Since it has already been bumped, most of the pluses and minuses listed in the thread still seem to hold. The big plus that blue ray has for it is picture and audio quality. Big negatives for me are fewer titles available, the fact that they cost more than their dvd counterparts, and the lack of portable players.

Another negative is how many people still don't how to spell Blu-ray!

I stick to favorites on BD and keep the dvd counterparts because of BD lacking the bells & whistles dvd has. Rapid play for listening to commentaries is a big one for me. Zooming in on specific portions of frames.

Also I won't rent a BD because I always finish a film whether I like it or not, and that's another time rapid play is essential.. getting through a terrible movie...

The biggest plus of Blu-ray is picture quality (obviously) and, to a lesser extent, sound quality.

For me, though, the biggest plus of DVD is that I can play them on so many more devices. For Blu-ray, I have two players (one in the living room, one in my bedroom) and that is it. But for DVD, I have that plus any computer as a player. So when I'm going on the road, I'll usually bring my laptop and a few DVDs along with me, while all of my Blu-ray Discs just stay at home.

(Of course, this situation will change once Blu-ray players are standard in most laptops, but that switchover seems to be taking a long time to happen. For now, I like it best when Blu-ray releases also have a DVD version in the package because then I get the best of both when needed.)

Another problem is BD player are not going to have an analog out anymore, so hooking up to old crt tvs is going to be a pain. I picked up one of the few remaining Seiki sr212s "easy hack" region free player from sears that was discontinued because of the analog out.

I just have the one TV, so I'm happy with Blu-ray. I almost never have a reason to take movies with me, since I don't travel and whenever I have in the past, holing up with DVDs is the last thing that interests me. Though for portability, I've actually made use recently of my Sony streaming player. It was on sale at Amazon for about $40 or so last year and I had accrued enough Amazon credit via Swagbucks that I got it for, like, 12¢ out of pocket. With my growing UltraViolet library and HuluPlus account, it's been easier to just take that to my friend's house on the off occasion our plans are to just hang out at her place and watch a movie.

[Addendum: Being able to link six accounts to UltraViolet is an easy - and terrific - way to quickly build a digital library.]

Blu Ray....Just not for me!!!

I had a hard time refusing to buy DVDs when they first came out. ..Most titles were $20 each. ..10 years later when catalog titles started showing up for less than $10 each, it was academic because used DVD were plentiful on eBay, garage sales, pawn shops, etc.

I love collecting used DVD movies at $1 each. ..When Blu Rays hit $1 each, I'm sure I'll be a big fan. ..I'm not having a hard time waiting for Blu Ray prices to collapse. ..They average about $5 each at local pawn shops. ..I'm still buying DVDs. ..I don't think it was a big enough improvement, to pay a premium price.

Not all of us see $5.00 as a "premium" price, though. I'm happy to pay $5.00 at a pawn shop for a blu-ray disc. Of course, everyone has his/her arbitrary limit set inside the mind as to what's acceptable and what's not. It'd have to be a really desirable Blu-Ray title (or multi-disc set) for me to pay above $7.00 used, and most movies I wouldn't pay more than $5.00 for, unless brand new in shrinkwrap (and then, only certain titles).

The only thing that I like about dvds over blu-rays is that a lot of blu-rays don't let you stop and then pick up where you left off....which wouldn't be so bad if they would let you use bookmarks, which not a lot of blu-rays do. The only real thing about dvds that is better is the availibility of movies.

Yeah, the bookmarking thing is just mind-boggling. What could the forum have possibly been thinking to not include that in the spec?

As for the prices, $5 is a great price for new or used, $1 a disc is asking for an Atari 2600 crash of the format. The stores need to make a few bucks on the titles to keep themselves in business.

I'm happy to pay $2-$3 for a DVD or $5-$7 for Blu-ray depending on the title.

When you think about it, a DVD is cheaper than a chocolate bar and a bottle of pop. What was once $24.95 is now $2 and, in most cases, it plays and functions exactly as it did when it was new.

I find that I'm still picky about titles I buy even at $2 each. At a cheap price it can be easy to get carried away and end up with a bunch of crappy titles that I'll never watch.

I wasn't "asking" for stores to sell new DVDs or Blu-Rays for $1.00. ..I don't buy new DVDs or Blu-Rays.

The stores can, and do make a few bucks selling DVDs at $5.00. ..See Amazon and Wal-Mart for titles.

The pawn shops in my area make a few bucks selling used DVDs for $1.00 to $1.29. ..They pay 50¢ each.

90% of the DVD titles I buy are not worth more than $1.00 ..A sharper Blu-Ray picture doesn't change that for me. ..To each his own.

I remember when people were paying $20 per DVD. ..And still paying $15 for new releases. ..Fine with me. ..It's not my money.

The trouble is, with Amazon now charging $3.99 shipping for used DVDs and Blu-Rays, using Amazon for cheap media purchases is now completely out. Who wants to pay $4 for a $0.01 DVD?

Now, we're left to pawn shops, Goodwill, etc for our "$1 or $2 DVDs".

I agree. ..Amazon would be a good source for cheap DVDs if they allowed sellers to offer a flat rate or discount (postage) if you bought more than 1 DVD from the same seller.

I assume it would be too much competition for Amazon's sales (new discs). ..I'm pretty much done with Amazon, unless they change their S&H policies.

Recently I did buy a couple of really low-priced DVDs from them. The postage did piss me off a bit, but overall I did get a good deal. (the next higher price was 3-4 dollars more). I do always look at final price, but oftentimes I will go to half or eBay to see if the same product is being sold there with only 3 bucks PH. Many times these sellers list on multiple sites.

I cant really say which is better since im still new to blu-ray, but man, blu-ray quality is amazing its nuts

In terms of variety, yes. VHS may have more films that were not released on DVD/Blu-Ray. DVD at least have really fine video and audio quality to make the obscure film worth the value.

But in general, home video, at least physically, is on a major decline and will continue to be soon in the near future, unfortunately.

While physical media may be in decline, I don't think it's in any danger of going extinct anytime soon.

Having finally bought into blu-ray, I can say that the video is definitely an upgrade but the audio leaves something to be desired (by someone else). Designed primarily for people with surround sound systems, the audio in these BDs absolutely sucks for someone with just 2-channel stereo. I've made whatever adjustments I can based on a thread about just that some time ago, and while it may have helped a little, it still sucks. Dialogue vs. sound effects... fuck me Freddie.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with that opinion. They even go so far as to provide "5.1" mixes for films which were originally in stereo - that had good mixes - that now have sfx and the score running 200% louder than dialog. I've replaced dozens of DVDs with BR and now watch the DVD because of the way the BR audio is mixed. If I do watch the BR I'm forced to use SDH just to know what's being said due to having to turn the sound down because of the poor audio mix. I'm not purchasing a "surround/5.1" capable system just to remix the audio properly. Whoever thinks this is "good" audio needs to have their head examined.

^ My wife & I just started using subtitles on BDs for that very reason. It's either that or get blown out of our chairs or our eardrums popped every time some sound effect comes crashing into our skulls.

I prefer DVD. It's cheaper, playable on more devices, and I just honestly don't think most movies/shows need to be in high def. My vision isn't fantastic, so I can't even see a huge difference in picture quality. I even (gasp) watch a lot of YouTube in 240p, to save data.

It's funny this thread got bumped. I have about 1200 Blu-rays, many of which I upgraded usually because they were $1-$3 on the used market.

Looking through my DVDs (probably 2,500 of them still), I can't help but like them and find reasons to keep them. Most of them still look good on my system (40" Sony Bravia TV), they're much more plentiful and easy to find on the used market. They usually contain more extras and the packaging is often much nicer.