making the switch to blu-ray: pros & cons?

[gaseousclay]

so i've been mulling over this for awhile now and i'm still trying to decide if I should take the plunge and buy a blu-ray player and completely ditch dvd. I have an older 32" 720p lcd but i've always read that in order to fully optimize blu-ray your tv should be at least 1080i (or is it p?). Is this a myth? My lcd is no more than 10ft away from the couch, so would I notice the difference in quality?

the pros:
- better quality
- blu-rays have come down in price over the years

the cons:
- i'd have to spend more money buying the same titles I already own on dvd.
- what the heck do I do with my dvd players and dvd's?

 

[Haggises]

you can play your old DVDs on the blu-ray.....

 

[jwcarlson]

you can play your old DVDs on the blu-ray.....

Yes... and if you didn't already own an upconverting DVD player you will be surprised how good some DVDs can look. Pricewise they are coming more into line with DVDs. Got Season 4 of Breaking Bad on blu-ray for $25 vs. $20 on DVD.

 

[mayhem]

you can play your old DVDs on the blu-ray.....

Exactly ^ - no need to re-buy on blu-ray unless it's something you really want to see in higher definition. We're still using DVD, and I notice a huge difference when we watch broadcast tv in high def vs the DVD definition. I'm looking forward to making the switch, but have been waiting for blu-ray player prices to drop a little more.

 

[Jut]

my sony blu ray has the capability to also play and upconvert dvd's

 

[Easttexasman]

There is only pro's when you switch over to BR,plus if you have a good tv the picture is amazing.

 

[CrotalusHH]

If you get a 120Hz TV to go with the Blu-Ray player. Turn off the 120 for everything but sports.

The 120 makes regular movies look like live shot soap operas. It's weird.

 

[Manning]

All pros, no cons . . . Really. Only con is buying the new player.

As said above all your standard DVDs will work in youR Bluray and will be up converted to look even better.

 

[SiBurning]

BluRay is a lot slower to start up, load, etc. and some don't forward/reverse nicely.

On the plus side, 720p is a lot better than 480i (and slightly better than 1080i for that matter). BluRay are usually played back at the right speed, 24 frames per second (fps) for film and 60 fps for video (with some exceptions), while NTSC DVDs usually use 3:2 pulldown and interlacing. Finally, BluRay has a larger color space (shows more colors) and higher contrast.

480i (DVD): 704x480, 338k pixels
720p: 1280x720, 920k pixels
1080p: 1920x1080, 2M pixels

You can upgrade the movies that matter, and just stick to dvds for others. BTW, don't be afraid to upgrade old B&W movies. B&W has more resolution than color, so the BluRays can still be a huge improvement.

 

[Kentos]

Once you see the clarity it's hard to go back to DVD's if there is a choice.

I can't think of any cons TBO.

 

[legrandfromage]

As long as you get a Blu-Ray player that up-samples DVD's there's no downside. I tend to think of this the way that we used to think about sound systems - they were only as good as the speakers. If you have a proper TV, the Blu-Ray picture will amaze you and the DVD's look pretty good also.

 

[jrak2]

If you have a high definition video camera and the video editing software, you can also burn and view high definition video using regular DVDs or, if you have a blue ray burner, using blue ray disks.

 

[njpaddy]

I've had a blu-ray player for several years but still buy mostly regular dvds. At my age I can't see enough of a difference that it matters and, in some cases (black & white films), the regular dvd looks better than the blu-ray. My purchase of the blu-ray disc depends on the price difference. A new tv might help as mine is a 720 with some dark areas, but my wife and I don't watch it enough and we have no kids living at home to pressure us into getting another.

 

[Spillproof]

Another advantage of Blu-ray is internet connectivity. Instant access to things like Pandora, Netflix....

 

[DC_MPA]

Here's what we did, we upgraded all the DVD players to blurays over time. When a DVD comes out that we think would be killer in bluray we rent it then buy it in bluray if we liked it. Very few of our DVDs (over 1,000) were upgraded into bluray. Get a bluray player and rent a few movies and overtime you'll pick up a few but you won't go crazy buying everything in bluray.

 

[JellyFox]

I have an older 32" 720p lcd but i've always read that in order to fully optimize blu-ray your tv should be at least 1080i (or is it p?). Is this a myth? My lcd is no more than 10ft away from the couch, so would I notice the difference in quality?

http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charted-viewing-distance-to-screen-size/

From that graph, 720p is probably just as good as 1080p for your set-up.

- i'd have to spend more money buying the same titles I already own on dvd.
- what the heck do I do with my dvd players and dvd's?

Cartoons/anime (if you watch any) upscale almost perfectly anyway, so you'd barely notice the difference. Live-action has a more noticeable quality difference, but if the quality is good enough now, why bother replacing them?

 

[misterelie]

Gas,
Unless the prospect of not owning a BR player bothers you, there isn't too much reason to switch. I bought mine in November. My 2 year old DVD player gave a visual almost as good as the new blu-ray. There isn't that much of an improvement, despite what the marketing of them leads you to believe.

That being said, if you are in need of a new DVD player, then absolutely consider a blu-ray. They don't cost much more anymore.

There are a couple of important cons to consider when you move to a Blu-ray, however.
1. You can't crack the encryption to rip your blu-rays as easily. I take my owned DVD's and rip them onto my iPad when I travel and I do it a lot. I know it can be done on BR, but it is a lot harder and takes a lot more space.
2. Leaving aside new movies, the selection of older movies aren't there yet for Blu-ray. It'll get there, but it isn't as plentiful. And if you're like me and collect TV shows, many of them just aren't released on Blu-Ray yet; those that are tend to be not remastered, so Blu-ray tends to bring out flaws in older video techniques that would otherwise be hidden.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[jwcarlson]

Don't go super cheap for a player. Read reviews, etc. I got a cheapy one for my parents and that thing takes forever to start up and load a disk. They deal with it and claim they don't move fast enough or care enough for it to matter to them.

I've always had the best luck with Sony media players DVD and Blu-Ray. I'll be honest... on a 32" TV I don't really see the point of upgrading to Blu-Ray. I'd suggest you look into an upconverting DVD player, which are pretty cheap. Unless the plan is to buy a big TV in the future... in that case go with the Blu-Ray.
My parents got my progressive scan DVD player when I upgraded. Then they got my upconverting DVD player when I upgraded to Blu-Ray. Then I grabbed them the BR player because I knew they would like Game of Thrones and other series that I owned on BRD.

 

[Go West Young Man]

I'd get a BD player, but only if you really need to replace your old DVD player anyways.
And I wouldn't bother rebuying anything you already have on DVD - BlueRay is a transitional technology and there's bound to be a new standard coming out in a few years anyways.

And +1 on not buying cheap. There's a lot of variation in the quality of BlueRay programming, and some publishers only test their discs on the big-name players. Even our old Samsung would get firmware updates almost weekly for a while, to deal with new features the programmers were sticking on new movies.

 

[jd_1138]

I don't even buy media anymore. I have hundreds of movies in my Netflix queue waiting for me to watch, as I get time. And if there's a new hot movie I want to see, I will either rent it at RedBox or just wait for it to show up in Netflix. Sometimes I will rent a movie on demand from iTunes. If it weren't for my wife, I wouldn't even have Dish Network.

Redbox has some Bluray titles, but really on a 32" TV, the DVD's will be upscaled nicely on your Bluray player, if you get one.