What really gets to me about this whole issue is that there really is no good reason that blu-ray shouldn't be able to improve even standard definition content. Granted, it's not going to be the kind of dramatic improvement that can be seen with high definition content, but it can still be significant. Two points in that regard:
1. First, there is no good excuse for the fact that their professional-grade production equipment can't do a better job of upscaling than my home video equipment. If you're using an HDTV, upscaling is a given -- if the content hasn't already been upscaled on the disc, then either your DVD/blu-ray player or your TV is going to upscale it. It should be expected that professional equipment costing thousands of dollars and made specifically for the task would do a better job of it than the cheap video processor that's thrown into the consumer electronics.
Not only that, but when my home equipment does the upscaling, it's already working with a flawed source. Any compression artifacts, macroblocking, edge enhancement, etc. that was introduced in the encode to MPEG2 for the DVD is only going to be magnified by my equipment. When the upscaling is done professionally, they should generally be able to go back to a higher quality source without all of these problems.
So what's the excuse for the fact that many of these blu-rays are being reported to look
worse than the DVDs? They should look better -- maybe not dramatically so, but still noticeably. There's something seriously wrong if a professionally done upscale doesn't improve at least a little over a DVD being upscaled by consumer equipment.
2. The second question that I have, though, is that if the studios can't do a better job with the upscaling, why do these have to be upscaled at all? Blu-ray is a disc format, not a video format -- there's no reason whatsoever why blu-rays couldn't be released with standard definition content (in fact, the recycled special features on many blu-rays are often kept in standard definition). So if you're going to keep it in standard definition, why bother to put it on blu-ray at all? Three answers:
- More space means less compression. Even the best looking DVD is going to have some issues introduced by compression -- again, artifacts, macroblocking, and edge enhancement. With the additional space that blu-ray affords, less compression can be used, resulting in a cleaner picture.
- Expanded color space. Most professional video equipment records with a larger color space than DVD allows. The expanded color space available with blu-ray would allow more depth of color to be retained, resulting in a more realistic and more brilliant picture.
- Uncompressed audio. This one is pretty much self-explanatory.
Again, would it be the dramatic difference that we see with a high definition source? No. But it would still be an improvement. It might or might not be worth bothering to upgrade for someone who already had a DVD, but if I'm going to buy it regardless, I'd personally like to buy the best version possible.
Of course, the problem is that the blu-ray manufacturing companies have spent tons of money drilling into consumers that "blu-ray = HD", so there would be numerous people complaining if they bought a blu-ray and it contained only SD content.
ING HAPPEN), you're going to end up with upscales on Blu.
