Don Reisinger over at CNET has published an article completely lambasting Blu-Ray and its future… What seems to have triggered this off is the fact that Blu-Ray actually lost market share last week and is now sitting at a utterly under whelming 8% of the market.
However the news gets worse for Blu-Ray after that as a recent study has shown that over 50% of the people surveyed had not intention of buying a stand alone Blu-Ray player and only 23% are considering it… and they are only considering it for 2009.
Hell I’ve been considering buying a boat for years now and haven’t gotten around to it so it’s not like we can count on that 23% actually buying one anytime soon.
He goes on to show how the PS3’s sales aren’t enough for Blu-Ray and the fact that the only PC’s with Blu-Ray drives are insane power houses that most of us will never own.
However the reason why I don’t believe that Blu-Rays are the way of the future and Don agrees with me is simply that they don’t offer enough of an improvement over DVD.
The mainstream don’t care about how many pixels are on the screen or how cinematic the sound is… they want it look good and be easily accessible. DVD looks great upscaled on a HDTV and the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD just isn’t great enough to warrant the money.
Let’s also not forget that the largest world markets also have the bandwidth for digital distribution.
Last Updated: September 29, 2008
JimBob
September 29, 2008 at 11:30
Dan Reisinger also thinks that the Xbox 360 is going to beat the Wii in the console war,,,
marc
September 29, 2008 at 11:41
have u even watched a blu ray movie? I watched my first one this weekend and difference between it and an upscaled dvd is huge.I used my bourne ultimatim dvd and the tudors blu ray for the comparison. I really dont think i can go back. I only wish more rental shops stock them now.
abe
September 29, 2008 at 11:45
From what I can see, Blu Ray is becoming more and more popular in SA, with more shops stocking bigger ranges and more people going over. And this is in SA!!!
ewie
September 29, 2008 at 11:58
Blu-ray as a media disc still have a long way to go, it barely outsell hardware at the moment in europe, yes it might
be the future for some but it still have a long way to go.
maby it will take of in 2010 but not before that time, as
nobody with a big dvd collection is suddenly going to replace a dvd title with a blu-ray title, they will buy new titles on blu-ray or rent it. The price of blu_ray disc will first have to be about half price from where it is now.
Kale
September 29, 2008 at 12:53
Jim you da man.
I just don’t get why everyone is so admiment for Sony’s products to fail. Parhaps someone could enlighten me…
Lupus
September 29, 2008 at 14:32
Also I’m not sure where he says PC’s with Blu Ray drives are powerhouses, you can pickup a Blu Ray drive for a PC for R1000 which is the same price DVD drives came in at, and the graphics card capable of handling it will be roughly R500 so its not out of reach.
LazySAGamer
September 29, 2008 at 14:36
I haven’t seen a PC with a Blu-Ray drive shipping for less than R10k… but then again I am not on top of PC prices…
Anyone got a link?
Wesley
September 29, 2008 at 15:19
I believe blu ray is purley for backing up data of huge qauntities, think of it as a HDD sized disc. I cant see it quiet breaking the movie barries quiet yet. too little titles are available on it and some just arent worth the re buy of it
kab123
September 29, 2008 at 16:54
Lol you gotta be a complete idiot to believe (or not see and hear) any difference between BD and DVD. I know there are people who don’t care for it like I don’t really care for a fast car. But shit, denying the fairly significant difference is idiotic and smacks of sour grapes.
Anyway I don’t give a rats ass what people think. My The Dark Knight is on pre order on BD. Enjoy your DVD version.
kab123
September 29, 2008 at 16:56
“Blu-Ray get’s hammered again”
Who gives a fuck what Dan the man thinks :
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Warner/Disc_Announcements/Warner_Announces_Two_Versions_of_Dark_Knight_Blu-ray,_Goes_BD-Live/2122
Fudzy
September 29, 2008 at 19:15
Stand alone drive (ROM) is about R1700. You could build a media centre PC for about R7k.
But we both know this is more about PS3 bashing than Blu Ray.
LazySAGamer
September 29, 2008 at 22:17
This article has nothing to do with the PS3… well very little to do with the PS3.
I can’t find a site that is offering Blu-Ray enabled PC’s to validate the prices at the moment but even R7k to me is expensive… I need to get paid more 😉
Milesh Bhana
September 30, 2008 at 00:02
on a 42″ i can see the difference. On a 32″ i can also see the difference, but not enough of a difference to justify forking out the cash.
In the end, i don’t think it matters that Blue-Ray is taking longer than anticipated to get some traction. It’s all related to HD screen adoption, the more people buy HD screens, the more they’ll want an HD format.
I think this will change when there are more HD broadcasts. DVD owners will start wanting to upgrade when the MNet Sunday night movie looks better than his super-duper-ultra special Casino Royale DVD.