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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."
Can anyone say DRM? Consumers do not like DRM and thus are not buying Blu-Ray. The poor economy is also a factor.
After all, Blu-Ray's real competitor wasn't HD-DVD. It was, and still is, downloads.
Frivolous new overpriced tech does poorly in tough times. Who'da thunk it?
Caveat Utilitor
I'm not about to rebuy my DVD collection or upgrade my TV to enable your HDCP-enabled dreams of complete consumer control.
Also, I could care less about your game console, so you won't be able to use me as a marketing statistic showing the success of Blu-Ray there either.
I'd much rather see a good story with crappy special effects than a crappy story with good special effects.
Don't Rely on the Market?
Yeah, Washington DC says that all the time.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
what the hell does blu-ray offer that DVD doesn't?
oh a super high resolution that MOST people won't notice on their old CRT Television sets and only few would actually notice on their Hi-Def TVs. DVD for me thanks.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
HD-DVD lost, clearly, but that doesn't mean Blu-Ray won. DVD is winning; and if it can hold onto a lead for several more years, long enough for a substantially better technology to go along, Blu-Ray will fade away just like LaserDisk.
Blu-Ray is better than DVD, but I don't know if it is enough better to survive and conquer.
In the latest issue of Wired, I got one of those "Trial" Blu-Ray discs. I would have loved to check out the movie and disc, except: a.) I don't own a Blu-Ray player. b.) I don't know anyone who owns a Blu-Ray Player. c.) I don't have interest in said movie. I mean, why the -hell- would I spend $200 on something I got in a magazine that I pay $15 for? If I do own the Blu-Ray player to play it, then why good does it do to tell me all the benefits of Blu-Ray when I'm already sold on it?
I have a PS3 which upscales DVD and plays Blu-Ray. Most of the time, upscaling is just fine for an action flick on my HD TV. I thought I'd be buying Blu-ray discs but I find myself just wanting to spend 20 bucks on a DVD rather than 32 bucks for the Blu-Ray version.
* I don't have a HD TV, so what would be the point right now?
* It's my (probably uninformed as heck) impression that not that many movies are out on Blu-Ray. I'm more into documentaries (which would look superb in HD) -- are they available and affordable?
* The players are not cheap -- and judging from the pattern of all similar tech devices, in a year or three, they'll be under $100 or so -- and eventually be downright cheap, once the thrift stores have switched from selling VHS players to DVD players.
* Finally, I have a substantial DVD collection and am in no hurry to re-spend all that money (especially since, until I get used to HD quality, DVDs look fine to me.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Just lower the price of movies that come on BD. It's simply too expensive. Because of this, I buy most movies on DVD and only buy special movies on BD. For example, I just got Transformers. But my last BD purchase before that was about 5 months ago, but I bought a lot of DVDs in the meantime.
Twinstiq, game news
Discs that are more expensive than DVDs? Having to buy new type of player? Limited selections? Difference noticeable only on HD TV sets? Gee...seems like the perfect combination to me.
cheap Blu-ray players that cost less than $200
Keep going. I can still get a no-name DVD player for $30, region free as well.
I won't install or use a BD system.
on principle.
sony: you lost a LOT of money on people like me who BOYCOTT you for all your various evil ways.
note to industry: upscaled dvd's are JUST FINE on any modern day video player or streamer (I use a 'popcorn hour' box which upscales just fine and is fanless and instant-on).
BD can die for all I care. I'll never fund your poor products with my money.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I already picked the superior format (HD-DVD) and Sony purchased its demise... The absolute last thing I'm going to do is purchase the Sony format.
That's like... Someone brings out a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle for $15,000 brand new that runs well, handles well, and is an all-around great car. You go ahead and make a purchase. Then, some conglomerate comes to market with a car that runs on cat shit for $10k and puts the fuel cell company out of business.
I'll walk, thanks.
You can throw in all the free cats and laxative kitty treats you want, I'm not buying.
Careful, someone in Hollywood heard you.
You'll get remakes which will be nothing like those movies. Don't worry, they'll make the Great Space Coaster and Different Strokes first.
Instead, maybe Blu-ray turns out to be the next Laserdisc.
Bought my Blu-Ray player a few weeks ago and was all pumped to pick up a copy of Saving Private Ryan and... nope. Well, I'll just go to Blockbuster and rent something at least... nadda. There was all of 12 movies available, none of them worth renting let alone purchasing. We settled on Fantastic Four I and II. God awful movies. Shamefully bad. I'm surprised they're not churning out movies faster than this; there's barely any titles worth getting that have been released yet.
body massage!
I've been kind of wanting to get a Blu-Ray machine. But I've been waiting for a title that I can get excited about.
Can anyone recommend a movie - that when you watch it on blu-ray you say "awesome ... that was worth it!"
When I look at the BluRay section - I see movies like "SuperBad" and the latest chick flicks
Who the fuck cares about these on BLURAY - @$30 a pop no less
I figure if the re-master Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder from the original AGFA film masters, I will be all over that format. ... but until then .... *yawn*
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Blu-Ray mastering needs work, to my eye. Without motion blur, you need ultra-high refresh rates (up over 120fps) to keep progressive scan video - regardless of definition - from looking jittery. That's controlled by how the images are mastered from either film or digital stock, and by how well your TV can really play back the material.
To me, all Blu-Ray stuff I've seen so far looks like crisp newscam compared to a real cinema experience. DVD playback has actually come a long way in emulating cinematic effects, despite the lower res, so in some instances DVD doesn't just get the job done fine, it actually looks better in some ways than Blu-Ray.
A-Bomb
While we can be quick to claim hot topics as 'DRM' or 'Poor Economy' for the cause, it's more likely the simple fact that the difference between BluRay and DVD is negligible. DVD from VHS brought 5.1 surround sound and full digital picture. There was also the elimination of over-use causing damage to your tapes and of course the dreaded RE-WIND. BluRay brings nothing spectacular or revolutionary to the table aside from slightly higher resolution for an excessively higher price. Consumers don't need/want it. Myself included.
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Those of you claiming that upscaled 480p looks as good as native 1080p have probably never compared them side by side.
That said, I bought an HD-DVD player, and while I'm rather pragmatic about the results of the format war, I'm not going to spend twice as much for a player with half the features.
Remember, when the format war ended, Blu player prices went up. And cheap 2.0 spec players are still a myth.
I believe that other factors have been significant as well.
What you will not hear any Sony executives say: "Gee, maybe if we hadn't insisted on a long and drawn-out format war and did whatever we had to do to come up with a single standard early on, perhaps the market for high-definition DVDs would be doing better right now."
I agree that DRM is an abomination but whether I like it or not, it seems that most "consumers" don't understand it and don't see why it's such a bad thing. "Another Betamax vs. VHS" and "I don't want to invest in the loser" however, is something that most people do understand. Because of the way digital downloads (legal and otherwise) are becoming more and more prevalent and are obviously here to stay, the idiots behind the format wars should have seen that time as their one chance to establish themselves and gain some marketshare before people lost interest in purchasing physical media.
The Blu-ray format will be useful as a replacement for DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, since more space is always useful for data storage. But I really think the days of buying physical media from a brick-and-mortar store in order to watch movies are numbered.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I've been waiting for HD content for YEARS. I remember thinking that NTSC was crap back in the early 90s and wishing for something better. I just thought it was disgusting that we had been relying on ancient technology for so long.
I finally broke down and picked up a decent TV and a ps3 earlier in the year and it's been like a breath of fresh air. The quality bottleneck in the bluray movies is finally the video source, not the format.
Check out the Dark Knight teaser on the Batman Begins bluray on a decent 1080p tv. It was literally jaw dropping for my friends and I. The thing is we should have been watching video like this 10 years ago.
I just don't understand it when people say DVD is "good enough". You can see the compression artifacts! (and that's on a low resolution display)
Oh and the DRM is annoying.... I suspect it will only be a matter of time before I'll be ripping the movies to watch on my portable devices just like I do with DVD. Just crack it and get on with your life.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
That's nearly as worrying as seeing "Eraser" at the top of the sales chart in the article.
No sig today...
I'll switch to Blu-Ray when the price comes down to about double a cheap DVD player and a Blu-Ray disc costs the same as a DVD.
Until then I'll simply download DRM free 1080p files to the PC hooked up to my 1080p tv.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Blu-Ray is failing due to pricing vs. benefit.
When it came to DVD, it won over VHS and Laserdisc because on the VHS side, wear and smeared playback and eaten tapes came to an end; take care of a DVD and it will last virtually forever. It won over laserdisc because DVDs are not 12" in diameter and don't need to be swapped one to three times for a movie (yeah it's true some single-layer DVDs might have needed to be flipped but I have never seen one).
However, early adopters got screwed; buyers of early $300+ high-end DVD players were the victims of bad runs, and manufacturers (read:Sony) denied issues existed. I replaced a high-end Sony player with a no-name Apex player, and the Apex player was vastly superior (not to mention region-free and macrovision-free). People who bought into DIVX got equally screwed, by paying as much as or more than a "Basic DVD" player and then losing access to all of their movies.
With Blu-Ray, players are overpriced, and people have to pay more for the same content. Why bother when upsampling DVD players work pretty darn well to make the difference indistinguishable for casual viewers at 720p, noticeable only to pixel peepers? Not only that but a lot of content (old TV shows, older movies, etc.) were either videotaped at NTSC resolution or are on old, grainy film, where encoding at 1080i or 1080p would actually create distractions from actually enjoying the story.
Lastly, what the hell is up with HDCP? If you are an early HDTV adopter and have a DVI flat screen that doesn't talk HDCP or has an early HDCP device which doesn't like to handshake properly with players, you're locked out of the content. You have to turn to either composite, S-video, or if you're lucky, component (if you invested in a large monitor-only device with only DVI and VGA, no YPbPr, you're screwed).
Bring the players down to $125 to $150 or so and limit the Blu-Ray content premium to 10% or so over DVD, and you'll see uptake quickly increase.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's the cost of the content. Content is king and always will be. Consumers will pay more for a disc player which offers more features and functionality. They won't pay $30 per blueray disc when they are used to paying $14-20 for decent quality movie on DVD. Add DRM to that and ya it's doomed to a early demise and they were fools for thinking they could succeed so.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Nonsense. Most consumers don't even know what DRM is, or if they do they don't care all that much. They already can't copy their DVDs (without some special software), and I don't see that harming the market acceptance of DVD players or DVD movies. Most consumers probably have no idea what DRM Blu-Ray uses.
Blu-Ray's problem is that it's a solution in search of a problem. VHS looked lousy (and progressively lossy) and was clunky to use; the DVD solved those problems by being a higher quality digital disk, so it was successful in the market. So... what's the consumer problem with DVDs that Blu-Ray is supposed to solve? "The resolution could be higher," just isn't that compelling a reason to upgrade.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
> However with blu-ray disks, i cannot picture the average consumer, or even
> the less common nerder consumer giving a damn over the inability to copy
> 40gig movies to their computer or to where ever.
Forget the nerds, the problem is the people who casually copy DVDs, often for sensible reasons like CHILDREN. DVDs and children are a sure fire way to lose titles. So a lot of people make copies for the kids. Others make copies for their portable media players. As soon as a potential BD customer realizes they will have to buy a BD copy (at a premium) and a DVD print of the same movie they ain't going to be all that interested unless they are the sort of hard core video quality freak that has a bunch of laserdiscs already. (assuming they are old enough)
Democrat delenda est
Sony has not been able to convince people that their DVD players are "broken" (obsolete, etc...)
This falls into the same category as satellite radio -- XM/Sirius have not been able to convince radio listeners their radio is "broken" and needs replacement, upgrade, etc...
Both are just novelties and will never go beyond just that, a new toy. DVDs/CDs fixed something that was "broken" stretched/worn-out/broken media tape. Ah the hiss of a worn-out cassette, and remember the cassette that you tried to play that sat in a 120f vehicle all day --- strrreeetch! Or the one you tried to play before the interior of your car warmed-up in the midst of winter --- snnnaaapp! etc... DVDs/CDs "fixed" these problems, not to mention quality... folks said, "I have to get one of these!"
With Blue-Ray... folks think it is "neat", but are perfectly content with their current digital media and they still remember how bad those analog tapes were in comparison. And in the case of satallite radio the feeling is mutual, "my favorite radio station still comes in loud-and-clear... why should I pay for something that is free?"
[apologies in advance for the satellite radio tangent, but it is somewhat relevant]
thats when I'll buy into something new but only because no new stuff is coming out on DVD. Untill then DVD is perfect and dacades ahead of what VHS tapes were.
Cheap movies
Cheap dvd players
???????
I just saved a lot of cash plus I didn't even have to contact Geico
Oh and being a Sony creation I can't support it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I have an "old" 36" CRT that can display 480p and 1080i (though the later flickers too much for my taste) and has component as the best input option. So why would I want Blu-Ray, I won't even be able to tell the difference on my current TV anyway.
Not to mention that Blu-Ray movies are more expensive than regular DVDs. For me to switch to Blu-Ray, first the movies themselves have to reach price parity with regular DVDs. The fact that my TV is too old wouldn't even enter into the equation, HD movie vs SD movie at the same price = I buy the HD movie.
And all of that doesn't take DRM into account. If I buy a movie I need to be able to play the content on any device that I choose.
The week before, market share of BluRay was WAY up. BluRay sales were up 16% despite DVD sales being down 10%.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/09/13/nielsen-videoscan-high-def-market-share-for-week-ending-septembe/
And selling players for cheaper is a bad thing? Sales accelerate when prices drop. DVD players are $35, it must be a complete flop!
It's about time for these ridiculous slanted anti-BluRay articles to end. BluRay is having a tough enough time without slashdot airing repeated hit pieces.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
People were willing to upgrade from VCR tapes to DVD because of the range of advantages - smaller, better quality, you didn't have to rewind it, it almost never jams, if the machine *is* goofed up it doesn't shred your DVD, they have some rather nice special features like directors commentary.
Only the "Better Quality" option applies to Blue Ray - and the difference between DVD and Blue Ray *or* HD DVD is a *lot* less than the difference between DVD and VHS.
If it were just the quality issue, laserdisk would have beaten VHS a long time before DVD's were around. DVD's were superior on a number of fronts, and are 'good enuff' on anything for the moment.
One doesn't really need to be able to read the writing on the One Ring while Frodo's wearing the damn thing to enjoy LOTR - {G}.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Show a casual user a DVD on a 42" 1080p TV from 8' away, then show them a bluray on the same TV from the same distance. Their jaw will drop unless they have worse than 20/40 vision. The differences aren't small, you just have to know how to compare them.
I dunno who Ian is trying to fool, but recent weeks have been up, not down. Last week was because, quite honestly, there was nothing worth buying on Blu-ray Disc. However, the previous week set a record for Blu-ray vs. DVD (the week Transformers was finally put out on BD). Taking a down week and saying "oh look, it's failing" is just the ultimate in silliness.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Why would we buy a blu-ray? We have DVD players in our SUVs, we have hand-held DVD players for $99. We have DVD players/burners in our computers. A DVD is the media we can use where we want to use it.
Blu-Rays are expensive, need an expensive player, and can't be used with all our devices.
The only "advantage" beyond new and shiny bling appeal for techy nerds, is dubiously better picture quality on an HDTV for new movie releases.
It isn't good enough to be worth it.
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.
Internet Retail spaces are wonderful. Get over it!
Actually, I think the parent has hit the nail on the head. As an early adopter (PS3 from day one), I've bought a lot of Blue ray disks, but far less than I would have if they didn't ask for $30 each.
I'd be happy to eventually replace my entire DVD collection at $10...$15; but not at thirty. As it is, we only purchase the movies that we like the very best; if it is so-so or just a popcorn flick (light humor, yet-another-sequel, etc.) we don't get it on Blue ray, even if we don't already have it -- we'll just get a DVD.
I really love the hi-res, too (and can see it, too: 204" screen); but ten disks x $30 is $300, and a hundred is three grand; I have *many* hundreds of DVDs, and there's no way I'm going to replace them just as a matter of course.
As more good movies come out, or let's at least say movies that appeal to my family, we'll slowly build up a considerable collection in the hidef format. But a mass replacement... no. Not until they stop charging so much.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Most average Joe doesn't care about neither DRM (don't know what it is) or the increased resolution (DVDs good enough).
The people who care about the increased resolution is mainly us geeks, but as we don't buy that DRM shit it implies that no-one buys Blu-Ray.
I have several hundred (around 600) DVDs in my collection. I didn't bother with DVDs at all from the beginning due to the stupid region coding, bought my first player when I saw an ad for region free player 1998, but still didn't bother much due to the DRM, but later DeCSS arrived and I felt like DVDs would be a safe buy.
Blu-Ray contains a shitload of DRM garbage so there is quite unlikely that I could make a safe purchase. There are several systems which all need to be cracked before I would get the slightest interest in Blu-Ray.
If HD-DVD had been the elected format, then I would have invested, because that had mostly been made safe already (that is cracked) so it was useful, but those shitty Blu-Rays contains several layers of DRM shit more.
To save the Blu-Ray format, please remove the DRM, (and the stupid stupid region coding) otherwise put it up yours ...
DVD quality is more than adequate, it's better than I ever expected.
There are other technologies i'd like to see long before a 'higher-res DVD' tech.
More convenience would be nice -- like being able to view any item from my movie collection at the press of a button; ability to seamlessly transfer my movies around without having to deal with bulky disks or DRM restrictions.
If they made Blu-Ray movies as cheap as buying DVD versions then it would be a viable choice.I have a blu-ray burner in my PC, but pack of 3 blank dual-layer BDRW discs is still about $120!!! That HAS to be as a result of the MPAA fixing ludicrous pricing on media to discourage movie piracy, rather than actually justifiable as disc production costs. If so its particularly unfair as you still have to pay the MPAA tax even if you just want the discs to store your own data on.
Most people actually don't care about the higher res. of blu-ray for 3 reasons:
1) The price difference between the same movie on BD and DVD is a total rip=off.
2) They are not releasing that many new BDs when compared to DVDs, and are also trying to maximse sales of less popular movies on BD by holding back releasing even older blockbuster movies on BD such as Star Wars adnd Lord of the Rings. iThe point they don't get is that no-one wants to buy crap movies no matter how high resolution they are.
4)) The majority of people still dont even have the hardware to see the difference, even if they think they have bought a high def setup. THis is for two reasons: There's lots of non-technical consumers who still connect up even their HD equipment such as blu-ray players with RGB or SVGA cables, and because they see some kind of picture they think that it must be working properly.
Also significant extra confusion was caused by purposely misleading marketing of HDTV by tv manufacturers: There are still new digital TVs being sold that actually have native screen resolutions (pixel counts) so low that are phyiscally incapable of displaying a 720p (broadcast res HD) picture in full definition, let alone a 1080p (blu-ray res HD) one. Yet those same TVs are being sold with criminally misleading "HD-Ready" stickers all over them.
As far as I can make out, "HD-Ready" just means the TV will display some kind of a downscaled picture when plugged into an HD signal. It certainly doesn;t mean what you would reasonably think, that if given an HD signal it will actually display an HD picture. Unfortunately lots of buyers make the wrong assumption about those weasel words and of course the kid at Best Buy who gets paid based on sales performance isn't going to make any effort to correct them.
Consequently you can't blame people when they incorrectly conclude there's actually no difference between DVD quality and Blu-Ray quality, because in many cases they're not actually seeing any difference.
Sony's problem here is one of branding. Bear with me for a minute.
They have world class engineers that expand the scope of human knowlege. They invent stuff. They embed their technology into products. And then they slap the "Sony" brand on them.
Their problem is that there's no more reliable brand for failure of a new medium than "Sony". You can't engineer your way out of this social problem. Because we've all been burned so many times by buying our content on the new Sony format, only to have to buy it again in the format that's become the standard, the "Sony" brand is certain death for a new content medium. They can fix this. I had hoped they'd offer me a few mil for this wisdom, but they didn't offer now I'll give it for free. They can pay for the next one.
For the next medium, they need to take their engineers working on a new media format and assign them to a product group. Then they need to isolate that group and spin it off into a wholly owned subsidiary. Then they need to create the usual three-times indirect shield of layers of corporate ownership that wind up with an untraceable "investment group" that buys the subsidiary. Then they need to release the new medium with no mention of the Sony origins or ownership.
By careful press they can pretend to compete against the new medium with their usual lame efforts with their hardware arm, while licensing content for it with their media arm.
Finally, once the new medium is fully accepted in the marketplace they can "buy" their subsidiary and take ownership of the related hardware IP. Perhaps in time they can admit that it was all a sham.
This is the only way they're going to get people to buy content on a new format they invent.
Oh, and they can forget the DRM... or they can buy my awesome and customer friendly DRM technology that people will accept. (work with me here.... Don't spoil the joke.)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Show the same casual user the receipt for the 1080p TV at their local Circuit City, and watch that jaw close right back up.
The TV playing behind me right now cost me $65. It's a 19" tube-TV, it's about 4-5 years old, and it has many years of life left in it thanks to the automatic down sampling done by the Dish DVR and the DVD player that gets occasional use. When we watch DVDs, we usually do it on our laptop computers. And even with the dish DVR, we're just as likely to go to digg/slashdot/myspace/youtube or use NetFlix for movies as watch the TV.
The problem with the TV is that it's a limited medium; you sit and watch movies or shows on it. No matter how much you spend on it, the TV is still a TV. But $500 gets you a decent, intro-level laptop.
The laptop can play a movie at comparable resolution to your $4000 "1080i" plasma TV. But, after watching your movie, you can then do some blogging, read the news, chat with a buddy, play a game or two. All on *your* timeline. Think about it... what are you doing right NOW!?!?!
I hate to say it, but once the price becomes reasonable, the long tail beats mass media every time.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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".
Umm, theatres play 24 frames a second, non-interlaced, nothing special. Not 60, not 120, 24. They've been doing it like so or decades and nobody says, wow this picture looks soo frigging jittery.
The only slight wrinkle in modern display of movies is that mastered DVD's need to be converted from 24-50(EU), or 24-60(NA) which is called telecine. This process could be what is causing your jitteryness. The advantage of the new 120hz TV's is that as long as the source is recorded in 24fps without pulldown and as long as the player can be configured to output those 24 frames unfiltered, then the TV can be set to render the 24 fps at a perfect 120/24 == 5hz for every frame causing no distortion, pulldown, jitter, tearing, alien invasion, or the like.
Bye!
High definition video is a DRM-clogged thicket and statistically negligible. It's all in low-res these days - YouTube and so on. That's because convenience wins, every time.
Someone must be making a fortune telling executives that consumers will buy what the execs want instead of what the consumers want.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Disclaimer: I own a PS3 and originally 'hated' blue-ray, I am now a convert.
The factors influencing this are many, for one the crazy deals on discs are (to my knowledge) not as good as they were during the war, competition makes for good bargains.
Also the economy is going down the gurgler, while it may not be disctinctively apparent to all people, things are slowly but surely changing, as well as media attention to the bottom dollar and credit debt, people are slowly (and finally!) becoming aware that blowing money is not smart.
I also believe blu-ray does not offer a vastly superior experience to DVD, it's superior in my mind, no questions asked but it requires (IMHO) at least a 42" HD television and ideally 50" or more to truely gain the benefits of the format.
Ultimately I am quite confident blu-ray will succeed however.
I do not, in any way want OR believe that downloadable movies will win (yet). The facts of the matter are that until very high speed internet is as common as a power socket in the wall, internationally - it simply won't occur.
Blu ray is a minor upgrade to DVD and it's currently too pricey but I do however believe, much like the HD TV sets required, it will slowly but surely be adopted as simply a replacement for existing 'broken' DVD players or as an upgrade, 'maybe one day' - it's not a "MUST HAVE" that DVD clearly was.
Sony (and the other companies involved with blu-ray) simply need to be patient, much like the PS3, this is going to be a long term investment which eventually pays off.
In 5 years time DVD may be 40% of the market, in 10 years time I believe it'll be 75% or 90% of the market, long time to make their money back but it will become (again IMHO) the final optical disc format.
In a full 10 years time, when (if) the economy and technology get over the large bump we're about to face, then and only then may downloadable movies truely replace a simple, easy piece of plastic.
Note: this piece of plastic can be sold anywhere, Kmart Texas, Safeway Sydney, Airport Singapore and it'll work anywhere you have the infrastructure to play it (television, blu-ray player)
Downloadable stuff requires an internet connected device which is authorised to be on the internet (ISP) to speak with a server that's authorised to download the content (account on server) - setting this up internationally, with all the movie houses and their laws, copyright crap, region coding rubbish and release date bullshit is going to be a nightmare, it will happen but this alone will cause blu-ray to go well.
So to summarise, blu-ray will dominate but it's going to be a very slow process and I do believe ultimately profitable.
really - you mean "I couldn't care less".
Jaso
I just bought a 46" LCD TV the other day, my first HDTV. It will do 1080p resolution, though I've never seen a 1080p signal. All of my HD cable channels are either 720p or 1080i. They look amazing compared to standard definition TV. I don't think that I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080i when viewing from 8 feet away, let alone 1080p.
When I was buying the TV I wanted to get another DVD player so that the old DVD player could move upstairs to my bedroom with the old CRT television. The salespeople steer me to the Blue-Ray players (obviously). I look at the $399 price tag and laugh. He says "Well, we have this less expensive model over here" and points to a $379 player. I laugh even harder. I honestly haven't looked at the different Blu-Ray players to see what's what, but I find it odd that all of them are exactly $399. There's no price differentiation except for the "store brand" model. I ended up quickly picking up an upconverting DVD player for $70 instead.
Why? Well, it's $330 cheaper for starters. Secondly, upconverted content looks really good. It may not be the same quality as Blu-Ray, but the difference wasn't that discernible from the in-store displays, and watching upconverted DVD content on my TV looks as good as most of the HD cable content that I watch. Then of course there's the movie prices, they're twice what DVD's cost for only a minor improvement in quality. It's odd, but after 2 years of being out Blu-Ray still feels very "bleeding edge" at the moment. Especially after HD-DVD folded I expected Blu-Ray adoption to increase, and I hoped (perhaps against reason) that the increase the production quantity would bring prices down. I was wrong there.
One other thing that really bothers me is that the $399 price seems "fixed" or artificial. You can buy a PS3 for $399, and it includes a Blu-Ray player. Or you can buy a Blu-Ray player for $399. Doesn't it seem like the stand-alone player should be cheaper than the PS3? It's almost like Sony wants to keep the prices higher so that people opt for the PS3 instead, but I'm not really a gamer. I'm not really much of a fan of Sony either, to be honest. All of their DRM infected CDs and other nonsense that they go through to try to force monopolistic, proprietary standards on people really rubs me the wrong way.
Is this from the Rick Romero newsdesk of the "bleeding obvious"?
Putting crap on Blu-Ray doesn't turn it into a masterpiece, it's still crap. How much is a blu-ray movie disc these days?
It never fails to amaze me how exec's still seem to believe they can push crap into the marketplace and people will buy it like sheep simply because it has a new name and a cool logo attached to it.
Wake me up when the hd tv format wars have ended and some stations actually broadcast full hd 24x7 outside of some indefinite beta trial phase, then I might think again about ditching good old PAL and my dvd player.
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Umm, theatres play 24 frames a second, non-interlaced, nothing special. Not 60, not 120, 24. They've been doing it like so or decades and nobody says, wow this picture looks soo frigging jittery.
Film captures motion blur and has no scan lines - it renders a complete image each frame, which is a very close analogue of how the eye works. Mimicking this effect digitally with a device that uses scan lines is impossible. To look like anything even halfway decent requires the high refresh rates I mentioned in my post, which you also describe. Nevertheless, the effect is not perfect. No TV with scan lines looks as good as film projected in a theater. Some effects in DVD playback systems - especially projectors - can be implemented to deliberately mimic film a bit better, such as anti-chickenwire effects to blur the edges of scanlines together, etc, but I have not yet seen this done with Blu-Ray.
A-Bomb
I don't know what the latest #'s are but after this past holiday/superbowl season, HDTV penetration was only 25% in the US. Which means that the consumer base for blu-ray disks is only a quarter of the market for DVDs.
The real question is whether blu-ray will entrench itself prior to downloadable HD movies becoming popular. Yes, I know blu-ray is a much better quality than downloadable HD right now. But its not always about quality, sometimes it is simply about "good enough". That is why people are currently satisfied with upscaled DVDs.
Can anyone say DRM? Consumers do not like DRM and thus are not buying Blu-Ray. The poor economy is also a factor.
That is one issue, but for me the biggest killer is region encoding. As long as I can buy my disk in any country I like and play it in the player of any other country, then I am happy. For me the defeating of CSS on DVDs meant that software applications could be written to ignore the region encoding. The fact I could copy the DVD didn't really rank that high on my list of wants.
With regards to Blu-ray, I have other stuff I want to spend my money on. I have a nice 27" flat screen TV and the DVDs play quite nicely. I will join the Blu-ray generation when the prices make it a no brainer and the market has already shifted. The other thing to take into account is that there are other optical disks, with higher storage capacity just round the corner, in the form of 'holographic disks'.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
if they were serious about bluray they'd make it cost the same as DVD, and phase out DVD a few years later.
instead they gouge with the price. $600 players and $30 disks. they're smoking crack if they don't know why no one's buying this.
another way to sell bluray to the public is to offer free (or cheap) replacement of existing DVD collections. this would get people moved over, and thus dependent, on the format.
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I have a reasonably nice TV (720p Sony Bravia) and a PS3 as a blu-ray player. I have a nice little collection of blu-ray movies. I LOVE the increased fidelity of the image. It isn't just the resolution - it is the lack of compression artifacts, increased color depth (no banding), etc. that makes watching a blu-ray movie so much more satisfying and enjoyable than watching the same movie on DVD.
Watch Dark City on DVD and on Blu-Ray -- the difference is startling. I am at the point now where I am getting increasingly reluctant to watch a movie on DVD - the image is just so soft and filled with distracting image artifacts.
Now, I would buy more blu-ray movies, but here is the problem for me: There have not been any really GOOD movies coming out this whole summer. What a long dry spell for the home movie enthusiast. Just about every new film released this summer has been awful dreck - insipid teen movies, bad comedies, crappy "paycheck" dramas, etc. I keep going every week, wanting to get a new movie, and I keep coming away empty handed because I just cannot bring myself to buy the junk that keeps getting released. The high point of this month is going to be "Iron Man". I bet the sales of that blu-ray release go through the roof.
planet texture maps and more
Show a casual user a DVD on a 42" 1080p TV from 8' away, then show them a bluray on the same TV from the same distance. Their jaw will drop unless they have worse than 20/40 vision.
The differences aren't small, you just have to know how to compare them.
The jaw will only drop because of the yawn. "The second one looks sharper," the casual user will say, while thinking, "I don't care."
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
It's not really an issue of intelligence, it's an issue of ideology.
I think DRM is stupid, pointless, and generally only going to lose you customers, but I don't passionately hate it, because, to be honest life's too short.
It makes the studio execs feel better, it doesn't really inconvenience me, so why should I care, why should anyone care?
My main deal is just that I don't want hardware I've bought and own to act on someone else'e behalf. It's mine, it should do what I tell it to.
Bow-ties are cool.
I don't have HD-DVD or BlueRay yet.
I don't have a high-def TV either.
Welcome to the majority of us people with neither.
I have a nice 32 inch Panasonic TV, CRT mind you and it's very nice, barely 3 yrs old.
Works great, I get S-Video, etc...
Also have a nice JVC DVD/VHS Combo and a Philips DivX / DVD Recorder.
Now I know that the newer Blue Ray format, with the newer high Def TV give much crisper details, but the truth is, I don't care.
The view I get from my TV is great, for me anyways, and for anyone who has been watching movies with me at home. If the movie sucks, it's not because it's in DVD or Blue-Ray format.
Justifying the investment for this new tech is hard when you have bills to pay.
Sony would have to almost give out the players next to nothing and make their Blue-Ray discs the same cost as normal DVDs in order to make us cross over.
But still, I have over 600 DVDs in my collection, so, I've already spent a lot of money, I can't see myself repurchasing any of the movies I have in Blue Ray def.
Technically, Blue-Ray is better than DVD, but in the end, for most of us, it just doesn't justify the extra cost and bother. DVD movies are just as fun to watch, the minute image detail that you get from Blue-Ray, isn't for most of us, worth the investment.
My setup is a consequence of an confluence of opportunities. I already had projection equipment, but it was shoehorned into a small home. We were looking for a new home with a lot of space, but nothing was really coming on the market. Then this church became available (25k for 5000 sq ft on two lots!), and we agreed that we would buy it and build an interior into it. So during this process, I was standing in the middle of this huge, empty space when I noticed that the wall behind the pulpit and above the chair-rail looked exactly 16:9 to my eye. Turns out it's within just a couple of percent. So we decided to use that space, as it was, as the screen area. The only thing I ended up changing specifically to accommodate this was the projector, so as to get one that would throw a 17 foot diagonal image at 1080p (I picked an Optoma HD80, works great.)
As far as benefits, they are myriad; the big screen is really fun and very revealing of detail, and there's a huge list of why watching at home is better than watching in a theater, once you have an HD display. Do you need a list of those?
We've been "moved in" for about two years, but it'll be at least 2010 before we're done building the interior. Right now we're doing stained glass for the windows (secular themes) and a deck; there are still interior walls to be sheeted, etc, but it's coming along. I'm not sure if you can generalize such a situation to your case, but that's how it happened here. :) Some of the pics of the build are in this flickr set.
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