Blu-ray is dead - heckuva job, Sony!

Brink · Oct 30, 2008

Blu-ray is dead - heckuva job, Sony!

Written by Robin Harris @ 12:31 pm October 28th, 2008

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?

Read more at the source:
Blu-ray is dead - heckuva job, Sony! | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com

Note

Brink said:
This is not a definite nail in the casket for Blu-ray. It's just a "If Sony doesn't pull their heads out and do something" type warning.

I say unless something better and cheaper comes soon, Blu-ray will be here for awhile. They just need to reduce the costs of Blu-ray before it will become more mainstream in everyone's home.

Brink · Oct 30, 2008

It appears that greed is killing this format off. :rolleyes:

NormCameron · Oct 30, 2008

Hi Brink. I would never have believed this. It looked. for sure that Blu-Ray was a winner when the Movie Houses picked it up exclusively. I guess you never can tell where greed and larceny will get you?

Brink · Oct 30, 2008

I think the main thing that they need to do is to cut prices and release an affordable recording Blu-ray drive.

NormCameron · Oct 30, 2008

The article does seem to reflect a certain point of view. An alternate is

Depending on which section of the press you look at today, Blu-ray is either set to grow rapidly over the coming year, or is doomed to failure. Do you trust market research, or the extremely vocal argument of an "industry expert"?

Blu-ray players will slip below $150 during the traditional Black Friday bargain fest in the US, according to the Wall Street Journal.

However, that's not going to save Blu-ray, which will be dead in just 12 months time, according to ZDNet's Robin Harris, who seems to think the whole of Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association are smoking crack (yeah, nice move Robin).

He believes that the average consumer will be just as happy with standard DVDs being upscaled to a high definition TV, rather than investing in a disc technology which in five years will have been completely replaced by digital downloads.

I don't happen to agree that Blu-ray faces a quick and tragic death.

Harris isn't enamoured with market research companies either, which means he'd consider the outlook from Futuresource -- that Blu-ray hardware sales will triple in Europe next year -- null and void.

Blu-ray's future isn't guaranteed, but then that's true of a lot of things at present. Many non-essential commodities will suffer over the coming year, which is more to do with the economy than how worthy they are as products.

Having said that, Blu-ray is still an emerging format, and it wouldn't be surprising if sales suffered more than that of standard DVDs. Still, 4% of the US disc market isn't terrible. Perhaps when we eventually get out of the doldrums, towards the end of next year, the format will pick up more strongly.

Significantly he neglects the experience of DVD, which was that people didn't adopt the technology in the mainstream market until prices became competitive with VHS.

Brink · Oct 30, 2008

LOL, no problem Norm.

I guess it depends on how greedy they will be.

Bare Foot Kid · Oct 30, 2008

Hello Brink, thanks for posting this....

I was considering a Blu-ray burner for my new system, I will now use the money elsewhere....

Thank you Shawn!

Later :shock:

Ted

SCSIraidGURU · Oct 30, 2008

I have both a Toshiba HD DVD and Sony Blu-Ray player. Toshiba has sent me an upgrade DVD for my HD DVD player 6x since January. Even though, no one sell the HD DVD movies any more. I think this is awesome. Sony on the other hand has a thumb up their butt. Blu-Ray movies are $10 more than standard DVDs. Upgrading the Sony unit is a pain. It requires a 600 MB ISO download. Burn it to a CD. It takes 45 minutes to do it. Toshiba takes 3-15 minutes. Usually closer to 3 minutes. I thought 1080p/60 would come out. I see 1600p is being thought about. I don't need 1600p for a movie. 1080p/24 is fine. They rather build a $400+ unit no one will buy and movies that are $20 more to own over doing 1080p/60. I also am finding more blu-ray media has trailers at the beginning of the disks you can get past. This makes me mad about paying $30 for a movie and having 10 trailers. If they want trailers, the disk should be $10-$15. If I pay $30, they should not be on the disk.

eggyuk · Oct 30, 2008

Bare Foot Kid said:
Hello Brink, thanks for posting this....

I was considering a Blu-ray burner for my new system, I will now use the money elsewhere....

So was I Ted. I found a LG Blu-Ray burner / HD DVD ROM for around £140 thought it would be worth the investment. Maybe not eh? Guess I'll buy a standard DVDRW for ~£20. Now what to spend the spare £120 on :huh:

Bare Foot Kid · Oct 30, 2008

eggyuk said:
Now what to spend the spare £120 on :huh:

Hello eggyuk!

Yeah, I can list several components to spend the extra coin on.... :cool:

Later

Ted

Ex_Brit · Oct 30, 2008

Interesting article. I'm not surprised either. I'm one of those people that has been using an upscaling DVD player to give me great images on my HDTV. I've been doing it for quite a while now and I see no reason to even consider Blu-Ray (or any other format for that matter).
Mine will even play PAL as well as NTSC, so I'm quite happy with it.

The article mentions Betamax in passing...it too was a leap ahead of VHS for quality and is still used in TV Studios, but Sony had their heads in the sand on that one.

NormCameron · Oct 30, 2008

Brink, Your post is getting more and more like a prohecy :-

It was at the beginning of 2008 that the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war came to an end, and it looks like the beginning of 2009 is going to see the start of a new battle. Blu-ray just got a new competitor, and if maker Royal Digital Media can deliver on their promises, it could mean big trouble for Sony’s format.
News of the new format broke by way of a press release from DreamStream, who RDM has contracted to provide military-grade, 2,048-bit encryption for the disks. Compared to Blue-rays paltry 128-bit encryption, the new format should prove significantly more of a challenge to crack, which must look good to publishers looking to protect their IP.
RDM says that their as-of-yet-unnamed HD disk will be able to hold 100GB of data, and will support 1920p video. That means that a single disk will be able to hold about 4 hours of super-HD content.
The best part about RDM’s new format? According to the press release, it’s based on “inexpensive red laser technology” and therefore the disks and players will cost about as much as traditional DVDs and players.
The format is scheduled to launch as soon as the beginning of 2009. It’s going to be interesting to see if they can keep their promises. If they can, is this going to spell the end of Blue-ray? Tell us what you think after the jump.

Royal Digital Media Announces 100GB/Disk Blu-ray Killer, Supports 1920p | Maximum PC

Brink · Oct 30, 2008

LOL, I knew I was getting pysco/psychic.

The sad thing is that since it uses a red laser, Blu-ray DVDs cannot be supported for backwards compatibility. :zip:

xguntherc · Oct 30, 2008

I never got a Blue ray. I wanted to wait and see how they did.. a few months ago I was at frys electronics and they had 6 shopping carts packed and overflowing with HD-DVD's all for $4.99 I was amazed at the price.. but they were all still full. thats to bad.

hopefully that new red lazer info above will be good. if blue ray went down to $80-100 dollar players and maybe 4-5 dollars more for movies then it would be succesful. but not the way it is now.

mansrm81 · Oct 30, 2008

I'll stick with regular DVD's for now cause I don't have a HD tv to have the full effect of HD DVD's.

dmex · Oct 30, 2008

Brink said:
I think the main thing that they need to do is to cut prices and release an affordable recording Blu-ray drive.

Blue-Ray burners are about $1500 here :mad:

Vista does more and its cheaper, My computer is 3000x more powerful and does more plus its cheaper :mad:

Very greedy for a drive to read and burn blue-ray disks if you ask me :mad:

ripbox · Oct 30, 2008

OMG please tell me this is a hoax...... iv not long ago baught my my self a blu-ray burner for my pc :cry:

Bare Foot Kid · Oct 30, 2008

ripbox said:
OMG please tell me this is a hoax...... iv not long ago baught my self a blu-ray burner for my pc

Oops...

...This thread just saveed me 400.00 Sorry ripbox.

Later :shock:

Ted

dmex · Oct 30, 2008

ripbox said:
OMG please tell me this is a hoax...... iv not long ago baught my my self a blu-ray burner for my pc

It is just a blog from some random guy who doesn't work at ZDNet... :sarc:

I dont believe blue-ray will be dead because there's nothing that matches the capacity or quality's of blue-ray media so yes consider it a hoax :huh:

The are quite a few truths but his whole post was just an angle about the problems and characterizing it as the death of blue-ray (He types like a drama queen!!) :rolleyes:

Bare Foot Kid · Oct 30, 2008

Well, we shall see what we shall see!... :sarc:

...I'm not going to hold my breath!

Later :shock:

Ted

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