Is Blu-Ray worth it?

One of the options I find myself having to chose from is whether I want my new laptop with Blu-Ray. Here in Australia that generally means $200-300 extra. Knowing nothing about technology, I thought I better ask.

Will game CDs be converted into Blu-Ray format? Will DVDs disappear? It is always possible to swap out drives or buy an external drive but if the Blu-Ray is inevitable, I'm tempted to just tighten the belt and pay the extra.

So, is it worth it?

Smallfry.

 

I dont think its worth it. I have a laptop with it and i cant watch any videos in blu-ray with out some encoding program or somthing. And yes you can upgrade later if you decide you want it.

 

I don't think Blu-ray will become the dominant format like CDs and DVDs have. At this point, it's basically a luxury to own a Blu-ray player. While the quality is amazing, you should consider if the price justifies the quality. I got a PS3 so it's worth it to me but I wouldn't buy a standalone Blu-ray player because it's just too much.

 

Thanks guys. I had a feeling that was the case. Good to know and even better now I can save a few bucks

Smallfry.

 

I think blu-ray is great for watching movies on my big screen TV (disclaimer: I have a PS3) but I wouldn't get one in my laptop. I don't feel that I can tell the difference on a laptop screen between blu ray and dvd quality (if you have eagle eyes then more power to you). And on the storage side, hard drives are pretty cheap these days so I don't think it's worth it to pay $200-300 for a drive plus recordable discs which aren't cheap either.

 

Yeah Blu Ray at the moment will mostly be a good buy if you plan on watching Blu Rays. I don't think it'll become the standard for applications or anything yet. Even DVDs aren't completely dominating the market and there are still CDs around so I don't expect Blu Ray to take over computer applications or games completely any time soon.

 

It seems that it's a long way to be marketable for the blue-ray. Though it win the competition w/ DVD/CD.

 

While they do hold more data, Blu Rays still cost more to produce than CDs or DVDs so for any products which do not require that much space, companies will still most likely chose one of the former.

Therefore, I doubt Blu Ray will really turn the market around until companies start developing programs which really are that big. I'm not expecting it for any time soon because there are programs which still fit on CDs and DVDs haven't even completely erased CDs from the market yet so Blu Rays will probably come around at the same rate as DVDs.

 

I got my laptop last year for the HD-DVD recorder (heh heh I suck). Asside from being a dead format, it does a pretty good job of backing up data. But an external 320 gig hard drive will do the same thing for less money and have a faster data transfer rate.

If we need blu-ray disks because our programs won't fit in a doal layer DVD, we are in serious trouble.

 

I have a blu ray read and write laptop and the amount oif times i have used my blu ray drive so far in 3 months for blu ray is "ZERO".

If i was buying again i would get the best RAM, best hard drives or drive, best graphics card and best processor i could, a blu ray drive is always something you can add at a later date if you really want one.

 

I got the blu ray upgrade on my laptop to watch movies on my 52" LCD. I didn't have a blu ray player before so now I hook up the laptop to the TV through HDMI.

 

Totally agree. Blu-Ray is a waste of time on a laptop.

 

I have a 16.4" BD laptop and I can tell huge difference between DVD and Blu-ray. Compare Lost Season 4, DVD and Blu-ray version and the difference is striking. Blu-ray picture is much sharper. Color is richer. Artifact is non existence. Every single grain of sand, every pores, every single strain of body hair, every body imperfection, every single details of everything is much more visible. In fact, after watching so many Blu-ray, I got so spoiled that watching DVD now looked blurry and the color looked pale.

 

its gonna take a while before Blu Ray becomes as ubiquitous as DVD....i mean DVD did take quite a while to get as popular as CD!

 

DVDs took out VHS =P blue ray on laptop useless unless its hooked to a hd lcd most o the time. use every penny of what u pay for.

 

It is still a small portion of DVD but growing very fast. FYI, Netflix has more than 900 Blu-ray titles for rent.

 

uh....thats cos sony, creator of blu ray owns like a third of the world's movie titles lol

i have my laptop hooked up to a HD lcd all the time WUXGA

i dont think DVD took out VHS.....VCD's (CD) took out VHS

 

Nope. Only 1 out of 5 movies I rent released by Sony.

What are you talking about? Where do you live? VCD is worse than VHS, a lot worse and nobody in America wants to watch VCD. Foreign movies, perhaps. But all local movies are in DVD.

 

DVDs took out VHS in terms of movie production, but in terms of actual computing(i.e. applications or such), DVDs have not completely replaced CDs...

Therefore, I suspect Blu Ray will take a long time to take place within the actual computing department of discs. As it stands, it'll be left as a media disc for movies for quite some time in the future and that's what you should be getting it for if you're getting a Blu Ray player on your laptop.

 

I wanted a blu ray drive but they are so expensive. Their price will drop a lot. After thinking a bit I bought a PS3 and forgot about blu ray in my notebook. I will eventually buy one when the price for a writer drop at 100$.