Other Cool Gadgets

Surging Blu-ray Disc sales will fail to stem declining standard-definition DVD sales through 2009, but the global packaged media business will stabilize by 2010, according to Screen Digest.

DVD will be negatively impacted by the weak economy and the technology's fast falling pricing. Screen Digest notes that world DVD/Blu-ray unit shipments will continue to decline this year. Blu-ray shipments tripled between 2007 and 2008 to 67 million units, but the growth wasn’t enough to offset DVD declines. That pattern continues this year, said Screen Digest.

According to Digital Entertainment Group, an industry trade group, in the past of nine months of 2009, sales of BD players in the U.S. increased 13 percent over the same period last year. The U.S. accounts for a third of the world‘s 30 million players, which include PS 3 consoles. The market for BD players opened up last year after winning the standards war against the competing HD DVD format.

So what’s next? Possibly a link to another rising star: online video.

The list below is the top 5 Blu-ray ideal for any home theater system.

Most home theater fans have praised Blu-ray as being the only high-quality form for home movie viewing. Luckily, with the price of Blu-ray players dropping, Blu-ray disc price points are falling as well, making all of these following Blu-ray movie suggestions a budget-friendly purchase possibility for the holiday season.

The Dark Knight

If you are intending to buy a Blu-ray player, but they all seem so expensive and you do not know what you should be looking for. You worry for two reasons: firstly, Black Friday sales will bring Blu-ray players with low price points and we've conveniently complied the ten top-rated Blu-ray players to give you some shopping ideas.

Oppo BDP-83

The forthcoming Blu-Ray release of Kurokami will be missing the Japanese track.The standard DVD release will be dual-language, but that's not going to be of much use to the quality-conscious fan who would vastly prefer the Blu-Ray version. Gia Manry of Anime Vice speculates that the strange omission of the Japanese track is motivated by the desire to stop Japanese fans from importing the US version, since the Japanese Blu-Ray will be much more expensive.

With U.S. DVD purchases continuing to fall off the cliff--movie disc buys were off 13.8 percent in 3Q2009--an increasing number of Blu-ray backers are looking at online video delivery as a needed shot in the arm for their business.

Some of the biggest companies backing the Blu-ray format for high-definition movies are hedging their bets by introducing players that can also show Internet video, which is making surprising inroads in the home-entertainment market.

The idea behind Blu-ray Managed Copy sounds good—it'll let you make one full-res backup copy of a Blu-ray disc, and studios are required to support it beginning next year. But needing brand new hardware is just the start.

LG decided to make this machine even better by adding an option for accessing Vudu movies!

What is Vudu? Here is what they offer.