Price threat to Blu-ray is coming?

[Q?]

Originally Posted by kdo

That's awfully expensive friend...If that was the average cost here in the U.S., I wouldn't be buying many Blu's...question though, do you buy them at the store, or do you get them online cheaper?

I usually order online as it is way cheaper even with shipping included.
Like I ordered Lost season 1 & 2 for about 35 dollars each, don't remember the shipping cost, but if I had bought them here they would've cost me 89 dollars each, NO BS.

But when I get impatient I just buy them here once in a while, shipping can take up to two weeks, so it's all about pro's and con's.

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by Q!

Wow...

Here in Greenland Blu-rays costs 35 dollars, that's the norm, one video store sells them for 46 dollars!!!!

You guys have it good here, so don't complain!

I've heard that blue and green clash. How much is Avatar?

[Q?]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

I've heard that blue and green clash. How much is Avatar?

35 to 46 dollars, the first video store that got Avatar sold them for 46 dollars.

And people buy them...

[kdo]

Originally Posted by Q!

I usually order online as it is way cheaper even with shipping included.
Like I ordered Lost season 1 & 2 for about 35 dollars each, don't remember the shipping cost, but if I had bought them here they would've cost me 89 dollars each, NO BS.

But when I get impatient I just buy them here once in a while, shipping can take up to two weeks, so it's all about pro's and con's.

...For $89 each, I'd be willing to wait several months for shipping...but 2-week shipping isn't bad...

Originally Posted by Q!

35 to 46 dollars, the first video store that got Avatar sold them for 46 dollars.

And people buy them...

Yes, I'd definitely be ordering everything online if I lived in Greenland

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by STARSCREAM

I do see some of his points.

what point, except for a stupid rant that DL is the future and BD is doomed what was there. 49% of Avatar sales in the US where BD, that means that for almost every person at the cash register buying a DVD there was an other person who bought a BD. That is the reality. If his rant had any merit and people are staying away from BD because of prices then the movie that sold the most copies first weak (and maybe more then any movie last year) would not have numbers that are that close between BD and DVD.

Sometimes people need to look at the facts.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by yodah03

It seems to me that the prices of blu-ray discs are staying too high for too long and that Sony (who loves high prices) is going to get screwed again (like with beta tapes) because Netflix and Redbox HD streaming is going to undercut the price. A survey went out to Redbox customers recently (so I heard) asking what they thought of a $3.95 per month subscription fee which would include unlimited streaming. Essentially they were considering halving Netflix's price. Not only is Blockbuster going to be out of business (with their buy all the mom and pop movie rental stores - jack up the prices - and then screw people with late fees business model), but they will undercut Blu-ray if it doesn't get established as a mainstream medium. Sony has the same (high price monopolistic attitude) and they are going to pay a big price again. BTW, they are NOT too big to fail and the U.S. is not going to give a $#!+. They have made some progress on BD players, but they need to get the price point to $99 asap. The MSRP of movies at $35-40 is also way too high. It needs to replace the regular DVD price at $30 and be discounted at launch to $19.95. From that point the major of the movies need to be in the low teens. I like collecting movies but with a obsolete collection of laser discs and DVDs (and being really concerned about the BDs I have purchased recently), I think it may be time to just stream HD movie content on demand, save the environment, and just move on! I see it coming soon! Maybe placing multiple movie titles on one BD for the same price like the TV show collections or just pricing them below $10 so they can just be thrown away is the only way to save the format?

Sony hate - check
Bring up MSRP even though no one pays it - check
Extolling the virtues of streaming/steaming(as in big pile of) - check
Hair brained ideas to "save" a format that is experiencing constant growth - check

I'll just say if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, odds are it is a duck.

[yodah03]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

what point, except for a stupid rant that DL is the future and BD is doomed what was there. 49% of Avatar sales in the US where BD, that means that for almost every person at the cash register buying a DVD there was an other person who bought a BD. That is the reality. If his rant had any merit and people are staying away from BD because of prices then the movie that sold the most copies first weak (and maybe more then any movie last year) would not have numbers that are that close between BD and DVD.

Sometimes people need to look at the facts.

You're right - and the fact is that most people can not see the future. Yes, some people including myself are buying BDs now and then they just sit on the shelf. I have been collecting for 20 years and like physical media, but in reality 95%+ of my collection (laserdisc, DVD, and BD) just sits there. I have been a fool and I am just waking up to it. I am a bit older than the average customer, but the upcoming generation who are now in their teens realize that most people only watch a movie once. Industry apologists will always defend the status quo - like Encyclopedia Brittanica who rejected the CD and the drug industry who insisted that their expensive ulcer drugs were needed when a little known researcher told them that ulcers could be treated with inexpensive antibiotics. He was initially laughed out of academic conferences and castigated by the industry. He is now classic! Even Microsoft Encarta on CD and DVD has been wiped out by digital download. Technology is changing at a rapid rate and on-demand HD video is on the horizon.

A moderator said that you can get BD for $9.99. I shop relentlessly for the lowest prices and there are very few, if any, good titles that you can buy for $9.99 new. Even good used titles are around $15 plus 2.98 shipping at Amazon. I will not buy anything new or spend more than $15 so I am waiting and waiting. Red box is a low cost distributor of movies. They are killing the industry with $1.00 rentals. They or someone else will logically follow with HD streaming (sorry that you can't see that). The cable and satellite TV providers will also offer more HD streaming to compete. Netfix will see that their customers destroy their physical media and will see that streaming is less expensive. They will work to expand bandwidth and use more highly compressed video formats. Hard drive space will not be a factor because you will eventually be able to see whatever you want on demand for a very low price and will eventually see that in fact you don't watch most of your movies again.

I have absolutely no money in the game and am not going to defend the BD industry, the cable or Satellite industry, or the new rental giants Netfix and Red box. To understand my point, you must understand how digital (downloaded) technology will continue to crush everything over the next decade and beyond!

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by yodah03

To understand my point, you must understand how digital technology will continue to crush everything over the next decade and beyond!

Continue? When did it start?

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

It really depends. The average BD movie is roughly 25-30GB at most (I'm not counting extras here). Now if your talking about typical 720p HD video downloads with lossy audio, from Apple for instance, I think your looking at around 4GB for a 2 hour movie, which is rather bit starved even for 720p.

1TB HDD's have become dirt cheap, a quick search at newegg shows a 1TB seagate drive @ $80. That come to 8 cents per GB. So even an BD movie can be stored for only a couple of bucks, or a 720p download under 50 cents. Of course disks fail so you'll need to factor in cost for setting up RAID or a backup disk.

good post for the most part but in your defence you miss the "cost".

yest way over compressed , sometimes worst then DVD, DL might be 4GB but why would that be acceptable? When you move up to BD quality (I am guessing that is what everyone here wants) then even the overly conservative 25-30GB brings it to a measly 30 "titles per TB". If you are a renter then disk space is not the issue so why talk cost/movie, but if you are a buyer I have close to 600 BDs and kpkelley (that you responded to) has 677 according to his collection), now I don't know what he has but if his collection is anything like mine some will beTV series (so several 50GB disks) and some will be box sets (like my two ST collections and POA). Even if someone goes with roughly with 30 titles per TB at 600 you get to 20 1TB drives are needed (plus if you have RAID you will need one or two extra ones and you need one for the operating system) , which is not realistic for a normal PC, this would need to be a specialized server so you need to add it's cost to the cost, also reconfiguring RAID is not simple and easy and people with large collections probably add 30 movies in a short time (Last week I received 15 BDs that I bought one of them being SGU 1.0). The other option is much larger HDDS like 5 or 10TB and then the cost jumps up a lot because you are not talking cheap crappy 1TB drives. There is a third option (assuming it is possible with bought content) with external drives where you just plug in the right one (be it an external RAID array like the lacie 10TB drive or smaller 1TB drives) but then you it also gets messy real fast. It is easy for me to find a movie I go to the section (i.e. horror) and then pick the movie which is alphabetical (Friday the 13), but if they where mixed up on HDDS 30 at a time depending when I bought it, it would be much harder to find and external solutions cost more as well.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Rob71

Continue? When did it start?

lol, come on man since when do facts stop people from wrinting stupidites on the net. This guy sees the future we can't why let the prese4nt and reality distract from that .

[lobosrul]

@AnthonyP

Your making the fundamental mistake, that I see here very often, that the BD enthusiast crowd is the norm, and the "average Joe", cares about very high quality video and HD audio*. Thats not the case, if it was I can't see the sorry state of HDTV quality existing, or youtube being so popular. Most people think the bit starved crap from Apple looks great. I've done enough HDTV encoding with x264 to know 2 GB an hour is actually enough for really good quality 720p (transparent to FOX or ABC broadcasts) if your using very high settings. 3GB/hour is enough for all but the noisiest, action packed video out there. Apple doesn't use high quality settings. They're encoding for the lowest common denominator so any of their devices can decode it.

As far as underestimating the size of BD's, I really don't think I am. The maximum video data rate for BD is 36mbits/sec which works out to just over 30GB for a 120 min movie. Throw in a lossless audio track and thats around 35 GB. However, exceedingly few movies use anywhere near the maximum data rate. Avatar is the only movie I've heard of that comes close.

You said you bought 15 BD's last month, I've barely bought that many in the last year!

*Count me as one whose happy with Dolby Digital.

Originally Posted by yodah03

To understand my point, you must understand how digital technology will continue to crush everything over the next decade and beyond!

When are you going to understand that BD, and DVD, and HDTV, are all digital technologies? That the major broadband ISP's are also major cable companies, and are going to fight tooth and nail over video over internet becoming mainstream. Why would you pay them their extortion cable rates if you can watch and pay for the exact programming you want through the internet.

Also understand there IS a market out there that wants super high quality video that only BD can offer until average bandwidth availability is massively upgraded in the US, that there will always be those in the boonies with slow internet, and those out there that just like having boxes sitting on their shelves.

[yodah03]

Originally Posted by Rob71

Continue? When did it start?

Assuming that this is not a rhetorical question - take a recent example. Microsoft has discontinued its Encarta Encyclopedia on DVD because they see what I see - the availability of the same media/information by digital download. Look at print newspapers - they are being crushed by digital download and are closing or losing major readership all over the world because of alternative digital downloaded media RSS, etc.). It's difficult to say exactly where it started but certainly Apple's decision to provide songs on Itunes is part of it (unless you look at p2p mp3 downloads). Look at their stock price over the last five years - it has gone from under $20 to well over $200 ($250 recently). Part of that is the phone, but a lot of it is from downloading digital content from their site(s). They see what I see and are making hugh profits from it. Now comes the IPad and where do you think all the content including HD movies will come from? Blu-ray discs? No, all digitally downloaded. I'm just saying watch out for Red Box and Netflix, but there is a lot of history to show that digital download will take an increasing market share at an increasing pace. BD must cut their prices faster or they will get overtaken by digital download sooner.

[yodah03]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

@AnthonyP

Your making the fundamental mistake, that I see here very often, that the BD enthusiast crowd is the norm, and the "average Joe", cares about very high quality video and HD audio*. Thats not the case, if it was I can't see the sorry state of HDTV quality existing, or youtube being so popular. Most people think the bit starved crap from Apple looks great.

When are you going to understand that BD, and DVD, and HDTV, are all digital technologies? That the major broadband ISP's are also major cable companies, and are going to fight tooth and nail over video over internet becoming mainstream. Why would you pay them their extortion cable rates if you can watch and pay for the exact programming you want through the internet.

Thank you lobosrul for your knowledgeable reply. I agree with your first point about Apple and Youtube and your suggestion that there will be a fight over video over the Internet. The same companies are however losing the VOIP battle and there is a lot of telephone service over the Internet now (and so they may also loose the videoOIP battle). I do, however, understand that BD, DVD, etc are digital and object to your jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that I do not! I should have properly said digital download and have amended my post due my inadvertent omission. Other than that I did appreciate the quality of your post, thanks!

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by yodah03

Assuming that this is not a rhetorical question - take a recent example. Microsoft has discontinued its Encarta Encyclopedia on DVD because they see what I see - the availability of the same media/information by digital download. Look at print newspapers - they are being crushed by digital download and are closing or losing major readership all over the world because of alternative digital downloaded media RSS, etc.). It's difficult to say exactly where it started but certainly Apple's decision to provide songs on Itunes is part of it (unless you look at p2p mp3 downloads). Look at their stock price over the last five years - it has gone from under $20 to well over $200 ($250 recently). Part of that is the phone, but a lot of it is from downloading digital content from their site(s). They see what I see and are making hugh profits from it. Now comes the IPad and where do you think all the content including HD movies will come from? Blu-ray discs? No, all digitally downloaded. I'm just saying watch out for Red Box and Netflix, but there is a lot of history to show that digital download will take an increasing market share at an increasing pace. BD must cut their prices faster or they will get overtaken by digital download sooner.

Blu-Ray is growing at a much much faster pace than Digital Downloads of movies, and none of your other examples are comparable to movies.

Encyclopedias, Newspapers, and music are all similar to each other, but not similar at all to movies.

When's the last time you decided that hey, you REALLY want to watch Chapter 11 of a movie, so will choose to download just that?

Furthermore, some of the growth of digital downloads is by people like me, who will buy it for specific movies but still buy Blu-Ray too. Digital Downloads are not a completely opposed market to Blu-Ray, but a side market (much like rental vs. retail).

Anybody who thinks that Digital Downloads will kill Blu-Ray at this point needs to rethink their position, because in spite of the naysayers Blu-Ray is utterly killing digital downloads. (In a comparison sense, not in a sense that DD will go away.)

[fdm]

Never underestimate the public's tolerance for mediocrity. Or their desire to get something for nothing.

[silverado]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

Blu-Ray is growing at a much much faster pace than Digital Downloads of movies, and none of your other examples are comparable to movies.

Encyclopedias, Newspapers, and music are all similar to each other, but not similar at all to movies.

When's the last time you decided that hey, you REALLY want to watch Chapter 11 of a movie, so will choose to download just that?

Furthermore, some of the growth of digital downloads is by people like me, who will buy it for specific movies but still buy Blu-Ray too. Digital Downloads are not a completely opposed market to Blu-Ray, but a side market (much like rental vs. retail).

Anybody who thinks that Digital Downloads will kill Blu-Ray at this point needs to rethink their position, because in spite of the naysayers Blu-Ray is utterly killing digital downloads. (In a comparison sense, not in a sense that DD will go away.)

If you choose to compare Digital Download movies, then you should be comparing that to Physical Media, not just one format. Physical Media is degrading in revenue and that is including ALL formats. So with Digital Download increasing in revenue YOY and Physical Media decreasing YOY, it is only a logical assumption from here. Blu ray is trying it's hardest to make up revenue lost, but alas, consumer apathy will make Blu ray sink with ALL physical media.

[jeffb66]

Digital downloads may kill off the older SD DVD format, but not BD for the following reasons:

1. limited download speeds. Many people do not have access or they cannot afford the cost of higher speed connections that would allow the download of HD content. Many rural areas only have access to only dialup internet or satellite service. The satellite services are very expensive and often limited in the amount of data to that can be downloaded.

2. The increasing use of monthly download limits by ISPs. These limits can be easily exceeded when downloading large files and then expensive additional charges are the result. Renting or even buying the BD version of a film would be cheaper.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by Blu Titan

Prices for Blu-ray movies are very reasonable now days. There are dozens of Blu-ray movies that you can buy for $9.99 or less. Sometimes they are pricey on release day, but if you are patient, you can always get a good price.

Agreed. Just pay attention to the weekly ads and online sales and you will get deals.

The B&M stores are high when titles aren't on sale, but just buy them when they're on sale. B&M stores like Best Buy and Target have had some nice prices on quite a few titles recently, resulting in Amazon having to lower their prices to match (like we will see soon with Saving Private Ryan).

Shop around....

[silverado]

Originally Posted by jeffb66

Digital downloads may kill off the older SD DVD format, but not BD for the following reasons:

1. limited download speeds. Many people do not have access or they cannot afford the cost of higher speed connections that would allow the download of HD content. Many rural areas only have access to only dialup internet or satellite service. The satellite services are very expensive and often limited in the amount of data to that can be downloaded.

2. The increasing use of monthly download limits by ISPs. These limits can be easily exceeded when downloading large files and then expensive additional charges are the result. Renting or even buying the BD version of a film would be cheaper.

Nope. DVD is THE format. It would not only take a massive/aggressive push, but it would be from multiple sources and not one single media. Digital Downloads is only a small part of the answer. Once DVD is dead in consumers eyes, that will include Blu ray as consumers will associate the two with too much similarities.
Step outside of the Blu cheerleading squad and you will see an Oscar winning movie "The Blind Side" on Blu ray is met with a resounding MEH.

[jeffb66]

I watch both SD DVD and BD films. BD movies and TV shows are generally better than SD DVD but not always a lot better. For example, I recently watched Season 1 of the Sopranos on BD and then Season 2 SD DVD (Season 2 is not on BD). The BD version is better than the upconverted SD DVD version but the difference is fairly modest. I can certainly see why many consumers do not always see much difference between the two formats. The BD format will certainly not have the penetration SD DVD.

My point is how can anybody in a rural area download HD content or even SD content with such limited or expensive internet connections. I feel sorry for people in rural areas with such limited ability to connect to the internet. I would be interested in streaming HD video such as netflix. Unfortunately my options for fast internet connections that support could support HD streaming are extremely limited and expensive and I live in an urban area.

Physical DVDs or BDs will not be going away anytime soon due to limited and decrepit broadband infrastructure in the U.S..

Most people in urban areas can get internet connections that will allow the download of SD video but not HD video. As result the SD DVD media will be more impacted than BD by streaming video services such as Netflix or Hulu.