HI Allan you could rent them before you could get the players.regards munch

Zorba,

A scaler won't actually improve an image, it will just scale it to match the native resolution of the display you're using, hopefully with as little damage as possible.

If you have a HD plasma or projector, it will have a scaler built-in to convert DVD resolution to 720p, 1080p, or whatever, in order to fill the screen. The reason for paying extra for a scaler is so that hopefully it will do a better (i.e. less damaging) job than the one built into the display.

If you could display the un-scaled native image in a small rectangle on your HD plasma you will be seeing the image at it's sharpest and clearest, a scaler isn't going to improve on this.

Allan

Munch,

This is the first time I've noticed HD disks available to rent in the UK.

I'm currently boycotting my local Blockbuster store since they changed their pricing policy. It used to be £3.95 for two-nights rental, expensive but at least we had some flexibility of when to watch, when to take back, some members of the family would watch on Saturday and others on Sunday, etc. But now its £3.95 for one night which I think is too much so I've voted with my wallet and stopped using them. Therefore I've been looking around at online rental companies and it appears that they are both cheaper and more flexible. And if they rent HD-DVDs as well then I'm all set.

Allan

£3.95 a night?! I've bought the odd DVD for less than that.


There'll be a thread called The 'Death Of Blockbuster Rentals', if they carry on charging that kind of silly money.

It'll probably happen anyway with things like this: Click for BT Vision on the way.

if you think thats expensive check this out from telewest, so called hd movies ie scary movie 4 £4.50

They are no good now days when you can do it online £4.50 a month for up to 8 dvds through the post.regards munch

quote:

Originally posted by Allan Probin:
Munch,

This is the first time I've noticed HD disks available to rent in the UK.

I'm currently boycotting my local Blockbuster store since they changed their pricing policy. It used to be £3.95 for two-nights rental, expensive but at least we had some flexibility of when to watch, when to take back, some members of the family would watch on Saturday and others on Sunday, etc. But now its £3.95 for one night which I think is too much so I've voted with my wallet and stopped using them. Therefore I've been looking around at online rental companies and it appears that they are both cheaper and more flexible. And if they rent HD-DVDs as well then I'm all set.

Allan

can you email me i would you but i have lost you email address munch

Thanx.

I am out of my depth here hence the questions. All information gathered will help make a more informed decision and save the dealer atleast half a head of hair by narrowing down my options. Besides, I would rather seek answers here from people who have or had the products than advice from someone at Currys or a dealer just after a sale.

My problem I suppose is trying to kill two birds with one stone. Can the n-Vi and the av2 handle the new lossless sound formats?

Sorry, I mean both connected to whatever will be the winner of the format war and sound passed through their preamp.

Zorba,

No problem. I think there's a common misconception about the ability and purpose of a scaler. This misconception gets exploited by marketing buzz-phrases like "upscaling DVD player". It's meaningless with respect to image quality. Plasma displays, for example, have always had scalers built in to them, they vary in quality and some might not be very good, but you could just as legitimately start calling them all "upscaling plasmas". Arrrggghh!!

Don't know about the n-Vi but I'm fairly certain that the av2 has a 7.1 analog input capability. If you use a HD-DVD / blu-ray player with analog outputs then this would allow access to the lossless formats by letting the player do the decodiing and D-to-A conversion. Problem though if you're wanting to use more than one source with multi-channel analog outputs (like a HD-DVD player AND a blu-ray player or SACD/DVD-A player). It might also be a bit messy having 8 analog interconnects going from your HD player to your pocessor.

The other connection method to access the new lossless audio formats is in digital form using HDMI. The player would decode the soundtrack and send the resultant 7.1 channel digital PCM signal (along with the digital video signal) to the AV processor using an HDMI cable. The processor would grab the incoming digital audio PCM signal for D-to-A conversion and relay the video signal to an HDMI output connector with another HDMI cable going off to the display. There are a growing number of AV processors now supporting HDMI audio and usually capable of switching between at least two or three HDMI inputs.

Allan

Thanks. Would you have to have the full 7.1 channels or would there be an option for 5.1 as I would assume most will have trouble to squeeze in another 2 speakers.

Zorba, 7.1 is the maximum number of channels supported by the new audio formats. If you have less than that then you can just tell the device doing the decoding which speakers are present and it will fold the audio from the missing channels into the channels you actually have.

Allan