Is Blu-Ray worth it with a 720P plasma?
 

I have a very good Denon DVD-1920 player which upconverts my DVDs from 480P to 720P, and that I display on a 2007 Panasonic 42" professional series 720P plasma display. Granted, upconverted DVD video is still slightly soft compared to native HD from, for example, my DirecTV HD channels, but a BD disk would have to be downsampled from 1080P to 720P anyway.

Is a BD player's superior resolution going to be wasted (additional features aside) with a non-HD display like mine?

Re: Is Blu-Ray worth it with a 720P plasma?
 

If you don't have 1080p I would not bother with Blu ray unless you want uncompressed sound. Also with a 42inch TV unless you sit less than three feet from the screen you won't notice the difference between 1008p and 720p. Taken an eye test lately :)

Re: Is Blu-Ray worth it with a 720P plasma?
 

the picture and sound will be much better. buy it at a store with a return policy and rent a bluray. if you're not impressed, return it.

hint: you won't return it.

Re: Is Blu-Ray worth it with a 720P plasma?
 

Not wasted at all. Many of the Directv channels are 1080 and converted by your receiver to 720p. Directv also uses what is called "HD Lite" which is 1440x1080 so it does not have the resolution that a Blu-ray disc at 1920x1080 does. You should see an improvement for sure.

Re: Is Blu-Ray worth it with a 720P plasma?
 

I agree, you should see much improvement over SD DVD's.

Re: Is Blu-Ray worth it with a 720P plasma?
 

I mistakenly bought a Panasonic 50" 720P TV at Costco, thinking it was a 1080P. I took it home, hooked it up to my Sony Blu-Ray and it is more than perfectly fine. At a distance of about 10' away, I doubt anyone could really see the difference. With standard DVDs, yes, but not with BluRay. I highly recommend using the movie "Dick Tracy" with Warren Beatty and Madonna as a reference DVD. Buy both, watch the difference in both color saturation, refresh and trailing rates, and sound.

Afterwardss, you can give the standard DVD to someone on your Christmas list.