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Sony Thinks Blu-ray Will Sell Like DVDs by Year End

Posted by Zonk on from the ambitious-planning dept.

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.'"

10 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. Then you had better lower those prices! by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    By the time DVD reached that kind of market share, the prices on players had dropped to the sub-$200 range and disc prices had dropped to the average $20 range.

    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.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Then you had better lower those prices! by kevin_conaway · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Average people will not spend $400 on new technology especially with an economic recession looming over us.

    2. Re:Then you had better lower those prices! by Gription · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More to the point: BlueRay won't hit 50% until the price drops so there is a $150 player and the disks have dropped to a sub-"premium" price.

    3. Re:Then you had better lower those prices! by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

      Average people will not spend $400 on new technology especially with an economic recession looming over us.
      Right. So credit cards serve what purpose, exactly?
      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. Re:Then you had better lower those prices! by Alphi1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll be honest, the "average person" sure won't see that much of a difference between DVD and BluRay. Even if they do, it'd be a real hard sell to convince them it's worth buying a $400+ player and spending MORE for each disc than they could with DVD. I mean, it's one thing when there's a MASSIVE jump in technology, like going from VHS to DVD. I mean, with DVD suddenly the discs were a lot higher quality (picture and sound), and were considerably closer to indestructible than VHS tapes (that would wear out over time regardless of how well they were maintained). And then you add the DVD extras as well, it's a slam dunk. What does Blu Ray have over DVD? A better picture (but only for those who have HDTVs and can see the improvement), a little better sound (but how many "average" users think that 5.1 from a DVD really sounds "bad"?). What else? Not much. Certainly not enough to justify the extra cost. Personally, I'll buy my first BluRay player when I can buy one that will also up-convert my existing DVDs and cost $100 or less. Considering you can get up-converting DVD players now for $40, I'd pay an extra $60 for the ability to play BluRay at some point. But pay an extra $360? No way.

    5. Re:Then you had better lower those prices! by phantomlord · · Score: 5, Interesting

      All Blu-Ray players can play DVDs, so if you're buying a new player you might want to future-proof the hardware, as well I can play any DVD in my DVD player...

      Some people are already complaining that their profile 1.0 Blu-Ray players can't play the latest discs. I'd say DVD is the better bet for future proofing at this point, especially as far as hardware goes. Who wants a $400 Blu-Ray player that won't play next month's discs?
      --
      Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
    6. Re:Then you had better lower those prices! by twistedsymphony · · Score: 5, Informative

      Does the upconverting really make any difference? I've never seen the output of an upconverting player, but I don't understand how upconverting in the player can look much better than upconverting in the TV.
      Technically it doesn't matter where it gets up converted but the general thinking is that up conversion in the player is of a higher quality since it is performed before the signal is compressed to fit over the video cables.

      Also players typically offer a higher quality of up conversion since they're designed to work specifically with the kind of content found on DVDs while TV upconverters are designed to be more generic (jack of all trades, master of none... or some such).

      Really it comes down to which device has the better scaling equipment. No matter what you should set it up to only scale the image once. ie: having your player scale from 480i to 720p then your TV from 720p to 1080p is a no-no.

      What you should be doing is setting your player to scale to the native resolution of your display, and see how that looks, then set your player to output at the native resolution of the original content, thus letting your display do all the scaling, and see how that looks.

      The problem is most people have their player set to upscale something stupid like 1080i (because it's the "biggest") when their display has a native resolution like 1366x768 and the results generally look like garbage in comparison to what they COULD look like.

      As for myself, personally I have a projector with a native resolution of 1280x768, and I have an Oppo upscaling DVD player set to scale the dvds to 720p (1280x720), my projector is set to just center the signal and leave some black bars on the top and bottom (often called "just scan" mode) thus completely bypassing the scaler in the projector. Both the player and projector have identical scaler chips (Faroudja DCDi) so the player is the better place to scale since it's done before converting the signal for travel over the cable. The scaling is only done once and the picture looks fantastic.
      --
      Collector's Edition
  2. I don't believe it. by MMC+Monster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  3. Re:Whats the point? by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Informative

    especially when you are talking about older movies that sure as heck were not recorded in HD.

    They were recorded on 35mm or 70mm film. The grain size is finer than a High definition CCD's pixel.

  4. Not in this household. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.