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Are Blu-ray's worth the extra Money? (1 Viewer)

Jim Mcc

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Seeing much of a difference also depends on the size of the display though. If someone is using a 40" TV or smaller, I doubt a difference would be visible.
 

David Norman

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Jim Mcc said:
Seeing much of a difference also depends on the size of the display though. If someone is using a 40" TV or smaller, I doubt a difference would be visible.
I can easily see the difference on my 23 and 32 inch sets betweeen DVD and Bluray though of course it's moredependent on seating distance. What I've never seen much difference is with 'upscaling' players which I alwaysthought was either a red herring or placebo affect.
 

jcroy

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David Norman said:
What I've never seen much difference is with 'upscaling' players which I always thought was either a red herring or placebo affect.
A lot of upscalers on dvd player sections, are largely crap.

The only semi-impressive video upscaling I've come across over the years, is playing some video files (ripped from dvds) using a highly customizable software video player on a computer (and doing a lot of tweaking). My starting point is using something like "media player classic" with the madVR render programs.

Watching 10-12 feet away from my large flatscreen tv, my tweaked "media player classic" + madVR video output looks decent enough. But if one watches 2 feet away, it immediately becomes noticeable that it is not a native 1080p hd resolution video.


In practice, this type of software tweaking is something that only really appeals to hardcore video aficionado types with a lot of patience.
 

tjohnusa

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jcroy said:
The individuals I've come across who simply do not give a damn about hd quality video, were largely people who were not collectors nor hardcore fans.

In the past, they were typically the ones who maybe rented a movie once or twice a year. Some may have purchased a dvd once every few years. They were largely "casual" viewers for the most part.
It is the same with audio....shelf systems are now the standard for young ones. Very few will invest in a proper stereo setup.
 

tjohnusa

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I actually feel this will be a moot point in a few years. Everything will be Cloud and computer based digital. Physical copies will be a thing of the past but you will be able to visit "your collection" from multiple sources....and everything will be HD.
 

FoxyMulder

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tjohnusa said:
I actually feel this will be a moot point in a few years. Everything will be Cloud and computer based digital. Physical copies will be a thing of the past but you will be able to visit "your collection" from multiple sources....and everything will be HD.
Nah not in a few years, the infrastructure is improving but bandwidth isn't good enough for everybody to be streaming content just yet, maybe in 10 to 15 years, i think physical media and streaming will co-exist until the bandwidth and infrastructure get to where it's needed, and certainly 4K blu ray is on the horizon but that's just an extension of the current format.
 

FoxyMulder

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tjohnusa said:
It is the same with audio....shelf systems are now the standard for young ones. Very few will invest in a proper stereo setup.
Same with cameras, more and more people are using smartphones for images and bridge cameras with their "super zooms," they just don't care for a good old proper DSLR with better lens, i suppose for just uploading to Facebook those cameras are good enough, i think people take convenience over quality these days, shame really.

Sorry for the double post, must have had this page opened twice and didn't notice, i thought it was a different thread. :D
 

Rick Thompson

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tjohnusa said:
I actually feel this will be a moot point in a few years. Everything will be Cloud and computer based digital. Physical copies will be a thing of the past but you will be able to visit "your collection" from multiple sources....and everything will be HD.
Not while big chunks of the country have to deal with wireless. I'm in one of those chunks, and Verizon wireless is bug city. Even when it works, the fastest connection still suffers from the jumpies.

And that's just SD.

HD? To quote Santa, "Ho! Ho! Ho!"
 

davidHartzog

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I think Blurays are worth it, even older films like Blue Angel and Grand Hotel look better than the dvds.
 

Jason_V

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Rick Thompson said:
Not while big chunks of the country have to deal with wireless. I'm in one of those chunks, and Verizon wireless is bug city. Even when it works, the fastest connection still suffers from the jumpies.

And that's just SD.

HD? To quote Santa, "Ho! Ho! Ho!"
Agreed. I've been saying the same thing for years. Before the studios can abandon physical media, internet has to get a lot better in terms of dowloading speeds and availability. And then, let's not forget, there will always be a subset of the population who wants to hold the disc in their hands and no be beholden to a Netflix/Amazon/Vudu/etc. actually being available.

Netflix has been known to go down from time to time. My PS3 and discs? Never go down unless I don't have power.
 

Sam Posten

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DVDs were a tremendous upgrade over all that came before them. Blu is a bit more incremental. I regularly run old DVDs on my 120" screen from a 2012 vintage projector and am consistently impressed at how well they hold up.

I believe the Blus are worth a small premium but I do not buy new media at full retail all that often. I wouldn't go out and buy a DVD at this point but there is no shame in viewing the ones you own either.
 

Rob_Ray

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I have no qualms about buying DVDs of titles that have little or no chance of ever coming out on BluRay. Mainly Warner Archive titles and TV shows.
 

FoxyMulder

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Sam Posten said:
DVDs were a tremendous upgrade over all that came before them. Blu is a bit more incremental. I regularly run old DVDs on my 120" screen from a 2012 vintage projector and am consistently impressed at how well they hold up.

I believe the Blus are worth a small premium but I do not buy new media at full retail all that often. I wouldn't go out and buy a DVD at this point but there is no shame in viewing the ones you own either.
I have the opposite opinion and view at 104inches via my projector, i feel many DVD's do not hold up as the edge enhancement stands out as does compression artifacts, blu ray is a huge step up from DVD because of this, now some DVD's didn't get the over sharpened approach, these ones do look okay still but many unfortunately do not.
 

Sam Posten

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It all comes down to your expectations really. If you pride yourself on picking on artifacts to the detriment of watching a movie yea you can do that.

I've had non enthusiasts say TWICE in my theater "Wow Bluray looks incredible" when in fact I was showing them DVD to start!
 

Walter Kittel

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As was mentioned on page 1 of this thread...


the increased color saturation should be very obvious to all
I concur with this sentiment. The increased color space of Bd is a big part of the format's appeal to me. You simply do not get the color performance on DVD that is available on Bd. It is technically not possible.

I still watch DVDs on my front projector and enjoy them, but I always try to watch them before I watch any HD content that day on the projector; otherwise the blurriness (relatively speaking) takes me out of the content, once my eyes have gotten accustomed to an HD presentation during that viewing session.

- Walter.
 

earlytalkie

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One misleading thing though is NOT ALL Blu-rays look excellent. I've seen some Blu-rays that look average at best, and I've seen some DVD's that look very good.
When Blu-Ray is good, it looks terrific. I've seen some that are mediocre at best. I have 2 Blu-Ray players and not every Blu-Ray will play on every Blu-Ray machine, as I found out when I took some out of the library. And I don't care to go through "updates" on one of my machines every time a greedy distributor puts some new anti-copy device in the disc. I have a small percentage of Blu-Ray's, but feel more confident about the playability of DVDs.
 

jcroy

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Walter Kittel said:
I concur with this sentiment. The increased color space of Bd is a big part of the format's appeal to me. You simply do not get the color performance on DVD that is available on Bd. It is technically not possible.
At best technically, one can do an approximate extrapolation from the color quality of dvd to bluray.

I use the LAV video decoder with "media player classic" and the madVR renderer.

It looks better than generic dvd-quality video, but takes quite a bit of additional tweaking on the tv and computer program to approximately imitate the color quality of bluray.


In practice I find it's easier to just play the bluray straight out of the box on a generic bluray player, than tweaking dvd-quality video on a highly customizable computer video player program. (Spending a lot of time and effort tweaking a computer video player program, is largely the domain of the hardcore enthusiasts).
 

FoxyMulder

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Walter Kittel said:
I concur with this sentiment. The increased color space of Bd is a big part of the format's appeal to me. You simply do not get the color performance on DVD that is available on Bd. It is technically not possible.

- Walter.
This is wrong.

There is no increased colour space on BD, it's YUV 4:2:0 and 8 bit depth, the better colour is simply down to the better resolution, better codecs and higher bitrate that allows for better compression of the image, the DVD uses REC 601 and BD uses REC 709, in no way does the BD use a superior colour space, now the Sony mastered in 4K releases use xvYCC, an increased colour gamut, the jury is still out on that because televisions and projectors are not calibrated for that increased colour gamut but it's nice to have.

I would also say that brand new film scans and work on those scans will bring out more detail and make the colours look more vibrant, the DVD may have been using sub standard older film scans, compare a brand new film scan and the DVD and blu ray from that scan and it will look identical, example below. There is no difference in colour standards between blu ray and DVD.

http://www.darkrealmfox.com/dvd_bluray_comparisons/beauty_and_the_beast/beauty_1.html

Another example.

http://www.darkrealmfox.com/dvd_bluray_comparisons/tomb_raider2/dvd-bluray%20comparison%20-%20Tomb%20Raider%20The%20Cradle%20Of%20Life%20-%2022.html

Colour is the same when they are using the exact same master for the DVD and blu ray, differences will come from different masters and not because DVD is in any way inferior with regards the colour space and what blu ray currently offers us.
 

jcroy

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Where is the brighter brights and darker darks on bluray coming from? (In comparison to the brights and darks on dvd).

I've noticed this on various modern movies which I've compared the bluray and dvd versions.
 

FoxyMulder

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jcroy said:
Where is the brighter brights and darker darks on bluray coming from? (In comparison to the brights and darks on dvd).

I've noticed this on various modern movies which I've compared the bluray and dvd versions.
Its an increase in resolution, it gives an illusion of this because everything is more in focus and detailed on the blu ray.
 

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