Blu-ray Player: For Better Movie Watching Experience

Blu-ray is very much similar to DVD if you look in to its physical characteristics such as the disc, the menu items, etc. So what are the differences and why the Blu-ray player and discs are so costly?

Here are the main reasons and features because of which the Blu-ray players are so costly and the demand is also increasing.

The new technology of Blu-ray has brought revolution in the field of movie watching. It has three major advantages or improvements over DVD and they are: improved image quality, improved sound quality, and various other special features. Though the external appearance of a Blu-ray disc is very much similar to that of a DVD but the difference is in the storage capacity of a Blu-ray disc. Blu-ray disc has a very large storage capacity of 50 GB, if we compared this with DVD, DVD holds only 8GB of information.

Now we will discuss about various factors/features which makes Blu-ray disc superior than that of a DVD:

Image quality:

Better resolution is a big factor which makes Blu-ray so great and superior than its counterpart- DVD technology. Better resolution makes you see more detailed images, you will able to see the images so clearly that you can see the strands of hair or small patches of the skin and even more.  Technically if we say, the maximum resolution in a Blu-ray is 1,920×1,080 (1080p) whereas 720×480 (480p) in case of DVD. Also they use different ways of video compressing which brings vibrant color and contrast to the images you view from a Blu-ray player and disc. Blu-ray technology has the highest degree of video format available in the market today.  If the blu-ray player and disc is connected to a High-Definition TV it can beat the picture quality of many movie theaters as well.

Audio quality:

Better sound quality is yet another very important factor which enhances movie viewing experience. Blu-ray consists of a very high resolution soundtrack formats namely DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD which produces exactly similar sound effects which the audio engineers and the director of the movie or documentary wants us to hear. 5 new soundtrack formats have been introduced in a Blu-ray. Here are few descriptions:

Dolby Digital Plus: It uses better technology than that of a standard Dolby Digital. The lossy compression for shrinking the size of the information of the audio is incredible in case of Digital Plus. It also supports higher bit rate (6.144Mbps vs. 40Kbps) and even more channels (7.1 vs. 5.1).

Dolby TrueHD: Lossless compression is the major good factor in Dolby TrueHD. It does compress the raw information but in doing so it takes care that no information should get loss in the transmission. It has higher bit rate and the sample rate than that of Dolby Digital Plus.

DTS-HD High Resolution: It is one step higher than that of a standard DTS. It also uses the lossy audio compression to shrink the size of the information. It supports a higher bit rate of 6Mbps vs. 1.5Mpbs, a higher sample rate of 96Khz vs. 48Khz, and more channels of 7.1 vs. 5.1.

DTS-HD Master Audio: It is similar to that of Dolby TrueHD. It also uses the lossless audio compression. It also offers a higher bit rate than that of DTS-HD High Resolution.

Linear PCM (LPCM): The Linear PCM is the basic foundation of all soundtrack formats mentioned above. All the sound track formats at last converts to the Linear PCM to be received by the AV receiver so that it can play it back.

Special features:

One of the additional features in the Blu-ray over the DVD player is that it has the pop-up menu. Pop-up menu allows you to access various menu functions in the midst of your movie watching. It offers picture-in-picture video commentary and also allows you to download various new contents right from the player. However, make sure that your Blu-ray player is of right profile which allows such accesses.

Yes, the Blu-ray players that are available in the market belong to one of these three profiles:

Profile 1.0: It can play back the Blu-ray movies and it is also possible to access to the standard audio commentary tracks along with other distinguished features not generally available on regular DVD players.

Profile 1.1: The additional feature here is the added picture-in-picture function which is also known as the BonusView. This is actually a video in which a director is giving commentary or footage of scenes at the corner of the screen when the movie is playing in the background.

Profile 2.0: It is the latest profile in the Blu-ray technology which allows the playback of the BD Live characteristics.  Here BD Live is any content in the internet which we want to download from the internet. For downloading, user has to connect his/her Blu-ray player to their home network (most suitable through Ethernet cable). It is a very nice feature in Profile 2.0 type of Blu-ray player which basically consists of outtakes or any extra deleted scenes, trailers, quizzes, games, message boards or any other pop-up text commentaries.

Limitations:

Price: The main drawback is the player’s high recurring cost. You can get a decent Blu-ray player in and around $200 but one single Blu-ray disc will cost you not less than $25. One time cost is however can be manageable but for creating a library of Blu-ray disc will really cost you more.

Non-availability of titles: As compared to DVD the number of titles found in Blu-ray is lesser than that of a DVD. At present there are around one thousand titles found in Blu-ray as compared to more than Ninety thousand in case of DVD. So you have left with few choices to find your favorite movies in Blu-ray.

Slow loading time: When Blu-ray was first introduced, the loading was too slow. It was taking at least 3 minutes to load which was quite unbearable as compared to DVD which was loaded within a blink of a second. However, now a days Blu-ray movies is taking around 20 seconds to load a simple movie on a very good Blu-ray player. However, for the movies with some complicated menus items still taking more than a minute to load the movie.

Portability problems: This is the most important factor. For example, you have collected many Blu-ray movies but in case you are going for a trip and wanted to play it in your vehicle’s DVD player, you can not do that. You will not be able to play Blu-ray disc anywhere, you have to have a Blu-ray disc to play it.

Other than the above few limitations, the Blu-ray technology is fantastic and it really doubles the pleasure of movie watching at the comfort of your own home.

Product Unique Selling Points:

• Excellent movie viewing experience

• Incredible picture quality

• Better audio quality

• Direct download from internet (available only in profile 2.0 player)

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Tags: Audio, Blu-ray, Disc, DVD, Movies, Player, technology, video