My brother says unless you have a really big screen and excellent sound system the DVD format is the way to go and still cost effective. He says putting DVD movies in a Blue Ray player look greater in quality and picture than a standard DVD player. What route are you guys sticking with?
With most new move releases Blue Ray format cost between $6-10 more still over DVD. Sometimes the Blue Ray format for older movies come with DVD versions as well. Sometimes there are good deals on Blue Ray older movies that are $9.99+ or so. Still I am not convinced to switch over since my tv is below 40" with HDMI format, HD function, stereo systems, etc.
I mix and match. digital animated movies like "How to Train you Dragon" or "Megamind" look amazing in blu-ray. I've converted my favorite movies into blu-ray, but am content leaving some of them as DVD's. I have a 720 DLP TV that's 5+ years old and movies still look markedly better to me in blu-ray. My wife would probably say differently. DVD's do look better in a blu-ray player than a regular DVD player. That's how I can stand the decreased quality when I watch a DVD instead of a blu-ray, because it's not as drastic as it would otherwise be. It's kind of like the difference between stand tv and HD tv, but not as drastic though.
Stream everything on my AppleTV nowadays. About to sell my whole DVD collection if anybody is interested.
I dunno. I bought a 58" plasma and a blue ray player 2 years ago and so far have watched one movie. Somehow not the best investment I've ever made, but Blazer games do look nice on it. Or at least they did, back when they played. barfo
Just bought my first HDTV (40") a month ago. Don't have Blu-Ray. I've been pretty pleased with the way DVD's look on the new set, so I'm in no hurry to upgrade.
I would only buy a blu ray of a movie I'd want to see more than once. The experience is superior but not worth the extra cost. Sometimes there are bargains on older movies tho.
IMO, unless you have a 1080p TV and a decent surround sound system, you wont get what BluRay does best. The picture quality and sound is amazing, noticeably better than a standard DVD. It's worth the extra $$ if you have the tv/surround sound to enjoy it... especially action movies. If you can afford the extra $$ for BluRay, might as well go that route just in case you upgrade your system in the future. I personally wont buy/rent anything but BluRay from now on. Bob Dobalina can probably provide a better opinion on this topic.
Blu-Ray definitely has a picture quality and sound advantage over DVD. I agree with the size of the screen comments though. Anything under about 50" or so won't be as obvious in PQ difference. 1080p tv does allow for the full resolution, but I wouldn't say it's mandatory. I can see a huge difference on my 720p projector when I watch a DVD vs Blu-Ray. I believe this is because DVD is maxing at a resolution of about 480p, so it's not HD. To take advantage of the sound quality advantages of Blu-Ray you need a receiver with decoders for DTS-HD, Dolby True HD and DTS-Master Audio. The price gap between movies in the two formats has narrowed quite a bit, but is still significant; and DVD still provides a very good picture (as long as you don't watch too many Blu-Rays). Personally I haven't rushed out to "replace" my collection with Blu-Ray, I've just stopped buying DVD when I do purchase movies.
The prices have down a ton. Nearly all of the blu-rays I own I purchased used from either Hastings, Hollywood Video (when it went out of business), or during sales at Blockbuster. Blu-rays are significantly more scratch resistent than DVD's, so I'm not too concerned about getting damaged discs because I'm buying used. Plus the companies I'm buying from gaurantee they will play or they'll replace the movie or refund me. I probably average spending $7 per blu-ray I've bought. It's pretty ridiculous actually.
If you have an up scaling DVD player, it will output a 720p image and signal to match you projector. The up scaling algorithms vary, but can be pretty good. I got a $300 Sony receiver that does all the fancier / newer audio formats. I had a spare pair of speakers to make a 7.1 system. Center, 2 front, 2 middle surround, 2 rear surround, and subwoofer. I am quite pleased with the Sony, especially the features for the price. Blu ray's big advantage is the amount of data that can fit on a disc. Something close to 60 gigabytes. With that much space, they don't need to compress the video and audio. There is going to be loss of quality with compression. You can really see compression artifacts with 4 megabit MP4 streams, like on DirecTV or cable. Sports programming is the worst because the background tends to be noisy - lots of fans in the stands moving about. And they pan the camera to follow the action, which makes the compression even less effective. There are about 2m pixels in a 1080p frame. If all those pixels are the same from one frame to the next, the second frame can be compressed to the equivalent of a couple pixels, basically a command to the decompressor to simply repeat the previous frame. If all 2m pixels change from frame to frame, you need a new 2m pixels worth of information for the next frame. It becomes a real issue when there's only 4m bits per second to send 60 x 2m pixels of information. Obviously something has to give, and it's picture quality.
Many of the newer receivers will also upconvert to 1080p. I have a Onkyo that upconverts my Comcast signal to 1080p and I can tell the difference.
I have an upscaling Blu-Ray player (PS3) and an upscaling receiver (Integra). I use the Integra's higer-end scaler and it has good results on non-hd content. I actually have a 1080p plasma which is in use when I don't drop the projector screen. So I scale everything to 1080p since my receiver has dual HDMI outs going to both the tv and projector. I then let the projector scale back to 720p. I was just trying to answer the "simple" question of Blu-Ray having a better picture than DVD. Even DVD upscaled is no match for Blu-Ray at 720p or 1080p. But you post some good information there for the more technically minded videophile's like BeerBoy.
I have a 3D-capable 52" (or so) HDTV. I didn't buy it because of the 3D capabilities, but the TV was a good price and so I pulled the trigger. My DVD collection is rather small--mainly movies that I am quite sure I will want to watch more than once or TV shows. I haven't used Netflix, but I subscribe to HBO (mainly because of shows like GoT and CYE) and Starz (because I wanted to watch Party Down... it was an impulse subscription that I haven't canceled) so I see enough movies to make me happy. 3D is actually much better than I had anticipated. I bought a pair of 3D glasses on eBay for $70 for the pair, and I get movies from HBO (and Starz, I think) in that format... along with ESPN3D (which is interesting and novel, but frustrating to watch the Ducks on because the camera angles are all wrong and I can't tell where yardmarkers are or how much yardage plays are going for). In terms of my DVD collection, I have primarily purchased Blu-Rays since I bought my player about a year ago. I am probably not going to replace the things I have on DVD, and I occasionally buy stuff on DVD if it's WAY cheaper than Blu-Ray (Amazon sometimes does that) or if it's not available on Blu-Ray (e.g., Twin Peaks). Anyway. I don't know a lot of the technical specifications involved, and I know it's eventually going to all be digital/streaming, but that's what I've got going on for now. Ed O.
Technology is moving along so quickly that I don't think it's worth it to BUY any movies. You just know something better is going to come along eventually.
