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Sony Thinks Blu-ray Will Sell Like DVDs by Year End
An anonymous reader writes "Sony CEO Ryoji Chubachi knows something we don't. At a press conference, he announced Sony's plan to increase Blu-ray market share to 50% of all movie discs by the end of the year. 'DVD and BD currently account for about 80% and 20%, respectively, of global demand for movie discs, Chubachi indicated. The new BD devices to be offered by Sony include models integrating an HD LCD TV with BD recording functionality, Chubachi pointed out. Sony has relied mainly on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) to promote BD, and sales of the game console will increase along with the offering by top Hollywood studios of new BD movies, Chubachi noted. However, Sony will extend its BD promotion from the current focus on the PS3 and BD players/recorders to IT devices, Chubachi pointed out.'"
Right now, the cheapest blu-ray players are still up around $400 and the discs still average (at most brick and mortar retailers) in the $30 range. Not to mention that DVD looked good on virtually any TV (even older legacy sets), wheras Blu-ray players will (for most people) require the purchase of a new, potentially very expensive, HDTV.
If you're going mainstream, you had damn sure better get those prices into the mainstream. Japan made be filled with technophiles who are willing to spend big money on the latest tech of the moment. But most of the rest of world isn't.
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I am going to wait at least 2 years. DVD's are fine for me. Maybe a drive for storage though.
Of course BD offers advantages, but even if BD were priced comparably to DVD, the selection just won't be there yet by the end of the year.
The only way I could imagine them selling at the same rate is if DVD sales drastically drop off.
I've got two perfectly good non-HD televisions in my house that I have no plans to replace anytime soon-- the longer I hold out, the better and cheaper HD sets get.
Regular DVDs look fine to me, and the price is right. When you factor in the TV needed, upgrade costs are ridiculous.
They seem to be overlooking the problem that DVDs are good enough for most people and that Blu-Ray doesn't really confer the same advantage over DVD that DVDs did over VHS.
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"If we're sitting here in 12 or 18 months time, we'll be saying, 'Why were people even thinking about a disc format when it's really about digital distribution?' Our strategy's been developed for the last six or seven years, and ever since we launched the platform this has been our big, big, big bet." So I guess you still have two camps here--Sony who thinks Blu-Ray is the future and Microsoft who is now betting on downloads of HD.
Convenience and you being at the mercy of whether or not your ISP deems that traffic taxable or expensive bulky disc boxes with insane prices? Good luck, consumer, you're bound to be screwed one way or the other!
My work here is dung.
Seriously, whats the point of spending 2-400 bucks on a DVD player and then an additional 2--50 per movie? I know that they look better, but they don't look 40 bucks better than upconverted DVD in my opinion. especially when you are talking about older movies that sure as heck were not recorded in HD....why the hell would you pay triple for someone else to unconvert it when you can do it with your 80bucks DVD player? Then again, why buy and DVD? Personally, I would prefer to download it.
I went looking for some numbers about the sales of Blu-ray players and found this from January where sales went up from 15,257 units to 21,770 units. The first number was pre-Warner announcing their support.
And some UK retailer has reported that sales are up 600%. Regardless I won't be buying a Blu-ray player any time soon.
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Looking at the local Best Buy and Walmart, I can't believe that BluRay makes up 20% of the demand of video discs. Even if you throw in all the Playstation 3 games. I'd be surprised if it was more than 5%.
Maybe 20% of generated income, since Bluray discs are not discounted and tend to be $30 or more, while DVDs are getting to be heavily discounted.
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I have a good HDTV and I'm quite happy with my upconverting DVD player. I don't see the point in spending 300-400$ on a bluray player.
So, they're going to lower prices?
I'm looking forward to the day when I can fit 20 H.264s on a BD for $1. I may have 1 offical BD title for testing purposes. I'm in China right now, where compression data rates are hitting all time lows.
Sony has a small window where Blu-Ray is available and convenient, legal downloads aren't. They had better make the most of it, or Blu-Ray will join mini-disc in the "almost but not quite" category. Remember those?
then sales of Blu-Ray will really take off. Now they pwn the market with their format, they can do whatever they want.
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First they'll have to convince the market that Blu-Ray -or even HD, for that matter- is worth the hundreds of dollars extra they charge. That hasn't happened, nor will it until prices come down to something reasonable, which of course won't happen unless Sony can convince people to pay hundreds more for a marginal improvement. It's a vicious circle.
I won't buy another drive/receiver/player for a format which doesn't allow me to store the content in a networked media library under my control. I know it's technically feasible to see movies without shuffling pieces of plastic. I won't pay for the houses of another round of media executives just because they think they can hold back technology.
Wow, I did not even think they had that much market share...
I sense a snake in the grass - no way Blu-Ray is gonna up sales to that levels without either a massive price cut or other sneaky tactics - like no longer making regular DVD drives - but that would be stupid...
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Will blu ray rips outdownload dvd rips ?
\u262D = \u5350
sorry sony, I have a PS3 and I like it - but no BDs.
a up sampling DVD player and an HD TV are all I need for the time being.
in short - DVD is perfectly acceptable for my needs (and many other peoples from the looks of things).
BR will be a premium item until I start seeing BR's of decent movies go for $10 and players go for $100.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Top 5 Reasons Blu Ray will never be in my home. (follow up)
Here's the two-step:
1. Blu-ray gets cobranded with another product, probably a video game console or computer DVD drive maker. In exchange for the Blu-ray drive being sold cheaply, it is sold under a high profile brand to increase market awareness and market share.
2. In time for Christmas, around September, they half the price of their low-end model.
These two steps will have box stores stocking as much of the stuff as people can get their hands on. It's probable the industry is going to be forced to discount CDs and DVDs anyway, since they have become hard to sell at their current prices.
technical writing / development
Forget the player prices. It's the disk prices that really matter. I was in the store yesterday and was shocked to see that most of the blue ray movies were down into the $20-$30 range, even some of the new releases. Most of the special edition stuff and the box sets were priced the same as their DVD counterparts. In one case, it was even $10 cheaper (Discovery Planet/World? I think it was).
Give it a year and even if they are still carrying a $5 premium over DVDs the sales will be fine. After all, the value added is rather obvious.
Oh, and am I the only one who finds the blue-ray trade dress kind of attractive? That long shelf full of blue boxes looks neat.
Ever so slightly off-topic.
Does anybody have reliable numbers on DVD sales before and after the copy protection was cracked?
I'd just like to know what (if any) the effect was.
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No not even close. Furthermore BluRay accounted for only 8% of total dvd sales for the week of 3/30.
This coming from the company that said Beta tapes would win the Beta/VHS war.
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The other interpretation is that regular DVD sales will crash, to the point where they're even with BluRay sales.
In a severe recession, anything is possible, especially since cable is rolling out video-on-demand like crazy, and if people have a choice between a dvr or a bluray player, they'll take the dvr.
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In related news: microsoft thinks vista sales will go up soon...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Because my desktop is Linux and my home server (connected to my tv) is also Linux.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
...family want HD quality signal, family sit and look out window!
What is the statistic on how many people own HD display devices? I'm betting it's only in the 20% range of penetration compared to all TVs.
If people don't have something to display it on, they're not going to buy the Blu Ray disks, it's that simple. Everyone who owned a TV got to switch to DVD, and it was an improvement. The utterly huge installed base of a standard definition TV means that high definition DVDs are going to be relegated to a very small percentage of people with that kit.
My house has 3 functioning TVs -- none of them HD compatible. So, what do I want with a BD disk? Unless everyone stops making normal DVDs, there is no market reason why they can improve their sales ratio. If they stop making plain DVDs, I'm going to stop buying them, not upgrade just because Sony thinks I should.
Plain and simple, Sony is dreaming!
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Two words: i phone.
One reason that Sony is so optimistic is that the cutoff for analog TV in the United States is scheduled for February 2009. They anticipate (perhaps correctly) that an enormous number of people will opt to purchase a new high def TV set in advance of the changeover to digital. They'd make ideal Christmas presents. And once a customer has laid out $700 for the TV, it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to add another $400 for a Boo-ray player to show off to their friends. In other words, Sony's statement about "increasing market share" is really a prediction of how fast the technology will be adopted, ann Sony has limited influence on adoption rate - they certainly can manufacture players and media (as well as advertise them), but ultimately it's up to the consumer to make the shift.
In this case, I think Sony's being overoptimistic. Millions of Americans will opt for a DTV converter box (or continue to subscribe to cable or satellite services that will work just fine with analog sets for the foreseeable future). The economy's going to hell in a handbasket, and that will impact the number of souls willing and able to fork out $1000+ for a shiny new boob tube as well. I suspect the HD revolution will take longer than the marketers hope.
An 80/20 split seems a bit generous...to Bluray.
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Without getting into the dificulty of predicting market conditions, the price of gas, and all the other reasons companies use for not meeting their own expectations, I'm horribly underqualified to believe one way or another if this will happen on a large scale.
I can speak through personal experience.
For the longest time, I told myself I wouldn't be interested in HD displays, at least, not for a while. Then, I got my new laptop, with an HD capable monitor. After a month I finally popped in a DVD, and after being exposed to HD content I was able to appreciate the difference. I noticed how the picture was not as sharp, colors were muted.
Then I downloaded some movie trailers in HD. I saw a considerable difference, and for the first time seriously considered purchasing a new HD TV and player.
I think the secret to Sony's success on this front will be a gradual but constant exposure to HD content over time. As people upgrade their computers and get new monitors with better capabilities, I believe the desire for HD content will grow.
Most people only get exposed to HD in retail outlets, looking at a 52" LCD and saying "Oh, isn't that nice" and then move on at the price tag. Also, those not technically inclined may not be anxious to jump headfirst into something so new.
Impulse buys are only going to get Sony so far. And it won't be easy convincing people that they need HD content. Getting them to want it is the trick. And to want it, someone needs to appreciate what they're missing (in my case, through prolonged exposure to HD and then reverted back) and affordable pricing.
Having ranted on that with no particular organization (and the above is only my opinion, as is the following) I don't see Blu-ray selling like DVDs by the end of this year. Next year, perhaps, if they can provide a competitively-priced player and televisions, and are willing to take a financial loss to gain a presence in the living room.
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> increase Blu-ray market share to 50% of all movie discs by the end of the year.
Don't trust a sloppy blog like the TFA.
The source article at Digitimes says the 50% refers to the share of devices, not movie discs.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080407PD201.html
>Sony looks to 50% global market share for its Blu-ray products in 2008
And this is one area where blu-ray has an advantage over DVD--a new blu-ray player will play my old DVDs. A DVD player won't play VHS tapes. (I don't remember seeing combo-DVD and tape players until VHS was all but dead already.)
Most of this thread seems focused on the argument for upgrading from DVD to blu-ray vs. not buying a new player--and I agree the 'don't upgrade' side is winning. But not every purchase is an upgrade with an option to purchase nothing.
I recently replaced a combo TiVo/DVD players with an HD TiVo, and so I'm in the market for a disc player. (The old TiVo is finicky about which discs it plays, so it isn't worth to keep just for DVDs.)
Not buying a new player is not an option. So my choices are buy a DVD player, probably an upscaling model in the $80-$100 range, or go with blu-ray, at about $300. If we were still in the midst of blu-ray vs HD-DVD I likely would have gone with an upscaling DVD player, but at this point it doesn't make sense to not get the newer technology.
I instead of spending $300 now, I could spend $100 now on a DVD players and then another $150-$200 on blu-ray when the prices come down, but that just doubles the amount of time I spend wrestling with the rats nest of cable behind my entertainment center.
If the option was go blu-ray or stick with an old DVD player, I'd stick with what I have. But since I am getting a new player either way, it's harder to make the case for DVD.
The biggest sticking point is price. I think $400 is a bit steep for a standalone (although the PS3 is great value), but I expect we'll see sub $300 and possibly even a sub $200 player by year end. The major manufacturers are all producing new models in the next couple of months so they're going to mark down their old models accordingly. On top of that economies of scale and fiercer competition will ensure cheaper prices.
I don't see Blu Ray capturing 50% of movie sales for several years unless we're specifically talking about new chart releases. It may well capture 50% of hardware sales though, especially if we see some significant discounts in time for Christmas.
I won't spend 500 on a BluRay player plus almost 30 for each movie.
The way I see it, Sony is feeding their propaganda to the public to make their market share wish come true. Feed enough BS to the people and some will believe and follow suit, making the BS come true.
It reminds me of gas prices here in Canada. We were warned by analysts a year or two back that gasoline will reach $1.00/L frequently enough that when it happened, some complained but most expected it and accepted it as inevitable. We are frequently being primed by oil companies for $1.50/L fuel by this summer (justified or not), what are the chances it will happen with little resistance?
Where the analogy is similar, Sony is telling the marketplace they will get the market share they predict, and those who will listen will figure to jump on board, interpreting it inevitable.
Like a lot here, I'm not convinced that DVD's need to be phased out, as the only selling point that BD has is higher data storage limit.
However, having a PS3 means I _already_ have a BD player, and I have the relevant HDTV (Whoops, it's _also_ a Sony Bravia, there was a lovely deal for it, and the PS3 came with the deal). And the PS3 as a platform makes some sense, as it is a 400 Euro/USD BD player that can play games, browse, and a crapload of other stuff.
For me, the difference is immediate, though not entirely telling. But I do know I'll be definitely thinking about getting a movie in BD form before the DVD version, not because I snub DVDs, but because I get all the benefits. For example, the BD extras on 300 are pretty darn awesome to have on just one disc instead of having to change discs all the time.
Let's not even start on LoTR. I would definitely buy those again, if ever released on BD. Maybe this time I can watch everything on one disc instead of 5...
Blu-ray is the Vista of ROMs?
...may be the manipulation of the profits/royalties/agreements necessary to make BR hardware now that HD-DVD is more or less officially dead.
Short term they may start pushing the market by selling at a loss, knowing that long-term they're not really competing with anyone and by flooding the market with BR hardware they can create momentum.
Long-term they may switch up who's allowed to make players and cut some of the royalty costs to bring in more of the low-end Chinese manufacturers to keep player prices low, or at least give people ~$100 BR options.
Given if you go into the average UK high street shop Blu-ray disks are between £20 and £30 they need to think about their pricing first! Even online prices are quite high.
So the signal from my local station should always look better, unless of course they broadcast from a compressed source.
Besides, blu-ray and even hd-dvd players love nothing better than to tell me I don't have a HDMI connector, especially on dvd movies (not the hd versions) so it won't even upconvert!
Somehow I think this is a PR release for stock holders.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Sony is home to a *LOT* of movie content. I can see them taking a money hit and releasing some top titles in BD only to move the players and format.
So I've got an HDTV and am very happy with it. However, I'm not about to dedicate all my bandwidth to downloading some movie and ruining my VOIP connection. What I don't understand is why people don't make a big deal out of the HD content that the cable providers give me in both free and on-demand ($5/movie for 24hrs). I can get quite a lot of HD movies 'on demand' for the cost of a player and the BR disks. Yeah i know I can't watch some movie whenever I want, but I've got a stack of DVDs that I haven't watched in quite a while. I know people with libraries worth of DVDs that are no more than 'look how many movies I have'. Why not just rent them from blockbuster?
Is Microsoft/iTunes the answer? Not when bandwidth is to precious. But cable company provided content doesn't interfere with my VOIP/broadband (otherwise I believe that would be double billing).
However, as a Cisco shareholder I look forward to increased downloads, torrents, VOIP....
double packs with the dvd and the blu-ray disc packed together? Or if size isn't a big issue, then double-layered discs, with the dvd on one side and the blu-ray on the other.
anata sekai o kakumei surush ga nai deshou? Anata no susumu michi wa yoi shite arimasu.
I'll consider BlueRay, when cheap, code-free players are available.
Sony is deluding itself if it thinks that they are going to pull off those kinds of numbers. Consumers don't forget too easily what companies do to them. From rootkits and betamax, to ATRAC3? Come on. I'm quite confortable with my DVD library and my DVD player. Not even Sony could stop the production of DVD media, they would be fighting one helluva bad PR campaign against consumers. What about households who have no interest in the Blu Ray format? It seems that Sony is trying to make the Blu Ray format succeed over DVD by default. In order to ensure that Blu Ray doesn't fail like Betamax did, what better way than to instill fear in consumers. How do you do that? Discontinue the DVD media format, forcing everyone to buy into Blu Ray. But, there is a problem with that. If you force consumers to buy your product, they won't. Not unless there are huge price drops. Currently, if you shop around, you can purchase a new release DVD movie for anywhere between $13 and $16. Blu Ray movies cost an additional $10. Do the math. If you were a consumer, which would you buy? To expect Sony to pull off the kind of numbers that they are expecting is going to warrant a miracle of some kind. There aren't many titles available for Blu Ray. TV Shows? They're practically non-existant. Sony risks alienating the studios if they resort to this. And what about those studios who support Blu Ray but who haven't full tilt into the format? Universal, Paramount, Fox, and the rest of the studios are releasing their content on Blu Ray but at nowhere the capacity that Sony wants them to. This is just going to result in even more problems for Sony. I'm quite happy with my DVD Player and my DVD Library and I don't require anything fancy which would require me to buy a $400 + blu ray player and multitudes of $35 + blu ray disks and a 32" + HD television set.
I couldn't tell you how aggressive the over-the-air compression is compared to Blu-ray, but standard HD broadcasting is most definitely compressed.
Why do you need upconverting? Your HD display won't show SD video full screen?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Integrated disc drives, and integrated AV systems in general, are a pet peeve of mine.
I always encourage people NOT to buy them, and the larger/pricier the device the louder my opposition gets.
Most people don't have a clue that laser diodes have a particularly finite lifespan--I myself wouldn't really consider buying anything more than a midrange* dvd player
There is enough junk going into landfills already, particularly those precious-precious dense polymers that individuals and manufactures seem to think that we have so much of, well they won't be thinking that in a few years time
I think that such (integrated) products are, from a value-for-money p.o.v., particularly opportunistic
Anyway no-ones gonna read this s#1t so I'm gonna wrap it up: those all-in-one 'so you thought you could sing' american idol kareoke boxes with their monochrome crt screens(!) are truely the work of devil
*Unless it could boot a linux kernal, anyone know if it could/can be done?
They're saying that DVDs make up 80% of sales and Blu-Ray 20% right now. A lot of people don't believe it.
I believe it. Why? Rentals. Most of the people I know with DVD players do not buy many DVDs. They rent tons, but do not actually purchase many.
Is it hard to believe that Blu-Ray early adopters are more likely to buy media than rent it when compared with late adopters? No, it's not hard to believe at all, which means each DVD sold is on average viewed by more people via rentals. And that makes the 80%/20% split much more plausible.
Can they drive up Blu-Ray usage so it makes up 50% of sales? Dunno. Seems ambitious. But the thing to remember is, the number of people consuming Blu-Ray does not have to equal the number of people consuming DVD for it to be true. You could have 90% of the population sticking with DVD, but as long as the Blu-Ray folks make purchases all out of proportion to their numbers and the DVD folks stick with rentals, it's possible for Sony to hit their numbers.
Sony has a history of producing technically superior proprietary products that are more expensive than the competition - and losing. Betamax, Memory Sticks, Mini discs. Then they grudgingly admit defeat and make a shitload of money building components based on someone else's storage technology, competing on price and quality.
But what do they do now? Their proprietary technology has won out, but have they ever been in this situation before? It sounds like there past and current plan is to make profit by keeping prices high due to keeping a tight grip their proprietary tech. But they've never gotten past the first market hurdle to see if that actually works - in their mind, their business model MUST work, because it hasn't actually *failed*, it was just never allowed to succeed.
I think Sony may be in for a harsh education in consumer economics and psychology.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
...ain't just a river in Egypt.
I'm waiting for a carousel player. Having a 5-disc carousel DVD player is great: new Netflix dvd shows up, throw it in the player and it's queued up ready to go.
I have a PS3. In a good month I can find two new Blu-Ray releases worth watching, maybe one will be worth buying. If Sony really wants Blu-Ray to sell, it needs to focus on getting some good films out there, and stop wasting resources on back-catalog garbage like the recent anniversary edition of the disastrously horrible Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
I am REALLY picky with buying just regular DVD players. I will only buy players that are region-free, or are easily hackable to be region-free. Why? I'm an anime collector, and I have a few R2 DVDs from Japan (The Rose of Versailles LD boxset was/is kinda hard to come by, so I jumped on it when it was reissued on DVD). Region coding is a lot broader on Blu-Ray discs, with Japan the the US being in the same region, but unless there's a Blu-Ray player that will play my old-style DVDs, both R1 and R2, DO NOT WANT.
I would argue that BluRay accounted for 0% of total dvd sales.
I hope prices drop. But the video and audio quality improvement of blu-ray over DVD is obvious even on modest equipment.
It is not just a matter of resolution. It is also a matter of much more subtle compression.
If you want to experience the _best_ that blu-ray has to offer, then you will need some pretty good equipment, since blu-ray quality scales well, so to speak. Even if you own ultra high end equipment, you really will not miss anything from blu-ray.
But that does _not_ mean that you _need_ such equipment to see the difference compared with DVD. DVD is really crappy. MPEG2 sucks. Having 9GB for 2 hours of MPEG2 video and DD5.1 audio sucks. It looks awful on cheap 32" LCD screens at normal viewing distances compared to blu-ray with its 50GB and AVC/H.264 codec. Even if that 32" LCD screen has a resolution of 1366x768 and not 1920x1080. Let alone larger screens...
I have a projector and a tiny 77" screen. DVD is totally unsuited for this purpose compared to blu-ray. I am _thrilled_ that we get a new modern format worthy of 2008, instead of being stuck with crappy DVDs that remind me of VCD MPEG1 videos from the 90s.
Now, if we could just get a new uncompressed audio format on blu-ray also, and have all of Pink Floyds albums remastered for this format. Screw SACD with it's 9GB.
So far, I have pretty good results from LCD computer monitors, at home and in the office. I get to look at five of those regularly, and the only problem so far are minor pixel defects on two of them.
These screens have resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 pixels, which is in the ballpark for HD. The later models are also fast enough for viewing video, and 22'' 16:9 models with 1650 x 1050 pixels are becoming commonplace in the market. Prices start at 200 euros ($300),and some of those have sound and HDMI.
Now all that is missing are somewhat larger screen sizes, and you have a nice screen for a HD TV. The rest of the TV should not be that expensive either. I'm pretty sure that we will see 400 euro/$600 HD TV sets at a reasonable size by 2010.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Blu-ray's biggest problem will be demonstrating additional value to joe six-pack. Sony needs to look at what happened to the music industry:
CDs had obvious quality improvements over cassettes and records at the time. As the hardware prices fell, the $5 to $10 premium for CDs was justifiable in the minds of most consumers. Two successors to the CD format (SACD and DVD audio) have pretty much failed - the cost is too high and the benefit over conventional CDs is not obvious to most consumers.
Today, almost no one I know listens to CDs any longer. Compressed audio in the form of MP3s are good enough and very convenient.
Blu-ray will have the same problem. DVDs are "good enough" for most people, and you can't beat the convenience of on-demand high-def video. Devices like Apple TV/iTunes and set-top boxes from cable companies will have the lion's share of the HD movie distribution business in the future.
Physical discs like DVDs will be relegated to portable use (kids in the back seat of a car...etc), and in that environment, do you really care about HD? If the answer is no, then Blu-ray is in trouble.
-ted
Do Blu-rays look better than DVDs? Yes, at least on screens that have higher native resolution than DVD. But at the current price, even if I do own one of those screens, I'll stick to DVDs. I prefer to buy two DVDs than one Blu-ray, and I will only buy a Blu-ray player... when the PS3 price will drop.
You are correct. I should have said 8% of movies sold on disc ;).
I agree it is crazy optimistic to expect parity this year. 2 or 3 years would be my estimate. But the FUD is a little out of proportion.
Media price FUD:
Everyone moans about the price of disks. Buy at Amazon. Disks are already average about $4 more than DVD and they have sales all the time.
Right now Amazon is having buy 2 get one free, bringing the average close to around $17. Anyone paying $30 for a BD is an idiot.
Player price FUD:
$400 seems to be everyones entry level price (with sales hitting close to $300). I paid $400+ for just about every first player I got (DVD/CD/VHS Hi-Fi) and those were dollars worth a lot more than todays. $300 to $400 is nothing I will think twice over. Prices are falling just as fast as they did for DVD. Sure BD won't take over the market till they hit $100 (the price where I bought for my mother/grandmother), but $300 would not be a big deal to anyone who just spent $1000+ on a 1080p screen and would like some HD for it.
Profile FUD:
Please can we stop the nonsense about profile 1.0 players, not playing new disks.
1.0 was the initial profile (aka grace period profile) It plays all movies, all standard extras, anything DVD would do.
1.1 is the last mandatory profile (aka final standard profile) adds capability for Picture in Picture extras (Yipee).
2.0 is optional and adds BD live crap. Ability to connect to the internet to download garbage (trailer games etc..)
They all play all movies and all standard extras. The new ones just add dubious junk like PIP and internet.
Upscaling FUD:
I laugh almost every time I read someone saying upscaling is good enough. Like upscaling somehow makes new detail or something. No matter what you do, you will get an upscaled image on a higher resolution screen. Aside from broken deinterlacing, upscaling is trivial and does not match up with true HD in any way.
Download FUD:
This one is even funnier. Downloads will kill DVD long before it dents Blu Ray. Quality/bandwidth/restrictions/ etc will all keep this much further out of the mainstream than Blu Ray.
I agree Parity is a couple of years off, but more from inertia, than the typical FUD.
"Sony has a small window where Blu-Ray is available and convenient, legal downloads aren't. They had better make the most of it, or Blu-Ray will join mini-disc in the "almost but not quite" category. Remember those?"
I keep hearing this, but I don't buy it, even for a second.
CD sales are really only now beginning to suffer significantly, and takes about 600MB to download a pristine copy of an album. Even so, most people are downloading compressed versions of the songs that take 1/10th of the space.
DVD's are the juggernaut of movie sales, and the ability to pirate these movies has been around for years. But it can take 7GB to download a movie, so very few people ever download uncompressed movies. So they accept degraded movies with no extras. And so DVD's are still selling.
And now you want me to believe that somehow digital downloads are going to kill sales of high definition movies in the near term, when some phantom window expires? Don't be silly. if people don't download full DVD's because the file size is too large, they certainly won't download 25-40GB high definition movies. They'll go on being happy with their over-compressed, feature-stripped versions, and the growing number of people who are buying 1080p flat panels will continue to add a PS3 or some other player to their purchase.
The far more likely source of piracy is not digital downloads - it's simple copying. The high cost of media will keep that at bay for a while.
Finally, nobody with a brain will buy movies by digital download in the near term. Hard drives don't last forever, and unless you buy the right to repeatedly download the movie in perpetuity - and the provider promises to always be there to provide the download - then you are faced with a decision. Live with the possibility of sudden loss of your purchase, or commit yourself to a never-ending cycle of backups, continually replacing the aging copies with new ones. A 50 movie collection might need 1.25 terabytes of space for backups, but then that's hardly a problem when you way how convenient they are, right?
For movies, physical media is king - and it will remain king for a very long time.
Needing a DVD player for my home theater, I went with an HD-DVD player for $99. HD content looks really great, and regular DVD content looks just fine. The biggest gripe for me is that it takes FOREVER to start the stupid machine. What's that? You left the disc in from last night and now you're in a hurry to return it to Blockbuster? Hit the button and take a seat while you wait for the silly thing to boot and finally decide to eject the disc. For a consumer electronic device the wait times for nearly all operations are ridiculous. Until it gets back to the ease and speed of operation that we are all used to in our DVD players I'll be waiting to upgrade again. I've gone to using the xbox for normal DVD playing because it is ready in 1/3 the time of the new, fantastic HD device.
No, Sony doesn't believe this, but they sure want us to believe it. There's no way BD is going to reach 50% market share before HDTVs are ubiquitous worldwide and player prices drop below $150. Not to mention the ridiculous cost of the discs themselves.
This is more PR bullshit from Sony trying to sway more people to buy their product by convincing them there will be some (false) shortage of DVDs in the near future.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
same three seem to be at the top of every damn news story each day!
Army of Darkness : The BluRay Edition is certainly worthy of an oscar or two compared to that blurry old DVD version, the acting becomes much more apparent with all those extra pixels
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was/still kinda am excited about blu ray because of it's 50 gig dual layer capacity-when they come down a bit in price they're going to be great for backup and archiving. This also makes them great as a medium for titanic ps3 games. For movies though it seems like nitpicking for the benefits.
Personally I'm partial towards the wireless streaming/media server setup. I hate fumbling around with disks.
In order for Blu-Ray to sell like DVDs, there have to be a lot of Blu-Ray players out there. And there's no sense getting a Blu-Ray player if you don't have an HDTV.
There are a hell of a lot of people who still don't have HDTVs, and there are a hell of a lot of people who do have HDTVs who don't care to get a Blu-Ray player.
I just looked up a random Blu-Ray player at Amazon: $389.00. You can get a DVD player for around $30, and it still looks pretty good. This guy is banking on more people being videophiles than there actually are.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Yeah, I have had the same reaction. Wait for periodic Amazon sales, or the inevitable discounts down the road.
There is an interesting parallel there: at this point in the DVD rollout, say back in '99 or so, I was doing the same thing for DVDs. They were running $25 and up at retail, so I would wait for sales, or buy them online for less. There were a number of online sites that were exclusively DVD discounters, though most of them eventually went bust when retail prices dropped.
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Every DVD player that I know of can be flashed with new firmware by the simple expedient of burning the update file to a CD-ROM and putting it in the drive. It was common to do this back in the day, because sometimes the old firmware couldn't play some newer DVDs. Or sometimes people did it to gain access to extra features like region code hack menus.
You can update the firmware on Blu-ray players as well. Probably the exact same way.
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
BD+ has supposedly been cracked, but only by one proprietary software vendor. Sorry, the format isn't quite playable yet. When I know I can play the movies, I might start buying. Until then: why would I spend a dime?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I was an HD early-adopter, and now I have a $500 dead weight in my cabinet. Anybody need HD-player parts?
---scott
Robocode in VB: http://scott-thomason.org/vbrobocode
Only if they are talking about Japan-only.
Here in brazil it's way too much expensive and DVDs are really becoming popular now with prices dropping and piracy levels lowering. I don't think people that pay R$200 (less than 120 US dollars) can pay R$ 3500 (more than 2000 dollars) for the player. The media price is like 20 for DVD and 100+ for DB.
In all seriousness, my laptop, my wife's laptop, my PC, my wife's PC, the PVR in the entertainment center, and the cheap portable DVD players that we're considering getting for my wife and for her parents all use DVDs, not Blu-Ray. EVEN IF the desktop PCs become cheap to upgrade to Blu-ray I'd have to buy at least two readers and a burner, and I'd still have to buy laptop drives and install them, and I'm not aware of any reasonably-priced ($100) Blu-ray portable player.
I'm still converting Laserdisc, SVHS, and VHS (thanks to COX Cable for removing Turner Classic Movies from analog cable) into a format that will at least play on the laptops if not be burnt back to DVD, and I'm not going to add even more optical players to my already electrical-straining entertainment system until I'm truly convinced that I should bother.
In my opinion, the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD was a red herring anyway. Like with Betamax, Sony still has to compete with another less expensive, consumer friendly format, and their only advantage this time is that their device can play regular DVDs. Rather than a format elimination, I suspect that Blu-ray will be to Laserdisc as DVD is to VHS; the videophiles will spend the money for better quality (or the perception of it based on the sum of equipment in their racks), while the regular consumer will go, "Oh! Look! Spaceballs is five bucks in the bargain bin!", or, "That promotional price for The Bourne Ultimatum at fifteen ninety-nine is a steal!" (with the unsaid, "Compared to $30 for Blu-ray.") and the technology might be adopted, but again, not nearly as widespread as a cheap, good, established format.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This is worth repeating:
The real benefit is getting the HDMI OUTPUT.
Here are my personal observations:
(1080p 40" Samsung TV)
480i DVD Player (Sony) with S-VIDEO output: baseline.
Same DVD Player with COMPONENT output: 50% increase in quality.
New Up Convert Pioneer DVD Player with HDMI Output: 25% additional increase.
Just a guesstimate. But again, this is about the cable being used more than anything else.
IMO, DVD will be tough to dislodge from its perch. What Sony appears to be ignoring is that freely available tools on the Internets now allow people to rip and encode DVDs so they can load up their Media Centers, their portable players, etc... in much the same way that people rip and encode CDs to mp3s to play on their portable players.
Until Blu-Ray discs can be ripped and encoded economically into other forms of media, and shared/downloaded to other devices, it may well be that only hardcore "videophiles" will collect these discs.
There all sorts of things that can go wrong in the signal chain. Especially when know-nothings in major stores are setting up things. White crush, black crush, multiple passes of scaling to the wrong resolutions, all sorts of crappy "enhancing" filters and "sharpness" etc. that will introduce artifact galore.
And of course, there _are_ Blu-Ray releases that are poorly done. Transfers can be bad. Mastering can be bad. And 31.87% of the current releases use MPEG2, for some tragical reason. http://www.blu-raystats.com/stats.php
If you compare _good_ DVDs played with a _good_ upscaler such as the Reon chip, with blu-ray, both playing on a well calibrated system in which the above mistakes are not made, the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray is night and day. Especially on large displays.
Most slashdotters seem to hate Blu-Ray, but it seems that none of you have seen it, at least not under the circumstances where it excels.
Remember that we're still at the beginning of Blu-Ray lifespan. This format might seem a little too "modern" or "excessive" to you, but if it is going to be the mainstream format not just for a short period of time, but for the next 10 years, why aim for less? Blu-ray will not seem like overkill in a few years. It will feel necessary and adequate.
At 30 bucks? I don't think so... When prices are like DVDs, they will sell like DVDs. I personally don't buy anything more than about $15... and I've been tightening due to the economy and the fact that movies suck lately...
anyway... tag: nowayat30bucks
Not to mention that DVD looked good on virtually any TV (even older legacy sets), wheras Blu-ray players will (for most people) require the purchase of a new, potentially very expensive, HDTV.
Why? You can just as easily hook a Blu-Ray player up to an old TV until such time as you can get an HD set. At least then you are buying media that will support higher resolutions with new sets going forward.
No way I'd buy a DVD these days,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What about movies shot in film in the 90's that then had computer-based processing? What resolution were these scanned in at and processed in before transferring back to film? Higher or lower than current HiDef?
You're not seeing the whole picture.
He's seeing this a lot more clearly than you are.
I don't have a digital tuner (HDMI capable), so (I believe) I would need to replace it to drive my existing surround system or at minimum get some sort of converter box
So you are arguing with someone who has DONE based on what you BELIEVE?
What I KNOW is that with a PS3 (for example) I can play Blu-Ray discs, and output using toslink (fiber) to my (rather old) receiver and get Dolby Digital 5.1 just fine. No converter required. For video output I use component, not HDMI - HDMI is not required by most players for video output, because many older HDTV's do not support HDMI either.
Even for things that do support HDMI primarily, other audio outputs will remain common because people are even slower to replace audio equipment than TV's. You might not get uncompressed audio buy DD 5.1 is still fantastic for most movies.
So all you would need is some kind of player and a TV. Frankly I use an older projector with sub-720p resolution and HD content still looks far better than DVD.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has BluR achieved parity with VHS already? How the milestones fall.
The only possible way BluR achieves parity with DVD in under a year is if DVD sales crater worse than Tunguska. No doubt Sony is working overtime behind the scenes to fit DVD with a $500m pair of cement overshoes.
Thirty years ago $500m would buy you a blob of concrete about the size of the Olympic stadium in Montreal, which would suffice, but not the launch vehicle capable of lobbing it far enough into space to achieve a 10km/s atmospheric reentry.
I have no idea how Sony plans to achieve this incredible acceleration of the demise of DVD.
The advantage of Blue Ray is not nearly as compelling
You wouldn't say that if you owned one. I find it compelling enough that I either buy a Blu-Ray disc, or wait for it to come down in price (or on sale) if I feel the cost is too much. Buying DVD at this point is a waste of money unless it's something I fear will never be released again in my lifetime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some people are already complaining that their profile 1.0 Blu-Ray players can't play the latest discs.
No they aren't because that was a single model of one manufacturers Blu-Ray player. Buying any Blu-Ray player today will let you watch any disc they release later - you just may not be able to access the movie-themed web store from the disc itself. Is that really such a crisis?
Meanwhile a DVD player will fail on 100% of all Blu-Ray discs inserted, so it's pretty obvious which is more future proof.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Microsoft has decided the future will be online media only - because when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The loss of HD-DVD means online media is looking pretty good to them now.
Meanwhile, just as Sony is building up Blu-Ray support in parallel they are also readying a PS3 video store as well. That's because Sony realizes that in the future, consumers will purchase some things online and some things on disc - that's just the way things are. I know for many things if I were going to really "buy" a movie I would greatly prefer to have a disc I could loan rather than an online "purchase" I can only watch myself and has more limited portability.
Heck, I like buying TV shows from iTunes but even there I have always considered them very long term "rentals" instead of true purchases. Until video DRM goes the way music DRM is going, physical purchases will always greatly outnumber online purchases because of the convenience they offer (yes, despite the heavy DRM put upon Blu-Ray it's 1000x better than the DRm you get with online media).
Not to mention that as a movie lover I prefer watching Blu-Ray movies over highly compressed 720p video that took some time to download. I can get a disk from Netflix almost as quickly as online.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the OP should have a mentioned that 20% market share, and Sony's goal of taking 50% market share with Blu-ray, is only IN JAPAN. It should be noted that the Japanese media market is much smaller; due to higher prices (DVDs cost $30-50, with only bargain titles hitting below $20). Capturing 50% by volume of the Japanese market is dramatically different then the US market, just by the sheer scale and volume difference, hence, titling this post "Sony Thinks Blu-ray Will Sell Like DVDs by Year End" is a disservice to Slashdot readers to the facts.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/Blu-ray-sales-hit-record-in-Japan.html
In the US, Blu-ray consists of 8% of media sales calculated only from the top 20 sellers.
Source, Home Meida Magazine (warning: netbook link):
Chart on Page 3
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom040608/
His opinion is not worthless. Perception matters for market success.
But then the real question is, does his perception match the rest of the market I notice a great preponderance of his opinion on Slashdot, that I do not see when talking to my friends of watching people at Best Buy.
His opinion is basically worthless (in terms of using it to predict consumer trends) if it's not indicative as to what the rest of the market does. Sales figures to date, indicate the rest of the market disagrees with him.
The full truth of the matter is of course that the market as a majority does not harbor a secret hatred of Sony that they disguise in proclamations that really low res video upsampled looks anywhere hear as good as a far higher resolution source with a better color gamut.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
are most of theese HD sets big enough to appreciate teh difference between blueray and well upscaled DVD.
Yes, because detail and color improvements are easily apparent even on the smaller sets. Remember with smaller sets most people sit closer anyway to get a similar field of view.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sony has a small window where Blu-Ray is available and convenient, legal downloads aren't.
First of all - how long until I can really purchase downloaded video, and share it with a friend? If I buy a Blu-Ray disc I can take it to someone else's house, or loan it out. I also don't have to worry about more than a single title going bad because of disc failure, instead of potentially dozens or hundreds vanishing at once.
Once you figure out how many years that takes, then please do the calculation of how long it is until most people have fast enough internet that they can download an HD movie in a reasonable time, and can download more than a few movies without blowing out the hidden ISP download cap.
But the main thing is that the delay for deep consumer acceptance is not technical (which can be solved for) it's political, and that always takes far longer to fix (and sometimes is never fixed!).
I'm frankly not sure when online video will really ever become more convenient for consumers than physical discs, for something someone likes enough to own. For TV shows, sure - I use itunes myself. But even there at the end of a season I'd buy a Blu-Ray disc set if I really liked the series, even if I had bought every episode from iTunes previously (Battlestar Galactica a case in point when they ever release Blu-Ray versions).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Have you been to a Best Buy lately Almost all (or in some cases, all) of the HD-DVD stock has been removed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Buy Blue ray player now, and buy it again next year when the 2.0 profile becomes mandatory for the published disks.
But it's not mandatory. New discs that offer 2.0 support will play on any player today, and continue to do so.
If you don't care that a disc can connect to the internet, then it doesn't matter if you don't have 2.0 support. And frankly for a lot of people just being able to play the movie and watch the extras is enough.
It's true that if you wanted to be safe buying a PS3 would be a good idea, and as it goes down in price though the year will probably continue to be a good idea. Nothing wrong with that as it's perfectly valid to buy a PS3 for Blu-Ray playing only.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Finally a great summary refuting all the points that are so endlessly repeated every time Blu-Ray comes up on Slashdot, and a whole new generation of posters get the chance to make themselves look as short-sighted as the people responding to the first iPod.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Problem is we are all thinking like men. Geek guys that is. What happens when the wife finds out you just spent $400 dollars on yet "another" DVD player and those "NEW" disney movies on "Blu-Ray" for some reason won't play in the Mini-Van??
I won't play in the kids bedrooms, or in your room, or in the family room.
How many DVD players do you have?? I have 4 that I can think of that get used all the time. So that is not $400, that is $1600 to switch to Blu-Ray.
Yeah, going "Blu-Ray" means that if you spend $35 dollars on SpiderMan 3, well, now I can't watch it on my portable DVD player, I can't watch in my mini-van, etc. That was one nice thing about a lot of HD-DVD discs at least.
Sonny we loves ya. I still remember what you did.
I don't know if any individual's disinterest or interest is indictative of the rest of the market. Neither do you. Either may turn out to be worthless as predictors.
You're still missing the point - superior performance is only important if consumers feel the need for better performance. Sales seem to show that picture quality is less important than slimness for displays. Sales show that MP3s are good enough for most people, and CDs are good enough for almost everyone. SACD and DVD-A flopped.
He did NOT say that upsampled DVDs look as good as BR. You invented that strawman. He said he was satisifed with his DVD player. Not that he couldn't tell the difference, but that the difference isn't worth the cost of a new player.
The people you saw at Best Buy have already passed the first hurdle. They have decided that they want something new. Any retailer can tell you that getting them in the store is the hard part. I'm pointing out that most people haven't gone to Best Buy to buy a movie player, they have one that is good enough, and they stayed home.
The problem Sony faces is not demonstrating that Blu-Ray looks better than DVD. That's easy. The problem is getting people to care about the improvement.
For example, the most popular beer in the US is Bud Light. It shouldn't be hard to find a better tasting beer. But most Bud Light drinkers are satisified, and aren't looking for anything better. Taste tests won't matter; they aren't looking. Winning the taste test is much easier than convincing people to take the test.
Blu-Ray discs aren't gong to sell for shit while the players are $600.
Make a $149 Blu-Ray player with all the trimmings and maybe possibly the discs might start selling.
They're using their grammar skills there.
With the recession in full swing, people today are voting with their wallets. Gone are the days when every other guy had a few thousand to toss around to try out the latest new toy.
Seriously now Sony wants us to call BluRay 'BD'? That sounds like a disease you'd catch from an upscale hooker. 'Damn you, now I have painfully inflamed BD on my Wii'
I have a modest collection of purchased DVDs (circa 120-150 discs). I have a big collection of recorded DVDs (circa 1,000+)- mainly movies off pay-tv that I haven't had time to watch over the years and have movbed to cheapo blanks to manage drive space on my PVR. This is most of what I use DVDs for. Call me when Blu Ray can record HD content consistently and reliably - onto disc without obnoxious DRM. Until then, DVD remains the best option.
This may sound ridiculos, because what you said is logical, but incomplete.
Responsible people will not spend....
is more correct. Problem is, the recession is directly connected to people being irresponsible up and down the board. For example, taking a 100% mortgage on a house that they knew they couldn't afford. Problem is, these are exactly the people the entertainment industry has classically targetted.
The entertainment industry thrives on recession since the unemployment rate goes sky rocketing. And people tend to stay home more often. So, they'll spend an unemployment check on a bigger TV and a bluray player while the getting is good. Cause when people say "recession" those people find excuses not to look for new jobs like :
"We Honey, there's a recession, it's not like the employer's are lining up to hire overqualified guys like me, things will get better soon. By the way, what did you bring home from the diner for dinner?"
Hate the break the news to you, there are a lot more people like that than there are of the ones who believe "It's a bad idea to spend $400 to upgrade my DVD player to bluray when I don't know how long I'll have an income for at the moment".
Does Sony think they'll sell more discs or do they think AppleTV, Unbox and the others will increase movie sales and rentals so much it will devistate the entire DVD/Bluray market?
I don't know if any individual's disinterest or interest is indictative of the rest of the market. Neither do you. Either may turn out to be worthless as predictors.
Actually I do based on sales data as I said. That's certainly better than simply relating my own experience.
superior performance is only important if consumers feel the need for better performance. Sales seem to show that picture quality is less important than slimness for displays.
But the slim displays are all HD too, so you can't really say to what degree picture quality was important - because slim or no, people are buying sets with a higher level of quality compared to traditional sets.
He did NOT say that upsampled DVDs look as good as BR. You invented that strawman. He said he was satisifed with his DVD player.
I never said he thought they looked as good. I only pointed out he was claiming that "everyone else" would be "as happy" with upsampled DVD's - which sales figures show, when people can they go with Blu-Ray generally judging by the quicker than DVD acceptance rate.
The people you saw at Best Buy have already passed the first hurdle. They have decided that they want something new. Any retailer can tell you that getting them in the store is the hard part. I'm pointing out that most people haven't gone to Best Buy to buy a movie player, they have one that is good enough, and they stayed home.
But that's not what sales figures are showing. They are saying that more people than you would expect are, in fact, going out to get a player even though they are still somewhat expensive. They show that a large percentage of the populace is ready to buy a Blu-Ray player and derive good benefit from the quality, in that they have HD sets already. They are showing sales rates for Blu-Ray climbing even faster than DVD rates which is pretty amazing when you consdier that technically there are less obvious advantages of Blu-Ray over DVD than there were iwht DVD over VHS - which is itself yet another indicator that people in fact do care a lot more about picture quality than you or other people are willing to admit.
The problem Sony faces is not demonstrating that Blu-Ray looks better than DVD. That's easy. The problem is getting people to care about the improvement.
I agree that is the challenge they face but as noted, sales figures all over show people do care more than you would expect.
For example, the most popular beer in the US is Bud Light.
The most purchased is not the most popular.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've gotten a few ideas to work around issues in the short term, but my point is upgrading obsoletes all my old hardware and so eventually I need to replace it all, which costs thousands.
But that's the thing. Upgrading to a PS3 as Blu-Ray player, obsoletes nothing you have now. You can simply wait until the right time to upgrade, when it does not cost "thousands" to do so. That's exactly what I am doing. I have a three year old projector, about a fifteen year old sound system, and speakers going on 20!. Although I'd like to replace the projector it will probably be a year or more until I do so. And I have no plans in the next few years to do anything at all to the sound system.
I have neither an HDTV or PS3 (for blu ray), so I'd have to purchase both (PS3 first or both at the same time).
Why? You can still play games or watch movies on a standard set. It will look better if you get an HD-TV but Blu-Ray even just on normal sets will look slightly better than DVD because of the better color definition. Or, to go cheap look for used HD sets. Even just 720p looks fantastic compared to normal displays.
Upgrading my DVR to one with HDMI should be trivial, but upgrading my service to HD costs some.
Then don't do either! Why upgrade the DVR at all? There's no need for HDMI for audio, even from modern stuff. You can still make use of TOSLINK or other audio standards.
And even if you can receive HD-TV, if you don't want to spend the money - don't. Just get a cheap converter box for over the air HD (which you've going to need within a year anyway) and make do with broadcast HD.
I also have a problem with connecting in my current DVD burner/player VCR combo which I use for archiving because that doesn't have HDMI.
I think you are really confused about HDMI as I can't see why you have a need for it anywhere. I use a mac mini as a home theater PC, so I can also burn stuff out of that - and use toslink out from that.
Even if you get a receiver that supports HDMI, why can't you continue to use the same audio outputs you have been?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What about all the people with standard 4:3 screens? They're not going to buy BD movies in 16:9 widescreen. I'm not sure what the market share is for sales in moves between 16:9 and 4:3...