Is it blue Ray?

Sorry to disappoint, but this isn’t a post about Australians discussing pornographic films. It’s a techno-blog.

In May this year, French Amazon had an interesting offer that I found too good to refuse. If you bought 10 blu-ray films from their selection, you could buy a Philips blu-ray Player for 1 euro. What better way to finally upgrade my DVD player to the latest high definition technology? I had bought a HDMI television when I arrived in France, and now I would be able to see just what all the fuss was about. I chose the films with the best reviews for their blue-rayness qualities wherever possible.


So for 117.36 euros plus 22.97 TVA (VAT) I became the proud owner of:


Les noces funebres (The corpse bride) , a Tim Burton animated film.


Vicky, Christina, Barcelona – A Woody Allen film with P Cruz, Scarlett Johannsen etc


Blade Runner – Harrison Ford


Yes man – Jim Carey


The Dark Knight (Batman filmed using IMAX cameras) / Superman Returns


Charlie and the Chocolate factory – Johnny Depp / Tim Burton


L.A. Confidential (too many stars to mention)


The strange history of Benjamin Button - Brad Pitt


Le gout de la vie – Catherine Zeta Jones – not watched yet


Le come back - Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore – not watched yet


Of course the benefit of buying the films from French Amazon is that as well as being in their original versions, they also have a French soundtrack and subtitles.


Can I tell the difference between blu-ray and ordinary DVDs?
Well, the animations like the corpse bride and scenes from Charlie are certainly very sharp, but without a DVD version of the films to compare with, I cannot say with hand on heart, that  on an HDMI (high definition ) television, I would be able to tell the difference. The up-scaling capabilities of today’s DVD players is so good that I will continue to buy ordinary DVDs and only buy a Blu-ray disc if it is filmed in blu-ray and exploits the capabilities of this technology. purely for your benefit and information of course...

Blog entries coming soon include " smelly boots and Bee-boy's parents"