Bluray-am I the only one one to be disappointed ?

Avoriaz

timmmers wrote: »

...The only truly impressive Telly I have seen recently was an OLED at a trade show...paper thin and clear as a bell in any light condition....with promises of flexible screens to come apparently which opens up great ways to use them in a home at huge size without the telly being the biggest thing in the room. They are on sale now in Korea and other places but too expensive to produce yet sadly. ...

They are too expensive to produce yet they are on sale in various places?

A very interesting concept. :whistle:

Avoriaz

timmmers wrote: »

Don't believe the hype?

Even more ironic is my old mate who is a real audio nut...he's been having a ball buying vynl discs for a while now...as he says rightly....in 20 years time they will still be playing and good quality, your CDs and DVDs will be dead as they have a finite life being light sensitive and exposure to light damaging them over time.

I think you are believing the hype.

Properly stored and cared for CDs and DVDs should last indefinitely.

I have CDs from 1984 that still play perfectly.

I have over 2,000 CDs and not a single one has developed a click or a scratch from repeated playing.

None have ever accumulated dirt and grime while being played.

And none have been damaged by dropping a needle on them.

aliEnRIK

Avoriaz wrote: »

Do you have anything to support that claim?

It sounds like a good way to p1ss off your distributors and customers etc, not generate sales.

Ive seen a few dvds where ive 'thought' the same might be possible. When they first released a Harry potter bluray the same dvd was a 'definite' drop in quality to the usual standard.

aliEnRIK

Avoriaz wrote: »

I think you are believing the hype.

Properly stored and cared for CDs and DVDs should last indefinitely.

I have CDs from 1984 that still play perfectly.

I have over 2,000 CDs and not a single one has developed a click or a scratch from repeated playing.

None have ever accumulated dirt and grime while being played.

And none have been damaged by dropping a needle on them.

All my cds are fine but it does intrigue me is whats being used to read them. For example, I have an Arcam cd32 cd player - the laser of which 'appears' very mild.
If I put a cd in my Pioneer LX50 dvd player there a 'red laser' which shines so brightly you can see it through the other side! So if one of those players was to 'break down' a cd quicker than the other I know which one my money would be on.

Dave101t

the fog on bluray is a good example of a non-hd film looking great in HD
check for reviews of individual titles.
your tv is 720 upscaled to 1080, on 32 inch wouldnt give a decent picture as my dvd player upscales normal dvd's to these formats which in effect provide a half way house between dvd and hd, which bad blu rays also are in between these poles.

moonrakerz

spiritus wrote: »

I've noticed if I virtually sit directly in front of the TV then more detail is revealed but this is hardly practical unless I want square eyes in 5 yrs time.

This is, I am afraid, the most common reason for people's dissatisfaction with HD TV - they sit too far away from it !

Hold a strawberry a foot away - you can see the seeds, the veins in the leaves; have it 6 feet away - you can just tell it's a strawberry, not a raspberry !
HD TV is the same.

http://www.cnet.com/hdtv-viewing-distance/

AND it won't damage your eyes - old wives' tale !

isofa

aliEnRIK wrote: »

All my cds are fine but it does intrigue me is whats being used to read them. For example, I have an Arcam cd32 cd player - the laser of which 'appears' very mild.
If I put a cd in my Pioneer LX50 dvd player there a 'red laser' which shines so brightly you can see it through the other side! So if one of those players was to 'break down' a cd quicker than the other I know which one my money would be on.

I can't image a laser of that power or colour could ever do damage to a pressed-CD. Pressed discs (silver reflective) are totally different to home burned CDR/RW/DVDR/DVDRWs, the latter use a dye substrate layer which is readily damaged/broken down by light and heat.

Pressed CD/DVDs etc to me are fantastic, I store a lot of mine in our; freezing in winter and 40 degree+ in summer loft, and never had an issue, I brought my first CD in 1990-1 must have 300 to 400 discs. Although I can appreciate just how good vinyl can be with the right setup and amp, nothing can ever beat the portability, durability, and with the right equipment quality (IMO) of a CD. I'd much prefer to buy a CD than an MP3 download, and despite having a ton of digital equipment, iPods etc, I'd still prefer sometimes to play a CD in a quality setup, read the cover notes etc.

Considering all current formats are based on the 12cm disc, be it CD, DVD, BD etc, then home burned CD and DVD discs for computers, let alone the millions of installed user bases of CD players, DVD players, PC and Mac systems with these drives etc, it must be one of the most ubiquitous format sizes of all time.

PS I do agree with some other posts about BD being the emperors new clothes... Still I'm happy with our top end CRT TV, because we don't watch hundreds of hours a week, just a few shows and a few DVDs from time to time. The picture is still superb. The idea of having a massive TV dominating a room and then having to sit so close you can see the detail, seems ridiculous to me, still TV isn't the be all and end all in our house, maybe that's the difference! Sure it won't damage your eyes in the old CRT sense, but high brightness and contrast scenes can cause eye strain, and if you are foolish enough to mount a TV above your eye-line and watch it looking up, you'll definitely strain your eyes. Eye's diverage when looking down (natural to look at a screen or read a book), they converge to focus (eventually to infinity) as you look above.

Marty_J

timmmers wrote: »

Actually it's a lot simpler than that, although that's inevitable too.

There are drives the size of postage stamps in development that can store everything you ever saw on TV or movie, and all the music that you ever heard. HUGE amounts of information in a drive a few inches across ...they move the drive laser and not the storage medium (which is why they have yet to produce a commercial version...it's not reliable yet). Once those are integrated into your telly...what would you need any removable media for?

The reason these tiny high capacity drives are so interesting and likely to become common is that once they crack it, they will fit just about anything...like the mobile devices that already come equipped with projectors to display movies onto large surfaces. Economy of scale will be fantastic for such a component. Cheap as chips.

We all used to have little black books with phone numbers, we all used to have a big address book at home full of names and numbers...now we just store it all on our mobiles as the norm. We move it from phone to phone...ckick and it's done.

The only truly impressive Telly I have seen recently was an OLED at a trade show...paper thin and clear as a bell in any light condition....with promises of flexible screens to come apparently which opens up great ways to use them in a home at huge size without the telly being the biggest thing in the room. They are on sale now in Korea and other places but too expensive to produce yet sadly.

t

There are some problems though:

1. Market penetration. Such a thing could only make Blu-rays "obsolete" if everyone used it, which would entail everyone buying a new TV. Movie studios aren't going to cease production of optical media if it then means that only a portion of their customers will actually be able to buy their product. This is why Blu-ray has not rendered DVD obsolete.

2. Delivery. Where do we get the content to put on our TVs? The most reasonable answer would seem to be by downloading it. Digital distribution is probably the future of content delivery, but we're not there yet. It worked so well for music because downloaded music files are (a) very small, and (b) portable. The UK's broadband network cannot handle everyone downloading HD movies all the time. Many people are on plans with usage caps, and they would barely to be able to download one HD movie, never mind everything they watch. This also ties in with point 1 above; if it doesn't have mass market appeal, it's not going to be rendering anything obsolete.

3. Portability. How do I take a movie to my friend's house to watch? If I have one of these new fabulous TVs in the living room, how do I watch something I've purchased on an old TV in the bedroom?

4. Backwards compatibility. Blu-ray players are backwards compatible with DVDs. In fact, one of their major selling points is that they up-convert DVDs (even though all HD TVs already up-convert anything in SD, but anyway). How does my fancy new TV with a chip inside enable me to watch the huge collection of DVDs and Blu-ray movies I already own?

5. Storage. What happens when you run out of space to store things? Do you have to delete old movies before you can buy new ones?

6. Backup. What happens when my TV dies? Do I lose my entire movie and TV show collection? I'm sure movie studios would love us to be constantly paying to re-download the same thing (they release enough special editions of DVDs after all), but I doubt the average consumer will take to kindly to the prospect.

custardy

people seem to always talk about the image quality of bluray
what about the sound? for anyone with a separate audio set up im sure they will; back me up how much bluray adds to the sound

Marty_J

custardy wrote: »

people seem to always talk about the image quality of bluray
what about the sound? for anyone with a separate audio set up im sure they will; back me up how much bluray adds to the sound

That's something my wife noticed immediately, and she still comments on it. The sound quality on Blu-ray is excellent.