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When should you upgrade your hi-fi? How to control ‘upgradeitis’
Is Britain shunning Blu-ray?
- Thread starter Clare Newsome
- Start date
I have been on record here saying that I would prefer 1080p downloads as my system is based around a HTPC and have a good amount of storage space...
I would consider buying into blu-ray when players are very quick to load, but I still would prefer full quality downloads.
I would consider buying into blu-ray when players are very quick to load, but I still would prefer full quality downloads.
This is good news. It's going to be a while still before we get downloads that compare to Blu-ray and until then the format needs to keep up it's adoption rise despite the recession in order to ensure that the studios release as much software as possible. Fumanchu, I've seen 1080p download material and even though it looks good, it just cannot compare with the image produced by the 54mbps bitrate of video from a BD. It's been said many a time before that the quality of the video isn't in the number of pixels, it's in the amount of compression used to transfer the pixels and this is blindingly apparent when you compare 1080p download material to disk-based video. And beyond the aforementioned video aspects, audio seems to be the *** child of all download services who haven't seen fit to entice anyone with anything beyond Dolby Digital 5.1 which is the absolute bare minimum codec for 5.1 and any audiophile will grimace at that offering if no better alternatives (TrueHD, DTS-MA, PCM, hell even vanilla DTS!) are available. Download service providers just don't want to or aren't capable of offering anything higher than the paltry 448K DD stream. Until our tinterweb pipes are fast enough to deliver 50 GB feature films with all the quality of a BD I'll be happy watching the best format available and saving HD downloads for spur of the moment rentals as I do already.
The US Consumer Electronics Association predicts that shipments of Blu-ray players will jump 112 per cent this year. Despite the recession, the CEA is confident that the format will break
into the mainstream, and is anticipating the market will be worth
$1billion in the US alone!!
The blu-ray revolution is in my opinion, still at it's infancy stage in the UK, and is set to grow much bigger.
into the mainstream, and is anticipating the market will be worth
$1billion in the US alone!!
The blu-ray revolution is in my opinion, still at it's infancy stage in the UK, and is set to grow much bigger.
It will only kick off when the high street retailers sell new blu-ray releases at the same price as DVD's...when will that happen though?
tvmog
Well-known member
Presumably the up take of blu ray will be closely related to the up take of HD televisions. The VCR and DVD were designed to work with every existing TV in the country, whereas Blu ray is only an improvement if you have at least an HD ready TV. Although it is increasingly hard to buy a new TV that is not Hd ready, millions of homes in this country do not have one. To invest in blu ray technology from scratch, ie a new HD TV and a player you are probably talking a minimum of £600-700 for something decent, and the many people who only watch TV and DVD on an occasional basis will not consider the outlay worth it.
Agreed. When I bought my first DVD player in 1997, a USA import Panasonic, I was paying a tad under £20 per movie. 3 years on from inception, and the Star Trek movie has just been announced for Blu-Ray at a price point of £30, for sale in an environment where on DVD, easily superior to its competition at that time (VHS), I can buy Iron Man 2-Disc, Dark Knight 2-Disc, Indiana Jones 2-Disc and Wanted for £20 the lot.
Back in 1996, and just prior to DVD's release, Laserdisc was the format we were buying, at around £40 for an import title, but not surprisingly the format never moved beyond a niche market of people like myself who were earning relatively well at that time. VCD was bigger, and not coincidentally cheaper, thanks to Philips' CDi players (for which I advertised regularly in the mag as Oakland Consoles - Andy Clough might remember me? I used to send the mag import discs for review), but again the market leader was VHS.
Comparatively speaking, DVD is easily superior to VHS, and that gulf is not the same between DVD and Blu-Ray. However, not only did DVD offer a clear performance improvement over VHS, but under the aegis of the DVD Forum, prices tumbled rapidly, such that within 18 months of UK launch it was quite straightforward to buy a DVD at the same price as a VHS equivalent.
The principal difference now, in my view, is that Blu-Ray as a format, though adopted by the DVD Forum group, is effectively a bought-in product thanks to shenanigans in high places in the movie companies whereby Sony and its' allies bought themselves shares on the boards to force through the Blu-Ray format - a background quite unlike the DVD launch, whereby everybody pooled in to agree a standard and cost equal to all.
Now, every movie company and Blu-Ray publisher has to pay Sony a royalty for the format's use, which keeps prices in my view artificially high, and where there is pressure on a company's economic performance (ie Sony's), it stands to reason that if anything they'll keep their royalty costs high.
I think that Blu-Ray is now in the dangerous position of losing the attraction of its' 'shiny and new' status long before it's reached anything like mass-market acceptance, and faces a future like DCC or MiniDisc before it, each technologically superior to the alternatives around at that time, each failing to reach mass acceptance because of price and competing formats - in Blu-Ray's case, that competiton being the enduring appeal of DVD and now downloading, still in its' infancy but appearing attractive as an idea in the market.
This may seem an odd thing to assert, in light of Clare's posting re. GfK's sales figures, but my contention is that these figures don't really compare on like-for-like basis - because Blu-Ray launched into an environment where the idea of movies on a compact-disc-sized format is something that people are now completely accustomed to, whether it be dvd-roms for pc's cd's for music or of course dvd movies. When DVD launched, in contrast, the idea of films (and extras) on a disc were, for the mass-market, something exotically foreign and new, which made its' take-up more difficult a sale to pull off. Blu-Ray has been able to piggy-back on the concept for its' understandability and acceptance, its players are cheaper than dvd players were (in 1999-2000), yet its' sales are only a tad higher than DVD had achieved.
These reasons are why in my view things need to move fast on pricing for Blu-Ray, but at £30, as I mentioned, for the new Star Trek movie, it seems some of the lessons of the past are yet to be learned.
Back in 1996, and just prior to DVD's release, Laserdisc was the format we were buying, at around £40 for an import title, but not surprisingly the format never moved beyond a niche market of people like myself who were earning relatively well at that time. VCD was bigger, and not coincidentally cheaper, thanks to Philips' CDi players (for which I advertised regularly in the mag as Oakland Consoles - Andy Clough might remember me? I used to send the mag import discs for review), but again the market leader was VHS.
Comparatively speaking, DVD is easily superior to VHS, and that gulf is not the same between DVD and Blu-Ray. However, not only did DVD offer a clear performance improvement over VHS, but under the aegis of the DVD Forum, prices tumbled rapidly, such that within 18 months of UK launch it was quite straightforward to buy a DVD at the same price as a VHS equivalent.
The principal difference now, in my view, is that Blu-Ray as a format, though adopted by the DVD Forum group, is effectively a bought-in product thanks to shenanigans in high places in the movie companies whereby Sony and its' allies bought themselves shares on the boards to force through the Blu-Ray format - a background quite unlike the DVD launch, whereby everybody pooled in to agree a standard and cost equal to all.
Now, every movie company and Blu-Ray publisher has to pay Sony a royalty for the format's use, which keeps prices in my view artificially high, and where there is pressure on a company's economic performance (ie Sony's), it stands to reason that if anything they'll keep their royalty costs high.
I think that Blu-Ray is now in the dangerous position of losing the attraction of its' 'shiny and new' status long before it's reached anything like mass-market acceptance, and faces a future like DCC or MiniDisc before it, each technologically superior to the alternatives around at that time, each failing to reach mass acceptance because of price and competing formats - in Blu-Ray's case, that competiton being the enduring appeal of DVD and now downloading, still in its' infancy but appearing attractive as an idea in the market.
This may seem an odd thing to assert, in light of Clare's posting re. GfK's sales figures, but my contention is that these figures don't really compare on like-for-like basis - because Blu-Ray launched into an environment where the idea of movies on a compact-disc-sized format is something that people are now completely accustomed to, whether it be dvd-roms for pc's cd's for music or of course dvd movies. When DVD launched, in contrast, the idea of films (and extras) on a disc were, for the mass-market, something exotically foreign and new, which made its' take-up more difficult a sale to pull off. Blu-Ray has been able to piggy-back on the concept for its' understandability and acceptance, its players are cheaper than dvd players were (in 1999-2000), yet its' sales are only a tad higher than DVD had achieved.
These reasons are why in my view things need to move fast on pricing for Blu-Ray, but at £30, as I mentioned, for the new Star Trek movie, it seems some of the lessons of the past are yet to be learned.
kaotician:
This may seem an odd thing to assert, in light of Clare's posting re. GfK's sales figures, but my contention is that these figures don't really compare on like-for-like basis - because Blu-Ray launched into an environment where the idea of movies on a compact-disc-sized format is something that people are now completely accustomed to, whether it be dvd-roms for pc's cd's for music or of course dvd movies. When DVD launched, in contrast, the idea of films (and extras) on a disc were, for the mass-market, something exotically foreign and new, which made its' take-up more difficult a sale to pull off. Blu-Ray has been able to piggy-back on the concept for its' understandability and acceptance, its players are cheaper than dvd players were (in 1999-2000), yet its' sales are only a tad higher than DVD had achieved.
These reasons are why in my view things need to move fast on pricing for Blu-Ray, but at £30, as I mentioned, for the new Star Trek movie, it seems some of the lessons of the past are yet to be learned.
I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that DVD's launch was in any way held back by "the idea of films (and extras) on a disc were, for the mass-market, something exotically foreign and new, which made its' take-up more difficult a sale to pull off." DVD (until the release of Blu-ray but we're still watching until the format reaches 5 year's maturity) absolutely smashed every existing record for speed of adoption. I think I remember a stat like more DVD players were sold in the format's first year than VHS players in it's 1st 10 years. And I don't know if it affected you here in the UK, but I lived in the US when DVD launched and there was a format war for the format's first year between DVD and DIVX, with DIVX being the cheaper alternative. I think that people had been living in a world were music was on CD for so long that it seemed stupid that we couldn't watch movies on a convenient disk format (VCD never even got a look in in America) and when DVD was launched people were falling over themselves to get some of that action.
With relation to disk prices, well the story there lies in the rate of adoption as well. Within 18 months of launch the studio were manufacturing so many discs already to meet demand that the actual cost price of producing a DVD disk fell well below the cost to produce a VHS tape. But even 3 years after launch, new release titles in the US would still demand $30 which is how much Blu-rays cost now. And if you have a cursory search you shouldn't have any difficulty finding new release titles online for £15 unless it's some sort of box-set or TV series. In my opinion the sales figures for Blu-ray are all the more impressive because of the rate at which they stand up to those early years of DVD. I think much of it is thanks to the US market's clamouring for a Hi-Def DVD replacement for some years now. HDTV's really only took off in this country a few years ago shortly before Blu-ray hit the market, but in America they've had their HDTVs for nearly a decade now and that's an awfully long time to wait to have a film delivery format that can match the images you're getting off your cable and satellite movie channels.
This may seem an odd thing to assert, in light of Clare's posting re. GfK's sales figures, but my contention is that these figures don't really compare on like-for-like basis - because Blu-Ray launched into an environment where the idea of movies on a compact-disc-sized format is something that people are now completely accustomed to, whether it be dvd-roms for pc's cd's for music or of course dvd movies. When DVD launched, in contrast, the idea of films (and extras) on a disc were, for the mass-market, something exotically foreign and new, which made its' take-up more difficult a sale to pull off. Blu-Ray has been able to piggy-back on the concept for its' understandability and acceptance, its players are cheaper than dvd players were (in 1999-2000), yet its' sales are only a tad higher than DVD had achieved.
These reasons are why in my view things need to move fast on pricing for Blu-Ray, but at £30, as I mentioned, for the new Star Trek movie, it seems some of the lessons of the past are yet to be learned.
I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that DVD's launch was in any way held back by "the idea of films (and extras) on a disc were, for the mass-market, something exotically foreign and new, which made its' take-up more difficult a sale to pull off." DVD (until the release of Blu-ray but we're still watching until the format reaches 5 year's maturity) absolutely smashed every existing record for speed of adoption. I think I remember a stat like more DVD players were sold in the format's first year than VHS players in it's 1st 10 years. And I don't know if it affected you here in the UK, but I lived in the US when DVD launched and there was a format war for the format's first year between DVD and DIVX, with DIVX being the cheaper alternative. I think that people had been living in a world were music was on CD for so long that it seemed stupid that we couldn't watch movies on a convenient disk format (VCD never even got a look in in America) and when DVD was launched people were falling over themselves to get some of that action.
With relation to disk prices, well the story there lies in the rate of adoption as well. Within 18 months of launch the studio were manufacturing so many discs already to meet demand that the actual cost price of producing a DVD disk fell well below the cost to produce a VHS tape. But even 3 years after launch, new release titles in the US would still demand $30 which is how much Blu-rays cost now. And if you have a cursory search you shouldn't have any difficulty finding new release titles online for £15 unless it's some sort of box-set or TV series. In my opinion the sales figures for Blu-ray are all the more impressive because of the rate at which they stand up to those early years of DVD. I think much of it is thanks to the US market's clamouring for a Hi-Def DVD replacement for some years now. HDTV's really only took off in this country a few years ago shortly before Blu-ray hit the market, but in America they've had their HDTVs for nearly a decade now and that's an awfully long time to wait to have a film delivery format that can match the images you're getting off your cable and satellite movie channels.
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