I used to love going to the movies. The big screen, the popcorn with that thick, sorta buttery gel, and the surround sound. It was great. As a kid, I never noticed all the reasons not to go to the theater. I never noticed the broken seats, the sticky floors, the high prices (thanks Mom and Dad), or the idiots yakking throughout the whole movie.
When my brother and I started to buy DVDs back in early 1998, I could watch these movies in the comfort of my own couch. Get up whenever I need to, without missing any of the movie. Eat whatever we liked, even take out. It was great.
And not only could we watch what we liked, we could watch it how we liked. Want to listen to the director's commentary; done. Want to watch a short feature on how the movie was made; done. Want to hear interesting stuff from the composer who wrote the score; done. DVDs ushered in a whole new dimension of films to cinephiles all over the world. And don't get me started on the whole home theater phenomenon. Speakers to the front, sides, and in back of you, all with different parts of the movie environment coming out of them. The first time I heard the water dripping in the submarine battle scenes from 'Das Boot', it was amazing.
Now we have Bluray discs. While very similar to the traditional DVDs that came before, they are able to hold upwards of 10 times the amount of information. They are capable of showing movies in their true High Definition (HD) form, not scaled down for DVDs. They also are able to output much better audio. Instead of being restrained, they can now put out the full, lossless audio that they were meant to have. And all of their special features can also be in HD.
Quite often these days, when buying a Bluray movie, you will also get a DVD of the movie, and a digital copy. (Although for me, that seems a bit over the top). I can only imagine what will happen once they really get into this new 3D phase that's hitting the moving picture scene. We shall see.
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