Do you think Disney's Blu-ray movies will be hard to find...

[DisneyFan01]

Do you think Disney's Blu-ray movies will be hard to find like some of the DVDs are after being released? Now I don't mean all the movies I mean like the Disney Animated Classics.

[darth_deetoo]

Well, they aren't releasing animated classics on Blu Ray in 2007. But when they start, they're bound to have the moratorium's imposed on certain titles just like DVD. I think the release strategy for the big titles will follow the same strategy as the DVD's, so expect titles to disappear in the vault after a year or two. It happened with VHS, it's happening with DVD, it will happen with Blu Ray. Best thing to do, if you're thinking of going Hi Def in the future, is to buy the animated classics as they're released once they begin to issue them on Blu Ray. A lot of people seem to have been caught out with the DVD editions of Snow White and Beauty and the Beast.

[Lars Vermundsberget]

I wouldn't expect them to become really hard to find, just like I don't consider most other somewhat recent OOP material very hard to find either...

But nevertheless, considering Disney's marketing strategy, the rule of thumb should be: If you want it, get it while you can!

[Princess Stitch]

I have tp admit I made that mistake with DVD. I just assumed alot of the movies would be there for when I decided to buy them. Now even though I don't have a blu-ray player I've started buying some of the ones that I want when they come out. That way I won't be scrambling later! I only have three right now, but I'll be picking up the animated classics when they're released.

[DarthPrime]

I don't have a Blu-ray player, but I hope to have one before the end of the year (if not first quarter of 2008 for sure). I'm not sure if I would buy any movies right now since I don't have a player. I guess if I knew something was going out of print that I wanted I would go ahead and pick it up, so I wouldn't have to hunt for it later. That said I don't think any current Blu-ray titles are in danger of going OOP anytime soon.

[MickeyMousePal]

Not everyone owns a Blu-Ray Disc so I don't think titles will be hard to find.

[darth_deetoo]

Well, I think hard to find is perhaps the wrong phrase. Snow White and Beauty and the Beast are actually very easy to find, but they are hard to find at a reasonable price.

The other problem is that there are so many bootlegs around of these discs, and so the buyer really has to be wary.

In terms of having a Blu Ray player. You really can't go far wrong with the PS3. It's just had an update too which now upscales your existing DVD's on a HD-TV. As long as you have a 1080i or 1080p capable TV, you can enjoy the upscaling feature, which nicely improves the image on most DVD's.

[disneystarsfan]

well once the animated classics are released, i would buy them anyway even if i didn't have a blu-ray player because its better to be safe than sorry because titles eventually will go out of print, but a blu-ray player won't(for a while atleast) lol.

[Loomis]

Well, they aren't releasing animated classics on Blu Ray in 2007. But when they start, they're bound to have the moratorium's imposed on certain titles just like DVD. I think the release strategy for the big titles will follow the same strategy as the DVD's, so expect titles to disappear in the vault after a year or two.

Which is probably why we won't see Classics on Blu-ray for a few years.

Disney already made the mistake once of releasing Snow White to stores when DVD was in its infancy. Hopefully they won't be making the same mistakes with this new format, which I believe will have a slower uptake than DVD. After all, the core audience for Disney animated films - which is still undoubtedly the 'family' audience of middle-America - would have bought their DVD players much later than the technophiles and Internet fans like ourselves.

However, there is no reason to believe that their current release strategy - which I believe has been in place since pre-VHS (when they released the film theatrically every 10 years) - will change any time soon. Although, you never know - Iger is becoming known as someone who wants to release home entertainment a little differently.

[blackcauldron85]

I'm not planning on buying a high-def TV or a Blu Ray player anytime soon (unless I win the lottery). Will normal DVDs always be able to be played on Blu Ray players? Or, eventually, will we HAVE to upgrade to Blu Ray discs?

[darth_deetoo]

Blu Ray players play normal discs fine now. I don't see any reason why that should change.

I have a PS3, and with the new firmware update that upscales old DVD's, the picture quality is amazing.

[blackcauldron85]

How long do you think people have (in years) before we HAVE to switch to high-def TV and high-def DVD players?

[Billy Moon]

I have a PS3, and with the new firmware update that upscales old DVD's, the picture quality is amazing.

But doesn't the TV set (or projector) do the upscaling anyway? Is there a difference in quality between the two?

How long do you think people have (in years) before we HAVE to switch to high-def TV and high-def DVD players?

I don't really see that happening anytime soon. In Finland they're only now ending the analog TV broadcasts and switching to digital (non-HD). And I've gotten the impression we're among the first in Europe. Is the US much ahead of us? I have no idea.

[Princess Stitch]

How long do you think people have (in years) before we HAVE to switch to high-def TV and high-def DVD players?

From what I heard they're going to start broadcasting cable differently in a few years and phasing out the way they do it now. I understand that newer connectors are already on tvs, but I don't know if people will be forced to switch, or just have to buy an adapter.

As far as I'm concerned, you can keep your existing TV and DVD player forever if you want to. People with an old black and white TV and VHS player can still find movies to watch and DVDs have been out for a long time now (at least 10 years, right?). So I'm figuring even if in another 10 years DVDs are harder to find, they STILL have the HD/DVD combo discs. You've probably got quite a while before you're forced in any way.

[2099net]

I have a PS3, and with the new firmware update that upscales old DVD's, the picture quality is amazing.

But doesn't the TV set (or projector) do the upscaling anyway? Is there a difference in quality between the two?

Well, like most things, it depends upon your TV. If you have a HD TV that is a year or two old, its probably not good enough upscaling. It's quite a big processor hit to resample and rescale a picture 60 times a second in real-time. So some TVs don't do it as best that they can (optimised for speed) or do it wonderfully, but too slow (resulting sometimes in sync issues). Most modern TVs probably can upscale by themselves to an acceptable standard.

It's always good to have an option of having the TV or the equipment do the upscaling though. On the whole, I can say that my XBox360 upscales a lot better than my TV. Early indications are it probably upscales better than my PS3 with 1.8 installed (but I've only had a quick play so far).