The Trap of BluRay

I feel this way right now, although I did just upgrade to BluRay.

DO NOT buy a Blu-Ray player yet

I know a lot of our Mod-Blog readers personally, and know that now now HD-DVD is "officially" dead I suspect a lot of us are looking for the excuse to upgrade to Blu-Ray now. But Gizmondo notes that now is NOT a good time to make the jump.

The place to be is spec 2.0, referred to as "full profile." Suddenly, it's Sony who is looking the best here, with not only the amazingly upgradeable PS3 but two new players announced this week, the BDP-S350 and S550. For $400 and $500 respectively, they are set to deliver all of the features promised in the Blu-ray palette, including both picture-in-picture and BD-Live internet connectivity (with USB storage for downloaded content). Nobody else, with the possible exception of Daewoo, has even muttered about a 2.0 spec player.

The only player that makes sense to buy now is the Playstation 3, because Sony is already committed to make it fully software-upgradeable to the new Spec 2.0 Otherwise, any player you buy today may be incompatible with disks released 6 months from now.

For the geek who has everything...

I present you the Star Trek the Next Generation: Complete Series DVD set. Is it a grand 6 disk collection? No. Maybe 20 discs with lots of extra features? You're almost half way. No, it's a 49 disk set with all the features any Star Trek: TNG fan could ever want. I won't be buying this, but I'm sure there's at least one contributor to this site that's at least going to think about it.

HandBrake is back from the dead!

After being abandoned by its original developer, I am pleased to see that the best DVD ripper in the world is an active and developing project again! HandBrake is he best DVD ripper I am aware of for any operating system. You simply insert a DVD into your Mac (protected or unprotected), select the format you want and click "Convert". That is all there is to it. Compare this to Windows programs which may you first rip the DVD, then remove copy protection, then convert it to your chosen video format.

Long live the new HandBrake!