Anybody who buys a luxury item(especially now)because they felt "strong armed" into it is an idiot and deserves to get ripped off. I buy things when I want them, not because society tells me I need to.
I've adopted Blu-Ray, but only for films which I feel benefit enough from the additional resolution to justify the additional cost and which I don't already own. The only films I'd be willing to double dip on are the LOTR EEs. Incidentally, I was furious yesterday when I popped in District 9 on Blu-Ray and was immediately treated an unskippable trailer for some Michael Jackson production. Fuckers are pushing their luck, I'm not exactly averse to piracy. 3D? Nah. I don't mind it, but I'm not paying for it either.
Then you are misinformed. There is a standard. Most devices that are being sold now are supporting it, or will through a future firmware update.
What standard do you need? There is an HDMI spec for delivering 3D content in various resolutions - HDMI 1.4(a) - for 3D blu-ray and 3d broadcast content. (You can find info about it here) THIS IS THE STANDARD. So any 3D blu-ray player can connect to any 3D TV. What else do you want??? Do you want a standardized 3d glasses? Why? The standard is agnostic when it comes to how the 3D is displayed. If a manufacturer comes up a TV with better glasses (or a display with no need for glasses), it will still accept the 3D standard content. This is a future-proof standard for stereoscopic 3D content. Any further 'standardization' will just lock down progress. You all want your 3D blu-rays to be playable in the future without glasses, right???
When I first showed DVDs played on my HD-DVD player, everyone immediately noticed the difference between regular DVD res, and the upconverting. The DVDs looks as good as the dedicated HD-DVD discs...so nope, I'm not a skeptic at all about Bluray. 3D is another matter, I know its better than the old 3D process, but I don't really have a particular interest in it. RAMA
Yes. It is called HDMI 1.4(a). If your TV supports this input, then it is 3D ready. AFAIK all 3D televisions now on sale support it. All new 3D blu-ray players support it. Older 3D capable blu-ray players will support it after a firmware upgrade. Heck, even PS3's are receiving 3D support via a firmware upgrade. (or have already received it)
^ I know what HDMI is. As I said, I'm concerned with the TVs themselves. Will any 3D television, regardless of its specific method of displaying 3D, be able to display any 3D blu-ray or cable/satellite channel *IN 3D*, regardless of how that blu-ray or channel is encoded? Aren't blu-rays and TV channels encoded with a specific method of 3D, which may or may not be compatible with the actual TVs?
I've been buying Blu-rays for about a year and a half now and own more then 130 titles. So that would be a no. However, I'm not a huge fan of 3D, at least as long as 3D glasses are required.
On the contrary, I'm in love with blu-ray. I have acquired about 200 blu-ray discs ever since I got myself a player, which was about a year ago. I used to be into dvd collecting, but high definition has added a whole new dimension tot the experience of watching films. I think I've watched as little as five dvds this past year. People who see little difference between dvd and blu-ray need to have their eyes examined. It's true that there are some sub-standard bluray transfers on the market, but the vast majority of titles offer an impressive video and audio upgrade over its dvd counterpart. As a fan of the entirety of motion picture history, I am thrilled to see titles from all eras such as F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927), John Ford's The Searchers (1956), and Bernando Bertolucci The Last Emperor look absolutely stunning in high definition. I recently got the classic British tv series The Prisoner on blu-ray and I was floored by the pristine picture quality. After the dark years of VHS, DVD was a groundbreaking format that offered original aspect ratio, lots of bonus material and superior video & audio. While the improvement upon dvd may not be as radical, blu-ray is the format I've been waiting for my whole life. In the face of digital downloads and streaming, this will most likely be the last physical format. Nevertheless I hope it will be around for a long while.
There is a difference between old shows and new shows. Sure TOS-R you end up seeing what the director never intended. Personally I'm ok with that, but if you're not I respect that and stick with DVD. But for new shows produced to be seen in HD from the start I'm not interested in buying it on DVD. My first Blu Ray TV purchase was BSG, and I haven't regretted the purchase once.
I've got no problem with Blu-Ray as it is a direct upgrade over DVD. I can't stand people who go on about how everything should be in "HD" and how "HD" is some amazing technology; guess what, it isn't. Good computer monitors have been doing the same resolutions since forever, the only reason that "HD" resolutions are being put into widespread use now is that there is now affordable, compact, idiot-proof media with enough capacity to store decent amounts of video at that resolution, and that's prompted TV manufacturers to bring television displays into the 21st century which has in turn prompted cable/satellite providers to introduce "HD" services to take advantage of people with these "new" TVs. Higher resolution is almost universally an improvement, but the "HD" enthusiasts acting like it's the most amazing thing since sliced bread who probably run their computer monitors at 1024x768 still just irritate me to hell. 3D on the other hand is an entirely subjective thing, and I personally think it's a pointless gimmick. Movies aren't supposed to be like theme park attractions.
Re: The "standard" thing, MLB is talking about. I think he's talking about the fact that there's no programing/software/hardware standard yet to the extent that one has to have glasses made specifically for the TV. You can't, for example, take your glasses to a friend's different TV and have it work. This, I believe, is related to there being no programing/software-to-hardware standard. Think of it this way: Imagine if every maker of a DVD player had their own "standard" when it came to the media. Whenever you bought a DVD you had to make sure you bought the correct maker's DVD and that DVD could only be played on your machine (or that maker's machine.) A bit of an extreme example, sure, but it's pretty much the problem. Some-what similar to the whole DVD-R/DVD+R BS when recordable DVDs first came out. There was no standard and you had to ensure your machine recording the DVDs was correct and the machine playing the DVDs had to be the same format and the discs themselves had to be the same format. Hell, an even better example is from the earlier days of computer software where, setting aside Apple, there were several OS formats and your software had to match. Then Windows came along and standarized/took it all over. No longer did you have to worry about whether your software could run on DOS, Amiga, whatever because everything ran on Windows. This needs to happen with 3D TVs. It needs to made so that any pair of glasses you buy works on any and every TV.
Blu-ray is great. The 3D thing is pretty silly- what is it, the 1950s again? (or, 80s, or 70s, it's been revived a few times). I ignore 3D because I wear glasses anyway and wearing a pair of glasses over my other glasses just enters over into a level of absurdity I am not willing to cross. I don't see the 3D thing as much of an issue since any 3D feature is also available in 2D and I will just continue to watch it that way.
Bluray is cool. I think for some films like comedies, unless the price difference is negligible, I will get on DVD since the visual fidelity isn't a major reason why I will enjoy the movie. For stuff like The Dark Knight? Hells yes. Just watch the opening scene on DVD and then switch to Bluray. You will be converted.
I'm not a skeptic toward blu-ray or 3D at all--I have nothing against new (or newly refined) technologies at all--but I have never been one to hurry and get the latest things. They'll either still be there when I get to them (and usually cheap by then) or they will have already been replaced by something newer. I don't mind being the last one on the block to convert to stuff or not keeping up with the Joneses. Heck, even though I've got multiple DVD players in my house, I still love my VCRs and enjoy looking at shows I recorded years ago on videotape.
I'm not sold on BD no, as my vision is unable to tell the difference between something that's HD and regular D, so buying into a more expensive technology would be a waste of money which I can't justify. Especially given how many DVDs I already have and the rate I collect them. I do have an HDTV though due to the forced cable upgrade a while ago, however. 3D glasses don't work on me either, they just make everything look blurry and give me a headache.