Re Blu-Ray - I felt and even feel as Pogue does. If the player hadn't come with the TV for free I don't know that I would have bought it. As I've said all along, it was too soon to ask people to switch and that's why, despite people always trying to tell me I'm wrong, it's going to remain a niche product - yes, certain titles will sell a few hundred thousand, but most titles, and I have heard this from the horse's mouth, sell less than 6000 units. I likened it to laserdisc, which never got beyond a niche, and people don't want to hear it - and Blu-Ray is a bigger niche than laserdisc for certain titles, but it's still a niche because there are ten million people who feel as Pogue does - that the bump in quality is not sufficient to warrant spending their hard-earned cash on (especially now). Also, the selection for classics is pathetic. And I just don't care about new films, save for a few. Classics are what made DVD break out - despite the studios telling you otherwise. Yes, the big popcorn movies did the huge numbers, but it was the steady and excellent sales of the classics that turned DVD around. Then the studios began crying about lower DVD sales - and when did that crying start? When they thrust HD and Blu on the market. They shot themselves in the foot, frankly.
All that said, if the Blu-Ray is well-authored from primo source material, it's breathtaking - on a film like Wall-E it's beyond breathtaking.
