I have an Oppo DVD player which I like a lot, but it turns out I hardly ever use it anymore now that I have an AppleTV. I just rip the movies and watch them on that instead. Every once in a while, we’ll rent a hi-def movie from iTunes, which looks terrific. And, of course, I’ve been thinking about going hi-def in the home theater more seriously. First, I was waiting for the HD vs. Blu-ray war to shake out, and that’s done. I figured when that happened the price on Blu-ray players and discs would start to come down. Well, it mostly hasn’t. The players have come down a little, but not much. I got to thinking about it again a while back when Oppo showed off their upcoming Blu-ray player. I figured I’d just wait for that.
But now I’m not so sure. With player prices still not great and disc prices still double that of DVDs, some are now saying that Blu-ray is dead. There are some compelling points there. Really, if the cost of Blu-ray discs isn’t going to come down to being only a few dollars more than DVDs, how can Blu-ray succeed? Yes, Blu-ray looks better than even upscaled DVDs, but not enough better to justify that cost for most people. Based on the argument there, it doesn’t look like disc costs are coming down anytime soon.
So now I’m not so sure. I’m not really a big gamer, but a PS3 would give me Blu-ray and even if Blu-ray tanks, at least I can play games on it. Of course, I’m not much of a gamer, so I’m not sure about the appeal. Or do I just wait for the Oppo, which will at least be a fantastic upscaling DVD player as well? Or just wait six months and see what, if anything, is happening in the blu-ray market? (And if I do that, what do I ask for for xmas?)
It’s a quandary. An entirely insignificant one, to be sure, but hey, maybe someone with a PS3 can comment on how it performs as a blu-ray player. Is it comparable to a stand-alone player? I would ask how it performs as an upscaling DVD player, but I’m not sure I care anymore…
PS3 is a decent Blu-Ray player, but if you have a new/decent a/v receiver, you are better off getting a better quality DVD player that will bitstream the MA, or TRU audio directly to the receiver to decode.
The best the PS3 can do is decode those formats and send them to the receiver via LPCM.
The PS3 has a decent upscaler, but again, if you have a better upscaler in your receiver or in a newer BR player, then obviously it would be better to use that.
That being said, I have a PS3 and I’m happy with it. I rip my dvds and play them over the PS3 through TVersity and that works well for me.
Right, I have a new A/V receiver which handles all the new formats, so that does suggest not using a PS3. And I don’t need it for media playback as I have an AppleTV. So this suggests that I wait for the Oppo.
I guess blu-ray has another drawback: I don’t believe it’s possible to rip blu-ray movies with Handbrake so that I can put them on my iPhone/iPod/laptop, right? Or can they be ripped? That might be the deal-breaker for a while…