Hello,

I'm considering purchasing a Blu-Ray burner and upgrading to Vegas 8 to begin providing HD to my clients.

My concern is that there are going to be many compatibility issues regarding Blu-Ray media/players. Will my clients be able to play the Blu-Ray disk I give them without any issues? Or, is it still too early to invest in this technology.

If this is not a problem, which Blu-Ray burner would you recommend?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

If you have short projects you canb urn BR projects withouta blue ray burner and on standard DVD discs.
Just got done trying it and it played great on my PS3. Burn right out of Vegas.

Is this at full resolution ? Does it include titles or do you have to go to DVD architect for that ?

Just my two cents worth, I am not a pro but everytime I have to make even a STD DVD I cringe at the thought, as it seems a lottery as to whether it will play reliably on other players. I have made probably less than 30 discs over the last 4 years but the hassles seem never ending, even now. I must say though, I have not used DVDA yet, but I started with Ulead DVD Workshop which at the time was highly recommended and seemed fine, until I found that although the results were OK on three or four players of my own, once they were given out, there were always a few people who had problems playing them.

On questioning some of my pro friends I found that they had even gone to direct burning on stand alone DVD recorders with hardware encoding direct from firewire to address the issue. I have also gone down this path too with better results but of course it is limited. - No menus and auto chapter points only.

Even now, after I have just made a successful DVD RW (after a lot of frustration with Vegas 8 but now resolved - (see my recent post), I find when I go to make a copy in the PC, - (tried 2 PC's & 2 programs), from this DVD which is only 3.547gig, I get a message saying that the source file is TOO LARGE TO FIT ON A STD RECORDABLE DVD ...DO YOU WISH TO COMPRESS FILES !!!

So for any PROFESSIONAL contemplating these precarious things with now even MORE data, I would suggest be very wary & don't rush in. (Frankly it amazes me how you guys ever make any money in this business !)

Of course this does not seem to apply (fortunately), to where you have the luxury going to full glass mastering where quantities & costs allow.

Who unleashed this monster called DVD on us ?

RonC.

RonC. There are a few things to keep in mind to make DVD's that play universally. Good authoring program( DVDLab PRo2 for SD, DVD Architect 5 for Bluray is what I use), low data rate( always less than 7000, mine are normally between 3800 and 5000, I use TMPGenc Xpress4 that also allows you to see how much of the disc your filling with encoding, 2pass VBR), don't fill disc( no more than 4G, burn with Nero( with full verify) so that you can see how much your filling the disc) and use good media ( Verbatim or TAIYO YUDEN). Even as a hobby I make lots of discs ( SD and Bluray) and cannot think of a problem in the last two or three years. Discs from 6 years ago were not of good quality, neither were the burners so I have had some issues with discs from 2001. But the PC will still read and I have just reburned them on good media.

Ron Evans

I just started offering Blu-ray discs and after the initial learning curve it isn't too bad. I only about 2 dozen in circulation but so far I haven't had any complaints or returns. I use the LG Blu-ray burner. Edit in Vegas, render out a AVC file, author in DVDA5. I seem to have a problem sometimes rendering using the "Best" setting so I usually just use "Good" which doesn't give my system any problems and the disc look increadible. I have a Sony Blu-ray player that I test each disc on before sending them to a client.

As far as regular DVD's I have burned and sold hundreds and only had 4 so far that have come back with compatibility issues. Again, I use Vegas to edit and DVDA to author. Most of my discs are DL so I use ImageBurn to create an image and burn copies. ImageBurn lets me place the layer break where I want it so there's no pause or delay when it goes to the second layer.

As far as compatibility Ron Evens hit it on the head, you have to use quality media. For clients I pretty much only use Verbatim.

Is this at full resolution ? Does it include titles or do you have to go to DVD architect for that ?

Ron, Vegas is not an authoring program so yhere are no menus but titles can be put into the program with Vegas It plays at full resolution (which is 1080i for me)

Thanks Ron & Garrett. I am encouraged.

However, I am aware of the data rate and I have been burning around 7 - 7.5K, but on the Sony RDR-GX7 I use, it only gives the data rate (as I see it), by playing time & type. - HQ 60min, HSP 90 min, SP 120min, etc. I usually burn at HSP, as I have for this last one which so far is OK in the 2 machines I tested it in. Quality is excellent. Maybe I should be burning on SP but I want good quality. - Surely if these higher bit rates are so buggy why did they introduce them?

I am also not using cheap discs - Imation DVD-R & Sony DVD-RW. When I use these up I will check out Verbatim. Are there any issues these days with DVD-R & DVD+R? I have only been using DVD-R.

I have Roxio (which is my preference) in one PC and Ashampoo in another which is only a new trial and so far useless, so perhaps I should investigate DVD Lab Pro2. I see it is not cheap (for a hobbyist), and on this site ( DVDlab PRO DVD authoring tool for advanced users (http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dvdlabpro.html)) it says it doesn't have an Mpeg2 encoder, only the ES version ?? What have I missed here?

I'm curious that you use this for SD and DVDA fo HD. - I assume that Pro2 doesn't do BR but is it better than DVDA fo SD?

Regarding my latest problem do you think that even 3.6 Gg is too large for a reliable DVD?

RonC.

Hi Ron,

I've used both DVD-R's and +R's and haven't had many problems. The -R's are suppose to be more compatible with players but with newer players I don't think there is any difference. I've used the Sony discs for no paying copies and haven't had problems with them so they should be ok. The reason I use Verbatim is they are only one of two makers for inkjet printable DL discs. And the other manufacturer is not reliable.

As long as you don't go over 8 M/S sample on the video end you should be ok as this is the DVD spec and all players should be able to read it. Then I usually encode audio in an AC3 files to save space.

I never liked Roxio to burn DVD's yet alone author. I found that when I tried to burn using Roxio I would get a lot of problems trying to play them on my set top dvd player. I do all rendering from Vegas in a DVD or BR compliant file so that the authoring software does not rerender. Then I burn with an LG DVD burner (forgot the number) or an LG BR burner.

3.6GB shouldn't be too big. A single layer disc can hold about 4.2GB of info but remember that isn't 4,200 MB as you have to use the old 1024KB/MB etc. conversion. I have put just under 4.0GB on a disc before and had no problems.

Garrett

Just read an interesting article that says the jury is still out on whether Blu-Ray will really ever become as common as standard DVD's

Price of the components is still an issue that's slowing it down, and direct downloading of HD material is starting to become quite popular.

The article went on to say that LG is set to announce a TV this week that has direct internet attach capability and can play downloaded material directly with no set top box.

Here's a link

New LG HDTVs Bypass Set-Top Boxes to Stream Netflix Movies - PC World (http://www.pcworld.com/article/156326/new_lg_hdtvs_bypass_settop_boxes_to_stream_netflix_movies.html)

Overall gist of the article was that it's far from a given that Blu-Ray will ever displace current DVD's and the longer it takes for Blu-Ray pricing to get as low as current DVD, the more uncertain the future looks for Blu-Ray.

Just an interesting perspective on the DVD wars.

Jim -

This has been my argument... My last decent DVD player with progressive component outputs and digital audio out cost a whopping $30 on sale, and it's a name brand. I pick up DVD titles for between $3 and $15 if it's a movie I liked well enough to watch again on a rainy day (or if it's so cheezy that it makes a great party icebreaker movie!). And DVD/multiformat burners are around $40 for my computers... Not to mention Netflix has streaming included in a cheap subscription...

Compare that to... $200 for ANY BR standalone (and from what I hear you have to spend $350 for a "good" one)... BR discs are limited in selection and $20-30... and a burner is still in the $200 range, not even sure how much the discs cost...

I can burn BR content to regular DVDs now, and it looks fine, I dont need long play times, so it's perfectly usable and I can put an HD version "in the can" for later. I can't justify a 2-10x premium on hardware/content that BR entails, and I think many people will feel the same way, especially in this economy.

Put a burner around $100 list, so street price is reasonable, a player at around the same price, and bring the content on in quantity at prices closer to DVD, and BR will take over fast IMO, it's not going to happen at current prices. With the speed of technology, BR could be a footnote before it gains market penetration...

Just my two cents worth, I am not a pro but everytime I have to make even a STD DVD I cringe at the thought, as it seems a lottery as to whether it will play reliably on other players. I have made probably less than 30 discs over the last 4 years but the hassles seem never ending, even now. I must say though, I have not used DVDA yet, but I started with Ulead DVD Workshop which at the time was highly recommended and seemed fine, until I found that although the results were OK on three or four players of my own, once they were given out, there were always a few people who had problems playing them.

On questioning some of my pro friends I found that they had even gone to direct burning on stand alone DVD recorders with hardware encoding direct from firewire to address the issue. I have also gone down this path too with better results but of course it is limited. - No menus and auto chapter points only.

Even now, after I have just made a successful DVD RW (after a lot of frustration with Vegas 8 but now resolved - (see my recent post), I find when I go to make a copy in the PC, - (tried 2 PC's & 2 programs), from this DVD which is only 3.547gig, I get a message saying that the source file is TOO LARGE TO FIT ON A STD RECORDABLE DVD ...DO YOU WISH TO COMPRESS FILES !!!

So for any PROFESSIONAL contemplating these precarious things with now even MORE data, I would suggest be very wary & don't rush in. (Frankly it amazes me how you guys ever make any money in this business !)

Of course this does not seem to apply (fortunately), to where you have the luxury going to full glass mastering where quantities & costs allow.

Who unleashed this monster called DVD on us ?

RonC.

Ron -

Having dealt with compatibility issues from all the programs I tried before using Vegas, I feel your pain. Since going to Vegas Studio (w/DVDA), and eventually to Pro, with DVDA, I've not had compatibility issues.

I can't speak to the problem you're having, I typically burn to nearly the full 4.7G... DVDA will always recompress certain things (audio) for some reason, but if you use Vegas's settings to render to DVDA compatible files (there are templates in vegas, fully tweakable), it's pretty much a drag and drop and burn affair... both for SD DVD and now for burning BR compatible onto regular DVD's...

FWIW, Vegas has been the most compatible for me, others were pretty spotty, and it was VERY discouraging until I switched. So again I feel your frustration, but in the end Vegas and DVDA seem to be the best integrated solution once you nail the workflow. And they seem to try to update and bug fix regularly.

Blu-ray Disc Statistics - Blu-ray Software Market Share Vs. DVD (http://www.blu-raystats.com/MarketShare/index.php)

Interesting link to current Blu-Ray sales statistics. Currently, Blu-Ray title market share is in the 8% to 12% range. Not so impressive!

According to an article in today's online NY Times, there are 1,092 discs available in Blu-ray format, Apple’s iTunes Store has 600 titles available to rent or download, and Vudu, can access about 1,400 high-definition films.

They also quote industry consultants who say that Blu-ray can sustain itself as a transition technology, but, will never replace the DVD

They also report that other consultants are saying that the Blu-ray format is in jeopardy because of downloadable HD movies and that other means of direct digital delivery are going to put optical formats out of business entirely over the next few years.

If you can find the article, it's a good read.

Thanks Garrett & Dave. It's nice to have further re-assurance on DVDA. The ability to make HD on std. discs is quite appealing.

With the HD market I feel it was a very clever move on Sony's part to make PS3 play Blue Ray. I wonder how many people have one & don't know this? - I have one, - came as a bonus with a new Sony TV!

I never use Roxio for authoring, only burning on the PC with a Liteon burner which seems OK. But, because I generally don't need menus, Chapters etc., I just come out of Vegas & go into the Sony recorder directly via firewire. It just encodes on the fly realtime, - simple, - no authoring, no hassles. (generally). For extra copies I then simply copy them in the PC at the lowest speed.

Having never used DVDA5 yet, I am a little reluctant at present (because of time pressure), to go through the bother of encoding it from Vegas into DVDA and then going through its settings just to do virtually a direct burn. I will try and do another copy on the DVD recorder at a lower setting (SP) which is a lower bit rate & hope that the quality doesn't suffer too much and hopefully end up with a copyable disc.

RonC.

The fact that BD players do such an excellent job of upscaling regular DVDs is somewhat shooting themselves in the foot. My regular DVD (Toshiba) player feeds my 46" 1080p TV and upscales my home burnt movies so well that many people have asked if it's Blu-ray I'm showing them.

Of course Blu-ray is better - as it should be at the price. But DVD is fighting back, and an up-rezzing player will breathe new life into your entire metre-long DVD collection.

tom.

That's interesting Tom, as just recently I have been evaluating a couple of HD projectors. I have an older top flight Denon DVD player which upscales - (I am a Denon Dealer), but I have not had much time to play with it. So when I checked out these projectors I used this Denon and was amazed at the quality from std. DVD discs.

Of particular interest was an older demonstration DVD put out by Pioneer, which, when I first looked at it about 8 yrs ago, was so poor that I virtually disregarded it. As we are in PAL land and I realised this disc was NTSC, I thought this was probably the reason.

Almost as an after thought, I put this DVD in the player and WOW ! It was quite amazing. Not quite HD but certainly better than I could have imagined. I am now stunned by what this upscaling technology is doing, so yes this does narrow the gap between SD & HD.

I am now further encouraged to edit more of my recent DV footage and see how it benefits from upscaling.

I always thought you got nothing for nothing !

RonC.

...I typically burn to nearly the full 4.7G... DVDA will always recompress certain things (audio) for some reason, but if you use Vegas's settings to render to DVDA compatible files (there are templates in vegas, fully tweakable), it's pretty much a drag and drop and burn affair... both for SD DVD and now for burning BR compatible onto regular DVD's....

DVDA doesn't recompress the audio if you render it out as a separate elementary stream from Vegas using the Dolby Pro template for 5.1 surround.

In DVDA, click on the media button, there are separate dropdown boxes for the video and the audio. It will default to the audio stream that's muxed with the video, but you choose REPLACE FILE and give it the name of the AC3 file you rendered separately.

No one would mistake my Blu-ray collaborations for upscaled dvd. That said, I am not sold on the format, but it's the best out there, whether it is ever adopted mainstream or not. And not just for the video, but the audio. Downloadable HD content has a few obstacles, bandwidth restrictions and compression. Perhaps upscaled DVD could look as good as that.

The one issue with upscaling is normally this is done to 1080P30 ( for NTSC) and there is a noticable loss in motion quality from the original 60i source delinterlacing and upscaling to 30P. Resolution is there and if there is little or no movement its great. Lots of movement and there is considerable judder. One of my hand held skiing shot from a DV camera is acceptable on a normal DVD player to a CRT , barely acceptable played back to my Plasma and unwatchable played back from the PS3 upscaling to the plasma!!!!
I like burning to Bluray. I have a LG burner use Verbatim disc and find them perfect for backing up large high quality files of my projects that otherwise would have to go to tape as HDV. I have as many 50G BD-RE as I do 25G discs.
Dave one reason not to burn to the full size is that on poorer quality disc the outer edge is where most of the problems usually occur and where most of the tracking errors due to imbalances in drive mechanism will also show themselves as tracking errors. Older players have electonics that have difficulty re-reading errors and this is what sometimes causes freezes or stops etc. Newer drives and PC's have lots of processing power and memory so have less difficulty. Hence for compatibility, avoid things that cause players problems. Don't go near the edge, lower bit rate so there are less re-reads and use good media.

Ron Evans

So my question is this... Can you burn BR quality audio and video on a DVD? Or are we talking about upsampling from a DVD?

-Jonathan

Yes, you can burn a BR project with a standard burner, at 25,000,000 on standard DVD (if its less than 20 minutes) and it plays beautifly, at leeast on my PS3

I found that playback isn't so good on a Samsung at the local BB if you go above 17Mbps (others are saying 18Mbps encoding is the max, haven't tried it yet). BUT, the BR recorded to a standard DVD kludge seems to work, and I'm sure it's better than "upscaled" trying to recreate bits that don't exist.

I must admit I find it interesting that everyone wants to burn to a standard DVD. To get HD video in the first place someone must have spent money to buy a HD camera. To watch the video they must have 16x9 HD TV and either a BLuray player or a PS3. They also must have a PC with a DVD burner that's capable of editing HD. That's a lot of money invested to try and avoid spending another $250 on a burner and $10 for a Bluray disc to do it properly and get over 2 hours on the disc!!!! That is less than it cost me when I started making CD's !!! I have just bought some TDK 50G BD-RE for $20 Canadian using AVC I can get almost 8 hours on this disc with full menus or with MPEG2 about 5 hours without worrying about bit rates and loss of quality!!!!! Anyone else who wants to see the video must also have at least the playback capability of 16x9 TV and Bluray or PS3. The cheapest is not to use a disc at all, buy a PS3 and play over the network from the PC. OR buy a media player from WD or now Seagate and load files on a USB drive. Am I missing something? I do use standard DL-DVD's to back up some of my AVCHD files as this is a convenient storage approach and they will play in the PS3, no menus of course !!! I can see that if one's projects are 10mins there is some reason but mine are usually 2 hours or so. Shortest is around 1 hour. Even the annual video of my grandsons this last year was 2 hour 15mins.

Ron Evans

You have to see the bigger picture Ron. BD-R/RE doesn't play on all the Blu-ray players either, otherwise I'm behind it 100%.

Six dollar 6x inkjet printable BD-R is available online now, that's great but what's on the store shelves remains a paltry selection of mostly 2x BD-R at $20+ per disk.

So it's really just a matter of targeting the playing time required. DVD-DL is under a buck, we're up to about an hour at 18mbps AVC with amazing quality, full menu functionality and Dolby 5.1 surround.

Although Blu-ray burners are out there now with 8x BD-R writing speed, a lot are only 2x, you can't get in a hurry with it.

Otherwise, I'm for Blu-ray burners and media 100% exclusively. Blu-ray format is the best out there, whether it will ever be adopted mainstream it will have to move beyond playback compatibility problems. I'm not certain about the future of the format, thus I see no reason to embrace it exclusively nor avoid it entirely.

"You have to see the bigger picture Ron. BD-R/RE doesn't play on all the Blu-ray players either, otherwise I'm behind it 100%.

This is problem we had when we first burn DVD years ago, but I don't see the same problem here, I have yet ran into a incompatible player, actually I did but after they update firmware on their player, all play fine.
You can't bring your BD into a store like Best Buy and make your conclusion on it, they might have players on display forever and had never update it. If you authored it right it will play.

This is problem we had when we first burn DVD years ago, but I don't see the same problem here, I have yet ran into a incompatible player, actually I did but after they update firmware on their player, all play fine.
You can't bring your BD into a store like Best Buy and make your conclusion on it, they might have players on display forever and had never update it. If you authored it right it will play.

It is however a problem the Blu-ray association sees with BD-R/RE content. They will not permit your adding the Blu-ray logo on BD-R/RE media except that they will permit the existing Blu-ray logo on the blank media to show through. This is because they cannot assure the compatibility or quality of the disk.

When we first authored DVD years ago, we didn't have firmware upgrades, that is true. It is unfortunate that now the expectation is that owners must perform firmware updates to achieve playability. In my mind, this will restrict mainstream adoption.

Accordingly, whether a client prefers footage on BD-R, USB flash drives, XDCAM tape or something else, does not concern me.

I've been wrestling with this issue too. Yesterday, I took a $100.00 gift card I got for Best Buy and bought the Western Digital Media player. In my first testing with it, I took an .mp4 copy of a film I had just completed, transfered it to a cheap 1 gig thumb drive I had, to see if it would actually play. It was a 1280 x 720 HD render I had made for upload to YouTube. It played flawlessly to my 720 HD TV. I rendered the same film using the Cineform final version to a Blue Ray preset in Vegas, and though I somehow for got to render a sound track, the image played flawlessly.

The unit weighs about a pound, has no hard drive, and is about the size of the Western Digit My Book drives.

Point is, I think this technology is where things are going next-- not another touchy optical disk system.

Thanks Ron & Garrett. I am encouraged.

However, I am aware of the data rate and I have been burning around 7 - 7.5K, but on the Sony RDR-GX7 I use, it only gives the data rate (as I see it), by playing time & type. - HQ 60min, HSP 90 min, SP 120min, etc. I usually burn at HSP, as I have for this last one which so far is OK in the 2 machines I tested it in. Quality is excellent. Maybe I should be burning on SP but I want good quality. - Surely if these higher bit rates are so buggy why did they introduce them?

I am also not using cheap discs - Imation DVD-R & Sony DVD-RW. When I use these up I will check out Verbatim. Are there any issues these days with DVD-R & DVD+R? I have only been using DVD-R.

I have Roxio (which is my preference) in one PC and Ashampoo in another which is only a new trial and so far useless, so perhaps I should investigate DVD Lab Pro2. I see it is not cheap (for a hobbyist), and on this site ( DVDlab PRO DVD authoring tool for advanced users (http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dvdlabpro.html)) it says it doesn't have an Mpeg2 encoder, only the ES version ?? What have I missed here?

I'm curious that you use this for SD and DVDA fo HD. - I assume that Pro2 doesn't do BR but is it better than DVDA fo SD?

Regarding my latest problem do you think that even 3.6 Gg is too large for a reliable DVD?

RonC.

Hi Ron, I too have an RDR-GX7 in my workstream, which I use for real-time encoding for some projects (for some dvd transfers, but not all). but then I rip the disk and just use the encoded video, but not the authored DVD (menu, etc.), but the encoding is real-time, and I like the quality of the encode.

just in skimming the threads, I think the weak link in your chain may be either the authoring tool you are using (roxio) or the media. I use mostly DVDLab Pro (in fact only the 1.5 version) and have authoried plenty of disks with that and have literally no returns (and dvdlab is careful to say they are not necessarily a pro authoring tool like scenariast). I do have nero in my toolbox, but would not use it to author any final work product for a client, I just don't trust it that way. It's easy and I like it but not for final authoring. DVDLab does have a learning curve, but it is quite flexible (you have to know what you want, but it will let you do what you want), and it's authored images have been very solid for me. (I do have vegas/DVDA as well and use DVDA on occaision).

For media I use only Taiyo Yuden, and those have served me well, burned at no more than 8x with 100% verification on every single burn (e.g. re-read and compared to the original image). When people say don't use cheap media, that is a bit misleading. it's not the price really but the quality, and TY has been constant (mostly). Even with the brands you mention, there is still the possibility they they are buying from multiple sources, and that is really where the variability comes in, and in this area, reducing variability helps. But I've burned over 4gigs on each disk and have also at times used quite high bitrates, still in DVD spec and not at the limits, but 9megabits, no problem).

Anyway, feel free to post back if you have RDR-GX7 specific questions or find anything in my post useful.

edit: by the way, you can use DVDInfo (free version, which I'm not sure I see anymore, but there appears to be a trial of the pro version: http://www.dvdinfopro.com/) to check out the bitrate in any of your burned projects. Also, here's a bit rate calculator if you want to go the other way (e.g. what bitrate is needed to fit a project onto a DVD): http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm.

The fact that BD players do such an excellent job of upscaling regular DVDs is somewhat shooting themselves in the foot. My regular DVD (Toshiba) player feeds my 46" 1080p TV and upscales my home burnt movies so well that many people have asked if it's Blu-ray I'm showing them.

Of course Blu-ray is better - as it should be at the price. But DVD is fighting back, and an up-rezzing player will breathe new life into your entire metre-long DVD collection.

tom.

I just did a weddign show this weekend with a Sony Bravia 1080p TV connected to a Panasonic DVD-RW bruner / player that ALSO did upscalling with a HDMI ouput to the TV and coax-digital audio to my 5.1 system.

For comparison, I also connected the s-video out on the DVD player to the HD TV. Just switching back and forth from the SD native source to the HD upscalled source showed a clear improvement. Many people could not tell the HD signal was not a native HD recording (then again, most of them were brides and not the fiance who has the fancy system and woudl know the difference).

Now if they had put my demo next to Travis's demo (shot true HD I believe) then there would clearly be a difference.

But those upconverting boxes do a fantastic job of giving SD-DVD a longer shelf life.

I think that there was also confusion between playback of BD-R/RE with DBAV content and BDMV content. I was under the impression that BDAV content always played on the Bluray players and the firmware upgrade was to allow BDMV ( interactive menus). To answer the question of burn times one has to look at the time it takes to burn 2 hours in 20min chunks, ie at best 3 Dl discs with verify against 1 Bluray disc. Using my LG burner ( 2x) I can burn a BD-R disc in about 1hour 25 mins normally. Using the same burner and DVD-R DL would take say 45 mins. In one case I have 1 disc to look after and can watch the whole program with menus and in the other I have 3 discs to look after and have to sort out which disc to choose. As far as cost goes the difference compared to the expense of all the other equipment involved is negligible( say $3 dollars for the Dl's and $9 for the Bluray and many thousands for the rest of the equipment!!!!!!) I accept the point that if one only has 10 mins of HD then burning to a 4.7G DVD makes sense making sure to clearly label them as Bluray format as I don't think normal DVD player might like them!!!. You still need to have bought a Bluray player!!!
I also agree that the upscaling players do a pretty good job and unless one watches the Bluray version immediately the differences are small. One big difference for me is the judder introduced by deinterlacing to 30P. I like smooth motion and 30P doesn't cut it for me.
Ron Evans