Blu Ray DVD

[Trevor723]

So... just picked up a PS3 a couple weeks ago, chosen over the 360 mainly due to the inclusion of BluRay capability. Looking at the BluRay dvds for sale, there are a lot of movies filmed decades ago that are released. I have to question the quality/ability to "HD-ize" something that was shot on film in the 80s ie Full Metal Jacket. Would it be worth it to upgrade my current DVD version to teh BluRay version of older movies??

On a related note, I picked up the Planet Earth series last night. I loved it on broadcast but the dvds are probably the most amazing thing I've seen on a television screen.

 

[Jimbo]

Eh, I'd just rip your current DVD collection rather than re-purchase everything. Will ripping improve the quality? No - but once it's in your computer, you basically guarantee its forward compatibility forever.

IDK about older stuff being "upmixed" into HD-quality...if the original is only so good, that's the best that the product can be.

 

[mikebike357]

The original movies were filmed in a 16:9 ratio for the big screen but adapted to 4:3 for the square box... I've noticed though that even some older flix in 16:9 don't fill the whole screen on my TV. Watching older HD flix on TNT-HD are still pretty damn good, but as James said, they're just upconverting. Also, when you're watching Planet Earth I don't believe it's in full 1080p but when you watch it on the blu-ray disk it is.

The BluRay player is on my list to buy... I've been toying between teh PS3 and the Sony BDP-S300 which you can get refurbed for $289. I'm not much of a gamer so i'm not sure ponying up the full $399 for the PS3 will be a big benefit.

I'm addicted to HD.

 

[ruggedman]

It completely depends on the source material they encode the video from and how the people encoding it decide to show it. Full Metal Jacket Blu-Ray sucks (one of the worst transfers ever) but the deluxe edition is pretty damn decent.

As for Blu-Ray quality...the place to find out about transfer quality and get reviews is below:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

 

[KTurner]

The BluRay player is on my list to buy... I've been toying between teh PS3 and the Sony BDP-S300 which you can get refurbed for $289. I'm not much of a gamer so i'm not sure ponying up the full $399 for the PS3 will be a big benefit.

I'm addicted to HD.

The PS3 will also connect to media servers. So say you have some PS3 friendly formatted videos sitting on your computers hard drive, you can set up a DNLA server and watch the vids through the PS3 on a TV from the comfort of your couch. Bigger files don't always stream so well on the wireless but run a cable and you should be good for any thing else. Does the S300 support other formats or just BluRay? The PS3 has a long list of supported formats.

 

[ruggedman]

The DLNA features are crap until sony smartens up.

When using HDMI to output audio to a new generation LPCM capable stereo you get R&L channels on audio that comes from the PC (MP3s, some videos, etc). And there's no option for the PS3 to output anything but LPCM in that mode. Not cool. uke: