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Blu-ray Discs Won't Be Cheap
frdmfghtr writes "Red Herring has a story on the forthcoming price of Sony Blu-Ray HD DVDs. At $23.45 wholesale, they aren't cheap. From the article: 'Some of the movies to be released in the first batch by Sony are The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator. Sony's wholesale price of $23.45 for Blu-ray discs is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com. A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.' Another reader suggested a link to an Ars Technica article with more information.
Hi, remember me? I'm the first DVD you ever bought. Back in 1997, I cost you $25 and had no extra features. I eventually went down in price.
Would you like to meet my friend, VHS? He cost $25 a pop back in 1980, had no features, and was a linear format that degraded over each use. Maybe being from the past makes me naive (sorry no dots for you), but, it seems that the point of this article -- although factual -- is totally irrelavent.
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But seriously, why wouldn't they be more expensive? You get a much, much nicer end product. Why would you pay $10 for a hamburger at Outback when you can get one for a dollar at Mickey D's? They both feed you (poorly!), but one is much more pleasant to eat than the other. How about a music file? Are you happy with a 64kbps encoding of a tune, or do you prefer a lossless encoded version?
It's the same with an HD movie -- it's much more pleasant to look at HD than an NTSC quality movie.
John
1) They'll claim that in time, the price to the consumer will come down. (See also: "The history of compact disc pricing").
2) It won't.
3) People will continue to buy them in droves anyways.
4) Profit!
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Nothings cheap when its first released. I remember buying 1x blank CD's for $13 a long long time ago ... give it a couple years and prices will drop.
New things that are better than old things cost more than the old things! Quick, grab me some reporters, I've gots me a SCOOP!
I can't wait to watch Hitch in High-Def! This type of movie is the exact reason why I bought an HDTV!!!
Judging from the wholesale price, I can only imagine that the retail price will be minimum of $30, depending on how high demand ends up. More likely $40-45, at least for new releases. Store cost for most DVDs when I worked at Circuit City was around $1-3 below retail, and it's been 10 years since DVD spec v1.0.
I don't have an HD-TV quite yet, since I haven't had to buy a TV in years, but I'm not sure I'll be willing to buy these movies at these prices, had I one. Especially not until there's a much bigger library than the 50ish that are apparently expected this year.
The real measure of success for the nextgen optical media will likely be the adult film industry (in addition to video game consoles). Everyone talks about gaming, but it would appear that there's going to be a pretty deep divide in consoles.
And Blu-Ray very well may be the winner in the adult film realm.
The adult film maker Digital Playground, which claims to control 40 percent of the US adult DVD market and is reported to have sales of $12.6bn in 2005, today told Adult Video News (AVN) that they've decided to support the Blu-ray format and release movies as soon as hardware becomes available.
What a surprise sony's upping the cost of movies. Perhaps if we're lucky they'll add some new and improved root kit that opens more holes in our systems. Seriously, sonys stratagy is: up price, make everyone rebuy everything for 3 times the price they paid before, screw consumers with stealth software. Yep. Nothing to see.
Blu-ray Discs Won't Be Bought.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
.. what is the price of an HD-DVD? Although blu-ray will drop in price, I think HD-DVDs will always be cheaper... or at least for the next few years.
"I canna take any moor of this" - (in my best Scotty accent) So, what am I going to have to pay Amazon to re-buy that $1700 Ultimate Star Trek collection, only now in Blu-Ray?? (And yes, I realize that Paramount is not Sony, so don't flame me on that. I am just saying that when the time comes, how pathetic will I have to be to re-buy that in Blu-Ray (possibly on many many less discs)
Funny sigs make your Karma go down.
Don't buy them...
Deleted
Hitch?!? Are you kidding me? Anyone who shells out $35 or $40 buck for Hitch deserves to have Sony's big old chubby pokin em in their nether regions. I mean if they offered you Dukes of Hazzard for $50 I bet you would bend over and take that one too.
Just the other day the community was blasting Verizon for thinking about extorting Google. Now Verizon is providing Slashdot readers with sneak previews of article postings. Is there an alternative to Slashdot?
I smell Betamax 2.0.
...new technology costs more than old? Bigger disks cost less than smaller? What exactly is the news in this news?
Game dev and music blog
According to TFA, new titles will receive the $23.45 wholesale price. Older (ie less popular) titles will have a $17.95 wholesale price.
Great strategy. Switch up the format every decade or so and obsolete the old hardware so that people have to keep buying the same movie over and voer again if they want tomaintain a viewable collection.
On another note, I still buy VHS every chance I get. At least when a HVS tape gets a little worn out it just keeps on going with some blips and squiggly lines instead of just.......stopping and displaying a "Can't Read" error.
I should point out that "Sony Blu-Ray HD DVDs" is probabyly a bad phrase to use, as the main competetor to 'Blu-Ray' is 'HD-DVD' (Yes, HD applies to Blu-Ray too).
With regard to the competition, ZDNet has coverage of Blu-Rays expected cost compared to HD-DVD based on the retooling cost, which experts expect could be up to $1 billion worldwide for Blu-Ray, and one tenth of that for HD-DVD (Which relies on pretty simmilar technology to existing DVDs).
One other point which may help out HD-DVD is the materiel cost. HD-DVD uses the the same materiels as DVD, whereas Blu-Ray uses a "high-tech film layer currently produced only by Sony."
What might be most damaging for Blu-Ray however, is Microsoft's direct support for HD-DVD. They've already announced that Longhorn will support HD-DVD, and the XBox360 will be recieving an HD-DVD addon. (Its in various news sources that I won't ref here).
This may be a Betamax type thing where the technically superiour device doesn't win due to corporate activity.
Obligitory wikipedia links:
Blu-Ray
HD DVD
Betamax
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
If this is the price for a single layer Blue Rray dish then the cost is about 1$ per gig. Even 7 years ago the price of DVD's was more than $5 for a single layer and cd's had more memory for the dollar but then, as with all things the cost to produce it dropped drasticly and now DVD cost about the same as a CD.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
$23.45? Ars Technica is saying the price will be from $23 to $39 for consumers, with newer releases tagged with the latter one. They'd better offer something major for me to be interested in paying that much.
You missed out the word "percieved". I'm not saying that all of the items you mentioned aren't actually higher quality, but that's not what people pay for, they pay for the perception or belief that it's higher quality, whether it is or not in reality is entirely up for debate.
Hence all the advertising, marketing, branding...
Deleted
All they need to do is throw Plan 9 from Outer Space on that list and they'd have some of the best movies ever!
Seriously, can't they find something a little bit better than these largely forgetable films? Terminator is something of a classic, I realize, and I have not seen House of Flying Daggers so I would exclude it from my list, but the rest of the list just doesn't excite me. Many of them don't even really show off the new format's higher resolution - I can't imagine Hitch has that much to show off.
Oh wait, I don't have any SACD or DVD-A discs. I do have a couple of DTS CDs, but I've had those for six or seven years.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
So it's $24 or so wholesale. What is the price going to be when it hits Best Buy? IIRC, movies, CDs, and games get a big markup so they make a lot of profit (hence the prices we have today.) So I'm guessing it will be about $30 or so for a new DVD. This really isn't too bad if you're into bleeding edge technology, until you bring in the price of a Blu-Ray player (which was, what, $1500?). Alternatively, you could get a PS3, which will only set you back somewhere between $300 and $500.
How will this affect PS3 games? Storage media, be it on CDs and (now) DVDs has always been cheap. Microsoft is trying out $60 games (from the $50 norm); will Sony/publishers shoot for $70 or $80, so it won't eat into their profits?
If so, it's a good way to make very few people interested in your console. Having worked in electronics departments, I know that most people are very iffy about buying a $50 game. About 3/4 wouldn't be interested if it wasn't under $40. How do you think they'll react to a $70 price tag?
Only the Slashdot and like-minded crowd, that's for sure. Average Joe movie-watcher on the street knows nothing about Blu-Ray. When the DVD came along to be the next big format, it was quite clear to the consumer what the difference was between it and VHS. In this case the lines are a bit more blurry. Let's put it this way; I can explain to and show my 48 year old uncle why he might want to start watching DVD's instead of VHS; i'll have a much harder time telling him why he wants to buy a Blu-Ray movie as opposed to a cheaper DVD of the same title.
Bring me any consumer technology which doesn't have a higher price point when it first hits the public, and then lowers when demand increased. Let's try an easy one: DVD's. I got my player in 1998 and almost every DVD on the market cost upwards of $30. Did I still buy them? Yes! Why? Better resolution, amazing sound, no annoying tape winding, rewinding to find the spot I left off at!!!
Seriously, even if Blu-Ray DVD's hit the consumer market at $30-40, people will STILL be buying them. There is a WHOLE lot to be said for the ability to say... have an ENTIRE season of StarGate or whatever show you want on ONE DISC! Or better yet, in 1080i HD, with HD-AUDIO IN 87 different languages, and all the damn bonus features you can shake a stick at!
Yeah, it's a gamble initially; they're expensive to manufacture, Blu-Ray players are really expensive (although that New Shiny PS3 is going to be (maybe) less than $500: marketing plan anyone?) So the adoption rate will be slow at the get-go. But in 5 years, you, your mom, and your little nephews and neices are ALL going to be watching Blu-Ray. Quit complaining. I've got Super Nintendo to get back to.
--- Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion -Lem
Sony's wholesale price of $23.45 for Blu-ray discs is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com. A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.
DVDs have been around since 1996 in Japan and 1997 in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD/). Though I can't find the prices at which DVDs were originally released I'm sure most were more than $10. Note that Sony is not giving a suggested retail price. The company is letting the market determine that.
Fully understanding that new/better technology is traditionally more expensive than old/lesser technology, I think this is a poor decision. If the next-gen dvds were marketed at a price closer to that of current-gen dvds, adoption would catch on quicker ("Why not pay $2 more?") and the format war would seem less important. As is, you're paying a huge entry fee to get into one of the two next-gen formats, then getting shafted again in price comparison to current generation dvds. Is the quality worth the extra $10-$15 bucks per dvd AND the price of the player? Not to me; not to many, i would guess.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I know that I would be more willing to adopt a format in speculation of the final winner if the prices weren't so much more than current dvds.
Internet Archive: Live Music Archive
And I'm not talking about prices going down here. Consider this:
In 1984 I could buy a brand new record with up to 40 minutes of music for $7.00. When CDs first came out they were around $36.00 a pop for the same album at my local retailers. Of course people griped saying "how are we ever going to afford to buy those"? But then the prices dropped until you could buy the same 40 minute album on a brand new CD for $15.00 in 1988. Since then the average price of CDs has gone up and you are typically paiying $19-21 per new CD. Of course none of the arguments that the industry used at the time ("we need to make up for the cost of retooling from making records to making CDs") hold any water today. They're just greedy fuckers. But, the buying public, while they might moan and groan about it are still going to pay the price when they want the latest pap that and RIAA conjured "artist" puts out. There is one thing missing in the original CD Audio spec. DRM.
Enter BluRay and other DRM controlled forms of media. After reading the Slashdot article on CableCard and DCAS the other day (end-to-end encryption for cable television), you better believe devices to play HD DVDs will be no different. Not only will you be completely lubed up and owned by the MPAA, but if you really want to watch their products you'll have to pay the money they ask. No matter how high or unfair the pricing. Welcome to corporate fascism. The price today might be in the $25.00 neighborhood. They'll say, "we need to amortize our investment in this new technology and then the prices will come down as the market grows". And the prices will go down temporarily. But in ten year's time, you'll be paying $30 a disc and likely will just accept it instead of raging at these assholes like I do.
Now, add to this element that the only people who read Slashdot that count (in my book) are the so-called hobbyists... and that we are targetted as "undesirable crackpots", well you see where this is going. The funny thing is that there was a time in America when the guy who built his own electronic equipment at home was looked at as a neighborhood hero or potential "genius". Today, we're looked at like the Unabomber. We're told by these corporations and their brainwashed customers, "Why don't you just do what any other normal person does and just buy a damn HD DVD player fer christ sakes"! We do't want to do this because the commercial products are typically lacking in base functionality that we would prefer to have. For example, you SHOULD be able to skip the advertisting at the beginning of the DVD and get straight to the film. However, the MPAA doesn't want you doing that so commercial players aren't supposed to be able to do this. It's not a technical limitation (although they might try to make it seem like one), it's an artificial limitation calculated to benefit them. And it's unfair. Fortunately, players like Xine and MPlayer allow you to bypass these tracks altogether since they usually add nothing to your viewing experience. That's just a single example of the crippling that the MPAA forces on consumer devices. And it's only going to get worse.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
23... 45? Are digits in sequential order more appealing? I tell you what, if it was 23.99, I sure's hell wouldn't buy them! Now, however... (ok, no, I'm still not buying them).
Can someone please explain to me what is so superior about BLU-RAY that we just have to switch away from dvd. There were really obvious arguements to switch from VHS to DVD, but from dvd to blu-ray I just don't see a really compelling arguement to switch, unless they start selling writeable media, then the obvious selling point would be storage capacity. Mod me a troll if you must but is this more creating a market for a product that isn't needed or is there a legitimate reason for this shift in media???
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
It reaches a stage when its very difficult to discern any real advantages "new media" has over older types. I mean, there is a limit to what resolution your eye can discern, just like in printing; There's no point in going any higher than 300 dpi (professional offset printing resolution). Once you don't have problems with blurriness or ghosting, it really can't get much better. They either need to produce an entirely different (immersive?) experience, or make bigger screens cheaper. I'd drop a grand on a 10 foot wide wallscreen, no problem. It seems to me like the executives at sony and the rest of them are stuck in an 80's gold rush mindset. The eighties are over boys - deal with it.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
In order to exploit this great new technology, doesn't the content on the DVDs have to be filmed using special HD equipment?
Yes, there is no specific "Sad" post modification (mod) but the "Funny" mod can be used for certain posts. Most situations where "Funny" is used is for modding amusing posts designed to incite laughter. This is commonly referred to as "Funny: Ha Ha". There is the lesser known "Funny: Uh Oh" that should be used in situations where a "Sad" mod would be preferred. Odd and perplexing posts would fall into this category.
It should also be noted that the "Funny" mod grants the post creator no positive karma. If the post is interesting or insightful then other, better suited mods should be used instead. This lack of karma could explain why comedians generally live shorter and more traumatic lives despite the fact that they make many people laugh.
Let's see if I get this right. I'm going to pay more money for a DVD that I can only play in a player that will cost $1800. Yeah, right. Oh, and it may not end up being the generally acceptable format? Ooookay!
I've got a better idea! Why don't I just sit here and wait? That's right, I'm going to wait about five or so years. That way, the price will have dropped on the players, and the battle over formats will have settled out. I figure I can somehow struggle along without having seen the movies you're releasing in this format, probably because...well... I've already seen them.
This is yet another repetition of the past. A NEW! HOT! TECHNOLOGY! which is supposed to IMPROVE! our ENTERTAINMENT! EXPERIENCE!. Ok, fine. But.. um, we have a couple of different formats and the prices are enormous! Betamax/VHS. DVD/VHS. Players running around one to two grand. Been there, done that, got the t-shirts. What I've learned is that there's no rush. Wait. Prices will come down on players. Format types will standardize. You won't feel scre^H^H^H^Hvictimized by the manufacturers/retailers.
So... 1) Netflix will probably have to charge a higher monthly fee for people who want HD discs, and 2) for companies like Netflix, HD is going to make them a ton of money.
The only price that matters is the rental charge at the corner video place. I suppose that will go up a bit too.
I'm not buying those movies!
I remember how expensive CD's and CD players were at first, too. You will pay a premium for being an early adopter. For everyone else it means that non blue ray DVD's will drop in price.
ConsultingFair.com
Serious question here -
I recall one of the biggest arguments against P2P sharing of movies, music, etc. is that I don't "own" the content - I license it. If I license the content by owning a copy of "Movie A" on DVD, why is it that I have to buy another license of "Movie A" on Blu-Ray at full price, instead of just the price of the new media?
In the licensing model this makes sense, but it's not going to be available. The "ownership" model would support having to purchase new content when the format changes, but then I'd technically be able to put it on P2P or back it up to my HD, no?
Why the catch-22?
Uhhhhh... was *any* of that shot in HD or a format that could even remotely be remastered to HD with any noticable improvement in quality over DVD ?
Were you going for a funny mod there ?
The question you need to ask is how pathetic you had to be to buy that in the first place, isn't it ?
Sorry, that's a cheap shot. Anyway, my real point is that there's a whole bunch of content that won't make sense to re-release in HD. The DVD is not going away any time soon.
"Why does Blu-ray cost more than regular?"
Because...the laserbeam that reads it is blue rather than the traditional red...trust me...it is much better.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
2. Sony Pictures is going to limit distribution at first to retailers who also sell Blu-ray hardware... Retail chains typically stock these types by isolating them on obscure shelves, you know, for the sophisticated lot who fire up Cuban cigars with C notes. set.
3. Pioneer said it plans to market its Blu-ray player in June for about $1,800. Samsung plans a similar machine in the spring for about $1,000. Toshiba, meanwhile, promised to have two HD-DVD-based models out by March at prices of $500 and $800. match.I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
Even at the theoretical maximum future capacity of Blu-ray, that will still be 10 disks.
If you buy it right away ( dual-layer ) then it would still be around 40 !
(I'm making the assumption that each disk is full, which probably isn't true, but oh well)
I personally don't care how much one of these new HD DVDs cost. All I care about is if I can get recordable media for no more than $5 a disc when they first come out and drop down to $1 a disc later on. Even then, I might not care because I think Blu-Ray is too little too late and will be crushed into the ground IF Holographic technology truly holds up to it's promise of being released at the end of 2006 with a reasonable consumer cost. Of course, that's a big "if" (in case you hadn't noticed).
--
What's this semi-clear, rectangular piece of junk? **TOSS** NOOOO! That was my entire movie/music collection on Holographic media!!
It's ironiriffic.
What were people expecting? The prices to be the same? This is a new and better technology.
The original cost to buy a single DirecTV DSS receiver and dish when they came out was around $1200. They're now, several years later, giving them away to get people to subscribe to the service.
Patience grasshoppers these prices will come down too.
Is there an alternative to Slashdot?
Yes
Sig: I stole this sig.
I'm remembering when the major labels were accused of price fixing on CD's when they were new to the market. Basically, they decided to artificially charge more for essentially the same content, even though the manufacturing costs were less than with other media like tape.
Is there going to be a similar issue with new "HD" content being more expensive, even though the technology to produce MAY be similar in cost (no, I don't know the cost of manufacturing a BluRay DVD vs a standard DVD).
In other words, does this cost more because it's more expensive, or cost more because the studios want to extract the most money possible?
There's a website with more details on the DC case and settlement.
Microsoft will fund articles like this right up until Blu-Rays launch and beyond, until their preferred format is dominant, or until they outflank the issues Blu-Ray presents for them.
Ever notice during a movie during the dark or particularly red scenes how it gets all pixelated and yucky? THAT is the movie I'd re-purchase to get a high definition copy of provided the HD discs solve that issue. If someone could post a link explaining why red colors don't seem to compress well I'd appreciate it.
Other than that, if I can't see any visible flaws in the movie, I have no problems sticking with the WideScreen version on my regular DVD. Oh yeah, for those who didn't make sure to buy WideScreen DVDs whenever they could, well, you should consider repurchasing the HD version provided you truly love it.
--
Blu-Ray? No, he's not my uncle who can't seem to find a date, it's a video technology.
Between this post, and the parent post for this thread that you made, I really wish we had a -1; Annoying tone mod.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Companies almost always take "early adopters" for granted, and introduce their products at a much higher price, to milk whatever extra money they can get out of them.
If the price doesn't drop significantly within about 6 months... THEN perhaps it will be time to look at HD-DVD players once again, and compare.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"What cost $23.45 in 1997 would cost $27.64 in 2005."
Sure, but isn't the trend for hi-tech stuff to go down? Computers, mp3 plahyers, satellite radios are going down in price.
This reminds me of when CD's were introduced. LP's were $8 and CD's were $16. They told us "Unfortunately, there are only 3 plants in the world that can make these disks. As soon as more production comes on line, these will be cheaper than LP's because they're cheaper to make".
I guess they were lying.
But on the plus side, Sony would never lie to do anything underhanded; their reputation is at stake. I'm sure the prices will go down later when more production is on-line.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Right now, people are clamoring for HD content, and these movies are really the first taste. There is a HUGE demand relative to the available supply.
I am utterly unsurprised at this pricing. It means we can expect retail prices about double DVD's for some time. The only good news there is that DVD prices will continue to fall as HD movies see increased competition and lower their prices.
This will continue until two things happen:
This will allow volume effects to occur that allow for pricing reductions. Until then studio's will make more money from their "outdated" DVD sales pipeline than they could possibly generate from HD movies.
So, give it a year or so. When there are a few million PS3's out there with BD-ROM's and people use them for watching movies (like they do PS2) then prices will tumble.
Since I am in a predictive mood, I'll say that we'll get price breaks on per movie costs when we have two or more studios with 100+ titles released in HD format. We'll start to approach current DVD pricing when we have four or more studios with 1000+ titles available for purchase, and there are 200+ TV series for sale.
If you think that is unreasonable drop by a Best Buy and count the number of titles they have on display.
As an additional side effect, there will be a point when HD discs "take over" the market from SD video. WHen that happens DVD prices will tumble well below what we have seen VHS prices drop to- because DVD is much cheaper than VHS to replicate on a per disc basis. You can make a profit at retail on a $5 DVD, but you can't on a $5 VHS.
Unlike the RIAA which depends on you buying a pice of music you are going to listen to time and again, the film industry depends on you buying LOTS of content you use infrequently and continuing to buy more and more. As a result of this difference the film/video folk will drive prices down for older products to clear inventory so they can get new product out the door.
Remember that with time you'll be able to make a profit at retail on a $5 BD-ROM, so they have no qualms about dropping prices. They have already seen the value of volume sales.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
I think we have gotten to the point that quality really isn't important anymore. Convenince is what people want. If people were first concerned about quality, you wouldn't see a single lossless audio format being used. Given that people will pay more for a lower quality audio track because they find it convenient says a lot.
Unfortunatly for Blue-Ray, the new disks will not be more convenient. People moved from tape to disk because the move from serial access to (semi)random access was a huge convenince. Both the newer audio and newer video disks are not more convenient.
Damn near all of the new "next gen" tech coming out such as the PS3's Cell, BD-ROMs, the Xbox360s (well, what superior tech does it use - add your own, just dont make my post the battlegrounds for a flamewar:(. The reason for the need for new high capacity optical discs is obvious - better graphics AND longer storylines (current gen DVDs have reached their limit and have to choose which the game values more). Most new console and PC games cost $50 or $40 bucks new, so personally I consider a mere $2x odd bucks nothing when it comes to buying optical discs (no, I dont buy a newly released game every week, its just that when I do, its a lot more than just a movie) so would you rather be able to fit the ENTIRE LOTR or Starwars saga on a SINGLE disc for only a (relatively) few bucks more or have 20 discs for one saga?
The red component of an image/movie frame is the most compressed, because the eye can't see contrast in this color well, but if an image is all red, this compression becomes obvious.
Cheaper, smaller, faster than DLT. While it might sound ludicrous to replace DVD media for entertainment and home use, it very well might be a better medium for backups, provided that RW media comes out soon at roughly the same price.
what about the bootleggers that have to download a 28 GB ISO over bit torrent. I dunno about europe but here in the US our internet is way too slow for that. Its gonna drive my business way down yo.
Then, the "keeping up with the jones'" buyers will buy in (with their budgets straining and groaning all the while). Now the price starts to drop, letting more of the "keeping up" crowd buy. Also, more robust, feature rich components start to become available until . . .
Finally, at some magical "price point", Joe Sixpack a.k.a. everyman, starts buying the bloody things, even though he still needs an HD monitor (or at least an ED monitor) to actually see the quality improvement of this format over NTSC - you know, "never the same color". BTW, somebody oughtta warn ol' Joe before he plunks down his hard-earned, or there'll be hell to pay when he plugs this thing in and voila - no visible improvement over good ol' DVD.
If you know any marketing 'droids, ask them about it. Also remember ancient wisdom - "Never buy anything new. Give it a year; see if anybody dies from it first!"
Am i the only one who thinks this? Isnt believing "Each disc will hold more, so they will release more episodes of my favorite show on each disc" very naive.
The way they make money on these discs is by volume of discs sold. If they were to sell fewer discs, then even with a few dollars more per disc, it would be a major loss to the companies.
An easy present example is the anime dvd's out there. Even with dual layer 18 GB DVD's out there, you are still stuck with 3 episodes per dvd. These anime cartoons probably dont even take up 1-2 GB.
Which is probably why most of the hype only revolves around resolution and HDTV. Not about that amount of extra material you are going to get in the disc.
It seems to me that lately the largest market for DVDs has been TV shows. I know that personally I've only bought 1 movie in the last several months, but I have purchased several television seasons on DVD. It's the same for most of my friends as well. The thing about it is that for this all that extra resolution is pretty much useless. None of the shows I watch are shown in HD (in fact, the majority of them were off the air before ANYTHING was shown in HD). It seems to me that if this trend continues, it will be several more years before most shows are in HD. Until then, it seems like this extra resolution is pointless even for people who have HDTVs.
It seems to me like they are going about marketing the format in the wrong way. I have an HDTV and I know that I am not particularly excited by the prospect of being able to buy bluray movies. On the other hand, I think a lot of people would be excited about this as a new higher capacity backup media for PCs. I've just recently seen Dual Layer DVD burners becomming common, and it seems like there could have been a good market in selling BluRay has having more capacity than DLDVD burners. As hard drives get bigger, it gets to be more trouble to back up and restore from backups. I recently had a hard drive crash and ended up having around 20 DVDs worth of data to restore from backups.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Movie theaters get more and more expensive--I refuse to go to them anymore. I have a big screen at home and a nice surround sound setup. I have a clean bathroom a short walk away. I can pause the movie. I have access to my kitchen, food and drinks (including adult beverages). and the best part--nobody else to disturb me! So why would I go to the theater? More and more people are staying home. They've been talking about releasing movies on DVD and in theater at the same time (or shortening the time to release). With more people renting DVDs and staying home, they need to figure a way to make more money off this. Enter BluRay and HD-DVD! Here's an idea, instead of buying the next steaming pile that hollywood shoves down your throat, GO OUTSIDE! WOW!! SUPER HD WITHOUT DRM! AND IT'S FREE!! We need to stop caring about hollywood. I wish people would get a clue. All the star gossip, all the awards shows--who cares what brad pitt did last night? Does he care what I did? Why isn't anybody disturbed that these actors get paid millions, and then ON TOP OF THAT we have big award parties and give them awards as well! Then they shove their agenda down your throat (like YAY! FOR HOMOSEXUALS AL LA BROKENBACK MTN) Oh wait, the rant light just came on my keyboard... I better sign off.
I never buy new technology when it first comes out anyways. There's always problems, it's too expensive, and I always know that 6 months or a year from now they will make it smaller, faster, and cheaper. Thanks to all you impulsive buyers and tech heads who have to have it right now because you help drive the cost down for those of us who buy later.
Can I bum a sig?
oh man.. you read way to far into that comment.. i was waiting to get moded offtopic or troll..
they like to do that to me..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
it can give you orders of magnitude higher resolution.
No, it can't. I just paid a thousand bucks for a new 42" TV the year before last, and I expect to be watching it twenty years from now.
It has 525 scan lines, and you're not going to get any better resolution than that with any tech save a new TV. It doesn't matter how many pixels it has, it's only going to show 525 vertical on my TV.
AFTER the spectrum has gone digital, everyone os broadcasting in HD, and my $1,000 TV starts going on the fritz, THEN perhaps I'll think about shelling out for one of those puppies.
Of course, by then my new TV will look like a rolled up window shade (or be directly painted on the wall), be four meters wide and three high, and cost maybe thirty bucks in today's money.
And oh yeah, Blue-Ray will be obsolete by then, even if it doesn't get its lunch eaten by the other spec out today like Beta got eaten by VHS.
I have one word for anybody who buys one of these...
LOSER!!!
-mcgrew
(non-MRC="lucked")
The price of Blu-ray wholsales for $17.95 (which is the same price as when DVDs first launched), the $23.45 price point is for new-releases only.
Being that the average profit for large retailer for DVDs is ~$4, I would expect Blu-ray disks to cost $20-$25 catalog titles, and $25-30 for new-releases depending on how agressively the retailer is trying to sell them. Many retailers (BestBuy, Walmart, etc) also also sell them close to cost to bring foot traffic into their stores.
IMHO, seems like a resonable price for 1080p movies, the title of this thread should really say "Blu-ray Discs Won't Be Cheap (but not that expensive either)"
Also correction for Zonk, the poster of this thread.
>>Movies like "Hitch" and "Terminator 2", etc. are catalog releases, and won't be sold wholesale at $23.95.
>>Also, for the statement "forthcoming price of Sony Blu-Ray HD DVDs", Blu-ray isn't HD-DVD. They are different formats.
But when will the first Blu-Ray Porn movie be out?
I think your argument would be valid if what was coming out on Blue-Ray was the exact same collection of VOB files that existed on the current DVD.
But it's not; on the Blue-Ray disc you get the high definition version of the movie and this is a different product.
The reverse question makes some sense, though -- if you buy a Blue Ray of some movie and it is otherwise identical content-wise to the DVD version of the same movie, shouldn't you be entitled to get a DVD copy of the movie for the cost of the media, or at least *make* a DVD copy yourself? Because in those cases, you're not getting a different product.
1: DVD players and discs have gotten cheap. Sony isn't making as much profit on them as they used to, so it's time to introduce a new format that costs 3 times as much.
2: Sony gets to license the patents related to blu-ray to all other electronics makers, so they get a cut of the action from everyone who sells a blu-ray player or blu-ray discs.
3: Blu-ray DRM is much stronger than DVD CSS. It'll be harder for people to make backup copies or share Sony Pictures movies on P2P networks. Even if they don't sell any more discs, they'll get a warm fuzzy feeling about "solving" the piracy problem.
4: Lack of HD content (especially movies) is holding back sales of HD monitors. If everyone buys into the HDTV craze, Sony stands to make lots of money selling new TVs.
5: Once everybody buys a blu-ray player and HDTV, they'll re-buy a lot of movies in blu-ray format, and Sony stands to make a lot more money there.
Or did you mean what's better for the customer? Well, there is the "more pixels" thing, but that's about it.
0 1 - just my two bits
Pink Floyd's discography is the only titles Ive ever considered buying a "special legit superdupercool version"
But all that is available is that silly S-CD. Dumb dumb dumb. I want those mixed in DTS so badly. I would pay a premium for them.
Yet another stupid choice that makes me not buy CDs. I havnt bought a new cd in more then 8 years now.
Yes, Funny like watching a 25 year old guy being mugged by a street gang of little old ladies who can't get by on their pensions
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Hmmm.... a purely academic question here as I am personally boycotting (not in not paying for, actually not viewing as well) any MPAA/RIAA content.
But from the summary. "Some of the movies to be released in the first batch by Sony are The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator."
Let's say I already own Terminator (1 and 2) on DVD, would I be able to download the HD version legally and have it qualify as "Fair Use" back-up? (I don't care about the legal situation of the man distributing it for purposes of this question.)
Why or why not? I already own the movie.
Before you groan and tell me why I can't - let me put this in perspective - would you answer be different if someone owned a VHS copy of a movie and wanted a back-up on his harddrive, thus downloads the "higher" quality DVD off a P2P - after all, he justs wants a fair-use back-up of a movie he owns on his harddisk.
At least for CD's and DVD's, they are called D Skins. I have some, but have not tried them yet.
Why are the people complaining about DVD prices the same ones with the $2000 52-inch plasma HDTV?
It won't matter how much better Blu-Ray is over HD-DVD if Sony can't get the prive down. Granted new technology is always more expensive when it is first released but in the end your average consumner is going to make a decision that is in some part based on price. If Joe Sixpack is looking to the upgrade his DVD player and he goes to Worst Buy and sees two options side by side, One is the Sony BDP-S1 Priced at $1000 (low end of most estimates) and the Toshiba HD-A1 Priced at $499.99 (Amazon) and they are both playing HD 1080i content. What do you think he is going to choose? Now you have to remember that Joe could give a shit that the Blu-Ray disk holds more content, all he sees is the fact that the disks and player both cost more. Joe just wants to play HD content on his new 64" HDTV. If Sony were smart they would swallow their pride and price Blu-Ray at $499.99 to compete with HD-DVD. The problem is this won't happen, and Sony's baby will fail because of it. You can't price something twice that of the competing offering and expect people to choose based soley on your technical merits. BetaMax was better than VHS but more expensive and remember what happend there? I guess Sony dosen't learn from their mistakes.
In markets with less HDTV presence than the US nobody would give a damn for Blue Ray movies.
This will probably follow the same way of DVD-Audio unless they totally replace DVDs out of the market (and it wont happen as long as there is not near 95% market share or HDTV setups).
I could never buy DVD-A discs. If you told your friend you got a new DVD-A disc and he had previously seen the movie "Orgasmo", he would either never speak to you again or, even worse, try to watch it with you.
DRM allows the media industry to keep obsoleting media, similar to the analog model, to trigger consumer re-purchaces of the same media. Expiring media would be even better, but DIVX and fading-ink-DVDs did not work. Expiring by forced obsolecence is the next best thing.
This combined with invinite copyright laws allow media companies to have a constant revenue stream with no new material.
And this does not include stomping out fair-use and any ability to skip annoying commercials in purchased movies.
I will wait for something that I can play in linux.
It will be a much tougher sell to get people to jump onto the BR bandwagon, i think.
I think unless there is an easy way to rip blu-ray/HD-DVD demand will grow pretty slowly. Not that I have any doubt that it will be done, but the MPAA will fight it.
I almost forgot about how much they fought de-CSS until I had to install a dvd-rom on a new system and get it to play dvds. Non-trivial.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Everyone is using CDs as a price comparison. Anyone out there a former Laser Disk fan? Fifteen years ago the base price for new releases was $35, with some running much more. Feature heavy disks could run twice as much. There were also collector disk sets running in the hundreds. Why on earth pay that much when a VHS tape could be gotten for $20 or less? Quality. The picture was excellent and the sound blew away DVDs. Even with a cheap sound system the sound was excellent and resembled what you heard in a theater. Initially the HiDef formats will be aimed at the collectors. Would I pay $50 for a film I like? Absolutely. In adjusted dollars it's still cheaper than Laser was and the quality will be much higher. The experience of going to a theater has gotten to bad due to cell phones and rude obnoxious people that I can't wait for HiDef disks and opening day HD broadcasts of films. The day most films are broadcast on Pay Per View HiDef opening day is the day I buy a Good DLP projection system and never set foot in a theater again.
If only FMD-ROM hadn't sank under the weight of gullible nerds accepting money [backing] from unscrupulous people. For those of you who remember the hype with FMD-ROM, I'm sure that nobody would care about blu- this and HD- that.
For those of you who never heard of FMD-ROM, it stands for Flourescent Multilayer Disk (FMD). Basically, back in 1999 a bunch of scientist came up with a way to make a disk that had many layers that could all be read at the same time (throughput of 1Gb/s). First generation hand-made disks contained roughly 100 GB of storage space (same size as a CD or DVD). It was estimated that manufactured disks would have roughly 120Gb of space and use of blue lasers (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray anyone?) would increase their storage to roughly 1TB per disk. I know many IT pros who would have beaten their bosses to death for not being an early adopter to replace tapes as the secure offsite storage medium. Manufacturing cost estimates were only 5-15% above the price of CDs (hardware and media) at the time, and the hardware could easily be reverse compatible.
They had working prototypes and were on the verge of bringing the tech to the manufacturers when their bank loan came due and their money man vanished in the night. A few UK HDTV companies and I think two PC optical drive manufacturers secured the rights to build the hardware. Several of the media manufacturers had the specs for the discs but had not secured the rights to reproduce it before the company (Constellation 3D, C3D) went bankrupt and belly up. I'm not sure who holds the rights to the technology since the company that the patents and copyrights were registered under dissolved, but I bet HD-DVD and Blu-Ray would have a real hard time if FMD made a sudden comeback.
DVD Jon better get to crack-a-lackin - I lived with 30 minute MP3 downloads back in the day - I can live with day long HD movie downloads.
I recently saw Terminator III DVD's for $5.50 at WalMart.
480i ISN'T overkill AT ALL! It's the absolute crappiest resolution - it IS standard definition, that's your shitty analog cable you're watching everyday. How's that overkill exactly? Looks like absolute garbage to me, and I don't even have a HDTV. Interlacing sucks. 480p is an ABSOLUTE BARE MINIMUM (still standard definition)!
I thought HD DVD players would be a lot more expensive, but not so. http://hd-dvd.buy-on-sale.com/ Anyone know when HD-DVD players for PC will be available?
Ready for HD DVDs? http://hd-dvd.buy-on-sale.com
Yeah, love DTS CD's. I have 2 of them because they play on ANY DVD player and home theater combo and sound amazing. DTS rocks. Just had to give you props for mentioning them.
I care more about a DVD w/ DTS than I would a HDDVD with DolbyDigital.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" - Touchstone,Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
Troy McClure, is that you? [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Sorry, no, according to this you do not exist. Go back you foul demon, back I say!!!!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
This pricing is the result of a monopoly. At first it seems like movies on the home video rack represent a diversity of choices and alternatives - multiple movies, multiple distributors, all competing for your video dollar (euro/yen/peso - but probably not yuan ;). But each movie is a unique item. With "exclusive distribution" deals, there's only one vendor of each unique item. The demand for competition, met only by piracy, is the biggest enemy of the MPAA - bringing with it customer-punishing exaggerated lawsuits.
Sure, most Hollywood movies are interchangeable in the same mass market. But somehow, they all cost the same, with huge profits and low risks. That is the fingerprint of either a monopoly, a cartel, or a price-fixing scheme.
Of course, movies are made by a single entity, a producer, so some monopoly is always inevitable. But like any other "invention", America's property laws accommodate that monopoly by allowing a limited time in which inventors can recoup their investment. That time has also been exploded into perpetuity, also by the MPAA. Who can blame them for going after a perpetual monopoly? But we can blame the people's representatives in Congress, who defy the people and the Constitution when they give the MPAA that unlimited empire.
Let the producers get a year, or 200% their dollar cost, or a second chance in any new medium under those same terms, in which to profit. After that, the limited temporary monopoly protection granted by the people to the inventors should expire. Even if we only get requirements for an open market for distributors with competitive bidding, it will be a useful "compromise".
--
make install -not war
I, for one am happy at the prices shown, they sound MUCH less than what I am currently paying for DVHS HDTV movies, which are averaging $40, somtimes over $60 (http://www.dvhsmovie.com/movies/trailerpark.asp)!
You have a license for the NTSC 640x480 version of movie X because you bought it.
You do not have a license for the HD 1920x180 version of movie X.
It's a minor difference yes. But one the MPAA would/could focus on.
You technically get more info with the HD version. And by downloading it with out having bought the "Official HD Version of X", it could be considered Copyright Infringement.
I personally think it's BS. So I probably won't be buy BD or HD disks any time soon.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Terminator has such a terrible print, that it would be worthless in HD. T5E is almost a 'reference' disc, especially in Superbit. It's about the only movie from that list worth getting in any form from that list, too. Everything else is a 'rent'.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
$23.45?! I mean, come on people, if you're going to pull a number out of your arse at least make it look semi-random!
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Those 4-5 dvd tv show seasons could probably fit nicely on one hd-dvd disc.
I would like that.
-
I was just talking about this phenomenon last night. DVDs have already reached the good enough point for most consumers. Even some people who have HD-TVs (my brother for example) don't know that DVD isn't true HD quality, because let's face it, it looks just fine how it is.
Why they would try to give this product to consumers when it is obviously too expensive to market as a real DVD alternative is beyond me. Especially since I know I get by just fine on a divx rip of a movie. That's just like when they release surround audio CDs. It's going to be hard to convince a generation that just underwent an upgrade to pay more for an even less significant transition to some "a little better looking than DVD" format. Why doesn't the technology market wait until a media has matured in the R&D department before releasing it?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
The fact is that while people will accept those prices it doesn't mean they can afford them.
However, that means in certain cases I have to completely bypass something I actually want.
Are we saying that it's OK that I'm "too poor" to be able to afford [X]
Are people actually walking around with this sense of entitlment? Do you realize that most people on this earth can't get enough food to eat? You know, the food they need?
And here you are worried about what you want!
According to this Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Hard-coating_ technologya , the Blu-Ray discs are supposedly coated with a scratch-resistant coating. Why wasn't something like this though of when DVDs and CDs came out. I have a few discs which are unplayable and I've been quite carelful with the discs. Think I'm going to buy Blu-Rays (esp when you can't easily copy the content for backup) because of this? Hell no!
(As an aside there's a 16-DVD TV box set of a show I want to buy. Considering the investment, what protection is avaialbe for DVDs that can protect the disc?)
How many times do you watch a movie. Once, and I know it from end to end. The crime is solved, the mystery is over, the scare is gone, the joke is old. How many times do you read the same novel?
Only those who truly have no life watch the same movie multiple times.
Rent it once for $0.99 at the grocery store and watch it once. Any more than that and you are flushing your money down the toilet.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Mmmmm can't wait to add the 129$ Starwars Trilogy: Blue-Ray Edition... to my collection.
My point is that Sony will claim production costs of BluRay is higher justifying their cost when in fact the production costs are in line with a CD. They're getting higher prices because, well, they think they can.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.
And for the same price, you can get Terminator 2 at (Amazon.com).
And oh BTW, that version already has an HD version .
Red DVDRs with DiVX, MP4 or (ech!) WMV in HD, played using DVD players available from JVC, Iodata, Buffalo, Zensonic, etc. are the way to go!
Xesdeeni
UMD movies for PSP? Those should be $8 apiece. If they were, Sony would create an actual reason to buy a PSP player. So they price the player at $250 and the movies at $20-25 and after a burst of enthusiasm, I think the UMD format is headed for the crapper.
Sony blew it big time with UMD movies, and they'll blow it again with BluRay movies.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
DVD's max resolution is 720x480 30 interlaced frames per second. That's 720x240, 60 fields per second. That's 10,368,000 pixels/second.
BluRay goes beyond HDTV (1080i or 720p) to 1080p. That is 1920x1080 60 frames per second. That's 124,416,000 pixels/second.
That's about 1.1x, which is an order of magnitude. That comes in just under the wire as "orders of magnitude" more resolution.
And before you say "my DVD does progressive", it may output progressive, but the data on the disc is interlaces, your DVD is doing an intelligent algorithm to turn 720x480 interlaced 60 fields per second into true 720x480 progressive 24 frames per second. But movie progressive reverse pulldown actually produces even LESS actual data than the DVD can carry, so your DVD player doing this doesn't increase the information carried, just presents it in a much more pleasing manner.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I'd dare say a large number of people are already capable of watching HD at home, whether one of their TVs in their homes, or on their computer monitor (most can display at least 1920x1080).
I have an LCD monitor on each of 3 computers, and each one of them is only 1024x768 pixels, you insensitive clod! Besides, given that the majority of existing monitors do not support HDMI, will BD players even have a VGA output?
All BROADCAST will be HD.
No, all broadcast will be digital. This could be anywhere from digital 480i to digital 720p or 1080i depending on choices made by each station and its network.
it's also a question of will I pay anything for a Sony product.
Blu-ray Disc is a Sony/Philips product. CD Digital Audio and CD-ROM were also Sony/Philips products.
Disney used to repeat its animated movies back to the theaters about every seven years because there would be a new generation of kids then. ...
Now they re-release a similar schedule because the technology changes: VHS, DVD, HD-DVD
and I wasn't considered an "early adopter" amongst my friends at the time.
In other words, I agree.
From a seller's perspective, an auction is ideal. You offer just one disc. The person who wants/needs the item most will pay the top dollar. Then you offer a second disc. And so on down until you sell one to the least willing customer, who will pay just over manufacturing cost.
It's not practical to sell Blu-ray discs one by one, so Sony has to do the same thing in batches. This is the first batch. The second should cost less.
They will leave some money on the table. The most willing buyers, who would have paid $100 for a disc, pick it up for maybe $50 like veryone else.
many of us are more interested in the price of blank dvds
The median play length of new releases have increased since the CD became the standard media. As well the lifetime of the actual disc has increased (a CD skip is much more annoying than a record skip) as pressed CDs don't actually wear out as a tape or vinyl record played with a non-laser stylus. When Tape/Albums where the format of choice we were stuck at just over 45 minutes as the standard. Now with CD's most new releases generally are longer than 50 minutes. Thus the price/minute skews this reduction of cost even further. You can say that there is now more filler, but there is no economic incentive for the record company to release filler, as they have to pay the Mechanical (songwriter's) royalty, which is paid on every track on every disc sold (it does not have to recoup any costs)
It's idiotic to think that people should just start dropping conveniences from their lives for economic reasons that are being forced on them by artificially inflated prices.
You know, it would convenient for me to have a private jet, and a condo in whistler, and one in Maui, and one in Rome while I'm at it. I could really get a lot more work done that way, with all the leisure time I'd have to de-stress. Damn those bastard corporations for making those things so artificially expensive!
It's time for a little lesson in economics - mainly, supply and demand. If you want something, and so does everyone else, I will change you more. Simple as that. Want to stick it to me, "the man"?
Don't "want" what I'm selling. Simple as that. Please tell me you aren't lacking this very basic understanding of how a capitalist system works...
Ah hell, I must stop feeding the trolls
Hey Hal,
I'd like to introduce you to two of my friends, laziness and convenience. While buying a HD-DVD version of what you can get for cheaper in normal DVD is silly, getting normal DVD-quality with the capacity of 5 discs stuffed into one blu-ray disc would not be.
Seasons of episodes which come in a box of five discs, swapping discs when the current 3 episodes are done... how about a single disc and no swapping.
*that* might be a reason for me to buy a new format (if not for the other concerns such as DRM and fragility etc), super-duper-wow-both-look-the-same-on-my-tv isn't...
"is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com"
thats no big deal as no one should be buying that movie
I haven't seen this point made yet, but the adoption of HDTV sets will drive the sales of higher res recorded formats. I don't know how many of you have watched a standard definition picture (480i or 480p)on a large format capable device (1080i or better) but it looks TERRIBLE! Without using VERY good scalars it looks like crap. Example: take that computer monitor you're staring at now and blow up a standard def TV stream to full screen. Look good? No. Right now, it takes $10k+ scalars to achieve decent image quality -- and they still have artifacts. The question is: good enough? I suspect it will be for most, but there will be plenty of early adopters who want more -- and will pay the premiums. Higher-res formats are necessary -- scalars are more of a patch. I also welcome the higher data contents these discs will be capable of. $24 wholesale means these will sell for $30 -- certainly a premium price, but as evidenced by the surviving (albeit struggling) high-end audio market -- there will be adopters. Much more so with video, I think, because the differences are that much more striking.
I clearly remember one of the first DVDs I bought was The Matrix for $13, brand spankin new.
IMHO, this is because Warner was doing everything it could to make sure people didn't adopt the Divx standard that Circuit City and Disney were trying to get to critical mass. Warner was putting almost it's entire back catalog on DVD and old movies were cheap. Then Divx died, mostly because it wasn't supported by enough studios and wasn't sold in enough stores, and after it was pronounced dead, all the DVD prices went back up.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Your movies change speed when you watch them and you take the opportunity to knock our video format?
Then you say our reason for interest in HD is because our res is low? How about because people are buying huge houses now (not me, mind you, can't afford it) and have screens large enough that even 576 lines doesn't look great? I'm sitting in front of a TV that if I turned it edge-on would almost bop me in the nose (55" TV at about a 70" viewing distance), and I'm not alone. I've stopped buying DVDs nearly completely (about 3/year) because I don't see the point in owning a movie forever in a format that already looks poor on the TV I have that isn't even full HD res! (I would rent DVDs to watch them, but if I wait a bit longer, the movies will come on HD cable and look a lot better, so I end up watching very little DVD now.)
How about we're interested in HD because we have lots of HD content available? I get 7 free network channels over the air in HD (no dupes), plus I pay for two movie channels which have HD versions and for $8/month a could get 4 more movie channels plus about 3 other channels (mostly sports). Our broadcasters didn't decide to sit HD out like the Beeb did. I don't think BSkyB even has HD yet. It's no mystery to me what HD isn't the same in the UK as in the US, you have very little to watch in it.
Any, look at the excellent DVD FAQ on hometheaterhifi.com. The flags you say indicate to show something as progressive, or to slow it down aren't for that at all, they're for compression improvement. They can be used for such things as you speak of, although they are often missing or wrong, so they aren't used for such things by good players. Good players just reassemble the frames by using pattern matching (and alter soundtrack tempo for you PAL folks).
PAL DVD is still only 720x576. You have increased vertical resolution? Good for you. You're still making 720 pixels stretch across the wide portion of the 1.79:1 aspect of your TV. Whereas with even the lowest form of HDTV you get 852 pixels (do you even consider the 852x480 format in ATSC HD? I don't) and with the lowest format used regularly you get 1280 (x720). That's a huge difference, and in any movie newer than the early 70s, you can see the difference without any effort. For older films, you have to hope they put some care into making the movie instead of shooting on cheap grainy film and blurring it every time it was duped from the master.
Anyway, I've watched PAL (and not under NTSC lights which show the flicker more) and I have to say that I wanted to claw my eyes out. How did people remain sane before the popularity of double scan (100Hz) displays?
Also, I understand why TV had to be 50Hz before, since TV formats were kind of tied to AC power frequencies. But it just seems like the largest form of spite or something to create new 50Hz HD formats. I can't imagine people really like their movies running 4% fast, do they? What was wrong with the original (60Hz) digital HDTV formats? I must be missing something here.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Computers and mp3 players have both dropped in price and increased in functionality.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
AS for me I think, right, maybe the prices would START at this, but as it is a completely unfair price, it would soon fall. If it didnt, it wouldt have a chance against the HD DVDs, follow me?