Technology is supposed to make your life easier, right? Sure it is- that's why we pay top dollar for the latest, most powerful, most user-friendly gadget every time a new one appears on the horizon. But one of the downsides to technology is the greater number of choices we are confronted with when trying to decide exactly which new gadget we want.
The HDTV world has become "cursed" with this problem too. It's not just different brands of gadget, or different levels of quality, but gadgets that all really serve the same purpose, but in a distinctly different way. Buying a DVD player used to be a simple task: there was one kind of player, and you just bought the best one you could afford. In a way, it's still like that, but there are now four different types of DVD player that you can hook up to your HDTV for satisfactory results. The different types are standard, upscaling, progressive, and high definition DVD players.
Standard DVD players
The cheap DVD player you have been using for the past ten years with your old black and white TV will also work with the latest 00 plasma HDTV. Even though regular DVDs are recorded with 480 horizontal lines of resolution and HDTVs display either 720 or 1080 lines, it's not a problem, since the HDTV is designed to expand, or "upscale" whatever input it gets to fill the whole screen. Just because it works, though, doesn't mean it works well. If the player is of low quality or the HDTV doesn't have a great upscaler, you may not notice any improvement over your old set.
Upscaling DVD players
These will do the job of upscaling inside the player, and help a lot when the HDTV is an older model or happens to have a poor built-in upscaler. You can choose the resolution to output, so if the player performs upscaling you can either make it happen inside the player or the HDTV, whichever one does a better job.
Progressive DVD players
The other operation that needs to be done on DVD output is called de-interlacing. In a nutshell, a DVD or a regular TV show comes in an interlaced format, where half the picture is shown, then the other half, thirty times a second. An HDTV, however, has a progressive format and likes to display a whole picture sixty times a second. Changing an interlaced video to a progressive one is a little harder than upscaling, and a lot of HDTVs don't do it well. A good progressive DVD player is not much more costly than a regular one and can make a huge difference, especially with a bargain HDTV. For the non-nutshell explanation of interlaced and progressive displays, check here: HDTV Basics.
High definition DVD players
The ultimate solution to the problem of too many choices is simply to buy the ultimate player, as long as you can afford it. Right now the ultimate technology is called Blu-Ray, and is simply a normal-looking DVD that can carry much more information than you would think. One of these discs can store up to 30 gigabytes of data, enough for two or three full-length high definition movies. Playing a Blu-Ray disc on a Blu-Ray DVD player will give you the ultimate high definition viewing experience. And the really good news is that you can also play standard DVDs on a Blu-Ray player, so your voluminous DVD library won't go to waste.
If you don't feel comfortable diving into the Blu-Ray world just yet, and you can't find a steady source of Blu-Ray movies anyway, one of the other types of player can still work wonders. Just do a little research on the HDTV you own or plan to buy, and find out if using a progressive or upscaling player will make a big difference. Looking through HDTV reviews is a good way to get this information.
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