The Blu-Ray Bottom Line.

Everyone’s talking about Blu-Ray like it’s the greatest thing ever made. Well it’s not. I own a player and 47 movies (at the time of this writing) my DVD collection is at 2450 (all originals, not burned etc) and I have to say that I enjoy BR and what it offers, but you have to be careful when buying.

My player, like most, up-converts regular DVDs – and they look pretty good. I watched Machete in up-converted and it was pretty darn wicked! Before buying a movie you have to check the user ratings on www.blu-ray.com these guys are good at telling you whether it’s worth it or not.

I wanted The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but they said the PQ (picture quality) wasn’t that much better than DVD, so there’s no point. Now there are some movies where even a slight improvement is enough for me to re-buy – like my top 10 movies, like Superman, 2001 etc. Superman is better looking on BR than regular, but not enough for me to say go out and buy it. But for me, any little improvement is enough for me to get that. So with that in mind I have made the criteria for blu-ray.

1 – The movie needs to be new – year 2000 and on.

2 – If the movie is old, then it must be worth getting due to effects/visuals.
Ex – Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Ben Hur, Blade Runner etc.

3 – If the movie is old and not a visual style movie, then you have to LOVE it enough that any little improvement is worth spending money on – because usually the movie is only slightly better than regular DVD.

4 – The movie has to be something worth having in BR, not some comedy.
Ex – Mall Cop, Hitch, Fletch, Blair Witch Project etc. – I like Mall Cop, but I don’t need a BR version of that.

5 – Price. I am not re-buying a BR movie for 40 bucks. There are deals everywhere for cheaper BR movies. You can Terminator 2 and Hellboy 2 for 20 bucks at HMV.

There you have it, the 5 step process.

Just my 2 cents.

J-Man