DVDs came out around 8 years ago. And the price of the DVD was more than what it is for the Blu Ray disk today. Well, a high def movie on a 25 gb disk is a big thing today though it might become as common as a dvd as it is today. A bland writable DVD disk is available for about 20 cents in India, which is about Rs. 10 here. Imagine how cheap it would be in China and what the production cost for it would be.
Blu Ray players will not work very well in old fashioned CRT tvs. You will need a High Def plasma TV or atleast a 50 inch or above LCD tv. Or a computer with a decent monitor. And the ordinary coaxial cable will not do to carry the signals to the tv, and you will certainly need a HDMI cable if you do not want loss of quality of the image.