new to Blu-Ray

[Mick Dundee]

so I woke up early this Friday and decided to venture out to Wal-Mart and see what they had to offer my cheap ass. 

 I got my 1st Blu-Ray player - Magnavox - it was cheap for a Blu-Ray player $78
 Bought all 5 Harry Potters on BD, Dark Knight, Constantine, and a bunch of bargain DVDs.

 My question about Blu-Ray is:
  Is it suppose to take forever to load up to the disc???

 I put in Batman to make sure everything worked before tossing the box/receipt/etc, but it seemed to take over a minute for it to just load up the disc.

 (I have a PS3 but am VERY particular as to what I use it for-JUST PS3 GAMES)

[Vt102]

so I woke up early this Friday and decided to venture out to Wal-Mart and see what they had to offer my cheap ass. 

 I got my 1st Blu-Ray player - Magnavox - it was cheap for a Blu-Ray player $78
 Bought all 5 Harry Potters on BD, Dark Knight, Constantine, and a bunch of bargain DVDs.

 My question about Blu-Ray is:
  Is it suppose to take forever to load up to the disc???

 I put in Batman to make sure everything worked before tossing the box/receipt/etc, but it seemed to take over a minute for it to just load up the disc.

 (I have a PS3 but am VERY particular as to what I use it for-JUST PS3 GAMES)

My PS3 loads the BD movies right away.

[Doom]

so I woke up early this Friday and decided to venture out to Wal-Mart and see what they had to offer my cheap ass. 

 I got my 1st Blu-Ray player - Magnavox - it was cheap for a Blu-Ray player $78
 Bought all 5 Harry Potters on BD, Dark Knight, Constantine, and a bunch of bargain DVDs.

 My question about Blu-Ray is:
  Is it suppose to take forever to load up to the disc???

 I put in Batman to make sure everything worked before tossing the box/receipt/etc, but it seemed to take over a minute for it to just load up the disc.

 (I have a PS3 but am VERY particular as to what I use it for-JUST PS3 GAMES)

A few things here - The PS3 is pretty much the best Blu Ray player ever. It will be the most supported, have the most updates, and packs the best punch for reading BD's.

On the other end of the spectrum is your crappy Magnavox player. It was designed to be cheap enough to be an impulse buy on Black Friday. Weather or not there is a huge difference between the two would depend on the feature set. Can your player have firmware updates? (etc.)

I'd estimate my BR player from 2007 takes 5+ minutes to load the menu for The Dark Knight.

Are the Harry Potter movies really worth owning on BR?

[Mick Dundee]

Are the Harry Potter movies really worth owning on BR?

They were only 10 bucks a piece, I only paid for 1 of them, and they were for the wife.
(I'd rather a heap of Anime)
 
As far as features and being updateable.... it was a 80 dollar Blu-Ray Player. I don't expect it to be updateable, hell, I didn't know they COULD be updated. I just figured it was like a dvd... put it in, it starts up and you click play.

[KaiserWAVE]

It depends on the RAM your Blu-Ray Player has and the features on the disc. There are often things like commentary or making ofs which can be viewed as picture in picture. The player has to buffer these features to make them play without buffering during the movie, which would stop the movie for a moment. Also the menu structure plays into it. If it's a very sophisticated menu with lots of animations the load time increases. Die Hard Or Live Forever and Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull take about 1-2 minutes to load before you get to the disc menu, both with my BR player and the PS3. Movies like the Kill Bill volumes or Silent Hill load a lot faster.

@Doom

The Harry Potter movies are really worth owning on BR I just have a HD Ready TV so I watch BR in 720p, which means the picture has to be downscaled from 1080p. But even then the picture quality is much better than on the DVD.

[wshbrngr]

First:
Everything is better in Blu-Ray and with Bluetooth.  

Second:

It depends on the RAM your Blu-Ray Player has and the features on the disc.

This is probably the cause of the long load times.
You might try timing it in your Magnavox and then in your PS3. (One movile will not kill your PS3).
Personally, I am more concerned about the picture quality and frame-skipping/lag during movie playback.

I was using the PS3 as a Blu-Ray Player (One reason my wife let me buy one   ) and it does work very well.
We now have a Samsung BD-P4600 Blu-Ray and I think it actually works better.

As to your original question, neither of these players seem to have really long load times.

If the picture quality is good with the magnavox, I think that any extra load times are offset by the price you paid. (I thought it was a pretty good deal @ $128.00).

A more important test would be to see what regular DVD playback looks like as I assume the Magnavox will upscale it. Most negative comments I have seen about Blu-Ray players relates to the quality of the upscale.
(The PS3 usually gets good marks here as well)

ETA: I would have bought the HP movies also, but they were all gone from my walmart. 

[Drakul]

I just have a HD Ready TV so I watch BR in 720p, which means the picture has to be downscaled from 1080p. But even then the picture quality is much better than on the DVD.

I do the same. I have an HD Ready Tv so I watch my blu-rays in 1080i which is already so nice.
And of course I use the PS3 as well.

I actually just watched Dark Knight last night on blu-ray and it did take a few seconds (10-20 maybe) to load the menus, but not a few minutes that's for sure.