Sub-Zero

April 16:

BobO'Link

Exactly. I know people who do not own a BR player but purchased the BR/DVD/DC combo because it was ony a couple of $$ more expensive and included the DC. My daughter does this all the time and she does not own a BR player. Like many others, she may eventually "upgrade" to a BR player but then may not. It'll depend on the price difference in players when hers dies.

I noticed a couple of days ago that WM has a "Blu-Ray players play DVDs too!" sign up in electronics over the disc player section. I'm guessing they, too, can't figure out why people aren't "upgrading" when it's simply that many people don't enough of a difference in quality to justify the additional expense.

I'll still purchase a DVD if the price is significantly lower than the BR copy, plus there are all those films and TV shows for which there's never been a BR release. I've compared several favorites on BR with the DVD copy and found, with upscaling, there's little, if any, difference on my setup for many of them. Yes, there are some for which the difference is significant but they are few and far between. Most consumers just look at the total cost and go for what's the least expensive. They are not "collectors" and typically just want to own a copy of a few of their favorite films and/or TV programs. BR is a hard sell for that group.

BuckNaked2k

^^ A $90 Million week? What a hangover!

bruceames

Plus the DVD was bare bones too.

I think the people without BD players are getting the combo more for the HD DC rather than for having the BD for later use. Almost everybody these days has an HDTV and HD streams do look much better than SD.

bruceames

I thought Star Wars week 2 would be better than that. That's quite a drop off. I guess everyone that wanted it, bought it in week one. Either that or the price went up in week 2 (probably a combination of both).

Meanwhile DVD has its worst week ever.

PhantomStranger

DVD's market support is beginning to collapse. Netflix/streaming is greatly eroding the power of the DVD value bins.

davidh777

New-release BD combos have been nearly the same price as the DVD for years, though. I'm sure a lot of people still buying the DVD either (1) don't care about the extra formats or (2) don't understand.

Alan Smithee

Can you even buy a DVD-only player anymore that isn't a $30 throwaway model?

slop101

None that I've seen, but I haven't really looked. I'll do you one better; I have a component CD player from the late '80s, one that needs to be plugged into an amp. It still works, and works better than any CD player I've had since. I'm assuming my stand-alone (all-region) DVD player, which is already 15 years old, will also stand the test of time. (both are JVC)

morriscroy

(As an aside).

For that matter, new computer dvd-rom-only drives are a rarity too these days.

It seems like every new computer dvd drive manufactured these days, is a writer drive that is borderline $20 throwaway.

rw2516

I still buy tv shows on DVD. I want my tv shows to play on any player in any room. I mostly use 5 disc changers. I don't know if tv on BD has resume play, but I want resume play for all my tv discs.
Theatrical features are a different matter. Unless it's a piece of crap, I upgrade every title to BD if it gets released. Only buy new releases on BD. I only watch them in the theater room on big screen with sound system.

Josh-da-man

Not that I'm aware of. And, outside of the Oppos, blu-ray players are the same way. They're all tiny, light, and feel cheap.

I picked up a Samsung blu-ray player the other day, one of those curved ones, and If I didn't know it was a blu-ray player I would've sworn it was a router or something.

BSTNFAN

I assume that the people who really don't want BD will just replace a unit with something off CL or at a pawn shop for $5.

E Unit

Jesus, do people shop on Craigslist for movies? I had no idea.

bruceames

If you mean by "nearly" within $5 or so then yes. The norm had been about $5 (going by the weekly street price reports from HMM), but it looks like it has been trending down to around $3 lately (the BD falling to $20 whereas it used to be more like $22).

bruceames

Wasn't the latest higher end model that Toshiba back in 2009 (or so) that claimed to do some upscaling magic? I haven't been paying attention to the DVD-only player market at all, and frankly I'm surprised they still make them (just goes to show the resiliency of the format). A low end BD player is only around $50, isn't it?

Why So Blu?

Shit, I paid $99 shipped for a Sony region free player that has 3-D, BD, and DVD capabilities. I should be saying "there's no reason why folks can't go region free now." The point is that folks also don't want to spend the potential premium on importing titles.

davidh777

BD players are supercheap. There's no reason not to get one instead of a DVD player even if you have no intention of buying BDs. I guess the exception would be portable players, but a lot of people just use tablets now. I admit I still use a portable player when traveling because I have more selections on DVD than on digital, and I don't have a tablet.

Alan Smithee

That was after HD-DVD failed, and they went back to DVD-only players for a bit.

I've found some good laserdiscs through that, but I don't look for newer formats there (I generally don't buy used unless it's an obsolete format or out of print.)

PhantomStranger

That CD player was likely manufactured in Japan when electronics manufacturing wasn't considered a fungible process meant to shave costs down to the bone. The only DVD players manufactured anywhere in that league of quality were boutique brands costing well over $1000. DVD manufacturing quickly moved to very cheap Chinese goods and even worse places to manufacture quality hardware.

morriscroy

(On a tangent).

The most tragic case of this in the computer dvd drive world was Plextor.

Plextor went from manufacturing (in Japan) the best cd/dvd drives, to rebadging mediocre LiteOn drives sometime in 2006-2007. (ie. Pasting the "Plextor" name onto a LiteOn dvd drive manufactured in China).

PhantomStranger

What happened is that margins quickly evaporated in electronics manufacturing, outsourcing most of it to cheaper labor in China and eventually India. Even the Japanese, the most protectionist trade country on the face of the Earth, eventually caved to those economic pressures.

orangerunner

I still recall buying a Panasonic VHS player in 1997 and the salesman telling me this is the last "Made in Japan" player they had.

That was pretty much the end of an era for quality electronics in the mid-low price ranges.

Granted, this VHS player was $240 which at the time was considered a mid-low price.

Why So Blu?

I want to say that I paid that much or maybe it was $199 for a S-VHS in 2002 when the S-VHS I had at that time stopped working.

BuckNaked2k

Anyone remember the days of the $1,000 VHS player?