I was thinking about what to focus my discussion on this month and since I recently purchased a Blu – ray player I thought it would be a good idea to have a discussion on whether Blu -ray is better than DVD and if it really is worth paying more money for. As always feel free to leave any comments below and I will reply to them or if you’re a twitter fan contact me @Screen_Gal with any suggestions or general comments.
Think back around fifteen years ago when every home had a video player and you would look forward to visiting Blockbuster or the local Global video store to rent or purchase your favourite film on VHS. If someone said that we would soon be watching all of our favourites from a disc we would’ve laughed at the idea! DVD players and DVD’s first came around circa 2003 and they are still a relatively new concept. I can remember my first DVD player costing £50 and I buying two DVD’s to watch: Charlie’s Angels and Reservoir Dogs as they were doing an offer for 2 for £20. That’s really expensive considering I never pay more than £4 for a DVD unless it’s a really good one or a new release that I simply can’t wait for! DVD’s are certainly better quality than VHS and are a staple in most homes throughout the world.
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| VHS tape |
Fast forward to 2006 and another form of DVD is released known as Blu-ray, this is where films are produced using a blue laser rather than a red one to produce a higher quality picture. As stated at the beginning, I am relatively new to the Blu-ray phenomenon having only bought a player last month and so far own 3 Blu-ray discs; Super, Despicable Me and The Lincoln Lawyer. I can definitely see the difference between DVD and Blu-ray and sat in amazement as the opening credits of Despicable Me rolled. Blu-ray is obviously more costly, with a lot of people not wanting to pay extra money for a better quality version of a film that they already own. It does become a rather tricky obstacle to overcome – when you already own around 50 DVDs (like myself!) do you replace them all with Blu-ray versions, if available, or do you keep what you’ve got and maybe only update your favourites?
I would say that I am a Blu-ray convert as I firmly believe that you simply cannot beat the quality picture. Another positive aspect is if you place a regular DVD in a Blu-ray player then it automatically improves the quality of the DVD. The only question that preys on my mind is as technology changes, will something else be made and replace the Blu-ray disc and then we will need to purchase a new player and eventually replace our Blu-ray discs/regular DVD’s.
However, I do still uphold my point; what is the point of updating DVD’s into Blu-rays? Let’s look at the decline of HD DVD’s (released about 5 years ago). They were released a little before Blu-ray and were considered much more reasonable. When the Playstation 3 console was released, containing a Blu-ray player it certainly helped the market as in January 2007 Blu-ray outsold HD DVDs and by May 2008 the release of HD DVDs ceased.
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| Charts from Wikipedia. The left one shows US sales as of Dec. 7th, 2007. Right one updated Jan 5th, 2008. |
Overall, I think that Blu-ray is worth paying more for as the quality is outstanding for both picture and sound. A lot of Blu-ray discs also have more special features than the regular DVD as the films are being re-released. I do love DVD and would never do without it (after all without DVD we would never have Blu-Ray) and I am still determined that I will never replace every single DVD I own into Blu-Ray. And don’t even get me started on Blu-ray 3D DVD’s…
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