Comments on: Is Blu-Ray Necessary?

By: bergmaniac

bergmaniac — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:10:19 +0000

Criterion Blu-ray. Preservation and restoration of great works of cinema, and being able to watch them in pristine condition, is reason enough to justify the format’s existence.

By: Alex Kary

Alex Kary — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:05:22 +0000

I kind of agree with you, the only reason that I have bought Blu-Rays is to watch documentaries, particularly wild-life ones. The detail you get in those massive serengeti scenes, or the extreme closeups makes it worth it. But for regular movies, I don’t see a lot of point.

By: Fardels Bear

Fardels Bear — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:51:41 +0000

The point isn’t to get you to buy something three times, it’s to get you to buy it once. With video on demand, DVR, torrents, and other entertainment sector competitors like video games, DVD producers are starting to lose a lot of customers. The Blu-ray disk helps them combat that in two ways — it gives you something it’s hard to get elsewhere (torrenting and playing Blu-ray quality video is tricky, and DVR and video on demand is generally closer to DVD-quality), and it’s at a higher price point, so even if you sell less, you can still keep revenue up.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:48:46 +0000

Between Netflix and my Roku, I no longer have any reasons to buy movies at all anymore. So I’ll agree with Kyle TW: “Isn’t the future fucking awesome?”

By: mightybaldking

mightybaldking — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:57:52 +0000

I’ve got a good 42 inch HDTV, and watch 1080p whenever possible.

Quite frankly, at the distance I am comfortable sitting from the tv, I can’t tell the difference between a standard digital cable channel and an HD channel. (although the few remaining analog channels really suck)

By: Will Entrekin

Will Entrekin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:12:13 +0000

I have a 55″-inch Samsung LED HDTV. The difference is huge in my living room.

By: fsherman

fsherman — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:18:10 +0000

Oh, there are executives who’ve acknowledged Blu-Ray is intended to keep the money coming now that most people who have a DVD player have one.
They’re gorgeous to look at, but I have no urge to spend money on one, or an HDTV. But since there’s a huge after-market even for laserdiscs, I’m sure I’ll be able to get tons of DVDs (I do like owning my own) for years.

By: Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:53:58 +0000

By the way, I think it was “The Reign of Terror” VHS box set, not “Invasion of the Dinosaurs.”

By: Darren K

Darren K — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:24:50 +0000

I have a big ass HD TV and HD satellite programming to watch on it. Much like the move from VHS to DVD, I can no longer watch SD without getting itchy. Even my wife, who swore we did not need an HD TV, gets the SD itch. She just watched Firefly for the first time, on DVD, and spent the whole time bitching about the picture quality. And her broken foot. Though one did lead to the other (foot to Firefly. Which is neither here nor there).

The point is, once you go HD, you can’t go back. Blu Ray is part of that. Built into a PS3, you can’t go wrong. We only rent Blu Rays if we can help it, and if we buy, which we don’t do that often, we buy Blu Ray, because even upscaled in a good upscaler (and the PS3 is just that), we can still see the difference. And we’re not even video nerds. Although, also we are somewhat cheap, so we aren’t even going to consider re-purchasing stuff we already have unless the price forces us to buy it again. But unless you have a big ass HD TV, no, Blu Ray is not necessary.

As for old Doctor Who, thanks to the quality of the source material, DVD quality is the absolute best quality that you can get out of the original tapes and film reels. The only thing a Blu Ray upgrade would do is allow lossless audio. The picture is already the best it is ever going to get (except for possibly the 1996 TV movie and maybe, just maybe, Spearhead From Space, but probably not even in its 16mm case).

By: Mary Warner

Mary Warner — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:24:15 +0000

I was against DVDs. I just want them to pick one standard and stick with it forever, even if a better alternative comes along. Replacing everything with new technology every few years is just not an option for poor people. I didn’t even have a VCR until the early ’90s, and then I spent years slowly building up a movie collection from garage sales and such. By the time I had a decent number of tapes, I couldn’t watch anything else because there were no more tapes for rent at the stores– just DVDs. I didn’t get a DVD player until this year (it was a gift from its previous owner), and now DVDs are becoming less common.
I just can’t keep up with this, and I know I’m not the only one.

By: Lamar

Lamar — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:18:12 +0000

Having a Blu-Ray player is nice, especially if you have a model that upsamples DVDs. My wife and I regularly watch TV series on disk, sometimes in the living room, which has an old big-screen TV, and sometimes in the bedroom, were we have our HDTV and Blu-Ray player. The difference in quality is noticeable, and nice.

That being said, if we are buying a new season of a show, and we have the choice between DVD and Blu-Ray, we’re likely going to get the DVD version because it’s cheaper, and cheaper enough to put the Blu-Ray version out of reach.

The benefits of getting a Blu-Ray player, though, is that 1) it will still play DVDs just fine, even better than a regular DVD player in some cases and 2) if they stopped making DVDs tomorrow and moved everything to Blu-Ray, you’d be set.

As far as any of this being necessary — well, what really is necessary, honestly? I don’t have to watch TV. I can read a book. If worse came to worse, we could tell stories to each other around the campfire. Necessary, no. Nice to have? Yes.

By: Chad

Chad — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:56:51 +0000

I am not jumping ship, I love movies in general, but I do not need BR, i am fine with DVD, hell VHS in the cases of rare movies never seen on dvd. It is a big rip off, even for DVD’s, I remember a pitch for dvds that we could manipulate movies by different camera angles and the like. I haven’t seen that even in blu-ray. some of the BR come with no bonus features, that is a huge crock and rip off IMo

By: zurn

zurn — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:12:18 +0000

It’s really simple: higher resolution lets you take advantage of larger screens. When TVs get even bigger than now, a higher resolution will be introduced, and a new format to store it if Blurays can’t handle it (which is likely unless they stick 8 layers on the Blurays).

By: Mark Cook

Mark Cook — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:06:36 +0000

I get blu-ray discs when they aren’t significantly more expensive than the DVD, depending on the DVD – I wouldn’t get a $25 blu-ray movie if there was a $15 DVD, but I might get the $70 blu-ray TV box set instead of the $60 DVD. I’m also more likely to get the blu-ray for an explodey action movie than a serious drama or comedy.

I have Rogers here in Canada, and a download cap. A movie download can take up a significant percentage of my cap. BOO CAPS.

A couple of things:
- Depending on the original medium, it doesn’t make sense to have high-resolution versions. I don’t think you’ll ever see colour old-school Doctor Who blu-ray discs. The source material was so often videotape that a DVD gets you everything the blu-ray would. That’s why the Eccleston/Tennant series 1-4 are only available on DVD – they filmed in SD, not HD. Torchwood, the Tennant specials and the Matt Smith stuff *are* on blu-ray. It’s different for, say, Star Trek, which used film stock.

According to the Tardis wiki, Doctor Who was mostly film stock through Spearhead in Space, so there are some possibilities there – but that is primarily black & white material, some of which would be from a home recording off of a TV due to the BBC’s destruction of part of its B&W archives. Spearhead From Space might have an outside chance at being a blu-ray, because it’s on film and in colour.

- For older movies: because they were made on film stock, there is visual information lost on DVD that is present on the blu-ray. The weird side effect is that despite a greater fidelity to the original source, the movies can look off because most of us have only seen them on TV; thus, your mileage here may vary.

By: drmedula

drmedula — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:16:47 +0000

Waitaminute- why are we talking about Blu-Ray when we could be talking about Doctor Who?