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No Love For The Blu-Ray
macnificent7 writes "Market analysis firm Cymfony has combed through blogs and discussion boards, and finds online consumers aren't thrilled about Sony's Blu-ray DVD technology. Many users are still bitter about the limited availability of the PS3 because of the Blu-Ray. Also many are skeptical of the Blu-Ray because of Sony's past formats that did not succeed."
Or that you shouldn't fall in love with any new movie format until it is to DVD what DVD was to VHS.
Seriously, I'm going to upgrade my collection every time you add a zero onto the storage capacity?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I agree with the parent post. The percentage of people who benefit from blu-ray or HD-DVD (users of HD TVs with decent home cinema setups and expendable money to buy everything they already bought on DVD) is considerably less than the percentage of people who benefitted from the upgrade to DVD from VHS (anyone who likes movies, hates rewinding and has some expendable money for entertainment). I would normally make some comment such as 'at least it can be used for backups or data' but it really is beaten by hard drives and simply installing from multiple DVDs right now. There is simply no killer app like there was for DVD.
Warhammer forums
HDVD is also a competing format and that family of companies is just as intransigent as the Blueray in refusing to compromise in the creation of a single format. So intransigence is on both sides here. Secondly I don't understand why people oppose this format because of prior format problems. Judge this one on its merits. Thirdly I try to look at what are the technological advantages of one format over another. Of course cost and availability of DVDs matter a lot too. But I never heard that mentioned as a negative yet for blue ray. Its not like there are such a plethora of movies on one format and not in the other yet. As far as betamax goes, it was the better technology. We would have been better off had it won. Bottom line: This one is way to early to call.
> Seriously, I'm going to upgrade my collection every time you add a zero onto the storage capacity?
Exactly. I don't give a shit about high def - I can afford but can't justify the cost of the tv/player/disks. DVDs are good enough for me, and I imagine it'll take longer for the price of this new stuff to come down in price because it'll be like the video equivalent of SACD disks - it solves a problem that simply doesn't exist for most people.
Most people are wondering how long their VHS tape player will last and if they can transfer all their tapes to DVD or hard disk.
Asking them to buy a DVD replacement when they've only just bought a boxed set of Friends DVDs is asking a bit too much of the marketplace.
Right. So (most) bloggers have a strong dislike for Sony and everything they do. How is this news? This is akin to having an analysis of Slashdot postings concluding that most Slashdotters dislike Microsoft. As it turns out, neither bloggers nor Slashdotters give an accurate picture of the demographics of regular consumers. And given that people with a grudge against some idea or company -- in this case Sony -- are always the ones who cry out the loudest, I'm actually surprised that the "analysis" didn't come out even more slanted in HD-DVDs favour.
And what's the deal about 21 percent of the online consumers disliking Blu-ray because Sony included it in the PlayStation 3? I can see several reasons why poeple might resent Blu-ray, but this is definitely not one of them. The only conceivable explanation I can see behind such reasoning is peoples aversion against anything that is Sony.
Nobody in the non-geek world knows what they are, so nobody cares.
Yes - remember the original reason why DVD was pushed so hard - unlike VHS, it was supposedly "uncopyable." But we all know how that's turned out. Now they're pushing another propietary, "uncopyable" format. Is it actually about better quality? I think not.
There's always the possibility the Chinese will come in and eat everybody's lunch, and given their much greater tendency (compared to the US government and others) to tell the various IP oligopolies to go fuck themselves, I'm all for it. I'd be perfectly happy to have a Chinese EVD player/recorder for my HD material, to go along with a Chinese Dragon Dream MIPS box running linux.
But that only works for a limited set of people with enough money, and that's not even half of America any more. It is a great theory for products like games and laptops, because they're already owned by the rich half who can afford to play the churn game. But it doesn't work as well on mass market items such as TVs and DVD players. Look at how long it's taken to replace VCRs with DVD players. Most people consider a TV a "big-ticket" item, and expect them to last 20 years or more. And nobody with a non-HD TV has any reason to consider an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.
Churn is great for cell phones, where they can continually "upgrade" them by adding more and more crappy features, and give them away (with expensive contracts.) But churn is not going to sell HDTV sets to everyone across the nation, and HDTV is a prerequisite to selling HD players.
John
"I refuse to support any format where the playback device ever has to tell me "Operation not possible". Skipping an ad or just getting to the bloody movie, for example."
Agreed: I'm so tired of sitting through several minutes of bloody trailers and anti-piracy ads _ON A DVD I'VE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR_ every time I put it in the damn player. At least on my PC I can skip over that crap.
Think about the word "obsolete" for a minute. Does it mean your old console is worn out, eroded by time and usage? Did it break? Did your N64 games stop working when the Game Cube came out? Did your Game Cube stop working on the release date of the Wii? Did Super Mario Kart expire, or did Bowser refuse to come out and play? No, it's obsolete because you were the victim of successful marketing to your own greed. "Own the shiniest video game! Your old console sucks because we have a new one! Don't be the chump with last year's console!"
Nothing went wrong with your existing system, yet you replaced it on the whim of a corporation. Churn.
Mind you, my retirement fund is based in large part on people like you continuing to churn video games and the like. Feel free to continue your participation in capitalism.
John