So, last night, we were watching American Idol.  Now, because of some weirdness we’ve yet to understand, we have to watch this on the non-HD channel, even though we are supposed to get the HD channel as well.  For whatever reason, it is shockingly unreliable.

Anyhow, we watch Idol starting 15 minutes late on our direct TV DVR (so we can skip commercials).  Right as it ends, we accidentally switch from the recording to the HD channel with Idol on it.  Surprisingly, we are actually getting the broadcast.

The difference in video quality was like a slap to the face.  We only caught the last two or three minutes of recap, but it was just stunning how much better it looked. 

You don’t usually get to see that kind of side-by-side, but never forget, the difference between standard and HD is not slight.

WOW

So, last year around this time, I bought an Aquos 52 inch LCD TV. 

I want to make this abundantly clear: I love this thing.  There are people out there who talk trash about the Aquos line, but I don’t think there’s a better TV for the money (at least not a year ago).

ANYHOO, I also have a PS3 (love part II).  The Blu-Ray does look really nice EXCEPT in very dark areas where its kind of fuzzy.  I first noticed this, I think, on 300, but given the style of the movie, it was a little hard to tell if it was intentional or not.

I then started seeing it everywhere, except in animation.  I assumed that this was somehow a limitation on the media or something, but it stuck in my head.  Searching online revealed nothing until I simply searched for “blu-ray fuzzy” and saw others had the same problem, especially with the PS3.  The claims are bitrate issues (which I’m not sure you can do much about), limitations on how the movie is filmed (which I expect to be completely untrue on anything made in the last 5 years), and TV calibration. 

I’d tried calibrating the TV months ago with a free DVD that didn’t appear to do much for the picture.  But I keep running into stories of how amazing the picture looks AFTER you get the thing calibrated, how killer the blu-ray image is, practically 3D.  But I am NOT paying Best Buy 300 bucks to do this.  Actually, I don’t want to pay ANYONE 300 bucks to do this.

So I just ordered Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics on Blu-Ray.  20 bucks total to get it here tomorrow.  I’m gathering from poking around that this has been highly anticipated, so I’m pretty hopeful (in the literal sense) that it will help.in