Blu-ray not yet finding a home on PCs

Blu-ray players are becoming a hot item in the living room, but they have yet to attract much attention in the office, according to a new report from iSuppli.

The market research firm found that 3.6 percent of PCs shipped in 2009 will feature Blu-ray players. By 2013, the company expects 16.3 percent of PCs to sport a high-def drive. During that period, DVDs will still reign supreme.

"BDs won't be replacing DVDs as the primary optical drive in PC systems through at least the year 2013," Michael Yang, senior analyst for storage and mobile memory at iSuppli said in a statement. "They eventually will find success, but during the next five years, that success will be limited in the PC segment."

iSuppli believes that Blu-ray's lack of adoption in the PC market is centered on two main factors: a relatively small number of available movies and the cost of adding a Blu-ray drive to PCs. iSuppli said its findings suggest consumers will be more likely to add Blu-ray drives to their PCs once the cost of those drives decreases.

Although the results weren't ideal for the Blu-ray Disc Association, iSuppli said that they're not uncommon. According to the company, new media formats in PCs have enjoyed success only when the cost has decreased to a suitable level. That success also depends on whether or not consumers feel the technology's value proposition is high enough.

iSuppli cited the 3.5-inch floppy's 15-year lifespan as proof that consumers will use media as long as they perceive value. Currently, those same consumers believe there is more value derived from DVD drives.

"It's undeniable that Blu-ray delivers a higher-definition picture, better sound quality and larger storage space for home entertainment," Yang said in a statement. "However, these benefits may have little or no value when viewing the content on a smaller desktop or laptop PC screen and using poor speakers."

The other side of Blu-ray
Blu-ray's struggles in the PC market don't extend to the home-entertainment space. In fact, the format is growing at a rapid rate.

In April, Adams Media Research reported that Blu-ray disc sales doubled in the first quarter compared to the same period in 2008.

But it gets better. Last month, the Digital Entertainment Group reported that U.S. Blu-ray disc sales were up 91 percent in the first half of 2009. Toshiba, once Blu-ray's biggest competitor and backer of HD DVD, announced earlier this month that it couldn't be a Blu-ray holdout any longer and would bring Blu-ray players to the market. It was another major victory for Blu-ray.

So as Blu-ray tries to find its footing in PCs, it looks like it has found its place in the living room.

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[ddhboy]

Here's question though, do I need a drive anyway? Netbooks are shipping without disk drives all together and I rarely use my DVD drive on my macbook pro unless I'm watching movies from Netflix on it, and even they are going digital distribution. Almost any software you want for PC is also available via digital distribution. Hell, its been that way for years as more people turn to open source applications from the internet. I'm sure that Blu-Ray will find its way into more computers eventually, but there's little need for the drive now. Even if you use it as backup, its far cheaper to just buy an external hard drive than to buy a Blu-Ray drive and burn a Blu-Ray disk.

[NewsReader_]

I look at BluRay as a potential cheap backup solution. When the price is low enough, I will get one. For now, it is cheaper and more productive to buy more hard disks.

[ddhboy]

I doubt BluRay will ever really be cheaper than hard drives at this point though NewsReader_. I can buy a 1 terabyte hard drive for 100 bucks now. Even if the drives cost 50 bucks, you'd need 20 Dual Layer BluRay disks to match the storage capacity of that Terabyte hard drive, who's cost would have dropped by the time we've reached that 50 dollar BluRay Drive

[solitare_pax]

Face it - Blue-Ray is D.O.A. for PCs - and the consumer market, once HC-SD cards come down in price, and you can fit something like the entire James Bond movie collection with commentaries on something the size of a postage stamp.

[texaslabrat]

@ddhboy:<br /><br />You can actually find WD and hitachi 1TB drives for under $70 these days with various rebates. The value proposition of bluray, as you've mentioned, doesn't look good unless they get REALLY cheap

[Lerianis3]

Yeah, but ddhboy.... with Blu-Ray or writeable DVD"s, you don't have to worry about mechanical problems hosing your drive!

[Renegade Knight]

Yes you need a drive. Games and other things that use a drive to "verify". Restore disks (A restor partition is subject to falure. And to be blunt not all software on the net will remain on the net. I much prefere a hard original rather than a digital file.

[tech_crazy]

@Lerianis3<br /><br />The problem is much less common than a simple scratch destroying the entire optical media and with it, your data. That, coupled with the limited life of the optical media. I have had CDs/DVDs go bad in 3-4 years even though they were not abused in any way. Optical media is too unreliable for anything critical.

[NoCashBob]

Well said!<br />I don't particularly agree with the idea of not needing a drive, but I completely agree with the statement of just using a external drive. BD blank media is just far too expensive, and like DL dvds it just won't ever take off until prices drop *drastically*.

[superswiss]

I think you are ignoring a larger aspect of why Blu-ray adoption on PCs is lacking. CD and DVD on PCs have primarily been a storage medium first and an entertainment medium second. When CD-ROMs came out, software vendors quickly abandoned shipping their titles on 20+ floppies and instead ship one CD. Same happened with DVDs. Today most software titles come on a DVD. Windows and OS X have for a while now supported burning data on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. With Blu-ray, Microsoft only recently added support for Blu-ray as a storage medium in Vista SP3 and if you want to play a Blu-ray movie you still need 3rd-party software. OS X doesn't support Blu-ray at all. The question, though, is who needs the kind of storage capacity on an optical medium that Blu-ray provides? If you need that much storage, aren't people just buying an external hard-disk instead of going through the hassle of burning a Blu-ray? Also, outside of game titles, what software title is gonna need to ship on a Blu-ray?

[Nate1017]

You are also only looking at a small picture. I can remember when my computer only had a 20MB hard drive. I can remember when I paid $230 to upgrade my PC with a 1.6GB hard drive. Enhancements in different areas allow for advancement in others. Where you say "What software title is gonna need to ship on a Blu-ray?", there are probably developers saying "Soon we shouldn't be limited to just 8.5GB to distribute software. With blu-ray we have 50GB and hard drive storage is really getting cheap." Blu-ray is just a step in the direction of providing a storage media for larger more sophisticated software to be delivered to consumers. It will eventually take hold on the market unless a cheaper larger solution comes out first.

[Seaspray0]

@superwiss. There is no such thing as vista sp3.

[sodapop2k9]

Blu-ray is a joke. Its didn't win any war because its still severely losing to DVD.

[Gold_Storm_Mac]

r u joking it is so much better than dvd. if you have ever watched it you'll know (on a ps3 and HDTV.)

[texaslabrat]

I don't think sodapop2k9 is talking about technical merits but rather installed base and volume of sales. And in that vein, DVD is still kicking the crap out of bluray.

[gofalcons]

blu ray with a 1080p with hdmi is not a joke at all, over 60 diff people have seen movies on my set and not one wasnt really impressed with the quality....the people complaining are probally using a 720p tv and component cables...... and dvd sales didnt exactly go crazy at first either. 1080p tvs are getting cheaper and cheaper now, i know kids who work for darn near min wage and they either have or are getting 1080p tvs now and with the price drop in the ps3, theyll get that for blu ray.

[Stormspace]

Unless your set is bigger than 42" ppl can't tell the difference with Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray is a big sack of Fail.

[ferricoxide]

@texaslabrat <br /><br />So, what you're saying is, the installed base (and associated media sales) of the 15yr-old, incumbent technology is greater than that of a technology that only recently became *the* next optical media standard? You don't say. Who would have thought it?

[rucknrun]

I hope they start shipping movies on flash cards. Blu-ray is way overpriced still.

[holywarrior007]

I agree. But flash cards are not cheap as well.

[AaronMK]

True, many movies are over priced, but that is simply the studios trying to put a big price premium on HD content, not due to replication costs. A quick search reveals a replicator charging additional $0.90 or so per disc for blu-ray replication over DVD replication. ($1.79 per disc verses $0.90 for DVD.) <br /><br />What makes you think distributing on flash cards would be cheaper? They cost more per card. Period. Forget the fact that simply do not have the capacity to store an HD movie at transparent bit rates, except for maybe the 32 GB ones that retail for $70, and those would only work for shorter films.

[wolivere]

Have you not been calling for the demise of blueray since day 1? Yet you are being proven wrong?<br /><br />Many new computers are coming with blue ray, but there is not much content being shipped on Blue ray so umm why buy it?<br /><br />Yes 15 years for the Floppy 1982-1997 DVD rom arrived on the market in ? 1995-97 odd that is? CD Rom though was around for while before that, you missed that part in your article.<br /><br />We went from floppy to cd since it made mode sense then shipping 20+ cd's <br /><br />CD's went from CD to DVD when we hit the 4-5 cd's for big games. But I have not seen to many multi DVD programs or games yet.

[ibeetle]

I was going to say the same thing. <br /><br />Wow, Don 2 Blu-ray is dead columns in one week. Either you are running out of material or you are banking up because you are going on vacation.

[gsmiller88]

Look how long it took computers to ship with DVD drives. Blu-ray drives will take twice as long at the rate they're going.

[krypter]

Considering that you can buy 1 Terabyte of storage, which can hold dozens if not hundreds of movies, for the price of a Blu-ray player, it doesn't really make sense for anyone to get one for their PC.

[ewsachse]

The problem is not the number of available movies. The reason why people do not want or need a BluRay drive in their PC is because of the ridiculous prices of blank BluRay discs. <br /> <br />Who is going to pay $30+ for one blank BluRay disc when you can buy a 100 disc spindle of DVD's for $30 or less? <br /> <br />The high cost of BluRay makes it too expensive as a storage medium for PC's.

[ibeetle]

Where are you paying $30 for blank Blu-ray media. You need to stay out of retailers. Online is far cheaper. I am only paying $5.00 for BD-25 and $7-10 for BD-50.

[FellowConspirator]

Whoever said Blu-Ray is about storage first, entertainment second is right. BD-R is nice, but with hard-disks being so cheap and people not getting the religion to back-up, I don't know that BD-R is so compelling. For the cost of a decent BD recorder you could get a few terabytes of hard-disk space. On top of that Blu-Ray carries with it the feeling that it will be summarily abandoned by the industry; BD video is still not perceived as very popular, it's expensive, it's encumbered by Sony, and if you order your anime from Japan to view in the US, it has to be DVD because the DRM on your BD player isn't yet flashable to make it region-free. The true sign of a mature product is that it's both open and pervasive -- BD isn't.<br /><br />Personally, I'm holding out for my 1TB 1024x-speed microSD cards. I want to be able to store a half-dozen copies of the library of congress in a thimble or hide the entire Harry Potter movie series, in HD, in a nostril.

[ikramerica--2008]

You can do the second right now. You just need to find a cooperative elephant.

[ibeetle]

Very little of what you said is true.<br /><br />Most (about 90%) of Blu-ray Disc movies are region free (mostly stuff from Europe is not, but even that is changing), and all of the stuff from Japan is within the same region as the U.S. so there is no region playback problem there. <br /><br />A BD recorder cost far far less than "terabyte(s)" of hard drive space, and at $10 for blank BD-50 disc the cost of backing up to Blu-ray disc is less than half of backing up to a external hard drive. You obviously do not remember when CD burners cost $400 and blank media cost $10 dollars. We did not always live in a world when Walmart sold blank CD's for $0.10 and burners for $20.00<br /><br />As far as the industry abandoning the format; that will not likely to happen for at least 10 years. Even so, if Hollywood abandoned the DVD for Blu-ray and/or digital downloads would people still not buy blank DVD's and/or CD's? Would not software (both PC &#38; Consoles) still ship on physical media?<br /><br />You are basically saying that all physical media is doomed to failure because everybody will move to the cloud and just back up to hard drives.

[Ralph Doctorow]

BluRay Burner $200<br />25GB disk $3 = $120/TB<br />50GB dsk $10(?) = $200/TB<br /><br />1TB Hard Drive $100<br /><br />So currently using BluRay disks to do backup costs $20/TB over hard drives and you never amortize the cost of the drive itself.<br /><br />Then there's the issue of convenience, the hard disk just sits there with no intervention for months, the BluRay drive has to be fed disks which makes overnight backups annoying.<br /><br />As far as using a computer as a BluRay player, it's currently far too much of a science fair project. A good hobby for those who like playing with the software more than watching the movies themselves.

[open-mind]

According to Steve Jobs, "Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace."<br /><br />I have a feeling he thinks that will never happen, but he also doesn't want to offend Sony.

[SactoGuy018]

I think a HUGE issue with Blu-ray support on PCs is the necessity for HDCP support in the computer system box and the display monitor itself. That means you have to buy computer with HDCP-compatible hardware inside the computer (BD-ROM/BD-RE drive, sound card, graphics card) and MUST connect the graphics card to an HDCP-compatible computer monitor using the DVI-D or HDMI interface. That's why a computer with a Blu-ray compatible disk drive plus appropriate HDCP-compatible widescreen computer monitor tends to cost around US$1,100 to US$1,200.

[LLIB_SETAG]

Hi! I'm a PC Laptop &#38; I got BAHLUUUUUUUUUUURAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!<br /><br />Blueray is a bag of hurt.

[jtjt145]

How could anyone seriously consider Bluray a necessity for a PC, unless you are a serious movie-buff?<br />With more and more people getting their jollies from other than TV and movies, Bluray is clearly an unnecessary expenditure, very much to the chagrin of media-moguls.<br /><br />And of course there is the DRM (digital rights management issue). Last time I checked, which was quite a while ago, so I admit, these things were fully laden with digital contraptions to ensure the viewer can NOT enjoy watching a movie other than laid out by the rules of the American Motion Picture Association, preventing the ordinary user to do simple things like taking a backup of legally purchased media. <br /><br />Only one word for it: FAULTY BY DESIGN<br /><br />Arthur

[gofalcons]

blu ray doesnt need to take over in pcs to get popular even though dvds went that route at first. any one whos watched blu ray movies on a good system with hdmi cables will tell you how amazing the sound and picture is. I know people in their 50's who bought ps3's just for the blu ray player after seeing videos played on it in our waiting room. Heck, i wont even go to the theater anymore, i have better sound and picture by far on my home set now and if the price of disks is an obsticle, i get disks for 20 bucks at target on sale and i rent them on netflicks really cheap.

[Renegade Knight]

It's a 520.00 option on my next laptop. It's not even an option on a Macbook that I've seen. Either way I'll wait for the aftermarket to lower the price to something reasonable.

[Dleon84]

Find something new to write about. You have written about this before. Get a life.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Blu-Ray to win:<br /><br />1. Get rid of Sony's high royality rate.<br /><br />2. Get rid of the players needing to phone home to play certain discs.<br /><br />3. Sell BR-R or BR-RW with DVD-RAM features in DL at 100 discs for $20.<br /><br />4. Sell recordable drives for both computers and TVs for only $50 and take a loss on hardware.<br /><br />5. None of this will happen, so while Blu-Ray stuggles to find an actual audience in a bad economy that's going to last to 2014 at the least, the rest of us will have moved on.<br /><br />6. Blu-Ray has been around for four years now and still is regarded and new and niche.

[tektaktyks]

the problem is software to play it on pc,it just sucks,but it makes more sense to get a burner for $130 than some stand alone player for $200 or more...

[ferricoxide]

When I bought my wife her laptop, this year, I bought the one I did, in part, *because* I could get it with a BDP. For the last two years, the only movies we've bought has been BluRay. Since my wife uses her laptop to watch movies, it wouldn't have made sense to get her a system without a BDP.

[Mr_7235]

The day Sony drops hdcp or buys me a new, hdcp enabled DVI monitor, I'll consider getting a blu-ray drive. Until then, I'll stick with dvds, hulu, crackle, etc, all of which work on my 3 year old Dell display.