Is Blu-ray Worth The Expensive Tab?

High-quality media such as blu-ray continue to flood the market. But many are still not impressed by the improvements offered by this very expensive media option. Compared to DVDs, Blu-ray movies are much more expensive and so are the blu-ray players. Many say that buying blu-ray is just a waste money since it only offers very little improvement when it comes to viewing quality. But of course, blu-ray lovers would beg to differ and would say that blu-ray is definitely worth the expensive tab.

To help you figure out if investing in blu-ray is worth your time and money, let us list the advantages of the Blu-ray experience:

  • Blu-ray offers superb picture clarity, rich colors, and astonishing depth.
  • Blu-ray provides incomparable and really huge storage space.
  • Blu-ray generates better and clearer audio.
  • Blu-ray players are capable of playing other video formats, such as DVDs.
  • Blu-ray, by far, offers the best home viewing experience.

Why Not to Get Blu-Ray

  • DVDs already offer excellent viewing and audio quality.
  • You watch a movie for its story not its visual quality. As long as the video is clear enough there is no need for you to spend more or get one offered in a Blu-ray format.
  • Blu-ray is a transitional video format that won’t likely last. Who would need a physical disc to store or save digitized information in the next 10 years?

Like what you’ll do when choosing phlebotomy training classes, I highly suggest that you weigh the pros and cons of Blu-ray to help you decide if investing in this kind of media format is something that will offer great value for your money.

A Short Product Review Of Three Blu-ray Disc Players That Allow Netflix Streaming

Yes, this is a serious article. We don’t want you spending your hard-earned money on a product that will eventually turn out to be a lemon. Our feature products today are Blu-ray Disc (BD) players. Let’s face it: Although DVD players provided us with great quality video and audio, BD players surpass the DVD standards by a mile. Well, maybe a mile and a half.

So for the purpose of this product review, we sent out our dependable scouts in order to observe, experiment, and analyze which BD players that are currently in the market excel in the ranks of providing you with the best features. We know that high-definition imagery and audio quality would be excellent for all BD players, so we focused on another criterion that our trusty scouts were instructed to look closely into. The criterion is the BD player’s capability to accommodate your choice of movie format. Probably you have been given a disc of your favorite movie and you are excited to see the HD version of it or the movie is in your son’s USB. Or perhaps, you want to take advantage of your Netflix subscription and stream the video direct from the site. There are three BD players that are on par with your preferences.

LG BD390

LG imbued this player with Wi-Fi and high-speed internet capabilities, the easier for you to stream videos from Netflix. In addition to this feature, a USB port in front of the player emphasizes the manufacturer’s intention that movie input should be from a flash drive instead of from a hard disc. Input from a networked hard drive is still possible via an ethernet cable. One gigabyte of integrated memory allows for movie or trailer downloads without the use of a flash drive.

Samsung BD-P3600

With the BD-P3600 you get superior image quality on Blu-ray movies. A Wi-Fi USB dongle is included with the unit, and it also accommodates Netflix streaming. It offers rapid operating speeds, as well as disc loading. In addition to its onboard decoder for DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD, the 1-Gb onboard memory is one of the features that make this BD player a wonderful addition to your home entertainment center.

Panasonic DMP-BD65

Its clean design, excellent playback (for both DVD and BD), as well as the fast loading capabilities are what draw people to the DMP-BD65. Customers rave about the Netflix playback quality (which is also dependent on the quality of the Internet connection). It is a solidly built machine that is guaranteed to be a worthwhile investment.

Movies That You Must Watch On Blu-ray This Month

This month, feast your eyes on the Blu-ray versions of several movies that we recommend for their plot, the brilliance of the actors, and for their breathtaking cinematography. So, stock up on the popcorn and make yourself comfortable as we present to you the Blu-ray movies that you must watch this month.

Inception (Thriller, 2-disc edition)

Leonardo DiCaprio lands the role of a lifetime in this thriller. Here, he plays as a corporate espionage thief, gathering commercial information from his targets while they sleep. Producer Christopher Nolan created a convincing, albeit, disturbing world, and he kept CGI to a minimum, opting instead for “practical methods” during filming. You can watch this movie over and over and experience a deeper sense of satisfaction with each viewing.

Dances With Wolves (Action/Adventure, 20th Anniversary Edition)

Be awed right at the very start of this movie. The prairie never looked so alive, and Kevin Costner convincingly played the stranger lost amidst the wonders of the natural world. The meeting of cultures had never been more enriched than in this Blu-ray version of the film.

Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King (Action/Adventure)

The Blu-ray version is definitely a worthwhile investment. The story picks up when the dark army of Sauron is preparing to do battle with the other denizens of Middle Earth. Frodo and Sam (along with Gollum) have reached Mount Doom, where the Ring needs to be. The imagery is so crisp — you can even see the embroidery details of the characters’ costumes. Even Gollum, who was done in CGI, appeared more lifelike. Non-geeks can even swoon over the love story between Aragorn and Arwen.

Tropic Thunder (Action/Comedy)

Comedic films are usually ignored in favor of action films when it comes to movies in Blu-ray format. After all, who would want to endure a high-def close-up of an actor’s pudgy face when they can be riveted to their seats with high-def explosions and combat scenes? Well, Tropic Thunder combines hilarity and action in a comedy adventure. The plot unfolds as follows: Three overly pampered Hollywood actors are filming a ‘Nam movie, only to stumble across into a real-life battle that they assume was all part of the shoot. Chaos and hilarity ensue.

The Dark Knight (Action)

If you haven’t watched this movie yet, now is the time. If you have already seen it, now is the time to watch it again. The Dark Knight is one of the very first movies to appear in Blu-ray. It shows what Blu-ray format is really capable of delivering. The IMAX scenes bring Gotham City to life. All in all, the movie is a fantastic addition to your film library.

Will Blu-ray Be Here To Stay?

By the time the new millennium rolled in, we all witnessed how DVDs began outselling videocassettes and CDs. In the last six years, too, we saw how the demand for DVD format reached a plateau and how its sales rapidly declined with the introduction of Blu-ray Discs. Currently, we are now witnessing the beginning of Blu-ray’s golden age as the preferred media for high-definition movies. Technological innovations that accommodate Blu-ray technology are also on the rise. However, we have an unasked question niggling at the back of our minds: How long will the Blu-ray format last?

Based on rough estimates and personal experience, videocassettes dominated the home-video scene for twenty years. DVDs usurped that throne, but its reign was short-lived — just about six years. Now, with Blu-ray, consumers are still hedging, and not everyone is comfortable spending so much money on a technology that they think will become obsolete in a few years’ time. Because, although the creators of Blu-ray proclaim that this is the final disc format, consumers instinctively know that the inventors and innovators are still hard at work developing new technologies that will cater to the consumers’ desire for a film-viewing experience that engages all their sensory perceptions.

There is a prediction that in the future, home videos will be sold through flash drives or downloaded from the web. We do see these innovations in their early forms all around us. However, the general consensus is that most consumers are still uncomfortable with the thought that all their digital data — film libraries and record albums collections — are stored or accessible through one server or through flash drives. Consumers feel that this is too risky. What if the flash drive gets corrupted or infected by a virus? In the blink of an eye, a film aficionado’s collection of thousands of movies can become inaccessible or can totally disappear. Or what if the server is down when a person wants to watch a film? It is quite frustrating to be dependent on a third party in order to enjoy a movie. For most consumers, a real disc — something that they can hold in their hands — is much preferred.

It might be that Blu-ray will surpass the duration that DVDs reigned as the format of choice for film and music recordings. In case innovations arrive that will present superior definition than what Blu-ray movies can offer, consumers will probably gravitate toward those innovations. Here is to hoping that Blu-ray will last for more years than DVDs did.