Blu-ray, in General

[MichaelB]

Unlike my DVDs, I can only play Blu-ray discs in one room, so they're on a single shelf there.

[Blood Pie]

I keep my blus together and my DVDs together. I toyed with mixing them at one point when I had more DVDs but it looked a 3 year old got hold of my collection and put them back on the shelves.

Likewise, I keep my Criterions and MoC blus together because of the continuity/numbering and the clear cases looking great together.

[domino harvey]

So are those conspiracy theories about studios purposely releasing terrible DVDs in order to fuel Blu-ray sales true? Because I rented Duplicity last weekend and my God, it has one of the worst images I've seen from a new film on disc. The picture quality was so soft and low that during the opening credits, the text is aliased. Like watching a low-grade JPEG file in motion. Disgusting

[scotty2]

Directors rule, so media is a secondary consideration. SDs and BDs are integrated here. The order is chronological within the director's work. The directors are then placed chronologically according to first film in my collection. So Feuillade is first, followed by Chaplin, and so on to . . . Matteo Garrone.

[dx23]

It seems Boogie Nights may be released December 15th on Blu-ray as a Best Buy exclusive.

[Blood Pie]

Whats funny is going back to page 1 and reading people's takes on the HD format war years before it even began...oh how the times have changed...

[Matango]

I trash all my Blu cases and keep the discs in a pocketed DVD-folder with natty blue trim. Except for Criterions...I keep those in the cases and put them on the shelf.

[Noiretirc]

the HdDVD/blu-ray will likely remain an elite, high-end "niche" consumer product for technophiles for at least the next 5 years.

Im sure most people [including me] certainly haven't spent a fortune on a DVD collection just to go out and buy them all again on blu-ray.
The average consumer is still catching up on DVDs and hanging on to their old VHS.

LOL.

I still haven't bought one blu ray. Sigh.

[Murdoch]

the HdDVD/blu-ray will likely remain an elite, high-end "niche" consumer product for technophiles for at least the next 5 years.

Points to godardslave for calling that one.

[oldsheperd]

So does anyone have the specs on the Ran BD coming Feb. 16th?

[Donald Brown]

the HdDVD/blu-ray will likely remain an elite, high-end "niche" consumer product for technophiles for at least the next 5 years.

Points to godardslave for calling that one.

Has it been five years? Doesn't matter, the prediction has already failed. Blu-ray is catching on much faster than DVD did. Most non-technophiles I know are already buying more Blu-rays than DVDs. The holdouts on this forum aren't representative of the general population.

[Jeff]

I rented Duplicity last weekend and my God, it has one of the worst images I've seen from a new film on disc. The picture quality was so soft and low that during the opening credits, the text is aliased. Like watching a low-grade JPEG file in motion. Disgusting

The Blu-ray, however, is gorgeous!

[HarryLong]

Has it been five years? Doesn't matter, the prediction has already failed. Blu-ray is catching on much faster than DVD did. Most non-technophiles I know are already buying more Blu-rays than DVDs. The holdouts on this forum aren't representative of the general population.

Well, this whole forum isn't exactly representative of the general population. They probably don't have a library of 3000+ DVDs/DVDRs (plus about a hundred titles on VHS still not transferred). They pick up the latest hit in the latest format, watch it a few times and a couple months later drop it off at their local used-CD/DVD store for some cash. That's what's driving the BR sales.
As noted above by another poster, we don't want to go out and buy all our titles all over again (some of us have been through this before, from Beta to VHs to DVD ... & some have LD in there as well).

[Blood Pie]

Nor is it really representative of the business Criterion and Eureka are doing with Blu Ray. Based on this site you would think Blu Ray is a dirty word and only spoiled technophiles who could care less about film buy them...

[nsps]

the HdDVD/blu-ray will likely remain an elite, high-end "niche" consumer product for technophiles for at least the next 5 years.

Points to godardslave for calling that one.

Has it been five years? Doesn't matter, the prediction has already failed. Blu-ray is catching on much faster than DVD did. Most non-technophiles I know are already buying more Blu-rays than DVDs. The holdouts on this forum aren't representative of the general population.

Funny—my non-representative survey of personal friends yields a different result. I know people who are Blu-ray capable, but often buy DVDs anyway because they want to play them in other rooms of the house or play discs in the car for their kids. I love HD and have a bunch of BDs, mind you, but for non-cinephiles without good setups, they seem a lot less appealing. Anyhow, I see the format as a cinephile format as much as a technophile format (my film-nerd friends are the only ones I know who buy a lot of BDs). It's the population that doesn't fit into either category that isn't quite eating it up just yet. The big question is whether they ever will, or if it will be a healthy but non-ubiquitous format a la laserdisc.

[TMDaines]

I can count on one hand the number of people I know who have the ability to play Blu-rays. Everyone I know who is either into film or isn't either watches DVDs still or pirates.

[Noiretirc]

I hate to be repetitive, but I just cannot understand how Blu-Ray is so "essential". I know....I know.....I've read the reviews that extol (is that a word?) the gorgeousness of this blu and that blu, but my remastered / cleaned up DVD editions are 98% gorgeous. Is 100% so important? And I still don't understand what Blu could do for something like King Kong 33.

But then again, I have used a $29 DVD player for the last few years, and a vacuum tube tv also, so......

As a slight aside, I find that a majority of the discussion here about various releases are technophile-centric in nature. It's an observation, not a complaint. I still don't understand PAL and NTSC and amaphormic or whatever, and I don't care. Am I a Luddite then?

[domino harvey]

If you are watching on a CRT, most things don't matter

[Matango]

I hate to be repetitive, but I just cannot understand how Blu-Ray is so "essential". I know....I know.....I've read the reviews that extol (is that a word?) the gorgeousness of this blu and that blu, but my remastered / cleaned up DVD editions are 98% gorgeous. Is 100% so important? And I still don't understand what Blu could do for something like King Kong 33.

But then again, I have used a $29 DVD player for the last few years, and a vacuum tube tv also, so......

As a slight aside, I find that a majority of the discussion here about various releases are technophile-centric in nature. It's an observation, not a complaint. I still don't understand PAL and NTSC and amaphormic or whatever, and I don't care. Am I a Luddite then?

No, if you were a Luddite, you wouldn't be posting online, or own a TV. Not knowing the difference between NTSC and PAL is fine, but you should know what anamorphic means, at least if you want your comments/opinions on image quality/frame composition taken seriously. Anyway, it sounds to me like you're trying to justify being too cheap and/or lazy to upgrade your equipment. No offence.

[hangman]

I hate to be repetitive, but I just cannot understand how Blu-Ray is so "essential". I know....I know.....I've read the reviews that extol (is that a word?) the gorgeousness of this blu and that blu, but my remastered / cleaned up DVD editions are 98% gorgeous. Is 100% so important? And I still don't understand what Blu could do for something like King Kong 33.

This discussion of Blu really has been all over the place lately. In any case MichealB nicely puts a common misconception about Blu and DVD. Which is that Blu-ray isn't necessarily going to be the "essential" format for films and its not going to amp up the quality of films with less than satisfactory material. Or thinking that its better to hold out for the god knows how long conversion of an already good/great DVD release onto Blu-ray, while it may look good already it doesn't mean that the materials used would be ready for Blu and even more so when you consider that the release of film on DVD took like how many years for who knows what reason (licensing rights, restoration, etc) let alone an urgency to re-release the film on Blu when they've already done a great job on the DVD release and would end up with more sales by focusing on another previously unreleased title.

What's needed is an awareness campaign of some kind - because the simple fact is that most films just won't come out on Blu-ray because the materials aren't in a good enough state or because the resolution was only ever SD in the first place.

Thanks to that rather premature announcement on Amazon, I'm still seeing people asking about the Blu-ray of Terence Davies' Of Time and the City, which doesn't exist and will never exist - the film was largely sourced from and entirely edited on SD video, so there's no point. Same for the vast majority of pre-2000s television - the 35mm-sourced The Prisoner is a freakish exception rather than a general rule (especially with regard to British telly - even if it was shot on film, the chances are it was edited on analogue PAL videotape and that that's the only master available). Even when the BFI very sensibly split Ron Peck's back catalogue onto Blu-ray (for film-sourced stuff) and DVD (for the SD video material) for its dual-disc release of Nighthawks, idiots complained about it.

More seriously, if the original mastering materials aren't in great condition, it's much harder to justify an HD remaster, as the flaws will just be magnified. Which makes it much less likely for niche titles to come out on the format.

In other words, anyone who refuses to buy DVDs on principle any more is just cutting off their nose to spite their face - the fact is that it's still a perfectly adequate medium for a huge number of films, and in many cases it's about as good as it's ever realistically likely to get.

Then you've also got the older cinephiles, or maybe just people who've seen the film recently, who wouldn't bother any longer to buy the newest high definition release of a film they've either seen/bought so many times that there is not much point experiencing the film again in its latest format reincarnation. So I wouldn't really worry about feeling pressured to own this or that film in its lates format release. Or if you really do want to have the Blu-ray of the film then get a Blu-ray forget about the plasma TV and the entire home theatre set up, sure you may not be able to get all the bells and whistles of the Blu-ray experience but if you really do just want to see the film badly then a Blu-ray player will be just adequate (you can aim for the plasma TV later on when its become cheap).

[Blood Pie]

It still seems like a lot of posters are commenting from a black and white standpoint with little factual information to back up their claims. Like any new format it will take time to take hold and for people to come around and adopt it. And in fairness, the hurdles for Blu Ray are a lot higher and more frequent than DVD and VHS as each had more tangible benefits from their predecessors and both only required a CRT tube TV that most people already had. So all you needed was the player and some movies and you were good to go. Blu Ray had a relatively tight format war AND the problem of HDTV penetration because, well, without an HDTV you aren't going to see any difference. From that perspective I can wholly understand people not having the money or desire to upgrade not only a player but an expensive HDTV and a new library of films.

On the other hand, you have people claiming Blu Ray is only a technophile format (which is a nice way of saying people who buy blus aren't film lovers), that its vulgar to buy Blus and such other pretentious nonsense. Its quite silly and completely untrue. Likewise, you also have a lot of people who are coming off as bitter because they have huge collections of DVDs and feel personally offended that Blu Ray even makes them question their desire to upgrade.

In reality, none of our opinions really matter. After this holiday season Blu-Ray will be here to stay. The players have come down to rock bottom prices hovering between $100-200 for name brand players (three years ago a SA Sony player was around a grand and the PS3 was your best at a launch price of $500-$600) and a lot of titles have been discounted cheaper than their DVD counterparts on Amazon to help push the format. And looking at it from a small release perspective its quite obvious it isn;t a technophile format but a film lover's format. If Eureka and Criterion are having splits as high as they claim then all it does is cement the notion that DVD isn;t what it used to be and that like it or not at some point an upgrade will have to happen.

That being said it shouldn't offend anyone one way or the other if someone chooses to support Blu Rays, DVDs or both...

[arsonfilms]

I've just gone Blu in the past few weeks, and here's why:

I was against the new format for a while, given that I had no intention of buying a TV that would reward the difference any time soon. To invest in that and then a brand new player seemed absurd, especially given all of my hundreds of standard definition DVDs. Still, the TV I had was not a good one, and the image quality was rapidly deteriorating. My laptop monitor was serving as my primary player, but despite it's abilities as an all-region player there were still some discs of mine it wouldn't play. As such, a new TV and all-region player were both things I would have liked but felt like I couldn't afford (business being what it is these days). Then a few weeks ago, I discovered that Amazon was running a 36-month interest free financing plan on Samsung TVs (making even a $1000 set easily affordable). I did the requisite research and bought the one for me, and simultaneously found an all-region BD player for about $150. The player was key, because even without the blu ray discs, I still needed an upscaling player to handle my existing collection.

So now I've got this state of the art home theater system, all for $150 down and about $35 a month. I've tested BDs and DVDs in several regions boasting different aspect ratios, and everything looks amazing. So is blu ray everything that everyone says it is? Are DVDs obsolete? Well yes and no. Without the upscaling and with a larger TV, I suspect that my DVDs wouldn't look great, but as my system is set up they look gorgeous. BD obviously looks sharper and clearer, but I don't at all feel like my DVD collection doesn't hold up. Obviously the deals I got made it an easier decision for me, but I would equate my upgrading to Blu with my decision a few years ago to go region free. If MoC does decide to go all-blu I'll be ready for it, but I can't help but notice that not all of their upcoming releases are being done in both formats. Many of their discs are still SD only, and I'll continue to buy them, feeling confident that they'll look and sound excellent on my new system. As has been pointed out already, many releases simply aren't able to be remastered in hi def anytime soon, or even worth putting on blu ray at all.

I know that a lot of people will resist Blu for a while (I was one of them), but I suspect that deals like the ones I found will become more and more common as time goes on. I would have bet it would have taken me several more years to make the jump, but now that I have I can say with confidence that it's a lot easier than it looks.

[Noiretirc]

No, if you were a Luddite, you wouldn't be posting online, or own a TV. Not knowing the difference between NTSC and PAL is fine, but you should know what anamorphic means, at least if you want your comments/opinions on image quality/frame composition taken seriously. Anyway, it sounds to me like you're trying to justify being too cheap and/or lazy to upgrade your equipment. No offence.

No offence taken. I'm lazy but certainly not cheap. (I mean, sheesh, I have a hundred or so Criterions.) I'm just not convinced that my film experiences will be greatly enhanced via Blu or them fancy tvs.

[swo17]

I believe Tati was quoted as saying that Playtime was best experienced on as small a CRT as possible. Did you ever get around to watching that Noiretirc?

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

No, if you were a Luddite, you wouldn't be posting online, or own a TV. Not knowing the difference between NTSC and PAL is fine, but you should know what anamorphic means, at least if you want your comments/opinions on image quality/frame composition taken seriously. Anyway, it sounds to me like you're trying to justify being too cheap and/or lazy to upgrade your equipment. No offence.

No offence taken. I'm lazy but certainly not cheap. (I mean, sheesh, I have a hundred or so Criterions.) I'm just not convinced that my film experiences will be greatly enhanced via Blu or them fancy tvs.

This is actually true to an extent. Great cinema will be great regardless of where or how you watch it. As a Blu-Ray owner with an HD set who still watches laserdiscs and VHS on it, the high quality certainly makes a difference, but when you don't have any better, older formats still do the job. I saw The Sun's Burial for the first time a few nights ago on an old VHS from New Yorker and the quality may have been crummy and the image was 2:35 non-anamorphic on a 1080i set, it didn't detract from the power of the film itself.