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?"

Comments

Not bothered

[aedan]

I suspect most people aren't that bothered by picture quality.

DVDs are handier than tapes, you don't need to rewind.

Re:Not bothered

[DataDiddler]

Hole in one. Past a certain point, most people just won't care. This is why most people listen to music on cheap, crappy speakers; the gains in paying an extra $X aren't worth it to them. Plus, people are naturally conservative by nature and won't change anything unless they're forced to or see enough of a benefit in doing so.

Re:Not bothered

[Seumas]

Exactly. I have only owned HDTVs (and 55" or larger) since 2000. I know people in 2011 who still have 32" CRTs and say that they can't see any reason they'd need anything else. These are even people who are heavy film and pop culture buffs. And not old, either. In their 30s. They're content with regular DVDs and with streaming netflix on standard def. They even play their XBOX 360 on them. It's kind of baffling, but I guess there must have been holdouts when color television came out, who insisted their black and white was more than anyone would need for a couple decades afterward.

Then, you also have the fact that a Bluray is still $20 to $30 and it's not worth that much for a movie that I'm only going to ever watch once (twice, maybe, for the extremely amazing greatest movies of all time). Especially when I can get access to like 9,000,000 songs from a streaming service like MOG for $5/mo and more movies and television than I could ever watch in a life time from a streaming service like Netflix for $8/mo.

Even when you push aside the people who are satisfied with 1980s technology and the people like myself who don't want to "collect" videos, the remaining people simply don't see a point in the investment in a format that is being replaced by streaming/downloads over time. They figure they can just skip this generation's media format and jump back in when we've settled on digital downloads as the ultimate option.

Re:Not bothered

[Hatta]

Exactly. I don't even bother to put on my glasses for SD TV. Why would I spend money on a TV with a better picture I can't even see without the glasses I don't want to wear?

Re:Not bothered

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There are also (non quality related) advantages to DVDs, to this day:

As with USB vs. Firewire(where Firewire is absolutely better; but modestly more expensive and much less common), the Blu-ray premium isn't nearly as crushing as it was back in the bad old days(TFA mentions a $70 Blu-Ray deck, albeit probably lacking support for some of the fancy features; but a DVD player can be purchased at just about any pharmacy for about as much as dinner and a drink...); but it is still the case that DVD is absolutely ubiquitous, while Blue-ray cannot be assumed.

Want a disk that will play at your house, on your laptop(s)/desktop(s), at a friend's house during movie night, etc, etc? Blu-ray still can't promise that. DVD drives have, essentially, replaced CD drives in everything but dedicated CD players. You have to look to buy CD-ROM only devices(DVD burners aren't quite as ubiquitous; but DVD read/CD R/W is pretty much baseline). Blu-ray, by contrast, isn't wildly expensive; but you still have to ask for it, every kiddie going to college whose "TV" is a 17 inch macbook doesn't have it, most cheapy PCs don't have it.

Then there's the fact that the user experience with some Blu-ray players has been almost hilariously hostile. DVD players, with comparatively rare and usually irrelevant exceptions, don't have firmware updates. Blu-ray, not always something that can be relied on to avoid that.

Re:Not bothered

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the issue that not everyone has a huge LCD panel for a TV. Sure, some people have 50" 1080p TV's, but some have 20-30" 720p sets (where the difference between dvd and bluray is small), and some still have CRTs (where the difference between dvd and bluray is non-existant).

I, for one, still have a CRT, and I've heard various horror stories of bluray players not outputing any picture at all to a set that didn't support HDCP (such as my s-video/component/composite connections). On my computer, where I do have a bluray-rom drive, I found out that my video cards (two) and monitors (three) didn't support HDCP. The idea of replacing so much hardware to watch a movie is just ridiculous.

Plus, I have reservations about the Internet-connectivity on these discs. I buy a disc because I want the content forever. Is that content really forever if I have to download it from Sony each time I want to watch it? Can they use the connectivity to violate my privacy?

Plus, and I'm sure this has been fixed on the new high end players, but the original bluray players took 60-90 seconds to play a disc. My dvd player takes less than 10. Why would anyone want to sit around and wait for a player to boot?

Furthermore, the ever-changing DRM environment on Bluray discs is in perpetual upheaval. Many older players won't play newer discs. Some older players will, but only with firmware updates. But again, this is more hassle than I'm willing to deal with.

Once I finally upgrade my TV and monitors, I'll probably take a more serious look at Bluray, but as it stands there are too many issues (many created by DRM-happy studios). I wish the upgrade to Bluray had been more about fixing what was wrong with DVDs, making it a defacto DVD-2.0, rather than the creation of a new format with a whole new set of problems.

Re:Not bothered

[ottothecow]

+1

The people who write about this kind of stuff usually fail to understand this. As a tech writer, it is probable that you and everybody you know has everything fancy things like HDTVs and you are naturally invested and interested in new tech.

The truth is, a lot of people don't even have TVs where blu-ray would matter, even if they did care about the difference between really good (DVD) and super good (blu-ray). My parents only bought an HDTV last year, which made everything look better already...so until they get used to that, why go blu-ray? When I come home at night and see people in my apartment building's windows, I see quite a lot of tube TVs still going strong (remember, analog broadcast is dead but the cable companies are keeping it alive and well).

Sure, all of my friends have HDTVs but I am young, tech savvy, and by the time we graduated college and moved into new apartments, you couldn't buy anything else. However, judging by the number of people content with pretty mediocre panels and crappy built in speakers--I wouldn't guess any of them care about quality all that much (not to mention the people who watch stretch-to-fit content without thinking anything looks wrong).

Re:Not bothered

[toastar]

There are also (non quality related) advantages to DVDs, to this day:

Well that and a dvd burner is 20 bucks whereas a bluray burner is about $100

Re:Not bothered

[Spellvexit]

I think your mention of Netflix is more of a reason why the uptake for Blu-Ray is so slow, and it's the same reason why Blockbuster has gone down in flames -- physical media just isn't as lucrative as it used to be. Before fast Internet speeds, DVDs had no real media competitor besides dwindling VHS players with their obvious disadvantages. Blu-Ray came out in the age of streaming media and portable storage small enough to fit on your keychain. I haven't bought anything on physical media for years now, with the exception of a few good books. I think this is the end of the line: I doubt there will ever be a successor to Blu-Ray as a physical format -- instead, its successor, if you could call it that, will be an algorithm like .mkv or .avi++ or some sort of fabulous content distribution infrastructure built off the cloud.

Re:Not bothered

[Stormthirst]

I disagree with your analogy of black and white to color TVs. Color has an obvious and immediate difference.

The same was true of DVDs over VHS
1) No need to rewind
2) No chance of the tape getting chewed
3) No overall degradation of image quality over time which we saw with VHS.
4) No chance of you accidentally over writing a DVD by mistake. (Aside from vindictive siblings, which happened to me once)

What do you get on BluRay that you don't get on DVD?
Sure it's higher definition - which is only any good if you've spent the money on an HDTV.
Sure it's got extra features on the disk - but how often do you actually watch the additional features? Once, maybe twice?

Personally, I'm happy with my CRT TVs. When they finally break, I'll buy an HDTV. Until then I have better things to spend my money on.

Re:Not bothered

[TheLink]

There's another difference which makes DVDs more easily playable.

You can easily buy _cheap_ multi-region DVD players.

It's still not easy to find cheap multi zone Blu-ray players.

I know some guy who buys lots of original stuff (especially shelves of anime) and he lives in NZ.

The trouble is most english sub-titled bluray anime releases are in the wrong zone for NZ blu-ray players!

So he had to go to a different country to buy a bluray player and take it back... I told him he shouldn't support such idiocy, but he just had to buy one.

Who gets hurt by this bullshit? Good customers like him. Those people downloading MKVs aren't hurt :).

Re:Not bothered

[BuckaBooBob]

Getting Gouged from the MPAA and sony...

When Blu-ray players drop below 100$ and dics are 20$ they will catch on... Right now... you can get a dvd player for 40$ and most movies are 15-20$... compared to a Bluray player thats 150$ and movies that are 40$...

Re:Not bothered

[Bobfrankly1]

I suspect most people aren't that bothered by picture quality.

DVDs are handier than tapes, you don't need to rewind.

Not to mention how good some DVD players are at upscaling. It's not HD, but it's close enough for the majority. Count that in with the compressed HD streams that many people are used to seeing from their cable provider and what HD actually looks like gets muddied in the public eye.

Re:Not bothered

[wjousts]

This is exactly it, it isn't about (marginal) gains in picture quality, it's about convenience. DVD beat VCR because disk don't need rewinding, they don't get mangled by your tape player, they don't degrade each time you play them, you can skip straight to the bit you want to watch, oh and they happen to have better picture and sound, but that last point is pretty far down the list of selling points. Blu-ray offers nothing except better quality picture and sound. To displace DVD, it's not enough to be a better DVD (DVDs are pretty good as it is, and good enough for most people), you have to offer something new.

This is why CDs weren't displaced by a better CD format (although they exist), they were displaced by downloads, because downloads are more convenient. It will be downloads that displace DVDs too, because the convenience of having movies available on-demand is hugely more convenient that going to a store to rent or buy a physical disk. People will even accept slightly lower quality for the convenience of downloading.

Re:Not bothered

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And the per-disk cost, of course(both with blanks and with commercial media). DVD blanks are basically disposable, blu-ray rather less so(but still not large enough or stability-tested enough to be a viable alternative to the really pricey tape, for smaller users). Then, when you hit the store, you find that the DVD is ~50% the price of the BD, except under special circumstances.

Given that people are willing to watch streaming video in the under-5mb/s range, quite happily if the price is right, the quality bump just isn't worth the extra cost.

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.

Re:Not bothered

[SQLGuru]

Why are you people still reading the comments to this article? I read this far and every point worth making has already been made.

* People don't care enough about better quality (in visuals and audio -- they do care about better quality in content)
* The price vs improvement isn't worth it to those that don't care
* DVDs can be copied by the pirates much easier (so why would they want to upgrade)
* Equipment compatibility issues (older vs newer DRM may or may not work with your player)
* Slower load times
* Better portability to "anywhere" -- even computers pretty much have DVD readers in the base model
* When you stream your content, you don't really care about Bluray (physical media isn't as important)

Re:Not bothered

[vlm]

but it is still the case that DVD is absolutely ubiquitous, while Blue-ray cannot be assumed.

Thru the magic of streaming and mythtv the only place my kids watch old fashioned physical disks is in the car. Can you even buy a blueray player for a car? For less than a kilobuck?

Re:Not bothered

[Lumpy]

In fact most people, where their new 42" LCD is at and where they sit, they cant SEE the difference between a bluray and a DVD. Most people sit more than 12 feet away from their nice shiny LCD widescreen. and this is too far for a 42" to see the resolution increase a 720p signal gives you. you have to sit even closer to see 1080p

SO the rich guy that has his 62" above the fireplace and he sits 20 feet away... he cant see the 1080p he paid for. It's why I laugh hard at people that are shopping for 690hz and has to be 1080p! Why are you payng for all that buddy? You wont see it! Your wife wont let you put the TV where it will deliver the best picture.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html

Then let's look at cost.. At new release, Blurays are 2X or more than the price of a DVD.

Re:Not bothered

[metamatic]

Two important pluses for DVD that you didn't mention:

1. I can rip it. Blu-ray is still hard to rip.

2. I can easily get a region-free drive and player. I'm still not seeing cheap region-free Blu-ray players.

So even though I do have an HDTV, and do see the quality difference, and do have the money to buy Blu-ray rather than DVD... I still buy DVD in preference, because of Blu-ray's DRM. Way to go, movie studios.

(That said, I rent Blu-ray.)

Re:Not bothered

[peragrin]

well that is it is shelf life. for most people TV's represent a 10-20 year investment. If you bought an HDTV 10 years ago, your not thinking of replacing it for another 5-10 years.

Ultimately Blue ray has a major design flaw. it forces people to update hardware that shouldn't need to be updated ever. google(or Bing) Blue Ray update problems. you get 80 million results.

James cameron's Avatar is the best example of it. something like 1/3 of the blue ray players had to receive a firmware update to play it.some took only 5-6 days to come out others took months.

when you finally got your update, you had o then hook your player up to the internet. for most people that means disassembling the tv stand moving the player to your computer desk and hooking it up there, along with a cheap tv so you can see what you are doing. Or making a really long patch cable and stringing through the house to hook up the player long enough to get the update.

Re:Not bothered

[Beardydog]

You can basically stick a DVD drive in a badger and get its best possible picture out the other end.

If I stick a Blu-Ray drive in my mom's computer, her 1080p TV will get 720p, at best, I think. If I stick it in my computer, with HDCP, but plug it into my iz3d monitor, I get 720p, at best ( no HDCP support ). If I plug it into my TV with VGA, because Westinghouse TV's apparently forget how to receive HDMI for weeks at a time, I get 720p, at best. Or if I accidentally leave the iz3D drivers running, thereby breaking the video chain of trust. Or if the wind blows.

People buy DVDs to play on -all- of their devices. Even old people watch DVDs through computers now. Getting Blu-Ray to work doesn't involve buying Blu-Ray discs, it involves upgrading every goddamned component you have, then crossing your fingers.

And the software. JESUS CHRIST.

I get to choose between CyberLink something or other and PowerDVD something or other... the only two options... both cost money. The OEM that came with the drive installs fine, but fails to install an update without it which it can play no Blu-Ray discs. When it finally runs, it's visibly horrible software, littered with stock photos and upsell messages. It enforces every no-skip, no-fast-forward, no-screenshot, no-noting rule to the hilt until you just wish Flanders was dead.

I love the picture, and now that I've got it all working, it's worth having the Netflix Blu-ray option.... but I'm not going to pay money to own discs that do their level best to thwart me at every opportunity, and if fell through a wormhole into the past, I would probably skip the whole thing and pirate my HD content. 720p only? Fuck, that's probably all I get half the time, anyway.

Re:Not bothered

[gstoddart]

Hole in one. Past a certain point, most people just won't care. This is why most people listen to music on cheap, crappy speakers; the gains in paying an extra $X aren't worth it to them. Plus, people are naturally conservative by nature and won't change anything unless they're forced to or see enough of a benefit in doing so.

One further reason (beyond not caring about incremental quality differences) is that "High Definition" has been a moving target. I've stood on the sidelines watching HD and the like since I started buying home theater components somewhere around '98.

HDTV is in its third incarnation, at least. Plus all of the cabling issues like HDMI rendering old TVs irrelevant/obsolete. Now they've got 3D TV which I have no interest in. It's been a moving target, and by the time you've bought into one technology, they move onto the next new thing.

Combine this with the competing standards for HD-DVD and Blu Ray, and now talk of different things ... it's like throwing good money after bad. When I buy movies, I buy them on DVD for the most part. A movie that I'm really interested in will be bought with a combo pack that gets me Blu Ray, DVD, and a digital copy I can download to I can have -- the digital copy is actually worth more to me than the Blu Ray.

"Normal" NTSC TVs lasted for decades, completely unchanged. We're not on something like the 4th generation of TVs since about 1998, and when Blu Ray and HD-DVD were fighting for market dominance, it was clear that the writing was on the wall for both of them. Blu Ray was dying the day it was released, because it was never going to get the huge amount of acceptance that DVD did.

I simply refuse to replace my TV, amplifier, DVD player every year or two because some company (usually Sony) decides they've come out with new and improved. And, until HD (or whatever it morphs into) becomes stable, people will continue to determine that they don't really need it, and they won't buy it.

I know someone who bought a $5K TV in the late 90's, by around 2005 or so, it didn't work with the newest things at the resolutions he was promised. His last TV was a $500 42" LCD, and like a lot of people, he's simply gotten off the treadmill of 'leading edge' TVs.

Somehow marketing companies have come to believe we're willing to get all new tech on a fairly regular basis. We're not.

Re:Not bothered

[Maximum Prophet]

I upgraded the firmware on my DVD player. Now I can fast forward through the FBI/Interpol warnings, and turn macrovision off. Is there a Blu-Ray player that can do that?

Re:Not bothered

[sheehaje]

It's not just the money. $100 isn't a bad price point for what should be a superior experience to a $20 player. My problem is the technology itself. I have a 2 year old Blu-ray player in my living room that needs constant updates to firmware to keep up with newer blu-rays. It's a pain to update because the USB port is in the back of the unit and it's not easy to access...

I just built a new computer and put blu-ray in it so my son can watch some of his movies that we purchased on blu ray, but again, scolded by the technology. I run a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu machine and on the windows I can only play certain titles because the software that came with the unit is a "lite" version. To play all titiles I need to fork over almost the same amount that the hardware itself cost. On Ubuntu, I haven't even attempted to use blu-ray playback. There are some major hurdles there.

Finally, I don't want to be forced into 15 minutes of advertisements upon inserting a blu-ray disc. I pay to own a copy of the movie.. I don't pay to be subjected to advertisements.

A DVD is much more universally accessible. I also have Netflix and a DVR... Maybe if the movie companies didn't make Blu-ray such a hard to access technology, it would probably have taken over... I only purchase blu-ray's now if they are part of a BluRay/DVD/Digital-copy combo pack. Otherwise it's DVD's (that I know will work on all my devices) or see if it's on netflix or I can DVR it.

Re:Not bothered

[newcastlejon]

I wouldn't really call myself a buff but I know what I like - read I'm picky - but my attitude to HD so far can be summed up thus:

If a film has to been seen in HD to be enjoyed it's not much of a film to start with.

Re:Not bothered

[bughunter]

So I've read thru most of the active, non-troll, non-joke threads here, and the union set of all of the discussions seems to be:

• DRM is limiting Blu-Ray adoption. DRM makes for a pain in the ass to setup, to watch, and to place-shift. Many (if not most) people are willing to tradeoff DVD quality for ease of use. And more than a few people are driven to bypass DRM in order to get what they want (e.g., control over playback, access to full-res content, etc.).

I'm with the majority on that. I torrent or record all of my HD programs. The rest is DVD movies from Netflix, or in the case of childrens' content, DVDs purchased and stashed with toys. I have one drive capable of playing Blu-Ray content, and I've never been impressed with the few Blu-Ray discs I've borrowed -- not enough to purchase a single one myself, anyway. But then I don't buy DVDs except for those with titles like "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Justice League Unlimited," for which the extraordinary expense and headache of 1080p playback is entirely unnecessary, and probably would go unappreciated.

Re:Not bothered

[networkBoy]

I think Blank Media cost is the big mover here.
If BD_Rom blanks were the same price or even price/gig as DVD media the adoption rate would be much higher. The content creators have ensured this won't happen. What they don't realize is this has also greatly hurt the general adoption rate of the format.
If disks were cheap, people would use them for their home movies, what with 720p cameras being commonplace now.

I recently had to explain to someone that my sony* DCR-96 was DVD quality even though it wasn't 1080p/720p etc. they really didn't get it. It wasn't until I shot identical scenes on both the DCR and a FlipUltraHD 720p camera and mastered them to a DVD, then played it on a 1080p TV did it sink in that raw pixel counts don't help in consumer video. You're better off buying based on low light performance and SNR than on resolution.
-nB

* I hate Sony's antics, and I shopped around for days to find an alternative camera in the same cost range, nada.

Re:Not bothered

[nabsltd]

Blu-ray is still hard to rip.

I've never had an issue, and since I don't own a Blu-Ray player, I have to rip all my discs.

In fact, since I have yet to find a movie on Blu-Ray that isn't at the original frame rate and progressive scan, the number one issue I have with DVD ripping (consistent de-interlacing and pulldown removal) goes away.

Although I don't actually automate, with AnyDVD HD, eac3to, DGAVCIndex (or ffmsindex), AVISynth, Xvid or x264, and mkvmerge, it's close to automation, with only a few conversions needing some extra tweaks (like subtitles). My only real issue is that I have a media player that does not handle MKV files, so I have to encode to AVI, which means splitting at 2GB.

Re:Not bothered

[w3woody]

Well, and given the angular resolution of most people's eyes, honestly unless you have a very large big-screen TV and plan to sit very close to it, most people won't notice the difference at all. The human eye can differentiate to around 1 minute of arc, which at 14 feet (the width of my living room) translates to 1.24 millimeters, or about 20 pixels/inch. An HDTV has a resolution of 1920 pixels wide; at 20 pixels/inch this yields 96 inches--which means for a TV set smaller than 8 feet wide, the pixels don't contribute anything when I'm sitting 14 feet away, unless I have exceptionally good eyes. (I don't.) Even at 480i, with 720 pixels horizontally, at 14 feet distance, a 42inch monitor will have roughly 20 pixels/inch, which is right at the hairy edge of many people's perceptions.

Now if you stand right in front of the monitor (or have a 23" computer monitor with a resolution of 1920 by 1080), you can see the pixels. But you're not staring at the thing from 14 feet away.

So it's not just a matter of the average person not caring. The extra pixels are also being wasted on most people.

Re:Not bothered

[riegel]

and mastered them to a DVD...

Your point is correct, but your test was flawed.

Re:Not bothered

[aix tom]

BluRay "4x" speed is 4*36Mbit/s = 144Mbit/s
DVD "8x" speed is 8*10.56MBit (1.32 MB/s) = 84.48Mbit
DVD "16x" speed is 16*10.56MBit = 168.96Mbit

I would wish they would just get rid of the "Xx" declaration and use something more comparable.

At the moment I use 8x DVD-( or +)R and 4x BD-R, so for me BD-R is faster. Of course I mainly use them for stuff that doesn't fit on a DVD.

Re:Not bothered

[norminator]

The software problem with DVDs on PCs was bad for a long time, too. You could get a DVD drive with a hardware decoder card, or one with software only. The software was most decidedly not free -- heaven help you if you lost the Power DVD disc that came with your PC, and Linux support was sketchy at best for quite a while. Some DVDs would come with some crappy player software that didn't include CSS encryption, but would sometimes goober up the DVD software you already had (PC Friendly!). If you have a DVD drive and you have the CSS decoder, you probably already have some type of player software, but PC Friendly would trick people into thinking they needed to install it.

Please don't act like everything was so much better in the glory days of DVDs. You're getting "better than they were before" confused with "better than they are now". At least now, even if your setup isn't optimal, you can still get 720p.

Re:Not bothered

[batkiwi]

Both makeMKV (which has osx and linux versions in addition to windows) and anydvdHD do 2-click ripping of blu rays.

I own a few blu rays, but all of them are ripped on my mac and then transferred to my mythtv backend. I got an external usb2 blu ray drive for $60 that does the trick.

Re:Not bothered

[lennier]

People are creatures of habit... How the hell that means conservative

Yes, that would be the definition of conservative, in the ordinary, everyday, non-political sense.

Not everything is about politics.

Re:Not bothered

[BoberFett]

I watch movies and TV shows for quality of writing and acting, not resolution and sound quality. Maybe you need to improve what you're actually watching, rather than what format it's in.

It's simple

[Deathnerd]

DVDs still work just fine.

Re:It's simple

[Abstrackt]

That's exactly it. CDs were a major improvement over cassette tapes and DVDs were a major improvement over VHS, no more rewinding and they took up way less space, so there was a compelling reason to switch. Now the motivation is gone; the form factor is the same, the picture isn't that much better, and Bluray players and discs are still relatively expensive compared to DVDs.

Re:It's simple

[sycodon]

Exactly.

People get tired of buying a whole a fucking new player and new versions of their favorite movies every few years because some duchebag company tries to push the latest thing.

"Good Enough" is the enemy of "Better"

[Mongoose Disciple]

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.

Re:"Good Enough" is the enemy of "Better"

[tlhIngan]

Exactly. It's also hurt by early adopters to Blu-Ray which had horrible mastering. I believe Talledega Nights was worse on Blu-Ray than DVD (and not just extras - picture quality too!).

Upscaling DVD players do a remarkable job these days (and if you got one of the old discounted HD-DVD players back in the day, wow it's hard to tell).

And Blu-Ray really only benefits new movies. Catalog movies often suffer worse on Blu-Ray due to poor mastering. (Compare the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Apollo 13 - yikes. The Blu-Ray has blown highlights, extensive DNR and other crap that despite a 66% increase in available storage capacity, it has less details than the HD-DVD version - at times it's so bad signs in the background are blurry).

Blu-Ray doesn't offer much these days - in the early days they were often worse than DVDs (if you're an extras buff like me the Blu-Ray would be 50% more expensive for just the movie alone) when they were mastered well, and for the vast majority of people, a DVD is far more convenient because there are players everywhere - cars, portable (there are a few Blu-Ray portable players, but there are far more DVD ones), computers, and attached to practically every TV in the household. A Blu-Ray player is rarer, can probably only be watched on the "good" TV, and doesn't offer much more for most people.

Even though I have both players, even I have to sit down and figure out if the extras are worth the extra cost, see if the mastering is any good (avsforum.com is good for this), etc. Even then I often buy DVD copies and reserve the Blu-Ray for movies I want (unless the differential is small).

DVDs plus DVRs replaced inconvenient VHS. Blu-Ray doesn't add as much value to the mix these days for its cost.

Re:"Good Enough" is the enemy of "Better"

[ShavedOrangutan]

It's still worth buying a blu-ray player. I picked up one at Best Buy for less than $100 that does upsampling DVD, streaming Netflix, Pandora, and a bunch of other stuff. Even without HD discs, it's still a great unit.

Price!

[MozeeToby]

Because "regular price" for many blu-ray movie is $29.99 compaired to $17.99 for a DVD. The only times I buy blu-ray over DVD are for action movies that I really enjoyed (and that the improved picture quality is actually noticeable) or deep discount sales when I can get them for under $15.

Re:Price!

[Nerdfest]

I haven't bought one partly because of it being a Sony controlled standard, and partly because of the price. I was expecting the price to drop to about the same as a DVD, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I almost bought a PS3 slim, but they dropped 'other OS' support, and things seemed to go downhill from there.

Re:Price!

[DarenN]

Except that really you'll get all but very new releases for $10 - $15 ( or €5 - €10 over here ). €5 is more or less my impulse buy price point - as a result I've a fair amount of DVD's. I think it's the same for most people, especially because Blu-Ray's are generally twice the price of a given DVD

I used to collect DVDs

[Scrameustache]

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.

Re:I used to collect DVDs

[kehren77]

I've got over 800 CDs - some as old as 35 years and still they work just fine.

First, There are no 35 year old CDs. The technology was first introduced in the fall of 1976 by Sony. So I'm going to call bullshit on your 35 year old CD claim.

Hey, check this out:

2011 - 1976 = 35

Oh my god!

Okay, I'll be more specific. April 2011 - September 1976 = 34 years 7 months.

Also, 1976 was just a product demo, not a commercial release. The first commercial release of an album on CD wasn't until October of 1982 in Japan.

This just in...

[boristdog]

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.

interwebs

[Goalie_Ca]

Sony finally won the standards war but is almost irrelevant because people now watch stuff on-demand via streaming.

Why have CD's held on so long

[DaveInAustin]

and are being replaced with lower-quality .mp3's? Because most folks care about content more then they care about sound or picture quality.

Do they have HDTVs?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Because...

[the_one_wesp]

...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).

Not worth it

[Fulminata]

Because it's a substantial price increase for an incremental upgrade in quality and often a downgrade in convenience.

It's caught on with me

[elrous0]

My biggest problem with blu-ray early on was that the first generation of players was awful. They were slow as Christmas (WAY slower than the first generation of DVD players) for one thing. Newer players are considerably faster and come with a lot more features. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that blu-ray discs still come with forced trailers (way more common with blu-rays than with DVD's) from most studios (Universal and a few others being notable exceptions).

Lets see

[rossdee]

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?

Re:Lets see

[cpicon92]

That depends what you mean by old. Old movies were shot on film, which was inherently higher-resolution than television screens. Hence the better quality brought by Bluray releases. Honestly, I enjoy the fact the Blurays exist in spite of the fact that I do not own a player. It's great having my pirated movies come in a resolution comparable to that of my computer monitor.

Blu-Ray isn't mainstream?

[0x15e]

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.

Re:Blu-Ray isn't mainstream?

[profplump]

Or just read the article summary, where it says 50% of new player sales were Blu-Ray. That seems fairly mainstream.

The headline-grabbing premise of the article claims "Blu-Ray is failing", but the actual argument being made to convince us of that is "Blu-Ray has not entirely replaced DVD in the first few years", which most people would not consider to be the same. There's absolutely no argument stated that even tried to convince us that Blu-Ray sales are on the decline or that Blu-Rays won't continue to grow and eventually supplant DVDs just like most incremental, backward-compatible upgrades.

SVHS vs. VHS again

[jandrese]

Basically, quality is not a big enough selling point for most people as long as the old stuff was adequate. DVDs advantages over VHS went well beyond just the quality, with instant seeking, no degradation over time, extra features on the discs, and lower price points. They were compelling. Blu-Ray is just more quality for more money, there aren't really any new features, and it requires you to upgrade your screen to use it. Most people are still on SD screens, because they work and HD is just more expensive. Maybe when their old TVs break they'll upgrade to HD, but there is certainly no hurry.

One-word answer:

[amliebsch]

Netflix

Re:One-word answer:

[BagOBones]

I purchased a BlureRay player specifically because it was cheap and had Netflix built in..
Months later the ONLY BlureRay I have is the one that came with it, the content I watch with the device is all Netflix and my own media streamed via a DLNA server.

Re:DRM

[geek]

DVD's have DRM also. Your argument doesn't hold any water.

Depends a lot on the movie

[thepike]

I have a blu-ray player, but I still buy a lot of movies on DVD (because they're cheaper). The main reason is just that a lot of the movies I buy don't really benefit from having better graphics. Sure, if I'm watching the new Tron, I want good graphics, but if I'm watching some random comedy film, do I really need that boost?

Because of that, I rarely stream action movies from Netflix, because I do want the bump in graphics. Mostly on Netflix I watch TV shows, since the quality isn't going to be great anyway and it doesn't matter, and go out and buy my favorite movies.

Featuritis

[PvtVoid]

From TFA:

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.

DVDs are better.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

DVDs don't crash because some jag-off decided to run Java code between frames of my movie. DVDs don't make me worry about version numbers, patching my player, or any of that jazz. And that's just technical.

I have a DVD player in every computer, and connected to each TV - meaning portability. All my friends have DVD players. It's easier to find movies on DVD.

DVDs are cheaper.

I have a huge collection of DVD's. I'm not going to repurchase everything.

Next will be going back to solid state non-spinning media. People don't change formats for picture quality (see: Betamax). They change for convenience/durability.

Re:DVDs are better.

[profplump]

If someone starts selling movies on solid-state media, I agree, Blu-Ray will fall to that. But currently it's *much* more expensive than pressing a disc, so it's not something that's just around the corner. And the MPAA is not so big on the downloading. Those facts might change over time but if we're going to speculate about what might replace Blu-Ray in the future you might as well talk about how new magic technology will distribute movies via fiber optic connection from a kiosk to your brain-drive -- why would anyone want to carry around solid-state media.

Back in the real world where the future isn't clear, Blu-Ray is currently an incremental upgrade over DVD and as people replace their equipment it will slowly become standard. Think about how long it took for DVD to become the standard optical drive in new computers -- most people didn't see the point, didn't have computers fast enough to play DVDs, didn't have DVD player software, didn't own DVD videos, couldn't exchange burnt DVD with their friends, etc. But over time it became the standard and now even the $300 Dell comes with a DVD drive. Blu-Ray will likely follow a similar path.

If someone invents a new, cheaper, better way to distribute movies and the MPAA can be brought on board Blu-Ray certainly might be supplanted as the "current" video technology. However, unless the new format is also backwards compatible Blu-Ray will probably continue to supplant DVD sales, as Blu-Ray can play all current video disc formats and people still own video discs.

Too good

[Gorkamecha]

Honestly, the quality is too good - You can see the wizard behind the curtain. Real life example: My geeks friends and I were all standing around watching Iron man 2 on a super huge LCD screen at best buy. It was the scene where Tony escapes his captors in the clunky MKI armor. We all noted that the suit looked like plastic, not metal. That you could see where the joints didn't quite connect. In short, the illusion was shattered. I haven't bought a blue ray video since. (I have a PS3, I own a few blueray films that I got for the extra features - But I prefer to watch plain old DVDs.)

Re:Too good

[karnal]

To be fair, John Madden has been a zombie for some time. He just didn't want to admit it.

Simple answer

[kenrblan]

Netflix HD streaming video and similar features with Cable and Satellite. Most people watch a movie once and aren't concerned with building libraries. The DVD was established well before on-demand and streaming were as viable as they currently are. People concerned with building collections will buy the BluRay player. One other factor was a general wait-and-see attitude while the BluRay vs HD-DVD format war was still ongoing. People waited and better options presented themselves.

Lots of reasons

[MightyYar]

First of all, the pricing is all wrong... why are these things so expensive? I understand that they were initially gouging the early adopters, but we should be more in-line with DVDs by now.

Second, they are delicate. You get rentals (if you can find them) and they seem more prone to scratches than DVDs.

Third, picture quality is awesome, but you often don't really notice from 25 feet away. Sometimes I have to really pay attention to whether it is Blu-Ray or DVD if the upsampling is decent.

Fourth, selection. Finding pre-2005-ish movies seems to be almost impossible. There have been some things worth buying since then, but not a whole lot. They need at least release the "watch over and over again" classics.

Fifth, player cost. I still haven't seen any for $20 at Walgreens.

Sixth, online. People watch "TV" more and more on their computers. Leisure time isn't what it was in the 90s.

Finally, replacement. VHS wore out, so re-purchasing an old movie on DVD was reasonable. It is much harder to chuck away a perfectly good DVD.

I have many BluRay Discs since...

[Assmasher]

...I have a home theater but there are several reasons why people aren't interested.

(1)If you don't have a home theater and a giant screen to display movies on, you probably couldn't care less about the difference in quality between DVD and BluRay (plus, I've seen some crap BluRay transfers that were no improvement over DVD.)

(2)Until mini-vans start coming with BluRay players by default, my wife will continue to buy DVDs to zombify the kids on car trips.

(3)My personal hatred of BluRay - Taking several minutes to startup due to the DRM and HDCP handshaking, key updating, communication, et cetera.

It is utterly ridiculous that putting a DVD in my Sony BluRay player versus a BluRay means a playback difference of 3 minutes (and I have a fast BluRay player.) Note that some BluRay Discs do not exhibit this behavior but all are still sloooooow compared to DVD.

Sharper video but inferrior in more important ways

[Script Cat]

Bluray stops working for grandma. Then the player gets tossed aside. Or it must be sent to the repair shop. Or grand son must install the new DRM keys.
Bluray is trash and that is where the player belongs.

Wow, way to move the goalposts...

[feepness]

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?

Because for most people DVDs are "good enough"

[Chas]

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.

failed?

[Ephemeriis]

I'm not running out to re-purchase my entire collection of DVD's in Blu-Ray format...

And I've always been picky about what I purchase.

But any new movies I buy have been in Blu-Ray format.

No real reason to switch

[hawguy]

On my TV, (37" 720p/1080i) I don't notice any quality difference between Blu-ray and DVD.

But I do notice that the disks take a lot longer to load, trailers are harder to skip over (one blu-ray had nearly 15 minutes of trailers that I had to skip by fast-forwarding then when it hit the next one, I had to fast-forward again and repeat about 8 times), and I can't easily rip a Blu-ray to my hard drive so I can watch it on the plane.

Re:DRM

[circletimessquare]

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

50% isn't that bad.

[Fr05t]

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.

An even split between bluray and dvd

[kevinmenzel]

And it "isn't catching on?" Plus the economy in the US still is pretty much in the crapper... what are worldwide figures? What are figures by country? Just because the US doesn't adopt something doesn't mean it's not getting adopted. The US has access to web streaming in HD of many shows and movies that the rest of the world does not - could that have anything to do with it?

So ... who read the article?

[librarybob]

The article states that Blu-ray player shipments are about to outstrip plain DVD. It's not like Blu-ray has failed. It *has* taken a while to capture the people who are still moving to HD. It *may* have a problem in competition with streaming (if you live in an area where there's sufficient bandwidth). I suppose the biggest issue is: will people continue to want to "own" content in physical form? The case is still out on that one (and even a minority position might be a very large market). Personally I think Blu-ray is still the only way to go if you've got/built a home theater.

I'm starting to miss VHS

[morgauxo]

We recently got our first blue-ray player. This is after a string of DVD players which barely lived to the end of their warranties. I think quality is definitely a forgotten art, everything is made so cheaply. The real annoyance is intolerance for scratches. Almost every movie we watch stops and has to be skipped through at least once. One out of every four movies it seems like we end up having to take back. This is usually due to tiny little scratches that I remember being able to play through no problem in older players when DVD was newer. It's not just Blueray or even this player. DVDs do it too and our more recent DVD players did it.

Maybe I'm just being too cheap myself and need to buy a more expensive player? I don't know. Rented VHS sucked too, the tape stretched with use and just wore out in general creating a lousy picture. At least you could almost always still watch it though. You didn't have to stop and restart it but if you did it at least you didn't have to find your spot again. Actually, our new Blueray player does remember the spot but that often times just drops it right back into the scratch that stopped it in the first place.

Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[goombah99]

A Snappy answer is that it failed because there are no Apple computers with blue ray built in. Sony tried to keep this proprietary from day one. It got into a pissing contest with Toshiba that delayed it. They didn't cut deals with other makers early. They didn't get them early into Apple or IBM or Toshiba computers (which is where the high end customers lurk). Just into Sony products early.

I think they drank their own Koolaide on the PS3s technical superiority and assumed that bundle pricing would make people buy that to get a blue ray, and a Bravia to get whatever HDTV standard sony wanted, and then buy Sony Pictures movies in blue ray.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[darjen]

Sony has a long track record of format failure. I avoid them like the plague.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[hazydave]

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.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[ganjadude]

Somehow I do not think apple not using bluray has anything to do with it not catching on. Apple still has a small market share when it comes to PCs/laptops. They may have a lot of sales in tablets/phones/ ipods, but than again there is no disc drive in any of those.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[darjen]

Betamax
Digital Audio Tape
Minidisc
ATRAC
MemoryStick
Universal Media Disc

Sure, they might have had some success in the past. But there are just too many bombs mixed in there.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[markhb]

I've never understood the hatred for MemoryStick, unless it's that no one but Sony uses it. We've actually had several Sony cameras over the years that used it, and they've all been fine. All the PC's we've bought that had an all-in-one reader handled it (albeit with the converter to convert the PRO size to the original stick of gum). We have one camera (a Minolta) that uses Sandisk, but we rarely use it since the most-recent Sony we bought is smaller and has a higher pixel count.

So far as BluRay goes, though, I've yet to see either a BluRay recorder or a BluRay player / DVD recorder (or the Holy Grail to replace what I have in my stereo rack: BluRay recorder (or player) / DVD recorder / VHS combo) in any of my local stores.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[styrotech]

Betamax - the dominant professional video format, and *still* lives on as one of the popular digital mastering formats for pre-glass masters.

Aren't you confusing it with Betacam?

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[rbrander]

>They want people to support iTunes, not Blu-ray.

I've heard the theory floated that MS threw all its weight behind HD-DVD, not because they believed it would win, but would lose. They wanted the format war to go on as long as possible to "run out the clock" for physical media at all, to move people straight to the streaming solution. Apple would have similar motivations.

In a similar vein, TFA is conspicuously lacking in some crucial numbers that would really reveal whether BR is "failing". That is, what percentage of households have one, compared to the number that had DVDs, VCRs, DVRs, etc, a comparable number of years after they were available. DVD was the fastest uptake of any gadget in history - faster than telephones or refrigerators - so makes for a hard mark to beat.

Without those numbers, I have to wonder if TFA is a report, or a kind of push-polling, like the "Is Barack Obama a Socialist?" articles you can find in other parts of the Fox News world, which is a very large, integrated media conglomerate that may have similar motivations to MS and Apple, for all we know.

Re:Real Reason: sony botched the launch

[Man On Pink Corner]

Face it, you just remember their failures for whatever reason (and DAT is not one).

No, when it comes to Sony, mostly I remember their attempts to fuck their own customers long, hard, and deeply at every opportunity.

If the answer involves giving money to Sony, you asked the wrong question.

forced commercials

[Dan667]

really, you just got my money does blu-ray really have to shove it down your throat with forcing you to watch something too? That and I had a free blu-ray that did not work and would play some director picture-in-picture with no way to turn it off. And finally, turn on the player to watch something and it updates. Blu-ray manufactures and movie companies act like they don't like money.

Re:*NOT* /clearly/ superior

[npsimons]

you're aware that one of the selling points of blu-ray is that the discs are (theoretically) unscratchable, right?

The only thing that is "unscratchable" is streaming. Once I see rental places replace a majority of their DVDs with Blu-Ray, or start charging less to rent Blu-Ray, or I hear parents laud Blu-Ray's resilience in the hands of their kids, I might believe Blu-Ray's to be more durable than DVDs. It is telling that Netflix's streaming service has taken off and many parents rip their kids' DVDs (which is not so easy to do with Blu-Ray) for playback. One of Blu-Ray's advantages is also one of its Achille's heels: the higher data density means that it's much easier to corrupt.

I've got roughly 500 blu-ray movies and roughly 1300 DVDs, and believe me when I tell you that the blu-ray discs are FAR more resistant to scratching than the DVDs are.

Get back to me in ten years; that's probably how long you've had most of your DVDs; Blu-Ray hasn't been around that long, yet. Of course, by then, ripping Blu-Rays so you don't have to put up with unskippable ads and warnings or have to change disks will probably be quite common.

Oblig. XKCD

[Weaselmancer]

Reminded me of this.

Re:*NOT* /clearly/ superior

[JackDW]

Maybe you treat your discs better than most people.

I have rented about ten BDs from Lovefilm and three had playback problems. Two failed in the middle of the movie and it was impossible to continue. The other took several attempts to get going*.

I compare this to the 20+ DVDs I have rented from the same place, all of which worked perfectly, and I can only conclude that for whatever reason, BDs are not as robust as DVDs.

I am now hesitant to rent BDs because of these bad experiences. A 20% failure rate is unacceptably high for entertainment technology that should "just work".

Re:Not bothered - or too much bother

[AliasMarlowe]

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.

Not any time soon...

[spaceyhackerlady]

The usual reasons: not enough bang for the buck, the perception of a forced upgrade, DVDs work just fine, thank you. Plus the draconian DRM that goes with all HD stuff.

It all adds up to a non-starter for me.

...laura

Re:Low road time

[PNutts]

Lucy Lawless' hooters looked fantastic, along with the rest of the show, of course.

There was a rest of the show?

Re:Not bothered - or too much bother

[aix tom]

Yeah, and that is the problem. Choose:

1) Pretty OK picture and convenient.
2) AWESOME picture and inconvenient.

Most people choose 1)

I have chosen to buy a BluRay Player only because my DVD player broke (after ~10 years, so that was pretty OK) and the Player was not much more expensive than a DVD player.

The media I buy is pretty much 90% DVD and only 10% BluRay. Because most of the (older) stuff I'm interested in only comes out on DVD, if at all. If it is available on BluRay, though, I get it on BluRay. But I only started buying BluRays after I knew I was able to rip them and and have a "Movie Only" copy without all the stuff they put on that only gets in the way.

Re:Too Unreliable

[toddestan]

From reading his post, I'm going to guess it's a LG BD390.

Re:Not bothered - or too much bother

[kevinmenzel]

MOST people don't have to worry about region support because MOST people aren't going to buy that much stuff outside of their region.