"Blu-Ray is Dead?" Topic

Blu-ray is in a death spiral. 12 months from now Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product.

link

Interesting read.

Not only does it have to contend with the DVD market as mentioned in the column, it also is reliant on the HDTV market.

Why would I want to buy a BluRay player (despite the price decrease) if I do not have a television set suitable for its quality?

I have no plans to buy one for the next couple of years, therefore I am not buying a BluRay player either.

Wait . . . some people don't have HDTVs? My God, people! Think of the children!!!

HDTV penetration will take a while longer than planned as people aren't going to drop a house payment or two on a large screen while things are uncertain. It will be pushed by the switch to digital broadcast in February, but I doubt someone's going to replace their guest room TV with a 42" plasma.

Wyatt

We bought an HDTV because our old TV died. I guess the hammering on the side of it to eliminate the fuzz finally did it in. I also upgraded to an HDTV cable box. Wow, the difference is huge. Once you get used to it, the shows on regular channels are markedly different. NATGEO in HD is amazing.

That said, I have no desire to upgrade my DVD player for odd DVD that we watch every month or two. With OnDemand and our built in DVR, our cable pretty much takes care of all our viewing needs.

I've had an HDTV for 3-4 years, and I have never considered getting a Blue-Ray, nor will I. I see too little difference to change technologies yet again.

I agree…the Blu-Ray is a techno-craze item…not anything more special. My DVD works just fine and until it breaks it won't get replaced.

nycjadie –

I had not thought of the HD cable channels are also cutting into the BluRay market.

Thanks for that piece of enlightenment.

I know that my interest in getting a Blu-ray player dropped dramatically when I got a up-sampling DVD player. Standard DVD to Blu-ray may approach the improvement of VCD to DVD. But Blu-ray is not hugely better than up-sampled DVD.

I got a HDTV cheap on sale and was planning to get a Blu-ray player and upgrade about 20% of my 300 DVD collection. Then I bought a up-sampling player at 1/4 the price.

Here's one consumer not going to Blu-ray for a long while.

I will wager the next Congress rescinds the mandatory switchover due to the economy.
This will be a pandering Congress, and that is a subject begging to be pandered to. Think of all the poor hillbillies without cable!

Blu-Ray? In 3 weeks I can get HD movies streamed from Netflix to my Xbox 360. Why bother?

Not to mention the cost of a Blu-ray disc next to a DVD. Haven't seen any of them in Wal-Mart's bargain bin yet.

There is a few places online where I buy them, and its usually about two or three more bucks than regular dvds, so whats the squabble. Maybe if you go to buy it on the release day at Target, Circut City or Best buy, then sure. Its $28 USD bucks. But even amazon sells them cheaper on the release day than that.

I got into the Blu-Ray thang when I got my ps3 a few years ago (day one of the ps3 release), and I really like them. Buy a ps3 if you are thinking of getting into it – its one of the cheapest way to get a player. The stand alones are still overpriced…

Since I've had digital cable since 2005, I've no need to buy an HDTV for February.

Sticking with "old" dvd I can understand, but why bother with an upconvert dvd player? You can get a basic blu-ray player for about $100 USD more, get all the upconvert ability and you're all set for the foreseeable future. I've been researching and prepping to upgrade my tv and video equipment around Christmas time and I was seriously looking at the upconverters. When I saw the prices for an actual blu-ray though, it just didn't make sense to do anything but jump up.

I doubt if blu-ray is in a "death spiral". Every PS3 sold is a blu-ray player, prices on stand-alones are coming down (if slowly), and laptop and pc's are increasingly being offered with built in blu-ray. Slow acceptance does not equal non acceptance.

I'm looking forward to the Christmas discounts. The forecasts are that TV and electronics sales will be very slow this holiday season. I would expect that they're going to pull some crazy deals out to try and bring the waffling people into the stores. I'm all over it then.

I did as Gladue just mentioned.

Just got the Blu-ray player a few weeks agao and have been too busy to use it but then again I only have 21 work days left in the year with all my vacation so I'll have plenty of time to catch up.

I generally buy very few disks and rent them so purchase price is not a big deal for me.

BTW, I bought all my gear online through Amazon and between the lower costs and no state tax I saved about 20-25%.

These are all commodity items so why pay more for them at a big box store? I'll gladly pay for any service required outside of their sales "help" (I knew more than 85% of the people I talked to on their floor) on a time and materials basis.

If anyone wants to buy an upconvert Denon VCR PM me. I've got that and an old Yamaha receiver to sell off.

You can get a basic blu-ray player for about $100.00 USD USD more

Then, the cheapest Blu-ray would have costs me US$400 more than the bargain basement US$70 I paid for the upscale. Even today the gap here is over US$250. I'd probably buy a Blu-ray player if the price difference came down to US$100.

However, with upscaling, and here's the crux, I'm no longer looking to replace 20% of my DVD collection with Blu-rays. The big bonanza Sony was expecting isn't going to happen.

I usually wait for these things to become fairly well imbedded before I buy one. I managed to allude beta that way.