I love blu-ray and unlike my family members, I can see the difference. I have collected about 10 blu-rays so far and will continue. Is there a chance down the line to where people will just not want to upgrade to blu-ray and SD will just stay like it is and the blu-ray will get less popular and they will stop production on it? I like blu-ray. I don't want to switch formats on movies to find out down the line the won't release any new movies? I like collecting movies in blu-ray. Eventually I will have a lot of movies and am slowly working my way to more DVDs and Blu-ray. I have 50 blu-rays/TV Show on SD and Blu-Ray and am hoping I can continue my collection with both blu-ray movies and SD TV Shows and Blu-Ray?

Who knows? The jury is out, but the debate rages on.

Some say it will remain a premium niche product with pricing to match, or perhaps become a "super niche", while others say it will gradually replace DVD outright.

Simple answer - no one really knows.

I'd say most likely not. Although it's certainly not a seller like DVD, Blu-ray is the one physical media format right now for high def content. At this point, Blu-ray is known as the victor, many people hop on the bandwagon or build up their collections over time, so I'm expecting it to stick around for quite some time. Any other physical media that comes out right now is going to seem foolish and unnecessary. The only competition Blu-ray will eventually have is the increasing market for downloading films for a fee and to keep... but there's still at that time going to be a very large market for people who want to have a physical format like Blu-ray, such as me. I'm fairly certain it's here to stay.

If people keep procrastinating and not buying Blu, then yes, it will phase out. But if everybody who was worried just bought a machine and started buying their favorite movies on the new discs, then we wouldn't have to worry about it.

I think it will stay a premium for quite awhile.

With catalog titles selling poorly, I don't think BD will become a mainstream option in the near future. New releases are the only thing selling and there's no hint pricing on those will drop any time soon. I hope we'll get heavier discounts on release week. We definitely do see sales often, but as far as consistency, the BD option is usually $10 more than the SD.

No doubt the economy has hurt, but the biggest thing that bothers me is catalog sales. That only means less classics getting released.

It does help that this format can show that a title can move a million units. TDK (2 mil) and Iron Man (1+ mil) are the top 2 sellers. And we know TF2 is going to be a mega seller, along with Harry Potter, Star Trek, Up, and others. We'll definitely know how it's doing after this Christmas.

No.

Big names produce big numbers. I think when they start more actively releasing some of the big catalog titles that people want to upgrade it will be perceived as being more mainstream. Also as more players start hitting that $99 mark I think that will increase market share of BD. So what if they are only profile 1.1? Half the people on this board don't give a crap about BD-Live but most will be convinced to make the most of that new HDTV they just bought.

I think the bigger question should be, what is after Blu-Ray? I know many of you who post here know alot more then me, but we have gone from VHS to Laserdisk to DVD to BluRay, is there something that will top this say in 2015 or 2017?

BluRay is as good as a home movie experience gets, and will this be the end where we just finally sit back and enjoy our collection forever? I bought a CD player in 1989, and have those same CD's now loaded on my Ipod. Hopefully the same happens with BluRay, where this is the last time I buy Jaws, The Godfather, and Caddyshack.

I wouldn't be worried about BR going anywhere anytime soon, I do think it'd sell a lot better if the price gap between SD and HD on new releases wasn't so great. I know for me, i've been itching to buy Gran Torino on BR since it's release, but the $25-30 asking price is just too much for one movie. If it would've been $15 (or even $18) at release (with SD being $10 or $12), it would have been an instant buy for me, but here I sit, over a month after release, waiting to buy this movie for under $20.

I'm the kind of person who tries to buy titles I want on BR as often as I can while scaling down my SD purchases, but when I see an SD title that i've been wanting to buy on BR for $3-5, I just can't pass it up when i'd have to pay 3-4x as much for the BR. The gap is just too big.

I really wouldn't worry about your Blu-rays phasing out of sync. That's more of an attribute of analog tapes. Interestingly, if you let them phase long enough, they'll eventually sync up again!

I would not worry either. Blu-Ray is here to stay. Now people will say, what about if something happens down the road and someone comes up with 500GB disc. Will Blu-Ray 50GB capacity be obsolete?

To answer this.. Right now Studios are happy with Blu-Ray and they are even more happier with the 8GB DVD capacity. Blu-Ray has enough room for an HD picture and extras. Not too many studios even utilize 2 Disc BD sets yet. With that said, will there be a 500GB and a 1TB disc in the future. Absolutely!!! Manufacturers are testing 500GB disc right now. Is it going to be ideal for Home Video and Hollywood usage???? NOPE!!

Discs that size are good for data backup, but what's the purpose of Hollywood studio to use disc that size?? You can put 1 Lord of The Rings movie easily on Blu-Ray and have room to spare.. 500GB is an overkill and too expensive!! What will Hollywood do? Put the entire Lord of The Rings on one disc and price it at what $100-$149??? Who would buy that??? Maybe less than 1% of the population.. Right now it's not worth it. DVD will be around for at least another 12-15 years and so will Blu-Ray!!!

And if one day something happens and Blu-Ray will be phased out.. SO WHAT!!! Is Sony going to come to your house and repo your movies and a player???? NOPE!!! You will just upgrade. You'll buy new releases in New Format and some titles you might double-dip on if the quality is better, but ultimately would you re-purchase titles that look the same??? NOPE!!

VCR might be dead and VHS might be think of the past and so is Laserdisc, but I still had an LD player until Start Wars came out on DVD!!! I still have some tapes around. This is the nature of the beast!!

I still have HD-DVD player with almost 100 movies on it and guess what??? Most movies i bought after the HD-DVD was phased out!!! Bought the BOURNE TRILOGY for less than $12 bucks and Matrix Trilogy for $19 bucks!!!! I will continue to enjoy these movies until my player breaks down and by then, maybe BD will be just as cheap!!

ENJOY!

Yes. This new format will not last forever. Eventually something will replace it, so don't buy any. And don't buy any of the format that replaces Blu-Ray either -- because that will not last either.

Groucho - Do I detect a bit of sarcasm??? Hope so

Anyway - PHMustang2000 seemed to have a valid reason to ask a question. I don't see jumping and cutting his throat so quick. After all you never know in this industry!!

I bought few systems that proved to be obsolete rather quick or became really niche!!! Actually HD-DVD is one system that although became obsolete, its probably one of the largest that i got into.

I remember I bought the Phillips CD-I player at Sears back in 1994!!! It was the first Phillips CDI-910 player that Came with 2 movies. Had a Patriot Games on CD-I and Top Gun on CD-I and paid $499.99

I also remember buying a 8mm VCR from Sony with few movies on 8MM. Lethal Weapon 2 and 3 were almost $20 bucks each in 1996. I still have that VCD somewhere

Laserdisc was another one. Bought it in 1992 at Circuit City with few movies, but then they dissappeared!!! Also bought the first PROSCAN 16:9 NTSC Analog TV back in 95' at Circuit City.. It was a TV ahead of its time!!! Who would have known this to be the standard almost 10 years later!! LOL

Anyway - I take risks because when it comes to MOVIES, I have always taken risks to see it in better format. Never got into the DVHS since I figured that would be a dead format anyway. Why go back to tape??

Mustang seems not be a risk taker which is okay. Some people don't want something that might be obsolete quickly (Sony MiniCD) LOL

I bought around 20-30 HD-DVDs, so yeah, that was a mistake. I wish other studios would take Warner's lead and do a trade-in program (at a price). I'm cool with paying a few dollars extra to upgrade my HD-DVDs to BDs.

Blu-ray currently owns 10% of the market share of home video with DVD consisting of the other 90%. Even if it doesn't take over DVD, it'll be a "niche" market as laserdisc was to DVD. The one advantage Blu-ray currently offers is that a lot of retailers like Wal-Mart and Target offer quite a selection for it being in the early stages of the format. In the twenty years laserdiscs were being produced, it never met the mainstream in that way.

It seems that digital downloads will be the next format that challenges Blu-ray. If you like owning your content in a physical form this is a pretty safe format to go with. I don't see a new disc anytime soon.

The reason everyone has an answer ready is because this question has come up in probably nearly a thousand threads in the HD forum, and similar questions relating to Blu-Ray and DVD in the DVD forum.

Digital downloads have a long way to go before they can challenge DVD or BD.

Downloads from iTunes, let it be SD or HD (720p), just don't compare to their DVD and Blu-ray counterparts. Colors are washed out, compression artifacts everywhere, and they simply don't look good when blown up on a decent HDTV. Even the audio isn't as crisp or clear as it would be even on a DVD.

Same thing goes for on-demand, let it be through a cable provider or something like XBox Live or PSN. Still 720p transfers, compression galore (in an order to save space and send it across the network), and not as active soundtracks.

With BD, you get the best possible transfer you can achieve at the current moment in time in a home theater that's close to 2K digital projection with most releases now coming with uncompressed high-definition soundtracks. You couldn't even get that on DVDs previously. Until digital downloads can hit that point, BD's only competition is getting the DVD market to switch.

there was an article in the la times the other day, about how dvd sales are down but rentals are up and among other things they mention though is that blurayhas seen a dramtic increase in sales and that they are seeing the same transitoning they saw when dvd was at this point, the problem is that this time we are in a recession


"New forms of home entertainment such as high-definition Blu-ray discs and digital distribution over the Internet have grown but not enough to make up for the DVD slump.


Blu-ray sales rose a dramatic 91% to $408 million in the first half of the year, while Internet downloads and streaming combined with cable and satellite video-on-demand, which the trade group lumps together, grew 22% to $968 million.

"This is exactly the same kind of transition that we saw when people went from VHS tapes to DVD," said Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst for market researcher In-Stat. "People knew they were going to get a DVD player, so they stopped buying VHS tapes. There's the same sort of discontinuity" now.

The bad news for Hollywood is that the recession hit right in the middle of that transition, making it less likely that consumers will shell out $200 or more for a new Blu-ray player. Even when the economy improves, it remains to be seen how eagerly consumers will adopt the new format."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,4884012.story

further more another article talking about consumer electronics having its first major dop since 2001 says this about bluray

One bright spot: Blu-ray DVD players are expected to post a jump, both in unit sales and in revenue, the report said. Manufacturers will ship 6 million Blu-ray players, up 112% from 2008, while revenue is expected to top $1 billion, a 48% increase over last year.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/tech.../07/index.html

This is what it comes down to in my book. Even if BD tanks tomorrow, I won't feel remorse about buying what I have because I have enjoyed it. It isn't an investment to me.

Besides Paramount; Universal and Weinstein can't do a trade-in program since their catalog has not been fully released on Blu-ray. In Universals case they have re-released 30%ish of their HD DVD catalog while Weinstein did 2 out of 11 (and don't expect the other 9 any time soon...)

Bingo. If it goes tomorrow I still have hundreds of movies to watch...just like my HD DVDs. They won't self-destruct.

Personally, I think people are just burned out on buying DVDs right now. Many (like me) have tons unopened and in these tough times who wants to spend $15-$18 on something that will be $8-$10 2 months later or could be a rental instead? Blu-ray is doing well because it has a growing base of people who are replacing their DVD copies or splurging on 'demo' stuff to show off to their friends. New releases are carrying the format...catalog stuff is not doing to hot. I've pretty much stopped almost all BD buying because the prices are too high on release week and I'd rather wait 2-3 months and nab it for 1/3rd the price.

Yes, but you are overrating the market buying these. Many of the people I know can't tell the difference and even think the poor quality of Netflix streaming looks great. The convenience of downloads is going to increase their popularity and even if they are inferior in quality they are definitely going to challenge BD and DVD for market share.