Should you buy Blu-ray?

Raikoh_91108 February 2010

I found a large section of this review to be somewhat off. I have a Samsung BD-P4600 that I paid £200 for. The picture quality is just as good as any other, and even seems clearer than my old PS3. I do not have a large surround sound system like Jon said you needed and only have a Hitachi ALIS Plasma TV which is a few years old now. The long menu loads take no more than 10 seconds which was from Heroes Season One. Also, many online stores now sell Blu-Ray discs for much less than large stores like HMV who are much more expensive. I paid £15 for Harry Potter Half Blood Prince on Amazon when I pre-ordered it. If you shop around, Blu-Ray isn't quite as expensive as it might be if you just pop into HMV. It is taking a while to put some older films onto Blu-Ray because of converting them into HD, but there are a good few older films available, especially if you buy them from import stores like Axel Music as 90% of Blu-Ray are region free and work on any player worldwide.

James Ollier09 February 2010

I second what Raikoh_911 has said Blu Ray is no where near expensive as to what John was saying about players and the discs think you need to re do this piece John. There are discs out there from £6 if you shop around and a Blu Ray player at a catalogue shop for £94.99.

Adam10 February 2010

This whole article was absolutely terrible, and while the end result was supposed to be positive toward Blu-ray, i can't help but feel it probably did more damage than good This is not what i expect from the countries premiere gadget information source lets address some of the issues raised shall we! Q1 - Why has the take up of Blu-ray been so slow? A1 - It hasn't, get your facts right... Every single report and stat on the take-up of Blu-ray shows that consumer adoption has been far higher and faster than that of DVD at the same point in it's life cycle, and while DVD is actually now in decline with less sales year on year, Blu-ray now accounts for 25% of sales of movie's released for home purchase across all formats including downloads Q2 - Players are so expensive - £1600 !!! A2 - Yes, £1600 for an overpriced top line audio/videophile's wet dream... but that was always true with DVD too... The truth is there are now many many players to choose from in the sub £100 price range that are more than adequate.... hey, you can even pick up a more than decent Sony player with internet connectivity for £99 Q3 - Another box cluttering the place up? A3 - No, it completely replaces your old DVD player as it will also play your old DVD disc's Q4 - The disc's are so expensive, twice the price of DVD (£20) A4 - Only if you shop in some rip-off high street superstore... I buy "Day One" releases for between as little as £10 to £16... wait a few months and you can pick them up in the bargain sections for as little as £5 Q5 - So little content available A5 - Not really true.. The majority of the "must have" back catalogue has already become available, and of course ALL new releases come on Blu-ray and that will be the main share of people's purchases (very few people will actually bother to replace their library of DVD's) Q6 - Disc's take an age to load A6 - Well, if you consider approximately 20 seconds longer than the equivalent movie on DVD to be "an age", then your quite an impatient person... and this time will only drop as future players get faster Q7 - You can download HD movies or watch Sky HD A7 - You really should have explained to people in detail about bitrates, and how all this rubbish that is labelled HD is not the really anywhere near the same quality as Bluray... This is where the major factor of peoples confusion lies when it comes to HD... Many people see stuff like YouTubeHD, or BBC iPlayer HD, or even iTunes HD & Sky HD, and say they cannot see much difference between that and standard tv TV.... What they don't realise is that they are actually watching little more than "High Resolution" standard definition TV.... There a very noticeable difference between these claimed HD sources and a Blu-ray These are just a few of the issues you raised at the start of this article but then didn't actually bother to answer (in any meaningful way) in the remaining article... instead choosing to waste peoples time with some heart beat monitoring nonsense And as for Jason's final "nail in the coffin" claiming it that Blu-ray just gets in the way of moving to "The Cloud" and streaming movies to all our peripherals... well dream on dude coz that ain't happening anytime soon... even if the Government does get off it's backside and implement a decent fibre based internet structure in this country (and make downloading 40GB files actually feasable), there will always be the reluctance for the movie studios to provide us with easy manageable DRM free full quality 40GB files to throw a spanner in the works.

24bit_192khz_11 February 2010

I find most reviews from Gadget show pretty poor but watching the show this week I found Jon topic on blu ray interesting. The best topic talked about was the blu ray issues. First MOST! peple are better off with a 720p TV to get the best from High def TV suchs a Cable HD and SKY HD. Second if you enjoy DVD more than TV then 1080P blu ray of any model will be great for you. Third! Most of us do not buy blu ray because we are fed up with the none stop changes. Blu ray is out now yet the talk is 1.4 3-D blu ray? I own the latest Denon DVD and AMP Flagship (Not blu ray DVD) & my DVD displays a very good picture, my lack in HD-sound is not a concern as i have a very high end setup. So going blu ray is a not yet. I rather download from my computer or xBox 360 if i like to watch a Blu ray films or watch HD from Cable HD box.. Blu ray without HDMI 1.4 will be as good as SACD or DVD_Audio or HDCD 20bit CD"S just a phase....

Gary17 February 2010

In the Daily Mail newspaper a few weeks back, it said that only 10% of people who buy DVDs also buy Blu-Rays. The jump from VHS to DVD was massive in terms of picture quality, but the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray isn't anything to write home about. If Sony etc. want Blu-Ray to phase out DVD, it's going to have to knock out players for under £50, and be realistic with the price of the movies. All in all, I won't pay anything more than £5 for DVDs, thats why I've a massive collection. I have a HD TV, but no Blu-Ray player as I'm happy with DVD. And why have I got a funny feeling that someone is going to come up with a new format?! I know Wikipedia isn't always accurate, but from reading on there about Blu-Ray, it looks like there may be a new format war on the horizon (Samsung and TDK).

Dave19 February 2010

Mr Bentley is normally spot on, but he's totally lost the plot here. I just bought a Philips BDP2500 from Asda for £79!!! OK, it's not Profile 2.0 (so doesn't let you get at the online BD-Live extras) but I rarely loko at disc extras anyhow - where BluRay shines is the picture quality after all. You don't *have* to have surround sound ... but even if you do, you can pick up a reasonable package for a few hundred notes. And if you're worried about the cost of Blu Ray discs, sign up to Lovefilm ... they charge *no* premium for renting BluRay discs over DVDs. C'mon Mr. B, revisit this topic - you did BluRay a big disservice and need to put it right!