Studio Reps Say Industry United Behind Blu-ray

[Alan Gordon]

Studio Reps Say Industry United Behind Blu-ray

Originally Posted by Home Media Magazine

For now, though, the standalone players remain expensive, and cheap upconverting DVD players are being pitched to consumers instead.

“We wish they would go away,” Forster said.

Originally Posted by Home Media Magazine

As for the cost of Blu-ray Discs, he added that consumers would eventually see DVD prices, once the household penetration hits a certain point.

“When DVD hit a penetration rate of 25% for hardware, that’s when software got below $20,” Takac said.

I quoted some of the more interesting/funny parts to me. I thought Forster's quote was funny, and Takac's was interesting.

~Alan

[Blu Titan]

There is good news all around. The format will make a big splah in Q4.

[ThePhantomOak]

Of course studios want Blu-ray. They make a TON of money off of it. They can re-sell old titles, and then they can have "high" prices for a while.

I want Blu-ray because I can find them cheep and have a much higher quality. Everyone wins.

I get better movies, they get more money to invest in better movies, I win twice!

[Turnda643]

With the superior a/v quality that BD can deliver, I have no problem double or triple dipping for movies that are a vast improvement on what I currently have. The only negative to me when doing so, is if that BD lacks the supplemental extras that I enjoy watching for more insight and behind-the-scenes info. For example, Gangs of New York BD will suposedly lack some of the extras found on the SD 2-disc edition. Because of that, I will hold off on the double dip on this title. Otherwise, I have no complaints about paying again for the 'upgrade.'

[scott1256ca]

Of course standalone upscaling players are being pushed now. That way they hope to resell them a BD player in a year or two. With any luck the consumers will remember which store recommended they buy an obsolete player, and make their next purchase from someone else.

As to BD prices, I don't expect they'll ever come down as low as dvd is now. Two reasons for this

1. I don't think the studios like the low prices and may play hardball and not let them be distributed too cheaply.

2. While the quality (and therefore time, effort and cost) of new releases is generally high on dvd, the quality on some of the catalog releases is low, and the studios seem to put little effort into them probably because they know that the limited resolution of dvd will cover a lot of the flaws up anyway. That changes with BD. Either they put in some effort to restore or clean up the film before they release on BD, or all the flaws will show up. So I'm HOPING that means they'll put in the effort (and I'll pay a little more) rather than just stuffing onto a disk whatever they have. If a BD is going to look like crap, I won't bother. I'm spoiled now.

[Bobby Henderson]

Of course standalone upscaling players are being pushed now. That way they hope to resell them a BD player in a year or two.

The problem with the upscaling DVD players strategy is there's very little money in it. The players are so cheap that profit margins are minimal at best. Sales levels of the software that plays on them (DVD movies) are dropping -and many of those discs have minimal profit margins as well.

Obviously Hollywood can't just yank support from the DVD format immediately. The studios will have to keep supporting DVD for a few more years to come. But the number of DVD players available on the market will shrink and we may see some of the current bargains in DVD dry up as Blu-ray becomes more and more attractive.

Basically, Hollywood studios can push customers into whatever viewing platform they want to be prominently used. If they want Blu-ray disc to be that platform then that's what it will be. There's no way Blu-ray can lose if it has unanimous Hollywood studio support.

This is one reason why I continue to laugh at the "movie downloads are going to win" argument. Last time I checked, Apple and Microsoft didn't produce movies. Any movie download service is going to be 100% dependent on the content movie studios supply to them. If the studios want Blu-ray to succeed why would they undermine it by putting a lot of emphasis into a competing platform? Steve Jobs may be on the board at Disney, but his vote is just one vote and Disney is clearly bullish on Blu-ray. They'll give the downloads thing just enough to be a nice alternative, but not give it enough to do any real harm to BD.