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I got a note from downtown saying, "Lots of people were buying (Blu-ray) in the stores today...But we don't really know what it IS."

Blu-ray video discs play high-quality movies (1080p) on high-definition TVs. Compared to regular DVDs, a Blu-ray disc's capacity is huge, even though both are physically the same size: 50 gigabytes, roughly six to ten times more than DVD capacities.

Their manufacture uses a blue laser (hence the name; DVDs use red) whose shorter wavelength can make many more "dots" (think pixels), so more information can be stored on the disc. Hi-def movie files are seven or eight times larger than regular movies, so this capacity is important.

Blu-ray (Wikipedia overview) won the format war -- not VHS v. Betamax but Sony's Blu-ray v.Toshiba's HD DVD -- for optical disc storage when Wal-Mart opted for Blu-ray in February over HD DVD, which Wikipedia now calls an "obsolete high-density optical disc".

So do you have to buy a Blu-ray player if you want to buy or rent high-def DVDs for your high-def TV? Yes. But the reverse is not true.

Walter Mossberg at WSJ wrote, just before the Wal-Mart decision,

I never saw any significant quality difference between the two high-definition formats, I never recommended one over the other. But most of the major studios have defected to Blu-ray, so industry experts believe HD DVD is likely to recede as a movie format, though it may find a market as a data format for computers. However, the companies backing HD DVD haven't given up, so the battle isn't formally over.

Meanwhile, I have found that, for everyone but videophiles, "upscaling" DVD players are effective at making most regular DVDs look better on high-definition TV sets. And name-brand models can be found for as little as $45, which is less than Blu-ray players are likely to commonly cost for quite awhile.

Blu-ray disc players at Amazon start around $200. (They play your old DVDs.) Blu-ray movies are more expensive than DVDs (16.99 vs. $12.99 at Amazon for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, for instance).

All hardware becomes obsolete, and at some point you'll want to upgrade, if you're still using hard media at all. Eventually, prices will drop and newer titles will be hard to find in the older format. But not yet.

Grinch Kyle Buckley at tech-help site Nillabyte (Blu-ray Is Overrated):

When you watch a movie being played from a Blu-ray disc and a DVD side-by-side, you will definitely notice that Blu-ray has a much sharper image. However, the added lines of resolution in Blu-ray are hardly worth upgrading your entertainment system. The number of movies available in Blu-ray format, although growing, is still pretty small....

Background: Reuters reported in February (Wal-Mart picks Blu-ray in HD DVD disaster),

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, announced the move as a phase-out at 4,000 U.S. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores by June, saying it was responding to consumer preference.

Wal-mart's on-staff movie and gaming blogger put the future of HD DVD in stark terms.

"So ... if you bought the HD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies, and make space for a BD (Blu-ray disc) player for your awesome Hi Def experience," Wal-Mart blogger Susan Chronister wrote in a posting.

Consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc and online video rental company Netflix Inc defected to the Blu-ray camp earlier in the week.

 Tags  Blu-ray DVD

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2 Comments

DaveBG said:

Hot-selling Blu-ray!?

Where? How many units, exactly?

Blu-ray is so "hot-selling" that the BDA (the Blu-ray Disc Association, the group of companies dedicated to over-seeing, developing and promoting the Blu-ray Disc format) refuses to allow verifiable sales numbers.

The exception is the Nielson numbers which are heavily weighted towards the early adopter and Blu-ray and against the mature market that DVD's is.

DVD sell 1.7 billion discs in the USA alone & over 7 billion discs worldwide.
Blu-ray does not even exceed 2% of those numbers anywhere.

You'll not be seeing titles' annual sales comparisons anywhere anytime soon, they know it instantly robs them of the illusion of growth and progress compared to DVD they have spent the last 2yrs crafting.

You need a huge HD TV to even 'see' 1080p (at normal viewing distances) and you need a full and very expensuive set of audio kit to even hear the latest standards of audio Blu-ray can offer.

Compared to upscaled DVD on the sort of HD TV most buy (32" - 42") Blu-ray offers very little for the price and an AC3 Dolby Digital home theatre receiver & speaker set-up will sound exactly the same.

Anyone who imagines the current economic climate is going to see Blu-ray genuinely going 'mass-market' is either laughably deluded or trying to con people by spinning ridiculously out-dated PR BS.

Even Warner are now waking up to this going horribly wrong
“We think this is a do-or-die time for Blu-ray,” said Ron Sanders, president of Warner Home Video. “We must get it established as a favorite holiday item.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/business/21dvd.html?_r=2&hp

No-one in their right mind (excepting the PS3 game console fanboys) seriously thinks Blu-ray is about to become "established as a favorite holiday item.”

Wake up.

Quit trying to sell people a format with very little or no future.

Link | November 30, 2008 8:53 AM
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Sheila Lennon said:

Dave, you seem to have angrily repeated every point this post made more calmly -- and somehow decided I'm in sales.

Walter Mossberg is more effective, imo, on the upscaling issue, and Kyle Buckley lots cooler in rejecting buy-in.

So with all your points already covered here, what got you so fired up? Or did you only read the headline and paste in a standard rant?

(Reporters coming back from stores saying "Lots of people were buying Blu-ray today," could answer your "Where?" question but not "How many units, exactly?" That's not their job.)

Later...

Full disclosure: I don't have a dog in this fight. I got a DVD player as a Christmas gift a few years back, but seldom use it. The kids do, sometimes.

I only like to watch movies once, so I don't collect them. I forget to rent/return them, don't need more clutter, and am happy to stream what comes on HD cable TV, what others bring over or what's in the theaters.

Blu-ray's selling point to the movie studios may have been the DRM in Blu-ray discs, called BD+. That has also been cracked (BluRay's BD+ DRM broken), but, after Googling around a bit, it looks like making Blu-ray backup discs is not easy.

The 2007 context at Ars Technica fills in some of the blanks: Adult film industry embracing HD DVD. Because it can be made more cheaply, with existing processes. And,

A spokesperson for one adult studio told TG Daily that HD DVD is easier and cheaper to produce and that it was the industry's belief "there are more HD DVD players in homes than there are Blu-ray players, for example in the Xbox 360.

Link | November 30, 2008 10:57 AM
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