Oh, Blu-ray. Is this your year—wasn’t last year supposed to be your year?—or will you wallow in relative obscurity while the world falls apart all around you?
There’s several things at play here, most of which you’re probably already aware. Generally, Blu-ray players are dropping in price, so buying one won’t necessarily ruin your credit (should you still have credit); actual disc prices are still on the high side. But DVDs are good enough, right! Then you’ve got IP-based services, like that streaming Netflix deal or Vudu. There’s no discs to clutter up the house with, provided your kids (or younger siblings) don’t break them in half while playing Blu-ray frisbee. But we’re at the mercy of the ISPs here: you can kiss these services goodbye if they start charging by the gigabyte.
So yeah, more or less a rehash of arguments we’ve had here every other day for the past year. May CES clear all this up for us.
There’s absolutely no reason why the players are still above $200 and the disks are above $25, except for the greed of the industry. I think what killed HD is that the industry saw prices drop quickly and paniced thinking revenues were going to drop.
The technology was designed to sell at the same cost as DVD, so until they have $30 players, they are essentially asking you to bend over.
They say that Blu Rays are on average $10 higher than DVD’s and I can tell you that I will gladly pay that for a decent movie in 1080p with a few decent extras. DVD’s were fine 8 years ago – but Blu Rays are much better and well worth the extra. As far as $30 players go – I would not buy a $30 DVD player let alone a Blu Ray – $200 is what I paid for my first DVD player in 200 and I am fine paying that for a good profile 2.0 Blu Ray player today. Blu Ray players may be $30 in 8 or 9 years but the good ones will always be higher just like with DVD players and all other electronics.
I just recently upgraded my player to blu-ray. I must say that the quality is much better with Blu-ray, although my wife did not see the difference. The problem will lie with the movie makers, the newer discs look and are designed with blu-ray in mind, but I am finding the older title are just the DVD’s slapped onto the blu-ray disc and for $30 a crack are a complete ripoff.
I have heard “DVDs are good enough” on the Internet, but never has it been from someone who has actually seen Blu-ray in comparison.
Every single person — every person — that I know who has said that, now has a Blu-ray player and says it makes a huge difference. I once showed a comparison between Blu-ray and upscaled DVD to our secretary at work (who doesn’t care at all), and she instantly chose the Blu-ray.
-Pie
OK, now you’ll hear from one. I’ve directly compared the same movie in Blu-ray and DVD on my HDTV, and am unimpressed with the Blu-ray. Yeah, it’s maybe slightly better, but that’s it. Not worth the price difference at all. The only thing I can think of, is that maybe the very newest movies are the only ones where there is truly a difference in picture. Movies a couple years old or more, I’m just not seeing it.
The last DVD player I purchased was in 1998. I spent $1,000 for a Denon. Blu Ray is not even on my radar. HD & Blu Ray spent too much time fighting over who’s format would win that they missed the boat. In the time they took to fight it out, enough alternatives came to pass (Streamimg/NetFlix..etc..) that their time to make money was long gone.
Compounding the issue is the movie studios inability to produce worthwhile pictures that would entice me to spend $30 – $50 for a Blu-Ray Disk.
I for one…think the market has shifted and Blu Ray missed the boat. My money is going to stay in my pocket.
As a side note I have noticed over the past several months that BestBuy has diminshed the amount of DVD’s for sale by a fair amount. They are now showing loads of Blu-Ray on the shelves instead.
So now I end up purchasing nothing. When the newe sales numbers come out reflecting a continued drop in DVD sales it will not neccesarily reflect the assumed reason that more people are buying BluRay disks.
I’ve seen DVD and BR side by side on a great screen, and BR has a better picture. Better picture isn’t enough for me to jump. I can’t hear that there’s better sound.
People went from VHS to DVD because there was better picture, better sound, better navigation (than ff and rewind), and extras. A great way to hedge your bet with DVD was a built-in player was in the playstation console. People could try a no-risk way to see the tech. There was no format war, and they could rent a disk without having to buy the disk or the player.
Despite the DRM/fair-use issues, DVD’s can be ripped and used on your mobile devices whereas BR hasn’t reached that level of user “friendliness” – it has actually tried to perform the opposite. In a down economy, people have less money. What parent wants to pay more for a movie they can’t put on their kids iPod/whatever? They’ll rip or simply not buy – which means it’s another way that BR won’t win.
Compare the shift of VHS to DVD, to the shift of DVD to BR… there’s better picture, better sound (again, I can’t tell)… and that’s it. I don’t want to provide and share my own commentary, and I don’t want to see yours. What else does BR provide? Shaky consumer confidence in a format that may or may not be around, extras that don’t persuade, no additional convenience in navigation, there’s no cheap gaming console to test the tech out (PS3 is WAY expensive), etc.
BR doesn’t convince me.
I just bought the Samsung 2550 Blu Ray player that also supports NetFlicks streaming.
I get NetFlick’s blu ray disks in the mail based on my selections, and I have also streamed video including some HD offerings.
Let me say that Blu-ray disk’s kick the crap out of the streaming as far as quality goes.
So if I am going to what a new film or show I’ll choose BluRay. If I want something now that is older, not available on BluRay, or just never looked good to begin with, I’ll stream it.
When I initially got my Blu-ray player I wasn’t totally impressed – I was using it on a 720p set. so I recently upgraded to a bigger Samsung 1080p with 120Hz and the difference is unreal. I’ll will gladly continue to pay $5-10 more per disk for as long as they’re around.
People are still buying Blu-ray?! LMAO!!