Differences between DVD and Blu-ray
September 22, 2017 12:50 PM   Subscribe

I have a 1080p television. Today, I rented a Blu-ray movie for the first time, and it seems like the picture looks better than a standard DVD does (my player plays both formats). However, I am completely open to the possibility that this is all in my head. Are the differences between DVD and Blu-ray perceptible on a tv like mine?

Thanks, as always, for your help.
posted by 4ster to Technology (11 answers total)
 
Best answer: Yes. That's kind of the whole point of Blu-Ray. It contains high-definition video. DVDs contain standard-definition video. Your TV is high-definition, so if Blu-Ray didn't look better on it, it would be broken.
posted by kindall at 12:55 PM on September 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


Best answer: kindall got it in one. That's the whole idea. And the Blu-Ray premium isn't just marketing; on a 1080p TV, you should notice a difference.
posted by craven_morhead at 12:56 PM on September 22, 2017


Best answer: Yeah there is a massive difference in quality between DVD and Bluray.
posted by RustyBrooks at 12:57 PM on September 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


Best answer: DVD native resolution is 720 x 480 in the US. Your Blu-Ray player upscales it to your 1080p (1920x1080). Depending on how good the upscaler is, the dvd can look pretty nice, but it's not full 1080p resolution.
posted by advicepig at 12:59 PM on September 22, 2017


Response by poster: Thanks everyone! That is what I thought.
posted by 4ster at 12:59 PM on September 22, 2017


Best answer: At a technical level, DVDs use a quite old video compression codec called MPEG-2. Blu-ray uses much newer and better codecs called H.264 or VC-1. MPEG-2 is very prone to visual artifacts. I found the DVD of 28 Days Later close to unwatchable because of the visual distortions created by MPEG-2.

DVDs hold a maximum of 8.5GB, Blu-ray ranges from 25 to 128GB.

So it holds much more and can use that space more efficiently. DVD also has a maximum of 720x576 resolution and Blu-ray can range from 1080p to 4K.

This doesn't guarantee that Blu-ray will be higher quality - if a low quality video is put on the Blu-ray, it's still going to look low quality. But for the most part, Blu-ray will always look substantially better than DVD.
posted by Candleman at 1:00 PM on September 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Before everyone goes around saying "yes", what connection do you have between your blu-ray player and tv? Assuming it's HDMI then, yes, you will almost certainly see an improvement. If, however, you have an old blu-ray player and using composite or s-video then you will likely not see much of a difference at all.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 2:49 PM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


If you're still curious, you can look here to see some direct comparisons between dvd and what I think are hdtv broadcasts (you would expect bluray to actually look even better). Click on a picture and it will take you to a pair of full-resolution pictures you can click between.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:40 PM on September 22, 2017


One last caveat. A 1080p TV that's, say, 12 ft away from you will not display any difference between 480p and higher resolutions if it's 42 inches or smaller. There's a great chart. The bigger the TV, and the closer you sit, the more benefit you get. Not to say that you won't also notice differences due to encoding. Early DVDs especially look like crap to modern eyes, though at the time it was incredible.
posted by wnissen at 5:10 PM on September 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


Just FYI, also,I've noticed that DVDs are better quality when I play them in my Blu-ray player rather than the DVD player we still have.
posted by hydra77 at 6:55 PM on September 22, 2017


There are literally dozens of distinct factors that influence the perception of image quality but, while it is indeed possible to have a set-up in which a DVD delivers a better or at least as good as a picture as a Blu-ray, in most scenarios the improvement from Blu-ray is real and significant.

Your scepticism is justified given the huge amount of snake oil that is pervasive in the A/V business and the human tendency for biased conclusions but that's almost certainly not what's happening in your case here.

Assuming best practices throughout the mastering and display chains, in ascending order of picture quality: VHS < DVD < HDTV/Streaming < HD files downloaded from online stores < Blu-ray
posted by Bangaioh at 4:26 AM on September 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


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