HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disappointing So Far

Dster76 writes "Reuters is reporting that the new format wars are showing signs of underwhelming performance, both technically and financially. In fact, according to the article, the new formats are just not selling. Reuters chalks it up to a current lack of interest. They indicate that as more movies and players become available this autumn, sales should improve. Just the same, the current picture is quite sour." From the article: "'Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up and other retailers have had the same experience,' said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn's. 'High expectations were set. At every meeting with Sony, every demonstration was spectacular,' Dybdahl said. 'Then along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung and that's when my expectations were hurt. When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD,' he said."

Comments

Good for screen cappers...maybe

[ben there...]

I rent DVDs from NetFlix and take screen captures and short clips for one of my sites, and would love to use HD movies instead. For the same subscription price, I'd be getting 1920x1080 images instead of ~640x480 or 852x480, a huge difference for stills.

But then again, I don't even know if I'd be able to take screen captures from a computer, with all the DRM they have.

Re:maybe, a scan line too far

[popeye44]

When he speaks of convenience I can't but help think he means broken kicked in the ass and left in the gutter encryption that is on dvd's. No one reasonably geek would have a device that it takes 3 seconds for their 2 year old to kill the only disk they have and be forced to buy another. I backup dvd's religously as I have a 5 and an 8 year old. While they do not fubar my movies much they fubar theirs like mad. "imagine if you will your 5 year old walking into the room with the dvd held correctly in the center by his finger.. and the underside of the dvd having peanut butter and jelly on it.."

I have no desire or intention to pay for anything more than once. Taxes are bad enough at doing that why should I buy a player that only makes it harder for me to escape that idiocy? Better quality? Well I have a 42in plasma.. and yes it looks great with hdmi connections and Hi Def... but there's not enough hi-def content for me to appreciate it fully yet. Dvd's look good and i'm happy with them so far. I still don't have a compelling reason to buy anything incrementally better. I'm not paying for a screwing regardless if your a hooker in Mexicali or Sony in Japan.

What do you expect?

[sdo1]

What exactly do you expect when a huge percentage of people who have HDTVs either aren't using them with high-def sources and/or they aren't but they THINK they are? Yea, HD is great. I have a 50" first-generation DLP (720p). The picture is really good and regular DVDs can look great. But I have no desire to drop a grand (or even half that) on an HD video player right now, especially when I'd be buying movies for a second time (some a third time when I upgraded from VHS). Furthermore, the discs are locked down with DRM that isn't yet breakable. I'm not going to buy a new movie on an HD format if I can't down-convert it and burn it to DVD so I can watch on DVD players elsewhere in the house. Sorry. Those are my rules. If the content isn't portable, I'm not buying. Period.

-S

The tactile changes are missing

[grapeape]

One of the things that really separated DVD from VHS was size and look. The DVD was futuristic to many, durability and very obvious image quality were bonus reasons to move to the new platform. It was similar to the move from Cassette tape to CD's, it was an obvious and cool transition, no more switching tapes for long movies, no more tapes stretching or wearing out and dvd's dont eat tapes like cassette decks. Dont forget there was also the early promise that the media would eventually be cheaper (even though it never happened)

The only obvious benefit from HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is image quality, it doesnt really look different, its no more durable, and for most it just seems like a scam to get people to buy their movies over again.

Increased resolution is a benefit but most people still dont have HD tv's and probably more than half that do only have them because there are very few tv's that arent HD for sale anymore. You can further reduce the total by subtracting the ones that dont know how to hook it up properly and arent recieving HD anyway most of them are now disillusioned by HD through their own stupidity. That leaves a very tiny fragment of a market that actually sees any advantage to HD formated DVD's. I do think eventually one of the formats will stick but they would be better off doing hyrid disks with one format on one side and standard dvd on the other that way they can snag the replacement buyers not just rely on folks willing to make an upgrade most see as not necessary.

Human Limitations

[LoTechDave]

The limits of humans' ability to perceive sensor information is fixed and while the DVD isn't perfect, the lackluster response of the HD-DVD & Blu-Ray in the marketplace is an indication that diminishing returns for entertainment-based technology are here. I think underpinning this issue is an unexcited general public that has been underwhelmed by the quality of recent movies. If a movie is crap, then seeing it in HD might allow you to say "I think he ate corn"

EVD standard

[alucinor]

I personally think China's EVD standard will become dominant -- not because consumer's will flock to it, though, but manufacturers. There is no copyright or other licensing to use it, and it's a freely published standard for high-def. No royalities, and it's codecs can even be implemented in Linux without legal issues.

Re: EVD standard

[PCM2]

This is an interesting possibility, but history leans toward no. VCDs became the de facto replacement for VHS in Asia even while DVD took off among people who wanted higher-quality formats. VCD never went anywhere in the U.S., however, despite the fact that there are a lot of major metropolitan areas in the U.S. with thriving Asian communities where retailers do trade in VCDs. The download community is accustomed to the VCD format, but not retail consumers.

Technologies like this just don't seem to cross-pollinate from Asian markets into Western markets. Presumably this has to do with the Western media companies' loathing and distrust for Asian technologies, given the Asian markets' traditional indifference toward Western intellectual property standards.

It seems likely that some format similar to EVD will emerge, however ... either that, or enough college kids with access to downloaded EVD images will drive some kind of market for DVD players that support the format (similar to how there is now a trickle of players appearing that support MPEG-4).

P.S. This seems like a pretty good FAQ on the various available formats, including EVD and FVD.

Re:maybe, a scan line too far

[RsG]

Actually, what I was getting at was more that the sound chip was like a VHS tape, and the sound card like a DVD. The general idea being that once you have a mature version of a technology, there is little to be gained from upgrading yet again.

So, I fully agree that these new formats aren't sufficiently better than DVDs to justify their cost and drawbacks. That was my point :-)

Re:maybe, a scan line too far

[twistedsymphony]

are you implying that current DVD and SD displays are the "peak" of home theater technology?

I think even discerning early adopters would disagree with you. Using your example it's like we have a chirping PC speaker now, and they're trying to sell us a sound card but all the sound card is doing is making chirps. They're not using the new tech to it's full potential, but we're still being asked to pay the price as if it was. I've seen TRUE HD content through HD cable as well as through examples of the WM9/VC1 codec on MS's website, I've played them through my HDTV and they look spectacular and I would be more then willing to pay $500 for a player that could bring that spectacular image to my DVD collection, unfortunately it hasn't happened yet, they've told me that's what their players can do but I don't see it yet. Blu-Ray is the worse of the two, it costs more and from the demo's I've seen it doesn't look much better then regular DVD, HD-DVD looks better but it doesn't even seem to be at the quality level of what I can get from a HTPC or HD cable. Then of course both formats have the issues of cost and the threat of not being supported if the alternative becomes the standard.

If this were a game of hold'em it'd be like them asking you to go all in when all you've got in your hand is an Ace and a Two, sure it could go really well but it could also go really poorly. I think even the typical early adopters are holding on to their chips until they have a better idea how things might turn out.

Re:maybe, a scan line too far

[amuro98]

I think "peak" is the wrong word here. I think of it as "delta", as in the difference in performance between the old version and the new version.

When comparing VHS to DVD, the delta in picture quality and sound was VERY large. Just about everyone could appreciate DVD as the superior medium, and the market migrated accordingly.

However, the delta between DVD and these new formats isn't quite as pronounced. Yeah, I'm sure many here could see the difference, but believe me, not everyone can. Plus throw in the fact you need to own a HDTV, and it's just not going to matter to the majority of the market at this time.

To go back to the soundcard comparison, everyone will agree that a sound card will give you better sound than the PC's onboard speaker. But does that mean that everyone here can appreciate the difference between, say, the SB-AWE32 and AWE64? Or, how about the differences between the first and second generations of the Audigy? Would you bother upgrading your Audigy to the Audigy2 (or whatever it's called)? Probably not. The delta between the two isn't worth the extra money.

Video cards still make pretty large strides each generation. Most probably don't upgrade every day a new card comes out, but can agree jumping every 2 or 3 generations is a good idea if you're serious about cutting edge games.

The only way you're going to get people to upgrade is to convince them that the delta is worth the cash. Otherwise, if they won't buy because their current equipment is "good enough."

Of course, issues like: format war, uncertain DRM, expensive players, sub-standard movies, etc. doesn't help things any. After all, it's usually the early adopters who convince their non-early-adopter friends to go buy the thing after seeing it in action at the early adopter's house :-)

"HD vs SD quality? Who cares!", says the wife

[jchenx]

In the end HD and all its accoutrements won't be rapidly adopted because they don't offer any increase in convenience. If people cared about quality, we'd still have big movie theatres playing 75mm films, but people preferred more choices and more show times.

I have to grudgingly agree with you. When I got the new HDTV and programming, I was stoked. For a long time, all I would watch were shows in HDTV, because of the amazing clarity. I bragged about it to all my co-workers and friends, and it was always the guys that were in envy.

Of course, my wife barely even notices the difference between HD and SD. It basically looks the same to her. And that's quite amazing, because SDTV on an HDTV looks even crappier than normal. Our old SDTV upstairs still gets a lot of use, because it's more than good enough for her.

Now, try getting her to notice the difference between regular DVD and a high-def DVD (Blu-ray or HD-DVD)? Might as well give up now. Or she may notice a small difference and just not care.

However, what she DOES love is the DVR functionality we got a few years ago. That's definately a sign that convenience > quality for many folks.