What is Digg?426 Comments
- MrBabyMan, on 05/06/2008, -16/+339Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Blu-Ray player manufacturers RAISED their prices when HD-DVD died? Genius move there.
- roysorlie, on 05/06/2008, -4/+132Perhaps if BLu-Ray movies weren't so overpriced, buying them might be interresting.
They need to market these movies in grocery stores, gas-stations etc, and they need to be much cheaper. And of course, all movies should be worldwide releases. - dsmx, on 05/06/2008, -10/+118Or could sales be down because with the economy heading to or in recession depending on who you talk to people aren't buying luxury items like HD movie players, just a thought.
- drachemorder, on 05/06/2008, -2/+69The things are still too expensive. It's still several hundred for a player and $30 or so for a movie. That's much more than most people are willing to pay. I can't imagine that it costs THAT much more to manufacture movies in Blu-Ray --- the studios are mainly banking on people being willing to pay a significant premium for high-def, which so far they decidedly ain't. A few bucks higher would be reasonable, maybe; but right now the price is still around double (or more) than standard DVDs. It's going to need to come down quite a bit before a significant majority of people are willing to pay it, I think.
- silimike, on 05/06/2008, -17/+70Or maybe people don't really care about HD players, since most people who have HD also have HD cable, with HD on demand.
- chris4404, on 05/06/2008, -11/+55Exactly, ohh yeah and the fact I love to pay $35 for a movie. Yes I know I can buy them off Amazon for cheaper but its a lot more convenient to run to Best Buy after work.
- dpchi, on 05/06/2008, -5/+42Maybe this is because everyone knows that the 2.0 spec is just waiting to make all of the current blu-rays obsolete (except the PS3, which is selling well.)
Also, I am still an HD-DVD owner who is not upgrading to Blu until the prices drop. - norman619, on 05/06/2008, -6/+40Well the figured no more competition so they can gouge us. Not much of a surprise there.
- chris4404, on 05/06/2008, -1/+35I'm complaining the MSRP is way too high.
- JakeyG14, on 05/06/2008, -2/+32You spelled "illegally" wrong.
- inactive, on 05/06/2008, -5/+35High resolution does not make crap movies written by a committee of "creative" ponytail heads with "iPlotline" on their macbooks any better, And even if the movie is good, once you have seen it it becomes a rerun.
- luchid, on 05/06/2008, -4/+33It's so funny when people whine and say Ars is biased. Just today there was an article comparing .Net to Cocoa and people cried they were being Apple fanboyx. When they praised Microsoft for their Live Search efforts people called them MS shills. When they wrote about Xbox Live's issues people were claiming they were Sony fanboys. So which one will it be?
- lpmiller, on 05/06/2008, -6/+32"aside from soaring PS3 sales" Uh, hello? Perhaps people are buying PS3's because they are bluray players that also hey, play games. And are cheaper then all the other player only machines. These articles that refuse to look at the whole picture mean nothing.
- treed, on 05/06/2008, -9/+32Or maybe they figured no more competition so they can stop selling at a loss.
- mrgreen4242, on 05/06/2008, -4/+27Maybe this is proves that BD was an inferior solution to a problem that only won because it was backed by deep pockets?
NOTE: I'm not saying HDDVD was any better... just that there are more economical ways to deliver HD media to people. - kingmanic, on 05/06/2008, -3/+24One of the things is there has been a 40% drop in non PS3 blu-ray players. The PS3 still has fairly strong numbers and there has been no mention of traditional hardware trends such as a after tax season drop in luxury goods. The article even points out that including PS3's there has been a huge increase year over year and from one month to the other. The 40% drop only means that the rate of purchase of non PS3 units has dropped. The rate of PS3 sales has increased.
from the article: 'Remember, it took nearly a decade for sales of DVD players to overtake those of VCRs. It was only when DVD players began dropping down around $100 that they truly took off, and Blu-ray has a long way to go before it gets there.'
It's not so much of Ars being biased against Blu-ray more of Diggers and the person who posted this story NOT READING THE ***** ARTICLE or getting the wrong message form the story. Soaring PS3 sales means Blu-ray is advancing and that consumers tend to buy the things that they think will get the most bang for their buck. PS3 = future proof BD player with a lot of extra features. - delb, on 05/06/2008, -6/+25Lower the price of the players and they will come. Simple as.
- doctordbx, on 05/06/2008, -5/+23It is noticeable but is it noticeable to the point where it detracts from the movie?
Nope. - phinn, on 05/06/2008, -4/+21I'll buy the PS3 so i can play Blu-ray (and games), but I won't buy Blu-ray they are a rip off right now. Seeing movies for $30 is a joke when I won't pay more than $10-15 for a dvd
- norman619, on 05/06/2008, -2/+18sorry but $30 for a movie is a ripoff. The players could be dirt cheap I still couldn't justify paying that much for a movie.
- orangefly, on 05/06/2008, -0/+16worked out well didn't it....???....
- dvddesign, on 05/06/2008, -2/+17You know, it could just be that this is still a new and expensive luxury item.
DVD didn't really take off until Xmas 1999, two years after it debuted.
If repurposed quotes from articles were the signaling death knell for every new technology, we'd never see anything new. New technology takes about 2 years to catch onto mainstream.
Anyone remember what DVD's used to cost back in 1997? I paid $400 for my first DVD player and each movie I bought for the thing ran me about $25 - $40. Cut to 2000, DVD's average about $20 for new releases, ceiling at $30 for SE, players cost about $200 average.
So here we are again with a new technology. I bought a BR player last year for $379, movies are about $25 - $40.
If everyone wants to hack BluRay apart, at least let it go through a holiday on it's own to judge software and hardware sales. Or at least until finalized 2.0 hardware is available for mass consumption. Besides, LaserDisc had a nice long healthy 12 year lifespan being a mostly niche product, so you won't hear me complain either way. - olenick, on 05/06/2008, -1/+15I don't care whatever they figured; they can either drop the price to $100 or I'll wait for somebody to (legally) stream 1080p encoded streams to my TV through the 'net.
- hipnerd, on 05/06/2008, -2/+15But Sony was the company that paid $400 million to Warner Bros to kill HD-DVD. Talk all you want about "the association." We all know who is pulling the strings.
- alpha19, on 05/06/2008, -0/+13@Rinxix: And you bring us right back to the point of this whole article. We aren't buying one.
- bigmark, on 05/06/2008, -6/+19Are they really surprised. Before they were going against a failing HD format. Now they are fighting againt upconverting DVD players. I bought one of those things and an upconverted dvd looks damn good on a 1080p tv. It's not blu ray or HD dvd, but so damn close that if i had to choose between an 11.99 dvd or 30.00 blu ray i'd pick the 11.99 upconverted any day. At least for now i will.
- inactive, on 05/06/2008, -2/+14Well if you look at the total adoption rate of HD in general... still something like less than 10% of televisions out there, and half of those have no hd source at all, maybe consumers are more interested in low profile televisions than they are the hd content that goes on them?
- Aadain, on 05/06/2008, -2/+14Where the ***** are you guys buying BluRay movies for $35 from? I can walk into my local Target and get movies between $20-$30 depending on how much "extra" stuff comes on the disc. Or I can go to Fry's and get them for as low as $15. Same over at CostCo. Best Buy is overpriced for EVERYTHING, so using them for a global price sample for BluRay movies is disingenuous for BluRay.
- kiroh, on 05/06/2008, -0/+11Xbox games come on standard DVDs. The add-on HD-DVD player was never intended for game discs.
- mywhitenoise, on 05/06/2008, -1/+12I'm pretty sure DVD is still around, and is considered competition.
Blu-Ray movies are still pretty cheap, you just have to look around. I've never paid more than 20 for one. The players on the other hand...who the hell is going to pay $400 for a stand-alone player when they can buy a PS3? - inactive, on 05/06/2008, -3/+14Well every september or october for the last three years we get a whole bunch of stories that "this is the year that hd televisions are really gonna take off!", yet hdtv's are still facing a standard replacement cycle of old worn out tv's maybe consumers are just not that interested in hd?
- greenrider04, on 05/06/2008, -3/+14The numbers don't include the PS3. As a customer who wants blu-ray, would you rather spend $400 on a standalone player or spend the same on a fully capable blu-ray player, and can play the next generation games, and stream videos from your computer as well? It seems like a no-brainer to me.
- bemenaker, on 05/06/2008, -3/+13No, it's common knowledge that on items like this, until you get under the magic price point consumers won't buy them, that point is $200. What happened to HD-DVD drives when they went under $200, they started selling like mad. Sony is just retarded, and greedy.
- brufleth, on 05/06/2008, -2/+12According to everything I've seen, which admittedly isn't much, there are no plans for the xbox 360 to get a BR player.
- norman619, on 05/06/2008, -5/+15Imagine that. The majority of the public is not falling for the hype and buying expensive toys to replace perfectly good TV sets.
- bemenaker, on 05/06/2008, -1/+11Still too expensive for consumers.
- shredswithpiks, on 05/06/2008, -0/+10^^^ so what's the confusion? doesn't matter what makes the price of blu-ray high, the point is people aren't willing to pay that much.
- wynja, on 05/06/2008, -11/+21I'm sorry. Do you have a HD player? The difference even on a 720P screen is very noticeable.
- browntiger, on 05/06/2008, -9/+18Any time I look at my 100+ DVDs collection I think what a waste. I hate disks.
Electronic format all the way. Never again I will waste money on disk media!
Players needs to drop in prices, and movies released at DVD price levels plus
be rentable for blue ray to fully replace DVD's.
As for me on demand is fine. Disks are obsolete - inactive, on 05/06/2008, -0/+9That's probably part of it but another luxury item that people aren't buying is big screen TV's (>50") which is what it takes for most people to be able to tell the difference between Blu-ray and a regular DVD. So with Blu-ray players and big screen TV sales slumping, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Blu-ray is slumping.
- Spuy767, on 05/06/2008, -3/+12Yes yes, but you see, those more economical ways don't include the thing that the studios want the most and that is annoying copy protection & DRM. If studios weren't so hell bent on DRM, they would release movies at HD resolutions on a DVD 9 using existing open-source compression technologies and everyone would walk away happy because all they would need was an inexpensive DVD player with a decoder chip inside to watch near Blu-Ray quality movies. Audio, however, would suffer.
- inactive, on 05/06/2008, -2/+11I will stick with my torrents.
- Monarch818, on 05/06/2008, -1/+10Sorry, as long as the players "Phone Home" to play a movie, they will NOT come! That and many refuse to give money to Sony!
- bemenaker, on 05/06/2008, -0/+8And the polls show that PS3 owners don't buy BR movies.
- strictnein, on 05/06/2008, -0/+8The only battle that MS cares about is the battle to digital distribution. They're still winning that battle and them supporting HD-DVD was just a move to help delay Blu-ray's wider acceptance.
- hexydes, on 05/06/2008, -0/+8I've said for a while now that for this generation of content, the medium that "wins" won't be decided by quality, but convenience.
I can tell the difference between a DVD and HD content. Probably many digg visitors can. However, the majority of people simply can't notice it, or find it so unimportant that they just don't care. What they will care about is not having to drive to the store, being able to watch previews of the movie before renting/buying it, not having late fees, being able to have other titles suggested to them, etc. The higher quality content will come over the next few years, but for now, the convenience of downloadable systems is going to be a big draw for this next generation of content. - FriedTurkey, on 05/06/2008, -0/+8Yeah I miss Laser Disc. One of my favorite things...
***Turn disc over ****
about it was how large the discs were. You couldn't lose them!! - br0ck, on 05/06/2008, -0/+8As seen on Digg several times over the last few years, http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html is a great little chart that very clearly explains the "Viewing Distance when Resolution Becomes Important: Screen Size Vs. Viewing Distance". The article it links to claims that contrast, color accuracy and color saturation actually play a more important role than resolution for most people.
- inajeep, on 05/06/2008, -1/+9It wasn't better specs, it was better marketing and better payouts. The specs don't drive movie publishers to dump a format all together.
- elliotys, on 05/06/2008, -5/+13Not only are they expensive, but I wouldn't be surprised if a new format comes out before too long.
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