Okay, so my regular DVD player just went out, and I'm wondering if I should just buy a cheap replacement or go full throttle with Blu Ray? I already have a Wii, so no I am not going to buy a PS3.

I feel like people are NOT switching over to Blu Ray. Will there be a proliferation of Blu Ray, will the prices come down, etc? Or will a new technology come into play in the near future to replace Blu Ray?


Thanks in advance.

There are a couple of factors that you might want to consider.

Do you already have an HDTV? If not the blu-ray is just an expensive DVD player.

How large is your movie collection? If you have a large amount of movies in your collection, then your blu-ray player will simply be acting as an up-converting device. However if you do have a large amount of movies it would probably signify that you were someone who often buys movies so you would be getting alot of use and likely not be as concerned about paying $5-10 more per disc.

Honestly it looks to me like the next major phase will be the push to have streaming devices. I have linked a couple of articles if you are interested. Hope this helps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/media/10sony.html
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-b...0,2601927.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/business...a/26stream.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405...1562233046.html

I know it doesn't address your question, but that is like saying, "I already have a calculator, so I'm not buying Excel".

The PS3 is so superior to Wii as a gaming console that there is no comparison. Plus with the PS3 prices coming down to $300, you are getting a steal.

Even down loadable movies will have to have a blue-ray dvd player in order to watch them, btw, if they are in blue-ray format.

there's no comparison because they're different products aimed at entirely different demographics

graphics aren't everything (or even most of everything) in video games

Not exactly. Movie content that is made for downloadable distribution will not require an optical sensor to read the media. The compression format used in Blu-Ray media is H.264 which is used in a variety of media content that is readily available now. I can encode video that I have taken from a HD camcorder in H.264 for distribution and it will have the same HD resolution as a Blu-Ray disc, however I am not obligated to pay Sony any licensing fee. This technology is already being used for the downloadable content purchased using Amazon, Xbox360, Netflix, and ITunes.