I already own an HDTV and have HD cable. But I've been tracking the HD disc market for some time now (including the HD disc wars, which Blu-Ray won) to decide whether or not it would be worth investing in. There's no question that Blu-Ray offers superior picture quality but it's never really averaged more than 7 or 8% of the market share compared with DVD. It occasionally breaks 12% when a big title like Iron Man comes out. Is Blu-Ray DOA? ( Paladin, feel free to avoid this thread as we already know your opinion. )
It's definitely not DOA. It may, however, remain niche for a while. The thing is that for most people DVD is good enough that they're not going to upgrade their collections. And, if they're not going to do that, they don't feel any urgency to go out and buy the Blu-Ray player. Eventually DVD will be supplanted, but the advantage of Blu-Ray over DVD isn't nearly as big as the advantage of DVD over VHS, and fewer people are going to run out to replace their old equipment.
They released Blu-Ray and HD-DVD too soon after DVDs, IMO. They should have waited either until after the digital switch in 2009 when more people would buy new TVs, or 5-10 years. Though, Blu-Ray in terms of storage capacity for computers is pretty nifty.
Compared to 2-3% last year and 0% the year before. If you look at the trends, Blu-Ray is at about the same market penetration 2 years after it's launch that DVD was at the same time, and DVD has been a VERY successful product. I remember all the fuss that was made when Air Force One sold 100,000 copies on DVD in 1998, that it signified that DVD was going to succeed. Blu-Ray hasn't had a million seller yet, but Iron Man is doing very well, with 200,000 copies sold in the first few days. The Dark Knight might get into the million seller category. DVD *is* still good enough for most people. But get a big screen and its limitations become clear. I still love my DVDs, but, after a year and a half of watching Blu-Rays? They look a litte rough... In the American market, broadcast NTSC goes bye-bye in February. I think the market is right where it needs to be for the accelerating number of people buying HDTVs.
I don't think so. Especially now that the format war is over, more and more titles are starting to come out on BD. And you just know that someday Lucas will come out a super hyper turbo edition of the six Star Wars movies and it will ONLY be on BD. That will get more people to buy.
The first year of DVD (1997), not all studios were in, mostly catalog titles were released, with some of the lesser recent theatrical releases. The second year of DVD (1998), a couple of studios still held out, but more high profile releases began to appear. The third year of DVD (1999), the remaining hold-outs jumped in, most new releases were day-and-date with VHS, heralding the beginning of the end for the old format. The fifth year of DVD (2002), everything that was released on VHS was released on DVD at the same time. The major movie rental stores added DVD and began to de-emphasize VHS. We're headed into the third year of Blu-Ray now. What do we see? All the studios are participating in the format. The higher profile releases on DVD also happen on Blu-Ray. EVERY SINGLE BLOCKBUSTER from this past summer has been/will be released on Blu-Ray, on or about the same time as the DVD. The big video stores (Borders, Best Buy, etc.) and rental outlets (Blockbuster, Netflix, etc.) offer Blu-Ray. If history is any indicator, 2009 will not be the end of DVD. But by 2011 DVD will be looking like a dying format, just like VHS did back in 2002.
I do think most people's movie libraries are still gonna be mostly DVD titles, with Blu-Rays being added only for new releases. I really can't justify the expense in upgrading my whole collection. I'm not that much of a videophile. And it will be a long time before we buy stuff like DS9 on BD. Whereas most people slowly junked their VHS collections... I think people will still hang on to all their DVDs... at least until the disc rot sets in.
I'll only buy a new player when my ol' DVD player finally dies. No other reason to buy another one exists. At that time I'll probably get a Blue Ray, since it's the format war winner (I waited this time, so my BetaMax. Laserdisc player and 8-track won't have company in the attic!). After that I may buy the occasional special thing on Blue Ray, but I have no personal need to get anything other than plain ol' DVD.
Has anyone noticed now that HD-DVD is dead that the blu-ray disks have gone up in price. Selling now for £21.99 (for the most part) and when the war was going on they were in the £17.99 area.
WHAT!?!??! You guys have to pay over FORTY DOLLARS for a BLU-RAY DISC?!?!??! I buy Blu-Ray discs at Best Buy for about $24.99 (roughly £12.50).
I hope it's not DOA because I just got a PS3 yesterday. Even though I will probably never use it for gaming, it's still a pretty nice player for the price and you can use it to stream media from the computer, not to mention it can be used to browse the Internet and/or it can run a full-blown Linux distribution. For the record, my first Blu-Ray set is the Godfather collection, which, believe it or not, I have never seen. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.
That's what I do. I still buy DVDs, too, but only ones from the bargain bin. My days of paying $20 for a new release DVD are over. I have around 1800 movies on DVD; I don't intend to replace them all with Blu-Rays. My rules are these: (1) New releases on Blu-Rays. (2) Re-buy on Blu-Ray ONLY those titles that I REALLY like AND have a real benefit from HD I've had very few failures with a great many discs over the years. I suspect many DVD libraries will outlive their owners if properly cared for. If you don't have an HD set, there's no need to get a Blu-Ray player, anyway. Blu-Ray will eventually supplant DVD for a similar or lower cost. That happened here the SAME WEEK that HD-DVD bit the dust. Damn! I'm getting many new titles for $19.99-24.99 here. If you have a Fry's nearby, they're even cheaper than that. I've had my PS3 since March of last year and I've spent maybe 10-20 hours playing games on it since then. Mine's really a dedicated Blu-Ray player. That's an excellent set to start a collection with.
Hey... we should do another 'whats in your DVD collection' thread. I'd be interested in seeing what sort of movies fellow WFers watch.
Like Paladin, I've got a ton of standard DVDs in my collection. Maybe not 1,800 but definitely over 1,000. I always knew something better would come along but I'm surprised by the speed with which companies introduced a new format (i.e., less than 10 years) particularly when DVD had really only become the dominant format for about 5 years.
Definitely not. I don't look at sales numbers or charts, or follow any of that stuff, but out of the Wal*Mart, Superstore, Roger's Video, Blockbuster Video, Best Buy, and Future Shop stores I go to to shop for Blu-Rays, ALL of them have expanded their Blu-Ray sections in the past 2 months. So either they are trying to sell them all off before the next big thing, or people are buying Blu-Rays in droves. Those retarded Xbox fanboys like to tell everyone that Blu-Ray is dead, and that downloaded content is the wave of the future, but unless your ISP has no problems with you downloading over a hundred gigabytes of data every month (which is about four HD movies) then for now, downloaded content is a non-starter.
Where are you shopping!!!! On-line most of the big new releases (the only ones I would buy atm) are around £15. Still more than I want to pay but they do seem to be dropping in price. In store they are still a stupid price, but I wouldn't buy them on the high street.
The UK is always overpriced. It's often cheaper to import. That includes postage and customs charges.
Well, as of right now, Comcast is capping it at 200 GBs a month, so yeah, I guess they are fine with it (so long as you aren't using Bittorrent to do it). But, lest I be accused of being an Xbox fanboy , I agree with you that DLC is, at this time, not a feasible option. Broadband, while ever-increasing, just isn't at the point where the speeds required for downloading HD content in a reasonable timeframe are consistant across the board. I'll save my usual rant about Blu-Ray and the disconnect between the market's perception of HD penetration and reality for another time, though .
At the moment Blu-Ray is very much an enthusiast's format. I bought a blu-ray machine because I have a 42" 1080p plasma and a Dolby/DTS decoder amp with 5.1 speakers so for me the upgrade in quality is very obvious and makes for really enjoyable home cinema expereinces (although other half keeps telling me to turn the volume down when the walls begin to vibrate). However for smaller HD screens (say around 20") and systems without 5.1 there really isn't any point in upgrading as the smaller screen and absense of 5.1 means that you can't reallys ee that much difference between blu-ray and DVD. Now having said that, I bought my player this past Christmas. At the time HD-DVD was still competing. Blu-ray sales and selections were pretty small. However, since they won the day titles have multiplied at lightening speed, advertising is now mainstream and sales have risen dramatically. I don't think they will last as long as DVD, but for the time being the format is very much alive.
I agree with the point that Blu-Ray cam out too soon, I'm still in the process of dumping the VHS collection and replacing them with DVD's. Blu-ray is absolutely brilliant but I can't justify the expense of re-buying all the stuff I only recently bought on DVD right now. And there is also no way of telling how quickly it will be before Blu-ray gets replaced with something else. I can see DVD hanging on for a good ole while yet, not as long as VHS.
Why would anyone have to re-buy their DVD collection on Blu-Ray? when I dumped VHS for DVD, I re-bought because a DVD player won't play VHS tapes, but Blu-Ray players all plat DVDs.
I thought Blu-Ray was only a tiny bit more than standard? Here's iron man Standard for $26.57: http://www.dvdplanet.com/details.cfm/info/PRD013856/iron-man And Blu-ray for $27.97 http://www.dvdplanet.com/details.cfm/info/PRD013857
In Canada, many ISPs are very anal about the amount of data you can transfer in a month. I'm with Shaw high-speed and we are limited to 60 gigabytes combined upload and download per month.
They don't, unless they want to. Since BR players play DVDs, there's no incompatibility that's going to make DVDs obsolete. As I said above, the only stuff I buy on Blu-Ray is new stuff (Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Godfather set, etc.). Of movies I have on DVD, I re-buy only those which I REALLY like and which benefit from HD. Case in point: I bought the Spider-Man movies on Blu-Ray though I already owned the DVDs because (1) I really like the movies and (2) they're eye candy in HD. I've passed on re-buying lots of Blu-Rays of movies that I've liked (for example, 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin') simply because there's little improvement to getting them in HD. Unless it bugs you to have most of your collection be SD and only some of it be HD, collecting DVDs and Blu-Rays simultaneously shouldn't be much of an issue.
I still buy seasons of TV shows on DVD, I'm not willing to drop the extra money to get them in Blu-Ray. $80 for a season of anything is too much, $20-30 is perfectly reasonable. I'd like to have Hero's in BD but it's just not justifiable so I won't buy it at all because some things are meant to be seen in HD. Entourage on the other hand I will get on DVD because I don't feel like it requires HD to be enjoyed. HBO DVDs are very high quality anyway.
As to the original topic, I don't think it's DOA, but I think it'll have a much longer adoption cycle than DVD had, mostly because it's just not that much better than an upconverted DVD. In some cases, it's completely indistinguishable. Market share of BluRay actually fell in August and September. That's not part of an auspicious start. As a computer's optical drive, on the other hand, it is DOA. Probably 90% of the installed base of PC's couldn't play BluRay discs (legitimately) even if they had the drive. Perhaps 10% of that could do so if they replaced their monitor. But people don't like to replace monitors except to upgrade to a bigger screen. Another 10% could do it with a graphics card replacement. Another 10% could do it with both. And the rest simply don't have the processing power to decrypt and decode BluRay. They're better off downloading rips from BitTorrent. Even strictly as a data disc, it's not going to go well. 25 GB BD-R's are $8 apiece (32¢/GB). DVD±R's are $0.20 each (4¢/GB). 25 GB BD-RE's are $14 each(56¢/GB). DVD±RW's are $0.40 each (8¢/GB). Even DVD±R DL's are as low as $0.88-$1.04 depending on quality(12¢/GB). It's simply not cost-effective to use BluRay as a data disc. You're better off with external hard drives (13¢/GB for the first one I saw on NewEgg) which can pack much more data (1TB) into the same physical volume. The only use I can possibly see for BluRay drives in computers is in high-end video workstations which need to burn a high-def proof of a movie. And even that's limited; you'll notice that digital projection of movies is done from hard drives, not optical discs. So it would only be needed to test the BluRay movie release before sending the data, probably by hard drive, to the replicator.
That doesn't seem to be the trend so far. Blu-Ray's at about the same adoption level as DVD was at this point. And don't forget: Blu-Ray requires a TV upgrade; DVD didn't. Unless there is some absolutely fantastic upconverter out there, I would disagree with this. My TV upconverts DVD and, yes, it looks good...but it isn't HD and the difference is pretty obvious in fine details, compression artifacts, and even color. And the bigger the screen, the more obvious the difference. Only if compared to a very substandard Blu-Ray. I've never seen a DVD look anywhere near as good as "Mission: Impossible 3" or "I, Robot" or "The Prestige" or "2001" on Blu-Ray. Even the crummiest Blu-Ray I have ("RoboCop") still looks better than the DVD (albeit marginally in some places). The economy's a little uncertain lately, so it's no surprise that fewer consumers want to buy new players or more expensive movies. The format's gained a lot of acceptance since it was introduced and I think it will continue to do so. Eh, maybe. But I'm seeing laptops with Blu-Rays in them. The Sony I'm considering has a Blu-Ray drive and HD playback. (As an aside, let me say that having Blu-Ray in a laptop is not all that important to me; the machine I like just happens to have it.) I bought my first laptop in late 1998 and I spent the bucks to have the DVD drive in it, thinking I'd watch movies on it. I didn't; I think I watched all of 2 or 3. But, my point is that DVDs in computers were still somewhat rare two years into DVD's tenure...I think it's a bit premature to write Blu-Ray off as a computer format. True, but optical media has always lagged magnetic media. I expect Blu-Ray to get much cheaper within the next 5-10 years. Of course, it may be that flash memory gets so cheap, NO disk format becomes/stays viable. We'll see. If Blu-Ray's only life is as an entertainment medium, that's fine with me. But I think as more people start recording HD and filming HD with their own camcorders, Blu-Ray will make inroads in consumer data storage.
