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Into the Blu
I was hesitant to switch to Blu-ray. At first, I had the format-war excuse: I didn’t want to commit to Blu-ray while HD DVD was still competitive, like all those poor souls who bought Betamax before VHS pulled through in that battle. And then, once HD DVD had conceded, there was the price (most players cost around $200 and the discs cost about $30 each), the smallish library of available titles (I watch as many classics as I do new releases, and few old movies have seen Blu-ray release thus far), the desire to avoid all the problems that come with the early versions of any new technology, and the usual depression that accompanies the realization that the format you’ve grown attached to is about to become obsolete, and you’ll spend your whole life upgrading and upgrading, shedding machinery like a snake sheds its skin, and buying new equipment just at the moment you’ve begun to enjoy the old stuff. I can see why some people stuck with vinyl.
But, then, Blu-ray is a little less offensive in this way than most new media formats: because its discs look like DVDs and its player accepts DVDs, it doesn’t relegate its predecessor to the dustbin. The two formats can coexist. But what sealed the deal for me was that I received a Blu-ray player as a gift. This, too, was what made me upgrade to DVD nearly a decade ago. I don’t know when I would have made the switch if the decision had been left in my hands. I would have had to do it eventually. Despite my complaining about the hassles of technological improvement, movies are important to me, and I think we owe it to them to display as much of their beauty as we can. Blu-ray is a good thing.
But it’s also a little less thrilling than the upgrade to DVD was. Before DVD, we’d never seen picture of such high quality at home. But Blu-ray followed the invention of high-definition television, which has the same resolution as a Blu-ray disc, so we all have essentially watched Blu-ray movies even if we’ve never used a Blu-ray player. There’s no “whoa!” moment here – we’re just getting the quality that we already were getting on TV. This is great, but watching it doesn’t feel revelatory.
Still, it was exciting to get my first shipment of Blu-ray discs (can we just call them Blu-rays, please?) from Netflix, which does charge an additional monthly fee if you want to access their Blu-ray collection. The first one I viewed was “The Hurt Locker,” but I really began to appreciate the medium when I saw “Volver,” whose deep, vibrant colors looked more resplendent on Blu-ray than they would have on DVD. After that, I watched “From Hell,” and its occasional panoramas of 19th-century London had a darker demonic grandeur, too, than they might have. I think I was impressed, although by that point I’d already decided to write an article about Blu-ray, and so I probably was actively looking to be impressed or unimpressed instead of just looking at the picture. I will admit that I couldn’t tell the difference in the supposedly improved sound, although I’m sure I just don’t have a keen enough ear. I wonder if anyone can discern the jump in audio quality without a side-by-side comparison. Maybe it’s possible if you have fancy speakers.
I had a few problems during my viewings, but I don’t know how many of them were problems with the player, rather than with the discs. Twice, I had a disc freeze on me, but each time, when I shut off the player and fast-forwarded to the same spot, it worked without skipping a beat on the second try. Since I hadn’t cleaned the discs in the interim, I’m inclined to blame the player for stumbling. Also, when I played a regular DVD on the Blu-ray player (“The Conformist”), the subtitles stopped working about twenty minutes in, and I had to switch to the dubbed version, which also stopped working during one scene, forcing me to watch a few minutes in Italian without any help. It is generally claimed that Blu-ray will improve the quality even of regular DVDs (this is called “upscaling”); though I have no idea to what extent the DVDs are “upscaled,” “The Conformist” did look awfully good, but then it’s always been regarded as one of the best-looking movies ever made.
All in all, my Blu-ray player – the Samsung BD-P1590 – has a very first-generation feel to it. It has, for example, a gaudily minimalist and annoyingly sleek surface (Mac aesthetics!) with buttons that activate if you merely brush up against them. The player is slow to turn on and off, as well, and even slower to open and close. But it comes with lots of cool features. If you hook it up to the Internet – via a cable or Samsung’s expensive wireless adapter (it accepts no other brands, which I didn’t realize until a few hours of frustration had passed and I’d already bought a useless adapter from Best Buy) – it can, for example, access Pandora or YouTube. Most importantly, it can stream movies directly from Netflix: anything in your Instant Queue can be downloaded to your player and viewed immediately on your TV, which means that, at all times, you have an almost embarrassing amount of entertainment at your fingertips.
If you own a PlayStation 3, I suppose this is all old news. But for everyone else, it may be time to open up the wallet again. Or you could just wait until the next format upgrade in 2019. Your call.
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