CrunchGear

I couldn’t agree more, granted what I’ve seen of blueray is that the quality is much better, but only if you’re watching it on a big TV (like 42″ or more) in 1080p. My TV doesn’t do that high of resolution, and I don’t have an extra $1000 to buy a blue ray player. Right now it’s just all too expensive when, as you said, regular DVD looks good enough.

I’d buy more Blu-Ray movies if they cost the same amount or maybe just a little higher than current DVDs….30 bucks is too much for something I’ll watch once a year…if That.

I was saying this months ago. THe Blu-ray/HD DVD “war” was over too early. THe war will be the one with the largest installed base of DVD and VHS users. Not this silly minority of people with PS3s.

It all comes down to price. Movies at $30 a pop is bad but decent players that are not under $400 is where the real problem is. I plan to buy a PS3 this time next year for Blu-Ray and a few games (very few so far) but my parents or even older co-workers would not. Dedicated players need to be $250 or below by X-Mas for Blu-Ray to really take off - any more and it all seems like a luxury instead of a commodity.

Can we say nobody gives a shiite (is that how you spell SHE-ite?) about HD optical diskage? The people who are buying it I think would rather just buy some lame ass XBox Live points and download whatever crap is on there that looks “good enough”. Because — really, does it look any better when you have a few Beast Ice’s flowing through the plumbing already? Nah. Grandma and Grandpa have no idea what a DVD is. My parents definitely have no clue that HD-DVD is dead and would only buy Blu-Ray if I told them it wasn’t a weapon of mass destruction. My generation (Gen Y baby!) doesn’t want to spend $500 to watch a DVD. 1) I could go see lots of new movies 2) I could steal it 3) I could rent it online in a month or two. And if it’s that good most resort to #2. The deal is Blu-Ray is only “that good” when you have an entire room devoted to watching movies. And then you might be game for ponying the money. Until then an upscaled DVD is plenty good, but that’s a rare buy for me these days anymore… I’d rather throw money at Apple for an AppleTV and get some instant gratification plus have lots of options for the being a McDonald’s Menuairre (nasty).

Really — is there a market for opti discs in the next 10 years for the upcoming gens? Hell no. Instant Gratification + Internet Generation = Opti Disc Death.

It’s only a matter of time.

HDTV is steadily replacing standard definition. There is no question of “if”… it’s just a question of “when” you will convert all your TVs and devices.

Downloading content has its advantages, but quality isn’t one of them. It’s tough to beat 50 GB of high definition content. People like having a copy of a movie on the shelf, rather than captive in a PC or on a little box, or in some proprietary eco-system.

This is great technology, but the technology isn’t cheap. It costs the content owners quite a bit to author BD titles, and BD disc manufacturing costs are significantly higher than DVD. BD players are far more advanced than DVD players (BD players are a computer with high def video decoding supporting 3 video formats and a variety of audio formats). Drives are more expensive due to the expensive blue laser diodes and advanced optics. These costs will steadily decrease as the technology matures and economies of scale kick in.

Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I love it. BD kicks ass.

Once these people stop charging $30 per movie I’ll start considering buying them. $20 still feels like too much, but if I saw a movie I actually wanted at that price point, I would definitely consider buying it. Until then, blu-ray can sit on the shelves.

3 million PS3s were sold in the last 3 months

I guess I would be more worried if the study had not left out the most fully featured, upgradable, cheapest, fastest and by far the most popular player. Should they lower prices and improve features on standalone 2.0 players? Of course they should but until they do only a die hard hater or fashion queen would not buy a PS3.

Highlighting results that don’t include 90% of blu-ray players is kinda dumb.

I have a PS3 myself and love it. I’m sold on the blu-ray format, think its great. But the price point hasn’t hit a place I’m comfortable with, yet. It seems many people feel the same way.

I look forward to expanding my film collection, and hope for a time I stop seeing anti-Sony/anti-blu-ray posts (I don’t count this post among them)…but until then, Sony just hasn’t given anyone enough of a reason to invest significant funds into a new format, when a perfectly acceptable one sits alongside it on the same shelves.

Sure, the high cost of discs and players is a major factor, but what really keeps me from moving to Blu-Ray are the horror stories I hear. There are two major ones. The first is the horrendous copy protection scheme that requires users to go through long, complicated downloads and chip-burning procedures just to play the latest movies. The second is how so many of these expensive Blu-Ray players lack basic features. For instance, some of them have no memory: they don’t remember where you were when you put the movie on hold to make some popcorn, and came back after the “pause” had timed-out. Stop the movie (manually or via a time-out), and you find yourself having to go through all the previews and logos, and then have to fast-forward through the movie to get back to where you were. I wouldn’t pay $99 for a player like that, much less $400.