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Forums - General Discussion - Blu-Ray FTW, or will it become a niche and/or luxury product?

With the format war apparently over, a big obstacle to the acceptance of an HD disc format has now been removed. However, Blu-Ray's fight for success is only getting started.

From what I've been reading, the main obstacles which it faces are:

1- Competition from downloadable content (which may become more and more relevant in the coming years).

2- The fact that many people buy HDTVs not for its image quality, but for the flat and big TV sets.

3- The fact that it offers little advantages over DVD when compared to, say, DVD over VHS which was a true revolution in terms of quality and convenience.

4- Price (both in terms of the players and the discs themselves).

For me, it's not clear at all whether Blu-Ray will overcome these obstacles fast enough. The last one (price) will probably be overcome soon (as in 1-2 years at most?), but the other obstacles may prove much harder to overcome.

Discuss :)

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

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Downloadable content is the future but i see it a distant future simply because much of the world would be inconvenienced by it. That said i think blu-ray will be one of if not the last physical media.



There will always be physical media because people have the need to store things and there are many people that want to actually have a physical copy of the thing on a playable disk.



PC Gamer

I have my doubts about bluray. VHS had close to 24 years as the dominant format and its only been 12ish for DVD so far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS

Look at the bottom of that link. Out of all those media types, only a handful had any sort of long term impact at all in consumer video media. Most have been niche or professional grade media.

Personally, I have the feeling that DVD's will remain on top for the forseable future, and maybe the format that comes after bluray will remove its crown (maybe something like holographic video's like a Star Trek holodeck).



I think if Blu-Ray is going to have success in the market it's going to be as a combo player that's sold to people as a way to watch their current DVD library while seeing the new super block busters (the movies that benefit the most from HD quality) on Blu-Ray.

Of course this won't be done because the movie studios mainly want a new format so they can resell everyone the movies they already own (just like they did with DVD). The public on the other hand will be highly against this since they bought their DVDs with the belief that they'd never have to rebuy those movies again (unlike VHS tapes which degraded in quality the more you watched them).



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I think Blu-ray will be like Laser disc, used only by some, I don't see HD discs becoming the medium of choice for years, and by then they will already be obsolete



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

but blu-ray players play dvd's...



PooperScooper said:
but blu-ray players play dvd's...

 Yes, but if you haven't noticed they've already started rereleasing a number of older DVD titles again on blu-ray, in part to expand the library but also to just make money, since hey if someone will buy something once and I put a nice shiny new cover on it they might very well buy it again.

The problem with this is suddenly people see these movies on blu-ray and they don't look that much better. I think HD would really help itself by sticking to where it really shines, newer movies that can fully take effect of its abilities.



PooperScooper said:
but blu-ray players play dvd's...

 Sure but with a premium price, and people already have DVD's so why buy them for more on Blu-ray?

 

I mean a DVD player with 1080i upscaling is like 80 bucks, why buy blu-ray? 



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

Prospects looks rather bright at a bluplayer. Signs are muddy about whether it will become a gaming machine of the type it's full potential envisioned.