I'm sorry, but it's you who do not understand. You seem to think it's the companies that deciedes what the public will buy, and that's really amusing.

If you havent figured out yet that the studio's do decide then there no point discussing it, the HD war is over and BD is already victorious, now the only factor is time.

The world moves on, things change as they always have and especially youngsters that get older arent interested in out of date technology. You might hold some nostaglic tie to it, but realise the next generation doesnt care.

The DVD->BD evolution will be hardly different from the VHS->DVD one, now that the studios have backed BD its just a matter of time before it takes a 50+% share.

gavind5uk said: The DVD->BD evolution will be hardly different from the VHS->DVD one, now that the studios have backed BD its just a matter of time before it takes a 50+% share.

 

It isn't as simple as you think: The biggest difference was that the replication costs for VHS were huge compared to the costs to produce a DVD! The end of the VHS wasn't even planned by the majors instead the stores replaced more and more the VHS Tapes with DVDs, that they were able to sell cheaper, with a higher profit, while they needed less space.

The problem for the BluRay is: It will always be more expensive to produce a BluRay than a DVD,even if the BluRay replication one day meets the DVD costs, simply due to more and higher licence fees.

The BluRay has the problem that it will have to  convince the customers that BluRay alsways offers additional value, so that the medium is worth the additional costs. This is the big problem. When I look at some people they would even buy the cheaper medium even if the cost difference would be as low as 50 cents...

BluRay is on the way to establish itself as a high quality medium, but if this medium will ever replace the DVD on the mass market is an entirely different basket.

If Blu Ray catches on before the next tech supersedes it, I will be surprised. HD DVD would of been the best choice for the consumer as it had a better pricing structure and had both formats had the same movie support would of been a shoe in. The movie houses decided that the public should not have that format most likely because of the perceived levels of encryption they could shove on the disc and profit.

The public do not by and large seem to care probably because they do not see the benefit especially with up scale DVD offerings.

Now that they wasted all that time quibbling it may be to late for Blu Ray to make a big enough difference as it is just still to expensive. I for one thing they deserve to lose out and hopefully the public will not be suckered into the BD debacle.

The HD war has not been won as it rages on, I think the recent innovations of HD streaming on Netflix in the US point us in yet another direction. I think On demand viewing is becoming more and more common place and certainly judging by my household they would appear to be happy to download watch and forget minus the wrapping and the trip to the shop.

Then how come the dark knight is the top-selling movie? >_

My local supermarket in NW London has removed its Blu Ray section.

I collared the manager and asked WTF is going on.

He just shrugged and said he was told to give the shelf space to DVD's over the Xmas period as they sell well and they needed to ensure the cash registers kept ringing over Xmas.

He did say that the Blu Ray sales were dissapointing up to now but they would definately persevere. He expected the display to be back up by mid Jan.

welshbloke said: If Blu Ray catches on before the next tech supersedes it, I will be surprised. HD DVD would of been the best choice for the consumer as it had a better pricing structure and had both formats had the same movie support would of been a shoe in. The movie houses decided that the public should not have that format most likely because of the perceived levels of encryption they could shove on the disc and profit. The public do not by and large seem to care probably because they do not see the benefit especially with up scale DVD offerings. Now that they wasted all that time quibbling it may be to late for Blu Ray to make a big enough difference as it is just still to expensive. I for one thing they deserve to lose out and hopefully the public will not be suckered into the BD debacle. The HD war has not been won as it rages on, I think the recent innovations of HD streaming on Netflix in the US point us in yet another direction. I think On demand viewing is becoming more and more common place and certainly judging by my household they would appear to be happy to download watch and forget minus the wrapping and the trip to the shop.

HD DVD did not provide enough of an improvement over DVD to gain widespread studio support.

There is no other optical disc based tech currently in development that has a chance to supercede Blu-ray.

The public does seem to care.  The Blu-ray adoption rate is growing as seen by recent news releases.

Streaming media services face a host of issues that will prevent it from being a mainstream solution for sometime.

• Streaming providers are the last in line to license content.  That is why their libraries are poor at best.
• Streaming/Digital Distribution currently accounts for .06% of a typical movie studios revenue.
• The Internet infrastructure does not have the bandwidth required to support the number of unicast connections that would be required to host streaming as a mainstream solution.
• The current 4 bar connection(best speed available) for Netflix streaming requires a 3 Mbps downstream connection.  This will give you a 720x480i encoded at a 3mbps bitrate.  The current Blu-ray movie will give you a 1920x1080p encoded at a 40mbps bitrate. 

 

dbot said: HD DVD did not provide enough of an improvement over DVD to gain widespread studio support. There is no other optical disc based tech currently in development that has a chance to supercede Blu-ray. The public does seem to care.  The Blu-ray adoption rate is growing as seen by recent news releases. Streaming media services face a host of issues that will prevent it from being a mainstream solution for sometime. Streaming providers are the last in line to license content.  That is why their libraries are poor at best. Streaming/Digital Distribution currently accounts for .06% of a typical movie studios revenue. The Internet infrastructure does not have the bandwidth required to support the number of unicast connections that would be required to host streaming as a mainstream solution. The current 4 bar connection(best speed available) for Netflix streaming requires a 3 Mbps downstream connection.  This will give you a 720x480i encoded at a 3mbps bitrate.  The current Blu-ray movie will give you a 1920x1080p encoded at a 40mbps bitrate.

HD DVD is dead but when it was alive it was more than a match for Blu Ray when it came to showing movies in fact it was ready. The studios as I stated wanted the extra DRM offered which the public will resist so in the long run as I originally suggested they shot themselves in the foot and delayed the introduction of the HD format on a disc in pursuit of the mightly dollar.

All these figures of hundreds of per cent increases on adoption are based on low initial values hence why they may appear high. For them to actually make a difference it would need to be more mainstream. Comparisons with DVD adoption do not wash because ultimately the end users does not see a big enough need when compared to DVD replacing Tape. a Disc replacing a Disc does not cut it. At its current rate of adoption it will be your children who will see it finally become mainstream.

Again as I originally stated the technology is already on the way which will further impede the Blu Ray progress. If you think that the same people who could not give a hoot about Blu Ray care about 720p or 1080p you would also be wrong. The general public are already getting to grips with on demand services and as the internet services improve so will the take up it may even be the reason these services are improved. In the UK as I am sure most of the western world is now offering increasing HD content via cable, Satelite and ultimately over the air. These services will no doubt be 720p and no doubt most folk will lap it up.

I would not be suprised if DVD sales of Mamma Mia in the UK outsold all Blu Ray sales in the UK. That is the problem and the hill Blu Ray has climb.

 

Well, this is partly thanks to much better advertising. My Hancock dvd had leaflets for blu-ray, and before the main dvd menu even appeared there was a great ad for the format

They had it at 6% of all media sales in Europe. So its a rather big niche and the niche is also getting rapidly bigger . (Faster than DVD did in the beginning at any rate) I wonder how big all downloadable video sales put together are.

Seems to be that with falling player prices BluRay sales increase. Quite surprising actually . Now the little bastards have to lower disc prices as well so that finally everyone can get the worth out of their expensive HD-TVs.