Quote:
Originally Posted by jayk
jeffhs, you do realize that to properly use a blu ray player you must have a hi definition tv set, right?
this can triple, quadruple the cost of the blu ray experience.
if you want a surround sound system, that can also add significantly to the price of the system.
the good news is you can rent blu ray movies and concerts from places like netflix for very little money.
i pay an average of $1.50 per. not bad!
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Thanks much for the info.
Yes, I am aware of the fact that Blu-ray players work at their best only with HD televisions, which is why I plan to stick with standard DVDs for the foreseeable future (I have an RCA XL-100 19" analog TV). I also realize that the cost of a Blu-ray system, including the player and a HD TV, not to mention an (optional) 5-channel basic home-theater sound system, can run into thousands of dollars. I've seen the prices on the better HD flat-panels, which run into the thousands, and Blu-ray players are not cheap either; the lowest price I have seen on any of these players to date is just one cent under $300, well over that with tax. Do the math on all this and you will arrive at a cost of well over $1,000 for a large-screen home-theater system.
I am also aware of Netflix; in fact, I have been renting DVDs from them since getting my first DVD player in 2005 or so. I don't know how Blockbuster's rental policy compares to that of Netflix, but I do know Netflix lets its customers keep rented DVDs as long as the customers wish. That's good news for me, as there are nights I don't care to watch anything on TV other than the NBC nightly newscast. I currently have three DVDs from Netflix of the 1980s police drama series T. J. Hooker, which I have yet to watch, as I have been watching old episodes of a late-'70s crime drama, Quincy, M. E., on DVDs I purchased from Amazon.com last month.
I am currently a subscriber to Netflix's lowest-priced plan, in which they send me 3 DVDs at a time. I currently pay $18.31 for the service. I have no intention of upgrading to any of their other plans at this time, as I live on a fixed income.
However, I much prefer watching movies and classic TV shows on DVD to paying through the nose for those high-priced movie channels on cable. I've only had one pay movie channel (HBO) in my life since I've had cable; that was back about 20 years ago or so. I had the service for one month, then canceled it and went back to standard cable service.
The pay channels are good, I guess, if one can afford them and doesn't mind seeing the same movies shown over and over all month long (as HBO was doing during the short time I had the channel on my cable; I don't know, however, if they have changed their policies on this matter since the '80s), but for myself, I will stick with DVDs and my VHS tapes. Netflix's prices are reasonable (at least for the time being), and with purchased DVDs, once you buy them, they are yours to watch as many times as you wish--and they are always available, unlike pay cable movie channels (or even standard cable stations, for that matter) which may show a given movie (or an episode of a TV series) only once in a great while; if you miss it, you are out of luck, or you may wait weeks or months before that film or episode is shown again.
I don't know if it's legal to tape with a VCR or to record on a DVR movies from pay cable channels; if it is, there is no problem with missing the movie or show episode the first time around. If not, however, you will be stuck with watching the program at the time the channel sends it down your cable. I believe there are laws against taping or storing on a DVR programming from pay-cable channels, especially now that the DMCA is law, so you may be doing so at your own risk.