Blu-ray slow in Korea

[Ectoplasm]

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/cult...006000315.HTML

You can fault the Korean manufacturers (chaebols) and the Korean gov't for this. It wasn't until before the summer that most blu-ray players were under $1,000 each. The PS3 was the only near-affordable player. You still pay double what you'd pay for most players in the USA. The newest Samsung models are still nearly twice the price of what they cost in the USA. We also have far fewer releases, and imports are now sky-high due to shipping fees and the poor won/dollar ratio.

A frustrating thing is that there is a very high penetration of HDTV's here. Maybe the highest in the world next to Japan. Also, there are problems with unpoliced downloading of rips on a massive scale. That's part of the reason why all of the big USA movie companies have left Korea this year.

Market penetration of Blu-ray DVDs very slow in S. Korea

By Kim Young-gyo
SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Yonhpa) -- Less than 0.6 percent of South Korean households have Blu-ray Disc players, which were thought to be next generation alternatives to DVD players, said a head of a home distributor on Wednesday.

"There are only a handful of South Korean films in the Blu-ray Disc format, most of which are released by a company called 'KD Media'," said Yu Seok-dong, CEO of the Art Service at a forum held at central Seoul.

[Clark Kent]

I have also heard that media sales in general are down in Korea due to the widely available high speed internet available. Free almost always beats everything else.

[kknight]

I really wish Korea would start jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon!! There's a lot of good Korean movies, I've slowed down on buying any DVDs from Korea, so until they release Blu-ray movies I'll be coming to a stop in buying anymore movies from Korea.

I hope KD Media releases more, those four they had released before were excellent choices!

[blu_world]

that's pretty sad if they're downloading & pirate movies to the point where American movie company's have stopped all together showing any American made Film's there..Too bad for them they have no real Material to hold on to due to piracy for Being a Cheap Country...no offense but that's how it sounds to me...all the Embarrassment is on them now if Movie studio's decided to move out.



everybody else here has high speed,but it isn't a HUGE problem maybe because were happy with retail releases and Collecting..

[Tru2theBlu]

Yea it is pretty sad what is going on there. My wife is Korean, and most of her family is still in Seoul. A couple of summers ago, when Transformers was out, her cousins were so excited to be able to see it, because they did not release it in Korea. They miss out on a lot of releases.

[quexos]

No matter how slow Bluray is in Korea, I'm sure it must be much slower in North Korea.

[Beefbowl]

There's a lot of bootleg going on here. I can easily see at least a dozen stores in my area selling pirated movies. I normally buy my Korean blus from the UK.

[MorgolKing]

Originally Posted by Tru2theBlu

Yea it is pretty sad what is going on there. My wife is Korean, and most of her family is still in Seoul. A couple of summers ago, when Transformers was out, her cousins were so excited to be able to see it, because they did not release it in Korea. They miss out on a lot of releases.

Sorry to raise this thread from the dead, but I was just shocked to see some of the things said on this thread.

Transformers was released in Korea a couple days before it was released in the US. Taken was released over a year earlier. Many blockbuster movies are released in Korea a couple days before they are open in the US. Just FYI.