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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.
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.
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
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."
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'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.
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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]
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
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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