How To Get The Best Picture From Your Blu-ray System

Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins

If you have just recently purchased a Blu-ray Player or you're thinking of purchasing one, you should realize it may not be as simple to set-up or connect to your TV/Home Entertainment center as you did with your old VCR or DVD player. This is mainly because the Blu-ray player is forcing manufacturers to change the way they are making TVs and AV receivers, causing these manufacturers to play catch up in order to give viewers the full benefits of this new technology.

So in order to get the best performance out of your Blu-ray player, here are some tips or guidelines you will need to correctly set-up your player. Also highlighted are some of the problems you might encounter when adding a blu-ray player to your Home Entertainment system.

Getting The Best Picture From Blu-ray:

Blu-ray players are manufactured to work on any TV that has component inputs, regardless if the TV is High Definition or not. However, having a Blu-ray player connected to a HDTV (High Definition TV) via the HDMI or component video inputs will allow you to get the full HD experience from your Blu-ray Player. So even though connections can be made to any TV with at least composite video inputs, in order to get the high definition Blu-ray resolution(1080/24p) you really need a 1080p HDTV. HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface and is the new standard for transmitting uncompressed digital data from your player to your TV set, just make sure all your devices have HDMI outputs or inputs. HDMI cables can be expensive, try to get a package deal where these are included with the product you're buying.

First, you should know the difference between a HDTV (High Definition TV) and HD Ready TV, you only have to remember one key difference: if your set has a built-in digital tuner it is HDTV, if it doesn't have this built-in tuner, it is HD Ready. So when a HDTV is labeled HD Ready, it means a television set does not include a built-in tuner for receiving over the air signals in high definition through an antenna. To overcome this problem, if you have HD cable, the box provided to you by the service provider will receive the HD signal necessary to give you high definition images on your HDTV. So even if you only have a HD Ready TV you will still have no problems watching Blu-ray high definition movies on it.

Now, having a 720p HDTV is recommended, but a 1080p HDTV would be your best option. This is because all blu-ray movies are stored on the disk in 1080p at 24 frames/second. You will often see this referred to as 1080p/24p. The original film was shot at this rate and the blu-ray format allows you to view the movie as the director wanted it to be seen. You should definitely be aware of older blu-ray players that were not capable of displaying 1080p/24p. These blu-ray players will convert the 1080p/24p signal to 1080p/60p using the '3:2 pulldown' technique. This means one frame is played 3 times and the next is played 2 times and so forth. One frame gets to be on the screen longer than the other causing a slight error in the video signal, commonly called telecine judder, the picture appears to have a slightly jerky movement.

Most of the newest blu-ray players have 1080/24 p output. But not all TVs can support 1080/24p. So feeding your 1080/24p signal into a television that cannot support it will result in the TV converting the incoming signal to 50 or 60Hz. This will also produce the telecine judder or vibration in the picture. Luckily most of the latest LCD and plasma TV set can now easily handle the 1080/24p signal.

To summarize, in order to get the best quality picture you need the following:

- Blu-ray Player with 1080/24p output signal

- Television that can support 1080/24p

- HDMI cable for connection

- For HD Television broadcasts you need HD cable service

This will give you the best cinematic images when watching movies or TV programs in the comfort of your own home. Happy viewing!