Fist of Doom

Of course.

Panda Phil

Its hard to say.

Studios are already pushing the issue by offering more features on BD.

Otoh, the high price of large, high def tvs is really going to hold it back.

I suspect that by the time BD's start to catch up, some other shiny new format will be catching the eye of videophiles.

"You're still watching movies on crappy old disks?! LOL! I popped an old BD's in my new player and it was practically unwatchable."

JOE29

I just have too many standard DVD's to switch over to Blu. It doesn't make any sense for me to switch. I understand Bluray are better quality but I have too many standards to change over.
In the future, I am planning on getting a Bluray player and after I do I will buy Blurays. But I will still keep and use my standard DVD's also. They'll be able to play in the Bluray players.
So whatever happens, it's a win-win situation for me.

drmar35mm

Of course BR will eventually take over. Just as DVD took over from VHS; as CD took over from LP. But as with both those earlier transitions, I'm happy to live in both worlds. I still own and watch VHSs and even buy them (because they're so cheap now). I have so many DVDs, though, I can't see ever replacing very many of them--both because many won't come out on BR and because of cost. I expect to be watching my DVDs when I'm in a wheelchair someday.

Indy24LA

Last month I got my first Blu-ray player (a PS3) mainly because some blu-rays were cheaper than their 2-disc DVD counterparts (Harry Potter, Star Trek... etc.). I do not plan on rebuying any of my DVD titles (sorry Film companies) unless it's a deal like Gladiator and Braveheart. I will still pick up cheap DVDs and only get Blu-rays that really show the difference between the two formats (or if they are priced = to or < than the DVD).

JediMindTricks

well, i'm sure physical media will still work in 10 years or so. i just figured that eventually, physical discs will become obsolete and the industry will push towards downloading/streaming like video games.

but i could be way off.

personally, i've had a ps3 for about a year and a half now. i only own 4 or 5 BR titles (including planet earth). i still buy standard dvds because of price. for budget purposes and not wanting to spend $20+ on a title, i'll still go with standard dvds unless it's a movie i really, really like. like the dark knight, as an example.

i have no plans to switch over to br on my existing collection (only 100 or so). i'm fine with the way those movies look on the ps3 and its upconverting feature.

however, being the OCD dork that i am, it will bother me that harry potter and the half-blood price will be on br, but the first 5 are standard!

dkedvd

I didn't mean our physical media. That will work for the rest of our lives if properly taken care of. I'm talking about steaming/downloading. Look at the PSPgo or the Wii. You can download games for them and as long as the games are available on the store or they are safe on your systems hard drive you are ok. But what happens when the games are no longer available for download or re-download and you system crashes? They are gone. And there is nothing you can do about it. But you can still dust off those 1980's NES games and play them anytime you want. This is why I'm against streaming/downloading and 100% for psychical media. I've talked to the customer service at Nintendo and they informed me that I can re-download any games I buy and time I want even if I have to buy a new system. I then asked what happens in a few years when there is a new system and I no longer can download games for my Wii and my system crashes? Or even in 30 years from now when I want to play my Wii as I still do my old NES system? He said there is nothing they can do at that point and I would loose all my games. I'm afraid it will be the same thing with streaming/downloading movies. What happens if a company you a streaming from goes out of business? Or the next format comes out and the titles you purchased are no longer available? I can see streaming or something like it being the #1 media at some point in the not too distant future. It's a good idea in theory. Buy a title and be able to watch it any time you want from any media device. Cool ehh? Sure until that media format is dead and all those bought titles no longer are available for viewing. It will be a way for the studios to force us to re-buy titles every time a new format comes out. In other words, making collection 100% pointless.

Osiris3657

I made the switch this month. If you had asked me earlier this year I probably would have said I don't plan on upgrading to Blu until DVDs are phased out....but you know what all of the sudden changed my mind? When I saw that the Inglourious Basterds and District 9 blu-rays are selling at about 5 dollars CHEAPER than their dvd counterparts. I said to hell with it and ordered a blu-ray player. That and seeing all the cheap deals on blu-rays in general this holiday season and it's been a huge turnover for me. At the beginning of November I had 0 blu-rays...now I have 48.
I've been very pleased with how noticeable the difference in quality is.
One final note: the last thing that pushed me to blu was the exclusive features...

mike07

Think of it this way, VHS cannot be played on a DVD player. However DVDs can be played on a Blu-ray player. So whenever something new comes along that won't play DVDs additionally will most likely bring the "new format." I vote 5-10 years for this change, no way Blu-ray will take over IMO.

i'm sure many film aficionados still collect old formats rather than the newest.

mdnitoil

Everybody is different. For me, it'll be years before I even bother with BR. I've got about 2,500 titles and most of them are older catalog titles and genre stuff. So far, the only good deals on BR discs that I've seen are the same old tired pieces of crap that have been beaten to death on SD. On the rare occasion they release a film that I might be interested in on BR, it's priced way over the SD counterpart. I'll be jumping in about the same time that catalog titles are released exclusively to BR. Considering that the market for this stuff is tanking so hard the studios are now dumping it out on DVD-R, I figure that time will be never.

If I were just getting into buying movies and didn't already have this shit they're trying to peddle, I'd probably be all over it and happy to have gotten such a great deal. As it stands now, I would just be wasting my money on stuff I've already purchased before.

dkedvd

Shhhhhh.... The big wigs will hear you. "Mediaism" is wrong!

dvd-4-life

There are alot of people who will never double-dip so in the long run this will hurt blu-ray more than anything else. Sure Diehard looks better in HD but if I've watched it on dvd a thousand times-I have no desire to purchase it on Blu-ray.

JediMindTricks

gotcha.

MrFleharty

i have never, and will never stream movies. I like to have actual things.

bodomnet

For me it has, my blu ray collection now out numbers dvd.

DVD wont go away.. I cant see myself buying things like yearly stand up comedy shows on Blu.

jjcool

But if you buy a title that contains a dvd and a blue ray of the movie, dont those two offset each other?

mdnitoil

Yeah, it's an interesting problem. The irony of making BR backwards compatible is that you make it that much easier for folks to hold on to their existing SD libraries. Now they're not going out and buying replacement copies which just further depresses the back catalog market, and consequently impacts the whole media market.

Outside of alternate delivery methods, this is probably the next biggest reason why BR software sales will never see the same numbers as SD at it's peak. Sure, individual titles may do pretty good, but the industry as a whole won't see those same sales.

orangerunner

This is my feeling as well.

For the average person who has a collection of 100-200 DVDs at home (average person, not average videophile) it's unlikely that they really want to drop another $10-$20 bucks per title to replace their old catalogue DVD titles with a Blu-ray that only looks better.

It all depends on how critical people are about picture quality. What I see most often is people watching their new 16:9 HDTV with a 4:3 signal and the image is stretched and distorted to fit their screen. This is not uncommon and people don't even seem to see anything wrong with this even when you point it out.

Is Blu-ray picture quality over DVD really going to compel them to drop a lot of bucks for extra quality picture when they don't even seem to care if the picture is distorted?

Probably not.

JediMindTricks

i have double dipped to buy a widescreen version to replace a fullscreen.

but there are only a few titles that would me make me want to double dip to upgrade to BR.

noworries81

While I'm no expert, this sounds like the Blu-ray's image is affected by the TV's Intelligent Frame Creation (IFC) technology, creating the "video" look. I can't post a link, so check out the first link (from AVForums) when you put into a Google search:"difference between 24p real cinema 24p playback".

Travis McClain

I think the endless double-dip releases demonstrates that the buying public will, in fact, continue to re-buy titles. There are a lot of barebones DVD releases that still haven't gotten the full, Two-Disc Ultimate Special Limited Collector's Edition treatment that can be rolled out on Blu-ray that should entice a lot of folks to upgrade.

Plus, remember that new fans discover things all the time. Keeping titles in circulation helps ensure that older things are kept available for those new fans to discover. You may have a lot of Die Hard fans who won't feel the need to upgrade to Blu-ray, but you've still got generations of fans yet to see, much less own, the films who may very well be happy to be introduced to them in Hi-Def.

dkedvd

Ughhh... I wanna break the TV over people's heads when I see them doing this. It takes 2 whole seconds to chance the aspect ratio. Morons!

orangerunner

Warner has a few titles they never bothered to make a decent special editions such as the Lethal Weapon films, The Road Warrior & Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Outland etc.

As films get older, I'm not sure how many younger fans are going to be interested in "old" films that came out in the 80s and 90s. There will be a few but not enough to make a significant dent in sales. The new generation of Blu-ray buyers that may just be starting out were born in the mid-late ninties. To that age group a film released in 2002 is considered "old".

If you were born in 1975, how many films do you own from 1960 or older?
Unless you happen to have a real interest in classic Hollywood, the older films in your collection are probably Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars.

Rockmjd23

The only DVDs I still buy are new release genre films that I'm not expecting to appear on BD for quite awhile if ever and I don't feel like waiting for like the recent stuff from Severin and Mya.

naitram

DVDs have peaked in sales, Blu-rays will eventually take it over. When it does, people like the ones that frequent this forum will already be looking to the "next thing".

I never buy DVDs anymore, and if I could stream or download content that was as good as Blu-ray, I probably wouldn't buy those either. But until bandwidth speeds go up significantly, I'll still buy my most-watched titles on Blu, keep my few DVDs that haven't gone HD, and stream other things I don't care to buy.