Only 4%!?

Considering the number of alternative means of movie delivery available these days it is a big surprise to see DVD hold up so well.

The most important thing here is Warner's public "We think this is a do or die time for Blu-ray".

Talk about a reversal - I wonder how much they regret last years move to kill off HD DVD?

It's also worth posting the whole quote -
“We think this is a do-or-die time for Blu-ray,” said Ron Sanders, president of Warner Home Video. “We must get it established as a favorite holiday item.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/business/21dvd.html?_r=2&hp

Who seriously imagines Blu-ray is on the verge of becoming "a favourite holiday item"?

The coming recession alone means Blu0ray stay a small niche product as people (doing what they always do in a recession) make the most of what they already have (DVD).

Frankly it is the height of bad taste and absurdity to see the legions of Blu-ray fanboys asserting that as the economy tanks Blu-ray will somehow manage to go mainstream and sell well in the mass-market.

It will never reach DVD status. In 5 years VOD will be the media of choice.

Hate Blu-ray much?
Do you think that Warner choosing HD-DVD and leaving two competing hi-def formats in the market would be beneficial for anyone at this time?

What I mean is, yes put it at 1080p - but get the sound in 7.1 too! And why does it have to be 25% to 50% more??

As far as VOD goes, great in theory, but what's the percentage of people with that level of bandwidth? Would you sit and download a movie for six hours or more? I wouldn't.

I think as long as the ISP's are clawing back the speed of subscribers VOD doesn't have that much of a mainstream chance.

Blu-ray was, and is, destined to fail. Even though they beat out HD-DVD and had the HD market all to theirselves they had to be greedy and mess it all up. There was absolutely no reason to keep Blu-ray player prices so high for so long and they're still high. Even if you argue that it cost more to manufacture the blue laser and the cost of the technology research had to be recouped, it was still done foolishly. They should have made the players cheap to begin with even if they took a loss on every player sold because they could get back far more from charging more for the movies.

So, they overcharged for the players and overcharged for the movies and guess what!?! People are not stupid, they won't be overcharged twice. It's like with videogame consoles. The manufacturers either take a loss or very small profit on the console itself and charge a high price for the games to make an overall profit.

The only reason DVD sales have plummetted is because there are no really good movies out on DVD. I don't think Blu-ray will fare any better.

Agree with AJ... BD will never reach DVD status. The future is streaming rentals, on demand solutions and digital purchases like Amazon, Netflix, Comcast, etc.. BD will be a small niche market for those who need to "hold" something in their hands to own the rights. I expect DVD to stick around for years as well since alot of people do not care or cannot afford to partake in the newer solutions.

CDs went from 700Mb to 4.7Gb, Blu-ray upped the density in a similar way, but why can't I just buy a replacement for my computer's DVD/CD R/O player for about the same price for the player and the media?

Just make money on replacing everyone's gear.

When films are releasing at $35 and $40 for BD, frankly its not worth it anymore. I'd rather spend the money on services like Netflix for a fraction of the cost or buy other media like games which seem like a great deal now that movies are in the same price range as new games.

I used to buy several DVD's a month as the prices were reasonable. In the last year I've purchased only 4 BD films which were on sale for $20 each, otherwise they would still be sitting on the shelf if they were at retail prices for the BD.

Considering Verizon and ATT had planed to be near done with the FTTN and FTTP by 2011 (prob 2012 now with the economic downturn). Steaming a BD movie will take less than a minute to start, I don't think most people will worry about that. As far as bandwidth caps go I would be willing to bet ATT, Comcast, whoever cuts a deal with Netflix, Amazon, etc... (revenue sharing i'm sure) to not count the movie stream as bandwidth usage and give higher priority to their data on the network. Hence the reason ATT, Comcast, and Verizon have fought so hard against net neutrality.

once again people are saying streaming is going to win...but the ATT and verizon or even netflix has nothing to show for streaming.. The speed is slow and there is a CAP download (like comcast) and the quality of streaming is not even DVD quality.
Even if it's HD it's still slow. Even getting a
$1.08 cents rental for driving to a redbox from a near by McDonell is still faster than download.
And for netflix if you rent too much it slows down delivery of new movies...so I end up cutting them too. Download is just too damn time consumming and you basically are renting it since you won't have any media to back them up and they are all protected. If your box's harddrive dies...the movies goes with it.
As for DVD sale down 4%, consider the car market goes down 40% in this recession. I think 4% is doing quite good.
Also since 70% of movie studio income comes from DVD or blue ray disc...do you think they will allow you to stream and watch ? That's why netflix's selection is so poor on streaming and I can see the same in apple itune.
blue ray player is going the 150-300$ ranger now and soon it will be even cheaper..
and the $599 42 inch lcd tv would help also.
The only killer here is not another media but the bad economy.

Considering the bad economic climate at the moment they should be glad anybody is spending money on luxuries such as DVD/CD etc. People haven't got the money to go out buying new players, and blueray is way to expensive at the moment. With everyone having to tighten the purse strings most will stick with DVD and even then only buy films that are on sale, that's what we do. We never spend over £10 on ANY film DVD, and never over £30 on ANY TV box set. It's just to expensive otherwise.

Spycho

I don't "hate" Blu-ray, I have it myself.
I have found it all deeply disappointing though.

I do have issues with the pathetic optimistic PR and the constant stream of ridiculously manipulative 'pro' propaganda BS being talked about it as the economy tanks though.
Wake up ffs.

I also don't like to see that lying PR effort going on to try & flat-out con regular people & cheat them out of their hard earned money over something most will never truly see or hear.

At normal viewing distances you need a huge HD TV to even 'see' 1080p
(besides the fact that many HD movie transfers are poor and deeply unimpressive).

You also need an expensive set of very high-end audio (including a full high-end speaker set as well as receiver) to even hear the new audio standards.

There's no point quibbling over the detail, we all know regular people would still see and hear the film and soundtrack.
But where is the admission that it'll be almost indistinct to what they would have seen and hear with an upscaled DVD on their current (assuming they have them ) 32"- 42" 720p HD TV & their 5.1 DTS/Dolby Digital audio set-up?

No, I did not say there was absolutely no difference whatsoever.
I am asking since when do those very margin differences become 'worth' the very large cost differential over DVD?

(This is the point when the PS3/Blu-ray fanboys usually run away at a rate of knots and switch subject.)

Where is any recognition that, of the minority that now have HD TV, the vast majority are 720p sets of the 32" - 42" size?
(in fact the latest Sept numbers show 720p sets are still selling most)

It's just BS to try and sustain the current propaganda that Blu-ray will ever, or even could ever, replace DVD.
Nor should it as it offers nothing - except great expense - to the mass-market.

Blu-ray is a high margin niche for the a/v enthusiast who is happy to accept that and who understand that, thanks to the PS3 gang, the genuine high quality titles will be limited in number.

I myself bought Blu-ray for a mere 5 titles I knew were already available or were about to be available and in the hope of a couple more which may come later.

Most cannot afford to be like that over their spending.

It is also true to say that Blu-ray is a high margin niche for the idiot PS3 game console fanboy too dumb to see it and only too willing to pay out for the likes of 'Spiderman 4, 5, 6, 7, etc etc: The Return of the Infantile Garbage'.

Nevertheless, for the general public it is nothing less than a con-job when upscaled DVD will be perfectly fine for the vast majority (of the minority) who currently have an HD TV @ 32" - 42" & 720p.

Now that it's obvious that Blu-ray stands zero chance of taking DVDs place the only realistic debate left now is entirely about the endgame.

“We think this is a do-or-die time for Blu-ray,” said Ron Sanders, president of Warner Home Video. “We must get it established as a favorite holiday item.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/business/21dvd.html?_r=2&hp

That says it all - and now the PS3 fanboys can't pretend it's only 'haters' (whatever the hell they are meant to be, over a CE product!?) or Microsoft PR saying stuff like that.

Like I said, who seriously imagines Blu-ray is on the verge of becoming "a favourite holiday item" at these holidays?

Answer: no-one, sane.

Will Warner kill Blu-ray in the new year?

Deja vu anyone?

If you can find the right deals, sometimes you can get new releases on Blu-ray for under $25. You can get them at Circuit City, Best Buy, Suncoast (their buy 4 deals) or on-line like deepdiscount, amazon... a few dollars more then DVDs??? definitely worth it.

I am one of the very small minority that has a very high end 1080P T.V. and a couple blue-ray players including the PS3. Now I have tried samsungs blue-ray player and the PS3 blue-ray player and have to say the PS3 wins in every aspect and can play games too. Now you say that it is hard to notice a difference between upscaled DVD and Blue-ray but I think your on crack. There is a pretty big difference if you have the T.V. capable to show it. Yeah you will be disappointed to have a 720P T.V. and blue-ray. People don't actually realize how much better 1080P is. It is like playing a game at 1280 x 720 vs 1920 x 1080. That is a huge difference in the number of pixels.

Don't make comments unless you have the hardware capable of seeing Blue-ray at its full potential.

Although I do agree that blue-ray will not take off because of the economy but it is a HUGE improvement over DVD.

Screw Blu-ray - even the name is a pain in the ass to repeatedly say. And what's BD? A shorter acronym for blu-disc? Anyway I saw Pirate's of the Carribean Black Pearl, on a Best Buy display lcd/plasma [whatever] tv - and it showed the boat while on deck and peered over the edge to see the water. All the blu-ray did was enhance how really fake the boat was - it looked horrible must less the weakly raging waters at the bottom of ship. From that day I sworn never to buy or view blu-ray movies.

And how in god's green earth can you give a movie from the 90s [The 5th element] blu-ray quality???? There is no way to do that - what would even be the point of trying??!?!?!

Somebody name a movie where I'm supposed to be stunned or blown away by blu-ray graphics?

Bring back LaserDisc, I would buy much more movies.
^__^

The thing that a lot of people are missing is that even though Blu-ray didn't make targets this year, neither will DVD sales. Both are taking a dip, and I don't think that's enough to kill Blu-ray. If DVD was going gangbusters and Blu-ray was taking a dive, that may be another story.

The price of disks could come down, yes. However, lest we forget this exact same phenomenon occurred before DVD's heyday as well. Considering new releases for DVDs aren't that much less expensive than Blu-ray's new releases, how much latitude do you have, anyway?

Seriously dude, you are an idiot if you do not know how movies are converted from analog film tape into a DVD. It is done by machine.

First off, NO, I am not going to answer any stupid redundant BS claim you made when you can't even tell the difference. I did I played my standard DVD Pirates (That I gave to dad) vs my BD Pirates, and it was amazing. Even my dad said it was better quality and the uncompressed sound was heard on his standard 5.1 surround sound stuff.

The analog tape is the master copy. They had to compress the bit rate when fitting it into a DVD. So what you saw in theaters, sadly does not transport into your DVD in terms of video quality and sound as well.

In the end, you need to broaden your senses and open your mind.
I highly recommend Spiderman and The Dark Knight

The artificially high cost is probably the first deterrent for me. The second is the DRM. The third is that they are using it as excuse to re-release every movie and get you to buy them again. With 4 kids scratching disks by leaving them laying around I can't afford to make someone else rich by buying stupidly expensive tech for minor improvements.

Let it die.

Come up with a huge improvement that is backwardly compatible, and leave the DRM in the dust bin where it belongs. If I can't back up my movies to protect them there is no point buying them; I'll rent thank you.

So, if they want to know why sales are dropping... why don't they just ask or do some real research? $$$$$ oh yes, they're greedy twats and assume people are violating copyrights because it's easy to spout off to the media. Never mind I answered my own question.

While it is true that Blu-Ray's resolution (and I'm especially talking about 1080p here) makes it harder for movie makers to hide the fakeness of the scenes, you cannot blame the standard for a horrible looking movie. Higher resolution is the way to go for everything: movies, games, mobile phone displays, you name it. Eventually we will reach eye resolution and that's when the quest for visual HD will end.

To answer your question about older movies, e.g. The 5th Element, being available today in Blu-Ray quality, remember that all those movies were shot using a 35mm camera. The movies studios can make a great-looking 1080p movie out of 35mm film.

It's really funny to still see all his shite about viewing distances, big sets etc. Which only started since February - prior to then his HD DVDs looked luvverly! Apparently.

Now though, with Blu Ray players at HD DVD prices (and without BD CE's having to cripple themselves like Toshiba did with their premature price-scything) no-one can spot the difference? Please.

Maybe he needs glasses, or maybe it's the sting of those bitter HD DVD tears clouding his vision. We may never know, or indeed, care.

I don't understand why we (the consumers) should pay big bucks to have certain content (a movie) while we can have that same content, albeit in another container (the image quality), for much less money.

In the end, does it really matter in what quality we watch movies, as long as it's a decent one? i know i'd rather watch a lot of movies a bought for cheap rather than to have select a few expensive ones!!

Ummm people realize it is better, but most don't agree that the difference is qorth a five fold and much more cost over DVD.

You buying 3 blu ray players is way over kill and shows that you are more into hype than sucstance.

The truth is only special effects film are worth the visual stunning please. And that's only if your a detail fan.

Most consumers aren't and a high level even settle for a vcr like quality in buying low grade boot leg copies.

Some of you suckers jumped on blu ray early paying almost 15 to 20 fold more on equipment.

Then stupidly started purchasing dvd collection all over thinking I need the high def version.

LOL, I watched people buying comedy films. I don't need to see facial pits to enjoy the COMEDY.

Name? - "Don't make comments unless you have the hardware capable of seeing Blue-ray at its full potential."

Tell us the best upconversion dvd player on the market? And when did you see it on the same viewing equipment?

Hey you can keep believing you are getting an experience that we just don't understand, I beg to differ.

The reality of 1080P is that it falls short of high end expectations because we all want the exact replica of how it was filmed.

Since the demise of HD-DVD, all the Blu-Ray player prices skyrocketed back to the stratosphere along with the disc prices.

Then to further thank everyone that helped in the battle of the format, they changed the spec to 2.0 and all that bought a player in the beginning were screwed, and had to repurchase to get the 'Improvements' that HD-DVD had all ready working.

I cant believe Blu-ray won the war with the PS3 helping them on the back end. Friends that have one have never even used a Blu-ray on their PS3 AT ALL!!

Since Blu-ray is the winner, I will wait for VOD to take off in the next few years, and be done with all this nonsense of 'screwing the customer'.

The point has never been that there is no difference at all.

The point is that the mass-market cannot benefit, not when they have 32" - 42" 720p screens (which most of the mionority that have HD TVs do) and the lossless audio means nothing to most (except the dleusional who lie to themselves that their $200 Creative 5.1 'system' reproduces it).

As usual the PS3/Blu-ray fanclub avoid the facts and attack the messanger.

The reason why HD DVD was the prefereable route to HD on disc is obvious (and has become more so as this year has rolled on).
It was much cheaper, it was a complete spec and it could have meant, thanks to Twin Disc & combos, that all movie discs simply became HD.

Have a rant and hide behind HD DVD if you like but it wasn;t me saying -

“We think this is a do-or-die time for Blu-ray,” said Ron Sanders, president of Warner Home Video. “We must get it established as a favorite holiday item.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/business/21dvd.html?_r=2&hp

In this tough economy who in ther right mind would want to spend more for a dvd movie or player.
The only way i'll buy one is when prices are the same as the standard players and dvds.

I have a PS3 and I have had it for about a year now. I have only bought 2 blu-rays and the only reason I bought them was becasue I got Pan's Labyrinth and Blade Runner as a 2 for $30 deal and they were both retail for 35.00 a piece at Best Buy. I have bought every new release on regular DVD this year as my girl does not even have a blu-ray and she likes to borrow movies. Look at it like this I have one blu-ray in my house compared to if you are counting players, computers, PS2's, 360's and VCR/DVD combo's I have over 10 things that plays DVD's in my house. The economy is not accepting blu-ray as this is not VHS/DVD war in which you are dealing with 2 different types of formats here, just the same format with supposely different quality. I will give blu-ray another calender year before Sony finally pulls the plug on this mess.

The truth is a lot of people just don't care about 1080p. Most won't even understand it.

Blu Ray = Sony.

Reminds me of Sony and the Betamax. They killed that too.

1080p VOD is a ways off, and even when it does take off, most people like having a movie collection or having a movie IN HAND, to put on whenever they want to. No one's going to pay $20 for a downloaded copy of Godfather Part II, but they will for a hard copy of the same thing.

Until there's another viable hard format that displays at 1080p, it's BD. That's fact.

Movies of all ages were shot on Film, film has a much higher resolution than blu-ray, (theoretically infinite resolution), A movie theater's screen is as large as your house, that perceived resolution is higher than 1080p, any movie which was shot on film can get a bluray treatment no matter the age. Thats the beauty of analog.

C'mon now.Were gonna keep a system (NTSC) invented 50 years ago ! No way
All the LCD/Plasma 16x9 sales are gonna be happy with half the resolution. NOT-A-CHANCE ! Perhaps slower than the execs want but this train is going. Pulling out now would be career suicide.

The benefits Blu-ray offers are too few and too expensive for the mass-market to adopt it.

The point the PS3/Blu-ray fanboy gang refuse to address is this one -

“We think this is a do-or-die time for Blu-ray,” said Ron Sanders, president of Warner Home Video. “We must get it established as a favorite holiday item.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/business/21dvd.html?_r=2&hp

Show me anyone who seriously imagines Blu-ray is on the verge of becoming "a favourite holiday item" at these holidays?

Blu-ray wasted this year and eneded up blowing it>
In fact they wasted the last 3 - if they had not had their dumb fight with the DVD Forum none of this would arise, we'd have had a smooth agreed path to HD movies on disc a couple of years back.
Too bad for the BDA their own blinkered & idiotic greed killed off the chance of anyone doing it successfully.

We have a whole gen now raised on the idea of downloads (which do not require the speeds streaming does - and even that has much to do with buffers etc).

Soon you'll be able to specify what resolution you want and what standard of audio track (ie why pay for 1080p & Dolby TrueHD if you only have a 720p screen & a Dolby Digital receiver?).

For the more obsessive who must collect there will undoubtedly be the option to burn your own copy too.
The studios will not care once you have paid.

The music business shows us what is going to happen.
The industry will be greedy idiots and ridiculously stupid about it to begin with and when they realise that approach is crippling sales they will tune into reality and cut the cr@p.

Besides all that developing at a fast rate we have HD TV services offering DVR and video on demand.
That's the big seller around my way this time around.
It most certainly is not Blu-ray.

It's all too late and Warner will not be seeing Blu-ray "established as a favorite holiday item".

I wonder how quickly they'll scale back in the new year?

The economic slump alone guarantees Blu-ray adoption is going to dive.

Like I said, deja vu, anyone?

If it weren't for the greed of Sony. I suspect that Blu-Ray was brought to us by the same people who brought us CDOs and CDSs and SIVs and all the other alphabet soup items of financial wizardry. All designed to suck money out of the consumer/taxpayer.

1. I have a flat screen 1080p TV, but I'm not investing in Blu-Ray ... yet. I've seen Blue-Ray on other folks' TVs, and then gone home and watched my DVD on my flat screen. There's a difference, but not enough of one for me to buy a new player with new movies to slowly replace my DVD collection.

2. The movie channels, streaming video through my Xbox 360, and etc, are all in HD. I get enough of a fix of movies in HD through that. My DVDs don't look that much worse than that either.

3. Movies now days just suck. I just bought "Wall-E", and the only other movie I'll buy this year is going to be "The Dark Knight." I watch and rewatch more movies from the 70's through early 2000's that I do new movies. The movies that have been coming out just don't show enough promise for me to actually buy them. I've rented a lot of movies, seen a lot on the big screen, and I'm always left going, "Well that was good, but I won't buy that."

I don't think its because its Blu-Ray is better because of this, or DVD is better because of that. It's because there isn't much reason to purchase any movies out there right now. There just aren't any GREAT movies being made right now.

I'm rarely inclined to waste my money. With these discs being $25 and up...No thanks..With the crap that the big studios are putting up on the big screen I can't fathom why I would want to own more crap, or worse yet have an overpriced coffee coster sitting around.

Ok, the reason bluray sales haven't taken off, is not because of marketing or because of the price. It is the fact that you need to have a HDTV to notice the difference between itself and DVD. Unlike the last format takeover, DVD from VHS, you could notice the difference without having to buy a new tv, that's the problem HDTV's are still fairly expensive and lots of people still haven't taken the plunge.

Why spend all that extra money that we don't have on a technology that will force you to change out all your dvd players. I and everyone I know with the exception of one is sticking with the old dvd format with upconvert dvd players. Looks very good, not great but very good on 1080p.

Products that sell well fill a VOID blu-ray fills no such void , it's simply a DRM controlled tecno bunch crap . The movie industries attemp to be in your living room while you watch movies will never take off . The "GREEDMUNGERS" need to learn this lesson this round and not try to move into our living rooms like a bunch commies trying hide the facts .