Early adopter's dilemma

I have been back-and-forth about Blu-Ray. Is it worth committing to a new format, when probably in five or ten years we'll just be downloading in hi-def? If I do get a Blu-Ray player, should I get a PS3, which is allegedly Profile 2.0 compliant, or do I wait for fall, when the newer, cheaper Profile 2.0 players are supposed to come on the market?

Now Amazon is trying to force my hand with a Buy Two Get One Free sale on Blu-Ray discs. What do you think, readers? Should I take the plunge, even if I won't be buying a player for a couple of months?

Comments

If the replacement is 5 to 10 years down the road, I'd go for it. You'll get plenty of use out of it. And even with an upscaler DVD player, DVDs aren't as good as Blu-Ray. The colors are just much, much richer. If you've got a HDTV you might as well go whole hog and get one.

And the way I look at it is with the PS3 you're getting a gaming platform too. Even if you don't use it too much, that satisfies my bargain hunter instinct. And they do have some cool little games; FlOw is a unique and relaxing game you can download for 8 bucks.

Posted by Toxic | July 15, 2008 9:36 AM

1. PS3, definitely. It's one of the best players out there. New ones can only save you so much. (Limited gains from "shorting").

2. As a side benefit, you can get "Rock Band" and geek out with 3 friends.

3. Some cable systems already have som HD content on demand. Cablevision has it in my area.

4. I don't have a Blu Ray player because the PS3 is the best one, and I can't be trusted NOT to play games on it to the detriment of my other commitments.

Posted by Stephen W. Stanton | July 15, 2008 9:38 AM

Do you have an HDTV?* There's really not much point in buying a blu-ray player if the output is sent to a standard def TV.

*grammatical side question: should it be 'an' HDTV, or 'a' HDTV?

Posted by Independent George | July 15, 2008 9:50 AM

Last time I got materially exuberant, I plunked down the cash for the PS3 -- I'm a sucker for the subversive fun of the GTA series. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

After comparing prices and packages with the other BluRay devices on the market, I decided PS3 had the rest beaten. The cheapest PS3 setup came in below the dedicated BluRay players at the time (at least from brands I would trust). Dunno if that still applies: That was six months ago.

I like the BluRay and its features. Plus, you get some amount of limited WWW access, which I thought to be a plus. And with the games, you can store vast quantities of geeky gamers on your living room sofa for endless periods of time. Do your part in cleaning up the streets of DC...

Posted by MarkG | July 15, 2008 9:51 AM

Unless you have a great TV, you'll never notice the improvement of BluRay over DVD.

Personally, I watch my DVD's on my computer, where I have a nice big monitor. Even there, I can hardly see the compression artifacts. Most DVD's look just fine. Although I probably would buy the Planet Earth series in BluRay, since they are visually spectacular. For most movies though, why bother?

Posted by Michael | July 15, 2008 10:00 AM

I think it's "an HDTV." And I agree, the HDTV makes a Blu-Ray worthwhile. Or, at least, it makes the HD-DVD player I got for Christmas worthwhile. Damn it.

Posted by Kyle | July 15, 2008 10:00 AM

Now Amazon is trying to force my hand with a Buy Two Get One Free sale on Blu-Ray discs.

I didn't see three discs on that list that I'd want to own, unfortunately.

Posted by Just Dropping By | July 15, 2008 10:07 AM

While there are HDTV movies available on demand from my cable company (Comcast), I've started to notice problems with their HDTV system. As they have added more HD channels (to compete with satellite, Verizon FiOS, and AT&T's Uverse), they have run out of bandwidth and have had to crank up the compression. It's not a problem with many programs, but if there is a lot of fast movement in the frame (like with sports or action movies) you get a lot of pixelation on the screen.

Until they pull fiber to the house, or convert to an IP multicast system like Uverse, this is going to be a problem.

As for Blu-Ray, I've been thinking about getting one and the consensus seems to be that the PS3 is a darn good player and plays games. Right now there aren't a lot of games I want to play on it, not being a twitch gamer and having no interest in GTA or sports games, there are a number on the horizon that look good.

Posted by ech | July 15, 2008 10:23 AM

The Amazon 3-for-2 Blu-Ray sale is a monthly occurence, so I wouldn't make any commitments just to take advantage of that.

Posted by Robert | July 15, 2008 10:29 AM

In addition to the PS3, you might also consider the Sony BDP-S350 and Samsung BD-P1500 standalone players for the same price. The big downside of the PS3 is that it will not work with infrared universal remotes with additional addon hardware that is either expensive ($100) or often unavailable.

For more see the AVS subforum on Blu-Ray players: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=149

Posted by DWAnderson | July 15, 2008 10:35 AM

I got a 1080P HDTV and blu-ray is the only way I can see something that takes full advantage of the TV's capabilities. Cable HD is 720P. Movies do look noticeably better. It's not a WOW moment like the first time I saw a DVD after years of VHS, but it is good. I got '2001: A Space Odyssey' on blu-ray and it is spectacular. I thought, 'This is why they make blu-ray.' 'Blade Runner' is also really, really good. With other stuff, like 'The Sopranos', there is more detail, but I am not sure it's worth the money. Right now, most blu-ray movies are just the latest Hollywood crapola, but hopefully the selection will get better as the technology is more widely adopted and the blu-ray discs will be better transfers, like '2001.'

Another point, the sound is much better on blu-ray. So if you're into the whole home theater 5-speaker set-up, the sound on my brother-in-law's blu-ray is much clearer, with each channel distinct. I, sadly, live in an apartment, and have only two speakers, but I do notice a cleaner, fuller sound.

I'm glad I got the blu-ray. For visually lush movies, I think it's worth it. And whatever we do, in 5 years there will be a new technology introduced to get us to re-purchase our favorites. Such is life in our modern capitalist society.

Posted by john | July 15, 2008 10:42 AM

As for downloading, I still think we're a long way off. Even though MP3's have been downloaded for a long time, it still seems like people are buying CD's anyways. The bandwidth required for on-demand blu-ray quality movies (1080p + lossless sound) is much greater than what we currently have and not as reliable as a disk in the drive.

Posted by JordanT | July 15, 2008 10:50 AM

I don't think the improvement in picture quality Blu-Ray offers is worth the costs of upgrading. And yes, I've seen them side-by-side in stores and yes, I acknowledge that the Blu-Ray discs look better. But they don't look better enough to a) justify the higher player and TV costs, b) justify the higher disc costs and c) justify the inconvenience of its DRM, especially because you don't know how it will change in the future.

Posted by Jake | July 15, 2008 10:59 AM

We were early Blu-Ray adopters, having bought ours over a year ago. We've also got a 60-inch HD set.

Upsides:

*Yes, the picture is noticeably better on most movies.
*There's more of a tendency to get pictures that fill your screen rather than having the annoying shadowbox effect

Downsides:

*On ours, at least, the load time is annoyingly slow.
*There's still not a great selection of movies.

Beyond this, though, I wonder why you'd bother to buy movies in any format in the Netflix era unless they're stunningly cheap. Netflix will send you Blu-Ray movies at no additional charge if you set that as your preference, defaulting to standard DVD if there's no Blu-Ray for that title.

Posted by James Joyner | July 15, 2008 11:12 AM

It depends what your goals in life are. If your goal is to watch movies in an amazing way at home and/or play Rock Band, then get the PS3. If you're trying to save up for something else, like a house or retirement, then save your money. If you can't decide then just delay the choice. They'll still be selling Blu-Ray players a year from now and they'll probably be cheaper and/or have better features.

Posted by Nelson | July 15, 2008 11:52 AM

I'm solidly in the "I'll wait" camp. Players overpriced, movies overpriced (and selection is limited). No BD discs at the corner rental store. And like the flexibility of DVDs (I can rip 'em, copy 'em, recode 'em for my portable devices, etc).

Posted by Slocum | July 15, 2008 11:57 AM

If there are definitely three movies that you want to buy, go for it. Even if the price of Blu-Ray goes down, it probably won't go down enough such that Amazon's current 3-for-2 offer is a bad deal.

However, if you're only buying three movies because of the deal. . . . Well, you know yourself better than I do.

Posted by Trieu | July 15, 2008 12:24 PM

Well

I want to buy an tv. That doesn't sound right.
I want to buy an HDTV. Sounds better for some reason, but hell if I know how you can distinguish the two grammatically. So I'm going to stick with "a HDTV."

And yes, you can tell the difference without a great tv. My HDTV was a moderate 1000 bucks; you can tell the difference. The thing that struck me was how amazing the eyes look, especially blue eyes.

Selection is weak, discs are overpriced, sure. They do have some rentals for it, but not a lot. But I don't regret it. Get a decent home theatre system, a decent big screen, and a blu ray and you have some amazing home movie watching experiences.

Posted by toxic | July 15, 2008 1:47 PM

"An HDTV" is correct.

The reason is the letter H itself is spelled/pronounced "aitch" and "an" is used in place of "a" before an initial vowel sound.

Posted by Nelson | July 15, 2008 2:47 PM

The PS3 is still the best value as a Blu Ray player. It's only downside is that it can't bitstream the new HD audio codecs, but since it can decode them internally, you can still easily listen to them via LCPM. It's a good DVD upscaler as well, and you can use it to stream all of your music and videos stored on your computer through a network using a program like TVersity. As a multimedia home theatre device, it can't be beat. (Yes, it has the bluetooth remote, but it's actually pretty nice). Oh yeah, it plays games too.

As for BD movies, I was an early adopter of HD and bought a 50" DLP 720p set in late 2004. Most BD discs blow away their DVD counterparts, although some don't--you have to see how they were encoded, and some studios don't give a damn. It's not just resolution either--BD colors are usually better as well. If you don't want to sink money into a lot of them, just switch your preferences in Netflix to send a BD disc whenever one is available. You can try a lot of movies that way.

Go to highdefdigest.com to check out whether a movie is worth getting on Blu Ray or not--they do good analysis of the video and audio encodes on almost all releases.

Posted by CMC79 | July 15, 2008 2:50 PM

toxic -

You kind of answer your own question, you just never knew why before.
"I want to buy an tv. That doesn't sound right."
You're correct, it doesn't sound right and it isn't right.

"I want to buy an HDTV. Sounds better for some reason, but hell if I know how you can distinguish the two grammatically."
It does sound better and it is correct. You distinguish the two grammatically by sound. If it has an initial vowel sound, use "an". If it doesn't, use "a".

When it doubt, trust what sounds correct.

Posted by Nelson | July 15, 2008 2:58 PM

Ditto what the folks are saying about the PS3; I bought one to serve primarily as a Blu-Ray player and it, quite simply, is awesome. I hate to watch standard definition DVD's now because, when compared with Blu-Ray, they flat out suck to look at. And they sound lousy, what with the icky, muddy compressed audio tracks. Get the PS3; it's well worth your while if you're serious about moving up from DVD's, even if you only occasionally use it as a gaming platform.

Posted by John Barron | July 15, 2008 3:11 PM

Five to ten years? If it is going to take five to ten years for the movie industry to get HD on the net, we won't have a movie industry in ten years. The pirates are transitioning to HD now. It is not so-called FullHD with 20Mbps, but it is significantly better than DVD or what is legally available on the net.

Interestingly the pirates seem to be better at getting the most quality out of the bits than the people doing the encoding for blu-ray. I'm sure there is some interesting competition going on which explains it.

Posted by Mr Alpha | July 15, 2008 4:22 PM

Mr. Alpha - Hackers do it for love and respect. Studios do it for cash.

You'll note that dodgy Beijing or Chinatown copies tend to suck (VCDs, etc), while hacked copies tend to rock (cam'd versions excluded). People on thin margins competing on price forget about quality, people that do it for a hobby are obsessed...

Posted by Hey | July 15, 2008 4:55 PM

I would go for the PS3 for several reasons.
1) You get to game as well.
2) You get downloadable content as well as the BluRay.
3) It's upgradable. When they add features to BluRay they extend them to the PS3 - you don't get that future proofing with mainstream players.

Posted by Chris | July 16, 2008 7:26 PM

Get the PS3.

I rarely play games on it but think it's great to be able to dump all of your music, pictures, and home video on the PS3's hard drive and easily enjoy any of it any time, including pictures and music at the same time. The Bluetooth remote is a bonus, while listening to music I can change the volume from anywhere in the house, or even in the backyard (I got outdoor speakers after getting the PS3). BluRay does give you a noticeably better picture if you have a good TV. It also gives you much better sound if you have good speakers and receiver. And it does give you some additional features, like going through the menues while continuing to watch the movie.

Very few DVDs are worth owning; get them from Netflix.

I also highly recommend the Roku if you use Netflix.

Posted by Bjartur | July 17, 2008 10:07 AM