Compare DVD vs. Blu-ray

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DVD vs. Blu-ray

Blu-ray

After winning the high-definition standard war against HD-DVD, Blu-ray has another battle to fight - the battle against standard DVD.
Standard DVD format is hughely popular, and is the de-facto standard in many home theatres. Blu-ray is entering the market in a possibly bad timing. How do they compare? This Choozza helps you decide which player is the best for yuor needs.

Standard DVD

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Low Cost

Movies Availability

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Special Features

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Comparison Details

Last updated by Nimo, on 23/7/09

	Blu-ray Blu-ray format is the new and improved movie watching technology. It won the battle of high-definition viewing format over HD-DVD, and is slowly gaining traction.	Standard DVD After winning over VHS as the most wide-spread video format, standard DVD still prevails as a good quality movie watching tecnology, and you can find players virtually everywhere (computers, gaming consoles etc).
Low Cost: What are the costs you should budget for when going with either options?	Blu-ray players cost five to ten times more than DVD players (and sometimes even more than that). But the costs don't end there. To really enjoy a Blu-ray movie you'll also need a good HD screen and adequate sound system. If you don't already own those, the price difference climbs up quickly. As a rule of thumb you're probably better off getting the screen and sound system first, so that by the time you get to buy the actual Blu-ray player prices may drop. Blu-ray players can play your standard DVD titles, which means you don't have to go and replace your entire collection at once,. However, you'd probably want Blu-ray titles to exploit everything Blu-ray has to give. The movies are not cheap, and easily cost twice more than the same movie in standard DVD format.	Standard DVD players cost a tenth to a fifth the price of Blu-ray players. Add to that the low prices for movie titles, and the savings are huge. Also, consider the issues around picture and sound quality on Blu-ray. While superior, they are really enjoyed on good HD screens and sound systems, which you may be tempted to buy. In the standard DVD world ? these are still very nice to have, but will not change your viewing and listening experience much.
Movies Availability: How many movies are available for the player?	More often than not, new movies get released in Blu-ray format. Older movies get ported and released slowly as well. However, the total number of titles in Blu-ray is only 1 percent that of the titles available for standard DVDs. This means that unless your taste in movies fits in exactly with what the Blu-ray library has to offer, your Blu-ray player will be mostly used to play standard DVD movies. Also, if you buy your movie in Blu-ray format, it will not play on standard DVDs.	All new movies are still released in the standard DVD format, and that will probably go on for a while longer. All in all, the number of titles you can find in standard DVD formats is almost 100 times more that of Blu-ray. Add TV programs to that and the DVD's edge is clear. Standard DVD format will play happily on a Blu-ray player.

Picture Quality: What kind of picture viewing quality does the format provide?	Blu-ray has maximum picture resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p). This is a far better resolution compared to DVD. What it means is that the quality of the picture you'll see is far better as more detail can fit into every single frame. The experience, on good HD screens can mimic a real cinema quality. Additionally, Blu-ray technology stores the video differently to DVDs (in technical terms, the Blu-ray discs use superior video-compression). The difference is that the picture looks more real ? it has rich colors and sharpness (contrast). The downside is that while the picture quality is superior, you really need a good HD screen to enjoy it.	Standard DVD has inferior resolution compared to Blu-ray. At only 730x480 (480p) and older video storing technology (inferior video compression) ? the quality of picture on a standard DVD just doesn't cut it, This being said, it doesn't matter much for older movies, or if you don't have a good HD screen to watch the movie on.
Sound Quality: What can you expect from the player in terms of the playback quality for music and soundtracks?	Blu-ray uses very sophisticated, new soundtrack technologies such as Dolby TrueHD and Master Audio. The quality sound stored on the Blu-ray disc is really studio-quality and, especially for newer movie titles, sounds great with the right sound system. The downside is that to enjoy this sound quality, you really need an excellent sound system, which costs a lot by itself.	The sound quality on standard DVD players is adequate for most people. This is especially true for older movie titles, where the soundtracks were not of high quality originally anyway.
Special Features: What can the player do beside playing back your movies?	Blu ray boasts several special features that standard DVDs do not have. The most obvious one is the ability to access the menu options without having to stop the movie. You simply open a pop-up menu that gets displayed on the screen while you continue viewing. Different features are available for different Blu-ray profiles. Profiles are the different generations of Blu-ray players, and some features are only present in the latest profile. Picture-in-picture viewing, or Internet connectivity to download additional material directly from the player are cool features but not available on all models. The downside of Blu-ray is that movie loading time is substantially longer than what you get on standard DVD, and that no Set-top recorders are currently only available in Japan.	A standard DVD does not have anything on Blu-ray in terms of special features except for the wide availability of set-top recorders. However, being more simple, movie load time (the time from when you insert the movie into the player until it is ready to play) is short.

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