And many may prefer to spend $30 on 2 blu-ray movies over a quarter tank of gas, two tickets and $10 popcorn at the theaters or a weekend trip somewhere.
As we all throttle back folks reset at different levels and find different leisure activities.
You're right, I'd personally spend the $30 on 2 lbs of Major Dickason's Blends at Peet's instead. At least for today, good coffee bean roast has more leisure value for me.
Still, an April report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. predicts that sales of Blu-ray discs will add just one percentage point of growth to the DVD market this year. One of the biggest hurdles is price. The discs cost on average $11 more than regular DVDs. And the players themselves run about $400 vs. $60 for a standard machine. That's a lot to ask consumers to pay when they are cutting back on discretionary spending. Plus, Sony executives have said that prices likely won't fall below $200 until the end of next year?at the earliest.
Another thing: Blu-ray is an iteration of an existing technology. It does not offer the kind of leap that DVDs represented over VHS tape. Even if Joe or Jane Consumer has an extra $400 to spend upgrading their home entertainment system, chances are they will junk the bedroom TV for a flat-panel one.
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
Probably until PS3 can be sold at $199 or less. Regardless of the price, the mass consumers have more serious things to worry about in life than getting a blu-ray player. I've been looking into housing market lately and no one's buying and the property price seems to be dropping even more. The whole economy in the states will be very rough for next three years for sure and most hi-tech/new tech/luxury hobby market will suffer the most.
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
Probably until it's not a serious money-losing proposition to do so. The hardware is obscenely expensive to produce, relative to DVD, which by this point costs maybe a few bucks per unit, tops.
if you talk in dollars then maybe when the us economy is back on track.. ie after Bush is dead and gone .. assuming Obama gets in ..
The president has very little influence on the economy. If you believe that he does I have nice HD-DVD player to sell you for $100 off of the original MSRP.
Disney wants to awaken sales of the Blu-ray Disc format, and the studio knows it'll take more than a kiss to get the job done. In October, Disney will release its first animated classic on the high-definition video format, Sleeping Beauty, with high-tech viewing options not possible with DVD.
Using a new technology known as BD Live ? which connects to the Internet ? viewers will pop in the disc and get a customized version of the famed castle that serves as a backdrop for the menu. The sky will reflect weather conditions in the viewer's hometown.
Once viewers begin watching, they'll be able to chat with friends right on the movie screen, using a laptop, BlackBerry or other PDA, through Disney's protected network. They'll be able to insert customized video messages anywhere in the movie and send them to friends or family members via a "movie mail" feature.
They'll be able to play trivia games with fellow viewers across the country. And when they're done, they can get a constant supply of new trailers, plus trade in "reward" points, collected by using many of these features, for ringtones and wallpaper.
Sleeping Beauty "will revolutionize the way people will interact with and view movies in the home," says Bob Chapek, president of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. "We pulled out all the stops in launching this technology."
But there's a hitch: Current Blu-ray owners ? except for those with PS3s ? won't be able to access Sleeping Beauty's online features. BD Live is part of a revised Blu-ray Profile 2.0, which will start to appear on machines from Sony and Panasonic this summer. Players already bought can't be upgraded.
"I hate that; it sounds like planned obsolescence," says Farrell Rigney, 50, a contractor in Carlsbad, Calif., who bought a Blu-ray Disc player the day after Thanksgiving. "They plan it so you have to buy another one, just like with cellphones."
The studios insist they aren't trying to make life difficult for consumers, just trying to keep packaged media alive. DVD sales are slipping, and the studios hope Blu-ray will rekindle consumer interest enough to continue buying discs instead of downloading movies.
At this point, Blu-ray accounts for about 5% of overall disc sales, according to Nielsen VideoScan. To really start the ball rolling, studios believe it'll take not just a clearer picture but a completely different and interactive experience.
That's the chief reason Disney is pushing the envelope with Sleeping Beauty, much as the studio pushed people to DVD in late 2001 with an innovative special edition of Snow White, which became the first disc to sell 1 million units in a single day.
Disney isn't the only studio working with BD Live technology, although others' early efforts aren't as elaborate. Lionsgate's Blu-ray War and Saw IV, released in January, offer chat features.
Sony released two BD Live features in April, The Sixth Day and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, with downloadable extra content. And 20th Century Fox's Alien vs. Predator lets viewers superimpose themselves into a game and play against others over the Internet.
"Blu-ray Disc alone is a significantly different viewing experience, with seamless menus and other technological advances that make DVD seem almost clunky," says Sony Pictures' Lexine Wong. "But with BD Live, it's a whole other world. BD Live allows packaged media to live forever."
The online additions could give Blu-ray a lift, says Russ Crupnick of The NPD Group. "BD Live promises to move potential buyers off the sidelines," he says. "We are in an increasingly interactive environment, with online gaming, social networking and virtual communities like Second Life ingraining themselves into pop culture. Taking that experience into the living room is a natural next step."
The president has very little influence on the economy. If you believe that he does I have nice HD-DVD player to sell you for $100 off of the original MSRP.
I don't want to take this into political territory but this is the same president that heads up the administration that sent american troops into an endless unwinable war, right?
ALL the billions that are flowing out of the country into iraq has nothing to do with the spiralling economy.
when you have a lea like that, plug it, damn it or whatever, just stop the leak.
{and here i promise to end any further references to the worst political leader ever.. at least for now}
I don't want to take this into political territory but this is the same president that heads up the administration that sent american troops into an endless unwinable war, right?
ALL the billions that are flowing out of the country into iraq has nothing to do with the spiralling economy.
when you have a lea like that, plug it, damn it or whatever, just stop the leak.
{and here i promise to end any further references to the worst political leader ever.. at least for now}
I don't know if he's the worst political leader ever...we have all sorts of colorful leaders with faults to an extent...
Will it be Apple on the back of the success of music downloads and the momentum that brings?
or will it be BD the next optical disc format for the masses, with discs being a proven quantity?
difficult to predict, some times I think Apple has no chance and sometimes I think BD has no chance.
lets wait and see what xmas brings
This pretty much sums up my thinking, as well.
I am convinced His Steveness would prefer everyone to get their audio and video programming from a server, somewhere, and to hell with the physical disk distribution. The problem with that perspective is that the realities present in Cupertino, California are very different than from say, Waynesville, Missouri. \
Bandwidth is IMO a key issue concerning His Steveness's vision of our entertainment future, as is how content creators can distribute their video productions (forget about music for the moment). Places like Waynesville, Missouri, and elsewhere in Flyover Country will not have access to the big pipes needed for effective, consumer-friendly distribution of video for some time. At the same time, a content producer wanting to make copies of say, a wedding video, has no choice at the present but to use DVD to distribute it. Blu-Ray support in MacintoshLand at present, frankly is where DVD was about 1999 or so. Yes, we can turn that wedding video into a 720p QuickTime file, and tell people to download it, but the vast majority of the public aren't that saavy.
It's a real conundrum. If the FCC under a new administration gets off its backside to promote broadband distribution on a par with South Korea (a view I don't think likely), BD goes down in flames. If the BD people figure a way out of the DRM crap that makes the format more viable for small independent producers to use as a distribution format, Apple TV goes down in flames. Of course, His Steveness has one foot firmly in both camps.
The Seattle Times ran the results of a Harris Interactive survey dealing with electronics Monday. There was no information as to the size of the survey or who was surveyed, so these figures need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Some of the results:
Device % owning device
DVD player connected to TV 87%
Desktop computer 86%
Laptop computer 53%
Large-screen TV 35%
HD TV 35%
HD-DVD player 6%
Sony PS3 5%
BD player 4%
HD-DVD drive for Xbox 1%
I was surprised by the percentage of HD-DVD players. It seems to me clear that lack of sufficient studio support killed HD-DVD; BD's marketing plan of going after studios rather than low player prices was the key. The adoption figures also show BD has a long way to go to supplant DVD. While BD may not become mainstream with consumers, there seems to be enough support behind it to become a strong niche product that to its intended market won't be affected by downloads. Just my take.
It's also clear that the Xbox HD add on was a non-factor in the format war.
Can anyone explain the difference between large-screen TV and HD TV?
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
it really is a cause for concern because i know (myself included) tons of people willing to buy into bluray if players were priced below $200.
sony will not allow this to happen though, they cant. the ps3 is still not doing well as a gaming console, and the bluray (ironically enough) is the only thing giving them a slight chance of success.
if bluray players sold below ps3 price the ps3 would be doomed.
it really is a cause for concern because i know (myself included) tons of people willing to buy into bluray if players were priced below $200.
sony will not allow this to happen though, they cant. the ps3 is still not doing well as a gaming console, and the bluray (ironically enough) is the only thing giving them a slight chance of success.
if bluray players sold below ps3 price the ps3 would be doomed.
sure, look at game sales. look at where the best games of this gen are, and which system carries the higher rated/higher sold multi-platform games. look at the incredible attach rate of the 360 compared to the ps3.
2008 was supposed to be the year the ps3 showed some gaming strength but it has yet to do so.. current "big future" title Haze fell flat on its face. MGS4 is looking to be the only system seller for Sony in 2008.
Even their flagship poster boy Killzone2 which debuted with a CGI trailer and created such a fiasco is being pushed back to 2009. yes, 2009! they touted the game as a "halo killer" before the system even launched and now it's being pushed back for the sake of "having too many shooters come out around the same time". uhh your most hyped title is taking a back seat to a sequel and other unproven games? huh?
pfff, chalk that excuse up to another game that will be crushed under it's own weight once released.
for you non-ps3 fanboys, this proves your theory that the ps3 is being bought as a bluray player. bravo.
Comments
And many may prefer to spend $30 on 2 blu-ray movies over a quarter tank of gas, two tickets and $10 popcorn at the theaters or a weekend trip somewhere.
As we all throttle back folks reset at different levels and find different leisure activities.
You're right, I'd personally spend the $30 on 2 lbs of Major Dickason's Blends at Peet's instead. At least for today, good coffee bean roast has more leisure value for me.
ooh! plinky plinky plink - tee plink tee plink!
...
3rd Man is an amazing film should be good to see in Hi-Def.
...
Love that zither music, extremely effective. And the sewer scene.
Love that zither music, extremely effective. And the sewer scene.
very tempting to watch it right now, but the suns out! maybe over the next few days.
Still, an April report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. predicts that sales of Blu-ray discs will add just one percentage point of growth to the DVD market this year. One of the biggest hurdles is price. The discs cost on average $11 more than regular DVDs. And the players themselves run about $400 vs. $60 for a standard machine. That's a lot to ask consumers to pay when they are cutting back on discretionary spending. Plus, Sony executives have said that prices likely won't fall below $200 until the end of next year?at the earliest.
Another thing: Blu-ray is an iteration of an existing technology. It does not offer the kind of leap that DVDs represented over VHS tape. Even if Joe or Jane Consumer has an extra $400 to spend upgrading their home entertainment system, chances are they will junk the bedroom TV for a flat-panel one.
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
Probably until PS3 can be sold at $199 or less. Regardless of the price, the mass consumers have more serious things to worry about in life than getting a blu-ray player. I've been looking into housing market lately and no one's buying and the property price seems to be dropping even more. The whole economy in the states will be very rough for next three years for sure and most hi-tech/new tech/luxury hobby market will suffer the most.
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
Probably until it's not a serious money-losing proposition to do so. The hardware is obscenely expensive to produce, relative to DVD, which by this point costs maybe a few bucks per unit, tops.
Probably until PS3 can be sold at $199 or less.
if you talk in dollars then maybe when the us economy is back on track.. ie after Bush is dead and gone .. assuming Obama gets in ..
the dollar is in the toilet at the moment against EVERY other major currency, the US is a crap place to live at the minute in terms of imports
if you talk in dollars then maybe when the us economy is back on track.. ie after Bush is dead and gone .. assuming Obama gets in ..
The president has very little influence on the economy. If you believe that he does I have nice HD-DVD player to sell you for $100 off of the original MSRP.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/product...-blu-ray_N.htm
Disney wants to awaken sales of the Blu-ray Disc format, and the studio knows it'll take more than a kiss to get the job done. In October, Disney will release its first animated classic on the high-definition video format, Sleeping Beauty, with high-tech viewing options not possible with DVD.
Using a new technology known as BD Live ? which connects to the Internet ? viewers will pop in the disc and get a customized version of the famed castle that serves as a backdrop for the menu. The sky will reflect weather conditions in the viewer's hometown.
Once viewers begin watching, they'll be able to chat with friends right on the movie screen, using a laptop, BlackBerry or other PDA, through Disney's protected network. They'll be able to insert customized video messages anywhere in the movie and send them to friends or family members via a "movie mail" feature.
They'll be able to play trivia games with fellow viewers across the country. And when they're done, they can get a constant supply of new trailers, plus trade in "reward" points, collected by using many of these features, for ringtones and wallpaper.
Sleeping Beauty "will revolutionize the way people will interact with and view movies in the home," says Bob Chapek, president of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. "We pulled out all the stops in launching this technology."
But there's a hitch: Current Blu-ray owners ? except for those with PS3s ? won't be able to access Sleeping Beauty's online features. BD Live is part of a revised Blu-ray Profile 2.0, which will start to appear on machines from Sony and Panasonic this summer. Players already bought can't be upgraded.
"I hate that; it sounds like planned obsolescence," says Farrell Rigney, 50, a contractor in Carlsbad, Calif., who bought a Blu-ray Disc player the day after Thanksgiving. "They plan it so you have to buy another one, just like with cellphones."
The studios insist they aren't trying to make life difficult for consumers, just trying to keep packaged media alive. DVD sales are slipping, and the studios hope Blu-ray will rekindle consumer interest enough to continue buying discs instead of downloading movies.
At this point, Blu-ray accounts for about 5% of overall disc sales, according to Nielsen VideoScan. To really start the ball rolling, studios believe it'll take not just a clearer picture but a completely different and interactive experience.
That's the chief reason Disney is pushing the envelope with Sleeping Beauty, much as the studio pushed people to DVD in late 2001 with an innovative special edition of Snow White, which became the first disc to sell 1 million units in a single day.
Disney isn't the only studio working with BD Live technology, although others' early efforts aren't as elaborate. Lionsgate's Blu-ray War and Saw IV, released in January, offer chat features.
Sony released two BD Live features in April, The Sixth Day and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, with downloadable extra content. And 20th Century Fox's Alien vs. Predator lets viewers superimpose themselves into a game and play against others over the Internet.
"Blu-ray Disc alone is a significantly different viewing experience, with seamless menus and other technological advances that make DVD seem almost clunky," says Sony Pictures' Lexine Wong. "But with BD Live, it's a whole other world. BD Live allows packaged media to live forever."
The online additions could give Blu-ray a lift, says Russ Crupnick of The NPD Group. "BD Live promises to move potential buyers off the sidelines," he says. "We are in an increasingly interactive environment, with online gaming, social networking and virtual communities like Second Life ingraining themselves into pop culture. Taking that experience into the living room is a natural next step."
The president has very little influence on the economy. If you believe that he does I have nice HD-DVD player to sell you for $100 off of the original MSRP.
I don't want to take this into political territory but this is the same president that heads up the administration that sent american troops into an endless unwinable war, right?
ALL the billions that are flowing out of the country into iraq has nothing to do with the spiralling economy.
when you have a lea like that, plug it, damn it or whatever, just stop the leak.
{and here i promise to end any further references to the worst political leader ever.. at least for now}
{and here i promise to end any further references to the worst political leader ever.. at least for now}
Exaggerate much?
I don't want to take this into political territory but this is the same president that heads up the administration that sent american troops into an endless unwinable war, right?
ALL the billions that are flowing out of the country into iraq has nothing to do with the spiralling economy.
when you have a lea like that, plug it, damn it or whatever, just stop the leak.
{and here i promise to end any further references to the worst political leader ever.. at least for now}
I don't know if he's the worst political leader ever...we have all sorts of colorful leaders with faults to an extent...
Bush:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLhQH...eature=related
Clinton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj-AdvsiczU
Gore:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-9WsKlKXJI
Exaggerate much?
nah, a promise is a promise, i dont intend to mention it again :P
Who will win?
Will it be Apple on the back of the success of music downloads and the momentum that brings?
or will it be BD the next optical disc format for the masses, with discs being a proven quantity?
difficult to predict, some times I think Apple has no chance and sometimes I think BD has no chance.
lets wait and see what xmas brings
This pretty much sums up my thinking, as well.
I am convinced His Steveness would prefer everyone to get their audio and video programming from a server, somewhere, and to hell with the physical disk distribution. The problem with that perspective is that the realities present in Cupertino, California are very different than from say, Waynesville, Missouri.
Bandwidth is IMO a key issue concerning His Steveness's vision of our entertainment future, as is how content creators can distribute their video productions (forget about music for the moment). Places like Waynesville, Missouri, and elsewhere in Flyover Country will not have access to the big pipes needed for effective, consumer-friendly distribution of video for some time. At the same time, a content producer wanting to make copies of say, a wedding video, has no choice at the present but to use DVD to distribute it. Blu-Ray support in MacintoshLand at present, frankly is where DVD was about 1999 or so. Yes, we can turn that wedding video into a 720p QuickTime file, and tell people to download it, but the vast majority of the public aren't that saavy.
It's a real conundrum. If the FCC under a new administration gets off its backside to promote broadband distribution on a par with South Korea (a view I don't think likely), BD goes down in flames. If the BD people figure a way out of the DRM crap that makes the format more viable for small independent producers to use as a distribution format, Apple TV goes down in flames. Of course, His Steveness has one foot firmly in both camps.
All we can do is wait and see.
Some of the results:
Device % owning device
DVD player connected to TV 87%
Desktop computer 86%
Laptop computer 53%
Large-screen TV 35%
HD TV 35%
HD-DVD player 6%
Sony PS3 5%
BD player 4%
HD-DVD drive for Xbox 1%
I was surprised by the percentage of HD-DVD players. It seems to me clear that lack of sufficient studio support killed HD-DVD; BD's marketing plan of going after studios rather than low player prices was the key. The adoption figures also show BD has a long way to go to supplant DVD. While BD may not become mainstream with consumers, there seems to be enough support behind it to become a strong niche product that to its intended market won't be affected by downloads. Just my take.
It's also clear that the Xbox HD add on was a non-factor in the format war.
Can anyone explain the difference between large-screen TV and HD TV?
Source | How long will the studios gouge us for $30-35 a movie? How long will Sony & their Blu-Ray consortium demand $500 for a player? They're playing a very dangerous game here.
it really is a cause for concern because i know (myself included) tons of people willing to buy into bluray if players were priced below $200.
sony will not allow this to happen though, they cant. the ps3 is still not doing well as a gaming console, and the bluray (ironically enough) is the only thing giving them a slight chance of success.
if bluray players sold below ps3 price the ps3 would be doomed.
it really is a cause for concern because i know (myself included) tons of people willing to buy into bluray if players were priced below $200.
sony will not allow this to happen though, they cant. the ps3 is still not doing well as a gaming console, and the bluray (ironically enough) is the only thing giving them a slight chance of success.
if bluray players sold below ps3 price the ps3 would be doomed.
sure, look at game sales. look at where the best games of this gen are, and which system carries the higher rated/higher sold multi-platform games. look at the incredible attach rate of the 360 compared to the ps3.
2008 was supposed to be the year the ps3 showed some gaming strength but it has yet to do so.. current "big future" title Haze fell flat on its face. MGS4 is looking to be the only system seller for Sony in 2008.
Even their flagship poster boy Killzone2 which debuted with a CGI trailer and created such a fiasco is being pushed back to 2009. yes, 2009! they touted the game as a "halo killer" before the system even launched and now it's being pushed back for the sake of "having too many shooters come out around the same time". uhh your most hyped title is taking a back seat to a sequel and other unproven games? huh?
pfff, chalk that excuse up to another game that will be crushed under it's own weight once released.
for you non-ps3 fanboys, this proves your theory that the ps3 is being bought as a bluray player. bravo.
Can anyone explain the difference between large-screen TV and HD TV?
If the poll was about pre-existing ownership (and not necessarily new purchases), then I assume one is HD, the other is SD.
please try to not feed the irrelevant troll.