Whats the best way to experience Blu-Ray??

No, size is inherent to the question of what is the best way to experience bluray. Just as you cannot pretend you can read a newspaper across the room, your ability to resolve detail has limits, if you try to watch bluray on a small screen most of that detail is simply lost.




As I said, screen size is part of the question by default. Bluray is about extra picture detail, if the screen is so small that you cannot resolve the detail at seating distance, what is the point. You seem to believe people have eagle vision, and totally discount how size also relates to cinematic impact.




False as saying that a newspaper can be enjoyed at any distance, including across a room. Ignoring size is ridiculous, pretending adjusting distance can fix size doesn't work in the real world, its silly as pretending that you can experience imax by holding an ipad against your forehead. Theres simply no distance that is practical to view a 32" at 1080p, it is a computer monitor.




You are stretching/overscanning then, because the calculator disagrees with you. Show me your math. Anyways my point stanRAB, you spent on a 50", yet all you get in screen height is 20", back at 6-8 feet and that image is a sliver on the wall. Pretend that 32" is adequate from your argument and you'd sit back even farther for this screen, and the sliver would get even smaller.

Theres a huge difference between poor as compared to hdtv vs a deal breaker or so horrible it cannot be watched. Sdtv on larger screens simply lacks detail, it doesn't inherently have any glaring artifacts on a decent screen, it's no different from it ever was.



Wrong, when they were adjusting viewing distance recommendations based on their meager offerings it was nothing more than a joke. Do you really need a chart to tell you a 21" is small at any distance? It was nothing more than a marketing tactic to sell things to people who simply lacked common sense.

You should already know this, esp as you portray yourself as expert on such things.


There were plenty of bigger screens available for those that wanted bigger - RPTV were commonly available, you could buy them from any high street store, Curry's, Dixons,John Lewis etc.
CRT/VGA projection was pretty big too.[/QUOTE]

Umm...at the time all projection was crt based, thus impractical. Even now with dlp the sales of projection tv's is niche. There were not plenty of larger rptv's around, almost no one actually had one. You are the one claiming everyone should be happy with 28" tv's yet you are pushing a fantasy of lots of people owning crt rptv's in the past? lol

You are right about the "pretty big part", but not in the way you intended, rptv were huge massive and impractical boxes, front projection provided a better picture, but it was even more impractical, they were big in size, and in drawbacks, not in sales. Its nothing comparable to what we have today.




Screen size is inherent to the discussion. It's like saying that text size has no bearing on whether you can read a newspaper from across the room. Of course size is the main factor. It's silly to pretend otherwise.
 
HD ready does not include 1080i as a native resolution.

HD ready generally refers to a display that has 720/768/1024 resolution, a requirement of that standard is it has to be able to accept 1080i.

A TV that displays 1080 resolution is generally referred to as Full HD.

Seating distances are different between the two standarRAB.
 
I only have a small lounge but have a 40 inch Sony LCD connected to Sony Blu-Ray BD500 and Sony BD 350.

Also I have 10 speakers around the room although only 8 will work at any one time because of the 7:1 Yamaha Amplifier I use.

Looks and sounRAB great, but there again, I live alone so dont have a wife telling me it isnt on!!

Women arent technology minded like some of us men.
 
This is the written spec, whether one spec is no longer used because technology has moved on doesn't have any bearing on what the spec means or says. Are you really going to argue with the BBC and wikipedia?
 
You cannot talk about quality when sizes you are claiming are acceptable are sub par in quality in terms of viewing experience by default. There is no reasonable distance where a 27" is not horribly compromised by the fact that it produces a tiny image. You might as well claim that watching an iphone from across the room is wonderful because its pin sharp. Watching Sdtv on a large hdtv is no worse than watching vhs on a 32" crt back in the day, you are exaggerating with your claims that you should set your tv standarRAB by the lousiest video you can feed into it. By that standard you'd sacrifice bluray for the sake of shrinking sdtv down to a level where you find it sharper. Which is totally missing the point of the ops original question of what is the best way to experience bluray.





You are recommending and justifying such screens as acceptable for bluray, in the same way someone would claim that reading a newspaper is possible from across the room. Its a recommendation based on false assumptions. People simply don't sit 4 feet away from a 32", or even closer for a 28", its not at all real world or reasonable. The additional strike of the screens obviously being tiny at any distance and thus not cinematic in any way at all is just a bonus strike against your argument. You need a certain size to be able to resolve detail at distance, it's just how the human eye works. Thats the fundamental point of bluray, so if you undermine this with a small screen, you have simply not setup the "best way to experience bluray" and have in fact thrown some of your money down the drain.
The cinematic experience is a fundamental part of justifying bluray, who in their right mind buys bluray to recreate the experience of holding your iphone at arm's length to watch a film anyways.



Imax maximum recommended distance at average home seating distances says this. Never mind that, common sense says this.



Lol its about technology they had access to as it relates to justifying "viewing distance recommendations" not markets. Bringing up what they had at the time is always relevant, seating distance has nothing to do with country of origin, unless you believe americans have different eyes than you. You were trying to justify viewing distance marketing jargon based on 27-36" crts of the time which is even worse. The fundamental thing was that the entire enterprise of applying seating distance recommendation to such a limited range of small tv's was simply bonkers. They were all small at any distance, so pretending there was a scientific basis for sitting 6 feet away from your 21" tv at the time and X feet further from a 32" was really baseless. You sat about 6-8 feet from anything, or as far as your furnishings would dictate, it didn't matter, the tv's were small regardless. Its like quibbling about viewing distances on various mp3 players, it doesn't matter, its just tiny regardless. Common sense would dictate you wouldn't watch your iphone from across the room, you don't need a distance calculator or chart to tell you this, and you don't need to measure down to the inch the correct distance to hold it away from your head to be "optimal" either.

I'm not sure how your 36" example helps, it doesn't at all, the 40" was bigger in all aspect ratios than the 36" you are talking about. In any case it was rare and impractical, so the point is moot. Common people did not buy such tvs and practical considerations meant that even 36" was out of reach for most people. So the idea that there were accessible ideal screens for people at the time is ridiculous, most everyone simply tolerated a compromise just as people before them tolerated a lack of color.


*fixing above posts broken quote which should read*


You should already know this, esp as you portray yourself as expert on such things.
 
Philips is sometimes just a name bought and slapped onto cheap chinese gooRAB now.
We just don't trust them anymore is all we are saying.
Bluray players pretty much constantly update their drm and stuff. So how quick your player maker is to impliment such fixes matters so you don't deal with new discs not playing. I trust sony more than philips on this matter. I"m sure they are responsible for half the player breaking discs in the first place after all.

HDMI is required for full digital 1080p signal. Previous connects only did 1080i max. Plus its easy peasy 1 cable for audio/video instead of several we used to deal with so why not. Its atleast 4 cables in 1.
Buy it online, its only a few quid. This is one of those things that many stores will rip you off for at a 1000% profit margin, much like printer cables. Buy a printer or a TV, sales guy says hey, you need a X cable for this, its required. Its 30-50 pounRAB!! Customer is then in a bind if they don't know the prices of such cables..they need the cable to use it after all, and the store gets a fat sale. Gold plating and other nonsense is all fluff to charge you more. Players generally don't include hdmi cables. I think its a scam deal between the makers and the stores so the stores can sell over priced cables. Just check prices on amazon a bit and you'll see what I mean.
 
I also have small living room with a 40in Sony LCD, I have a little cove in the side of wall which the tv fits into so I could easily jump to 50 but I really think it wouldn't work with SD programes as it would look truely awful, I'm about 15 feet away from my screen from my couch.

But being an avid HD fan and with more channels becomming HD I do see me switching just not for a year or two yet.
 
No, they tolerated it, else the best selling lcRAB would be 28" lcRAB and would be forever more. Why buy more after all. They bought 28" crts for the same reason people buy ford mondeos, they are affordable and other options just are not realistic. Now we live in a world where what would have been a mercedes benz in the past is now priced as the mondeo. Someone who buys a mondeo is only happy because thats what he knows he can afford in this world. If you recast the scenario where he could suddenly afford the mercedes as easily as the mondeo of the past, his opinion would change. Even you follow this pattern, you seem to be buying bigger and bigger screens even while claiming the 28" was good enough.



Once again, if the 28" were as "fine" as you were saying, you'd find that buying 32 or 37 would be "excessive", yet you did it anyways, meaning it was hardly fine at all. You do not lose quality in sdtv just because you get a larger screen, you really have to stop saying that. Let alone when talking about 30-40" small screen tv's. You'd only have a point with vhs, which is 250 lines and such bad quality that it would be glaringly bad on any screen of decent size, but to base your purchase based on vhs is pretty silly. Further more these new tv's are now wall mounted and thin, meaning the distance of the viewer from seating position is actually increased over their original crt. Which only makes buying a larger size all the more important, if only to compensate for this extra distance.

The 37" you consider adequate provides a mere 13~ or so inches of image height at 2.35 aspect ratio, a little over a foot tall of viewable image. Sit 6-8 feet back from that and it becomes silly, it doesn't matter if its bluray or dvd, it's just so small that the detail is wasted.
 
Oops, I updated my post too late. We worry because bluray gets broken from time to time by new drm and such, and players require new patch/fixes/updates, how fast your company is to respond keeps you from having to deal with discs that won't play.

I just searched amazon for hdmi cables, they are just a few quid,just factor in shipping, it should be well under 10 quid total. Just beware of a 50p cable that might have a big shipping cost.
For laughs here's a
 
So an sd channel looks just as good on a 32" lcd as it does on a 50" .
Ok:rolleyes::confused:

Of course it gets worse as it gets larger.

Its like taking a VHS recording.
Look at it copied to a dvd on your laptop and you can hardly tell its VHS.

Play it on your 42" screen and it looks horrendous.
Same also with the limited 625 resolution of dvd.

Play that on a cinema screen and it will look awful.

Bleedin' obvious really
 
You make it sound like you are using some tv with a scaler built in 2001. That or you are sitting mere inches away from your tv. We aren't in the analog era anymore, even sdtv is digital now, and as such its a clean signal. Scaled its not that bad, even on a larger screen, it's certainly not so bad that its unwatchable, in any case non hd/bluray sources aren't so important that you spend your time watching all that closely in the first place, that's by definition really. You don't know what you are talking about if you are comparing broadcast resolution to vhs, vhs resolution is a mere 250 lines at best, sdtv is 576 lines. I'm not sure what you are talking about horrendous? You are exaggerating. Unless you stand right in front of the tv it's hardly "horrendous". In such case if your high standarRAB were at least consistent the idea of watching a film on a tv small as yours when it produces a 2.35 image height of little more than 1 foot tall should be horrendous to you, let alone from 6-8 feet back. Thats so small that the last seat in the back of the theater at the local cinema wouldn't be far enough back to simulate that poor experience. You wouldn't admire a painting that small from 8 feet back, thats for sure, so blurays extra detail is wasted when you advocate such tiny screens. Bleedin' obvious really
 
I doubt any do, or any of note, or in your budget range. Maybe the super high end ones do, as a favor after you've already spent hundred and hundreRAB of pounRAB more;)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-BDPS370B-CEK-BDPS370-Blu-ray-Player/dp/B0038M1UTW
See, it even suggests you buy a cable.

Its just how the system works. Both printers and players could include the 1 pound chinese made cable, but they never do. They probably have a deal with the stores.

Newer is better? Not so clear, but more bugs are probably worked out, thats for sure, you will have to still judge by a case by case basis.
 
Ah okay thanks for your time I've just got a couple more questions lol

1) By looking at some other parts of this thread it says 1080i and 1080p are pretty much the same so is it worth it to pay a couple more quid just for the HDMI

2) Is it better to get the most latest Blu-Ray available for example if I decided not to get the Sony BDP S370 and decided to get the one before would I be missing out on any quality or would it just be the features such as internet and BBC iPlayer I would miss out on?
 
If your tv has the connector, you might as well, its the cleanest way to get signal to your tv regardless. The only features missing would be the extra features listed like iplayer, i'm sure sony is continuing to patch their older players for basic funcionality.
 
It's made by Philips that's what.



I would take Richer SounRAB over the BBC anyday and as for Wikipedia -how can you seriously take as gospel anything that can be changed by ordinary members of the public?



Generally no .
But sometimes certain retailers do deals . My PS3 was supplied with a free HDMI courtesy of Amazon who had the offer on when I got my first one.

But you can get HDMI for under
 
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