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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 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!
... 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also a techie and also a flim fan. I find the difference quite noticeable and though new Blue-Ray movies are too expensive, I'm willing to buy my favourite ones second hand from Amazon. However, though I want Blue-Ray, I also want it to work. After battling with the crap that is PowerDVD on Windows or the frustration that is decrypting the discs on Linux, neither option appeals anymore and I'm just giving up on it. I'll take another look at the technology in another six months, perhaps. And if the situation for watching the bloody things on my computer (my main media centre) has improved, then I might start buying some again. (I currently have two). Its been a near complete waste of my time so far.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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"?
Let me fix this for you "female factor" should be replaced with "people who have a life". I don't understand how this gets attributed to females given that females are just as likely to blow large sums of money on trivial things, and ultimatly that is all this is.
I have a TV capable of doing higher than 480, I have an upconverting DVD player. I don't have a desire to spend $50 on a cable where a $5 cable will do just to get a better picture. I mean...you can make the picture and sound the most amazing quality, even better than the human ear/eye can distinguish. But so long as the content quite consistenlty sucks in the first place what is the point? I like shows with good acting, good story, good concepts, and quite frankly the quality of the picture/sound above reasonably clear has precious little effect. The only dramatic effect this has is on movies that tend to lack in every department other than visual and audio effects. The same way gameplay keeps turning out to be horrible in so many games while they have the latest super rendering mega fast pretty factor engine. I don't care how good it looks if the game sucks, and if it is a good game then stellar graphics are hardly my concern.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
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
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
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."
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...
Most of us don't even have hidef TVs. Without a high definition television, BluRay is worthless.
My TV is forty two inches, flat screen, only five years old. I paid a thousand bucks for it, and I'm not planning on replacing it any time soon. By the time I need a new TV, BluRay will be obsolete.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
The other day when I was standing in line at Blockbuster, they had a blu-ray demo playing on a fairly large sized HDTV. The demo was going over the virtues of blu-ray, with side-by-side comparisons. The problem is, I couldn't tell which side of the screen was blu-ray, and which was regular dvd resolution (at least from where I was in line, about 10 ft away). The only thing that HDTV makes clearer is the disclaimer text at the bottom of most commercials, and maybe sports such as football. Other than that, for most movies I get plenty enough enjoyment out of them with regular DVDs.
three words: Video LAN Client.
Best FOSS DVD/media player ever. not only does it skip the retarded FBI warning, it skips all the can not skip past sections and directly loads the main menu, if the DVD was mastered to annoy people who directly load the main menu, you can specify the menu number, manually with the open disc dialog.
works on windows and linux, give VLC a shot. VLC is also the only client i've found for internet radio that works if the cast isn't an ogg stream, under linux.
did i mention it slices, dices and makes julian fries too? (you can even 'save stream' internet radio, arr)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
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?
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....
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
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.
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.
When will people learn to not let big companies like Sony shove expensive proprietary formats down our throats?
Oh, wait.
-- Boycott Shell
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.
"I don't care how good it looks if the game sucks, and if it is a good game then stellar graphics are hardly my concern."
The big problem is with consumers though, what people buy vs what people rent makes a huge difference and many people buy games on hype and graphics more then gameplay, because most people are simple minded.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
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?
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)
Actually from what I have seen is that females will do it spread out across more purchases. Guys will typically blow large sums of money on single purchases where gals tend to nickel and dime you to death buying 1000 things they don't need simply because "it was on sale".
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
If the $50 dollar cable you are referring to is an HDMI cable then you haven't gont to Amazon.com where they have them for 1.73 +shipping to bring it up to around 5 dollars. PROTIP: don't shop for electronics at Best Buy.
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.
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.
They actually die a variety of slow deaths. They get blurry, they lose color fidelity (tint), they get dark, or lose contrast (look washed out), they can suffer 'burn in', make high pitched buzzing noises...
A lot of this stuff is repairable... but its not usually worth repairing.
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
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