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Ray HD Photography Shack Guide

Blu Ray HD Players And Discs

By Nikos L Maxwell

New technology is always expensive for three reasons: 1) It costs more to convert factories over to new production methods, 2) The demand usually exceeds the supply capacity initially and 3) New technology hasn’t been developed to find cheaper, more efficient ways of manufacturing yet.

For the Blu Ray HD disc, the story is the same. First of all, some facilities are paying as much as $250 million to upgrade to 80 production lines for Blu Ray movies and games. Secondly, market analysts are predicting a shortage of 5 million Blu Ray discs this year as consumers’ expectations overwhelm what manufacturers can possibly produce.

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Lastly, Pioneer and Mitsubishi are currently working on new technology that will make discs cheaper to produce, but it’s not near completion just yet.

Finding Cheap Blu Ray Disc Players

First, we’ll take a look at where to find cheap Blu Ray HD Players. Currently, the best way to get hooked up with the new Bluray HD DVD player, which will replace DVD players over the next few years, is to simply buy a $399 PlayStation3!

These amazing machines can be fully upgraded, have the ability to play video games and will even be able to sync up to your iPhone, and in the very near future, will be able to transmit ringtones or accept remote control type signals.

Expecting A Price Drop

If $399 is still a bit too steep for your liking and you’re not the kind of person who spends hours sifting through featurettes, interactive games or on-demand purchasing options, then you may want the bare bones basic stand-alone player, which is expected to drop in price when Sony unveils its 2.0 player this summer.

If you aren’t so much a quality/tech geek but you just want to be able to buy new movies, all of which are being released in Blu Ray format only, then there will be version 1.1 players that lack internet WiFi/ethernet capabilities for much less eventually. Right now you can purchase the Samsung BD P1400 for as low as $259.99 from the Refurb Depot or for $299.99 from Amazon.

Finding Cheaper Blu Ray Discs

Next we’ll look at where to find cheap Blu Ray HD discs. Since the cost of manufacturing BR discs is so high (just a blank BD-R costs $25!), the cheapest way to buy is to look for all the deals from various retailers.

Since the technology is so new, you can bet retailers will be marking down prices like crazy to offset the "start-up costs" of changing over from DVD to High-definition Blu Ray DVD. For example, Amazon.com has "Buy-2-Get-1-Free" Blu Ray sales right now. Similarly, Circuit City and Best Buy are dropping many titles down to $19.99 for a limited time!

Advanced Audio Of Blu Ray HD

To handle the advanced audio of your Blu Ray HD, you may need a receiver with HDMI inputs. For just $270, the Sony STR-DG810 will do the trick, offering a Dolby TrueHD decoder.

However, the next step up is the Onkyo TX-SR605 or TX-SR705 for $290 and $550 respectively, and these offer more advanced decoding with better amps for those really loud home theater experiences. In terms of sound quality, this is the most important component for great at-home audio, so check out the Monitor Audio, Paradigm, Definitive Technologies and Revel Concerta lines.

Pioneer is also a good brand to keep an eye on, since they are always developing good-quality, lower priced products. If you have the Sony Playstation3, then keep an eye out for frequent (free) Bluray HD firmware updates, like the latest DTS-HD Master Audio support/High Resolution Audio codec!

About the Author:
Nikos L Maxwell has written a number of articles on digital photography and digital editing software including Digital Editing Software, Adobe Photoshop Tutorial, Large Images, Edit Pictures, Fuji Film Digital Cameras, Video Editing Computers, Digital Image Processing, Ray Disc, Blu Ray, Blu Ray Disc, Blu Ray HD DVD, Blu Ray Reviews, Blu Ray Vs HD DVD, DVD Duplication, HD DVD.

Keep a lookout as more articles are added from this popular author on this website in the near future.

More Blu Ray Facts....

Have you made the switch from DVD over to Blu Ray yet? If you have not then what is stopping you? It could be the price to pay for all of those movies that you love and own on DVD.

Many people find that slowly re-acquiring those beloved movies over onto the more expensive Blu-Ray version is a tad bit expensive but there are ways around this. Did you know that some programs allow you to burn a Blu-Ray version of your favorite movie? The trick is to find the right software programs.

Owning a Blu Ray collection is something most movie collector’s dream of nightly. The problem is the expense of acquiring all those favorite movies again but in Blu-Ray format. It can quickly add up to a major expense. There is a solution to this problem though.

It involves burning the DVD’s over into Blu-Ray format with the right software program. If you do not have the software program this may be a problem but thankfully there are programs out there that you can purchase.

The opportunity to own a Blu Ray disc collection is a great one and should not be passed up. But what do you do with all of those DVD’s you collected over the years?

Plus let’s not forget that Blu-Ray discs can be quite expensive in comparison to DVD’s. Converting all of your collection over into Blu-Ray can be a chore, a very expensive one at that. The answer to your problem is to burn the DVD onto Blu-Ray format.

Are you a movie fan that just is not pleased with the quality of your DVDs? Is the color and sound not what you expect from your extensive collection? Maybe you should try swapping those old DVDs for Blu Ray discs. You will be surprised by the difference in picture quality and sound.

But these discs do not come cheap. They are more expensive than DVDs but well worth the price. The trick is to burn your own Blu-Ray movies at home with a software program designed especially for burning movies.

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