electronrun.com

I have yesterday given here 9 reasons why you should not yet invest in Blu-ray.

As a follow up, and in order to help readers decide whether it is the right time to go ahead and buy, I decided to list here the questions I would be asking myself before making a sensible decision:

1. Do you own a HDTV and home cinema audio equipment? Do not bother without these prerequisites. Even if you only have a HDTV without the audio part, you will miss the uncompressed surround sound bliss which is more or less half of the fun.
2. Does your local video club stock films in the Blu-ray format? If not, you will not want to buy all the movies you wish to watch. Simple economics. It will work out cheaper to go to the cinema…
3. Is it worthwhile investing in Blu-ray? Maybe your needs imply buying something more useful. If you already have a home theater built around DVD you are probably having a great time and can use your hard earned cash on other priorities. The list is countless, desktop and laptop computers, smartphones, cameras, videocameras, you name it…
4. How much is Blu-ray going to cost me? If you want to have an experience on par with the format’s potential you might have to get a HDTV and/or the audio equipment. Apart from the hardware, think of how much your DVD buying/renting habit costs you. Get online to check the equivalent prices for Blu-ray and do the comparison. Is it worth it? Can you afford it?

Those of you that already own a PS3 already have a very competitive and upgradable Blu-ray player. At the same time, it is a very good DVD player that can respectably upscale to 1080p, therefore it is up to you as to whether you will go ahead with either format.

Also bear in mind that version 2.0 of the Blu-ray format is now official. Players currently available are only version 1.0 and 1.1 compliant, but all new models will definitely have version 2.0 integrated as standard. The PS3 upgrades take care of this issue. If you do not worry about PIP (picture-in-picture) and some other version 2.0 features, go ahead with any model you fancy, as they all play fine.

The decision is yours and of course jumping from the DVD to the Blu-ray boat is a personal matter. After CES 2008, things have cleared up and we are all fairly certain that going to HD optical discs now means Blu-ray only. At least this uncertainty has gone away.

I have read comments that argue that now that the HD-DVD competition has been minimised, Blu-ray prices will not fall so quickly. I personally do not agree, as the hardware is made by a large number of brands that compete with each other, much like it happened with CDs and DVDs. Moreover, the real competitor of HD optical discs was always the DVD and existing habits. Later this year, we will see sales comparisons and will be able to draw reliable conclusions.

At the moment, there is diverging views on the issue of movie downloads and how quickly they will become truly practical and accessible. It is still very early to say whether HD discs are a short parenthesis towards this goal. The situation changes very frequently, and the companies that eye this future opportunity strike deals and try to build a good base on which to launch their future proposals.

But of course now I diverge and prefer to conclude by promising that Electronrun will cover HD developments with regular news and unbiased comments.

Link: Electronrun