Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[octagon]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Of course it matters. It decides if we have 5 or so years to still enjoy our blurays or ten years or more. Bluray is only 3.5% up YOY i think, that means my beloved format may not see the end of the decade!

According to the Mayans - who make just as credible a case - Blu-ray has less time than that.

A lot less.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Of course it matters. It decides if we have 5 or so years to still enjoy our blurays or ten years or more. Bluray is only 3.5% up YOY i think, that means my beloved format may not see the end of the decade!

Didn't you used to get upset whenever I made such comments based on sales statistics?

I'm hoping BD had a great Thanksgiving and that sales pick up in the Christmas season. If they don't, we could wind up with a sales decline from 2011.

[Icemouth]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Of course it matters. It decides if we have 5 or so years to still enjoy our blurays or ten years or more. Bluray is only 3.5% up YOY i think, that means my beloved format may not see the end of the decade!

No it doesn't. You're a fool if you think blu-ray not "taking off" is going to get companies to go "welp, didn't work, lets push out another new format sooner".

[ouflak]

Originally Posted by Companies

"welp, didn't work, lets push out another new format sooner".

They are already saying that. And we know what that format is. Hint: It no longer involves optical disks.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by ouflak

They are already saying that. And we know what that format is. Hint: It no longer involves optical disks.

they can TRY all they want, but reality may speak a different tune. with bandwidth limitations getting bigger and bigger along with people not wanting to actually BUY digital media (most streaming media is cheap rentals, not sell through where studios make most of their profits from)

[Cevolution]

Here in Australia I don't know a single person that pays for digital downloading/streaming distribution for tv and film, almost everyone just obtains it all illegally. If it came down to having to pay for it, most here would opt to own physical media if they were spending their own money, because they don't value digital distribution, they just see it as a means to get content for free. We have a few digital rental services, but they are nothing to the extent of Netflix or other American companies which offer these services, therefore paying for those methods has barely generated any interest in the Australian market. I don't think that will change now either, because if most already get it all for free, then they are not all of a sudden just going to start paying for it. These service such as Netflix have taken too long to enter our market, and I doubt many people will take to it and embrace it now if they were to try and establish themselves here.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by Icemouth

No it doesn't. You're a fool if you think blu-ray not "taking off" is going to get companies to go "welp, didn't work, lets push out another new format sooner".

What I think the distributors are doing is using DVD/Bluray to create a natural market segmentation. They can sell the crap out of DVD's, and charge more for BD's. It maximizes their profit. It's different from VHS because they cost MORE to replicate than DVD's. So it was in their interest to replace VHS ASAP. Plus TV shows were more are less impractical to be released on VHS, so DVD opened a new line of product.

[Rooper]

I think there are any number of factors, most of which have been touched on already. But for me, the biggest factor by far is likely caused by the advacement in quality. A lot of people claim not to see it (or hear it). I have a hard time believing that. I tend to think its more of, "it's only a little better so it's not a big deal" than "I see absolute no difference". But either way, people are seeing minimal benefit. So that's a big strike against Blu-Ray.

I also believe that people are cutting back on buying movies. Very few people had significant movie collections on VHS (I was an exception to that, but outside of Disney stuff I knew few people owned many VHS tapes). DVD changed that. For whatever reason (I have a few theories, but that's another topic), it seemed that everyone bought at least some movies shows. And then people realized that have to store this stuff. So there's been a big withdrawal on owning movies. Call it fatigue. call it buyer's remorse. And digital dowloading does help either. But you can clearly see media sales going down. Going back to the "minimal benefit" of paragraph 1, I also don't see many eager to re-buy the same stuff.

The costs also play into it. DVD prices have plummeted with Blu-Ray and already had been going down for years. If most people are content with DVD, why buy any Blu-ray when new and/or used DVDs are infinitely cheaper? DVDs used to cost more. They cost a lot more when they first came out (although online deals help wiped that away). But over the years, the discs started getting discounted. Sometimes very heavily. And I think a lot of people have set price limits, maybe $5 or $10 at most for what they'll spend on a movie. The vast majority of Blu-Rays still are over that threshold.

I love Blu-ray. I actually like the sound advances over the visual ones. But I know I'm in the minority and most people simply do not care.

P.S. As a slight aside, I don't see 4K becoming anything at a consumer level. The benefits are even smaller at that point. Blu-ray at least gave better picture AND sound. 4K would just be picture, and you'll need a pretty large display to even begin to appreciate it. That's a niche market at best.

[R3P0]

I think there are several factors that contributed to Blu not taking off in the states the way DVD did. First and foremost being the economy, when Blu came out in 06/07 people were starting to lose there jobs were less apt to spend, when DVD came out in like 97 the US economy was at one of its highest points.

After that include the fact that most still had tube Tv's and really would have gotten no use from a Blu Ray combined with the prices of the media in comparison to the prices of DVD players and DVD media, for the average consumer upgrading really made no sense at the time.

Then there was consumer confusion VHS vs Betamax part 2, Blu vs Red. The average consumer was confused. If you went into 1 store someone would say blu ray was worse than HDDVD, others would say Blu was better etc etc. There was no common ground. When the consumer is confused they are less apt to spend money upgrading technology for fear that it will be a waste of money.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Steel Panther

The first DVD I bought was Tim Burton's Batman. I paid $30 for it + my $300 DVD player.

.

Not sure if you remember, but you had to flip the disc as the movie was spread out on two sides for the very first release of Batman on DVD.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by mastadge

Because most people only casually experience their entertainment. There's a reason that the most popular digital music services offer by default 256 or 320k bitrates, not even CD quality, and that even now iTunes offers to downconvert higher bitrate stuff to 128k when putting it onto the iPod. Most consumers aren't sitting and digging into their music: they're playing it in their cars, or as background noise while doing other things. Same with movies. Most movie and TV watchers are casual viewers (citation needed, I know, and maybe I'm wrong), who pop something on to decompress after work or for basic entertainment or for noise in the background while doing homework or cleaning. They're not audiophiles or videophiles. They don't have home theater setups. They aren't looking for much if any intellectual or sensory engagement with their movies. I know that I, like probably many around here, really care about the details. I remember wondering whether I'd really notice the difference when I finally upgraded to Blu-ray, so I sat down and compared some DVDs to Blu-rays on my modest 23-inch screen -- and was delighted to find that there really was a visible difference even on that small screen size. I could actually read the text on posters on the walls, text which was just a vague blur on the DVD. I could actually make out fine facial details -- whiskers, wrinkles and crinkles -- that simply disappeared at DVD resolution. But I would wager that that level of immersion is simply not important to most viewers. Outside of some small niches, movies are more or less disposable entertainment and getting maximum video and audio quality is simply not that important, especially if it requires upgrading hardware.

Reading all of the posts, this post makes the most sense. With Blu-ray, you have to do a lot to reap all of the benefits. Most people do not care, with iTunes etc etc many people just want to watch the movie.

I have 1000 laserdiscs, 1500 dvds, and about 25 blu rays. Newer movies I will buy on blu ray but I see no reason to upgrade some of the older titles. Older movies, whatever is cheapest at the used store works for me.

And tomorrow, I am renting a movie on iTunes for $3.99.....Its hard to beat that!

[worldchmps]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

And tomorrow, I am renting a movie on iTunes for $3.99.....Its hard to beat that!

Sure you can. I rent movies from Redbox all the time. $1.20 for DVD's and $1.50 for Blu rays. Why spent $4 when you can spend less than half that? Wait, don't tell me. Then you'd have to go to a store. But there are Redbox kiosks all over. And to get to my nearest one definitely doesn't take $2 in gas. Even for multiple days, it still pays to use Redbox. If only Redbox could get its act together and offer the same movies that are in the kiosks via a streaming service for the same price. I would pay $2 to rent a movie from a streaming service. I'm lazy enough to waste the extra $0.50 versus going to a kiosk. But to me, $4 is definitely NOT worth it to rent online. $2 would be my max to do that. Otherwise, I'll take the kiosks any day of the week.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by worldchmps

Sure you can. I rent movies from Redbox all the time. $1.20 for DVD's and $1.50 for Blu rays. Why spent $4 when you can spend less than half that? Wait, don't tell me. Then you'd have to go to a store. But there are Redbox kiosks all over. And to get to my nearest one definitely doesn't take $2 in gas. Even for multiple days, it still pays to use Redbox. If only Redbox could get its act together and offer the same movies that are in the kiosks via a streaming service for the same price. I would pay $2 to rent a movie from a streaming service. I'm lazy enough to waste the extra $0.50 versus going to a kiosk. But to me, $4 is definitely NOT worth it to rent online. $2 would be my max to do that. Otherwise, I'll take the kiosks any day of the week.

Last time I checked, red box does not have the movie I want to watch.

For the most part I was referring to my rental vs buying habit. Not online rental vs renting a blu ray habit

[Bk_Tan]

It's a stupid question that keeps being repeated.

It does not need to and will never match DVD.

The explosion came from efficiency mainly and then of course was backed up by catalogue.

Now, all of the movies that you either could not get or had to rewind to rewatch have been released countless times.

Only new movies and classics and cult favourites will continue to sell and never at the same rate as before when you include all the other forms, legal and illegal of watching movies that did not exist back then.

If you can't grasp that and are still looking for reasons to stick a finger to DVD, I do feel sorry for you. It's pointless and it's over.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Bk_Tan

It's a stupid question that keeps being repeated.

It does not need to and will never match DVD.

The explosion came from efficiency mainly and then of course was backed up by catalogue.

Now, all of the movies that you either could not get or had to rewind to rewatch have been released countless times.

Only new movies and classics and cult favourites will continue to sell and never at the same rate as before when you include all the other forms, legal and illegal of watching movies that did not exist back then.

If you can't grasp that and are still looking for reasons to stick a finger to DVD, I do feel sorry for you. It's pointless and it's over.

Spot on.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Bk_Tan

It's a stupid question that keeps being repeated.

It does not need to and will never match DVD.

The explosion came from efficiency mainly and then of course was backed up by catalogue.

Now, all of the movies that you either could not get or had to rewind to rewatch have been released countless times.

Only new movies and classics and cult favourites will continue to sell and never at the same rate as before when you include all the other forms, legal and illegal of watching movies that did not exist back then.

If you can't grasp that and are still looking for reasons to stick a finger to DVD, I do feel sorry for you. It's pointless and it's over.

You are actually wrong with what you just said. DVD didn't exactly take off when it started, it took a while to start penetrating the market. It was when it was determined that DVD would not be a rental first format is what allowed it to become more mainstream. Prior to dvd, VHS movies were not sold as sell-through at street date, only the rare blockbuster movie would be available to the public unlike DVD which was simply sold as retail at street date.

There were also DIVX that was adopted by certain studios and DVD by some studios. This slowed the growth of DVD at launch.

It was also expensive for people at first to get into DVD as players cost lots of money and sound receivers were not cheap.

For all of the success of DVD, there were some flops with the format:

Superbit, DTS, DTSES, Dolby EX all failed to take off.

Fast forward to blu ray:

Blu ray is only starting to take over now as when blu ray first came out, there was the hold HD vs Blu ray competition, widescreen 1080p tv were very expensive, and to get to a master audio, it would cost you a lot of cash. I eventually upgraded when I saw that prices were starting to become more reasonable.

One thing we can really be thankful for, is the blu ray/dvd/digital combo packs. That makes it much easier to adopt it.

[Lutra]

Simple economics...blu-ray requires specific home theater components to shine, namely a HDTV, and a decent stereo. DVD was beyond the 480p resolution of standard def tvs when created, thus you didn't have to upgrade everything to truly enjoy the format the movie came in. Replacing the tv, the audio system, and then buying a bunch of blu-rays to watch isn't cheap for a lot of people!

[Riddler95]

How did DTS fail on DVD? I mean Dolby Digital was the standard for DVD but there were several releases that featured reference quality DTS mixes.

The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy Extended Editions are a perfect example.

[Cevolution]

Originally Posted by Lutra

Simple economics...blu-ray requires specific home theater components to shine, namely a HDTV, and a decent stereo. DVD was beyond the 480p resolution of standard def tvs when created, thus you didn't have to upgrade everything to truly enjoy the format the movie came in. Replacing the tv, the audio system, and then buying a bunch of blu-rays to watch isn't cheap for a lot of people!

Not really, in comparison to buying crt tv's and other equipment 10-20+ years ago etc, gear today is much cheaper and extremely affordable than it was back then. My old man bought a 26" Sony Trinitron CRT tv for $1100 here in Australia in 1995, however I bought him a 32" Sony Bravia LCD tv for $395au this time last year.

[Icemouth]

And I paid $1200 for a 32" 720p set 5 years ago. Stuff goes down in price, but they were highly expensive when they came out.