Word: rayed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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They're starting to fill the racks in video stores, in packages that look like the shorter siblings of DVDs. Netflix carries nearly 1,400 of them, along with 100,000 of the old models. They are Blu-ray discs. This Sony video format, having won a staring contest with rival HD DVD, is now officially the next generation in home entertainment. The promise is that movies will look better than ever, duplicating and perhaps surpassing the big-screen experience. Manufacturers and film companies, investing zillions in the process, want you to say, Wow! But first they want...
...producers are pinning their hopes on Blu-ray for a simple reason: the DVD business, which accounts for most of their revenue, is in the doldrums, and a new format might spur a worldwide shopping spree for the latest application of a cool gimmick - like for PlayStation 3 or Wii, only more so. Yeah, but money's tight these days. Consumers want to know if they have to buy a Blu-ray or whether it's just an incremental improvement that will soon be rendered obsolete when high-quality movie downloads from the Internet become available...
...wondered too. So we bought a Blu-ray player and watched a couple of dozen current and classic movies on it. Here are some first thoughts from a veteran movie critic (who, trust us, is in no way a techno-whiz...
...ItPop in some treasured oldie like John Ford's 1956 western The Searchers (a frequent entry point for Blu-ray connoisseurs), and voilą! Instant enlightenment. As the '40s film critic Cecilia Ager said when Citizen Kane opened, "It's as though you had never seen a movie before." Colors and textures are richly, plausibly vibrant, with an astonishing depth of field; all those Fordian shots of the Plains as seen from a ranch-house door lend equal clarity to the foreground and the far horizon. Blu-ray gives a 3-D impression, as if the figures in a scene were...
...ray also has a practical advantage: DVDs can be played on it. Every other upgrade in home entertainment - from 16 mm to laser disc to VHS and DVD - has meant the obsolescence of the previous format. This time you can embrace the new technology without mothballing your DVD collection. No awful separation anxiety. (See the top 10 movie performances...