Blu Ray
 

I have never in my life seen a Blu ray movie & I don’t own a Blu ray player.

Are Blu ray movies really so fabulous? (They’re expensive, this I know.)

I own & rent regular DVDs & they look great to me.

Thoughts?

Re: Blu Ray
 

Yeah, they're better. Particularly for sound and interactive menu options and stuff.

When I saw DVD for the first time I was kind of unimpressed...until I went back and watched VHS again after. Turns out my memory was "filling in" a lot of the missing detail. A similar thing happens with Blu-ray, though I think the jump to DVD was a lot larger.

They're getting close in price, anyway, relatively speaking. When I buy a new film it's pretty much always in Blu-ray. Costs have come way, way down.

You're not alone🙂 Up until a couple of years ago I hadn't seen a Blu Ray either...but I do have a Blu Ray Player. Of course one needs an HD TV to be able to see a Blu Ray in it's full effect.

I don't particularly love Blu Ray as they can look too sharp, which to me kind of looks fake. Of course it depends on the Blu Ray movie and especially the HD or UHD quality of the TV.

Re: Blu Ray
 

I do have an HDTV. If I owned a Blu ray player I would definitely try it out. But then I would have 2 types of DVDs. Life getting too complicated. :)

@Yoda, just realized this minute that this thread is in the wrong place. Thanks for moving it so quickly - I was about to ask you to. :)

Ha🙂 I hear ya! What's weird is that I have a Blu Ray Player and use it every night to watch movies, but I haven't watched a DVD or Blu Ray movie since Covid started...that's because my library is locked down. I don't miss watching movies on disc, though I still own some, but not many.

Something else that would complicate it for me is that I must have a multi-region DVD player. So if I bought Blu ray movies, I would need a 2nd DVD player.

I have had Blu Ray for over ten years now and it is a lot better image and audio wise if you have a good HDTV and Blu Ray player.
To get the full effect you will need a surround sound set up that can handle Dolby Digital 5.1 and up, DTS True HD and with some newer discs Dolby Atmos.
Some films can look overly sharp but that is usually down to the TV's picture enhancement modes.
They do generally take a little longer to load up and some players do enhace standard BluRay to near 4K quality if you have a UHDTV.
Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic and LG are at the forefront of the format, I myself have a Pioneer player and a Samsung HDTV and the blacks are nice and deep and colours nice and bright.
Movies like Valerian, Life Of Pi and most animations look awesome and even older movies get a bit of a lift in the format.
Sound is handled by a Pioneer receiver and Wharfedale surround speaker system.
TV is the next upgrade then the speakers ready for 4k discs. 🙂

A multi region Blu Ray player should play multi region DVD, ask the seller if it is an option. 🙂

Re: Blu Ray
 

Christ! I always wondered who still bought DVDs!

The jump from DVD to Blu Ray is massive. Huge. The quality is night and day. Especially on a great massive TV. The jump is far greater than Blu Ray to 4K in my humble opinion.

Re: Blu Ray
 

Results vary.

I have great results with Blu-Ray, but my HDTV isn't an LED TV. I am one of those weird Plasma purists still clinging to a tech that has been phased out. To me, Plasma is the clear superior technology for retaining that film-like look when playing DVD and BluRay, but there is just one problem: Plasma can't scale above 1080p. Once 4K et al. hit the scene, Plasma was kicked to the curb.

That said, the new OLED TVs look amazing, and have finally gotten to the point where the quality either equals or surpasses that of Plasma.

My point is that, depending on your TV, you might get undesired results from BluRay, such as a weird "soap opera effect," where the image comes across as looking to stagey. without proper depth of field or background blur. Personally, I find these problem to be extremely distracting, to the point that I can't properly focus on the content. Oddly, not all LED TVs have the same problems, so it's kind of a crap shoot.

Best of luck!

Quite a few of us here are collectors. I absolutely adore buying DVDs.

Good on you. I just thought most people had made the jump to Blu-Ray. It's been around 18 years now.

I made the jump to OLED a few months ago. Although I'd say that it's not as bright as LED and the motion is probably not as smooth, the overall picture quality for film content is just sublime. The Blu Ray and 1080p content looks superb. The 4k content is out of this world.

Bummed out to hear this. That's one of my hang-ups with LED, which has blurry motion compared to Plasma (which has no refresh rate - the tech doesn't work like that). If OLED has more blur than LED, I might not be able to get past that. Dang!

Check the displays out in your local store when we return to normality. Everybody's eyes are different, and it depends on the source quality too. You can also increase the smoothness settings to your liking with the truemotion effects so it's just down to taste. Overall OLED is a massive improvement to my eyes compared to LED.

As it happens I watched a DVD on it last night, which is something I rarely do as I only have a few and it looked pretty decent. Good upscaling quality.

I still hit the stores pretty regularly, and can sometimes be found ogling the OLED TVs. The ones I have seen look amazing, but they are still a bit out of my price range. As soon as my plasma dies, I will make the jump. Also, I have a toddler in the house, and she frequently puts her hands on the screen, sometimes after eating etc., so I think I need to wait until she is a couple of years older!

Count me as a weird Plasma TV enthusiast🙂

I knew there were more out there!

Yeah you gotta have rules around OLEDS! My kids aren't allowed within 4 feet of mine or I stop pocket money.