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Comment by gfody | Hacker News Reader

720x480 4:2:0 YCbCr doesn't look great on modern screens

Good point, buy an old CRT in addition to the DVD player!

Or if you can find one, an RGB CRT projector, which unlike LED projectors can actually provide true black (or close to it).

My BluRay player automatically upsamples DVDs. It's far from perfect but it looks pretty good most of the time.

Not sure if that's common to BluRay players or not.

Any idea if PS5 does this too?

In TFA they specify that it was also blu ray. This person was using DVD as an (incorrect) term meaning "some kind of plastic disc."

Though they don't say 4k/UHD blu-ray which would be a big miss if not. UHD blu-ray is superior to any other format in terms of quality. Perhaps excepting a few very niches streaming services that are tied to expensive hardware.

But still looks better than the crap streaming services are streaming. Star Trek DS9 looks washed on Netflix, like played from a VHS tape.

I'd happily sacrifice some pixels to avoid the aggressive DNR and hack 16:9 crop treatments typical of streaming re-releases.

It's often better than a 5 Mbps 1080p

Since DVDs are ~5mbps mpeg2, no, no it isn't. 5 mbps h264 is dramatically better.

Now, when compared to blu-ray... That's different. Very, very different.

h264 is (generously) about 2x as efficient as MPEG-2, granted, but you're smearing those 5mbps across 6x as many pixels.

I would take crisp 480p over a gooey, artifact-softened 1080p for most content.

Most feature DVDs are 8 Mbps.

It's certainly blurrier than Netflix, but dark scenes, grain and textures are usually much more detailed on a DVD nonetheless.

I've found cartoons look fine if the format matches your display.

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