I am always amazed to hear that some people don't see a dramatic difference between standard DVD and Blu Ray. To my eye it is night and day and if only my audio purchases were as dramatic I would be very happy indeed. I find that with Audio gear it is much more incremental.
At any rate, I have a 50" 720p plasma and as I don't care a great deal for much on TV I just run analog cable which looks pretty awful. I picked up an Oppo player which was highly regarded and it does a great job on standard DVD's. When I got into high def movies I found it to be a significant upgrade and at this point I hardly consider watching a standard DVD. Even if you don't have a 1080p TV the results are extremely impressive, to the point that I haven't even been tempted to upgrade my panel at all.
All that being said, just like with recorded music, some Blu Ray discs look better than others. The biggest thing that you have to get over is that because film has grain, many movies will have a grain to them especially on darker scenes but the detail will still be considerably better. To compare to the audio world, some great recordings have a bit of background noise or hiss but they can still be great recordings all the same. There is a website called High Def Digest which has great reviews listing content, picture quality and sound quality of each disc. It's a great resource to find out if the disc you are considering buying is actually a good transfer etc. The better discs should certainly impress though. If not, you should pay a visit to your local optometrist.
At any rate, I have a 50" 720p plasma and as I don't care a great deal for much on TV I just run analog cable which looks pretty awful. I picked up an Oppo player which was highly regarded and it does a great job on standard DVD's. When I got into high def movies I found it to be a significant upgrade and at this point I hardly consider watching a standard DVD. Even if you don't have a 1080p TV the results are extremely impressive, to the point that I haven't even been tempted to upgrade my panel at all.
All that being said, just like with recorded music, some Blu Ray discs look better than others. The biggest thing that you have to get over is that because film has grain, many movies will have a grain to them especially on darker scenes but the detail will still be considerably better. To compare to the audio world, some great recordings have a bit of background noise or hiss but they can still be great recordings all the same. There is a website called High Def Digest which has great reviews listing content, picture quality and sound quality of each disc. It's a great resource to find out if the disc you are considering buying is actually a good transfer etc. The better discs should certainly impress though. If not, you should pay a visit to your local optometrist.