One question, one poll, separate topics.

[tzikeh]

One question:

Can someone explain to me why I should get a Blu-Ray player, and why Blu-Ray is better than not? I'm not going to be buying one anytime soon (no money for either the player or the HDTV I understand it's only worth buying a Blu-Ray player for), but I would like to understand why it's better.

I understand tech-talk, so don't be afraid to use big words, big numbers, and intialisms.

One poll:

[Poll #1599741]

Comments

[zulu]

Yeah! The mode! Go [my age bracket]!

All I know about bluray is that it's fancy. When I was a kid, we watched our DVDs and we LIKED it, dammit! You blurays get off my lawn.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

HEE! *imagines a bunch of DVDs that had been hiding in the grass flipping up onto their edges and rolling away as fast as they can*

And yes, go [my age bracket] too!

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

Heh. When I was a kid, we got truncated 200 foot reels (about 15 minutes) of heavily-edited 8MM or Super8 film. Black and white if you were poor like us. Color if you had money. Color and a magnetic soundtrack if you sneezed money.

A friend of ours who happened to sneeze money had a Super8 sound projector and the home movie release of Star Wars. It seriously was the Reader's Digest Condensed Version.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

There was a format war and for a while there was HDDVD and Blue Ray. Blue Ray won, so it's now pretty much the standard going forward for HD dvds. They'll be putting out HD and Standard for a while, but slowly over time HD's going to become the new standard. (just like DVDs edged out VHS).

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

:nod; I do remember the format war--my question is more what makes Blu-Ray DVDs "better" than regular DVDs, not better than HD-DVD. Is it simply image quality being sharper? Is the color richer? Blacker blacks? Higher resolution? Other things? Because I've seen HDTVs in the stores, and the picture tends to look pixelated in the parts of the picture that aren't moving.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

Format aside, I believe there are some movies (e.g. ST2009) where the Blu-Ray has more Stuff than the DVD. I don't know if this is going to be a universal thing or what.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

The big thing is that it's higher resolution, which lends itself to better image quality. Simply more info crammed into the same space, so that instead of the field being green, and obviously full of grass, you can see each individual blade of grass. Or every pore on the anchor person's nose. Things like the blacker blacks and being sharper, that can be affected what TV you've got displaying things/who made the DVD I suppose. You can play regular definition stuff on HDTVs (and there's also the issue that some people don't set them correctly, so the square of regular def is stretched rather than letterboxed on the more rectangular screen) but ... basically right now, prices are coming down, most stuff is coming out in both formats and will continue to for a while.

But for something like Mad Men, if you've got an HD screen to display it, it'll be beautiful with the SD discs, but with the HD discs, it'll be beautiful, and you'll see every strand of January Jones' hair and the exact texture of Peggy's coat. For DVD home use, Blu Ray is the consumer medium, and the way to take full advantage of an HD TV set, but if you don't have one, Blu Ray is pointless, because an SD screen can only play SD.

Some players "upconvert" SD for HD, which means they make the image bigger so it can play on the screen, but it doesn't actually make the image clearer, because it's like turning an 800x600 wallpaper into a 1600x1200. If that makes any sense. HD is to SD what IMAX is to a regular big screen. You could presumably shrink down an IMAX shot film for a regular screen, or project a regular shot film on an IMAX screen, but either way kind of defeats the point

[tingler.livejournal.com]

One thing I have definitely noticed about HDTV, you can really see some things that, sometimes, you'd maybe rather not see, like every skin eruption or the glue on the skullcaps on SNL. (Watching HBO's John Adams series was sometimes seriously disturbing--they went for verisimilitude with a vengeance!)

Regular TV is 480 lines of resolution. HD is 720 to 1080. The letter after refers to the scanning method. I = interlaced scanning (first the odd number lines are displayed, then the evens) .P= progressive scanning (all the lines are displayed in order from top to bottom).

After you've had HD for a while, regular TV looks grainy and bad.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

One thing I have definitely noticed about HDTV, you can really see some things that, sometimes, you'd maybe rather not see, like every skin eruption or the glue on the skullcaps on SNL.

:nod: I know that actors and news anchors are unhappy with HD because they can no longer appear flawless. ;) Maybe it'll be good for people in the long run to see that. (One can dream.)

Yeah interlaced v progressive is a long-time blargh from vidding.

I won't have HD for a long, long time, so I guess the only reason to get a Blu-Ray right now would be for the extra extras. :D

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

Another thing is that some Blu-Ray players will allow you to stream stuff like Hulu onto your TV, if you care about that.

[dua-186.livejournal.com]

I can't attest to all of the techy stuff, but it looks like other people have it covered :D

I do know that Blu-Ray discs can hold much, much more data than your (current) standard format DVD disks. So, for example, when I wanted to buy the new Star Trek movie on DVD, I made frowny faces upon finding out that there were a lot more extras on the Blu-Ray version, which I couldn't get because my player doesn't have the right spectrum of light to read the disks! I also don't have a giant, fancy tv, but really, it is the DVD extras that I care about.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I yearn for the super-awesome picture, but at this point, I'd happily settle for the DVD goodies. *sigh* I'm a big fan of DVD goodies.

[soobunny.livejournal.com]

It's the resolution between the two. The resolution on the blu-ray is significantly better. While watching the Torchwood blu-ray dvd's you can see John Barrowman's pours.... Sometimes this can be a good thing other times it can be a bad thing.

Cnet has a quick about blu-ray vs dvd (http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-13817_7-6462511-2.html)

[grace-om.livejournal.com]

My son has one that he brings home from college and hooks up to our tv periodically, and yes, it give a noticeably better quality picture (and we're used to HDTV). I'm not rushing out to buy one, because our current dvd player is pretty new, but it's on the eventual wish list. Also, we like the idea of getting the kind that lets you stream from the internet directly to your tv. Then we'd just drop comcast cable tv.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

How do you stream from the internet - does the player have wifi capability, or do you have to hook it up to a computer?

[grace-om.livejournal.com]

I *think* some of the players have wifi capability built in. And I think pretty much any of them could be hooked up to stream from a computer. But I am just going by what he's said, we haven't actually tried this yet. He's home this weekend, so if I learn more, I'll pass it along.

[elrhiarhodan]

I'm probably in the minority - but I'd vote NO. Nothing against HD content, it's more that the whole concept of disc-based entertainment is going to go the way of the dinosaur in the next 5 years. Downloadable HD content, whether streaming or hard drive based will be much cheaper than Blu-Ray format.

I've bought the HD versions of both seasons of WC from iTunes...and the quality is INSANE. It doesn't have the extras, but $30 for the season, as opposed to nearly $60 for the set? I don't care about the HD extras that much (got the SD discs via Netflix for the extras)

Just my $.02, adjusted for inflation?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Hm. That's a very good point. Every time before this, I've been an early adopter, so it didn't bother me when things changed, because it was usually years later. Right now, since I can't afford anything, that's a good thought. Maybe I should save up for an HDTV for a few years, and skip the Blu-Ray dvds idea. And yes, there's always netflix, though right now I can't afford an account.

[doctor-fangeek.livejournal.com]

So...where do you watch your iTunes HD content? Obviously one can watch on the computer (and it looks great), but do you send it to an HDTV, and if so how? Just curious.

[elrhiarhodan]

I have an Apple TV and stream HD content all the time. It's absolutely gorgeous.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

blu-ray is almost worth it just for the nature documentaries, if you are into that sort of thing.

seriously -- "planet earth" on blu-ray was like nature porn.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Yes. That. It was the first thing we watched and OMFG.

The thing that annoys me about it is that i feel I need to buy everything twice or decide--all other TVs only have regular DVD players in the house, so even renting a Bluray means I can only watch it in one place.

Oddly we have two BR devices on that TV, bc the PS3 doubles as one too...

But yes, on films where the visuals are the central thing, it gives you a stunning image quality. For the most part, I can take it or leave it though (and would never have bought one, but it came with the new TV...shrugs)

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily think there is any overwhelming reason to get a Blu-ray player. I got mine because I heard that there might be extras on the Sherlock Holmes '09 vid that weren't on the standard format, but there wasn't much of anything. However I got an internet-ready one and we were able to attend a live screening of the film with commentary by RDJ and Susan Downey.

I'm also able to stream films from Netflix and... I think it's Cinema Now, I'm not sure because I haven't ever used my account. And for me that was worth the very modest price.

However I will say that even standard format DVDs look a whole LOT better on the Blu-ray player.

[vrya.livejournal.com]

We replaced our 19" tube tv with a 42" HDTV two years ago, and let me tell you, almost immediately anything less than high def, all of which had been perfectly acceptable a few weeks prior, started looking distinctly shabby. We haven't gotten a blue-ray player yet, but I imagine the same will be true. Our plan is to wait until the current DVD player dies (and it will) and then replace it with a cheapie blue-ray. Last I checked the low end was running $100-$150, which is not bad. I don't think we'll buy any discs though. We barely watch the DVDs we own, I think netflix will do us fine for the limited amount of tv we watch post-baby. As long as we can avoid watching anyone else's blue-ray player, we can continue to live in our little "this looks fine, no need to rush out and upgrade!" bubble.... plenty of room in here for all! ;-)

[melina123.livejournal.com]

Mileage will vary, but I love my bluray player. Since I got a 1080p HDTV, there is a very noticeable difference between standard DVDs and bluray in terms of the quality of the picture.

Some bluray players have wifi or ethernet ports (or both) for streaming content from providers like Netflix.

As for discs disappearing within the next few years -- I disagree. Downloading will become more prevalent, but discs aren't going away, and depending on your bandwidth and provider, the quality of downloads can vary, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of having an HD-capable TV.