Why Buy or Upgrade to a Blu-ray Player

By Mr PY Tekki-Enthusiast

Learn the benefits and when it makes sense to buy or upgrade to a Blu-ray Player.

The benefits of Blu-ray Players are quite evident for HDTV owners. Video from traditional DVDs is made up of fewer than 350,000 pixels, while 1080p HD video is composed of over two million. That means a lot more storage space than the standard DVDs can hold. Blu-ray discs, which can hold more than five times as much data as DVDs, can provide the necessary capacity. So if you want sublime, high-resolution detail from your disc-based movies and TV shows, you have to go Blu-ray.   Other benefits of Blu-ray players include widespread adoption, access to bonus features in movie disc, compact design, and energy efficient.

There's never been a better time to buy it than now when the format is gaining widespread acceptance.  We're moving fast past the incredibly expensive, comparatively slow, feature-deficient first-generation (standard DVD) devices. In addition, the latest batch of Blu-ray players offer much faster disc-handling speeds and more robust multimedia features than previous models, and the players cost only around $300.

The HDTV owners benefit the most from Blu-ray players.  By that, I’m referring to large screen 1080p HDTV.  So screen sizes smaller than 40 inches require you to sit pretty close to the screen to appreciate the higher resolution.  That’s saying it would be a waste of money to use a Blu-ray player on a 720p HDTV.  Blu-ray videos are typically sampled from very high resolution source material that is converted to 1080p. Because upconverting a standard-definition DVD requires that a player generate more than 1.7 million additional pixels (which involves a lot of real-time extrapolation or "guessing" ), image quality can vary from one model or manufacturer to another. But all Blu-ray players can upconvert traditional DVDs, so getting one doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your current disc collection or add another device to your home-theater setup.

Blu-ray players have recently shrunk as a direct result of manufacturers' lowering costs by reducing the amount of raw materials that go into producing the machines. Almost all players retain the standard component width of 17 inches and are about 2 inches high, but chassis depths have been trimmed down to around 8 or 9 inches (from the 13 inches that was common in earlier models).

As for the discs, two core Blu-ray bonus features are increasingly utilized in new movie releases: Bonus View and BD-Live. Bonus View is basically picture-in-picture and requires a player equipped with a secondary audio/video decoder. (Almost every device produced in the last two years supports this feature.) BD-Live encompasses downloadable or streaming multimedia content that a particular title may offer, such as games, cell-phone ringtones, wallpaper, and features for interacting with other fans. Many of the latest players I've seen are described as "BD-Live ready," meaning that the player lacks the necessary internal storage to support the feature, but you can add an optional memory module (via USB or memory card slot) to enable the functionality. You'll sometimes see a player referred to as supporting Blu-ray Profile 1.1 or 2.0: Profile 1.0 can support just Bonus View while Profile 2.0 supports both Bonus View and BD-Live (and thus requires a Network (wired/wireless) connection to the Internet).  Profile 1 was the original Blu-ray spec, and you're unlikely to find it on a new player; a Profile 2.0 player typically costs more than a Profile 1.1 player.

Blu-ray players in general are very energy efficient, with most models consuming less than 25 watts on average during playback. Some players offer a QuickStart feature that significantly decreases the time it takes the player to wake from standby, but enabling this feature often results in increased standby power consumption. Considering how much more time a player typically spends in standby mode than it does being used, it is probably best to leave this feature disabled if your player supports it.

The benefits of Blu-ray Players are quite evident for HDTV owners. Video from traditional DVDs is made up of fewer than 350,000 pixels, while 1080p HD video is composed of over two million. That means a lot more storage space than the standard DVDs can hold. Blu-ray discs, which can hold more than five times as much data as DVDs, can provide the necessary capacity. So if you want sublime, high-resolution detail from your disc-based movies and TV shows, you have to go Blu-ray.   Other benefits of Blu-ray players include widespread adoption, access to bonus features in movie disc, compact design, and energy efficient.

There's never been a better time to buy it than now when the format is gaining widespread acceptance.  We're moving fast past the incredibly expensive, comparatively slow, feature-deficient first-generation (standard DVD) devices. In addition, the latest batch of Blu-ray players offer much faster disc-handling speeds and more robust multimedia features than previous models, and the players cost only around $300.

The HDTV owners benefit the most from Blu-ray players.  By that, I’m referring to large screen 1080p HDTV.  So screen sizes smaller than 40 inches require you to sit pretty close to the screen to appreciate the higher resolution.  That’s saying it would be a waste of money to use a Blu-ray player on a 720p HDTV.  Blu-ray videos are typically sampled from very high resolution source material that is converted to 1080p. Because upconverting a standard-definition DVD requires that a player generate more than 1.7 million additional pixels (which involves a lot of real-time extrapolation or "guessing" ), image quality can vary from one model or manufacturer to another. But all Blu-ray players can upconvert traditional DVDs, so getting one doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your current disc collection or add another device to your home-theater setup.

Blu-ray players have recently shrunk as a direct result of manufacturers' lowering costs by reducing the amount of raw materials that go into producing the machines. Almost all players retain the standard component width of 17 inches and are about 2 inches high, but chassis depths have been trimmed down to around 8 or 9 inches (from the 13 inches that was common in earlier models).

As for the discs, two core Blu-ray bonus features are increasingly utilized in new movie releases: Bonus View and BD-Live. Bonus View is basically picture-in-picture and requires a player equipped with a secondary audio/video decoder. (Almost every device produced in the last two years supports this feature.) BD-Live encompasses downloadable or streaming multimedia content that a particular title may offer, such as games, cell-phone ringtones, wallpaper, and features for interacting with other fans. Many of the latest players I've seen are described as "BD-Live ready," meaning that the player lacks the necessary internal storage to support the feature, but you can add an optional memory module (via USB or memory card slot) to enable the functionality. You'll sometimes see a player referred to as supporting Blu-ray Profile 1.1 or 2.0: Profile 1.0 can support just Bonus View while Profile 2.0 supports both Bonus View and BD-Live (and thus requires a Network (wired/wireless) connection to the Internet).  Profile 1 was the original Blu-ray spec, and you're unlikely to find it on a new player; a Profile 2.0 player typically costs more than a Profile 1.1 player.

Blu-ray players in general are very energy efficient, with most models consuming less than 25 watts on average during playback. Some players offer a QuickStart feature that significantly decreases the time it takes the player to wake from standby, but enabling this feature often results in increased standby power consumption. Considering how much more time a player typically spends in standby mode than it does being used, it is probably best to leave this feature disabled if your player supports it.