Blue Ray/HDD Be able to play SD dvds?

[fulllupo]

Question as above.

Im just in proces of buying plasma, amp, speakers and dvd and was originally trying not to spend much on dvd due to HD next year possibly. But i demo'ed a HK dvd-22 and then the Denon 2910 straight after on the Pio XDE and the differnce was massive. Bugger!

Im curious though, when HD dvd players come out, will they be able to play old dvds do you think, as now im im thinking maybe ill just buy a decent dvd player now as still have large SD dvd collection to view anyways.

Thanks

[Timbo21]

Originally Posted by fulllupo

Question as above.

Im just in proces of buying plasma, amp, speakers and dvd and was originally trying not to spend much on dvd due to HD next year possibly. But i demo'ed a HK dvd-22 and then the Denon 2910 straight after on the Pio XDE and the differnce was massive. Bugger!

Im curious though, when HD dvd players come out, will they be able to play old dvds do you think, as now im im thinking maybe ill just buy a decent dvd player now as still have large SD dvd collection to view anyways.

Thanks

I think all/most Blu-Ray/HD-DVD players will be backwards compatible with SD DVD. However, how good will they be compared to a good stand alone DVD player? We don't know. Just as £500 DVD players which play CD's don't play them as well as a £500, or even £300 stand alone CD player.

AFAIK, it is not too hard for an HD-DVD player to play SD DVD, since they are quite similar apart from the colour lazer they use. I read somewhere that Blu-Ray might need a seperate mechanism all together in order to play SD DVD, so how good they will make it probably will depend... No doubt they will make machines which play both to a high level, but then they will charge you for it.

I guess if you have a large SD DVD collection you intend to use well after HD arrives it is worth getting a good SD DVD player now?

T.

[eternaldark]

I think it will be a given that blu-ray/HD-DVD players can playback normal dvd's after all theres a massive consumer base and no one is going to buy a dedicated stand alone player just for a handful of disks this early.

[fulllupo]

Thanks for your replies.

I think i might try and get a balance somewhere in the middle. Maybe a 500 quid dvd player will sit in the middle somewhere. Just looking for an area to save money as the cost just keep going up!

Thanks again