Blu-ray: Who really knows?

[djhsecondnature]

I was recently trawling through the vast amounts of news on N4G when I came across this story. Basically, the article was claiming that, as the title says, Consumers find Blu-ray a turn off. Now let me start by saying that I honestly don’t know how well Blu-ray is doing or how well it will do, but this article was making this claim with no evidence of facts to back up their argument. Once you read through this, you could quite fairly make the same remark. However, I am not actually making any sort of claim at all. I would like Blu-ray to do well as anyone who owned and purchased a product would, but just like your letter to Santa as a child, wanting it doesn’t mean that you will get it.

What I found interesting about this story was nothing to do with it’s content, it was actually that just a few articles above it was this story. This article states (for those of you who can’t be bothered to read it) that “Blu-ray had its best month of sales ever in October” and that “Blu-ray disc sales have crossed the 20 million mark since the format was introduced”. All of this got me thinking. Who actually really knows?
We all know we’re in an economic recession and really, no-one knows how long it will last. Whether it be six months, a year, or several years; right now, no-one knows. This will definitely have an impact on not just Blu-ray sales, but just sales, which is not unexpected. So why is it that people feel it necessary to headline their article, “Is Blu-Ray dead?” or “Will The Dark Knight save Blu-Ray?”, which if you are reading this, I feel I could safely assume you have also seen many of these types of articles.

But since when was Blu-Ray dead? Who knows whether it will last? If so, for how long? Being a format that only really became a regular member to instore shelve space as of this year, there is no pre-recession trend to go on. If we were to look at DVD sales pre-2008 and as of this year, we may see a decrease in sales. If so we can make a reasonable estimate as to why this is and how many may sell next year. This just can’t be done with a format as new as Blu-Ray.

Ultimately this was not an article to discuss the life and death of Blu-Ray, just simply a place to vent that I just find the constant barrage of people making such bold comments without any real knowledge of how things will pan out, a tad annoying. If we were not in a recession, then you could probably predict with a reasonable amount of acceptance, but with the changing climate at the moment, people are just wildly guessing to make a story and no-one really knows.

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[tuuttuut]

Hell it was the same with the videotapes and the new DVD's. Not alot of people had DVD players when they first came out. The sales sucked and it would never last, according to people. How they have been proved wrong, I'm not that worried about Blue Ray anyway, its new! I know no one in my family that has a HD TV, because why should they? Its not like Blue Ray is replacing DVD, which DVD did to Videotapes after a while. So maybe when Blue Ray becomes more common, sales will increase. But in the end, I dont care.

[psycodadx]

I have seen a few sites/articles, will look them up and post links when i get a chance, that state more people are going from Blu-ray to DVD quicker then the change from Video tapes to DVD. It is a new format and seems to be doing pretty good so far. Just go to Best Buy and see how big the Blu-ray section is two years after it was brought out. I got my DVD player the second year they came out for X-mas, and two years after that the section for dvd was little, compared to that of the Blu-ray now, at both best buy and suncoast.

[Elite Alien]

Originally Posted by djhsecondnature

Ultimately this was not an article to discuss the life and death of Blu-Ray, just simply a place to vent that I just find the constant barrage of people making such bold comments without any real knowledge of how things will pan out, a tad annoying. If we were not in a recession, then you could probably predict with a reasonable amount of acceptance, but with the changing climate at the moment, people are just wildly guessing to make a story and no-one really knows.

Half the major population never will know a thing. You talk anything tech wise and usally it is their goes the marbles.

As for Blu-Ray in general I find it funny in ways how they went to the movie field. About mid 2000 I first heard and was able to actully see the first few Blu-Ray discs made. The great thing is they were the huge thing to replace cds to store data on. This was back when we really did not have over say a 150 - 200gb HDD(Hard Disk Drive) and yet they were pretty high priced as well. Anyway it was going to be a great way to back up almost everything on your hdd on a single disc. I just find it funny the whole into movies. Sure HD quality video with audio can be pretty large, but do we really need this for a Blu-Ray disc. If you compress the file in correct formats it really does not matter. I mean you can compress it into something such as compressed motion jpeg you really can not tell to much of a differents. As for audio compression can be bad but really it still comes all back down to format and how many times you edit the file.

Originally Posted by tuuttuut

Hell it was the same with the videotapes and the new DVD's. Not alot of people had DVD players when they first came out.

No one ever hardly gets the best when it first comes out. Mainly because of the price tag, but you do not just jump into something to see it fail. Look at what happened to laser disc.

[Jaytime]

Originally Posted by Elite Alien

About mid 2000 I first heard and was able to actully see the first few Blu-Ray discs made. The great thing is they were the huge thing to replace cds to store data on. This was back when we really did not have over say a 150 - 200gb HDD(Hard Disk Drive) and yet they were pretty high priced as well. Anyway it was going to be a great way to back up almost everything on your hdd on a single disc. I just find it funny the whole into movies.

It's funny, because it's actually going to work backwards of that, first movies will go more to the masses then as the price goes down more it will be a more affordable (w/Blu-ray burners..) to do mass hdd backups one or a couple discs for the whole storage space.

Anyways, I've read at a couple places and heard (don't remember where) that there's always going to be demand for games and movies (DVD/Blu-ray) even in the current economic times we face. Add the fact that Blu-ray has grown quite considerably since it really started to pick up back around Oct. Nov. the Blu-ray format won't be going anywhere sometime soon. It just depends on how much faster the next gen after Blu-ray will go public and become cost effective, just like any and all other technology gets outdated faster every generation.

Originally Posted by psycodadx

I have seen a few sites/articles, will look them up and post links when i get a chance, that state more people are going from DVD to Blu-ray quicker then the change from Video tapes to DVD.

Think you meant this..

[mjc0961]

Congratulations, you're arguing with some who posted over four months ago.