Blu-Ray in a death spiral?

[Texsox]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=365&tag=nl.e550

Blu-ray is in a death spiral. 12 months from now Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product.

 

With only a 4% share of US movie disc sales and HD download capability arriving, the Blu-ray disc Association (BDA) is still smoking dope. Even $150 Blu-ray players won’t save it.

 

16 months ago I called the HD war for Blu-ray. My bad. Who dreamed they could both lose?

 

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Delusional Sony exec Rick Clancy needs to put the crack pipe down and really look at the market dynamics.

 

In a nutshell: consumers drive the market and they don’t care about Blu-ray’s theoretical advantages. Especially during a world-wide recession.

 

Remember Betamax? SACD? Minidisk? Laser Disk? DVD-Audio? There are more losers than winners in consumer storage formats.

 

 

[RockRaines]

Betamax was proprietary, Laser Disk didnt have the ease of use like VHS tapes nor DVD's.

 

Blu-ray has the advantage of some of the population already having the Television technology to take advantage of the format. Also chains like Blockbuster are already getting behind blu ray. Also blu ray players are backwards compatible with DVD's which all the other technologies above didnt have.

[santo=dorf]

I think I saw stats that the Blu-Ray market is growing faster at its age than the DVD player originally did at its same repsective age. I own both formats and rent through Netflix, and I appreciate them more than regular DVD's

[HuskyCaucasian]

People are freaking out about Blu-Ray, but i think it's a lot to do about nothing. Blu-Ray JUST hit the $300 or cheaper mark less than a few months ago.

 

$300 is kind of a breaking point. People will think twice before spedning $301, but $299 is ok. It's psychological in may ways. I bought my first DVD player in 1997 for $300. Also, after about 7 years of DVDs being "mainstream" (around 2003), retailers started to FORCE DVD on people. Stopped selling VHS tapes, phased out stand alone players.

 

Also, VHS to DVD was a huge quality and durability leap. DVD didnt degrade. DIdnt have to rewind DVDs. Menus. THere were a lot of perks to DVD over VHS. But Blu-Ray over DVD? HighDef... ooooooo. And HDTV penetration is not fully pentrtated yet, so people wont see a differance.

 

Blu-Ray is the future of physical media, but it'll take time.

 

Now if w want to have a debate of Blu-Ray vs Content Bought Online and downloaded to a hard drive... I'd like that debate.

Edited October 29, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[Buehrle>Wood]

Blu Ray is the format used by PS3 and probably PS4 too. So no.

[shipps]

Nope Iam not buying that its failing.What would feed our HD hunger?

[ChiSox_Sonix]

Nope Iam not buying that its failing.What would feed our HD hunger?

 

 

Exactly. Not enough people would be able to or want to have to rely on their only tool of getting DVDs in HD via online download and without a rival to Blu-Ray (bye bye HD-DVD) I just dont buy that Blu-Ray is on the way out at all.

[Heartattack19]

I still have a laserdisk with tons of movies! It would suck if DVD's are eventually phased out, how many copies of Apocolypse Now do i need in different mediums?

[nitetrain8601]

Blu Ray is nowhere near being out. A ton of people still prefer to have a hard physical source of their media, whether it be pictures, movies or music. They also like to be able to move that media around from one house to the next. And there are tons of people who still don't have the DL speed equipped for downloading HD streams.

[rangercal]

Blu ray will only fall if something far superior emerges.

[Texsox]

Blu ray will only fall if something far superior emerges.

 

Like downloads?

[Balta1701]

Like downloads?

You need an awful lot more memory than most people have available to get that kind of quality image. If you're buying a blu-ray disk, that's what you're buying it for.

[Texsox]

You need an awful lot more memory than most people have available to get that kind of quality image. If you're buying a blu-ray disk, that's what you're buying it for.

 

And you don't see the memory being cheap enough in the next year or so to compete?

[Jenksismyhero]

And you don't see the memory being cheap enough in the next year or so to compete?

 

I think people will always cling to the physical part of purchasing a movie or game (at least I will). MP3's are cheap, but when you start talking about $20-30 (or $50-60 for games), people want the security of knowing it can't simply be deleted by accident or out of necessity.

 

 

[santo=dorf]

Like downloads?

I'd say the Ipod >>>>than any discman yet CD's are still in full production.

 

With Cable/Internet companies threatening larger charges or shutoff of services to people who use a lot of memory, downloading isn't the best option.

[Texsox]

I think people will always cling to the physical part of purchasing a movie or game (at least I will). MP3's are cheap, but when you start talking about $20-30 (or $50-60 for games), people want the security of knowing it can't simply be deleted by accident or out of necessity.

 

Interesting, they said the same thing about audio CDs.

[Jenksismyhero]

Interesting, they said the same thing about audio CDs.

 

Yeah but I think there are a lot of differences. For one the price point is greater. The draw with mp3's is that you could buy one song for a buck instead of a whole CD (half of which or more usually sucked unless you really liked the band) for 15. Second, there's not the worry of losing digital content because you can just back it up on a cheap cd using a recordable cd that every computer has (an option that was available when mp3's first started to come out). Blu-ray playable drives for computers have just hit the market and are still expensive. It'll be years before you get a recordable version that comes shipped with your PC. I think too that you'll see a greater use of blu-rays in video games. It holds something like 10 times more capacity than a standard dvd. Microsofts next machine will most definitely be a blu-ray for that reason alone.I'm not saying downloadable content isn't the future, but I think it'll be beyond the life cycle of the blu-ray.

[Iwritecode]

Like downloads?

 

I can't imagine sitting at my desk, staring at my relatively small computer monitor and trying to watch a movie compared to sitting on my comfy couch and watching it on my larger TV.

[santo=dorf]

BD-Live and other Netflix-type boxes are used to download high-def programs and movies, so you can do that in your room. What if you want to take it in another room or over to someone else's house?

[Rex Kickass]

Interesting, they said the same thing about audio CDs.

 

The big difference about MP3 and audio CD and BluRay/DVD is the way that CDs are sold. Everything was 20 bucks at the Joe's Record Store. On iTunes, the album was 10.00 in mp3 format, and filesharing makes it much easier to download a fairly easy product.

 

Downloading video? Takes a lot more time and know-how and memory. Not saying it won't happen, but it's years away. DVD's are sold at relatively reasonable pricing, and the download of video through piracy is a lot more difficult.

[Balta1701]

Downloading video? Takes a lot more time and know-how and memory. Not saying it won't happen, but it's years away. DVD's are sold at relatively reasonable pricing, and the download of video through piracy is a lot more difficult.

Also worth noting is the fact that thanks to its disastrous regulatory environment, the U.S. is already light years behind the rest of the Western/developed world in Broadband capacity and speed.

[nitetrain8601]

Bingo. It's pretty much safe to say, Blu Ray is far from dying. It's on the up and up. For some reason, some people forget(this is not aimed at anyone particular because it is a good discussion) that DVD took awhile to completely take off.