So far, I'm not a Blu Ray/HD fan

Just getting into Blu Ray as I got a player for Christmas (we've already got a full HD TV). I'm more than impressed with the Dark Knight, Wall-E and the other disc I got, Mongol which is just damn gorgeous. I was assuming that old dvds upgraded wouldn't be as good but reading those useful links from Taccy and TUS, I'm going to make some further purchases.

Like others have said, the most useful time is spent setting your tv up properly!

Yup, case in point: The Dark Knight Blu-Ray is only 2 dollars more than the DVD.

Also, Blu-Ray.com is where I get all my information from about new releases and the quality of discs.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

From memory I got the 5 disc Blade Runner set on BD for £19.99 (was expecting double, and would have paid £40 without hesitation) but mainly I wait for '2 for £20' etc offers, and there are plenty of those about.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

I personally thinks that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is ********. The players are way to f*** slow! And the videoquality isn't that much better than a DVD in my opinion. As well as the movie have good videoquality (like most DVDs) I don't care. The movie itself is the most important thing, not the damn videoquality! Most people don't see the difference anyway. So what's the point. Off course it is important to develop and produce new media, but when the prices is that high and most players don't even support alldifferent formats I just don't see what's the point!

Slow in what way? I get picture 5 or 6 settings after pressing 'play' - about the same as the upscaling DVD player.

Ok, I'd (and if you're the other way round you've got no business on this site or your name is JRS) rather have a good movie displayed poorly than a poor movie displayed ... errr ... goodly, but people with BD players have the choice of good movies in HD so I don't really see your point.

Welcome to MoFo, by the way.

Well the fastest player I've ever tried used 1 minute to boot up just to open the dvd tray. Dvd doesn't play a movie poorly. The quality is good enough on a dvd so I don't actually see the point. The problem is: They're too expensice, slow, and well...the need of that good quality is overated. A dvd has awesome videoquality if the movie itself is in good quality. That goes for Blu-Ray etc as well. I don't see the point in watching movies just because of the videoquality and using WAY too much money on just a single film. It's dumb. If it was the same prices as dvd/dvd-players I would've bought it but not with the insanely dumb prices today.

As I've said before, I don't think anyone here (certainly none of the regular members) put production quality over cinematic excellence so that argument is dead in the water. If the opportunity is there to have production quality and cinematic excellence then why not take it? Food can never be too tasty.

How much was your first DVD player? Mine cost me over £200 (and it wasn't even a top of the line model) which is more than a lot of Blu Ray players nowadays - New technology has a price premium but it drops fast. DVDs were £20 for a new release when I first started buying them too.

I'll say that we'll get £100 BD players by the end of the year and a good selection of £9.99 discs.

Hahaha my dvd player is one of the cheapest and it's better than most of the more expensive players. Its REALLY fast. The problem with blu-ray etc is the price and the speed. The quality is great. Off course combining both production- and cinematic excellence is the best alternative, but the prices "destroy joy". As I said the price is the biggest problem. When the prices get lowered, slowness is speed up and the players can play dvd,hd-dvd and blu-ray I will buy one of those. But before that, there is NO WAY I'm going to buy one of those players.

Your DVD player is cheap and fast because the technology is newer and easier to make. Same thing will happen with Blu-Ray, as with all technologies.

As for speed, I have no problem with speed on my HD players, except the Toshiba A-2 which is one of the most horribly slow players on the planet. However, the quality from it is beautiful, and I only paid 50 bucks for it. Anyways, the units are *much* cheaper now than when they launched and speed, which really wasn't an issue to begin with, is the same with new DVD players.

I am sorry, but, speed? What are you on about? How is speed a deciding factor in DVD playback? It isn't, unless you can't wait four seconds for it to start, in which case you are in sever need of some patience.

Meanwhile, I am not buying any of them. Disc Media films won't be around much longer.

Also, how are you determining your player is better than most expensive players? Is it because it's yours? You would need to have compared each and every player to yours in a test to claim something like that.

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If you read some of the posts earlier I was talking about how much time it took to boot up the damn thing and how long time it took for it to open the tray. Lots of players today use one second before it responds to what button you pressed on the remote. Mine doesn't, and believe me, I've tried alot of different players (dvd, hd-dvd, blu-ray). The fastest blu-ray player I've tested to this day used abut 60 seconds to just boot up! I'm not dumb and childish Sedai saying my player is better because that is the one I've got. If it sucked, I would've said it sucked! I don't like blu-ray/hd-dvd players because of the f***ing price, respond/load time and all those negative things. Even the movies are more expensive because they're blu-ray/hd-dvd, thats bullshitt.

Everything you've said in this post as already been proven otherwise.

I just bought Planet Earth and I, Robot on blu-ray. Both titles I previously owned on regular DVD. I'm not going to upgrade every movie, just the ones that need it. While I, Robot isn't the best film out there, it is regarded as one of the BEST blu-ray transfers of the whole lot, so I decided to make that upgrade.

Planet Earth....you need to watch this in HD...NEED TO.

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Suspect's Reviews

Simply put, that is the most sensible thing I've read in this thread yet!

Please tell me you got the BBC version? And Planet Earth is a great showcase material. Like "oh hey, look at what my TV can doooo."

I had no idea there were other versions. Yes I got the BBC one. I watched the Mountains episode today....had to clean the brain matter off the wall 5 times.

Yea, they are two editions. The BBC one with the most brilliant voice over done by David Attenborough, while the Discovery Channel one is horribly narrated by Sigourney Weaver. Seriously, her voice over is so bad that it makes the thing unwatchable. I have no earthly idea why they redid the voice over for the American version. Were they afraid Americans wouldn't like an excellent voice over? I mean, come on?!

Both versions I have (had, gave DVD to a friend) had Attenborough. Thank god...

He really does make the entire show, IMO. Weaver had absolute no emotion and was completely flat voiced the entire time. Ugh, I get sick just thinking about it.

Off Topic - David Attenborough is such a great guy and I grew up on his natural history programmes. He just narrates them these days instead of going out and, say, sitting with a family of gorillas in a jungle (probably his most famous TV clip) but I don't mind - he's earned a rest at his age.

Here's a little clip from some sort of '30 years on' type show:

YouTube link, embedding disabled

If you want a good selection of films, grab a HD DVD player, fair enough nothing will come out again for it, but usually the BD version of a film will have less extra features than the HD DVD quality. I had both HD DVD player and a Blu-ray player(PS3) Glad I have oth, the HD DVD player was £30. Not bad. Oh, with HD DVD and BD it's not just picture quality, it's sound quality that is improved also. HD DVD's you can get for around £3 and I normally get my BD's on offer.