Dvd or Blue-ray?

[Royta]

A simple question. I've been watching shows at friends houses lately and enjoying them, and thus decided I want to have the collections at home. I have a 42inch tv-screen.
Now, I'm also tight on cash as it is with other hobbies around the corner begging for more spending with each passing hour..so my question is this.

Is the jump in quality really that big from Dvd to Blue-ray? Or is it just a small increase?
Is Dvd material sharp on a 42inch, or will it get blurry?
If the difference isn't that big I'll just go for Dvd-sets.

Thank you for the replies : )

 

[LordFish]

You keep saying you have a 42" TV, But what we really need to know is the Resolution (720p 1080i 1080p ext)

 

[Royta]

Not really sure on that. I'm pretty sure it can do 1080p as it does that for a few games I play on my PS3. Don't know what 1080i is though, or how I can check that.

Sorry for the lack of information, this isn't really my field of expertise.

 

[LordFish]

Well this is just my opinion, Bluray does give an amazingly sharp picture, however I don't really think its worth the extra money in a lot of the cases. Look how far they have to zoom in on this example for you to see the difference. http://www.wfu.edu/~yipcw/atg/bd/

So if there's a couple of quid in it, go for bluray, But since they're normally twice the price; I tend to stick with DVDs. They wont look blurry on your 42" TV, well they don't on mine anyway.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

There's barely any difference at all, really. Buy the DVD unless the Blu-ray's price is basically equal.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Blueray is just a way to store data, how it will look depends on everything else:
- how good is the actual movie quality
- are your TV and movie resolutions compatible
- how good is your actual TV
- how good is your player/TV software (there usually need to be some conversions and some software does it really horribly)

I'm just generally not a fan of it at all, the extreme sharpness makes it look like you are concentrating your eyes on every molecule of everyones face at the same time, that is just extremely distracting and irritating.

 

[Jazoni89]

I say screw all those, and get a Laserdisc player.

You know you're hardcore, when you have to change the huge ass discs over every hour or so.

Plus they come in some wicked looking vinyl-like sleeves.

 

[Supertegwyn]

Blu-Ray (no e) is far superior to DVD.

Been using it for a few months now with my LED and have been loving it.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I say screw all those, and get a Laserdisc player.

You know you're hardcore, when you have to change the huge ass discs over every hour or so.

Plus they come in some wicked looking vinyl-like sleeves.

Ha. I remember those when I was in elementary school. I never thought that disc media would actually take off because of those.

Anyway, the resolution on the TV is what really matters. Standard definition DVDs look great on an HD TV, so there's really no need to spend the extra scratch on Blu-Ray unless you want to. I only get certain movies in Blu-Ray because they are colorful, animated, or incorporate a lot of special effects that make the images pop out.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Blu-Ray is superior to DVD, especially because you often get more special features on the Blu-Ray version. However, the difference in most cases isn't substantial enough to justify the price difference, especially on movies that don't do anything interesting visually.

If you're short on cash, I would recommend DVDs for a vast majority of movies.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Yes, blu-ray kicks ass.

With some movies more than others, but when the quality is good it's really fucking good.

I bought Akira and Ghostbusters on blu-ray and it was like falling in love with those movies all over again.

 

[Total LOLige]

There's a slight increase in picture quality but I think that Blu-Ray sound quality is much better than DVDs. You might as well just buy DVDs because they're cheaper but if the DVD is the same price as blu-ray buy blu-ray.

 

[Do4600]

My recommendation to you is to buy a combination up-scaling DVD player and Blu-Ray player. What it does is reassemble the visual information on DVDs for high definition tvs and makes it look about 100% better than an older DVD player, then you can decide on a per film or tv show basis if you want to have blu-ray or DVD quality. I found mine for about $80USD.

It depends on the original quality of the media, for instance you won't see that much of a jump in quality in a movie from the 30's, current films and television shows are shot in high def so you would see an increase in quality there.

 

[FalloutJack]

Answer: Go with what you can find for what is available to you.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It depends on the original quality of the media, for instance you won't see that much of a jump in quality in a movie from the 30's, current films and television shows are shot in high def so you would see an increase in quality there.

Actually you would, assuming the original film elements were in decent shape. Hi Def is a video format. Film is something else entirely, and the kind of film that gets used for movies -- usually 35 millimeter, although some are filmed in the higher resolution 70 millimeter format, and a few really old ones may have been filmed in the lower res 16 millimeter format -- is much higher res than blu-ray. In fact, a frame of 35 millimeter film has more picture information than a frame of 4K digital video[footnote]which is what all these digitally shot movies that are coming out these days are shot on. If they're lucky; the Star Wars prequels were in 2K, barely better than Blu-Ray.[/footnote]

Even with TV shows, you can't necessarily tell if blu-ray will be no better than the DVD by the time period in which it was made. A lot of shows were filmed on 16 or 35 millimeter film stock, and only transferred to video so they could be put on TV. These will show an improvement if transferred to Blu-Ray, assuming the original film elements still exist. Others were shot directly on video cameras, and will only look better on Blu-Ray than DVD if they're recent enough to have been shot with HD video cameras. Still others were shot on film, but had post production work done on video. Star Trek: The Next Generation is a pretty infamous example of this. Basically the footage of people talking is on 35 mm film, as are the actual shots of ships and things, but the composition of the effects shots, as well as the effects for the phasers and anything else that was done with a computer were done on video. This made it so any transfer to Blu-Ray would require the whole thing to be recomposited from the stems, and a lot of the effects to be re-made entirely. This is actually getting done now, but for years it looked like it would never happen.

TL;DR: 1080P is a great resolution for television, but film has pretty much always been higher res. Even really old films will usually look better on a Blu-Ray disc than on a DVD. This is especially true of visual masterpieces like Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, and Blade Runner. Even old TV shows can look better on Blu-Ray, if the original film elements still exist and can be transferred.

 

[Dr Pussymagnet]

Visual quality aside, I only ever buy Blu-rays because nobody ever puts good bonus features on DVDs anymore.

It's depressing seeing a terribly made DVD menu with play movie, scene select, and languages being the only options.

 

[Rack]

I find it to be a huge step up in quality, on a 40" screen DVDs get a bit fuzzy and details are hard to pick up, on Blu Ray everything is extremely sharp and clear. Given the option I try to go for the Blu Ray as I know I'll always prefer to watch it that way in future. To save on cash though I'll sometimes rent the series when I first want to watch it and then can buy the Blu Ray when it has been significantly reduced.

 

[johnnnny guitar]

I find I can only rarely watch a standard definition DVD Movie/TV show if that's the only way I can watch the movie that only happened once in this past 5 years of having a HD screen (Which was when I wanted to Watch "The Wire") I don't know I'm a sucker for gadgets and gizmo's so I might be a bit biased.

 

[Do4600]

It depends on the original quality of the media, for instance you won't see that much of a jump in quality in a movie from the 30's, current films and television shows are shot in high def so you would see an increase in quality there.

Actually you would, assuming the original film elements were in decent shape. Hi Def is a video format. Film is something else entirely, and the kind of film that gets used for movies -- usually 35 millimeter, although some are filmed in the higher resolution 70 millimeter format, and a few really old ones may have been filmed in the lower res 16 millimeter format -- is much higher res than blu-ray. In fact, a frame of 35 millimeter film has more picture information than a frame of 4K digital video.

Even with TV shows, you can't necessarily tell if blu-ray will be no better than the DVD by the time period in which it was made. A lot of shows were filmed on 16 or 35 millimeter film stock, and only transferred to video so they could be put on TV. These will show an improvement if transferred to Blu-Ray, assuming the original film elements still exist. Others were shot directly on video cameras, and will only look better on Blu-Ray than DVD if they're recent enough to have been shot with HD video cameras. Still others were shot on film, but had post production work done on video. Star Trek: The Next Generation is a pretty infamous example of this. Basically the footage of people talking is on 35 mm film, as are the actual shots of ships and things, but the composition of the effects shots, as well as the effects for the phasers and anything else that was done with a computer were done on video. This made it so any transfer to Blu-Ray would require the whole thing to be recomposited from the stems, and a lot of the effects to be re-made entirely. This is actually getting done now, but for years it looked like it would never happen.

TL;DR: 1080P is a great resolution for television, but film has pretty much always been higher res. Even really old films will usually look better on a Blu-Ray disc than on a DVD. This is especially true of visual masterpieces like Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, and Blade Runner. Even old TV shows can look better on Blu-Ray, if the original film elements still exist and can be transferred.

I do know that film contains much more information but the problem is in the chemistry of the film used and the quality of the cameras used to film it, as well as the inherent instability of nitrate and triacetate film stocks. The quality of each transfer is entirely dependent on the quality of the original print. If the film itself is deteriorated you can take a scan of each frame but the higher detail is going to be of a highly deteriorated image. We only have something like 30% of the films made between 1900 and 1930 because of how unstable the film was. Any film you have from that era will be deteriorated on a chemical level. The technology used to film in the 30's is nowhere near as sophisticated as the technology used even in the 50's. So the image focus will not be as sharp as the focus you would expect from a film made in the 90's based only on the advances in optics and manufacturing since then. Obviously the sound quality is reduced by comparison as well. You can transfer a film from the 30's to a high definition digital format but you can't change the original quality of the film and you have to combat the effects of film deterioration the entire time.

Just because the medium can hold more information doesn't mean that the process used to transfer the image will create valuable information for our purposes. There are many films that are going to be good when transferred to blu-ray but most of them from the 30's won't make enough of a difference to justify the cost. The movies you list are all from 1962 on, so they don't fall under that category. Television shows are filmed on usually the same 35mm film that movies are filmed on, but not CURRENT television shows, within the past ten years almost every television studio has switched to using high definition digital cameras. Star Trek: the Next Generation was filmed between 1987 and 1994 so it's not exactly current is it? Actually a whole generation has passed since the first season of ST:TNG was filmed.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It depends on the original quality of the media, for instance you won't see that much of a jump in quality in a movie from the 30's, current films and television shows are shot in high def so you would see an increase in quality there.

Actually you would, assuming the original film elements were in decent shape. Hi Def is a video format. Film is something else entirely, and the kind of film that gets used for movies -- usually 35 millimeter, although some are filmed in the higher resolution 70 millimeter format, and a few really old ones may have been filmed in the lower res 16 millimeter format -- is much higher res than blu-ray. In fact, a frame of 35 millimeter film has more picture information than a frame of 4K digital video.

Even with TV shows, you can't necessarily tell if blu-ray will be no better than the DVD by the time period in which it was made. A lot of shows were filmed on 16 or 35 millimeter film stock, and only transferred to video so they could be put on TV. These will show an improvement if transferred to Blu-Ray, assuming the original film elements still exist. Others were shot directly on video cameras, and will only look better on Blu-Ray than DVD if they're recent enough to have been shot with HD video cameras. Still others were shot on film, but had post production work done on video. Star Trek: The Next Generation is a pretty infamous example of this. Basically the footage of people talking is on 35 mm film, as are the actual shots of ships and things, but the composition of the effects shots, as well as the effects for the phasers and anything else that was done with a computer were done on video. This made it so any transfer to Blu-Ray would require the whole thing to be recomposited from the stems, and a lot of the effects to be re-made entirely. This is actually getting done now, but for years it looked like it would never happen.

TL;DR: 1080P is a great resolution for television, but film has pretty much always been higher res. Even really old films will usually look better on a Blu-Ray disc than on a DVD. This is especially true of visual masterpieces like Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, and Blade Runner. Even old TV shows can look better on Blu-Ray, if the original film elements still exist and can be transferred.

I do know that film contains much more information but the problem is in the chemistry of the film used and the quality of the cameras used to film it, as well as the inherent instability of nitrate and triacetate film stocks. The quality of each transfer is entirely dependent on the quality of the original print. If the film itself is deteriorated you can take a scan of each frame but the higher detail is going to be of a highly deteriorated image. We only have something like 30% of the films made between 1900 and 1930 because of how unstable the film was. Any film you have from that era will be deteriorated on a chemical level. The technology used to film in the 30's is nowhere near as sophisticated as the technology used even in the 50's. So the image focus will not be as sharp as the focus you would expect from a film made in the 90's based only on the advances in optics and manufacturing since then. Obviously the sound quality is reduced by comparison as well. You can transfer a film from the 30's to a high definition digital format but you can't change the original quality of the film and you have to combat the effects of film deterioration the entire time.

Just because the medium can hold more information doesn't mean that the process used to transfer the image will create valuable information for our purposes. There are many films that are going to be good when transferred to blu-ray but most of them from the 30's won't make enough of a difference to justify the cost. The movies you list are all from 1962 on, so they don't fall under that category. Television shows are filmed on usually the same 35mm film that movies are filmed on, but not CURRENT television shows, within the past ten years almost every television studio has switched to using high definition digital cameras. Star Trek: the Next Generation was filmed between 1987 and 1994 so it's not exactly current is it? Actually a whole generation has passed since the first season of ST:TNG was filmed.

As far as film goes, you're /way/ underestimating how well film holds up. Properly stored, film is still the best archival material for moving pictures. This includes things like hard drives and plastic discs. Does this mean everything was properly stored, and does it preclude situations like the bad film stock that Star Wars was shot on? No, not really. But it also doesn't mean that everything is improperly stored or shot on bad stock.

I'm really not sure what you're getting at with the TV show comments. My point was that even old TV shows i.e., shows made before the invention of the HD video camera, could still benefit from a Blu-Ray transfer under the right circumstances.

And since you're being nit-picky about the time period the films were made, here's two from the 30's that look better in HD than SD: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. The latter is of special note, because the original negatives were destroyed in a fire, leaving nothing but second generation and later copies, and yet the film elements we have /still/ contain more visual information than HD video. I'm sure this would be true of pretty much any well preserved film, be it Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera or the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. I mentioned the films I did before before because they're full of tiny but important details that SD video just cannot do justice, but that doesn't mean it takes a special movie to look better on Blu-Ray. They just show it off really well.

Edit: Basically, most films from the 30's and before probably won't look better on blu-ray. But as you pointed out, most films from that time period haven't even survived, and a lot of the ones that did have either never made it to home video, or haven't since the early days of VHS and Beta. For the most part, if it's a movie that anyone today actually cares about, it'll look better on Blu-Ray than any other modern home format.