AAPDDC

Blu-Ray discs were launched in 2006, but only in the past few years have they started to catch on with the public. Part of the early resistance came about because of the war between HD-DVD technology and Blu-Ray. This battle was strikingly similar to the contest between VHS and Beta when video players first appeared on the market. Until 2008, HD-DVD was winning the race and the bulk of R&D efforts were going in that direction. According to Wikipedia, two events helped turn the tide:

In 2006, Sony’s Playstation was updated with Blu Ray player capabilities on board
In 2007, the Blu-Ray developers added advanced copy protection to the discs

All this led to the decision in 2008 by the makers of HD-DVD to abandon the technology. The only reason HD-DVD is still supported today is because consumers had already invested heavily in purchasing the discs and equipment; therefore, there’s still a secondary market for it.

Blu-Ray has a huge number of advantages. First among them is image quality. Paired with HDTV, a movie viewed in Blu-Ray looks absolutely stunning. And since the technology seems to have won the format wars, it’s likely to be stable for a number of years. The number of movie titles available is growing fast, with about 6,000 available as of the date of this posting. Sales of players and discs have doubled every year since 2008, reaching $350 million in 2010. Even some public libraries have added the discs to their lineup of movie titles available for checkout. In short, Blu-Ray has gone mainstream.

The disadvantages? It’s still expensive. Each movie title costs $5 to $10 more than the corresponding title on DVD. The players have decreased in price rapidly as the technology gains acceptance with consumers, but even so, the rock bottom price point to put one in your home theater is $150, and it won’t get you many features.

The biggest stumbling block to consider, though, is whether you can afford to maintain two separate libraries. Blu-Ray discs can only be played on players with Blu-Ray capability; your DVD player can’t read them. Neither can your computer, unless you buy third-party Blu Ray ripper software. For people who like to keep the option of portability in their moviegoing lives, this means buying a duplicate copy of each Blu-Ray movie in their collection in the old DVD format. Some studios have addressed this by including a DVD copy in each package; most of them haven’t.

Fortunately, there’s no need to get rid of your old DVD movies and start over. Nowadays it’s rare to find a Blu-Ray player that isn’t backward compatible: that is, it will also play DVD discs. DVD doesn’t look all that great on an HDTV compared with the sparkling quality of the new technology, but at least you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.