Why aren't there any multi-disc Blu-Ray players on the market? - Page 2

I just checked out Amazon and narrowed the search for DVD Changers to 3, 5 and 7 disc models. Here is the status of the top 10 bestselling models:

 

1. Currently unavailable.

2. 1 refurbished from $199.00

3. 1 refurbished from $199.00

4. 1 used from $79.99

5. 1 used from $75.00

6. 1 used from $100.00

7. 1 used from $350.00

8. 2 used from $89.99

9. 1 used from $139.99

10. 1 used from $150.00

 

As far as I can tell, no one is selling a new DVD changer on Amazon. I didn't spends hours researching this, so there might be some models, but it looks to me like the changer market has fizzled.

 

Personally, I don't care one way or the other if Blu-ray changers come out. I don't want to own one, but I can understand why some people might want them (I understand it's about convenience and not about being lazy). However, I think it is obvious that most people don't want to buy them and, therefore, manufacturers are not building them. I suppose they might some day, but it won't surprise me if they don't.

Perhaps the relation to the playing time of the media makes it less attractive.

 

After you played a DVD, you may want to start another one. After your Blu-ray is over, you may want to go take a leak. Or go to bed.

 

 

Cees

 

I don't think that is the issue, since the playing time of SD-DVD's and BD's are pretty much the same -- each contains a feature length film or 3-4 TV episodes.

 

Personally, I just think not very many people sit down and watch multiple discs in a single session, so they do not see the value. In my case, I may go several days between watching content, and I have no idea what I will be in the mood to watch a few days from now. So, chances are if I load a few discs in a player, I will just be taking them back out to watch something different. Therefore, it could actually be an inconvenience instead of a convenience.

 

In the early days of SD-DVD, I owned a two-disc Toshiba model and almost never used the 2nd tray. However, I own two 5-disc carousel CD players that I find useful, since there are times I will want music playing for hours during a party or some other occasion. That never happens with DVD's or BD's -- at least in our home.

i have a sony 5 disc dvd player i no longer use because i moved my dvd watching to the computer in the living room, but here is why i loved it.

it would remember where i stopped playing every disk. so 1 slot would be a movie i started and stopped halfway thru, i turn the player back on later, instantly watching that same place. tv shows. Sometimes i'd have 2 - 3 different series going i was watching, married with children, sopranos, bsg. well having all 3 in there and qued up to the exact place i left off, i didn't have to remember what episode to start on or where i was on the disk. it just instantly put me back there. then sometimes (before the computer was in there) i wanted to listen to music so the loud music i wanted to hear all over would just reside in there for when i was in the mood.

 

i do miss all that convience on blu ray, heck i miss being able to just turn the player onand go right back to where i was without waiting 5 min for a disk to load to the first commercial (no its not literally 5 min but it seems that way sometimes)

 

That had nothing much to do with the player. That is determined more by the disc. Some players remembered more disc's stopping places, but I think about all of them remembered the last one. I had one player that remembered the last one only, and another that remembered the stopping place for up to five discs.  Some blu ray movies allow starting from the position you stopped at, but not many. I think I've only run across three or four.

Possibly of interest:

http://m.engadget.com/default/article.do?artUrl=http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/13/kaleidescape-launches-100-disc-blu-ray-movie-server/&category=classic&icid=eng_latest_art

Another plus is it the mega changer plays MP3's you can load the player up with a few discs and have hundreds of songs ready to go when you have guests over.  And having the ability to load it with DVD's and Bluray's is a plus.  Especially if you have young children and you do not want them messing with the discs and risking them damaging them.  This way it is all loaded and even if you do not have children many of your movies are loaded and ready to play, no digging for them especially when family and friends are over.  The player should show you cover art and maybe even a little bit about the movie.

I'm sure this would be a selling point for some people, but these days I would imagine that people have other ways of getting their music to their home theater if it's already in their computer (which would be the presumption if they were making mp3 CDs). In my case, I've been using an AppleTV as my music server for the last 3 years. Prior to that, I had a setup for using my computer as a music server and piping the sound throughout the house. Plus, there are iPods and other devices that make it pretty easy to have large playlists and don't require hard media such as CDs (mp3 or audio). I guess what I'm saying is that I don't see this as a game-changing selling point. For a small percentage of people this would be a nice feature, but for most wouldn't make any difference.

 

For me, the main reason I would have wanted multiple disc capability is for 2-disc sets where the movie is on disc 1 and the special features are on disc 2. A lot of times after watching a movie, we like to skim the special features. It's certainly not that big a deal to get up and change out the disc. However, it's a heck of a lot more convenient to simply tell the changer to move on to the next disc. I couldn't see loading multiple movies in the player; I don't plan that far ahead.

 

That being said, I never wanted to deal with something as large as a multiple disc DVD changer. We quit using our CD changer back in 2001 (when we commissioned my computer as music server). The changers are just so big. I prefer the streamlined size of single disc players. Anything that can keep the HT area from being too crowded...

 

I'm bumping this thread because an Internet search for the subject line question is what brought me to this site.

 

If I had a 5 or 6 disc carousel blu-ray player (or, better yet, a player with two 5-pack cartridges ready to load and play 10 blu-rays/dvds), particularly if it were region-free or could be made so, I could remove at least two other components from my A/V component rack and simplify movie night considerably. Load it up with the snack bar countdown DVD, the vintage trailer DVD, the cartoon compendium DVD, the one or two blu-ray features for the night's home theater Drive-in double bill and off we go!

 

I remember multi-disc DVD players being a perfectly legitimate "up" selling feature on the retail floor almost from the day DVD players were available. Anyone remember the 3-disc AIWA line? Then there were 5-disc DVD players, 6-disc DVD players, eventually the 300+1 and 400 mega-changers showed up. They might have lost market share as a new "up" selling feature came on the scene; the blu-ray player.

 

Now we've almost come to the end of obvious new and improved features to add to the single-disc blu-ray player as a reason to sell the customer "up" for greater retail store profits. Once every blu-ray player features 3-D, Wi-Fi, Fast-Load, and a couple of other features, which direction will the brand-to-brand, model-to-model "up" selling competition go? If history is any guide, it will go in a direction that is deadly for a retail operation; "price". The competition will become who can sell the CHEAPEST 3-D, Wi-Fi, Fast-Load, etc. blu-ray player on the store's shelf. And with that, unit sales might increase for the manufacturer for a while, but profits will plunge for the retailer. Not good if you're a retailer.

 

If retailers are smart (and, yes, there is mounting evidence to suggest they are no longer), they'd be on the horn with blu-ray manufacturers asap demanding that they begin introducing multi-disc and other convenience features as a reason for their "geek squad" on the retail floor to sell the customer "up" to something he might not have considered but ought to consider for an extra $50 or whatever.

 

Like cup-holders in automobiles and back-lit remote control units, a feature like multi-disc blu-ray/DVD playback is not necessary and is a feature that must be SOLD to the customer as a reason to spend more. It's up to the seller to help generate demand for it by painting a picture for why the customer should want it. The retailer pays someone to wander the aisles and SELL these "up" features to customers, not stand there and point like a statue, right? If anything, that is where you'll find the weak link in the chain when it came to the last of the multi-disc DVD players on the store shelves. It is very possible the store clerks were so busy pointing toward the new blu-ray players that very few customers even knew why that Sony multi-disc player was priced at $129 instead of $69 like the DVD player sitting next to it.

 

It is the retailer who should want and demand the manufacturers provide a multi-disc blu-ray player right now. Then it is the job of the sales people on the retail floor to generate demand for that and a multitude of other potential "up" selling convenience features. It's called "selling". Since it is a given that a multi-disc player would command a higher price and probable higher profit margin for the store, it is in the retailer's interest to tell customers why they should want that feature. Retailers used to know how to train their "geek squad" to do that.

 

Of course, if retailers don't care about "selling" customers on an upgraded feature/benefit at a higher price point for a higher profit and would rather the direction competition from one model to another be almost all about the cheapest price then they deserve to lose out to the Internet sellers and close their doors.

Actually, Sony makes two different 400-disc Blu Ray jukeboxes.  I'm not sure what the differences are between the two.  I own two of their 400 disc DVD players and love them.  I'm a TV junkie and I like being able to have all five seasons of Babylon 5 (plus the TV movies) or eight (or is it nine, now?) seasons of CSI loaded up and ready to go.  All my music CDs and a several TV series (including documentaries like A History of Britain) are loaded up in one of them.  The other holds mostly movies and another bunch of TV shows. If I had the cash and the room to add a Blu Ray version, I would definitely consider adding one. 

 

Regards,

 

Joe

I've got one of the Sony Blu-Ray changers that I've got loaded with concerts.  I tend to watch a song or two off of one and then go to another.  Nice and convenient to crack open a beer and sit back and music surf.

Of course, the "don't have to walk across the room to change it" convenience feature has been one of the most effective step up sales features in the history of electronics. Stackable LP record players, remote controls for everything, old auto-reverse tape decks, et al. I remember when it was debatable whether anyone really cared about remote controls for television. "You're not so lazy you can't get up to change the channel, are you?" lol. But it was inevitable. 

 

And waiting for customers to flock into a store demanding a certain feature has never been how it was done. I doubt anybody walked into a Best Buy in the days before blu-ray players and asked for a DVD player that could connect to the Internet with some kind of BD-Live type feature built into it. But they could have. What is the percentage of customers who ever actively lobbied for 7.1 instead of 5.1 audio capability for their players at the store level? 0.5%? Yet, there it is as a step up sales feature for retailers to make more profit. In fact, there probably weren't that many customers demanding greater resolution than they were already seeing on their 27" TV sets with DVDs. But blu-ray technology was sold to customers alongside the larger screens the stores wanted to step up their customers to buy.

 

So now that we're seeing 3-D, WiFi, Fast-Play, 7.1 single disc blu-ray players heading toward the $99 price point with nothing but lower prices and lower profits on the horizon for the stores, retailers had better start demanding something like a 5 or 6 disc player step up from the manufacturers while also demanding their sales floor personnel start selling customers on the feature. 

I've currently got a 5 disc dvd player. I generally fill it with:
1 movie
1 sit-com tv show
1 drama tv show
1 animated tv show
1 collection of animated shorts

I use the memory function to remember what episode of the disc I'm on without having to sit through all the opening trailers and company logos. I can watch a couple of episodes of a tv show (frequently there are 6-8 episodes per disc) or two, then watch a couple of cartoons (usually dozens on a disc), and then the next day continue on with tv shows easily without losing my place or wasting a TON of time on jumping past the disc start-up junk.

Now that more tv shows and even animated shorts are coming out on blu-ray, I'd REALLY like a multi-disc player without resorting to a 500 or even 100-disc monster. It's awesome that the new Loony Tunes bds have 25 shorts per disc, but I don't want to have to watch all 25 in a row or try to remember what I last watched if I take a week-long break in the middle. So every 6 months or so I look to see if there's any news on a multi-disc player, and so far every time I'm disappointed.

I, too have had multidisc players: a Sony 60 disc (vertical) CD carousel that eventually went wonky (guess what mechanism failed?) and a Panasonic 5 or 6 disc (flat) carousel DVD player. I kept that when I got Blu Ray, figuring I can still play standard DVDs in it and my Onkyo HT system (which promised name brand upconverting capabilities) would bump it up to something nicer looking. It doesn't, but that's another thread.

While I do love the idea of having most or all of my library loaded up and ready, yes, for the convenience, If I got a mega changer, it would have to be able to play both sides of a "flipper" disc, but I have heard enough reports of mega changers scratching up discs. I may have the same Panasonic model another fellow complained about, as it is a bit confusing to take one specific disc out - mostly because the buttons for that function are among 4 identical ones in a row, and hard to read. That's just something that can be fixed with a better designed model. I haven't noticed any disc damage from my flat carousel, so I'm much more inclined to get another 5-7 disc flat carousel if they make them for BluRay.

I love the report from the obvious theatrical experience buff who loads intermission clock, cartoons, concession trailers, etc. along with the feature into a changer for a "night at the movies" and that is another thing I'd like to be able to do. Another reason I'd like a Blu Ray changer is not only for multi-disc sets that have supplements on a second or third disc, but also for longer movies that have been split onto 2 discs on BluRay to keep the high resolution/bitrate. Granted BluRay releases that do this are wisely split at the intermission, but I'd still like them all loaded at once, along with the supplemental discs.

So yeah, I think there would be a market for such players eventually, at least the 5-7 disc flat carousel type. However... Being well behind the cutting edge of early adopters, I have nonetheless already transferred all my music library to my computer and iPod and no longer physically play any CDs. It seems likely that practice would eventually include movies. While movie studios are clearly more aggressive with regard to copy protection, I still imagine that the nascent trend of media servers may be the wave of the future.

If studios and hardware manufacturers can reach an agreement for media servers that can store discs in full res without the ability to make any copies, and the price of that technology comes down, I imagine we'll be handling AV media the same way we handle audio now.

Meanwhile a 5-7 disc flat carousel BluRay player is something I would buy when available, (if it had the latest net enhancements) as I'm sure it would be more affordable than a high capacity server.

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