What's better about Blu-Ray?
Asked by
noelasun (
1894
)
March 11th, 2009
I mistakenly bought a blu-ray DVD, and after several foiled attempts of trying to play the disc, have realized it needs a seperate player.
So what’s better about the blu-ray exactly, and should I invest in a blu-ray disc player?
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9 Answers
It’s a higher resolution, and thus sharper image than a DVD. You’ll also need a HD-ready TV to view a blu-ray, along with the player.
Here are some screenshots of the quality you can expect from blu-ray discs.
Thanks, the pictures really helped. =)
But didn’t HD do basically the same thing??
You mean HD-DVD?
It did, only that blu-ray is a bit bigger.
It was announced (last year?) that HD-DVD was going to be discontinued because the popularity of blu-ray was overwhelming everything else. Besides the better resolution that @whackyrusty already mentioned, blu-ray discs can hold massive amounts of data (up to 50 gigabytes) which is six times the amount found on conventional DVD discs at the current time.
Blu-ray discs are also much more scratch resistant than regular DVD’s and blu-ray disc players will accomodate both blu-ray and regular DVD discs also in all the players that I have read about.
As far as a sound investment right now, I don’t know. Blu-ray players aren’t the end all be all of home entertainment at the present time but their popularity is predicted to go way up in the coming years and the technology certainly is better than current DVD technology.
HD-DVD is dead. Blu-Ray has the highest bit rate of anything out there for now, but I’m not gonna invest in a technology that will most likely be obsolete in a few years.
@PupnTaco Then your going to be stuck where your at for about… ever… I mean the rate of change in Technology is just amazing. They just came out with 120 Hz in televisions, (Refresh rate of your picture, to eliminate blur in action/sports shots) and are already rolling out sony’s with 240 hz!
When they first came out, Blu-ray players wouldn’t play DVD’s. Make sure you know what you are buying. It also helps if you have an HDTV. That will improve the picture on standard dvd’s as well. it won’t be much, but it will be progress.
@Kiev749 It’s a popular misconception that getting a HDTV will improve the quality of Standard def DVD’s in fact the opposite is true. SD widescreen is 1024×576 and true HD is 1920×1080 watching a SD dvd on a SD CRT is the best quality you can get. On a HDTV it blows up the SD picture and you see all the nasty MPEG2 compression artefacts. I recommend getting a well know brand blu-ray player (or PS3) and a true HD (1920×1080) tv (panasonic, sony or samsung) or projector. Cheap blu-ray players have long load times and usually outdated profiles, with no way to upgrade. 3D tv is the next big thing, and then super HD, but there’s plenty of mileage to be had out of blu-ray before (and if) these become widespread. Do be prepared that blu-ray discs are 21×9 and most HD tv’s are 16×9 so you end up losing top and bottom through letterboxing. Philips are bringing out some 21×9 tv’s this year but then you end up with pillarbox broadcasts. The solution… a projector!
@Kiev749: I have a nice HD plasma, an Apple TV, and a good-sized library of HD movies streaming from iTunes. The bit rate isn’t what I would see from Blu-Ray, but the convenience and the price of the movies I download (free) is my best solution for the time being.
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