Too much is being made out of blu-ray sales figures right now.

I completely preferred HD DVD, but blu-ray sales are doing ok and blu-ray will in the worst case be a niche product. There's nothing wrong with that - Laserdisc did ok in that area too.

I think blu-ray will do better though, its just going to take more time. The holiday's this year will really show what might be capable as it will be the first holiday season blu-ray has had no competition.

Looks like Sony has stymied the growth of their own HD format and also has managed to thwart the market penetration of their game console. Talking about killing two birds with one stone!

Thanks for this info, we will link to this from our Blu-ray Duplication site!

Yeah, 5.6 millions in 2007. Add HD DVD sales to that and high definition movie sales won't look like it gained much from last year since HD DVD's fall.

Can someone tell my why there are Sony fanboys? Because Sony screws fanboys like they screw everyone else.

Sony fanboys are the most devoted fanboys. They are blind towards Sony's arrogance, faults, broken promises, etc.

You forgot lies.

Since Blu-Ray is owned by Sony, Blu-Ray discs and players will always be overpriced.

It gets even funnier.

I saw this elsewhere.....

DVD annual US sales almost 1.7 billion discs p.a.

http://www.dvdinformatio.../industryData/index.cfm

DVD annual sales over 7 billion discs worldwide.

http://www.contentdelive...lication_worldwide.html

Which means that this 8% number is just garbage, disconnected from reality and BS which tells us nothing.

By all means buy into Blu-ray for the convenience of high def on disc so lonmg as you realise you are involved in a high margin and probably short-lived product.

Blu-ray is not on the verge of taking over from DVD.
It isn't even close to starting.

All of the BR supporters who still claim BR is the ascendent champion have a lot to account for.

After 'winning' the HD format war, they should have received a pretty substantial bump. Not only from new undecided folks, but also rom a significant number of HD-DVD folks who were not the atypical rapid partisans that some here are. After all, most HD-DVD users were folks already sold on HD. They should not have simply evaporated.

Instead we have seen almost no increase in sales. In fact, the silence has been deafening, both as little has been heard regarding the format as the format war was indeed in large measure what kept attention on it.

And I'm sorry fanboys, but the nonsense that the market only began ~9 months ago is ludicrous. As folks were already familiar with the digital formats from Laserdisks and CDs and DVDs, the market began with BR's vaporware announcement in 2002. Its not like anyone had to have the concept explained to them.

But as the range of titles are still extremely limited (if not in theory - in real retail presence), and the preponderance of what is available on store shelves are 'mediocre at best' recent theatrical offerings - there is little to offer a compelling reason to invest in the prohibitive entry cost players (of which, any aside from the PS3 seems a bit ludicrous) as well as the exorbitantly priced media - unless you really like Adam Sandler's adolescent humor (in which case you are probably distraught by the lack of an iPhone fart generator that you are rendered too incapacitated to even consider buyinga BR title right now!). ;-)

With the 90% return one already gets from upscaled DVD's, where the REAL threatrical experience comes from the AUDIO, and not the video... without a MAJOR price reduction in players to between $100-150 and movies to the $10-$15 range, I don't see this format going anywhere quick, soon. And Sony's marketshare predictions are as inaccurate as their initial time to market projections for BR itself.

In hindsight, I wish HD-DVD had won. Recording BR is almost a moot point, as is the small technical spec advantage of max capacity. HD-DVD offered a potential for media and players competitive with current DVD market prices.
In other words, HD-DVD provided the usable quality at a much more competitive price that would have allowed more to be able to justify the move to HD source material. BR simply fails to do this.

Very well said.

I agree with this statement.

Very true.

Ironically, Blu-Ray died with HD-DVD.

"about 8.8 million Blu-ray discs have been sold in 2008"

DVD sell 750+ million units per year.

They're not even going to hit 2% of total sales.

So much for the cherry-picked Nielson BS.

Hocus you took the words outta my mouth bud!

Like they took a page from Sony or something

Too true.

It's like some kind of parallel reality, Nielson's biased stats come in & the Blu-ray fanclub start cooing about having '8, 10.... or on a good week.... 12% of the market'

They haven't gotten 2% of the true market.

Of course Nielson is out of whack.

1st of all Blu-ray unit prices are higher so a weekly total based on revenues tells us nothing much about units s***ed.

2ndly DVD is a mature market.
What kind of nut-job rushes out to buy every DVD they like the look of at release prices?
Everyone knows if you wait a couple of weeks or even a month or two prices will fall like a stone.

They are not comparing like with like and the claims that Blu-ray is selling anything but the most derisory numbers is just a lie, spread by knowing liars.

Blu-ray is a high margin niche product.
If you can live with that, fine.

......but keeping this ridiculous lie going about how it's on the verge of 'being the next DVD' is just getting embarrassing.
Clearly it is not.

Like some of us said at the time, a Blu-ray win merely ensured high def movies on disc failed to go mainstream.
It's just another failed Sony proprietary product to add to the long list.

I bet the rest of the CE industry that bought into it have been just thrilled to see it all work out like the train-wreck it is.....and Sony grab what little money was in it with the PS3 & S300/350.

The truth is that both sides got caught out by how underwhelmed the general public are about high def.
No-one cares enough to pay a premium for it.

More DRM'ed bull crap that we don't need. a great format spoiled by courporate greed.

HDMI HDCP DRM, SPDC, BD+, AACS. Ability for phone home authorisation. Multi Region Hack Blocked, to enable global media price fixing.

why would anyone jump through all them hoops cheers Sony, thanks for your DRM-Ray player, thanks for your RootKit and SecuROM.

You hit the nail on the head!

Exactly. Sounds like an iPod. The reason I never considered buying one or Apple's line of "sets you free" bull.

Actually, it's the Rockbox firmware replacement for the iPod that really sets you free. ;)

Whats with the negativity? 8% seems quite good since the format only became the single HD format from January this year. Just 9 months... As people steadily buy new HD TVs/AV-AMPs to replace there existing entertainment systems then its automatic that the only option is HD media. Why would anybody buy DVD media? Its finished. I have a very modest collection of 50 or so DVD movies... they all look and sound like something on a youtube site compared to BD movies at 1080P. The biggest hurdle is the prices... but as BD devices continue to be released prices will drop accordingly.... for both players and media.

Niche market? for now maybe... but it took DVD about 4-5 years to kill of VHS.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4031223.stm

The bonus of BD is that at least your DVD media is still playable and upscalable.. something DVD could not do for VHS.

Sony is too flaky to handle the responsibilities that come with BRD becoming a media standard. That, plus the price, keep me from supporting BRD. My upconverting DVD player is just fine thank you very much.

Some people just don't know what they're missing. Or they're blind.

Spoken from the "Resistance is Futile" high-horse.

Or don't care.

Apparently Blu-ray supporters don't know what they're missing either... an additional $10-$25 per movie purchase over DVD prices. Hardly incentive for such a marginal improvement in video quality over the best upscaling "universal" DVD players, and no incentive for practically the same audio quality.

Serves them right.

It's not that people are blind.

No.

It's that

.....and here's the bit the high def evangelists love to keep very quiet about......

a lot of high def really isn't all that.

There, just admit and feel a lot cleaner with yourself. :P

Unless you have a 60"+ screen (ie hardly anyone) it's really not all that great big a deal a lot of the time.

....and shelling out for the kind of audio kit required to hear the audio differences it can bring is not exactly high on many people's priority list at a time when we in the western world are about to be hit by a major recession.

For too many people (you know, the regular working adults who are not all obsessed about Tv or movies) the benefits Blu-ray may offer are at a premium few are willing to pay.

For a lot of people, at the end of the day, it's still just TV.

Realise.

Not when upscaled DVD is so good (at the price) and HD TV services with a DVR offer
'HD on your HD TV all the time' at an affordable price.

Any receiver with Audyssey MultEQ will let you hear the huge difference between Dolby Digital and Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio. Such receivers start at about $350 the last time I checked (they may have dropped in price again). With Audyssey MultEQ there is a huge difference in audio quality even with five cheap satellite speakers that are paired with an 8-inch subwoofer. As for video, any LCD TV that is 30 inches or larger with a resolution of at least 1280x720 will show a massive difference as long as you use HDMI. For one thing, the video won't be stretched way out like it is with 480p content. There will also be considerably less video noise. Also, if you're watching high def TV on cable, OTA or satellite the rainbow effect that shows up on some scenes on 480p content will be non existent.

Getting top quality HD video and audio is extremely inexpensive.

Unfortunately, far too many supposedly 'high-definition' titles contain audio soundtracks that do not take full advantage of the increased storage capacity of their respective formats (and no, simply being uncompressed does not count). In most cases, soundtracks on Blu-ray and HD DVD titles are presented in the same 48KHz / 16-bit resolution that has existed on DVD for the past decade. This is changing, but not nearly fast enough.

Uncompressed or otherwise, until more titles are offered with (at least) 96KHz / 24-bit soundtracks, there are quite simply no "huge differences" than what consumers are already used to with DVD. Bit depth and resolution are where the real differences exist in quality. The visual equivalent would be viewing an image with gradients throughout at 16-bit color depth, and then viewing that same image at 24-/32-bit color depth. The greater the bit depth, the more accurately the original analog material can be reproduced digitally.

You shouldn't need DSP effects to notice huge differences... if they did indeed exist.

The only time you don't need room EQ to fully experience the difference between Dolby Digital and, say, Dolby TrueHD is if you have a properly treated room. Currently if you have an untreated room like most homes do, Audyssey makes the only room EQ that can properly adapt the speakers to your room acoustics. Yes, you are correct that higher bit depths and sample rates will make even larger improvements than current Blu-Ray discs already do. The House of Flying Daggers Blu-Ray disc is proof that standard uncompressed 48KHz 16-bit audio can still make a big difference between what you hear on DVD's and what you hear on Blu-Ray.

I just bought Speed Racer, the Godfather trilogy, and pre-paid for Iron Man. At least I'm contributing.

Speed Racer was $35 but it came with a digital copy you can use on portable devices and even burn to regular DVD if you like.

BD movie prices are way out of line IMO.

BD will never make it into mainstream, only one person i know owns a player, and it's a PS3.

Spped Racer now that is money well spent. Very bad movie you paid to much for that pile of a movie.

Wonderful!
If you look at the advantage over DVD you will see that the audio is the same. Therefore the only ++ is the HD. If your not picky you can buy the DVD version and use an upconverter to do the same thing.. This is why bloray will fail and probably why Samsung agrees that Bloray is a lost cause.

Wow... you actually know someone named 'PS3'?

Now that guy's a fanboy! :P

Too bad most of you don't have a BD player or an HDTV but you are in here bashing it. BTW, anything under 42 inches does not qualify as a real TV or even a man's TV.

I would also like to add the fact that home theaters have dedicated screens and 16:9 DLP projectors, so your 50" Costco Vizio hanging over your fireplace doesn't count. If you have a CRT projector, you are stuck in the 80's and if you have a 4:3 LCD projector or a paint-on screen, you also don't have a home theater, you have a PowerPoint presentation room.

I have an HDTV but not a Blu-Ray player and the reason is simply it isn't competitive enough with DVD. When DVD came on people didn't make the switch in droves until the price was closer to VHS but Blu-Ray is nowhere near close. $40 for Get Smart is crazy, it was a good movie, but not a collectable.
The players are also far too high for most to consider, but they might consider it if the movies were cheap, but they aren't.
Right now Blu-Ray is lose lose for the average consumer.

Get Smart the movie is to the TV series what The Wild Wild West movie was to the series. A complete embarrassment.

But as far as a compelling reason to invest in BR...I agree. There is none.

Price wise, that's true.
The funny thing is though that I went Blu-ray, didn't notice much difference, but when I went back to watching few things on DVD... I was shocked by how bad the quality of DVD was.

I was like.. I thought DVD was better than this!?

Anyway, I don't watch much Blu-ray videos anymore, but it does work great as a backup drive. I mean I constantly burn off tons of data and 25GB is nice

It really doesn't make sense to spend all of that money on an HDTV only to use it primarily for watching standard definition content. What a waste.

"it was a good movie, but not a collectable. "

I just thought to make a point here that addresses something much broader in regards what you said. I think we've been, over a long period of time, brainwashed to think things are collectible and have value that actually are not and will never will be unless they become rare.

With that said when will digital content ever become rare; when the company can just duplicated at will??

I know this is off topic but I think it's an important point. Marketing puts the word collectible or limited edition on something and somehow it has more value? The world is filled these days with mass produced worthless collectibles.... what do you think?

For the most part I agree with you. However, there are some "collectibles" out there that do contain additional value. One example I can immediately recall is the Serenity Collector's Edition DVD release, which added a DTS soundtrack as opposed to just Dolby Digital, and lots of additional scenes and content. That had value to me, as it enhanced the playback experience, and didn't simply include swag and gimmicks with the packaging.

But yes, terms such as "collectible" and "limited edition" are thrown around far too much and have definitely lost their meaning.

Upscaled DVD looks great and so does over the air HD. I've had a PS3 since launch but now starting to question the blu format. Some of the soon to be released titles have ridiculous prices so I am losing interest in blu altogether.

lol man i saw a Walmart commercial yesterday..
DVD player 20 bucks.
There is no way that bloray can compete with that. Not with their marketing

There's a huge difference between the grainy, stretched out picture that upscaled DVD's provide and OTA high def TV programming.

Wow, loved the first statement. :P

EDIT: "The MSRP for Get Smart on Blu-ray is $39.95, for instance."

HOLY CRAP! Thats ridiculous.

In other words:

"The market has spoken. New figures solidify Blu-ray's niche status for years to come."

What a shock...

It won't take off until the content becomes much cheaper with a much larger selection, the players get cheap, and HDTV penetration becomes greater since the appliances are tied together.

It will NEVER take off if movies like "Get Smart" are $39.95