Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[blacklion]

Originally Posted by financially deprived

downloads become mainstream.........yeah sure

Yep...and they said the sun revolved around the earth and man would never fly


Blu ray is the last optical disc format. If only the greedy studios would allow us make the best of it for the few years of life left to it.

[Travis]

First, Infrared Sight, I want the DVD rewinder on the previous page. I hate when people forget to rewind them.

Second, the author said, "In the movie world, we embraced DVDs so quickly because they vastly improved what came before."

In my memory, DVD didn't overtake VHS quickly. It was expensive and many stores continued carrying VHS for a long, long time.

When did movies arrive on DVD, '95? '96?

I got my first DVD player when I moved to Taiwan 10 years ago, my mom, in the states, probably 5 years+, she still thinks VHS is fine. My sister, in Canada, still uses a VCR to play Disney stuff for her kids. Before I moved here, in 1999, I was working at Circuit City and 4 head VCRs were still selling strong, more than 3 years after DVD. Also was selling DVD players with DIVX discs, anyone buy those?

My video store, which I go to to rent in Taiwan, just stopped carrying VHS a few years ago, a bit behind the US. And they still carry VCDs.

[benricci]

Originally Posted by Travis

When did movies arrive on DVD, '95? '96?

Summer of '97 in the States.

[Musashi]

Originally Posted by blacklion

Blu ray is the last optical disc format. If only the greedy studios would allow us make the best of it for the many years of life left to it.

Fixed it for ya.

[Al_The_Strange]

Great. More biased criticism. Hmm...

Originally Posted by Coqui2k

But blu-ray? Yes, it cooks up beautiful picture and sound -- but with the right equipment. You must have the great high-def TV and solid stereo system to really enjoy it. DVDs still offered perks to those with crappy systems. And yes, the capacity is bigger, so more stuff fits on a disc, and this allows for fancier menus and less disc-switching. But that's it. It's still just a disc, so the newbies aren't going to be enamored by a new look, and DVDs themselves have upsampling which balances out a little of the visual divide.

Oh please, it's not "just a disc!" DVDs can't go online, fetch updates or additional extras, or allow you to chat with others while you're watching the film. DVDs don't usually let you bookmark scenes or share clips. They don't let you access the menu while the movie itself is running. And they don't offer seamless branching (...I don't think). Blu-Rays offer a bigger step in interactivity than DVDs ever could.

Originally Posted by Coqui2k

Me, I would love a Blu-ray player, but I don't have one. My TV doesn't even make DVDs look their best, and I don't have cash on-hand to spend thousands on a new system. (Aside from the fact that great sound systems are not apartment friendly.) And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Why spend THOUSANDS on a new system? I got my TV and PS3 for only $1000.00. These days, you could probably get all that for half that price. It may not be the best, especially since I don't really have a sound system, but it works for me.

Originally Posted by Coqui2k

Do you have a Blu-ray player? Why do you think the format is struggling?

I don't think the format is struggling at all. Blu-Ray titles are coming out faster and faster. Sales seem to be going up, while prices are going down. The figures this site reguarly presents are usually promising. More people seem interested in the technology than before. Heck, even my parents have a Blu-Ray player now.

Originally Posted by tilapiah6

The bottom line here is that once the tube televisions are phased out, for the most part, of homes, they will be replaced with HDTVs. Standard TVs are no longer available, and HDTVs are now the only type of television available on the market. It's only logical that people will then start adopting high definition Blu-ray technology. This will really start to kick off when the average price of a Blu-ray is 20 dollars in local stores such as Best Buy and Target. I'm sure there's still thousands if not millions of people out there who still cling to their precious VHS collection; that didn't stop them from buying DVDs. It will be a slow process, but Blu-ray technology will take over. It's inevitable, with HDTVs now being the norm. I'm guessing it will take at least a few more years before the haters start to die out. At least we have a jump start on it!

Exactly. DVDs look perfect on old TVs, but are soft, blurry, grainy, and even discolored on HD TVs. HD TVs naturally called for a bigger step in video resolution, and Blu-Rays emerged as the answer to that.

Originally Posted by benricci

The other thing that bothers me is the mentality that we (the current generation of humans on the planet) are the ONLY potential customers for a new format. As if new people won't be born anymore, and have media needs.

Whoa. A subliminal doomsday prediction? Scary.

[benricci]

Originally Posted by Al_The_Strange

DVDs can't go online, fetch updates or additional extras, or allow you to chat with others while you're watching the film. DVDs don't usually let you bookmark scenes or share clips. They don't let you access the menu while the movie itself is running. And they don't offer seamless branching (...I don't think).

Just to clarify, DVD has actually offered seamless branching for well over a decade.

[Al_The_Strange]

Originally Posted by benricci

Just to clarify, DVD has actually offered seamless branching for well over a decade.

Oops, I never noticed. For a whole decade nonetheless, isn't that bad?

Sorry.

[Septimus Prime]

Seems to me like that article is just using "DVD" interchangably with "disc" to appeal to laymen. It's like calling copy machines "Xerox" or tissue paper "Kleenex" just because of brand ubiquity.

[HiDefRev]

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by benricci

Summer of '97 in the States.

no, March 97 in the US, Nov 96 in Japan

[ryoohki]

Yeah DVD was release the last week of March in NA. I know i bought a player for 800$CAD and i had to import Eraser from a store in California (iam in montreal) with money order (yup online buying sucked in 1997). We didn't had any movies in Canada until June and it was only Sony... About in October we had the same title that in the US.. LOL!

[Travis]

Was DVD adopted faster than Blu-ray?

When I left California in 1999, and came to Taiwan, VHS was still going strong there and here. DVDs weren't cheap and players were very expensive. Don't remember a lot of friends being into DVDs or HT at that time. But I was 24 and had a younger group of friends, HT was not affordable for most of us, just getting out of college.

What do you old guys say, the ones that were in their 30's or older when DVD was introduced?

To answer my question, I say no. I'd guess it is on the same track.

It may have beeen introduced 3 years ago, but I'd say it wasn't REALLY made available until the war was over. I had no interest in buying HD or Blu during the war. Blus are doing great for being a year and a half old.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Travis

Was DVD adopted faster than Blu-ray?

hard to say because adoption rate can change, but so far the answer is that BD is being adopted faster then DVD, on the other hand if you asked in 2006 or early 2007 the answer would have been different.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by Travis

Was DVD adopted faster than Blu-ray?
...

The whole format war with HD DVD put a damper on the whole thing. But it wasn't long after BD won the war that I could no longer browse alone in the blu-ray aisle.

I really do miss being an elite schmuck. sigh.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by tron3

The whole format war with HD DVD put a damper on the whole thing. But it wasn't long after BD won the war that I could no longer browse alone in the blu-ray aisle.

I really do miss being an elite schmuck. sigh.

I'm still an elitist.

All these newbies getting into Blu-ray, and thinking they are going to borrow my movies 5-10 at a time. DVD was fine, but there are very few people I loan BR to.

[LynxFX]

Originally Posted by ryoohki

(yup online buying sucked in 1997).

But it rocked in 1998-2000. I bought more DVD's on release day during that time, all priced around $12.49 thanks to I believe it was realdvd.com. The online community figured out what the retailers hadn't yet, a low price makes those puppies fly off the shelf. Those were the best years in my opinion. Once the format took off and turned mainstream the quality started to drop, we got price gouged on bare bones releases, fullscreen only releases reared its ugly head, $12.49 new release never happened again, double, triple, quadruple dips became the norm.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by tron3

I really do miss being an elite schmuck. sigh.

agree, I remember when I bought Casino Royal, I was at the check out and in the line there where two others with CR BD, it was so cool to have others buying it at the same time and we all looked at ourselves knowingly “this will look and sound so cool”, on the other hand I bought Transformers last week and it was annoying having people blocking the isles when you try and see the different movies to decide what to get.

[Elvispookie]

Digital Downloads are coming!! Streaming is coming! Really?

Digital Downloads is something in a very very distant future. They are occuring today.. but at a loss for picture and sound. They cannot offer what Blu Ray does. Period. We Americans like to believe that the future is right around the corner - it is not. We will not transform into the Jetsons in 3 years. But as Americans we like to think this will be upon us in no time. Think of the countless movies and stories we that were written and filmed about our future - now think of the year they portray them in. 2001 A Space Oddessy comes to mind. Written in the 70's someone thought thats what our society would be like in 2001. Maybe it was too close so they made a sequel and called it 2010: A space oddessy. Yeah, thats next year.

The point is is that people move at their own pace when it comes to technology with the majority of people lagging behind. Yes, technology may be advancing but people do not or at least until the time is right for them. This in turn slows down technology. Just look at when we tried to make the switch to all digital TV. Almost 40% of Americans still had rabbit ears!!
Am I supposed to believe that these same 40% are going to upgrade their PC's (if they have one) or upgrade their entertainment systems and figure out how to stream movies to their tv sets?? No way.

Face it people, we are the first in the lineage of the internet. We were not born into it. We were born before it. And what came before it was what our ancestors knew and the technologies afforded to them. We are the ones taking bold steps into the future. But not all of us. As we on these boards have embraced these technologies - that 40% is still out there - and they have not. It will be our children - born into the internet age - who will demand that 100% of people embrace technology and then and only then will we have the future. Maybe then digital downloads will be the norm. Not today and not in the next 5 years either.

[cathexist]

2001 was in the 60s, and the short story it was based on was in the 40s. 2010 was written in the 80s.

But yes...I agree, infrastructure in the US is not going to be able to handle blu-ray quality digital distribution for quite some time.

[benricci]

That's an awfully long rant just to tell us you don't think downloads are gonna be the standard anytime soon.