Do you have a BluRay player? Do you have a DVD player?

[Shat Happens]

I feel not everybody migrated from DVD to Blu Ray as it was when DVD succeded VHS.

Since the 1980s I had 3 VCRs, 3 DVD players (only one of each at a time) and all my computers had/have DVD drives.

But I dont have nor want BluRay. Seems like a scam and a waste. I have several DVDs (the discs) already and I dont watch them much nowadays, with streaming and downloads.

 

[TheSeeker]

Blu-Ray is hardly a scam. You only have to look at the difference in quality of TNG on DVD and Blu-Ray to see that.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

It's not a scam or a waste.

It is a visible quality improvement over DVD and while it was initially expensive like all new technologies, prices have come down to what DVDs used to be while you find DVDs in bargain bins now almost exclusively or in that special retro corner.

Bluray is downwards compatible, so you can continue to play your old DVDs on the new player but enjoy the much better quality of picture and sound of the new discs.

 

[Pingfah]

I have a Blu Ray player and a Blu Ray drive in my PC. I don't have a DVD player because the Blu Ray player plays them anyway.

Blu Ray players are not any more expensive than DVD players now, so it's hard to see how they are a scam or a waste since they also play DVDs. I buy a few Blu Rays because you can't get the huge amount of extra content many of them carry for my favourite films with streaming services.

DVDs look like shit by comparison, also.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I still use a VCR to record some TV shows, but I've got about two DVD players hooked up to my standard definition TV and a third in my computer. I understand the advantages of bluray, but I'm fine with what I got as I have a rather large DVD and VHS collection that I barely watch as it is. By the time the DVD format has gone the way of 8-track tapes, I probably will be just watching just a few downloaded stuff anyway, so bluray isn't something I just got to have.

 

[Starbreaker]

It's not a scam just because you prefer streaming media. I have a PS3 and a decently sized LED HDTV. The picture quality of Blu-rays far outshines that of DVDs, and especially VHS. A DVD holds about 4.7 gigs of data. A Blu-ray disc is up to 50 gigs. That's much better picture, sound, and extra material. I watched my Star Wars Blu-ray alongside my DVD not to long ago. The color and detail are far superior. It's supported by every major studio and the prices are almost DVD level now. I've bought most of mine for $10 or less and at the most $100 for a set that I really wanted.

 

[SPCTRE]

^ I'll second that.

Streaming is great if you have a fat pipe.

Yes, I'm talking about penises, but also bandwidth.

Even then though, compression artifacting and buffering as well as server availability issues may arise from time to time. It is during these rare occurences, that I really appreciate the reliability old-fashioned physical media formats such as Blu-ray offer.

 

[Pingfah]

Yeah, I stream some HD stuff on my PC, but the experience is not as good as watching a Blu Ray disc, which are, for the most part, flawless in their delivery.

Also, I don't always want to boot up a noisy power sucking PC when I could just pop in a disc to the player. My player supports Netflix etc as well, which is ideal.

 

[Vendikarr]

I have a DVD player set up in my entertainment center. The kids gave me a Blu-ray player for Christmas, but I haven't swapped out the DVD player yet. I don't have any Blu-ray disks.

 

[Kelthaz]

I don't have either as a standalone device, but I do have a PS3.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

I've had a BluRay player for over a year, but I'm waiting for my DVD player to die before I hook it up.

 

[Melakon]

I'm on a fixed income, so I can't justify spending all the money needed just to watch Blu-ray. First, I'd need a high def television, all I have are old tube model tv's. Then I'd need a Blu-ray player, and finally I'd have to buy a movie to watch on it. When I've glanced at Blu-ray films in stores, I was seeing prices averaging over $20, which is more than I can afford to spend if I want to build a library.

On top of all that, my vision is deteriorating, so I probably wouldn't see much improvement over dvds anyway.

ETA: I didn't start buying dvd until around 2008 anyway, as I still had a working vcr. I only switched when I couldn't find tapes anymore.

 

[selina]

I still have my old VCR, which I use occasionally. Furtheremore, I have two DVD players and one Blu-ray player. I've got two DVD players because my fist one only plays DVDs with my country's region code. A couple of years ago I bought the complete Farscape collection and unfortunately it came with another region code, so I couldn't watch the damn DVDs. That annoyed me so much that I bought a really cheap region free DVD player. So now I've got two. And then Blu-rays became more affordable so I upgraded.

EDIT: ^ Yeah, I've still got an old tube television as well, but if I buy a new one I've already got the Blu-ray player to go with it .

 

[John Clark]

Still have both and a vcr or two as well.

The vcr is for the old stuff that is not available on dvd/blu and recording anything that the Tivo can't access (or if there is too much on at once even with timeshifting)

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I've had a blu-ray player for 9 months now. I still have a now 10 year old dvd player still hooked up to my tv as I'm just too lazy to take it down and dispose of it properly. I've only replaced a few dvds with blu-rays since I don't want to spend a bunch of money to upgrade them and the dvds look so much better on the blu-ray player it's not really necessary.

 

[BillJ]

Blu-Ray is hardly a scam. You only have to look at the difference in quality of TNG on DVD and Blu-Ray to see that.

+1

But I dont have nor want BluRay. Seems like a scam and a waste.

What makes you think it's a scam and a waste?

 

[trekkiedane]

Neither -Although I do have an optical drive, that reads/writes DVDs, in my PC.

Oh; and I threw all of my VHS cassettes away some years ago

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I have both. Blu-ray players (which play DVDs too) hooked up to the widescreen in the living room and my bedroom, and DVD players on my laptop, desktop, in the other bedrooms, one in the car, and I have a portable one for the beach or park. Hell, we even have a working VCR for some of our old VHS tapes of home movies and stuff we taped off the TV.

The quality is noticeably better, the prices for both the players and Blu-ray discs are comparable to what DVDs were at their prime, they're backwards compatible so my DVD collection is still playable on them, and the format has been in widespread use for going on a decade now, so it's hardly a flash in the pan or a scam.

 

[Timby]

My wife bought us a Blu-ray Disc player for Christmas, and holy shit the difference is incredible, even with our seven-year-old 720p plasma TV.

I mean, I thought upscaled DVDs looked nice enough, but my God, when a transfer is done well, it can be just utterly sublime.

The Ghostbusters Blu-ray is magnificent, as well -- just make sure to get the 4K release from last May, and not the 2009 Blu-ray (the color timing is shot to all hell on the 2009 release, it's just atrocious).

 

[MacLeod]

I have both a DVD player and a BR player as well as a DVR-DVD, and the only reason I still have the DVD player is that it's a region free one.

BR gives a superior picture quality to DVD, as for streaming. I can barely stream low quality SD never mind HD quality, same problem with downlading it would simply take to long to download.

There is room for streaming/downlading as well as physical media. Even if I could stream I would still by BR as I actually like owning the film.