I made the leap yesterday. Can't say I am overly impressed. First Blu disc I watched was the Sorcerer's Apprentice which I did enjoy. The overall picture quality was perhaps a wee bit better but close to the same as my upscaling panasonic DVD player. It is the Sony BDP-S570/BX57. I picked it up at the Sony store for $103.00. Comes with wireless ethernet with a host of online features with sites to watch things like you-tube, Netflix and streaming TV. Also has a music feature to have genre's of music piped in over the web. It took me a while to get it to work. The HDMI port is loose on the player and the wire does not stay plugged in. I had to finagle it to keep the connection. It is going back today for another one. It is hooked up to an Infocus In-82 projector. The picture is bright and clear but again DVD's almost look just as good as the one I watched last night. So can I say the leap was worth it? Probably not. But the other features of the player and the price made it a good upgrade to a well used and tired Panasonic S-52 Dvd Player.

Quoting mediadogg:

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I made the leap yesterday. Can't say I am overly impressed.

I hate to break it you ... well maybe not. It is good news and bad news.

I don't know about the Sorcerer's Apprentice, but truth is that way too many Blu-rays are simply ugly, and do not even come close to the theoretical technical specs. Eg I saw Mission: Impossible last saturday (UK release) and was very disappointed, again, very noisy, full of speckles, MPEG2-coded on a single layer disc, no lossless audio.

In fact it's by far not the standard but you have to be lucky to get well done BD material.

Quoting bbbbbb:

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In fact it's by far not the standard but you have to be lucky to get well done BD material.

Right. I recently replaced a HDDVD of SUperman Returns with the BD using WB exchange - and it was horrible! (maybe defective, cause the HDDVD version was great)

I replaced the player today and the HDMI problem is resolved. Now the test. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the next viewing for tonight. I am hoping for the WOW factor on this one. BTW the projector is a 1080P projector and the setup is up to snuff. I will let you know the outcome.

Quoting Kathy:

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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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Blu-ray player hooker...

The dirty mind has gone into overdrive. 

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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Quoting mediadogg:

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Quoting bbbbbb:

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In fact it's by far not the standard but you have to be lucky to get well done BD material.

Right. I recently replaced a HDDVD of SUperman Returns with the BD using WB exchange - and it was horrible! (maybe defective, cause the HDDVD version was great)

They are the exact same video files. Is your Blu-ray player hooker up the same way as the HD DVD player?

Yeah, my setup is not too shabby. I suspect it was either a bad pressing or I was sleepy. I'll take another look soon - now my curiousity is aroused. (I'm gonna pass on the typo ...    )

Edit: Oh this is just too f'n ironic and funny  . You know I just got this new Onkyo with dual HDMI. I never watch BD on my LCD, except - you guessed it - I auditioned the Superman quickly on it, but never saw it on the projector. Just now I tried the projector and all BD are beautiful as expected. Now I need to find out why my HDMI cable to the TV works just fine for everything else but the BD player (Xbox, FIOS, HTPC all identical and yummy on both projector and LCD. But the BD has wierd artifacts on the LCD. - I'll mess with cables and settings.)

Hey thanks Ace ... you alerted me to a problem that had been lurking undetected - my setup has undergone some recent major changes. When I got my new Onkyo receiver, I hooked both my 1080i TV and my 1080p projector to the two HDMI outputs. The BD player has always been set to 1080p for HDMI, but previously the TV was driven from its component outputs. So now when I set the BD to 1080i, the problem (artifacts on the TV) goes away.

Now I can take some time exploring the Onkyo settings to see if I can program the HDMI outputs separately, to force 1080i out to the TV, then I can return the BD player to max and enjoy that on the projector.

I am not saying that the Sorcerer's Apprentice did not look good, It was very good, just that it was slightly better than the up conversion of a DVD. Harry Potter on the other hand is a very dark movie and the detail in that Blu-Ra was astounding.  Now My daughter watched Toy Story 3 and I have to say that was even better. The plastic dolls looked lifelike, the material in the clothing was amazing in detail and overall a huge HUGE difference between the 2 formats. So being that 2 out of 3 showings so far have produced results that are not marginally but exceptionally better in quality, I tend to beilieve that Disney skimmped on their mastering of the disc or that I have a bad pressing. I'll never know unless someone brings a copy over to watch in DVD format or another Blu disc as I will not buy the film again to test. But I can say my first impression of Blu over DVD was  not accurate.