Blue Ray - Commercial success or going the way of the Dodo ?

[John Duncan]

the smell of book-ness

 

[unfocused]

They have blu-ray discs and players for sale in my local Tesco's, Sainbury's and Asda. That's pretty much mainstream success I would think.

 

[Anonymous]

And many older movies on Blu-ray are a complete waste of cash.

A fairly sweeping statement. Many of the Blu ray films that I've been most impressed with are if not old then hardly in the first flush of youth, the likes of Withnail, Life of Brian etc. Seeing an old favourite dusted off and presented better than it has ever been before is a joy.

 

[Diamond Joe]

I'm sure Blu-ray is a growing success, but my experience has so far been anything but. I've got a Sony BDP-S363 which is within a whisker of getting thrown out of the window, from its lethargic operation to not actually knowing if it will play a film all the way through without stopping, or even play it at all, has made it a very frustrating experience.

It's fine with DVD and with upscaling the picture quality is not far off BD (on a 32" LCD TV), this is probably all that's saving it from a trip to the recycling plant! Plus my local supermarket sells a lot of DVDs for between £2 & £5, so I'm still buying loads of them.

For now, at least, I've given up on blu-ray and removed them all from my Lovefilm list and I have zero intention of buying any.

 

[professorhat]

I'm sure Blu-ray is a growing success, but my experience has so far been anything but. I've got a Sony BDP-S363 which is within a whisker of getting thrown out of the window, from its lethargic operation to not actually knowing if it will play a film all the way through without stopping, or even play it at all, has made it a very frustrating experience.

That's strange - I've not had a single issue with playing Blu-rays ever apart from a couple of rentals from Lovefilm where they have been either covered in fingerprints, or sometimes just don't play even though they look fine. From what I've learned on another post, this is due to scratches being removed by Lovefilm by removing a layer of the Blu-ray which eventually results in the disc being unplayable. In each circumstance though, I've just reported this to Lovefilm and got another rental free.

Every single Blu-ray I've purchased (have well over 200 films now) has played just fine on my PS3 and Marantz player though.

 

[Alec]

Well I guess sales figures speak for themselves, and I'm glad its taken off so far, having invested.

However, having got a bigger TV lately, I can see why people say you don't get the full benefit with smaller screens. I thought some BRs made a deifferenc ewith my old 37", but am convinced of it with many disks on my new 42".

 

[DandyCobalt]

As main market is USA, and most americans have tvs that are bigger than UK houses, then Blu-ray is defo here to stay

 

[Diamond Joe]

... due to scratches being removed by Lovefilm by removing a layer of the Blu-ray which eventually results in the disc being unplayable. In each circumstance though, I've just reported this to Lovefilm and got another rental free.

Every single Blu-ray I've purchased (have well over 200 films now) has played just fine on my PS3 and Marantz player though.

I didn't know about that Prof. I assumed it was my BDP refusing to play them properly* so I just sent the discs back, they all looked really clean, but you never know!

*It's probably knackered!!

 

[professorhat]

Yes, I wasn't aware of it either, but it makes sense for one disc I had from Lovefilm that looked perfect but refused to play on my Marantz, PS3 or Sony Blu-ray players. Here's the thread that explains it.

 

[Diamond Joe]

Cheers for the info Prof. Based on that I think I'll give blu-ray another crack, I've already changed a few titles from DVD to BD on my LoveFilm list, I'll see how things go.

 

[DandyCobalt]

We seem to get Blu-rays quicker through Lovefilm than DVDs - maybe the lower demand at the moment is helping those of us who've already moved to Blu-ray. Only had one Blu-ray fail from Lovefilm - they sent a replacement immediately and sent an extra disc as apology. Good service.

 

[theo12]

ggggg

I think that Blu ray has been a qualified sucess. Such that it currently can sustain itself but has not grown the way DVD did. A previous comment points out the extra competition Blu ray has faced in comparison. Also VHS was not as good a competitor as DVD has been. I have greatly enjoyed the upgrade that BR is and hope to continue for some time to come, but alas I think Andy Clough has hit the nail on the head. The Cloud is coming and by means of overcoming bandwidth issues, instead of receiving discs through the post, you order a copy of a film from the cloud, which will deliver Full HD picture and sound and within a reasonable time frame. Large storage space at a cheap price, coupled with the fact that most of the population spend the most money on a television than any other piece of AV equipment (barring the computer) means the end of the disc is in sight albeit quite a way off yet. The first company to stop making CD players is known to us, and by contrast vinyl is not dead (VHS is though)so the discless society will come. Will I miss the disc or will I struggle to remember the last itme I used one! Blu ray has IMO delivered on it's promise of fabulous quality long may it continue

 

[Tom Moreno]

The Cloud is coming and by means of overcoming bandwidth issues, instead of receiving discs through the post, you order a copy of a film from the cloud, which will deliver Full HD picture and sound and within a reasonable time frame. Large storage space at a cheap price, coupled with the fact that most of the population spend the most money on a television than any other piece of AV equipment (barring the computer) means the end of the disc is in sight albeit quite a way off yet.

Storage space online isn't the issue. In order for any streaming medium to even approach BD for picture quality the Network infrastructure would need to be upgraded to be able to deliver a consistent downstream of 50 Mbps to the vast majority of the population. Even BT's Infinity fibre service that runs fibre from the local exchange to your local cabinet has a severe drop-off in speed depending on the length of the copper line from the cabinet to your house. In other words in the next five years the only people who are going to be able to get the 50Mbps stream are going to be the luckiest Virgin Media customers and those few BT Infinity customers that have the cabinet in their front garden. Maybe ten years from now the story might change for the better, but streaming is still a ways off in terms of quality.

I think the more relevant question should be how long brick and mortar video shops like HMV will still be around. As stated earlier, online prices on disc media are nearly half what you find on a physical shelf unless the shop's offering is a bonus to their primary business (ie Tescos, Sainsburys, etc.). From everything I've read, as much as DVD and CD sales are declining it would seem that sales at the high-street disc retailers is going down at a much higher rate.

 

[theo12]

Thanks for the reply Tom,

I didn't state in my comment that streaming Full HD is indeed along way off. In fact I was unclear about what I was saying.

The way around the streaming issue for now is that people have large storage space at home to receive a large download from something like "the cloud" instead of discs through the post.

Rather like the space that is free on a Sky+ box, films could be "pushed" to the customer on request and watched on any device that copes with full HD rather than being streamed, thus bypassing streaming limitations, albeit less "on demand".

I can not see enough of the population having sufficient bandwidth to stream for nearly 15 years, considering the amount of cost involved in upgrading the infrastructure, let alone the physical work required.

For someone like myself the internet does offer the best value for disc buying and will continue to get my custom for as long as they remain there (I am a bit old school when it comes to owning films and music). But I agree with you on the longevity of the retail stores selling "hard" media.

Still I hope the discless society is beyond my earth bound days as I doubt I could afford to upgrade to a cabinet in my front garden

 

[Tom Moreno]

Theo12,

You're not wrong. There's been talk branded around for ages about setting up a system where-by you could download a full-featured DVD via a paid site and print the disc at home thus getting the full quality of a disc-bsed medium with the (semi) instant gratification of an internet download. They even suggested that it could be the saviour of the brick and mortar shop in that they could be set up as a kiosk that could spit out your purchase without having to keep physical stock of all sorts of films in order to satisfy demand for anything other than big blockbusters. But alas I doubt this will ever get past the concept stage due to the studios' crippling fear of piracy. Maybe some day though!

 

[manicm]

I think the bigger question here is whether Blu-ray will be the last disc-based format for films. In future will we all be streaming them from a virtual cloud, or do people still want to own something tangible?

I think it'll be the last, but it'll probably be replaced by a solid state device. I thing a lot of people are getting miss lead by HD streaming. The general public think this is the same quality as Blu-Ray. It isn't and it frustates me that the mass media give this impression that it is, when talking about it.

+1

 

[CnoEvil]

I think Joe Public is probably suffering information overload.

Their HD Ready TV has been replaced by a Full HD one, which is already out dated.
3D is now the way to go, so their av amp, which they have already replaced twice, due to getting HDMI connections and then full HD sound is also last years news!....and these are the more clued up ones.

It is easy to forget, while closeted up on forums with knowledgable people, that a fair amount of confusion exists out there.
Having invested in that cutting edge "blu-thingy" they won't take kindly to it being outdated....which it already is if you buy into 3D.
Chances are, that as soon as those glasses are purchased, the opposide ones (active shutter vs polarised) become the norm... followed by 3D with no glasses.

What I am trying to say (in my own clumsy way) is, that the average person has just got to grips with blu-ray and won't be pushed too easily into something else, so its here for a while.

 

[Anonymous]

I don't think DVD is going to die anytime soon .

Blu ray disks are still to expensive IMO . but they are making 2nd hand DVD's a bargain .

i am in the situation now that i rent Blu Rays from Love Film , but anything i want to own i tend to buy on DVD .

Having a high end Arcam DVD player , sound wise i actually prefer my DVD player over my Sony 760 Bluray , but no doubing the BluRay picture is superior . just not superior enough to make me spend £10 a disk extra though .

long live both formats i say

 

[strapped for cash]

I had an hour to kill today, so popped into WH Smith on the off chance they'd have a film I liked on Blu-ray. I was surprised to find they had only three remaining Blu-rays available for sale. When I enquired, I was told that WH Smith (or at least the branch I visited) are no longer stocking Blu-rays, because nobody is buying them.

Granted, this probably has a lot to do with the relatively high price of WH Smith's Blu-ray stock compared with online retailers, but I don't think Blu-ray has entirely captured the public imagination.

I then nipped downstairs to browse through the magazines. Having read this month's WHF I picked up a rival publication, which featured an interview with Oliver Stone. Stone was an advocate of Blu-ray, but suggested we've reached a tipping point in terms of quality, with many consumers prefering the convenience of film streaming over the higher quality Blu-ray offers.

I do wonder whether Blu-ray will remain largely the preserve of enthusiasts. As a format it's certainly more successful than Laserdisc, but I don't think we'll reach a point where Blu-ray becomes ubiquitous as a technology in the way DVD did.

 

[professorhat]

Having read this month's WHF I picked up a rival publication, which featured an interview with Oliver Stone. Stone was an advocate of Blu-ray, but suggested we've reached a tipping point in terms of quality, with many consumers prefering the convenience of film streaming over the higher quality Blu-ray offers.

I don't really understand this though - at the moment, film streaming isn't really that convenient unless you have a huge download capacity on your broadband (at least 50 Mbps). And very few people have this in the UK. Without this, you end up with either a long wait before you can start to watch a film to allow enough of a buffer to download or stuttrering of the video / audio as the download struggles to keep up with the real-time demand. It's still far more convenient to either own a collection of films or subscribe to a postal rental service and play them at your leisure. Clearly Oliver Stone will be talking about the US and perhaps they do have that level of broadband for the mainstream now, but I'd be surprised.

This will change in the future, but as others have said, the UK especially is still a long way off from this facility being mainstream.

 

[The_Lhc]

I understood that the US was if anything worse off than us for broadband.

 

[hammill]

I understood that the US was if anything worse off than us for broadband.

You understand correctly if my work colleagues are anything to go by

 

[strapped for cash]

Having read this month's WHF I picked up a rival publication, which featured an interview with Oliver Stone. Stone was an advocate of Blu-ray, but suggested we've reached a tipping point in terms of quality, with many consumers prefering the convenience of film streaming over the higher quality Blu-ray offers.

I don't really understand this though - at the moment, film streaming isn't really that convenient unless you have a huge download capacity on your broadband (at least 50 Mbps). And very few people have this in the UK. Without this, you end up with either a long wait before you can start to watch a film to allow enough of a buffer to download or stuttrering of the video / audio as the download struggles to keep up with the real-time demand. It's still far more convenient to either own a collection of films or subscribe to a postal rental service and play them at your leisure. Clearly Oliver Stone will be talking about the US and perhaps they do have that level of broadband for the mainstream now, but I'd be surprised.

This will change in the future, but as others have said, the UK especially is still a long way off from this facility being mainstream.

Oliver Stone was suggesting we're on the brink of film downloading becoming the way people prefer to access media.

In order for this to happen, download speed and capacity will need to increase by some margin, though I'm sure this will ultimately be the case. The thrust of his argument was that Blu-ray will represent the optimum in terms of sound and picture quality for some time. Of course this doesn't mean streamed content will never surpass the quality of Blu-ray. I agree that streaming films is far from convenient right now; but tell that to my brother-in-law, who is obsessed with Apple TV.

I'm inclined to agree that movie streaming will become increasingly popular. After all, internet ready TV, not 3DTV, was the success story of 2010, implying there's great demand for streaming content, even if this equates with compromised quality and greater inconvenience.

 

[Anonymous]

Streaming is the future, DVDs are the past. Blue Ray is caught in the middle which is unlucky for those heavily investing in this technology.

P.S. I refuse to call it BLU ray. The marketing people who came up with that aught to be shot.

 

[professorhat]

I refuse to call it BLU ray. The marketing people who came up with that aught to be shot.

Why? I mean it's up to you, but effectively you're just misspelling a word. Like saying you refuse to call Krispy Kreme donuts that when they should be spelt Crispy Creme.

Streaming is the future, DVDs are the past. Blue Ray is caught in the middle which is unlucky for those heavily investing in this technology.

We'll see

Personally, I think DVD will remain as the mainstream format of choice for at least the next few years, but Blu-ray will enjoy continued growth during that time as prices come down. Streaming will grow, but as I've said, it won't be the mainstream number one choice for at least 5 years and I think more likely 10 years.