1080P

Blue Ray is a screw job anyhow. I have yet to find a single disk that is actually recorded in and native output in 1080P. I thought the big deal and hype was all that space on the disk to allow this. The best I can find is 720P which my Audio/Video receiver upconverts to 1080P. A standard DVD upconverted is only minor hit on quality. When they start giving us what they hyped and promised I might start buying them. Until then, they can keep the over priced and underwelming crap

Blimey!

I have the Sony Blu-Ray r/w drive, but I don't think I have one of these DVDidder upconverters! Larry knows what Steve will make of me.

So it takes a couple years

I am tired of them expecting overnight conversion for the sake of their greedy shareholders. It is good the war is over. When HD DVD was still alive my local video store said they had no plans to carry any HD video. Now that Blue Ray has won they are saying they will soon start having Blue Ray titles to rent. That's great and I will happily rent them and watch them through my PS3. That was on of my reasons to buy it in the first place. Being a minimalist, not a pack rat I like one machine that does multiple functions and that is a good thing. I also did not want the red ring of death machine I deal enough with a blue screen of death on my PC gaming rig.

So we loose again

Let me get this - one of the reasons given for Blu-ray winning was the larger install base of players - now they start to wake up that most of those are PS3's and might never play a film!

Well blow me over but that could mean that HD-DVD always had the greater install base of 'actual' users.

Sounds like we (the public) loose again due to the decisions of a few retarded execs with their collective hands in the till...

market

Doesnt take a wizkid to figure out when Blue-ray will catch on...

when players are under 100$
when blanks are under 1$

very simple really....

Funny though

I had to laugh when the Blu-ray camp 'won' the HD format war. As a consumer I could have told them that I am looking forward to Blu-ray about as much as a hernia. The format was always going to be a dud. Most video we watch these days are podcasts, or some of the +500 tv-channels we have at home... over the years I have bought a large number of DVD's and VHS tapes which I still watch from time to time, but it is a long while ago since I actually bought a new one, or rented one for that matter. And if there is a really good film coming out, we still go to the cinema to watch it (anticipating the new Star Trek very much).
If I won millions on the lottery tomorrow, I still wouldn't buy into Blu-ray, so it hasn't got anything to do with money, it's just a non-starter.

Give it 2 years

I cant say im surprised by the slow adoption of bluray, but 5 years is a little too long.
This xmas wont see a huge takeoff, as prices are still too high (for players and media), but with hddvd gone, xmas will see a genuine surge.
By the next xmas (~1.5 years from now), prices should have dropped to the $100-200 range, there will me much higher HDTV penetration (especially 1080p sets), and the whole setup will be alot more appealing, both from the perception of dvd being old and dead tech, and most importantly, the price will be 'reasonable' for the majority of consumers.
Right now, bluray is positioned by the marketing folk and price as the 'superior, upper-crust' product, with dvd being mainstream. Until prices drop enough and they become more common, this tiering will hinder growth.
I mean, the price of media isnt that much greater than dvd, so a movie shouldnt be twice the price (im going to assume the actual cost of the disk is under a buck for dvd or bluray, neway, so the premium is just the a@$-f*#&ing for the 'premium' product).
If bluray movies were, say, $20, and a dvd is $15, it would accelerate adoption, as the biggest hurdle is the player, and not outrageously expensive movies.
Also not to be forgotten is the internet and p2p, as a poor university student, i cant afford even dvd's, so i download everything. In the future, Im not going to be the type to buy physical media anyway, at which time i will continue to download semi-legally, unless a legal, equally good alternative is available, like paying a monthly fee to get any media I would like.
But as it stands, the illegal way is still faster, easier, and all around superior to the legal methods.
Perhaps if they werent so greedy, and listened to their customers, they could have a sound business. As it stands, they are flailing around, trying to maintain their old levels of profitability by ripping off their customers of successively larger sums of cash, turning even more people away, exacerbating the situation.
While this normally makes me smile, unfortunately, the impact on the world is quite large, as the intransigence of upper management is screwing over the consumer, with no end in sight.

Bottom line: The easy street of the 70's-90's business model is dead, they cling to it, screwing everyone over.
Its time to adapt, either the established players must do it, or eventually fall into the annals of history, and a smarter, more fluid, dynamic company will take its place.

/endrant

Edsel Rev. 1

Blu-ray and Ford Edsel. Same thing; what everyone needed but nobody wanted. Works for me.

Blu-Ray PC drives

I'm tempted to buy a Blu-Ray Reader/DVD-RW drive for my PC but I can't at the moment warrant forking out £100 or so on such a drive, especially when the films are so expensive.

In fact I'm rather tempted to pickup a bargain basement HD-DVD player to plug into the TV and enjoy cheap HD-DVD films off eBay and upscaled DVDs.

Maybe once Sony cut the PS3 price to under £200 I'll probably buy one.

Rob

Ah, then usual twist....

The article says, "Blu-ray manufacturers, who at least appear to have caught on to the problem, have now started to slash prices in what appears to be a desperate bid to get the market going"

Excuse me, but isn't this exactly what everyone in the tech media has been demanding for the last 3-4 months? So now prices start falling, and instead you find another angle to attack? Instead of writing about how the BluRay market is maturing as prices fall with CE manufacturers looking to increase market penetration, you attack them for it? So what is it that you want? Cheaper players or more expensive players?

The article also blathers on quoting someone as saying, “If you're only going to spend $500-600 on a PC, are you really going to spend 40 per cent more for a built-in Blu-ray player?"

If you're going to spend $500-600 on a PC why are you concerned with BluRay anyway, unless you want an optical drive that can backup your HDD. There's little to no point looking to PCs for HD movie playback, you kinda need a bigger screen for that.

H.264

For now upconversion works great unless you have a 70' TV or you watch your movies at 30cm from the screen.

What I would really like is DVD players with H.264 compatibility and skip the blue-ray-of-death altogether.

already cheaper

the Dell upgrade is dirt cheap like a 100 or less for slimline notebook bd-reader dvd-burner, the pc liteons, lgs, with bd/hd, are about 130-170 thats down from almost half from first quarter, standalones though have not seen many deals since death of hd, and bd prices have actually risen going from dvd23ish to 35, and canadian retailers gave no blowouts on hd like bestbuy america and amazon, otherwise I would have scored an xboxdrive and a bunch of 5dollar movies, but like I said in another article here, once bd is 10 or 15 and players 50-100, pirating will be history, I have minus7 correction and I can tell the difference between sd and hd, sure at 35 ppl will stick with 12previouslly viewed dvd, but 20, ppl will grab premium titles, and 10 thats the biggest profit margin, rich and poor will buy everything, no rentals, no downloads, ty K

Told yer...

You've really got to be on the ball to tell the difference between upconverted SD video and High Definition content, even if you've got a big screen. ("Anything less than 50" need not apply") The culprit is our eyeballs; they're way less resolution than even SD video so provided your SD feed is clean you'll have no problems with picture quality. We got caught with the HD hoopla because most SD feeds were pretty bad so we confused "inherently lousy picture quality" -- a.k.a. videotape -- with inherent definition.

Its really easy to fool the eyes. That's why we're able to take movies at 24fps and convert them to video at 25 or 30fps (and convert between video systems). The ear, OTOH, is a lot more sensitive -- errors are easily detectable.

BluRay is more about selling adaptive DRM than superior technology. We need now to watch out for the same kind of mindset that drove the BR/HD wars to start trying to degrade SD-DVD disks.

Blue-Ray slow to catch on

"ABI reckons that because almost 85 per cent of all Blu-ray players are actually PS3s"

Makes sense.

Up to recently the Blu-ray players were more expensive then PS3's. Even when they were slightly under, Hmm, spend the extra $50-100 and get a full entertainment console or just get the player? Most would opt for the PS3.

Assuming that company is using the current trend for the Blue-Ray I'd say they're right. However, with the PS3 being competitively priced with the players up to recently, and with the 'new standard war' going on most were just waiting for one to win. Why make the same mistake that was made with beta?

They're talking about upgrading a DVD player? We live in a time where electronics are treated like milk cartons. They are used and then thrown away, or atleast moved when something bigger and better comes out. Back in our grandparent's days they would have things like TV's and vacuum cleaners fixed. These days it's more expensive to have them fixed then to throw them away and buy new. This is especially true when many electronics repair stores charge $60 an hour + parts minimum of 1 hour and a Blu-ray player can be picked up for as little as $130 (all USD). (newegg.com)

Give it another year and we'll probably see them down to $50-$60 for the low end models.

I'd say Mr. Wilson is looking at the wrong numbers. $130 < 40%*500. Current trends cannot be used to predict the future sales due to the above variables. And I haven't heard of anyone upgrading or fixing anything that costs less then $200 to buy new for quite a while.

Blu Ray=Wide Screen

One Big cost for Blu Ray operation is You Mist Have WIDE SCREEN display or you won't get any real advantage. Well you do get pixels & they have to go somewhere, yet then image shrinks or is cut off or black bared. So think of it
Blu Ray is well beyond DTV, which is NOT Wide Scren. Keep you needs & formats in mind, or you could pull blopper.
drashek

players or the tv?

Is it the high price of the players or that of the high def TV's that is the real problem? Just how many people actually own high def tv's i wonder.

Gimmick

Blu Ray and HD DVD is another way for movie studios to make money off old films. They did it with DVD now they are trying to do it with Blu Ray.

I havw seen an up converted DVD on a 61" screen and looks perfectly fine, there is nothing wrong with the quality of picture.

More than likely consumers will choose digital distribution over High Def media. Most downloadable content, its quality exceeds that of standard dvd's, in my books thats good enough.

What a surprise, Blu-Ray didn't instantly go to 50% install base!

I mean really. What's taking so bloody long. Two months since the format war effectively ended, in a middling global economy, and Blu-Ray hasn't hit 50% install base yet? C'mon $ony, you bought this war! We all know you're just trying to screw the consumer! To$hiba only had pure consumer interests at heart when they invented HD-DVD. DVD is just plain good enough upconverted, and just wait for To$hiba's SUC! Yep that Super Up-Conversion will be even better than HD! I'm sure To$hiba had reasons for not releasing it first.
/sarcasm off

Okay, so whom really expected Blu-Ray to suddenly obliterate DVD overnight? The players cost US400 bucks (minimum). The movies cost 25-40 (in-store). When DVD was at this level, most people were admiring it, but not nearly enough to want it. Several things need to happen:

1) Player & Movie prices have to move downward. This will happen over time just as in DVD.

2) People have to have HDTV's, preferably 40+", preferably 1080p. Fortunately, this is already starting to happen in the US as 1080p televisions have started to break the US$1,000 barrier

3) More titles have to be available. This takes time.

Oh, and I'm sorry, but an upconverted DVD is still crap on an HDTV.

not again

They can't expect the same uptake rate as DVDs or CDs had. The jump in usability and quality from analogue tape to digital disc was huge and obvious to people, the jump from digital disc to a little bit better digital disc isn't going to make people rush out and buy the damn things at the same rate as before

Why a BR disk in a PC?

There are three main reasons why someone might want a BR unit in their PC:

1. High-capacity backup

[Why, when (a) optical disks have never been a reliable and long-lasting backup medium; (b) it's far cheaper per byte, faster, more reliable and more secure to use a portable USB hard disk, which can be re-used almost indefinitely?]

2. Access to BR media

[Very little on the market, and what there is (a) isn't using full resolution, as Bob points out, and (b) isn't porn - and porn is the "killer application" for video media, as witness the VHS/Betamax battle.]

3. Access to BR PC software

[What BR PC software? Until - chicken and egg here - BR units are commonplace in PCs, software producers won't adopt the format, which will cost rather more to produce. Most current packages fit comfortably on one DVD, or even one CD, anyway.]

All in all, I can't see any real reason for installing a BR disk in a PC. Give it a few years, and that might change, but right now there's no point.

Not a surprise

You can buy cheap "old edition" movies on DVD for $2. BluRay moves costs like $40, you can have 20 oldies-goldies for the some money like one new "blocbuster". But it doesn't look 20 times better. The situation is even worse for recordable media, archival grade golden DVDs are as expensive as cheapest Bluray. Consumer grade recordables are 5 times cheaper than cheapest recordable Blurays! The price of burners and players is Okay (especially PS3 is a bargain), but I'm not buying Bluray unless the media are comparable per GB to DVD.

Dont really need it.

You know to be honest I'm more than happy with a nicely mastered DVD costing me say £4.

How many DVDs do you have in your collections that you have watched more than once? A few maybe. How many more than twice? Is it worth paying over £20 for the version where I can see the blackheads on Tom Cruises nose? Nope.

HD is a nice to have, thats all. It will take at least another 3 years for BD to get any great market share at all. By then who knows what else may have arrived. iPlayer is proving that folks are happy to pull down SD content if its worth watching.

On some forums folks are so pro HD that as far as they are concerned everything that went before HD is worthless and should be thrown away. They would pay to watch paint dry if it was in 1080p!

I'll take Blackadder in SD over most modern day HD twaddle.

More pixels maketh not the quality!

Waiting for BD-RW

Even now, many stores are showcasing large screen televisions using upconverted DVD as a source. And people think it looks fantastic.

I am waiting for a $99 Rewritable Blue Ray drive for my PC before jumping on the BR bandwagon.

And I will be using that drive for data backup, not movie watching.

I don't even watch DVD

I have no need for Blu-Ray or even DVD for television watching. I have a DVD player that I used to use quite a bit to watch rented DVDs, but it hasn't been used in ages. I now rent all of my movies from Amazon.com, which sends them to my TiVo (which happens to be an HD-TiVo). I have a 42" HDTV and the TiVo video is fine for me. I know that the Amazon.com movies aren't HD, but I don't especially care about HD for most movies.

Not cheap enough yet!

I would actually like a BD-R drive for backup purposes, but still im not convinced that the price is good enough yet..

take this dual layer disc found on amazon uk.

Blu-ray Bd-r Disc Media - 50gb Dual Layer Price: £16.75

Sony BNR50A - BD-R DL - 50 GB 2x - jewel case - storage media Price: £21.63

Its a bit much for a single disc.. if it where a 5-pack for the same price it would be ok.

Also only 2x and 1x? writing speeds.. thats too slow, I hope we will see 6x or 8x discs soon.

Remember the days when your HDD would fit on a single CD-R disc, the good ol' times lol ;)

Blue-Ray in a PC

Someday, when internal SATA Blu-Ray burners go down US$30 and blank Blu-Ray disks are available for US$30 per 50 disk spindle (store brand, on sale), I will probably install a Blu-Ray burner in my PC.

Until that time, I don't foresee any reason for any sort of Blue-Ray device.

Comments by Microsoft/Toshiba employees?

I really wonder...

1) You are unable to find 1080p encoded Blu-Ray titles? What the heck are you talking about? Which titles have not been encoded at 1080p, really? Practically they are all 1080p. Then if your LCD or Plasma is just 720p what do you expect to see ?

2) Telling that DVD Upconversion to HDTV is as good as native HDTV content is a silly statement that's absolutely false technically wise both in the spatial and temporal domain resolution achieved and due to that the human eye just can't see what is not there. The human eye and your brain interpolates a lot and in a complex way both temporally and spatially BUT if the visual data is not there it can't do miracles. That's why native HDTV content is so much better than any upscaled SD content, telling otherwise it's just a lie. Also, DVD MPEG-2 encoded content is constrained by parameters that limit its full SD resolution even more and so it looks even worse than what the MPEG-2 codec it's really capable of (MPEG-2 was designed for HDTV in the first place, btw)

3) The acronym for Blu-Ray Disc is "BD" and *NOT -BR-* ! Stop spreading the wrong acronym thruout the 'net. Just use the correct one which is BD. Period.

a notorious research firm

About ABI Research

The problem of this article is that it is uncritically based on one of most notorious research firm whose media predictions have been so wrong and so often.

Read the article:
"ABI Research: Wrong Again On Blu-ray" (http://www.tvpredictions.com/abi042908.htm)

Bluray is fine

Im sorry but to say a 1080p Bluray movie is not much better than an upconverted SD DVD is ludicrous.

We upconvert using our Sony BD player and whilst the results are very pleasing the picture does not get anywhere near the fine levels of detail and textures that a HD movie gives.

Watch demo material quality movies such as Cars, Blade Runner and Harry Potter 5 and the difference is marked.

But thats not the entire reason why Bluray is excellent for Home Cinema buffs- the uncompressed soundtracks be they Dolby TrueHD, DTD-HD or PCM are startling and are as important an upgrade as the improvement in the visuals. I thought regular Dolby 5.1 and DTS showed off our old Denon, but the new standards take the bombastic surround experience to new levels.

I was however interested to read about their being no movies in "native 1080p"- would appreciate it if Bob would provide some more information about this as seeing as the discs are sold as being 1080p then surely trading standards would be interested in this?

Saying that I think Bobs system is at fault here as we pipe our Bluray through a HDMI 1.3 link via our amp and I can say for certain that neither the amp or our 1080p projector is performing any scaling when watching Bluray movies.

I hate Sony and Bluray is expensive- but if youve got a top end home cinema system then it is an essential purchase.

The future is bittorrent

Optical media is a dead format in general. The whole question of DVD or Blu-Ray is moot because most younger people can get whatever they want online for free.

China Format

Whatever happened to the DVD format that the was being promoted in China back when
both BluRay and HD-DVD were still fighting it out ?

Certainly they could rule the market on volume sales first and price drops close behind and as I recall it was technically sound.

The Tech and the 3rd world markets

Blu-ray is vastly superior, the bit rates and storage capacity is high enough for high quality rendering of cinema releases (once you de-noise the footage and hopefully drop Mpeg2). But it is not as simple as all that.

I have had a bit to do with video, and the sort of quality you can get at 9mb/s using a modern codec (read non mpeg2) codec is more than you can get on HDTV and most consumers would probably not be bothered choosing that on DVD over Bluray. It is likely the third-world markets this can be most popular, where the price of a bluray player and disks are more prohibitive, markets that also have lots of local content.

DVD's can also have more layers, let alone that technique reported a few years ago that can get 100GB on a DVD using a player with a software upgrade. As I mentioned before, elsewhere, you can also have Mpeg2 DVD that also contains data to upgrade it to HD, through a parallel codec. In this case users can play the disks in standard definition until they upgrade their players (imagine how happy video rental shops would be). Still, you always could have a SD layer over top of a high density HD layer (using the 100GB red laser DVD technology). One trick for the formats not involving high density recording, is to stick to 720p24-50fps for maximum low bit rate quality (18mb/s being preferable over 9mb/s for 50fps). Verdict, very possible.

Except in the case of the 100GB DVD disks, and high density HD layer, bluray will maintain the maximum enthusiast quality when all the disk is used, given the ability to extend to SHD and digital cinema resolutions for future 60 -200 inch+ screens. But for Ultra HD, that 100GB DVD method might need to be applied to Blu ray or holographic might be needed.

@Tom

Your not really thinking about this are you?

Torrents and bandwidth arent great if a HD 1080p movies with uncompressed audio comes in at the 40gb mark?

Some of us with highend systems want the best, and currently Bluray, like DVD and Laserdisc (once the only way to get 5.1 digital sound at home even if picture quality was relatively poor) before, is the cutting edge way of delivering the best sound and picture quality to our home systems.

If I wanted average picture and sound quality I would download movies, but for now Bluray has its place.