Cable HD vs. BlueRay/HD DVD

jwbeck17 -- Sun, 06/24/2007 - 11:05

I have Comcast Cable and am wondering if there is a visual quality difference between an HD feed coming from a BlueRay or HD DVD player to an HDTV versus a HD feed from a cable provider such as Comcast. If we assume that both the HD DVD/BlueRay player are connected to the HDTV via HDMI, the Comcast cable box is connected via HDMI/DVI connector, and that the HDTV outputs to 720p/1080i, would there be a discernible difference? (I didn't want to include 1080p in this as cable doesn't output at that level.)

Any thoughts here?

PS. - If Scott Wilkinson is reading this: Thank you for your thorough answers in the past and I love hearing you on Leo Laporte's Tech Guy podcasts. Do you have a podcast as well? Maybe you should get in with his TWiT buddies as you would be great at it!

Thanks!

scottwilkinson -- Thu, 09/27/2007 - 18:45

Thanks for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoy my contributions to Leo's show. I don't have a podcast of my own yet; there are only so many hours in a day!

In general, HD DVD and Blu-ray probably look better than cable HD (or satellite or over-the-air) because all three broadcast media compress the signal as much as possible to fit as much content in the available bandwidth as possible. HD DVD and Blu-ray put picture quality first, since they don't have to fit more than one thing in the "pipe" at a time. Even so, I often find broadcast HDTV via OTA, cable, and satellite to look fantastic.

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision