Should You Buy Blu-ray?

I've decided to hold off on Blu-ray. I only have a 720p set and I'd rather put together a sick audio system to enjoy the DVDs I already have.
 
I just had no ideal Larry The Cable guy lived in Baltimore. That's obviously the author of this article. He also must have commented numerous times as well to reflect upon the article.
 
TechieSooner said:
Actually that had just gotten HD-DVD to fit more on it (surpassing BlueRay's capacity) about the time the "war" was over, and were even saying they could've gone higher (like 100GB).

HD-DVD was flat out superior. Backwards compatibility was the ultra FTW.
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Blu-Ray already has prototypes well past 100GB. They had a 100GB prototype before Toshiba threw in the towel.

Backwards compatibility was nice, but its use was limited. It wasn't a well known feature outside of the geek crowd and I wouldn't expect the average Joe to figure it out by themselves. Still I wish HD DVD would have lasted longer. Competition is always good.
 
k1DBLITZ said:
You guys are forgetting one important factor - That ISP's are actively toying with charging us for additional bandwidth.

How can downloads be the wave of the future when it's going to cost you more?
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What I see is the copyright holders of these movies will make a deal with isps and come to an agreement to charge you more per movie while some of the money gained will go to the ISP and they wont credit the download to your monthly allotted bandwidth
 
Derangel said:
Blu-Ray already has prototypes well past 100GB. They had a 100GB prototype before Toshiba threw in the towel.

Backwards compatibility was nice, but its use was limited. It wasn't a well known feature outside of the geek crowd and I wouldn't expect the average Joe to figure it out by themselves. Still I wish HD DVD would have lasted longer. Competition is always good.
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HD-DVD/DVD combo discs were far and away the most expensive media out there. More expensive than Blu Ray, more expensive than standalone HD-DVD, and obviously more than DVD. Its a nice feature to have but IMO useless; if I have an HD monitor and a choice between watching the HD or SD version of a movie, I'll pick the HD version and just watch that.

Adding cost for a practically useless feature makes no sense to me.
 
Derangel said:
The US is one of the largest consumer markets in the world, no?
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Exactly...

However he does have a point with the US Broadband not being the deciding factor. However being by far the biggest $$$$ movie producing country out there, it plays a big factor how the US buys our media.

Even if Japan adopted downloadable media, our ancient-backboned country would take another 8 years to adopt the stinking thing.

Haste266 said:
Yeah...ok. I'd like to see HD-DVD do this:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/news/2008/08/05/Pioneer-Produces-500GB-Blu-ray-Disc/p1
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I'd expect HD-DVD to have done the same, given enough time.
But we'll never know!
 
I own HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The quality difference is quite noticable between upconverted DVD and either of these formats. Of the two formats I prefered HD-DVD even though it had lower capacity per disc it was/is just a more polished product. I still pick up new HD-DVD's from time to time.
 
46" Panasonic Plasma 1080p w/ Panny Blu-ray... DVDs look much better on that player/HDTV than on standard TV, and BluRay is quite a bit sharper still. So, you don't need a BluRay to enjoy a new HDTV, but it is better.
 
TechieSooner said:
I'd expect HD-DVD to have done the same, given enough time.
But we'll never know!
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Obviously, you know little about the technical details underlying these technologies. The very reason why Blue-Ray holds more is the same reason it is less compatible with standard DVD equipment than was HD-DVD. It uses smaller pits to hold more data and natively supported more layers.

HD was made so as to not be too far from std DVD so that they could use the same manufacturing plants to produce both discs. Since DVD only supports 2 layers, that's all HD-DVD was originally designed for. They could use the same lenses for DVD as well as HD-DVD.

Both camps added layers, but BD has 25 GB layers whereas HD-DVD has 15 GB layers. Newer HD-DVD specs would be incompatible with earlier HD players, but the BD players could be firmware upgraded since the hardware was already designed with that in mind.

I was always for BD, as my only concern was max storage. DRM and copy protection issues make me less likely to mess with the movies. Also, I don't have a 100" 1080p screen, nor do I want to clutter my house with one. If I want that, I'll go to those things called theaters, their screens are even bigger than that you know.

Here is one good bit of info though:
When comparing HD DVD to Blu-ray there is only one obvious difference, the storage capacity of the disc. As a single layer medium HD DVD will hold approximately 20Gb, with a maximum of around 45Gb on a dual layered disc. Higher capacity discs currently can not be produced, this is because the distance between the discs surface and the recording layer is too great.
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http://www.cd-writer.com/blu_ray_faq.html

Everyone has their own opinion and that is fine. But facts are facts, though some will distort them due to their opinions. Arguments can never be settled unless facts are clearly represented, separate from opinions.
 
I have a PS3 and I haven't bought a bluray movie yet. Still using my XBMC to stream divx movies/tv shows. I can't justify paying 30$+ for a movie I'll watch once or twice. Never been a big collector of physical media, and this probably won't change until prices drop to $10 per disc which will be never.
 
Oh man, this article.. where to start.

The difference between DVD and Blu-ray is nowhere near as striking, despite what the consumer electronics retailers and manufacturers might have told you this holiday season.
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Oh really? Samples such as this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or...

Sure, Blu-ray vs. DVD is equivalent to standard-definition vs. high-definition programming on your TV, but it's not so good that you should go out and buy a Blu-ray player and replace your DVDs.
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Just the opposite. The there is a bigger quality difference between DVDs and Blu-rays than there is between SD TV and HDTV because of broadcasting limitations.

Especially if you own an "upconverting" DVD player, which enhances the quality of DVDs so drastically, it's hard to tell it's not Blu-ray.
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No it's not. Upconverting doesn't magically make detail appear. See above links.

Blu-ray prices have dropped drastically, especially over the holiday season
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Again, not really. If you want to see drastic price drops, look at HD DVDs. I've seen them go as low as $1.99 (without discount) at stores such as Frys, where as their Blu-ray counterparts were upwards of $20.

If you are looking to replace a DVD player and can spend the money, buying a Blu-ray player makes sense, primarily because Blu-ray players can play and upconvert DVDs, so your current movie collection won't become obsolete.
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First of all, see above. Second, if its going to be released on Blu-ray, your DVDs will become obsolete. The 'magical' upconversion isn't going to save your collection on this one.

When you pop in a Blu-ray disc, you immediately notice the increase in quality, just like you do when you tune from a standard-definition channel to a high-definition one on your HDTV.
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I'm sorry, didn't you just say the opposite just a few paragraphs up?

Blu-ray offers some nice new features, such as the ability to enable closed captioning and access other settings and menus without having to exit the movie, the ability to bookmark favorite scenes and a timeline that shows you where you are in the movie as you fast forward and rewind.
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Just like on HD DVD players, or with DVD playback software (such as MPC[-HC]). Next.

One thing I didn't like is that all of the Blu-ray movies I watched were widescreen, so there were black bars above and below the picture on my HDTV until I stretched it or zoomed in.
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Uh-oh, someone doesn't know anything about aspect ratios.

[...] Blu-ray is superfluous. The features are fancier, but the picture? No improvement.
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See above.

agree that movie downloads are the future, but buying a Blu-ray player is not a needless expense if you are able to use it for more than just playing Blu-ray movies, such as playing DVDs, watching Netflix movies instantly, viewing photos and accessing Internet content.
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Until the US (World?) steps it up big time and starts offering faster internet, thats not a possibility. Blu-rays are still the way to go. No, they aren't? Try streaming a 40Mbps Blu-ray.

Wow, what an article. The only thing it got remotely correct was the last paragraph. Nice try Mr. Horowitz.
 
funny thing is Blu Ray is doing better and cheaper than DVD at this point in its life. Plus, BR has hit its milestones faster than DVD did. Shame how the media always fucks things up
 
I think what finally converted me over to completely using Blu-Ray was The Dark Knight. I will no longer purchase DVD's, plus the price of this movie was really no different than a DVD. The audio is excellent, as is the video.

I can't wait until Heat comes out on BR, that will make my sound system very happy. The DVD version had crappy audio. :(
 
Steve said:
One thing I will say....well, aside from my usual complaint/whine about Blu-ray price....is this;

The Blu-ray Association needs to set some standards / guidelines about what can be put on Blu-ray. There are a bunch of horrible movies being slapped on to Blu-ray with no features and barely noticeable image quality difference and sold for $29.99.

Most of the big ticket action flicks are good (Batman, Iron Man, the Hulk etc. etc.) but even some of them (Superman Returns) look ass-like because of added film grain effects and so on.

So, as much as people scoff at the average Joe saying "I can't see the difference" you really have to look at what is being passed off on Blu-ray. What is the benefit of getting a Blu-ray movie like "Battle of the Bulge" circa 1965 when the upconvert DVD copy is just fine?

Anyhow, if there were some standards in place, it would help the format immensely....I think. Blu-ray should be High-Def ONLY and let movies like Step Brothers stay on standard DVD.
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QFT! Steve, I remember when you posted this gem and was appalled. It's more reason why people won't jump to Blu-Ray - the quality of what gets put onto Blu-Ray is inconsistent, and in many cases you can't justify the premium for it. According to the article, some studios aren't even TRYING to meet an HD standard. :eek: I understand the article's a bit dated now and many titles have come out in BD since then, but I can still imagine that this crap is still going on.

Blu-Ray is an awesome idea, however when everything put to the disc isn't truly HD, what is the point of doing it then?

I think that in itself is why DVD will still continue to remain popular.
 
I would LOVE to have fast internet. I HATE the crappy internet where I live.

That said, I don't really want to live in a city big enough to have fantastic internet ... :p I'm not much for the city life. I like running around in the mountains and having a 150 acre back yard. :D

I would push for solid state. They're selling music that way now. I like digital downloads for convenience, and for music it's fine. But for movies, especially $20 + movies or TV series, I would much rather have them on physical media. Read only chips, or ROM chips have shown to be very, very durable. Remember all those old Nintendo games? We have the original NES and we can pop in a cartridge and it still works after all those years.

The price to manufacture it is constantly becoming better. We sell 8GB flash drives and SD cards at BBY for $20 now frequently. That's pretty good even vs. online. And the cost is only going to keep going down. They're getting better and more efficient at making them. If they mass-produced memory cards for movies the cost would plummet.

And it's a DRM haven. They can do whatever they want. They can put it on read only SD cards (cheap and 100% universal) and require proprietary software (hopefully integrated into MCE) to watch them, preventing piracy. Or they can make their own proprietary format and design a matching USB-driven card reader for it, again helping stave off piracy. Granted, people will eventually hack it, but BR and HD-DVD and every other format eventually get hacked anyways.

The stuff is way durable, resistant to shock, scratches, etc. I had a compact flash card fall out of my car once into the dirt by where I park. It got ran over, deeply embedded in mud, and was hidden there for months. I noticed the corner of it once sticking out of a dried mud track. So I dug it out. The middle was depressed because it had been smashed repeatedly by my '84 Grand Marquis I had the time. The holes were all caked with mud. I gathered some cleaning tools, loosened up the caked mud, slammed the heck out of it to make sure I popped all the dirt out. Sure enough, the card still worked flawlessly. Every single picture I had taken was still on there without a single error. I was amazed. Since then I don't think I've ever had an SD card die. I know many people do, but so far I've lucked out.

Don't even ask me how many of my DVDs and CDs are scratched beyond belief. And some of them haven't taken much abuse at all. Optical media has served us well for a long time, but I think compared to current and up-and-coming technologies it's a pain.
 
Snowknight26 said:
Oh man, this article.. where to start.

No it's not. Upconverting doesn't magically make detail appear. See above links.
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Wow, what a fucking noob. Have you never watched CSI? You just have to press the "resolve" button like 8 times to get all the extra data you want!
:D:D:D:D
 
Where do they think we are going to store all these downloaded movies? We don't have unlimited disk space and you can kiss your collection good bye when the HDD fails. Anyone who claims there is no improvement in visual quality of a 1080p BD compared to an up-converted DVD seriously needs to go have their eyes examined. BD is here to stay. Downloading HD movies is for non collectors only.
 
Netflix $100 downloader box, Xbox Netflix service & Players like Samsung & LG incorporating Netflix compatibility is clearing showing downloads are the way of the future.

Though it will be a gradual transition.

Blue ray just isn't worth the cost of the discs. The players are "cheap enough", thought still not cheap compared to upscaling DVD players.

I'm still a little pissed I bought a Toshiba HD-DVD player at least it was a cheap Black Friday deal!! And it is an EXCELLENT upscaler. I almost threw my Sony DVD upscaler in the trash after seeing the difference.
 
w1retap said:
LOL, where do they find these people at? What a joke.
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I agree. This is yet another reporter who can't do proper research. Blu-Ray is much better than up-converted DVD.

Ultimately movie downloads will win out, but for now the infrastructure just isn't there. Also, bandwidth costs to download 4GB+ movies would be far to high with the current ISP download limits. Maybe if the public gets a backbone like Internet2 it will happen. There is no way I'm gonna download movies and watch them with youtube quality.

I own a wide screen TV because I prefer widescreen format, but I constantly fight with myself about getting into Blu-Ray because of the cost of the player, once they get under $200 (CAN) for a GOOD one, I might bite.

What is the sense in owning a 1080P TV if you don't have a HD signal to put into it, right?
 
Klob said:
Where do they think we are going to store all these downloaded movies? We don't have unlimited disk space and you can kiss your collection good bye when the HDD fails. Anyone who claims there is no improvement in visual quality of a 1080p BD compared to an up-converted DVD seriously needs to go have their eyes examined. BD is here to stay. Downloading HD movies is for non collectors only.
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EXACTLY!! Most places only give you 90 days to re-download your purchased content in case of some kind of hardware failure or corrupted/incomplete download. That's why I'm for durable, solid state flash media. Imagine NO buffering, NO scratching, NO seek-times - instant rewind, FF, chapter skip. With the first blue ray players there was quite a delay loading, and navigating the discs. Even though that has improved, it's nothing compared to seek times on solid state media. When I start playing video, even HD, from a flash drive, it starts right up. When I skip ahead, it never breaks playback for a pause while loading or seeking the chapter beginning. If each HD movie was stored on a 32 or 16 GB flash drive, imagine how many of your favorite movies would fit in a small fire-proof safe. They would take up the same or maybe less space than storing a bunch of blu-rays.
 
I'm buying Blu-ray as I enjoy the 1080P quality, download or streaming is not ready, even satelite providers only offer 720P.
My PS3 rocks :)
 
Screenshots are still images, movies move. I know, duh, right? So, why compare them to each other if they are not the same thing? I will not contest that BD looks much better than DVD, but in moving pictures, does it really add to the movie experience? You don't see near as much detail when the images are streaming by at 24 frames per second.

I believe the added detail of BD is not worth it, most of the time. Only a few movies do I care to see that way, in theaters usually. The rest of my small screens serve me well at 720x400 resolution, with their corresponding smaller file sizes on my HTPC.

If the price gets to be negligable, then there will not be a good reason NOT to go BD I guess. Unless you want to watch movies on several systems, and they are still loaded with DVD drives.
 
my buddy is all about blu-ray has me watching blu-ray this dvd this asking "do you see the difference?"

I see a difference but not a difference worth the wallet change :p
 
chrisf6969 said:
Netflix $100 downloader box, Xbox Netflix service & Players like Samsung & LG incorporating Netflix compatibility is clearing showing downloads are the way of the future.
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Those have limited space and a HDD is a far more unstable medium than an optical disk. Thousands of HDDs fail every day, optical disks have a very low failure rate. Many of us like looking through our collection on the bookshelf so I will never collect downloadable movies. Sure, they can replace rentals easy enough and already have for me but they will never be a replacement for movie collectors any time soon. Maybe one day but not for a long time yet so BD is here for a good while to come, IMO.
 
TechieSooner said:
Fact: Over 50% of America is still on dial up.

From that, you can pretty well deduce downloadable media is not going to become "the norm" anytime soon.

Blueray itself I think will never catch on, but downloadable media is not the answer, either.
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I believe those same people are also using VHS as well.
 
MixPix said:
I agree. This is yet another reporter who can't do proper research. Blu-Ray is much better than up-converted DVD.

Ultimately movie downloads will win out, but for now the infrastructure just isn't there. Also, bandwidth costs to download 4GB+ movies would be far to high with the current ISP download limits. Maybe if the public gets a backbone like Internet2 it will happen. There is no way I'm gonna download movies and watch them with youtube quality.

I own a wide screen TV because I prefer widescreen format, but I constantly fight with myself about getting into Blu-Ray because of the cost of the player, once they get under $200 (CAN) for a GOOD one, I might bite.

What is the sense in owning a 1080P TV if you don't have a HD signal to put into it, right?
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I've downloaded a movie over Xbox 360 and it was widescreen HD so that is not an issue. They use a caching method to download the movie so you don't have to wait for a complete download before you start watching it either. But you are correct that bandwidth is an issue because the ISPs are getting all prissy about how much we download even though they used to advertise "unlimited" Internet with high speed. Obviously they were lying and have moved the goal posts.

BTW, you could have bought a Samsung BD player on boxing day for $165.00 CAD.
 
Sorry if this was covered before, but I skipped pages 3 to 9. What connection speed would be required to stream the equivalent quality of Blu-Ray? I have a 20Mbps cable connection that runs solidly at that, sometimes over, so would that be fast enough to stream blu-ray quality? 20Mbps is the fastest you can get in my city (Brisbane, Australia) at the moment (ADSL2+ doesn't count).
 
dengar said:
I see a difference but not a difference worth the wallet change :p
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That will change eventually and there have already been some price drops on certain BD movies. I only buy BD for movies I know are in high quality to begin with and it is something I really want. Buying a Woody Allen movie in BD would be a waste of money because he does not film with high quality production values to begin with. Probably still uses mono audio. ;)
 
Alistair Roe said:
Sorry if this was covered before, but I skipped pages 3 to 9. What connection speed would be required to stream the equivalent quality of Blu-Ray? I have a 20Mbps cable connection that runs solidly at that, sometimes over, so would that be fast enough to stream blu-ray quality? 20Mbps is the fastest you can get in my city (Brisbane, Australia) at the moment (ADSL2+ doesn't count).
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Yes, that is plenty fast enough. The caching system Microsoft uses works well and I saw no stuttering in the movie like I have seen with crap Youtube videos even on occasion.
 
BTW, a freind has my 360 now and I have his PS3 and he rents movies from Microsoft on occasion and never has issues with streaming the movies and his connection is slower than mine by quite a bit. He has ADSL and I have high speed cable internet. He can't wait for his contract to expire so he can go back to the same cable company I use. I don't have the full on high speed they offer but not the lowest they offer either.
 
but, Netflix doesnt broadcast BR quality. Not possible for all but the best internets. Think about it, 20-30 meg per second just for the video, the losses audio is also HUGE. No way, not possible yet. Netflix does compressed 720p stuff I think, and even if they offer 1080p, I promise its not BR quality.

And even for the people with fast internet, there's no buffering on a disc. Open the cover, BAM, your whole movie is already there! carzy fast!
 
Right now Bluray is suffering from what DVD did back when it first started catching on. Alot of movies are being released on bluray that are nothing more the DVD upconverts and people are getting ripped off. There are already 2 versions of Fifth Element. people complained about the crappy original version.

I don't see downloading to be feasable at all. I have yet to download anything at a streamable size that looks as good as over the air HD broadcast. OTA 1080i TV is about 7gigs for an hour of TV. I don't know anyone that can download 7 gigs in an hour. Ever Bluray disk I have put in my PC has come up with over 40gigs on it. You can compress video but it will look like compressed video.
 
"but the picture, no improvement"

This guy obviously has no clue. No improvement? Keep telling yourself that buddy. Convince yourself.
 
I don't think downloadable HD media will be market factor against blu-ray anytime soon enough. By the time 100% downloadable/streaming content is at the quality and position to take the "standard", blu-ray probably would be threatened by other physical methods like SSD or flash media.

Here are the reasons this article is full of it.

1. Blu-ray players can play DVDs and upscale them, all that is needed is more price drops to start phasing out regular DVD players. It is close already I say in about a year we will see $99 players. Whether or not blu-ray disks are cheaper won't matter, people will still by the player just to be safe. Then they will start to buy the blu-ray disks just because they have the player...

2. The USA internet infrastructure is NO WHERE near where it has to be to support streaming HD content. I live in a not so distant suburb of a major city and my high speed connections are limited to one provider, cable. DSL in my area is 1.5mbs. What about all the country areas where all they have is the slower DSL if they are lucky???? It will be years before the infrastructure to support the speeds needed for even SD DVD streaming to a large enough portion of users to be considered the "standard".

3. OK lets say everyone has the option of 50mbs to the home, that doesn't mean people will want to pay the price for that connection just to watch movies. Hell most of my older family members are just NOW getting DSL (1.5mbps) etc because that is what they need. Try and tell someone, well yeah you not only have to pay $200 for an internet movie player but also the movie rental fees and oh lets not forget the the $50+ per month just for the OPTION to subscribe to rental services. I can assure you many many many people will pay for a blu-ray player and rent/buy movies for many years to come before they will put up with a large internet connection fee.


Downloadable/streaming content will be an alternative method for the next few years at least. Sure major cities will have a larger blu-ray less rate but until internet speeds increase, internet costs decrease substantially and the actual market penetration of the internet services improve then Blu-ray will succeed.

on the above I will add, that internet service really hasn't dropped much in price over the last few years (Sure speeds have increased though). I have paid about $50 for internet service for about 8 years now. Only until recently there hasn't even really been too much of a choice in the matter, you either pay $50 for the decent fast speeds for $25-30 for ridiculously slow speeds. Only in the last year have we seen 4, 6, 10 meg speed rates. Given this pattern I think it will be YEARS before speeds are high enough in the rural areas and cost low enough for streaming to be a large factor to blu-ray.
 
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