Report: Blu-ray Sales Falling Short Of Expectations Even As Prices Decline. Are you still buying? (1 Viewer)

[Stephen_J_H]

Alien Anthology and my purchases yesterday @ Best Buy are textbook examples of my buying habits. I got Alien Anthology for $49.99 Cdn at Costco a couple of months ago. There was no way I was paying any more than $50 for it. BB had their Bond titles for $6.99 yesterday, so I picked up Dr. No and From Russia With Love. As well, one of the local Blockbusters is closing, so I picked up several titles @ 50% off. While Blockbuster's prices are typically inflated compared to other retailers, at 50% they were more than reasonable.

 

[Dave H]

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce

I think one reason for overall sales not being as good as hoped for is the format war.


Because of the format war, the Blu-ray was never really able to get the momentum it needed from right out of the gate. The format war turned off a lot of people and many just waited on the sidelines - and some never entered the game. So, Blu-ray had a hole to come out of from the beginning.


By the time the format war ended for all intent and purposes (mid 2008), come the fall we learned of the financial meltdown and here we are today in an economy that very well may be on the brink of a second recession. This will be even more difficult and present further challenges for the format.


Had all of the studios and manufacturers supported Blu-ray from Day One like they should have, I believe even with the economic situation, the format would be much stronger today as it would have likely come out fairly strong in 2006 (or even if they delayed it to 2007) and had much better footing becoming more ingrained in people's movie viewing at home today.

The truth of the matter is that HD DVD was ready, and blu-ray wasn't. But they rushed blu-ray to market as an unfinished product, which is why it had so many problems early on. Of course if they hadn't rushed it, the war would have been over before it started, and HD DVD would have won.

I think the real issue with the HD market however is that poeple's viewing habits have changed pretty radically from the 90's when DVD was released. People under 30 now think nothing of keeping all of their media on some sort of computing device, be it an iphone, ipad, computer what have you. I was talking to a guy the other day. I think he was in his late 20's. Young aspiring filmmaker. I was talking about my DVD and blu-ray collection. He said, "why would I do that? I've got 100 movies on my ipad, and what I don't have on the drive I can stream from netflix." I've never felt so old in my life. Really folks we are the dinosaurs!

Doug[/QUOTE]



Doug,


HD DVD was far from ready when it was released. That first HD DVD player I bought (model name skips) I had returned three different times. lol There were countless issues on that model as it seemed everyone had issues with it. The only early "players" that were ready when they came out on either side was the PS3. HD DVD never had a chance from the beginning anyway as hardly anyone else supported it other than Toshiba and three studios. It became doomed as most of us knew would eventually happened.


I agree viewing habits have changed, but I still think the format war did some permanent damage to Blu-ray.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Here's an article that says Blu-rays have supplanted DVD losses.


http://www.twice.com/article/469413-NPD_Blu_ray_Sales_Begin_To_Cover_DVD_Losses.php


Personally, I'm replacing every library version of my collection of DVDs with Blu-rays as they come out. To my eye, once I've seen how good a film can look, I can't watch it any other way. But the stream of stuff I'm replacing has been so slow (but steady), I'm not buying more than one or two a week at most. I love coupons for B/N, Borders, and Best Buy if I can go and pluck something physical myself from the shelf, but also take advantage of whatever the best price is online. (I bought the Alien Anthology UK version for $42USD). Lately, I've found if you combine Barnes&Noble membership with coupons and order online, you can beat Amazon almost every time. It's an aggressive grab at business. And Borders is now trying similar approach with generous coupons you can use with Rewards online and easily get 50% of Blu-rays most of the time.


Blu-rays will be the end media for me because, to me, the image is better than I ever even remember it at the cinema. I have zero intest in the gimmick of 3D, and doubt I'll be around long enough to see holographic perfection. And I'm old school enough to want a library of physical product in my house to pluck and choose from and hold and savour. But I also still read physical newspapers in a cafe, so I'm not the future customer. But I'm fantastically excited that Blu-rays came around and poked me to double-dip once more. I'm just waiting for that complete Twilight Zone set, though, and it's all gravy from there.

 

[Cees Alons]

Originally Posted by Dave H

......


I agree viewing habits have changed, but I still think the format war did some permanent damage to Blu-ray.

The format war also did permanent damage to HD DVD.

More.



Cees

 

[Douglas Monce]

Lets be brutally honest here most BD catalog titles are not worth the upgrade cost over DVD are they??

I have to strongly disagree with this. The only thing I buy are catalog titles, and the vast majority of them are huge improvement on the DVD of the same title! Doug

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Originally Posted by Dave H
HD DVD never had a chance from the beginning anyway as hardly anyone else supported it other than Toshiba and three studios. It became doomed as most of us knew would eventually happened.

I don't want to get into too much of a rehash of the format war, but I agree that HD DVD was doomed from the start, for one simple reason: a Blu-ray holds 50gb, and an HD-DVD held 30gb. That may not have played a role in the studios decisions about what to support, but as an end user, that was the only factor of importance for me. I really had no interest in the different interactive bells and whistles offered by one format or the other - to me it was simply a matter of, I want to support the system that holds the most data because that's what's going to be important in the long run. I know there are many things in life where bigger doesn't equal better, but when we're talking about physical media and its capacity, I think it's absolutely true.


The confusion among the public with the two competing formats didn't help anything, and I know I wasn't the only person who was unwilling to buy into any technology (either HD-DVD or Blu at the time) where you had to have a different kind of player depending on what studio made the movie. And I think by the time the dust settled on that and Blu-ray emerged as the winner (which I agree seemed the only possible outcome from the start - the conversation about which format to go forward with should have ended the day the guys proposing the HD-DVD spec came up with discs almost half the size as Blu), the public was thoroughly confused, reasonably happy with their DVDs on their new HDTVs, and then the recession hit not too long after.


If I had unlimited resources or could wave a magic wand and replace every DVD with a Blu, I would - and if studios charged a small upgrade fee to trade in the DVD version for the Blu (as Warner did for some select titles recently), I probably would go for that. But at this point I've got too many DVDs just to start from scratch again, and in having had them for so long, I also have a better idea of what's worth owning to me and what really isn't. I have a bunch of DVDs where I saw the movie theatrically, liked it, bought the DVD, and then have never actually watched the DVD. I'm trying not to make the same "mistake" with Blu-ray.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Doug,

 

HD DVD was far from ready when it was released.  That first HD DVD player I bought (model name skips) I had returned three different times. lol  There were countless issues on that model as it seemed everyone had issues with it.  The only early "players" that were ready when they came out on either side was the PS3.  HD DVD never had a chance from the beginning anyway as hardly anyone else supported it other than Toshiba and three studios.  It became doomed as most of us knew would eventually happened.

 

I agree viewing habits have changed, but I still think the format war did some permanent damage to Blu-ray.

I have the A-1 and the A30. Never had a problem with either of them and they still work just fine.The main thing was that all advertised features of HD DVD worked out of the box from day one. Blu-ray was a big problem out of the gate, with many features not working, and never able to work in the first generation players. Players like the Samsung BDP1000 are now virtually useless as a blu-ray player as most new discs aren't even recognized in them. 50 gig discs were not available to manufactures for almost the first year of blu-ray's life. Constant firmware upgrades are even now still required just to be able to play some new discs. The PS3 is a great hedge against blu-ray updates, but the cost is beyond most casual consumers of movies. If HD DVD hadn't come along when it did, blu-ray would likely have not been released for another year and a half to two years. They rushed it out because they knew if they didn't, HD DVD would become THE HD format and they would lose before they even got a product on the shelves. Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

I don't want to get into too much of a rehash of the format war, but I agree that HD DVD was doomed from the start, for one simple reason: a Blu-ray holds 50gb, and an HD-DVD held 30gb.  That may not have played a role in the studios decisions about what to support, but as an end user, that was the only factor of importance for me. .

Interesting considering that this a completely irrelevant factor considering the codecs that both blu-ray and hd dvd use. At an average of 20mbps a 2 hour movie takes up less than 2/3 of a 25 gig blu-ray. For the vast majority of visual material, a 25 mbps average (allowing for jumps of up to 40mbps at times) is more than enough to be visually transparent to the master. (particularly if letterboxed) I've said this before and I'll say it again, these discs that are encoded at an average of 35 to 40 mbps are overkill and are just there to give a hard on to the bit rate watchers. I've actually tested some footage at an average of 8mbps (small enough to fit a feature on a double layer DVD) and was stunned at how good it looked, with only very minimal artifacts. I found that artifacting went away around 10 to 12 mbps. Doug

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg

I don't want to get into too much of a rehash of the format war, but I agree that HD DVD was doomed from the start, for one simple reason: a Blu-ray holds 50gb, and an HD-DVD held 30gb.

No, it unfortunately was going to likely fail for the one simple reason; it did not include region coding and that gave Sony the opening they needed ("Hey, our system will have region coding just as you wanted") to get Disney and Fox ignore HD-DVD and wait for Blu-ray, which required 4 generations to catch up with where HD-DVD started. The 30G/50G argument is somewhat of a red herring considering it was well over a year after Blu-ray was introduced before 50G discs were even available in any quantity and nearly everything was on 25G discs but HD-DVD had 30G discs right from the start. The war was over long before the 30G/50G was even a factor.

I don't think the format war has any impact on the current situation. First I think if you asked most consumers about the format war, they would say "What format war? You mean there are two HD formats out now?". Secondly I have a feeling the majority believe playing a DVD on an HDTV is getting an HD movie. For the rest that do know the difference, they are likely to indicate the picture improvement is minor to non-existent and not worth paying the $25-$40 for Blu-rays they see at the B&Ms. There are just too many $5 DVDs and $25 DVD players out there.

 

[Kevin EK]

I completely understand the position of people who were happy with HD-DVD and correctly noted that Blu-ray was rushed to the marketplace to compete.


But I think the truth of the format war may be more along the lines of: Two very powerful men in Japan did not agree on how HD formatted DVD would work out and both of them refused to compromise. The cheaper version from Toshiba (HD-DVD), which used existing DVD technology, was rushed to market first in the hopes of killing the other format. Sony, of course, rushed their Blu-ray version to market at the same time to head off that issue. Things were essentially stalemated for about a year and a half, at which point Toshiba wound up taking a massive bath on the scenario. One could argue that this studio or that one was paid off for their attention to one format or another, but the reality is that the battle hurt both formats.


The colder truth is that the whole format war could have easily been avoided if two major companies had agreed to work together. In that event, they could have waited another 18 months to bring out the format, which would have worked out better in terms of R&D. And when the economy tanked, they certainly would have waited another year to both work out the bugs and wait for the recession to ease a bit. There's a part of me that could believe that Toshiba was happy to have at least made it much harder for Blu-ray to catch on.

 

[Douglas Monce]

For me, HD DVD is still the format that simply works better. Blu-ray still has compatibility problems with some players. Almost 5 years into this thing and we STILL have to do frequent firmware updates, not to add some new feature, but just do get the damn thing to work. To my mind, not the model of a well thought out, well designed technology. In my opinion we have been saddled with the more expensive clunker. The fact that blu-ray is more complicated than it needs to be, is another reason that many people are turned off by it. Doug

 

[Kevin EK]

I don't have issues with the firmware updates, which are common to most machines these days. And I agree with you that Blu was rushed to the market. But I stand by my position that this was due to Toshiba deliberately refusing to work out its differences with Sony and trying to see if their version of HD discs would win out. This was a selfish move, and it cost them dearly. I wish they would have taken the time to come up with a compromise, but they thought they'd come out as the sole winner here. Instead, they wound up taking a big hit, and the consumer has taken an even bigger one.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I don't have issues with the firmware updates, which are common to most machines these days. And I agree with you that Blu was rushed to the market. But I stand by my position that this was due to Toshiba deliberately refusing to work out its differences with Sony and trying to see if their version of HD discs would win out. This was a selfish move, and it cost them dearly. I wish they would have taken the time to come up with a compromise, but they thought they'd come out as the sole winner here. Instead, they wound up taking a big hit, and the consumer has taken an even bigger one.

How was it that Toshiba was selfish and Sony wasn't? I'm not sure I see the logic there? Doug

 

[Kevin EK]

Toshiba knew they could likely kill their own product but was willing to do so in order to make sure that Sony didn't have a definite hit. They knew that Sony needed more time, but that their own product had potential issues as well.


Toshiba's selfishness was that instead of working out their differences with Sony, they tried to beat them to the marketplace - hoping to do exactly what you discussed. Sony, of course, rushed their own product out to make sure that Toshiba didn't have the market cornered. Over the next 18 months both companies tried to make exclusive deals to promote themselves. In the end, Sony won this conflict and Toshiba wound up losing a massive amount of money. And the consumers who chose HD-DVD also lost a lot of money. You could argue that Sony was also selfish, but by the very description you have given, Sony would have wound up completely out of the race had they not stepped in. So their action seems to me to have been more one of self-preservation than anything else. Toshiba's action, on the other hand, was intended to promote themselves and eliminate their competitor, rather than provide the best possible product for the consumers.


Most non-involved consumers sat out these 18 months, waiting for the nonsense to stop. And by the time that was done, the economy was in freefall, leading us to where we are today.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Originally Posted by Kevin EK

But I stand by my position that this was due to Toshiba deliberately refusing to work out its differences with Sony and trying to see if their version of HD discs would win out. This was a selfish move, and it cost them dearly. I wish they would have taken the time to come up with a compromise, but they thought they'd come out as the sole winner here. Instead, they wound up taking a big hit, and the consumer has taken an even bigger one.

I am not sure where you get this idea exactly. Toshiba had proven an HD-DVD solution long before Sony had a working Blu-ray player and had pressed ahead with HD-DVD as the standard. By the time Sony had a working Blu-ray, they never submitted their format to the committee. Now it may be because they knew Toshiba had control of the committee so it was pointless to do so but it is a fact they never asked to be the format of choice. They simply took advantage of the HD-DVD spec not having region coding and used that issue to bring over Fox and Disney as exclusives and developed Blu-ray independently of the HD committee and the rest is history.


Now maybe you consider it selfish that Toshiba pushed ahead with their working HD solution instead of waiting for Sony to figure out how to get theirs working. Blu-ray really offered nothing new except the promise of 50G discs. It isn't like they were going to have 10 or 12-bit depth or full resolution color (4:4:4) instead of the same quarter resolution (4:2:0) they each have.


I am curious if there will be a new format in the future that tries to address the current limitations of HD, namely a much larger color space (this is a bit more of an ability to display issue more than an encoding issue), 12-bit color depth and full color resolution but my guess is that streaming HD will be as good as it gets for a long, long time. Streaming HD is better than DVD and for most people that is quite sufficient. I also think the days of owning a movie on physical disc are coming to an end. Maybe in the near future, real moviephiles will collect movie theater digital files and project them using high end 4K projectors like filmphiles have done with 35mm reels. The only way I see a new physical format is if the hardware manufacturers work hand in hand with the studios to sell new and improved display devices, sort of like they are doing with 3D now.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I think Chuck has hit the nail on the head here. Add to that, HD DVD was the format that was supported and endorsed by the DVD Forum, IE all the major studios, before Sony demonstrated blu-ray. And I agree that this is likely the last physical movie format. I will also say that when you start getting into color space, and bit depth, you are getting way beyond anything that the average consumer is even able to perceive. I think it highly unlikely that a home format will develop much beyond what we have now, at least not in the near future. There maybe incremental improvements, as there were with NTSC, but I don't see anything like 4.4.4. Color space at home, unless it is a very niche "prosumer" format. Doug

 

[Kevin EK]

Chuck, I think you're right that Sony decided that Toshiba would make sure they weren't the "format of choice."

My point is that this problem happened before that time. It was obvious to both Toshiba and Sony that they were each developing HD formats that would likely both compete and be incompatible with each other a la VHS and Betamax. They had an option long before 2006 to work on this together and save the consumer time and money. It would mean that the format would come out later, but it would also mean that the format would have more time to be developed. (And given that timetable, there would have been even more time, since it's doubtful they would have introduced the new format in the middle of the recession in 2008.)


But both company heads chose instead to battle each other and to put the consumers in the middle of the battle. I say that Toshiba's act was selfish because they rushed to market with their product specifically to make sure that they headed off Sony and cornered the market. They knew that Sony would rush their own product to market to compete, and gambled that either Toshiba would win the day or neither company would win. In the end, Toshiba lost a lot of money (along with many consumers), and Sony's product went through a much rougher period of introduction. You could certainly argue that Sony was being selfish by their own rush to the market, but it was either that or go home.


Had this battle not happened, whatever version of HD discs would have come out, been adopted, and the initial strength would have been stronger. We're still playing catch-up from that battle today, given the number of catalogue HD-DVD titles that have not been released on Blu-ray yet.

 

[Kevin EK]

Doug, I think you may well be correct about this being the final physical movie format, but I hope we're not just looking at downloads and streaming video.


I think you're absolutely right that the consumer can only perceive so much in terms of color (as well as sound) before there's a drop off in perceptible quality difference. I don't see how a home consumer will be able to really see the difference between a 1080p disc and a 4K disc - unless they have professional equipment and a screening room like what you'd find at a major studio. Going from analog TV and VHS to DVD was already a major leap. Going from DVD to HD is another leap, but much smaller in terms of scale. Going from HD broadcasts or Blu-ray discs to a higher resolution level will be much smaller again in terms of scale.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Chuck, I think you're right that Sony decided that Toshiba would make sure they weren't the "format of choice."

My point is that this problem happened before that time. It was obvious to both Toshiba and Sony that they were each developing HD formats that would likely both compete and be incompatible with each other a la VHS and Betamax. They had an option long before 2006 to work on this together and save the consumer time and money. It would mean that the format would come out later, but it would also mean that the format would have more time to be developed. (And given that timetable, there would have been even more time, since it's doubtful they would have introduced the new format in the middle of the recession in 2008.)


But both company heads chose instead to battle each other and to put the consumers in the middle of the battle. I say that Toshiba's act was selfish because they rushed to market with their product specifically to make sure that they headed off Sony and cornered the market. They knew that Sony would rush their own product to market to compete, and gambled that either Toshiba would win the day or neither company would win. In the end, Toshiba lost a lot of money (along with many consumers), and Sony's product went through a much rougher period of introduction. You could certainly argue that Sony was being selfish by their own rush to the market, but it was either that or go home.


Had this battle not happened, whatever version of HD discs would have come out, been adopted, and the initial strength would have been stronger. We're still playing catch-up from that battle today, given the number of catalogue HD-DVD titles that have not been released on Blu-ray yet.

I don't think Toshiba rushed anything. They were simply ready, Sony wasn't . Toshiba released a completed working product, Sony didn't. Also this was a matter of Sony saying not again. Their video tape format lost out to JVC's in the 80s. Their digital disc format lost out to Toshiba (DVD) in the 90's,(before it came to market) and they weren't about to lose out a 3rd time with an HD format. Sony was determined that their format would be THE format, and they were willing to spend any amount of money to make sure it happened. Already having a working relationship with the other major studios through Sony Pictures, they used that, and money to buy loyalty, regardless of the workability of the product. Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

Doug, I think you may well be correct about this being the final physical movie format, but I hope we're not just looking at downloads and streaming video.


I think you're absolutely right that the consumer can only perceive so much in terms of color (as well as sound) before there's a drop off in perceptible quality difference. I don't see how a home consumer will be able to really see the difference between a 1080p disc and a 4K disc - unless they have professional equipment and a screening room like what you'd find at a major studio. Going from analog TV and VHS to DVD was already a major leap. Going from DVD to HD is another leap, but much smaller in terms of scale. Going from HD broadcasts or Blu-ray discs to a higher resolution level will be much smaller again in terms of scale.

Yes and I read about an experiment that showed that even on a huge IMAX screen, people can't detect resolution beyond 4K anyway. I really think we are hitting the limits of the visual formats, unless you want to up the frame rates, which no longer looks like movies. Doug