Low Interest In Blu-Ray?
I'll admit it, I'm nuts for Blu-ray. High definition movies on disc for your HDTV: what's not to like? Line-doubling just doesn't cut it for me, I love the buttery reds and silky blues of 1080p; I purr at uncompressed surround sound.
Still, I can't rightly be surprised at a survey that finds that 40% of those polled termed Blu-ray only "somewhat better" than DVD players, with most people being very satisfied with their current DVD players:
'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.'
Fie! This is what you get for asking a bunch of CRT foolios about tapping the sweet pixelstream that is the high-capacity optical format. HDTVs should be mandatory.
New Study Finds Low Interest In Blu-ray [Slashdot]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, In the News on 7 August 2008
· Comments (6)
The way I see it, most things worth watching nowadays are made by people who cannot afford to take advantage of that technology, so why bother?
People want things that will keep them entertained, and it's usually content and ideas that does that trick. Blu-ray would be awesome if it was the icing on that cake, but for now it's the awesome icing of a sort of bland cake and you don't eat cake because of the icing.
What I'm saying is that while Blu-ray is a technical advantage it does not compensate or replace what has to be given by the creative side of entertainment.
HDTVs being mandatory? like everyone HAS to have one?
you gonna buy me one? I work at a fast food restaurant in a podunk town. I can barely afford to drive to work.
I would love nothing more than to get a blu-ray player. I just refuse to pay the price they are currently asking.
I have thought about getting a PS3 so I could get double duty out of a blu-ray device. Only problem with that is I don't play games enough to justify the expense of that either. Also with my TiVo Series3 I haven't been using Netflix enough to justify the change over to blu-ray.
If the blu-ray players break the $150 price point, then I would seriously consider buying one. I think the price more than anything is the barrier.
I think there are already too many "good enough" alternatives to justify the current price tag. Jumping from VCR to DVD was a much bigger leap. The old tapes broke and degraded. The current DVDs are good enough for a long, long time. Why pay $20 for something I already have?
Plus there is so much alternative content. I'm currently watching the Bob Newhart show via Hulu on my laptop. It does not require another $500 investment and upgrading to Bluray won't make Bob any prettier.
2 years from now we'll probably be streaming everything HD anyway so why buy a limited format now?
Frankly, this doesn't surprise me.
When it came to changing from VHS to DVD, the format's time had come. We'd had VHS tapes since the 70s, and DVD didn't take off until very late in the 90s in any real marketable manner. Twenty years is a good timescale for such things. The market had changed, the VHS system had lived a full market life, and a new product was needed.
And realistically, let's be honest. The new formats simply do NOT offer much more than DVD. Yes, geeks can list tech-specs until the cows come home and spoo over how many colours are on a screen at once, but the buying public want one thing when they buy a movie; they want to watch a movie. We're not going to pay more for a disk that 'apparently looks better, if you have a big tv, and about the same on a regular tv', even if it has more gigs of space on it to do nothing with.
People don't care about it because they don't NEED it, and they've not been given a good enough reason to WANT it. It's that simple.
I'm with you, Tiny. Having seen the Blu-Ray version of BBC's Planet Earth series, I was sold.
As for price being the limiting factor, that was the case with DVDs at their beginning, CD burners too. (I remember paying over $400 for a CD burner 10+ years ago when they first came out; now a CD/DVD burner combo goes for $25.) In another year or two, you'll see the prices drop dramatically.
As for streaming media, that's not necessarily a given—it really depends on whether the infrastructure can keep up. Most people's connections today would be hard-pressed to stream an HD movie and do anything else.