What's the difference between Blu-ray & DVD and will we eventually have to buy Blu-ray disc players?

Blu-Ray uses a blue-violet laser as opposed to the red laser used on DVDs. This allows Blu-Ray discs to hold a lot more information on them than DVDs.

This increase in the amount of information that can be stored on a disc allows you to put High-Definition movies on a disc and not run out of space, since the average HD movie will take up about 15-20 GB of space.

If you have not seen an HD movie yet I would suggest stopping by your local Best Buy or Circuit City and looking at a Blu-Ray display. The images are sharper, brighter, and more detailed than any DVD movie. What manufacturers are trying to do is make the movie look as close to what you see in a real theater as possible, except for its a tenth the size and in your home.

Blu-Rays cannot be played in a traditional DVD player, which means that you will eventually have to buy a blu-ray player. However, all blu-ray players can play DVDs, and they upscale the images to look better on an HD screen, up to 1080p

So, while you will have to get a new Blu-Ray player to play HD movies, you can still see all of your current DVDs on the same player, and they'll be enhanced.

In essence, Blu-Ray will replace DVD just as DVD replaced VHS and the CD replaced the Casette Tape.

Blu-ray is essentially the next generation of DVD. A blu-ray disc looks like a regular DVD but must be played in a blu-ray player, not a regular DVD player.

Blu-ray discs can hold much more data than regular DVDs, which makes them good for carrying movies in HD.

If you don't have a HDTV yet, then don't worry about blu-ray. While you can use a blu-ray player with a regular TV, it won't look any better than your existing DVD player and DVDs.

Even so, regular DVD is not going anywhere. Expect to see new releases on BOTH DVD and blu-ray for the foreseeable future.

If you do decide to buy a blu-ray player, it will also play your existing DVDs - so you lose nothing by upgrading.

A Blu-ray player is just a higher-definition player, and will give a more detailed picture when playing a Blu-ray DVD. It's also backward compatible, so will play today's ordinary DVD's.

All indications are that Blu-ray has won the hi-def war, so I expect that all players will eventually migrate to that, as will computer DVD drives.

This does not mean everything will be really expensive, any more than switching from CD to DVD originally meant huge expenses. The raw material cost of a Blu-ray drive should be no higher than an ordinary DVD, so eventually, the price should come down.

there is a huge differnce between blu ray and dvd. while they may look identical in terms of the cd and such they are completely different under the hood. A regular dvd can hold 8.5gb of data on two layers. A blu ray disk can hold 50gb on 2 layers.

If you have seen hdtv then this is what you are getting with bluray! Movies in high definition. There was another format called hd dvd that was competing with blu ray but toshiba announced today that hd dvd is finished so blu ray is the way forward. I think eventually blu ray will be the norm and yes ina few years i would expect everyone to have a blu ray dvd player but seeing that almost everyone has a regular dvd player that format will not just go away over night. If you have a hd tv though i would highly recommend getting one so you can get the most out of your hd tv

It comes down to a stupid obsession with HD everything. Yeah, the picture is slightly clearer, but it's still the same show or movie. It doesn't change the quality of the material, just the picture. Myself personally, I never had any problems with the quality of a VHS tape, but in 2002, someone bought us a DVD player. They also bought us 3 DVDs. We've gone through one or two others since then, but now we just use a PS2. And this is in 2014. Someone bought me an HDMI cable, so I can hook my laptop up to our new HD TV, which I never watch by the way. I'll watch the occasional sporting even on it with my family, but I'm not blown away by it. The only benefit those TVs have over others is that they are so much lighter. They are lighter than 2000s computer monitors, which is great for moving them around. We have one TV that will never move out of our home because it is so heavy. It probably weighs over 200 lbs. It was a "flat-screen," but with a huge back.

I've never had any problem with older TVs and players. I don't watch much TV, at least not on the TV. I usually watch shows or DVDs on my laptop, so I really couldn't care less about blu ray. Sure, it can hold more information, so why not put 2 or 3 movies on them instead of just one high-quality movie? It's going to be the same movie either way, and unless the quality is really poor, like blurry and stuff, there's no reason why they shouldn't use that technology to put more on less, not less on more, but with better picture.

Anything that will play a blue ray disk will also play a regular dvd. Blu ray is a high definition format with movie theater quality. You can't get higher quality than a blu-ray picture. A blu-ray will not make a regular dvd play at as a high a quality as a blu-ray, but it will certainly be better than a standard cheap dvd player.

The picture is TWICE as sharp as HDTV broadcasts but the Blu-ray players are backwards compatible with non-HDTVS, offering improved color and clarity over DVD (even on an analog TV). Check out this chart: http://www.avtruths.com/pixels.html

And the sound is completely UNCOMPRESSED. The audio is much more realistic than DVD or CD. Just like an "MP3" (with all that "compression") doesn't sound as clear as a CD, the Blu-ray Disc far out-performs the DVD in the audio department. Click here to see how to get a demo in your home town: http://www.avtruths.com/uncompressed.html

difference bluray dvd eventually buy bluray disc players

You do not mention recording how long recording on blueray?

Thanks to all of you, you've answered my question also!!