Last night we had a few friends over our apartment. The reason for the event was to watch the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Aside from just meeting up to hang out it was also a test to see what people thought of Blu-ray and a real surround sound.
Many people are finally catching word of these new blu-ray disks. Even today when I stopped by my parent’s house my mother wanted to know what they were because when she went to go buy Sleeping Beauty she wanted to know why one was $14 and the other $27. I explained to her that they are the latest in technology. She asked if she could watch it on their TV. I went through the basics with her.
You can watch Blu-ray disk on any TV but they are designed specifically for HDTVs. They need a specific player to watch the movies but also allow you to watch regular DVDs in better quality if you use a new cable (HDMI). They do not play on DVD players. Also the sound quality on most Blu-rays is the highest of quality to date right now. Her reply was but what about all my VHS movies. I explained that even today it is extremely difficult to find stand alone VHS players even back a year ago when I worked at Circuit City. I assured her that DVDs would still be around for at least 4-5 more years.
Now the major question that people need to think about is… Is it worth it? Majority of people are just learning that there are new disk out there BUT have no idea if it’s worth buying into this technology if they’ve never seen it. Everyone who sees demos in the store think they are doing something to make it look better or even trick them. We all have the natural instinct to see those demos and end caps at electronic retail stores and think to ourselves it’ll never be like that when I get it home. Well this is why I had people over last night to see what everyone thought of the Blu-ray experience.
To put things into technical perspective I’ll list the resolution of VHS, DVD, & Blu-ray.
VHS: 330 x 480
Laser Disk: 560 x 480
DVD: 720 x 480
Blu-ray: 1280 x 720 & 1920 x 1080
These numbers refer to the size of the image (resolution) in pixels. The reason Blu-ray has two resolutions listed is because your TV will restrict you on what resolution you can watch blu-ray on. If you set only supports up to 720p that means you’re stuck with the 1280×720 being your highest resolution. If you television supports 1080p that obviously means you’re set to support the highest resolution.
Now when you think about it the size of an image of a DVD compared to the size of the Blu-ray it’s almost double. The way to think about it in terms of reality is imagine you have a photo in a frame. The size of the photo is set but if you wish to make it bigger you’ll lose quality. Now if you have a much larger photo and try to make it smaller or large it will not distort as much. The same concept goes for the resolution of movies, games, and television. The large the TV the more it will distort if you have a small resolutions like 330×480 or 720×480. When you introduce 1920×1080 the image is huge and will not distort at much if you put it up on a big screen TV.
This is where the fun begins. Every person who came over knew that I was playing the movie on Blu-ray. I even hyped it up a bit because it was on Blu-ray. Did Blu-ray live up to the hype?
Of course it did! The second the lights went off and the first scene started people were freaking out. All I heard was “It looks like you’re seeing it in real life”, “Wow I can’t wait to see all the special effects”, “This is going to make me stay and watch the whole movie”, etc… People who had already seen the movie who just stopped by to hang out for awhile stayed for a decent chunk of the movie because they were so amazed how it looked. The amount of detail and clarity you’ll see in Blu-ray is breath taking. Keep in mind the higher quality of a television set you have the better the experience.
I showed it on my 40” Samsung with 120Hz. Since I currently own the 71 series and it is one of the first generation of 120Hz set it has some faults when it comes to fast motion scenes BUT everyone talked about the detail and that’s Blu-ray that’s doing that not the 120 Hz. People did say that sometimes it looked funny and like a soap opera effect. Others even noticed how the background looked blurry and just focused on the things closer to the camera. I had the Auto Motion Plus set to High which creates these artifacts yet also sometimes creates some of the most realistic scenes I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately Samsung has not fixed the problem in the 71 series and is even replacing people’s sets for the newer model. I haven’t committed to that long process.
At the end of the day people left with their first experience of Blu-ray and heard, “Wow I want to watch every movie now on Blu-ray”. Unfortunately the technology of Blu-ray isn’t as affordable as most people would want to pay but I’d say 98% of people who have spent the money would say it’s definitely worth it. Prices range from $200 to $3,000. To be perfectly honest the only difference they all have is what type of audio the player supports and load times of the disk. If you don’t have a surround system or don’t care about audio you can buy any Blu-ray player out there and get the visual experience like no other if you have an HDTV.
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