DVD player died. Should we go blue ray ?

[dockmasterdave]

We always carry a DVD player and assortment of discs. Have been used for rainy evenings with no OTA TV, or sickness, so staying around TT all day.
Our small portable DVD player finally died.
I'm about to start looking at replacements, and wondered if it was time to join the 21st century and go Blue Ray.
Looking for opinions. T I A

[wilber1]

wa8yxm wrote:
Blue Ray normally needs HDMI connection to TV's. DVD can go A/V. (3 wire yellow red white coaxial cables)

I'd go Blue Ray myself.. however getting it to a remote tv is a lot of cable pulling with HDMI wire.. Not that I can't do that.

Cable pulling can be pretty easy if you have an existing cable that isn't clamped. Tape your HDMI cable and a string to an existing cable. Pull them both through with the existing cable then pull it back through with the string.

[wa8yxm]

Blue Ray normally needs HDMI connection to TV's. DVD can go A/V. (3 wire yellow red white coaxial cables)

I'd go Blue Ray myself.. however getting it to a remote tv is a lot of cable pulling with HDMI wire.. Not that I can't do that.

[GordonThree]

I have a very old Blu-ray player that still has analog outputs. It's a Hitachi.

If wiring is an issue, shopping around eBay, Craigslist and good will might be of benefit.

[wilber1]

Bought a nice compact LG Blue Ray player at Walmart several years ago for around 50 bucks. Exactly the same size as my sat receiver. Looks like they were made to go together.

[ktmrfs]

IMHO if your tv has an available HDMI input no reason to NOT go blu Ray, Most current Blu ray players have gone to HDMI output only, although some older ones had HDMI, composite and S video output.

The sony I have is a year old model, $40 from amazon, also gives me Netflix and Amazon connectivity along with other services w/o needing cable, just wifi.

And I don't need to make sure the DVD is NOT blu ray when I rent/buy one.

Heck, you can spend more on a non blu ray player than a decent blu ray anymore.

ours is s sony bps 3700. It was $40 around xmas time on amazon, now it is back up to $69.

[3oaks]

tomman58 wrote:
Listen up! Blue ray is the current method of DVD players. PERIOD. Anyone that has a simpler system sucks, period. If you don't have a blu ray you are in a caveman environment.
If you have tapes you are missing out on the current tech by a mile!!!!

A Sony blu ray costs less than 70 bucks if you can't afford that steal the money from a McDonald employee.

Good grief am I in America ???

:S

Wow! Typical "elitist" attitude or should I say old fashioned "snob" attitude, one and the same. :R

Or did you skip your Meds.? :h

[Matt_Colie]

Chris,

It is your BluRay....
Just for shts and giggles, I just fired up our newest BluRay. It was waiting at the "make a choice" screen before I turned around. When I dropped a disk in the drawer, it was less than 15 seconds before it was badgering me about some choice. And then rolled into the movie setup in less than five seconds more.
This was not how it was with the older BRD players. Yes, there were all a slow boot up.

Because we are early adopters, we are on our third. Each is better than the last.

Matt

[Chris_Bryant]

Am I the only one who hates blue ray discs? Maybe it's my Sony player, but I pop a DVDs in and can play in seconds, blue ray takes time to load all the bs, then is slow to respond. I haven't watched a blue ray disc in years now, just stream everything.

That rant aside, I agree the op should go blue ray....

[DrewE]

tomman58 wrote:
Listen up! Blue ray is the current method of DVD players. PERIOD. Anyone that has a simpler system sucks, period. If you don't have a blu ray you are in a caveman environment.
If you have tapes you are missing out on the current tech by a mile!!!!

A Sony blu ray costs less than 70 bucks if you can't afford that steal the money from a McDonald employee.

Good grief am I in America ???

First off, pardon me for sucking, since I don't own a Blu-ray player. :R I could afford one, without committing crimes against fast-food restaurant workers, but don't see any advantage for me at the present...and for the record my house is hardly cave-like so long as you don't venture too far into the basement. I'd just rather spend my $70 on other things like campsite registrations, and once there get out and do things besides watching movies.

Blu-rays are not any form of DVD, but an entirely different medium (though of course both are optical discs and based on the same basic concepts). Blu-rays have more densely packed data, holding more information, so they can fit an HD movie on the disc. To be able to read that, they need to use a higher frequency of light (which allows for greater resolution when reading the disc), which is where the name comes from--it's a blue laser, rather than the red ones used for DVDs. Actually, a Blu-ray player needs a separate red laser to read DVDs; the two formats are not really compatible with each other beyond the physical disc size.

[GordonThree]

I have Blu-ray connected to multiple screens at work, no problem playing protected titles. Just need an hdcp compatible splitter.

I can see, having to rewire an older RV with HDMI as a hurdle.

[RBStorms]

GordonThree wrote:

tomman58 wrote:
Listen up! Blue ray is the current method of DVD players. PERIOD. Anyone that has a simpler system sucks, period. If you don't have a blu ray you are in a caveman environment.
If you have tapes you are missing out on the current tech by a mile!!!!

A Sony blu ray costs less than 70 bucks if you can't afford that steal the money from a McDonald employee.

Good grief am I in America ???

I've been stumped by this as well... Why do they even make DVD discs any more?

DVD discs are priced artificially cheaper than Blu-ray, is that the reason? They cost the same to produce and distribute.

So, the deal is this. Blu-ray has requirements. Restrictive requirements on your playback system. One of them is HDMI-only output and HDCP. If you buy an HDMI splitter to send the signal to multiple screens, guess what happens if you try to play a Blu-ray disc with HDCP (most commercially produced movies)? Blank Screens. The disc will not play if there is more than one screen connected. This will happen on a Blu-ray equipped laptop, too. It will only play if you have selected ONE screen. It doesn't matter what is displayed on the other screen, even. This is only one of the "advantages" of Blu-ray.

[RBStorms]

Yes, you will want to have BlueRay capability, as we are starting to see cheap BlueRay discs in place of DVD discs.

One caveat: You may want to keep your DVD player, too, as some burned DVDs will not play in newer BlueRay players.

I also second the motion for digital storage. A nice PC with an external BlueRay/DVD R/W drive, and a copy of MakeMKV and HandBrake will allow you to rip BlueRay and DVD discs to a hard drive and then copy to flash drive, if desired. With the hard drive or flash drive connected to BlueRay player or a smart TV, you can let your kids watch Frozen over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and... well, you get the idea. Have one drive for the kids, and keep the stuff for grown-ups on another.

In our rig, I can play DVDs on the original Concertone unit (Composite TV input), BlueRays on the Samsung BD Player (HDMI 2), and whatever I want on my PC (HDMI 3), with the audio routed through the TV back to the Concertone system.

[GordonThree]

tomman58 wrote:
Listen up! Blue ray is the current method of DVD players. PERIOD. Anyone that has a simpler system sucks, period. If you don't have a blu ray you are in a caveman environment.
If you have tapes you are missing out on the current tech by a mile!!!!

A Sony blu ray costs less than 70 bucks if you can't afford that steal the money from a McDonald employee.

Good grief am I in America ???

I've been stumped by this as well... Why do they even make DVD discs any more?

DVD discs are priced artificially cheaper than Blu-ray, is that the reason? They cost the same to produce and distribute.

[Bobbo]

Why not? There is no downside.

[tomman58]

Listen up! Blue ray is the current method of DVD players. PERIOD. Anyone that has a simpler system sucks, period. If you don't have a blu ray you are in a caveman environment.
If you have tapes you are missing out on the current tech by a mile!!!!

A Sony blu ray costs less than 70 bucks if you can't afford that steal the money from a McDonald employee.

Good grief am I in America ???