Your iPhone doesn't play DVDs, so you're not watching DVDs in those places either.
Would you enjoy it just as well if the DVD was sub-VHS quality? Do you get the same enjoyment watching a film on your iPhone as you do watching it in a quality movie theater with a good audience?

The key phrase here is "almost". Quality makes a difference to everyone, otherwise you wouldn't even know what an IMAX presentation looks like.

The AV quality upgrade is not worth the [current] cost to many, especially after factoring in the purchase of an HDTV. However, DVD wasn't worth the cost to many, many, people for a good number of years after it debuted.

I'm not sure I follow: wouldn't you be buying more BDs than you are right now? So you percentage of BDs bought would increase, even if it didn't exceed you percentage of DVDs bought.

This was true when DVD was new as well. It took quite a while for studios to start digging in the vaults for DVD.

Wow, so the format that started with 100% of the physical media market 3 years ago is still "winning"? Is that a surprise to anyone?

Have you actually done such a comparison? 720p is 3x the resolution of 480i, so 720p and downconverted 1080i/p looks markedly better than 480i, as I can attest to with my own 720p LCD.

This is true, but it's also changing. Nobody here suggested getting a BD player if you don't have or get an HDTV

That's changing already. 1080p is sneaking down into mid-grade level, and will eventually replace 720p on everything but the smallest screens.

OTA and HD cable is both 720p and 1080i, depending on the station. Dish Networks provides 1080p VOD. The original Xbox could output 1080i on select games, and the 360 and PS3 have a number of games that support 1080p native resolution:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070721/4652/

An HD "broadcast" could be an infinite amount of data, depending on how you count it (from when HD started broadcasting, ect.) You're porbably referring to bandwidth though.

That depends on whether it's 1080p30 or 1080p60, since at 30 frames/sec, 1080p would have the same bandwidth of 720p60, the current broadcast standard.

However, material doesn't need to be broadcast in 1080p for end users to take advantage of 1080p. A 1080p TV will take a 1080i signal and de-interlace it, making the end product 1080p, sometimes 1080p120. The 120Hz TVs are interesting, since there's absolutely zero material out there that's delivered at 120Hz, yet the TVs keep getting sold since the end users see an improvement in video quality on these sets.

Dish Networks already does.

The current highest FIOS connection is 50 Gbit/s, which is near BD's maximum bitrate. That connection speed isn't available to a lot of people thought.

That's possibly true for pre-recorded media, but not for recordable BD vs hard drives. At $20 a disc, BD's 50 GB pales in comparison to a 1 TB harddrive for $100, or 20x the storage for 5x the price.

It's 50/50 currently in regards to those points, but the points that DVD trump BD are simply because it's an older format that already dominated the marketplace when BD was introduced. As you point out, the advantages DVD has over BD has diminished in only 15 months.

The upconversion point is stupid, as you pointed out. Upconversion is simply not as good as BD. As for price, I'm more upset that the BD detractors have no sense of history and cite the prices for BD as a deterrent, when history has shown that the prices will eventually drop.

Quite nice that this thread as stayed civil. Too used to BR vs DVD discussions turning into big ol pissing matches.

After going through this thread, I can see you guys point actually. Sure I'd love a 50-inch screen, but right now it just isn't feasible on my budget and livign arrangement. So BR would just be wasted.

But yeah, I can see how as display technology gets better, you'll want a format with better resolution to take advantage of it.

I have a 27" crt tv in the bedroom and I can tell the difference between HD and SD easy. The thing is, you can always buy a BR player because it still plays DVDs.

Very interesting (and honest) Q and A with two of the heads of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton:


" Do you think DVD sales are down for good?

Lynton: What you see happening is that every time a new technology or means of distribution show up, about every decade or so, there’s an enormous growth in the business because there’s another way to exploit the library. We just went through one with DVD. Now we need the next one. I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish but there’s always a next one.

There are a lot of concerns that if the next big thing is distribution over the Internet it will hurt revenue.

Lynton: I think DVD has been a real gold mine for a lot of reasons. You were selling a packaged good in a big mass market so you could make it huge. You were selling or renting a thing that people didn’t consume. You go to Blockbuster, rent five movies and only watch two. That’s a good business to be in. The potential problem with the Internet is that people are going to buy only what they watch and we are going to get paid only for what they watch. It may be a smaller window from a financial standpoint but it will be incremental to the windows we already have.

Do you think Blu-ray will make up for lost DVD revenue?

Lynton: That’s the hope, but I’m a little skeptical. The question is whether people will really replace their libraries. Plus it would appear there’s already price erosion in Blu-ray, so we’re not making the price point we originally hoped for. The entertainment industry at large has pretty much given away high definition to consumers. They haven’t really charged a premium for it on television. That makes consumers more likely to buy Blu-ray but less likely to pay a premium for it. "

Complete article here:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/21/son...edia-sony.html

And an editorial about this here:
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article...-the-real-news



It really is great of them to say (like many of us in this thread have known) that Blu-ray really just is a way to shove down their catalog titles down our throats again. Its kinda disgusting in practice but I also cant really blame them since they are in the business of making $. All I can do is to not buy into Blu or be bullied into buying it with all of their evil and unfair practices (like exclusive Blu special features, purposely making DVD transfers much inferior to the Blu-counterparts, etc.)
SO all I can say is I hope others will not be bullied into Blu as well.

Oh crap, they're on to us.

Interesting interview. Thanks for the link.

Our DVD library hasn't hit 1000 yet, and I already know about 20% are titles that were blind buy impulse purchases--they were cheap enough and had at least one reason to seem interesting. Now, apply that to everything else in your house (there's some variance, but I know it's true of everyone I know). What if we didn't own that 20%? What if our economic meltdown has been so disastrous that we, the greatest capitalist society of all time, break some of our excessive habits?

Do you realize how irrational you're being? Did a Blu-ray machine kill your puppy?

Oh please, no one's making you throw out your DVDs. Of course Blu-Ray is a way for studios to milk more money out of catalog movies, does anyone even deny that? It's like all these Special Editions and Ultimate Edition and Absolutely Gotta Have It Editions, you think they release those for the love of the film? Some people are ready for a an upgrade though. DVDs were nice, but hey, HD has been a long time coming. Let's get a little 1080p and some 7.1 DTS-HD up in here, you know what I'm saying? That's the only exclusive Blu-Ray special feature worth mentioning. But if you're good with DVDs, then go nuts. There's like a Million Billion of them out there, and they're as cheap now as they've ever been. You can by a big pile of DVDs and roll around in them for the price of a couple of Blu-Ray, you should be happy!

Like I said its because they started putting special features on Blu-ray disks that could have (and should have) been on the DVD counterparts. I certainly wont be bullied this way into buying the Blu-ray version and most of the time I wont even buy the DVD version now.
Sorry but if the studios wanna play dirty like that then I will play dirty as well. It may not be much coming from one customers but I spend many thousands of dollars on dvd's each year and I hope however small a dent I do make counts for something and hope at least some others do the same to give the studios some lessons.

But what if...

(hear me out)

...they made all of their Blu-Rays AT LEAST TWO HOURS LONG?

= J

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/21/son...edia-sony.html
This is an odd statement. I guess I didn't realize that this was a large enough portion of the market to really be concerned about. However, the studio apparently doesn't think internet will dig into disc sales:

As for this:
It's just stupid. SDTV OTA was always available for free, yet people paid for DVDs. If anything, it's DVDs that have cause reluctance to pay more for Blu-Ray, since people are used to paying a certain amount for movies.

Of course it is: DVD was the same thing, as were DVD double-dips, and internet viewing. What matters is whether, as a consumer, you feel the newest method of delivery is worth the price. Contrary to your claims, studios can't "shove down our throats" a format we don't wan't; they can only offer it up for sale and hope the market responds favorably.

Nobody's buying your "Blu-Ray consipiracy." BD may have exclusive special features, but there's just as many, if not more, DVDs that have more special features than their BD counterparts. The "inferior transfers" is silly, since the studios use the same transfer for both the BD and DVD. The picture quality on the DVD is of course going to be inferior, since it's 1/6th the resolution, to say nothing of color depth, and encoded with codec that's over 10 years old.

Ummm...I think you are misreading the statement. I took it to mean that they are not only concerned about digital delivery digging into disc sales, but that sales overall will be moving downward if folks only pay for what they view. Essentially, it looks like a warning that the business model is changing. Granted, not today, but it's coming.

Give it a rest.

By all means, if you are not interested in owning a certain title, move along; no one is forcing you to buy anything.

Pro-B

No, I understood that. I just didn't think the percentage of unwatched purchases/rentals was that significant.

Are you kidding? Have you seen the "Unwatched Movie Pile" threads? Trust me--they knew, and counted on, our excessive purchasing. That was the ceteris paribus activity they counted on most, I think, and not just in the movie industry. I wonder if it ever occurred to anyone at the corporate level when the economy began to falter just how much they relied on us to continue buying and renting things we didn't need.

All companies do this. Do car companies sell the same model for 20 years? When they come out with a new model, do you bitch that they are bullying you into buying a new car?

The studios are providing a better product, a more advanced product than DVD. I personally have made the choice that this improved product with worth the change and extra money. No one bullied me into this.

And while there might be some BD exclusive special features, there are still many movies that do not even make it to BD. Is that because the evil studios are bullying me into staying with DVD?

I'm changing my stance a bit. At first I defended the DVD side from the perspective that some tried to make the point that DVD quality was all of the sudden lousy and that any respectable person would go BR.

I believe that BR will become the standard over DVD just as DVD did to VHS at some point. The prices for players and content will continue to come down over time making it not worth continuing to buy DVDs. However, VHS could never handle the increase in display systems to warrant still being viable, while DVDs can.

Therefore, there will be those that will keep their DVD catalogs for a long time and only buy new content on BR or maybe replace some favorites with BR. While others may replace their whole libraries with BR replacements. And in some cases certain content may only ever be available on DVD.

So, is BR better then DVD? Yes. Will BR overtake DVD as the standard? Yes. Is DVD a viable format for people to maintain in their collections going forward, unlike VHS? Yes.

I know that there are people who excessively purchase, but again, I didn't think that was a significant portion of the market. The people who post to DVDtalk are going to belong to a small niche of enthusiasts, and no representative of the public as a whole.

Technically speaking, nobody needs to own or rent a movie. That's not what was being discussed though, which was renting or buying a disc you never watch.

True enough. Say, Ford offers the Mustang GT with all the bells & whistles or the base model. You have a choice.

They want to push the GT model because they are more profitable. The GT model is faster, cooler, has GPS, satellite radio, heavy duty suspension, fat tires etc. but the base model always sells better because of the lower price and the lack of need for the higher price performance goodies.

I think the Blu-Ray and DVD comparison is similar in many ways and they will both sell in harmony for many years to come, catering to different markets. Eventually Blu-ray will gain a larger share as the price comes down.

At the moment HDTV owner's don't "need" Blu-Ray. It's a nice addition, but not a necessity to enjoy watching movies.

The analogue VHS tape technology was no match for the DVD in quality or features and that's why it disappeared fairly quickly. DVD still looks great on today's TVs whereas VHS still looked mediocre on TVs built before and after DVD.

VHS would be the Ford Pinto of the car analogy!