I ask as I'm thinking of getting a blue ray player but my collection of DVD's and quite a big one in that is all normal DVD.

Yes, they play DVD and CD as well.

You don't think they will move the goal posts in future and make normal DVD's un playable on future made blue ray players? I remember when blue ray first came out the industry/shops were saying that blue rap players couldn't play normal DVD's because they only played disks with blue lasers and normal disks had a purple laser. When people started to complain bigtime all of a sudden they said that blue ray players could play normal disks afterall!

No, nothing has ever changed - the very first ones played all three discs, just as current (and future) ones do/will. It's part of the BD specification.

I don't know where you've heard that, but it's not true.

DVD players have two lasers (one for DVD one for CD), BD players have three, one for each.

Purple laser? Wasn't in Currys you heard this,or some bloke down the pub who heard from a mate who heard it from a mate (and so on to infinity)

Unless there is some confusion arising due to the competing formats in the early days of high definition disk players where you had Blu-Ray (no e by the way ) and HD-DVD? these two formats were incompatible with each other. Perhaps that is what you were thinking about?

I think that was it but back then "they" were saying that normal DVD disks would play on the HD DVD's but not on blu ray ones. I decided not to buy blu ray as a result and I am still wary of switching as I really do not want to be forced to build up my film collection for a 3rd time (VHS -DVD-Blu Ray) and I think I won't if ever they try and move the goal posts again.

Blu-ray players have always been able to read DVDs. If they couldn't installing one in a PC would be ridiculous. Back them most software came on CD's or DVD's.

Incidentally a DVD is a digital versatile disk, it can be used to just store data. To play back on a DVD/Blu-ray player the content has to conform to the DVD-Video standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

It's also possible to burn High Definition content to a DVD disk using the AVCHD standard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

You need a PC or blu-ray player for replay.

Sony's PS3 had a Blu-ray player from day one, it could handle CD, DVD and Blu-ray.

Miscrosofts XBOX360 had the now defunct HD-DVD system. The Xbox One has a Blu-ray drive.

The next development will be 4K (4 x the resolution of Blu-ray). It would be suicide if 4K players couldn't handle the legacy optical formats.

Yet many DVD and blu ray players sold in Europe can't handle VCDs. All players sold in Asia can.

That's because VCDs never took off in Europe, yet they did in Asia. A lot of players at the time could not play them either.

Who wants to play VCD's, the quality is dire. In Asia they require to play pirate copies of the latest movies ripped to a CD blank , they clearly don't give a fig for picture quality..

Have you ever watched one, they are complete crap. ?

Anyone who wants to watch VCD's on a modern High Definition display definitely needs to visit Specsavers 352 x 288 4:3 video mpeg1 stored on CD blank, played back on a 1920 x 1080 16:9 display, ludicrous

And why did you mention this format, no one else did ? Blu-ray players can't play Laser Disks either. I doubt the OP has even heard of the this format (supposedly vcr standard).

As it's been mentioned new players play older formats. When that's not always the case.

Suggest you read the thread title

No one has said that a Blu-ray player will play back a CD Video format that died years ago. I can't see any relevance at all here, nor any requirement to do so.

In any case I imagine a Blu-ray drive in a PC could play back VCD disks, why anyone would want to, defeats me

Thanks for the info. I wonder if 4k is really going to be worth it? I still have a CRT TV and I think the picture is good enough. The only thing that irks me is since they switched off the analogue signalls, I'm losing a certain amount of the picture frame on some TV channels so I'll probably go to HD and maybe blu ray as and when I have the spare dosh for it, but I don't have any desire for 3D or 4k at all.

I do remember in a previous forum more than 10 years ago, someone told me not to bother with HD as there was at least 2 other formats after HD already planned and whoever told me that was certainly correct!

A bit of common sense would tell you that as well!

HD was not big in the early noughties, it might have been more than 10 years ago too.

Still common sense no matter when it was...technology always improves so screen resolutions were always going to change. They will continue to do so as well.

Blu-ray could be the last popular retail disc format. With the vast library of films instantly available online to watch, the need to 'own' your copy has diminished considerably.

No it wasn't. With the exception of Colour TV coming in, TV's didn't really change much at all from the 70's to late 90's, oh yeah, Nicam Digital Sound came in the early 90's but that was about it until the late 90's when they then started changing the size and features of TV a lot. I knew HD was being worked on way before it came out but I had never heard of any other formats coming out after that until that one poster told me and no one else had said anything about other formats back then either.

Most people were either switching from videos to DVD players and only a few were buying the latest TV's. I thought they would have settled on HD for a good while and like I said, I have no desire for 3d or 4k so they can move it on all they like, I will not be rushing to pay over the odds for the latest technology.

Yes I'm hearing this more and more too.

If you still have a CRT don't bother buying a blu-ray player. From what I've read all you will get is 480i.

My Pioneer Blu-ray player has VCD playback, I guess its still very much alive in Asia a retailer I sometimes use in China has some of the Latest films available in BD DVD and VCD formats.

Before anybody jumps in to say pirate I am talking about official studio releases from a reputable retailer that doesn't sell pirate copies.

On launch, Sony's PS4 could not play CD's. If it's part of the BD specification, then why would it not be able to play CD's?

I'm assuming it's due to the software not being capable of processing CD's, in which case the answer to the OP's question is not necessarily yes.

Support for other formats is not required by the Blu-ray standard, but the Blu-ray Disc Association, who maintain the Blu-ray standard, say that despite this all BD video players will play DVDs and CDs so perhaps manufacturers have voluntary agreed to include this support for the time being.

It certainly makes sense for consumer devices to support older formats for quite a way into the future, but there's no guarantee that future players will always support them.

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/techni...iscformat.aspx

Is 4K worth it? Well that is the question. Best thing to say without causing another 4k vs HD argument is that it shows promise.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it's not about just detail through resolution. The expanded colour space, once agreed, and resulting sharpness of having smaller pixels, results in a much more lifelike picture than ever seen before.

However, as of yet, no high quality standard has been agreed for broadcasting, just what many regard as an intermediate standard (phase 1) and no UK broadcaster currently has any 4K service. I believe Sky have one planned for when a standard is agreed. Whether the newly agreed intermediate (phase 1) standard counts for them, I don't know. They could wait for the full standard (Phase 2, as of yet, not agreed).

Also, 4K current tv's probably won't meet the likely standards as they've been manufactured without any standard in force. That said, provided they support 60 fps, it's likely in the future a set top box can do the decoding.

There's nothing wrong in going HD at all if that's what you want. Certainly if you don't want to wait for 4K, then it's the smart choice.

3D I personally like if done well, but I wouldn't get caught up in it as most tv's have 3D capabilities built in for free and it doesn't affect 2D capabilities so you don't need to worry about has the tv got 3D (which you don't want), just concentrate on getting a great HD tv. If it has 3D built in, it won't hurt you and it won't be costing extra.

My advice is get a quality HD set top box eg Humax, and make sure you buy a good quality tv. (You do get what you pay for generally).

PS if you get a set box that records, I doubt you'll be using Blu Ray very much as most people record to the hard drive and watch films from their libraries. I have a whole shelf of Blu Rays and DVD's and I doubt I've turned my Blu Ray Player on in the last 2 years!!! My 1TB hard drive by contrast, is 94% full and I often watch films from my archive on there.

If you're a cinema purist though, Blu Ray can't be beaten for quality and cinema sound when compared to broadcast.

576i actually.

Actually it's worse than that. Most Bluray players in the shops now don't have SCART or other analog output, only HDMI. So they can't be connected to non-HD TVs.