Yes the blu-ray players are backward compatible.
The difference is that it is actually capable of showing 1080P which is true high definition. resolution of 1920×1080. this is the widescreen look and anything else is simply a compressed version. That is why it looks superior. but it will still play your old dvds too.

well blue ray has better sound and picture like one time i went to best buy and they were showing a blue ray movie with a blue ray dvd and they were showing a regular one and the blue ray looked better it had better color and the blue ray is like the dvd but more in the future

Anything that will play a blue ray disk will also play a regular dvd. Blu ray is a high definition format with movie theater quality. You can’t get higher quality than a blu-ray picture. A blu-ray will not make a regular dvd play at as a high a quality as a blu-ray, but it will certainly be better than a standard cheap dvd player.

Yes. Your DVDs will play fine in a blue ray player. It will recognize the regular dvd and play it. Most blue ray players also have an upconvert feature that will make regular dvds look better on their machines. In a year or two, blue ray players will probably be around $100 or less.

What you don’t want to do is buy blu ray discs and try and play them on a regular dvd player.
That would never work.

blue has way better grahpics and good playback and is more compact and better for the envirment