frybread said:
The public liked DVD because: 1) It was smaller than VHS. 2) They were allowed to skip to any scene. 3) Freeze-frame pausing. 4) MOST OF ALL: No more rewinding. Rewinding was a huge pain, it would break vcrs (causing people to buy rewind machines) and if they forgot to rewind, Blockbuster would sometimes charge a penalty.
Oh, it also had a clearer picture. So did Laser Disc. So did Beta Max. Clear pictures do not sell formats to anyone except ... well, us geeks. |
Blu-Ray disc has all those advantages in addition to new ones (and players include backward compatibility for your whole legacy DVD library). So did Laser Disc offer many of these features, but was huge. And so did Video CD (a success in China and India), but usually required muliple discs with not so great quality improvements. There are many different factors, retail and rental service adoption IMO being crucial.
Blu-Ray content makes sense for HDTV owners.
