Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blu-ray

Blu-Ray Makes My Mac Mini Turn Green With Envy

willmize — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:05:08 -0800

How can I get my Mac Mini and my new Blu-Ray player to play nice while they both share my big screen HDTV? I've been using my Visio VW46L as a monitor for my Mac Mini. I plug the DVI to HDMI cord into HDMI port #1 and everything has been well. The whole internet just looks better when it's 46" big.
Until now.

I purchased a Phillips BDP-5010 Blu-Ray Player.
Plugged it into a second HDMI port on my TV.
Looks fabulous!
Until I hit the input button and go back to the HDMI input that I use for my Mac Mini.
Everything that should be blue is GREEN.
Now nothing looks fabulous.

If I unplug the Blu-Ray player HDMI, unplug the TV and then plug it in and turn it back on (what I figure is the equivalent of rebooting a television), the Mac Mini's colors are back to normal and spiffy.

Do I have what I might loosely term a HDMI conflict?
Is the TV incapable of multiple 'profiles"?
Are the settings or whatever for my Blu-Ray 'leaking' over to my Mac Mini?

Needless to say, it's going to be a big PITA to have to go through all this plugging and unplugging and turning off nonsense when I want to check email without everything looking a sickening shade of green.

Any ideas on what's causing this color shift and how I can get my toys to play well with each other?

As always, thanks for all your help, I truly appreciate it.

DVD headspin!

mwhybark — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:05:04 -0800

Time for a new DVD player. Format confusion! Resources? After seven years, our old DVD player is consistently refusing to play a disc all the way through. I have paid enough vague attention to DVD format wars to understand that the wars are over and that one or another format won and, if I understand the way these things work, dual-format high-def players may actually be or become available. In addition to that I have noticed that a wide variety of ancillary media formats are commonly supported for playback on current DVD players.

The current machine has either/or s-video and component out; we currently use component out in parallel with a secondary s-video out and can view both signals simultaneously, which is nice for use with a projector. I would like to keep those output options and am open to adding HDMI out.

I am definitely looking for an upconverting player; our primary TV is true HD. It would be WAY COOL if the DVD player could also play a range of network-stored media files, both ripped DVD images and VIDEO_TS folders and loose quicktime files, .avi's, MP4s and MP3s and whatnot.

Where to go to review current offerings and models in order to get up to speed sufficiently to make an informed decision?

Thanks very much!

Some (reasonably recent) previous links:

http://ask.metafilter.com/120622/What-mainstream-DVD-player-has-the-best-error-correction

http://ask.metafilter.com/102589/DVD-player-that-isnt-hostile-to-endusers

Blu-Ray playing software for Windows 7 HTPC?

chengjih — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:11:19 -0800

Blu-Ray playing software for Windows 7 HTPC? Does anyone have recommendations for a Blu-Ray player for Windows 7? The software that came with the drive (PowerDVD 8 OEM) doesn't run properly (it requires 1024x768 minimum resolution, which is a problem on a 720p display; it also doesn't think the Nvidia ION is capable of handling the output for whatever reason). PowerDVD 9 does work, but I would have to pay some $70 for it. I'll bite the bullet and buy it, but I'm wondering if anyone has any better alternatives.

Which are the best movies to get on Blu-Ray?

bent back tulips — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:15:20 -0800

Which are the best movies to get on Blu-Ray? So, the HD format wars are long over and I'm looking at buying my first Blu-Ray player. So I want to know: which films most benefit from the Blu-Ray medium? (Or television content, for that matter; I hear that Planet Earth is practically the first thing one should buy on Blu-Ray.)

So are there movies that blew your mind when you saw them in HD? Which are most impressive or improved over the DVD?

Also, assuming my player does a decent job of upscaling standard DVDs, will it be worth purchasing Blu-Rays of any movies that I already own on DVD? (Not that I'm averse to buying my fifth copy of Blade Runner, but...)

I should note that I'm mainly curious about visual pizazz since I do not own anything resembling a Sound System(tm), just the speakers on my TV.

What codecs do I need?

Chocolate Pickle — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:05:29 -0800

What tool can I use on Vista to look at a decrypted M2TS file and to find out what audio and video codecs it uses? (M2TS is the file format used on Blu-Ray disks.)

maybe I should just clean my glasses

randomstriker — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:58:41 -0800

37" widescreen LCDTV viewed from 12' away, do my eyes have the resolving power to justify getting a Blu-ray instead of upscaling DVD player? I realize the best way to the answer this question is to go into Best-Buy and see their demos or something, but it's hard to find demos setup exactly the way I need to make an accurate, objective comparison. Everything seems to be setup to sell me the most expensive thing.

Hopefully someone with knowledge of the anatomy of the eye can provide advice based on "first-principles".

Blu-Ray Menus - made simple[r]?

ostranenie — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:03:48 -0800

I want to develop BD-J / Xlet / GEM menus suitable for Blu-Ray disks but it's confusing... I want to develop Blu-Ray / BD-J / Xlet / GEM menus suitable for Blu-Ray disks but the Java API seems initially confusing, and not many websites agree on just how to implement a menu. Is there a GUI-based BD-J menu development tool I can buy for less than $5000 that will abstract away some of these woes?

This wikipedia article says there are Director-like packages that help author a menu, or even things that take in HTML and spit out GEM menus. But I haven't been able to find anything close to that - just Java APIs and classes and something called Xletview that will allow me to 'preview' a Blu-Ray menu. Am I really just not looking hard enough?

Too Blu-ray Aye

popcassady — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:38:26 -0800

Will my iMac G5 play blu-ray movies? If I bought an external blu-ray drive and connected it to my iMac G5 (17" 1.8ghz 2GB), would said mac be capable of playing blu-ray movies?

I think it boiled down to having a cooler name for the technology.

geckoinpdx — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:58:37 -0800

Now that the HD format war is apparently over, should I renew my search for a 60GB PS3, get a standalone player or wait a while longer? I knew the minute I handed over my card at the video store a while ago that I was backing the wrong horse. I went with HD-DVD anyway because at the time the number of releases were about equal and I figured, well, every HD-DVD I get is another couple of bucks Sony doesn't get from me.

I really have a problem with Sony.

But. My other half is all about the shiny new toys (and I admit that the few HD DVDs we have look pretty damned cool). I had expected that I would eventually be getting both anyway.

I was holding out for a 60GB PS3 as I need full backwards compatibility...I have too many devices as it is and want to combine where possible. There are rumours that a 120GB model is in the works which fixed what they broke with the compatibility, but I haven't seen anything really solid supporting this.

Should I resume my eBay search for the existing 60GB model (that way Sony doesn't get more money from me; childish, I know but still important in a way), get a standalone player (which one?!) or hold out for a while more?

I'd be in the market in a few weeks time, it's not like I'm rushing down to the video store after work today or anything.

War. What is it good for?

uaudio — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:54:29 -0800

Is it finally OK to buy a Blu-Ray player? Can I? Finally? Is this stupid 'format war' essentially over? I want to enjoy my new television, but I don't want to be the guy stuck with a bunch of DIVX discs.

I know its been asked before, and before, but with Warner going only Blu-Ray, is the question finally answerable?

HD Favourites

booksprite — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:37:00 -0800

Without getting into the old Blu-ray vs HD-DVD debate, which films would you recommend watching, which really benefit from the HD format?

Perfect HDTV picture: Buy now or wait?

stewiethegreat — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:26:09 -0800

I haven't owned a tv since 2004. Since then, I've been downloading my shows, at first at compressed HD quality, and then more recently 720p and 1080i/p. I don't want to watch broadcast TV that looks like YouTube, I want a beautiful picture. Should I wait until 2010 to get an HDTV and service? Back in the day, I had digital cable on several TVs in an apartment on the other side of the country from where I live now. When I moved in 2004, I decided to save money and productivity by eliminating broadcast and cable/sat tv from my life. Indeed, I have been far more productive as a result. But, I still download a select few shows in hi-def and watch them on my laptop. Starting this past season, I've taken to downloading all of them in 720/1080 i/p depending on the rips available.

I'm starting to get in the mood to build an entertainment system again, and my field's audio, so I have that covered. My question is about the video side:

What HDTV, tuner, upscaler, DVD, Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player and HD cable/sat video service should I get for the most beautiful visual entertainment experience? (I've heard the DirecTV's video compression sucks, for example.) Will prices on this stuff drop dramatically after the big switch to HDTV in a few years?

I'm willing to invest in good equipment. So far, everything that I've seen at Best Buy looks like a youtube video, albeit with great color saturation, and I'm not going to waste my time and money on this if that's all I'm going to get. I'm also willing to wait a few more years until the broadcast and equipment quality catches up with what I had on my CRT.

So, what do I need? Should I wait? Thanks!

HD DRM + PCs. Sort out yet?

krisjohn — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:55:37 -0800

I want a computer that can play Blu-ray and HD-DVD at full resolution out an HDMI port. And can play World of Warcraft. Can this be done yet? (Bonus points for an ultra-quiet solution.)

HD DVD and Blu-ray

Kwantsar — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:09:05 -0800

Please, tell me who is winning the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Both data and (well-founded and -referenced) opinion welcome.

Thoughts on Vaio desktop?

Saucy Intruder — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 15:18:25 -0800

Anyone out there have anything to say about the new Sony Vaio desktop? It's been a long time since I bought a desktop machine and it's been never since I bought a Sony. I have heard rave reviews of their Vaio laptops but am in the dark on their desktops, and online reviews are scarce. Even sans monitor this seems like a good price for the processor speed, memory, and storage I get, though I wonder if I am overpaying for the Blu-ray drive that has been problematic. Thoughts, before I take the plunge?