Kevin's Watch

I bet the few people who went ahead and bought HD DVD players are annoyed, hehe.

It was tempting to go for an HD DVD player because of its lower price compared to Blu-ray players. I'm not that eager for Blu-ray. I'll wait a while - until next year perhaps - to see what kind of a deal I can get for a good budget Blu-ray player. Current retail price for a Blu-ray machine in Canada is around $400. Thanks but no thanks.

Not surprising given what's been going on over the last few weeks.

I still don't think I'm going to upgrade. I think that there will be another 1080p medium in the near future.

The only reason I have a blu-ray player is because FIL got Beorn a PS3 for Chr-stmas...grrr...

I don't have an HDTV. Worthless.

I'm not going to be upgrading anytime soon.

I don't have an HDTV so it's a moot point for me currently, but to be honest I think this has 'phyrric victory' written all over it. We're already starting to see HD movie and TV downloads on Apple TV, Xbox Live and Comcast and it's pretty clear to me that the future is not physical media. Once you add upscaling DVD players (that make standard def DVDs look pretty good on an HDTV screen) to that mix, I'm really not sure BluRay is going to succeed in the long term.

Getting a blu-ray player isn't high on the to do list.

Nav wrote:I don't have an HDTV so it's a moot point for me currently, but to be honest I think this has 'phyrric victory' written all over it. We're already starting to see HD movie and TV downloads on Apple TV, Xbox Live and Comcast and it's pretty clear to me that the future is not physical media. Once you add upscaling DVD players (that make standard def DVDs look pretty good on an HDTV screen) to that mix, I'm really not sure BluRay is going to succeed in the long term.

I've seen this argument elsewhere. And it's a good one. However, I think many still like to have a collection of physical discs, complete with packaging and liner notes, pictures, etc. There is something undeniably easier about buying a piece of hardware and plugging it up, than setting up a media computer to output downloaded movies. This process must get easier, and download speeds must get faster. Granted, this will eventually happen. But for a while (5 years?), Bluray will not be threatened by downloads.

The biggest competition is the DVD. It's simply too ubiquitous and of high quality to be tossed away for much more expensive equipment. The transition from VCR to DVD was a no brainer: prices dropped faster than any consumer electronic product in history, and the jump in quality and media access was astronomical. Kids today (and many of us adults) have gone so long without rewinding a video tape, that we now take our DVDs for granted. We're so used to special features and commentary tracks, opening menus and chapter selections, surround sound and crisp colorful video, that it just seems normal now. Telling the general public that the picture will look a little better (if you have purchased an HDTV), and the surround sound will sound a little better (if your system is good enough to reproduce it accurately--not some "surround sound in a box" setup with tiny speakers) is a much more difficult marketing task than it was for DVDs.

We're in the same situation of Vista vs XP. XP is pretty good, and there's not really any reason to upgrade unless you are buying new equipment anyway. Not to mention that many people will have to buy new equipment to run it (graphics card, RAM, etc.).

It might come down to the right movie being offered. Star Wars or Lord of the Rings in high def would send a lot of people to Best Buy. In fact, it was Lord of the Rings back in 2001 that finally got us to get a DVD player (I got an, ahem, "early" copy of the movie ). There is rumored to be a massive edition of the trilogy to be released, with yet more deleted scenes and the mother-of-all extras. If only they'd release a edit-your-own version, it would be perfect.