More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge - Page 5

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Thanks Doug for bringing a little reality to the forums. Sure prices have gone up on certain items, but it is nowhere near the doom and gloom the media would have you believe.

For example the so-called housing "crisis" and homes in foreclosure affects barely 4% of homes in the U.S., up from around the average of just over 2%. Now being in foreclosure DOES NOT mean your house is going to be taken from you tomorrow, it simply means you are at least three house payments behind, and most mortgage companies are at least willing to work out the problem.

Additionally what the press doesn't bother to tell you is that the MAJORITY of homes in foreclosure ARE NOT the primary homes of the homeowner. They are second houses or homes that were bought as rentals with quick fix ARMs or Interest Only loans in an effort for people to make quick money with rental properties, now that interest rates are going up the "chickens are coming home to roost" as it were.

Blu-Ray's failures are simply price of players and price of movies versus perceived value over standard def DVDs. If the economy were the only reason for Blu-Ray's failure then please explain how a $60 video game (Grand Theft Auto 4) broke all records and in one week generated over $1 billion in revenue for Rockstar Games/Capcom, or how that same week Iron Man generated over $100 million at the box office from Thursday-Sunday?

If the economy were in tatters and we were on the brink of a fiscal meltdown people would not be spending money the way they are today!

Yancy

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Things are moving faster now, downloading doesn't even have to be genuinely THAT close to make most people want to pass on Blu-ray. The mere potential is enough, it's like a relief to them to not buy movies and players again. (plus, it sounds stupid, but it's not helping that many stores have the discs in those thick plastic theft cases that have to be removed. People see those cases with some movie they've already bought once and they head for the hills.)

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

No one has argued any such thing.

M.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Escapism...

The 'golden years' for Hollywood have always been in times of depression/recession. Entertainment always makes more money during a recession, technology, though, doesn't.

Also, it is easy to spend money when they print so much of it...

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Actually movie attendance did drop in the great depression and several smaller film studios went out of business. It went up dramatically during the boom of world war 2 to a high point in 1947. Of course one could argue that there was nothing else for anyone to spend money on in the war years.

Doug

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Unmitigated bullcrap, learn you history. The Depression affected some 20-24% of the public (on average). Again the majority of Americans were largely unaffected by the economic crisis of the day and continued, as they had before, to go to the movies. Hollywood in the 30s was not propped up by some poor unemployed working class of Americans who handed over there last dollars to be swept away in wave of escapism.

The unemployed masses turned to the radio for their entertainment. Interestingly most Depression era victims kept two things, their cars and their radios.

Yancy



Great point Doug.


Yancy

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I think this is a stupid way to conduct business. I think you got to go "old school," i.e. to make money you got to spend money....
Just look at the huge gobs of money that other forms of entertainment are currently spending to stay in the public limelight. I see more commercials/newspaper ads for games/Dish/DirecTV than I do for Blu-ray.
The only way all of this makes sense to me is if the HDM industry already has accepted that HDM will never go mainstream and, like Laserdisc before it, is satisfied with remaining a niche product.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Intriguing how the failure of Blu-Ray is taken as an accomplished fact.

Strong language to use for such a dubious point. I have to suggest that an economic problem becomes severe, & its effects broadly felt, long before 50% of the population is dispossessed. Even a rise of, for example, 5 percentage points in the unemployment rate, or an equivalent increase in bankruptcies, considerably alters the balance of the economic system.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Yes, it's amazing how cavalier some people can become when they're quoting bloodless percentages. Using the 1933 U.S. population of 125 million, we're talking about "only" 25-30 million people being affected by the Depression.



As I noted earlier, no one has made the argument that gallandro is "refuting". The whole thing's a strawman.

M.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I hope the download revolution for films is many years down the road. I still like physical media. I believe most on this forum do.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I do acknowledge the troubled economy. It just seems to me that we always seem to base sd dvds, blu-ray dvds and players on the J6P crowd. Those in that demo are buying $40 dvd players and shopping exclusively out of the Wal-Mart $5 bin and $1 racks for sd dvds. I really don't find them as relavent as some here do. My thing is that the people who populate this forum on the average don't strike me as J6P. The arguments that stem from this excuse seems to be just another way to piss on Blu-ray for whatever reason. Sometimes it seems like the format war hasn't really ended.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I don't know about your Walmart, but the only thing in the dollar bins at mine are Spanish language videos.

J6P is the crowd that is going to have to buy into blu-ray if it is going to be truly successful. I'm not saying that all of the J6P crowd, but a significant portion of them. If not then blu-ray is really just a niche product and it will go nowhere fast. I just don't think it can survive on the Home Theater Group alone.

Doug

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Blu-ray growth has been slow, but HDTV adoption is great. I believe it is close to 40% of households in the US have an HDTV now. What percentage of HDTV owners already have Blu-ray capable hardware including the PS3? The respondents owning an HDTV are the only ones I would be interested in. Blu-ray isn't a product that will drive HDTV adoption, it is the other way around. Once an HDTV is owned is when Blu-ray comes into consideration, people just aren't going to buy Blu-ray without an HDTV or plans to get one, and people aren't going to run out and buy an HDTV because they want Blu-ray. Satellite and cable and OTA are the reasons consumers buy an HDTV. Wanting the best picture quality for their new HDTV will result in a signifcant market buying Blu-ray.

I have been predicting that HDTV will be in about 70% of the households in the US in 2011 and that half of those will have Blu-ray at that time. Blu-ray sales and rentals are going to be about 35% of the DVD market at that time and will still be growing compared to DVD is the what I expect based on this survey and all other research I have been reading. If someone wants to call that a niche market, fine, it isn't going to be comparable to the DVD penetration at the same time in DVD's life and will be a fraction of the DVD market at that time, but it will still be a big number.

I expect this holiday season will result in some surveys and market research indicating Blu-ray is growing and will do much better than these recent articles are claiming.

Chris

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Blu-ray can still be successful without being totally massed market with 90% penetration. So what if Blu-ray only achieves 40-45% penetration, to me that's too big to be considered a niche market.




Crawdaddy

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

As others pointed out, no it wasn't.
Hey, Francis: The format war is over.

Everything you've mentioned was DOA or before.
Utter hogwash.

By your rationale, DVD should have died already because of the "extremely fragmented" market of cable/sat, VOD, DVR, and download services. Yet surprisingly enough, it's still a multibillion-dollar industry. That doesn't even take into account the enormous problems in most of the world concerning bandwidth for mass downloads of HD material that are in many cases a decade away from being fixed.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I can take one of my region 1 discs and one of my region 2 discs and they look the same. The technology is the same. The only difference is how the disc are encoded. DVD has been the worldwide standard for a number of years.


The format wars are only over in the US. The hidef battle in the world has not even begun. The US is not the only world economic power. China and India are home to a growing middle class. Also China has other reasons for seeing CH-DVD succeed. They also have the money and power irrespective of hd-dvd. Perhaps that is why Sony has been part of a consortium working with ch-dvd. They are hedging their bets.


A lot of this technology was not practical when dvd hit its stride. As a result,
dvd's only competitor was videotape. Given the technological improvements over the last few years, these technologies are more available today. DVD will be a major competitor to bluray as well as downloading and other technologies. As time passes, the technology will only get better. Given the
wider choices available to the public, it will result in an extremely fragmented market.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Oh Oh! Format war, Version 2.0.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Sp now you're saying nothing is different because of the technology? That's no different than Blu-ray, since it's the same standard worldwide as well.
You're kidding me, right? It's over everywhere.
Which means what, exactly as it pertains to HDTV? You've been challenged on this many times before and as far as I know have yet to provide a single shred of evidence. I've provided evidence to the contrary, and there's plenty more.
Again: which means what, exactly?

By all means, please share what exactly these reasons are. In fact, why don't you provide even a single bit of recent evidence that China is, in fact, making CH-DVD a standard and ignoring Blu-ray as you claim? Or that India is dropping Blu-ray in favor of VMD. Hell, just for starters, when's the last time any major publication even mentioned either of those?
Evidence? Anything at all other than Sony being a part of the DVD Forum?

To reiterate: the format war is over.
I'm sorry, are you saying none of those technologies were "practical" when DVD took off in 2000-2001? Not even cable/sat and VOD? Pardon me while I go outside and laugh my ass off.
Can you get your arguments straight? First, it doesn't matter because of where they were, now it doesn't matter because of where they will be, and you're under the assumption that Blu-ray will remain static in things like pricing. And you're still avoiding my statement that Blu-ray's issues have a much higher potential of being fixed in the near timeframe than that of anything else. After all, Blu-ray basically only needs price changes that can be done with the approval of a governing body. Every single technology that you so desperately want to "fragment" the HD market not only has a longer road, it has a astronomically more expensive road with dozens, if not hundreds, of different directions. Not only does each individual carrier have to invest hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to overhaul the infrastructure, they have to adhere to the different standards from every level from local to international, they have to choose from the various draconian DRM schemes to employ (all of which are much more draconian than anything Blu-ray has), and they have to convince people that never owning anything they've paid money for is awesome. Tell us, when will all of that happen?

And remember, it took 3-4 years for DVD to really take off, and Blu-ray has been around for less than 2 years. I'd love to hear your explanations on why you set the baseline at the most successful media in history by a huge margin. By that measurement, everything is a failure.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I see that Wal-Mart is putting in an entire 1/2 row of Blu-ray product (including $299 players). Does anyone know what price point Wal-Mart will be selling new and/or catalogue Blu releases? Seems to me that the faster new releases come down to $20, the better for software sales.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Yep, some people seem to need it.

Let's all try to moderate the rhetoric. Anyone slipping back into the tone and idiom of last year is going to find themselves in an awkward situation.

M.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Wow. 5 pages, so I had to come and see what´s going on. I should´ve known - the trolls are back..

Later.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

We don't allow such talk on this forum so consider this a warning.






Crawdaddy

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Back during the format war I used to see some BD's in Wally-Mundo for $18 and some change, no more. I was in the Alcoa store yesterday and there were a half dozen titles for $24.xx and everything else was $30 or more. The BD's are behind glass now to protect them from junkies and other thieves. At the West Knoxville store they have not recieved a glass case for their BD's yet and you have to go to the counter and ask to see the list....that was two weeks ago....

The only players I've seen so far are Samsung 1000's for $488.

I was by Tar-geaux after Wally's yesterday and they had 4 titles for $25 and everything else was $30-$35. ....Oh, they they did have T2 for $14.99.

I have no good local shopping options other than go out to Busted Buy and ask them to price-match Amazon which they will reluctantly do. I'm tired of that. I might as well stay home and order from Amazonia.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I would be quite happy with a 40% market penetration, and I would consider that a huge success for blu-ray. Particularly considering that HDTVs are only in about 40% of American homes. That would mean that nearly 100% of HDTV owners bought into the format.

Doug

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

The only difference is that your region 1 disc won't play in your region 2 player because one is NTSC and the other is PAL. They aren't compatible even beyond the region coding. Yes they both use a laser to read a disc that is encoded with an MPEG 2 video file, but that video file is not universally usable world wide.

Doug

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I think Crawdaddy meant 40-45% penetration in the long run (like after another 5-7 years, if not more), not near term. Presumably, by then, HDTV itself -- though not necessarily 1080i/p HD -- would have >=90% penetration.

Anyway, I think that's a reasonable prediction/expectation, if the industry doesn't mess up. And I'd be happy w/ that myself.

_Man_

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

I've been reading through these five pages with interest. It's good that we have these discussions, and anything I might say shouldn't be taken as criticism of the thread. Much of what's being said here, harkens back to the very beginning of hi-def software. We're simply not arguing red vs. blue anymore.

Perhaps I'm very dim, but I still don't understand all the hand-wringing. All the basic factors are well known and understood. Any format of hi-def software, nearly by definition, isn't going to have the massive appeal that SD DVD had. Most likely, SD came along at a particular time in the PC and home video market, that might never be duplicated. I've said it many times before: BD doesn't have to have that same massive level of acceptance in order to be a successful format...and it never will.

Why is everybody foaming at the mouth, for tidal waves of mom and pop purchases? Why can't anybody relate the here and now, to a similar stage of past formats? And that includes the perhaps once in a lifetime success story of SD DVD. I don't see a massive, do or die crisis. The software people, even though times are slow, don't seem to be hurling themselves off roofs, or doing much price cutting. The CE people aren't in a panic either. Which helps raise the question, of why there's such high anxiety and hand-wringing in these forums. Seems to me, that if things were that dire we would see aggressive price cutting all the way around, both software and hardware. I simply don't think they're all that displeased. And if they aren't, we're not in danger of certain format death.

As I've said before, what's with the frenetic cries: $15 software, NOW! Blu-ray in every mom and pop home, NOW!

Software that sells for $35 never enters my mind, because I've almost never come close to paying that much, and I have a respectable library. If the only place you can shop, sells BD for that price...well, what can I say? If the software people were that concerned about scaring away mom and pop impulse purchases, the prices WOULD be lower. Again, it's the failed perspective that I don't understand. This is not a unique or troubling cycle. It's the way things work.

The same sense of doom has been hanging like a shroud in these forums, since day one. Is it the state of the world? Is it politics? Is it the war? Is this the only place people like us can go, loose our anxieties and actually get a response?

I'm just a knuckle-head thinking out loud.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

David, I think you're on to something.

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

David,

I think at least some of us tend to agree w/ you.

Cheers!

_Man_

Re: More Research Asserts that Blu Ray Adoption Isn't Apt to Surge

Last week, or so, i ordered a damn lot of Blu-ray discs for under $15 from Warner Home Video. Most were pre-orders. But, of course i had to be here on the HTF to even know of the deal. I know its not the same as the average Joe on the street who might of bought I am Legend on Blu-ray at BB for $35. Most, or many of us bought it in the $18 price point from Amazon or Warner. Helps to know where to shop.
So we can find some good deals, i guess it just needs to be easier for Joe.