when will blueray replace all standard/upscale dvd player completly - Page 3

Get real. I've heard the "handhelds will sync with EVERYTHING" argument for going on 5 years now, and outside of the occasional iPod boom box, absolutely nothing has come of it.

You're confusing your personal wants with real-life trends, here. Apart from netbooks--which, ironically, easily overtook iPhone sales--there hasn't been any such trend.

But by all means provide these sales numbers and articles.

Again, I've heard this time and time again for the last half-decade. Yet it hasn't happened. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, provide your evidence that anything is remotely near happening.

And don't forget, the portable storage market, especially flash, has taken an enormous hit recently. Even Samsung said the market just isn't there.

My iPod has about 15 movies plus TV shows plus video podcasts on it. We also have a 9 inch Phillips portable DVD player that the iPod plugs into. The kids love it and we use it non stop on vacations. Even when the kids are sick in bed, the always ask for it. They can bundle up, stay warm and watch a favorite show or movie.

There are hundreds of other times you might want to watch a movie on an iPod (I am currently re-watching episodes of lost on my phone when I travel), you just need to think outside the BD box.

We are talking about HiDef media here. The iPod isn't a HiDef device nor is your portable DVD. Are you saying that iPod or Portable DVD = HiDef?

Is this turning into one of those "anything" but Blu discussion.

I am not some kind of iPod zealot, but you download movies to it and then sent it out to a TV. Not sure about HD, but I am sure it is coming eventually.

I was watching a windows 7 promo yesterday that was pretty impressive. Alot of folks don't realize why Vista is the way it was. Many of the features originally intended for Vista were left out because they had to go back and fix security issues in xp.

The touch screen aspect, photo enlarging and a number of other neat features were supposed to originally be in Vista.

Windows 7 adds synchronization and is a OS that is scalable. so you can work on a doc on your desktop, continue it on your phone, switch to your laptop... get your laptop destroyed ... no problem because the doc is still accessible on the other devices.

The idea is to integrate all the devices into one system. Including TV.

Don't know if it will actually turn out that way, but it sounds promising from the initial beta reviews that I have read.

I think this will play a big part into how much DLs take hold. And the iphone in many ways also ties into this. It is a mac at heart, but Mac seems to be developing along these lines as well.

Still prefer Bd myself for my movies. I only watch my shows online anymore. Just finished up and got caught up on Bones on Fox.com.

Considering that PS3 Nov. sales has dropped 19% from the
same period of last year, the road ahead of blue ray is
very tough.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...ummet_sne.html

I had read that the 360 was outselling the PS3 by 3:1 and those numbers are pretty close. Of course the Wii is doing even better.

Its funny that last year when numbers showed that the PS3 was not even selling as well as the Gamecube (last gens #3 console), BD fans freaked out and claimed that by this time the PS3 would be outselling the 360 and in a few more months be caught up in total numbers too.

So while I am sure the PS3 has now passed the lowly Gamecube, it is selling being our sold close to 3:1 by the 2nd place console. The Wii on the other had is set to sell more units this year than the PS2 did in any year of its existance...and its momentum is still increasing!

Sorry to get off topic, but soon gamers will start dumping their PS3s which means cheaper BD/media players for me!

Personally I don't see that happening and don't you already own a PS3 that you use as a Blu-ray player and media client?

I've sat in a hotel room with my P2 14 inch laptop and watched the SD version of Bada Santa. Which was great for the SD version, even if the black bars gave me the same screen acerage as an iPod.....

As stated, I have a Big Ass TV, so why would I want to watch HDM (should have been more specific first time round) on anything less than it?

I can see putting a BD ROM reader into a new swanky 15.4 WS laptop and using that on the road, but a 3inch iPod screen really doesn't cut it for me.

For my mobile music, I use a Clix2, which as a pretty good screen. Well, that's what the specs say anyway. Can't say I've ever tried it.

I do admit that I like the sound of a portable BD player, ala SD DVD. But again, it would be for road work.....

Seggers

Ah, the best part of a PS3! Which I have 2 of right now. You can place your media (pictures, music, HD home movies, DVDs, etc) on a media server and access them from different rooms/floors of the house. NO running up and down 2 flights of steps trying to find a disc! I still need a PS3 for my bedroom.

I do see people dumping their PS3s in the future just as they did with old Xboxes gamecubes and PS2s. My local Gamestop has stacks of them for sale most for about $50 or less.

I think you folks are looking at the MP4 player concept the wrong way. Yes you can watch a movie ont he ipod, but that is not really how Everdog and I are using it as much. I look at it as a portable container for the movie. You load the movie on, like you would burn a DVD, and then play it on another full size device. Imagine being able to carry 15 movies in your pocket for instance. It is not the 3" screen that we are talking about... it is the portability. Surprising how involved you can get on a movie in a 3" screen though. I watched lotrs once on my MP4 player while waiting in a doctors office for 2 hours. Surprisingly watchable.

And why would I want to carry 15 movies around in my pocket?

A song is 3 minutes long, I can listen to many songs in two hours and that is why the ipod is a great "music container".
How many movies can I watch in 2 hours? One. Why carry 15.
Because I can?

Hey, I am with you for the most part. I prefer HDM. I am just saying that to assume people watch their movies on those 3" screens instead of the bigscreen is a false assumption. while some do, other use it as a container for their movies. Or they are going somewhere and download the movie to the device and just bring the ipod over.

Storage is going to have come way down in price though. When I buy a disc, the storage cost is built in. I'm not interested in going backwards in quality, so I'd have to spend a lot of money to store hundreds of movies that take up 25-30GB on average. When I can get, say, 5 terabytes for $80, we'll see. I don't doubt that the price will come down, but it's going to take several years.

As for the original question, in a few years I could see BD players replacing DVD players for the most part. It's like how you can't really buy a (non-portable) single CD player at Wal-Mart or Best Buy because DVD players have gotten cheap enough to supplant them. The dedicated CD players that survive are the changers and the high-end gear.

That doesn't mean the BD format will replace DVD by then, just that you'll almost have to buy a BD player to play DVDs. (Just as you can't buy a non-HD TV of a decent size, but that doesn't mean everything is HD).

If you have 15 movies you have some selection. Lets say you are going with a bus that takes 2 hours, perfect time for a movie.

With 15 great movies on the device, you have some selection. You doesnt have to add a movie before you travel, you already have so many to select.

Sorry....My eyes are old, i'm not watching a frakin movie on a 2 inch screen.

Backward dual player devices mean that BD doesn't have to replace the dvd only players anytime soon. However, one day you'll walk into your local B & M and find the dvd player gone and find BD/DVD/upconvert players at very low prices. The price decreases may not happen very fast with the software but it will with the hardware.

If a movie is in my collection it is because I will watch it more than one. But depending on the title I will only watch it some where between 1-3 times a year. I am NOT going to waste one of those opportunities watching it on a 2" screen. Just not going to happen.

The only value I see to a 2" screen is you don't have to worry about macroblocking, EE, DNR, focus or color timing.

I don't know how many ipod Touches Apple has managed to sell, but a good many of them are probably used for watching movies, videos and TV shows. In fact the new Nano screens were redesigned to make them more suitable to watch movies and videos.

Hand held game consoles also sell quite well, often better than stand alone consoles.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/...ike-crazy-aapl

There is the world we wish it were and then there is the world that is. People do buy video centric handhelds

First, you realize that iphone is a product from one company and Netbooks are product category. Smartphones as a whole probably sell 10X more than Netbooks as a whole. But that is another story.

There are ultra compact handheld PCs, not much larger than a typical hand held, including the Sony UX for instance that you can use like a regular portable hand held, but since it runs Windows you can synch directly with TVs like the Pio Elites. In fact my Vaio TX notebook is pretty small as well and I can synch with my Pio Elite Plasma with no problems at all.

bjmarchini was right. An iPod can hold like a months worth of songs these days. They whole point is not that people try to listen to them all at one time, but rather they can take them all and listen to what they want depending on their mood. And even better, an iPod plugs in anywhere these days. My AVR even plays video from iPods.

So why would you carry around 15+ movies? Maybe one day you want to watch a comedy, maybe you want to watch a drama. My kids often takes movies to their friends to watch via an iPod.

I do love the fact that I have a 16 GB chip smaller than my pinky finger nail that holds a bunch of movies and music.

Very true and neither is the media that gets sold in the Wal-Mart bargin bin for $5.00. How much could the studio be making off that considering the pressing, packaging, shipping and handling. The only thing keeping DVD viable IMO is the new releases, but even then Blu-ray is getting more competitive.
For example from amazon.com:

Notice that the compariable DVD is $1.01 less for list price and $3.00 less for Amazon pricing. They do have just the movie for people that have no intrest in the special features that will likely do well for DVD rentals, but I can't see a movie buff that actually buys movies going for the featurless version.

Also there were many BD players sold this thanksgiving. This could also account for this interesting fact.

Per the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG)

Read the full article here: http://uk.gear.ign.com/articles/938/938098p1.html

On thing to keep in mind is that DVD is almost no R&D cost, the plants have probably all paid for themselves and the cost to create and host BD Live doesn't come for cheap.

Also, given the volume of DVD v. Blu Ray and the catalog it is hard to guage just by looking at MSRP or even the SP of a given title which is earning more profit $ for a studio even if the % margin is higher for the Blu Ray. Right now, the highest margin is for DL, but it is also the lowest selling. As you increase volume you can afford to lower the margins

Part of the trend is that BD players are being made w/ DL capabilities.
That will allow BB, CC and the like to trim inventories to stock all BD and new release dvds only.
You want Cool Hand Luke, sure we have it in stock on BD but for dvd quality/price, you'll have to find it on amazon or DL it from NF. Retail floor space is too valuable for $5 dvds and $20 dvd players.

If by "a few years ago" you mean something like the early 1990s, sure. But your assertion about "5 years" is laughably ill-informed.

The RAZR V3, which merely popularized web-capable phones with MP3 capabilities, were released out over 4 years ago, and the Treo smartphones were already in production by 2002. In other words, it certainly wasn't something anybody's been laughing about for the majority of the current decade. In fact, internet-capable multimedia phones seem to have been something that was already a fact of life for most major communication company R&D teams since before 2000.

Really? Two years after a major multimedia tech company (Apple) and one year after the largest tech company in the world (Microsoft) and had offered movies and shows, there were people on a AV tech site who didn't believe there wasn't mainstream download services?

Well, now you're just making stuff up.



I look at the real trends, not depend on "next shiny thing" . And currently, those real trends show downloading is growing slower than Blu-ray, let alone any other format. It doesn't hurt that I don't make claims about a compressed timeline to try and bolster my argument.

Wow, really? Gosh, if only this hadn't been used back in the early part of this decade, you might have had a point.

"Many of us"? Did you perhaps see some alternate future where (a) the HTPC market exploded and became so big that a large amount of consumers (not AVS forum members) were using it to transport media, and (b) that flash storage companies hadn't publicly stated there was no market for their product at all, let alone as a "missing component"?

Again, I'm gonna have to ask you to provide some numbers to support your claim that the download market--especially connected to HTPCs--has become so huge that "most of us" can claim it as a major everyday method of viewing.

While I agree with many of your points, I am not so sure about downloads growing slower than Blu Ray. May be a specific type of download business. But unlikely on the whole. First, it is important to note that just like Blu Ray is a format so is Digital download and digital distribution of content. However, digital distribution and downloading is a much broader market and includes SD and HD content, free ad supported content and purchase and download options for both renting and owning. It applies to small hand held devices and large home theatres. The growth of DVRs and Tivo (time shifting) has certainly played in role in eating into the DVD market for instance.

So if one were to put a value on ALL the devices that people use to watch downloaded digital content and the amount of content being watched via digital downloads I am quite sure it easily dwarfs anything we are seeing from Blu Ray. I can see Cable Ondemand sales being below Blu Ray, but why would I rent movies from Cable OnDemand when they are usually not day date and are often available on HBO, showtime or other movie channel. For instance, I can't rent TDK or Hancock from Cox cable until the end of the month.

Some places like itunes release their own numbers and don't report to content aggregators like Neilsen etc. At least that was their policy as I recall.

As an ownership format I think Blu Ray has clear advantages. It is far superior to any downloable version I can get - from a total package. But from a rental market it makes a lot of sense. DVD for instance created the ownership market for home video, will DL do the same for rental? Only time will tell.

I am wondering if any portable device allows you to synch wirelessl with your PC? I know my Apple TV synchs wirelessly with no problems. I now have 3 Apple TVs on 3 rooms all synching with one HTPC. Makes for a very nice set up aesthetically. I also have 1 Blu Ray player (which I am planning to replace soon with a Blu Ray/Netflix combo player).

It also helps that my itouch can be used as a nice remote for the Apple TV units. I only wish I could share my Cox DVR across multiple displays. I'll need a wireless hdmi switcher for that

Point of all this? Digital distribution and downloadable model play perfectly into a whole house integrated model. It does for videos what we have had for audio with mp3 and media extenders.

So one room will always have the best components like Blu Ray. For the rest media extenders will be the way to go.

Now if Blu Ray allows us full HD managed copy then it again changes the game....unlike anything else. Imagine at your finger tips hundreds of Blu Ray titles to watch in any room at any time. For the first time, sure, the ritual of opening a disk and putting it in would be great. But after that, for re-watch having a digital library would be great.

In a world of networked devices, current Blu Ray model is the odd man out. It's a step back from DVD in that regard. Although a straight digital copy like Warner and Disney offers is still ahead of the typical DVD since I don't need any additional software to extract the files etc. But so far only a small sunset of titles are offering this feature.

My Sunday BB and CC flyers have new action/blockbuster DVDs for $15 and the BDs for $25+. They don't mention anything about extras or comparible DVDs. They just say BDs are $10+ more.

You really need to spread the word and tell people that they should always pay $25 for new movies.

I guess I should mention that most of the movies in the flyer didn't even have a BD version mentioned.

Well then, if you look at the real trends as you say, you are aware that 95% of the people don't care one bit about blu-ray?

You keep on moving the goalposts here. First it was merely the existence of iPhones & co that was inconceivable, then it was "laughable" that anybody was thinking about such devices 5 years ago, and now it's that these devices could replace laptops. Make up your mind already!

Um, where are all these posts? And let me remind you, those download services that have been around for at least as long as Blu-ray are only doing 10% of Blu-ray's business...


Wow! That totally proves how you're not just trolling against Blu-ray!



Says the guy who can't even manage to keep his timelines and stories straight--if he's even in the ballpark in terms of accuracy--and who has made a dozen or so claims about downloads or against Blu-ray without providing a single shred of evidence.

It's also amazing that, y'know, nobody here said that. We're just pointing out that your statements are either patently false, or come from some weird idea of time that has no connection to reality.

When you can come back with unbiased articles, figures, hell, anything other than personal opinion, we might take you seriously.

Disregarding the fact that that's not even true (last time I saw polling, it was in the 30s), my point about downloads is that at this point, if we use your figures, then 99.5% people don't care about downloads.

That's what the numbers say, yet you two keep on saying that somehow means that OMGZOR BLU-RAY IS DEAD!

Are you going by polling over at br.com where you guys hang out?

This is the kind of stuff I keep seeing...

Ouch.

Regarding the projection that "only" 8% of consumers will buy Blu-ray this Christmas, this could actually be very good news.

According to Nielsen, 23% of homes have HDTV programming, and something over 30% even have HDTV.

The homes to which we can realistically expect to sell Blu-ray would therefore seem to be between 23% and 30%; call these "marketable homes".

If 8% buy into Blu-ray this season, that represents a big increase among the marketable homes.

This will also push a big jump in the weekly Blu-ray disk sales ratios, according to simple calculations with the Nielsen numbers.

Key point: Blu-ray is a part of the HD rollout process. We must expect that Blu-ray adoption will follow HDTV adoption.

I don't doubt that downloads could eventually be very popular and even replace BD. However, I'm focused on what I want today, not years from now. For now, BD is the only option for top-quality HD movies. Downloads have a long way to go to catch up. I'd also like to see some sort of standard, as the iTunes/NetFlix/Blockbuster divide is tantamount to another format war, and of course I already said that storage costs should come down (unless streaming is the dominant model).

In time, downloads could be very good, but I'm not concerned about what things will be like several years from now. I'm not going to ditch my BD player and switch to low-quality downloads just because they might get to be as good in 5-10 years. So, for now, I'll enjoy my BDs, and if downloads improve and emerge as a viable option, so be it.

I think that might be why there is such opposition here to downloads now. We don't want to see quality take a back seat to convenience. For the time being, that is just what's happening, but of course things can and do change.