Aha! well reminded. Even though PSN is down, I can still use the PS3 iPlayer app..

Jon

+1, but the guy was the ambassador type to global companies IIRC, which makes it even funnier

The whole 3D thing is a complete joke imho. We've got some pretty damned expensive 3D ones in the office which I've tried and they invariably give me a headache and look really [LIFTED].

I must confess I find it vaguely amusing when shops have a 3D TV showing 3D on the shop floor but none of the glasses readily available so it just looks like a fuzzy mess.
I know the specs tend to be rather expensive and you wouldn't want them sitting around but having an out of focus fuzzy picture running continuously doesn't exactly make it a tempting proposition.

Chap I used to work with bought a 3D Sony set.
He loves it, mainly for the football.
When the fitters came to install it for him, they did have to Google some of the setup steps, however.
And he is a retired banker, so there's a certain relationship he enjoys between money and sense...

Quite true, I must admit I sit in my gaming chair for my PS and I was pretty much blown away with the clarity. Like you say though, size of tv/living room/distance from screen all play a part.

Can you rip Blu Ray disc to your hard drive?
If you can I may well start buying Blu Ray's. If not, I'll stick to DVD's.

Don't people rip BD to .MKV?

That's the first stage I er... would do, theoretically. Then theoretically I'd use handbrake to transcode it to MP4, because that plays on more things.

Jon

I have a BR player in my laptop, and in the time I've had it (over 2 years) I've watched one film, just out of curiosity.

To me, BR goes into the same pot as 3D - another gimmick from the film industry to con the consumer into watching rubbish films. No amount of high definition or 3D will turn a poor film into a great one. They should concentrate more on quality than gimmicks.

To my mind, the advent of hi resolution large wide-screen TVs makes DVD horribly obsolete. seriously - something with only 200 lines of effective resolution on a 42" screen with 1080 lines looks dreadful, no matter what the "upscaling" (aka blurring).

What I don't understand is why there is such a price premium on Blu-ray. It's reminiscent of the tape v CD days when CDs were more expensive, despite being cheaper to press.

*looks confused*

I've got a thirty quid Sony DVD player that upscales to our 37in Toshiba 1080 HD telly. It looks superb.

So far, nothing has persuaded me BR is worth the investment. That is until the upcoming release of Star Trek TNG, which has been remastered from original negs. Even then, it's still an outlay I probably won't bother to make.

The CD prices were high because Philips were recouping development costs, so each disc effectively had a “tax” applied to it.

I don’t buy Blu-Rays when they first come out. I’m a stingy sod, and I usually wait for a film in a 2 for 1 offer, or in the bargain bin. I’m OK with spending a tenner on a film, but certainly not £20. I waited for the Alien anthology to drop to a price which equated to about £10 a film. I think I paid £35 for it, so it worked out cheaper per film. In this case, I think it was well worth the spend. I’m keeping an eye out on the Star Wars set. I don‘t think it‘s worth what’s being asked right now, but eventually I’ll buckle and buy a set.

However, we are both feeling a squeeze here, and things like music and films come bottom of the list. I’m more likely to revisit DVDs than buy a new Blu-Ray disc right now.

+1. This is why I'll only buy on blu-ray if the film's any good. Otherwise standard DVD will suffice. Two exceptions I've made to this are the LOTR Blu-Ray boxset, and Inception, both of which I bought as soon as they came out and on Blu-Ray because of the implied higher quality.


+1. I do the 3 for 2 or 2 for 1 offers when buying blu-ray (unless it's something I really want to watch.

The one thing I didn’t do is rush out and buy a big TV and a BluRay player for movies. The TV was bought nearly 3 years after the PS3, which played BluRays. The TV, which was excellent, was on its last legs, and so was a natural replacement. At that point, it was HD or nothing. It certainly makes playing games on the PS3 better.

The good bit about the PS3 is the BR player. So no need to buy anything more. Once I had the new TV, I was certainly going to prefer BluRay over DVD for movies.

I’m certainly not going to rush for a 3D TV. I’m not convinced that it’s anything more than a layer of icing that is oft applied to a cardboard cake. I think we are all waiting for the Hitchcock of 3D to emerge. When I can be convinced that 3D will drive and enhance a story, I’ll be interested. Right now, it’s doing neither of that. Even though I felt that Spielberg may have got a edge on Cameron on how 3D can be used from a compositional point of view, he’s not told the story with it. I think we may be 10-15 years before that happens. By then, if it’s still around, 3D TV will be glasses free and we’ll be looking at something with a greater resolution than 1080p.