Right, so the obvious answer here is: "No, you don't
need a Blu-ray player." But, you know -- do you
need a Blu-ray player? At its core, the latest
argument put forth by an
Orlando Sentinel editor is yet another debate over the viability of the format in comparison to upscaled DVD and in the wake of
surging support for HD streaming, but there are certainly a lot of points made that we vehemently disagree with. According to the editor, the "difference between DVD and Blu-ray is nowhere near as striking [as VHS and DVD], despite what the consumer electronics retailers and manufacturers might tell you." He goes on to assert that a BD player simply isn't worth purchasing if you've already got a stout DVD library, particularly if you own an
upconverting DVD player. Ruining any shot at anyone taking his view seriously were the remarks by his colleague, who watched
Planet of the Apes on a BD deck and a $40 DVD player; according to him: "The features are fancier, but the picture? No improvement. Investing in a [Blu-ray] player... is a needless expense. Downloads are the future, not discs in a cute blue box." Let the firefight begin.
[Thanks, Anthony]
posted November 16th 2008 5:48PM
My thoughts exactly.
That and "were they comparing on a Vizio?"
To me the future success of BR boils down to three major things happening. The average size TV in a household must increase to the 46"+ range, Major brand players must fall below $150, and new BR releases must be priced below $20. Then the average buyer may just say, what the heck, might as well buy a BR machine.
Andy, I couldn't agree more. The disc prices, while on track with how much dvd's were in years 2 and 3, are too high especially with this economy., If the studios want blu-ray to be the next home video physical disc format, they better reduce prices, catalog titles should not be $39.95 (like Fox's Batman 1966, or in the 30.00 range for the Planet of the Apes discs). New releases should be closer to the dvd price so people will just say, as you said, what the heck I'll spend my money on the high def version." I was looking at Best Buy's Sunday ad and they had some new releases that came out this last week that were relatively unknown and did smaller business at the boxoffice. The dvd's were 15.99 and the blu-rays 29.95. That's double the price and the movie wasn't even a hit. I think the prices of players is falling very quickly, much quicker than dvd players did when they came out. But I still don't see what good a $150.00 player will be when a person has to spend another 150.00 to get 5 or 6 movies to play on it. I think the studios are the ones making the big mistake here. I understand they don't want bl;u-rays to end up in the Walmart $5.00 bins, but pricing on films is way out of line for this economy.
Wow, aren't news stories like this getting a little old, and bringing up the same arguements? Anyway, while I am at it, I'll post my opinion. With blu-ray players coming down to $139 (Black Friday, confirmed) and even 199, why would a person with an expensive high def tv set keep buying their movies in the dvd format when they can buy the high def?
For the time being, my own answer to that question FOR NOW is disc price. The movie prices need to come down and fast! If you can buy a player at 139 on Black Friday, and have say 200.00 to spend, you can only really get 2 blu-ray movies, at usual retail prices.
But when the movie prices come down, I cannot see the new high def world choosing a dvd of, say, Spiderman 4, over the blu-ray version. People are spending alot of money for their high def sets, and maybe they won't replace all their movies, but in time they will when the price of the movies goes down like they did for dvd, everyone is at the very least going to buy new releases and replace their most favorite movies on blu over dvd. It just makes sense. Those of you who think the public can't see the difference (or hear it) in quality are very underestimating of the consumer.
Let's re-discuss this in a year's time, when a new release blu-ray can be had for maybe $17.99 and a full-featured player may cost $99.95-150.00 (regular price without any Black Friday,ect). Certainly people are not going to see the value of spending the same amount of
money for a new release on dvd, granted they have purchased a high def tv and player.
As far as the downloading and streaming goes, my best wishes to them all, I havn't downloaded a single thing including music yet. I prefer my music to be on a CD and uncompressed unlike MP3's, and my picture to be prestine 1080p (without miles of travel for the signal to go) and with lossless soundtracks, so we can hear them like the original masters sound. DVD's Dolby Digital at 384kbps is pure gtrash compared to a true lossless track. It's just going to take some time. Physical media is going to be around for a long time. I do see streaming as becoming rather popular, but then what about those (and there are many) who want to own the movie? Are streams 1080p and lossless with all the extras, bdlive and pic-in-pic commentary and digital copy?
Ohh Snap! I cant belive any one in their right might could not make the jump to blue ray after investing in an HDTV!!! Thats like having a high def tv and only watching standard def 480 all the time...whats the point in upgrading then??? You dont need to repurchase your entire movie collection hence DVD playback with upscaling ability and the fact that Planet of The Apes although a great movie was shot way back when using age old technology this is why it looks no better on blue ray then DVD! Try a newer movie shot with HD Cameras or cutting edge tech and then tell me you dont see a reason to upgrade. If your still not convinced then my friend maybe you should get some glasses. Sheesh who are the Engadget writers associating with...senior citizens or complete dumbasses?
I don't know what you people are talking about, but I purchased the blu-ray set of Planet of the Apes and the transfers are stunning and MOST impoved over their dvd counter-parts. I am of course using a 150" screen with a 1080p projector, so maybe you can't see much difference on smaller sets, but the difference in quality is HUGE with a larger screen.
Also, mentioned above someone talked about the fact that Planet of the Apes was as older movie so it should not be used to compare......that fact is false in one way-film is film, it depends on what condition the negatives are in. Look at the new blu-ray of How the West was Won, looks like a movie shot yesterday.
@ mntwister
"I am of course using a 150" screen with a 1080p projector, so maybe you can't see much difference on smaller sets, but the difference in quality is HUGE with a larger screen"
Well not everybody is rocking a 150" projection screen and while my experience on my Sony 46" BRAVIA LCD w/ 120mhz and PS3 for my BD's kicks ass...it looks a little better watching an older movie however when you stated film is film and the quality of the negative… is just a bull shit example of upscaling not shot for High Def thus not giving you the fullest experience possible of your HD system, therefore the reason I would not replace my POTA DVD with a BD and save my $$ for some newer titles that take full advantage of my HD system.
It's like saying I have GTA 4 for my PS3 but I would rather play GTA San Andreas on my playstation cause it looks just as good...maybe you should make an appointment for the optometrist??
As to digital downloads and streaming HD...I do think that this will be a major player in what and when we watch, I would still rather have my physical media anyday. Haters beware Blue Ray is here to stay!
@ Joebnsd
You sir, are an inept fool. Film by and large is HD! Just like an old SLR captures more detail than a new digital SLR. There is a misconception that digital is better than analogue. Why do some of the biggest bands still record albums on 2" tape? I'll tell you. It has higher resolution. Old movies that still have good quality prints available are down-converted to 1080p. Yes, DOWN-CONVERTED! The quality of the lenses/equipment and film stock do play a part, but at the end of the day film is superior. Most everything is done digitally these days due to ease of use. Digital recordings eg. (Video - 1920x1080 pixels) (Audio - 48,000 samples a second) are limited by the current technical ability to process/crunch numbers. Analogue recordings do not have these limitations. Don't get me wrong, I have a 50" plasma and a Blu-Ray player and enjoy the experience greatly, but if everyone is going to play the blame game its time to wake up and realize that we have gone backwards as far as film versus digital video and tape versus digital audio is concerned.
planet of the apes on a 42" magnavox; not exactly reference quality source material or hardware, IMHO.
If you're trying to figure out a normal consumer's viewing experience, then yeah it's a pretty good reference. Most people are not buying 60" Plasmas, and they're not really watching 2001 or Blade Runner.
This has nothing to do with 'need'. It has to do with desire, wants, etc.
Stop and think for a second ... most people are probably sitting too far back from their displays to be able to even resolve the native resolution of their displays. Now, did they 'need' that display? Again, its not about needs, but wants, and we are a very wanting cowsumer society.
How can downloading my movies be the future when I live out in the middle of nowhere and only have a slow crappy DSL connection to deal with? Even when I lived in an area with a really good cable connection I had plenty of hiccups that left me wanting to go get the disk and dump the streaming and downloading. MAYBE someday when I have unlimited storage and ridiculous internet speeds we'll talk, until then you've got to be kidding.
YOU'VE got to be kidding. It only takes a few hours to download an 8gb 1080p movie on a standard road runner connection, and a 1 TB hard drive costs $100. That's like 125 1080p movies.
We rewatch movies like crazy, because we don't watch television. We just upgraded to our first HDTV and I can't wait to get a Blu-Ray player. Why not? It will play all the DVDs we already own, and then we can just start buying new movies in the format and they'll look great.
Wow, I can't believe some of the comments AGAINST Blu Ray. The nonsense about how the extra resolution doesn't matter. If it doesn't matter then stream everything in SD. Why waste the bandwidth for HD in cable or satellite when we can just watch regular SD, ooh boy! Heck why even buy HDTV's? Let's just live with SD, that's good enough.
That review is so uniformed it makes my head spin. Black bars? ouch my head.
The larger the screen size the more apparent the differences. My screens range from 32" (720p) to 106" (1080p projector). DVD's are sometimes unwatchable on the projector particularly if the print is a bad transfer. But I can notice the difference and all my sets. The colors are better, the sharpness is better and obviously the resolution is better. Even HD OTA or cable can't truly compete with Blu Ray since there's so much compression going on to get it into your home.
Lossless audio? Hello?
Don't get me wrong I'll probably jump into streaming at some point. But I agree with Eric, until I can get a fast and consistent broadband connection it's not very attractive. I live in a major city and my DSL still can't break 768k. Internet over cable is way overpriced and never worked right.
If you want to knock Blu Ray then price is a valid argument. $25-35 for a BD is too much although I guess it's not as bad as VHS movies for $95 when they first came out. And the players are still too high compared to a PS3.
Upscaling DVD's on sets under 46" is passable but nowhere in the same league as watching HD discs. They look flat and lifeless. I own both HD-DVD both Blu Ray and you can have them back when you peel them out of my cold dead hands.
JoeBNsd: Since Engadgethd does not allow replies to continue from your own post, I will post here. It is not BS, the quality of the negative is EVERYTHING. A movie with a superb negative could look just as good on blu-ray as a movie made today. Unfortunately many of the studios were not that careful with their materials, and I agree that many older movies have sub-par negatives.....but Planet of the Apes, which is one of my favorite film series and I have owned every dvd set and watched dozens of times, even on my smaller Sony Brav tv, is a big improvement from the last set of dvd's. Also, the soundtrack has been remastered and sounds a hell of a lot better in DTS Master Audio at 4.7 megabites per second than 384kbps dvd Dolby Digital.
But hey to each their own, we all have our favorites, and we will upgrade according to which movies we love the most. But, I simply will NEVER accept ANY argument that upscaling a dvd will EVER look as good as a blu-ray in 1080p and certainly sound as good in extremely compressed audio. How about the thousands of dvd's of older films that had bad transfers from the start? Those will look even worse upscaled where the studios know they need to strike a new master for the blu-ray version. And believe me, being a classic film lover, there ARE thousands of movies on dvd that had lazy, sub-par scratchy transfers with off-color and terrible sound transfers. Upscaled? No thanks, I don't care to see the film scratches and noise reduction upscaled to 1080p and made even more clear.
??????? I can reply to my own posts!
You don't need a 1080p HDTV to get all the detail in a Blu-ray movie. You're just a victim of marketing hype if you believe otherwise.
A quality 720p HDTV will show all the fine details, what matters is that you're using a 1080p signal...not that your HDTV has a 1080p resolution.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=767929&pp=30
DVD was a huge leap over VHS. Anyone that's used VHS knows this. From quality going down every time you watched that movie, to just sitting on the shelf and it goes bad, to having to Rewind the tape, especially if you rented that movie and didn't want to pay a extra rewind fee. With DVD, the Disc's Last. Quality is the same over and over again. You can jump around the movie, you had much better Audio besides the better Video, and the Extras thrown on the Disc's was another plus. In fact the Extra features would be left off on the first release, and at a later date, a new version with lots of extra content would be released so you'd buy the same movie over again. Sometimes even release a Directors Cut, or some other extended version of the movie. DVD was only competing against VHS, and really, that wasn't a fair contest.
Blu-Ray on the other hand has to compete not with just DVD, but many other formats, and not only that, unlike DVD, Blu-Ray 's better Video is worthless on anything but a HDTV. Same with Audio. If you don't go out and buy new Audio Hardware to go with it, your wasting that better Audio also! Add in Higher Costs, and a Bad Economy, and Blu-Ray isn't going be all that hot of Item to Buy. I have my 50" 1080P Plasma, and I still think for the most part DVD looks fine and I really don't have a problem with the 5.1 Surround sound I get now. I sure don't have room for a 7.1 setup even though my Receiver will support it. Yet it doesn't
t support the new Audio formats.
For under $9 a month, I can get access to Hundreds of Movies though Netflex. I don't need to save a copy, or go looking for a copy someplace. On a whim I can just watch it, and anytime later watch it again. Tell me, to get the Benefits of Blu-Ray, I need a $300+ Blu-Ray player, and a $500 low end Surround sound Receiver. And a $25 movie. I'll leave out the HDTV and the 5.1 or 7.1 speakers. So for $825, I can start watching my first Blu-Ray Movie! Lets be REAL CHEAP, Black Friday, got such a great deal, you only paid $525 for those things. That would pay for a $9 a month Netflex account of Unlimited streaming and 1 DVD out a month for almost 5 years!!! So I have 5 years of watching all the movies I want, to your 1 Blu-Ray Movie. Each Blu-Ray movie you buy can pay for almost 3 months of Netflex!
Yes it's NOT AS GOOD!! Most people just don't care!!!!!!!!!!!!! When you think of it in these terms, do you really think Blu-Ray stands a Chance? I havn't even gotten into Xbox LIVE HD Movie downloads, or Comcast HD Movies and HD VOD, and all the others out there. Most people still watch DVD's using their TV's Built in Speakers and Stereo sound. HD DVD may have stood a better chance because it was cheaper all around, and Licensing fee's were cheaper also, far more then Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray had the Marketing though. Still HD DVD would have had a slim chance also. The whole war just didn't help either format. If it wasn't for the PS3, Blu-Ray would have already been dead!
Rob, did I say I watched all the films via netflix? I was 26 when I got Netflix - by then I'd had 10 years of seeing 8+ films a week. I didn't have cable so I'd just watch a movie or two a night instead of watching ANY television.
The average American spends over 40 hours a week watching TV. If TV is not an option it's quite easy to see 7-10 movies a week. Some nights I'd go to the movies and see 2-3 films at the theater in one evening.
Point is, I love movies - don't likeTV - so it's pretty easy to suck up 10 movies a week. We're planning to cancel our Directv after football season as it's not something we watch.
Those of us who are "average joes" do not need a Blu-Ray player. At least, not until hollywood stops releasing movies in standard dvd format.