Blu-ray player profiles explained in detail

[Jesse Avery]

Hi there, I have a question concerning the quality of the picture I am seeing on my screen. I am relatively new to Blu-Ray, DVD having served me well up to now, and am finding the quality of the image so far very inconsistent and varying from movie to movie. Some movies look absolutely great, but others look annoyingly bad - overall so far I would say I still prefer DVDs.

The two discs that I am having the most trouble with are Grey Gardens from Criterion and Cover Girl from Eureka. I am not at all happy with the picture - I'm not entirely familiar with the lingo, but to me the picture looks grainy and somewhat pixelated, and generally not pleasing to the eye. In the case of Cover Girl, the movie came in Dual Format and I much prefer the DVD - it has a much smoother and warmer color, and stays the same all throughout.

My question is...is this normal or do I have to change the settings somehow? Surely the Blu-Ray should be superior to the DVD. Please forgive my ignorance and please talk to me like I am an idiot because I do not have much Blu-Ray experience. I can not understand why some movies look great and others not so much - I mean some are just awful.

The model I use is a Sony. Thank you for any help, and sorry for the long-winded nature of this post. Also sorry if this is not the correct place for his post, I am not allowed to start new threads.