A few Blu Ray titles are listed at $7.98 with free delivery on JB's website at the moment. Can't confirm whether these are the same price instore.
Stealth
Vertical Limit
Hollow Man
Welcome To The Jungle
Catch and Release
Wickerman
Life of Brian
Gattaca
The Devils Own
Men In Black
Waterhorse
Maximum Risk
Maid in Manhattan
You Don't Mess With Zohan
The Punisher
My Best Friends Wedding
Seven Pounds
The International
Felon
A lot of old movies are getting remastered for Blu Ray (ie. Star Wars), and then some releases aren't so good. If you aren't sure, the best place to check beforehand is blu-ray.com reviews as they analyse the picture and audio quality down to a fine detail. I recently watched Point Break on Blu Ray which was well before Blu Ray's time and it was really good, so much better than DVD.
There are a number of factors involved with the quality of a Blu-Ray. The two most important factors are the quality of the original film print and money.
To a certain extent poor film prints can be cleaned up with a lot of work (money). It really depends on what the studio is willing to spend to make the transfer.
A single film cell has a much higher level of detail than DVD or even Blu-Ray can handle. If converted into pixels, you would be talking many thousands of lines in each direction.
Now that a lot of films are being digitally filmed, there will be limitations in the future on what can be extracted.
Audio is where you will probably notice the least the move from DVD to Blu-ray, as older movies were not filmed in 8.1 surround sound, or whatever is today's latest standard.
Yes, some Blu-Rays are awful and look like upscaled DVDs, if that. Others, however, with the right measure of good original film stock and a lot of money can look incredible.
I remember hearing some years back that a number of blu-ray releases out of Hong Kong were simply upconverted SD (it may have been FUD but it seemed to be a legitimate story). I don't believe any major studio did this. Most of them have been transferring their product to 4k (or more recently 8k) for quite a few years now in preparation of the next big thing.
I don't know about them upscaling a DVD. Wouldn't that mean they upscaled it and then compressed it to the formatt blu ray uses so it would actually look worse than the DVD.
Personally I have yet to see a Bluray that doesn't out perform its DVD version with video content.
Life of Brian, for instance, is almost certainly no better than DVD quality. Any cut scenes that they've put on the disc as extra features will be a lot worse.
I have a Criterion Collection DVD of Life of Brian, and as I recall their focus wasn't really on archiving. There is an hilarious but very poor quality scene about shepherds and sheep, though.
You'd be absolutely crazy to pay the Blu-Ray premium for anything back in the 70s or prior, I think.
Oh, and in five years Blu-Ray will be replaced by 4k. And you'll be expected to buy your movie collection all over again:).
As the following review mentions. Life of Brian is over 30 years old. Not the best quality blu-ray out but still the best presentation of this film to date.
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Reviews/Reviews.asp?ID=8191
Although there are plenty of older films on blu-ray that have been restored to outstanding HD quality and look as if they were made only recently.
You should really research blu-ray titles before buying as the quality may not be any better than DVD, don't include all the extras found on dvd and may not be worth the premium price some titles sell for especially for a sub par transfer.
Cinema releases, even back in the 70's, probably weren't limited to SD quality, so if the film had a cinema release Blu-Ray should have better quality than DVD… and I wouldn't be too worried about upgrading my film collection to 4K until I upgrade my eyes to 4K ;) (I'm not even too concerned about upgrading my DVD collection).
4K would surely only benefit when TV's get to 70"+
OP: great deal, thanks!
Postulative - from yet another review (http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/32217/monty-pythons-life-of-b…):
The Image:
Sony presents Life of Brian in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 in an AVC-encoded 1080p transfer. This is the best I've ever seen Life of Brian look, and that includes the theatrical re-release I caught a few years back.
Good - it has "The shepherds" and "Otto".
I have the Blu-Ray of the original Italian Job (1969) and the picture is stunningly sharp - you wouldn't think the opening sequences were filmed in the 60s. Similar with Dr No - James Bond (1962). The sound is the weak point, but not incredibly so. It has been improved from the DVD releases and in many cases they mix it for 5.1, but is not what you get with a modern movie.
See http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Italian-Job-Blu-ray/4211/#…
or http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Dr-No-Blu-ray/971/#Screenshots
Note: these screen shots have been scaled down from 1080 to 720 due to bandwidth limitation, but blu-ray.com members can select to view them in 1080 if you want to see a better version.
I'm constantly surprised by the amount of people who assume that Bluray can't benefit older films if anything it's given them a rebirth some of what's been achieved is quite outstanding I'm thinking in particular of some of the B&W releases by Criterion. However for a few populist examnples 3 that instantly spring to mind are The Wizard of oz, Gone with the wind and The sound of music. 1939-1965
Scroll down to the Video & Audio section and have a read
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Wizard-of-Oz-Blu-ray/7703/…
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Sound-of-Music-Blu-ray/136…
Just got my copy of "Life of Brian" and can confirm: it is far better than anything that is possible on DVD. Very happy with my purchase.
Agreed, that bargain thread will more likely provide more entertainment value than most of these movies I've listed here.
These are the same titles KMART still have on sale at the moment for $8, since early January.
Although KMART has a few other different titles that are not listed here.
Yep, but free delivery beats having to go to KMART :-)
Agree but KMART has larger selection of titles and instant pickup, compared to the long wait for delivery from JB.
Received mine today, no long wait. Very happy with their service!
Thanks OP, picked up "Life of Brian"
I remember when the Blu-ray tech came out, it was ridiculously expensive to buy a movie on a blu-ray. Good to see the prices dropping to reasonable levels. Thanks for posting the deal :)
Thanks OP. Picked up Felon. Great movie!
No The Prestige?
/table flip
At $7.98 per title there is really no reason to start complaining about transfers!
Think of it as a DVD title with free Blu-Ray included :)
wish trasnformers 3 was on da list :(
I ordered ONE Blu Ray from this list and they cancelled it as unavailable. FML, but thanks JB, you've done it again!
Can I unpositive my own deal???
Werent many of these movies released even before blu-ray was invented? Does that mean it is all digitally upscaled? Will that be any different from watching a dvd then?