So is Blu-Ray 21st century LaserDisc?

[binary solo]

Most people are still happy with DVD quality. They don't really care about better visual quality than what comes with DVD. And they care even less about audio quality improvement over DVD. Most people still use their TV speakers for sound output, and Blu-ray audio quality is completely wasted on TV speakers.

And yes, new formats have always been about practicality rather than quality, which is why high def discs were always going to have a much longer transition than past format transitions because there was no practical advantage that justified replacing perfectly functional hardware with more expensive hardware. And Blu-ray movies / TV shows are still more expensive on release to buy than DVDs. That's certainly one way to convince the masses not to convert.

And now that streaming is becoming huge it is likely that Blu-ray will be the last hardware media format introduced to the mass entertainment market. 4K streaming for the mass market is probably not far away, which means movies and TV shows on disc are only for the collectors and the people who want to watch the bonus content, which of course means bonus content becomes extremely important if the industry wants to keep pushing for purchases of content on disc.

Speaking of sound, I'm actually very cheesed that PS4 does not have standard stereo AV output because my PS3 set up was HDMI out to the TV for video and AV out to the stereo for audio. I can't do that with PS4 now, so both games and movies sound worse coming from PS4 than what I got with PS3. I'd basically have to buy a whole new sound system to get a better 8th gen audio experience than what I got with 7th gen hardware. I'm not going to buy a whole new sound system.