BluRay Waste On Laptop?

i was thinking about getting a BluRay drive when i get my OCZ but i was told that it would be a waste of money as you wouldnt see the difference compared to DVD on a laptop , now the OCZ has 1920 x 1200 res so im thinking that i should be able to see a good amount of difference between the 2, will i? should i get the BluRay Drive or will i just be throwing money away?

 

My personal opinion, is that the advantages of Blu-Ray are best observed on a 60"+ Display (preferably a 100"+ Front projector) with 5.1 surround sound. This is because on a setup of that size it is easy to see the faults and shortcomings (blocks due to low bitrate, softness, etc.) of DVD technology.

On a smaller screen, I think the benefits are small. Basically, if you are satisfied with DVD, I don't think you'll be blown away by Blu-Ray especially on a small laptop.

Additionally, both the Blu-Ray laser and the decoding of the content uses a lot of power. If you intend to play back content on battery you will get better battery life from DVD (and much better battery life on a digital file played off a SDHC card or USB key) than a Blu-Ray disc.

The biggest exception, and when you would want it, is if your laptop has HDMI out and you intend to hook your laptop up to a large 1080P HDTV and/or Projector.

 

well the laptop is 17inch with the 1920 x 1200 resolution. i have my laptop plugged in most of the time so i dont think the use of battery will matter much but if the benefits are really that small and unnoticeable on a laptop then i might not bother going for it and save the money

 

you will definitely see a difference.. even with lower resolution laptops people have reported a difference.. but do you really want to watch blu-ray on a laptop? how often will you rent/buy blu-ray and watch on your laptop? do you need to burn blu-ray? what will you burn? the only computers that can read blu-ray are those with blu-ray drives, and there's not many out there right now, so you're really limited to your own laptop

i am personally waiting for blu-ray to become standard on all laptops, until then, there really is no reason, to me, for getting one.. especially when blu-ray movies are meant to be watched on an hdtv

also, if you have a hdmi on your laptop, you can just attach an external blu-ray player if you want to watch on your laptop. and once blu-ray drives are cheap, you can just replace your dvd drive with it

 

I've never observed a meaningful difference between blu ray and DVD image quality on a laptop, I'd only get a blu ray drive on a laptop if I were to output via HDMI to something where you'd notice it, as previously mentioned.

 

Blu-ray would make your DVD look like crap, even with a laptop. I watch Blu-ray all the time with my 1600x900 16.4" laptop. It makes a HUGE difference. Go get it and get your content from Netflix or Blockbuster. It's dirt cheap. Just make sure that your laptop meets the system requirement. http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/bd-support/enu/system-requirement.jsp

 

yeah i see what you are talking about, with DVD still the king at the moment i might as well wait til BR becomes more common and that should also help reduce the prices coz they arent on the cheap side at the moment

 

Ideally, you would want to watch Blu-ray on a bigger screen but that doesn't mean you won't see a difference on your laptop, especially if you have a 17" WUXGA screen. It will be well worth it.

 

If you still have your Sager NP9262, then download few 1080p HD video clips from Microsoft WMV HD Content Showcase and see for yourself. Personally I don’t think its worth paying $200 or more on a Bluray drive for a laptop.

 

i'd get blue ray

 

thanx for the help, i think the money could be better spent else where, such as a new phone as the rest of the laptop will be decent

QX9300, 4GB ram, 2 x 500GB 7,200 HD's and 4870x2

 

I have a bluray drive in my laptop. Honestly I bought it to have the best, and well I dont even watch movies on my laptop. I only use it occassionally, like 4 times a year to burn a backup of files.

Honestly their is no difference in video quality between a blu-ray and a dvd. Its all marketing, which makes you think blu-ray is better.

K-TRON

 

its strange - some people say you can see the difference clearly while others say theres no difference, who to believe?
i guess i dont NEED a BluRay drive so i think ill pass on it for now

 

Do you have blu-ray movies?
or dvd movies?

The blu-ray drive is going to be inherently more expensive. The quality difference is not noticeable for me.

K-TRON

 

The difference is much more noticeable on my 55" Sony than it is my computer, and the TV isn't even 1080p! It's worth it IMO, but only if you watch movies regularly. Netflix just costs a dollar extra a month.

 

Armageddon, this maybe something to consider.
I have personally never watched movies on a huge screen. I am referring to the quality on the notebook screen (which is the same between blu-ray and dvd).
Maybe blu-ray has better quality, but maybe it can only be seen on large screens.
I dont have any screens bigger than 24" so I cant really test for you

K-TRON

 

i dont really have that many DVDs and even them i barely watch so maybe getting a BluRay drive aint the way i should go for now

 

That is why I gave a link to 1080p clips. Watch them your current notebook (which according to your review has a 1920x1200 screen). compare the quality against a DVD and decide for yourself.

 

i had a look but it asked to save a .exe file, is that right?
just seemed a bit weird for a video, maybe have to install something as well?

 

They are self extracting zip files; that is why they have a .exe extension. You can also extract them manually without executing. Besides, the clips are from Microsoft site, there is nothing to worry about .

 

better to be safe then sorry
will do it tomorrow

 

Microsoft WMV HD is not anywhere close to true Blu-ray movies. They use different codec and compression method. One needs to see Blu-ray for himself to see the difference. One advantage of Blu-ray is older movies, if well preserved and properly transferred would look much better than new movies in DVD. Disney Sleeping Beauty (1959) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) looks fantastic, better than new movies. Film, especially 70mm film, naturally has far higher resolution than DVD, so Blu-ray can take advantage of that.

But if the OP doesn't watch movies that much, it's probably not worth it since he is not going to use it that much. But if one relies on the laptop to watch movies and given one can rent Blu-ray for less than 85 cents per disc, Blu-ray is definitely worth it.

 

+1

Agreed, The Microsoft showcase is not a good suggestion for testing Bluray, there is a significant difference from anything on that page to any BD, or rip.

If you cannot notice the difference between DVD and BD @1080p or higher, and even 1200x800 for that matter on a laptop you may just be legally blind please consult a doctor or eye specialist.

 

Ok then how about these :
1. H.264 Demo Clips
2. Digital Digest Movie trailers

 

I'll pass for BD on the laptop 'till BD drives become more mainstream..and cost less. I can certainly see the scaling effects on my big HD screen from DVD vs BD! the higher bit rate helps here as well.

On my laptop you should see a sharper image as well if your 1920x1200. Try a regular DVD with no scaling, then scale to full screen..should be a bit blurrier when scaled, no?

Regardless, a huge miss with laptops is that your missing the effects of DTS-MA or high bit-rate PCM/multichannel audio.

 

Short Answer: Don't get it
Long Answer: There will definitely be a difference, however it will most likely be minute and irrelevant unless you are specifically looking for the difference. Unless you want to burn backups to blu-ray (or output to a large TV or projector via HDMI) there is no reason to get one.

Full disclosure: I own blu-ray discs and rent them from netflix and LOVE watching them on my 60" 1080P TV in the living room with 5.1 calibrated surround floorstanding speaker system and powerful subwoofer (I <3 my system...). Believe me, with a large TV and good surround system you can definitely tell the difference in picture quality (even compared to a high quality upscaled DVD image) and the audio sounds great. That being said, I have no desire whatsoever to pay a premium for a blu-ray drive on a notebook. As I mentioned, the picture quality difference will be small and audio will be no different. And I backup to two external HDDs (one is constantly attached and syncs every morning and the other I connect once a week and keep somewhere else), that's the extent of my backup regime. I'm not saying its the best regime but that's what I do...

Personally, I don't even watch DVDs on my notebook. When I'm at home I watch movies on my TV and when on the road I copy a couple movies or some TV shows in digital form to my hard drive and watch from there (of course I own a physical copy as well, of course, but download a digital copy from torrents for portability...). Why would I carry around disks and deal with battery drain from a spinning disc drive.

 

agreed.

getting bluray on notebooks can only be justified if you use it to
hookup with a large HDTV.

 

I can definitely see the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray (it's surely not just a marketing gimmick), but unless you will very regularly buy/borrow Blu-Ray disks and play then on your laptop hooked up to a 42"+ TV, there is no value in paying for a Blu-Ray drive.

Sure, you can use it to back up files, but with hard drive prices so low, you'll be better off getting an external hard drive.

Also, not having a Blu-Ray drive doesn't mean you won't be able to play Blu-Ray content - you can always download videos.

 

If you compare that with a 60" HDTV, of course HDTV would look better but we are focusing on the difference between DVD and BD with a notebook. There is a huge difference and I am saying this as a movie watcher who don't even have TV. I rely on my laptop exclusively to watch movies. BD makes DVD looked blurry. It would make DVD color looked washed out. I wish I can take an uncompressed screen shot with BD and compare that with DVD and post it here but current implementation prevent me from doing that.

I would agree, however, if one uses their HDTV most of the time for watching movies, a stand alone player would be better. A stand alone player has a remote control and permanently connected to your TV so it is less of a hassle to use it.

NOTE: If anybody knows how to take a screen shot with BD, let me know and I will post the BD and DVD version of the pic.

 

If one really wants to compare BD and DVD without actually purchasing the notebook, one should download Quicktime Trailer and compare "HD-1080p" with "Standard-Large" version. Quicktime HD quality is closer to BD than Microsoft WMV HD.

 

You are either blind or insane if you can't tell the difference between HD and SD disk content on a notebook screen. I'm sorry but that is rubbish talk.

 

It's not that I can't see the difference (I can). It's just that on a small screen, the differences are relatively subtle (less blocks due to a higher bitrate) and slightly sharper details.

The absolute best non Blu-Ray content you can download is Elephant's Dream. This is a rendered 1080P video with a very high (>15 mbps) h264 codec. This is very near Blu-ray and blows the "HD" from Apple, Netflix streaming, Comcast/Time Warner, Revision 3, etc. right out of the water.

You can download the 1920 file and this compares favorably to Blu-Ray.

Compare this to the 720 file as this is roughly equivalent to DVD (although it uses a newer codec and lower bitrate).

This will show you what you would get out of Blu-Ray in an ideal world (extremely sharp detail due to the nature of the content). However, many Blu-Rays (especially catalog titles) suffer from less than ideal transfers and have less activity/creativity in the content. As a result, in the real word and for many types of movies (e.g. Drama, Comedy, Romance, etc.) the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD (especially on a small screen) is rather small.

I maintain, that unless you find DVD quality to be unsatisfactory (e.g. you find detail to be inherently soft and/or you see excessive blockiness), then you will gain little from Blu-Ray (especially on a small screen).

 

i personally think it's a waste of everything to watch movies on a notebook. can't wait for the fullhd beamer myself.

but you can definitely see the difference on any display capable of showing all the pixels.

i recently watched "get smart" as bluray, and while it's not a movie which requires it, i even saw gain in watching it that way. espencially in scenes where you see the people from further away it makes a real difference. close-up views don't change that much.

i have bluray in my desktop, there it's nice. i normally never watch movies on notebooks. i had one exception: transformers while doing server-updates at work. my notebook (12") has 1280x800 res, and i watched the 720p download. it looked gorgeous. now i have the hd-dvd (i can watch them, too, they're more cheap ) and it looks gorgeous on full-hd.

what i like is watching a movie at 1:1 the res the display has. on a 1680x1050 display, i would use mediaplayerclassic or so, to watch the movie slightly with cut borders. that way i would have the 1:1 pixel ratio, which makes movies really crisp.

 

My G1 was wsxga+ and my new HDX16 is 1080p. Personally I can't tell the difference between BD on the HDX or DVD on the G1.

 

The difference between SD stuff and HD stuff is night and day on any screen capable of displaying HD content natively.

Anyway, the actual difference in quality isnt really the issue - the real issue is will the OP actually utilise the bluray drive?