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Originally Posted by chiprocks1
Since I am late to the Blu-Ray/HD party, and with Lost (Season 3) out with its Blu-Ray edition today.
I need to know if Blu-Ray DVDs can play on a regular DVD player (till I can afford a Blu-Ray player).
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No they cannot. The only hidef discs that can play on a regular DVD player are ones that are labeled "HD DVD/DVD Combo". Only the HD DVD format supports this, Blu-Ray does not support backwards compatibility on discs.
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Blu-Ray DVDs contain all the same bonus materials as the regular versions?
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Sometimes less, more, or the same. Depends on the release.
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Whats the difference between Blu-Ray and HD? Do I need a player labeled Blu-Ray/HD to play both?
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Yes, you need a player with both a Blu-Ray and an HD DVD logo (not just a DVD logo, it has to have the HD DVD logo that looks like my avatar) on it to play both.
Basically they are the same thing, except Blu-Ray is more expensive, has more restrictive DRM/copy protection (BD+, Regional Coding, ROM-Mark) and less interactive features builtin to players compared to HD DVD.
Studio support is split across the two: Warner does both formats; Paramount/Dreamworks & Universal do HD DVD only; Sony, Fox, and Disney do Blu-Ray only.
Blu-Ray has more bandwidth but it has not been demonstrated that this has benefitted video quality. Blu-Ray used to have more space, but recently the HD DVD group approved the 51GB HD DVD disc - so now HD DVD has the most space in the specs; but in terms of space, too, it seems to have made no difference in video quality anyway. Regardless in terms of A/V quality both formats deliver about the same.
So in the end if you want to watch everything, you need to either buy a dual format player like the Samsung BD-UP5000 or LG BH200 - or buy seperate players for each format. The cheapest for each are the Toshiba HD-A3 ($199) for HD DVD and the Samsung BD-P1400 for Blu-Ray ($299).