leighdu

Although we have Hi-Def TVs in our home, we don't (as yet) have any Blu-ray players; we have DVD players and a small batch of DVDs but no big collection of them. Everything we have seems to be in good shape and the players perform well with our TVs, and given the economic downturn, we have no immediate plans to buy a Blu-ray player or the discs.

Nevertheless, I am wondering: is the Blu-ray format really better than DVD? I have heard lots of people saying it is but I rarely get any really good explanations or comparisons.

bicker

Pardon me for shouting:

Yes.



Let me be fair about this: DVD is really good. The difference between analog broadcast and DVD is substantial, and actually is greater than the difference between DVD and Blu-ray. But that's really a credit to just how much better DVD is than analog broadcast -- it doesn't really take anything away from Blu-ray.

The advantage of Blu-ray over DVD is very significant, if the program was made to exploit that advantage. So, for example, I wouldn't bother with Blu-ray for, say, The Simpsons, but for a program where picture quality was a significant concern in the crafting of the program, you will definitely note a significant improvement going from DVD to Blu-ray.

Do keep in mind that Blu-ray delivers effectively double the bitrate of HD television (broadcast or cable). So if you think all you get from Blu-ray is HD (like the HD channels you get) on disc, that's not the case -- Blu-ray is even better than that.

Something else to keep in mind in this regard: While Blu-ray does support more advanced audio technologies, DVD did support DD5.1, which is the best most of us can handle in our home theaters anyway. So while there is significant advantage in video quality that can be derived from Blu-ray, don't expect a big step-up in the quality of the audio... again, this is a credit to how good DVD was, and doesn't take anything away from Blu-ray.

Blu-ray is still significantly more expensive than DVD. However, for some things, I think it is worth it. We have purchased the Blu-ray version of Planet Earth, and of the Harry Potter films. We probably won't buy many BDs (but we didn't buy many DVDs either), but rather instead add BD access onto our Netflix subscription next summer, and exploit our new device that way. It's a few extra dollars a month and at that rate well worth it.

heather

So what would all the extra storage be for? That reminds me of floppy disks vs. cds. A floppy was too small to hold even one low res picture, but putting one high res picture on a cd seems like a waste.

bicker

Blu-ray is used to store high definition video.

bm42

We have a very good Sony 1080 set and was given a blu-ray player last year. We already had a Sony DVD player-recorder. The blu-ray does seem to be sharper than what we record from satellite on the player-recorder but not by much. I think this small difference may be attributed to the TV being HD. The problem with the blu-ray is the cost of the discs for it. Even rental is substantially higher than regular DVD. We do not see the benefit of paying the higher cost at this time. The DVD rentals and our own recording of some programs does not appear to be so much less quality as to warrant the price difference for blu-ray discs