Well, I really hated to do it, because Netflix served me and my husband, who actually still has his account with Netflix, but I had to cancel my membership with Netflix last week. The reason wasn’t the speed of service or the selection of movies or anything like that. It’s just that for some reason over the past few months, all of the Blu Ray DVD’s we got from Netflix were unplayable in our Sony Blu Ray player.

We weren’t sure at first if our Blu Ray player was going bad, which wouldn’t have made sense because we just got it one and a half years ago, or if there was something about the Blu Rays suddenly that Netflix was sending us, so we checked.  It did seem that every other Blu Ray, except the ones that Netflix had been sending us with the exception of a few, was playing perfectly fine. The Netflix Blu Rays were either coated with something or were averse to playing in our particular Blu Ray player, we’re still not sure.

We would return some of the discs 3 times before we got one that actually worked, and it got really frustrating.  So, what I decided to do was give the Blockbuster online DVD rental with Blu Ray service a try and see if their Blu Rays gave our player any problems. And what do you know, we haven’t had one problem with Blockbuster blu rays yet.

We did have to use our Monster Screen cloth and cleaner on one of them because it had fingerprints allover it, but that was it. Every other one has booted right up and began playing instead of giving us that weird “disc unreadable” error or whatever it was that was so aggravating when you had your feet propped up and were ready to watch a great movie.

So far I’m very happy with the Blockbuster Blu Ray service. Not only do the DVD’s play, but they also are shipped quickly, and don’t have as much of a wait time on the Blu Rays, at least in my area where there must be a warehouse close.  We also like the fact that we can trade in up to five blu rays a month at the store by us for another selection, that’s really handy. So far, so good with Blockbuster!

Blue ray DVD players and blue ray DVD’s are shooting right past most sales forecasts for the hot ticket items.  In fact, they’ve already substantially surpassed the sales in the holiday season of 2007, even in this awful economy we’ve been experiencing.  The reason some people say the sales aren’t hurting for these home entertainment units is that with the recession, more people are opting to stay at home and “nest” and do things for entertainment at home instead of going out and spending money on entertainment, which is usually a lot more expensive than anything you can do at home.

The blue ray players have come down in price too, as with most other new pieces of technology, so the lesser models are appealing to a more broad audience, since a wider range of people can afford to buy them.  However, the price fo the blue ray discs themselves isn’t really low.  They run about twenty five to thirty dollars each currently (for example, Batman Dark Knight blue ray runs about $25 right now), and that’s a bit pricey for something that you may only watch once or twice if you ask me.

Now I’m not denying that blue ray doesn’t look completely awesome on the screen, especially if you happen to have a high definition tv already, but I am hoping that the cost of the DVD’s themselves comes down to make it a truly functional option to going out for people who are trying to watch their pesos right now.

Some of the blue ray dvd players that are getting the highest marks are Panasonic, Sony and Samsung.  I’ve been to a few stores where these seem to be the top sellers, and they are flying off the shelves.  They were on sale at a lot of places on Black Friday for about $199 when they are normally about $250 to $300 for the same model, and there’s no telling whether they’ll be that price again.  Time will tell!  Hopefully those of you that still want to get a deal on a blue ray players haven’t missed the boat entirely on the lower prices. 

It seems that the world is going the way of the Blue Ray DVD now.  Hmm, wonder how that’s going to affect everything, since it seems that DVD’s available in this format are a somewhat limited selection, at least by my gauge.  One of the biggest retail chains here in the US (ok, probably THE biggest still), Wal-mart is reportedly going the way of the Blue Ray. 

I’m not sure if this means we are backing away from those high def DVD’s, since I’m not really a techie, but it sounds like they are making the jump everywhere, since I also just read that a major DVD player maker is ditching the high def format to go with Blue Ray.  As I said, I’m not really sure why this would be since it seems that both are fairly new technologies, but there is obviously some sort of preference if major players are making these moves this early on in the game! 

I’m going to be seriously pissed off if the rumors have any truth to them, at any time in the near future - I mean, JUST WHEN YOU GET A GOOD DVD COLLECTION!!

This “rumor” I’m referring to is actually speculation that’s been circulating for a while but has yet to come to fruition, about the death of the DVD, in favor of a smaller disc and a different recording device other than the DVD player.  Jeez, to me it seems like we just made the complete transition to DVD from VHS, now this!  I guess they’ll always have new ways of getting our money though….

Some say the reports of the death of the DVD are greatly exaggerated, but we still can’t ignore signs that the manufacturers are currently working on something better - as in more high definition, less problems, not as easily scratched and damaged, etc.  In other words, one more step toward technological perfection I guess.

The 5th annual Home Entertainment Summit had some people with different points of view than us consumers though, who seem perfectly content with out DVD’s, and don’t really want to dash them all to bits and buy into some newer better thing (do I just speak for myself here, or is this just totally unnecessary at this point in time?) 

It sounds like some of the big names in the entertainment biz, like Universal, are gunning for a change already.  My guess is, this will not take off for another 5-10 years, because we all know how slowly some of the new pieces of technology actually come to market. 

Maybe we’ll get lucky and this either won’t take off, or it will be only a niche market for the rich people who can afford the new technology all the time.