Blu Ray Discs.... Do you buy them?

Deepest Blue · #1 22nd November 2009, 11:36

They've been out a while now but do you think they are worth the investment? I've owned a player (in the semblance of a PS3) since it's launch a few years ago and I only own about 30 blu ray's and although that may sound like a lot, I don't think it is considering I own over 1000 DVD's. I just think the prices of Blu Ray's are still far too expensive and I don't think they should be because I would have expected with the demise of HD DVD, Blu Ray would have come down in price as well to get the consumer base moving forward in this direction at competitive prices, but it's not happened, a bit like Laserdisc. The last one I bought was a pre-owed version of Twilight for £14 in which for about the same amount I could have bought 4 or 5 films on DVD. The quality difference isn't always aparent either and it also depends on the source it came from, especially if you're buying older films such as Die Hard 1 and stuff like that.

So who else buys them then or am I the only mug!!

D.

brian_maiden · #2 22nd November 2009, 11:43

I don't own any. Or in fact a Blu-ray player of any sort to play them on.

Or an HD tv come to think of it.

I may get a PS3 and an HD telly in the new year if they are cheep enough, then I'll probably get a couple of blu ray dvds to try it out. But until they come down in price I wont be bothering to buy more.

png · #3 22nd November 2009, 11:50

Can you really see much difference with HD? The standard def picture on a 32" tv looks pretty much perfect to me so I wouldnt be in too much of a hurry to upgrade. But then I'm the latest of late adopters

Deepest Blue · #4 22nd November 2009, 11:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by brian_maiden

I may get a PS3 and an HD telly in the new year if they are cheep enough, then I'll probably get a couple of blu ray dvds to try it out. But until they come down in price I wont be bothering to buy more.

Yeah, if that were me, I think I would restrict the Blu Ray purchases to just exclusives or editions that contain rare footage/interviews that only feature on the format, otherwise it's maybe better to carry on buying on DVD. Standard price of a Blu Ray at £24.99 is just riddiculous I think.

CEX seems to be the best place to get a good price on Blu Ray's right now, I have seen them in there for as low as £6 but it's normally the ones I already own elsewhere so I don't quite benefit :rolleyes:

I don't really want to get into a situation where Blu Ray's are eventually replaced with something else cheaper and better like Laserdisc did, I own one of those as well as I thought they were the dogs back in the day and where the future of home entertainment was heading - I still have the player and a few discs but are collecting dust now because I've had to replce everything I had on Laserdisc onto DVD so that I don't have so many machines cluttering the place, that player cost me £780, well gutted!

So I am kinda stuck, do I carry on buying on DVD and not taking full advantage of my HD set up or carrying on wasting money on a format that hasn't really taken off as well as it might have?

Deepest Blue · #5 22nd November 2009, 11:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by riverside

Can you really see much difference with HD? The standard def picture on a 32" tv looks pretty much perfect to me so I wouldnt be in too much of a hurry to upgrade. But then I'm the latest of late adopters

Depends on the source, but generally yes you can see a difference, especially if you watch things like Casino Royal, Cars, Ratatouille & Sweeney Todd which are exceptional in quality.

Medea · #6 22nd November 2009, 11:58

I have an apple tv. I occasionally rent films in HD, but only if they're visually impressive. No point having HD for a rom com or drama.

Deepest Blue · #7 22nd November 2009, 12:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by moose

The only area where I would say HD makes a difference is in gaming. In the early days of 360, I used to switch between composite and component cables and the quality in HD and SD picture was staggering. I don't think console graphics could have advanced much further unless they went down the HD route..

Do you think it was a shrewed move of MS not to include that HD player in the Elite? Seems like it now! Clever marketing on MS's part as at the time I was screaming at them to release a 360 with some form of HD player included. Glad they didn't listen to me then !

brian_maiden · #8 22nd November 2009, 12:16

Standard definition TV in widescreen 16:9 ratio is 720 × 480 pixels (usually cropped to 704x408 I think)

HD tv is 1920 x 1080 pixels, so there is quite a difference.

To put that into context. This is an image showing the relative picture sizes

The red is standard definition, the blue is high definition.

It's like watching a clip on youtube on your laptop in terms of size.

However, to really appreciate that you have to have a TV that is capable of showing it properly, and an HD source of sufficient quality. Not all HDTV are 1080p quality, some are 720p (the green box), if you have one of those, you've been ripped off. Equally, not all Blu Ray discs or HD tv out put may be up to 1080p quality.

png · #9 22nd November 2009, 12:27

interesting B_M, thanks

Deepest Blue · #10 22nd November 2009, 12:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by brian_maiden

. Not all HDTV are 1080p quality, some are 720p (the green box), if you have one of those, you've been ripped off. Equally, not all Blu Ray discs or HD tv out put may be up to 1080p quality.

Spot on, exactly, and that's why it pains to see all Blu Ray discs at £24.99 regardless of content, so basically if you pay that amount you should expect the same quality. I bought Batman (the 1989 version with Michael Keaton & Jack Nicholson) and the quailty is not of Blu Ray standard.

Deepest Blue · #11 22nd November 2009, 12:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by moose

Not sure if they wanted hard disc or downloadable content to be the winner or if they wanted to give their own console a massive lead over the PS3, which they achieved..

I know that this is a bit off topic, but I think the next generation of consoles won't use any form of disc media for primary game usage as it will all be in a downloadable format ala the online Marketplace, the new PSP has already started doing that.

piesJoy · #12 22nd November 2009, 12:48

ive enough problems with my woolworths DVD player (yeh yeh i know, they saw me coming). i've always been crap with technology though. not enough patience

Deepest Blue · #13 22nd November 2009, 12:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by moose

when flash media becomes more affordable (higher capacity), I see no need for blueray. But in truth, with so many people ownng DVD players, I see no need for bluray now

Yeah I agree.

I just had another thought, thinking of the route that Sony has gone with the new PSP (downloadable only), could this spark the end of gaming shops like Game and Gamestation? OMG I am going so off topic!

png · #14 22nd November 2009, 12:52

On the broader HD picture, I similarly wouldn't cough-up £250 for a Freesat HD box at the moment just for the sake of two channels while SD boxes can be got for £30. By the time anything worthwhile becomes available in HD on freesat, hopefully the prices will have come down...

Deepest Blue · #15 22nd November 2009, 12:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by pissJoy

ive enough problems with my woolworths DVD player (yeh yeh i know, they saw me coming). i've always been crap with technology though. not enough patience

I know some people who still use VHS!

brian_maiden · #16 22nd November 2009, 12:55

When you think that you can fit 16gb onto a microSD card the size of my little finger nail, and that the capacity of these things tends to double at a yearly rate, discs in general do seem a bit pointless don't they?

Munkeh · #17 22nd November 2009, 13:10

You don't need 1080p on a TV that's smaller than 42", unless you have some kind of robotic eyes you simply won't be able to notice the difference between 720p and 1080p at that size.

I've owned a Blu Ray player since the summer and must say I've been massively impressed with all the discs I've bought. The thing is though I've really looked into the discs I've bought, there's a lot of incredibly average lazy transfers out there where the difference between DVD and the Blu Ray is barely noticeable. I can understand that a lot of people aren't going to be bothered with Blu Ray, but for me the sound and picture advances are fantastic and for that I have no problem paying the extra money.

Films like Casino Royale, Braveheart, Blade Runner, Monster's Inc, Wall-e and Pirates of the Caribbean are prime examples of what can be done with the format, absolutely stunning picture quality. This isn't the case with every disc though, a lot of studios particularly at the start of the format put out incredibly lazy transfers with negligible advances that really don't help selling the format to anyone.

Also I'm not sure where you're buying your discs from at those prices, but I've picked up most of discs for £10 and under. The most I've paid is £12 for Braveheart the other week. Certainly instore prices for Blu Ray at the moment are way over priced, which can only be a bad thing for the future of the format.

brian_maiden · #18 22nd November 2009, 13:25

The way I see things going, is films, music, tv, all being both downloadable, and available on a universal format memory card. The card wouldn't have to be tiny like a microSD though, it could be something like the size of a normal SD or even slightly larger perhaps, as it doesn't have to go into a small device like a phone or a camera. Hopefully the larger size and universal availability of the format would encourage those producing them to iron out such corruption issues. All content would also be backed up online.

The cards would be used to put their contents onto large hard drives, which would replace the disc players. The hard drives could even be built into the tv fairly easily.

The beauty of this system is, as picture quality and tv quality increased, you wouldn't need to ditch the old format. You just get a bigger hard drive and/or tv, and the memory cards can stay the same format, but larger capacity, thus being backwards compatible.

The issues with such a system though are

a) copyright infingement, though since this is already an issue, it doesn't mean it would any worse under my system.

b) total backwards compatability discourages people from buying new players and rebuying all their old films again in the new format, something that the media wouldn't companies like.

Of course you could dispense with pysical media altogether and just have all content downloaded or streamed online. But I think there will always be plenty of people (myself included) who want to physically own something that they can see and touch and browse through.

All the parts of this system already exist, it's just not the standard yet. This is what will probably mean blu ray never takes off. Much like MP3s did to mini-disc.

ponder · #19 22nd November 2009, 13:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by brian_maiden

When you think that you can fit 16gb onto a microSD card the size of my little finger nail, and that the capacity of these things tends to double at a yearly rate, discs in general do seem a bit pointless don't they?

Pre-recorded discs can be mass produced for pennies each, unlike those flash cards. However, for storing my own data, I haven't used any sort of removable disc for a long time.

ShyDoll · #20 22nd November 2009, 13:42

No i don't buy blu ray discs... i'm too poor and anyway i dont even see the difference.. when i saw a movie on blu ray i wasnt even a little bit thrilled =-s.

brian_maiden · #21 22nd November 2009, 13:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by ponder

Pre-recorded discs can be mass produced for pennies each, unlike those flash cards. However, for storing my own data, I haven't used any sort of removable disc for a long time.

That's true, but flash cards will come down in price though.

What you can buy now for £20 will in 18 months time be twice the capacity, half the size and half the price.

I bought a 4gb SD card about a year ago, now you can buy an 8gb micro SD for the same price.

a duel layered blu-ray disc can hold 50gb, so flash memory isn't far away from that at the moment, and it wont be long before it catches up and is as affordable...

However, apparently they will soon be able to produce a 10 layer blu-ray disc that can hold 320gb, which will supposedly still be able to be read and recorded by standard blu-ray players... so if that ever happens, flash will be back to square one I suppose....

Blue Haze · #22 22nd November 2009, 13:57

Blu-rays are awesome quality compared to dvd's but they're far too expensive for a Good/Shitty film which you can download for free and upscale it to 1080p on a PS3 and some Blu-Ray players. They'll take over dvd's in a few years just like dvd's did with VHS videos. But at the moment, they're not worth the price.

ponder · #23 22nd November 2009, 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by brian_maiden

That's true, but flash cards will come down in price though.

What you can buy now for £20 will in 18 months time be twice the capacity, half the size and half the price.

Well, sort of. I can't see how it could ever come down to the cost of stamping out a DVD at maybe 10 pence (don't know the exact figure but it's very low).

There's no flash memory card you can buy for less than a few pounds - certainly the amount you store on your £5 card goes up, but the basic cost doesn't seem to be coming down.

A bit like how you can't buy a hard drive for less than £25, but the size of drive you get for that price goes up.