HDTV Forum

While on vacation, I had an opportunity to stop by SONY to see a demonstration of the Blu Ray player. It was fantastic. I was watching the demo on a 60" SXRD and talking to the SONY rep, he mentioned that the
player was outputing the signal to the set at 1080p via HDMI. I asked him how that was done and he told me that THE NEW 60" SXRD can accept an HDMI 1080p signal! He told me that my 60" was being phased out! (I purchased my 60" SXRD in late May)
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He said "that doesn't mean you cannot use this player with your set (I will have connect to the component inputs not HDMI), just that the image will lack some of the clarity." etc on your set as it scales the player's (apparently selectible) 1080i signal to 1080p. They had the NEW 60" SXRD connected to the player, so the image was absolutely incredible.
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On my drive back I stopped at the SONY Style store at the Westchester Mall in White Plains, NY. They were demonstrating the Blu Ray. I asked them to switch the DVD to the one I had seen earlier. As it was playing I told the rep (Lou) that I had just seen a demo on the same set at SONY, and the image was very noticeably sharper, more depth, almost 3D. Why the difference? He told me that they had not yet received the NEW 60" SXRD that has a 1080p HDMI input and that probably accounts for the difference.
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Should I feel cheated?

Cheated? If I'm spending a few thousand $$ I'm going to do my homework. For starters, it's all about connections. What do they have, what don't they have. How long has the current model been out? After all, the shelf life of a "hot" new Sony is about 6mos to a year.

On the positive side, did you get a great price for your soon to be obslolete set back in May? That's about when they started dumping the old ones to make room for the next hottest thing. You're also not missing much yet, unless you had planned to buy a costly HD DVD player and then find the few titles that are now available.

I still have my 3 year old Sammy and I can live with it until the dust settles (and prices come down) on the new HD stuff. My upconverting cheapo Samsung DVD player, while hardly perfect, is still very watchable. I'm an audio nut and perfect sound still trumps perfect picture for me. That said, I'm eagerly looking forward to hearing what the new DD+ has to offer.

I did my homework. In April I spoke with several people at Sony at the suggestion of Sony execs who live in my community. My question was to the effect: "If I am planning to buy the BluRay, will I get a better, sharper more dementional picture from the SXRD 60" that is likely to follow the 60" SXRD that is currently on the market" In essence their answer was to the effect: "What you are seeing from your DirecTv's 1080i signal now will be improved with the BluRay.

I was upset by the comments and picture at the Sony Style in White Plains where I was told all sorts of negatives

Art

At this time I would not be overly concerned about anything. Current Bluray combined withthe Samsung player is nothing to get excited about and is currently providing degraded images anyway compared to HD DVD. We are hopeful the players from Pioneer and Sony plus getting some mastering corrected for the discs will finally supply us with the performance it is capable of.

If you want the real insight to what is going on keep visting us. Manufacturer loyalty will not help a performance enthusiast acquire the right products nor will talking to most sales people unfortunately...

HDMI is suppose to work like this: The DVD player and the HDTV will do a handshake routine. The two will determine what is the best format that both can support, then the DVD player will send THAT format to the HDTV.
If you HDTV is a 720p, then that is what it receives. If your HDTV is a 1080i set, then that what it receives, etc. John

I feel your pain. After countless conversations with Samsung personel I purchased a HLR-5668W (last year)under the guise that this unt would show 1080p. Low and behold I found out later that this unit will only generate this quality thru the PC input. BUMMER

In the midst of reviewing the xbox 360...

It does support a VGA output and the report was it will also upscale SD DVD via that connection type! Yet to be tested...

Might give you the 1080P magic you wanted! Either way you will get 1080P with games and HD DVD...