I have sent away for my free panasonic blue-ray player. (As I bought a 50pz plasma).
I was going to sell it and put the money towards a panasonic twin tuner recorder, but have been told to keep it as blu-ray picture quality is awesome
So now I have been wondering....
If I buy a recorder then transfer the recordings to DVD.
If I then play that DVD through the blu-ray instead of the recorder will the blu-ray upgrade the image to full hd? ie; blu-ray quality.
Or will it only be blu-ray discs that will show a true full hd picture?

Per bold

It will upscale and look improved no doubt, but it won't be the same as a true 1080/24P BD.

Your free panasonic blue-ray player is the BD30? The twin tuner recorder you mention is the DMR-BW500?

My understanding is that the BR player part of the DMR-BW500 is essentially a BD30.
If it is a BD30 you are getting for free, then I would sell it and put it toward a DMR-BW500.
I have one and love it! (As much as a man can love a piece of technology...)

The quality of the HD tuner is fantastic. I have had at least 3 people say that the picture on my panel is the best they have ever seen - and my plasma is nothing special.

If the freebe player is better than the BD30, then you have a different decision to make I guess. But I have no complaints with the BR player component of the DMR-BW500.
If the twin tuner recorder you mention is the DMR-XW300, then you have a very different decision to make.

The DMR-XW300 and DMR-BW500 both allow you to burn recorded HD TV to DVD in a variety of quality settings depending on how many hours you want to fit on said DVD. The top quality setting allows you to get 1 hr on a single layer DVD. You will get very close to HD TV quality with that setting.

Of course with the DMR-BW500 you can burn to recordable blu disks and get no loss at all.

Good luck!
Mark

Question, when watching upscaled DVD, has anyone noticed subtitle reloaction? The found out that my Sammy 1500 does this which is very useful for my CIH set up. I can now watch SW and LOTR (hopefully, still need to test these ones) films and actually read the text that was previously in the black bars which of course get chopped with CIH.

Now all we need is a BD player that will also relocate subtitles for BD. Mark, is there a site out there that lists BD's that are not CIH-friendly? There were some threads here and there that listed a few titles, but nothing comprehensive.