Why is Blu-ray better than HDTV?

[jshannon]

I don't know anything about how HDTV is broadcast, but I'm quite sure they have much better equipment than my Panny blu ray player, so why do the movies that I play on my blu ray player look so much better than the HD movies they put on TV. Why don't they put blu ray movies on TV for that matter?

[groove93]

Originally Posted by jshannon

I don't know anything about how HDTV is broadcast, but I'm quite sure they have much better equipment than my Panny blu ray player, so why do the movies that I play on my blu ray player look so much better than the HD movies they put on TV. Why don't they put blu ray movies on TV for that matter?

Lots of factors kick in with regards to HD Broadcasts and one of the biggest ones is of course, Compression of the signal.

[Disco]

Blue Ray has a better PQ. It is a higher resolution.

[My_Two_Cents]

Blu-Ray: Uncompressed 1080p

HD Cable: Highly compressed 1080i/720p

Originally Posted by Disco

Blue Ray has a better PQ. It is a higher resolution.

Really? Blue?

[Duffy12]

The MAJOR problem that I have with HDTV broadcast is those stupid very annoying little movie commercials that stations now run over top the current movie(usually in the bottom left of the screen) that is being broadcast that very minute!!!!! At times can really ruin great scenes such as recent ones that I remember of in 'King Kong' and '2001 a Space Odyssey'.

That alone by itself shows why Blu is much much better.

Do these in-movie commercials bother anybody else?

[RiseDarthVader]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Blu-Ray: Uncompressed 1080p

HD Cable: Highly compressed 1080i/720p

Actually Blu-ray is not uncompressed 1080p.

[tilapiah6]

Originally Posted by RiseDarthVader

Actually Blu-ray is not uncompressed 1080p.

How about *less* compressed.

[SlmShdy1]

OP, have you ever watched Speed Racer on a HD broadcast? There's macroblocking all over the place. The Blu-ray is flawless except, of course, for the audio.

[thedarkangel1975]

Originally Posted by SlmShdy1

OP, have you ever watched Speed Racer on a HD broadcast? There's macroblocking all over the place. The Blu-ray is flawless except, of course, for the audio.

And the movie (script,acting,etc) lol

[onemorechance]

uncompressed 1080p to 720p compressed i vbelieve

[Rob J in WNY]

Don't forget Blu-ray's lossless or uncompressed multichannel audio. Broadcast HDTV is lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 at best (which is a nice thing, but it's no lossless!).

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by RiseDarthVader

Actually Blu-ray is not uncompressed 1080p.

From the player to the TV, it's uncompressed, which is what I was referring to. Is that incorrect?

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

From the player to the TV, it's uncompressed, which is what I was referring to. Is that incorrect?

good come back, but then someone can say the same for HDTV (i.e. from the tuner to the display it is uncompressed)

To the OP: a couple of major reasons
1) HDTV has a lot less available bandwidth then BD, that means the video and audio needs to get much more compressed to fit through the pipe, the more you compress the more detail is lost. For lossy compression the way it works is that it looks at a bunch of pixels and says "let's pretend they are all the same" then it groups them together as a block and says that block is x colour instead of sending the colour of each and every one of the pixels. Because the encoder changed some from colour Y to X to be able to send as a block the info is lost and those pixels will be displayed as X instead of Y and that detail has been lost.
2) HDTV (and DTV) can be different resolutions (then again so can stuff on BD) not everything is necessarily 1080p and truth be told, don't know for your cable or sat, but usually none are 1080p

[ghebert]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Blu-Ray: Uncompressed 1080p

HD Cable: Highly compressed 1080i/720p

If blu-ray were uncompressed, we'd be looking at a few, if not several, hundred GB of data. Blu-ray is compressed, just not in the obscene amounts used in broadcast tv.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Blu-ray: 1080p maximum, VC-1 or MPEG-4 compression, higher possible bandwidth
HDTV: 1080i maximum, MPEG-2 compression, lower possible bandwidth

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

good come back, but then someone can say the same for HDTV (i.e. from the tuner to the display it is uncompressed)

Well, fine, if you put it that way... Not sure what I was thinking.

[Ashamed Pegasus]

Originally Posted by Danielle Ni Dhighe

HDTV: 1080i maximum, MPEG-2 compression, lower possible bandwidth

Some HDTV providers have 1080p and MPEG-4, but you're correct on the 3rd comment...

[Trogdor2010]

It goes like a song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir1A74UA2YE

[solarrdadd]

Full, true 1080p video, 5 - 7.1 channels of lossless HD high bitrate audio, bd-live 2.0, the amount of physical stuff/extras on the disc....teacher, may i be excused, my head's full!

[GGX]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Blu-Ray: Uncompressed 1080p

Umm no not quite. Blu-ray video is still compressed. MPEG-2, AVC MPEG-4, and VC-1 are all video compression codecs.