I am boycotting the Blue Ray, whatever it is.

[kaligal]

I don't know what "blue ray" is and I don't want to know. I don't want it. I'm sick of this ever-changing technology crap.

I'm still mad that I had to replace my records with CDs and then buy the songs for the iPod. Some of the records are STILL not out on CD and likely will never be converted, so those songs are just gone.

Also ticked that I had to replace the videos with DVDs...some never did get replaced.

I don't want a new thing!!!!!! They can take those blue ray things and...well, you know what they can do with them.

NO NEW TECHNOLOGY!

(DVRs are okay, though.)

 

[WDWtraveler27]

you can play your DVDs on a blu ray player...just sayin

 

[kaligal]

you can play your DVDs on a blu ray player...just sayin

I can also play them on the DVD player and not have to buy something new and replace my entire blessed library again. It has to end.

Down with technology!!! (except DVRs and iPods, lol.)

 

[SarahinNO]

Amen! Does that make me a curmudgeon?

 

[Matt@WDWR]

With a Blu Ray you get superior quality and the player plays your old DVDs so you don't have to replace your collection. So, I am all for it!

 

[mainegal]

What is the hot present this season?

Blu ray player or Kindle?

 

[monkeyknuckler]

Don't worry, there will something else after Blu Ray. Maybe you'll like that. Maybe we'll all get microchips implanted in our heads or something. Just have to think about what you want to watch, then poof, its there. Maybe Tony's will serve decent food. You never know what could happen in the future.

 

[robertgp124]

We're normally early adopters. I'm just not convinced about blu-ray. I am more inclined to be patient and see what happens with video streaming. We can already get pretty good streams via netflix and our Tivo. We also buy or rent videos from iTunes in digital format. Sometimes we even use Amazon's service.

I'm just not convinced to spend the $$ for a new device (for admittedly superior video quality) when I think streaming make overtake the physical media in a few years.

I like "on demand" more than HD.

 

[Mike2023]

I am not sure I understand. No one is making you go out and upgrade your collection or buy a player.

If you dont want a better picture then there is no reason for you to upgrade. As long as your good to your moves and dvd player they will work for 50 years.

At some point you will need to get the next gen player as they will stop selling dvds, but that a long way off.

My vcr still works.

 

[PinkBudgie]

As soon as we found out Nightmare Before Christmas was coming out on BR we had to get a player. It is so amazing. You can see every detail of all the textures used. We do not go and buy everything on BR. We rent BR from Netflix and only buy some movies. Ones we really like and we think will look amazing. Pixar movies fall in that category. And we look for sales, we don't pay full price. Like we are getting both Up and Monsters together on BR (each the four disc set) for $33 at Amazon. They retail for about $45 each. That's more than half off! Anyway, we are not replacing most movies, only a few. If you don't have a HD tv, then blu ray won't help anyway.

We like the streaming from Netflix, but our internet speed will never be fast enough to get high quality. We've tried to increase it, but we live on the edge of town so we are out of luck.

 

[FireDancer]

I'm with you. I am done with physical media. If I want to watch something let me stream it. If I want to own it let me buy an ISO image, put it on a media server, and push it to my TV. If I really want it on a physical disc let me buy that same ISO and burn it to a disc or buy an HD ISO and burn it to a Blu-Ray.

<soapbox>The studios are clinching onto the anti-piracy BS bandwagon to keep from distributing media digitally. In reality if anyone wants to pirate a DVD or Blu-Ray it is easy. What they need to do is learn the lesson the music industry did. If someone is going to pirate for the sake of pirating they are not a potential customer. If someone wants to have an ISO of a DVD right now the ONLY option most of the time is piracy. Give people a legal, paying alternative, and the people who will pay for the movie will pay for it. They aren't protecting themselves from piracy,they are trying to defend a 50 year old business model from new technology. </soapbox>

 

[Mike2023]

I'm with you. I am done with physical media. If I want to watch something let me stream it. If I want to own it let me buy an ISO image, put it on a media server, and push it to my TV. If I really want it on a physical disc let me buy that same ISO and burn it to a disc or buy an HD ISO and burn it to a Blu-Ray.

<soapbox>The studios are clinching onto the anti-piracy BS bandwagon to keep from distributing media digitally. In reality if anyone wants to pirate a DVD or Blu-Ray it is easy. What they need to do is learn the lesson the music industry did. If someone is going to pirate for the sake of pirating they are not a potential customer. If someone wants to have an ISO of a DVD right now the ONLY option most of the time is piracy. Give people a legal, paying alternative, and the people who will pay for the movie will pay for it. They aren't protecting themselves from piracy,they are trying to defend a 50 year old business model from new technology. </soapbox>

I agree, I love my media server. 2 TB of pure joy. Takes way to long to rip a tv season though but worth it in the end.

 

[wdwfreeksince88]

We're normally early adopters. I'm just not convinced about blu-ray. I am more inclined to be patient and see what happens with video streaming. We can already get pretty good streams via netflix and our Tivo. We also buy or rent videos from iTunes in digital format. Sometimes we even use Amazon's service.

I'm just not convinced to spend the $$ for a new device (for admittedly superior video quality) when I think streaming make overtake the physical media in a few years.

I like "on demand" more than HD.

A lot of blu ray players stream movies also, such as Netflix. And now Netflix streams to the playstation 3 which I am so happy they do. I love blu ray, it looks amazing. But I also love streaming. I stream movies and only buy ones that I just have to have.

 

[Golf4food]

Streaming is well and good but internet connections go out - my BDs don't disappear. If the signal dies (even if "You can't stop the signal." Browncoats!) I can still pop in a BD or DVD and watch on our Bluray player.

I was a little skeptical until we got one. Now? No way. Blu-ray is unbefreakinglievable. Amazing in every way. The picture is so clear and detailed you can almost walk through the screen. And it isn't just picture - BD has lossless audio as well, so if you have a home theater system you owe it to yourself to upgrade because the sound is also a lot better than on DVD. You don't have to replace all of your old DVDs - they'll play upconverted on the Bluray player, but a Bluray disc will look and sound better than the same movie on DVD upconverted. Blurays also have a new protective coating layer that helps prevent scratching - much better than DVDs, which scratch pretty easily.

We don't replace all of our movies with BDs, only the ones we really love or that would benefit from the full 1080p in picture quality. Pixar movies on BD are just stunning, absolutely stunning. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are about as good as they get for picture and audio quality (actually Disney is about tops when it comes to BD transfer quality - hard to beat). Movies with lots of action or special effects are good candiates for upgrades to BD. You can find many, many BDs for $14.99 or $19.99 now on Amazon, etc. - only a few bucks more than the same DVDs. Heck, we bought all three POTC movies on Bluray as a box set for $43 shipped - that's under $15 per movie and we paid at least $19.99 for the special 2-disc DVDs when they first came out. Some BDs are as low as $9.99 now. Prices are dropping fast as more people adopt, and now that BD players are dropping more people will adopt and prices will drop even faster. From what I understand in my readings on Bluray forums the BD technology isn't likely to be replaced any time in the near future. DVD has been around for what, 15 years now? They will likely be around a little longer, but as HDTVs take over the market BD will quickly become standard. Heck, there will be BDs for under $100, maybe even as low as $50 for a basic BD player, this Black Friday. In a few years you won't be able to buy a non-HDTV off the shelf and neither will there be many if any DVD players - all Bluray by that point.

The movie studios want to control distribution, and that is easier to do with a disc than a download or flash. We'll certainly eventually wind up down that path, but for now the studios have all invested a lot of money into Bluray, so it will be here for as long as they can keep it that way. Until technology allows us to get past 1080p at the consumer level for a reasonable price, there is no need for anything better.

 

[FireDancer]

Streaming is well and good but internet connections go out - my BDs don't disappear. If the signal dies (even if "You can't stop the signal." Browncoats!) I can still pop in a BD or DVD and watch on our Bluray player.

True, but that is why the movies I really want will be sitting as ISO images on my server. There is no reason that ISO can't be HD. I can mount them to a logical player and stream them through my LAN into any TV I want. No Internet connection required.

The problem with paying for a Blu-Ray or even a DVD is that I will watch most movies once or maybe twice. When you divide the cost of the DVD or Blu-Ray by the amount of viewings the price is often worse than seeing the film at the movies. If I can stream the movie for $1.50 or purchase the ISO for say $4.99 (The maximum I will pay for either). I can stream the movie I only want to watch once and buy the ISO of the movie I will watch multiple times.

An ISO can also be backed up. The copy protection on DVDs is keeping me from backing up my media. If I do have a DVD that gets scratched I could reburn it if I had a backup. I refuse to repurchase a disc that I should have been able to back up. I see all data as just that, data. Whether it is on a disc or sitting on a hard drive. The copy protection is easily broken so it isn't serving the intended purpose of anti-piracy, it is serving the unintended purpose of keeping legitimate copies from being backed up and punishing the consumer. If I buy a DVD and it breaks I am punished by buying a new one. Conversely if I pirate the movie and burn it and it breaks I will just re pirate it. The paying consumer gets screwed again. Let me have control of the data I have paid for.

 

[Becx N Gav]

I'm still mad that I had to replace my records with CDs and then buy the songs for the iPod. Some of the records are STILL not out on CD and likely will never be converted, so those songs are just gone.

You can get USB turn tables to play vinyls - then they can be stored digitally

I was very annoyed to have to replace so many VHS tapes but looking back I'm glad I did. They were so bulky and didn't last very long compared with DVD's, plus the extras and being able to skip chapters is fab

I don't have any Blu Rays yet but may get Snow White (out on Monday over here) in the DVD/BluRay combo.

The company I work for manufactures a material used in the making of the discs so i hope they are around for a while

 

[robertgp124]

I've actually asked DW not to buy me DVDs for Christmas. I've gotten (either gifted or bought for myself) far too many dvd's that just sit on the shelf after being watched once. I'd much rather stream the stuff or rent it from Netflix.

I'm not immune to the picture quality argument. We have a nice HDTV, bought an HDTivo (now that, I could not live without!) and as much as we can with our local cable co's paltry HD offerings, have switched over to watching HD from the regular feeds.

When our current DVD player goes, we'll get a Blu-Ray, just not going to replace while the current one is working.

 

[lorax123]

Rrrr. I am anti-blu ray. But I am anti Sony in general. I'm all for HD content and I can see the difference in a 720/1080p image as opposed to 480i. But I'm a visual person and look at high-res images all day long.

I'm just against Sony trying to create a propitary format in which they control the price and licensing. Sony has been trying for years to monopolize something. Betamax, their stupid memory sticks, silly mp3 formats for music... Arrrgh. I'm all for better quality content, but keep it open enough that we aren't going to have to spend a premium to buy the content and the hardware.

Seriously, $25-30 for the average disc? Forget that.

I'm all for digital formats so I can store stuff on a hard drive and access it all, anytime, anyplace.

Down with Sony!!!!

 

[monkeyknuckler]

Rrrr. I am anti-blu ray. But I am anti Sony in general....
Down with Sony!!!!

I'm with you on that. BTW, you forgot the MiniDisk. Bah.

 

[disneyfav4ever]

As soon as we found out Nightmare Before Christmas was coming out on BR we had to get a player. It is so amazing. You can see every detail of all the textures used. We do not go and buy everything on BR. We rent BR from Netflix and only buy some movies. Ones we really like and we think will look amazing. Pixar movies fall in that category. And we look for sales, we don't pay full price. Like we are getting both Up and Monsters together on BR (each the four disc set) for $33 at Amazon. They retail for about $45 each. That's more than half off! Anyway, we are not replacing most movies, only a few. If you don't have a HD tv, then blu ray won't help anyway.

We like the streaming from Netflix, but our internet speed will never be fast enough to get high quality. We've tried to increase it, but we live on the edge of town so we are out of luck.

I do the same thing as you. I also really like the new combo packs that have been coming out with the blu-ray, the dvd, and the digital copy.

I pre-ordered the blu-ray of Lost and Harry Potter, and can't wait to watch those in HD.