I have a 720p HDTV. If I buy a BluRay DVD player with is see a significient difference in my movie picture quality. Im using an Upconvert player now.

If you got a blueray player (the hardware) it should have come with a disk with software. If you got the OEM version without, you need to buy your own software. PowerDVD should work. If you are somehow looking to download something to play bluray disks on a PC without an actual bluray player, you need to buy the drive.

If the item is under warranty return it asp. The problem is in the power supply, the cause is a open capacitor sometimes leaving a bulge at the top.

It will look great. You can actually set it for 1080i. I have an older model HDTV(no HDMI) and a bluray player it looks great. TVs that are 720p will actually do 1080i. The only difference is 1080i is two pictures interlaced(the way tv has always been before digital) and 1080p is one single shot. If this helps please rate me. I do not get paid for this but I like helping people.

Generally speaking, your TV will display the signal it receives. DVD player output, for example, is 480p, but an upconvert DVD player can output the signal at 720p or 1080p. You should adjust your components (e.g. cable/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray players, etc.) to the desired compatible output.

In all reality you are probably not doing anything wrong. You have a great TV and a pretty good BluRay player.

One thing about looking at movies in a store is usually you look at the screen further away than you usually do at home. Also, some of the demo disks they use are recored at a higher bit rate than many movies you can buy. Store displays are designed to show off TV units to make them sell, they do not care about them after you leave the store.

Many people do not know that some Bluray movies can actually look worse than DVD. Avatar for example is encoded at an average of 28 Mpbs on Bluray, and Avatar on DVD is encoded at around 7 Mbps. However, note that a 1080p screen has 6 times as many pixels as DVD, but in this case only 4 times the amount of data for the picture, so in all actuality Bluray has a lower quality picture per pixel than DVD. Some Bluray movies claim that they are 1080p, but are encoded as low as 14 Mbps (They do this so they can fit the movie on a single layer Bluray disk instead of the standard dual layer disks.) Another thing to note is that the color 'black' on Bluray is like 'Bass' on an MP3, in that they both require high bit rates. A low bitrate on Bluray will produce a grainy black picture, and on an MP3 a low bitrate will make the bass sound tinny. A great example of this is the movie 'Crash' which looks way better on DVD than that of Bluray.

From my experience, the best Bluray movies to show off your system are the BBC's 'Natural Earth', and 'Doctor who' like 'Planet of the dead.' Dr who is 1080i, but is encoded at the highest bitrate that I have seen on any Bluray movie so far, and looks outstanding.

Good Luck

the tv models in store are usually have samples from blueray dvds. standard dvd players will look fuzzy because it only submits standard dvd picture quality. you can try an upvert dvd player. tho i cant promise picture quality. i have an xbox 360 that upverts the quality. if you get a bluray player i recommend hdmi wires. if you get upvert dvd player and it has an hd outlet red, blue, green wires it might work. i havent tried one myself. if you dont want to spend money on bluray dvds. i recommend an xbox console. it upverts dvds through hdmi or hd red, blue, green wires

You can use your old on, but I am guessing it doesn't have progressive scan. If it does, make sure to hook it to your TV using a component cable.( RED GREEN BLUE ) Then you will have to hook the audio up seperately with a standard red and white RCA cable. Do nt try to use a standard RCA video cable in the place of a componenet cable. Once you have the compnent (RGB) cable and RCA (RW) cable hooked to the TV, check the DVD menu and make sure it is set to Progressive Scan. If you want the best picture for your HDTV. I highly reccomend a blu-ray disc player. That is the highest quality. There are some prety good upconverting DVD players out there. They take the 480p signal and upconvert them to 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. These have HDMI outputs and connect quickly and easily to the TV you have. Most of them can be purchased for less than 100 bucks. But this would be your second best option. Before you shell out 400 bucks on a blu-ray player, go to a rental company and rent a blu-ray player. Once you see the quality of blu-ray, I think you will run out and buy one!

There will be a big difference in video quality between HDMI and S-Video. If you happen to have a DVD player that uses HDMI you can upconvert your movies to 1080i if your DVD player allows it. The only problem that you might run into is your audio. HDMI has audio built into the cable and DVI does not, with the HDMI to DVI cable you are going to have to find an alternate source for your audio to travel through. If you are looking for video quality get the HDMI to DVI cable.

Are you just using the yellow cable at this point, because the quality would in fact be awful? Using the green, red & blue cables (component cables) would not improve quality much, seeing as the yellow video cable has a resolution of 480i and component cables are set at 480p. Your TV (if it is in fact high definition) would either run at 720p or 1080p depending on what the manual says and what the native resolution is. I would say try and buy and upconvert DVD player and make sure to get an HDMI cable to go from the DVD player to the HDTV (some DVD players come with this cable, but you'll have to look around for them, otherwise look on buy.com or something for some cheap ones). HDMI connection and the upconvert DVD player will improve picture quality significantly.

Hi Anya, Im sorry to hear of your difficulties but very happy to know im not alone. I have the same exact Sony model and the same exact problem. I wasnt sure if it was my Tv or my upconvert Sansung DVD player. I spoke with Sony assistance..and well..they were of no assistance. They blamed it on my HDMI cable, then the dvd's i was playing, then the dvd player itself. I ruled out all of the above. Mine goes black when i play a dvd in the upconvert format (720p or 1080i) otherwise known as digital..but the analog signal goes through fine. Luckily i am within my 30 days since I bought it, so now that I have seen your posting and am certain its a tv issue, I think i will return it and buy a Samsun tv (a great alternative for same price with only drawback being a glossy screen=not good for bright rooms but amazing color clarity). Sorry I dont have answer for the problem other than your not alone on this one. I have read other Sony users listing similar issues. I hope all goes well with you and wish you the best Matthew