So the format's been around since 2007? ... Impressed? or or

As for me ... I'm a notoriously late adopter of new formats. I own a standard consumer level Sony BDP S360. I use Blu -Ray for rentals mostly.

Mixed results: I was really impressed with the James Bond Remasters (frame-by-frame digitally restored picture by Lowry Digital and remixed DTS sound). Also the two Blu Ray discs I own are impressive ... John Ford's "The Searchers" and Criterion edition of the "Third Man".

Other discs I've rented have been sub par ... not really taking advantage of the format ... IMHO.

My DVD player is a Cambridge Audio Universal player DVD89. The results (video & audio) I'm getting from this unit are impressive on well mastered discs. Probably why I don't have a burning urge to upgrade my DVD collection to Blu Ray.

I may be more impressed in the future ... when I upgrade to a larger LCD TV (currently 37 LCD 720P) and buy a latter generation Blu Ray player.

I've been buying mainly new music releases on Blu Ray that were never available on older formats such as laserdisc and VHS. I've been quite impressed with those so far but the back catalog is quite tiny. DVD has a very extensive list of music titles now available but the quality is often lacking.

My fear is that Blu Ray may not be around long enough to make as much impact as DVD or laserdisc. One mistake I will not be making though is to sell my older formats. I see them all as complimentary to one another and the lasers and even VHS are still being kept!

I don't really think much about it, except that I'm eventually going to be forced to buy a player soon. I've already had to buy a Blu-ray release when I don't have a player because they only released a directors cut of a certain recent movie on BR but not on DVD. So we're eventually going to be forced into adopting the format whether we like it or not.

BUT I refuse to be held to regional restrictions on the movies I purchase (one of the things I HATED about the DVD format.) So I have been looking at region free BR players as of late.

Same here. I've been tempted to upgrade lately but the problem is that 90% of the titles that have tempted me have bee released by Criterion, one of the few BR issuers who actually bother region locking their discs. As I'm in the UK I've been keeping an eye out for a good player that is or can be made BR region free. It's either that or I hold my breath for a UK BR release of the 1972 version of Solaris.

Pretty much all players are DVD region free, but if you want BR region free you either have to pay around £250 plus. However most budget BR players can be made BR region free using the remote, similar to many of the DVD hacks, so if you're not worried about 3D and all the online services etc that more expensive players offer then you should be able to pick up a region free BR player pretty cheap.

Of course with hardware you tend to get what you pay for and a budget player will always be a budget player.

So far I've still not made the upgrade, just my DVD player and LD player at the minute.

I love my Blu-Ray player and Blu-Ray films. Especially for animation, crisp and clean with plenty of bonus features with great sound and picture. What's not to love?

if you find a decent all regions blue ray player let me know. I want to watch my copy of dogs in space.

I'm leaning towards this one:

LG BD-611

Has a built in NTSC/PAL convertor (not all of them have that) and supports Divx, MKV, AVC, MP4 should I want to play downloaded content on it.

The OPPO players can be made region and zone free quite easily.
And they are more than decent, rather top notch!

I love blu-ray. I really hope that it sticks around for awhile. I think a good mastered disc in blu-ray is right on the edge of what the human eye can discern at a descent viewing angle (somewhere around 35 degrees per THX recommendation). The audio is excellent (with some titles in 7.1 lossless). If you have a good setup they really blow anything else out of the water. It makes spending $10,000's on your home theater worth it!

Check out my gallery if interested.....

The first time I watched a High Def movie I almost got sick. To much sharpness. The new King Kong while an aweful movie is awesome in HD. I like it if done right. I have True Blood on hd and it is pretty good. TV shows usually do well in HD. I have most super hero movies on Blu Ray as well. I just cant get over the digital download!

I bought a Samsung BD-UP5000 back in 2007 when I realized that though I had a bunch of HD-DVDs, Bluray was going to win out. Thing is, I really never bought any Blurays so it's sat there basically idle except for the occasional DVD I get from Netflix. Lately I've been streaming movies. Sure, they're older movies, but I never saw them so I'm playing catchup on classic movies over the last 30 years.

On a whole bluray is just rubbish! Nearly all titles are rush jobs off the same DVD with bone dry extras and often skipping or removing some extras that was presnet on the DVD (for the so called perfect format) to make quick dirty crocked money for those rich a$$ snobs!

dts master audio keeps stealing from DOLBY. I don’t know why DOLBY doesn’t sue dts into total liquidation.

Nearly most of all the bluray titles I have or have seen screen captures proves its a losers format and HD 1080p is totally meaningless if colour balance isn’t correct so that it mirrors without any deviation what so ever, but we keep getting bull$hit promises and nothing has changed since the format was released.

STAR TEREK has good colour balance and the DVD is the same as the bluray who cares if its HD I have hardly used the video projector for HD its just a waste of money most of the time!

-laserbite34
I respect your opinion on the matter (although I don't agree with it). I think there is a major difference between DVD and blu-ray. It is true that many discs are not mastered well, but this is true for any format. I have seen "terrible" DVD's (and laserdiscs). There are a number of really well made blu-ray movies and when you put them in comparison to DVD they are far superior. May I ask what equipment you are watching blu-ray's on? What are the lighting conditions of your room? How far are you sitting from the screen. The great thing about blu-ray's is that you have the viewing situation set up to take advantage of the quality, it is quite dramatic. If you are watching blu-rays on a small 28" crt, 15 feet away from the screen using the TV speakers, then of course you are not going to notice the difference. I don't know what your setup is, but if you are playing blu-ray's on high end equipment with a darkened room, with a 35" degree viewing angle on a good 1080p TV or projector system I find it hard to believe that you would not notice a DRAMATIC improvement over DVD.

The "extra" content that is included on blu-ray's is a matter of opinion. Most of the releases are pretty much the same as DVD (commentary, special features, etc) except that blu-ray's have superior lossless audio tracks. In all honesty I usually buy movies for "the movie", and not a commentary, but of course this is not true for everybody.

I love Blu-Ray. However there's a similar problem in terms of consumer preference to what happened when DVDs went mainstream and people complained about the black bars. Widescreen is pretty much the norm so that battle has been won, but the new area of contention is with the film grain. Blu-Ray has such a high resolution that you can actually discern the fine film grain while watching the movie. A lot of people don't like this so the studios have responded by applying mild to heavy digital noise reduction to a lot of Blu-Rays which eliminates most of the grain but also deletes other fine detail and gives the movie an artificial look. Also the excessive sharpening is still a problem but not nearly as bad as it was with DVDs.

That being said there's really no comparison to the Blu Rays of Blade Runner, Taxi Driver, Fight Club, Baraka, Apocalypto etc. The sound and picture quality is insane and I feel like there's really no where else to go from here unless in the future everyone upgrades to 120+ inch screens. I think BD is the final home video format.

I completely agree with you. The DNR (digital noise reduction) on some blu-ray's is crazy. The Predator blu-ray (http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Predator-Blu-ray/11375/#Review) comes to mind, Arnold looks like he's made of clay! We have to remember that this is not the format's fault but rather the studios screwing up the picture on purpose. Film inherently has grain, so if you don't want to see grain it would have to be shot with a digital camera. I also feel that blu-ray has a high enough bitrate to give a very good picture. I can't stand the "high-def" content that my cable company and netflix streams me. I wish the term "high-def" had some real technical requirements that would specifiy 1080p as well as a high bitrate (this is where all the alternatives fail, and nobody seems to bring up bitrate as a factor in content even though it is just as important as resolution).

I think the sound is pretty much topped out as a format and there is nothing else we need. 8 channels of uncompressed, better than CD quality should satisfy 99.9% of the market.

Screen size is also a huge ignored factor. Most people are watching all this high def content on 42" screens sitting 12 feet away, so of course they're not going to get the full 1080p resolution because it's beyond their visual acuity. Very few people watch their TV with a viewing angle over 35 degrees and thus their "perceived resolution" is going to be much less. I think this is why a lot of people say they "can't tell the difference between DVD and blu-ray."

Agree with the points made about film grain. When I view a Blu Ray disc of a classic film ... as an example: The Criterion OOP release of The Third Man ... I expect to see film grain, because that's what you get from a 35mm print. My ultimate goal for a Blu Ray release would be to own the best copy of the original 35mm print possible ... not some animated version of the original. I do like some of the remastering that has been done on some classic films ... they can "restore" the look and feel of the original 35mm print. The key IMHO ... is to stay true to the original source material.

I was an early adopter of Blu-ray, before they won the format battle with HD-DVD. I once saw an example of a Blu-ray playing on a Plasma HDTV and I was hooked. I couldn't get over how clean and crisp the image was. Nothing can beat a well mastered Blu-ray disc, except seeing the original 35mm print in a movie theater. I can also tell the difference between a DVD and BD of the same movie, even on my TV's small screen size. With the BD disc, it feels like I'm looking out a window, while the DVD has less detail and clarity, and more digital artifacts like color banding, macroblocking, "noise", etc.

The only problem I have with the format is the way the movie studios have responded to it: most of the BDs available are current movies (understandable since the format is new), and they have been slow to release classic titles (since most would need expensive restorations). I also have a problem with digital "restorations" that use excessive DNR, Edge Enhancements, and contrast and color boosting.

Hi Guys,

When I first watched HDDVD of ''Fantastic four silver surfer'' I was seriously impressed with the depth of picture detail.

I then purchased my Blu-Ray Player from Pioneer a year or so later, watched the first TRANSFORMERS and IRON MAN movie and again was impressed.

Even though the Laserdisc's is inferior, that for me doesn't matter, as I enjoy all the disc formats that I have.

Well since I’m cynical about bluray I’m still giving it the benefit of doubt, I’d give it a chance just as long as I don’t get screwed over the barrel once every few months.
I brought a few cheapies today

Battle Los Angeles (2011) a kinder of Independence Day meets The War of the Words meets War of the Worlds meets (Skyline which I haven’t brought).

Colour balance on BLA was fine I was expecting the worst but it seemed clear of common colour issues I didn’t bother wasting project lamp on it or any of the other blurays I just used the CRT widescreen, thou it is damn hard to read the end credits on BLA if it was a DVD I'd say it would be a bit easy to read still I strained my eyes to see though all the moriori.

Batman Returns (1992) one of the first DOLBY SR-D titles to go fully public but there were some experimental releases with STAR TREK VI (1991) and other titles. Anyhow the colour balance appeared fine and no slip-ups of the usual colour issues! Nice that the title comes in DOLBY TrueHD as it was DOLBY SR-D release!
The sales girl put the wrong Superman in the case for Superman The Movie (1978) so I got to take that back in 7 ½ hours to get the right disc put in the box!

Too bad its no DOLBY TrueHD but I can live with DOLBY DIGITAL its still packs a wallop on the JBL sound system.
The Perfect Storm (2000) and the auto flagging DOLBY DIGITAL-EX works on this one where the region 2 DVD seems to not want to work and I have to manually select no real fuss I often use matrix rear on some decent stereo surround mixes I used tonight also on BLA.

I have Batman Returns Superman and son of Superman and son of Superman the movie on DVD R2 and Laserdisc also The Perfect Storm and from memory colour and image seems to be the same thou not sure if they mucked around with framing like the usual do sometimes!

The LFE.1 on BLA dts master audio 5.1 “6channel” it seemed to be hardly used! I was I can see the LFE.1 channel on the Behringer BFQ2496 input and I only saw it lighting up a few occasions films are mixed differently and most of the low end was covered by LCRS or LCR was plenty not a whole lot below 20Hz as I have new lead (that arrived today) to patch up on audio processors in the living to pc for Spectrum Lab. The seats vibrated nicely with sub bass shakers.

Not bad film done in kinder of way like Black Hawk Down (2001) with documentary style and gritty camera work like that filming style that was used in Saving Private Ryan (1998) it seems that slow motion and over cranking the camera technique as caught since 1998, now ever film uses it!

laserbite-

Sounds like you got some "descent films" there. May I suggest a few to really get a good result from what blu-ray has to offer? Pick up a copy of Baraka, Tron: Legacy, The Dark Knight, Avatar, Planet Earth, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (crappy movie but 5 star video and sound quality), and Sunshine. I guarantee you will not go back to DVD!

The problem is that a lot of the films you chose (batman returns, star trek) are old and they didn't take the time to do quality re-masters. This is not blu-ray's fault but rather the studios being too cheap. Going with the suggestions I have above really give you the best of what the format has to offer.

Also, why are you watching this on a CRT? I didn't even know that CRT's were made with 1080p resolution (I thought they topped out the sets with 1080i or 720p) which means you may only be getting half the resolution with your TV. Also, were CRT's made with HDMI input? I would recommend using a 1080p calibrated TV/projector with a viewing angle of 35 degrees (very important or your not going to even see the maximum resolution which makes comparison meaningless). Also, some of the movies I have listed above have 7.1 soundtracks (Tron: legacy is one) so 5.1 will not be the "full show."

If you have the opportunity try these out, let us know what you think. Or if you willing to "hop across the pond" I can do a demo for you! Maybe we can spin some LD's while were at it!