Blu-ray

Technology always progresses forward. When it comes to home videos the past several decades have brought us the rise and fall of BetaMax, VHS tapes, Laser Discs, and the gradually disappearing DVD discs. The next iteration in home cinema is the Blu-ray. Blu-ray presents your favorite movies and TV shows in crystal clear 1080p High Definition right in your very own home. If you are just hearing about it, or are not familiar, this guide will help you decide if it’s right for you.

Why should I get a Blu-ray and not a traditional DVD player? To answer that question you would need to know that the images on Blu-ray are second to none. The resolution is 1080p (six times the resolution of a standard DVD player). Blu-ray players are the perfect way to watch movies on 1080p High Definition Televisions (HDTV), but an HDTV is not necessary to watch a Blu-ray disc. Blu-ray players have superior sound than that of a DVD player.

Screen Resolution is a way of explaining how crisp the picture looks. Usually, the resolution is described in numbers and letters. 1080p, 720p, and 1080i are the numbers that are associated with High Definition TV (HDTV). The numbers stand for the lines of pixels in the screen. The total number of pixels is measured by multiplying the lines of pixels (horizontal and vertical). For instance, when a TV is 1080p, it is actually 1920 (horizontal lines of pixels) X 1080 (vertical lines of pixels) = 2,073,600 total pixels. The letters associated with the numbers “P” and “I” stand for progressive and interlaced. Comparing screens with the same resolutions, progressive has double the picture information than the interlaced with a more fluid and stable image. Is there a noticeable difference between 1080p and 720p? Yes, especially when watching HD and Blu-ray DVDs. The 720p image will look as if it is lacking the same quality of a 1080p image.

So, how do I decide which player is for me?

Deciding which Blu-ray player best fits your needs is based on what you would like your player to do for you. Unlike many DVD players Blu-rays have many available features.

Audio quality is a major benefit to owning a Blu-ray player as opposed to a traditional DVD player. Blu-ray players have superior sound quality due to their lossless compression format. What this means… When movies are taken from their original state—“studio master”—and transferred to a DVD sound quality can be lost. Not so when transferred to a Blu-ray. The sound quality remains intact. This means watching a movie at home will sound as close to movie theater quality as it can get.

Blu-ray Online is a great feature that Blu-ray players have. This allows users to access the internet wirelessly or through an Ethernet line. When the player connects to the internet it can automatically update its firmware, run applications like YouTube, Pandora and you can stream movies via NetFlix or Blockbuster online.

BD-Live is available only on Blu-ray players. It is a feature that allows users to access extra feature only available online. These features may include: bonus scenes, bonus view (picture-in-picture), internet chats, scheduled chats with the director, internet games, downloadable featurettes, downloadable quizzes, downloadable movie trailers, and extra storage.

Revised 12/21/10