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Remember how much they goofed on CD burning?  They were a year late to that party.

MFfan310 wrote:

and Blu-ray is gaining massive steam has me worried,

Steam? Blu Ray is still struggling to be adopted by the masses. Players just dropped to $200, and sales numbers are still shaky. It's not the revolution DVD was, the economy is crummy, HD on demand is easier, etc etc.

Apple is not going to bend over backwards for a technology that the public still isn't super excited about.

Aqua OS X wrote:

MFfan310 wrote:

and Blu-ray is gaining massive steam has me worried,

Steam? Blu Ray is still struggling to be adopted by the masses. Players just dropped to $200, and sales numbers are still shaky. It's not the revolution DVD was, the economy is crummy, HD on demand is easier, etc etc.

Apple is not going to bend over backwards for a technology that the public still isn't super excited about.

I disagree.  A third of the movies at my local wal mart are already blu ray. My local blockbuster's Blu ray section is increasing in size.  And with the recent bitch-slapping of LCD manufacturers for price fixing, prices have fallen, and HD adoption will surely increase.

Mr. T wrote:

Aqua OS X wrote:

MFfan310 wrote:

and Blu-ray is gaining massive steam has me worried,

Steam? Blu Ray is still struggling to be adopted by the masses. Players just dropped to $200, and sales numbers are still shaky. It's not the revolution DVD was, the economy is crummy, HD on demand is easier, etc etc.

Apple is not going to bend over backwards for a technology that the public still isn't super excited about.

I disagree.  A third of the movies at my local wal mart are already blu ray. My local blockbuster's Blu ray section is increasing in size.  And with the recent bitch-slapping of LCD manufacturers for price fixing, prices have fallen, and HD adoption will surely increase.

Well, most of the big gadget blogs have been reporting that Sony's BD player sales are 10% less then forecasted, and the recent holiday price drops haven't seemed to spur an increase in sales. The sales data is what is.

Last edited by Aqua OS X (2008-12-07 5:26 pm)

elpato84 wrote:

Give it one more year, they'll be everywhere.

How many years have we been hearing that?

I'm not usually this pessimistic, but for this situation you can't expect anywhere even close to the revolution that DVD/CD was.

Before the DVD and CD you had tape players. These took time to rewind, nearly impossible to skip around without some frustration, and no real way to insert special features. In comes CDs and DVDs. Skip to the track you want instantly. No rewinds. Fast backups. Special Features. These were things that every person with a TV could enjoy. It wasn't even close, obviously the new format was better. And it didn't take as long for prices of adoption to drop.

Fast forward to now. What advantages do the HD formats introduce? Higher resolution picture quality (only on HD TVs) as well as support for excellent 5.1 (and greater) surround sound (if you have a surround system), but at the expense of increased copy protection. The reality is, DVD is good enough for most people. Yes, HD sets are becoming more prevalent, but 5.1 surround systems are not rising as quickly. The average American simply doesn't reap a benefit as great for the price as the initial analog->digital change over.

I don't see it happening.

Upconverting DVD players are pretty good. Not as good as actual 720p or 1080p video, but perhaps good enough that for many people there isn't near the level improvement that DVD offered over VHS. To add to Shadowless' list, some other improvements DVD offered over VHS were smaller physical size, very noticeably improved picture quality, and subtitles/closed captioning (multilingual support, hearing impaired, etc.).

Perhaps Blu-ray will eventually catch on like DVD has, but it sure is taking a while. One thing that might give a boost to adoption would be a Blu-ray drive accessory for the XBox, which is a lot more prevalent than the PS3.

Last edited by Macskeeball (2008-12-07 9:14 pm)

Macskeeball wrote:

Upconverting DVD players are pretty good. Not as good as actual 720p or 1080p video, but perhaps good enough that for many people there isn't near the level improvement that DVD offered over VHS.

To my eyes, DVDs look about twice as good as VHS, and Blu ray looks about five times better than upscaled DVD, so the relative magnitude of improvement is about 2.5 times.  In other words, I was 2.5 times more willing to transition to blu ray than DVD (but that's me). 

I agree that the perception you've described may be the prevailing one, but I think that will change as HD adoption proceeds.

Last edited by Mr. T (2008-12-07 11:00 pm)

Mr. T wrote:

Aqua OS X wrote:

Mr. T wrote:

I disagree.  A third of the movies at my local wal mart are already blu ray. My local blockbuster's Blu ray section is increasing in size.  And with the recent bitch-slapping of LCD manufacturers for price fixing, prices have fallen, and HD adoption will surely increase.

Well, most of the big gadget blogs have been reporting that Sony's BD player sales are 10% less then forecasted, and the recent holiday price drops haven't seemed to spur an increase in sales. The sales data is what is.

Slightly less than forecasted, perhaps, but still increasing.  It makes sense that the change is slower than DVD adoption, simply because DVD players didn't require a special kind of TV.

Increasing year over year... but last Christmas people were still pushing HD DVD players. HD DVD quickly exploded and spiraled to it's death in the first few months of this year.  BD players are no longer loosing sales to a competing optical HD format. Moreover, they're finally attracting the early adopters who didn't want to get burned by a format war.

Furthermore, the TVs are a pretty big deal. A massive amount of people still don't understand / care about HD TV. Broken TVs, not an HD transition, still seem to be the primary reason people are buying flat screens. I think Bat started a thread about that a few weeks ago.

....and of course we're just talking about a BR option, right? So with the cheapest drives around $200, Apple's custom config page would look something like:

Optical Drive
4X Blu-Ray Superdrive [add $400.00]

Funkey Monkey wrote:

FWIW - I have zero interest in Blu-Ray until I can get a player for under $50.  Perhaps I'm a normal person in this regard?

I don't find most sub-$50 DVD players acceptable. I can't imagine how bad a sub-$50 BR-DVD player would be.

mrreet2001 wrote:

Funkey Monkey wrote:

FWIW - I have zero interest in Blu-Ray until I can get a player for under $50.  Perhaps I'm a normal person in this regard?

I don't find most sub-$50 DVD players acceptable. I can't imagine how bad a sub-$50 BR-DVD player would be.

For me it's a decent standalone player with the features I want at or under $100 (give or take tax) and/or a burner under $50.

So you are saying it will be a bit before Blu-Ray hits my general equipment price ranges? I figured that already.