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[PS3Scene]

Blu-ray Player Prices Hit 2008 Highs As Competition Dwindles Posted by XanTium | 12-3-2008 23:44 EST

From tomshardware.com: Blu-ray Disc players from Samsung, Sony and Sharp are now the most expensive they have been all year, presumably because HD DVD's exit from the high-def disc arena has removed some of Blu-ray's pricing pressure. In a move to expedite HD DVD's downfall, Blu-ray manufacturers and retailers aggressively cut prices earlier this year, to the point where it was possible to buy a standalone BD player for less than $300. Now, however, according to Pricegrabber.com's most recent information, the average price for Blu-ray hardware is around $400, which is right around where it was last year. Full Story: tomshardware.com

[dezza9995]

Hmmm, i think we all expected this to happen. The price of the Blu Ray movies will be next. Think im just gonna stick to DVD's now that HD-DVD is dead.

[Zod5000]

Sony seems to be as shortsighted as hd-dvd.  They don't really want to become the next laserdisc do they, where only the niche market buys it?

The blu-ray consortium, gets royalites from every player and every disc sold.  Look how much cash philips got from CD technology.

I'd think they'd want to push blu-ray so they'd starting getting all the royalties, otherwise the masses might just stick with dvd.

[malformata]

I have a hard time imagining that physical media will exist for very much longer. I don't know about others, but I find cds, dvds and the like to be a complete pain in the ass. Let us download it. Death to Blu-ray and their shortsighted ilk.

[eldritch2k4]

QUOTE(malformata @ Mar 13 2008, 11:58 AM)

I have a hard time imagining that physical media will exist for very much longer. I don't know about others, but I find cds, dvds and the like to be a complete pain in the ass. Let us download it. Death to Blu-ray and their shortsighted ilk.

<A> Physical Media will not die for a LONG time. Most people like to have something other than 1s and 0s to show for their $15 - $30.

<B> If you want to spend four days (on a 3Mbit DSL connection) to download a movie with the special features and quality of a Blu-ray disc, more power to you. I'd rather spend an hour or so driving to and from Best Buy or Circuit City and purchasing a disc.

<C> What the hell is shortsighted about Blu-ray? They had a sale? Having a sale is shortsighted? Walmart, Target, Sears, etc. do this all the time. Are they being shortsighted? Please, please, PLEEEEASE go learn a little about Capitalism and Economics before you open your mouth.

[malformata]

<a>Physical digital media contains only 1s and 0s. That's what you are paying for when you buy a "DIGITAL Versatile Disc" or similar.

<b> If Blu-ray quality is what we are concerned with here than I agree that we are a years from being able to transmit that amount of data quickly. Storage is also a concern when downloading this amount of data. However, I think the P2P, torrent, newsgroups, etc. communities offer more than adequate evidence that people aren't concerned necessarily with quality over content. This has been a concern for the ever vocal music industry.

<c> Capitalism is chiefly concerned with consumers purchasing "stuff". Consumers have to be convinced to purchase said "stuff". Digital transfer across lines is easier and cheaper than going to the store. The leftover industrial attitude that everything is physical commodity will have to be overcome by these corporate entities. Whereas in the past it was necessary to reproduce things in a factory, it is now very easy to reproduce digital media. ctrl-c, ctrl-v and I have an almost instant copy of your movie. Done deal.

As data transfer becomes faster and storage space becomes less and less restricting the dying breaths of digital information disseminated physically become more shallow. That last gasp can't be far away. I haven't bought a physical cd or dvd in over a year. I probably won't again. I can't be the only one. In this respect I consider Blu-ray, etc to be short-sighted.

ps. respectful communication would be nice. we all have valid ideas. I'd appreciate not being told to shut my mouth.

[FCTE]

I wish digital downloads would stop being brought up. Yes, it is the "future," but quite far from now.

Until a high speed connection is available in EVERY home and we have an internet structure capable of delivering huge files at a decent speed (the 360 takes almost 3 hours some days to download an HDM) then digital downloads as far as HDMs goes is just not feasible to be a standard at this time.

Not to mention the poor quality of current VoD compared to the higher quality of an HDDVD or Blu-ray disc. With music you can get away with poorer quality for non-audiophiles, but people into HDMs can tell a substantial difference between VoD and HDM discs both in PQ and sound.

[eldritch2k4]

QUOTE(malformata @ Mar 13 2008, 05:50 PM)

<a>Physical digital media contains only 1s and 0s. That's what you are paying for when you buy a "DIGITAL Versatile Disc" or similar.

<b> If Blu-ray quality is what we are concerned with here than I agree that we are a years from being able to transmit that amount of data quickly. Storage is also a concern when downloading this amount of data. However, I think the P2P, torrent, newsgroups, etc. communities offer more than adequate evidence that people aren't concerned necessarily with quality over content. This has been a concern for the ever vocal music industry.

<c> Capitalism is chiefly concerned with consumers purchasing "stuff". Consumers have to be convinced to purchase said "stuff". Digital transfer across lines is easier and cheaper than going to the store. The leftover industrial attitude that everything is physical commodity will have to be overcome by these corporate entities. Whereas in the past it was necessary to reproduce things in a factory, it is now very easy to reproduce digital media. ctrl-c, ctrl-v and I have an almost instant copy of your movie. Done deal.

As data transfer becomes faster and storage space becomes less and less restricting the dying breaths of digital information disseminated physically become more shallow. That last gasp can't be far away. I haven't bought a physical cd or dvd in over a year. I probably won't again. I can't be the only one. In this respect I consider Blu-ray, etc to be short-sighted.

ps. respectful communication would be nice. we all have valid ideas. I'd appreciate not being told to shut my mouth.

You missed the point entirely on <A>. When I purchase a DVD, Blu-ray, CD, etc. I get something I can hold. Something I can look at. Something, that if my HDD gets screwed up (as is want to happen with DVR) I don't have to worry about spending hours downloading again. Something that I know will work if I upgrade my PC. Something I can take over to a friend's house if I so desire without worry that my License will be invalid on their player. Example: I've downloaded Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles from XBL. If I decide I want to go to a friends house and watch it, I either have to take my entire 360 or hope that that friend has XBL access that I can log into, spend about 20 minutes recovering my XBL account to their 360 which will, in turn, require me to recover my account again when I get home. Or I can buy a physical disc, grab the disc as I walk out the door and watch it with no hassles.

A Few Things on Point <B>:
This whole discussion is about DLC being a replacement for BD and DVD. Any solution proposed has to be of equal quality and content of the format it's trying to replace. And again, said solutions should be more convenient than the previous format. Storage space and bandwidth destroy any hope of equal quality/content and as such make the DLC less convenient.

Also, the fact that people who aren't willing to pay for content (P2P) are content with the quality offered as evidence of the lack of concern over DLC quality is ludicrous. That is a clear example of "not looking a gift horse in the mouth." The people who pay for BD, DVD, and eventually HD DLC are concerned about quality. I didn't pay $2600 (and this is a cheap system, I've seen people spend $10,000+) for my HD Theater setup to view DivX and Xvid rips at sub DVD bitrates that claim to be HD because they are 1280x720 resolution (FYI to those who don't know, bitrate means more to HD than res).

<C> There is nothing shortsighted about planning for being the standard for 5 - 10 years. DVD did the same thing when it took over for VHS. BD isn't supposed to be permenant, but physical media isn't going anywhere in the next 20 years. It will take at least that long to get FiOS connections to Rural areas and then it will take another 5 -10 years to convince everyone that DLC is the way to go. You can't start convincing everyone until everyone has the capability.

And yes, your kind is the rarity. Go look at the size of the DVD sections at CC, BB and Walmart. If so many people were giving up on physical media, the chain stores wouldn't have so many different movies available. They wouldn't stock them, just like they are stopping stocking HD-DVD movies.

[Elemino]

QUOTE(malformata @ Mar 13 2008, 04:50 PM)

<a>Physical digital media contains only 1s and 0s. That's what you are paying for when you buy a "DIGITAL Versatile Disc" or similar.

Huh??! That's what EVERY disc, hard disc, network cable, and data transmission contains.

QUOTE(eldritch2k4 @ Mar 14 2008, 07:05 AM)

FYI to those who don't know, bitrate means more to HD than res).

That's very true. You can still be at 1080 and have digital blocks in your picture from the compression. Just look at DirectTV. (AND BTW Fios IS way better). True 1080p HD uses a bandwidth of somewhere around 3gbps. That's without xvColor (or YCC), that's without TrueHD or DTS HD. So think about this. A Typical bluray plays about 30Mbps. But the output to your TV is 3Gbps. That's about a 100:1 compression ratio to begin with. If you try to get it down to the tiny amount of data a typical divx movie uses, how much video quality do you think you're going to lose?

[malformata]

eldritch2k4,

You make really good points. I agree that I am probably in a small category of consumers. I don't make a lot of money, use a tv that I got from my grandfather for free, and watch movies on the laptop I got from work- streaming netflix. I walk everywhere because I live in the city so going to the store is a once a month deal. For me dvd quality alone isn't an issue because I can't tell the difference on my shitty tv and laptop. Beyond that I barely watch movies anyhow- and would prefer to spend my money on things like booze and drugs- ha!

Anyhow, I have to agree with you at this point. I seem to have made the idealist mistake of being too far-sighted. I do imagine that eventually we will just be passing data between each other one way or the other, but that is probably further off than I imagined.

Thanks for responding intelligently.

Elemino- I'm quite aware of that. I was merely making a point to eldritch2k4. I misunderstood the point he was making about physical media.

Best to you all.

This post has been edited by malformata: Mar 14 2008, 06:33 PM

[spinr34]

HD is hype, remember this. people don't really care what quality they get as long as the quality isn't bad enough where they stop and say, "this looks bad". the average consumer doesn't understand the difference between hd and sd, they just know hd is supposed to look better than sd. if people can pay a monthly fee of say $20 - $30 and get unlimited movies streamed to their TV, they'll do it, as long as the quality isn't horrible, and, this type of service is very possible in today's world. as long as the content is on that service of course ;p people just want to watch their movies, i don't think they really care how they get them. for the people that do care, they'll put the money out for hd releases whether it's a physical disc or downloaded.

[HotKnife420]

QUOTE(Zod5000 @ Mar 13 2008, 05:44 PM)

Sony seems to be as shortsighted as hd-dvd.  They don't really want to become the next laserdisc do they, where only the niche market buys it?

The blu-ray consortium, gets royalites from every player and every disc sold.  Look how much cash philips got from CD technology.

I'd think they'd want to push blu-ray so they'd starting getting all the royalties, otherwise the masses might just stick with dvd.

 I doubt that. The fact is that if you're getting a HDTV, then you're going to want HD content. If the movies are in the store on Blu-ray, eventually, you'll buy Blu-ray. You're overestimating the integration rate of downloading. Currently, it's not in THAT many homes. People are going to be more likely to buy a standalone for quite some time. Also, let's not forget that many other countries don't have widespread broadband service, so downloading/streaming isn't a global option yet.