I have been trying to think of an easy way to explane what your seeing, so here it go's.
DVD are a compressed format, the compresion ratio is vairable, much the the way the jpg picture fromat is.
So a DVD set for high quality and get 1 hour of recoring time which is full 480p, or set it for low quality and get 6 hours of recording time, which is about the same quality as VHS. Most DVDs are some where in between the two. This varies from DVD to DVD.
Now the HDTV is in 720p or 1080i and so there is far more picture detail than your TV can display, but it is displaying eveything it can.
Since EDTV is 640x480 you would be upscalling DVDs then your EDTV would be down scalling the image back to 480p, it may make it look worse. John
I recently bought a Panasonic EDTV plasma and have been very happy with it. Although it isn't HDTV, the picture quality is extremely good. However, after getting hi-def programming, I definitely notice a difference in the picture quality between hi-def programming and DVDs (hi-def programming appears much more clear).
I know that the resolution of my plasma is only 480p and technically it shouldn't be able to produce a better picture than one seen while viewing a DVD, but after seeing the difference with hi-def programming I am considering buying a Oppo up-converter DVD player (after reading the outstanding reviews) so that hopefully the picture quality of DVDs will be much closer to hi-def programming. Has anyone tried using this player with a Panny EDTV or have any advice/experience with an Oppo player?

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