Have anyone in here went in to a store that has a showcase which shows the difference between HD and SD? They will usually have a a split screen showing what both look like and usually SD is ridiculously bad looking and blurry while the HD looks crisp.

For instance, I watched a Blu-Ray demo at Circuit City and it was completely stupid how it made a standard DVD look so crappy that no one would want to watch it. I knew DVDs never looked like this.

Are these displays actually accurate or are they nothing more than a hoax?

Really, I can't say they're ever that true. What they're really showing you is the difference between SD and HD on that system. Most HDTV's look absolutely terrible when viewing Standard Def channels, so the difference looks far more pronounced.

I doubt they are accurate. Since you cant have half of the picture be an HD picture, and the other half display in SD, they have to convert the SD movie to HD (which looses quality), so they can display it correctly on the HD TV. They probably also grain up the SD picture a bit for marketing; to get more people to buy that TV.

I havnt sat down and watched a SD-DVD on an HD-TV, so I dont know what the picture looks like, but I cant see it being as grainy as they show in the stores.

I put a VHS on my HDTV once, it was the most god awful thing I have ever had the displeasure to watch. And all the more reason for me to hurry up and finish replacing my last remaining handful of VHS.

As for DVD quality I would guess part of it is a factor of what sort of DVD player you're using. Most DVD players now upscale the movie to at least 720p. Which isn't perfect but it is an improvement. I suppose if you went back to a first or second generation DVD player you might get a really crappy looking image. But not anymore.

quote the slayer

I havnt sat down and watched a SD-DVD on an HD-TV, so I dont know what the picture looks like, but I cant see it being as grainy as they show in the stores.

The upscale of the quality is good enough to just buy the normal DVD IMO. Granted the shift from 720p to 1080 is a large one, 720p is better than anything that we had years ago.

hm... my dvd player has this progressive scan mode that is supposed to make dvd movies look good on HD. i think that upscales the movie. and anyway, dvds are not that bad in resolution aren't they?

I've seen those split screen comparison videos and I can tell you, they tell the truth but they don't display half of how great the difference is.

how on earth do you say that? there can't be that much of a difference!

But there is a big difference between 1080p and 480i. And it is really pretty noticable even when you just switch over from one channel to another on an HDTV. I haven't seen these new floor displays so I don't know how much of an exaggeration it could be. But trust me when you watch even 1080i on a regular basis you notice immediately when something isn't in HD.