YES, blu-ray is worth it!
I owned the Lost Season 3 DVDs, and on a whim, ordered the blu-ray version of the same episode from Netflix.
The difference was like night and day. We switched back and forth several times and it was way, way better on blu-ray.
The DRM built into Blu-Ray doesn’t bother you, Jeff? (Not saying it should; genuinely curious about your thoughts on it.)
In 90% of the cases the only people who care about DRM are the cheap ass pirates.
I’m just wondering, is the DRM on blu-ray completely broken now and how’s the support for that on linux?
@ola some of us are fine buying the discs and the players, but I refuse to run windows and buy some lousy software program to do actual playback.
@ola!:
The DRM built into Blu-Ray doesn’t bother you, Jeff? (Not saying it should; genuinely curious about your thoughts on it.)
In 90% of the cases the only people who care about DRM are the cheap ass pirates.
Or Linux users.
Forgive my ignorance but blu-ray uses a blue laser, which is a big part of how it gets higher data densities, correct? Do they need a red laser also to double as a standard dvd player?
To me, the whole idea of keeping your video on a shiny, spinning disc is already looking a bit outdated. Stream, fuckers, stream!
HD video time? Yes
Blu-Ray? No
HD has already been with us for quite some time due to high speed Internet and low bandwidth costs; one can easily find HQ HD version of almost everything that is out online.
Wasting money and space on a physical media? No thanks.
Blu-Ray is worth it if you have a large 1080p-resolution display. In my case, I’ve got a 1080p projector pointed at an 80-inch (diagonal) screen. With a DVD, even the best upscaling looks lousy compared with Blu-Ray. The pixels are about 2mm square-- barely invisible from the couch. But for DVDs, the pixels are huge, and there’s only so much that the upscaler can use to fix it. (I’m using a PS3, which I suspect uses Lanczos or some similar sinc-based upscaling algorithm; I can tell by the glow around the shirts on my kids’ Wiggles DVDs.)
With smaller screens, 1080p is wasted because the pixels are much too small to see from a typical viewing distance.
Another thing: Blu-Ray is likely to be king for HD for a long time because it’s not significantly data constrained. Cable companies and download services try to minimize the bandwidth and give you a picture that’s just good enough so that you won’t complain.
I gave up on TV a while ago. I don’t even have one where I live right now. I watch everything on my computer. Better resolution than a standard TV, plus everything is digital. You know what would be a great service? If there was an online store that would allow you to download movies and as time progressed and technology got better you could upgrade your digital copy to the higher resolution version or newer formats.
@Drew - What do you mean by there haven’t been advances to audio technology? IMO, part of the enjoyment of Blu-Ray is the ability to hear 7.1 uncompressed sound. Compared to a standard DVD, the difference is impressive.
Downloading taking forever and no viable alternative for Netflix being available over here (in the Netherlands) makes Blu-Ray the only way to see HD content.
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Andreas
@Jeff Donnici:
A) my Samsung DLP looks great at 1920x1080. connected via DVI-VGA cable.
B) i don’t use it for computer activities often, but when i do it’s usually web browsing. in firefox: Ctrl-+ rocks. so, that’s very usable from 12 feet away. a more general solution: adjust the font size in control panel.
@Jeff Donnici:
A) my Samsung DLP looks great at 1920x1080. connected via DVI-VGA cable.
B) i don’t use it for computer activities often, but when i do it’s usually web browsing. in firefox: Ctrl-+ rocks. so, that’s very usable from 12 feet away. a more general solution: adjust the font size in control panel.
I bought the exact same drive from Newegg on Black Friday and couldn’t be happier with it. The fact that it also supports HDDVD was a selling-point for me, as you can find some HDDVDs floating around for a rather low price. Snag those up as you can, fill the rest of your collection with Blu-ray discs.
I have a full 1080p HD TV and to be honest, the increase in quality from DVD to HD just isn’t worth the extra cost of a blu-ray player + discs. Perhaps if you have an 81 TV or something it might be worth it, but I really can’t see what all the fuss is about at 46.
Not to mention the fact that if you run Linux as I do, you’re going to run into all sorts of stupid problems with HDCP. To me, the idea of a piece of technology refusing to play something which I have paid for because of the operating system I run, or some component of hardware is not compliant, is unacceptable bullshit.
I’m happy with DVDs and I think blu-ray is just for the wank factor.
i have a panasonic 1080p 46 plasma and i can definitely see a difference in video quality between blu-ray and dvd. its huge. my blu-ray player is a ps3 and since i had one for games i thought id try out some blu-rays as well. i loved it. but as a poor college student i cant buy all blu-rays so i just pick a few movies that i love and buy them on blu-ray and the majority of other on dvd, there is a happy medium, no need to go all out. but the choice wasnt that hard for me since i had a ps3 to begin with. since i spent thousands on all my equipment why not spend like 5-10 dollars more on a couple movies.
People who say ooh I’m gonna buy one of those full HD lcd tv’s, they are so cheap now really need to look at them in a store. Full HD isn’t that important.
When you are at a reasonable distance (living-room distance) you barely see if your tv is full HD. But you still see the colors, the contrast etc.
The cheap LCD’s have horrible contrast, horrible color and horrible flow. Full HD doesn’t change that. The LCD’s that have an acceptable picture are very costly.
Then there’s plasma. For about half the price you get a really good picture. Of course plasma has other downsides. But at least it’s not like you’re watching a video game.
Vista SP2 due out next year will natively support Blu-Ray burning, not sure about playback though…
I stopped my BluRay subscription on Netflix when they added an extra fee for it (I think it’s only $1, but they can shove it). Usually I notice the difference in visual quality for less than 5 minutes, then I’m watching the movie instead of paying attention to the resolution.
That being said, I’m still on 720p, so maybe it’ll be more worthwhile when I get a new TV.
Of course, I haven’t bought a single BluRay disc, yet. I’m not really interested in starting over with my collection, especially knowing that there are further advances coming with more storage and higher resolutions (on both TVs and the storage media).
Have you had much luck getting your 1920 HDTV to run Vista in a nice, high resolution?
I did the HTPC thing a couple months ago also and have it connected (via DVI-HDMI adapter) to our new Samsung LCD (from the ToC series).
At a resolution like 1280 by 720 (or something like that - I’m not near it), it looks pretty good – but ovbvious there’s not much screen space there to work with. When I bump it up to 1920x1200, (or thereabouts) there’s a definite fuzziness that makes it look not native on the television.
Just wondering if A) others have seen similar issues getting the high resolutions to pair up between PC and TV and B), I suppose there’s the question of whether 1920x1200 is usable from the couch 10-12 feet away.
People here seriously need to go see a 70mm film and then tell me that resolution doesn’t matter. We aren’t even close to digitally reproducing what the eye can resolve. The only reason it may seem that way is because Full HD is such a relatively miniscule improvement. It’s still very substantial thought. It being most obvious in video games what the difference between 480p and 1080p actually is.
Full HD is just over 2 megapixels. 35mm film is worth almost ten times that. I don’t even know what the numbers are for 70mm. And that is visibly clearer than 35mm.