Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[joie]

Why doesn't the CEO talk about how Roku is better than Blu-ray? Better picture quality? Better sound?

[MattvonSyborg]

Some good points here. Most people I know (regular non film-freaks) have always stared in disbelief when they see my DVD collection. They usually stream or download movies (maybe see them in theatres and rent them) but a lot of people don't really see the need to rewatch movies that much. When DVD first came out, it had very obvious practical advantages over VHS (lighter and smaller format, no need to rewind). Also you couldn't just download or stream anything in the days before highspeed internet, you had to go to rental places, and when they made the switch, you made the switch basically.

VHS to DVD made practical sense. DVD to BD is more about the optimal viewing experience - most people aren't geeks like that. Then again, my mom who's very far from a film geek is a blu ray convert, so maybe people'll come around.

Also, I think not making BD region free was a huge mistake.

[nycomet]

I don't understand all the anger here.

When it comes to viewing movies my first choice will always be blu-ray. Cannot beat the picture and audio quality.

My second choice is Vudu HDX files. It is a super-convenient option at times. I can select from a large library of movies and TV shows when I am up in bed watching the flatscreen -- or even when I go to a friends house (using their SmartTV app).

My home office has a flatscreen and basic cable. I have an AppleTV box in here. It's too limited.

I plan to get a Roku 2 SX so I can have many more streaming options including use of my Vudu collection.

I do believe the Roku CEO was blowing himself when he said "blu-ray will be obsolete by 2016." There is a time and place for streaming and a time and place for blu-ray discs. They will coexist for many years to come.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by ScooterMan

I truly believe that younger generations are, overall, beginning to shun excessive numbers of physical copies of pretty much anything, LOL.

My daughter is 19, in school, very social & well-adjusted girl. She's just not interested in the following things:

car (not a brand new one, anyway)
house/real estate/owning property (ditto; she says an apt. leaves her "free to move")
husband (not yet, anyway....a boyfriend is good enough for now)
huge numbers of kids
large collections of "stuff" that are not kept on some type of Cloud-type storage

.....and the list goes on.

I guess that times are a-changin'.

I do agree with her, though; if these things don't/won't make you happy, don't do/get/buy into them. She apparently has learned very early what has taken me nearly 50 years to realize: Don't let your possessions own you.

I've been really obsessive for decades about my collections (I have several), but I've reduced them all (pretty much) to a manageable and fairly portable size, should I ever need to move.

lol, you described just about EVERY 19 year old for the last 100 years

[jw]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

A point about TV shows - many of them were filmed on SD videotape, which would basically make a BD release pointless. Also, if a show didn't sell well enough on DVD, studios won't bother with a BD release.

The latter point is one of the biggest issues, even facing releasing more DVD sets of a particular season, Alot of money is pumped into royalties and rights to release older shows with no financial reward. thus the honeypot of releases slowed alot.

We as Americans are people of "possessions" while countries like Japan are a rental market where they dont hoard movies and such. Its all about culture as well.

[krazeyeyez]

Anthony when you finally manage to meet a girl you might realize why i would want a roku that can be easily transferred to another tv so the game station is not the only streaming option. Weird how people can have different circumstances or benefits you can't see right. Enjoy your electronic superiority complex bub.

[PFrank]

Lol the Roku is irrelevant when you have streaming content on your blu-ray player and tv. Good luck Roku..

[Steedeel]

Yes, agreed. The arguments switch from technical ones such as the quality of streaming or bluray to lifestyle ones like family, kids etc.. Does not change the fact that streaming is a deeply flawed format. Why would someone who cares about quality suddenly think 'oh, so and so has kids, i will change my mind, I actually love streaming now'? One can only speak of their personal preference, so why would they give a crap about lesser formats regardless of someone having five kids or whatever.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by krazeyeyez

Anthony when you finally manage to meet a girl you might realize why i would want a roku that can be easily transferred to another tv so the game station is not the only streaming option. Weird how people can have different circumstances or benefits you can't see right. Enjoy your electronic superiority complex bub.

lol man, so before you did not know anything about measurements and said something stupid;

then you did not know anything about internet connections (or Canada) and did the same again

http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/01/...-networks.html
now the info might be a bit outdated but even though Netflix did say they would post charts every month they never continued it because loudmouth fanboys thatdid not want to deal withy reality preferedc shooting the messenger than accepting the fact that the internet access in the US is pretty crappy and crappier then in Canada

so know why would you think that you know anything about my love life? and how does that have anything to do with the size of devices?

As for needing to move it from TV to TV, have you ever thought that if you did not over pay for the Roku just because there is no BD logo on the box, maybe you could afford more players and then you would not need to move it to different TVs

And why would this discussion have anything to do with you or me. I made a simple claim, the Roku CEO said a bunch of FUD now that the players (that just also happen to play BDs) from other manufacturers have become cheaper because they are his completion.
If Joe bought his 360 in 2005 and the HD-DVD add on in 2006 and vowed when HD-DVD went belly up that he will never watch a film on BD and has it in his living room to watch Netflix, he does not need an extra device in there to watch his Netflix films. If Joe has his laptop in his office and watches Netflix on that he does not need anything more there, if Joe just got a smart TV for his kitchen because the old one broke then he can watch his Netflix films there as well. So what if Joe is now thinking “hey the only TV I can’t watch my Netflix on is in the BR, maybe I will do something about that”. He is thinking “my TV is still good, so I don’t want to spend the money to get that, I won’t be playing xbox games in the BR, so that is overkill” and he goes to the store for a box where he can use with Netflix. Now if he goes starts shopping and as an HD-DVD fanboy he says I don’t want a player with a BD logo or if he does not look at them because he read “BD is doomed” then he might buy the Roku for the room. But what happens if he has an opened mind? He looks at all the machines that do Netflix and he looks at the Roku and it is unrecognizable, while some of the rest are well known brands he likes; he looks at the prices, the Roku is more expensive; he might think, hey I don’t want to watch BDs since I vowed never to watch one, but I do have some DVDs so that is an extra feature (and if he has a DVD player there already he can get rid of it). These are what he is most likely to consider important and not how much less then 1/12th of a cubic foot difference there is between the two players, he might say “looks smaller” but then again he will probably also think “I will put it on the dresser were it will collect dust for as long as it works so who cares”.
The issue is that Roku needs to convince Joe to buy their player to continue doing business, they already sold you that one player that you are moving from room to room.

PS I included the smaller charts from Netflix since the bigger ones are way too big, if people want details then follow the link and click on the small charts. But just to add a bit of info, the scale is a bit different in the two charts. For the US the range is 1000-3000 and increments of 200 for Canada it is 1000 to 3500 and increments of 500. Each coloured line is the average kbps for HD movies per carrier, for HD it should be 4800kbps but when the BW is not there the system bumps down the bitrate to minimize troublesome artifacts like judder and so lowers the quality of the video you watch.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by Blu-Benny

most people don't want to have to upgrade to a new medium every 4-5 years....i think that's the biggest problem.

The time difference between the first DVD player and the first Blu-ray Disc player is far more than 5 years. So your "4-5" theory is nulled.

[djkest]

One my friends has a 720p widescreen LCD TV. She still buys the DVD instead of Blu-ray. She said "I don't have one of those really fancy TVs so it doesn't matter". She also likes the DVD because it's a couple bucks cheaper for new releases.

I asked her how long she plans on keeping her movies, and if she ever might get a better TV later. The question blew her mind. I don't think people always think ahead.

[Michael1989]

Probably because the change from a chunky video tape to a disc was different and appealing.

Going from DVD to Blu is kind of the same so hasn't gotten peoples attention so much

[dfinch]

Originally Posted by Michael1989

Probably because the change from a chunky video tape to a disc was different and appealing.

Going from DVD to Blu is kind of the same so hasn't gotten peoples attention so much

This. DVDs offered a selection menu, subtitle options, language options, scene selections (no longer have to rewind your tapes at the end ), bonus material, improved video/audio quality. The jump from VHS to DVD was HUGE. From DVD to Blu Ray, all we got was a jump in resolution.

[josuv22]

Originally Posted by Blu-Benny

most people don't want to have to upgrade to a new medium every 4-5 years....i think that's the biggest problem.

that and people that say they can't see a differenece between blu and dvd.

I had some one who claimed sky HD looked the same as SKY
they had a HDTV and sky HD box hooked up with a scart cable.

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

The time difference between the first DVD player and the first Blu-ray Disc player is far more than 5 years. So your "4-5" theory is nulled.

And you decided to use your FIRST post in these forums to be a complete douche to a long-time, well-respected member WHY?

Me thinks you won't last long around here. Back to junior high with you.

[bandit29]

Originally Posted by Michael1989

Probably because the change from a chunky video tape to a disc was different and appealing.

Going from DVD to Blu is kind of the same so hasn't gotten peoples attention so much

Agreed. I remember the jump from VHS to DVD it was really different..better.

Blu-rays didn't take off well for a few reasons. Format war with HD-DVD and the start of the recession were big reasons. People not feeling the need to upgrade is another.

And now blu-ray has survived..but technology has caught up with it. Like it (not me)or not blu-ray quality downloads will take over eventually. I'm not so sure they ever need to be blu-ray quality...If you don't have an AV system and are just watching through the TV only, the current HD downloads(iTunes,Amazon, PSN etc) are "good enough " for most people. Downloads have over taken books & music. Slowly happening now with videogames.


Now whenever the next physical format begins..if there is one..I probably won't upgrade again.. I've been through enough lol .. VHS-DVD-BLU-Downloads

[bobbydrugar]

Don't underestimate the learning curve for blu-ray. Take your average AV consumer and ask them to define the difference between Composite, Component, and HDMI. I could guess that there are a good many people out there that would buy a blu-ray player get it home and hook it up with the old composite cable that they used for their DVD player, put on their brand new blu-ray and turn around and state quite truthfully that blu-ray doesn't look much better then DVD to them. Are they wrong or just misinformed?

Another angle is my favorite ploy of advertising how much better the picture and sound of a blu-ray are by playing an advertisement on the begining of a DVD .

Now as an aside I don't think blu-ray sales are anywhere near as dismal as some people think. I think there are rose colored glasses on this one thinking hey back in 2003 no body was buying VHS so by proxy on day one blu-ray should have crushed DVD. When in point of fact Blu-ray had to first contend with HDDvd for its first couple of years (and believe it or not there are still a lot of people out there that remember the Beta-Max/VHS war) and decided to wait that period out to see who won. Now that that is over you really had the tru begining of Blu-ray as the decisive successor to DVD so we are really only a couple of years into the formats true reign.

Good points have also been made about the TV hardware. With DVD all you had to do was buy a dvd player and you were ready to go (Unless you wanted true progressive scan DVD and how many people upgraded to component video for that). Now there is a new TV, new Cables, and if you want to take advantage of the HD audio codecs then you also get to buy an AVR reciever and probably a surround sound speaker setup. That is a HUGE investment for what is realistically for the average Home AV experience (i.e a 46" screen at close to 10+ feet away viewing distance) a very minor upgrade in quality.

Thanks,
T

[bandit29]

Originally Posted by bobbydrugar

Don't underestimate the learning curve for blu-ray. Take your average AV consumer and ask them to define the difference between Composite, Component, and HDMI. I could guess that there are a good many people out there that would buy a blu-ray player get it home and hook it up with the old composite cable that they used for their DVD player, put on their brand new blu-ray and turn around and state quite truthfully that blu-ray doesn't look much better then DVD to them. Are they wrong or just misinformed?


Thanks,
T

this. I have friends who still can't figure that stuff out. They always ask me. I don't mind. I had to explain all this to my chief of police brother in law lol.. he was like huh? lol Now he a 108" HD projector screen in his basement lol

[octagon]

I've got a different question: why do so many people care whether Blu-ray meets or surpasses various DVD-related yardsticks?

Household penetration is more than respectable, players are more than affordable, we're getting a wider and wider selection of well-produced catalog titles every year and discs are dirt cheap.

DVD was phenomally successful. It had over 90% household penetration. That's up there with phones and tvs. It's a really high bar.

Does it really matter if Blu-ray hits those levels or not?

[Tony208]

I hated VHS, I remember when my Raiders tape broke and I opened it and taped it back together.