Passage

Notes on a Blu-Ray transition

As a longtime film fan and media junkie I have accepted that every so often a transition to another delivery platform is inevitable. I have a pretty big DVD collection, though, and for a while the thought of upgrading all of it made my stomach sink.

The flipside to having a large collection like this is that it's also a financial asset, and if it starts getting devalued, you've gotta start unloading. DVD resale values have been dropping like a stone, and they're only going to drop further.

So Blu had to happen sooner or later. And yeah, it's the shit.

Basically, it's a refinement of DVD, and it looks damn good, but you have to have the system for it; you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference on a CRT tube television. I have a relatively inexpensive Sharp HDTV and Blu discs pop right off that sucker. The uncompressed PCM audio streams sound a lot richer and fuller, although I did have to fiddle with my receiver to get the best sound.

Overall, I'm still mopping up the drool. It's nice to get to rediscover films you've seen a million or so times and pick up something new and interesting, thanks to the added resolution and deepened sound quality. It's fun to watch something like Speed Racer and ooh and aah at all the pretty colors. (And I happen to like Speed Racer as a film, so there. I'll take it over a perfectly competent and really rather boring blockbuster like Iron Man any day.)

Padding the bank account with resale revenue hasn't hurt, either. I always said I'd cross the Blu bridge when the time came, and, well, the time came. It's been surprising to see what sells and what doesn't; whatever doesn't make the cash gets tossed into the giveaway/Goodwill box.

As for all the DVDs that have departed for my benefit, seeing them again for the first time is what I'm looking forward to.