I just realized that it was ten Christmases ago that I got my first dvd player. So there’s a small touch of coincidence that this Christmas, a blu-ray player with a tag addressed to yours truly made its way under our tree! (Thanks honey).

Upon connecting this shiny new toy to our system, I was struck by a thought or two as a first time user of HD video. The first thing I learned is just how essential an HDMI cable is. Picture if you will, an excited Hatter fussing with the back of his TV stand sometime after 1am on Saturday. After seemingly getting everything connected and set-up, I popped in the accompanying b-d copy of INCEPTION to test out the new ride.

If I could sum up my reaction in one word, it would be “Meh”.

The good news though, is that given what I knew about our TV’s capabilities, and what I already knew about the quality of blu-ray, I started thinking something was amiss. Come boxing day morning, a quick trip to a big box store and my “Meh” was turned to “wow”. The lesson? Even though many players don’t include it, an HDMI cable is a blu-ray essential if you truly want to get the full effect.

My next thought was sparked when I looked at the shelves and shelves of dvd’s Lady Hatter and I have accumulated over the years. The fact that they weren’t rendered obsolete in the same manner that our old VHS tapes were was part of the reason I finally decided to take the plunge. However, that detail was far outweighed by the fact that many players will up-convert DVD’s to a rather lovely high-def quality.

So with gift cards in hand, I ventured out to grab a small handful of titles to begin the blu section of my library. Making matters easier? The complete lack of temptation to upgrade titles I already own. You might want to bookmark this page, because I might end up eating these words later, but for now, I’d really like to refrain from becoming some kind of double-dipping monster.

So hopefully you found goodies under your tree that brought you this sort of happiness, and likewise, ones that avoided you needing to set so many provisos for your future spending habits.

I do have one question for any blu-ray collecting readers. Back when I first bought my dvd player, the movie that showed off its capabilities the best was THE MATRIX. So much so, that I always believed it should just come bundled with it, Super mario/Duck Hunt style. So my question is this…

If there’s one blu-ray I must have to start my collection and give my system a workout…what would it be?