Will BLURAY kill DVD?

[jg0001]

Specifically related to on demand -- while it's fine for SD, HD, even highly compressed HD, still results in a whopper of a file -- one that I'd wager for 95% of America would take longer to download then it would to play (i.e. no on-the-fly instant start playing). The few movies I've downloaded in HD on my XBOX360 have taken 3+ hours to get (and I have the 2nd highest tier of service from Comcast, with 30Mbps down speed), and even once gotten, are vastly inferior in every way to their Blu-Ray counterpart.

If you think super-high speed internet connections will take off faster than the prices of Blu-Ray movies will fall, you are kidding yourself.

[nwo]

Wich is your opinion?

Will take a long time?

Only if $ony paid the DVD forum another $6 billion.

[kbbbb]

Prices on Blu-Ray -- on sale -- have been fantastic. I must have picked up 20+ movies between Thanksgiving and New Year's around the $9.99-$14.99 mark.

This just makes me choak. As an Aussie, they try to offload relatively new discs to us at AU$40 (that's like US$35).

The supposed "cheap" retailers "big" offer recently on BD? 3 for 2 with prices at about $30-$40 a disc. I am so sick of Australians being scammed by the studios. I bought a US MGM disc from eBay, only to find out my stupid PS3 can't play different regions. Hearing the bargains in the US, I can't WAIT til someone cracks PS3 (as they have every other PS unit).

As Aussies would say, NOT HAPPY JAN.

[jg0001]

Sounds like it would be cheaper to import a US PS3 or straight up Blu-Ray player and buy online from U.S. retailers (www.amazon.com, etc). Or, use your PC and AnyDVDHD and you can ignore region coding and the like.

[pepegot1]

DVD will be here for a long time. Blue-ray has a long way to go, if ever it gets there. Prices will drop but, there needs to be faster computers, software equivalents to what we have in DVD-function wise and time wise, and good recorders like the JVC's of days gone bye. I am staying with DVD because I do not want to spend hours on things I can do in minutes with DVD. At 10-15 feet and 65+ who the hell can tell the difference anyway? I don't need to see Bogie's worts.

[jg0001]

When DVD was in its infancy, just to PLAY them on a computer monitor required a special card that merely overlaid the video onto the screen (i.e. it acted almost like a video card in itself). Forget about reading the disc natively or ripping anything, let alone converting. Heck, back then the size of a DVD was too huge vis-a-vis available harddrives All of those things took more than a DECADE to become viable. Blu-Ray, with the combination of tools like AnyDVD HD, and a plethora of FREE software will quickly catch up to DVD in ease of manipulation. We're probably less than a year out before we finally get an all-in-one GUI that can convert BD's with their fancy-schmancy audio & all to whatever file type we want (yes, I know some GUIs exist, but they are still on the 'clunky' side).

[fjmr]

See this Guy!!!

From here to 20/30 years!!



Blu-Ray Goes From Strength to Strength
By Neil R Hawkins Neil R Hawkins
Level: Platinum

Neil Hawkins is a senior staff writer for the price comparison, news and features website ChooseISP where users can compare home and mobile broadband deals.

A £1 million pound ad campaign aims to make Blu-ray a more dominant force in the home movie market.
A massive increase in sales of High Definition televisions over the past two years has provided Blu-ray's interested parties - namely big movie producers and distributors - a chance to persuade owners to exploit their new equipment to the best of its abilities.
The promotion of Blu-ray DVD in the UK is organised by the British Video Association. Its Director General Lavinia Carey, hopes that educating consumers about Blu-ray will increase sales.
Carey commented that "The best way to enjoy films at home is in High Definition and on Blu-ray discs and our goal is to boost understanding of the benefits of Blu-ray in the run up to Christmas."
At present the figures indicate that the majority of home movie viewing is DVD-based. The range of titles available on DVD and the relatively cheap cost of players and discs mean that at present DVD holds a commanding 92% market share.
Whilst Blu-ray sales increased this year by roughly 200% in comparison to the previous year, in total only 3.1 million units sold compared to over 99 million DVD units in the same period.
It is this gap which Blu-ray aims to bridge in the coming years.
Bridging the Impossible?
The main issue claims Helen Davis Jayaleth, Head of Video at Screen Digest, is that a lot of consumers, without full knowledge of Blu-ray's benefits, don't feel that they will be getting something that will deliver an improvement comparable to the VHS/DVD upgrade.
Jayaleth stated: "Clearly the start of a global recession was not the ideal time to launch an upgrade to what many consumers consider to be a perfectly serviceable home entertainment system."
Inevitably, the costs will come down but the prevalence of online DVD rental sites means that industry bodies such as the BVA cannot be sure that cost alone will be enough to persuade consumers to purchase DVD titles they may well already own on Blu-ray.
At present there are numerous online Blu-ray rental websites.
Lovefilm and Blockbuster operate the two largest with a large selection of the titles available to purchase.
Renting Blu-ray titles from online Blu-ray rental websites is often cheaper as most do not charge extra for the privilege.
This proves particularly useful for consumers who have purchased other technology that incorporates a Blu-ray player. PS3 owners for example, are all owners of a Blu-ray player.
Online DVD Rental websites mean they are able to rent games and movies at the same time for the same monthly subscription.
Consumers claim that for Blu-ray sales to reach the dizzy heights that DVDs currently enjoy, the price of the hardware needed to play Blu-ray discs and the cost of the discs themselves needs to fall, persuading people to replace DVD players.
It may need a new generation who only ever know High Definition before Blu-ray renders DVD obsolete or indeed, is rendered obsolete itself.
What is certain though is that it will take more than an advertising campaign to kill off the DVD.

Neil Hawkins is a staff writer for the Choose Ltd group of websites, he specialises in broadband news but often writes on home entertainment, particularly online DVD rental for Choose DVD Rental.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neil_R_Hawkins

[edDV]

They could kill the DVD by matching DVD disc prices and offering $50 Blu-Ray players.

[fritzi93]

I'm unsure just how much of an impediment VOD or streaming will be in regard to Blu-Ray adoption. They may be alright for the mass market, but for me they're inadequate.

I watch HD On Demand from time to time (free old movies!), and see bitrate starvation. From what I read, the problem is not confined to ComcastHD (what I have). You know, dark scenes with a smeary sort of haloing in the background. I see people mentioning the same with streaming. What less savvy subscribers think is another matter, I dunno.

New releases are still pricey, but I recently got several new BD discs for $10 bucks and under (Bullitt, Master and Commander, and others.)

I too find it hard to watch SD any more. Blu-ray is the best option for me right now. But again, what the mass-market will do, I dunno. But I'm sure there will be a helluva lot of holdouts that stick with DVD for as long as they can.

[jg0001]

They could kill the DVD by matching DVD disc prices and offering $50 Blu-Ray players.

And that is just it. That WILL happen faster than anything else in this thread will happen (i.e. VoD, flash-based ROMs for movies, etc).

We practically are there already on Blu-Ray player prices (I see sale prices around $79 all the time) and almost certainly will see Wal-Mart selling $50 players Christmas 2010.

Most new, SALE priced Blu-Ray movies are only a few bucks more than their DVD counterparts, whereas a year or more ago, they were often $10-15 higher. The gap has closed much faster than I expected. Cut-rate prices on certain discs appear every week in Best Buy ads. All of this has happened quickly, and certainly far quicker than the drop in DVD prices.

One thing to consider -- the incremental COST of making a Blu-Ray disc versus a DVD disc is an very small fraction of the retail price -- that is to say, there is nothing inherently expensive about the media that would keep it from competing with DVD.

[jg0001]

Here ya go... across the top of the site, they list popular Blu-Ray movies at discounted prices...
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Princess-Bride-Blu-ray/243/

[and I happened to leave it on a popular title...]

Target (the retailer) had another pile of $12.99 and $14.99 Blu-Rays this week.

[usually_quiet]

A lot of people only rent movies and Blu-ray rental opportunities are still not where I need them to be. Like many, I rely on Red Box, and they don't yet have Blu-Ray movies available.

I don't rent enough movies per month to make a flat-rate subscription from Netflix a good deal and there are no conveniently located brick-and-mortar rental stores remaining. The round trip to the closest Blockbuster requires about an hour.

[RdM642]

Sticking with DVD? You'll last a while, no doubt. Just like those that said HDTV wasn't worth it. However, the next generation won't stand for the low quality of DVD as the prevalence of 46"+ HDTVs continues.

Everyone I know who is next generation is consuming HD when it comes out on disk, but not paying. They pay early, pay for streamed content -- or don't pay at all. Check it out yourself, look at people buying BD Feature films, you see very few under 30's doing it.
[QUOTE=Video Head;1949839]

CD offered a real benefit to the consumer over cassette...
DVD offered a real benefit to the consumer over VHS...
BR offers a real benefit to the movie industry over DVD...

DVD was one of the fastest new technologies to be adopted by the general consumer.

I am with you. That is why BD isn't doing anywhere as near as well as predicted. It was never primarily a scheme to deliver better content but a scheme to exercise control over the buyer -- and one bound to fail even faster than css.

[RdM642]

To put things into perspective, I paid $1100 for my first VCR. A JVC top loader, It was one of the first 4 head models with a hard wire remote. I don't think that equates to a $100 bluray even with inflation. Bluray players are only a couple of years old and have come down to 33% of the initial price. I don't think VCRs dropped that quickly.

Respectfully I don't agree with your logic or the way you organize the prices and dates.

Firstly VCR was fought by the content providers not promoted by content providers like BD!

The content providers took the VCR makers to court. In many jurisdictions they sought and secured special taxes on blank media!

BD players haven't dripped as quickly as DVD because every tom dick and harry wanted muliple DVD players,a nd every Tom Dick and harry was making them.

These are consumer electronics, not limited supply commodities. the more of a demand in consumer electronics, often the lower the price..

[NICEBUD]

The math is so simple.All you have to do is make all blueray films and machines and all the other bullshit thats out there the same price or lower.Then why would you need dvd.

[RdM642]

The math is so simple.All you have to do is make all blueray films and machines and all the other bullshit thats out there the same price or lower.Then why would you need dvd.

There are hundreds of millions of portable dvd players sold. Screen resolution on those makes any upgrade meaningless. There are proably billions of dvd drives in computers not to mention laptops where slim drives are more expensive to replace.

[jg0001]

Look... even just a couple of weeks into this argument, Blu-Ray PLAYERS can be found for just over $100. By THIS Christmas, I bet we see at least one big-box store have a Blu-Ray player for $50. The MOVIES are also getting cheaper, assuming you are willing to buy from Amazon.com or similar. I've bought a ton of popular movies for under $20, and many for $15 or less just by watching for sales.

Go to www.blu-ray.com and you'll find a large quantity of price cuts & deals.

[Anonymous5394]

I think the problem with Blu-Ray is all the players need firmware/flashing at some stage or another. Retail products get reviews on sites like Amazon and users say fix is out or update player is now for sale, which in itself may need another "flashing" later on because it cannot play "The Dark Knight." DVD Players don't have this problem so much now compatibilitywise since Philips brought out there first UltraDivX player which would not play loads of avi because of QPEL etc, plus loads of players are hardware compatible eg Pioneer.

Average Joe Bloggs users just do not want to mess around or indeed have the tech savvy to download zip from OEM site, burn to disc, insert CD and flash his hardware up. Also the fallacy of "I have a HD TV" when in fact most users cannot recognise the reality of what HD ready actually means just that! That's probably why DVD upscalers are quite popular at moment.

Also file sharing is killing the industry and who in their right mind wants to download 7 to 10gb Blu-rays? Dont get me wrong superb quality in many cases but does the naked human eye actually appreciate it? DVD can be just as good upscaled to the eye, though never obviously the same! Avi/MP4 is still very popular and DVD's are thankfully going to be with us for a very long time I think. Blu-ray is a faddish format(another example of I must have it to impress my neigbour!) we do not really need at the moment until everyone is fully onboard including Joe Bloggs from a UK/European point of view, but in US/Japan where mega bucks tech culture prevails it is becoming understandibly very popular. Look at HD discs- dead as a duck, but Blu-Ray will survive I think because of greedy rich tech culture saying "you must have!" No, it will NOT bury DVD, there is a big world out there with many different peoples and tech needs!

[lordsmurf]

I wish it wouldn't but since DVDs can't hold enough information for a HD movie and everyone has to have their HD, Blu-Ray is catching on...

Not true at all -- use H.264.

[creamyhorror]

The Blu-ray consortium/Sony has made it pretty hard to author BDs, and the market for networked media players like the WD TV Live has been expanding quite aggressively. Perhaps we will see more and more people simply buying the networked players in order to play HD home videos from their friend and family? Seems to me that it's still just a bit too much trouble to author personal Blu-ray discs at this time, and even AVCHD discs can be finicky in players. On the other hand, current network players can deal with all sorts of H.264/AVC material; they don't have the limitations of Blu-ray players.

If networked players develop fast and innovatively in the next two years, they may solidify their niche in the home as the handy play-it-all HD device alongside the existing DVD player. Even better if they start to offer online movie streaming (e.g. via Netflix), because they would then become something of a direct challenger to Blu-ray players. That would be a nice scenario for everyone who isn't so enamored of Blu-ray players' highly regulated and inflexible technology (so far).

[edDV]

If networked players develop fast and innovatively in the next two years, they may solidify their niche in the home as the handy play-it-all HD device alongside the existing DVD player. Even better if they start to offer online movie streaming (e.g. via Netflix), because they would then become something of a direct challenger to Blu-ray players. That would be a nice scenario for everyone who isn't so enamored of Blu-ray players' highly regulated and inflexible technology (so far).

This is all predictably following historical trends. When DVD came out, many ripped the DVD and compressed the hell out of if with divx and were happy to watch in much lower quality.

Now they are doing the same with Blu-Ray to lowered bit rate MKV or Netflix type streamed titles that are mostly sub DVD quality. Bottom line these people want file transportability (free of optical disc) and care little about picture quality. Others want top image quality and buy the Blu-Ray discs and Blu-Ray players.

It seems very rare that people rip Blu-Ray and keep original h.264 or VC-1 bit rate.

[Anonymous5394]

I wonder what the actual corporate end game is, say in 20/30 years time? Will all these formats we care about eventually been totally phased out for just one streamed format which offers excellent quality in terms of video/audio but is based on innnovative compression techniques yet to be discovered?

Look at the excellent film "Minority Report" with some of the technology in that film(in the context of the future shown not the the technology the film used in its production) is actually coming in to being. Also the papers recently reported that the film's premise on future crime prediction may actually be achievable using technology too.

It is all going to happen folks. Those tech guys at NASA, Sony, Toshiba. Intel etc will all have it under wraps somewhere until its convention unveiling. We will all laugh one day at how poor Blu-ray is to our standard formats based on some incredible streaming nano technology process where the "bots" make sure we get the right picture!

Until then I'm happy with good old DVD and xvid! Some of my bought DVD's are Divimax an early precursor of HD. Converting them to Xvid always produced incredible picture quality compared to using conventional DVD as source. Did Divimax get phased out?

[creamyhorror]

This is all predictably following historical trends. When DVD came out, many ripped the DVD and compressed the hell out of if with divx and were happy to watch in much lower quality.

Now they are doing the same with Blu-Ray to lowered bit rate MKV or Netflix type streamed titles that are mostly sub DVD quality.

The difference is that Xvids are noticeably worse than DVDs, but the gap between H.264-encoded MKVs and the source DVDs/BDs is a lot smaller. Encoding time is the big drawback here.

Online streamed content is of course going to be a lot worse in quality, and is for the people who care more about convenience than video quality.

It seems very rare that people rip Blu-Ray and keep original h.264 or VC-1 bit rate.

It's a tradeoff on speed of conversion (muxing being much faster than encoding) versus size on disk saved. The original bitrates are usually quite inflated anyway, compared to what x264 can do - but the encoding process may not be worth the time.

[edDV]

Any recode will lower picture quality.

[creamyhorror]

Any recode will lower picture quality.

Well of course. I was saying the drop in quality was smaller in the case of H.264 though, especially x264.

[cal_tony]

It seems very rare that people rip Blu-Ray and keep original h.264 or VC-1 bit rate.

Well, I guess I am that rare individual. I thought there were more like me, but maybe not.

I stopped reducing the quality of my DVDs as soon as I purchased my first Philips 5990. Now I play everything on my Media players (Seagate and WD) . Recently, I got around to copying my DVD box sets to ISO and BRs over to MKV at full resolution. Like my DVDs they are on 2tb ESata/USB drives. Most of my BRs have never seen the inside of my PS3.

I like the concept of playing my movies from my hard disks. It is convenient.

The junk that I don't want has all been removed but the quality has not been compromised. My Avatar BR was converted to MKV as soon as I brought it back from Walmart. With the DTS and the video descriptive audio it is 34.5GB. If I was to reduce the video, to me it wouldn't have made sense to even copy it. I would have watched it on the original disk.

Hard disks are cheap and down converting takes time. Spend hours to convert a movie??? why bother?


Tony

[Noahtuck]

Will BLURAY kill DVD?

Not for a very long time... if ever.

That's like saying 30 years ago, Audio Cassette Tapes will not replace Records, or CD's will not replace Audio Cassette Tapes for a very long time, if ever......

If ever is a BIG statement!!!
Nothing is "FOREVER"!!!!

It may take a long time, and it may end up being an even newer format, but everything is replaced and goes the way of the dinosaur sooner or later.

If Bluray does not kill DVD, time will.....

Everything vanishes and becomes a urban legend!!!

My kids are 28, 27 & 26, and they are still like, what is a "record" ??

LOL!!!

I hate grave diggers but i came across this in a search and i just could not resist the urge!!

[gll99]

The greater push to Blu-ray today is coming for many reasons.

1- More people are buying large HD televisions since the price has dropped which moves us to buy better quality movies
2- Blu-ray players have dropped in price to acceptable consumer levels
3- BR players can also play DVD and many accept other home produced HD formats which is attractive to the video hobbyists
4- Many BR titles are priced similar to what DVD discs cost a short time ago.
5- 3D features will attract a niche market but this is bound to grow as technology and product improve.

Since DVD is a far better format than VHS ever was it's unlikely that Blu-ray will completely dislodge it from the marketplace in the near future like DVD did to VHS. There is still a fairly large low budget market for DVD. There are some movies where the BR format isn't so much of a jump over the up-converted DVD in quality to justify the greater price point. On the other hand some other titles must be bought and/or watched in true HD only (Blu-ray) to get the full effect on a large screen HDTV or projector.

[johns0]

The blu-ray player will kill the dvd player soon as blu-ray player price drops match dvd player but dvd quality(720x480/576) will still be around just like svcd and vcd are kicking around.

[Hoser Rob]

To put things into perspective, I paid $1100 for my first VCR. A JVC top loader, It was one of the first 4 head models with a hard wire remote. I don't think that equates to a $100 bluray even with inflation. Bluray players are only a couple of years old and have come down to 33% of the initial price. I don't think VCRs dropped that quickly.

Jeez, that was my first VCR too, or a very similar model. I didn't pay $1100 though. Those things were tanks. In a good way. Lots of pros used them, though they weren't really designed for the pro market. I really lucked out there.

On the original subject, it's not just the studios that want to kill dvds and go br. The retailers don't want to stock 2 formats. That costs money. It was retailers who killed the LP more than the record companies. CDs take up much less space than LPs. Record stores could, and did, move into another mall location of half the size by changing to CD. Remember, they pay rent by the square foot.

The movie/media companies really want to go streaming. Audio CDs probably won't exist a year from now. DVD and BR will be next. The marginal cost of streaming media is much lower and the supply chain is much simpler.

I'm frankly bit surprised by how many people I know who collect DVDs ... they have a ton of them ... and haven't jumped on the BR bandwagon. They don't cost much more than DVDs anymore.

Sales of both DVD and BR are really flat. Both Ron Howard and Jerry Bruckheimer had movie projects cancelled on them last summer. The studios won't put out major releases now if they don't think they can make their money in theatres. That's how bad DVD/Br sales are ... those are two of the most powerful people in Hollywood.

I'm also surprised how few people are aware that there are major changes coming in wireless networking standards. When they auctioned off all that analog TV bandwidth they opened up a huge space. It's going to change everything.

Look up "whitespace networking".