Best of the BlueRay Players

[JustinB]

Actually, Justin is right. I'm ripping dvds and bluerays directly to disk. Right now i have almost 2 terabytes of DVD movies. with the price of storage coming down again, allocating 25-50 gig on a 1 or 2 terabyte drive isn't much. It's all part of my concept for a completely digital home theatre. With the software I have, I can rip only the movie and leave all the other stuff behind, the trailers, the "special features", etc....

Thats true and you could probably get 40 to 80 movies on a terabyte.

 

[workaholic]

My personal opinion is the BluRay only has about a 5 year shelf life. You are starting to see the next way that content will be viewed with Apple TV and VuDu. All HD with no Media. Just download and watch. You can rent or buy the content and store it and never have to find a place for all of the cases and discs. Also I never have to go to the store if all of the sudden I want to watch a movie.

I think this type of content distribution is the way of the future and it is why I wont spend $300-$400 on a BluRay Player.

 

[GWguy]

My personal opinion is the BluRay only has about a 5 year shelf life. You are starting to see the next way that content will be viewed with Apple TV and VuDu. All HD with no Media. Just download and watch. You can rent or buy the content and store it and never have to find a place for all of the cases and discs. Also I never have to go to the store if all of the sudden I want to watch a movie.

I think this type of content distribution is the way of the future and it is why I wont spend $300-$400 on a BluRay Player.

I would agree with you, but look how many people on this forum are still on dial-up or other low-speed links that cannot handle that traffic. It probably won't be resolved in 5 years. There will still be a need for hard media. Netflix works great for me.

 

[workaholic]

I would agree with you, but look how many people on this forum are still on dial-up or other low-speed links that cannot handle that traffic. It probably won't be resolved in 5 years. There will still be a need for hard media. Netflix works great for me.

I understand the need for Hard Media but I don't think BluRay is the future. because the folks that are on Dial-up most likely do not have HDTV's and they are not using BluRay. Just regular $50.00 DVD Players.

Not saying this is the case for everyone with Dial-up but I would think a majority.

 

[glhs837]

My personal opinion is the BluRay only has about a 5 year shelf life. You are starting to see the next way that content will be viewed with Apple TV and VuDu. All HD with no Media. Just download and watch. You can rent or buy the content and store it and never have to find a place for all of the cases and discs. Also I never have to go to the store if all of the sudden I want to watch a movie.

I think this type of content distribution is the way of the future and it is why I wont spend $300-$400 on a BluRay Player.

WE'll see, but I think hard media has a longer life than that. Even if it does, thats less than $100 a year for my PS3. Lots of folks, though, even if they have broadband, are not going to be streaming HD. And when they do, watch what the broadband providers do with bandwidth charges.

Not enough folks now to make a dent, but when a large amount of folks start taking down +40-50 gigs a week, they will.

 

[JustinB]

My personal opinion is the BluRay only has about a 5 year shelf life. You are starting to see the next way that content will be viewed with Apple TV and VuDu. All HD with no Media. Just download and watch. You can rent or buy the content and store it and never have to find a place for all of the cases and discs. Also I never have to go to the store if all of the sudden I want to watch a movie.

I think this type of content distribution is the way of the future and it is why I wont spend $300-$400 on a BluRay Player.

I think the blu ray will be around for a long time. HD download services are going to run into bandwidth problems. I think they're only capable of doing 720p right now. The next TV's are probably going to be 1440 or 1540.
Blu ray players have come way down in price I know there's a nice Sony for around $250 and saw a Memorex on woot.com the other day for $150.

 

[workaholic]

I think the blu ray will be around for a long time. HD download services are going to run into bandwidth problems. I think they're only capable of doing 720p right now. The next TV's are probably going to be 1440 or 1540.
Blu ray players have come way down in price I know there's a nice Sony for around $250 and saw a Memorex on woot.com the other day for $150.

Vudu does 1080p. Apple TV only 720p. It will be interesting to see what happens with the broadband in the next few years. FiOS is a strong platform for this type of usage but not widespread coverage yet. Some places the Cable TV Provider is providing a Fiber internet solution to compete against FiOS. Of course not around here. We are just lucky to have HD service with our cable provider.

 

[vanbells]

My personal opinion is the BluRay only has about a 5 year shelf life. You are starting to see the next way that content will be viewed with Apple TV and VuDu. All HD with no Media. Just download and watch. You can rent or buy the content and store it and never have to find a place for all of the cases and discs. Also I never have to go to the store if all of the sudden I want to watch a movie.

I agree with you, but a lot of people still want a hard copy. Same thing goes with a paperless future. It's never going to happen until everone becauce tech savvy.

 

[Bavarian]

Hard drives can fail. What about making your own HD DVD's from your HDTV Camcorder? You want backup even if you rely on your computer harddrive. DirecTV has plenty of HD programming, but for programs you want to keep, you want to record onto disk now. I have hundreds of VHS tapes I am copying to DVD.
Circuit City has a Blu-ray burner for a computer.
People who rent tapes and now disks are not the kind of people who appreciate good programming.

 

[GWguy]

Hard drives can fail. What about making your own HD DVD's from your HDTV Camcorder? You want backup even if you rely on your computer harddrive. DirecTV has plenty of HD programming, but for programs you want to keep, you want to record onto disk now. I have hundreds of VHS tapes I am copying to DVD.
Circuit City has a Blu-ray burner for a computer.
People who rent tapes and now disks are not the kind of people who appreciate good programming.

You're preaching to the choir here. Everything I have is backed up and on RAID drives. The chances of losing something are slim. The whole idea of the digital theatre is to get away from hard media and select a movie from a library of movies with a remote control. Until such time that instant downloads are realistic and cost the same as netflix, this is what I'm doing.

I have no idea what you are implying with a comment like that. How do I appreciate a movie less because I get it from netflix vs satellite ?

 

[glhs837]

At the rate I consume media, theres no way in heck I can keep it all. I rent for the same reason I get books from the library, I'm a media consumer, not an archivist. My personal book library numbers a few hundred, I read anywhere from 30-45 books a year, and only a few get kept. I cull regualarly. Same for movies, I might watch 20-30, but I'm certainly not storing that many.

 

[Bavarian]

Much of what I have is not available commercially. I collected it over the years. Switched from Cartrivision to VHS in '79.

Have a lot of self made "footage" from vacations.

 

[forceofnature]

My personal opinion is the BluRay only has about a 5 year shelf life. You are starting to see the next way that content will be viewed with Apple TV and VuDu. All HD with no Media. Just download and watch. You can rent or buy the content and store it and never have to find a place for all of the cases and discs. Also I never have to go to the store if all of the sudden I want to watch a movie.

I think this type of content distribution is the way of the future and it is why I wont spend $300-$400 on a BluRay Player.

I will not repeat the other replies but must say that due to the new online media services we will see more metering of internet services to compensate for loss of revenue via PPV or on demand services. Comcast has started the 250G per month cap and will charge more according to use.

I see this metering causing blue ray to stay longer than 5 years.

I am probably going to start my own media server with 4 1tb drives to start.