BLU RAY burning

sonnyboo

sonnyboo

A little over a year ago I had my first and only thus far experience burning a BLU RAY. It did not go well. The discs did not play in 9 out of 10 players, and the singular player was a PLAY STATION 3.

Who all here is burning their movies to BLU RAY and how much success have you had with compatibility?
 
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It's not much more complex than authoring a standard DVD, as in the only difference is now the ability to make pop up menus during playback.

That's not the issue I'm concerned with. It's the compatibility with players that still scares me. When I made a few BLU RAYS last year, the problems was they didn't play in ANY of the players, except the Sony PlayStation 3, and even then, not very well. That could be the MEDIA, as in the brand of discs, but they were Sony and Verbatum, both staples of the industry for discs. It could have been the burner, which was a Phillips, also in the top 3 for burners.

At the beginning of CD-R's and then DVD-R's there were similar bumps in the road about compatibility. But I don't hear a lot of good things about BD-R's so far, but I also have trouble even finding a lot of filmmakers that are making Blu Ray burned discs to find out what their experience has been.

Also, I do my screenings from the WDTV media box in full HD, HDMI out. It's an incredible little box that when you connect a hard drive or flash drive to it, it can play a lot of versatile file formats, including H264, MPEG1, 2 and 4, as well as many types of MKV, MOV, and AVI files. It's right now like $70 on Buy.com and I love mine. I used it at home all the time now.

That does not negate the distribution of HD content on BLU RAY so far, but absolutely, it is NOT a guaranteed future format. I just want to make my HD content available on what is currently the only compatible disc format.

So, no one else on this site is burning Blu Rays? Anyone have experience at all with how well BLU RAY BD-R discs work with set top players?
 
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Iv not bought a physical container of music in over 5 years. I buy a lot of music. I buy a lot of ebooks too, and Im starting to buy more and more movies on iTunes. If I had a decent internet connection at home (im in the boonies so Satellite is all I can get) Id very likely never buy a DVD again. As it is, I buy movies on Itunes, download them at the office (good internet) then pop the iPod into a docking station and watch movies on the 61" at home..

In general I think physical read only media is dead. DVDRW and CDRW will be around longer the bluray, maybe because once you get over a a few GB's of storage need, a portable HD just makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Like Sonny mentions, the support for writable bluray just isn't there. If the manufactures don't see it as a feature that will make them money, then you can bet they have done the research that proves its not worth the bother. In my opinion, blurayRW will never reach the adoption of DVDRW or CDRW currently has. I also think that people are instinctively reacting to the FORCED upgrade path of content.. geeze, how many times will I have to buy the White Album!
 
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There are still a lot of consumers, albeit a diminishing majority, like having a tangible product when they purchase. I agree that this will fade over time when kids who are used to having almost everything as data files grow into adulthood, but even then there is still that percentage that like a "collectible" this or that in regards to movies and music.

I agree 100% that the slow Blu Ray conversion is simply because people spent a lot of time in the last 20 years acquiring their favorite movies on DVD, sometimes in double dipped editions no less, and buying a movie again, after they probably already had it on VHS too, keeps people from committing to the HD trend.

I know it's a huge pain in my ass to re-buy Blu Ray movies, especially if I already own it on DVD.
 
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This could go so many ways.. partially dependent on display tech.. paper displays could mean you don't just buy a movie "disk" you buy a movie, you can watch.. say a thin sheet that is some divisor of the old album size (cd cases are they size they are because two would fit Side by side in an old LP racks.. the reality of people happily watching movies on iPhones and what not.. suggest that big screen is not a requirement.. a cheap paper like display with a limited life span.. a media distributors dream..
 
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Here's something I'm working on, click on the image to embiggen




It's all the short films I've done in HD and on the RED. I have no other way currently to sell this to people who want it without using the BD-R, but it makes me nervous to use something that had so much compatibility problems. My Blu Ray player is almost 2 years old and I doubt I'll be able to see it on my own player.
 
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re

I am one of those that never got Blue Ray or HD DVD. Reason being I thought DVD actually looked just about as good to me and could not justify the cost of the Blue Ray player or the more expensive Blue Ray DVDs. Now we have DVD upgrade players that upconvert regualar DVDs to 1080p. Now I see in Walmart that there is hardly any Blue Ray players and they are still a lot more expensive then DVD or DVD upconvert players. I picked up a DVD upconvert player for $40 that had optical out for surround sound. DVDs have really came down in price. You can get old DVDs in 5 dollar bins at Wallmart. The selection at Blockbuster or Red Box is enough to keep you in DVDs versus Blue Ray. Also, the retail selection of DVDs versus Blue Ray shows the popularity of DVDs versus Blue Ray. You can get any title in DVD but Blue Ray is very limited and costs a premium.

I am thinking Blue Ray may never really catch on unless the equipment goes down in price and the Blue Ray discs are cheaper. One thing that may help is releasing all new DVDs as both Blue Ray and DVD. You just flip the disc for DVD or Blue Ray depending on what player you have.

I agree that digatal will be the future. With the speed increase of the internet in the futuer downloads of movies should be as fast as mp3 downloads are today in the near future. This could be a blessing and curse. It could go much like the music industry has with rampant piracy and torrents could be even more popular. I think Itunes will be much more popular. Also, online Blockbuster hooked to your TV may be the future fad. I hear Blockbuster is doing it all ready. Some high end Blueray Players have internet hook up for Blockbuster online movie rentals. My guess Tivo like with Blockbuster downloads direct to TV is the future. Hopefully every movie and show that exists will be available in a flash. But this could spell trouble for indie films trying to get distrubution deals since the market will have much more piracy.
 
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Maybe this is a newb suggestion, but couldn't you just place a small order with a company that makes bluray dvd and guarantees compatibility?

Is it a bunch more expensive? Or do they not even guarantee that it will be compatible?
 
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No one can guarantee compatibility to 100% unless you replicate.

I don't want to pay some company $30-$50 when I can buy blank discs for under $5 each and find someone with a burner myself.
 
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Just burned a test BD-R, and went to Best Buy to try it out. It worked on every player there, but when I took it home, it did not play on my 3 year old Samsung.... Argh!

Also, I got blank discs for $2 each at Microcenter, the Windata brand.
 
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You probably know this, but the brand of the disc can really matter when burning one. So this might not be a case for going with the cheapEST option. Is there a way you could go get a large sampling of just a couple discs from different brands? Then just trial and error it out until you find the best one.

I bet there is a blog in there somewhere if you do that research...
 
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rockerrockstar said:
It probably is your 3 year old Samsung that is the issue. You may be able to upgrade the software that runs the samsung to make it more compatable.

http://pages.samsung.com/us/bluraysupport/support.html
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I did the Firmware update from June 2010, which supposedly fixes the BD-R compatibility, but it still won't play Blu Ray Burned discs.

We did buy a Blu Ray Burner. I've made some discs, plus Microcenter is selling a 10 pack of BD-R's for $9.95, so it's only $1 per disc. Easier to experiment and make potential coasters when they don't cost as much.
 
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Good luck. Maybe you just need to buy a new blu ray player then. If all else fails you could do that. I had a similar issue except it was an old dvd player that would not play my burned dvds that I made with Unlead. I tried all kinds of things tell I figured out I just needed to upgrade DVD players.
 
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rockerrockstar said:
Good luck. Maybe you just need to buy a new blu ray player then. If all else fails you could do that. I had a similar issue except it was an old dvd player that would not play my burned dvds that I made with Unlead. I tried all kinds of things tell I figured out I just needed to upgrade DVD players.
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The Samsung website states in 4 different places that my unit is compatible with BD-R's but the manual states that it cannot play BD-R media. I'm hoping to get a free replacement unit because of their error. I have a call in to customer service with the complaint and you just push for a supervisor. It's a $1,000 player from 2 years ago.
 
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Yikes!

At least it was narrowed down to your player and not the burned discs.

(Say, am I the only one that sees a night-and-day quality difference between DVD and Blu-ray? DVDs look downright blurry to me compared to the Blu-ray discs I have.)
 
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escher said:
Yikes!

At least it was narrowed down to your player and not the burned discs.

(Say, am I the only one that sees a night-and-day quality difference between DVD and Blu-ray? DVDs look downright blurry to me compared to the Blu-ray discs I have.)
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I love my Blu Ray player and the HDMI, but when I watch certain movies, mostly movies from before 1990, they don't actually look that different unless they went through a frame by frame restoration (like the Godfather part I). In my research, which is considerable, it has to do with the film stocks made by Kodak and Fuji before the 1990's and especially the VISION stocks, that make it so that HD transfers tend to sharpen the film grain, not the image itself. There are hardware and software called "grain killers" but they are expensive to run and time consuming.

I am sold on HD, but when comparing most older film titles from Standard Definition DVD to HD BLU RAY, I can completely see why the general public is not impressed. For the lay-person, the difference is negligible. The idea of re-buying a movie that you already bought on VHS, then DVD, then again on a special edition DVD, and now for the 4th-5th time on BLU RAY? For the average consumer, this makes no sense.
 
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