Has Blu-ray really taken off as expected?

I don't know many people who insist on buying Blu-ray, most are content for normal dvd, shame as blu-ray players are cheap nowadays and HMV are doing 5 blu-rays for £30 so at £6 each I reckon thats pretty good value!
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  • SoundboxSoundbox Posts: 6,240
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    For some reason they have never appealed to me. What with the HD DVD 'war' and uncertainty at that time followed by a reluctant change of formats by the studios with lesser quality releases I just can't get any enthusiasm worked up.

    I was one of the first with DVD though - that was an exciting format. Look back in the internet archives - people wrote with real passion about the earlt DVD releases and ordering region 1 disks like Terminator 2 was a thrill. There is too much choice and too little explanation these days, and nobody in the shops seems to care what they sell. Most of the kit is cheap tat.
  • KodazKodaz Posts: 1,018
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    I don't know about Blu-Ray in general, but recordable Blu-Ray discs (BD-R) and burners have definitely been a damp squib compared to where recordable DVD-R, DVD+R et al were around this time after their release.

    Although the cheapest Blu-Ray (computer) burners did fall from around £150 for the cheapest models some time back to around £70 (£65 on a good day), they've been pretty much stuck there for quite a while now.

    (DVD burners started out expensive, but gradually fell- I got mine for just over £40 in early 2005, and they've been around £20 for several years now).

    Let's be honest- £70 isn't that much if you're bothered enough about it, but it's still enough more than a £20 DVD drive that it's nowhere near a "no brainer" upgrade in the same way that paying a small amount extra to get a DVD burner instead of a CD burner was.

    The other issue is that people are generally moving away from disc media anyway, and towards watching this sort of stuff online and/or via a media player that supports KVMs or whatever stored on solid state, hard disk or network devices. Why bother burning to Blu-Ray?

    I think that if it's not taken off by now, it never will.
  • Trickster999Trickster999 Posts: 1,631
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    Kodaz wrote: »
    I don't know about Blu-Ray in general, but recordable Blu-Ray discs (BD-R) and burners have definitely been a damp squib compared to where recordable DVD-R, DVD+R et al were around this time after their release.

    Although the cheapest Blu-Ray (computer) burners did fall from around £150 for the cheapest models some time back to around £70 (£65 on a good day), they've been pretty much stuck there for quite a while now.

    (DVD burners started out expensive, but gradually fell- I got mine for just over £40 in early 2005, and they've been around £20 for several years now).

    Let's be honest- £70 isn't that much if you're bothered enough about it, but it's still enough more than a £20 DVD drive that it's nowhere near a "no brainer" upgrade in the same way that paying a small amount extra to get a DVD burner instead of a CD burner was.

    The other issue is that people are generally moving away from disc media anyway, and towards watching this sort of stuff online and/or via a media player that supports KVMs or whatever stored on solid state, hard disk or network devices. Why bother burning to Blu-Ray?

    I think that if it's not taken off by now, it never will.

    Online downloading, at the moment anyway, is not as good quality as an actual blu-ray disc
  • KodazKodaz Posts: 1,018
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    Online downloading, at the moment anyway, is not as good quality as an actual blu-ray disc

    True, but if you take the stuff you downloaded online and burn it onto a BD-R, it isn't going to look any better than the original(!)

    Plus the fact that the man on the street is more bothered above perceived or claimed quality than actual quality (maybe stereotyping here, but picture the guy happy with his big, expensive, "latest thing" HD set fed through a composite connection!)

    I think that some people do pirate BD rips and burn them to BD-R, but speaking from experience, recordable BD just hasn't taken off that much. The discs themselves aren't that expensive these days (you can get them for well under £1 each). There just isn't any compelling reason to use them...
  • Chris FrostChris Frost Posts: 11,015
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    Under the TV BD recorders are hobbled straight out of the gate. What are you going to record except some piss poor Freeview HD? If you have a HD cam then more than likely you're also editing on a PC so need for a separate box.

    BD players on the other hand... far more successful; but still not not the take-up of DVD because the perceived quality jump (DVD > BD) isn't as big as VHS to DVD and there's been no "Big Hit" movie like The Matrix to kick start interest.

    The world has changed too. Today's 30-somethings grew up with MP3/Napster/P-2-P file-sharing. They're the download generation obsessed with online communities and their mobiles. From what I see they're less interested in a single format and more focused on bits of content from lots of different sources.

    BD will be here for a while I think. Streaming is catching up though. When the 30-somethings become 40-somethings then there'd better be something really good waiting in the wings otherwise physical media will become obsolete.
  • diablodiablo Posts: 8,300
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    I keep meaning to rent more Blu-ray disks. Little point in buying them if I only want to watch them once !

    With a 1080p projector and a 95" screen the difference from standard DVD is very obvious - i.e. sharp picture versus blurry.

    I'd have thought that with the number of big-screen TVs which are sold these days their future would be guaranteed. :)

    p.s. do you work for HMV ? :D
  • uniqueunique Posts: 12,367
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    Online downloading, at the moment anyway, is not as good quality as an actual blu-ray disc

    it depends what you download. you can literally download a bluray image of the whole disc without loss of quality

    and for most people used to compressed tv images from freeview and cable and satelite tv, a compressed 720p or 1080p file will appear fine to them, just like most people don't notice or care about the difference between cd and mp3
  • uniqueunique Posts: 12,367
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    Kodaz wrote: »
    I don't know about Blu-Ray in general, but recordable Blu-Ray discs (BD-R) and burners have definitely been a damp squib compared to where recordable DVD-R, DVD+R et al were around this time after their release.

    Although the cheapest Blu-Ray (computer) burners did fall from around £150 for the cheapest models some time back to around £70 (£65 on a good day), they've been pretty much stuck there for quite a while now.

    (DVD burners started out expensive, but gradually fell- I got mine for just over £40 in early 2005, and they've been around £20 for several years now).

    Let's be honest- £70 isn't that much if you're bothered enough about it, but it's still enough more than a £20 DVD drive that it's nowhere near a "no brainer" upgrade in the same way that paying a small amount extra to get a DVD burner instead of a CD burner was.

    The other issue is that people are generally moving away from disc media anyway, and towards watching this sort of stuff online and/or via a media player that supports KVMs or whatever stored on solid state, hard disk or network devices. Why bother burning to Blu-Ray?

    I think that if it's not taken off by now, it never will.

    when the first dvd burners came out they were pretty expensive even if you wanted one. i got my first one about 12 years ago for £200, which a few years earlier was about the price i paid for my first cd burner (although i had a stand alone recorder for a while before that, which was £600). the prices fell to the degree that a year or two ago i got a brand new dvd burner for £10 delivered from a well known etailer that regularly has drives between £10 and £15

    bluray burners started sub £200 when they came on the general market. i'm sure there were early models that were crazy prices, but as someone always looking for pc components to upgrade i don't recall any. i think it was around £150 roughly for a burner, even readers were about £100 at first. i expected prices to drop as they did with dvd but noticed they have seemed to have stalled at about the £60 mark. i just picked up one recently for £54 delivered so less than £60 with 10 blank discs. i thought there wasn't much point in waiting much longer to save about £20-£40 when i had a few non commercial discs sitting about the pc that i wanted to burn

    as i can play everything on the pc or straight to my tv via streamers in the house, there was no need to burn to disc. in fact i prefer to rip everything to the pc and stream from it, than muck about with discs. it's just for this specific material i wanted it on burned discs for posterity

    i think the prices will eventually fall to sub £20 and they will end up being the cheap optical drives that dvd writers are now, but optical media in general is on the way out. i'm still not sure with the cost of data farms and the resources they use, if it's really more cost effective or environmentally friendly, however most people probably think that because a physical disc isn't made, that it's cheaper to distribute digitally

    btw the format you mean is MKV, KVM is keyboard video mouse, a switch that lets you use more than one pc from a single keyboard and mouse. or it means kernal based vitual machine, if you want to get more geeky
  • Trickster999Trickster999 Posts: 1,631
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    Kodaz wrote: »
    True, but if you take the stuff you downloaded online and burn it onto a BD-R, it isn't going to look any better than the original(!)

    Plus the fact that the man on the street is more bothered above perceived or claimed quality than actual quality (maybe stereotyping here, but picture the guy happy with his big, expensive, "latest thing" HD set fed through a composite connection!)

    I think that some people do pirate BD rips and burn them to BD-R, but speaking from experience, recordable BD just hasn't taken off that much. The discs themselves aren't that expensive these days (you can get them for well under £1 each). There just isn't any compelling reason to use them...

    Not true.....downloading in true Blu-ray disc quality is for people with a very fast internet connection, and how long would it take? Im still not convinced that it will end up as good quality as Blu-ray disc
  • DirtyhippyDirtyhippy Posts: 2,059
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    I always buy or rent a BD desk if there is the option, superior picture and sound,what's not to like?

    Download BD quality? that's about 20-40 gig right? I only have 20 gig bandwidth allowance and a 4mb connection. Downloading won't be an option for quite a while, and besides I like a hard copy.
  • uniqueunique Posts: 12,367
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    Not true.....downloading in true Blu-ray disc quality is for people with a very fast internet connection, and how long would it take? Im still not convinced that it will end up as good quality as Blu-ray disc

    if you download a ripped bluray iso and burned it, the quality would be exactly the same. a full 50gb iso would take me an hour to download, so about half the time than a movie, and then takes about 20 mins to burn. a single layer disc would be about half an hour and about 8-10 mins to burn
  • alan1302alan1302 Posts: 6,336
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    I don't know many people who insist on buying Blu-ray, most are content for normal dvd, shame as blu-ray players are cheap nowadays and HMV are doing 5 blu-rays for £30 so at £6 each I reckon thats pretty good value!

    I don't think it's anywhere close as to waht was expected. It was designed to replace DVDs and it's still a long way from doing that...online downloads of course have not helped its chances as a lot of people would rather do that than have a physical product now.
  • KodazKodaz Posts: 1,018
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    Kodaz wrote: »
    True, but if you take the stuff you downloaded online and burn it onto a BD-R, it isn't going to look any better than the original(!)
    Not true.....downloading in true Blu-ray disc quality is for people with a very fast internet connection, and how long would it take? Im still not convinced that it will end up as good quality as Blu-ray disc

    I'm not sure what point you think I was trying to make?

    I was saying that if one downloads "HD" material that is below the quality you'd expect from a pre-recorded commercial Blu-Ray (i.e. more compressed), then converting and burning it to a blank BD-R isn't going to make it look any better than the quality of the original download. (*)

    So there's no real point in burning such downloaded material to disc to watch it if you can view it directly.

    And as another poster commented, one *can* find full-quality DVD rips, but- as *you* commented- those are going to take a lot of downloading (circa 50GB(!))

    (*) Unless one is using very advanced remastering technology to "correct" the degradation, and that'd be a waste of time on material that was already available elsewhere in higher quality form!
  • KodazKodaz Posts: 1,018
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    unique wrote: »
    i just picked up one recently for £54 delivered so less than £60 with 10 blank discs.

    Was that a special offer, one-off or relative "bargain" you snapped up? Yes, it's sometimes possible to get something cheap, but I said £65-£70 as a guideline for the cheapest one could easily expect to order a drive from a major online retailer under normal conditions.

    Since I checked ebuyer.com and their cheapest model is *just* under £60, I'll grant you that. :)

    But I'm not convinced now that- as you suggest- they'll ever fall to the £20 mark that made DVD burners no-brainers. I think the whole concept of writable discs is being bypassed and recordable Blu-Ray has missed the boat.

    Even if it's fallen marginally, the price of BD burners has still stuck at around £60 at a time I'd have expected it to be cheaper than my original £40 DVD writer.

    It doesn't always follow that a new, improved version replaces the old one. S-VHS offered significant improvements over VHS, but never replaced it; it started off expensive, and never sold enough to bring down the price, enter the mass-market and take over from regular VHS.
    unique wrote: »
    i thought there wasn't much point in waiting much longer to save about £20-£40 when i had a few non commercial discs sitting about the pc that i wanted to burn [..] it's just for this specific material i wanted it on burned discs for posterity

    I'd definitely be wary about the longevity of BD-R discs until it has been proven, and even then I'd want to use discs from a reliable brand that makes their own media (i.e. Verbatim).
    unique wrote: »
    btw the format you mean is MKV, KVM is keyboard video mouse, a switch

    Oops, yeah- MKV is what I meant. Was probably thinking of the KVM switch I use at work! :D
  • David (2)David (2) Posts: 20,632
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    Bluray is better quality than DVD, thats why i bought a player. You can see a difference even on smaller LCD's, but this becomes more clear to see on much larger screens (where DVD starts to look sub-standard). If its a major movie i want or some thing kinda collectable i will only get it on BluRay. If its not imprtant, then i will still consider the DVD version.

    The thing is though, even when there is some difference in quality a lot of people i know have the view that considering the price difference (this goes for Sky HD too), the lesser/cheaper SD version is good enough. Part of the reason i cant see much point in next gen 4K and even 8K HD tv's - if people are happy with current SD why on earth would they bother spending all that money on a new tv at a size where they still wont see much difference (eg, you will need it to be the size of an entire wall to see a massive difference - 42in screen wont be worth it). And even if you get them to see a step up in quality, will they consider the cost involved "worth it"?

    No BluRay recorders under the tv?......the world has moved on (pushed along i think by people with money invested in it) since the days of DVD-R/RW. Now as for live tv, everything is "in the box", eg Sky+, Freesat+ or Freeview+. For HD content this is now locked down, with the only exception to the rule being Panasonic who make a combi Freesat+/BluRay recorder.

    Like the other post said, newer/better doesnt always win in a format war. What happened to SACD? Instead of improved quality, we went down the mp3+download route.....so will the same thing happen to BluRay....maybe.....i think internet connection speeds and data allowances are the things holding this back, but this will change with the roll out of Fibre connections and maybe even 4G mobile too. It could be that internet kills of BluRay but DVD keeps going as a supermarket special, like the many CD's sold in supermarkets currently.
  • uniqueunique Posts: 12,367
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    Kodaz wrote: »
    Was that a special offer, one-off or relative "bargain" you snapped up? Yes, it's sometimes possible to get something cheap, but I said £65-£70 as a guideline for the cheapest one could easily expect to order a drive from a major online retailer under normal conditions.

    Since I checked ebuyer.com and their cheapest model is *just* under £60, I'll grant you that. :)

    But I'm not convinced now that- as you suggest- they'll ever fall to the £20 mark that made DVD burners no-brainers. I think the whole concept of writable discs is being bypassed and recordable Blu-Ray has missed the boat.

    Even if it's fallen marginally, the price of BD burners has still stuck at around £60 at a time I'd have expected it to be cheaper than my original £40 DVD writer.

    It doesn't always follow that a new, improved version replaces the old one. S-VHS offered significant improvements over VHS, but never replaced it; it started off expensive, and never sold enough to bring down the price, enter the mass-market and take over from regular VHS.



    I'd definitely be wary about the longevity of BD-R discs until it has been proven, and even then I'd want to use discs from a reliable brand that makes their own media (i.e. Verbatim).



    Oops, yeah- MKV is what I meant. Was probably thinking of the KVM switch I use at work! :D

    the drive i got had a few quid off as a daily deal, prices for computer components etc go up and down like a yo yo daily, usually consistantly down a little bit at a time, sometimes in big jumps. i've been looking for a while as i was thinking about the BDXL models if i could get at a decent price because the triple and quad layer discs cost about as much as the drive does at the moment, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of it taking off, so i got the 12x dual layer model instead. they've been available just under £60 for a while, sometimes about £52-£55. the same models are more expensive on certain other sites though

    i'm sure it took a lot longer for dvd burners to get down from £200 to even £40 though. bluray burners haven't been around commercially in retail outlets for long
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 113
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    I think my local large HMV answers this question:

    Almost the whole store has DVD's, sorted like a library, easy to see and well stocked.

    Blu_Ray has one aisle with all of them stacked side by side, jammed in and difficult to see what's what.

    I think for most DVD quality is perfectly OK, especially when compared to the old VHS and the price difference makes it a no-brainer.
  • alan1302alan1302 Posts: 6,336
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    Kremmen wrote: »
    I think for most DVD quality is perfectly OK, especially when compared to the old VHS and the price difference makes it a no-brainer.

    I think this quote is the main reason that Blu Ray has not taken off as expected – most people are happy with the picture quality from a DVD and don’t want to pay extra for a Blu Ray disc when they can’t see enough difference to justify the extra cost.
  • bobcarbobcar Posts: 19,424
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    alan1302 wrote: »
    I think this quote is the main reason that Blu Ray has not taken off as expected – most people are happy with the picture quality from a DVD and don’t want to pay extra for a Blu Ray disc when they can’t see enough difference to justify the extra cost.

    Yet many of the same people insist on getting a 1080p TV?:confused:
  • DirtyhippyDirtyhippy Posts: 2,059
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    Blu rays discs are not that expensive now, sometimes the same price so I don't understand why anyone with a HD tV wants std def DVD.
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,329
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    Dirtyhippy wrote: »
    Blu rays discs are not that expensive now, sometimes the same price so I don't understand why anyone with a HD tV wants std def DVD.

    Possibly because it takes so long to actually play a film in a BD player - it really pisses you off :D
  • DirtyhippyDirtyhippy Posts: 2,059
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    Possibly because it takes so long to actually play a film in a BD player - it really pisses you off :D

    all of 60 seconds :rolleyes:
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,329
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    Dirtyhippy wrote: »
    all of 60 seconds :rolleyes:

    60 seconds is MANY times as long as a DVD player, which in turn is many times longer than a VCR :D
  • Fowl FaxFowl Fax Posts: 3,968
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    There are a few Blu Ray discs that look no better than DVD.

    A lot of Blu Rays also have the same amount of grain in the picture.

    But then there are some really good looking Blu Ray movies like the Alien Anthology that has often gone down to less than a tenner.

    The jump from DVD to Blu Ray just hasn't been anywhere near as impressive as the jump from VHS to DVD.
  • Glawster2002Glawster2002 Posts: 15,189
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    alan1302 wrote: »
    I think this quote is the main reason that Blu Ray has not taken off as expected – most people are happy with the picture quality from a DVD and don’t want to pay extra for a Blu Ray disc when they can’t see enough difference to justify the extra cost.

    I think to get the best out of Bluray you need to make an investment in the sound system as well as the TV and the majority of people won't do that. So because of that they wouldn't be able to justify upgrading from DVD to Bluray.

    I think if you do make the investment in both, though, Bluray wins hands down every time.
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