Reasons to Switch to Blu-Ray
It was not long ago that most, if not all, television sets were square shaped and still operated with cathode ray tubes. Movies were available for consumers on the preferred home format, vhs, and the only way you could watch a movie was to buy it outright (example: in 1991, a copy of “Die Hard 2:Die Harder” would’ve cost around 65$ to 85$) or rent it at the local video rental retailer. And picture quality? Low resolution, soft, washed out, not in it’s intended aspect ratio and degrading before your very eyes - vhs tapes had a very finite life span and every time you watched one you were contributing to it’s degradation. When you were done watching, you had to rewind the tape, thus stretching it slightly each time and moving the degrading process along even more. Constant rewinding was also wearing out your vhs player at an accelerated rate.
It’s difficult to believe now, but the conditions described above were only a decade or so ago. It was not until the late 90’s that the dvd market emerged, and through the 00’s, it began it’s rise in the marketplace. Dvd’s were embraced quickly, as they presented a superior option to vhs in that they were smaller, could hold far more information, maintained the theatrical aspect ratio (16:9, your movies at home would now be seen as they were meant to be, old crt tv’s were square and thus the picture you’d see would have it’s sides and top and bottom cropped to fit the screen, depriving you of viewing the whole picture), and required no rewinding. Picture quality and sound were greatly and noticeably improved. Best of all, they would not degrade as rapidly as vhs tapes. But the home entertainment evolution was just beginning.
Within the past five years, the home entertainment landscape has changed dramatically. You’d be hard pressed to find a crt style, square shaped television anywhere anymore. Certainly not for sale. Televisions have evolved quickly to what they are today: thin, sleek, light, hangable on your wall and with a quality of picture never before experienced in the home. High Definition, or ‘HD’ for short, is the new standard in picture quality. High Definition tv’s are the perfect compliment to your dvd collection, right? No.
To fully experience the dramatic increase in picture quality that an HD television is capable of, you need to upgrade your standard definition dvd’s and dvd player to Blu-Ray.
A lot of people don’t know the difference between Blu Ray and DVD. On the surface, they are very similar - they’re discs of the same size and require similar looking players to watch them with. That’s where the similarities end though. Often the larger price tag on Blu Ray players and movies puts people off, but there are distinct advantages over DVD that you should consider. To that end, here is a simple guide to help you realize those advantages.
- For starters, Blu Ray discs have a lot more storage space than DVD’s. While regular DVD’s have only 4.7 GB of space, their counterpart discs can store up to 27 GB - which is 13 hours of standard definition television, or 2-3 hours of HDTV. This means that you can store a lot more information on a disc, which means more special features for your movies as well as more details to watch on your HDTV.
- Buying a Blu Ray player doesn’t mean that you need to replace all your DVD’s, as you might have done when converting from VHS to DVD. All Blu Ray players are backwards-compatible, meaning you can watch your older DVDs with a Blu Ray player. Most players also “upconvert” your DVD’s; in other words, they increase the definition of your standard DVD to a better image for HDTV’s. If you have a substantial collection, you can still watch them in higher than standard definition (though it’s still not HDTV).
- The biggest advantage of Blu Ray over DVD’s has been touched on but not fully explored: HDTV. You will not get the same quality picture on an HDTV with a standard DVD player. A disc will give you superb picture quality, and also audio quality. So not only will you experience better TV and movies, your sound system will sound better too.
- Your kids will be as enthusiastic as you are about the Blu-ray player, especially since the device is included in Sony’s Playstation 3 console. That’s some serious value, considering the price tag of the PS3 includes both the player and next-gen gaming technology.
The substantially improved picture and sound on HDTV sets is a result of the increased storage space on the Blu Ray disc, as well as the blue laser behind the technology. By upgrading to Blu Ray you will never want to go back to DVD - just like you never wanted to go back to VHS after viewing a DVD for the first time.
Vinpower Digital.com has almost any type of dvd duplicator on the market today, as well as other formats. We have the expertise to help you at every stage of planning to enhance your optical disc duplication. Visit us online today!