Should I get a Blu-ray player?

Yes...

 

No...! Yes when the price drops below 100$.

Unless you have HDMI on a 42" or higher sized TV, that is 1080p, and your DVD is older than your Prius.

DVD pixel resolution is 640x480 to 720x420, more or less 307,200 pixels.

BluRay is stored at 1920x1080, or 2,073,600 pixels.

So your choice is either to scale UP (DVD) or down to whatever resolution your TV can do.

Tube-based HD-TV's can change screen resolution, so they always look good.

LCD / Plasma, if you scale UP, or DOWN, it won't be as enjoyable, since pixels are a fixed size.

I have a 720p 32" Samsung w/HDMI, and I'm definitely NOT getting a Bluray.

When I can buy a LCD 50" 1080p or better TV for 500$ (or less), the Bluray readers should be priced at 59$, then yes I'll get one.

Look at the price curve of how fast these items go down in price. By 2012...

 

Cant tell the difference on a 42" 1080P, DVD - BD. What I can tell you is a $10+ difference between the same move on DVD - BrD, so if the quality on a 42" looks just as good from DVD as Blue Ray, then the wise thing is to get a decent Upconverting DVD player.

 

According to one reviewer, I think it was for PC World, the PS3 is not a good machine by which to judge Blu-Ray. He said the stand-alone BR was better by a large margin. I haven't seen them side-by-side. The quality of BR on my 46" 1080P Samsung LCD and my stand alone BR player makes VHS impossible to look at, regular DVDs a challenge to watch, HD TV likewise a challenge and BR pretty nice.

That being said, they may come down or they may not. What you can expect is to pay a lot for Apple TV downloaded movies as most all the "broadband" companies are working on charging by the amount of traffic.

 

Sorry, but that means something is wrong.

I just got done comparing the movie CARS back-to-back from my Blu-Ray player with an HDMI connection on a 32" LCD. The DVD upconverted and looked great. The BD looked fantastic. Improved clarity should be obvious. It certainly was with that particular example.

And of course, the larger the television the easier it should be to see the benefit of the HD video.
.

 

Well then the movies I have on BD aren't very good. I have Jumper, and Close Encounters of the 3rd kind. I just cant justify the extra $10 for a movie when the PS3 can play a DVD and make it look so much better than what I have been used to.

 

"Close Encounters" obviously isn't true HD. Analog capture of decades past offers high resolution, but not the clarity.

I chose to compare "Cars", since it is of the best quality... the purist digital source currently available.
.

 

That is just chock full of nonsense. I agree with John - you've got it wired wrong.

On my 720p, 32" Samsung, I can *definately* see a difference. Imagine on 1080p (at the store a sales rep can show you).

However, if you're wired HDMI with a BD player, the graphics engine does a very good job at scaling up a DVD resolution to 1080p or 720p, to the point you won't seem to see a difference.
Especially with things in motion.

I had heard, about the PS3 & DVD, the main problem was cabling and digital audio.

In any case, when you can build a small PC with a BD/DVD/ROM for cheaper than a PS3, why even bother.

I'm building with all recycled parts & eBay, an HTPC.
AMD 3800+
2G Ram
BD rom player
nVidia 8800 GT

It will also do Folding@Home when "Idle" (not used for watching TV/Movies) and BitTorrent client.

 

This has probably been answered, but you definitely want blu-ray if you have a 1080p TV. You want the type of blu-ray player that upgrades a regular DVD to 1080p on your TV. As for blu ray DVDs, some are spectacular (eg, Planet Earth). Some are worse than the regular DVD (eg, That's Entertainment Collection--according to reviewers). My guess is most are probably better, as long as the movie isn't too old.

 

That's simply nonsense. The PS3 is an excellent Blu-Ray player. It has by far more processing power and is easily upgraded with the latest software with its built-in networking. Picture quality is just as good.

There are three potential disadvantages to the PS3 verses a stand alone player. They are not disadvantages for all users:

1) The PS3 takes more power. Its high power cell computer is more power hungry than a stand alone player. Along with this power consumption comes cooling requirements. You don't want to bury a PS3 inside of a closed cabinet.

2) No front panel. Other than power and eject, all PS3 functions and displays are on the TV or remote control.

3) Bluetooth remote control. The PS3 remote control is RF, not IR. This means it will work through doors and doesn't have to be pointed at the PS3, but it will not work with universal remote controls unless they have a bluetooth adapter.

Tom

 

Can you even buy a 3800 dual core? I built a machine a couple of years ago, and then the 3800 was considered "middle of the road." This machine runs Ubuntu very well

If it is running XP Pro, then you will have good performance with a 3800 dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM

If you intend to run Vista Ultimate, you had better reconsider. With that graphics card I would suggest an SLI compatible motherboard that supports AMD Phenom processors, eg AMD Phenom 9550 quad core.

I would also suggest 4 GB of SLI compatible memory

 

Yeah, all my movies come from iTunes now. I wish I could rip my DVD's with the ease I did my CD's, but the iTunes model is nice. Not only can you watch your video on your TV, but also take it with you on your iPod/iPhone, and instead of sorting through a big library of physical media and having to hassle with putting discs away, your movies are organized in a menu system that you can search, navigate through by genre, etc.

 

The whole point is building as cheap a system as possible, that can play all AVI and MKV files in 720p and 1080p without any lag.

However, for 20$ more I got on eBay a 5200+ AMD cpu instead, which is dual-core 2.7Ghz instead of 2.0Ghz.

I didn't win the nVidia 8800GT, but, I got the 9800GTX !

Not only do I now have a kickass HTPC on the cheap, I'm also Folding @ Home over 5,000 points per day.

 

Sounds good. Is that machine running XP Pro or Vista?

 

XP Home actually, a copy I had from another machine that came with it, but I had gotten Pro. Was sitting unused for over 2 years !

I'm not ready to waltz the Vista & DRM limitations just yet. In a few years I'll just go straight to V7 and skip Vista, only when XP is no longer supported for Critical updates, in what...eight (8) more years?

 

Good choice!