| Editorial February 2009
Blu-ray at Two: What's the Grade?
 It’s been a year since
the Blu-ray Disc, with a more than a little help from Time Warner, knocked out HD DVD
in the war of the high-definition video-disc formats. Many BD fans are now proclaiming
that Blu-ray will vanquish the standard-definition DVD as well, to become the single
physical video format of the future.
As we begin 2009, let’s revisit Blu-ray and see if it
has fulfilled its promise.
What I like about Blu-ray Disc:
- Blu-ray players have come down in price and are more
available. There are good players out there now, from major companies such as Panasonic
and Sony, that cost less than $300, and the prices keep dropping. By next holiday season,
there should be a wide array of affordable players. Moreover, most of the new players are
profile 2.0, which means they can take advantage of Blu-ray’s interactive
Internet-based features.
- The image quality of films on Blu-ray can’t be beat.
Though upconverting circuits in SD DVD players have become more sophisticated and are
useful in making your DVDs look better, they can’t reproduce true high-definition
images. Blu-ray tops out at 1080p, DVD at 480p -- you do the math. Download systems are
getting better but still aren’t as good as BD. Moreover, there’s no guarantee of
which download protocol will still be in business by the end of 2009. Vudu is now
generally acknowledged as the best, but in so competitive a field in an era of
considerable economic difficulty, no one can be sure who will be an eventual loser, and
how long any loser’s products will then remain functional. I believe that video
downloads will eventually triumph, as audio downloads are now beginning to, but it will
take another few years.
- Blu-ray offers the best sound to go with your hi-def
picture. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, and multichannel PCM are all capable of
outstanding sound, and new players and receivers are now incorporating them. Most film
companies now use one of these codecs for their Blu-ray releases.
- Blu-ray offers special features, such as picture-in-picture
and BD Live, that allow viewers to experience much more than the movie itself. On a few
new discs, BD Live allows the user to record his or her own commentary for a film. Now
that’s interactive!
- Almost all Blu-ray players can play SD DVDs through their
excellent upsampling circuits -- you don’t need to junk your current collection.
- Blu-ray Discs are now readily available at all places that
sell or rent SD DVDs.
Aspects of Blu-ray Disc that still need work:
- Blu-ray players still take too long to load discs. I have
one of the newest players, but it still takes more than a minute to load some recent,
feature-laden BDs. The general situation is a lot better than it was a year ago, but not
good enough for a product that’s already been around for two years.
- Navigation within a Blu-ray Disc can be clunky and slow.
With some BDs, it seems that all of a disc’s information must be reloaded each time
you perform a search function.
- Some BD releases include special features that have merely
been transferred from the SD DVD edition and are not high-definition. This situation is
improving, however.
- Though the new high-definition audio formats are easily
decoded by most BD players and new receivers, some companies still regularly use Dolby
Digital soundtracks. It’s not as bad as HD DVD, where Dolby Digital Plus became
the default rather than Dolby TrueHD. Speaking of default, Warner Home Video titles still
default to Dolby Digital 5.1; you then have to go to the Audio menu to select Dolby
TrueHD. This seems backward.
- Although films on Blu-ray are readily available via the
Internet, most stores carry only a few titles. My local Walmart carries only 40 or 50 BD
titles; my local FYE has five to six times as many, but they charge considerably more.
- The list prices of BDs are much higher than those of SD
DVDs, making the building of a Blu-ray library a costly proposition. Fortunately, most
online stores offer as much as 50% off. Amazon.com’s prices are generally at least
30% below list. If you can be patient and wait until a new title has been out for three or
four months, you can usually get it, new or used, at a fraction of the original cost.
- Although it’s nice that Blu-ray players can be updated
with new firmware, it’s irritating when the hardware lags behind the software. Who
wants to bring a new BD home, only to discover that it can’t be played until the
player has been upgraded? That still happens. There’s no excuse for this for a format
that’s been out two years now and was more years in the planning.
All things considered, Blu-ray Disc’s report card
reads B-. Not too bad, but not good enough yet.
. . . Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
