Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Okay, question.
I have a movie channel that is an HD Movie channel.. would this be the same resolution as an HD-DVD movie?
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The complicated answer is the movie is stored at 1080p on HD DVD, but my HD A1 and I believe the xbox only output at 1080i or 720p, so essentially the same resolution. Since 1080i60 has more than twice the frame rate as film, 1080i can essentially send a 1080p picture anyway (although with some judder due to 24fps being converted to 30 essentially). I believe that the hd dvd sends a flag for movies to tell the progressive displays to build a single frame out of the interlaced frames, not sure that a HD satellite/cable box does that. (my understanding of this part is a little fuzzy.
The short answer is that no, there is not a difference in resolution. But their is a big difference in lack of compression. HD DVD are typically about twice the bandwidth of HD movie channels. This means a lot less macro blocking during fast scenes, explosions, etc. And dark scenes seem to look a whole lot more detailed. No banding, globbing,etc.
I find a good HD DVD looks significantly better than a HD movie channel.
Sound quality is a more noticeable improvement, IMO. Although, since there aren't any receivers capable of receiving dolby digital+ and dolby trueHD, I have to use the 6 analog outs from the HD DVD player to take advantage of the better sound. Or if you have an HDMI receiver, you can convert the advanced audio codecs to pcm and send them that way. There is no way to take advantage of the new audio simply using optical or coax audio cables.
Since the xbox add on doesn't have hdmi or analog outs, it unfortunately can't take advantage of DD+/True HD sound. Too bad, because that is where HD DVD really shines.