Came thisclose to hitting the “order” button on Amazon.com for my first Blu-ray player.
Then a friend in the know shot me an email saying my TV set (720p) didn’t have the resolution required to take proper advantage of Blu-ray’s crisp visuals.
So I’m back playing the waiting game, hoping prices drop further – or Santa brings me a new flat-screen TV that’s 1080p. Christmas miracles can happen, right?
TV Predictions says plenty of others made the jump to Blu-ray during Black Friday. Have we hit the tipping point, and at what point do I become a movie Luddite for not having a Blu-ray player?
ALSO CHECK OUT:
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I believe we have hit the tipping point. There are sub-$200 players available in every store, with 2.0 models (which means the players are connected to the Internet for downloadable features and the ability to link up to other Blu-ray players) around $250. My father, who is not a technology guy by any means, wants one for Christmas to go along with his new HDTV that he bought last month (though mainly because I tend to buy the Blu-ray releases of new titles and he can’t watch them like he did the DVDs). I plan to pick up the Insignia player at Best Buy for him today, which I saw was only $169.
You could be right, Synner-man … do you know if Blu-ray would help me given the fact that my tv is only 720p? How big a factor is that?
You will still see a marked difference over regular DVD. Your 720p TV has a smaller resolution (either 1366×768, 1280×720, or 1024×768: roughly 921,600 pixels) compared to a 1080i or p TV (1920×1080: 2,073,600 pixels). But is still an improvement over regular DVD (720×480: 345,600 pixels). The Blu-ray has the full resolution of 1920×1080 and will basically drop to fit your TV. That means you are losing half the possible resolution of a 1080 picture, but the 720 is still 3x the resolution of DVDs.
The nice thing is that if you buy Blu-ray now, you are set for the future when you do upgrade your TV. And it gives you another reason to rewatch those titles.
Thanks for the feedback!
I haven’t gone Blu-Ray yet but I came across this web page several months ago.
Apparently, this fellow took a HD broadcast (in 1080i) of the first “Lord of the Rings” and compares it with the DVD version. Even on my 15 inch laptop, I can see a difference. On a larger screen, you’d see much more of a difference.
Just roll the mouse over the pics to see the difference.
http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html
Hope this helps.