Will 2010 (Finally) Be Blu-ray's Year?

im finding alot of decent movies for good prices now for bluray.

Found my wfie a copy of twilight on BR in-store (HMV, not online lol) for $8, cheaper than the dvd versions.

The store had a couple of movies like that, nightmare before christmas ect.. alot of good movies that are worth buying, New release prices are still kinda of bad, I find it hard to pay $30 for a movie I really want. Thankfully renting them is much cheaper lol. Add in the fact walmart is now selling bluray players for a decent price. I seen one for $140 CAD which is alot better, not sure what they sell for in the US. Sure there not top quality players but the fact that players are getting to the average consumer price point I think gives it a good chance.

Movie streaming isnt close to becoming ready to replace physical media. In places like canada we have pathetic bandwidth caps and slow speeds, theres no way we could hope to steam anything close to bluray quality anytime soon. And im sure theres lots of places in the US thats the same.
 
What? Bluray? Really?

Pffft. Move aside. Downloadable movies are already here. Legally.

I can buy a movie on Zune and watch it on my PMP (Zune HD), TV (XBOX), and computer (Windows). What more could you want? (And don't say DRM free... it'll get there with time. No one, not even physical media, can avoid DRM yet)

Zune-Ray FTW!
 
heatlesssun said:
Well 2009 was my year. All of my new movie purchases and rentals went BD this year.
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Same. Tons of titles came out the past several months. Stores are adding more shelves for Blu-ray, and I'm finding a lot of them priced the same as DVD - except new releases, which is to be expected.

Blu-ray is where it's at.
 
nilepez said:
Are you fracking kidding?
As for paying off the industry, that may be true, but it ignores the fact that the HD group did the exact same thing (albeit less successfully)....or did you forget about them paying Paramount/Dreamworks 150 Million to release movies exclusively on HD-DVD?
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So what I'm reading from you is that you are for monopolies, and if the price coming from a monopoly is fair to you then thats good. Since your good with your history think about HDTV and ask yourself why we in North America had to wait approximately 10 years to get what Asia(Japan) were already watching. Some companies here didn't want to have to pay royalties to a foreign company, so HDTV was kept out until Motorola and another outfit could patent a chip. In the mean time we had to watch analog all these years. Internet through power lines was happening in Europe five years previous to just talking about it here, again all the excuses of why it wouldn't work here. Guess which companies would stand to lose the most if we could plug into the internet from our electrical outlets. Without going into detail, most every household in America is plugged into the power grid, with no lack of copper that I can think of. Ever look at the size of copper cable line vs electrical. Nothing but bandwidth. All this bullshit about having to wire everyone up and spending Billions to do it is exactly that bullshit. The infrastructure is already there, use it. Quit listening to the bullshit of these companies, and force their hand for your benefit.
 
I'll be getting my Blu Ray in a couple weeks. I'm getting one with Net Flix streaming. Time to make the switch. That and I refuse to pay MS $50 a year for a live gold account just so I can get Net Flix. Looking forward to it.
 
IRSmurf said:
What? Bluray? Really?

Pffft. Move aside. Downloadable movies are already here. Legally.

I can buy a movie on Zune and watch it on my PMP (Zune HD), TV (XBOX), and computer (Windows). What more could you want? (And don't say DRM free... it'll get there with time. No one, not even physical media, can avoid DRM yet)

Zune-Ray FTW!
Click to expand...

What more could I want?

Quality.

Sorry, why watch HD video with DVD style compression artifacts when you can have image quality and clarity that far exceeds anything else in the consumer market?

Enjoy your Zune-Ray. :rolleyes:
 
Uncle said:
So what I'm reading from you is that you are for monopolies, and if the price coming from a monopoly is fair to you then thats good.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

  • Apple Inc.
  • Dell Inc.
  • Hewlett-Packard
  • Hitachi, Ltd.
  • Intel Corporation
  • LG Electronics (Lucky GoldStar)
  • Mitsubishi Electric
  • Panasonic (Matsushita Electric Industrial)
  • Pioneer Corporation
  • Royal Philips Electronics
  • Samsung Electronics
  • Sharp Corporation
  • Sony Corporation
  • Sun Microsystems
  • TDK Corporation (Tokyo Denki Kagaku)
  • Thomson SA
  • 20th Century Fox
  • Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group
  • Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Quite the monopoly consortium there.

Posts like yours that assumes that Sony is solely responsible for the development, deployment, and pricing of Blu-Ray, are hilariously misinformed.

As for pricing, yes, I am totally cool with the fact that Blu Ray players, drives, and media have fallen in price far faster than DVD did, a-ok with that.
 
I'm in the camp that definitely has appreciates BD image quality, video streaming and downloads are WELL behind BD and I don't mind a few extra dollars for the quality. And AnyDVD and TMPGEnc take care of portability.
 
I find it funny how Apple is on the list but they don't have a BDROM option on their computers.
 
450 said:
I find it funny how Apple is on the list but they don't have a BDROM option on their computers.
Click to expand...

Isn't Windows the only desktop OS with official BD support? It's a question folks so if you have better info please share.
 
450 said:
I find it funny how Apple is on the list but they don't have a BDROM option on their computers.
Click to expand...

They don't want to pay the licensing fees to roll it into OS X and Quicktime yet, and I reckon they're way more interested in pushing HD movie downloads and rentals on iTunes. This may change since the Blu Ray licensing structure simplified last summer and the fees dropped, so we'll see. Its also why we'll never see Blu Ray on the XBox 360; why should Microsoft pay for BR licensing when people will just pay them for HD rentals?

You can use Blu Ray burners with Macs, but with hard drives and flash drives being as cheap as they are, I'm not interested. I absolutely love Blu Ray for watching movies but I'm pretty sure I'm done burning physical media on anything larger than a DVD. Hell, I hardly even burn at all these days, last time I did was to update the firmware on my SSD.
 
Steve said:
I bitched about prices forever and, it seems like the industry is finally listening to consumers because you can finally get decent deals on Blu-ray movies now without having to hit the internet.
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Prices have been in line with what DVDs sold for when the format was at a similar point.

With that said, the industry is also pulling a pretty fucking sneaky one to get people to buy Blu-ray movies too, something we've talked about for awhile now...and, this is the movie industry NOT the Blu-ray camp doing this:

Went to buy Terminator Salvation at Best Buy, regular DVD has PG-13 theatrical release and that was it. That's all you could get. If you wanted the director's cut R rated version, you HAD TO buy the Blu-ray version.

what the?
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I think the real question is why the hell are you buying that movie ;)

I've noticed it more and more on new release movies:

DVD (no special features) $15.99
DVD (2 disc SE) $22.99
Blu-ray (all bells & whistles) $20.99 - $22.99
Click to expand...

Been in these debates for over a year, and the prices for the deluxe DVD edition was roughly $22, while the BD was around 24-25. BD's are slightly less, while DVDs are about the same.


...Soooo, if Blu-ray doesn't take off this year...there are no more excuses left.
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There was never any doubt that it'd take off. Will that be this year? Yes and no. This is 99-2000 for BD. Sales will definitely increase at a quicker pace, but I think we've got 2 more years before the masses get on board. I was on the DVD bandwagon in early 1998, but most people didn't get on board until 2002 or 2003. I hope I'm wrong and it happens sooner, but that's my take.
 
heatlesssun said:
Isn't Windows the only desktop OS with official BD support? It's a question folks so if you have better info please share.
Click to expand...

You need to buy another application to play back Blu Ray media on Windows. Microsoft hasn't paid the license fees for it so you need to pay for an application that has, its why you don't have WMP with Blu Ray playback. If Apple gets Blu Ray playback then they will want it to be a part of Quicktime, I'd put money on that being the big holdup.

I have TotalMedia 3 on my Windows 7 machine for BR playback , its pretty cool. I hardly ever use it since I watch Blu Ray in my living room but it works well.
 
IRSmurf said:
What? Bluray? Really?

Pffft. Move aside. Downloadable movies are already here. Legally.

I can buy a movie on Zune and watch it on my PMP (Zune HD), TV (XBOX), and computer (Windows). What more could you want? (And don't say DRM free... it'll get there with time. No one, not even physical media, can avoid DRM yet)

Zune-Ray FTW!
Click to expand...

WEll shit, if you're looking for a low res movie on a tiny screen then DVD was already better than you needed. For those of us that want to watch it on an actual TV (or even a PC), most downloads aren't all that great.
 
nilepez said:
Prices have been in line with what DVDs sold for when the format was at a similar point.
Click to expand...

Yup, Blu Ray pricing had actually been better than DVD for the last two years at B&M stores. Hit the internet, and I have no idea why internet pricing doesn't count for Steve, and things are actually the same as they were last year: very price competitive and affordable.
 
nilepez said:
There was never any doubt that it'd take off. Will that be this year? Yes and no. This is 99-2000 for BD. Sales will definitely increase at a quicker pace, but I think we've got 2 more years before the masses get on board. I was on the DVD bandwagon in early 1998, but most people didn't get on board until 2002 or 2003. I hope I'm wrong and it happens sooner, but that's my take.
Click to expand...

QFT

I was on the DVD bandwagon back in 1997 and was actually over it before it took off with consumers in 2001. Compression artifacts drove me nuts.

Now we have a format without compression artifacts, unparalleled image quality, uncompressed or lossless audio, cheaper than DVD was in the same period of time, and we still have idiots on the internet complaining about relative prices and whatnot.

Everything is amazing and nobody is happy, fucking typical. :rolleyes:
 
Serpico said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

  • Apple Inc.
  • Dell Inc.
  • Hewlett-Packard
  • Hitachi, Ltd.
  • Intel Corporation
  • LG Electronics (Lucky GoldStar)
  • Mitsubishi Electric
  • Panasonic (Matsushita Electric Industrial)
  • Pioneer Corporation
  • Royal Philips Electronics
  • Samsung Electronics
  • Sharp Corporation
  • Sony Corporation
  • Sun Microsystems
  • TDK Corporation (Tokyo Denki Kagaku)
  • Thomson SA
  • 20th Century Fox
  • Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group
  • Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Quite the monopoly consortium there.

Posts like yours that assumes that Sony is solely responsible for the development, deployment, and pricing of Blu-Ray, are hilariously misinformed.

As for pricing, yes, I am totally cool with the fact that Blu Ray players, drives, and media have fallen in price far faster than DVD did, a-ok with that.
Click to expand...

That List is as you say is a consortium of companies that support Blu-Ray, because who else is their to support. Sony still gets the royalties for every Blu-Ray that gets sold.
 
Serpico said:
Yup, Blu Ray pricing had actually been better than DVD for the last two years at B&M stores. Hit the internet, and I have no idea why internet pricing doesn't count for Steve, and things are actually the same as they were last year: very price competitive and affordable.
Click to expand...

What I don't get is I believe Steve was buying DVD's fairly early. He knows what pricing was like (it was super cheap on line, thanks to tons of Etail coupons that gave you 30-50% off) and fairly expensive in stores like BBY.

I don't recall buying a DVD in BBY until somewhere around the time that LOTR was on DVDs. If Star Wars Ep 1 or the Potter movies came out before that, then they were sold at a loss and BBY had good prices on them (though i didn't buy EP1 at all).

IMO, B&M prices are just starting to matter, but not as much as it will in a couple of years. I think I've bought one movie in BBY and since they no longer let you use 10% off coupons on new releases, I'm going to return it (already ordered and received Star Trek from Amazon). I would have passed at the time, but I'd gone through the hassle of pricematching bestbuy.com (only at BBY do you have to do a price match to get the price that's on the kiosk in teh store) and the girl at the register was really nice, so I bought it anyway.

The only other B&M I picked up was UP/Monsters Inc. 2 deluxe editions for 13 bucks? I couldn't pass that up...and I can promise everyone there was nothing like that in 2000 (though some came close)
 
just my 2 cents here, Blockbuster just REMOVED most of their Blue ray selection. for those of us that don't buy movies (rarely do I every watch one twice) there is less point then every.
 
Valset said:
just my 2 cents here, Blockbuster just REMOVED most of their Blue ray selection. for those of us that don't buy movies (rarely do I every watch one twice) there is less point then every.
Click to expand...

The one in Jefferson city mo that is
 
Uncle said:
That List is as you say is a consortium of companies that support Blu-Ray, because who else is their to support. Sony still gets the royalties for every Blu-Ray that gets sold.
Click to expand...

*facepalm*
 
Uncle said:
So what I'm reading from you is that you are for monopolies, and if the price coming from a monopoly is fair to you then thats good. Since your good with your history think about HDTV and ask yourself why we in North America had to wait approximately 10 years to get what Asia(Japan) were already watching. Some companies here didn't want to have to pay royalties to a foreign company, so HDTV was kept out until Motorola and another outfit could patent a chip. In the mean time we had to watch analog all these years. Internet through power lines was happening in Europe five years previous to just talking about it here, again all the excuses of why it wouldn't work here. Guess which companies would stand to lose the most if we could plug into the internet from our electrical outlets. Without going into detail, most every household in America is plugged into the power grid, with no lack of copper that I can think of. Ever look at the size of copper cable line vs electrical. Nothing but bandwidth. All this bullshit about having to wire everyone up and spending Billions to do it is exactly that bullshit. The infrastructure is already there, use it. Quit listening to the bullshit of these companies, and force their hand for your benefit.
Click to expand...

It's not monopoly. It's standard. Blu-ray isn't run by one company, but a consortium of companies. Yes, I would want one standard. I don't want another DVD -R +R +RAM war. I don't want another VHS and Beta war. I don't want another Draft N war. They're very unproductive and hold back innovation, especially when they do the same damn thing.
 
Uncle said:
That List is as you say is a consortium of companies that support Blu-Ray, because who else is their to support. Sony still gets the royalties for every Blu-Ray that gets sold.
Click to expand...
Quote:
""Originally Posted by Serpico View Post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

* Apple Inc.
* Dell Inc.
* Hewlett-Packard
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* Intel Corporation
* LG Electronics (Lucky GoldStar)
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric Industrial)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation (Tokyo Denki Kagaku)
* Thomson SA
* 20th Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group
* Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.


Quite the monopoly consortium there.

Posts like yours that assumes that Sony is solely responsible for the development, deployment, and pricing of Blu-Ray, are hilariously misinformed.

As for pricing, yes, I am totally cool with the fact that Blu Ray players, drives, and media have fallen in price far faster than DVD did, a-ok with that.""

Sorry for the double post can't edit.
Sony still gets the royalties for every Blu-Ray that gets sold, by the manufactures of Blu-ray machines that belong to this consortium. They have to belong to this consortium or Sony won't give them the rights to use BLU-Ray technology. So I still consider this a Monopoly.
 
Uncle said:
That List is as you say is a consortium of companies that support Blu-Ray, because who else is their to support. Sony still gets the royalties for every Blu-Ray that gets sold.
Click to expand...

You don't know what you're talking about.

Blu-ray has a lot of grandfathers. A lot of people call it a Sony standard but by our estimates Sony doesn't even have 30 percent of the IP," Richard Doherty [principal analyst at the Envisioneering Group]said. The top four intellectual property holders are likely Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Warner.

Do you actually think that the other companies that have patents are giving the IP away fro free? That's a rhetorical question. Clearly you do.
 
nilepez said:
You don't know what you're talking about.

Blu-ray has a lot of grandfathers. A lot of people call it a Sony standard but by our estimates Sony doesn't even have 30 percent of the IP," Richard Doherty [principal analyst at the Envisioneering Group]said. The top four intellectual property holders are likely Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Warner.

Do you actually think that the other companies that have patents are giving the IP away fro free? That's a rhetorical question. Clearly you do.
Click to expand...

No, clearly Blu Ray was 100% created and licensed by Sony. I mean, all those companies I'd read about developing Blu Ray back in the early 2000s, they obviously have nothing to do with BR, nor do they have anything to gain from it, its all Sony and their HD monopoly.

PS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Founders

The Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF) group was a collection of technology firms working together to develop and support the Blu-ray Disc. The Blu-ray Disc Founders was launched on May 20, 2002. As Blu-ray support grew progressively; announcements in 2004 included Hewlett Packard and Dell, which declared backing for the standard on January 12, 2004, and TDK on March 19, 2004. It announced that Blu-ray Disc Founders will shift to Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) in October on May 18, 2004. It shifted to Blu-ray Disc Association on October 4, 2004.

The companies are:
  • Sony Corporation
  • 20th Century Fox
  • Dell
  • Hewlett Packard
  • Hitachi
  • LG Electronics
  • Panasonic Corporation
  • Mitsubishi Electric
  • Philips
  • Pioneer
  • Samsung Electronics
  • Sharp
  • TDK
  • Thomson
 
Serpico said:
You need to buy another application to play back Blu Ray media on Windows. Microsoft hasn't paid the license fees for it so you need to pay for an application that has, its why you don't have WMP with Blu Ray playback. If Apple gets Blu Ray playback then they will want it to be a part of Quicktime, I'd put money on that being the big holdup.

I have TotalMedia 3 on my Windows 7 machine for BR playback , its pretty cool. I hardly ever use it since I watch Blu Ray in my living room but it works well.
Click to expand...

Yes I have TotalMedia 3 and use it a lot great app. I was referring to protected path as I thought was a requirement for official BD support.
 
nilepez said:
You don't know what you're talking about.

Blu-ray has a lot of grandfathers. A lot of people call it a Sony standard but by our estimates Sony doesn't even have 30 percent of the IP," Richard Doherty [principal analyst at the Envisioneering Group]said. The top four intellectual property holders are likely Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Warner.

Do you actually think that the other companies that have patents are giving the IP away fro free? That's a rhetorical question. Clearly you do.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the enlightenment. Can't argue with facts. I guess whats eating me is that I would like to have choice, and I just saw Sony with deeper pockets win out over Toshiba, even though at the time I thought that Toshiba had the better product.
 
Anyone who thinks streamed HD content can even come remotely CLOSE to the quality of a nice home theater with a Blu-Ray player is simply delusional. There's just no way to get the same audio/video quality over a stream that you get with a dedicated device.
 
stop!theradio said:
Anyone who thinks streamed HD content can even come remotely CLOSE to the quality of a nice home theater with a Blu-Ray player is simply delusional. There's just no way to get the same audio/video quality over a stream that you get with a dedicated device.
Click to expand...

For now you are correct. In time as broadband improves I would imagine that downloaded and streamed content will become as good and even better than today's BD content. But today is not that day.

If you like downloaded and streamed content then more power to you but there's nothing digitally distributed that compares to BD ATM.
 
Funny you guys are talking about INTERNET streaming being the next best thing. Especially with gov't everywhere trying to pass usage-based billing and fighting net neutrality.

Good luck streaming fuck all to your computer/home theatre on a 3mbps ADSL connection. Not everyone has the luxury of FiOS or OOL or docsis3. Here in Canada, the only unlimited connection is via ADSL, which for my house, has a max of 3mbps down and 1 mbps up. Enough for my uses BUT not even remotely enough for any kind of HD streaming. There is cable available in the area, but at $50 a month for a 7.5mbps connection... with 30GB combined cap. WTF is that shit? And I don't live in the sticks, I live in a suburb of a major metropolitan city.

I'll stick to my BD, thanks.
 
^^Exactly my thoughts. Most, if not all ISP's are trying their hardest to limit usage and throttle bandwidth. Anyone who thinks internet-based streaming will get better and better and even surpass the quality of dedicated, local hardware is delusional, in addition to the delusional people who think stream content is "as good" as local media.
 
Valset said:
just my 2 cents here, Blockbuster just REMOVED most of their Blue ray selection. for those of us that don't buy movies (rarely do I every watch one twice) there is less point then every.
Click to expand...

I suspect Blockbuster is heading towards removing their entire store in a lot of places: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125019678123730195.html

Don't know that what they're doing predicts how Blu-Ray will fare...

I own a bunch of DVDs but much of what I own on DVD can be streamed at a similar quality to the DVD. The same can't yet be said about Blu-Ray

IMHO, Blockbuster is really going the wrong direction removing Blu-Rays. By focusing on DVDs, they're focusing on the very area that can be pretty much replaced by streaming right now - and streaming is part of what is hurting them. If anything, they should expand their Blu-Ray selection - that'd get me interested in going to Blockbuster again.
 
LanceDiamond said:
I suspect Blockbuster is heading towards removing their entire store in a lot of places: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125019678123730195.html

Don't know that what they're doing predicts how Blu-Ray will fare...

I own a bunch of DVDs but much of what I own on DVD can be streamed at a similar quality to the DVD. The same can't yet be said about Blu-Ray

IMHO, Blockbuster is really going the wrong direction removing Blu-Rays. By focusing on DVDs, they're focusing on the very area that can be pretty much replaced by streaming right now - and streaming is part of what is hurting them. If anything, they should expand their Blu-Ray selection - that'd get me interested in going to Blockbuster again.
Click to expand...

what you say is true but what they also told me is true, nobody was renting the videos. they cost more, run on more expensive equipment, and have a smaller selection. for a rental store it was a nightmare. They still rent DVD and can make money on it. This is the old chicken and the egg argument. the way these idiots ran the format war was just dumb IMO.
 
Homework for people who say BD is not a noticeable upgrade from DVD: go play a game at as close as possible to 720x480 then play the same game at 1920x1080 and come back and tell us if you noticed the difference. Unbelievable...
 
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