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I have to disagree. I have a pretty decent DVD player (Oppo DV-983H, deinterlacer scored perfect 100/100 on Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity benchmark DVD) and for every movie where I have both the DVD and Blu-Ray, my PS3 playing the Blu-Ray absolutely humiliates the Oppo. OTOH, my girlfriend can't tell the difference. Even my Dish Network HD, which is roughly 5Mbps H.264 is better than the best DVD quality. The increased resolution is easily visible from my normal viewing distance.
We will just have to agree to disagree.
I did the same test. Deciding if it was worth the extra $2.00 for BluRay from Netflix. Put the 2012 DVD in my Samsung DVD Player/recorder. Looked beautiful.
Put the Bluray 2012 in my PS3. Also looked beautiful. The only real difference I noticed was the colors seemed a tiny tiny bit more vivid and the sound, particularly the lower freq's, was a marginally better.
I don't think it's quite time to ditch the DVD's.
I'm going to guess that differences in viewing distance and screen size are responsible for us coming to different conclusions on the relative picture quality of Blu-Ray and DVD. I sit less than two screen diagonals away from the TV. Other less likely reasons:
1) Resolving power of TV - not just native resolution, but effective resolution during scenes with motion
2) Type of signal sent to the TV - though I'm sure you weren't sending 480p from you PS3 to your TV.
How do people typically route three different sources (say, PC, Blue Ray DVD, and cable converter box) of 5.1 audio into their home theater amplifier? Do these amplifiers have several 5.1 inputs?
No. The amp will take whatever is input into it and if it is encoded in 5.1 it outputs it that way, no matter the input method.
What I was referring to are the physical connections. Do amplifiers have three separate input jack sets, one set for each input? Meaning how do you switch the audio source? You have three sources, your PC, your Blue Ray DVD, and your cable converter box - each has 5.1 sound. If there is only one 5.1 audio input (and say you hook your blue ray audio out to it) then how do you play your PC 5.1 or cable box 5.1 audio out of your amplifier?
What I was referring to are the physical connections. Do amplifiers have three separate input jack sets, one set for each input? Meaning how do you switch the audio source? You have three sources, your PC, your Blue Ray DVD, and your cable converter box - each has 5.1 sound. If there is only one 5.1 audio input (and say you hook your blue ray audio out to it) then how do you play your PC 5.1 or cable box 5.1 audio out of your amplifier?
This is a major problem that a lot of people are running into. A lot of newer surround sound systems can accept multiple inputs and most are currently setup so that all your devices connect to the surround sound and then the surround sound has a video pass through you connect to the TV.
The hope of many was that the TV itself would facilitate this. You hook everything into the TV via HDMI and then connect the TV to the surround sound and use that in place of the TV speakers. This works, but it won't be 5.1 as virtually all TV's only pass on 2 channel stereo through their digital optical out for the audio. The reason has something to do with HDCP encoding over the HDMI cables and the fact that the TV itself is only requesting 2 channel stereo.
So, you are left with three options:
1. Upgrade your surround sound to something that can handle multiple inputs and video out.
2. Switch the cables as needed or use a whole bunch of splitters to get them all hooked up.
3. Use the stereo audio out from the TV to connect to the surround sound. You won't have 5.1, but it will at least use all the speakers and sound better than the TV speakers alone.
This is a major problem that a lot of people are running into. A lot of newer surround sound systems can accept multiple inputs and most are currently setup so that all your devices connect to the surround sound and then the surround sound has a video pass through you connect to the TV.
The hope of many was that the TV itself would facilitate this. You hook everything into the TV via HDMI and then connect the TV to the surround sound and use that in place of the TV speakers. This works, but it won't be 5.1 as virtually all TV's only pass on 2 channel stereo through their digital optical out for the audio. The reason has something to do with HDCP encoding over the HDMI cables and the fact that the TV itself is only requesting 2 channel stereo.
So, you are left with three options:
1. Upgrade your surround sound to something that can handle multiple inputs and video out.
2. Switch the cables as needed or use a whole bunch of splitters to get them all hooked up.
3. Use the stereo audio out from the TV to connect to the surround sound. You won't have 5.1, but it will at least use all the speakers and sound better than the TV speakers alone.
Something like this would do it but it isn't cheap...I will keep looking
Something like this would do it but it isn't cheap...I will keep looking
Just so you know there are other "solutions" out there, but then you introduce the problem of the picture and sound being out of synch. The universal recommendation is to use the kind of receiver that you posted as it will give the best results and easiest implementation. That is, until they are able to figure out a way around the HDCP issues with HDMI and sending the audio through the TV.
Just so you know there are other "solutions" out there, but then you introduce the problem of the picture and sound being out of synch. The universal recommendation is to use the kind of receiver that you posted as it will give the best results and easiest implementation. That is, until they are able to figure out a way around the HDCP issues with HDMI and sending the audio through the TV.
Today we bought the Panasonic TC-P50S2 with two nine foot HDMI cables - one for the cable box output and one for the computer output. We don't own a blue ray dvd but I own a regular DVD player so we can for now just take the s video out of it. We also bought a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for using the internet via the computer displayed by the TV.
I have something called a ProLogic receiver by Sherwood RD-6500 AV Receiver (http://www.sherwoodusa.com/prod_rd6500.html - broken link) - I'm guessing it is as least ten years old. It has speaker out for FR, FL, RR, RL, C, and SW.
I will start with a Dell Mini 10 which I think is the only computer I own with HDMI out. It only has an Intel Atom processor and 1G memory so I expect it won't work well, but I'll try. If it doesn't work I try a Dell Optiplex 740 with a HDMI card (to be purchased). If that doesn't work well then I have will have to buy another computer.
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