Keeping the LCD Switched On

I'm curious to see what things look like on our new television. I used to think that DVDs were the bees knees. The resolution of a standard DVD once seemed to look so fine compared to broadcast TV. We can chalk that up to the difference between interlaced and progressive scanning at the equivalent of 480 lines.

When moving to a bigger plasma or LCD screen, even an SGVA cable doesn't really cut it. I bought an upconverting player with the new Toshiba. It can output 1080i via an HDMI connector and this should be automatically converted to true 1080p on my REGZA model. A DVD cannot have true high-def though. A standard, duel-layer disc can only hold a smidgen over eight gigabytes which is only about a third of what future high definition discs will be capable of storing.

If I really want to see high definition right now, we'll have to get a Bell ExpressVu satellite receiver. However, DVDs still look pretty good and I find myself wanting to revisit films that I've already seen.

I borrowed Sweet Hereafter (1997) from the library. It's a wonderfully slow-moving Canadian film. It occurs after a horrible school bus accident in which children are killed, so it's definitely not light fare. It shows the effects on a small town. Most of the outside sequences were filmed not far away in British Columbia. Although there's no snow where we live, the mountain ranges are now white just like in the film. Spences Bridge and Merritt, BC looked fine when shown on the three-foot wide screen. If you can get hold of this disc, it's worthy viewing.