Digital Home Thoughts: Yeah, I Caved: I Bought a Blu-ray Player

Your eyes do not deceive you: that's a Blu-ray player and my first three Blu-ray movies (don't judge my taste in movies yet though, keep reading). The amplifier that I purchased a few years back is on the fritz - it keeps cutting out - so I decided to replace it with a new one that I purchased a couple of months ago. Installing a new amp is a pain though, since and I've been focusing on trying to finish my digital wall project (more on that later - it's finally done!), I haven't gotten around to installing it. Since I needed to rip apart my home theatre setup and re-position things to make space for the amp, which is much bigger than my previous one, I figured I might as well make the jump to Blu-ray. Re-programming my Harmony remote is also part of the equation, so I thought now was the time.

I didn't do much research before picking the Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player; I read a couple of reviews to make sure there weren't any show-stopper problems with it, but I didn't look at any other players. Chalk that up for my preference for Samsung, or the fact that the player was $249 after a $50 discount and came with three Blu-ray movies. It was supposed to come with Kingdom of Heaven, The Devil Wears Prada and iRobot, but they were out of stock on this three-pack, so the salesman let us pick any two movies we wanted - and since we already had two of the three freebie movies (guess which two), I figured we'd select two new movies that we didn't yet own. The problem? I buy new movies quite regularly, so there weren't many movies available that I didn't already own - and I didn't want to pick movies I already had on regular DVD. So that's how I ended up with Speed Racer and Get Smart - Independence Day was an add-on purchase. I think I'll probably pick up Iron Man on Blu-ray though, simply because it's so extremely awesome!