Last week I picked up a new 42" LCD to replace my "aging" 8 year old 51" rear projection.  It's an 1080p Element, not the best of brands, but I couldn't knock the price of $250 (I had various discounts that added up to about 60% off)!  Since the 51" takes up about a 1/4 of the room, even with the smaller size, this LCD will be an upgrade.    Now...with the Extended Edition of Avatar coming out next week, and Black Friday around the corner, I feel the time may just be right to go Blu.  Target's Black Friday (actually, their 2-Day) ad has been leaked online, I see they will have the Sony S370 for $99 (with my discounts, it'll come down to $84).  How can I say no to that? 

Quoting Blair:

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Personally I hate that all TVs (and especially computer monitors) are widescreen now. All it means to me is the possibility of stretching of video because it wasn't encoded, still having black bars at the top unless you have a video that is just the right size, black bars to the left if you are watching any of the millions of 4:3 TV episodes and video clips online, or possibly black bars at the top and sides making things look smaller than they did with a 4:3 TV of the same size.

I know I probably won't change your opinion - that's fine - but I'd like to refute your statements.

A widescreen computer monitor makes it easier to have 2 documents side by side without having 2 screens. It also fits better with the keyboard in a laptop.

"Stretching of video because it wasn't encoded" is usually a non-issue because you can set the zoom/aspect yourself and correct it. Except for those non-technical people who don't know how to work their screen.

"Still having black bars .. unless you have a video that is just the right size" applies equally to a 4:3 screen. Unless you like cropping the image, there's no way to get around it (except with a projector?). Personally I can't stand watching a 2.35:1 movie on a 4:3 screen or pan-and-scanning it. For movies, a widescreen is the best way to go to have the largest image possible. If you want, you could still crop the image to fill your screen (just don't stretch it - ick!)

The only thing a 4:3 TV is good at is 4:3 TV and movies, so I guess it depends on what you spend most of your time watching, but most new TV is now in widescreen.

For me, the time to make the jump was over 2 years ago, because I purchased my HDTV and PS3 (first Blu-ray player then). The free Blu-ray movie (Spider-Man 3) that came with it blew me away! I took the jump and never looked back.

However, something like that is a very personal thing and you need to think for yourself how much value you attach to the video/audio upgrade, if your equipment will be able to push that extra quality out and if not, if you're willing to invest further to be able to do so and so forth ...

I don't see price as a big issue anymore.  Sure, the players do cost more than a standard DVD player, but great deals can be had this time of year.  As for the discs, I have no plan to upgrade any of my current collection, but I'm thinking more going forward.  The cost of Blu-ray movies has dropped to almost where new DVDs were several years ago, and more & more titles have (unfortunately, IMO) pushed most of the features onto Blu-ray only. 

Quite often, I have gone for the 2-disc DVD just for the extra features, but those are becoming more scarce lately.  Looking forward to the new Avatar release, which I had been holding out for, if I go with the DVD version, I get the film split in half over 2 discs, with 1 disc of deleted scenes & features.  If I go Blu, for only $5 more, I get the film one 1 disc, and 2 full discs of features.  Makes it an easy decision, IMO 

Sorry, couldn't resist. 

The regular DVD of Avatar is just the Blu-ray scaled down to a lower resolution. An occasional blu-ray gets digitally processed all to hell, but for the most part, it's an accurate representation of how the movie looked on film. Avatar looks so clean because it was shot with digital cameras, so you don't get the usual film grain.

Quoting OWFie:

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I just recently bought a 46" LED HDTV and when I popped in my first bluray to watch on that HDTV....My JAW DROPPED.  HOLY COW, I had NO IDEA what I was missing.  I refuse to buy any more DVD's, blu ONLY.

Now, sadly, many of my DVD's look like old generation VHS compaired to my blurays, but I'll never regret making the switch.

You hit the nail on the head there. The key point is that Blu-ray (in most cases, provided it's a good transfer of course) will offer a substantial upgrade, provided you have the right equipment that can actually handle that increase in quality.

For example, way back I used to be happy with standard mono or stereo tracks ... until I invested in a surround system and now I catch myself actively checking which discs have a sound track with good surround separation.

Oh and about some DVD's looking like crap on you HDTV set ... yeah, I had that too with a few discs. It was quite a shock for me the first time to see how little detail they actually contained, even more so after I upgraded some of the to Blu-ray and had a hands-on comparison 

Quoting Blair:

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Not for me. I'll hang on to non-Blu as long as I can probably.

I was the same.  I'm not a Sony fan, and was hoping for the success of a holographic format, but at the same time, I was eager to get away from the over-compression that plagues HD broadcasts.  I tried watching Alien & Aliens on HDNET, and while the image quality is usually superior to DVD, when those strobes start, the screen turns into a horrible checkerboard due to mpeg compression.  Blu-rays use far less compression.

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I still use TVs that are 20 years old (and still run perfectly) and I'm perfectly fine with that. But for all who want to switch, more power to you, I'm not criticizing (though I find it ironic how only a few years ago so many people were complaining they wouldn't switch to Blu because the increased quality wasn't enough of a reason)

It's definitely not for everyone. Nothing is really.

For years I was holding off, not because of quality, but for compatibility.  My entire system was JVC, all linked through their compulink system where each component talks to each other. Unfortunately, JVC was taking their time entering the Blu-ray arena.  Also, none of my gear was HDMI capable yet, and the original threat of BD content through component being reduced to 480i held me back.  Cost was another issue, though that's not as big a deal as it was before.  You can get a pretty good HD flat panel for less than what a 32" CRT cost ten years ago.

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Personally I hate that all TVs (and especially computer monitors) are widescreen now. All it means to me is the possibility of stretching of video because it wasn't encoded, still having black bars at the top unless you have a video that is just the right size, black bars to the left if you are watching any of the millions of 4:3 TV episodes and video clips online, or possibly black bars at the top and sides making things look smaller than they did with a 4:3 TV of the same size.

All of these are issues you have with 4:3 TVs now, so they're actually non-issues.  Every widescreen TV I've seen has controls that let you adjust the image for content that isn't encoded properly.  They'll even let you zoom letterboxed content so you can push those burnt-in black bars off the screen entirely. 

Personally, the only problem I have with widescreen displays is that some cable channels just don't 'get it' and constantly screw things up on their end (AMC, TNT, I'm looking at you).  Frequently they'll employ that horrendous fisheye stretch effect on 4:3 content, or they'll vertically squash 16:9 content on HD channels, for absolutely no reason.  This isn't the fault of the displays, but the people at the cable channels that don't know what their doing. 

Black bars, either top & bottom or on the sides, are just a fact of life with TVs, unless you want to restrict your viewing to a single aspect ratio.  Projectors can let you get around them (though the black bars are still technically there, they're just not as evident since you can position them off the screen), and I've only seen one TV that actually adjusted its screen by physically moving the sides in & out to change the shape of the visible portion of the screen.

But entertainment is entirely a personal preference.  The entertainment industry, on the other hand, is driven by popularity and $$$.


He Who Would Like A Projector, But Doesn't Have The Appropriate Space For One Yet.