Okay, go with this for a bit... it gets a little technical... (and if you don't have an HDTV, then you probably won't find any of this interesting at al...)
Most folks know that there is a new disc technology, for viewing movies and such at home, portending to replace DVD, called Blu-Ray (or BD, for "Blu-ray Disc"). There are advantages of BD over DVD. CNET provided a good summary. (LINK)
The most obvious advantage is that BD supports the higher resolution of HD while DVD supports, at best, "EDTV", something twice as good as the old analog video (480p instead of 480i), but only about a quarter as good as what BD can provide. Note that BD provides video that is a certain amount better than HD from television networks.
Do keep in mind though this complication: Most newer DVD players, and most BD players, will actually "up-convert" DVDs to HD. This won't actually make DVDs HD, of course, but it will make them look a lot better on your HDTV. So there really aren't two choice here (BD versus DVD), but rather three ([1] BD, [2] DVD, and [3] DVD played on an up-converting player, either a up-converting DVD player or a BD player.)
BD also supports the newest audio formats, while the best DVD can do is Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. BD also is a bit more software-driven, so a BD can have some neater special features than DVD.
With regard to price, taking the Disney film Bolt as an example, the DVD costs $28, BD costs $35. [Source: Disney.] Cars is $15 for the DVD, and $19.50 for the BD. [Source: Amazon.com.] Rental services generally charge a premium for renting BDs; Netflix charges $17 per month for 3 DVDs at a time; but $21 per month if you want to rent BDs as well/instead.
In the "video enthusiast" forums, as you can well imagine, BD is highly favored. There is practically no question, there, that BD is "worth" it. One of the best things about the DIS boards, though, is that while it still represents a biased sample of people, for things like this, it does tend to better reflect the average viewers' perspective than the "video enthusiast" forums. So I'm wondering what DISers make of the BD versus DVD issue.
So, assuming you don't have a BD player, how do you know whether it is worth it to you? Well, each of us will have our own way of deciding, and really the manner of deciding isn't important; what is important is what we decide. For me personally, I've seen BD in showrooms, and I have an HDTV so I can get a pretty good idea how good BD would be by figuring it will be a certain amount better than HD television channels.
The big question, now, is whether BD is going to "take off", like DVD did. My contention is that it probably won't. DVD had competitive advantages (over VHS tapes) that BD simply does not have (over DVD). The advantages of BD are simply too subtle (appealing mostly only to the "enthusiast") as compared to how apparent the advantages of DVD (over VHS) were. That doesn't mean that I'm never going to get a BD player. (I probably will, since they're getting relatively inexpensive now, and I'm the kind of person who gets new technology sooner than later.) However, given the price difference, I'm unlikely to buy BDs, and I may or may not even see fit to pay the surcharge for renting them. (Okay, to be honest, for $4 a month, I probably will, but that's still me, eh?
)
So where to you stand with regard to this? Are you going to stick with DVD, relying either on how good DVD is now, or relying on up-conversion? Or have you switched/are you aiming to switch to BD?
Most folks know that there is a new disc technology, for viewing movies and such at home, portending to replace DVD, called Blu-Ray (or BD, for "Blu-ray Disc"). There are advantages of BD over DVD. CNET provided a good summary. (LINK)
The most obvious advantage is that BD supports the higher resolution of HD while DVD supports, at best, "EDTV", something twice as good as the old analog video (480p instead of 480i), but only about a quarter as good as what BD can provide. Note that BD provides video that is a certain amount better than HD from television networks.
Do keep in mind though this complication: Most newer DVD players, and most BD players, will actually "up-convert" DVDs to HD. This won't actually make DVDs HD, of course, but it will make them look a lot better on your HDTV. So there really aren't two choice here (BD versus DVD), but rather three ([1] BD, [2] DVD, and [3] DVD played on an up-converting player, either a up-converting DVD player or a BD player.)
BD also supports the newest audio formats, while the best DVD can do is Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. BD also is a bit more software-driven, so a BD can have some neater special features than DVD.
With regard to price, taking the Disney film Bolt as an example, the DVD costs $28, BD costs $35. [Source: Disney.] Cars is $15 for the DVD, and $19.50 for the BD. [Source: Amazon.com.] Rental services generally charge a premium for renting BDs; Netflix charges $17 per month for 3 DVDs at a time; but $21 per month if you want to rent BDs as well/instead.
In the "video enthusiast" forums, as you can well imagine, BD is highly favored. There is practically no question, there, that BD is "worth" it. One of the best things about the DIS boards, though, is that while it still represents a biased sample of people, for things like this, it does tend to better reflect the average viewers' perspective than the "video enthusiast" forums. So I'm wondering what DISers make of the BD versus DVD issue.
So, assuming you don't have a BD player, how do you know whether it is worth it to you? Well, each of us will have our own way of deciding, and really the manner of deciding isn't important; what is important is what we decide. For me personally, I've seen BD in showrooms, and I have an HDTV so I can get a pretty good idea how good BD would be by figuring it will be a certain amount better than HD television channels.
The big question, now, is whether BD is going to "take off", like DVD did. My contention is that it probably won't. DVD had competitive advantages (over VHS tapes) that BD simply does not have (over DVD). The advantages of BD are simply too subtle (appealing mostly only to the "enthusiast") as compared to how apparent the advantages of DVD (over VHS) were. That doesn't mean that I'm never going to get a BD player. (I probably will, since they're getting relatively inexpensive now, and I'm the kind of person who gets new technology sooner than later.) However, given the price difference, I'm unlikely to buy BDs, and I may or may not even see fit to pay the surcharge for renting them. (Okay, to be honest, for $4 a month, I probably will, but that's still me, eh?
)So where to you stand with regard to this? Are you going to stick with DVD, relying either on how good DVD is now, or relying on up-conversion? Or have you switched/are you aiming to switch to BD?
But that is a whole other story.
J/K
