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New Study Finds Low Interest In Blu-ray
PHPNerd writes "A new consumer survey recently released chronicles the woes of the winner of the hi-definition format war: nobody wants it. While consumers were very happy to embrace the DVD standard when it came about because it brought a huge jump in quality over VHS, the pros of switching to Blu-ray are not as obvious. From the article: 'In contrast, while half of the respondents to our survey rated Blu-ray's quality as 'much better' than standard DVD, another 40% termed it only 'somewhat better,' and most are very satisfied with the performance of their current DVD players." Another reason cited was that a Blu-ray investment also dictates an HDTV purchase, something consumers are reluctant to do.'" Maybe it's also that line-doubling DVD players can be had for less than a hundred dollars.
If this is true, why is Wal-Mart pushing the Blu-Ray discs to the front of the electronics section? Because they're all going to push it on us anyway.
I'm a "techie," but I've seen Blu-Ray. The fact of the matter is, the quality difference isn't that great to me to worry with buying another player. It's going to take more of a leap in technology than Blu-Ray to get people to replace DVD players.
I'm a HD fan - in fact, I rarely watch SD any more when it comes to OTA programming. I just don't seem to care much any more about HD over DVD quality programs. As the summary says, line doublers while they aren't great (nowhere close to 1080p quality) work 'okay'. I held off because of the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle, and that showed me that there really wasn't a need for either.
That, and the fact that many Blu-Ray discs take 90+ seconds to go from insertion to movie watching is just stupid. If I buy a copy of a movie I want to watch it, not play with it. A 'quick-play' mode (and note that I'm not even talking about watching mandatory trailer-crap, just getting the damn thing 'loaded') would dramatically increase the odds that I'd buy into it.
I'll probably pick one up when my current DVD player finally dies... but there's no compelling reason to do so before it does. And this from a self-confessed geek who at least used to have a ton of home theatre stuff.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Slasdot survey reveals lack of interest about survey revealing lack of interest in bluray
If you don't have a HD capable display, then of course you won't see any benefit to Blu-Ray. Since many people purchased a 780p display as well, the advantages of Blu-Ray will also not be as obvious.
Then you also have the "female factor", where women typically do not care about an improved experience when watching TV, and things like surround sound also are not noticed. I am not saying that all women ignore the benefits of a higher quality display or sound system, but most women just don't pay attention to these things for them to care one way or the other.
... that HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray wasn't the next Beta vs VHS, but rather, the next Laserdisc vs CED.
Q: What exactly is a line-doubling DVD player?
A: Progressive scan from an interlaced source.
Hardly something that should be mentioned... you know, we've had progressive for quite a long time now, and from experience most DVDs are interlaced.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Big deal, people will move up when they need the capacity, and when the price goes down...
Given the huge price difference between an upsizing DVD/VHS player and a Blu-Ray player, and the higher cost of the movies on Blu-Ray...I am not surprised. My movies on DVD look just fine to me (upsized to my HDTV, no less). My surround sound didn't stop working with the invention of Blu-Ray, so they all sound just as great as 2 years ago.
I will wait for the $50 players to arrive.
Bearded Dragon
With players at $400 and discs at $30 a pop, Blu-ray is a lot less appealing, even for those with an HDTV. Plus, standard-def DVDs look remarkably good with upconverting players.
I don't buy the conclusions of this article. There is a clear difference in quality with true HD versus DVD. But it's true that at some point, you can't tell the difference anymore, so nobody cares. Sort of like why does anyone want a 4 GHz Pentium processor for Microsoft Office, is that really useful?
The same will happen for HD for maybe 10 years: there will be only minor tweaks, prices will fall, but no new jump in quality. What I see (hope) as the next jump is "experience immersion". When I take a picture or short movie with my digital camera, I want the audience to fell exactly what I felt. When I hike a mountain at 5,000 meters, it's freezing, breathing is hard... I snapped a picture, but you can't see what experience it was. I'm willing to wait another 10 years, but this has to happen at some point. It's all about sharing our experiences, after all.
Alain - fairsoftware.net
People thought the same at the beginning of DVD, or worse.
DVD Will Fail
People say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why? Is there any shortage of bad ones?
I'll admit it, I'm a Sony hater. Been bit too many times by their crappy proprietary media, computers, interfaces and software. It's plain old DVD for me for the foreseeable future. In my mind BlueRay==Sony.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
For me, the big selling point for upgrading to DVD was the ability to skip around to different scenes quickly, no rewinding and features like playing commentary from the director and cast. Blu-ray adds better sound and picture, but unless you also upgrade your entire A/V setup these benefits just aren't there.
DVD appeared to be pushed on us as well. But ... at least it had some merit to it!
I have made the purchases of course, knowing that I would want to get an HDTV eventually, my wife and I went and bought a good one that should last us a while. We also got a PS3 after careful consideration, and I have to say the Blu-Ray movies are *much* better than regular DVD in my opinion. I don't regret either purchase to be honest, but they are expensive pieces of hardware at the moment I admit.
Of course once you are used to it, the difference is mostly noticeable when you go *back* to viewing regular DVDs or TV broadcasts. The difference between the Digital TV and HDTV while still noticeable is much less and much less noticeable.
I think its mostly that the cost is too high for most people to want to pay for. Geeks are probably more inclined to shell out for good equipment in the first place and I would expect them to be early adopters as a result.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
A lot of the problem comes from the fact that Blu-ray quality quite often sucks. This has nothing to do with the format, and everything to do with the mastering process. I have seen countless Blu-rays that hardly have enough detail to justify a DVD release, let alone anything in HD; some examples include Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, the latter of which was done as a film transfer... and had dirt all over the film and jittered throughout the entire movie, along with the film grain, which seemed completely out of place for an animated feature.
Its difficult to market a new format with better quality when in reality a large number of the discs are produced so badly that there's no reason to get them in place of a DVD.
Yet another attempt by Sony to force an expensive proprietary format on the masses: http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2006/07/sony.html
Maybe it's the fact that they want 25-30 fucking dollars for a movie that I can get for $12 on regular DVD?
I should be their target audience - I have plenty of disposable income, a 52" 1080p LCD, and a PS3, but I still don't buy much on blu-ray, cause it costs too damn much.
Make it a 20% premium, and I'll buy it, but 100% is absurd.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
I still can't figure out why people are so fascinated with video: higher resolution, faster refresh rates, more colors, etc. Yes, visuals are very important. But, in my opinion, video is the least important feature in the chain when it comes to movies. Sports is another thing, usually, but I'd even wager that I could win a debate regarding video versus audio in even live sporting events.
Watch a great thriller: Hitchcock if you will. Turn off the audio and watch the movie. Turn off the video and watch the movie. Compare.
Now, watch it again with BETTER audio (subwoofers, clear highs, decent surround sound). Compare.
Radio still can thrill me with good audio productions. I still prefer most sporting events on the radio over the TV, personally, as one's imagination really builds a lot of emotional connection to the game.
Yes, high res is amazing, and it can be "lifelike" but without a good audio backend, it's trash. Instead of spending tons of cash on the best video chain, spend a bit firming up your audio system, including minimizing reflections in your theatre room, reducing vibrations of the floor or furniture, etc. It's a worthwhile investment, and you'll get great music quality, to boot.
A few years down the line when Everyone has Big LCD's and needs Hi-def videos, then Blue-ray will shine, but currently DVD is the king, and everyone already have a $30 DVD player over the $500 for Blue-ray players.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I'm not a big fan of blu-ray. Just so long as my TV-and-Movie rips from TPB and the green demon keep coming in HD, I'll never bother getting a real Blu-ray drive. Why bother paying for a physical product, when you can pay (or not) for an electronic one? Especially when it is easier to find HD downloads than Blu-ray discs.
For most consumers, BluRay is just another kind of DVD that is more expensive, more confusing, and requires a new DVD player, when their own one works just fine, thank you. DVD was much better than VHS not because of quality, but because they lasted better and you didn't have to rewind and fast-forward them. The menu options are what caused the jump to DVD, not the quality. Mind you, this isn't my opinion, but it is the majority of consumers.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
I wonder how many people got burned last time by a format "leap" that really wasn't that awesome. I get the impression that people are holding off until Blu-Ray is the only game in town. For now if it doesn't offer a huge increase in quality why invest the money?
In two years there could very well be another dominant format (online digital downloads) which would mean all the Blu-Ray crap I buy now is part of an intermediary step in the digital evolution.
The quality of the program is largely irrelevant to me and many of my friends. Yes, it may be better quality, but I've been living off my home media server for several years now. I will never, ever, ever, ever go back to keeping physical media around. I can't stand it. I want all of my media available at any TV in my home and ready when I want it.
If I have to have a disc to keep track of, you can forget it. I don't want the technology. I want my media available whenever, wherever and HOWEVER I want to play it. Blu-Ray offers NONE of the those things (and to be fair, neither did HD-DVD) and THAT is why I won't ever be adopting Blu-Ray. The players can drop to $10 and I still wouldn't buy one, simply because I do not care. I realize that I'm not in the majority currently... but as time goes on, more and more people are going to get sick of carrying around physical media.
The popularity of MP3 players is a prime example... instead of toting around hundreds of CDs, why not just carry around one MP3 player. The same thing is happening with video, and the trend will only accelerate. The disc as a medium for entertainment is dying, if it's not dead already and only still twitching.
Frankly, Sony has screwed all the blu-wah fanboys by jacking up the price of their "favorite" toy once HD DVD stopped having new movies released. HD DVD owners get the nice benefit of high definition movies for prices equal or less than regular DVDs. Who in their right mind would pay the exorbitant cost of another failed Sony technology?
I am glad I did not get screwed by following Sony fanboys. So sad really. They thought they won but they really lost. And many of them still do not know it. It is like Microsoft releasing Vista to match a preset release date. If it ain't ready, don't release.
Today's consumers are smart enough to know DVD is a much better deal for the foreseeable future. If you want an easy, inexpensive upconverter just get the $40 Philips from Costco.
With PS3s going for about the same price as any other BD player, that's what most people who care will end up getting.
Also, I bought a BluRay disc, just to see the picture difference. Yes, it is better quality, but not enough to be worth making the switch, or buying Bluray discs over DVDs. And you have to be pretty close to the TV to care about the small noticeable details.
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
The whole idea of rotational, optical media is outmoded. I should be able to take a flash drive (any flash drive) to Blockbuster and load on my drive a movie where I can play it anywhere. And the only reason to do that, is because we don't have a lot of bandwidth for real-time streaming of perfect quality.
Plastic media is prone to scratching, and carries with it some value based on on its manufacture, but the bits put on it. It is not reusable either.
High Def Video-on-Demand is also working to obsolete rotational disk, however the limitation is that movie inventories are limited. Given that inventories will increase, this will fix itself.
The only remaining space of rotational media is for portability, but flash drives can fit several movies. In addition flash drives are more rugged and portable than temperature and scratch-vulnerable rational media.
Blu-Ray won the war that never needed to be fought.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"Maybe it's also that line-doubling DVD players can be had for less than a hundred dollars."
True. Line-doubled DVD content played out via HDMI to a big LCD display isn't bad. There's a noticeable improvement when you go to an all-digital path to the display. As you'd expect, vertical edges get sharper. The transition from an analog video path to a digital one may provide more improvement than the next step of a data rate upgrade of Blu-Ray.
Audio formats better than CDs never caught on. DVD-Audio, at 96 kHz with 24-bit samples, solves the problems of CD-quality audio. With CD audio, soft passages may be only 4 or 5 bit audio, with the high bits all zero. That's quite noticeable. But only classical music has soft passages any more. Few people buy DVD-Audio discs. (Of course, they have DRM, which is another issue.)
Once Blu-Ray players drop to the point that they're no more expensive than DVD players, they will, of course, take over. But there's no big rush.
This is a little story on why I'm not buying anything Bluray anymore; not for a long time at least.
I just bought a decent porno video, bluray edition, and I was all excited. You know, it was going be more realistic with the high definition, and I had to take care of things before the girlfriend gets back home. I started it up, and let the dumb plot intro finish up, and I was immediately disgusted with what I saw when the camera zoomed up a little closer to the face of the woman as she was.. um... doing an oral presentation. Zits. Discusting zits. All over! "This wasn't on the DVD version!" I thought. What the hell? Later in the video I actually noticed more visible stretch-marks, and a scar on this once-attractive 22 year-old female.
Lesson learned: Save those VHS porn tapes men, for you will if not now, then in the future, miss the porno where the truth wasn't as vivid as it is now becoming. *shivers*
...such as "consumers were very happy to embrace the DVD standard when it came about because it brought a huge jump in quality over VHS."
I'm not so sure that's the reason for consumer adoption - DVDs are more compact, less fragile, and you don't have to rewind them. I think it's all about convenience, not quality. Quality is just a bonus.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Landfill items like DVDs are dead, and broadband will kill them. Nobody should care about the next landfill item. I just recently bought a terabyte of storage for abotu $250. It connects via Ethernet--a stable standard that isn't going to change in any radical way. Same deal with USB, which is just as ubiquitous, and almost as stable.
Why should I build a big collection of toxic plastic platters when I can order what I want and put it on my little SAN?
Plainly, there are a lot of things that need to be worked out before everybody takes this path. The DRM people need to go away. Really. Just give it up already. We need broadband to become much more widespread.
OK, I know there is that desire to have the "physical item" for some people, and nicely printed liner notes and things like that. Fine. Send us that, maybe even include your latest landfill format disk as an option, but as far as getting excited about the little plastic platter is concerned... no. It's not exciting. It's just data, and everybody knows that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The average moron doesn't think there's a difference between "widescreen" and "HD". One step above that - the informed consumer - might realize there's a difference but has a hard time telling the difference in quality between an anamorphic-widescreen NTSC SD picture and a true 1080i one. Above that, there is an even more technically inclined bunch of folks who couldn't tell 1080i from 1080p if their lives depended on it. At the very top you have the uper-videophiles who know what they're doing and what they're seeing, and can tell the difference. This elite group is like "the gamer" in the PC market. They know what they want and will pay to get it. Everyone else is happy with Intel's onboard graphics.
Add in the compression that some distributors put their signal through, and the difference between anamorphic widescreen and "real HD" becomes hard to distinguish even if you are able to discriminate between them.
I like what the survey results reveal. It tells me BR players and recorders will be coming down in price a lot faster than the manufacturers had hoped.
Maybe it's because the players start at ~$280 and the new release movies are ~$35?
With a subprime crisis going, and from what I read recently the downturn in the economy now threatening to make it into a prime crisis as well, people aren't interested in expensive players and discs that require a home with room for a large TV? I have a HDTV and play HD content on it and think it looks great - but it's an expensive luxury. And it doesn't turn a soggy movie into a great one either. I think the change will still happen because it's easier for the whole supply chain to have one format, they can easily push DVDs to a "legacy" option if only they cut back on the margins.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There's a very simple reason why I will never buy a BluRay player. No matter how cheap they get, even if they were free I wouldn't want one. The reason is simple - I've moved past physical media. I don't use CDs. I don't use DVDs. Everything is ripped to a media server and controlled by a HTPC. I love being able to just sit down, bring up the movie directory, and click my way to a movie. The last thing I ever want to do again is fumble around with individual discs. So thanks to the DRM in BluRay, it's difficult or impossible to transfer your legally purchased HD movies to a hard disk. Way back in the day this was the case with DVDs as well, but thankfully free, effective DVD ripping tools are readily available now so it's no longer an issue. Maybe someday that will be the case for BluRays as well, but until then, no BluRay for me!
I read Usenet for the articles.
Personally it's the disc price for me, most titles run two or three times more, and worse you never see blueray titles on sale for really cheap.
Tack on the expensive player and lack of depth in the back catalog and you've got yourself a loser for the forseeable future in my book.
I went out and bought an HD-DVD player when they where on sale. I got one $99.00 before Blue-Ray won.
It is a nice DVD player and the movies that I watch on it are also good. But when I bought it the check out person was shocked that I paid so much for a DVD player! I tried to explain HD to them and got a blank stare. People think that DVDs are HD!
Frankly DVDs look great on my HDTV. Not even the HD-DVDs but the regular ones.
Yep I have a feeling that if it wasn't for the PS3 that we would be looking at Beta V2.0
I have to wonder just how many none PS3 players are out there? It is hard to tell because from what I hear the PS3 is the best player.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The day they remove the DRM is the day I buy Blu-ray. It's just not worth my money paying for something that's designed to make it as difficult as possible to view what I buy in the quality I paid for.
For the general population, I believe the reason many embraced DVD was the navigation. Instant chapter jumps, no rewinding. Yes, it had superior quality over VHS, but for anybody but the specially interested I don't think that was the killer feature.
Blu-ray? Its *only* offer over DVD is resolution/quality on HD TV sets. And to get that you have to accept DRM that effectively means you're allowed to watch your movies for as long as "they" decide you can.
Unfortunately, the masses didn't seem to learn much from the music DRM fiasko. But luckily Blu-ray lacks any kind of killer feature so it's not being accepted as quickly as it otherwise might have been.
I'll stick to my HD media jukebox and MKVs for now, thank you very much. I would have bought a Blu-ray player for that money if it weren't for the DRM.
Got the PS3 for gaming, but thought since I had it anyway, I might as well upgrade to Blu-ray where available in my Netflix queue.
Compared to my upscaling DVD player with Faroudja chip, also connected to the HDTV via HDMI, the difference is really marginal.
Given the downsides that Blu-ray for me currently has working copy protection and region coding, I'm not buying any Blu-ray discs for the time being.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm more interested in the writable blu-ray discs, which hold 25GB each @ $20 per disc. When or if(and that's a big IF) Blue-ray is widespread enough to where I can take a blu-ray disc to any friend's computer to be read, then it may be a viable competitor to other forms of storage. I don't see that happening for the reasons the article cited, and also the fact that it's...ugh...Sony technology. Additionally, why hasn't the optical disk form factor already been made obsolete! Motors and lasers are more likely to wear down and break, and they suck power like a moFo.
It's unlikely that I'll ever buy a blu-ray player, because I have no desire at all to own a TV (HD or otherwise) to connect it to.
Now, if my next laptop comes with a blu-ray burner, that's different. That I'd buy, if for no other reason than data backup.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The problem is not that 1080p is too small of an improvement, it is actually a vast improvement. The problem is that standard DVD has had more resolution than most people could see on their old sets. Specifically, when viewing a DVD that is "Enhanced for 16:9 Televisions" on a standard TV, the DVD player is discarding 25% of the resolution. It is surprising how much of a difference that makes. So what happens is that when people get their new HDTV set, the first thing they do is watch one of their existing DVDs and they see how much better it looks, and they are satisfied with that. That is enough of an improvement to wow them for the time being, especially since a Blu-Ray investment would cost them way more than the HDTV set did, considering that the player would be $400 and replacing a 20 movie library would be another $600. Blu-Ray players will have to get down to $100 and disks $15 before it will be a mainstream success.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Part of the problem also lies in the fact that, this time around, the same people who are most likely to be the first-adopters (the geeks) are also the people who are most likely to torrent their Blu-ray movies instead of buying them.
The biggest problem with Blu-Ray is they're not releasing compelling products. They're releasing a 2 hour movie that loads slower with very marginally better video (because they used the same masters for the DVD) and exactly identical audio (very few BDs have a true 7.1 mix) that costs more. Why the fuck would people want that?
The solution is to take advantage of the 50GB capacity and give people stuff they want. Like an entire TV season on a single disc. Collections of playable Java games. A search function in the menus (possible with BD!) for searchable clip segments. ex. type "little friend" into the menu of the Scarface DVD and you jump directly to the "Say hello to my little friend". Look at porn BDs to see what the studios should be doing.
People might have been calling the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD the next VHS vs. Betamax, but I didn't see it that way.
Laserdisc has been around almost as long as consumer VHS. But, unlike when Disney and others dropped the cost of VHS movies to $20, Laserdisc stayed expensive, often $50 or more per title. Laserdisc remained a premium format, VHS became the common format, and VHS outsold LD in droves.
Fast-forward to 2000 or so, and DVD is the next hot thing. Laserdisc is still being made, but it's almost done. DVD companies use their brains, and realise that if they want to make DVDs replace VHS and not just replace LD that they need to make them cheap. Thus, the price was common originally around $30, then $20, then $16.99, with some titles as low as $5.00 new, on sale. Great! Those who never saw LD and only saw VHS see a significant quality improvement as they get to use most of their 525 scan lines, instead of about half of them, and with the prices being competitive they see no reason to keep buying those old tapes.
Jump to now. DVD is reasonably well established. DVD has replaced VHS like CD replaced cassettes. People know it, they like it. They see how nice it is, and how much it basically looks like regular broadcast TV, or Cable, or Satellite on their analog TVs, and how it looks pretty good on their digital TVs. Many people have amassed large collections of DVDs and the money spent in those purchases is fresh in the minds. Now, Sony wants everyone to buy an expensive player, expensive titles (twice or more the cost of DVDs), and all that they can really claim is that it's better looking. Trouble is, most of us still need analog converter boxes for HDTV, most of us still use composite cable or coax, and even those of us who are videophiles with huge collections don't necessarily see enough benefit to bother with the added expense. We have our consumer format in DVD and by all reaoning it's a great format with good quality. Why should we buy the elite format in Blu-ray when we've got something that already conveys the eye candy, and already has all of the special features, languages, multiple versions, and the like?
Yes, I actually do collect Laserdiscs. I collect DVDs. I don't see how my older projector will make any use of the new format, and as projectors are expensive, HDMI-capable receivers are expensive, HDMI cables in 50' lengths are expensive, and what I have works wonderfully, I don't see any need to upgrade to anything new until something that I already have breaks, and I mean something more than my DVD player chunking out. Even then, I might buy a Blu-ray player if my DVD player breaks, but that would only be for the ability to possibly play blu-ray discs, and as the standards for Blu-ray aren't finalized, I still don't see any advantage to buying a player that might be obsolete by the time I get around to buying titles in its format.
Blu-ray is the next Laserdisc, and the sooner that Sony realises this and markets it accordingly, the better it'll be for them and for the consumer.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
With Blu-Ray on the scene, I can buy regular DVD movies at Sam Goody (often used) at greatly reduced prices. And it's going to be a *long* time before Blu-Ray has the market penetration to replace DVD's entirely (if ever). For 95% of the movies I watch, I don't care whether it's in HD or not, the content transcends the resolution. For the regular standard-definition DVD consumer, Blu-Ray is the best thing that could have happened. You don't have to own a Blu-Ray player to love what it's done for the cost of owning movies!
PS - Have you seen how nice regular DVDs look when upscaled on a PS3? I'll look forward to that, if I ever choose to get myself one...
Sometimes you really, really have to wonder. This article should be labeled "Economic Theory Still Valid". Increase the cost to entry and you decrease demand. As long a HD TVs are more expensive, Blu-Ray players are more expensive and Blu-Ray discs are more expensive, demand will be lower.
Of course, Blu-Ray isn't a revolutionary innovation (like DVDs were), it's an evolutionary improvement on the DVD. Eventually, prices will come down, and the media companies will stop price gouging for Blu-Ray discs. As prices drop, demand will rise slowly and inexorably. Give it a decade and almost everyone will have a BluRay player*.
* barring some revolutionary new technology in the mean time.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
There was a lot more than quality improvements that drove people to DVDs. I think if people were given a choice between VHS quality video with random access versus DVD quality video that still had to be rewound, people would go for the lower quality.
Now if Blu Ray eliminated all the mandatory warnings, commercials, etc and let you skip anything at anytime, they might see an uptake over DVDs. Otherwise, other than an improved image quality (that only matters if you ALSO buy a new TV), what's the point?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Blue Ray Discs Cost more to rent or to buy than the same DVD. This cost differential is not insignificant. Blue Ray will not be popular until it make financial sense. If Blue Ray and DVD cost the same people would migrate. Better is better. But as long as there is a cost differential people will make a choice and DVD is already to expensive for what you get.
I have a PS3 so I can play blue ray, and I have two flat screen HD TV's so I can see the difference but Blue Ray makes no sense at all to me given the cost differential and limitations on use. I seldom watch a movie more than once with a few exceptions. thirty + bucks for a one time show is not worthwhile I don't care what kind of quality you have..
There are a number of factors that I feel like may have hurt this format, too:
1) The name sucks. What the hell is a 'blue ray'? Why is that good to have in my living room? We went from VCR's playing VHS to DVD. Note the acronyms. Now 'Blu-ray' means what, exactly to my blue-haired grandmother? I feel like the name 'HD-DVD' had a FAR better chance of market adoption, as it is fairly obvious what that is compared to a normal DVD.
2) Too expensive for too few new features. The quality may or may not be a factor, but it isn't nearly enough. The jump from VHS to DVD had numerous advantages, and the cost wasn't all that ridiculous after the first year or so.
3) Can't record. People that don't use DVR's still use VHS (and more rarely DVD recorders) to time-shift content. Camcorders writing to DVD is another example. Burners exist. I think the consumer is aware that the use for a Blu-ray player is almost entirely limited to what you can buy on the shelves.
4) Redbox, etc. No Blu-ray options there. DVD only thus far. Some stores will have a section for HD rentals, but in my local area these sections are far, far smaller than the DVD sections.
As someone who has taken the plunge and gotten an HDTV, it has been a really nice switch. The difference between SD and HD when it comes to satellite channels is pretty dramatic...to the point where I don't watch the SD channels anymore unless there's something I really want to watch which is only on an SD channel.
The problem with Blu-Ray is that the difference it offers from an upscaled DVD really isn't as dramatic as the difference between an SD channel and an HD channel. And that makes the price they're asking us to pay for both the players and the media way too high. Consumers are used to essentially getting technology progress for free...a Core 2 Duo costs roughly the same as a P4 did when it was top of the line. Yet Blu-Ray media is being sold for substantially more than DVD ever was. And when you consider just how many ways there are to get discounted DVDs, it makes the price comparison swing that much more in the favor of DVD.
The thing is, once you start using it, it is preferable. I use my PS3 to play Blu-Ray discs I get from Netflix and have so far been very happy with both the quality and the extras offered. But the key to my experience so far has been that Netflix sends me Blu-Ray discs at the exact same price as I would pay for the DVD version and I've purchased the least-expensive Blu-Ray player which is pretty much the only one that doesn't suck on a price-per-feature basis and is pretty much the only reasonably-priced one that will be reasonably forward-compatible with the rapidly-changing Blu-Ray spec. The spec has changed so often that most people that have bought stand-alone Blu-Ray players have been bit by the fact that discs using Blu-Ray profiles released after their players were released aren't entirely functional.
But expecting people to pay a hefty premium for a product that offers modest improvements isn't going to fly. If they stopped updating the Blu-Ray spec to allow player manufacturers a fixed target, it might enable them to drop the price of the players to the $200-$300 range and that, coupled with reducing the cost of discs to same price charged for the DVD version, would make Blu-Ray a lot more successful. But until they realize that their technology isn't worth the hefty premium they're attempting to charge for it, very few people will buy it.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
No one will buy it until it's as cheap and easy to copy movies to physical blanks as it is for DVDs.
You need to have your eyes checked. I have a DVD player with the Silicon Optix uprezzer (best there is). It is crap compared to a full HD BlueRay disc.
For instance, with digital television, it says right on the program "Broadcast in HD". Now, whether you have an HD receiver, or a digital converter box, you're seeing this message. The average Joe who just went from analog television to digital television converted to analog with a converter box thinks he's watching HDTV. After all, the image quality is so much better than analog television, he reckons it must be HD.
And cable/satellite providers are making it worse as well, advertising HDTV for programs that are barely standard definition.
And the average Joe has amassed a huge collection of DVD's over the past decade or so. Try to convince him to upgrade to all Blu-Ray movies to watch them in HD.
DVD Upconversion won the HD format war http://www.dvd-upconvert.com/.
Oh, and I hate Sony.
I had the opportunity to watch a blu-ray disc on a $38,000 super crazy tv (only 42" or so), the crispness was incredible. However, you have to spend an insane amount of money to get the noticeable difference -- on the HDTV's at the mall, the HD content may look worse because the (cheaper) TV just doesn't render it that well or something.
stuff |
I'll take a good story line on a worn-out VHS tape over a worn-out story on Blue-Ray any day.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Blue-ray has plenty of honest, actual merit; it is capable of about six times the visual detail, higher frame rates (so considerably better motion depiction) and a larger color space as compared to a DVD; in fact, it is so good that just as compact disks did for audio, a Blue-ray version of a film often reveals limitations of the original recording.
The summary has it at least partially right: The problem isn't that Blue-ray isn't better, the problem is that without good source material, a large hi-def TV and a viewing arrangement where you can actually make out the additional detail, it is difficult or even impossible for a viewer to appreciate the extra capability. With the economy tanking, I rather doubt the first thing on everyone's list is to go out and get an HDTV.
For those of us who do have them, though, and where the viewing arrangement is large enough to see all the detail, Blue-ray is not just "better", but far, far better and definitely the format of choice. I went extreme with my setup, and I don't regret it even a little bit. People who see movies and HD games on my system never leave thinking HD is a marketing scam.
I am almost certain that HD and Blue-ray will do just fine; it's just that there's a ton of legacy hardware that people already like, and it'll have to get old and crufty in their sight before they upgrade, and the economy has slowed down what wouldn't have been all that quick a process anyway.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And very low interest in paying for the TV plus all the other infrastructure that it's going to entail, such as replacing all my Dish Network boxen, paying the upcharge for the HD service, etc.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Blu ray drives will play DVD, so there will no be impetus to buy old or new movies on Bluray except for the additional 'quality', which will require an expensive display. Bluray discs are being sold again at hugely high price points even though, according to the industry, 1 billion is lost a year to piracy, something that is increasing difficult with blu ray. And, of course, given that blurays retail for $30, even old sotck, they are certainly not priced to sell.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Maybe if there were some decent movies in the BluRay library?
I've had a BD-ROM drive for a couple years, and an HD-DVD for about the same amount of time.
In two years I've watched *one* BluRay disc (Spider-Man 2), and it was a freebie rental.
Everything that I genuinely wanted to see in high definition seems to have been an HD-DVD title. Serenity, Stardust, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica. I bought those. Hell, I own a dozen or so HD-DVDs and have purchased more since the format died than I did while it was "alive."
I don't mind adopting "dead" technologies. I continue to buy DVD-Audio and SACD discs and indeed I actually own a few hundred SACDs. The process of finding recordings I actually want is probably the only time-cosuming part of the process.
Extrapolating this to BluRay, I've looked at the lists of what titles are available, and I'm not seeing anything that make me want to spend money, and I'm EXACTLY the guy who is willing to re-purchase media for a better viewing or listening experience.
How many of you have walked up to that "bad-ass" HD/player display demo to watch a few minutes of the loud action movie being demoed, only to find the really fast action scenes STILL end up pixeling and distorting in front of your eyes?
I'm sorry, but I've yet to find an HDTV that has eliminated this completely. THIS is what has turned me off from dumping $2000+ into a new HD environment, so I'm not so certain the player/format is to blame here.
Contrast this to the gaming world, if you saw image degradation in fast FPS sequences, you'd find yourself shopping for a new video card, which generally fixes the issue. What the hell "upgrade" choice do I have with my new $2000 HDTV? other than the "new and improved" $3000 model?
Matrix:DVD::Dark Knight:?
Amen to that! I already have a PS3 and a nice plasma HDTV (a refurb. I mail-ordered a year or so ago for an amazingly low price), but other than the Blade Runner box set, I haven't even purchased any blu-ray discs.
Sure, the quality is awesome ... but I was enjoying my movies on DVD just fine, before all the "HD" stuff came along. Most of the time, I don't even want to watch a movie more than once, anyway. If it's really good, I like owning it so I can show it to friends who might not have seen it before -- but being able to do that is only so valuable to me. Some standard-def DVD movie out of the discount bin for $5 or even $7? Sure, if I remember it was a classic, I'll grab it. But $30 and up? Nah....
Maybe it's also that line-doubling DVD players can be had for less than a hundred dollars.
Ridiculous. Line-doubling DVD players have nowhere near the picture quality of real 1080p.
The reaction is because most consumers are watching their shiny HDTV monitors in SD because they are generally too stupid to connect them properly.
This discs are expensive, the players are play-only and expensive, the players force use of a DRM'd display...
Wake me up when I can stick a raw drive in my computer (running any display on the computer or anything it streams to around the house) for $100 or less, it can also burn discs (data only discs it won't play is fine), and the blank media is $1 a disc or less.
I also expect playback with the OS/software of my choosing. If VLC won't work with it, it isn't what I'd hope for.
Knowing how the industry is with DRM, I doubt I'll get what I want. I'll probably eventually settle for a read/write drive that takes affordable media and can be used for tv shows I've recorded or whatever else comes along. Looks like it'll be years before I get even that...
I've noted that support for large HD displays is poor, life isn't that great, they're expensive and the money will only make the trade imbalance worse. So for the shorter term, a medium (24"?) display on the computer will be fine. I've heard that retailers like Best Buy have reported low than expected sales of HDTVs. Close to 20 minutes of ads an hour on over-the-air tv, and few shows that appeal to me. I wonder how many of the people struggling with debt have stopped to figure out what the total cost of a large screen HDTV with paid programs is over say a 5 year life?
For 8 hours a day use, figure close to $10 a month just for electricity to start with....
is it something new?
Hope is the currency of fools
Several factors are going to sound the death knell of Blu-Ray;
First: DRM. Defective By Design, broken straight off the assembly line, yada, yada, yada. SSDD over security constraints all for PROFIT!
Second: Requirements to fully utilize its features. You need HDTV and blu ray DVD's. The former is expensive as sin, the latter not that many have been released so far.
Third: You guessed it, your wallet. The credit crunch and the Second Recession of the century has pretty much nuked everyone's budgets, forcing them to forgo their next big purchases and buy Ramen Noodles. The licensing just to cut blu-ray is ridiculously high, forcing others to use other formats that are more inexpensive. The equipment itself starts at 300 smackers just for a player, the consumer would have to wait until they could afford a HDTV just to see what they bought in the first place is worth all the hype.
I can see that DVD is going to stay with us for awhile longer.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Forget using the Blu-Ray's massive capacity to give us better resolution. Use it to give us more content. Give us a movie and every documentary and interview that the people involved have given about the movie on a single disk. Give us an entire season of a TV series on one disk, eventually the whole series on one disk.
The benefits in picture quality do not justify upgrading from DVD, but if they put more stuff on the disk, that just might be worth it.
Technoli
When you go into any electronics store or Wal*Mart there's a LOW probability that they have the TVs set up right or they have an HD signal running at all.
Blockbuster is worse, they run Guitar Hero, Rockband and Super Mario Kart.
TV's have a confusing array of resolution features from 720 to 1080 for the screen and a different resolution for the tuner. So you really have to know what you're doing to figure out what it will really do - AND TRUST ME -
No pop collar slackers in the store have the foggiest idea WTF they are talking about.
BluRay players are still absurdly expensive. If they want us to use them and they finally beat HDDVD then make the players affordable. $300 is way too high.
Likewise the Blueray discs are twice the price of DVD. That just smells of customer abuse.
I think this statement rather clearly quantifies the issue. A good portion of the population have some sort of optical defect in their eyes. The majority of people I have met who praise HD and Blu Ray all day are people with especially acute eyesight. I think for the majority of people a high quality progressive scan DVD on a good 720p HDTV is about as good as their eyesight is.
Many posters wrote that they'd rather download content. But if you download content with DRM that's tied to some authentication server, you can't rely on the service staying up for more than a few years.
Major systems which have already shut down, making purchased content unplayable:
That's why downloaded DRMed content can't be trusted.
I have a HD player, Toshiba's AH3. Yeah, that means HD-DVD. Got it for $99 with eleven free movies. Got a bunch more when HD-DVD got shut down for less than $100. Still work. Better yet, compared to my friend's PS3 I don't have a single HD-DVD that forces me to watch anything other than the movie. His movies, well its pot-luck but many play ads for up coming movies that don't allow skip.
Still I have a 61 HD tv (Samsung LED DLP fwiw) and with a good upscaling player I can still tell a difference between DVD and HD-DVD. Dune and Blade Runner are good examples of being able to pick out details on. Especially in clothing and other textured items that just seem to blur on vhs and even base DVD. HD OTA looks better than some dvds! Yet with even a great TV, good sound, and the ability to get HD satellite, I can't see getting a new player
The real issue is two parts. The players are obnoxiously priced and the movies aren't far behind. With the ability to rent them I could see getting a service like Netflix but honestly I am not going to fork out nearly four hundred dollars for a media player. Get the price of the player down and do it quickly or simply write it off. Sony may have bought off the studios and if the rumors are true even Toshiba but they bought nothing if they cannot price the players and the movies into a realm where people don't even have to think about it. I have no qualms buying movies at CD prices... but at twenty four and higher its not worth it. Maybe Disney films for the kids as they will watch them for years, but regular movies? Get real. Its just a movie.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
its a case of "too much too soon", the opposite of "too little too late". DVD is still relatively new so what point was there rushing Blue-Ray into the market when DVD could be upgraded when new breakthroughs were being made?
Jonathanjk.com
When will people learn to not let big companies like Sony shove expensive proprietary formats down our throats?
Oh, wait.
-- Boycott Shell
You know, I think the arguments against blu-ray are the exact some ones made against dvd. So many people complained about how dvd was a neat idea but just wasn't worth it, too expensive, not practical or whatever.
too expensive - I know when I bought my dvd player in 1997 it cost around $800; depending on the studio dvd's cost up to $40. VHS movies cost around $15 at the time, I remember most people saying the extra cost per movie just to avoid rewinding wasn't worth it.
picture/sound quality - dvd isn't that big of an improvement over VHS really, Especially at the time. Dolby Digital is nice (DTS not even available yet), but back then the equipment was very expensive so the only ones who saw an improvement in audio quality were those with lots of money to buy an expensive stereo. Early DVD encoding wasn't great, picture quality was better than VHS but really not by much. (I think the jump to hi-def is a much bigger improvement than even the best dvd over vhs)
Have to replace library; DVD wasn't even backward compatible! At least with blu-ray you can get rid of the dvd player but still watch all your dvd's (even better; blu-ray upscaling dvd's may improve the results depending on your set up). With dvd, you needed to keep that VHS player around if you still wanted to watch your tapes.
Initially not every studio supported dvd, and some releases were pan&scan only! DIVX for a short time posed a credible threat especially with a number of exclusive titles and studio support, but luckily that didn't last long at all.
blu-ray uptake has been pretty fast, as prices drop more and more people will buy, and it will do just fine. I don't see these mythical digital downloads taking hold anytime soon, let alone at a decent quality level and ease of use.
People listen to MP3 files that sound like crap compared to CD-quality. But they do the job and other considerations, such as portability, are more important to consumers.
So why is anybody surprised that the same consumers will accept less than the best for their viewing when it comes at a fraction of the cost, and with a far larger selection? There's even a market for bootleg garbage made with hand-held cameras in theatres, and DVD quality isn't too terribly bad, even compared to Blu-Ray.
As long as one guy in the crowd has state-of-the-art equipment, the "usual gang of idiots" will wind up meeting in his basement now and again for a real kick-ass movie night with beer and everything else. For normal viewing, who needs it?
And it will be a pretty safe bet that the guy with the small fortune in equipment is single and probably has no kids. Oh...and everybody's wives and girlfriends hate his guts.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If quality was the key point in selling a format than why didn't LaserDisc take off?
I once posted that most of this "format war"s outcome didn't matter because the format would die a fast death anyway and this article only strengthens my belief in this. BluRay is the new LaserDisc. It's nice to have if you have the system to take advantage of the new format with and if you have the money to buy movies at a premium price but aside from that why bother.
The only good thing that BluRays has over LaserDisc in their respective timeframes is that you can still play DVDs on a BluRay player where as I couldn't play a VCR tape on my LD player. But that's it.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
a BlueRay. Sony flexed muscle to get their format accepted as the standard. I bought my HDDVD player when the movie Transformers was released. I was very happy with the picture quality on my 1080p LCD HD TV. A few months later support for hddvd was dropped. Well, up yours sony! I refuse to buy a blueray. The HDDVD player upscales better then my old dvd player, granted it's not 1080p.. not even 720p, but I can live with it. I'm also going to attempt to encode a HD DVD mpeg2 stream (yeah that's what HDDVD uses) with my linux box and try to play it ack on my Toshiba HD-DVD player.
BlueRay disks and rentals are over priced.
Let's see, from this week's BestBuy circular, new releases: Nim's Island DVD $16.99 Nim's Island Blu-ray $29.99 Which will I buy for the kids? Also consider I can play a DVD on my main TV, my laptop computer, the DVD player down in the basement, and I can rip most DVDs onto my iPod or iPhone. Blu-Ray movies just aren't worth the extra picture quality (and I say this owning a new Samsung 46" 1080p LCD HDTV, and a Sony PS3).
... so it is pointless for BR until the TVs get replaced with big HDTVs.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Gas prices are up. Economy is in the stinker. I can't remember the last vacation I took. Saving every penny to make those payments. Yea, I'm gonna buy a new dvd player & a new tv just so I can perceive better quality slightly.
How about fixing the roof? Or saving for my kids' college funds? That's why we Americans are pressured put everything on credit! So we can buy the latest n' greatest!
Yea, right. I have no need for this currently. All it will do is enhance how I waste my time. I can do that with weed or a beer instead of being able to count the blemishes on some football player's neck.
The reality is that there's still a need for physical media here. On-line distribution is improving, but getting high quality video over the Internet is still not quite there yet. Furthermore, getting a disc in a box and putting it into a player is simple and familiar to most people.
Having said that, the drive for Blu-ray isn't going to ever be like it was for DVD. I recentl advised some folks doing an HD upgrade to skip getting a blu-ray player because they are too pricey still and they wouldn't get enough out of the difference. If something is made for HD from the get go, it does look nicer on blu-ray, but it's a marginal difference in most cases. The HD version of Blade Runner is absolutely gorgeous, but if I'd never seen it, the original is still a great film.
My expectation is that this will probably be the last generation of dedicated video formats. It's up to playing high definition content and there's no new higher definition standard on the way (nor can I see any reason to go there). So blu-ray will probably be it. It will likely always have a market because people like to collect movies, etc, but it will eventually just become like DVD is today where it's dirt cheap and common.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I was so pissed about unskippable commercials and FBI warnings on my DVDs that I stopped buying them new. I now wait, buy them used, rip them to my PC, remove that shit, and burn new disks to play. Now I can put the disk in and start watching my movie. No lectures from the government about copying the disk I fucking paid for. No worries about my ownly copy getting scratched and having to buy a new copy.
When I can burn full-capacity BlueRay movies to my own media, and I can get BlueRay movies used, I will consider switching.
Until then? Fuck those guys.
Blar.
Why does anybody choose inferior anything? Why don't we all own several mansions and drive a Rolls Royce at weekends and a Ferrari for the daily commute?
People choose "inferior" stuff because:
a) They can't afford the superior stuff.
b) They don't see the expensive stuff as superior (or at least not enough to pay the difference).
No sig today...
Everyone wants Blu-ray... they just dont want to pay the ridiculous prices for discs. A Blu-ray is $35+tax.
A DVD.. can be had for $9 to $19 dollars.
The differences for DVD weren't clear either.
I think we're all missing the point. DVD had two huge selling points over VHS:
1. Random access. No rewind, skip to arbitrary scenes, etc.
2. Bonus features. Making-of bits, interviews with directors and actors, deleted scenes, etc.
I think blu-ray would need to offer something of comparable value to have comparable success.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Why would I want Blue Ray when I don't even have a TV anymore. I'm sure it has all sorts of technical merits, but if the products being sold over them (the movies) are poor why would I want to but it at all.
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
Its a waste on any TV that is under 32", and probably not that big of a deal up to 40". There is not a noticible enough difference to make me want to shell out all that extra cash.
B&W to color, 8-Track to casette, cassette to CD, VHS to DVD, Tube TV to LCD all had marked improvements over their predecessor... DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-ray... not so much
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Most CEOs definitely take last years performance and use it to gauge this years performance. It's a decent gauge but they rarely take into account what possible changes there are in the market. However, if they missed a sale because they didn't try to do it, that's a CEO's fault. If they try to make that sale, and didn't, it's the market's fault because the people would not buy.
But in truth it's the CEO's fault for mistiming the market, and misjudging the consumer. In the 90s, consumerism took off as people bought like crazy. We were riding the wave of high investment in the dot com bubble and the y2k scare. People were taking advantage of the web to create new services, and businesses were retooling their technology to make sure they were Y2K compliant. That meant plenty of jobs and jobs meant people had money to spend.
Fast forward to Bush and jobs went from middle class white color jobs to retail walmart and burger flipping joints for minimum wage, and in the past couple of years we've been losing a lot of jobs. People don't have the money to buy large screen TVs or spend additional money when you can get a regular DVD for 5-10 in the bargain bin. If VHS was still out and movies cost $2.99, you'd see a huge amount of people buying those because that's what they could afford! DVDs are a luxury, and blu-ray is an extreme luxury. We can't afford luxuries like that.
The middle class has a money problem, so companies have a money problem. This hasn't been something that just popped up on us, it's been coming for years. Middle class wages have not kept up with inflation, and they expect us to shell out more money for something which is a mediocre upgrade. Sony picked the absolute worst time to introduce a new format, which is funny, because they haven't been able to do anything right in the innovation sector since the walkman.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
My only DVD player is a linux box.
As soon as Blu-Ray works just as well on Linux as DVD does now, I'll upgrade the drive to a Blu-Ray drive. Until then, no thanks.
(Of course, this means that the DRM will need to be thoroughly hacked to pieces first... Oh well.)
BluRay players and discs are too much money, and the software selection is crap. When the great classics like Lord of The Rings are out, and players are cheep people will buy in.
Right now everyone is worried about their budgets because of the recession. People forget it took several years for DVD to catch on.
Is Blu-ray faster?
No. It takes longer to load a disc and get a movie up and running than DVD does.
Is it cheaper?
Oh. Heck. No.
Is it better quality?
Yes.
Sorry, that just doesn't cut it. Amazon Unbox and Tivo or AppleTV or um, er, ah "other methods" (coughcoughPIRATEBAYcoughcough) are faster and cheaper and sometimes better.
Any physical media will lose when facing that competition.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
As soon as Blu-ray won all the prices were jacked up. Might just be me but I would wait for the companies to stop gloating about their monopoly. When this happens and the prices come down I might get one.
I wanted to go for Blu-Ray, but there is still no Blu-Ray player that can compete with the PS3 for features.
The war ended too early. There are no cheap players and the expensive ones are poor value.
I honetly think that it has more to do with the content than anything else. The last couple summer blockbuster seasons saw few movies that were all that spectacular. You can tell by the way the box office numbers were down. I'm not talking about 2008 mind you, but the movies that are now available on BR disc. Add in the massive about of reality TV programming (who wants to see that in HD?), and you're left with not a lot of quality content. Perhaps when movies like Iron Man and The Dark Knight become available you'll see a boost in the sales of players.
What you want a Blu-Ray player for is the ability to play AVCHD DVDs, which is how you watch video of your granddaughter made with a Hi-Def camcorder in HD.
Otherwise your son would have to get a Blu-Ray burner and drop $12 on a blank BD-R disc when he sends the latest footage.
One of the causes of this is because they use Java as the backed for running the menus, but are not yet using the latest runtime environments.
This should be fixed with the next generation of clever "Just-In-Time" virtual machines, they'll be able to dynamically recompile the "byte code" whilst the player is running, enabling unprecedented optimizations - far beyond what could be achieved with modern C++ compilers.
Even the very best hand crafted assembler GUI menu systems can't approach 10% of the speed of a modern Java application.
Do I have any cold hard facts to back up my assertions? No. But I posit that a big factor is cost. We're also entering a recession. Debate that as you wish--but unemployment is on the rise, consumer credit is maxed out, millions of homes are being foreclosed in the US, inflation on essential things like food and energy is on the rise and the dollar is swirling the toilet bowl. Quibble over semantics and nomenclature all you like, but the fact is that consumers are hard-pressed to spend money on luxuries like $300+ players and $30 blu-ray discs--even if the picture quality is superior.
the perception of a quality film is not video quality, but audio quality
mix stunning video quality with poor audio quality and the overall audience perception is that the movie is a bad copy. mix crappy video with stunning audio quality and the overall perception is that you have a crystal clear piece of work
i'm not going to play pop psychologist, but i will say that for whatever reason, the ear decides perception of quality in filmmaking, not the eyes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If it ain't broke, and you fix it anyway, don't expect to get paid!
Blu-ray === XM Satellite radio.
(Normal Radio isn't exactly broke either.)
the quality of the of the video, I'll look to increase the quality of my video. I think I have a long wait.
I bought a cheap Blu-ray drive off of Newegg and installed it in my HTPC. I rent Blu-rays from Netflix and rip them to Matroska files to watch later. However, if I had to buy Blu-ray discs outright I'd certainly live without them.
Don't get me wrong, Blu-ray movies look awesome, but not anywhere near 30 bucks a disc awesome.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The article states that 23% of people were interested in upgrading to BluRay by 2009. Consider that the players are still over $300, the discs still cost twice the price of DVD, and many people don't have HDTVs yet. That sounds like a high degree of interest to me.
What will the market look like in 2012? I imagine there will be $100 BluRay players that are better than today's $300 models. Hopefully the BluRay movies will be priced closer to DVDs. Most or all TVs being sold will be HDTVs. If 23% are interested now, a majority should be interested by then.
The real question is not DVD vs. BluRay, it is internet downloads vs. BluRay. By 2050, most likely everything will be downloaded. However, by 2050 many of us will be dead. In the meantime, especially in the next 10-20 years, I suspect there is a window for BluRay to succeed until the internet catches up.
Getting harder to find a "Regular-Definition" TV set new these days. I haven't seen any on display at the electronics shops since... last year sometime. And there weren't many then. I think blu-ray will take off once the regular TVs people already own start breaking down... That's why I went HD--my old TV decided to run in Black&White only mode at some point... The replacement unit was HD. PRobably how most people will get an HD set--because its their only option left for purchase. ...and then why not get a device supporting blu-ray?
Who did what now?
The problem is price. Not of the Blu-Ray players (which are relatively reasonable), and not of HD televisions (which more people are buying anyway), but of the media.
Simply put, a Blu-Ray title typically costs 50% to 100% more than it's DVD predecessor. With high gas prices and reduced wages and many families struggling to make ends meet, does it make sense to spend $30 a pop for a movie?
High-definition disks, you see, were the industries the secret strategy behind rationalizing higher DVD prices. Consumers have historically resisted every attempt by the industry to raise prices, and competition has in fact lowered them. As such, we pay much less for a DVD today that we did a decade ago, despite that fact that inflation should have boosted the price of a disc along with most everything else.
A new format kills two birds with one stone: It provides a rationale for higher prices for a higher quality product and --not insignificantly-- lets us pay for our favorite movies yet again in yet another format.
Unfortunately for the industry, however, we're not taking the bait. Plus we now have other options, like HD cable VOD, or AppleTV/iTunes HD downloads. They're not quite as good as Blu-Ray, true... but they're also only five or six bucks apiece.
If the Blu-Ray folk want to sell players and discs, they need to drop media prices so that the HD version is only a slight premium over the SD DVD. Say two bucks, max.
As is, they're wanting to screw the consumer and, as always, make him pay for the privilege.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Here's the thing, I don't watch a lot of special effects laden action movies. So I feel like there's no real reason for me to even want Blu-Ray. Of like the last 10 movies I've watched only one (Sweeney Todd) I think would have benefited from Blu-ray. And I was able to enjoy it just fine regardless. All the rest were stuff like Juno, or The Savages, or the Bob Dylan movie. I mean - these are things I could get just as much enjoyment out of watching on a 13 inch screen. But I just don't feel like most movies benefit at all from the treatment. Note - this is pretty much the same reason I haven't gotten an HDTV either. The Dailyshow/Colbert is just funny in normal-def. And I doubt there's even more more to see in an episode of the Venture Bros. Most shows/movies (especially good movies) tend to be more about a story than striking visuals.
Why am I going to drop $350+ for a Blu-Ray player, that's not even feature complete. They boot slow as hell; and I have flashbacks to using my Commodore 64's 1541 Floppy Disk drive when waiting for the DVD menu to load. And $30 for a movie? That's like 7 gallons of GAS. I can rent an HD Movie on my AppleTV for $5.99, and I swear it downloads as fast as it takes a Blu-Ray disk to load (over my FIOS internet anyway). And I don't have to Drive to the store, or wait for Netflix shipments. Yah, the quality is no Blu-Ray, but my 720p TV nor my analog eyeballs can tell the difference.
Another overlooked fact is the current consumer confidence of today compared to that of late 1996-2000. The capital gains tax cut of 1997 marked the beginning of the late 90's boom. Then factor in the cost of upgrading both the source and display verses just the source as was the case with the DVD and yea adoption is going to be slower. As far as a comparative time line for both bluray and DVD I'd say the death of HD DVD back in February 2008 is equal to the DVD launch of November 1996 because of the market based format war, verses only one format reaching the market for the DVD time line. Of course the difference is the larger library for bluray on this time line due to the format war. The point being most ppl site 1999 as being the year that DVD saw widespread adoption, so lets see what happens 3 1/2 years from today with bluray.
And then we have bluray will be quickly outdated by downloads and a new format. Both arguments are so shortsighted it's almost laughable. Download speed isn't scaling to the consumer in the US which is problematic on many levels and a large segment of consumers are not going to accept purchasing a file verses a physical disk. A more likely scenario is the set top box download model will replace the video rental/netflix/video on demand models long term. The upgraded display format argument is so crazy. If your in this camp did you miss the fact that HDTV has been on the drawing board since the late 80's, early 90's (ironically the DVD's development began around the same time, early 90's IIRC) and it took a freaking act of congress to push it out the door? I'll bet money that the HDTV format will be with us for a few decades at the very least (longer than the DVD's life).
How many years did it take for standard DVD to even start registering en-masse? Introduction 1997. I bought my first one in 2002 because the players hit £100. So that's 5 years, and I wasn't late to the game. Maybe 4 years if you count the PS2 when that was released.
BluRay isn't even 3 years old yet, and has had a faster uptake than DVD so far. People will get HDTVs when they upgrade anyway, and they'll end up with BluRay players when they upgrade the player too.
There's nothing interesting here. BluRay is here, it will drop in price like DVD did. Players will be $200, then $150, then $99. One thing that would improve uptake would be dropping the price of BluRay content however, it is massively overpriced.
Personally I am boycotting bluh-ray because their marketing droids chose to mis-spell blue.
That and the stupid "copy-protection" bullshit.
Solution-looking-for-a-problem show poor sales figures; Dog bites man; Vaccuous celebrity does something stupid... Is there NOTHING more interesting going on?
Wake me when they have 4x dual-layer burners for $150 and 4x dual-layer media in 50 packs for $75. 2.5 trillion bytes per spindle!
There's only one crack for BD+ and it's proprietary.
I'm not going to buy any Blu Ray disks until I can play them. That's just common sense.
If the studios can get the crack well-documented and distributed by the time I enter the HD market, then I can buy the disks and they'll receive sales revenue. If they don't get Blu-ray ready in time, then I'll obtain the content from something other than the shiny disks, and that means they probably won't receive a cent.
People who want Blu-ray to succeed, should hope the studio stockholders go out of their way to make the studio execs do the right thing to maximize profit, because right now it's like they're trying to lose money.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
People must have the same tired replies in a file and don't bother updating them.
## $30-$35 disk prices?
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/
Check the top 20 Blu rays: They are $14 - $25 Most are under $20. These are not garbage titles. Batman begins is #1 BR for $17.95.
Right now there is typically only a small premium for the Blu Ray. Soon it will be negligible. Why they heck wouldn't you get blu ray when the price is more or less equivalent?
## Not enough quality difference.
Seriously is everyone blind? I can see the difference on my 20" computer monitor. On really big screens DVDs show serious issues. Actually compare the back to back is astounding. People used to watch VHS and think it was fine too.
I don't have a BR yet, but I think buy a DVD at this point is silly when the price is so close for a much better source. A year from now the prices will probably be equal and we will still see posts railing about $35 blu rays.
Last Christmas I bought a 46" Sony LCD that came with a Blu-Ray player. I think I have rented maybe 2 Blu-Ray movies over the course of the year.
I few months back, I bought an Apple TV, and I've probably rented about 5 HD movies on it. Since the Apple TV, the only time I used the Blu-Ray player was to watch a free copy of Flight Of The Phoenix that someone gave to me.
While not a coward, I am Lazy so I won't register here.
Still, this article is not fully accurate and too many people think Blu-ray NEEDS HDTV. While it is a significant boost, Blu-ray movies will still look better than DVDs, AND contain more advanced special features like Picture in Picture and web content and more.
Now Blu-ray is still in its infancy, and anyone who says they will never buy Blu-ray simply can't see what will happen in the future. As HDTV sales go up, despite the declining economy, Blu-ray sales too have gone up. In fact, Blu-ray adoption is FASTER than DVD adoption was in its infancy! Blu-ray is actually making a difference already. The first quarter DVD sales went down, as expected. However the Blu-ray sales were large enough to boost the entire Home Media market above last year! Already Blu-ray is doing the job of replacing DVD as it starts to decline with age.
For now, Blu-ray will remain a luxury item, and anyone buying it is still considered an early adopter. However, time will tell, and it is more likely than not that Blu-ray will become the norm, especially since Blu-ray players will play your existing DVDs, and upsample them as well.
The average lifespan of a TV is 5 years. The expected lifespan of Blu-ray is 10. Even if you don't buy into the HD revolution now, eventually everyone else will.
The main opposition now to Blu-ray is bad press and confusion. Many are not ready or willing to put down that money involved to get Blu-ray, but it is still young, and like DVDs, it too will drop in price significantly. The media coverage tells you digital downloads are the way to go, except digital download sales overall (SD and HD) are less than half of Blu-ray sales.
consumers were very happy to embrace the DVD standard when it came about because it brought a huge jump in quality over VHS
Wrong again.
"Consumers" prefer DVD over tape because tape, the media and the player, is unreliable, bulky, slow (remember rewind?) and ultimately more expensive than DVD. If DVD quality were exactly the same as classic VCR media consumers would have still bought into it.
As far as this Blu-Ray vs. DVD survey result goes, I knew this and told you so some time ago. Consumers are not *philes. Where cheap meets "just works" you will find consumers; the rest is just *phile noise.
Anyhow, this whole debate is moot; tapes and spinning disks with die out for distributing commercial content as consumers figure out that "movies on demand" via download is cheaper and "just works" better than any other form of media.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
I don't know how much time the jvm adds to the startup of a blu-ray player, but it probably isn't the problem. My HDDVD player takes 90 seconds to start up despite the fact that HDDVD does not use a jvm.
Cow Cube
Well, quite a few people, when shown an upscaled DVD and told it's high-def, ALSO comment on how much better it looks. Honestly, compared to a good VHS tape, DVD doesn't look better -- the difference is random access (versus rewinding/fast forwarding a tape) and other than scratches, the DVD doesn't wear out. Bluray over DVD? It's higher definition -- but, I among with many others don't care. I don't want to spend more per movie, I'm not interested in rights restrictions. I don't know if there's any BluRay support for Linux -- I don't have a TV, so if I want to watch movies, I watch them on my PC. No BluRay for Linux, no interest. I've downloaded some movies, the high def ones, USUALLY I scale it down anyway and watch it in a window.
$400-500mm well spent..
(bitter? moi??)
Seriously though, got almost all the HDDVDs I want, at the same price or less than the standard DVDs at a B&M store.. The last batch averaged below $10 a pop.. Maybe when that runs out and the 45nm PS3 comes out I'll pick one up for bluray and folding@home..
Actually, I believe Blue-ray and the related optical disc technology is a dead end road. The more bits it tries to pack into the disc, the more easy it gets scratch and not usable. And it also require more precise control of servo system to read back the data and the cost goes up. As price of solid state chip goes down, I believe in the future, every type of data are stored in a flash like device. No more moving parts in your player/computer. Imagine your future purchase of a movie is just a thumb size chip, how wonderful it will be!
I was recently really into the idea of getting an HDTV, but I've decided I don't really care. For one thing, if I buy an LCD HDTV, my SD video game systems (N64, NGC, PS2), which are important to me, will look pretty crappy on it and have new-found lag, thus making them suck balls. If I buy a Plasma HDTV you have to deal with burn in and annoyances like slowly fading menus and such - that seems even worse to me. So the best option is still a tube TV and, uh, I've got one. LCD TVs suck due to pixillation and lag. Plasma TVs suck due to burn in. Tube TVs are big and heavy, and that sucks a little, but they look great and have no lag. I'll take it.
--- What?
The film distrbution companies can't continue producing two media formats forever, it gets too costly. DVD and Bluray will run side by side, just as VHS and DVD did during it's inception. You don't see VHS anymore. The cost turns people off and yes, to the average joe they look similar. Don't say "digital distrubtion will kill Bluray" thats crap, we don't have enough bandwidth and most people don't have the hardware to store all the movies they like let alone know how to back them up, would you like all your movies destroyed due to a hard drive crash? Live streaming on demand? Not bad for rentals but again bandwidth constraints for many and a lot of people still enjoy buying or renting a physical product. Just my two cents anyway.
Here's a reason that many on /. will understand.
I watch all my TV shows and movies on a Linux computer hooked up to a 28 inch LCD monitor. Usually, the show is in a window while I do something else (like right now).
Now, at least the DRM on a DVD is pretty much a joke and easy to bypass, but Blue Ray is a different story. I refuse to buy Vista (along with a Blue Ray drive, if any such exists for less than a king's ransom) just for the privilege of watching a movie in the same tiny window I use right now with the equipment and software I already own.
Obligatory Star Wars reference: "This is not the customer you're looking for. Move along."
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
...they described Bluray as being "somewhat better"???
Just more proof that the human race is comprised mostly of morons.
What's the deal with line-doubling DVD players? Wouldn't HD set automatically line-double SD signals coming in?
-Bucky
oh sure when I have $2000 for a decent HDTV and Blu-ray player or I'll wait until Blu-ray goes down to $100 for a player, $25 for a movie and $400 for a HDTV.
DVD vs VHS
The big upside for DVD was bonus features like multiple audio tracks, subtitles, commentary, deleted scenes.
The downsides for DVD - durability, DRM that has the DVD decide when I can and cannot fast forward, more cost for stereo (5.1)
DVD vs Blu-Ray
Upsides for Blu-ray - better picture, better sound
Downsides for Blu-ray - more DRM (I have to download an update to my player to watch a movie!?!), more cost for player (5X - 6X), less durability (same size scratch removes more), more cost for TV (HDTV), more cost for movies (2X-3X), more cost for new stereo (7.1)
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
This format war was probably better served with two players. Sony may or may not win out... its not a foregone conclusion and it won't be for some time.
The facts that this article proves is that the majority of people don't care that much about HDTV and then beyond that even few care about configuring and maintaining a 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 surround sound system. So what's the advantage of a BluRay player when very few people care enough to have surround sound?
Simple, it's for the audiophile home movie crowd. Blu-ray will stick around but it won't be the "family movie player" for a long long time, if ever.
My call is that the real leap will be from DVD to digital distribution. One box. One TV. Lots of choices for purchase and rental. There's a lot more broadband connections than there are HDTVs and surround sound systems in the United States. Blu-Ray will get skipped over and forgotten by most in 10 years.
Serious question: Has anyone here ever seen a TV die? I mean, not from being dropped during a move, but actually just stopping to work. I might be mistaken, but I have the impression these things just don't break.
Which might be a hint to why the producers of such technology are trying hard to impress the consumers with ever newer technology.
The cost of the Blu-Ray player is not my main disinterest in Blu-Ray, it is the cost of the media. I can buy a DVD for 10 - 15 dollars, or I can buy a Blu-Ray movie for more than double that. Suddenly the cost/benefit is not nearly what it is with a regular DVD. When the cost of the BR movie comes down to something more along the lines of a DVD, THEN I may start looking at them.
I don't get this argument. DVD used a red laser, at a shorter wavelength than cd obviously, but still technology they had been making for some time (10+ years!). People didn't like the DVD prices (which were anywhere from 30-50 dollars per movie) but they didn't act like they were getting gouged for new tech. BD uses a blue laser, that's only been made for the last couple of years period. People act like 30-40 dollar movies are out of line for new tech.
Meh. Just makes me more discriminate when I buy, just as I did when DVD came out.
People say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why? Is there any shortage of bad ones?
I have an x1950pro I am in no hurry to upgrade due to the lack of decent modern games; or more accurately games that fail to surpass their predecessors (crysis, c+c3, oblivion). My pc plays anime donwloaded off the net and I like the stories better. Films are a dead medium they are not making progress, they tell the same stories with even more annoying camera work (Bourne identity I look at thee). I would rather relax when I watch something and for the story to be relatively happy instead of "gritty and realistic".
Enough with media formats, the future has to be in broadband delivery. How annoying is it when you want to see a specific movie and one of the following conditions applies: a) the store or rental establishment is closed, b) you're drinking and cannot get to the store or rental establishment anyway, c) movie is out of stock, d) movie is independent or hard to find, e) movie is not one of the 12 available on pay-per-view. (More annoying if you consider how convenient it can be if you're willing to violate copyright laws).
As far as the HD goes, I kind of just prefer sporting events and specialty shows in HD where the extra detail is interesting. Movies have a lot more special effects and more post-production work so HD doesn't seem as necessary. Any DVD from my collection looks great even just from an old progressive-scan DVD player with component connection.
I've got the TV for it, but I still don't have Blu-ray. Why? Because it's too expensive. $400+ for a decent player, when DVD players are $30? Re-buying movies I already own if I want them in the better format? $30 a movie when I can buy DVDs for $10? No thanks. If they want me to make the jump to Blu-ray, the players need to around $100 or so. And I'm still not re-buying movies I already own unless there's a trade-in credit.
Maybe because it's a rip off, double the price of a DVD and costs almost the same to manufacture. If was just slightly more I might be interested, but as of now I would feel like they are bending me over every time I bought one. Besides everything will be digital soon enough, why spend thousands to replace my DVD collection when this will be obsolete soon.
1) Stupid expensive
2) Potential Quality != Realized Quality (compression)
3) Stupid HDMI - Many of us have HD TV's or displays capable of the resolution, but not the interface. Yeah this isn't an unsolveable problem, but see #1
People will eventually switch, but it's just going to take a long time. No news here, this was by design.
Let's not forget those of us who have been burned by having to do driver updates to support the DRM updates, or the fact that certain blu ray disks don't play in my blu ray drive, already beginning to render it obsolete. I won't be buying another one, especially with the problems I've had even after waiting for it to be out for a year.
Development notes at http://devscribbles.blogspot.com
YES IT LOOKS GOOD BUT.... DISCS $25-$30 FOR A MOVIE $300 + MACHINE TAKES FOREVER TO LOAD A DVD
That's very interesting, because I do have 20/15 eyesight (corrected; naturally I'm blind like the rest of y'all) and I do love BluRay. I especially enjoy taking the same movie in BD and DVD and flipping back and forth and seeing how much finer detail the BD shows. Clothing textures, leaves on trees, or the iris of an eye, stuff like that.
My friend, OTOH, hates BluRay because it makes blemishes and visual artifacts in the original much more apparent.
See, you can't please everyone.
Maybe you need to sit at normal viewing distances.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
including the discs and demo the systems on 1080p only displays and resample the survey with customers to see how much more their interest perks up.
My bet is that if a Blu-Ray player suddenly goes from $400 -> $133 the interest will skyrocket seeing as the Blu-Ray drives also run their DVD discs.
I don't know where everyone is getting this "now the ads are everywhere and unskippable!" rumor.
I've had exactly the experience described by the parent. Most Blu-Ray titles are as stuffed with ads as Barack Obama's office is stuffed with copies of the Koran.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
All other factors being equal, I'll take HD.
I have around 300 DVDs. I have less than a dozen VHS tapes that I'd like to replace with DVDs at some point if I can find them cheap enough. If I could find a bargain bin of $5 blu-ray discs then I might consider upgrading my favorite DVDs. But even at $5 each that would be $1500 to replace them all. It's just never going to happen.
I can't justify spending more than $15 for a DVD unless it's an outstanding movie which is rare. Blu-Ray discs havn't even hit that price point.
As for HD, my motivation for upgrading the TV is safety. I don't like the idea of a big bulky CRT tv being within reach of a grabby little 2 year old's hands. So I'm planning to buy a larger HD LCD TV and mount it on the wall out of reach. It'll free up floor space and be safter.
The other hurdle is portable players. I can buy a DVD and watch it at home or in the car on a portable player. People aren't going to want to have to buy a movie twice just so their kids can watch it in the car. A home DVD player plus a portable DVD player is still much cheaper than a single Blu Ray player.
So I don't see any compelling reason to switch to Blu-Ray. They need cheaper players and bargain bin movies. Until then, it's going to be only for those people who like to spend their money on that sort of thing. Not the mass market.
Work Safe Porn
...the after effects of a Pissing Contest is everyone's feet are wet with Piss and reek like hell.
Hollywood just had the quickest selling movie ever in the black night, yet they are afraid of releasing movies without easily cracked DRM?
I'm an early adopter and already have an HD TV, but BluRay has these problems:
a) Difficult DRM - I can't playback the content on almost any device that I **may** want to in the future
b) Expensive playback devices. I just bought a replacement DVD player for $70 - it included DivX, mpg4, mp3, playback too. Oh, the disks I put into it can be self made.
My plan to go HiDef is to buy a component video recorder once they add the DTS 5.1 audio recording to it. Then I'll record HD content from cable and convert it to the format I like.
When DVD came out, we didn't know much about DRM. We've learned better now. If I can't play the content on my OS of choice, I will point that out to everyone who asks me why I don't have an HD or BluRay player. My family is VERY LARGE and has lots of people too!
Listen to burger king - "have it your way."
I've got the same setup, and I have a few blu-rays, but I'd much rather buy DVDs for $10 than blu-rays for $25-$30 as well. They even have DVD sets with 2-3 related movies on them still for $10 a lot of the time. If there's a movie that I really really like and watch regularly I might get the blu-ray, and that's why I only have about 8 of them compared to over 300 DVDs.
I have to admit, I would much rather watch a blu-ray because of the increase in dynamic range of color and the near absence of JPEG-like artifacts because compared to blu-ray, a DVD looks like mud. But I'll put up with it as long as they keep the prices up. Hey maybe they'll change their tune once they find that the price prohibits people from being comfortable with re-buying their movies on a new format since players are backwards compatible.
At least my blu-ray player upscales nicely.
Twinstiq, game news
I recently finished upgrading my setup from a five-year-old 32" CRT HDTV to a 70" SXRD.
I upgraded the TV first. I was very disappointed with the performance when I put the first disk in the player. It looked very grainy and splotchy. You could see all the compression artifacts. It was very sad.
I upgraded the DVD player to a very good Oppo DVD player that was advertised as having an extremely good up-converter. I found that this gave much better results, but it didn't really knock my socks off. Impressive, yes. But not anything that made me wet my pants.
After HD-DVD threw in the towel, I finally upgraded my PS2 to a PS3. When I put in the first Blu-Ray movie into the PS3, I finally had my first bout of incontinence. It looked better than I thought possible on a TV screen.
I set up the system so I could flip between my old DVD player and the PS3 Blu-Ray version of the movie 2001. It really amazed me. The Blu-Ray version was so full of detail and so devoid of artifacts. Almost a year later, the TV finally had achieved its potential.
Ever since, I've stopped buying regular DVDs and started looking for sales to replace some of the action/Sci-Fi DVDs with Blu-Rays.
Now, for some background.
When the HD-DVD / Blu-Ray war began, I hated it. I didn't have a very big HDTV, but it looked great with my ancient DVD player. I chalked the battle up to the studios pushing a new technology into a market that just didn't need it. I didn't want to buy a new player and I really didn't want to replace all my movies with yet another standard.
All that changed once I saw how things look on a really big TV screen. Once you get a screen that lets you really see how bad compression can get, you understand why an uncompressed movie makes such a difference.
I still think Blu-ray is too expensive, which causes quite a barrier, but it will eventually come down. I don't think Blu-rays will go the way of Laser Discs, but it's going to take a while for them to take down DVDs...
/sig
...haven't we established that decades ago? Do you want to be a "consumer" or do you want to be on the cutting edge? As I recall there was a survey a while ago saying most consumers had no desire to upgrade to broadband...
I bought a cheap HD-DVD player at xmas, and got 10 free movies. Then proceeded to buy a Sharp TV and got a free Blu-ray with 5 free movies. You'd be really hard pressed to tell the difference in imaging. To try to explain the difference, there's a scene in Bourne Identity where Bourne is standing next to a concrete brick wall after they go to a bank. Watch it on DVD and it looks like a concrete brick wall. You watch it on Hi-Def and it looks like a concrete brick wall, but now you can see the little pieces of aggregate in the concrete clearly.
That's it. It's not nearly as dramatic as VHS to DVD was. Or even standard def television to HDTV has been.
Now, what's interesting to me is the sound. That I can actually tell the difference quite easily. If you get the content which is uncompressed, called Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD there's a remarkable improvement in surround sound quality. In an outdoor scene, you'll hear birds chirping in the background and the wind blowing through the grass.
Even then, it's not worth spending the money. I bought one blu-ray on sale for $20 just to have one movie to try it with. Other than that, I ain't buying blu-ray movies for $30. The only movies I buy these days are $5-6 on sale at Best Buy. Newer stuff, I just get it on Netflix and then wait for the DVD to be $5 in a year or so.
It seems to me that the inherent problem with Blu-Ray is that it marginally improves upon DVD's strengths, but is still subject to its weaknesses. DVD was a no-brainer improvement over VHS because it doesn't degrade over time, does not require rewinding, it takes up less space, offers better AV quality, carries multiple audio tracks, optional subtitles and just a great deal of interactivity in general. Blu-Ray does all these things, sure, but it still vulnerable to fingerprints and scratches. Add that it's more expensive, and you've got a deal-breaker, hands-down. Quite frankly, I don't understand why we bothered with it, at all.
I'm thinking that a genuine upgrade in formats would sacrifice none of DVD's advantage over VHS, and have physical durability such that fondling it, throwing it across a room or sliding it across a desk should not be a problem. This naturally makes me wonder why, as a culture, we've been quick to engage in HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, but have failed to observe the incredible advantages found in Digital Media Players-- most of us already have a great deal of the equipment necessary, and to top it off, obtaining media for them is cheaper, faster and easier.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
I love my new Blu Ray movies, don't get me wrong, but I see no real need to replace old DVD's because upscaling works great. They aren't quite as good as Blu Ray, but my old DVD's look so much better via my PS3 than on my old (non-upscaling) DVD player that I will focus on new titles when I buy Blu Ray discs.
Upscaling DVD players, Blu Ray or non-Blu Ray, will slow adoption quite a bit.
I don't want to download a movie. It looks horrible and it's very noticeable. When I went to blu-ray I saw the increased color fidelity and absence of lossy compression motion artifacts and it made the move worth it alone, even if you don't consider the higher resolution and lack of telesync and interlacing and other bullshit. One reason physical media will rule is because it takes a lot of time to transfer data that represents a high quality movie at any given point in time. As broadband speed will increase, so will the movie bitrate of the format we use.
... or at least will be very soon.
Why spend $400 on a player and $30 on a disc for a movie that I can watch on demand (and keep indefinitely on my DVR) for less than ten bucks?
The physical media paradigm is dying, rapidly.
When you get right down to it, for me it's cost and BD provides no justifiable advantages over DVD. I still have a SD CRT and that wont be replaced by a HDTV anytime soon. Our priorities are House first, then a 1080p HDTV when I can get a nice size for $1000, and then I'll consider BD. Even then I may or may not go for it.
A number of posters above me have stated that the improvements of unscaled DVD to BD is only marginal. I might consider getting BD for newer content, but I wont be replacing my current DVD collection with BDs of the same title since none of them were originally recorded in 1080p. Let's not forget the constant updates they're making to the BD spec. Yeah the PS3 is supposedly future-proof, but that damn thing puts out a lot of heat and doesn't have the audio output I'm looking for.
More than likely when I do get a house and a 1080p HDTV, I'll build a HTPC to handle streaming movies from my server and possibly include BD drive. We'll see where the market, BD hardware, BD playing software, and especially the price of BD in general are when all that happens. If you're an analyst and looking for a timetable, at the earliest this will happen is a year from now; probably not even that. If you really want me to consider having a BD player and owning BD movies anytime soon, you're going to have to bring the price down on the players and media quite a bit.
Another key item nobody is noticing is that a LOT of people think that with the impending doom of analog TV, that they need a new HD set... and quite a few big (yellow) stores are telling people exactly that. Other cases are that the man in the house sees it as a good excuse to get his new flat panel for football season, but forgets to tell the wife about the converter boxes for $60 (speaking of, thanks uncle sam for kicking in the $40, but you may have wanted to PRICE FIX THAT!)
Is there a way to beat those with a player I can plug into my TV and stereo?
Blar.
I'm not buying the white album again.
I'm not spending $400 on a player and $2500 to replace my movie collection. I'm certainly not interested in spending $25 per movie. Especially not when delivery of HD content over the Internet is imminent. Netflix will start streaming HD content before I buy a blu-ray player.
The concept of consumerism is really going through a rough time. I don't think it's headed for greener pastures.
Tell me why I should have to buy a movie again, which I've already paid for? Why can't I download a blu-ray rip from torrent? I already have a license to watch the movie any time I want.
I'm not going to give my money away for this.
They're using their grammar skills there.
(Quick, mod me down!)
I wound up getting a Blu-ray player "for free" with my TV purchase (I put "for free" in quotes because I could have ordered the TV online and not paid sales tax, but buying it locally for the same price and paying sales tax got a Blu-ray player and 3 discs bundled in).
I'm not paying extra for my movies-- Netflix doesn't charge me any extra to rent Blu-rays instead of DVDs. (Set the right checkbox in your preferences, and if the Blu-ray exists, they send it to you, and if not, they just send you the DVD) The image quality is spectacular-- and yes, better even than DVD.
That said, it ain't perfect. Like someone else noted, Blu-ray hasn't gotten rid of the unskippable commercials (much like DVD never technically did...) Boot time is pretty atrocious, though slightly better than my Toshiba HD-A3.
I'm glad I did it, though. I needed a new TV anyhow (ok, wanted, but I did get rid of my old CRT TV when I moved, so there was a gaping space of empty in the room where the TV would've lived.) and it was worth the cost of sales tax to get the unit. Netflix has made it so media doesn't cost me any extra. It's worked out quite well for me.
I won't comment on your complete answer, but this really caught my eye :
picture/sound quality - dvd isn't that big of an improvement over VHS really, Especially at the time. Dolby Digital is nice (DTS not even available yet), but back then the equipment was very expensive so the only ones who saw an improvement in audio quality were those with lots of money to buy an expensive stereo. Early DVD encoding wasn't great, picture quality was better than VHS but really not by much. (I think the jump to hi-def is a much bigger improvement than even the best dvd over vhs)
Picture and sound quality was absolutely brilliant compared to VHS. I don't know what you were smoking back then, but VHS always had horrid quality, with bleeding colours and an awfull resolution. ... and even then it's not sure it's really worth the money.
The only reason it survived for 9 years after DVDs came out is that home DVD "recorders" were expensive.
The big difference between VHS vs DVD and DVD vs Bluray is that you could see the great improvement DVDs brought on your standard TV set, whereas the improvement from DVD to BluRay is not apparent, unless you change your whole setup
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
We're interested, just not while it is $400. It should be up to 2 times more expensive than decent DVD player, not 5 times.
Well, the one thing that is not in dispute is that the quality is better. You can argue about how much better, but when I popped in The Legend Of Zorro on Blu-ray that came free when I bought my PS3, I could immediately tell that I wasn't watching a DVD. The PS3 does upscale DVDs, but I can tell the difference. It is around 0.35 megapixels even upscaled, versus about 2.1 megapixels on blu-ray. Granted, it makes a difference having a 1080p display, but the point that blu-ray isn't good enough just isn't valid. The only real argument is that the 6 times as many pixels per frame isn't worth double or triple the money... and I agree with that. I am not sufficiently more entertained by a movie if it has more pixels.
This is a rather unusual case involving a MAJOR case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing...
But in my case, as a deaf guy who depends on closed captioning or subtitles in movies, the "upgrade" to high resolutions screwed up one thing: Everyone forgot about closed captioning.
This thread does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=699933
Bottom line: If I get a DVD that does not (for whatever reason) include subtitles, but instead only offers CC, then I must watch it in 480i in order to view the captioning.
I can't tell you how annoying it is to pop in a movie, see no subtitles, then fumble around with the PS3/TV settings until it works (and even then I end up watching the movie on my laptop because it's just easier that way).
I'm a big fan of HD. I don't see the difference between 720p and 1080p on most tv sizes (50" and under). I do have a HD-DVD player (I'm a sucker, and paid $99 with 7 movies.) I must admit that once you start watching certain types of movies with breathtaking cinematography, you don't want to downgrade to DVD resolution. Another thing is, most people are novices and can't tell the difference between quality levels, until they become aware. This applies to everything, computers, audio, video, cars, and the list goes on. Once people become used to something, that's when they realize they want the better product. For example, give someone in Africa who's never experienced better technology a Mac 512k, a 12" crt tv with a VCR, and a K-car, and they'll be on cloud nine. Give the same to an american, and they'd probably laugh in your face. ;)
New slashdot story finds high interest in low interest technology...
HDTV is overrated.
I've maintained for years that while HDTV is impressive, in the real world use it's overrated. I say this even as I'm buying an LN46A650. Why am I buying a high-end set even though I think HDTV is overrated? Simple. I'm going to connect an HTPC to it and play games in high def, where it actually makes a difference (ever play Viva pinata on SDTV? The text is unreadable). Also if I'm going to finally "invest" in a flat screen, I'm going to get the best model that fits within my budget..
HDTV is impressive. It's gorgeous. It really is. However, it doesn't make bad writing better. It doesn't make 'reality' tv shows watchable. It doesn't make Hogan's Heroes or Fresh Prince any more entertaining, and doesn't make the Ellen show any less annoying. It doesn't make Stargate: SG-1 season 10 suck any less. It certainly doesn't matter much when watching Futurama or The Simpsons. One of my friends just bought a Sammy flat screen, and I joked "WOW, just LOOK at that! That's AMAZING!" -- we were watching The Simpsons. heh.
To make things worse, Comcast over-compresses the HDTV streams, so the 1080 streams may as well be 720p, and the 720p streams may as well be SDTV. The compression artifacts outweigh much of the benefit reaped by going HDTV in the first place, and from what I have seen so far, Verizon FIOS is even worse. Oh sure, they have some channels where the compression artifacts are not present or are unnoticeable, but I've seen too much of it to make HDTV alone a good reason to upgrade to a new TV. That's not to say it's not an improvement over SDTV at all, it's just that it's not all it's hyped up to be. :(
Why am I finally upgrading? I'm getting rid of clutter. I have >20 years' worth of computer hardware hanging around just in case I need it, and while I do often need older parts for repairs, etc. it's not worth the money for me to keep clutter stacked up at home and at the office. In cleaning up the clutter, I want to chuck my CRT television as well since it takes up a huge amount of space. I want to eliminate the 38 million cables and replace it with a handful - one HDMI from the cable box to the receiver, one from the receiver to the TV, and one HDMI cable from the DVD player to the receiver. I'll eliminate at least 12 cables by going all HDMI, getting rid of a huge annoying rat's nest.
Now, As far as blu-ray is concerned (to FINALLY get on topic), at $250-$400 I am not interested. The last time I bought a DVD player at that price it turned out to be a piece of shiat (it was a Sony DVP-S360), and the quality was abysmal compared to a "cheap" (cheap then at about $189.00) Apex AD-600A.
I'll wait it out until Blu-Ray players are in the $75.00 range, then I'll buy a high-end model at $120 or so. In the meanwhile I'll make do by going with an upscaling DVD player after I get my sammy. :)
Blu-Ray vendors: Your prices need to come WAY down if you want massive adoption. Until then, 480p is enough for me. :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
At some point, "definition" is useless. Look at digital cameras, The race was on for resolution at the beginning, but when they have about as much resolution as a 35mm camera, only professionals can really take advantage of the difference.
(I'm am a photog in my copious spare time, accept what I said as a generalization, yes I know YOU have a need for more than 8mpi).
The upsampling DVD players with standard DVDs are better all around for the home user.
If my wife wants to watch a movie and we are using the TV in the living room, she uses her laptop in another room. Same with me. I can use my laptop on the plane, or where ever. The picture may be better (with the right equipment) with a blue-ray, but so much better that you have to give up all your compatibility and flexibility?
I heard rumor that Toshiba is making a high-def format that is backward compatible with standard DVD. That will be a winner.
I've grown weary upgrading time after time, so I'm staying put until 3-D is available. :)
... you didn't have to rewind it.
Sorry quality argument people.
So the marginal quality difference between BruRay and DVD, which can only be perceived by a small faction of the population that have real HD monitors, is a very thin value propostion to most people for a move to BluRay. BluRay will happen in a few years when all units are DVD/BluRay combo units that cost ~$100US -and the vast majority of these people will use DVDs on them.
Sorry BluRay vendors.
When the format war ended I went out and purchased a BluRay player, a Samsung 1400. I connected it up to my Plasma and put in a DVD and up it came and played and the 5.1 output worked. So far so good. I went out and bought 2 BluRay disks. It was then that I found out how long they take to load. At first I thought that the player was faulty. One disks was Dirty Dancing a long time favourite of my wife's. It took ages to load and then the sound was only mono. I went back to the menus waited again, then selected proper sound, the waited again for the reload. It takes three minutes from putting in the disk to the start of play. This is the worst case, others only take 30 secs to a minute, but DVDs start virtually instantly. So, was HD-DVD this bad? Maybe some newer palyers will speed thing up. My family can't be bothered with BluRay, they would rather hire the DVD version and avoid the hassles.
I have a 2001 era DVD player hooked up to my 1000W surround sound but it can't play MP3's. I'm in the process of getting a up converting DVD Player. (HD path is too costly for the very occasional movie watching)
Can't the industry come up with ways to update the codec packs for these players? There will most certainly be newer formats with better compression in the future. Why waste an entire player for silly codecs as I am right now?
The PS3 may still be the best BluRay player on the market. $400 is a decent price compared to most players, it has built-in wifi, and gets firmware upgrades faster than any other BluRay player. The quality is fantastic, it loads fast, and it beats my $250 up-scaling DVD player when it comes to up-scaling.
The BluRay portion of it is actually a really good value at $400, to the point that it is like getting a next-gen console for free.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I finally made the leap and moved my 26" 720p HDTV to my bedroom to make room for a 52" 1080p TV in my living room. The room is big, and now sitting on the couch across the room I can see everything. Watching 480i/p content on that TV is downright painful, though. I watch OTA HDTV, and 1080i, even with compression looks passable. DVD and broadcast HDTV cannot compare to 1080p native video content. Having this equipment has eliminated my desire to take a trip to the Theater to watch films. I have a wife and four kids. Buying a Blu-Ray disk costs less than the movie theater tickets, and I am able to re-watch at my leisure. The price of theater concessions are a joke, I don't have to pay those either. And to boot, if my kids act up, I am not ruining someone's bought and paid for theater experience. The sound and picture are amazing, and you have to admit, for some people like me, this is the best choice.
I love my Blu Ray burner. Some day I will learn how to get the Blu Ray movies to play on Linux, but even without that it rocks.
I'm not sure that it's an eye defect. I think the "problem" is that humans are remarkably adaptable.
When I was younger, I had a cheap record and cassette player. It sounded fine. I had a friend with more money who had a nice stereo with a CD player. When I first visited, I could sort-of tell the difference, but it wasn't a big deal. After visiting his place regularly, my ears became accustomed to the higher quality. My own stereo started to sound worse and worse.
There was a time when everyone had VCRs. The quality was fine. Yeah, that over-used tape from the video place might crackle a little bit, but you could still tell what was going on, and it usually looked better than television. Everybody thought that the only advantage to DVDs was their disk shape. No more rewinding! As time passed, we all ended up with DVD players and became accustomed to that level of video quality. Have you watched a videotape in the last year or two? It's kind of painful, really. It's on par with Youtube.
I suspect that the same thing will happen with Blu-Ray. We'll slowly upgrade our TVs and players as the current ones die. We'll buy the Blu-Ray version of the movie because, hey, we already have the player. No need to upgrade existing movies because they still look fine. Eventually, the majority of people's collections will be Blu-Ray. We'll adjust to that level of picture quality. We'll pop in the DVD version of a movie, and it'll look just AWFUL on the 90" set that we watch from a few feet away.
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BluRay is likely to go the way of DAT
Crippled by copy limitations and providing a level of quality that requires source material; reproduction equipment and level-of-attention much better than the average person has.
-- Butlerian Jihad NOW!
DVD came out in I think late 1997, but I don't remember them really starting to catch on until mid 1999. I think VHS even outsold DVD until about 2002-2003.
Blue-ray came out two years ago and the first 3/4 it was unknown if the format would even win. Now the economy has gone pear shaped which isn't going to help things. I'd say its going to take another 18 months until it really catches on.
I love dvds and cds... and vinyl. I don't have a tv large enough to take advantage of HD, really..
I'm not surprised by the results of the survey.
I don't think Bluray was actually intended to be an instant hit, for now it's just filling a hole in the market that existed, that of really HD video.
Most people of course isn't videophiles, just like not all people are audiophiles, and will therefore not bother. DVD is good enough in most circumstances. But just as there are people that will pay 20000 dollars for a good audio system, there will be people that will care a lot about video quality. With a good 1080-projector you will be absolutely baffled by bluray quality.
Alot of people complain about the high prices, but in a sense, they are at the exactly right level. It's a deluxe product and you pay for having better quality than everybody else. If you don't care about that, fine, again there is DVD:s for you.
For me though there is another supposedly big market that isn't being utilized right now. That is the sweet spot of consumer TV:s right now: 720p.
The typical new display is a 37 or 42 inches plasma or LCD that can do 720p. It makes sense since most people won't be able to discern any difference between 720p or 1080p at the typical viewing range of such a display. So why isn't there a 720p disc format? They could have made a small improvement to current DVD:s to make it use H.264 encoding instead. A 8GB H.264 video in 720p looks great and would fit perfectly with most people:s setups. Also it fits perfectly with what the media wants, namely to sell essentially the same content over and over again.
In the years to come we will see bluray drive the consumer video product market with new players and new displays to the households. Eventually it will turn commodity. But just because it isn't an instant hit doesn't mean it has failed, it still has it's best years to come.
I'm curious how they were removed. I have an issue with floaters in my left eye; while they're not always consciously visible, in bright light such as daylight, they can become a distracting nuisance. I was under the impression that there's no way at all to ever deal with them. Even if I have to wait for eye disease (which runs in the family) to set in, I may at least have some bright spot to look forward to (so to speak).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
These folks http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=695922/ will be happy to tell you how awesome they can be and you'd be surprised how little they sell for these days since they lack the coolness of being able to be wall-mounted.
it's not enough that they make us sit through 30 minutes of retarded trailers at the theaters to have to endure this at home as well.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159889&cid=13385253
I really think that DVD is still more than good enough with upscaling and well encoded DVD's - it looks just great still (in my mind)
Also, I now own a 50" plasma television, yet I still don't find regular DVD too pixelated. (as a CRT lover, god why didn't I get a bigass plasma sooner?)
I now own a PS3 and I've used blu-ray discs, I'm very very happy with the image quality of them and the durability (special coating) applied to the discs, the cost is a concern though, I don't purchase many discs though.
I'm happy that a single standard has prevailed, sorry for the HD-DVD owners but either way a single standard is going to save us trouble in the long run.
Sure the manufacturers now need to include 2 lenses in future devices but sooner or later due to mass production the cost will be reduced.
My thoughts ultimately on the situation have changed, I feel that blu ray will actually prevail but it's going to be a substantially slower adoption compared to DVD, much much slower due to the reasons outlined in the post I linked.
With DVD's being as cheap as 3-10$ US now, they are going to be around for 10 years or more, while blu ray slowly takes over, maybe even 15 years.
Eventually, due to marketing and higher quality displays in peoples homes, the perception will be that DVD is crap (despite it not being crap)
What these media companies do need to worry about is the next standard, because that's a whole different story, that's most definitely not going to take off for a long long time, if they try within 3 years they WILL fail.
I feel digital downloads will eventually replace blu-ray (however unlike some, I don't think in 2 or 3 years, more like 6 to 10 years)
My thoughts are that blu-ray will be the last optical disc format for the home consumer, it *WILL* be as big as DVD is now but it'll be a long long time coming.
Simple fact is that there are very few movies out there that I would pay $30+ for to own. DVD advantages vs. VHS were a no brainer. BR quality is very nice, but so are DVDs, especially when I play them on my Toshiba HDDVD player. Its like the price of music. I very rarely buy music because unless its less than $13 its very rarely worth it. Lower the price of BR disks and I will strongly consider buying a player and movies. Until then, I am happy with my huge DVD collection. Oh and another thing, BR doesn't have managed copy. My kids scratch to many disks, and I want to be able to burn and play movies through my media server to my awesome HP media center TV.
Blu-Ray offers significantly better DRM control than DVD. Some (many?) of the content protection features in BluRay discs and players just haven't been activated in order to make the "trap" more inviting to consumers -- like the 'accidental' test of MSNBC's "no copy" flag on MS (Vista et al) software. When consumers are forced to move to the next gen of software beyond XP, it seems MS and content providers will have, essentially, won. :-(
Personally I think XP should be "Open Sourced". If MS doesn't want to provide it and support it, it should be opened up to consumers. Vista OS and beyond will be accepting Hollywood control over our computers -- with any alterations being detected by the OS, and high-quality output being downgraded or disabled. It's really scary and it's currently the 600-lb gorilla that, as things stand, will eventually become the defacto standard for the next generation of content control.
Ten years ago it was predicted that here in the future year of 2008 we would no longer be buying music CD's. Instead, we would be buying DVD-Audio discs with higher-fidelity multichannel sound. Blu-Ray is the same mistake again, but this time for movies.
The optical disc is just Sneakernet. You can't sell that to people who have the Internet. It's like selling a bucket brigade to a fire station that has a big pumping fire truck. Sony is like, "but they're really big buckets!" Doesn't matter. My CD's and DVD's are in storage ... the content on my computer and the discs themselves in boxes in the basement. The last movie I watched was on my iPhone. How are you going to sell me a Blu-Ray plus 10 or 20 years of discs?
Also, right now directors are shooting with Reds, 4000 pixels wide. Is there going to be another, higher-definition Blu-Ray in a few years to display this content? No. So we are going to the Internet anyway, where the bandwidth and the pixel resolution can increase together until reality looks like it has fatbits.
Yes, it IS the PRICE! Back when HD-DVD was still a contender, it seemed that prices on Blu-Ray and HD DVD were on average lower. Now that Blu-Ray "won", prices went back up. Ug!
Those who think BlueRay is DOA, should consider the merits of the included DRM (In general, these are the benefits of effective DRM).
- allows you to watch uninterrupted commercials before each movie.
- you get proper uninterrupted reminders before movies that copying is like killing polar bears and the million dollar fine is obviously justified.
- Prevents wasting time wasting time with Linux and that open source thing, as Blue Ray only really plays on La Vista. Actually Vista will probably downgrade the video to 640x480. So you can get a proper player and quit wasting time with the computer.
- Allows you to donate money to your favorite corporate each time you repurchase the same movie.
- The extra money you spend for the players double encryption will help heat your house and help your coal and oil stocks.
- Imagine all of your DVD's interpolated to 1080p. Imagine all the pixels you are missing. Imagine Dumb and Dumber in HD. Wow!
- Gets rid of any artificial/constitutional limit on copyrights. Effective DRM means that the copyright is infinite. This prevents those pirates from stealing copies from our great-great-great-great-grandchildren. The purpose of copyright is to make money on a thought forever. The government is stealing from us from limiting the monopoly to 70 years after I am 70. If I invent a thought, I expect get retirement compensation from that thought hundreds of years after I dead.
But what if your Blu-Ray player could dual-boot into Linux (even if you couldn't view the discs in Linux). Would that be cool?
I'll just summarize the above comments:
Reasons DVD is better than BluRay:
1) Players too Expensive
2) Discs too Expensive
3) Discs 2x as expensive as the same DVD
4) Half the "BluRay" movies have quality at DVD level
5) DRM
6) Incompatible with previous format
7) Requires HDMI (less convenience than DVD)
8) Unnoticeable on TV's under 46"
9) My old DVDs still work fine
10) Buying a blue ray disc is more expensive than a trip to the movies for the family... including food.
Reasons BluRay is Better: .....
1) Better picture quality on screens over 46" with HDMI support
Yikes. Guess that's why this technophile hasn't bought one either. +1 Redundant I guess...
Blue-ray has plenty of honest, actual merit; it is capable of about six times the visual detail, higher frame rates (so considerably better motion depiction) and a larger color space as compared to a DVD; in fact, it is so good that just as compact disks did for audio, a Blue-ray version of a film often reveals limitations of the original recording.
Funny to see someone who believes the 80s hype about CDs. CDs have a lower "resolution" than vinyl. They just get a better average performance on a cheap reader. A good turntable and an 180 gram vinyl will have more detail than a CD.
The CDs "may reveal limitations" thing was mainly a slogan to sell CDs that were poorly remastered from the original analogue source. Ask Neil Young about CD quality. He even refused to publish some of his records on CD for decades, due to the unacceptably poor quality of the medium at the time. Only now that mastering techniques have improved has he accepted to issue "On the Beach" on CD, for example.
I just dont see blue ray as worth it. I remember when dvds came out and I took to it because it was truly superior to vhs in sooooo many ways. The same way cd's replaced cassette tapes. It was digital vs analog , no contest.
My current setup is a 40" HDTV 720p/1080i , pioneer 5.1 home theater (700 watt), direct tv HD and my Xbox 360 elite. This setup is great to me and does everything I want and I can even get the dead HD-DVD movies for dirt cheap, that is the few that were released and my xbox plays converts to 1080p or even just plain in the resolution of my tv 1360x768.
Blue ray players cost too much even at Wal Mart. I spent my 400 bucks on an xbox 360. The movies cost too much at 30 bucks a pop. Think about it when you walk into Wal Mart again. The $30 movie shelf is nowhere near as attractive as the $15, $12 and $9 or less shelves.
Hey theres that new "overhyped movie" on blue ray for 30 bucks. Never mind, here it is 12 feet away on DVD for $12. With so many people spending money getting blown out there cars tailpipes, the choice is obvious.
...when you can BitTorrent?
You can usually download the movie of your choice in the format of your choice (DVD or blu-ray), play it where ever you want, DRM is already taken care of for you, and best of all, doesn't cost you a dime!
I have seen ALL of my movies this way, and I go to the theater to see the ones that are truly outstanding that I do not mind spending a few bucks on!
BTW: To all the people out there who spend the time and the energy to rip movies, and create good telesyncs: God Bless You! We appreciate all the hard work!
Look everyone, the human brain can fill in details. VHS had crap quality, but nobody minded. DVD won because VHS tapes had to be rewinded, cleaned, and untangled. You watched a VHS a few times, and then the kids would get peanut butter on the tapes and the player was destroyed. The advantage of DVD media (no degradation, no rewind, smaller size) was far better than the advantage of Blue-ray over DVD (picture looks a bit clearer).
From my own personal experience, I love HD.
You can get a decent 720p set for $800-$1000 so I don't really believe that cost is an issue. Nearly everyone I know has an HD set, yet interestingly enough, none of them are watching HD sources. Even my parents are considering getting an HD set because of the US Analog switchoff. (They live across the river from Detroit, so they get plenty of OTA HD signals, I'm jealous.)
My reasoning for not buying into Blu-Ray is because it is so bloody expensive! I'm sure players will come down in price and a good Blu-Ray player will be affordable. I'm waiting until then.
When it comes down to it, DVD is still good enough. I love using my xbox w/xbmc to upscale a DVD to 720p. Looks decent. Does it rival HD? Hell no! I surely notice an improvement when I am watching an HD source, but is it worth $600? Not really. At some point you have to start caring about the content more than the visual wow factor. Otherwise, you have bad taste in movies. ;)
the reason it isnt the same as VHS to DVD or cassette to CD isnt a quality issue. the quality is clearly better. as the article suggests its largely to do with the requirement of an HDTV, but there's something else too. with DVDs and CDs, there was a convenience. no rewinding, instant search, 1:1 copying, non perishable (minus scratches). bluray brings nothing new here. the only new thing is quality and quality isnt enough for a lot of users. my parents marvel at the clarity of their 40" 1080p HDTV whilst watching DVB sky through a SCART cable. looks like youtube to me, who's been watching 720p HD movies on a 32" HDTV. HD movies ive aquired of the internet because i too, have no intention of paying for a bluray player.
The lack of quality titles for BluRay isn't doing the format any help.
From what I've seen there are only a few handfuls of movies available in BluRay that were made pre-2000; I'm no market analyst but I know most of the things out there I'd want to see are already a decade or two old and just haven't been produced on BluRay. Perhaps if they go hand-in-hand with actually making use of the storage capacity along with raping up production of actual good movies (e.g. not movies like Wild Hogs and Van Wilder) they'd get some ground.
"but as soon as I forget about the fact that I am or am not watching an HD source and just go ahead and watch the content, I very quickly forget I'm watching DVD."
The difference is detail. DVD or DVD-quality rips on my 47" 1080p television I sit 2 metres from are lower quality than HD content. In movies, things are "fuzzy" around edges (or, worse, jaggy if I get aliasing effects) -- while HD movies have complete detail (I could pause the playback and count the change on a table, or read the flavour text that's in a lot of movies on props, etc). With non-HD, you're only getting a vague sense of the set and setting around the actors. Corpse Bride is so clean in 1080p, that you can see details that remind you they're little dolls again (like dust sometimes showing up in a shot, which DVD would just blur away). Older HD content (eg: Taxi Driver) shows more film grain, and reminds me more of home cinema experience than DVD does.
In gaming wise, aliasing is a lot more obvious. A 1080p image from the Xbox 360 looks a lot nicer and more detailed than the Xbox Originals, or something like a PS2 game.
In both cases, the difference is pretty obvious.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
No, I use that machine for other stuff than watching DVDs, too, and rebooting it frequently out of linux would interrupt that.
Super high video quality only sells at a premium in movies that are about the scenery or visual effects. Very few people want to pay extra to see Superbad in HD. Lord of the Rings or Batman, sure. Why would I pay $10 extra to see Will Ferrel's ass in HD? *shudder*
The DRM means that you may get downconverted to 480p with no notice or explanation.
Early adopters of HDTV got burned by lack of HDMI connections to hook up their Blu-Ray players. I can watch my DirecTV in HD, but have to roll the dice with every Blu-Ray movie I would buy. They intentionally made their HD player incompatible with my $2000 HDTV, so screw them.
I can watch a lot of movies in HD on DirecTV instead.
Until BD+ gits cracked, I'm unlikely to buy movies. Any DVD I watch repeatedly usually gets re-ripped so I don't have to watch all the commercials (often for stuff I've bought), studio logos and FBI warnings. Or even DVDs that take over a minute to start playing anything (assuming I don't eject it a few times and reset the DVD player thinking something is broken). I understand Blu-Ray usually takes even longer to get to the movie.
Most of my rental locations (prefer RedBox) only stock DVD.
Discs aren't playable on my laptop, in my car or at my friend's house.
Expensive players. I'll have 7 DVD players (3 laptop, 1 car, 3 TV) that will need upgrading to maintain compatibility.
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If they want Blu-Ray to take off, then they should make dual-sided discs (DVD/Blu-Ray) of new titles and sell them at about $2 over the current price structure of current DVDs. I'd likely pay that much extra to have both versions before actually buying a Blu-Ray player. Then they need to let players output ALL content at full 1080p over component and ignore non-skipable content flags.
In the absence of all that, I'm waiting for BD+ to get fully cracked and PC Blu-Ray burners & blank discs to become somewhat affordable.
LDs weighed a ton, were huge, suffered from 'edge rot', cost 2-4x the price of VHS and had to be flipped or changed every 30/60 minutes. I rented a bit, but only bought mine when places started clearing out the players and discs at bargain pricing.
I like to buy a lot of old movies. The problem with blu-ray or really any new format is that these movies are (i believe) going to look and sound the same on DVD as they will on blu-ray.
My reasoning is the movie was digitally corrected from it's source file to the dvd. How can they make a crappy source file converted to digital any better than it currently is?
Garbage in, Garbage out?
Besides we all know Song is evil with their proprietary formats.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Right now, every movie studio and computer electronics manufacturer out there are ignoring a top class market which can happily pay exact same CD price for legal download, buy movie online to view in handheld, pay $600 for a better experience smart phone. You have guessed right, there is no Bluray Player.app for OS X. It would take 4-6 days at most for an experienced Cocoa developer _if_ he had the codecs rights and specs to ship one. At least a "Blu Ray Movie Player" application. They are sitting there and waiting for the company who sells HDTV online content and extremely busy with OS X and iPhone to code it!
There are no "OMG binary! no source!" or "evil DRM" majority on OS X community either. XCode required to code it is there, in their OS X Leopard DVD or as a free download from Apple ;) If we speak about high end, HD movies, they should fire the first idiot who said "But 90% of planet runs Windows". That is 90% of _entire_ PC market. Your market is not that, you shouldn't bother with what the accountant Joe runs in his junk corporate Terminal. Your market is the people who already pays for better experience.
Of course speaking for Linux, by not shipping a binary Bluray playing Application, they are seriously looking for trouble. Remember how did DeCSS ship at first place for which reason? There weren't any DVD playing application on Linux!
one commenter earlier mentioned 90+ second to watch a movie, wtf???
Do you remember all the buggy DVD players that were out in the late 90's? Raise your hand if you couldn't Follow the White Rabbit.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)