Home Media Part 1: Why we don’t care about Blu Ray
The home media market is in a strange place right now. For awhile it seemed like the HD DVD vs Blu Ray battle would decide the future of personal entertainment but Blu Ray’s continuing slow sales figures now give a clearer indication of what consumers want and where the market is heading.People aren’t switching from DVD to Blu Ray because they think dvd is good enough, the only added value HD DVD really offers is higher picture quality, and not many people seem to care. The precedent was set by the music industry; people are perfectly happy with 128kbps songs from itunes (a CD is 1,411kbps (*fixed*)). Beyond a certain point higher image/sound quality are given diminishing ratios of importance by consumers. Sure we’d be happy to buy into better looking dvds for about £200, but the biggest problem with Blu Ray is that it doesn’t fit its only market.
If we want to ‘’go high-def’’ you’re going to need a Blu-Ray player (about £300) an ‘’HD Ready’’ (what a confusing, un-consumer friendly term) TV costing around £600, a high definition cable subscription plan, because you want your tv to be HD too (Sky HD costs £210 for set up and the box then +£10/month) and that's without considering the added cost of the more expensive discs. In total then over two years going HD will cost you around £1400 or $2800 more than sticking with SD, all that just to have better picture quality.
Unless you’re an audio/visual- ophile nut, or you’re mad rich, you’d actually have to be pretty crazy to spend that kind of money for a few more pixels. As with the CGI backlash, we’re seeing that really how something looks (in terms of pixels not visuals) isn’t that important. Cinema is a means to tell stories; it is primarily a narrative (like literature) and not a visual form of art (like paintings). As mentioned in Style of Gimmicks Part 2, the vast array of visual cues and camera techniques only work when used as the most effective way to convey the intended emotion/message otherwise they’re just showing off.
Blu Ray, at its current price point, is just another expensive gimmick. People want their media delivered easier and cheaper (why is bittorent so popular?) and don’t mind about the slight qualitative hit this entails. This is why digital downloads are the future, and this will form the topic of discussion in part 2 (available here)
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Digital downloads are the future...the future when everyone has unlimited, affordable high-speed internet. Currently, that's just not something everyone has. There are those who for some odd reason wish to remain on dial-up, ISPs in many countries imposing bandwith caps, censoring content, throttling bandwith so that a competitor's website seems slower...I'm sure you're familiar with all this and more. I hope you cover more on this in later parts
What you're overlooking is the fact that many of us are waiting for devices that support to 2.0 spec to become readily available. Why bother buying equipment that will be obsolete in just a couple more months? As soon as enough 2.0 compatible devices are available to provide some price competition, I'm there.
CDs are 1,411.2 kbps, not 320 (that is, they are not compressed at all).
as much as everyone else likes to download their movies and music, I never will..I like owning the physical object that represents my purchase ~ makes the media more valuable to me.
I have a PS3, but blu-ray is still far too expensive to invest into more movies... I'll stick with upconverting my DVDs for now thanks :)
-Blake
Yes i noticed the CD mistake (i'm no music-nerd) and the error has now been fixed, thanks everyone for pointing it out
what if you're an audio-video phile and you're rich too?...downloads DO NOT cut it! Blu-ray may not be ideal, but it's the best this HD generation is offering so far. DVD and downloads can eat shit.
There's a big difference between audio and video. If you've noticed, many people are opting for HD tvs on their new purchases and I would say probably 80% of people will get an HD capable TV as their next TV purchase. People said the exact same thing when DVD came along to replace VHS, and then once they saw it, DVD became the new standard. Blu-ray is still a fairly new technology and the prices of the players and media should drop significantly to that of DVDs within the next 2 years.
I have a 1080p 47" TV with DirecTV with many HD channels and love it.
However, I'm not going to buy Bluray and re-buy all of my DVD titles in Bluray as that is too expensive. Plus, I already have them on hard drive and use my AppleTV to stream them over the air.
Why would I waste the money buying all of my movies again in Bluray? It makes zero sense.
Neil, i agree with your 'natural progression' point, a portion of the market will gradually switch up to an hd tv and then buy a blu-ray player as well. The question is how long this will take though? An average non-geek household might buy a tv every 10 years? (rough estimate) so say people buy a new tv in 5years time on average, then add more time fluffing around before they go Blu-Ray... in 5 and a half years the market will have moved on
I think Blu-Ray will fail as by the time it can gain any sort of momentum, i'm talking 20% of the market, Digital movies should have taken over.
Another point i didn't mention is the back catalogue problem. People have bought dvds like nothing before, i think it will be much harder to lure this crowd away from dvd than it was from vhs.
Alot of these areas will be covered in part 2 so stay tuned
It's the price point, period. I'm sure the media companies realize that people aren't going to pay $20-$50 for bluray discs when dvds are $6-$15. They're just milking the early adopters.
If the issue was better quality viewing/definition, then places like youtube would not have the popularity they enjoy. After all, look at how many people enjoy watching grainy, poor quality clips in a little box on their screen! This seems to be an issue of content rather than quality. I am wondering if the same might apply to the DVD vs Blu Ray?
HD is a pleasure to watch, there's no doubt about it. But he's right, the median is about story telling, not picture quality. However, I think the pitcure quatity can certinaly enhance the expirence of watching the story unfold.
Blu-ray is a joke. Has anyone here ever heard of "red-ray"? (www.red.com). 4k+ resolution (double that of blu-ray). HD is gonna get a lot better, a lot quicker.
'...but the biggest problem with Blu Ray is that it doesn’t fit it’s only market.'
Meaningless! It's = it is
Presumably you write for a living so please learn to use the basics of your language.
I have a PS3 and a full HD flatscreen television (40"). I bought two Blu-ray discs last week and enjoyed it immensely. "Earth" and the Spiderman trilogy. Superb image quality really made me enjoy watching it. Special features and the likes are great additions, too.
That said, I'm only one person. But I can definitely see the added value.
Wasn't the uptake of DVD relatively slow to begin with? Weren't the same things said about it, but when DVDs came down in price they were massively successful.
Just playing devil's advocate, that you can't trust the sales patterns to predict the success of Bluray. Once cheaper models come out, the buy up may be greater.
Personally, I couldn't care less about Bluray. I have an extensive DVD collection - do I really want to rebuy it all? As you suggest, do I care more about looks than substance? No.
There is a future out there where everything is high def - a shiny, Jetsons future. But at the moment, with a world economy crisis, I doubt if people want that future just yet.
I'm sceptical about Bluray. Of the DVDs we rent from the local video store, about a third have scratches bad enough for us to have to skip a scene. When we look at the surfaces of the DVDs the scratches don't look bad at all but they're bad enough so that we have to skip forward to the next scene to continue the movie.
If that's what happens with DVDs I can only imagine how bad Bluray discs will be. Someone needs to have the guts to break from backwards compatibility with CDs and DVDs. High density discs should have the surface of the disc protected, like in floppy disks.
First of all the DHA comment, about youtube. Of course there will always be enthusiasm around creative content, and audio/visual is no substitute for quality content. I think most sane people would not choose watching "Hootie and the Nottie" in 2160p over "The Godfather" in 320x240 on your phone.
I think it's the fewest that chooses solely based on technical quality. But really, if you had the choice of Iron Man in standard PAL or NTSC vs. 1080p, with no concern to cost. Hard not to choose the one, which is best.
Blu-Ray might go the way of LaserDisk and VCD, and become a step towards something better. But no doubt, I think the only thing holding Blu-Ray is the price, like many of the other commenters has mentioned.
I remember seeing an ad in the early stage of DVD with $15,000 for a DVD burner drive, and thinking with burnable CDs as low as $1 a piece, who would ever go into DVDs. But prices changed, and so did the market.
And with Pioneer making 400gb Blu-Ray discs, you'll be able to not only get top shelf audio/visual, but also room for a lot more creative content; behinds the scenes and so forth.
You leave out a number of reasons. BluRay isn't practical as a personal recording medium. The HD cameras are expensive, you don't have "set top" recorders that cost less than a used car, and, worst of all, many Blu-Ray players are region locked. Lots of people today have DVDs from more than one "region" and players capable of playing them back. Yet, if we jump on the Blu-Ray bandwagon, half of your catalog of old DVDs instantly goes up in smoke -- with no practical way to carry them forward.
As the technology is becoming more restrictive, the value of it decreases. Lower value at much higher cost means no sale.
you think cinema is not a visual art?
are you insane?
"It's = it is
Presumably you write for a living so please learn to use the basics of your language."
This not strictly true, if you're going to be a punctuation Nazi, you really ought to get it right.
In addition to "it is", it's can also be used to denote belonging to. John's = belonging to John.
The sentence "but the biggest problem with Blu Ray is that it doesn’t fit it’s only market.'
Is correct, the "it's" denotes "belonging to" Blu Ray
Peace
sorry, but
"its" is possessive.
not it's.
it's = it is.
I agree with Jake on this one I have a great deal of pride in ownership. Expanding my collection and owning the actual DvD and case is my favorite part.
For those of you who forget or don't know, I can recall reading an article about dvds in 1997. The same year I believe the playstation 1 was released. Who knows if it was even for sale before then? But thats at least 11 years to progress to where it is today, and blu-ray has been out for how many years now?
With my new HDTV, I wanted to watch more high-def programming. Upgraded my satellite programming to HD and enjoyed the better images when using by Xbox 360. When I started getting hardware failures, I got it replaced and immediately sold and it got a PS3 instead. I then altered my Netflix account to send me Bluray movies when they are available for the titles in my queue at no extra charge.
The reality is that for me, Bluray doesn't cost any extra. I watch movies only once. Only a few movies are worth rewatching in which case I can hold on to the movie for a few more days or put in back in my queue.
The lesson for everyone is that technology is a commodity. When it becomes accessible by price and convenience, people will turn to it if it has value to them.
Right now, the best option is Bluray for rentals. If you like to buy your content, then an upscaling DVD player is probably a better option.
Unlike music, HD content appeals to our most primary sense, our vision. We are much more discriminating for visual content over audio when it comes to technical quality. Doesn't really matter for content that is not cinematic in its portrayal or lacking in impressive special effects. But some movies are presented for their visual arts. In which case HD is the way to go.
I'm glad I have the option and am glad there will be better ones coming down the pipe. The bottom line is that none of this is important enough to hate Bluray, Sony, or any other technology.
Just buy or rent what works for you.
BluRay makes a HUGE difference on big screens >42 in and I can't go back to regular DVDs. This article seems very narrow-minded to me. Prices will eventually become affordable once the technology reaches its goal of demand.
Anonymous @6:10 is correct.
It should be "its" not "it's."
Please get a copy of Strunk & White and read it to avoid further embarrassing yourself :-)
The title of this article needs to be changed to, "Why I don't care about Blu Ray" since we implies others agree with what the author is saying.
I certainly wouldn't consider myself mad rich, or even a visual-ophile nut, but I did take the plunge to buy an HDTV, and not because it has "a few more pixels," but because it has a hell of a lot more pixels. Five to seven times as many as standard definition and that makes a big difference unless you're blind.
I agree that Blu Ray players, media and HD subscriptions are overpriced, but the cost of upgrading to HD does not need to include any of this. I am getting plenty of HD with a $55 UHF antenna here in the states.
I suppose part of the reason Blu Ray isn't taking off is due to ignorant cheapskates who find standard definition to be good enough, but I think a bigger part of the reason is there is more HD material available from the Internet than there is from the overpriced Blu Ray market. That's right, the Internet isn't just good for obtaining lousy-quality media for blind and deaf people; there's good stuff out there too for the audio/visual-ophile nuts and the mad rich.
It's the SOUND that has the biggest improvement over a regular DVD. I personally love the heck outta Blu Ray and use Netflix to get around the cost.
The low sales numbers are due to the price point, period. Nobody is going to pay $35 for a Blu Ray when Blockbuster is selling DVDs for $5 each.
But don't rag on Blu Ray, it is simply superior technology, and it looks and sounds amazing. Just because you don't like investing in home theater equipment doesn't mean it's a "bad format." It is the best format, period, including direct downloads. I don't know how big a 1080p movie would be in terms of bandwidth, but regular DVDs are 7-8 gigs each, so I would have to imagine Blu Ray is a good amount over that.
Given current and near-future bandwidth capabilities of broadband internet in the US (and world), I do not think we will be seeing true on-demand HD content at Blu-Ray resolution anytime in the near future.
I agree that the visual disparity between DVD and Blu-Ray is negligable on anything smaller than a 50" TV. But on large HDTV's and particularly projectors, on screen sizes of 120" or more, the visual difference is enormous.
There is a reason why Netflix has become so successful using snail-mail and DVD's as its delivery medium. Netflix and its competitors now offer Blu-Ray for exactly the same price.
I think Blu-Ray will be around for the next few years, at least until a newer HD format arrives.
I'm a bit shocked to read some of the comments here. I agree with the poibnt of the article and I think digital downloads are the future. I think people will not switch to HD because its to much fuzz about nothing, you need the big as expensive TV and the player and now u have to pay even more for your TV siubscription. Normal people don't care about this stuff, only nurds like you guys.
Picture quality is a none issue for most people.
Actually, a lot of what I download from BitTorrent *does* incur a substantial hit to quality because I often elect to take the smaller files. The point is I don't even care about that. The power of convenience in quickly downloading what I want, when I want it is the real value-added. Sony and the rest have utterly botched this. The only company who understood this is Apple, who started up the iTunes music store when the others continued to try and cling to physical media. And now everyone is playing catchup to Apple.
You're right, digital downloads are the future.
But Blu-Ray is the present.
maaaannn, we're going to be SOOO kicking ourselves when we get genetically augmented hearing... =(
I think people are missing a very important issue to consider: if blue-ray were the standard, filesharing would be deeply impacted (I think this was partially behind the creation of blue-ray itself) b/c it's very difficult to compress a 25GB movie into a size that makes it easy to share. Current DVDs can be compressed to fit on a 700MB CD and be in very good quality, but a 25GB blue-ray would probably still be in the Gigabytes after compression.
anon @ 7:44, Strunk & White? that guide is nearly a century old. try suggesting something applicable next time you want to look important. i suggest mla, apa or ap style guides. language isn't static; the sentence wasn't unreadable. far be it from me to hijack this thread, but effing relax on the grammar.
I bought a blu ray player to go with my hi def tv. i don't particularly care if it is 'standard' or not. it looks better than regular tv/dvd and that's all that really matters to me.
BluRay sucks, Sony sucks and I will never buy into such a consumer unfriendly technology.
Sony could care less about quality or consumers - It is all about licensing, royalties and propriety for Sony. Betamax, Betacam, Minidisc, SDDS, Memory Stick, UMD, Hi-MD, and now bluray?
Bluray discs are too expensive for what they are. Sony gets kickbacks for every BR disc produced on top of the expense. BRD’s are not even cost effective to use for data backups. It is overpriced junk technology that could easily be made less costly and less proprietary.
@Anonymous July 23, 2008 12:05 PM:
That is how capitalism works. Get used to it. They are not selling girl scout cookies.
And besides, Sony isn't even a majority owner of Blu-ray. Dozens of other media and electronic companies are involved. If my memory serves me correct, I think Sony owns less that 30% of Blu-ray.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
Prices are higher than DVDs, but they'll come down. We don't live in a Utopian socialist society. Profit is the motive for most innovations by companies. They are only doing what any other company in their position would too, which is to try and control the market and increase their profits.
Vote for your technology with your money. It is not worth your vitriol. If it really bothers you that much, unplug from the grid and become a Luddite. Your life is too short to hate this meaningless stuff.
Meanwhile, I'll enjoy my hi-def content at little to no extra cost compared to regular DVDs. Thanks Netflix.
Don't forget they crippled Blu-Ray & HD-DVD with DRM & incompatibility just like DVD-A & SACD. 2 other expensive major flops in the market.
Were you the one who wrote "Why do we need cellphones? Pagers and landlines rule!" Or were you the one who wrote that article on "Why CD's will bust in another 10 years because cassette tapes can be copied and sound good enough."? All I know about technology is, whether you love it or hate it, it soon becomes affordable. My mom spent $800 on a cellphone in 1988. CD players were $800. Cd's were ridiculously priced compared to cassettes. Cassettes sounded good enough right? What about the fan of eight tracks or the fan of vinyl who says vinyl sounds better than any CD? Why don't we all just take all the brunettes in the world and make them blonde? Point is, Different strokes for different folks. Just because you sunk a fortune into DVD's (let me guess you have a collection of about 200-300?) don't hate it's younger brother, Blu-Ray. So HD-DVD was the red-headed stepchild. Move on. I stopped buying DVD's two years ago because I knew technology would render my dvd's obselete in the next ten years. Why? Because technology will dictate that Blu_ray will be the same price of Dvd's and hold more storage with better quality and sound. I hope that after writing this article you don't have a cell-phone, cd player, or automobile as I think that horse drawn carraiges can still get you from point A to point B. Oh yeah, what about the computer you're on at the moment, typewriters were around for decades. The world is full of non-essentials. Some of it good, some of it bad. Stop being so emo about technology you can't afford. And stop making money off Blu-Ray with all your internet ads advertising Blu-Ray. I'll take my Blu-Ray without the whining thank you very much. I enjoy it and enjoy the haters as much as the lovers. It's the next gen of entertainment, so stfu and enjoy.
stillerwhistmanpryce@yahoo.com for all you emo's who are crying about the loss of value in your huge as worthless dvd collection. I have a whole garage load of VHS I would love to sell you.
^^ To the above ''anonymous'' poster. Thanks for taking the time to post your comments. I'm not sure you got the point of what I was trying to say. Of course Blu-Ray is ''better'' quality wise than dvd. My point is that we should stick with DVD (as clearly pointed out in part two) but that progression is from DVD -> downloads and not DVD -> BR. Simply put because while BR offers higher quality; the added quality value is far down on the list of what a consumer wants. As shown by the bittorent, youtube etc. people are happy to exchange added video quality for higher convenience and more importantly price. By the time BR has caught up with DVD in terms of back catalogue, price and accessibility, downloads will have taken over the space having risen up to the picture quality of DVD and become the easiest and cheapest way to access media. I'm not saying we've got to stick with DVD, that would be naive and churlish, BR is just not the way we should or will be going.
sorry, but
"its" is possessive.
not it's.
it's = it is.
---------
Not here in the UK it isn't and as we invented the language, you'd better get it right :)
Seriously, I think this is where a lot of the confusion about grammar and spelling on the net comes from. Most ex colonies except for the US, use the UK English standards. But the interwebs are dominated by America.