Samsung BluRay Player Sucks 97
The salesman needs glbuttes, then, or the early equipment isn't living up to the potential of the format (which is not that unexpected, if one looks at the history of these things).
Just as a quick example, here are a couple of images. The first is a crop of a still (1:1 pixels) from a 1080p trailer off of Apple's web site, which is similar to what Blu-Ray should be able to deliver (the trailer is encoded with H.264, which Blu-Ray supports):
The second is the same frame, but scaled up to the same pixel dimensions from a DVD-sized frame:
Load both of these images up in a browser window and flip back and forth. Look how much detail just vanishes in the second image: the lines on the lips, the individual strands of hair, the texture in the iris, etc. all just goes away.
What are you watching on? Most HDTVs presently on the market can't really accept 1080p signals. They say they support 1080p, but that just means they can upscale other stuff...
On a typical HDTV which only has 700-800 lines of vertical resolution, maybe you can't tell the difference from across the room. But on an HDTV (or computer monitor) that actually supports 1080p, at recommended ideal viewing distance (2.5x the diagonal measurement of the screen), the difference is *huge*.
-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005