Just got it for $14.99 DVD was like $19 or something

Glad I didnt buy it at Best Buy once I learned that they were advertising the DVD price of $19 instead of the Blu-Ray one the other day Who the **** still advertises new DVD instead of the Blu-Ray version?

Edit: This was in store, we passed the electronics part looking for something else and I did a double take at the price.

Lots of people? It's still a small minority of people who actually own bluray. o.O

Yeah... I don't know many people who have blu-ray atm. DVD is still the vast dominant majority. It's going to be years before that changes.

I don't think it will be too many years, but it isn't like the jump from VHS to DVD. The difference in convenience simply doesn't match up to the difference in price the same way.

I don't know... with HD TVs being so cheap now, and Blu-Ray players dropping in price as well, I think the conversion isn't going to take that long.

Convenience has nothing to do with it, it's the huge jump in quality. I find the price difference to be worth it except when some blu-rays get priced at $35, even $30 is pushing it for some though. That being said, Ive picked up several movies from Best Buy for only $10, which is awesome since I didn't own them on DVD (Robocop, Bullitt, Total Recall). For Star Trek I'd be kinda willing to pay $30, since it was a great movie and all, but I just decided to wait. Glad I did.

And yeah, with as much as they are pushing HDTVs now and how cheap they are becoming, along with how much harder CRT ones are becoming to find (I think the only place I see them anymore is Best Buy, all small and gimpy ones), that they'd be pushing blu-ray instead of the DVD. Stupid ad that made me think it was $19 at Best Buy had some really small fine print under it that said the blu-ray one was $29 which I didn't see or think to look for.

I really think the jump from SDTV to HDTV isn't much different than the jump from B&W to colour, problem is people are really stupid when it comes to technology and hooking **** up properly (EG: people using composite cable to hook stuff like their PS3 up to their HDTV)

I had an "argument" with a Best Buy employee really pushing the Monster Cable HDMIs down a customer's throat.

I basically made both him and the customer uncomfortable by trying to save the customer some money and letting them know there isn't a difference between the $90 monster cable and the $30 off-brand one, since they both had similar shielding and same metal. I mentioned how brands like Monster Cable really rip off consumers, because tests have shown people can't tell the difference between their cables and cheapo ones.

The customer darted off with the more expensive one and the employee mentioned how it was awesome that Rockfish (another high priced HDMI cable) would send you a new cable when the new HDMI standard releases.... well of course they can do that, they charge 70 bucks for something I can buy off of newegg for 5 or 10

I guess I was obnoxious when I was just trying to help. Oh well, it was sorta fun.

Hmm, star treck blu-ray at my wal mart was $19.99..oh well either way good deal and bought.

For most people I know the visual quality increase isn't enough for them to make the jump to bluray. The VHS to DVD quality jump was incredible, DVD to bluray so far is feeling more like the how Laserdisc was, yeah there's a market for it and it probably will grow to become a more dominant standard eventually - but right now for the most part the people showing an interest in bluray are people who are heavily interested in both technology and video quality.

I only personally know two other people who even have a bluray player - one is the owner of a dvd/bluray specialty store, the other is the owner of the local comic book/general geek stuff store. Neither of those can be described as the average consumer, every person I know who would fall in that category goes "Oh yes, it looks really cool, awesome quality" when they've seen the difference, but they simply have no desire to invest in it at the prices it's going for atm. And at the price difference I can see their point, the majority of bluray discs aren't yet priced in a way to motivate the average person to switch. Same goes for the players when compared to dvd players.

Monoprice.com is your god for cable needs

Dude, $30 ones are still a rip off. You can buy HDMI cables in the 6' range for like a buck a foot. I've bought two 6' (I think thats their length) for less than $10 (including the shipping) both times. Speaking of which I still need another one since my TV only have three Component inputs. I found it odd that the employee didn't push cable on us more than he did when I bought the blu-ray player for my mom's TV (which still hasn't been used and I can now get her a blu-ray player for $100 less -_-; ), he only made a mention of cable one time and didn't even mention Monster, I just told him I could get my stuff online and he didn't say anything.

And its not just cables people can't tell the difference b/w, I saw some older article (from like a year+ ago) a few months ago that had some audiophiles that couldn't even tell the difference b/w HDMI and some wire coat hanger that had some audio jacks stuck on them.

Audiophiles is recognized by Firefox as a word, but something like berserker isn't...


That or Firefold.com, that's where I got me cheap ones. I've seen Amazon run sales on HDMI cable before, was like $2 or something crazy for 6'.

From what I've seen from my upscaling DVD player that came with this TV, I'd need to be hit in the head repeatedly to not be able to see the difference b/w it and my PS3 playing blu-rays. I got the urge to finally use the thing for something other than its speakers and decided to watch LotR on it since Ive been jonsing to see it again (PS: PUT THE BLU-RAY OUT ALREADY ASSLICKERS) and it doesn't look good at all. Since HDTVs are replacing SDTVs, people are going to have to pick up on blu-rays eventually and there's no reason to not do it now.

(Here anyway) Most brand new blu-rays are only $10 more than the DVD, if that.Thats not much worse than when DVDs were new, right? Places also some movies on sale a lot (like Best Buy and the ones I picked up, there were still a bunch of others for $10 that I could have used). At $10 I was kinda leery of it thinking they might be ones with bad transfers or something (like Reservoir Dogs or The Fifth Element from what Ive heard), but A Clockwork Orange and Robocop looked perfect to me, still need to watch Bullitt, Terminator, and Total Recall.

I'm pretty sure theres a line in the sales book at best buy toprem, that if someone looks like a geek smells like a geek, just let them buy what they want and dont upsell as it'll piss off customers more then get you a sale.

Maybe if you looked average.

It varies here, sometimes it's like 10 buck difference, sometimes it's significantly more - sometimes up to being as much as double the cost of the dvd. It varies a great deal on studios and even which release it is (Fifth Element you can get pretty cheap the first release, but remaster one is more expensive). People who aren't into technology like you or I are, to them that 10 buck difference is HUGE though, heck, it's not insignificant to me either. I still buy a more movies on dvd than bluray, some movies just aren't worth the difference (though Star Trek absolutely is!). My point wasn't that there wasn't a noticeable difference either, but that the difference is not nearly as dramatic as going from VHS to DVD. Nor is there any significant storage space saved by going with bluray like there was on going to dvd from VHS.

Now the difference in upgrading from your small CTR to your big HD set, THAT is the part these people notice. The quality they can't see often, but the size they notice very well (sorry guys, to a large percentage of the population it's not the resolution of your equipment that counts, it's the size alone). And yes, I have run into people who could not see the difference between HD and SD - heck, my mother's one of those people.

These things that seem trivial to a geek add up. I mean my sister a bit of a gadgets freak - but she won't make the move to bluray. To her it's simply too costly for the benefit. And I can see her point, the kind of movies she likes are romantic comedies, there's not nearly as much oooh and ahhh in those compared to say my taste in movies that tends to include very visual heavy special effect high-octane ultraviolent choreographed fight scenes that really shine when viewed in full HD. I mean let us be perfectly honest here people, no one watches your average Megan Fox movie for plot, we watch it for the visuals only, therefor we expect very good visuals.

I know a lot of people with HD TVs, people who bought theirs years before I bought mine. People with 50 inch monsters for watching the news on - in standard definition too I might add (at this point Toprem might have keeled over dead in shock, if so could someone please call an ambulance?). All of them are pretty meh about the technology, they just got their sets because they were big, everyone else was doing it and bigger is better right? That's not the crowd that will ever get a bluray player until the cost is equal on both players and movies, and there are a lot more of them than there are of people like us.

Hearing that Toprem paid for something was a shock....

Have a ps3 but my tv is a older sony trinitron, so wouldn't really get much out of a bluray. But if they are cheaper than the dvd hells I'd get it. Few times I've bothered to look they've been 35$+ and I wrote them off.

Oh, now I have to buy a few more versions of 5th...(have 3 different dvd versions)

I thought it worth mentioning that most blu-ray haven't been in the $35+ range outside special editions, CE etc for some time now. A few still release at $29, but most are releasing in the $19-$24 range. They do still average more expensive then DVD, but not by much. I have picked up 4 or 5 movies in the past few months and all of them have been no more then $5 higher then their DVD counterpart. Since i own an HDTV that $5 is well worth it given the massive difference in visual quality between an upscaled DVD and blu-ray.

If you don't own an HDTV then I would agree that it might not be worth it. However you might consider springing the extra $5 on new purchases for when you eventually do get a tv that takes advantage of it. The visual quality, the bonus features that blu-ray gets that dvd does not, and the simple fact that you don't have to deal with half a dozen disks for all the extra content makes it worthwhile.

Those that say they can't see the difference in upscaled DVD fall into two camps; They are either blind, and no I am not being hateful because I have had extremely bad vision my entire life, or they have not seen a quality blu-ray setup on a properly setup and quality HDTV. View blu-ray through composite or even RGB on a crap hdtv and sure you can't see the difference. View it through hdmi on a quality screen and the difference is as big or bigger then the jump from VHS to DVD was.

Firstly: For a digital cable, you are correct. You will not see a difference between an el cheapo cable and an expensive one. So optical audio, digital coax, or HDMI. For analog cables - *I* can see a difference between cheap cables and high quality ones. Monster, Tributaries Silver/Platinum, etc. The cheap component cables that came with my cable box versus the $300 Tributaries I own (I worked for an a/v store, I got them for like $60)... there is a HUGE difference. The picture is sharper and clearer, the colors are brighter and have less bleed, etc. Audio... I haven't used analog audio outside of my PC (which right now, my PC amp/speakers has died, so it's connected digitally to my home receiver, heh), but I have done tests (again, I worked at an a/v store)... I ran with cheapos that came with our $600 bluray player when they first released (literally, the sony's came with terrible composite cables), our basic cables, and the high end cables (we didn't have the cables like I bought, nobody bought them, lol - we did a lot of custom cables in general - why I got 'em so cheap). There was a difference most of us could hear - and it was a blind test, the only one who knew what was going on behind the scenes was me.

So, if YOU can't hear a difference on analog... cool, save the money. *I* hear the difference, and sorry you have crap ears. Digital... you're absolutely right, save 'em some money. Cables aren't like the other equipment, use won't wear 'em out, so go as cheap as you want on digital cables

Anyway - most people don't know the difference between SD and HD. The only way I could ever show people was 2 identical TVs with identical satellite receivers sitting next to each other. SOME people can see it when you flip back and forth between SD and HD, some need it side by side - but I've never seen someone go "I don't see a difference." I have seen a lot of people go "I don't care about the difference." My biggest issue is that SD on an HD set looks... awful. Way too many pixels on an HD set, not to mention the stretching (since most people would rather stretch it than have the bars on the side)... I have bars when I watch SD, but me not on an HD channel is rare ;)

Edit: Bluray through component (RGB) is fine. It's 720p/100i, not 1080p though. You cannot see a difference at that level between analog and digital (RGB and HDMI). HDMI just allows you to bump up to 1080p, and progressive >>>>>>>> interlaced. My stuff is all set at 720p instead of 1080i, cuz my 30" TV won't do 1080p. Progressive wins, hands down.

LOL, I only paid 600 bucks to watch Star Trek on my transatlantic flight!!