zombie84 said:Blu-Ray is a niche format that will eventually become a standard format, because HDTV is a niche format that will eventually become a standard format.
I know far more people that have HDTVs than have Blu-ray players. I'd say that HDTV is not a niche format. People can buy an HDTV for very little (as you say below), hook it up to their HD cable or satellite, and enjoy a stunning picture right away. And if they have an upscaling DVD player, their old DVDs will now look even better than they did before.
DVD players didn't come down because the format war ended or because recordable players emerged; I don't think most people even knew about the format war, and no one uses recordable DVD anyway.
I knew several people at the time, that were not technical at all, that knew about Divx. One of them even bought a player because he felt it was the better buy, despite all the drawbacks.
I also saw plenty of people at places like Fry's that were buying recordable media, but they could only buy one type (no dual format burners at the time). These people were probably not that technical, they just wanted to be able to backup large amounts of data. But I'd agree that DVD player prices didn't come down due to dual format burners. Player prices came down due to exactly what you said.
Remember that DVD came about just before Tivo hit the market. DVD came out in 1997, Tivo hit in 1999. Once Tivo came out, VCRs were rendered practically pointless. Why buy something that only records 6 hours of video, has to be set for the right time, and has to have the tape changed when you can buy something that allows you to tell it what program to record and never needs anything changed? The DVR is a godsend to anyone who ever had trouble with a VCR not recording their show or just plain setting it up right.
So in short, with the advent of DVD and the DVR, DVD didn't even need to be recordable at the time.
But thats not necessarily going to happen again. I think people just take the incredible success and disgustingly cheap prices of DVD for granted. In 1995 I was paying $20 for VHS tapes, and now people pay almost the same for a lot of Blu-Ray titles, yet they still complain; our family bought a top-quality VCR in 1987 that cost us almost $300, and you can buy Blu-Ray players for much less today. I don't really know what people are expecting. I think its actually cheapened the home video industry a bit that you can go to the store and get a $50 DVD player and own a recent Hollywood blockbuster on DVD for $6, its sort of made home video a bit disposable but I guess thats just the way its gone.
Actually, I have no complaints about the price of Blu-ray discs. The discs have fallen to within a few dollars of DVDs. I'd even be willing to pay $10 more for the hi-def disc if I had to.
Yes, the home theater arena has become affordable for a lot more people. You almost sound like you think people shouldn't be able to have home theaters without spending thousands of dollars. I think it's fantastic that you can get an HDTV with a 5.1 receiver and speakers for about $2000.
As for Blu-Ray--here's the thing. I don't think anyone ever expected it to replace DVD, so why are people disappointed that its sales are not as good as DVDs?
I don't know where you got this idea. Every article I've ever read since Blu-ray's inception has made the case that Blu-ray is so much better that it was going to replace DVD.
DVD was a success that had never been seen in home video, and probably won't be ever again, at least in our lifetimes.
Never going to need more than 1 MB of RAM either, huh?
DVD you could just hook up to your TV and be blown away by the quality, but Blu-Ray requires you to have a completely different television set, and jump between Blu-Ray and DVD isn't nearly as dramatic so there's not as much drive for "you gotta see THIS!!".
I don't know where people get this. A Blu-ray with 1080p is over double the resolution of a 480p DVD. DVD was double that of VHS (usually around 240 lines). Sure, it's best viewed on a screen larger than 32", but I was never really blown away by the quality of a DVD on my 27" TV. What blew me away was the ability to freeze frame without the frame jumping, select scenes at random, and high speed skip through the movie. Add in the commentary and other extra features and I was hooked.
I'd say Blu Ray will be the standard home video format by about 2016, if it can hang in there for the next two years or so.
2016? By that time, I expect HD streaming to become common place. Verizon already streams the DVR over the FiOS link. If they can do that today, there's nothing stopping them from streaming an HD video directly to a media center that is either leased or owned.
Jay: I really don't care how much different you think a hardware vs software player is. Beyond the necessary chips to decode the Blu-ray content, the differences aren't major. DVD players have hardware mpeg2 decoders. PC DVD drives don't because the software does the decoding. It's pretty much the same thing with Blu-ray.
I also wasn't trying to point out that PC Blu-ray players were cheap, so standalones should be cheap too. I was merely pointing out that NewEgg had a one day sale and the prices are back to where they were (it wasn't a Black Friday sale either).