Blu-Ray or DVD

Should I upgrade to a Blu-Ray Player?

Things to consider when expanding your movie collection.

Part I

Blu-Ray vs DVD

1. First and foremost, Blu-Ray (as I'm sure everyone knows by now) plays at a higher resolution than DVD ... so Blu-Ray immediately wins the battle of Picture quality. DVDs play at standard definition resolutions - 480i/480P while Blu-Rays play at high definition resolutions - 720P/1080I/1080P

Standard Definition/High Definition 1
Standard Definition/High Definition 2

2. You must keep in mind that in order to take advantage of this "higher resolution" picture quality that Blu-Ray offers, you'll need a television capable of 1080P, 1080i or 720P (HD, short for High Definition is a picture quality that can only be obtained via resolutions of 720p or higher)  - It's important to note that a Blu-Ray is capable of being viewed on non-HD televisions but will be downgraded to standard definition in order to do so, which will result in it being similar in picture quality to a DVD. (some would even argue worse than a DVD due to the down conversion process) 

3. To play Blu-Rays, you'll obviously need a Blu-Ray player (which can be a Playstation 3 gaming console) The advantage of having a Blu-Ray player is that it will also play DVDs, and most of the players out there on the market support upscaling DVDs to 1080p/1080i. On the contrary, a DVD player will not play Blu-Rays.

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I have an HD TV, a Blu-Ray player and a DVD player?

Things to consider when expanding your movie collection.

Part II 

Blu-Rays or DVDs

4. Blu-Rays look better then DVDs, but they also cost more (sometimes a little more, sometimes a lot more). If a movie lacks eye candy and doesn't have a lot of jaw dropping special FXs, it may not be worth it to shell out the extra dough.  

5. Most people have multiple DVD players (family room, bedroom ... etc) but tend to have only one Blu-Ray player. One thing to keep in mind is, if you don't wanna be limited to one area of the house, it may be better for you to buy the DVD. My mom likes to watch movies in the family room during the day, but she likes to watch movies in her bed at night ... she was much happier with the DVD than she would have been with the Blu-Ray. (Her Blu-Ray player currently resides in the family room)

6. If you're like me, and you have a media center PC, with your entire movie library ripped to an external hard drive/server, then you'll also have to take into account storage space. A DVD will typically use anywhere between 5-9 GB of storage space (rounded number), while Blu-Rays will use 25-50 GB of space, which can quickly eat up some of the more larger hard drives on the market if you have a huge movie collection. Sometimes, the Blu-Ray just isn't worth the space.
Nowadays, more and more, Blu-Rays are including a free digital copy of the movie (physical copy or downloadable copy) which allows you to have the DVD version as well.

7. If you have a really good home theater system, you'll also be happy to know that Blu-Ray (unlike DVD) supports a few different lossless "uncompressed" audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio (MA) and Linear PCM (Linear Pulse-Code Modulation) which can greatly enhance your overall movie experience.

Blu-Ray Audio Formatts

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Other Links:

Blu-Ray
DVD
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The Mothman