3D TV ready TVs are already around and all the main manufacturers produce them, Sony, Panasonic etc. The idea has been around for decades but the industry needs something new to keep the public interested and buying. Most of us have watched a 3D movie at some point in our lives but it has always been a momentary thing in movie theater and TV viewing history. Is this latest attempt going to be any different? Not in my opinion. I believe it’s the fact that we have to wear those funny red and greeny-blue lens cardboard glasses. It’s enough to put most people off. Well just to top it off, the glasses are now different and yes you guessed it, expensive! $400 to $800 a pair. Well it’s already put me off but you can check them out at sony.com.

Sky intend to start broadcasting in 3D on some channels this year.

If you have an old CRT TV and you are ready to purchase a flat-screen TV then you have two basic choices, LCD or Plasma. LCD is the cheapest and most commonly used new TV, it typically provides all the new viewing standards you require with High Definition (HD) picture resolution and HDMI socket(s) for connecting Blu-Ray and/or latest gaming systems e.g. PlayStation and XBox 360. Plasma TVs give you the same viewing standards but with richer colour and greatly reduced motion blur. Plasma does however produce more heat than LCD. More often than not, people will start with LCD and then later upgrade to plasma. Don’t let me persuade you to go straight for plasma though as they cost considerably more.
If you are going to buy a new TV then you can be almost certain that it will offer the 1080p screen standard. I don’t know any store that now sells any CRT TVs.
1080p is now the viewing standard for LCD TVs and gives the viewer what is called “progressive” scanning at the top resolution of 1080 horizontal picture lines. Progressive scanning simply put gives the viewer greatly reduces motion blur.

I hope this was helpful. If you would like to have a look at some new TVs (and be sure to checkout the technical information) then try TV&Video
.

An excellent performer in the Blu-Ray world is the Oppo BDP-83. Now when I say excellent performer I mean excellent at playing BD movies. Fast to load and start, very little time is wasted when swapping BDs and flawless in its performance. If you are just watching movies and are not too concerned about anything else and you are prepared to spend a lot of your hard earned, then at $500 this might be the machine for you.
However, this machine does NOT have the online functionality that other manufacturers do like LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony and this usually comes at a far lower price. If you want a range of features from a system then this will probably not be the one for you but, it does exactly what it says on the tin and it does it brilliantly. The user’s viewing experience has been optimized to the maximum.
If you are swayed then have a look

Just in case anyone is having screen freeze issues, or anything else for that matter, here is the link from Panasonic so you can get the firmware upgrade – http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/bd/download/bd60/index.html.
You have two ways to do it.
1) Download and burn to a CD-R then run it on the BD player.
2) Connect your player to the internet and directly download and install.
It does mention that the upgrade can be emailed to you if you can’t burn a CD-R but you might as well use option 2.

Number one tip: Get online and perform a Firmware Upgrade.
Some people experience occasional teething problems with their BR player. Screen freezing seems to be the most common issue. This tends not to happen so much on higher end players as there has been more investment in development and testing and lets face it, lower end players are going to have less of most things – lower spec memory chips which also run at lower speeds and probably less memory all together. This means that when a momentary failure to read the BD occurs, there will be less time for the system to get back on track.
Higher speed memory means quicker start times and quicker response to BD re-reads.
Having said all this, manufacturers do a brilliant job of getting a high quality result from lower spec parts. This is the main reason that you will find way more firmware upgrades available for lower end systems. The programmers have to find ways around annoying little problems that just won’t happen on better quality machines.
I recommend that you regularly check to see if your Blu-Ray player has a firmware upgrade available and install it before teething problems spoil your enjoyment.
Now I normally advise that you concentrate on good value for money players from familiar brands but, just in case you are curious then you may like to take a look at the OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player with SACD & DVD-Audio. It’s at the high end of the market but gets excellent reviews.

Blu-ray is a technology developed by Sony to replace DVD. The purpose of this was to provide High Definition (HD) picture quality.

Standard DVD screen is 720×480(NTSC) and 720×576(PAL).

Blu-ray is 1920×1080.

As you can see this is considerably more pixels per frame, in fact 6 times more data!

So a new high capacity technology was required. After some hard fought media standards battles with Toshiba, the film industry finally settled on Sony’s Blu-ray technology.

This required a different surface chemistry for the discs and a new laser wavelength so more data could be stored over the same surface area.

Blue lasers were chosen instead of the DVD’s red. The wavelength values escape me at the moment.

A complementary article I have also written on Ezine is “Choosing a Blu-ray Player“.

A Blu-ray disc (BD), has it’s data stored at a narrower wavelength by use of blue-violet laser. The blue-violet light has a wavelength of 405nm (nanometers) where as the DVD’s red laser operates at 650nm. By looking at these figures directly, it may appear that there isn’t that much difference between the values but, not only is data stored more closely together around the disc but also closer in a radial direction.

In addition the aperture of the laser lens has been altered thus providing storage of 25GB and 50GB worth of data depending on number of layers provided on the disc.

DVD players are definately being phased out as all Blu-ray players can play DVD discs. Just look how cheep DVD players are now in your local stores.

DVD discs will probably be around for quite a while longer, as millions of people have numerous DVD discs and won’t make the move to BR until they are forced to do so. Most computers still have DVD recorders and until Blu-ray drives become the norm then DVD discs will continue. BR recorders are available but they are still very expensive and out of range for a lot of people.

The Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Disc Player, Black
is a fantastic value for money Blu-ray player. It has many, many features that are included on higher end Blue-ray players so why not click on the above link and see just what fantastic value you can get this player for?

Blu-ray disc (BD) recording is still in it’s infancy when it comes to you and I. We are still pretty much tied to purchasing a Blu-ray burner for a PC if we want to make our own BDs with the exception of Blu-ray camcorders.

BDs come in various formats:

BD-R Can be written to once.
BD-RE Can be written and erased multiple times.
These are the main types.

BD-R has an added version BD-R LTH,
BD-RE has three versions:
1.0 which is not computer compatible,
2.0 is computer compatible,
3.0 is for 8cm camcorder BDs and is backward compatible with version 2.0.

In the main you shouldn’t need to worry about the above standards unless you decide to purchase a second hand piece of hardware.

For a desktop PC, I would recommend LG Electronics 8X Blu-ray SATA Writer Drive WH08LS20 (Black)…

or for laptops and those not wishing to do any plumbing, External Blu-ray Burner (Slot-Load) USB 2.0 Powered Drive by DIGISTOR…