New Study Finds Low Interest In Blu-ray

PHPNerd writes "A new consumer survey recently released chronicles the woes of the winner of the hi-definition format war: nobody wants it. While consumers were very happy to embrace the DVD standard when it came about because it brought a huge jump in quality over VHS, the pros of switching to Blu-ray are not as obvious. From the article: 'In contrast, while half of the respondents to our survey rated Blu-ray's quality as 'much better' than standard DVD, another 40% termed it only 'somewhat better,' and most are very satisfied with the performance of their current DVD players." Another reason cited was that a Blu-ray investment also dictates an HDTV purchase, something consumers are reluctant to do.'" Maybe it's also that line-doubling DVD players can be had for less than a hundred dollars.

It's being pushed anyway

If this is true, why is Wal-Mart pushing the Blu-Ray discs to the front of the electronics section? Because they're all going to push it on us anyway.

As I recall...

DVD appeared to be pushed on us as well. But ... at least it had some merit to it!

Re:It's being pushed anyway

It is pushed in front because the revenue is bigger. Simple economics.

Now, one thing I have learned in my life that at some point you do not need the best, biggest and hippest to [do your job|be happy].
Commercialism is for businesses not for consumers.

Personally...

I'm a HD fan - in fact, I rarely watch SD any more when it comes to OTA programming. I just don't seem to care much any more about HD over DVD quality programs. As the summary says, line doublers while they aren't great (nowhere close to 1080p quality) work 'okay'. I held off because of the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle, and that showed me that there really wasn't a need for either.

That, and the fact that many Blu-Ray discs take 90+ seconds to go from insertion to movie watching is just stupid. If I buy a copy of a movie I want to watch it, not play with it. A 'quick-play' mode (and note that I'm not even talking about watching mandatory trailer-crap, just getting the damn thing 'loaded') would dramatically increase the odds that I'd buy into it.

I'll probably pick one up when my current DVD player finally dies... but there's no compelling reason to do so before it does. And this from a self-confessed geek who at least used to have a ton of home theatre stuff.

HD rocks!

I'm not a big fan of blu-ray. Just so long as my TV-and-Movie rips from TPB and the green demon keep coming in HD, I'll never bother getting a real Blu-ray drive. Why bother paying for a physical product, when you can pay (or not) for an electronic one? Especially when it is easier to find HD downloads than Blu-ray discs.

Re:Personally...

My main issue has been the 90+ seconds to load a movie - thats absolutely insane. I hate the normal trailer and flashy interface crap that is on standard DVDs...but unless I can pop in a DVD and run in a matter of seconds, then I am certainly not moving.

Is the quality better? OF COURSE! But then again...I have an upconvert player and it looks good too.

/shrug

It was obvious from the beginning....

... that HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray wasn't the next Beta vs VHS, but rather, the next Laserdisc vs CED.

line doubling?

Q: What exactly is a line-doubling DVD player?
A: Progressive scan from an interlaced source. [wikipedia.org]

Hardly something that should be mentioned... you know, we've had progressive for quite a long time now, and from experience most DVDs are interlaced.

Waiting for $50 players

Given the huge price difference between an upsizing DVD/VHS player and a Blu-Ray player, and the higher cost of the movies on Blu-Ray...I am not surprised. My movies on DVD look just fine to me (upsized to my HDTV, no less). My surround sound didn't stop working with the invention of Blu-Ray, so they all sound just as great as 2 years ago.

I will wait for the $50 players to arrive.

Prices Don't Help

With players at $400 and discs at $30 a pop, Blu-ray is a lot less appealing, even for those with an HDTV. Plus, standard-def DVDs look remarkably good with upconverting players.

When Is Perfection Too Much?

I don't buy the conclusions of this article. There is a clear difference in quality with true HD versus DVD. But it's true that at some point, you can't tell the difference anymore, so nobody cares. Sort of like why does anyone want a 4 GHz Pentium processor for Microsoft Office, is that really useful?

The same will happen for HD for maybe 10 years: there will be only minor tweaks, prices will fall, but no new jump in quality. What I see (hope) as the next jump is "experience immersion". When I take a picture or short movie with my digital camera, I want the audience to fell exactly what I felt. When I hike a mountain at 5,000 meters, it's freezing, breathing is hard... I snapped a picture, but you can't see what experience it was. I'm willing to wait another 10 years, but this has to happen at some point. It's all about sharing our experiences, after all.

Alain - fairsoftware.net

Bahh, the beginning of DVD was little different

People thought the same at the beginning of DVD, or worse.

DVD Will Fail [robertsdvd.com]

Sony Hater

I'll admit it, I'm a Sony hater. Been bit too many times by their crappy proprietary media, computers, interfaces and software. It's plain old DVD for me for the foreseeable future. In my mind BlueRay==Sony.

DVDs already have the big improvements

For me, the big selling point for upgrading to DVD was the ability to skip around to different scenes quickly, no rewinding and features like playing commentary from the director and cast. Blu-ray adds better sound and picture, but unless you also upgrade your entire A/V setup these benefits just aren't there.

Quality is part of the problem

A lot of the problem comes from the fact that Blu-ray quality quite often sucks. This has nothing to do with the format, and everything to do with the mastering process. I have seen countless Blu-rays that hardly have enough detail to justify a DVD release, let alone anything in HD; some examples include Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, the latter of which was done as a film transfer... and had dirt all over the film and jittered throughout the entire movie, along with the film grain, which seemed completely out of place for an animated feature.

Its difficult to market a new format with better quality when in reality a large number of the discs are produced so badly that there's no reason to get them in place of a DVD.

Price?

Maybe it's the fact that they want 25-30 fucking dollars for a movie that I can get for $12 on regular DVD?

I should be their target audience - I have plenty of disposable income, a 52" 1080p LCD, and a PS3, but I still don't buy much on blu-ray, cause it costs too damn much.

Make it a 20% premium, and I'll buy it, but 100% is absurd.

Video always loses to audio

I still can't figure out why people are so fascinated with video: higher resolution, faster refresh rates, more colors, etc. Yes, visuals are very important. But, in my opinion, video is the least important feature in the chain when it comes to movies. Sports is another thing, usually, but I'd even wager that I could win a debate regarding video versus audio in even live sporting events.

Watch a great thriller: Hitchcock if you will. Turn off the audio and watch the movie. Turn off the video and watch the movie. Compare.

Now, watch it again with BETTER audio (subwoofers, clear highs, decent surround sound). Compare.

Radio still can thrill me with good audio productions. I still prefer most sporting events on the radio over the TV, personally, as one's imagination really builds a lot of emotional connection to the game.

Yes, high res is amazing, and it can be "lifelike" but without a good audio backend, it's trash. Instead of spending tons of cash on the best video chain, spend a bit firming up your audio system, including minimizing reflections in your theatre room, reducing vibrations of the floor or furniture, etc. It's a worthwhile investment, and you'll get great music quality, to boot.

BluRay? Not today...

I hardly watch television at all. Most of my video comes through youtube and similar sites. when I want to see a recent movie, I have the rental shop down the street. Does BluRay look better? Yes. Do I care? No.

RS

Just another disc

For most consumers, BluRay is just another kind of DVD that is more expensive, more confusing, and requires a new DVD player, when their own one works just fine, thank you. DVD was much better than VHS not because of quality, but because they lasted better and you didn't have to rewind and fast-forward them. The menu options are what caused the jump to DVD, not the quality. Mind you, this isn't my opinion, but it is the majority of consumers.

This generations laser disc?

I wonder how many people got burned last time by a format "leap" that really wasn't that awesome. I get the impression that people are holding off until Blu-Ray is the only game in town. For now if it doesn't offer a huge increase in quality why invest the money?

In two years there could very well be another dominant format (online digital downloads) which would mean all the Blu-Ray crap I buy now is part of an intermediary step in the digital evolution.

Quality or not, the disc is why I don't care.

The quality of the program is largely irrelevant to me and many of my friends. Yes, it may be better quality, but I've been living off my home media server for several years now. I will never, ever, ever, ever go back to keeping physical media around. I can't stand it. I want all of my media available at any TV in my home and ready when I want it.

If I have to have a disc to keep track of, you can forget it. I don't want the technology. I want my media available whenever, wherever and HOWEVER I want to play it. Blu-Ray offers NONE of the those things (and to be fair, neither did HD-DVD) and THAT is why I won't ever be adopting Blu-Ray. The players can drop to $10 and I still wouldn't buy one, simply because I do not care. I realize that I'm not in the majority currently... but as time goes on, more and more people are going to get sick of carrying around physical media.

The popularity of MP3 players is a prime example... instead of toting around hundreds of CDs, why not just carry around one MP3 player. The same thing is happening with video, and the trend will only accelerate. The disc as a medium for entertainment is dying, if it's not dead already and only still twitching.

Rotational Media is so 20th Century

The whole idea of rotational, optical media is outmoded. I should be able to take a flash drive (any flash drive) to Blockbuster and load on my drive a movie where I can play it anywhere. And the only reason to do that, is because we don't have a lot of bandwidth for real-time streaming of perfect quality.

Plastic media is prone to scratching, and carries with it some value based on on its manufacture, but the bits put on it. It is not reusable either.

High Def Video-on-Demand is also working to obsolete rotational disk, however the limitation is that movie inventories are limited. Given that inventories will increase, this will fix itself.

The only remaining space of rotational media is for portability, but flash drives can fit several movies. In addition flash drives are more rugged and portable than temperature and scratch-vulnerable rational media.

Blu-Ray won the war that never needed to be fought.

My reasons for why I dislike Bluray..

This is a little story on why I'm not buying anything Bluray anymore; not for a long time at least.

I just bought a decent porno video, bluray edition, and I was all excited. You know, it was going be more realistic with the high definition, and I had to take care of things before the girlfriend gets back home. I started it up, and let the dumb plot intro finish up, and I was immediately disgusted with what I saw when the camera zoomed up a little closer to the face of the woman as she was.. um... doing an oral presentation. Zits. Discusting zits. All over! "This wasn't on the DVD version!" I thought. What the hell? Later in the video I actually noticed more visible stretch-marks, and a scar on this once-attractive 22 year-old female.

Lesson learned: Save those VHS porn tapes men, for you will if not now, then in the future, miss the porno where the truth wasn't as vivid as it is now becoming. *shivers*

Summary makes assumptions...

...such as "consumers were very happy to embrace the DVD standard when it came about because it brought a huge jump in quality over VHS."

I'm not so sure that's the reason for consumer adoption - DVDs are more compact, less fragile, and you don't have to rewind them. I think it's all about convenience, not quality. Quality is just a bonus.

Nobody should care about landfillable media

Landfill items like DVDs are dead, and broadband will kill them. Nobody should care about the next landfill item. I just recently bought a terabyte of storage for abotu $250. It connects via Ethernet--a stable standard that isn't going to change in any radical way. Same deal with USB, which is just as ubiquitous, and almost as stable.

Why should I build a big collection of toxic plastic platters when I can order what I want and put it on my little SAN?

Plainly, there are a lot of things that need to be worked out before everybody takes this path. The DRM people need to go away. Really. Just give it up already. We need broadband to become much more widespread.

OK, I know there is that desire to have the "physical item" for some people, and nicely printed liner notes and things like that. Fine. Send us that, maybe even include your latest landfill format disk as an option, but as far as getting excited about the little plastic platter is concerned... no. It's not exciting. It's just data, and everybody knows that.