Blu-ray????

Question

so blu-ray is basically 1080P dvds that have more storage and is read with a blue laser or some ****???

Answer 1

Don't forget 5 times the bit transfer rate of DVDs...

Answer 2

And along with all the sweet HiDef video, you also get Dolby True HD and DTS Master HD sound. Basically you get 5.1 surround sound with the 24 bit / 192 khz sampling rate that a DVD-Audio can only do in two channel stereo. Or you can have 7.1 surround sound with 24 bit / 96 khz resolution. Contrast this to normal DVD movie surrounds such as Dolby Digital and DTS, which are not only not high resoultion, they're actually compressed audio tracks. Not to the extent mp3 players or ipods are, but nowhere near what Blu-Ray can do. The only thing is, you'll need an A/V receiver capable of decoding True HD and DTS Master, which is a little spendy, but just think movie surround sound with true audiophile quality sound!

Answer 3

Yup you got it! 720P can also be put on it.

Answer 4

Pretty much. Note the storage space is pretty much irrelevent and to the user the laser doesn't matter (other than to mean you can't read a Blu-ray disk on a DVD player)

Blu-ray is an HD alternative to DVD. Players will upconvert DVDs to near HD quality (as will much less expensive stand alone upconverting DVD players).

People differ in their opinion about how big the improvement of Blu-ray is over DVD. Some rave about it. Others decide the benefit isn't worth the cost and are satisfied with upconverted DVD. You have to decide for yourself. See the link (best with a broadband connection) for comparison photos of not only Blu-ray and DVD, but some HDTV sites (e.g. Apple TV 2.0, HD Cable) ... differences, but ... well, you decide.

If you have a 1080p HDTV and a good surround sound system you will see a great picture form Blu-ray, but on a small/720p HDTV or if you don't have HDMI connections, results will be less impressive.

Costs for a Blu-ray player (~$400) and infastructure to support Blu-ray (HDTV, sound system) are high. And disks cost $5-20 more than for the same DVD.

With over 82,000 titles on DVD (and 600 more announced for the next 4 months) and only 500 on Blu-ray (and only 60 more announced over the next 6 months) it will be along, long time before DVD disappears.