Blu-Ray Drives

[ThinkPad560X]

So im thinking of replacing my DVD library with Blu-Ray but before I do I want to make sure.
Will all the movies look better and sharper then DVD? At my local stores that sell Blu-Rays came down in price starting at ($7.50) I've heard that Blu-Ray players can make DVDs look better too, So is it worth the upgrade or not? I only own a PlayStation 3 as a blu-ray and tryed out DVDs in it and came out in a smaller box on the tv, maybe to make the video look better. And is it too late to be buying blu-ray? I think the next stop for movies is digital / account clouding.

[ZaZ]

Converting DVDs to 1080p resolution is called upscaling and your PS3 probably already does it. Blu-rays do look better than DVDs, but a number of factors come into play in determining how much better like the size of the TV, how far you sit from it, the quality of the transfer, etc.

[ThinkPad560X]

I just got a brand New Sony DVD HDMI Upscaling Player DVP-SR510H today, Replacing my old Sony DVD Player DVP-SR200P that had Progressive Scan. It brought my DVDs up nice and clear "And can use HDMI now over Component" and use the full screen compared to my PS3 using a small box. The Tv I use is one that fits my desk well I built, a Sony HDTV BRAVIA KDL-19M4000. I think its a 19". It fits well next to my IBM monitors and wanted to have a small Tv to play consoles on. From what I read on the box before it supports 1080p aswell. So If I decide to get Blu-Ray say next year, is it too late? I read around that companys are working on 4k tvs.

[ThinkPad560X]

At the store on black friday, I saw some blu-rays that said 3D Blu-ray. So is that another format or will it be fine playing on a basic blu-ray Player? Such as this one, A small Sony one like the one for my DVDs. "Sony BDPS185 Blu-ray Disc Player"

[ZaZ]

I believe you need a 3D screen to use the 3D feature of 3D Blu-rays. They make a few 3D laptops, but no ThinkPads have it. I would presume you could watch the 3D Blu-ray on a regular screen, but honestly, I have no idea.

[pianowizard]

So If I decide to get Blu-Ray say next year, is it too late? I read around that companys are working on 4k tvs.

Why wait? The cheapest Blu-ray players are now only like $20 to $30. The improvement over DVD is stunning and many Blu-ray titles are actually cheaper than DVDs, e.g. this set that I ordered just yesterday: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004 ... ROKL5A1OLE.

It's true that 4K TVs will come out in the not-so-distant future but unless you sit really close to the TV or have a huge TV, it would be hard to discern any significant difference between 1080p and 4K. For TV and movies, the difference between DVD (which is at most 720x480) and Blu-ray is very noticeable, but going from 1080p to 4K doesn't provide as much real-life improvement. I recommend these CNET articles on this topic:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57 ... pid-still/

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57 ... tra-hd-4k/

On the other hand, for computer monitors, 1920x1080 is actually rather low. A higher resolution like 2560x1440 is far better.

[ThinkPad560X]

So im thinking of buying this Tv at the store, Its just a basic Sony 32" LCD for $248.88, but it says 720p, So does that mean its not a 1080p Tv? I thought all tvs today do 1080p now.

[pianowizard]

So im thinking of buying this Tv at the store, Its just a basic Sony 32" LCD for $248.88, but it says 720p, So does that mean its not a 1080p Tv? I thought all tvs today do 1080p now.

That's means its resolution is limited to 1366x768 or even 1280x720. You need to find a TV that is 1080p. And a 32" TV for $248.88 is a bit high. Wait for a better sale.

[ThinkPad560X]

Does my Sony BRAVIA KDL-19M4000 support 1080p by the way? When I hook up my PlayStation 3 via HDMI and turn it on, it says in the top of the tv screen | Imput HDMI 1080p |

[aoitenshi]

excuse me for hijacking your thread, Sir

I'm thinking of buying an external blu-ray burner for my old T61, just to get bigger storage than DVDs, not to watch bluray movies

I saw some drives here, but I need more info about external bluray burner

any recommended good and cheap external bluray drive out there?

thank you for your comments

[ZaZ]

I think from a cost perspective, an external hard drive makes a better choice for backups if that's what you're after. Blu-ray discs are expensive, especially the re-writeable ones. They're flaky too.

[aoitenshi]

I agreed with your opinion, but currently I'm using 100GB 7200rpm HDD and 64GB ssd for data storage

I wanted to have one external bluray burner, for collection purpose
I know that Lacie makes great external bluray burner, but it's not in my budget range

So, any recommended cheap external bluray drives?

[ThinkPad560X]

So I had blu-ray for a few months now and some movies I can see the sharpness such as predator, Terminator 2 and 007 films. But when I put in The Fugitive or Dumb & Dumber some 1990s early movies they look in the same quailty as my DVD version. So before I buy anymore BD, are their only select movies being redone in full sharpness? Also will the ThinkPad Blu-Ray drive work in T60-R60 ThinkPads? I think they use the serial plug in type too, not like the T20, R40 models.

[pianowizard]

So before I buy anymore BD, are their only select movies being redone in full sharpness?

If the master recording had poor sharpness, then the Blu-ray transfer would still be low in sharpness. It's impossible to find out which movies' original masters were good and which ones were less good.

EDIT: I have another question. Did you get a 720p or 1080p TV?

[ZaZ]

But when I put in The Fugitive or Dumb & Dumber some 1990s early movies they look in the same quality as my DVD version.

Really? I have the Blu-rays for the Fugitive, and Dumb and Dumber, comic genius by the way. They look better than the DVDs to me. A lot of how good a movie looks in HD is related to how much the movie company is willing to invest in the transfer. For a movie like Casablanca for example, they'll spend a lot of money because people will buy it, but I'm not so that's the case for Dumb and Dumber. They can fix a lot of issues when they do the transfer, but again, it's a cost vs sales question. I have some older silent movies on Blu-ray. They look quite good. Some movies were shot with the intent of making them look grainy. To clean them up would alter them.

[SafeHarbor]

Hi. This is a subject that's fairly dear to me, but only in hobbyist terms. Folks are very much right that the quality of Blue-ray movies and transfers vary a LOT.

Certain films have become known as "reference" discs. These are movies that are widely considered to be state of the art and that show exactly what the media is capable of. Some of them so far include Super 8, Prometheus, Brazil, AI, Waterworld, The Lovely Bones, and the last revision of Blade Runner. Some include 2009's Star Trek.

Some films miss the mark. For example, Avatar had great production values, but the non-3D version suffered. In some scenes, such as when the birds are flying over foliage, the background looks almost hand-painted- cheap- not state of the art. Without the "zing" of 3D to hide it, the details were quite apparent.

So while DVD up-sizing is FUN, and will add value for and extend the life of your DVD collection, grab some reference disc Blu-rays to see what your player and TV are really capable of.

I've also noticed lately that some TVs, especially the 32-inch and below models are advertised as "HD capable." This is pretty annoying. Watch out for this deceptive marketing. TVs either have a certain number of pixels that they can display, or they do not. Even worse, this may mean that it has a cheap 720p panel and is capable of lying about it and accepting a 1080p signal even if it's not going to display it. This doesn't really stand out as a Blu-ray player until you hook one up through the PC port to a PC and then try to figure out why you can't get a pixel-to-pixel resolution at 1080p in your video driver console. I saw that recently with a Sanyo from Wal-mart. It claimed to be 1080p and looked great playing from a external PC player, but it only admitted to 1280 x 720 (basic 720p) when hooked to the PC.

About Blu-ray in a Thinkpad, I've tried running some of the ones I mentioned over the network from my media PC to the TP (which is a big hassle). In each case, I've stopped playback because of impending overheating. I suspect that a R60 offers much better cooling that a 61p, but I suggest that you make SURE that other folks are happy with performance before sticking a Blu-ray player in a ThinkPad.

[ZaZ]

I would suggest if you want to watch these movies in 1080p, getting some software that would allow you to rip and re-encode the movies. The Blu-ray drive will fit in a R60, but the R60 just doesn't have enough processing power to run them properly. A re-encoded 1080p file ran on my R60 with T7400 between 30-40% of CPU usage, while the same movie on Blu-ray was always at or over 95% of CPU usage and playback was never smooth, though they looked great on the FlexView screen.

The re-encoding part isn't that hard. There's lots of free software to do it like Handbrake or RipBot, but given that the files are so large, it's going to take a long time to code them. My desktop has a six-core AMD. It usually takes between three and five hours to code a 1080p video depending on the particulars. Given that the CPU power of an older ThinkPad is probably on third or less, it'll take considerably longer. You're going to have to spend some money on ripping software too. While there's lots of free DVD ripping software, there's none for Blu-rays and they tend to be on the expensive side of things.

[FunkyRes]

About Blu-ray in a Thinkpad, I've tried running some of the ones I mentioned over the network from my media PC to the TP (which is a big hassle). In each case, I've stopped playback because of impending overheating. I suspect that a R60 offers much better cooling that a 61p, but I suggest that you make SURE that other folks are happy with performance before sticking a Blu-ray player in a ThinkPad.

T520 w/ FRU P/N : 42T2525 - I purchased the drive from a seller here when I ordered the TP from Lenovo as Lenovo did not offer Bluray with the T520. The drive though is made by Lenovo (I think for W series ??) and works just dandy.

I did have to provide my own software, Corel WinDVD Pro 11 is what I went with.

I don't use it often but when I do, it's nice to have and works very well.

Whether it will work in an R60 is something I just don't know. I have some doubts though.

[ThinkPad560X]

I got a 32" SONY HDTV 1080p. On the box it says on the badge logo in gold FULL HD 1080P.