What's so great about Blu-Ray?

I know when I ask this, I risk getting flamed out the ass, but I don't care.

What's the big fucking deal about Blu-Rays over DVDs? I know I've seen a thread about this before, but I can't for the life of me find it, so excuse me.

Take ANN's Oreimo announcement for example. I see nothing but:

"No Blu-Ray, no buy"

"DVD sucks, why bother at all?"

Are people THAT fucking whiny? Yes, Blu-Ray has crisper colors and a crisper picture (for some things.) Kinda. But most people can't really see a difference, and if they do, they don't give a fuck.

Why do people bitch that "OH GOD THIS ISN'T BLU-RAY" when, last time I checked, 80% of people are just happy we're getting DVDs at all.

First piracy fucks shit up, and now you want to force everyone to buy a Blu-Ray player? Last time I checked (at a Wal-Mart,) Blu-Rays are nothing but really, really old movies that no one wants to watch anymore, Season sets of TV shows and some recent movies that stay in the slot while DVD versions disappear.

1. Does does piracy fuck shit up when they only pirate the blu ray to the majority of the movies/animes?
2. same thing with vhs to dvd. shit changes.
3. Most dvd versions suck when your tv is hd and compresses into the square format.

That last one makes the most sense. Thanks, I get it now.

DVD standard resolution is 720x480
BD standard is 1920x1080

Try watching any standard dvd on a 42" Widescreen and when your eyes start burning you'll have your answer.

Of course there are going to be exceptions with upscaling, aspect ratios and non WS televisions but by and large the image quality will be better on bluray.

and if you don't see a difference your blind...

compare on an LED... I gotta samsung 7100 series and it makes everything orgasmic...

Blu-Ray makes all the difference when you have a big computer screen/TV.

Also, with a lot of blu ray releases, a lot of touching up/improvements to the animation quality are done.

http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Episode_revisions#Webcast.2FAT-X_version

Here are some screenshots, comparing the bd with the tv version.

Also, on most modern day TVs, the bd copies look a lot sharper than their dvd counterparts.

Although I know a few people that swear that they can't tell the difference between the two, so I guess it's more of a matter of personal preferences.

http://images.puella-magi.net/e/ed/Madoka_bd_2.jpg

Maybe I'm blind, but I see no significant issues here. The title has a different background, as does another pic there, but that's it. Nothing that stops me from buying the DVD instead.

that link does not due bd justice...

True, but it's also worth noting that Madoka, Bakemonogatari, Code Geass, etc. are exceptions. Very few improvements are done on typical Blu-Ray releases as far as I'm aware.

I'm noticing it a bit more frequently, but yeah, it mostly depends on the title.

Also, for those images, the bd release has a touched up mouth for the teacher, etc. Although the other screenshots, revolving around the action scenes, are more touched up.

This can all basically be compared to the idea of lossless audio and 320 kbps. This is one of those things that you have to go and see or hear to understand. For example, for years a lot of my music was in 128kbps. Upon learning and understanding the concept of lossless audio and further understanding bitrates and the such, I went out of my way to make all the music in my library at least 256kbps and VBR (Variable Bit Rate) in an attempt to get the best audio quality as possible after hearing the difference between my 128kbps and 256kbps.

The same is applied to Blu-Ray. After seeing anime in an HD format I immediately favored things in 1280x720 and 1920x1080 (720p and 1080p). To be truthful though, I don't own any Blu Rays. I want to install a Bluray drive on my computer and then buy Blu-Rays but at the moment I don't have any Blu-Ray movies. Hell, I don't own any anime period. I have a manga collection but no anime.

In the end of the whole thing it basically comes down to "Do you care enough for the quality of your anime to get Blu-ray releases?". There is in truth a significant increase in the quality of the anime. The picture of a DVD is around 720x480. Compare that to even 1920x1080 and you will that is a big jump.

The simple matter is to think of it this way: would you stretch an image or would shrink? Say you have a viewing medium that is 17 inches. Your DVD (not legit info here) contains an image that is say 5 inches. What happens to the image? It stretches. You can do things to lessen this stretching like telling the viewing medium to keep the image in it's aspect ration (4:3 I think it is with DVD's) or it can simply not stretch it at all and so you will have a little box in the center of your screen with the image.

Now Blu-Ray is much bigger. Let's say the Blu-Ray is like 18 inches. Now for future reference, I'm not being exact with how big in size the image size for these things are. Back on topic though, 18 inches is bigger than 17 inches. So what happens? Well it doesn't stretch, that's for certain. The only thing you can do for an image of that size is to shrink it. Again we have two options, we can either let the viewing medium show the image at a certain aspect ratio (Blu-Ray's aspect ratio I have never been certain but I believe it it 16:9 or 16:10) or just let the whole image just take up the whole screen and never have to worry about black bars at the top or bottom.

Tl;Dr, DVD images on an HDTV will get stretched and Blu-Rays either won't or will get less stretched.

The simple matter is that universally the quality of the image of Blu-Ray is much better over all than it's DVD counterpart. It is up to you the viewer though to judge all this. It's just a very simple question of:

"Do you even care enough for the quality of the image to spend money in getting a device that plays Blu-Ray and then buying your anime in Blu-Ray?".

It's the old vs new all over again. If your used to the old you won't care unless your techo perfectionist. Unless you watch say the first half a series on blu then go back to dvd for the rest you won't be bothered by the quality of the dvds, what you don't know won't hurt you.

Great... now I feel like getting the BD releases... I wonder if its really worth it though...

99% of the time the only differences between the dvd and bd is that there more resolution and better saturation in the green and yellow spectrum of the color and contrast ratio. unless you have a good hd lcd tv or willing to pay for more green sat points or what to see every nook and crany of a porn star vagoo... dvd with a dvd player with good upconverting is fine until bd players and disks are cheap.

I can understand getting a blu-ray version of a new series, but what about older series? Would something from the 80s or even the 90s look any different? After all, it's not like they can change the inherent quality. For example, I've been watching Space Battleship Yamato recently, and there is no way a blu-ray version would make it look marvelous or stunning. There are mistakes and scratches on the cells, and they are always going to show up. And that's okay, because it's from the late sixties.

When high-definition TVs were becoming popular, I remember thinking, "Having a high-def TV won't make I Love Lucy or The Honeymoonerslook any different." The same logic applies to blu-ray.

In other words, even if Naruto was my favorite series, I wouldn't buy the first season of it on blu-ray, at least not until DVD became obsolete and blu-ray was the only viable option, but hopefully that won't happen for another 5-10 years.

Blue rays are basically discs with more space on it so the producers can up the quality, have extras or even put some film cuts back in. Alot of people don't like using a second disc just for a few extras.

Think of it this way.
ps1 = vhs
ps2 = dvd
ps3 = blu ray
if you update your tv then you'll want to update your dvd player to something that makes movies look better with that new hd. it's mostly preference. if you like blu ray then buy them. if you dont then dont.