KingCheetah still desperately trying to doom blu-ray since declaring it a few years ago. Major Studios are releasing more and more movies on blu ray, the price is starting to drop. Blu Ray will be big this Black Friday.
I'm not a tech geek, but this is how I switched to Blue Ray about a month ago. Old (3+ years) dvd player crapped out on me. Don't own many DVD's but do spend $15/month with Netflix. Did some research on-line, went to stores. Could get solid, relatively similar replacement DVD player for $50-$100. Could get lower end BlueRay player for $225+. It was a decent price difference, but then when I saw I could spend just the little bit more and get a BlueRay player that also hooks up to the internet to watch Netflix and Youtube on, I decided to spend the extra $200. So, I spent an extra $200 to be able to (1) watch BlueRay DVDs, and (2) be able to stream Netflix on my tv (which I could have done in other ways, yes, but I found this easier; also, it sucks that you can't get everything on Netflix streamed yet, and that the quality isn't there yet, but as I mentioned, I'm not a tech geek...the convenience of having it stream through the DVD player was worth it to me). I think I spend a little more per month now on Netflix, but not much. So that's why I switched. Had my old player not crapped out, I wouldn't be using BlueRay yet.
I had this problem at first with Netflix but don't anymore. It's not like I'm not watching movies during this few week - month period, typically. It's just that one title. If I'm/you're just not watching movies, the whole conversation I guess is pointless - no need for a DVD player at all, then, much less a HD one, or a great HD tv, etc. So it's just that one DVD. And after the first few titles like this, I came to realize that what I was doing was stupid. Either reduce the # of titles per month (which I have done at points), or after a few days it is already obvious I have no short-term desire to watch whatever came, I just turn around and send it back (and it's a reminder to update the queue). I can always get that title back again in 2 days if I need to. I know a lot of people use Redbox. And I don't think Netflix has been Tivo/DVR, or iTunes/mp3 like transformative to the industry, but close. I do think it is definitely worth what you pay.
Why buy a blu-ray player and disc. Just download all the blu-ray movies u can think of into a computer and plug the computer hdmi to your flat screen tv ... and sit back and enjoy. http://www.verycd.com/topics/2748598/ http://www.verycd.com/topics/2721409/ http://www.verycd.com/topics/2753391/
480p for knowing? know thanks . j/k. I download HD movies from time to time when I know it'll be a while before i get it from blockbuster. I only have one BD (dark knight) Haven't planned on buying anymore recently. I might try to get the whole pixar collection though.
KingCheetah, did you lose your job because of blu-ray? Why do you care so much about it? HD-DVD is dead, live with it. Bluray won the war. Stop bumping this thread up because when you started it you thought HD-DVD was going to win.
The prices will inevitably come down on the players and discs, but I don't know that blu-ray will ever be a common household item like a standard DVD player is. I think it'll always be viewed as more of a luxury, since DVD quality on a nice TV isn't all that bad in the first place (nothing compared to VHS quality vs DVD quality). I was at GameStop a few weeks ago and the clerk was showing a customer how they don't scratch, or will still play even if scratched. I thought, whoop-d-doo...I'm not going to buy a $300 player and pay $30 for discs just because they don't scratch.
Generally speaking I do agree with you on buying the complete series after the show is over, but there is a great deal with lost right now that I had to take advantage of. If you buy lost season 1 and 2 on blu ray, amazon and best buy, both offer a 20 dollar discount, and then since you own season 1 and 2 on dvd they have mail in rebates of 20 dollars per season, so you can save 60 dollars total off of the price of 48.99 a season. Also you never know if they decide to change the packaging of the show in a complete series. When I waited to get the wire in a complete series they removed the artwork and changed the packaging to a paper format for holding the discs that scratched the discs everytime u took them out or put them back in.
like buy the blu-ray and get a MIR for 20 if you own the dvds? sounds intriguing but i dont have the ~ 200 bucks right now to spend on seasons 1-4 on blu-ray
The death of bluray is going to be digital content, just like it has killed the CD on the music side. As soon as bandwidth allows it to be a reality, I think physical media in any form will be a thing of the past.
I think once high definition TVs fall even more in price as technology improves, high def TVs will begin to become much more common in the average household. It's at that point where blu-rays will become the preferred standard for the average consumer. That's the problem though, how soon will bandwidth allow this to be possible? If anything, it seems like service providers have been taking steps back that will make digital distribution a more long-term proposition.
there's life in BD yet: [rquoter]SAN FRANCISCO--Even as Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray player sales are growing, Sony is looking to build out its larger strategy surrounding the company's high-definition disc products. At a small press event here Thursday, the company introduced a new feature of BD-Live and a new piece of Blu-ray hardware. MovieIQ will be included on some high-profile releases from Sony starting in September. It's essentially IMDb live--while a movie is playing, facts about casting, directors, production, and actors' filmographies pop up onscreen. It's powered not by IMDb, but by Gracenote, creators of CDDB, which Sony purchased just over a year ago. It's the kind of feature intended to keep people from pausing a movie and hopping online to ask questions like, "I totally recognize that actress, but from what movie?" It's also meant to build on the inherent capability of Blu-ray players that have Internet access. Sony has tried to do this by allowing BD-Live access to exclusive trailers and some trivia games, but MovieIQ seems like something that users would engage with repeatedly, not something they'd just use once and forget about. A senior Sony exec at the event, Tracy Garvin, called MovieIQ the "first killer-app for BD-Live." That sounded like an admission that none of the BD-Live features thus far have been all that compelling. It's clear Sony is still in the process of fine-tuning its BD-Live strategy. At the event, Sony Vice President Rich Marty said that while 37 million Blu-ray Discs were sold in 2008, the company has only released about 100 titles that are BD-Live enabled. In other words they still have a long way to go. "BD-Live is complementary to Blu-ray," he said Thursday. "It was never meant to compete with the Web, it's not a VOD (video on demand) play. We're still building the foundation." Part of building that foundation is bringing down the cost of Blu-ray players. While the PlayStation 3 is still generally regarded as the best deal on a Blu-ray player from a top-tier electronics company, other brands sell players for as low as $99 or $199 these days. But Sony is also pushing Blu-ray drives in notebooks. While Dell, Sony, Acer, and Asus have dutifully jumped in offering the drives, Sony says the prices are still too high. So Thursday, the company introduced its Vaio NW series notebook, which starts at $879 with Blu-ray inside, but is $799 without it. It's considered a budget notebook for Sony--it's not the cheapest Blu-ray-enabled notebook out there, but it is for Sony. Some features of the NW Series include a 15.4-inch screen, an HDMI port, and a quick-start Splashtop button for booting directly to the Web if the computer is turned off. It will go on sale later this month.[/rquoter]
Considering there is talk about capping bandwidth or paying by the GB transferred, it might be hard for such a massively large format to come over the Intarwebz Pipeleinz. Most BD rips on the Internet are 4.5GB (DVD size, ironically), but they are encoded in a non-lossless format. The actual media on the Blu-Ray disc is well over 10GB. In order to stream a 2-hour move that is 10GB, you need to transfer 85MB/sec. That's two T3 lines. While Internet media is a great thing, streaming 1080i/p video is still quite far off for an average consumer (or even an above average consumer... or small business line...).
I think that's what he was saying though... in the transition from VCR to DVD's the medium was already there....standard def tv's. Now you had a minor jump up to 720p/1080i tv's, and then a jump up to 1080p tv's, while yet others still were trying to get rabbit ears to work with their SD tv's. By the time we all run 1080p or whatever-p is next, it'll be years into the bluray cycle. Now that 1080p is prevalent, we get hit by the economy going down the tubes. I've held out on buying a bluray player for the very reason mentioned. I never thought the jump from DVD to Bluray was as great as VCR to DVD and I have a 720p/1080i tv as my "big" tv that I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon. When I upgrade that tv or get a projection screen, I'll consider what technology is out there worth upgrading to in terms of video medium. If my DVD player died right now, I'd rather pay $50-$90 for another DVD player before paying $200-$350 for a bluray player and rebuild or slowly start building my collection in time to for it to be old news again (with my luck... lol), but that's just me.
I purchase most of them from $10 up to $17, never pay retail. So far I have 103 Blu Rays and 25 HD DVD.
DoD, I sure understand not wanting to shell out a lot of bucks (on the discs) to go to another format. I was very reluctant to do it. Got one as a gift, bought a couple of movies, and was blown away as much by the HD sound as I was by the fantastic image quality. Now I've even bought a few flicks that I already had on DVD, just because they are some of my favorite films and I just can't help myself. New copies of Blade Runner (big surprise, I'm sure!), The Fifth Element, The Terminator I and II, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example. I'm looking for Lawrence of Arabia. I already have them all. For me, at least, it's worth it. Of course, I got for them on sale.
Blu Ray I see your future: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZOJ5h0EC9Nc&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZOJ5h0EC9Nc&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
