Comments on: Blu-ray is doomed

Don Reisinger contends that Blu-ray is doomed and should stop before it's too late. He gives four reasons why, but is he right?

[Travis Ernst]

Come to reality! The High Def formats (now just Blue Ray) are still in the INFANT stages. Do you demand a full line of products from a company the day they release their Beta version? It sure sounds like it. Why don't you start bashing software companies for not making better versions of their software and always needing to release updates to plug the holes in the dam.

Reason 1. Within time we will have portables once licensing contracts are resolved. Being Toshiba JUST, less than a month ago, ducked out of the battle for the HD format. Now the industry can focus on one format and the ducks can start to get in line.

Reason 2 Looks. Obviously you have never compared Tube, to LCD to Projection to Plasma for image quality. If the source of the image on those four is the same media there is a visual quality one can see. When you switch from Tape to DVD there is a BIG jump in quality. Once you upgrade to 1080 the quality variables are even more noticed depending on your source. If you watch a movie on Tape, then watch it from Blue Ray You can see a HUGE change in quality.

COST. Remember when CD's first came out? They ran for $20/ea. However we had no physical wear on the platters and never needed to replace a tape the deck wore out or player chewed the tape, or heads became of issue with magnetic issues. Same issue. New format arriving on the market. Once they become larger in numbers the costs will be reduced.

Reason 4. DOUBTFUL. Bandwidth will never make up for the customer demands in Fiber. Even on cable (digital) the providers compress the signals too greatly (at the source) the quality is lost in the stream. Downloading takes time. People don't want to wait, or have a file/movie taking up space on their drives. Hard Copy is the way to stick with as we have with music and movies.

[Abuelita8733]

The problem with DVD or Blue-Ray, people is this... we customers are SICK AND TIRED of the greedy, money grubbing, stingy, self-important "media" producers who continually dangle this format and that format and then yank it away for the purpose of FALSELY creating the "need" to "upgrade" to the phony "new, better, brighter" format. Cassette tapes are/were great... until you could not get them and car stereos and portable boxes began to not even be built to accomodate the format. So, we have been FORCED to switch to CDs. Are they better? No, not really; not for $17-$20 to REPLACE what you have ALREADY purchased and paid a royality for! The purpose of CDs, DVDs, Blue-Ray, etc.? It is NOT for the better enjoyment of the buying public, it is to line the pockets of the second most useless segment of society, the entertainment media (the first being sports jocks). What good is a CD or DVD? Does it have longevity like a cassette tape or a VHS? Absolutely NOT!!! Drop a tape of any type, pick it up, put it in the player and keep going. Drop a CD or DVD or Blue-Ray... OOPS! there goes AT LEAST $17 down the drain because with one little slip, the stupid little plastic disc is destroyed! If it does not shatter outright, you STILL will not be able to get it to play. My point is to raise your awareness that the "newer, better, brighter" from this bloodsucking industry is solely for the purpose of raiding our pockets. After 20+ years of owning and collecting my favorite movies on VHS, and 30+ years of owning and collecting my favorite music on cassette tape, I am now REQUIRED to REPLACE that which is NOT broken with DVDs and CDs, simply because the format and the means to play it are no longer available.

Come on Blue-Ray... I see you coming but you will not get me! My pockets will be SEALED against your thievery!!!

[aronnyc]

I watched the BBC Planet Earth documentary in both Blu-Ray and DVD. The difference is more than noticeable. I think the price issue is still a barrier for some, but with the HD wars over, there were be a lot more focused concentration that will drive prices down. I don't think people who buy into HD really care about portability. Having HD in a car is silly and pointless. You want to enjoy HD in a large screen TV, which is also becoming more affordable. You really think Toshiba would be happy wasting millions on R&D only to lose the HD war? Seriously now. If Blu-ray's life cycle is short, it might be related more to the fact that tech life cycles are becoming shorter because of accelerated innovation, not because any of your four reasons.

[aka_tripleB]

Some other points about flexibility. One, homes don't have muliple Blu-ray players, yet. Until then a lot of people may buy many DVDs so that it can be played in different rooms in the house. Two, no one has made a portable Blu-ray player. On long road trips, one DVD can keep kids quite for about two hours. And on a small screen like that, it's hard to justify the cost for the high resolution.

[anonymous999]

Don, your prediction is just BS,

Reason 1 applies equally to every single online download service for HD content. It's all DRM laden, even from Apple it only gives you what 3-5 authorizations? It's all locked in and inflexible, that's the name of the game.

Reason 2 is a non issue. There is a substantive difference between HD and SD and up converted SD. If people can't see it, they need their eyes examined.

Reason 3, new tech ALWAYS costs more. HD TVs cost more, people buy those. New computers and new consoles cost more and people buy those too. Cost comes down, people buy more, people demand flexibility, blu ray becomes ubiquitous and plays everyhwere... it's a slow outward spiral with techs like this but it does happen.

Reason 4, another BS reason. The clock is always ticking on technology, business and even every day life.

All in all, your logic is flawed and wrong. I think this is the last time I read your blog, you seem to be more concerned with being ostentatious than being correct. I got the same impression from when you went on TWiT (a great show) and bashed the PS3 as a horrible Blu player and a terrible console in the first 10 minutes (the former being a complete lie assuming you've tried it, and it has a remote). I advise others to stop reading as well, enough is enough.

[Travis Ernst]

Shelf life of Magnetic Media is limited to MAYBE 20 years if maintained. If you let it sit you have a good chance of bleedthrough (one layer etching itself on to the next). It also has issues with becoming brittle, adhesive may peal away from the oxide and backing.

Common technique to maintain tapes are to forward and rewind every 3-6 months and store in a controlled environment, in the professional industry that is.

Reflective medias (CD/DVD) have a unlimited life if properly stored. As long as you don't store them on the dash of your car (warping/blistering) there is very little that tends to go wrong other than from mishandling of the platters.
Expected shelf life is 100 years. There are the odd cases that a platter goes bad. It could be from a bad source batch or an issue like that when no visual problems can be seen on the headers or sectors on the platter.

[jpcalkins]

I think it was a very intelligent move on Sony?s part even though it is not ready to be equal platform as the DVD. The speed that technology is advancing is overwhelming and will over take the DVD in matter of months. http://hotcookies.net

[toxigenicpoem]

Don,

One thing you missed, that will hold Blu-Ray back from DVD, HDCP. While current titles are not taking full advantage of this technology yet, we know full well the Movie Industry will start using it.

I bought my HDTV 2 years ago, and will not be buying anything of substantial size in the near future. It is a 720P set, so I can not even take full advantage of the expensive format yet.

Because it was also older, at the time most sets didn't have the HDCP included, not to mention I prefer Component over DVI, simply because of the cost involved in routing multiple inputs to my Television.

So, once the HDCP kicks in, my un HDCP television will not be able to receive a full picture, and most people won't be able to benefit from the quality if they are using Component input.

I agree that price alone should not be a factor, CDs were hideously expensive in the 70s, hence why we didn't see much of them till the 90s. I don't think downloads will be that big to fight off, I think BR has to worry about Cable Providers first and foremost. While there are huge restrictions on watching videos through the Cable, Cable providers have a one up on Blu-Ray, an installed and generally uninformed user-base.

With that being said, its been a while now since DVD-A, and I can say I own 1 DVD-A disc, and only because it was packaged with the original CD. Blu-Ray may have a harder time than those that support it think, but I agree with them it might not be dead yet - but we may have to wait 10 years to find out.

[grangerfx]

OK that has to be the dumbest market analysis I have ever read. Everything you said about Blue Ray could have been said (and probably was) about DVD when it was first introduced. It was expensive. It was not "portable". It had copy protection. There were not enough titles. Most consumers could not tell the difference on their small analog TV sets. There was no place to rent DVDs. Years later here we are with you claming that there is no way Blue Ray (and I suppose any other HD media format) will ever surplant DVD.

You say we will all be downloading HD movies over the internet. Here is a little fact for you: Not very many people have the kind of internet bandwidth reqired to download HD movies. On the other hand anyone that has a TV and a power plug can use a Blue Ray player.

Here is another fact: Blue Ray discs store 50 gigabytes of data. Download HD movies are a tiny fraction of that size. Heck a downloaded HD movie could easily fit on a 8GB DVD (you could probably fit several of them). Why do we even need new HD media if a standard 8GB DVD will do? Could it be that the 50GB Blue Ray media can provide far greater quality than a downloaded movie? If some company wanted to offer full quality HD movies over the internet, they would have to send 50GB per movie. How long would that take to download? Is today's internet really able to provide that kind of bandwidth to hundreds of millons of people at the same time? From what I am reading, it is having trouble keeping up with user demand for YouTube videos and those things are only 320x240.

Doesn't CNET have someone better qualified to comment on HD media formats? I think you should stick to reviewing blogs or whatever it is you do.

[toxigenicpoem]

Just a note, its Blu-Ray, Blue Ray could be misconstrued to also mean HD-DVD, as both use a Blue Laser. Thanks.

[professorecho]

The fact that many of the techno-geeks who posted comments here overlook in their self-delusional justification for adopting Blu-ray, is that the original DVD format was just that: ORIGINAL. The same way VHS was when it competed with Beta; it offered something that the previous format did not. When they tried to elevate the product within its own sphere, Super VHS, it was a flop because no one perceived this as anything new. The same indifference is happening with Blu-ray; there is nothing new about it except to techno nerds and like Super VHS, LD, SUPER AUDIO CD, DAT,etc. it just might be doomed to failure. You can only go to that well just so many times. Unless people can literally be shown a remarkable difference between what they have and what is being offered as a replacement, they just aren't going to invest in it. People post here as if Blu-ray were a new FORMAT, but it's not. It is merely an extension, an improvement to already existing technology that most people do not feel needs replacing in any way, shape or form.

It's easy to lose this fact amongst the babble of the early adopters and certainly the major PR push from the manufacturers of both the hardware and software. But can you trust either of them? Of course not. Without a doubt people who have already bought into the BD technology are going to cheerlead it as they have done in their comments to this article; why wouldn't they? They have spent a lot of money to upgrade and cannot be convinced in the slightest that it was not only money well spent, but an investment in the future.

As for the manufacturers and their retail shills, one would think that Blu-ray is sweeping the world. Why? Because they are pushing as hard as they can to once again PROFIT from DVD sales. When that market bottomed out--and it has big time--the short term solution was HD/BD and higher markups for the software. THAT's why they want you to think that Blu-ray is so popular, so that you will buy a more expensive version of what you already own. Of course, that's the American way and you can't fault it too much. Still, for one to believe all the hype and propaganda that Blu-ray is anything more than a niche product and is probably destined to remain one would be silly at the present time.

I'm all for better quality, but I just don't think most people are going to care because Blu-ray offers nothing very original to be excited about. Mention the increase in lines of resolution to most people and they will say "HUH?" But come up with a NEW, ORIGINAL way of thinking, as SD DVD did and iPod and TIVO did and people will follow.

[trank07]

Reason 1: No flexibility
DVDs use to be the same way

Reason 2: The issue of looks
People must be blind or trying to view HD content on a non HD tv or just plain stupid

Reason 3: Cost, cost, cost
DVD players use to cost just as much as a BD players as with VHS

Reason 4: The clock is ticking
Downloadable HD content will probably have really restrictive DRM to the point you can only use their software and hardware to play it

[jrm125]

Let's go through your points 1 by 1...

1. Flexibility:
So you're arguing that BD is doomed because it isn't flexible, and you're reasoning is it isn't portable because no one has the players. Umm...DVD suffered a similar issue a few years ago. That certainly worked out. At the same time, you trumpet the downloadable movie which is even LESS portable. More on that later...

2. Looks
With ever increasing television sizes and resolutions, the difference between HD and SD is going to continue to broaden. Right now it isn't too much of an issue, but wait till next year when many people start replacing their SD sets for HD ones as the US switches over. TVs under 30" it doesn't matter too much, but start getting larger and DVD starts looking pretty rough. In fact, that was my biggest gripe when I jumped into HD a few years ago. Upconverters are a good choice now, but as BD player prices fall, people will likely buy the newer tech (which is also capable of playing and improving their old DVD collection along with the new discs).

3. Cost
Again, DVD had similar issues. My first DVD player was $400. Now I can pick one up for $40. Sony has already announced BD players will drop to $199 by next year. As adoption increases and production methods are improved, the players will cheapen, just like with every other technology EVER produced. HDTVs were $10,000 a few years ago...

4. Downloading
So you admit that Blu-ray is safe for at least 5 years. That's until people even have viable options for proper downloading (which you can't even predict). That means they get a good 5 year run out of it, more likely 10 years. This is similar to DVD and not an issue. Downloading is still tethered to the issues associated with portability (DRM will limit copying to other computers) so good luck taking it to a friend's house and popping it in. Also, the majority of people don't even have broadband yet, nor does the current structure allow for everyone in the country downloading movies all the time. The worst part of all, is that when you want to watch a movie, you can't just pop it in, you have to sit and wait for the download, and even then you might be stuck with inferior quality.

This is the furthest from journalism or even a semblance of it I have seen on here in awhile. You, sir, look like nothing but a bitter HD-DVD supporter. Your arguments are tripe at best. Human nature is to have hard copies of things, for collection, ease, and security. This won't change with Blu-ray. It's not doomed, it's just beginning!

[jamiegau]

Come on guys, this story borders on FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in internet crime just about spam.
Sure, online will effect this market to some extent, but you fail to see all the other reasons this market will grow. Read my latest blog on this and my reasoning at
http://www.crafted.com.au/blog/2008/03/09/more-fud-from-the-media-on-blu-ray/
if your interested.

James

[urwrong]

<sigh> another tech pundit ready to make vast sweeping statements based on flawed logic.
(1) No flexibility - Let put aside for the minute that blu-ray is being developed with built-in allowance for digital downloads to your device on each disc (which you fail to mention). Then let's take a look back to as little as 5 years ago. How many people have DVD players in their car? And how vital is this feature? I say not much. People buy Blu-ray for HiDef movies, pure and simple. And yes, this IS important, about as important as the numbers buying HiDef TVs. Of which the impetus is growing primarily because of the drive of HD TV (which at least in australia is growing at such a rate that it is actually hard to buy HD set top boxes nowadays)

You are putting *way* too much emphasis on the portability issue which I think is not the reason for the rise of DVD. Not to mention the fact that something is being done about providing a portable version.

(2) Looks
I notice the difference on my 576i Plasma. So yes, there is a difference. Besides, why would you go and buy a hi def TV, then decide you want to play DVDs on it when the Blu-ray version is available? Please. Yes, it will take a while to get critical mass, but it will take a LOOONG time for HD downloads. Be realistic, the backbone for network connections is in its *infancy* for the gigabytes that need to be downloaded for hi def. They are no where near affordable (you would need an unlimited plan at a very high speed - I don't think consumers would accept anything more than a 15 minute wait for the download). 10 years minimum for a reasonable network, longer for reasonable plans for consumers to take up (a reasonable percentage).

(3) Cost
Once again underestimated. expect the cost to be down to as little as $200 by mid next year. With 10 years to wait for acceptable broadband for HD downloads, I think that is a reasonable target.

(4) Clock is ticking
Geez once again premature ejaculation on your part. You are sounding more and more like the stereotypical bum on the street with a big placard reading "the end is nigh!".

People have underestimated the move to add blu-ray to the PS3 and the impetus of the PS3. I've been saying it since the whole debate started, critical mass is the key, and Microsoft and Toshiba blew it when the XBOX did not come with HDDVD standard. If the PS3 becomes an abject failure (becoming less and less likely day by day), then I can see where you're going with this.

Lets see if you can look at your own article without cringing in 2010. Methinks not.

[urwrong]

Dan, you are pulling our chain right? Just to get your page views up after your controversial healdine makes digg? Because I was hoping you were alot smarter than what you have written.

[urwrong]

Oh, and go see this. Its at the new york times, but David has his head screwed straight..

video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=11f0b3c4628d875185d923583a536d4642831374

[yiwu]

ya,,that right.

[AV_Integrated]

Hi! My name is Don Reisinger and I'm totally ******* clueless!

(Hi Don!)

I just wanted to say that I have no clue how the world works or how marketing works at any level at all.

(Keep going Don)

Well, I was vehement that DVD was going to be a complete failure after it was out for 18 months because everyone already owned VHS tapes and the TVs were good enough for VHS while DVD didn't really offer a huge jump in quality. I mean, it's all 480i right?

(Right Don!)

But, then, everything went wrong, and DVD took off. But, with these new HD formats... This Blu-ray stuff... I know I'm right! I mean, sure, people are buying HDTVs left and right, but there is no chance they will possibly want a true HD player to go along with it when they could have quality upconverted SDTV is there?

(Of course not Don)

I mean, sure, the format is less than 2 years old and is in millions of homes, but not everyone has it, so that automatically makes it worthless right?

(You the man Don!)

And, since HDDL is poised to take over the world next week, or... well, 5 or 10 years from now... Blu-ray should just throw in the towel.

(How could anyone doubt you?)

Yes, I know I'm right, but for some reason... It just seems like.... someone is mocking me somewhere. Like they could possibly find fault with my perfect logic.

(We believe you Don! You da' man!)

[sid6581]

So you say that missing flexibility is a major flow of the Blu-ray disc and then you go on saying how big video downloads will become which are and will ever be less flexible than physical media? With Blu-rays already starting to include iPod and PSP versions it seems it is even more flexible than the DVD. Once again another weak post.

[aubrey_q]

Don has some good points, and like a previous poster commented, blu-ray is an extension of a solid format. It's just like DVD-Audio and SACD: superb quality that the masses didn't adopt. Comparing blu-ray growth to DVD growth doesn't make sense because blu-ray doesn't bring up the added value that DVD did to VHS. Let's not forget the rest of the world either. Studios like their money and they won't be cutting DVD off at the knees when there are millions upon millions of DVD players around the world.

I've seen blu-ray and hd-dvd movies and although they look spectacular, it'll be a while before everyone replaces their trusty DVD players. Upconverting DVD players are around $50 now and by the time blu-ray gains momentum it may be too late.