Comments on: Blu-ray sales nearly double from a year ago

Despite the recession, the Blu-ray format appears to be enjoying relatively decent sales numbers, with 9 million units sold in the first quarter of 2009.

[Waam]

5 stars. Downloads are good too, but man, the Blu-rays coming out these days have both the HD Blu-ray disc AND a digital download. Hard to beat that since the downloads are relatively expensive in themselves.

My wife just bought Twilight for $25 on Blu-ray with the blu-ray disc AND digital download. Thats a really good deal. I will never trade in my physical collection for downloads. Movies are not the same and aren't treated the same as music.

[Wei_Zhu]

You consider $25 a good deal for a movie?

[giga90]

To: Wei_Zhu
Yup, it's a pretty good deal, but too bad I can't afford HD.
It's kinda surprising for me to see that VHS(s) are still selling in the US, I live in a third world country and we don't use VHS anymore, we use VCDs.

[jrolin1]

giga90- I believe the VHS reference was to the original roll outs of VHS and DVDs years ago compared to the roll out of BD now. DVD players in the US can be bought for less than Waam paid for Twilight on BD.

[jspencer09]

I think Blu-Ray will have a long and healthy life -- at least as long a shelf life as DVD had. At this point in time no medium can equal it in terms of picture or sound quality. The difference in picture quality vs. standard DVD is nice, but as many people have commented, if that's all Blu-Ray had to offer, I don't think it would be a compelling upgrade. But once you compare the audio quality of Blu vs. DVD, there's no going back. As an admitted audiophile, I realize I sound biased, but if you give blu-rays a listen, I think you'll hear their value. The picture quality is nice, but really, the sound is so crisply superior to the muddy compressed DVD audio that it's amazing. It's like hearing a whole new movie! No current stream or download model can equal Blu in either picture or sound quality, and won't be able to for quite some time. So thought they may in the future be the medium of choice (or lack thereof!) I think people will gravitate to blu-ray for the foreseeable future.

[MadLyb]

I agree that Blu-ray is a great product and will have a good shelf life, but with two caveats.

First, it will never have the penetration of DVD because of dilution from DVD and Digital Downloads/Streaming.

Second, I think Hollywood will walk away from the format in a heartbeat if the DRM system is cracked.

[g8crapachino]

@MadLyb, you aren't thinking and you certainly are not consider the facts.

- The movies studios have finally settled on a single format, blu-ray, and consumers are finally beginning to adopt it. Given the difficulting in getting a new format to be adopted they are not about to start switching to yet another format so soon.
- The studio make, control, and provide the content. No new format can take hold unless there is content for it.
- DVD sales are slowing, Blu-ray sales are rising.
-HD television sales are up. In fact try finding a retail store that still sells non-HD televisions.
- The cost of Blu ray players are dropping to under $200.
- DRM was already cracked, it hasn't motivated any studio to abandon blu-ray. What exactly did you think they would "walk away" to anyway?
-Every consumer format has averaged 10 years before a new one comes around to take it's place.

[Lenman_99]

buy em up my Sony stock my someday be worth what paid for it!!

[sdf0013]

What a scam! We wait all this time for LOTR and it's only the theatrical versions. That's lame on a whole new level. I bet Sony put New Line up to that just to milk more money out of the per unit license that Sony gets. And I used to think Microsoft was greedy. They've got nothing on Sony.

Oh, but my point is why go through all the trouble for blu-ray and not produce an extended version at the same time? That's just lame.

[jspencer09]

Ouch! That *is* lame! I was so looking forward to the full extended edition trilogy! Darn. I'm sure they'll release the Extended Editions just as soon as everyone's ran out and bought the theatrical versions. Man, talk about milking a cash cow!

[vikinzer]

Why does the industry insist on speaking in terms of failure or total domination? Blu-Ray will not fail. It provides a strong value in terms of owning something, and owning an excellent copy of it. That said, I do not believe it will displace DVD, or streaming. Blu-Ray will likely never become the behemoth that DVD has become. I have little to no motivation to replace my DVD collection. Once I finally purchase a Blu-Ray player I will still be able to watch my DVDs on it, and with the exception of a couple titles like Firefly/Serenity, or the Matrix films I am perfectly content to watch DVDs. My Good Eats, and my Documentaries, and even my average every day TV series just don't need High Def. Similarly, if I'm purchasing a romantic comedy, or a stand up routine, or some DIY type content like a cooking show, I just don't care about high def. So DVD isn't really going to be displaced, the way DVD displaced VHS. So Blu-Ray is never going to own the whole market the same way DVD did. It's going to have to share the scene with it's older less capable brother, because it just doesn't provide value that matters in all scenarios.

[g8crapachino]

Who in the "industry" are you talking about? It isn't the industry talking about blu-ray failing, it's usually some random moron in a newsgroup or forum who thinks he's an "expert" on the subject and believes he knows more then everyone else.

[Stan_the_Engineer]

Well considering I graduated college about 2yrs ago and had mostly copied dvds. I have jumped on the beauty of bluray train and never looked back. I mean the audio is fantastic and hooked up to the right TV the picture quality is stunning. I tempt you to watch speedracer or the dark night on blue ray in 120hz. fantastic. Upscaling can only go so far. I just am in a position now to replace my copied collection with true high quality blurays and it, i dare say it again, love it. and I agree with the first comment. Movies are definately different from mp3s i couldnt stand having a hard drive crash and loose all my movies. I think I would cry if i could not watch my beloved action movies in high def.

[ducttape36]

Once bluray discs start coming down in price it wil really take off. Already i saw 'The Decent" on bluray for 10 bucks and bought it without missing a beat. What I'm really waiting for is more content. Lets get some wes anderson films on bluray already!

[CFSacks]

I love Blu-ray! I have been buying all the IMAX movies and similar things like crazy! Try Mystry of the Nile or Over Alaska. Anyway, I will watch some of my DVD's, those that are widescreen. Foolishly thinking I would never have a widescreen tv, I bought full screen DVD's when I could. Dumby! Blu-ray doing as well as it is is amazing when you realize that when DVD's were introduced, everyone had a compatible tv. As time goes on most people will have the proper tv's for blu-ray. Another problem is that they are making fancy blu-ray players with BD-Live which costs money. I bought a Sony player around black Friday for $190. $270 is about the best price now. I will never hook it up to the Internet, just want a player. I think that most people feel the same. We just want players that play blu-ray disks! For firmware updates, I download and burn a disk. We must remember that DVD players also needed firmware update early in history.
About downloading movies: As ISPs eventually succeed in charging for high usage of the Internet, the cost will become very high. We had a narrow escape here with Time Warner, but someday they will charge for amout of bandwidth used.
If they don't come out with lower priced players/disks soon, I fear for Blu-ray's future. I managed to get a good player at a good price. Try that now. I also only buy disks on sale or reasonably priced ones such as the afformentioned nature disks.
I feel that blu-ray will succeed but anything can happen. If prices don't come down soon....
Another thing, Blu-ray has a goofy name! I have to actually explain to people what it is. Are they HD? some ask. Somehow a name like HD DVD would be better. :-)

[SactoGuy018]

Blu-ray will have a very long life for two reasons:

1) Blu-ray players and compatible big-screen TV's are rapidly coming down in price.

2) Downloaded HD movies will take a LONG time to download and won't have anywhere near the extreme sharpness of a real 1080p VC-1 or AVC format video found on Blu-ray discs.

There will be some demand for downloaded movies, but they will be lower-resolution formats intended for portable media players like video-enabled iPods.

[maneeshpan1]

I will never upgrade my entire DVD collection to Blu Ray that would be too expensive. Instead maybe I would upgrade 1 or 2 titles to Blu Ray and the rest of my Blu Ray titles I buy will be titles I buy for the first time on Blu Ray.

At the moment I have no investment in Blu Ray and don't plan to go Blu Ray until 1) Blu Ray authoring and playback are available on Apple Macs and on Linux PCs (for Linux it would be even harder to do so -- only way is to crack the DRM to play in Linux -- on Mac it could be configured to work with DRM as in Windows Vista).

Also I want to see BD prices go down to levels they were at during the price war between them and HD DVD. Last but not least as no fan of DRM I am avoiding Blu Ray because of the copy protection.

[jenstad1]

My brother has blu-ray and it does have slightly better quality, sound,etc.... However, it has taken me years to change from my VHS collection to DVD. I have alot of money invested in my dvd collection.

Looking back......lets not forget the only reason DVD replaced VHS is because it was technologically time for a change. VHS had dominated for over 20 years, then came along DVDs. At the time, DVD was the better technology. I was amazed at the quality of DVD, but dvd's at the time lacked enough titles for me to get excited.... However, many years later I sold my VHS collection and started to slowly upgrade my titles to DVD.

Now again...many years later, along comes BLU-RAY.... Its possible that blu-ray will be around a long time and many people who want something better than regular dvds, will want to upgrade to blu-ray.

But, there is one thing people forget and that is blu-ray is just a upgrade, not a replacement to DVD.

Let's not forget DVD, is still around and some people are still, even today, upgrading from VHS to DVD. I know so many people who still have their VHS collection and refuse to upgrade to DVD. Just because there are still many titles that were never released on DVD and are still on VHS only.

I personally will not upgrade to blu-ray, unless they stop making dvd players(which I seriously doubt they will anytime soon). If they stop making dvd players, and if my dvd player breaks down, then I'll just purchase a cheap blu-ray player. But, I'll still have my regular dvds titles. Most people I know, cannot afford to upgrade to blu-ray TITLES.

Blu-ray better technology and yes, the players are coming down in price. But, the blu-ray titles are still expensive. Considering I can go to my local walmart and get low-priced $1-$5 regular dvds. I cannot see spending more than $10-15 for a new release video, and some older titles are even cheaper.

I consider blu-ray for people who enjoy upgrading to new technie toys every year or so... Usually these people don't worry about cost or what will happen in the future, they just like new technology.

[deanbvfx]

Things is where VHS won't work on a DVD player DVD's work perfectly fins in a Blu-Ray player, and most will upscale your DVD's to HD. So there is no need to re-buy your film library in a new format. I've only got Matrix as a re-purchase for Blu-RAy, and may get Lord of The ring's on Blu-Ray too (if it's extended ed.), but I'm happy with most of my DVD's being upscaled and just getting new purchases on Blu-Ray. Iron Man n Dark Knight last year were instant Blu-Ray purchases, and with lot's of great 3D and action/sci-fi flick's coming out this year there's alot of movies that really shine on Blu-Ray.

[pablouk1]

I take it that the complete TLOR is on one BR DVD.
Which should cost no more that £20.00, if not can we say rip off.

[LiDoc]

What's missing in the article is the comparison with DVD sales. Look at the comparison figures from Home Media Research (http://www.homemediamagazine.com/): For the week ended 4/12/09:

DVD Sales: $219.58 million
Blu-Ray Sales: $19.56 million

In terms of $ figures alone, DVD beats Blu-Ray 11 to 1. Considering that Blu-Ray Discs on average cost 25% more than DVDs, in terms of units sold you have no contest at all.