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Who owns a Blu Ray Player?

MBHockey

MBHockey

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 4, 2003
4,063
314
Connecticut
I'm curious about whether many people own dedicated Blu Ray players (not PS3s). I am thinking about buying one to go with my 50" Plasma but the prices seem ridiculous for its function.

Do you own one? Which brand and model is it?
 
I recently demoed one of the only Sony Blu Ray players in the UK on a large-screen HD display. It looked crap :p
Save your money and get an upscaling SD DVD player.
 
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I'm confused.

So nobody recommends a blu ray player? One guy talked about an SD upscaling DVD player and the other recommended an HD-DVD player. :p

What are you trying to tell me... :)
 
With both formats supporting the same advanced video codecs, comparable audio codecs, and now triple layer HD-DVD there's hardly any theoretical advantage to either (although Dolby Digital Plus is mandatory for HD DVD, but only optional for Blu Ray so the movies might follow this).

Right now it's mainly a cuestion of price, which movies you want to see, and what kind of availability there is if you rent.
 
Well, you said PS3s don't count. And honestly, until recently the PS3 was by far the cheapest Blu-Ray player available, so that's what many if not most people who wanted a Blu-Ray player bought. Blu-Rays from my PS3 on my Samsung TV look great.
 
Why wouldn't you buy a PS3? Its the cheapest Blue-Ray player on the market(atleast it was until recently, thats what I'm hearing)...makes sense to. It does HDMI, 1080p...plus games, music, video internet.
 
The sole reason I am looking into this in the first place...

Arg, so a PS3. What is the cheapest version of a PS3 I can get? I have a 360, so i wouldn't be buying it to game...just for blu ray.

Also, what does an upscaling DVD player do?
 
You can interpolate to have a somewhat better image at a higher resolution, but it won't have all the real additional information that an HD disc would have of course.
Maybe most of the improvement comes from matching the resolution of HDTVs which do not do such a good job at scaling a signal to the native panel resolution.
 
I just got a new 1080p TV, and I've been looking pretty hard at the Samsung Blu-ray player. You can see it at Amazon.com for $459 . Watching the newest Pirates of the Caribbean on it was pretty amazing.
 
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MBHockey said:
The sole reason I am looking into this in the first place...

Arg, so a PS3. What is the cheapest version of a PS3 I can get? I have a 360, so i wouldn't be buying it to game...just for blu ray.

Also, what does an upscaling DVD player do?
Click to expand...

The 60 GB PS3 is $499 (after a recent price drop from $599). There's an 80 GB (with a bundled game) version coming out next month for $599, but honestly, that's sort of a ripoff, especially if you're not going to use it for games, since the hard drive is user-upgradeable anyway.

Of course, the fact that you have a 360 means that you do like video games, so if you got a PS3 for Blu-Ray it seems weird that you wouldn't also use it for games, especially considering the fair number of good-looking PS3 exclusives on the way.
 
I've got the Sony BDP-S300, FWIW. *And* i have the Toshiba HDA2 HD-DVD player.

The Sony is a good player @ $499, but now that I think about it, the new Panasonic DMP-BD10A is $100 more, but you get 5 free movies in the box PLUS the 5 free with mail in rebate. So yeah, 10 movies AND a Blu-ray for $599? considering movies are usually $30 a pop? I'll take it!

And don't get an 'up-converting dvd player'. I would use the money and put it towards something that actually works. I sell home entertainment stuff at Circuit City, and upconverting players (aside from Oppo's) are a sham.

And neither HD camp is better than the other really. Blu ray has more studio support and about 10 more movies, but HD-DVD is half the price for the player. Luckily, I own both.
 
I'd certainly like a Blu Ray Player. I briefly had an HD-DVD player so I know how incredible the picture quality is. I'll probably hold out though because I intend to buy a PS3 for MGS4 and FFXIII.
 
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