Blu-Ray SOUNDS like a great idea. And in some cases it probably does do a great service. But the fact of the matter is that A LOT of AMAZING films, landmarks of cinema, do not benefit from a Blu-Ray transfer. If anything, Blu-Ray diverts attention to what the director(s) and writer(s) want(ed) you to see, the sights and sounds that make the film as profound as it is...GHOSTBUSTERS, for instance, looks GREAT on DVD, but carried over to Blu-ray you NOTICE the non-HDness of the video quality it was shot with. Granted, this may be more accurate in the mechanical sense, but what good does it do to see obscuring lines and white/grey patches on your television?
Personally, I hate most of what comes out in theaters these days. Sometimes they're cute and enjoyable - like marshmallows - but they lack longevity. You forget them 1 year later and ten years later you revisit the film and wonder why you liked it to begin with. Perhaps that's why people are so apt to re-watch films so often - there's so little substance, yet there IS stuff happening, so people end up in this half-catatonic state where 3/4 of their brain is just not even paying attention to the film so they pick up more of the film with repeated viewings...and of course people are so friggin' superficial and short-attention spanned that anything not from the "current" time of viewing is going to turn people off due to the different kinds of cars, clothing and hair style on display. Films of the 1970's and 1980's often time don't look as shiny and glossy as current Hollywood productions and since everyone's obsessed with new-technology, people turn away from the not-so-perfect looking films, even though there's still a lot of visual beauty IN those movies for people who can accept and realize the fact that fashions change - they have - a million times over - and they will continue to do so. I mean, admittedly, I don't watch movies, usually, made before 1968, simply because this country - the land of the free - was essentially a dictatorship run by superstitious pod-people who existed according to trumped up social codes that didn't make a dang big of sense. People couldn't forgive themselves for thinking about anything sexual, and if they SAID anything of the sort, oh no, what would God think?! Women especially were bogged down in that department, and if someone was suffering - from either internal or external ills - they couldn't tell anyone and if they did, nobody would do anything about it. People couldn't handle thoughts of "mental illness" and living with a child automatically meant it was OK to beat them. Just as long as they weren't physically dead, the parents couldn't be wrong for what they did...
And the films of that day, because of everyone's fear of open communication and expression, were stale and have grown unwatchable as time's gone on.
But then the government made a huge mistake - the Vietnam "conflict". The grown ups tried to ignore it, but the children wouldn't. Hollywood was losing money because they tried acting like nothing was happening, but the country was hurting, and the children were fed up with the world they were brought in to. Movies were making more money from distrusting children and adventours college kids than adults who didn't even have as much time to gaze at the silver screen to begin with. It was the age of artistic expression, honesty, beauty...
And then Hollywood figured out how to modernize the Blockbuster - put fake things that look real in them. A giant shark! Space ships! Aliens! And as the education, legal, and parental units have all but washed their hands of responsibility and accountability, people walk around thinking things that don't make any sense as if they DO make sense, applying world views that defy truth to their purchasing habits - including movie tickets etc.!
So most movies are either random flashes of shiny light, or half baked excuses for "drama". In the case of AVATER, it's a bad case of both and it beat TITANIC - another example of technology-with-no-use - for the #1 highest ranking film of all time - financially speaking!
So BELIEVE me - when I say that having a Blu-ray player would be nice, but continuing to be able to watch my VHS tapes would be just as important to me if not more so. VHS is cheaper anywayz, and the quality isn't really all that much worse than DVD, although I admit I like DVDs better, if I can get them for a good price...
Right now I have a VCR, but it's really old and I always thank my lucky stars that it still works when I pop a tape in it. But this will pass. Is replacing it worth $300? If it has a Blu-ray & a DVD player that isn't made by the mind of Satan? Possibly. Currently it's over $300 at Amazon, although not long ago it was on sale for $120...and it's got some bragging rights - a four star average customer rating? If there's a better DVD and/or Blu-Ray player out there, it can't be worth trading over the 1-and-only Hi-Q VHS player currently being manufactured. I mean, what more can a DVD and/or Blu-Ray player do? Maybe NetFlix...but I'll probably need to replace this computer someday too ---- if i could get a computer that doesn't freeze up when NetFlix tries to stream movies on my computer, that would be great. But nobody I know currently can afford to get me a $1K+ computer. And I'm only 26...gosh, I'm getting old...
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