[Closed] Blu-Ray Players - Worth it?

If you have a HD television, yes. They are £99 in Richer Sounds for a Sony one. The picture on mine is lots better than the Sky HD box which isn't bad.

If not then no.

Worth thinking about a PS3. I just got one and use it as a sort of media hub to stream video and music off my wireless network. It has a blue ray player as well and upscales DVD's. You can get a nice remote for it, plus it's pretty good for playing games as well 🙂

If you get one that upscales well dvds look magically better too.

Yeah, dvds are miles better on my PS3 than my old (only a couple of years) sony dvd player, cos it upscales them.

Blueray probably isn't worth it if you don't have a 1080p tv, at least 40" or so too. On my 32" 720p set, they don't look an awful lot better than the upscaled dvds.

I stayed with a DVD player, it was £100 & discs are £3-5 vs £13+ for BR. I have a 42" 720p TV which I watch from 12' away & the picture looks good. With a bigger TV or closer viewing position I may have stumped up - there is info about screen size & viewing distance somewhere on the web. If I had gone for a BR player it would have been a PS3 or (more likely as I don't play games) an Oppo BDP80 which is supposed to be the mutts.

I have had one for a while and love it.

it plays DVD's, upscales and of course blu rays.

This is a minter and has BD live : [url= http://www.richersounds.com/product/blu-ray/samsung/bdp1600-m-r/sams-bdp1600-mr ]samsung blu ray player clicky[/url]

Yes, if you've got, or are getting in the next few years, an HD tv. Lovefilm rent BluRay for the same price as DVD and the cost of BluRays to buy is coming down quickly - lots now available sub-£10.

The Sony S360 player is under £100 and very good. Given a half-decent upscaling DVD player is £50 it's easy to justify the extra if you've got a HDTV.

It's dropped in price a lot because of a newer model. Amazon, Play and a few others keep dropping the price (to entice people to get one and a few discs too), the others match then it goes back up. If you see it on one of those for £80, grab it.

http://whathifi.com/Review/Sony-BDP-S360/

And if you want to watch the newer 3D films, you need a Blueray player.

I can vouch for the sony player listed above. Got mine last week and have been watching Band of Brothers. Absolutely fantastic picture on my 40" tv and the DVD upscaling is very good too.

Here's a question then.

I have a 32" 1080p telly running through an AIWA surround-sound system. When we tried to run a PS3 through it we couldn't get the sound to come through the AIWA system.
As it is a bit on the old side now, is there some sort of converter box where i can stick the HDMI cable in? For a Blu-Ray player obviously, already have the DVD player.

[i]When we tried to run a PS3 through it we couldn't get the sound to come through the AIWA system.[/i]

Did you change the output settings on the PS3?

Drac - not my PS3, tis the G/F's (i've no idea about them & not interested) she fettled with it for ages but couldn't get it to 'talk' to the surround sound system.

Yes

Doesn't your TV have a pair of phono output sockets (or an optical out)? I just run a lead from that to the amp, turn the TV speakers right down and we get whatever is piped through to the screen to the amp as well.

MUDDYDWARF... You may need an Optical digital cable to connect the ps3 to surround sound. With my surround system I connect the HDMI from PS3 direct to tv and I run a Optical digital cable from PS3 direct to AMP.

This is the correct way to get the best sound out of the PS3.

You can also connect HDMI as described above and use the RED YELLOW WHITE cable that came with PS3. Only use the RED and WHITE plugs into the surround sound.

The surround sound wont work properly doing it this way.

Optical Cables are about £20.

Hope that helps.

HMV were doing £50 blu ray players recently.

I got one but haven't done a comparison with the DVD player it's replacing.

Plus one for the PS3

2nd optical cable, I also use one for my sky box into my AV amp as well as the HDMI cable as the sky box and PS3 don't pass "HD" audio down HDMI.

They cost peanuts from ebay and this is the one I got for less than £5

[url= http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hi-Q-2M-Optical-digital-audio-lead-SPDIF-TOSLink-cable_W0QQitemZ110482429551QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_CablesConnectors_RL?hash=item19b944166f ]Optical cable linky thing[/url]