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[Guybrush Threepwood]

I thought this was a really interesting article, though the title is a lot more alarmist than mine.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=365

Blu-ray is in a death spiral. 12 months from now Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product.

With only a 4% share of US movie disc sales and HD download capability arriving, the Blu-ray disc Association (BDA) is still smoking dope. Even $150 Blu-ray players won’t save it.

16 months ago I called the HD war for Blu-ray. My bad. Who dreamed they could both lose?

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Delusional Sony exec Rick Clancy needs to put the crack pipe down and really look at the market dynamics.

In a nutshell: consumers drive the market and they don’t care about Blu-ray’s theoretical advantages. Especially during a world-wide recession.

Remember Betamax? SACD? Minidisk? Laser Disk? DVD-Audio? There are more losers than winners in consumer storage formats.

It’s all about volume. 8 months after Toshiba threw in the towel, Blu-ray still doesn’t have it.

The Blu-ray Disc Association doesn’t get it
$150 Blu-ray disc players are a good start, but it won’t take Blu-ray over the finish line. The BDA is stuck in the past with a flawed five-year-old strategy.

The original game plan
Two things killed the original strategy. First the fight with HD DVD stalled the industry for two years. Initial enthusiasm for high definition video on disk was squandered.

Second, the advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.

Piggies at the trough
The Blu-ray Disc Association hoped for a massive cash bonanza as millions of consumers discovered that standard DVDs looked awful on HDTV. To cash in they loaded Blu-ray licenses with costly fees. Blu-ray doesn’t just suck for consumers: small producers can’t afford it either.

According to Digital Content Producer Blu-ray doesn’t cut it for business:

* Recordable discs don’t play reliably across the range of Blu-ray players - so you can’t do low-volume runs yourself.
* Service bureau reproduction runs $20 per single layer disc in quantities of 300 or less.
* Hollywood style printed/replicated Blu-ray discs are considerably cheaper once you reach the thousand unit quantity: just $3.50 per disc.
* High-quality authoring programs like Sony Blu-print or Sonic Solutions Scenarist cost $40,000.
* The Advanced Access Content System - the already hacked DRM - has a one-time fee of $3000 plus a per project cost of almost $1600 plus $.04 per disk. And who defines “project?”
* Then the Blu-ray disc Association charges another $3000 annually to use their very exclusive - on 4% of all video disks! - logo.

That’s why you don’t see quirky indie flicks on Blu-ray. Small producers can’t afford it - even though they shoot in HDV and HD.

The Storage Bits take
Don’t expect Steve Jobs to budge from his “bag of hurt” understatement. Or Final Cut Studio support for Blu-ray. I suspect that Jobs is using his Hollywood clout from his board seat on Disney and his control of iTunes to try to talk sense to the BDA.

But the BDA won’t budge. They, like so much of Hollywood, are stuck in the past.

A forward looking strategy would include:

* Recognition that consumers don’t need Blu-ray. It is a nice-to-have and must be priced accordingly.
* Accept the money spent on Blu-ray is gone and will never earn back the investment. Then you can begin thinking clearly about how to maximize Blu-ray penetration.
* The average consumer will probably pay $50 more for a Blu-ray player that is competitive with the average up-sampling DVD player. Most of the current Blu-ray players are junk: slow, feature-poor and way over-priced.
* Disk price margins can’t be higher than DVDs and probably should be less. The question the studios need to ask is: “do we want to be selling disks in 5 years?” No? Then keep it up. Turn distribution over to your very good friends at Comcast, Apple and Time Warner. You’ll be like Procter & Gamble paying Safeway to stock your products.
* Fire all the market research firms telling you how great it is going to be. They are playing you. Your #1 goal: market share. High volume is your only chance to earn your way out of this mess and keep some control of your distribution.

Time is short. Timid incrementalism will kill you.

Like Agent Smith delivering the bad news to a complacent cop: “No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead.”

He basically says why Blu-ray is failing and what the Blu-ray Disc Association can do if they don't want Blu-ray to be a thing of the past in a couple of years.

Personally, I have only bought one Blu-ray movie: Blade Runner. And what do you know, the reason why I bought it was that you get the complete five disc set without spending $70+ on the DVD "Ultimate Collector's Edition."

Blu-ray movies cost way too much money for what you get: a jump from the DVD format that isn't nearly as far as the jump from VHS to DVD.

 

[Karma Kramer]

Until prices come down there is no reason for me to own a blu-ray player.

Its only necessary if you have a 40+ inch HD television and a nice surround setup... otherwise for myself a college student living in a small dorm in New York... blu-ray won't exactly improve the quality of the picture on my 19 inch LCD computer monitor that much... to pay $400+ on the device and movies.

No thanks.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

BluRay seems like more of a hassle than anything at this point.

 

[SteveMeister]

I own a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, and ask for new movies on Blu-Ray as gifts (and give my wife movies she wants on Blu-Ray), but, yeah. I don't think it's going to gain enough traction -- DVD is the last mass-market physical video medium. On-Demand, Pay-per-view and online services like Hulu & NetFlix are going to do better. Why have a massive collection of movies on disk when you can access whatever you want to watch on TV or via your computer or console?

Blu-Ray isn't dead or dying, but it's NEVER going to reach the level of market penetration that DVD has.

 

[polyh3dron]

Sounds like a butthurt HD DVD fan.

Blu-ray movies cost way too much money for what you get: a jump from the DVD format that isn't nearly as far as the jump from VHS to DVD.

I take it you don't have a 46" or larger 1080p screen, because the difference is huge.

Until prices come down there is no reason for me to own a blu-ray player.

Its only necessary if you have a 40+ inch HD television and a nice surround setup... otherwise for myself a college student living in a small dorm in New York... blu-ray won't exactly improve the quality of the picture on my 19 inch LCD computer monitor that much... to pay $400+ on the device and movies.

No thanks.

I recently bought my mom a Sony BDP S350 for $250, and you can get some models for around $200. Stop spreading this BS about BD players costing $400+.

 

[NekoFever]

I've always said it will be the next-generation Laserdisc. I don't mean that pejoratively because LD wasn't a failure like some people seem to think, and it'll be much bigger than LD was because of the PS3 effect; I just mean that it will have a comfortable niche for people who want the superior AV quality, but DVD will remain the dominant format for the foreseeable future.

Dying, though? That's pushing it.

 

[immy]

BluRay seems like more of a hassle than anything at this point.

.

 

[Karma Kramer]

I take it you don't have a 46" or larger 1080p screen, because the difference is huge.

Not everyone can afford such nice things. :lol

 

[Mango Positive]

I RARELY watch movies more than once. There are too many potentially great movies I haven't seen yet. This means that I only buy the truly great DVDs. One look at Sin City DVD upscaled on a 42 inch plasma crushes any justification for Blu Ray. Granted, I want a PS3 and would buy one immediately if the price were greatly reduced, but Blu Ray does not factor into that want.

Even in the HD DVD / Blu Ray wars, I was calling the digital distribution surprise victory.

 

[LuCkymoON]

There are alot more options to get HiDef material in today's market. I've only bought one BR movie since owning my PS3, but I watch/play tons of HiDef material. On Demand is bigger than people want to believe.

 

[Gaborn]

My dad just got a DVD player for the first time like 3 years ago, older generations are going to be a LONG time in adopting blu-ray, they just don't see the need and aren't as tech savvy for the most part as 20 somethings that are more likely to be early adopters.

 

[polyh3dron]

HDTVs are selling like crazy. Sooner or later the owners of those TVs will want movies that are in HD.

 

[Evlar]

Nope.

 

[aorange999]

Having just bought a new 1080p 42 inch TV and a PS3 I must say that the jump to bluray isn't as astounding as I thought it would be. Its nice but definitely falls in between Laserdisc and DVD in terms of popularity. I see it kind of like the minidisc. It was a good format that noone ever really got into but had just enough traction to last for years.

 

[CajoleJuice]

I'm sick of arguing with these articles.

 

[Ferrio]

Having just bought a new 1080p 42 inch TV and a PS3 I must say that the jump to bluray isn't as astounding as I thought it would be..

Planet Earth 1080p version made me rethink that.

 

[PhoenixDark]

Wait for TDK

 

[CajoleJuice]

Wait for TDK

Year of PS3 continues

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Planet Earth 1080p version made me rethink that.

Doesn't the BR version of Planet Earth have less features than the DVD version?

 

[Zombie James]

Right now it's the only place to get 20Mbit/sec+ 1080p movies with bonus materials and alternate languages, so it's not really going away as many seem to want.

 

[tedtropy]

I take it you don't have a 46" or larger 1080p screen, because the difference is huge.

And I imagine a good 99.9% of the world could say the same thing. Myself included and I'm a videogame dork by most standards. That's the point. There's not enough reason for your typical DVD movie-buying consumer to care about BR.

 

[RevenantKioku]

Blu-Ray deserves to die. This "OMG HD IS SO MUCH BETTER" is a bunch of bullshit. No one cares and your favorite movie is still boring in "HD".

 

[LuCkymoON]

HDTVs are selling like crazy. Sooner or later the owners of those TVs will want movies that are in HD.

and they will rent them from their Cable service provider.

 

[shuri]

I watch movies on a 102 inches 1080p projector; and I don't care much about bluray. Too expensive, and I wont upgrade my giant (500+) dvds to collection. I will only upgrade a few select titles (like.. perhaps terminator 1 and 2), but eh; outside of that, regular dvds are much cheaper.

It does looks much better, but its not worth it, to be honest.

Digital download is where its gonna be, when it becomes possible in Canada.

 

[Ferrio]

Doesn't the BR version of Planet Earth have less features than the DVD version?

I don't know about most people, but I couldn't care less about "features" When I buy a film I buy it for the film. And since BR version is the best version of the actual film it wins easily.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

As an owner of HD DVD and a upscaling DVD player--- I'm waiting on $3 HD DVD's to round out my collection and then sticking with DVD until the next format is out. Blu Ray doesn't need me as a consumer nor do I see the value in it. They really have screwed themselves out of market share by not dropping the prices. I've argued that back in the Format Wars days and it still holds true now.

They will continue to see lackluster adoption rates with $200-$300+ dollar Blu-Ray players and $30+ dollar Blu-Ray movies.

The consumers are speaking, but it's falling on deaf ears apparently.

 

[Zombie James]

and they will rent them from their Cable service provider.

For people who don't care about quality or extras, sure. Both online rentals and retail discs can co-exist, they cater to different markets.

 

[Kevin]

At Wal-Mart they are offering RCA 1080p 42 inch HDTV's for only $799. I have also seen several Blu-Ray players including a Samsung branded one for only $200 and still no one is buying the stuff. Blu-Ray is incredible but people just cheap these days not to mention simply broke.

 

[captive]

Blu-Ray deserves to die. This "OMG HD IS SO MUCH BETTER" is a bunch of bullshit. No one cares and your favorite movie is still boring in "HD".

Get your eyes checked and stop acting like a jackass.

 

[captmcblack]

PS3 is my Bluray player...but I don't have any Bluray movies yet :-x

Does PS3 upscale DVDs?

 

[C4Lukins]

They really need to bring the prices down on the disks. I have bought fewer BR disks since HD-DVD died because most of the great deals died with them. Online retailers seem to be the only good places to purchase them with all the big retail box stores selling most releases around 30 dollars a pop. If they want to break into the mass market before HD digital distribution becomes a bigger deal they need to hurry their asses up.

 

[Solo]

Now that Ive sunk a few thousand bucks into the format (players + discs), it had better not.

 

[speculawyer]

Dying? No. Absolutely not.

Off to a slow start? yes. People don't see much reason to upgrade. And if you are not a cinephile or don't own an HDTV, there isn't much reason to upgrade.

 

[Evlar]

PS3 is my Bluray player...but I don't have any Bluray movies yet :-x

Does PS3 upscale DVDs?

Yes, and it does a nice job of it. It's better than my Oppo was, both using HDMI.

Dying? No. Absolutely not.

Off to a slow start? yes. People don't see much reason to upgrade. And if you are not a cinephile or don't own an HDTV, there isn't much reason to upgrade.

I think Blu Ray will be OK because the studios have no reason at all to kill it and good reason to keep promoting it. R&D is already completed, their costs going forward are minimal and existing sales should make them a profit. The only thing that will kill it in the short term will be retail shrinking down or eliminating shelf space... But they are the partners who have the most to lose if Blu Ray fails, since the other HD alternatives bypass them entirely (cable or satellite On Demand, download services).

At worst it will linger as a cinemaphile option, much as Laserdisc did. At best it will gradually begin to replace DVD... which will happen when Blu Ray players get very cheap and drive DVD players off retail shelves.

 

[CajoleJuice]

Anyone who expected this to take off as quickly as DVD is a moron, and it took DVD 6 years to overtake VHS. So I think Blu-ray is doing fine. Of course, they need to bring down the prices, but there are deals to find, nonetheless.

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

I RARELY watch movies more than once. There are too many potentially great movies I haven't seen yet. This means that I only buy the truly great DVDs. One look at Sin City DVD upscaled on a 42 inch plasma crushes any justification for Blu Ray.

This is me to a T. The only difference is I own a 42" LCD.

Actually, scratch that, I only really own 1 DVD: Batman Begins. Blockbuster is my friend.

 

[LuCkymoON]

For people who don't care about quality or extras, sure. Both online rentals and retail discs can co-exist, they cater to different markets.

just saying... the bigger market will be Digital Distribution + Rental kiosk/mail order. Having my first collection of DVDs stolen made me realize that I had no real reason to keep them when they would eventually end up at the CD Warehouse.

 

[Marty Chinn]

The really big kicker is the price of the discs as people have already mentioned. It's hard to stomach $30 movies when you see Fry's selling the same movie for $10 or less at times. I've completely let go of DVD and will only buy Blu-Ray, but I recognize why people are still buying DVDs. They're practically giving them away at stores in comparison to the Blu-Ray prices. MSRP on discs need to really start at no more than about $20 so that your street price is somewhere around $15 before it becomes something that you get on an impulse buy.

 

[VALIS]

I watch movies on a 102 inches 1080p projector; and I don't care much about bluray. Too expensive, and I wont upgrade my giant (500+) dvds to collection. I will only upgrade a few select titles (like.. perhaps terminator 1 and 2), but eh; outside of that, regular dvds are much cheaper.

It does looks much better, but its not worth it, to be honest.

Digital download is where its gonna be

Same here. 56" 1080p HDTV, own a PS3, could buy a 360 HD-DVD add on for pocket change, and yet I still don't care and don't own a single HD disc. I have fucking thousands of DVDs, they look great on today's upscaling players, I'm just not starting over with a new format. Not happening. I don't want to own more shit, you can bury me with my DVDs. If I have an itch to see an HD movie, I'll watch one on one of my HD channels on digital cable.

 

[jecclr2003]

and they will rent them from their Cable service provider.

There's ALWAYS going to be a market for physical media. I see no value in "renting"...for all that matters I can just DL it from a torrent site.

My ONLY gripe with Bluray is the ridiculous cost of catalog titles. Fox is REALLY bad about this charging $35 for a back catalog title. There's no reason to charge so much for movies the studios have already made their money on and then some. You want people to buy more? CHARGE LESS DAMMIT.
I find myself hitting places that sell used discs and ebay to buy back catalog.

Most new releases are a couple $ more than the standard def. I'll take the BluRay ANY day just due to the amazing quality jump.

I think the biggest problem is not enough people know what BluRay is or what it does.
For me to convince my wife to jump into HD I had to usean HD-DVD combo format disc and use the same scene to show the difference. Her jaw dropped.

As for dying? Hardly..... most stores are making more room to give more shelf space to BluRay. There's obviously a market.

 

[RevenantKioku]

Get your eyes checked and stop acting like a jackass.

I have the corrective lenses I require!

 

[starchild excalibur]

Until prices come down there is no reason for me to own a blu-ray player.

Its only necessary if you have a 40+ inch HD television and a nice surround setup... otherwise for myself a college student living in a small dorm in New York... blu-ray won't exactly improve the quality of the picture on my 19 inch LCD computer monitor that much... to pay $400+ on the device and movies.

No thanks.

.

I'm still running a 20" standard def TV. I'm into films (who isn't?), but not enough to drop money on a blu-ray player (unless I get a PS3) and Blu-Ray movies just yet. I don't think the format is dying whatsoever, i just think it may be taking longer to reach anywhere near the mass-market appeal of DVDs than some people expected.

 

[Evlar]

Same here. 56" 1080p HDTV, own a PS3, could buy a 360 HD-DVD add on for pocket change, and yet I still don't care and don't own a single HD disc. I have fucking thousands of DVDs, they look great on today's upscaling players, I'm just not starting over with a new format. Not happening. I don't want to own more shit, you can bury me with my DVDs. If I have an itch to see an HD movie, I'll watch one on one of my HD channels on digital cable.

You are spending quite a lot of money- much more than the average person- on entertainment hardware but will not shell out for the software. That's ok, just not typical.

 

[tak]

They need to lower the cost. It is that simple.

The image quality of Blu-ray movies is of course better then DVD movies, but for the majority of people (including me) the extra cost is not worth it for not a huge leap in improved image quality. The cost difference between VHS to DVD was a lot easier to justify. I'm still buying DVDs, but I'll switch to Blu-rays when the cost comes down.

This is coming from someone that has in the past spent large sums of money on high quality monitors to get the absolutely best image quality.

 

[KTallguy]

Planet Earth 1080p version made me rethink that.

This.

They need to lower the cost. It is that simple.

This.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

HDTVs are selling like crazy. Sooner or later the owners of those TVs will want movies that are in HD.

true but i was thinking that dvd slowly being phased out would ultimately increase blu ray into the no1 spot by default since toshiba threw in the towel. Here we are 2 years later and its still battling for market share. I now have to consider the possibility that blu rays life span will be as long as it takes for high speed networks to take off and become standard. At that point why have physical medium. Both tv sets and distribution channels are gearing up for this, cable and satellite have HD on demand, Tv's are starting to have built in storage and media readers, and PC's are more than equipped for HD playback , have more than enough storage for pennies / gb, and the cost/size of LCD screens are plummeting a good 22 in monitor is 200 bucks in a few years 30 in will be affordable.

So if something doesnt happen soon a 99 dollar player and lower costing media, then HD content will have HTPC, streaming media, on demand, tv's that can read from external hdd, and PC's with video out or big screens to get the job done.

 

[davepoobond]

Get your eyes checked and stop acting like a jackass.

.



Honestly, WHO THE FUCK wants to stick with that NTSC/PAL/SECAM bullshit??

 

[Evlar]

And for those who own high-end equipment but won't buy Blu Ray... Why not rent? It won't cost you much more (if any) than On Demand and the quality will certainly be better, particularly if your TV is 1080p.

 

[suffah]

It will pretty much come down to how hard VOD gets pushed in the next 2-3 years. Blu-Ray will not disappear. There will always be people who want to own the physical disc.

So it took 6 years for DVD to pass VHS when the benefits to the average joe were more significant. They didn't need to upgrade their television set, either. Instant quality leap, no need to rewind, digital format, etc.

As of this Christmas season, BRD will have been out 2.5 years. Or 3 years as of next June. I think that's going to be the critical turning point. Somehow the studios need to get the pricing competitive with standard dvd's. Cut back on the licensing fees, whatever, they need to do whatever it takes.

Also, I think posters here on Neogaf are out of touch with joe 6 pack. The average walmart consumer doesn't want high-priced blu-rays. Take my buddy for example. He bought a 60" plasma a couple of years ago. Still has a standard definition cable box. His wife bought him a PS3 last christmas. He buys normal DVDs and actually thinks the PS3 can only play games. :lol

But the format is not dying, it just won't reach mass consumer levels like DVD and VHS.

 

[GalacticAE]

This.



This.

Those? They.