Jay said:lordjedi said:
Then you're not paying attention. Blu-ray units moved pretty well when the price was under $200. Now that most places have the players back above $200, sales have slowed again.It's called "the holidays." It's a time when things often sell very well at a reduced price and then slow down afterward. Add the economy into the mix and it's not exactly the best environment to be pushing a new media format.
And yet Amazon reported record sales. Only normal retail has reported sales being down. Black Friday actually had high sales, but they were lower than expected, so everyone has reported that sales were down.
I understand that you take part in the mass expectation--actually, mass entitlement may be a better description of the national condition--that the products you buy should be cheap right out of the gate. You've been whining for as long as I can remember about Blu-ray being too expensive. Nevermind that Blu-ray hardware is cheaper sooner in its lifecycle than DVD was while offering superior A/V quality and interactivity. You want it cheap, and you want it now. Wal-Mart and McDonald's.
Uh, wrong. I don't expect anything to be cheap. I expected player prices to be high when there was a format war. That ended in January or February. Player prices dipped slightly after that and then went right back up. Prices showed no signs of dropping until Black Friday. Retailers have been offering steep discounts on everything else except Blu-ray players. Games, clothes, movies, etc, etc. Everything has had steep discounts except those damn players. Even Sony didn't drop the price of the PS3 going into Black Friday. The XBox got a price cut though and saw an 8% increase. Nintendo didn't need to since they've been selling like mad anyway.
When there's no competing format, I want it cheaper sooner, yes. When dual format DVD burners appeared, burner (and media) prices started to drop significantly. Burners went from $300 (dual format) to under $100 within a year.
We also didn't have to worry about getting DVD players that couldn't play certain "future" content due to different profiles. Every DVD player released with the logo had to be able to play all the features in the spec. Even the players that did have problems were updated to work via firmware or by mailing the player in. A Blu-ray profile 1.0 or 1.1 player won't be able to play 2.0 profile content. The only thing I'm aware of that was added to the DVD spec later was mp2 audio since most of the cheap software used that and then those discs couldn't be played on earlier players.
The Blu-ray version of The Dark Knight sold 600,000 copies on its first day and 1 million after its first week. No laserdisc ever came close to that, not even after 16 years on the market. Not ever.
And it sold 13.5 million DVDs. Still looks like a niche compared to the DVD market.
Ziz said:lordjedi said:Remember that laserdisc didn't die either. But it didn't supplant VHS. It just became a videophile niche format. Even after DVD came out, plenty of places still carried laserdisc.
Part of that was that LD was only a "play" format. VHS was "play" and "record". The average public wants convenience first, quality second, so LD stayed on the fringes.
LDs were also huge in comparison to VHS tapes. They took up more space and had to be handled much more carefully.
DVD didn't start to replace VHS until DVD recorders became cheaper. Likewise, when BD players come down and BD recorders go desktop, then DVD will start to be phased out.
You got something to back that up besides anecdotal evidence? Otherwise, I'm calling bullshit. I started building my DVD collection the moment Divx died, burner or not. I had a pretty sizable collection before burners became affordable, as did a lot of people I know.
BD recorders also should have come down by now. They haven't. NewEgg had a one day special on ROM drives for $80, but it was only one day. DVD will start to be phased out when BD players can 1) load discs quickly and 2) players are under $200 brand new and people don't have to worry about firmware updates. The number of players I've read reviews for on Amazon that required updates just to load a disc in under 3 minutes is staggering. The PS3 is the fastest and most expensive player on the market. When it just becomes the most expensive, then maybe Blu-ray adoption will pick up.