blue wave dvd player

[DONNA1458]

Are these worth the money, can you see a big difference. and do you need a HD tv to get the best picture.TIA

[pug100]

To be able to benefit from a Blu ray DVD yes you do need an HD ready TV, but they can also be viewed on non- HD sets using the standard Scart lead.
Can you see a difference? It depends on the size of the viewing screen and the picture content, but watching a Blu ray disc on a 42" screen compared to a DVD on the same screen the HD disc will be clearer and sharper with fewer artefacts visible in the picture.
Are they worth the money?
Well if you already have an HDready TV and like to watch films in high quality, can afford the extra �5 to �10 per disc plus the �300 for your Blu ray or HD DVD player then go for it.
BTW there are currently two High Def DVD formats and neither are complatible so by being an early adopter you run the risk of ending up with the Betamax of the DVD age.

[vehelpfulguy]

As pug100 says, there are two competing formats HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

There is a bit of war going on, and some film studios are only releasing films on HD-DVD, while others are only releasing films on Blu-Ray.

The hardware is still expensive, and in a year or so you will probably be able to get a HD player for a little more than a DVD player nowadays.

Whereas eveyone saw the benefit of DVDs over Videos and there was widespread aceptance, I think there is less of an obvious benefit of HD over ordinairy DVDs (lets face it, most of us are happy with the quality of DVDs).

Couple this with the fact that the XBox only works with HD DVDs and the PS3 only works with Blu Ray.

This is a nasty war, between Microsoft and others with HD-DVD and Sony and others with BluRay.

I would leave them to fight it out and ignore HD for a year or so till the "winner" (if there is one) is more obvious.

Lets face it you dont want to buy loads of HD DVDs (or Blu Ray DVDs), then find everybody stops making them and you are stuck with them.

[vehelpfulguy]

Note you said "blue wave"

It is actually Blu Ray. http://www.blu-ray.com/

This comes from the fact they use blue lasers as opposed to the existing DVDs that use red lasers.

[ben_duder]

just to add

recently some players have been released (one by Toshiba, i think) that can play both formats, but these are very expensive at the moment...

also, blu ray and HD-DVD films playing on an SD (standard definition) TV wont and cant really look any better than a normal DVD because the television doesn't have enough pixels to display the extra information.

Having a PS3, i can say that Blu-Ray DOES make quite a big difference, but if you are interested in buying an HD TV anyway then you could buy a normal DVD player with an HDMI connection (this upscales the DVD, making it look sharper and brighter but you don't need to buy your films again). A lot of high street shops, such as zavvi (was virgin megastore), comet or currys have HDTVs with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players set up, on display.

[ben_duder]

just to add

recently some players have been released (one by Toshiba, i think) that can play both formats, but these are very expensive at the moment...

also, blu ray and HD-DVD films playing on an SD (standard definition) TV wont and cant really look any better than a normal DVD because the television doesn't have enough pixels to display the extra information.

Having a PS3, i can say that Blu-Ray DOES make quite a big difference, but if you are interested in buying an HD TV anyway then you could buy a normal DVD player with an HDMI connection (this upscales the DVD, making it look sharper and brighter but you don't need to buy your films again). A lot of high street shops, such as zavvi (was virgin megastore), comet or currys have HDTVs with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players set up and on display, which give a good idea of the quality to expect.