Bad Signs For Blu-ray

Ian Lamont writes "More than six months after HD-DVD gave up the ghost, there are several signs that Sony's rival Blu-ray format is struggling to gain consumer acceptance. According to recent sales data from Nielsen, market share for Blu-ray discs in the U.S. is declining, and Sony and its Blu-ray partners are trying several tactics to boost the format — including free trial discs bundled into magazines and cheap Blu-ray players that cost less than $200."

Comments

Re:I got one of those "Trial" discs.

[amRadioHed]

Maybe they should consider putting free trial Blu-Ray players in magazines. I'd consider giving them a spin of they did that.

Re:I got one of those "Trial" discs.

[Tingler]

Oh, so that is what that was. I saw 'Sony' on it, so I ripped it out of the magazine and threw it away. I thought someone rootkitted my magazine!

"Transformers" is special?

[Joce640k]

That's nearly as worrying as seeing "Eraser" at the top of the sales chart in the article.

Re:Noone likes DRM

[Goldberg's Pants]

I said All the consumer sees is the movies are more expensive and in pretty blue boxes.

So that's what I just said. Now can you say "Polly want a cracker"?

Re:Noone likes DRM

[Bonobo_Unknown]

$3150 is not a small amount of money, even if it is in Pacific Pesos (NZD) ;-)

Re:From one consumer's perspective...

[lubricated]

Finally the typical movie buyer speaks up.

Total Geniuses

[TigerDawn]

If the concept of $10-20 movie for DVD (Players for $40) vs $40-50 movie in Blu-Ray (players for $300-400) is puzzling corporations, on why Blu-Ray is not selling...

I really cannot help them.

Re:Noone likes DRM

[Paua Fritter]

DRM is irrelevant to 99.999% of Blu-Ray owners because it doesn't effect them.

Affect; not effect.
Man, I've seen this so many times recently it's starting to seem rediculous!!

Re:Noone likes DRM

[dgatwood]

Indeed, Pounds are the problem---the players start at something like 190 Pounds... and the discs at 15 or so.... :-)

Re:Noone likes DRM

[TubeSteak]

So that's what I just said. Now can you say "Polly want a cracker"?

I don't get it.
Do the crackers come in blue boxes?

Re:Noone likes DRM

[dgatwood]

To be pedantic, the original poster is technically correct---DRM doesn't cause those people to come into being---but almost certainly was mistaken in his/her word choice.... :-)

Well, I suppose DRM could effect a person if somebody gets so annoyed by it that he throws the DVD player out the window and goes out for a night on the town, meets the perfect girl, then one thing leads to another, and the next thing you know, a DRM-effected child is born, but... thats about as likely as a pig flying without a trebuchet....

Re:Noone likes DRM

[BronsCon]

So we need them to figure out that "Disk go in here, disk maybe play, maybe not. If not, me spend more money and disk maybe play, maybe not. If still not, me lose money and get frustrated and go to thepiratebay.org and now it play. Me write letter to company, tell them they steal from me, I steal from them, we even now."

Close but not quite

[LostMyBeaver]

Everything was great up until recession. I worked in a film company for a few years and they're banking on the recession to make BluRay happen.

Here's why....

Jim Bob, your average Walmart employee is actually their #1 sales target. In fact, they depend on Jim Bob for quite a few reasons :
  - He couldn't figure out how to pirate a film even if you gave him incentives like threatening to break his beer fridge on his porch.
  - He places strange values on entertainment. After all he spent $200 on his new truck, $500 on his fake chrome wheels, $99 on his new paint job, but $1500 on his high end audiovox stereo system with three 18" subwoofers.
  - He's lost his job to those [insert derogatory name for a minority group here] and now that he's receiving his pay checks from the unemployment office once a month instead of every week, he gets much bigger amounts in each payment. So, now he finally has enough money in one go to buy that 42" plasma and BluRay combo which will free up nearly 2/3s of his living room in his trailer, so he might be able to fit a couch next to his lay-z-boy imatation recliner. So he can even invite friends over to play XBox and drink beer.
  - He realized that he can be the hottest thing at the local bar when he says "I just watched that at home on my new HIGH.... DEF... TV and Blu-Ray". When the other guys then say things like "Yeh, I heard about them things... I heard the movie is like much better on that".

I can go on and on like that forever, but the company I worked for knows one thing... it's only the middle class that spends less on entertainment budgets during recession, the lower class actually spends more since "It's too expensive to go out to the bar right now, I'll just (rent|buy) a new movie and a 6-pack for the house".

Re:Noone likes DRM

[hobbit]

No, that was "talk like a pirate day". "Talk like a parrot day" is this week. Next week it'll be "talk like Poirot day". Mon dieu!