Posted on 05/06/2008 11:04:35 AM PDT by Notary Sojac
Mid-February was a good time to be a Blu-ray backer. Media moguls who had championed the technology were busy floating on yachts in the Pacific, chomping cigars, and stroking white longhaired cats; the billion-dollar payday was at hand. But numbers out last week indicate that standalone Blu-ray player sales plummeted in the early part of this year, and enthusiasm for the hi-def format appears as lukewarm as the applause at an REO Speedwagon concert. Where did all the buyers go?
Last week, both ABI Research and The NPD Group delivered the news: the standalone Blu-ray player market did not suddenly rise up and walk after HD DVD quit the market. Instead, it remained in its bed and took a turn for the worse. NPD reports that player sales dropped by 40 percent from January to February 2008 and increased by only 2 percent the following month.
ABI argues that the Blu-ray player market won't improve to full health for more than a year, perhaps as long as 18 months. "BD player prices remain high, and supplies are limited," says ABI Research principal analyst Steve Wilson. "This is good for the market because most current players do not support all the functions that studios place on the discs. Lacking support for—or upgradability to—BD Live! or Bonus View (picture in picture), consumers cannot utilize all the available options. Manufacturers would rather sell more fully-featured models."
This is "good" only because the collective companies involved in supporting Blu-ray haven't been able to get their collective act together. In fact, the only real beneficiary of the current high-prices, underperforming standalone players has been Sony's games division, which produces the PlayStation 3, a solid (and future-proof) Blu-ray player in its own right.
In answer to the question posed above, it appears that buyers have gone in several directions simultaneously.
PS3. The reported declines in Blu-ray player sales aren't actually declines at all; they only apply to standalone players. Sony's PlayStation 3 has been moving serious units, and while standalone player shipments can be numbered in the thousands, Sony sold 257,000 PS3s in March 2008 alone. That represents a 98 percent growth rate in year-over-year sales. Given the high cost of standalone players and the fact that the price didn't fall after the HD DVD announcement, it's clear that most people are getting their Blu-ray fix from the PS3.
ABI believes that PS3s will account for a full 85 percent of all Blu-ray players in the wild by the end of 2008. Despite dire headlines regarding Blu-ray that are based on the recent ABI and NPD reports, it's clear that the format is actually growing the number of players in the field, and in significant ways.
Upconverting players. HD players from both contending formats have long had to face questions about whether the quality boost they offer is "good enough" to drive users to make a pricey upgrade away from a DVD player. While the PS3 represents a good value for money, standalone players typically don't. They still exist far above the $100 magic number for broad adoption of new consumer electronics devices, and upconverting DVD tech continues to look quite good. On my new 52" LCD TV, for instance, Battlestar Galactica upconverted over an HDMI connection looks simply spectacular. Sure, it would look better in HD, but good enough that I want to drop hundreds on a new player?
NPD notes that upconverting DVD player sales are up 5 percent in the first quarter of 2008 over 2007, while those that cannot upconvert dropped by 39 percent.
Download services. But not everyone sees the need for a disc-based player anymore. The 360 has a well-regarded content download service that delivers HD movies right to the console, for instance, and Microsoft has been talking up to the direct download model for content distribution now that its pony is out of the race.
Apple has its own iTunes infrastructure that can serve up video content to iPods, iPhones, Macs, PCs, and TVs, and it now offers 720p rentals for the Apple TV. Amazon and TiVo provide further video download and rental options, while Netflix has been adding to its ever-increasing stable of films that can be streamed online instead of ordered through the mail.
Given the array of such services available, it's not hard to see how even tech-savvy folks might hang on to a decent DVD player as backup but make use of newer streaming and download services to grab on-demand fare.
HD DVD is dead, and Blu-ray is arguably well positioned to take advantage of that fact. But the format has a long way to go before it supplants DVD as the physical media of choice for the living room. Remember, it took nearly a decade for sales of DVD players to overtake those of VCRs. It was only when DVD players began dropping down around $100 that they truly took off, and Blu-ray has a long way to go before it gets there.
HDTV is 1080i, BD is 1080p. the "i" stands for interpolated- it "guesses" 1080 lines. BD is a true 1080.
The difference is you can go right up to the screen and it looks like a photograph. On my 52" LCD, I could see that Dave Matthews needed to floss his teeth.
HDTV is pixellated if you walk right up to it. Not with BD.
I still have my VHS player and since I have a nice collection of vintage movies and hardly anything being made nowadays interests me at all, I think I will wait until the Leafs win their next cup (41 years and counting) before I invest in another here-today-gone-tomorrow technofix and spend $$$$ replacing everything for the third time.
Enough is enough.
Kevin Cronin is straight, but the older he gets, the gayer he looks. Short, skinny dudes with gray hair wearing designer clothes never look straight. LOL...
HD-DVD had DRM too. There's no way Hollywood would have supported a format without it. BTW, while Microsoft's codec is used in both formats, Microsoft wrote the interactivity software for HD-DVD vs. Java in Blu-Ray.
Blazing Saddles is out on Blu-Ray, 'nuff said. :)
Ya, 50,000 hours just isn't enough.
At 5 hours a day of TV, thats a mear 27 years.
“But eventually is not today.”
Sure ain’t.
I think a competing standard would have hastened better designs and lower prices.
Microsoft was in the HD DVD camp. Not Blu Ray.
Well, opinions are like --- well, bellybuttons; everybody's got one.
Me? I think that game playing is idiotic. As is the necessity of buying a "game console", whether I like it or not, in order to get "improved resolution" image on a large-screen TV.
Just saying.
I saw a plasma display suffer burn-in in one day flat.
Kinda soured the idea of getting one.
You're right. I would prefer to watch concerts on BD but even the available music is mostly not my type.
BD is really just for larger screen TV's. I don't think there is a detectable difference on a less than 40" screen.
A piece of advice if I may offer...
The Black Friday sales are your best bet to find an HDTV at a good price - save your money and wait for the opportune moment.
My wife and I did just that a year and a half ago - we set aside $1000 over the year for an HDTV. We checked online in late November for the Black Friday ads, and then went into the stores the week before to actually check out the models that would be available. We got up early, stood in line for maybe half an hour, got into the store and out in 20 mins, went home and hooked up a 51in rear-projection unit that gets crystal clear pictures. We then went to breakfast - it was still early enough that the restaurant manager was just unlocking the door as we arrived. Total price, tax and breakfast included, was less than $900.
- We paid less for a large screen HDTV than a lot of people are paying for 35in CRTs. I got the PS3 for Blue-Ray and HD audio - looks and sounds great and plays the reg DVDs clearer than my Zenith high scan DVD player ever did.
Purchased by first VCR back in 1980, paid $820.00 on sale. The sucker was made almost entirely out of metal less the mechanical knobs to change the channels. (damn thing weighed about 75 Lbs.)
I'll skip the blue ray and hold out as long as possible, I should be okay for at least a couple of years.
My plain old DVD player works just fine.
You don’t need the game machine fine, but when the player with the built in game machine is the same price or hundreds of dollars less, most folks will buy the one with the game machine built in.
Lets face it, BD is sony’s baby... PS3 is Sony’s baby... if I am looking at players, please explain to me why should I pay more money for a dedicated player, when I can buy a player made by Sony for the same price of less with a game system built in?
Even if you aren’t into games, when its cheaper by hundreds of dollars for the same function, its going to be the highest seller.
Like I said before, seperating out PS3 when talking about BD player sales is nonsense. Even if I had no desire for a PS3... if I’m looking at a PS3 for $399 and some other BD player, that offers no more features for $499 or $699.. I’m buying the $399 one even if I have no need of the game system.
Its simple economics. HD-DVD played that stupid game of pulling out PS3 numbers and trying to argue they didn’t matter... and of course it was complete BS... and now HD-DVD players are doorstops. (They effectively were even before they were even released, can’t believe Toshiba allowed itself to be played by MS so blatantly, but they did... and now there are a lot of expensive door stops out there)
I still have my 36" CRT upstairs. Watching Blu-ray movies on the 65" DLP in the basement is a totally different experience. More akin to 'the movies' but with none of the annoyances. Once you have it, there is no going back.
At current prices for standalone players and Blu-ray product -— most consumers are wise to avoid the “Bleeding Edge” of a new technology they really don’t need bad enough or that provides sufficient benefit to justify the cost....
Once player price comes down, and selection and cost of Blu-ray product make it feasible -— market may develop.
bump
The reason Blu-Ray quality may exceed HDTV is because HDTV channels often employ lossy compression data streams in order to squeeze more channels through a single satellite connection. Blu-Ray always delivers maximum quality.
BTW, Blu-Ray players feature support for HDMI cables, which carry both high res audio and video in the same cable. This eliminates the rat's nest of wires that we were all too familiar with in the DVD days.
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