Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

2010 DEG Final report:
http://www.degonline.org/pressreleases/2011/f_Q410.pdf

Blu-Ray sales were $1.8B.

In 2011 sales (they never gave us the actual number but they gave us the percentage) were up 20% for BD YOY. 20% of $1.8B is $360M. That would put 2011 sales for BD at roughly $2.16B.
http://www.degonline.org/pressreleas...r_end_2011.pdf

If sales were up 10% in 2012, that would represent approximately $216M. So it is not just a percentage slowdown but an actual slowdown in revenue growth by almost $150M.

Blu-Ray growth is definitely slowing in 2012 based on the above.

I suspect we will see similar growth in 2013, especially since most of the tent pole catalog titles have been released. I think if the studios and retailers phase out new releases as DVD only sku's it would obviously lead to big Blu-Ray growth (combo and BD only sku's) but obviously that would come with huge drops in DVD revenue.

DEG's job is to pump up home entertainment. So of course they will say things are accelerating or doing better. Marketing is marketing

Again, I don't find these numbers bad at all considering the challenges and all the options consumers have. Trying to get people to pay more for 1080p and better audio is a tough sale in a tough economy with so many other cheaper options.

I will reply in the other thread, no use keeping the same discussion going in two threads

[postulio]

VHS to dvd was an insanely enormous jump, not just in picture quality but technology and convenience as well. Way way way more so than the jump from DVD to BD.

Furthermore, most TV shows are filmed with video, which has resolutions closer to DVD than BD, making remastering/upconversion to BD rather pointless, as most shows won't look much better than they did on DVD, unless a lot of expensive post processing occurs (which may be pointless as older shows have relatively low fanbases)

[Steedeel]

People are cheap is the correct answer

[erixon20]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

People are cheap is the correct answer

I was going to add stubborn as well to that above statement.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by erixon20

I was going to add stubborn as well to that above statement.

Yep, some people wouldn't know quality if it bit them on the ass. Sheep basically.

[bobbydrugar]

Its probably not fair to blame people for being "Cheap" The cost to get into blu-ray when it came out was Astrinomical. You had $2500 for the Television and $1000 for the Blu-ray player and then there were all the cables and other such brikabrack. DVD was an easy transition as it worked with all your old equipment no problem and you could get the benifits for the cost of a player and a movie.

So now the question is why is blu-ray not skyrocketing now that all those issues have been ironed out and the answer is simple to that as well. People Just don't care. What does blu-ray offer to the average viewer? The ability to skip to a chapter very slowly (DVD was Faster) the Ability to remember where you left off on a movie (DVD did always blu-ray Sometimes DVD is better) The ability to put the movie in and push play (DVD works blu-ray well did you turn off the internet connection, did you update your firmware, Has you blu-ray manufacturer released a firmware revision with the necessary DRM codes to watch that movie yet Etc, Etc. So for convienence DVD wins.

In other words the only areas that blu-ray wins is Resolution (Sometimes not even by a noticable margin over upconverted DVD) Color Depth, (Which is dependant on having your screen calibrated) and Audio (Which is dependeant on the codecs included on the disk and your audio hardware and your calibration of such hardware). So basically Blu-ray does everything in its power to inconvienance the user puts all requirements of quality on the user calibration of equipment and only works sometimes.

Gee I wonder why the average consumer is a bit put off by the Tech only hobby.

Thanks,
T
PS. I Love my Blu-ray but it took a long time to get my skills to the point where I could really get the benifit out of it and tech is what I do for a living. My mother forget it. My sister forget it. They don't have the time or patience or interest to figure all this BS out.

[KRW1]

DVD didn;t have a smooth ride. It was only in about 2001-2002 it sort of picked up as I recall, a good 5 years after launch. I worked in a video store circa 1998 and it had a terrible time from the regulars. Didn't see the point of it, not going to upgrade their VHS collections etc etc. We were a national chain but it wasnt until 1999 that they even decided to let us have it on our shelves.

The point about not needing to upgrade TVs is moot. It's different in the states, but in the UK we generally had small 4.3 sets as standard, about 25-30". On that sort of screen, with DVD in scope, you'd get no end of people going on about how narrow the screen was and VHS showed more and, indeed, was at a higher resolution, albeit panned and scanned. (I remember a magazine looking at this issue seriously)

The Home Cinema fans, as I recall, a lot of them didn't think it would take over from laserdisc as it was established as the collectrors format and 'normal' people didn't want to pay £20 to own a movie when they could just rent it or watch on cable.

It's easy to look back and not see the hurdles it went through and just imagine it was overnight. Certainly wasn't, was a hard fought battle.

[Taikero]

Blu-ray is not taking off because the big brick & mortar stores are still selling DVDs at a ratio of 5 to 1 over Blu-ray.

Why? Cost to own. You can get a 4-pack of DVDs at the local store for 10 bucks, when that same group of movies might cost you $32+ (minimum $8 per Blu-ray).

So what does the average consumer do? They buy the cheap 4-pack and call it good. That's really as complicated as it gets, especially in this economy. Price of the product with a slightly inferior alternative available for 1/3 of the cost rules everything.

When you see your local Wal-Mart/Target start stocking primarily Blu-ray over DVD, that's when we'll really start seeing more Blu-ray adoption. Right now there's just no incentive for the average consumer to move over to Blu-ray because they're just not being forced to by their local stores (and again, in this economy, stores can't force the issue).

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by bobbydrugar

Its probably not fair to blame people for being "Cheap" The cost to get into blu-ray when it came out was Astrinomical. You had $2500 for the Television and $1000 for the Blu-ray player and then there were all the cables and other such brikabrack. DVD was an easy transition as it worked with all your old equipment no problem and you could get the benifits for the cost of a player and a movie.

So now the question is why is blu-ray not skyrocketing now that all those issues have been ironed out and the answer is simple to that as well. People Just don't care. What does blu-ray offer to the average viewer? The ability to skip to a chapter very slowly (DVD was Faster) the Ability to remember where you left off on a movie (DVD did always blu-ray Sometimes DVD is better) The ability to put the movie in and push play (DVD works blu-ray well did you turn off the internet connection, did you update your firmware, Has you blu-ray manufacturer released a firmware revision with the necessary DRM codes to watch that movie yet Etc, Etc. So for convienence DVD wins.

In other words the only areas that blu-ray wins is Resolution (Sometimes not even by a noticable margin over upconverted DVD) Color Depth, (Which is dependant on having your screen calibrated) and Audio (Which is dependeant on the codecs included on the disk and your audio hardware and your calibration of such hardware). So basically Blu-ray does everything in its power to inconvienance the user puts all requirements of quality on the user calibration of equipment and only works sometimes.

Gee I wonder why the average consumer is a bit put off by the Tech only hobby.

Thanks,
T
PS. I Love my Blu-ray but it took a long time to get my skills to the point where I could really get the benifit out of it and tech is what I do for a living. My mother forget it. My sister forget it. They don't have the time or patience or interest to figure all this BS out.

I agree to most of this, picture quality is important as most people do not care at all about audio. As for the firmware upgrade, I know of a person who was so frustrated with the blu ray player not letting him play certain movies that he just got rid of the player and went right to Apple TV and that's that.

[KRW1]

If most people did not care at all about audio, we'd still all be listening to films with 2.0 soundtracks at home and Netflix wouldn't bother wasting bandwidth on their pseudo 5.1 remixes. Your assertion is not backed up by the current state of the market.

[postulio]

Originally Posted by bobbydrugar

Its probably not fair to blame people for being "Cheap" The cost to get into blu-ray when it came out was Astrinomical. You had $2500 for the Television and $1000 for the Blu-ray player and then there were all the cables and other such brikabrack. DVD was an easy transition as it worked with all your old equipment no problem and you could get the benifits for the cost of a player and a movie.

So now the question is why is blu-ray not skyrocketing now that all those issues have been ironed out and the answer is simple to that as well. People Just don't care. What does blu-ray offer to the average viewer? The ability to skip to a chapter very slowly (DVD was Faster) the Ability to remember where you left off on a movie (DVD did always blu-ray Sometimes DVD is better) The ability to put the movie in and push play (DVD works blu-ray well did you turn off the internet connection, did you update your firmware, Has you blu-ray manufacturer released a firmware revision with the necessary DRM codes to watch that movie yet Etc, Etc. So for convienence DVD wins.

In other words the only areas that blu-ray wins is Resolution (Sometimes not even by a noticable margin over upconverted DVD) Color Depth, (Which is dependant on having your screen calibrated) and Audio (Which is dependeant on the codecs included on the disk and your audio hardware and your calibration of such hardware). So basically Blu-ray does everything in its power to inconvienance the user puts all requirements of quality on the user calibration of equipment and only works sometimes.

Gee I wonder why the average consumer is a bit put off by the Tech only hobby.

Thanks,
T
PS. I Love my Blu-ray but it took a long time to get my skills to the point where I could really get the benifit out of it and tech is what I do for a living. My mother forget it. My sister forget it. They don't have the time or patience or interest to figure all this BS out.

You know, I almost forgot to mention these great points.

even for me, to this day, i actually hate the act of putting on BDs. oh sure once it gets rolling things are great (usually, i have had perfect discs completely stop working at random spots too) but the amount of time it takes to turn it on is stupid. DVD is just plug and play, BD is annoying as ****. I blame Sony.

the only honest benefit in convenience BD holds over DVD is that they are difficult/impossible to scratch vs the dozen or so DVDs i had to trash at one point or another.


PS, as someone mentioned, it wasnt until 2001-2002 that DVD really picked up. I remember buying my first one in 2000 and it was a very underwhelming experience, and i live in NYC, out of all places. Most stores barely carried them till 01-02

[postulio]

Originally Posted by KRW1

If most people did not care at all about audio, we'd still all be listening to films with 2.0 soundtracks at home and Netflix wouldn't bother wasting bandwidth on their pseudo 5.1 remixes. Your assertion is not backed up by the current state of the market.

nah man, leave the hyperbole aside. I know a LOT of people... coworkers, acquaintances, friends, internet friends, family etc etc.... and MOST do not care at all about 5.1. the 25% or so that do, are absolutely content with a shitty HTiB for 200$ or so. My left speaker cost 200$.

I really know like three people who even know about different master audio codecs (or what codecs even are), just one of whom cares a lot about audio fidelity, and its not even in movies, he only cares about music. Alternatively, everyone I know has an HDTV.

The reason surround is included and became the norm is because its the soundtrack used in movie theaters, and THATS where people care about sound. whats the point of remixing it into 2 channels when a surround track already exists?

besides lets not forget that the power users (us) are a VERY vocal minority. we sway companies more so than joe shmoe. can you imagine the shitstorm if avatar came w/ 2.1??? it would have a 1 star rating on amazon, a website regular consumers shop at, and they would see that 1 star thinking its not worth buying (whether they particularly care about 5.1+ or not).


P.S. I've only been able to get my parents interested in BD after i bought them a 55" LCD screen a couple years ago AND a player, and even still they dont own a single movie (they are both content with watching streamed, downloaded content, which trust me looks like shit). they are in their mid/late 50s by the way. I am 28. They dont even rent or borrow my collection (although I have watched a couple BDs with them together, some at my place some at theirs - they loved it but dont care at all about spending $ on it, and its not like we are on welfare).

[BluVinyl]

Originally Posted by bobbydrugar

Its probably not fair to blame people for being "Cheap" The cost to get into blu-ray when it came out was Astrinomical. You had $2500 for the Television and $1000 for the Blu-ray player and then there were all the cables and other such brikabrack. DVD was an easy transition as it worked with all your old equipment no problem and you could get the benifits for the cost of a player and a movie.

So now the question is why is blu-ray not skyrocketing now that all those issues have been ironed out and the answer is simple to that as well. People Just don't care. What does blu-ray offer to the average viewer? The ability to skip to a chapter very slowly (DVD was Faster) the Ability to remember where you left off on a movie (DVD did always blu-ray Sometimes DVD is better) The ability to put the movie in and push play (DVD works blu-ray well did you turn off the internet connection, did you update your firmware, Has you blu-ray manufacturer released a firmware revision with the necessary DRM codes to watch that movie yet Etc, Etc. So for convienence DVD wins.

In other words the only areas that blu-ray wins is Resolution (Sometimes not even by a noticable margin over upconverted DVD) Color Depth, (Which is dependant on having your screen calibrated) and Audio (Which is dependeant on the codecs included on the disk and your audio hardware and your calibration of such hardware). So basically Blu-ray does everything in its power to inconvienance the user puts all requirements of quality on the user calibration of equipment and only works sometimes.

Gee I wonder why the average consumer is a bit put off by the Tech only hobby.

Thanks,
T
PS. I Love my Blu-ray but it took a long time to get my skills to the point where I could really get the benifit out of it and tech is what I do for a living. My mother forget it. My sister forget it. They don't have the time or patience or interest to figure all this BS out.

Great points. I can't even get my firmware to update for over the past year. That has got to be the most annoying feature of any AV equipment that I have bought going back to the late 1970's when I bought my first stereo. But I still love BDs for the resolution when I am watching on the projector and a 120 inch screen. But I can understand why most people don't see the need to upgrade.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by postulio

nah man, leave the hyperbole aside. I know a LOT of people... coworkers, acquaintances, friends, internet friends, family etc etc.... and MOST do not care at all about 5.1. the 25% or so that do, are absolutely content with a shitty HTiB for 200$ or so. My left speaker cost 200$.

I really know like three people who even know about different master audio codecs (or what codecs even are), just one of whom cares a lot about audio fidelity, and its not even in movies, he only cares about music. Alternatively, everyone I know has an HDTV.

The reason surround is included and became the norm is because its the soundtrack used in movie theaters, and THATS where people care about sound. whats the point of remixing it into 2 channels when a surround track already exists?

besides lets not forget that the power users (us) are a VERY vocal minority. we sway companies more so than joe shmoe. can you imagine the shitstorm if avatar came w/ 2.1??? it would have a 1 star rating on amazon, a website regular consumers shop at, and they would see that 1 star thinking its not worth buying (whether they particularly care about 5.1+ or not).


P.S. I've only been able to get my parents interested in BD after i bought them a 55" LCD screen a couple years ago AND a player, and even still they dont own a single movie (they are both content with watching streamed, downloaded content, which trust me looks like shit). they are in their mid/late 50s by the way. I am 28. They dont even rent or borrow my collection (although I have watched a couple BDs with them together, some at my place some at theirs - they loved it but dont care at all about spending $ on it, and its not like we are on welfare).

Agreed

Master Audio is a such a non issue. Most electronics stores barely stock much recievers any more. It is just not a big component of the home theatre anymore as most people are moving away from it

I can confirm that standard 5.1 is good enough as people cannot tell the difference and nor do they really care.

People just want to watch the movie, that is about it. Audio is important but not nearly as important as picture as tastes change.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

Agreed

Master Audio is a such a non issue. Most electronics stores barely stock much recievers any more. It is just not a big component of the home theatre anymore as most people are moving away from it

I can confirm that standard 5.1 is good enough as people cannot tell the difference and nor do they really care.

People just want to watch the movie, that is about it. Audio is important but not nearly as important as picture as tastes change.

You can confirm?

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

You can confirm?

Just look at what is available now. 5.1 is available on iTunes and Netflix and there is nobody crying about the lack of master audio in cars that have blu ray etc. o

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Taikero

Blu-ray is not taking off because the big brick & mortar stores are still selling DVDs at a ratio of 5 to 1 over Blu-ray.

Why? Cost to own. You can get a 4-pack of DVDs at the local store for 10 bucks, when that same group of movies might cost you $32+ (minimum $8 per Blu-ray).

So what does the average consumer do? They buy the cheap 4-pack and call it good. That's really as complicated as it gets, especially in this economy. Price of the product with a slightly inferior alternative available for 1/3 of the cost rules everything.

When you see your local Wal-Mart/Target start stocking primarily Blu-ray over DVD, that's when we'll really start seeing more Blu-ray adoption. Right now there's just no incentive for the average consumer to move over to Blu-ray because they're just not being forced to by their local stores (and again, in this economy, stores can't force the issue).

Bingo, way to many people have rose colored glasses on about DVD. it went through most of the same struggles that blu-ray is facing and it was the highest profit format to date.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

Agreed

Master Audio is a such a non issue. Most electronics stores barely stock much recievers any more. It is just not a big component of the home theatre anymore as most people are moving away from it

I can confirm that standard 5.1 is good enough as people cannot tell the difference and nor do they really care.

People just want to watch the movie, that is about it. Audio is important but not nearly as important as picture as tastes change.

most people are moving away from receivers etc??? riiiiiiiiiight, speaker sales and receiver sales are though the charts.

and of course did you ever list your "superb" setup that you keep constantly dodging int the treads so we can see why you can't tell the difference between lossless and lossy?

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

Agreed

Master Audio is a such a non issue. Most electronics stores barely stock much recievers any more. It is just not a big component of the home theatre anymore as most people are moving away from it

I can confirm that standard 5.1 is good enough as people cannot tell the difference and nor do they really care.



People just want to watch the movie, that is about it. Audio is important but not nearly as important as picture as tastes change.

And yet I'd really struggle to find a store that sells Apple TV yet new recievers and speakers are being thrown at me on an almost daily basis.

A few years ago, you'd have been one of those people telling us that pro-logic was good enough for most people and people weren't interested in upgrading a reciever to hear 5.1 as 'the upgrade isn't enough of a pull'.

Originally Posted by wormraper

most people are moving away from receivers etc??? riiiiiiiiiight, speaker sales and receiver sales are though the charts.

and of course did you ever list your "superb" setup that you keep constantly dodging int the treads so we can see why you can't tell the difference between lossless and lossy?

No, we never got an answer. I suspect he's not allowed to mention brands unless its Apple or Netflix.

I would also like to know the make up of this 'superb' system that makes Netflix look and sound the same as bluray.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by KRW1

And yet I'd really struggle to find a store that sells Apple TV yet new recievers and speakers are being thrown at me on an almost daily basis.



No, we never got an answer. I suspect he's not allowed to mention brands unless its Apple or Netflix.

Recievers are nowhere near what they were once in popularity. Most people do not care. The old recievers will handle 5.1 from no problem.

Speaker bars do not count as speakers being thrown at you, those speakers are used to improve audio from the big screen speakers