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Sony Warns Demand For Blu-Ray Diminishing Faster Than Expected
Lucas123 (935744) writes "Sony has warned investors that it expects to take a hit on expected earnings (PDF), due in part to the fact that demand for Blu-ray Disc media is contracting faster than anticipated. In two weeks, Sony will announce its financial results. The company expects to post a net loss. Sony's warning is in line with other industry indicators, such as a report released earlier this year by Generator Research showed revenue from DVD and Blu-ray sales will likely decrease by 38% over the next four years. By comparison, online movie revenue is expected to grow 260% from $3.5 billion this year to $12.7 billion in 2018, the report states. Paul Gray, director of TV Electronics & Europe TV Research at market research firm DisplaySearch, said consumers are now accustomed to the instant availability of online media, and 'the idea of buying a physical copy seems quaint if you're under 25.'"
Especially when those copies come with awful DRM.
They should re-tool all of their factories, embrace the inevitable, and minimize (or prevent) losses by marketing it for storage and reducing the price of the discs and drives. The only thing that can save Blu-Ray now is to re-purpose it.
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Was it even ever popular? I never had a Blu-Ray player in my house and I have only held a internal player once in my hands. In my opinion, Blu-Ray has failed as a successor to DVD. Even in the autumn days of DVD, you can find disks and players everywhere. With the better Blu-Ray, adoption had been hurting and it has never seen the lift-off its predecessor had. I doubt that a successor to Blu-Ray will fare much better.
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Because you media types went and fucked it up as hard as you could. I am the sort of person who would like to buy a fair bit of Blu-ray movies. I don't mind movies on disc, I have a player, and I'm fussy about picture and sound quality. Blu-ray is noticeably better than streaming video on my system.
However, greed and stupidity have screwed it up. For one it is just too expensive. I'll see a new movie int he store and the Blu-ray version is $10 above the DVD version. No, I'm not paying you for the extra bits. It does not cost you more to make. I'm not going to go and drop $35 on the Blu-ray version of something.
Then there's the DRM. "That wouldn't affect you unless you are a pirate!" you say? Bullshit. So while my TV setup is nice, by far the highest def system in my house is my computer. It has a high end home theater speaker setup connected to it, and a professional monitor. So I wanted to watch one of my Blu-rays on it. It has a BD-RW, it has software, it has a GPU with the stupid "secure" drivers, and everything is HDCP compliant. So I fire it up and... no dice. See I mirror my video signal, one goes to the monitor for display, one goes to the soundcard to provide clock for the audio. That isn't allowed, even though every device is HDCP compliant.
It also means should I wish to watch on my laptop, I'd have to buy it a Blu-ray player and lug the discs with me, there's no ability to copy them over.
Is it any wonder I'm not more interested? I have a few Blu-ray discs, but not many, and I don't buy them often. I'm not paying an inflated price, and part of their interest, the extremely high quality, is dulled by the knowledge that they won't work on my highest end system.
Netflix may not look as good, but it is cheap, and it works on, well, everything I own practically.
Besides, at least I could rip and watch my DVD's on my devices - I know it can be done with BluRay, but they made it unpleasant enough to deter me exactly as they (Sony) intended. Now that me and guys like me just aren't that interested, I can't say as I'm surprised how things are ending up. Must break their hearts over there at Sony, eh? Doesn't break mine.
Blu-ray support is the biggest pain in the ass in our very tweaked media center. HDCP lag, endless ads at the start of each disk, incredibly complex software installs that frequently fail all in the name of 'security.' Try this security ... we will no longer tolerate your product. Now we're safe, how 'bout you?
Sony fought *hard* to make Blue-Ray the dominant standard. It was basically "everyone and their brother behind HDTV" vs. "Sony and a couple of their bestest buddies behind Blue-Ray" until Sony spent a ton to get exclusives and woo studios away, all so that they could monopolize the next generation of movies (and not repeat the Betamax experience).
As somone who hates to see companies monopolize technology, the fact that all their efforts were largely wasted makes me very happy :-)
What with the much lower quality video and far worse compression artifacts streaming has, also having to be connected to the internet to watch a movie, and also often having to pay per play rather than a pay once model, it totally boggles my mind that people prefer streaming video to blu-ray and even DVD.
I'm much more inclined to believe that its really Hollywood that is killing off Blu-Ray (and any other form of physical media) rather than Joe Public.
Hollywood have had so many bad experiences with successfully applying DRM to physical media, they've now turned to trying to do away completely with any/all forms of physical copies being in the hands of Joe Public. In mybook, thats a BAD thing for us.
...for those of us with projection screens. When you're looking at a 150" screen projecting at 1920X1080, a blu-ray is gorgeous, just like being in the theater. At 25mbits / sec, artifacts are nonexistant. With the reduced bitrates and resolutions of even "HD" streaming, it all shows up. Streaming is not quite there yet due to last mile problems at least here in the states.
At this year's NAB conference in Vegas, 4K was starting to take over in a really big way. I was flabbergasted by the difference in adoption between last year and this year. Everyone had 4K gear. I don't know how long it will take that to filter down to the consumer market, but I don't think streaming services are going to be able to keep up at all for a while. A 4K disc format will hopefully be in the offing.
That being said, Blu Ray has been a pretty raw deal for small and independent video producers. If you want to make a video and publish it on Blu Ray officially, you have to pay the Blu Ray consortium a hefty royalty fee up front and you are obligated to use DRM even if you don't want it. They have come down hard from the beginning so that you can't go to any replication house and get replicated BRDs made without going through this process. You're limited to burning BD-R discs on your own if you don't want to deal with that. Fortunately BD-Rs are 100% compatible with all Blu Ray players, unlike DVD-Rs and DVD players, which were very problematic with compatibility. (that's a long story in and of itself)
I was initially happy that Blu Ray won over HD-DVD until I found out how bad it was to actually just get something replicated onto BRD. I don't know that HD-DVD would have been any better though.
I never bought a Blu Ray player. Why? Because the DVD was such a disappointment. We were promised all these features that never materialized. The only feature that DVD used was the feature that kept the consumer from skipping content, fast forwarding over commercials at the beginning of DVD, and of course DRM that makes it hard to copy onto the hardisk. So if you don't want to be tied to a DVD player, the best option is a subscription to Netflix. And since Bluray is DRM incarnate, unless one want to live in the 19th century, it is a trade off that most younger people choose not to make, Bluray becomes a non starter. The validity of these statements is shown by the inclusion of digital copy on some DVD and Blu Ray. If bluray had this a standard feature from day 1, I suspect it would have been widely succesful. But like DVD, the main goal of Blu Ray was to screw the user.
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And in some cases the video is exactly the same (grain per grain) as the DVD, and perhaps even with inferior audio and features. The studios decided to just ship out any crap and we would pay a premium because it was on BluRay. Some of us fell for it once or twice but eventually learned and went back to buying DVDs. Blame downloading services if you want, but I much prefer to own a physical DVD than a DRM crippled download of lower quality with repressive DRM or not even having the download at all, just watching and then having nothing. And I do like the extra features on discs and the ability to watch again or even lend the disc to a friend. There are lots of advantages to physical media, but several disadvantages to BluRay. I expect some studio execs would rather blame downloading for the decline in BluRay sales than take responsibility for decisions they made.
And, yes, I know that DVDs have DRM too, but it tends to be much less of a problem for most users.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
1) Whole seasons of television on fewer than half the number of disks as DVD.
2) When the burners get faster and cheaper, convenient backups. But realistically, Blu-Ray is too small for geeks - you want a backup medium that's at least 10% if not 20% of the size of your data set so a full backup won't be a huge stack of disks. You also want the differential backup from several weeks or months ago vs. today to fit on one disk.
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Was it even ever popular?
Oh yes. The quality is absolutely better than DVD, and still much better than streaming.
That said, I stream a lot of shows and video - but some selected movies I love I still buy on Blu-Ray because you can't beat 50GB of data locally cached.
I can see why the absolute sales of Blu-Ray have declined because people used to buy the "filler" movies on DVD that you can now easily stream, so the sales of filler stuff on BluRay must be dropping like a stone.
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Stargate was released on BluRay with the exact same video as the DVD, an awful two channel audio track, and even fewer subtitles than the DVD. After an up swelling of complaints from the public they did release a better version. But even a few years after that I bought a copy at WalMart and it ended up being the inferior older BluRay version, even though it was freshly sent out stock. I damn well assure you that I'm not going to buy the better version now that I know it exists. This is not the only case of studios doing this.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The FA says that Blu-ray disc sales are increasing, but overall disk sales are slowing because DVDs are contracting so quickly.
Quoting the article. "Last year, about 124 million Blu-ray discs were sold in the U.S., a 4.2% increase over 2012, according to IHS Technology. Even so, because of reduced pricing for the format, revenue only increased 2.6%. DVD sales, which have been plummeting for years, dropped 13.6% last year."
Blu-ray data rates are far higher than anything you can stream today, and people who care about that (not many of the commenters apparently :) ) apparently are still buying discs.
I do come from the movie business, so I surely have a different perspective; but to filmmakers quality is paramount.
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While awful DRM on BD media is a giant pain in the rear end, there is a lot of stuff just not available for streaming at all.
Then of course DRM on DVDs is usually not so awful.
Lack of availability is a far worse problem than awful DRM.
And of course what is available on streaming today may well be gone tomorrow.
So I'm sticking with physical media as my preferred source.
This summary has it wrong. Read the article and its BluRay sales that are still increasing, presumably due to the quality problems (both audio and video) currently inherent in streaming. Anyone with a 60" or better LCD and a decent sound system will notice the difference immediately. Despite the DRM.
It's DVD sales that are cratering, due to the following factors:
1. Streaming quality is competive with DVD.
2. Why buy DVD when BD is better?
3. Easy piracy due to non-invasive DRM.
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Or the looming problem that the 'under 25' crowd will start running into soon, what do you do when something you want to watch is not available? If one is watching only new series and latest movies this is not a big deal, but sooner or later people often want to go back and watch something they saw years before, and even the best streaming services right now generally only have a small (and rotating) fraction of content available. Their feeling will also probably change the first time they are part way through a series and it is pulled from the streaming catalog.
For either rental or purchase, once a disk is out there, it is out there. You generally do not get all available copies of it (including ones in your playlist) vanishing overnight.
3/4 U-matic was a huge success. Betacam was a huge success. 8mm was a big success. 3.5" floppy was a HUGE success.
DAT was a failure.
MiniDisc was not a failure. It was big in Europe and Japan.
DVD was partially Sony's work (split with Matsushita, just as CD was split with Philips).
A lot of the reason people think Sony has a penchant for failed formats is Sony creates a lot of formats. You can't fail if you don't try.
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But there is no legal alternative. AACS may suck in principle, but it has been broken. I can buy a Blu-Ray and rip it bit-for-bit. There is no other HD content you are offered you can do this for. Netflix? Nope. Amazon/iTunes/UltraViolet/etc.? Nope.
And HDCP? It sure is a pain in the butt. But it is on every other bit of legal HD studio content too. You cannot watch Hollywood HD content on any device in your house unless it has a built-in display (like a laptop, tablet or phone) or has HDCP. It's not just Blu-Ray, it's Netflix, iTunes, etc. So if you're going to put down Blu-Ray for that, you're just going to have to turn pirate or else watch in SD.
The thing that really gets me about Blu-Ray, which other systems don't have, is all those stupid forced previews before the movies. As long as the studios put that junk on their Blu-Ray discs, they are going to discourage people from buying Blu-Ray discs. And that's on top of the existing discouragement of having to buy a drive.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
With HD digital projectors getting below $700 and Blu-ray players getting well under $100 and tons of classic movies on Blu-ray for $15 or less, it should be doing fine.
I can't imagine being dependent on streaming to watch the movies I want to watch. A lot of kids these days only care that it looks good on their phone or tablet.
If I get Blu-ray, it's for high quality shows/movies and I prefer to get a DVD with them. It's rare that I'll buy a Blu-ray only movie. I know that I in theory can back it up, but it's going to cost a bunch of money to get the software and hardware to do it. It's going to be a long time before I have a blu-ray collection that justifies it.
That's really all they need to do, they need to package DVDs with Blu-ray discs at no extra cost. I get my digital backup and if I want to watch the movie in maximum quality, I can.
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The picture quality is excellent and puts the streaming alternatives to shame. But every time I play a film that I've bought legally from a reputable shop, they treat me like a dirty, stinking pirate. I get shown lots of warnings and there's lots of unskippable propaganda sequences, I've even seen unskippable ads. Even worse, the player shows an obnoxious "this operation is illegal" when I attempt to skip these things and this warning requires an extra click to get rid of. I love buying a real physical disc and watching proper quality video on my TV, it feels much more like a proper movie night, but they were testing my patience from day 1 and this patience has run out.
The lesson as I see it: don't treat your legitimate customers like criminals. The first thing pirates do is strip these obnoxious warnings.
I suspect the subscription/library model will have a kind of "golden age" as bandwidth gets good enough and there are only a tiny number of different libraries to subscribe to, but in the long run the most likely positions seem to be market fragmentation (you have to subscribe to several libraries, and your favourite shows might jump around between them) or consolidating into a near-monopoly (with the natural tendency to then push prices up). Neither is good for consumers
Or you regulate to prevent exclusivity deals between the content producers and the content distributors/libraries. That way you can watch the same content from several libraries, so you get to choose based on price, quality of service, etc.
These days, I just want to go to the supermarket, buy a movie, watch it, stick it on my book shelf and rewatch it in 15 years' time. The choices seem to be:
- DVD: might not be the highest resolution, but it works and if the story is good you don't notice the lack of HD anyway.
- BluRay: DRM that would require me to replace perfectly functional equipment (which isn't going to happen - I have better uses for that money), and would subject me to unskippable copyright warnings and trailers. Also, looking up the BD+ specifications, things stick out such as content producers being able to execute "native code" on the player, which falls into the "Just... no, not ever!" category for me. Also the danger that my player's AACS keys would be blacklisted, etc. Also, region restrictions...
- Streaming: the quality isn't great, and I'm going to need a reliable internet connection (so no watching it on the train). But more importantly - I don't get to buy content, only rent it for a limited time. In 15 years time I can't go back and watch something I already bought because chances are it won't be available any more in the library (or I would've been required to pay an ongoing subscription in order to access the content I already bought). And again, region restrictions...
- Illegal downloading: I don't really subscribe to the idea that you should download illegally if you don't agree with the existing distribution models; although I have some leeway here on downloading content that just plain isn't available in your region (since there can be no economic harm to the content producer in this case).
So basically, all this boils down to me continuing to buy stuff on DVD (and my media player automatically skips over the copyright warnings and unskippable trailers). Make BluRay so that I can buy it and have it Just Work without any DRM hassles and I would probably be buying content in that format instead of DVD, but I simply don't want to have the faff of jumping through their hoops, so I don't.
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The reason nobody's buying Blu-Ray isn't soley because of the annoying DRM and non-skippable content and other generally user-hostile 'features' of the format. The average consumer doesn't give a shit about that (and will have no idea what DRM even is.) The reason is that they don't care about the quality loss in streaming content. How they can't see (on a big TV anyway) that the Blu-Ray looks 100% better than what you get from Netflix streaming boggles my mind, personally. When there's a movie that I want to see in good quality (think Man of Steel, Frozen, etc, just to name a couple recent ones) I go to Redbox to get the Blu-Ray. It looks better. Unfortunately, people don't give a shit.
The war on picture/sound quality has, sadly, been won by the apathetic side. (Witness the demise of multichannel audio, DVD-Audio and SACD. Most people think a stereo 128-bit .mp3 file sounds fine. It doesn't.) I'll be renting Blu-Rays until streaming formats (and the necessary bandwidth) are available at the same bitrate as a Blu-Ray. But, the way things are going, BD will die and we'll be stuck with streaming movies that look like Tetris on a big screen. Another case of the consumer wanting 'cheap/convenient' over 'good', aka the Wal-Mart effect.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.