Even after HD DVD’s demise, Blu-ray still isn’t catching on, the PS3 excepted. Maybe the real format war was between DVD and Blu-ray all along?
A recent survey, carried out by ABI Research, found that more than half the respondents have no intention of buying a Blu-ray player. About a quarter said they had plans to buy one, but not till next year.
And why are consumers so reluctant to make the Blu-ray jump? Surprise, for many people, plain ol’ DVD is good enough.
Again, DVD is good enough. 1080p and BD Live be damned, apparently.
As it stands, the PS3 is one of the only bright spots in the Blu-ray arena right now, insofar as it’ll help drive down manufacturing costs of Blu-ray players.
Maybe Blu-ray is too beautiful for this world?
“Maybe Blu-ray is too beautiful for this world?”
I think it’s still just a tad bit too expensive.
Blue ray is still expensive. It will not be popular till China get rights to product it. If the production is under control of a few countries (japan, korea, usa), the price will not drop to acceptable point. Thank about DVD player.
It’s expensive and we’ve already invested in our collection of DVDs. Don’t get me wrong, I think blu-ray is great looking, but I can watch Harold and Kumar on upconverted DVD on 56″ and feel ok about it.
It’s not being adopted because it is just too much money. We all know that in 3 years you will be able to pick up a blu-ray player for $50 bucks at your wallyworldmart and until then no one is going to dig out $200 – $300 bucks from their wallet to buy a blu-ray player. On top of that BD movies are also way overpriced. When it comes down to it, it will be an epic failure for a long while unless they drastically reduce prices for this Christmas season.
BD is way to over priced, way to fragile, Way to pushy in that i dont want to be forced to adopt a new media formate just to play a game.
Maybe sony should have held out on blue ray till the PS4, to be honest, i could care less about blue ray i would have gone with HD dvd cause there all backwards compatible.
We can all thank Warner Bros. for picking the more expensive, less stable format, thus ensuring the death of high-def movies on a disc. Money talks and Sony spoke very loudly here. Perhaps Blu-ray will duplicate the relative success of Memory Stick, but that’s about it.
Batman Begins came out on HD DVD first. So did Superman Returns and Justice League: New Frontier. All Warner Bros properties. HD DVD’s are awesome. Now that they’ve lost the war, you can pick them up for 10 bucks each, same as regular DVD.
Content Stinks, I could re-buy movies I have already seen many many times(The Matrix) or watch As good as it get’s? on 1080p? NO THANKS! Ok I would maybe buy Transformers, but my god did that plot SUCK. As with everything Sony lately……..WE NEED MORE CONTENT and I don’t see hollywood helping them any.
Maybe I don’t have an 1080p HDTV yet.
Maybe I don’t have an 1080p HDTV yet.
I haven’t made the Bluray jump yet, even though I have a PS3. The main reason being the price of the disks at the momment, not to mention how well the PS3 and other players upscale DVDs. Maybe I’ll try Bluray when The Dark Knight comes out.
Well, as a Blu-ray owner, I love it. It’s worth every penny. I can see the potential. And when people see it, they are blown away. All of a sudden, DVD isn’t good enough any more.
The Blu-ray coalition needs to educate consumers, bring prices down somewhat and they will do well.
And let’s not even bother mentioning statistics that Blu-ray is actually selling very well at is increasing adoption faster than DVD did over VHS. People resisted DVD for the same reasons.
And as long as ISPs don’t want to give people the bandwidth to download so much data without making them pay dearly for the usage, online video services will not be possible.
People are so used to instant gratification they forget that technology takes time to be adopted. There’s been a winner in the high definition ware for just over half a year. Give it some time.
Prices are too high. At least the PS3 plays games and Blu Ray movies making it somewhat worth the $400 price tag. Players need to be under $200 and discs under $30 for any real adoption to take place by most people. Better movies would be a help as well.
Eric you have spoken like true gentelman!
Blu-ray will definitely succeed… but it will take time.
I wonder how many people posting negative comments have actually watched a Blu-ray movie on a decent HDTV? Blu-ray blows away HD broadcast, and it makes DVDs look like VHS tape.
I agree that it’s still too expensive for most consumers. The components of a BD player are still expensive to produce… but the cost is coming down steadily. Disc prices will come down also as manufacturing ramps up and the production volume increases.
I agree with Eric and Travis above… it won’t be long until you see nice BD players for $200 or less, and at this magic price point adoption will ramp up quickly.
Before you hate it… try it. 50 Gigabytes gives you a killer movie experience.
Blu-ray looks better than DVD. Clearly.
But that is the only real benefit over DVDs. Yes there are things like picture in picture and other cool extras, but in reality only the hardcore fans of films will use them.
DVD has so many genuine advantages, other than picture, over VHS. no quality degredation, no need for rewind, selectable subtitles/audio tracks etc.
I will convert to blu-ray at some point. Assuming downloadable/streaming content doesn’t mature soon.
But at the current cost for new TV and player, along with a decent selection of films, isn’t justified by the better picture quality.
Blu-Ray Won, Sony Won, Bluray adoption is quicker than DVD adoption. Studio support, content, everything was RIGHT, exactly why a Victory was so easly acquired against the pathetic hd-dvd format and microsoft’s worthless attempts at corperate payola.
Wait for prices to come down if you need, next year you’ll have even more great choices on the Universal Standard High-Definition Format of the Twenty-First Century, Bluray-Disc.
I will buy one when it can play a DVD and costs the same as a DVD player. DVD is good enough, why pay more for un-needed flash.
Who the heck wants to pay $30 for a BR movie?
Most people are not videophiles so they could care less about BD.
The majority of music sales are mp3s.
The majority of PC/laptop graphics sales are integrated Intel chips.
People care about quality but good enough solutions are all the majority of people are willing to pay for. When the price of players and movies come down (if they come down) then people will adopt.
For myself, 1080p often ruins the experience. I don’t need to see more clearly the poorly integrated special effects that are in many of the big budget movies.
In the mean time I’m looking forward to more and more content being placed onto sponsored sites for free and all you can eat subscription services.
Part of the problem is the $30 disk. You can get the same disk, in regular format for $9 at Wal Mart. If they brought down the price of the movies, I’m sure they will sell allot more players, the movies are way too expensive.
…seriously, …who didn’t see this coming?
Sony has always had expensive products – if they dominate the market why the heck they do not bring prices down, who’s gonna buy a 30 bucks BD – I got PS3 but have no BD and the reason I got it is for games.
The economy is going in the toilet and people aren’t purchasing overly expensive players and extremely pricey movies. To me owning one of these things is akin to owning a Hummer. Not impressive, just plain sad.
Internet downloading is too good for BR to come.
The real question isn’t about blu-ray sales, it’s about HDTV sales…. remember HDTV is NOT even close to being “everywhere” yet…and that makes Blu-ray just about useless. Adding insult to injury, the people behind Blu-ray don’t even advertise to the general public that a “blu-ray” player can “down convert” or PLAY on “regular” TV, even though it technically can….
My take of truth, that all current movies are filmed
in HD. some movies you cannot make any clearer
because of age & work print.
Most people need…. to wear glasses, but have to much ego to do so.
The Technology Recession is comming
You can repackage it, but its the same thing just
with sparkles.
Blu-ray players cost less than PS3s now, so there should be no excuse not to buy them. I am getting one tomorrow!
no one seems to mention that used DVD’s that are usually as good as new can be had for between 4$ – 8$ vs blu ray on sale at 20$- 25$
Completely disagree that blu ray makes dvd look like tape. And I have both. And thats the problem isnt it? The jump from vcd and Vhs to dvd was HUGE , whereas going from dvd to blue ray is marginal (unless you have a 10,000 dollar hidef setup, and hlets be honest , unless your a high end geek videophile with cash to burn (like me) why would you spend that much when DVD puts out a perfectly acceptable picture???? Blue ray to most people smells of greed and ripoff….dvd did not. So blue ray need to re-think….time alone wont solve their abysmal sales.
The only reason you get some rich folk touting Blue Ray is, they need the masses to fuel their need for Bluray…without mass adoption blue ray will become extinct quicker than a T-rex at a meteor shower….sony has no interest in catering to a few hundred thousand rich people when there are millions who arent interested…
The present format actually is DVD vs Bluray. The future format war will be Internet vs Bluray. (I figure blue ray will lose both.)
harold and kumar rock lol!
the disks are too expensive. i would buy an expensive player if the movies were cheap. really, 19 bucks is on the expensive side for a copy of a movie. i don’t care if it’s in high def or not. charging more than 20 , which most blue ray disks are 30 or so, is just rediculus. it’s not worth that much to me. and definately not worth that much to most people. that’s why blue ray is doing poorly. i have thought several times before. oh, the ps3 is not that bad, mabey i’ll get one for the movies, then i look at the price of the movies and im like. oh. no thanks. ill just get the dvd.