Is it time to get Blu-Ray or should I just stick with my DVDs?

The answer, my friend, is in thy name.

DVDs will continue being around, because there's plenty of people who simply do not care enough to do so, and the PQ/AQ upgrade just isn't enough. This is why Combo packs continue to happen.

That said, anyone serious about film, upgrade. Players are quite affordable, and there's sales all the time. There's GOLD in the under $10 section on Amazon. Go for it. It's not going anywhere.

Until they can find a way to stream in bluray quality, bluray is the best option.

 

And the good thing is that blurays seem to be getting less expensive everyday.

Blu ray players are cheap. You can get good ones for less than $150. I'd go for it.

 

That's the truth; some of the best Blus out there can be found at Amazon (or even Walmart) for under 10 bucks.

 

Beware, though.  Once you start buying blus, you might have trouble stopping: my collection has swelled to over 150 titles in just the year and a half that I have had a player. 

Having bought a blu ray player a few months ago, I can confidently say that you'll thank yourself for the upgrade. As others have said, you can get a good player for a good price and it's easy to get discs dirt cheap, even at brick-and-mortar stores nowadays (New releases are still pricy, but they get nice and cheap really quick).

 

Get yourself a player and a few good discs (Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now are must-buys; in fact, the 'best of blu-ray' thread is stuffed with good starting points) and you'll be in hog heaven.

 

I got a decent Blu-Ray player for $99. And the comment about regular DVDs looking better on Blu is absolutely true. You may find you don't want or need to upgrade your existing collection, or even change your Netflix options if you have that service (I still get the regular DVDs via Netflix and they look great). But yeah, new purchases will no doubt be Bluray

You'd be surprised to see what sticking to a plan of "Won't replace unless it's under $10" would do for you. It's done me wonders.

So I'm the only one waiting for bluray to die it's inevitable death at the feet of HD digital downloading and leap-frogging it as the last hardware entertainment delivery system before we all go online?

 

I'm with you. DVD is the last physical media format I'm going to own.

You could have a long wait.

Yeah, for the next 5 years at least you will be missing a great picture and sound. DVDs upscaled - which your tv can probably do - are good but blu-ray is a lot better. Whatching THE THIN RED LINE BLU, bought for 5 quid, was an experience.

 

For it to get to that level, general bandwidth speed needs to be fast enough nds affordable enough worldwide to make constant streaming of HD video the go-to option. We'll get there, but it's a few years away still. I'm perfectly happy to go blu-ray for the next 3-4 years while it all catches up. I agree that blu is most likely the last go-round for physical media, though.

 

 

Plus, there is no guarantee you will have access to all the HD downloads, unless you can afford subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, pay-per-view, and whatever new providers come down the pike in the next five years or so. Buying a Blu-Ray or DVD means ownership, not contingent rental.

 

But I completely understand the sentiment of waiting. I just wouldn't trade my Blu-Rays of The Fountain or Assassination of Jesse James when/if they pop up on instant watch for six months.
 

 

I finally broke down and bought one about a month ago.  I didn't think it would really make a difference at this point since my TV is only 720p, but even at that resolution I have noticed a difference.  Not huge, mind you, but still enough to surprise me.  I haven't watched any older movies on it yet, with the exception of Halloween 2 (thanks to Terror in the Isles being an extra feature!!!).  But new movies definately pop.  Hell, I got Speed Racer (yeah, I love that movie) at Best Buy for eight bucks, and the colors damn near melted my eyeballs.  As far as prices go, I should be getting Game of Thrones from Amazon in the next couple of days, and it was only like 38 bucks!

 

I must confess, though, I still don't know what the point of BD Live is.  So far as I can tell it's just a way to watch old trailers by whatever studio put out the Blu Ray.  What am I missing here?

Sidebar (sort of):  is it worth it to get a Blu player if I'm still using a tube television bought back in 1998?

 

Occasionally, studios will do really cool shit with it. Mostly, thats been Warner Bros., who've been doing live commentaries using it shortly after a big new release since The Dark Knight hit, and Sony, who'll use it to keep trivia tracks up to date. And I do like that Universal in particular will give you trailers for new movies whenever you download. But mostly, it's so much wasted potential.

If it's flatscreen, and got component hookups, then yes. Fun fact: Tube TVs by their very nature handle colors and motion infinitely better than LCD/LED sets.

Really it's all about self control, and doing your research so you get the best value for the buck.

I was lucky to do a home theater upgrade at a time and love it. Just something about the picture and sound going up a notch in quality.

I only upgraded a few of my old DVDs though. Something that gets a lot of love and care in say a restoration, or new sound, provides a new experience.

Oh BTW, I have a small HDTV in my bedroom, so my DVDs still look good on it. The bigger TV downstairs, it's blu-ray or nothing. I know I'm more a little picky, but there are just some movies that really benefit on this format. It maybe the last physical media format, but that doesn't mean it's a bad format. A lot of other factors need to kick in for downloads to get good.

Not flatscreen.  Old school giant tube screen the size and weight of a safe.

 

I simply cannot fathom or justify replacing my current collection with blurays that will only probably be relevant for the next half decade. I love movies but seriously, I grew up with shitty pan and scan tv's and VHS, I already feel pretty damn spoiled with dvds as it is.

 

I got a PS3 to play, blu ray was a bonus.  Only movie I've bought so far is the Godfather trilogy, which I didn't have on DVD.  I've found that I've been able to work it out through iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, and On Demand.

 

I'd say skip it.

Well I'm just going to say that nothing is permanent. There is always something coming. You can enjoy what you have now, or you can keep looking to the future hoping for something better, but you might be missing what's right in front of you.

If what was righjt in front of us was free I doubt we'd be having this conversation. This isn;t about waiting for the perfect tech, it;s about not outlaying a fortune every time you need to update to the latest and greatest - the window on which seems to be shrninking to under five years. It's fucking ridiculous, and is nothing but a racket and a rort.

They'll look like DVDs with good transfers. No point really unless you HAVE to have those BD-exclusive extras on many discs nowadays. I'm in the same boat with the big ol' bastards of televisions.
 

 

I've got Blu-ray, Dvd, and HD-DVD, but I'm friggin' cheap, so if I can get the dvd, and it has the same features, I'll get that. Then again, I'm a sucker for Blu-ray/Dvd/Digital Copy sets.

 

Yes, I've also gotten HD-DVD's because they're dirt cheap as well.

Bingo but even then you will replace so many. Blu-ray prices are so low especially everything from Lionsgate. Seriously they got a bunch of Miramax titles. Rounder, Hostage, Swingers can all be found for 5 bucks at Wal-mart and shit like the crow, evil dead 2, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown for 10. Keep your eye on Amazon as well. Grabbed the godfather trilogy for 25 the other day. 

I'm a big fan of the blu-ray format. I've got a decent set-up in my basement home theater ('47 LCD, 7.1 Sony receiver that will decode lossless audio), and enjoy every second of it. When done right, blu-ray is the gold standard when it comes to watching movies...outside of the movie theater of course. I've upgraded a lot of my old DVDs to blu-ray since getting my first blu-ray player, but I definitely see the reluctance for a lot of people to do that. It is a lot of money to spend.

 

It's very apparent that streaming is the future of rentals, but I can't see streaming/downloads becoming norm for movie ownership.  I just can't fathom keeping my entire film collection on a hard drive, or series of hard drives. Although, I'm the guy that still buys CDs over their digital counterparts.

I've been using blu since 2008 and I still get chills when I put on a new criterion blu of a classic film with an amazing transfer. You either see the quality difference and fall in love or you don't.

 

The depth that blu can provide in a picture is what really got me. And 2 years later, when I got a 250 dollar Onkyo htib capable of master audio.. well I started leaving the house a lot less. I was never someone really concerned with audio quality.. but a when I first listened to the fight club blu dts hd master audio track on a capable system, that all changed.

DVD isn't going anywhere. DVD and BluRay will probably die at the exact same time, and that's a ways off.

 

I'm skipping BluRay entirely. I like being able to loan out my favorites w/o worry about whether my friends can play them, and the picture quality just isn't worth the upgrade costs for me.

Nah. Consumer 4K screens are coming. The bandwidth required to stream a 4K movie + lossless 7.1 audio will be astronomical. There's at least one more physical media type coming for that.

It's not a racket. You can now get cheap, decent blu-ray players. And as other folks have said, there a loads of bargain blus out there. Yes, you would be an idiot to buy every new release blu at full price, but wait a few months and they go down. And the blu-ray player will upscale your dvds, so you eon't have to replace all of them.

That is how it started for me. Then the receiver broke.......then after replacing that I felt I should replace the speakers too. Wait until your hear that lossless audio through good speakers.

 

You guys do realize we're still only up to 30% of consumers who have streamed anything, ever, right? There are people who are, and have been perfectly happy with digital cable, and DVDs. And as the tech advances faster than the truly mainstream is adopting it, that'll be the case for a long time.

Also: I present to the court:

 

http://www.avclub.com/articles/in-defense-of-discs-and-the-desire-for-better-thin,70396/

Upgrayedd, if you have a phone with internet access, be sure to bookmark a site like blu-ray.com .  I can't count how many times that site has prevented me from buying blus with crappy transfers or sound.

Yes and keep an eye on Amazon. That will be easy since the top of blu-ray.com shows Amazon's deals of the week . Every once in a while Amazon will have their bosxset deal of the day. They take a boxset and sell it for like 20 something for one day only. Managed to get the whole godfather set for 25. They also just have random sales all the time for about a week so technically every blu-ray will reach 10 bucks or under. Again watch blu-ray.com, they never fail to report of the deals. 

 

An example:http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubrick-Collection-Spartacus-Strangelove/dp/B004O724NG/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1331904486&sr=1-1

 

Edited by Waaaaaaaalt - 3/16/12 at 6:28am

Blu-Ray.com's word shouldn't be taken as gospel but it will almost always steer you away from a bad Blu, and there are quite a few bad ones out there.

 

And for some reason, that Amazon Gold Box Deal won't link (I tried to link it myself.)  Anyway, their deal is for the newest Kubrick Bluray boxset for $60.99.  That would be a great way to start a collection.

 

$60 for the Kubrick set? I'm buying the fuck out of that. I had every intention of buying it earlier in the week and flat out never got around to it. I never get lucky like this.

Been with blu-ray for about 4 or 5 years now and never going back. I still buy DVDs because blu-ray players upscale DVD footage and it's still better than normal DVD footage but I always buy blu-ray over dvd now unless the film is only avaliable on DVD(a lot of foreign films still seem to just come out on DVD mostly). And it's even better when you have a multi region blu-ray player. I'm in the UK so I can play the blu-ray Criterion releases on my player and they are absolutely beautiful(just got Rushmore on blu-ray that was released not so long ago).

 

If you are a film fan and can afford it, there is no question, the difference in quality is astonishing. If anyone tells you any different - they need glasses or a new television.

 

As for the Kubrick set, what a buy. I have them seperate though. I've got a few on steelbook blu-ray(2001 for example), and some in lovely digi book format(pre ordered Full Metal Jacket 25th Anniversary edition from Canada), can't wait to see it on blu-ray.

 

 

 

Will power dude, will power .

 

I've got 800+ DVDs and I'm certainly not replacing all of these... I've only upgraded a certain few of my all time favourites and sold/sent to charity the DVD versions. The beauty of blu-ray players, they can play all your DVDs and upscale the things as well.

 

If you can, sell your dvd player and put that money towards a blu-ray player(you can get them really cheap now) and you still have something that plays your dvd, but you can now buy blu-rays too and blu-rays are coming down too.

Edited by Kaboom - 6/16/12 at 1:59pm

Anyone who calls themselves a film fan should have blu-ray if he can manage it.  The picture and sound quality is so much better than dvd (why not experience a film as close to the way the filmmakers [and in some cases beyond] intended?), the players and discs are cheap and it upscales your existing dvds.  Blu quality downloads are at least 5-10 years off.  I just don't see the point in waiting.

 

Would you mind telling where you got your multi-region player?  They seem to be rare to find and expensive, for playing blurays at least.  I know plenty of affordable players have multi-region DVD enabled though.

^ I got mine a few years back when they had them in the supermarket Aldi(don't knock it, my blu-ray has lasted 4-5 years now with not one problem and it's still going strong), it's a Tevion blu ray player.

 

At the time it was only in the £80 price range. I've never seen it in Aldi since though because I've been looking for a second one since.

 

I believe it's a 1100UKT one, Tevion 1100UKT. I've been told they go under another name/similar called Curtis. Never looked into that though.

I seriously need a multi-region player, I just read about The Game being re-released in the US, in another thread, wtf!!!

 

Hmm, I see a 1100UKT on ebay for £50....

It's simple, really - if you love movies (and everyone here does, I would think), and would be buying DVDs for the next, say, five years anyway, then upgrade to Blu. The cost difference between a reduced-priced Blu and a reduced-priced DVD is, for the most part, so slight that upgrading was a no-brainer for me.

The difference truly is astonishing, and I say this as someone who was as sceptical as they come originally. Just compare Aliens on DVD and BluRay, it's amazing how much better it looks. Plus you don't get that grainy, jarring sense of having accidentally pressed pause on shots where the camera remains stationary/lingers over a still scene for a few moments but maybe that one is just me!

Ah yes, Aliens in the quadrilogy DVD set is below par quality(especially when you compare it to the Alien DVD), much better on the blu-ray set.

 

If you're talking about the Fincher GAME then it's been available in the UK for nearly a year on Blu. Think it's region-free too.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Game-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B0041G67YW/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1339956080&sr=1-3