The good thing about many BD players is that they also support DVD play back. So you can save some money if you don't need the BD quality.
With black Friday coming up, you may be able to buy both. BD players are cheap.
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Blue ray or apple TV?
- Thread starter Dr Kevorkian94
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If you like movies with action and special effects -- and have a large, HD tv with surround sound speakers than blu ray is without peer. But if you are watching content with a high dialogue to explosion ratio like sit-coms than blu ray does not add much value.
Personally I use the blu ray for epic movies and the iPad for more mundane watching. Also, if you have an iPad you can buy a cable adapter and use it like an Apple tv.
I'm one for overkill, I have a Samsung 40inch, a mac mini, 
TV and my Panny bluray player. The mini is new and I would not need the TV if I got it first but now I don't use it much. It all boils down to what you use your TV for. Using Apps to watch rented movies, buying digital movies, ripping and watching your own collection of movies? I do it all.
TV and my Panny bluray player. The mini is new and I would not need the TV if I got it first but now I don't use it much. It all boils down to what you use your TV for. Using Apps to watch rented movies, buying digital movies, ripping and watching your own collection of movies? I do it all.Attachments
I'd spend $400 on a hackintosh with a Blu-ray drive so long as you have ethernet. If not, Apple WiFi card in a PCIe to Mini-PCIe card for another $90. Then install Plex and be done with it. No True-HD or DTS-MA, but you'd get fabulous 1080p video and on-demand access to all of your videos.
Ive decided to get both, I totally forgot that my birthday is coming up so it gives me the excuse lol. Thanks for all the info i already order my ATV
Good choice! Enjoy!
Well according to the tracking info my ATV should be hear today! What I now realize is that the reason I would have both is because there are some movies I'd rather have a physical copy. And Whatever blu ray player I decide to get ill go from there. Thanks for all the help!
I own both and I use the AppleTV far more.
Netflix, youtube, vimeo are what I use most on the AppleTV. I also ripped a lot of my DVD's with the goal of ripping EVERY one of my DVD's into my iTunes library to share out to my AppleTV. My blu-ray player gets used maybe twice a week for movies. I would say own both but if you had to pick which one to get first go with the AppleTV.
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Just a little advice, hard wire the AppleTV over wireless. Makes a big difference. And with that you will need a Ethernet connection for your Blu-ray player because they need security updates a few times a year to work with the newest Blu-Ray movies. So you might as well run a line to your TV area and put a switch there so you can plug both in to a cable.
I prefer physical movies to digital downloads, I can get them cheaper in Physical copy. Most of my AppleTV usage is with Netflix and streaming DVDs I already own (rips)
Netflix, youtube, vimeo are what I use most on the AppleTV. I also ripped a lot of my DVD's with the goal of ripping EVERY one of my DVD's into my iTunes library to share out to my AppleTV. My blu-ray player gets used maybe twice a week for movies. I would say own both but if you had to pick which one to get first go with the AppleTV.
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Just a little advice, hard wire the AppleTV over wireless. Makes a big difference. And with that you will need a Ethernet connection for your Blu-ray player because they need security updates a few times a year to work with the newest Blu-Ray movies. So you might as well run a line to your TV area and put a switch there so you can plug both in to a cable.
I prefer physical movies to digital downloads, I can get them cheaper in Physical copy. Most of my AppleTV usage is with Netflix and streaming DVDs I already own (rips)
Physical media like blu-ray and DVD is a dead technology. Much like VHS. Right now, blu-ray is just living on borrowed time. Large discs that are easily damaged, require a ton of packaging and plastic is coming to an end.
Digital media content is the wave of the future. small thumb drives and online cloud content is where the industry is heading. Why do you think Apple has starting dumping optical drives and never had any intention of utilizing blu-ray.
Digital media content is the wave of the future. small thumb drives and online cloud content is where the industry is heading. Why do you think Apple has starting dumping optical drives and never had any intention of utilizing blu-ray.
I have a cat5 cable running to the Xbox from my airport already So I can switch them if need be, thanks.
I don't recall you saying if your 40" TV is 1080p or not.
If so, get both the ATV2 and the BDP. That's what I have. Several reasons to go for standalone Bluray player, some of which will directly apply to you right now, and some which will apply should you choose to upgrade your sound system:
1. Picture quality of a well-mastered Blu-ray is leaps and bounds above anything else in HD. By the way, the scale of pq, from best to worst, is: Blu-ray, Over-the-air HD (via antenna), cable or Satellite HD, streaming HD, Over-the-air SD, cable or Satellite SD, streaming SD.
2. If you have a 1080p HDTV, Blu-ray is the only way to really see that detail and color depth.
3. Sound quality for most Blu-rays is encoded with lossless soundtracks, either Dolby TrueHD, or DTS HD Master Audio. These are bit-for-bit identical to the studio masters from whence they came. If you invest in a good quality A/V receiver and speakers, you can create a jaw-dropping theater experience at home.
4. Most new Blu-ray players stream content, just as the AppleTV does. So, you'll get Netflix, Youtube, sometimes CinemaNow, Pandora, even Facebook, Amazon's video service, Vudu, etc.
5. The prices of Blu-ray players and titles has dropped into bargain basement territory, under $99 for players, and under $20 for a LOT of good titles. Try high def digest online for a ton of blu-ray reviews. That way you can avoid the detritus while investing your money well.
So, it all depends on what is important to you, what hardware you have and what hardware you want. But, keep in mind that, like Apple products, home theater products are VERY Aspirational and can quickly drain your wallet if you let it.
It is the future, but it's not here yet.
You can't even stream OTA HD quality yet, much less blu-ray quality.
Until such time as that happens, there will be room for both:
streaming for convenience, and blu-ray for quality.
Its true a lot of players now have the ability to do youtube and netflix. Test if possible to see if you would like it. My blu-ray player does both youtube and netflix and I will never use it for either because the controls are horrible and the speed is terrible between menus.
@Mac.World
Its not dead and will not be for a while yet. Blu-ray got hurt bad because of the format war. Its lagging still because its over priced. But as it becomes more respectable in price its going to continue to grow for a while. The biggest issue with digital is you don't own anything except 1's and 0's that can be easily erased. Highly compressed High Def content takes up a lot of space and does not look as nice as blu-ray. Many ISP's have bandwidth limits which will limit how much HD content you stream or download. A lot of issues still need to be resolved before Digital takes over. Price, size, bandwidth, redownloading...
@Mac.World
Its not dead and will not be for a while yet. Blu-ray got hurt bad because of the format war. Its lagging still because its over priced. But as it becomes more respectable in price its going to continue to grow for a while. The biggest issue with digital is you don't own anything except 1's and 0's that can be easily erased. Highly compressed High Def content takes up a lot of space and does not look as nice as blu-ray. Many ISP's have bandwidth limits which will limit how much HD content you stream or download. A lot of issues still need to be resolved before Digital takes over. Price, size, bandwidth, redownloading...
I don't recall you saying if your 40" TV is 1080p or not.
If so, get both the ATV2 and the BDP. That's what I have. Several reasons to go for standalone Bluray player, some of which will directly apply to you right now, and some which will apply should you choose to upgrade your sound system:
1. Picture quality of a well-mastered Blu-ray is leaps and bounds above anything else in HD. By the way, the scale of pq, from best to worst, is: Blu-ray, Over-the-air HD (via antenna), cable or Satellite HD, streaming HD, Over-the-air SD, cable or Satellite SD, streaming SD.
2. If you have a 1080p HDTV, Blu-ray is the only way to really see that detail and color depth.
3. Sound quality for most Blu-rays is encoded with lossless soundtracks, either Dolby TrueHD, or DTS HD Master Audio. These are bit-for-bit identical to the studio masters from whence they came. If you invest in a good quality A/V receiver and speakers, you can create a jaw-dropping theater experience at home.
4. Most new Blu-ray players stream content, just as the AppleTV does. So, you'll get Netflix, Youtube, sometimes CinemaNow, Pandora, even Facebook, Amazon's video service, Vudu, etc.
5. The prices of Blu-ray players and titles has dropped into bargain basement territory, under $99 for players, and under $20 for a LOT of good titles. Try high def digest online for a ton of blu-ray reviews. That way you can avoid the detritus while investing your money well.
So, it all depends on what is important to you, what hardware you have and what hardware you want. But, keep in mind that, like Apple products, home theater products are VERY Aspirational and can quickly drain your wallet if you let it.
Yea i have a 1080p HDTV which is 47" i think, Personally i would like a blu ray player that only plays blu rays and dvds, because that is all i want it for. i understand that they do have streaming capabilities some even will stream from your computer but still id rather have an apple tv and a plain blu ray player. We do get dvds now and again and the xbox is what we use to play them and the quality isn that good and the thing is on its last leg. as for apps and stuff i have an iPhone and the rest of the family has either an iPod or iPads. So for me an ATV and a non fancy blu ray player is the way to go.
Notice i said thumb drives, not just online content. You can easily fit an entire blu-ray disc onto a 4 or 8 gb mini thumb drive or sd card. Quality is preserved and unless you break the drive or card in half, you never have to worry about scratches and if all of you content is on this sort of media, instead of taking up shelves of space, you take up one small box. Not to mention, packaging and plastic is nearly eliminated compared to now. And shipping costs are dramatically reduced.
Currently new car stereo's cater to the thumb drive, tv's are beginning to... There will be no need for an add on disc player very shortly. As i said, blu-ray and dvd are living on borrowed time.
Not all blu-rays are 40gb in size and I was just throwing a number out there for drive size. For the sake of argument though, how much are you spending on a 40gb bluray disc? Micro sd cards, in the 32gb size, can be had for roughly 30 bucks and the price keeps dropping.
The blu-ray is a dead man walking. But if you want to keep paying for blu-ray discs, in ten years, you can be like the guy that still has vhs tapes now. I don't buy into dead technology.
And yes, you can shrink a 40gb movie down to 8-12gb and lose very little quality.
Naturally every digital medium will become obsolete, it's just a question of when. At the moment the Blu-ray disc is the most cost-effective way to distribute the 40GB that the average Blu-ray movie takes up. The disc itself costs maybe 50 cents. There's no way a movie at Blu-ray quality can be distributed on a USB stick or SD card, the media is just too expensive. Sure it'll come down eventually, but it's got at least a few years to go.
And the good news is that when they stop making Blu-ray players we can just copy all of our Blu-rays onto hard drives or even thumb drives -- maybe they'll be cheap enough by then -- and either play them as they are or convert them into any other format, which is much harder to do when you've just bought a DRM-protected movie. So it's kind of arguable which one will be obsolete first.
And yes indeed, you can get very good picture quality at 8-12GB, but you said you could fit a whole Blu-ray onto 4-8GB, and that kind of made it sound like you didn't know what you were talking about for a minute there.
And the good news is that when they stop making Blu-ray players we can just copy all of our Blu-rays onto hard drives or even thumb drives -- maybe they'll be cheap enough by then -- and either play them as they are or convert them into any other format, which is much harder to do when you've just bought a DRM-protected movie. So it's kind of arguable which one will be obsolete first.
And yes indeed, you can get very good picture quality at 8-12GB, but you said you could fit a whole Blu-ray onto 4-8GB, and that kind of made it sound like you didn't know what you were talking about for a minute there.
For me it has been the convenience of the ATV. I have my entire DVD collection (600 +) on an ext drive.
Yes BR looks better but having access to all of our stuff + streaming Netflix on all of our TV's is just perfection.
No wall of DVD's, no searching through disc to find what I want, it really is great.
Yes BR looks better but having access to all of our stuff + streaming Netflix on all of our TV's is just perfection.
No wall of DVD's, no searching through disc to find what I want, it really is great.
I would beg to differ. Just compare the original close encounters movie in blu ray to the re released version. The re released is much better due to high quality transfer. Yes, many of past blu rays are in the 8-12 gb size, but most of the newer ones coming out are much larger. The larger your tv screen the more noticeable the difference. Crappy LCD HD tv's of the past covered this up. Much better HD tv's are coming out at the same price of the crappy sets, and if your tv is 50 inches or bigger, there is a noticeable difference between the lower quality blu ray movies and the higher quality ones.
Streaming will never come close to blu ray until they can dramatically stream at a much higher bit rate. That won't happen until the whole internet infrastructure of the US is rebuilt. USB sticks still have a long way to go. I can get a high quality blu ray movie for $10 to $15. Not going to see that on a stick for quite sometime.
Plus throw in the poor chips in the ATV, Roku, etc, processing of HD material will still be second rate to a top quality blu ray player like the OPPO.
Blu-ray isn't because there is nothing as good. Period. So long as it leads in quality it will be marketable.
All technology is on borrowed time.
It may be, but it isn't now. In addition, ISPs are already increasing costs for high-volume transmission. If the cost and quality of downloaded content cannot compete with Blu-ray (such as the 720p crap from the iTunes Store), then Blu-ray will still be profitable. In addition, The Studios have complete control of their distribution with physical media. You have to convince them that it's in their best interest to do digital distribution - and thus far none are willing to package Blu-ray quality into downloads.
You cannot stamp flash media. That dramatically increases production costs.
Because they don't make money off of optical media. They are trying to drive the industry to digital downloads and The Studios have steadfastly opposed them for the highest quality product.
Again, you cannot stamp flash media.
But it won't be anywhere near the audio and video quality of Blu-ray. Plus, you have to make special production runs for different languages and subtitles - unless you want to compress the video and audio even more.
It's not dying and in fact it will even be more important when distribution of 4k video by The Studios begins. Optical media will be here for quite some time.
But there's more to a container than just video and an audio track. And I'd love to see how you plan to package a DTS-MA audio track in a movie in a 12 gb container.
Agree- the cloud is the future. But the future is just that...it's years away.
Huge bandwidth for blu ray quality.
You also have to rely on a hi-speed wifi connection. I live in an apartment and I'm constantly fighting interference and slowdowns.
Also- and the biggest one for me- is the extras you get with the blurry sets.
Some folks are content to watch the film and move on. That's cool.
I love to indulge myself in the films I like. The more the better.
You may never the amount extras you get now with streaming.
Huge bandwidth for blu ray quality.
You also have to rely on a hi-speed wifi connection. I live in an apartment and I'm constantly fighting interference and slowdowns.
Also- and the biggest one for me- is the extras you get with the blurry sets.
Some folks are content to watch the film and move on. That's cool.
I love to indulge myself in the films I like. The more the better.
You may never the amount extras you get now with streaming.
Blu ray players do not normally include streaming abilty. To conform to the blu ray standard players have to be ale to connect to the net, for firmware updates, special online only features and other stuff. Not t stream movies.
@OP, if you're still looking for a blu ray player that's pretty bare bones, Wal-Mart is selling an LG Blu-ray player for $50. That should fit your needs, as it also upscales DVDs.
Hope this helps and enjoy your new setup!