Is Blu-ray ever going to get sufficient market penetration to become the format of choice ? or is it going to a 'skip' technology - something that is passed by most of the market who jump onto whatever comes next?
If I walked into Tesco tomorrow and saw a Profile 2.0 player for £30, I wouldn't buy it. What's the point when you end up paying so much extra for Blu Ray films, compared to the same content on standard-def DVDs? I'm happy with upscaling my existing SD DVD collection and using services like Cable VOD and Xbox Video Marketplace. The HD AV quality those options offer won't match Blu-Ray, but its 'good enough' for me.
I'd say Blu-Ray is the tallest dwarf in comparison to HD-DVD, a moderate success that fares somewhat better than Betamax.
It'll skip a generation, until the next piece of technology. Really, HDDVD and BluRay are the VCD and Laserdisc of this generation
Depends. If something better comes along fairly quickly it will be skipped. However, it could catch on if it is forced upon us, much like CDs were. I only stopped buying casettes and had to get a CD player when the cassette section at the store had dwindled down to about 20 choices. Same thing with VHS and DVD. I kept buying VHS tapes until you just couldn't anymore and I finally got a DVD player when someone else had an extra and gave it to me. And even then I still got Lord of the Rings on VHS online through Amazon. So if they take away our choices, then yes it will catch on. But it would be really shitty of them to do that since it would mean having to buy a new TV as well. I would probably just stop buying movies until I really needed to buy a new TV and HD was cheap enough.
But that wasn't "forced" the technologies had captured significant market share and the availiability and decline of the older formats was reflected in that. There is no way that blu-ray would be "forced" on you - the market share isn't there...
I don't see what is wrong with standard dvd. I don't like to see people sweat, that is the common reason I read, when people say why they get blu ray dvds and players....to see the actors sweat.......disgusting. Also blu rays are way...way to expensive, and stardard dvds in the main market are new still. I have way to many NEW standard dvds to even think about converting to blu ray dvds.
IMHO blu-ray is another spectacular failure from Sony. Even with their destroying the superior format by buying off (in the hundred of millions of dollars) studio support, it still can't do better than what - five percent market share? This is with hi-def tv's selling like crazy. No, it will never be anything but a niche product. It will never have more than 25% market share. The damn discs are too expensive and always will be. It costs a fortune to make a blu-ray disk, as opposed to hd-dvd which could be made in dvd plants with minor upgrades. Blu-ray is a Japanese professional disc format that Sony bought and modified for home use. It was never intended to be a home format. It's a mess.
We cannot really be sure if Blu-ray has failed yet. We know that it beat out HD-DVD and has the support of almost every major studio, not to mention that it is the format which the PS3 uses.
I have no intention of upgrading to Blu Ray. The trade-off on the investment just isn't worth it, especially given that 90% of my DVDs are television series, most of which aren't even wide-screen, let alone HD. I just don't care about seeing every flaw and detail...
Same here. My DVD collection percentage isn't as high on TV sets but the principal is the same. I've said it before, as have others, its just not that big and/or significant an upgrade. The visuals aren't that much better the sound clarity isn't that much improved. Sure they are but its not that big a deal. I'm waiting. Maybe the next gen device will be a datarod ala TNG style!
Yeah, I don't really see the point in upgrading. Even if more people switched over, I'd just see it as an excuse to get a lot of DVDs on sale.
I actually own a Blu-Ray player, in the shape of a PS3, but I've never used it to play a BR movie simply because there's no point - I haven't got an HDTV, and am not planning to buy one in the immediate future. In a year or so, maybe, but right now my old (ironically) Sony 32" Trinitron is still working just fine. BR and HD-DVD were both cynical money-grabs by the major electronics corporations once DVD players started being made by the million in China to be sold in supermarkets for £30. From the hardware companies' point of view, DVD was too successful - they needed something new to replace it that could restore their profit margins.
Blu-Ray is growing faster than DVD did, so I wouldn't call it a failure. It won't be the only format on the market, though. DVD will still live on. Blu-Ray can read DVD:s, so I don't really see it as a DVD-killer. Japan is a bit ahead of the US, as usual, but I expect the US to get here in a few years: http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/10/23/blu-ray-surpasses-30-of-all-dvd-recorder-player-shipments-in/ A picture of how it stands in the US: http://i38.tinypic.com/15ofehj.jpg
The only way it'll really catch on is if people stop making DVDs and Blu-Ray becomes the only option.