What is the difference between upconverted 720p and Blu-Ray 720p?

Is there enough of a difference between the two to warrant buying a Blu-Ray player to play "true" 720p movies? Or is the difference not as large as between upconverted 1080p and Blu-Ray 1080p?What is the difference between upconverted 720p and Blu-Ray 720p?
This depends a great deal on your specific hardware. BluRay at 720p is actually downconverted from 1080. DVD at 720p is upconverted from 480. Sometimes the conversion process alone introduces undesirable artifacts (esp. in fast motion or scenes with very little contrast or color differences). Generally BluRay, because of it's higher data rate and capture resolution is gonna look better regardless but will be really noticeable if you are projecting or using a large 50" or better TV capable of hi-def resolutions. If you are using a 40" 720p TV, I doubt that you will see a dramatic difference while sitting on the couch.



My Samsung BluRay player will upconvert my DVDs to 720p all day long. My TV is only capable of showing up to 720p and the player will upconvert DVD or downconvert BluRay as necessary (and both look about the same on my 36' 720p TV). Further DVD is not only 480p, many DVDs are 480i, but the player can display them as progressive scan (this is what the "P" stands for) with varying degrees of success
true 1080p. Anything that's upconverted won't be as good as true resolution.



Sorta like, two women, one naturally beautiful, the other has to try really hard just to look good.What is the difference between upconverted 720p and Blu-Ray 720p?
Here's the list in ascending order of quality:



480i

480p

560 (rare - don't bother with this pixel reference)

1080i

720p

1080p



Philips upconverter DVD and BluRay players, as well as the XBOX 360 will upconvert standard DVDs to simulate 1080i and sometimes 720p.



An actual BluRay disc is played at a native (built-in) resolution of 1080p - that's the highest commercially available resolution for home.



The difference at 42" is negligible at best, at 52" and larger you'll definetly see a cleaner, sharper image.What is the difference between upconverted 720p and Blu-Ray 720p?
Blu-ray disc player are 1080P, and will up-convert your dvd disc from 480P to 1080P not 720P. The only source for 1080P is blu-ray disc movies, 720P are tv programs in HD, dvd disc are at 480P. Anything that you up-convert will at times not look as good. If your tv is small than a 46" you won't be able to see the difference between 720P and 1080P. Hope this will help you out.