School me on Blueray, HDMI, etc. Please!!

[moopdog]

I have gotten behind the times slightly & need a little tutorial. I currently own a TV that is NOT HD. I have a Sony Vaio laptop and wireless internet in the house. Our wii is taking a vacation (long story). So we currently have no way to stream to the TV. I believe that with a blueray player I could do that, right? My laptop has an HDMI port & I have a cable...but my TV is not HD - that means it's not compatible, right?? I was thinking of getting one of the cheaper bluerays on BF, but will they all stream internet movies or do I need it to have that feature?

And.... now I see a Sony Media player on Walmart.com for $50. That seems to do everything I want except play DVD's. Since I have an OLD dvd player, I kind of wanted the blueray player but don't have to have it for the DVD's necessarily. Is see that the Sony media player is compatible with the iphone (which I have) but have NO clue what that means.


Sorry for rambling. Please help a girl in need. Thanks!

 

[moopdog]

And, by the way. I see a good deal on a 3D blueray player, too. But I cannot believe that without a 3D television, that I could watch the movie in 3D. Am I missing something? Does anyone happen to have a 3D Blueray player??

 

[Nayan]

And, by the way. I see a good deal on a 3D blueray player, too. But I cannot believe that without a 3D television, that I could watch the movie in 3D. Am I missing something? Does anyone happen to have a 3D Blueray player??

To answer this one first, yes you would need a 3D TV and the glasses to go with it. So that would not be a good deal for you.

Now it would help to tell us what you're trying to stream . Netflix? Amazon Prime? One thing that will work with any TV is a Roku box. Roku's stream just about everything. Since your TV is not HD this would be the best for you're needs. Check their site at www.roku.com.

 

[RitaE]

I also stream from a Roku box - I have one that has a USB port so I can also put mp4 movies on a USB stick and then play those on the tv. I have been slowly converting all our old DVDs to digital files over the past year or so. I'm really trying to get away from DVD and other discs because they are always getting lost and scratched but the movie industry seems to prefer that I keep buying DVDs to lose and scratch.

But back to your question - a Roku player won't play your DVDs I also don't know how good of a quality picture you get using the older style video/audio cables instead of hdmi. I know that you can buy DVD/Blu-ray players that stream Internet media such as Netflix and Amazon and have usb ports like my little Roku box, but I don't know if you can get one that won't need a HDMI compatible tv.

 

[momof3ds]

You might be able to connect a blu-ray player to an older TV but the picture will not be great.

A roku box can connect to a TV and stream from certain services, such as netflix. There is also an apple TV product that will do the same thing but it can also wirelessly connect to iphones, etc. They are about the same price but I am not sure how well they connect to older TVs.

We have Vizio flat screen TVs that are wi-fi connected on their own. We also have vizio blu-ray players that have wi-fi capability. All of them have apps for netflix, blockbluster, amazon, etc.

I didn't look to see if the blu-ray player had other connection options, just used the HDMI.

 

[mousefan1972]

If you go the Blu Ray route, be sure to choose one that has WiFi built in. The cheapest ones will say "WiFi available" or "WiFi Ready", which means they need either an ethernet cable or an adapter in order to connect to the internet.