BluRay vanquishes HDDVD

[Tiberius]

Here's a bet for you. Within two years, the entire DVD section of any given shop will occupy as much shelf space as the VHS tapes do now (ie precious little). Within five, it will be hard to buy a movie on DVD at all. It'll be hard to buy a player for them too.

Given that we're just about there now (and sorry for the thread necro, BTW, but it applies, i think), it's interesting to see that DVDs are still fairly popular. I wonder why that is? Could it be that lots of people are using laptops and computers to watch movies and most comps come with DVD drives not blu ray?

[McAvoy]

Because VHS vs. DVDs, there was a huge difference. DVDs were sharper and had neat features that not many have seen before.

Blu-ray vs. DVDs however, not much of a difference. If you have a crappy TV, then Blu-ray won't be any better than DVDs. Even a good TV sometimes won't show much of a difference. So you need this expensive setup to get any advantage.

IMO Blue-ray features are useless...

I would also guess that DVD players are dirt cheap now, costs about the same as a case of beer and DVDs are usually five dollars cheaper too.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, I would agree with that. I know several people who still have DVD players, and their rationale is that they saw a huge improvement in picture quality when they stepped up from VHS to DVD, but the step from DVD to Blu Ray isn't all that great. I've heard the same thing said about HD, actually. My parents got a HD satellite TV package, and they gave it up after a year because you can barely tell any difference between normal and HD pictures. They only kept it as long as they did because 1 year was the minimum term when they took the deal.

Another factor is that Blu Ray itself is pretty much obsolete now - the way of the future is downloads and live streaming. If you keep films at all, it will be on a hard drive.

[McAvoy]

Yeah. I got well over 500 GB of movies on my hard drive. I did this only because I was in the Navy and it took up no space.

For me it is interesting. I have a DVD player with surround sound and a subwoofer. The DVD player is hooked up to my LED LCD TV with high quality cables. In other words, my setup is just as good as most Blu-rays. However, I do own a PS3 where I do buy Blu-ray but they would have to have high action/CGI whatever to make use of it. I see no point in buying BR for comedies for example or older TV series.

[Griffin]

Did you have to necro this thread, it's full of Blackstar idiocy. I wasn't around in that time, I shouldn't have to deal with that crap.

[Tsukiyumi]

Did you have to necro this thread, it's full of Blackstar idiocy. I wasn't around in that time, I shouldn't have to deal with that crap.

[Mikey]

Yeah, I would agree with that. I know several people who still have DVD players, and their rationale is that they saw a huge improvement in picture quality when they stepped up from VHS to DVD, but the step from DVD to Blu Ray isn't all that great. I've heard the same thing said about HD, actually. My parents got a HD satellite TV package, and they gave it up after a year because you can barely tell any difference between normal and HD pictures. They only kept it as long as they did because 1 year was the minimum term when they took the deal.

Another factor is that Blu Ray itself is pretty much obsolete now - the way of the future is downloads and live streaming. If you keep films at all, it will be on a hard drive.

Agreed, except for HDTV - I find the difference to be dramatic. As far as blu-ray, yep - by the time I got around to checking one out seriously, I have no need for any physical storage media for my movies anymore.

[kostmayer]

I've just got a BluRay player to replace my dead DVD player, you can get a very good budget model pretty cheap these days. Not sure the formats obsolete just yet, not everyone has the means to stream / store things on a hard drive, and a BluRay movie can take anything upto 30gb of space at full quality.

Theres a noticable difference between an upscaled DVD and a BluRay film IMO, but definitely not enough to warrant upgrading your entire collection. Theres only handful of films which I watch over and over again, I'm replacing those as and when they become available cheaply enough (as low as £6 each these days).

One thing that does amaze me is how amazing old films can look these days after they've been remastered. Forbidden Planet, knocking on 60 years old, looks gorgeous in HD.

[mwhittington]

My wife just got The Wizard of Oz on BluRay, and it's like watching it for the first time. It really looks good. She also bought me the Star Wars collection on BluRay.

[Teaos]

It's funny I don't think I've ever watched a bluray movie...

[Tinadrin Chelnor]

It's funny I don't think I've ever watched a bluray movie...

I know I haven't, and my DVD collection is bountiful...

[Tsukiyumi]

It's no different if you don't have an HD TV.

So... kinda pointless.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

And I don't, so I'll be passing. And considering my rather sizable TV collection, it'd be way too much money for me to upgrade them all.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

It's no different if you don't have an HD TV.

So... kinda pointless.

Though most new TVs today sold are HD (the latest fad in 3d doesn't seem to have stuck), there are probably a lot of standard-def sets still in service. Watching a Blu-Ray on anything less than a 1080p screen is pointless since the unit just ends up scaling down the HD-encoded blu-ray data to fit the lower-res screen. The future is going away from discs of any kind, in media of all sorts as well as software: download and streaming media is on the rise. Media in physical form may end up sent out in flash-based storage.

I do have a 1080p HDTV (a small 24 incher, but my bedroom is tiny). I did find the upgrade from the older tube-style (CRT, to be precise) box it replaced quite noticeable. At least we don't pay extra for HD TV service compared to standard-def service from Verizon (and hadn't from Time Warner either, while we were still a customer of theirs), so that's a free upgrade after the one-time TV purchase.

[McAvoy]

I have a nice 46" LED LCD screen. Even DVDs look great on it.

You can get a very good TV cheap nowadays because flat screen 1080 screens are like computers. Their prices fall real fast when a new model comes up. So you can probably find a good one cheap. Hell my $1,800 TV is less than half of that. Unlike old school TVs that are pretty reliable and not much different from the previous model or the one following it...