This may be more of a rant, so forgive me. But it is a rant backed up by much of the feeling and figures I have bore witness to over the last month or so. This probably should have been written sooner, but then we wouldn't know as much as we do now, and how currently Blu-Ray (BR) has not won favour with the consumers. We have talked specs; we have talked about the format so now we have one clear format to base our hardware choices on, but even knowing all of this… Are you sold?
See: Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? And Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD Continued
We have been landed with one overall HD format to carry us in the HD revolution; it's been a long struggle for consumers in the market looking for a new player, with Toshiba putting in a good fight to reign supreme with their own format HD-DVD, which died a long and very public death. Leaving us with the wildly supported (decision making support, I may add), Blu- Ray format.
Many will still argue that HD-DVD, being the finished format, was the best choice for consumers; but as the two sides kept drawing the whole thing out, over all they where preventing either format of having the success that DVD has had. So ultimately we have to conclude, it's best we have a clear winner to choose.
Are we still interested though?
When people where buying DVD players the reasons for buying one was clear and obvious to us, as before we somehow managed with the classic VHS tapes. Remember the times of rewinding, forwarding, trying to find the start of that programme? I can recall a time when Video+ was introduced and thinking it was a miracle that I didn't have to set a timer, and just magically knew when to record.
DVD players, then eventually recorders, made obvious leaps from all of this, quality being the obvious showcase of the DVD format, it was clearly obvious how much better this was for films and programmes, the obvious extra space was practical and cheap for PC developers and publishers. Manufacturing plants where relatively easy to setup and cheap for companies too. The average consumer could literally see the quality on their screens, not just people into there AV gear, this was an obvious choice.
Where does this leave BR?
DVD could have been just a little bit better than VHS playback; the truth is, what sold us all was the capacity of the DVD format, and being able to leave the headaches caused by tapes that had a short shelf life, that is what people wanted, and that's what everyone has.
People are thinking what can BR offer me that is so different to what I have now, that makes it worth while? And when we come down to it, the only thing your average Joe will see is the benefit from a better quality picture, that's it really. Certainly long term PlayStation 3 owners will have something to look forward too when they get to use that ability for massive games with numerous amounts of textures being able to be used, but that's not going to be enough for everyone else.
Although, as people are buying HD screens, most of whom I see buying at about the 42" mark and up as prices start to drop again, the truth is, yes, its makes obvious sense that if you are interested enough in owning an HD screen, that you should use that for a good BR player, at least that's what every sales person will tell you.
The truth being is people are sold on the screens and to be honest, HD screens are the only ones available now, but soon a lot will be:
A: Gamers, 360 or PS3, who will generally be a bit more-savvy about these things, and mostly sold on the Hi Def gaming front
B: People sold on Sky HD (a lot of sports fans especially), who want to be able to see all the blades of grass on the pitch
But how many people have you heard buying an HD screen for the sole use of watching films? There will be many certainly. Although I looked I couldn't find any figures for how many estimated HD Screen owners end up buying an HD player to go with it.
Also, and it's a big point…the cost of BR movies. On average, on the net, BR movies go for about £20. That's not terrible, but it's not great, first thing I think of is:
"Wait... I have that movie on DVD... and now you want me to re-buy it for a higher price for the same film!?"
They obviously hope so, although with nearly every BR player coming with a half decent upscaler for your DVD collection, this is not something people should buy into, and should instead think about future releases, for the future is paved with BR, not just for films and PS3 gaming, but a lot of other industries will be making the change. With many PC companies looking to install BR Drives, then the obvious succession of software companies changing to BR, fact is we are all hording more media stuff, music movies and billions of pictures, all of us wanting and needing bigger hard-drives to store all of this on, then hopefully backing that up to what will (they hope) be your BR player that can easily swallow 50GB of info.
But here is the bottom line. BR isn't selling, not by a mile. NPD who conduct and measure the sales, are reporting a 40% drop at the start of this year, only managing to claw back 2%. Also research has noted that the general high street consumers will not see any difference in the BR quality compared to their own DVDs. This is due, to a certain part, to ignorance, or a poor example being shown, instead, according to figures, a lot are buying upscaling DVD players, with regular DVD players dropping about 40% in sales that don't have this feature. For now its looking like BR sales will pick up towards this Christmas when players should have to see a drop in price to around £200, although other more established firms are putting it in the last quarter of 2009.