Are you going Blu-ray?

I finally have the Telly that can display 1080p blu ray! But I need a drive. I am hoping MS release a addon for 360.

 

I had almost 2 thousand dvds. I've ripped most of them to hardrives for a household media server and put them in the attic. Still working through them. I have 22 blurays and 58 hd dvds. I don't see my bluray collection doubling this year.

 

We never bought a tonne of DVDs anyway, but when we do buy something now it's almost always BluRay (except some cheap DVDs for the kid, which are often watched on the PSP anyway). We're really happy with being able to rent BluRay movies as well. Again, not something we do a lot (because we get a fair amount of good movies on TV) but when we do BluRay is really a step up.

In general, I feel that BluRay is a nice step up from DVD in that the menus and extras just work more smoothly and less obtrusively generally, being able to select all sorts of stuff through the menus while the movie still runs and so on.

But perhaps more surprising is that for me the sound of DVD is now often very disappointing. Even though some DVDs have pretty awesome quality compared to others, the difference is huge between the best audio on DVD and the best audio on BluRay. HUGE! But of course the picture quality is much better as well, even if we have a humble HD Ready tv (1366x768)

 

I bought Blu-ray when possible. However, if I know a title is not going to have Blu-ray version (such as some Japanese anime) I'll go for DVD. Blu-ray here are still very expensive, many are priced twice as DVD of the same title, but now I don't buy that many titles anymore.

I also have a VOD service but it's too expensive for my taste. Most HD movies cost NT$120 (~US$3.75) which is basically the same price as rental, and only good for 3 days. They are encoded with H.264, bitrate is around 5Mbps.

As for quality differences, I have to say that MPEG-2 has its limits. Even those HD MPEG-2 broadcast in Japan are blocky at times. A good comparison is Planet Earth (I have both Blu-ray and DVD editions), DVD is just not good enough for that, and no upscaling can save that.

However, I still think VOD services are the future. For most DVD I've bought, I only watched maybe at most 3 times. Even with the "expensive" VOD price (NT$120), watching three times still cost less than buying a DVD. Unfortunately, current VOD services in Taiwan still lack in content. Their movie library is not large enough, especially HD.

 

I'm totally uninterested. I'll go BR when the DVD's become obsolete.

 

I hadn't seen glasses-based 3D for a few years but last month we took my daughter to a pantomime (of all things) that had computer generated 3D with cheap vertical/horizontal polarised glasses and was very impressed with the effects. I was expecting some problems with other depth cues etc but there were none even when things appeared to be only 1m in front of you. Of course, the image was projected onto a screen the size of stage so that probably helped.

I think it rather depends on the source used to produce the content in the first place. We have SD DVB at home and if the original was recorded with HD equipment (e.g BBC's Life) the quality is noticeably better. Of course, HD is better still, but I can't justify replacing all our SD equipment at this time.

 

I have PS3 and a Blu-ray player in my PC and I use them both to watch movies. I don't buy movies, unless I get some super deal on them. I bought the Band of Brothers Blu-ray version, because it was only about 18£, and that's pretty good price. In general I won't pay more than 2x the rental price of a movie, because imo they are not worth more. It's rare that I would watch a movie more than once or twice. DVD's are basically a no go for me these days. On my 52" monitor/tv they are watchable, but on the 100" projector screen the difference to Blu-ray is just too big. I rent quite a lot of movies.

 

Those errors are much more common in the NTSC territories than the PAL ones. Loads of poorly encoded DVDs out there and loads of poor players and/or TVs with too poor pulldown detection to properly deinterlace them, often effectively halving resolution. That's much less of a problem with film content on PAL.

 

BR for me. Picture quality is better overall, but it seems to vary from marginal to dramatic depending on the movie. However, the improvement in sound quality BR provides is much more dramatic IMO.

 

I am definitely not in the camp that thinks VOD will be a huge hit especially right now. I think it may take off in other countries outside of the USA but the way Comcast is with bandwidth caps and the prices for high speed internet connections, I dont see this VOD thing taking off.

Also I am one of those people who like media, and boxes so on so forth that is why despite games being available on Steam, I buy them physically. That way I can lend to friends or if I reinstall I dont have to wait a few hours to download 5 gb off the Steam servers.

When I go home to California which is where my PS3 is hooked up to my dad's entertainment setup, movies like Black Hawk Down, Casino Royale, Wall-E, Wanted, The Kingdom, etc etc, there is just a night and day difference in both audio and the visuals compared to a DVD. Granted there are some DVDs which when upscaled by the PS3 look amazing, bluray still has the edge in motion, a lot of stuff going on all at once in a frame and audio. Because of that I cant go back. You definitely need a proper tv to take advantage of the bluray though.

For my apartment in Atlanta, I am looking at getting a 55 inch XBR8 I just dont feel like paying the price it is at the moment. That and a few floor standing speakers and a PS3 slim are on top of my purchase list

 

I think the slight blurriness of DVD helps to hide some of the flaws in the picture that are visible, when watching the Blu-ray version. That's why the quality of DVD's are more consistent than Blu-ray's. The picture quality of Blu-ray's varies quite a lot, also within a movie.

 

The Bluray`s merely have a way higher upper limit on picture quality, thats why you see more variation. DVDs are already "maxed out" so to speak, but it wasnt always like that... I have "Braveheart" on both DVD and VHS, and DVD doesnt look better in this case, very muddy and unsharp picture (sound is way better though). In this and other early DVDs simply doing a new transfer would already help the quality significantly.

With new movies the Bluray quality should become just as consistent as the transfer and encoding technology gets mastered, if that aint already the case...

Oh, and I stopped buying DVD in favor of BluRay`s when I still had my PS3 hooked to a SD-TV.

 

That's one of the reasons I've mostly stopped buying DVD, and will probably never get BRD.

I have a huge collection of DVD's most of which I've watched a grand total of one time. A few that I've watched maybe twice. And a very very very few that I've watched 3+ times. VOD is just far more economical. Even if I ended up re-renting them 3+ times.

Regards,
SB

 

All for VOD here, I'm a lazy b-tard way better than driving, renting, returning etc. But the "important" stuff has to be at home in a case.

 

I have a PS3 with Blu-Ray and it is great.
I have a small collection of Blu-Ray movies which IMHO justify the investment

- Transformers 1 & 2
- Star Trek 2009
- Batman Dark Knight
- Iron Man
- 2001
- Pirates of Caribean 1, 2 and 3
- The Fifth Element
- Final Fantasy
- Casino Royale
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- The Day Earth Stood Still

My family really like it.

 

Speaking of Blu-ray...

Sony and Panasonic have announced that they have developed a new optical disc evaluation technology that will allow the layer capacity of Blu-ray media to increase from 25GB to 33.4GB using existing Blu-ray laser diodes. This would presumably allow existing Blu-ray hardware - including Blu-ray Disc players and burners - to play the proposed discs with a simple firmware upgrade.

 

I find the difference between DVD and Blu-ray to be very noticeable, even on my parents' 37" 720p LCD.

 

Yeah that is true although it varies from title to title though in this case best DVD IQ movies vs low/mediocre IQ Blu-ray movies. Btw I just poped in the Predator DVD low IQ movie (that 80's movie!) and it looks good with the GPGPU doing exotic scaling. Ofcourse I compared it to rambo on Blu-ray and the difference is large. Though I find that quality tends to be quite uneven in Blu-ray movies. For example in Rambo some night scenes looks like DVD IQ and the rest is high IQ.

 

That's one of my big issues with VOD. WIth all the talk lately of big ISPs wanting to put in caps and doing traffic shaping, its completely at odds with the push for highdef ondemand video streaming. It's so reliant on large bandwidth consistent connections.

 

I have a PS3 (slim), blu-ray capable PC and a region-free Panasonic BD-80 hooked up to a full-hd projector (projection diagonal about 110"). The difference between DVD and blu-ray is incredible at my screen size, although focus problems, bad transfer and cheap effects are very visible with blu-ray, too. I usually rent movies and buy TV shows and get the blu-ray version whenever possible. For me the better images quality is worth the premium.

A friend showed me his Apple TV lately. We watched a rented HD movie (Quantum of Solace) on his 55" and the quality was well below blu-ray.