So the PS4 releases this week, and the Xbox One next week...

[A Black Falcon]

Anyone planning on getting one soon? I'm not. No way can I afford that now, and anyway I'd get a Wii U before either of those, for sure. They are tempting of course (new tech!)... but no, not now. I'll need to get an Xbox One someday, though... I want to play Crimson Dragon!

[Dark Jaguar]

Hmm, eventually. Not just yet though. As is standard, there are no exclusive launch titles for either of these systems that catch my attention.

[Great Rumbler]

I don't care about either.

[Sacred Jellybean]

Me either. But I'm interested to come across next-gen screenshots and see how the technology has progressed.

I'm thinking of buying an X-Box 360 to play the Bioshock series. I'll be caught up to the last gen!

[Dark Jaguar]

I got the PC versions of those games. They play well with the PC, if you've got something of decent power. Even Bioshock Infinite, good as it looks, has surprisingly low requirements.

[A Black Falcon]

Since PC games mostly have to run on the X360 and PS3 too, it's kind of held back PC game specs for a few years now... we'll finally start seeing progress next year, thanks to the new console releases. (That is, computers like mine won't be good enough anymore...)

Also, it's interesting that no one is interested in the XO or PS4...

[Dark Jaguar]

Oh I'm interested, but as a standing policy I don't buy systems until games I want come out for them. It's why I waited about a year before getting a PS3. (Fortunately, the PS3 is swimming in exclusives, at least NOW. You can get one with a 250GB hard drive and a year's subscription to PSN Plus for $250 at this point, and I'd say it is a good deal.)

[Sacred Jellybean]

They play well with the PC, if you've got something of decent power

There's the rub. :/ I could upgrade my video card (my PC is otherwise decent), but getting an 360 or PS3 would at least give me the capability of upscaling my DVDs. I, uh, think. I play DVDs off my PS2 which has a noticable drop in quality compared to Netflix VOD. A buddy of mine has a bigger TV and plays DVDs from his 360, and they look fine. But I guess it could be the TV, too. Maybe all that upscaling shit only works for Blu-ray? Help a layman out, guys. Am I correct in my assumptions?

If nothing else, getting a (now-last) gen console would at least let me play the games I missed out on, like Silent Hill 5. When I do play games, I tend to prefer a TV/comfy couch instead of a computer desk. Old habits die hard.

[Dark Jaguar]

Upscaling, ultimately, doesn't really improve anything. The DVD is still displaying images at "standard" resolution, the pixels are only being "doubled" to make the TV display it as a 1080 HD image. No real improvement happens there. Essentially "upscaling" doesn't improve an image like some CSI "enhance" program that magically draws out a license plate number from an original image that was far too blurry to derive specific letters from. Bluray is actually using image stock at 1080, recaptured from the original film in most cases, so you're actually getting an HD image.

Now as it happens, Netflix is now streaming HD content. That'll be what you're seeing. Basically, if you want to play movies in HD, you need an HD source, and that's either bluray or a digital download. No DVDs contain HD video.

I should warn you, Silent Hill 5 is generally panned by critics and fans alike. One big mistake they made was using the Unreal game engine, so the game looks like every other game, far too glossy and shiny for a Silent Hill game. I would recommend Ni No Kuni, the Uncharted series, The Last of Us, and the Batman games, for starters. There's also a massive pileup of surprisingly awesome "indie" games just waiting to be snatched up for really low prices, but most of these are also on the PC and really don't require a very powerful machine.

[Dark Lord Neo]

The PS2 played DVDs and the PS3 played blu-ray, neither of which I had when they came out so that helped justifying buying them when I did. The PS4 and new Xbox not having some new fangled video player makes me less inclined to buy it until there are more games I really want.

[Sacred Jellybean]

Upscaling, ultimately, doesn't really improve anything. The DVD is still displaying images at "standard" resolution, the pixels are only being "doubled" to make the TV display it as a 1080 HD image. No real improvement happens there. Essentially "upscaling" doesn't improve an image like some CSI "enhance" program that magically draws out a license plate number from an original image that was far too blurry to derive specific letters from. Bluray is actually using image stock at 1080, recaptured from the original film in most cases, so you're actually getting an HD image.

Damn. :( I brought a DVD to a friend's house and it seemed like the quality was higher, but it must have been an illusion. He's got a bigger TV, placed a further distance back than my own, so maybe that had something to do with it. Oddly enough, quality seems to vary between DVDs. Some get this kind of pixelated effect, while others look fine. Maybe it's my TV?

I should warn you, Silent Hill 5 is generally panned by critics and fans alike. One big mistake they made was using the Unreal game engine, so the game looks like every other game, far too glossy and shiny for a Silent Hill game. I would recommend Ni No Kuni, the Uncharted series, The Last of Us, and the Batman games, for starters. There's also a massive pileup of surprisingly awesome "indie" games just waiting to be snatched up for really low prices, but most of these are also on the PC and really don't require a very powerful machine.

Thanks for the recs, I've heard great things about Uncharted. Too bad about Silent Hill 5. :(

[Dark Jaguar]

You might check the settings on your TV. Try to make sure the image settings aren't "zooming in" on the image, which distorts things. Playing DVDs will have a small black line around them, but I prefer that to a blurry image. As for the "blockiness", that's the codec. DVDs, and Blurays, compress the image, and neither uses a truly lossless compression algorithm. Depending on how much care was taken in creating the transfer, you might have a lot of artifacts during the compression process, or nothing you can notice. Unfortunately, the blame for this is squarely on those making the DVDs and/or Bluray. (There's also the quality of the original film to consider. I have a bluray of Ghostbusters, and unfortunately the original film was not well curated. The image doesn't have a large number of "blocky" artifacts, but it does look very "gritty", as old film would, with no effort to digitally remove that "grit" from the final transfer. On the other hand, my copy of Nausica and the Valley of the Wind looks outstanding, and was a very well done capture done by Disney (with an all-star cast redubbing the whole movie).

I really do recommend Uncharted. It is the closest you'll get to actually playing an Indianna Jones game. I say that as a fan of the old Lucasarts adventure games too.