Read the first part of this article for the first half of the top ten titles. 

Before I wrap up the list of top ten Blu-ray discs you must own, we should all breathe a sigh of relief to celebrate the fact that the format war is over. As everyone knows, Toshiba has pulled the plug on HD DVD and will no longer be competing against Blu-ray. Microsoft is shelving their HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 and I am sure we will see HD DVD fire sales shortly. This is great news for the consumer as long as we do not see any price fixing to inflate the cost of the next generation format that won the war.

Now that we have Blu-ray as the only option for high definition video we need to understand some things. Toward that end, we'll talk about the three Blu-ray specifications that the format can support and what the best players are from a value and performance perspective.

Blu-ray has three distinct specifications; each successive one adds distinct features to the multimedia performance. This has caused some concern in people who have first generation players like the Samsung BDP 1000 which cannot even play some Blu-ray 1.1  movies. Hopefully showing you the players to note and explaining the differences in specifications will help you decide what device you want to have in your home.

Blu-ray specification 1.0 is the launch profile, and secondary audio and video decoders are optional, as is local storage and network connectivity. The majority of standalone players fit into this category.

Blu-Ray specification 1.1 is the newer profile, and to take advantage of these discs, players need a secondary audio and video decoder to handle picture-in-picture, as well as at least 256MB of local storage for content.

Blu-Ray specification 2.0 is the profile of the future, requiring the two secondary decoders, 1GB of local storage for updates and content, and an Internet connection.

What does this mean? Well, in a nutshell they are planning by 2.0 (or BD-Live) to have interactive content, web-enabled extras, and picture-in-picture extra features. Currently the only player on the market that can support 2.0 is the PlayStation 3 as it is Internet ready and has a hard drive. What this also means is that most 1.0 players cannot be upgraded to support the new features as they do not have the extra decoders or memory available.

On to the players... I will be listing players that are 1.1 compatible as there are no 2.0 players on the market at this time. It is a future specification, so do your research before you buy. To be clear, 1.0 and 1.1 players will play the movies on Blu-ray discs, but the supplementary or BD-Live features will not be available.