So how long until Blu-ray completely phases out DVDs?

[LethalStriker]

Excuse if this isn't the right forum but I can't think of a better place to post this. First came VHS which was eventually replaced by DVD and now Blu Ray will ultimately be the next generation after that. For the most part DVD sales are still way higher then Blu Rays but thats mostly because the price of BD's is still higher then your average joe is willing to pay for a movie. But with Blu Ray players slowly becoming more of a platform then just a place to play movies it will eventually take over the whole industry. So what is your guess in a year or two, 5 years or 10 years before it takes over the industry?

[Blu-ray Fanatic]

Only time will tell. Its going to happen whether people like it or not, they'll have no choice but to adopt it. Can people buy and rent new releases on VHS? Of course not. Old technology can never beat new technology.

[FlipperWasIrish]

See one of the "When will DVD die" threads for the answer to your question.

Summary of answers range between

1) What's a DVD (ie: now)
2) 5 years
3) 10-20 years (IMO this is the best guess)
4) Never (possible but (IMO) only at best for a small % of titles

[LethalStriker]

Prices of Blu Rays will definitely have to come down in the long haul for this to work. Not everyone who wants to purchase a movie is going to be willing to pay $20 for a movie. And it also depends on how quickly that households get HDTV flatscreens. Since if you purchase a pretty new flatscreen TV you're going to want the best possible video player to go with it.

[blu2]

Originally Posted by Blu-ray Fanatic

Only time will tell. Its going to happen whether people like it or not, they'll have no choice but to adopt it. Can people buy and rent new releases on VHS? Of course not. Old technology can never beat new technology.

There are exceptions: Vinyl is still the first choice for some music lovers for a variety of reasons (with new releases still being made available).

Can't think that anyone would have the same love for DVD though.

[BillieCassin]

It's going to be a long while.

DVD was adopted rather quickly - 2-3 years after it's release finding a VHS copy of anything became difficult. Possible, but difficult. Another couple of years and it was gone.

It's going to take much longer for Blu to do that, because to Joe Public the benefits are not nearly as apparent. The main attraction of Blu's over DVD's is the picture quality. That's not enough to sell it to middle-America.

DVD, on the other hand, was an upgrade on many levels - it went from a tape-based to a disc-based format (even just that aesthetically this was pleasing to many), no more rewinding, you can jump from scene to scene, though scratchable more durable (it was hard for a VHS tape to survive a drop in-tact, whereas a DVD usually survives just fine unless it becomes scratched in the process), DVD offered "special features" which until that point were 99% of the time only on Laser, and finally, of course, the increased picture and sound quality.

Now, Blu-ray has all that stuff, and as we know the PQ/SQ is much better, but again, to Joe Public, that's not really enough to invest in a new format and new system. Even those that have HDTV's (which is quickly becoming a large amount of people). Most people I know who have HDTV don't have HD service...they watch SD "zoomed in" or "wide". Personally, that gives me a headache almost instantly, but for most people that's enough. And their DVD players look "pretty good" to them.

This is why manufacturers are so heavily hyping 3D, and it's working - they are getting people to run out and buy the first-gen 3D stuff and you can't even buy a disc for it yet! They are going back to the well of early adopters to get them to adopt again, because the general public isn't picking up Blu-ray nearly as quickly as they wanted. The studio's are helping by pushing 3D in the theaters (since their ticket prices can be almost double in some cases), so 3D is the big buzz right now, even though there is woefully little content.

DVD will be around a long time. Personally, the only DVDs I buy anymore are TV DVDs that would not ever be released on Blu, but for some people, they are "good enough", especially when anamorphic and filling the screen.

[Anthony P]

2-3 years. Some of the Day and date titles have already hit 50%, that means that it will be fast DH from here on out.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by BillieCassin

DVD was adopted rather quickly - 2-3 years after it's release finding a VHS copy of anything became difficult. Possible, but difficult. Another couple of years and it was gone.

maybe 2-3 years after you bought your DVD player, but VHS was easy to find for much well into the 2000's actualy every film was released on VHS and DVD until Dec 2005 and some even in 2006 (for example Bambi II came out in Feb 2006 http://www.amazon.com/Bambi-VHS-Walt.../dp/B000BAVLYS ) almost 9 years after DVD launched.


I won't bother with the rest since they tend to be equally as erroneous or ridiculous as your first statement.

[Blu Smurf]

Originally Posted by LethalStriker

Prices of Blu Rays will definitely have to come down in the long haul for this to work. Not everyone who wants to purchase a movie is going to be willing to pay $20 for a movie. And it also depends on how quickly that households get HDTV flatscreens. Since if you purchase a pretty new flatscreen TV you're going to want the best possible video player to go with it.

Working at a big box retailer, I can tell you many of those people who drop 800 dollars on a 42 inch HDTV, have no real interest in Blu ray. "DVD looks good enough" is what I hear most often.

Kinda sad.

[mjbethancourt]

DVDs will not go away for a very long time.

DVD players were not backward-compatible with VHS tapes (except for those absurd dual-media-input models), so all the new player purchases for DVD players slowly eliminated the user-base for VHS.
Blu-ray players are backward compatible to DVDs, so the user-base pesists after purchasing blu-ray drives. It will overlap much longer than VHS did, using VHS as an analogy to predict how long DVD will persist, is flawed reasoning.

... also, there was not a recession going on during DVD's rollout, as there has been for the past 2.5 years during the early days of blu-ray.

[Batman1980]

I don't think DVDs will be completely phased out any time soon but sometime in the next 2-3 years blu-ray will be the main home media format. Now that CRTs are no longer in production and studios are making a 3D push, HD will become the "cool new thing" to own. Movies like Avatar and Iron Man 2 and such help, of course.

[fredreed]

dvd's won't go away for a while. I believe that many people will not buy or adopt to the blu-ray format unless two things happen 1 blu-ray movies comes down in price and hdtv's comes down in price so the average American come afford it. dvd's will be around for 2-4 years yet. plus dvd's are cheaper then the blu-ray so that makes a big difference to a lot of people. I tell you what I know there are a lot of people who still owns only a vhs player or just a dvd player.

[FlipperWasIrish]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

2-3 years. Some of the Day and date titles have already hit 50%, that means that it will be fast DH from here on out.

Perhaps in an alternate universe the above could be true.

But, not here on this planet and this reality. Fantasy wishing aside, the current economics just do not support such a quick demise of DVDs.

[koontz1973]

2018 DVD dies.

2027 Blu Ray dies.

2027 HD streaming takes over

2032 Betamax makes a comeback as people keep losing files due to world wide power cuts.

Any one care to guess if this might happen

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by FlipperWasIrish

Perhaps in an alternate universe the above could be true.

But, not here on this planet and this reality. Fantasy wishing aside, the current economics just do not support such a quick demise of DVDs.

so show me the data, DVD has already had a quick demise. When D&D titles hit 50% then for those titles DVD is not king anymore. Once that is happening there is no way back, like a stone falling gravity makes the velocity faster and faster until it hits rock bottom. Just because you don't understand the simple math does not make it untrue.

[Buddy Christ]

never

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

DVDs will not go away for a very long time.

DVD players were not backward-compatible with VHS tapes (except for those absurd dual-media-input models), so all the new player purchases for DVD players slowly eliminated the user-base for VHS.
Blu-ray players are backward compatible to DVDs, so the user-base pesists after purchasing blu-ray drives. It will overlap much longer than VHS did, using VHS as an analogy to predict how long DVD will persist, is flawed reasoning.

but your thought is backwards. People had VHS tapes and VHS players. Wanting to keep that backwards compatability was why some kept VHS players and away from DVD players longer. That is now eliminated. Let's put it simply, if someones VHS player broke (before the dual players) and he wanted one player and that playes VHS, what was his choice? A new VHS player, right? if he buys a VHS player and does not have a DVD player, what movies will he buy or rent? now let's say someone's DVD player brakes today and he wants one player, what is his choice? he can get BD or DVD, he is not stuck getting a DVD player to play back his DVDs. So he buys a BD player because there is no price difference (you can get a BD player fro <100$) so what media will he likely buy or rent?

Your argument, if valid is that Joe that has a BD player won’t buy movie X on BD because he has it on DVD already. The issue is that if he has the DVD Joe won’t buy it again on DVD either. So to the studio they won’t sell the BD but they also won’t sell the DVD, so it won’t help DVD sales. And if it is rental, then why won’t Joe rent the BD this time?

[svenge]

DVDs will die precisely when:

1) All 5-inch disc-based media is obsolete
OR:
2) Proper 3-D is ubiquitous (can't do non-red/blue 3-D on DVD)
OR:
3) Every single major content producer agrees via collusion to discontinue releasing films on DVD.

I don't think any of those 3 conditions will be met for AT LEAST 5 years, perhaps more.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

but your thought is backwards. People had VHS tapes and VHS players. Wanting to keep that backwards compatability was why some kept VHS players and away from DVD players longer. That is now eliminated. Let's put it simply, if someones VHS player broke (before the dual players) and he wanted one player and that playes VHS, what was his choice? A new VHS player, right? if he buys a VHS player and does not have a DVD player, what movies will he buy or rent? now let's say someone's DVD player brakes today and he wants one player, what is his choice? he can get BD or DVD, he is not stuck getting a DVD player to play back his DVDs. So he buys a BD player because there is no price difference (you can get a BD player fro <100$) so what media will he likely buy or rent?

Your argument, if valid is that Joe that has a BD player won’t buy movie X on BD because he has it on DVD already. The issue is that if he has the DVD Joe won’t buy it again on DVD either. So to the studio they won’t sell the BD but they also won’t sell the DVD, so it won’t help DVD sales. And if it is rental, then why won’t Joe rent the BD this time?

No, my argument is valid if they continue to make DVDs, period. People will still buy them, because they will still want titles that are not and may never be on blu-ray, and they will still buy them as long as they are cheaper. Grandfathering a DVD collection over to a new player will play a major factor in the survival of DVD...

... from your tone, I get the idea that you think blu-ray adoption and survival of DVD are mutually incompatible. I think you are very wrong about that.

[Variable_Star]

Part of the reason I waited so long to convert to Blu-Ray is because I never felt studios put quite enough effort into their releases, particularly catalog titles. I already own a collection of roughly 1200 DVDs, and the only benefit most Blu-Rays offer is a sharper image for the feature. That's very nice, of course, but wasn't quite enough for me. And it's still not enough for most.

I also had little interest in buying all the titles I already own all over again, not to mention the fact that well over half of my DVDs aren't even available on Blu to this day. I also noticed it was common practice for studios to simply port over the special features from the DVD release to the Blu in SD, with the notable exception here and there (i.e. "Minority Report"). Add to this an increasing list of poor/underwhelming transfers ("Wall Street", "Tombstone", "Gladiator", etc.) that often looked only marginally better than the DVD - I simply wasn't interested.

The only Blu-Rays I've purchased are either my favorite films or new releases that take full advantage of the format. I still buy certain films on DVD because I can typically get them for less than the Blu. A film like "State of Play" is every bit as enjoyable in SD as it is in HD (IMHO).

I only mention all of this because I think most collectors who already own a sizeable DVD collection feel the same way. The real reason I switched to Blu? My girlfriend bought me a PS3 in March, so I figured I'd go for it. Otherwise my pre-order list would probably remain filled with DVDs!