| thismeintiel said:
Yes, the majority WOULD rather buy a new product than update the firmware, This is a disposable society, People would rather not deal with the "hassle" of downloading the update, burning it unto a disc, and flashing their Bluray player. I already cited one example with a DVD player I own. Too bad you didn't read it. Most Bluray players do not auto update like the 360, PS3, or a PC, and that is exactly why people don't go out and purchase new consoles or computers. Besides, as I said before, what benefit would a Bluray disc with more that 25 GB of space, give the general consumers as far as videos go? Absolutely none, not when you can fit an entire film in 1080P with 7.1 surround sound on one dual layer bluray. No, a 1 TB disc will benefit nobody but tech geeks at this point because super HD is still being worked on. BTW what kind of DVD player did you have? I have never heard of DVD player having upgradable firmware via the internet. Only one I can think of that was upgradable at all was the PS2. But that was through either random games or demo discs. Toshiba sd-4000, I suspect this isn't the only one that has ever needed a firmware update. Suffice to say, most people didn't even bother looking for a solution to their sync issue on this model, and around half of those who did stumble across the problem, just decided to go out and buy a new DVD player. I'm sorry to say it, but your history is the one that is off alittle. True, in the early 70's, cassettes did start to gain ground, due to the increase in sound quality. However, 8-tracks were still popular, and didn't truly start to lose popularity until the late 70's, when companies wanted to decrease the number of formats for music. Cassetes proved to be cheaper to make, coupled with their increasing popularity, so they were chosen as the format of choice. However, as I stated before, cassettes hit their larger boom in the 80's, thanks to the introduction of portable players. Keep in mind also that both 8-track and cassettes were released in the same year, 1964, and it was 8-track that came out on top for more than a decade, so definitely not a flop. Read the below statement. But just for the sake of argument, let's take your history into consideration. Even if cassettes took over in '73, that's still 9 years 8-track dominated. And considering it wasn't until late 1982 that they were completely removed from shelves, that's another 9 years they stuck around. Now you said VHS stuck around for 3 years after DVD was released, and DVD is looking to stick around 4-6 more years after Blu-ray, I would have to conclude that 8-track was bigger than them both. Actually it was about 8 years, and records were still more popular. Records were sold right along side 8tracks until the tape became popular, then both formats virtually disappeared, you had to go to speciality stores to get records and 8tracks after that. Just because Blu-ray has more to compete with doesn't mean it will fail. It only means it will not gain the huge market share DVD had, as it had barely any competition. But I still feel confident it will rise to having a majority share in the next year or two. And the fact that not everyone will replace their DVD's with Blu-ray is why Blu-ray will be succesful. Simply put, you don't have to. You can keep your old movies and just buy new ones on Blu-ray. Now I don't know how well upconverting DVD players have done, as I have yet to see any published sale numbers for them. But considering my last trip to Wal-mart I saw one as opposed to the 6 or 7 Blu-ray players, I doubt there is that much demand for them. Blueray is expensive, people with a good number of DVDs are not going to buy Bluray to replace their entire collection. that would be stupid, especially since they can buy a good upconverting DVD player that will give them almost the same picture quality. Now, you said in your above statement that People don't have to replace their entire collection with Bluray...instead they could keep their old DVDs and buy the Bluray version...now, perhaps it's just me...but isn't that replacing your DVD with a Bluray? Also, I don't know what Walmart you were in, but the 4 that I have visited recently, all had four Upconverting DVD players (the less effective ones mind you.) and at least two regular DVD players. Then of course, at each Walmart, there were 4 bluray players, and that's not counting the surround sound systems...which all had DVD players... Oh, and let's not forget the two VHS/DVD combos that they had. |
