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Why Has Blu-ray Failed To Catch Hold?
Velcroman1 writes "My VCR is stashed in a closet, right next to a couple of CD-ROM players, a laser disc player, and other forgotten electronics. Is my Blu-ray player about to join them? Blu-ray really hasn't caught on — and probably never will. 'I'm surprised DVDs have continued to hang on,' said King, referring to the fact that player sales of over 20 million units in the US last year were pretty much evenly split between DVD and Blu-ray models. Blu-ray discs and players are clearly superior to DVDs, offering more features and a better picture overall. So why haven't shoppers been impressed?"
I suspect most people aren't that bothered by picture quality.
DVDs are handier than tapes, you don't need to rewind.
DVDs still work just fine.
For 99+% of what I or my wife watches on DVD we couldn't care less about a better resolution or extra features. That really eliminates motivation to get a Blu-ray player.
Until my DVDs started to give me disc read errors. I'm tired of wasting money on planned obsolescence, I'm not replacing that collection with BluRays just to have them crap out on me in 5 years. Anyway, a better format will be out by then... I'm skipping this cycle.
You can't take the sky from me...
Many people don't want to spend thousands to re-buy their entire movie collection at a higher price.
Especially when DVD looks almost as good as BR from across the living room on the 40 inch HDTV.
Sony finally won the standards war but is almost irrelevant because people now watch stuff on-demand via streaming.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
and are being replaced with lower-quality .mp3's? Because most folks care about content more then they care about sound or picture quality.
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
I just got my HDTV this year and I'm surprised as to how many movies in my DVD collection have only been recently released on bluray (or are still waiting).
The fact is hi-def is just coming out of the early adopter phase.
Time will tell, but I bet a lot of those DVDs are being purchased by people on standard def.
...the economy is in the toilet, and people aren't rushing out to improve their video quality when they don't have the money to do so (or maybe they just don't care to do so).
Because it's a substantial price increase for an incremental upgrade in quality and often a downgrade in convenience.
The viewing experience is only marginally different unless you are watching on a big hi-def screen.
The movies cost more
the players cost more
and what is the point of rereleasing old movies on Blu-Ray - like theres gonna be more shades of black and white?
This is the first I've heard of it.
Seems to me that someone at Fox just decided Blu-Ray was failing and wanted to write an article about it.
Netflix
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Blu-ray players connected to the Web can offer games, extra movie features, and additional bonus materials online that DVD players generally can't. And the latest Blu-ray players can handle 3D discs, something no DVD player can do.
I don't want any of that shit, especially if I have to pay extra for it. I just want to watch a movie.
It used to be about how BluRay will fail completely. Now it's "only" selling half of the market.
No, BluRay will likely never have the complete hold of DVD, simply because download is a real option. But it's certainly not going anywhere.
What do you think will be in the next consoles?
Plain and simple. Most people aren't looking to play in high definition on Frank's 2000 inch TV.
And for screens 60" and smaller high def, while noticeable just isn't enough of an improvement to merit the switchover.
That and the huge install base of DVD players and drives out there is just an 800 lb gorilla that Blu-Ray has to struggle to overcome.
And the capper.
If there had NOT been a credible format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, we'd probably have seen better adoption by now. The format war completely crippled uptake of the format for YEARS. As such, neither HD platform gained the critical early traction necessary to overtake DVD. Now, this late in the game, since it has to now compete with streaming/downloadable content as well, it's going to continue to stumble.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
unless the DRM is a lot worse
all DRM is eventually defeated (region free playing, sharpie on the inner ring, etc), but if BluRay makes you jump through more hoops, and spend more money, for less rights, it's a turn off
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
50% market share isn't that bad is it? For a long time after DVDs came out VHS was still selling and renting well. Most people I know (including my parents) upgraded to Blu-Ray shortly after getting a >40" LCD.
The lack of Blu-ray support from Apple is entirely an Apple thing. They want people to support iTunes, not Blu-ray. The tiny bit of money they would have made on video professional who want Blu-ray support (which they can actually get, after-market, on the Mac ... Adobe tools support it) pales in comparison to the cash they're pulling in on iOS devices and products. In fact, just the iPad itself brought in as much revenue as the Mac last year... and it wasn't even launched until April.
Sony won specifically because Blu-ray wasn't proprietary. Toshiba and Microsoft ran HD-DVD like a gaming console -- Toshiba sold every player at a loss, which they could, because they got a per-disc royalty. Blu-ray was rapidly licensed... other than the PS3, Sony wasn't even out with a BD player early on (they had to devote their supply of lasers to the PS3).
Blu-ray in PCs wasn't a critical thing, just as DVD in PCs wasn't when DVD was new. PCs only adopt the new consumer formats once the drives hit a comfortable price point. Which is about where Blu-ray drives are these days.
And this is the same evolution as other devices. The pundits do expect Blu-ray player sales to exceed DVD this year, for the simple reason that the CE industry has counted on new DVD features of some kind every year to drive new player sales. Particularly today, your best chance at a new sale is to someone who's already a DVD users. The premium player market was long ago established at around US$100. When 480p players hit the market, they were more expensive, but settled into the $100 niche. Then upscaling players took over that $100 slot. Now it's Blu-ray players... they are, after all, still fully functional DVD players. By Christmas, BD players will hit the $50 mark on sales, then pretty regularly into 2012 -- just as BD players first hit the $100 mark last Christmas, and now are readily available at around $100.
Media sales are another thing... many discs are sold to people with multiple players. You may have that BD player in the livingroom, but DVD players in the car, the kids room, the portable player or PC for vacation use. This has many new BDs bundled with a DVD as well... they'll spend the extra $0.05 to make the BD sales. Disc sales were around 20% last year, depending on the film (films with geek appeal do a significantly higher share of BD sales than, say, chick flicks or kiddie films). This is expected to increase this year.
That's not the whole story, though, because it's also keyed by retailer. Wal-Mart sells the most DVDs in the country, and they're still highly DVD oriented. Best Buy, on the other hand, went over 50% Blu-ray last year, and they continue to grow. DVD sales are skewing toward highly discounted older releases already, and probably keep moving that way. That's one big reason the studios are all about the Blu-ray, even though it hasn't dominated yet. Don't forget, it took quite some time for DVD to replace VHS, and that was without the backward compatibility.
Another related factor: just try to find a standard definition television or camcorder any more. They essentially don't exist. Consumers are moving rapidly toward HD in all things, which starts to make DVD unacceptable, at least for certain films. Same reason I could imagine watching a small cast drama in SD, but wouldn't even bother to watch any pro sport in SD... just doesn't work anymore.
-Dave Haynie
The one that I would like to see more of; but is basically certain to not happen outside of pirate circles, is greater adoption of the dubiously standard; but quite convenient, intermediate format of MP4 video recorded on DVDs. All the cheapness of DVD production; but better quality than MPEG-2 for the same size. Some DVD players support it, and computers have no trouble; but it is totally informal.
This is something I'd like to see also. All of our movies have been ripped to mp4 format and put on a hard drive on the media server, but there is no room in the car for such an item. It would be nice to fit a few movies per DVD for the kids to watch on long car trips.
Which leads to the other two pluses for DVDs: (i) ripping a DVD is mindlessly easy nowadays, while ripping a BluRay still takes some effort, and (ii) region-free DVD players are the norm in most of the world, while I have not encountered a region-free BluRay player. We have a few DVDs which are region 0 (i.e. no region), a larger number which are region 1, but most are region 2. This is OK with a region-free DVD player, but wanting to view disks from different regions would mean buying multiple BluRay players.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire