Comments on: Blu-ray Movie Sales Are Not Taking Off Like a Rocket

By: Harley

Harley — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:37:24 +0000

I have ONE DVD Upscaler. It cost me £70. I have ONE HDTV 23″. It cost £150. I have over 350 DVDs, at an average of, lets say £10 each. YOU do the math on what REALLY makes the money for the media companies.

Also, Sony hasn’t even finished developing the Blu-Ray player yet. I’ve heard stories about people wanting to watch a quick movie but first having to get the upgrades – which are usually a load of bells and whistles with nothing to do with watching movies. Or even being interrupted in the middle of a movie with a demand to upgrade. Why should I buy a player that hasn’t even finished development yet?

Range of movies is another issue. New movies are coming out on Blu-Ray. But I don’t see box sets of TV shows coming out for them. And the reason for that is the Blu-Ray’s loading time. You can’t just sit down and watch a 20 minute episode of The Simpsons on Blu-Ray; you’d have to wait 5 minutes to get to the title screen. Even if you didn’t have to spend 10 minutes with its upgrades.

And that’s a matter of even if TV box sets started coming out on Blu-Ray. With the disks at current prices, they just wouldn’t sell. A box set of a season of The Simpsons is about £40 in shops (without discounts). Will you really feel like paying about £80 for it?

Sure, you can get Blu-Ray a lot cheaper on places like Amazon now. But they’re still not cheaper than DVDs on Amazon. And they still lack the same choice.

By: Doogie

Doogie — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:05:23 +0000

It looks like the next wave will be downloadable movies, but poor bandwidth and bandwidth restrictions current limits the ability of most Internet connections to download streaming audio and video in high defintion without any problems.

Several companies, including Netflix, already offer streaming media players for watching movies, but good quality high definition is not yet available. If Internet connectons can be improved, Blu-ray discs could fall by the wayside.

By: Harley

Harley — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:03:08 +0000

I won’t deny that Blu-Ray can give you higher quality images.

Blu-Ray quality, even at its best, isn’t a whole lot better than an Upscaled DVD. And then there’s the fact that no movies shot before 2002 will have been shot in HD anyway – and not all of them after that. Your choice is drastically reduced – as is the range of movies Sony will be able to sell.

Prices are too high, and while I can see them coming down, I can’t see them coming lower than DVDs are now. So even when Blu-Ray DOES come down it will still have to fight the lower prices of DVD. It’s not just a battle against regular DVDs either – Blu-Ray also needs to win against Upscaling, which is considerably less. When I replaced my broken DVD player, I did so with an Upscaler. Nobody who has decided that upscaling is enough for them will care to go for Blu-Ray.

It’s not about comparing frozen screens. It’s about comparing playing movies with sound.

It’s not about the quality of the picture. It’s about all the nasty little restrictions that Sony has added to their Blu-Ray discs and players for no reason other than the Purpose Of Making Money.

It’s not about comparing the price of a DVD player vs a Blu-Ray player. It’s about comparing the price of an Upscaling DVD player vs the price of a Blu-Ray player, new discs, a 40 inch HDTV, and a new sound system.

It’s not about sales of players. It’s about sales of movies – you only buy one player, but you buy many, many movies. The PS3 won the first format battle for Sony, but it’s unlikely to win the war.

Eventually something will come along that will replace both DVDs and Upscaling-DVDs. But it is unlikely to be Blu-Ray.

By: marc

marc — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:01:59 +0000

Toshiba’s format hd-dvd would of been the best hd format if it had won out on the format war.
A. it was regionally uncoded
b. it was cheaper to make disc’s and players
c. disc’s and players would then be cheaper to the public
d. it used a better compression system
e. it had none of this upgrade/edition nonsense.
Sony just wanted to bully there way into finally winning a format war and they have come unstuck, the ps3 is a flop and blu ray will die as streaming hd films will now take over as well as dvd upscaler’s that do quite a good job for a hell of a cheaper price.
And i’m not anti sony, i happen to be a broadcast engineer that see this a long time ago.
Sony should of accepted hd-dvd when it was first accepted by the dvd forum instead there greed has persited.

By: ARM4RAM

ARM4RAM — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:10:29 +0000

I just purchased a B-ray player the BD prices are out of control! Honestly I buy used BD I have an HD DVD player THe prices are good w/them now being obsolete and all but i will continue to buy HD DVD I rather spend cheap on HD DVD disc than wait for it to come out on BD and pay double triple the price.

And to ppl that think there is no difference, BIG difference!!! Especially while viewing on a 100′ screen, But HD @ any size is fantastic! But they must come down in price. THanx for this site.

By: shawn

shawn — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:32:10 +0000

Its useless to purchase blu-ray disc of movies that were made before 2002. If they were not shot in hi-def they cant really be made hi def.

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:45:09 +0000

I’d be more than willing to buy Bluray movies, even with the prices at their current level. (allthough I also think they’re way overpriced) However, there’s only been a few of my purchases that satisfied me. There’s a lot of Bluray movies on the market that are simply DVD quality on a Bluray disc. Big disappointment when you’d expect High Def… I had started to replace some of my favorite DVD’s, because I would have loved to see them in HD. I stopped after the first few disappointments. Getting the same results with some new movies now makes me weary to buy any Bluray disc.

In short: the producers did it to themselfs… In their eagerness to get as many movies out there as possible they undermined the sense of quality about Bluray. It seems to be no more than a new medium, for the same old same old… At least that’s how I experience it.

Martin

By: bvdon

bvdon — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:12:33 +0000

I don’t find the BluRay discs to be that much better than a regular DVD. Your article is right on point too… bring down the price and people will change format. The publishers are greedy as usual.

By: George Martin Leen

George Martin Leen — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:58:31 +0000

I totally agree with what you said.
Right now the price of Blu-Ray Disc is absurd and consumers must co-operate and pass the correct signal that no one is going to buy the Blu-ray disc movie when it is so expensively priced.
For the time being i am satisfied with my DVD Home Theatre system that does a reasonably good job at upscaling the DVD disc and me and my family enjoy watching DVD movies and when we like to collect them we buy and treasure movies like “Transformers”, “Spider Man”, “Matrix”, etc. We buy these DVD’s because they are affordably priced.
So for a long time, i am just going to stick with DVD’s and wait till the price of Blu-rays come down to earth before considering switching to Blu-ray.

Thank you for your informative article and
You have a nice day!

George Martin