Blu ray or not blu ray

Joey the lips · 16-01-2011 2:59pm #1

Hi Folks

Wondered if you could advise...

I recently got full HD Panasonic tele. Its the bee's knees. To improve the pticture i have been advised to change to HD Sky(which wont be happening) and buy a blu ray DVD player.(which might happen)

When the chap was delivering the tele(actually the sales man as he lives in my area) he had a portable hard drive of sorts with so many DVDS pre loaded onto it.

Now this got me thinking. To future proof myself would I not be better off going down the road of buying a hard drive than a blu ray player.

Granted if i buy a hard drive I will need to buy a blu ray reader for my computer but i imagine it would be better to spend the 150-250 on a High Defination hard drive and a portable blu ray reader than just a blue ray player.

Am i making sense? I am not all techno savy in this area which is why i am asking

So what is best and can you provide links...

ie

Portable blu ray reader for computer and portable harddrive

or blue ray dvd player and pile of dvd's

JDxtra · 16-01-2011 3:14pm

Option 3 : buy a PlayStation. It plays BluRays and DVDs, plus you can stream any ripped / downloaded content to it from your PC.

For most, its not practical to be ripping your own BluRays to a digital format. Most people would download (illegally) but you would need a decent broadband connection.

lomb · 16-01-2011 4:19pm

Hi, get the sony blue ray player s370. It can be linked by a network cable to a hard drive/pc and can then play .mkv which are blu ray encoded or dvd quality files also as .avi.
Sky HD is not true HD. Avatar was something like 15 gigs when downloaded in COMPRESSED .mkv. There is no way Sky have the bandwidth to transmit that much bandwidth that quickly in real time. What sky hd is is better quality than standard and is upscaled to the tele. It is higher definition not high definition.
Blu ray is true HD but in reality DVD quality on a good screen is very very good and hard to tell the difference from.

JDxtra · 16-01-2011 4:59pm

Actually, Sky have access to a huge amount of bandwidth.

Sky HD is HD. I think you will struggle to see any difference between a movie on Sky HD compared with the same movie on BluRay (unless you sit just a few feet from a 50" screen!).

superleedsdub · 16-01-2011 9:40pm

JDxtra wrote: »

Option 3 : buy a PlayStation. It plays BluRays and DVDs, plus you can stream any ripped / downloaded content to it from your PC.

For most, its not practical to be ripping your own BluRays to a digital format. Most people would download (illegally) but you would need a decent broadband connection.

The PS3 won`t play any .mkv files which is the most common container for HD files. The Files would need to be converted using a programme such as MKV2VOB

To the OP: what option you chose is all down to how technically proficent you are, IMO

1.Blu ray players are very cheap these days and have the added advantage of playing your old DVD`s too. But you will have to buy the blu-ray movies and TV boxsets for the player.

2. To go down the hard drive route, I would advise using a media player such as WDTV Live, Boxee box, popcorn hour etc.... as most TV`s with USB connections stuggle with video playback (this is an area that will be improved on in the future)

In order to have content on your Hard drive you will either need the original content such as a DVD or blu ray and use a programme like DVD Shrink or makemkv to back up the contents to your drive

Or

You can download from the internet, either legally or otherwise. As stated, most HD content these days use the .mkv container (this appears to have taken over from .avi ) so your TV or media player will need to be able to play back these files

Hope this helps, I could go into a lot more details about these options but don`t want to give an overload of info:D

P.S. SKY HD is indeed HD - 720p/1080i as opposed to 1080p, not full HD but HD nonetheless.....

JDxtra · 16-01-2011 10:48pm

By the way, I find streaming to the PS3 a good option. Just use PS3 Media Server on your PC and it can play almost anything you throw at it. It re-encodes on the fly.

Nononolan · 17-01-2011 6:27pm

Depending on the pana you bought, it might play compressed video through the usb slot on the side of the set.....possibly even recording direct to the portable harddrive depending on the model. Meaning you could record your everyday viewing direct to the harddrive. As stated above most hd content online is compressed to mkv and I havent come across a set that will play that format directly without streaming so you would require conversion software.

I download all my hd movies online and in terms of quality they're pretty good but am still amazed when I see a good blu ray (Avatar, Casino Royale etc). An mkv movie might be 1.4gb but a blu ray can hold up to 50gb on a dual layer disc. As noted in earlier posts blu ray players are pretty good value right now, the only thing thats killing it is a lack of content beyond mainstream titles available to rent and buy in ireland. If you dont mind buying online then you'll find loads on the blu ray format...just remember that blu rays are region locked so whatever you buy must fit in with the region of your player.

JDxtra · 17-01-2011 7:07pm

Side note to the above: My Samsung can't play MKV files from local storage or from a stream. But if I rename them to AVI they work perfectly. Weird!

andy1249 · 19-01-2011 10:10pm

Plenty of TV sets and Blu ray players come with multimedia features today.

LG for example , most of their sets and players will play MKV based material.
They will also read NTFS hard drives connected to their USB ports , so any hard drive with almost any type of content can be played on their sets and also through their Blu ray players.
The LG 390 is the one I have personal experience of , that model is a couple of years old now though so theres sure to be and updated model.

There are other makes that can do likewise , so my advice is look for one of these multi-tasking Blu ray players , then you have a single box that can do everything.

If money is no object , for about 500 or so you can go high end and get an oppo , these can be made multi region for both Blu ray and DVD with a simple hardware mod , the seller will usually do it for you , and theres nothing else they cannot do. They even work as streamers these days.
See here ,
http://www.oppodigital.com/

Side note to the above: My Samsung can't play MKV files from local storage or from a stream. But if I rename them to AVI they work perfectly. Weird!

Both AVI and MKV are whats known as containers , they can have many different types of audio and video inside. ( for example xvid , divx , mp3 , ac3 , DTS , etc. )
Any devices firmware must have instructions on what to do with any file and this will to a large extent depend on the file extension.
Changing the file extension then , simply allowed the device to look inside the container and luckily enough it was able to play what content was in there.

Changing file name extensions is not a universal fix for playback , you were lucky it worked , it wont work all the time.

Nodferatu · 19-01-2011 10:14pm

JDxtra wrote: »

Option 3 : buy a PlayStation. It plays BluRays and DVDs, plus you can stream any ripped / downloaded content to it from your PC.

For most, its not practical to be ripping your own BluRays to a digital format. Most people would download (illegally) but you would need a decent broadband connection.

this is the best option me thinks

Stinicker · 30-01-2011 12:47am

This is what I have in my own Multimedia setup.

Like the OP I have a Panasonic,

I would not bother going with the PS3 unless you are actually into gaming, it costs about €300 to €350.

Get yourself a HTPC, which is just a computer dedicated to the tv for playback, I have a Quad Core Medion (Lidl jobby) which I picked up for €400 and it has a great video card and I have it connected to my TV via HDMI and it plays back every thing (Download VLC media Player) and there is no problem with container formats or streaming issues as I had when I used my Xbox 360 before which was a pain in the arse to be honest and I reckon the PS3 would be too!

I can download all my films and TV shows to the PC and play them back with ease, I find this setup to be great for Tv shows catching them hours after they air in the US instead of waiting months for them over here. However there are limitations to how much High-Def content you can get as a 1080 blu-ray rip is about 12 to 14GB which makes it an over night download even on faster connections. Most 720p TV shows are about 1.09GB though so they are light and easy to take down. If you get into Downloading you will need a good internet connection of 10mb or greater and at least a 100GB download limit a month. This most definitely rules out Three and their crappy "broadband" service.

I also have a Blu-Ray player and that will play both DVD's and Blurays, and I have a good shot of Blu-Ray discs too, although they are costly!

I have Sky HD also and it is great and it is 1080i but most HD TV stations broadcast at 1080i except one or two in the states which broadcast at 1080p as the 1080p bandwidth requirements are absolutely massive, a few stations in Germany are even broadcasting in 720p. I think to broadcast at 1080p takes double the broadcasting capacity of 1080i which is itself double the capacity of 720p.

However with newer higher capacity satellites launching globally like the recent KA-Sat and with Fibre to the Home in developed countries becoming a reality, 1080p broadcast will soon become more common place, although with Ireland's 4th World internet infrastructure when we eventually get Fibre optics the rest of the world will probably be gone to some new fangled thing about the middle of the next century!

Get yourself a HTPC with a high class graphics card and BluRay drive and you will be on the ball. Make sure it has at least a 1TB drive and you will have oceans of room for any downloads you make. If you are not interested in Sky HD then you can always get a Freesat HD receiver or better still a Freesat HD PVR (which is a bit like Sky+ letting you record etc.) You will then get dozens of British satellite channels and a handful of High-Def content also.

Saorview is also broadcasting RTE2 in HD right now, you may and may not already have this on your TV now.

ted1 · 03-02-2011 9:34pm

if your not in to illegally down loading films i'd recomend a apple tv. Ever since i got mine i havn't touched my blue ray player.

superleedsdub · 04-02-2011 11:58am

ted1 wrote: »

if your not in to illegally down loading films i'd recomend a apple tv. Ever since i got mine i havn't touched my blue ray player.

The Apple TV is only useful if you wish to buy/rent from itunes. It is excellent for this but is not flexible enough for most AV use for the reasons listed below:

No External hard drive or SD card can be connected to it.
It doesn`t support MKV and many other common containers.
It doesn`t display 1080p so will not be as good as a blu-ray.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/networking-and-wi-fi/media-streaming-devices/apple-tv-2010--900409/review

It`s not just illegally downloaded content that is stored on hard drives etc. e.g. I have backups of my legally purchased Music and DVD`s on my hard drives (not sure of the legality of this, but think once you use the back up for personal use then it`s ok)

ted1 · 04-02-2011 1:01pm

the OP asked about a blue ray player, which would suggest he wanted to rent or buy dvd's.

The Apple TV is a very good alternative. my tele plays mkv adn other files. his may well do it.

can you honestly tell the difference betweek 720p adn 1080P???

superleedsdub · 04-02-2011 2:07pm

Joey the lips wrote: »

Hi Folks

So what is best and can you provide links...

ie

Portable blu ray reader for computer and portable harddrive

or blue ray dvd player and pile of dvd's

The OP asked what was the best option for the 2 choice above based in seeing a guy play files from a hard drive on a TV. If he went down the hard drive route - the apple TV is not a great option as you cannot directly connect a hard drive to an apple TV, I`m sure there are workarounds but there are simpler options out there....then there is the file extension conversion issue.

However, in a Blu ray player vs Apple TV comparison, yes, the Apple TV is a very viable option as the cost to rent is comparitively cheap and the GUI works very well. The Apple TV came out on top in a group test of Media Streamers (not to be confused with Media players, different kettle of fish altogether) in what HiFi sound and vision magazine.

But he could buy a blu ray drive for a laptop and connect the laptop to his TV and buy movies from Itunes and play them though the laptop in his TV, this would give the best of both worlds, Itunes downloads and the option of buying blu rays.....

I would personally advise the OP to go down the media player or HTPC route as described in previous posts (not sure if his TV supports MKV playback)

As for the 720p vs 1080P debate - a couple of weeks ago I would have stated I could see no difference. But, I`ve been watching alot of SKY Sports HD, BBC HD and TV shows from 'Other sources' in 720p in the past few months and having not watched a 1080p blu ray in a few months, I watched a couple of movies recently (Inception and the A-team) and I could actually see an improvement - but that honestly could just be in my head:)

Butch Cassidy · 07-02-2011 4:30am

The OP's question is centered around the desire to "future proof". Wrt a hard drive full of films in this case you would be future-proofing yourself a future that is not even guaranteed.

Only now more than 10 years after Napster has a music streaming service been launched by Eircom. Just imagine how long it will be for a TV/film one. It might be anachronistic but CDs were big in the 80s and it was until the early 00's that DVDs reached critical mass.

In short people downloading HD films or streaming is a long way aways off imo. Even look at the quality of RTE Player!

The bigger point to make is that hard drives f'n fail. I asked someone about this/had a rant to which he replied "back yr stuff up, buy a 2nd hardrive". When I asked what about a back-up for the back-up he said 'absolutely' and missed my point entirely. A physical copy will last you well into the future whereas data can be corrupted or the entire unit could fail thus losing all yr stuff. Now this is grand if you haven't just shelled out a mini-fortune on downloading films legally but imagine losing your entire DVD collection right now in an instant!

The stuff about future-proving is a misnomer imo. Just because someone has a CD player they bought int he 90s and it doesn't have a USB or card reader doesn't mean it's obsolete. Likewise a vinyl player will still play vinyl which people are back in to. A DVD player without recording facility is still usable even it's not got a recording facility of a HD connection to upscale.

In my opinion I think you're looking too far into a future that is not knowable. Blu ray might fail, DVD might last forever or blu-ray might be the gold standard for many years. Although I would add that convenience not technology has been the main driver in entertainment formats and hard drives with 1000's of films would indeed be more convenient than physical media and waiting for stuff to load-up and get passed the warnings/ads/trailers - but didn't they say that about DVD that you could skip all that?!

One of Blu-Ray's trump cards on DVD was that they were to be region-free. Gradually more and more are locked to a region so if you wanna proof yourself about the only way to do it would be get a player than isn't locked to a region.

Blu ray or not blu ray

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