For the Video Hound: Vudu
Vudu
$399, vudu.com
About as big as a Mac Mini, the Vudu box gives you access to over 5,000 movies for rent or purchase. Vudu uses the same peer-to-peer technology that pirates use to illegally swap movies online, but for good purposes like letting you watch a movie instantly even though it's not done downloading. The service just started offering HD movies you'd actually want to watch – like the 'Bourne Ultimatum' – but the mostly standard definition (SD) movies on offer still look stunning since the box upscales video to quasi-HD quality, while the ergonomic remote is the most responsive to come along since Tivo.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nycmuscleasian @ Mar 14th 2008 3:28AM
Upscaled standard definition (SD) movies to "quai-HD quality" still look "stunning"??? That is a ridiculous statement.
ALL SD movies HAVE TO BE UPSCALED into either approximately 1 megapixel(720p/1080i) or 2 megapixel (1080p) resoultion to be displayed on modern HDTV's. This is because modern HDTV's are fixed pixel display units (unlike CRT scan line display units) and all video signals have to fit the native resolution of the particular dispay screen. Therefore, an SD video source of 480i has to be upscaled ANYWAY, either by the source (DVD, Vudu, SD TV), OR by the display unit (HDTV) itself. ANY video signal one would see on a 720p/1080i HDTV is of approximately 1 megapixel resolution. However, true HD material cannot be compared with "upscaled" and "quasi-HD quality" SD video signal, because the extra native resolution of true HD signal is not "made up" by interpolation of data. That is why SD movie, whether from SD TV, DVD, or Vudu, would still look crappy on an HDTV... Anyone with one of those "upscaling" DVD players and a Blueray player at home can tell you that no matter how well a SD video signal is "upscaled", it still looks awful!