Blu-ray players may drop prices for holidays, does anyone care?
Blu-ray conquered HD DVD in the war to be the next format standard with a combination of savvy marketing and a built-in base of Playstation users. But movie downloads are becoming readily available through many outlets online, including Hulu, Netflix and soon YouTube. That may loosen Blue-ray’s grip on media distribution.
Netflix is already actively encouraging its user base to download more movies so that it can ship fewer discs. It’s cheaper for the company and more efficient for consumers because data is infinitely replicable. The Roku Box, Tivo, and some Blu-Ray players are linking into that content outlet, all of which seem to diminish the value of burning data to a disc and physically shipping it.
Of course, in areas where broadband Internet is scarce, digital distribution doesn’t make sense. But maybe with the newly freed white spaces spectrum it will become more feasible soon.
The kicker to this situation is how widely adopted DVDs continue to be, and a similar sort of reluctance seems to apply to high definition TVs. Consumers are somewhat interested, but overall the prices will have to come down before adoption will become widespread.
The trend is mirrored in declining traditional television ratings, and the woeful newspaper industry. It’s all part of the same trend toward getting information and services through the Internet.
At least according to one analyst, the Blu-ray industry may be catching on to the trend:
Blu-ray vendors and dealers are starting to realize that for Blu-ray to become the next DVD, they need to lower player prices in order to generate interest and build volumes.
Specifically prices will probably begin to hover below the $200 mark for new Blu-ray players.
Another trend that’s influencing adoption of Blu-ray players is a tendency toward temporal ownership. It’s especially obvious when looking at companies like Netflix or Bookswim, who manage revolving streams of books and DVDs for their subscribers. It cuts down on clutter, is good for the environment, and opens up volumes of new content for everyone. Who needs to keep their own DVD or Blu-ray library anymore?
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November 8th, 2008
Who? People who want to go where the wires aren’t? Can I watch a movie in a campground in the Arizona wilderness over somebody’s broadband service? And what happens to your downloaded movies if the company decides to disable your playback or take their “rights servers” offline (recall MS and WalMart DRM server shutdowns)? What if I want instant acces to a larger catalog then I can store for instant playback? How about if I WANT to watch Heroes or Lost from the beginning and NBC (or whoever) decides to pull them off line for whatever reason (remember NBC pulling out of iTunes over cost sharing disagreement with Apple)?
There are still a LOT of reasons to have the shiny disc in your hand! Plus as long as the media companies have a stranglehold on the content via their DRM restrictions, people need to remember that any investment in downloaded content could disappear in an instant (usually without notice too)!
November 9th, 2008
Keep in mind only about 10% of Netflix’s catalog is available on Instant Watch. Content can be taken on and off Instant Watch as Netflix and content owners see fit.
Until a vast majority of the Netflix catalog is available on Instant Watch, it will only remain a supplement to packaged media distribution.
November 13th, 2008
While you’re doing your best to raise all the pro-Blu-ray FUD you can dvdchris & Davidb you might like to own up to the truth that the Blu-ray catalogue is tiny.
If only 10% of Netflix’s catalogue is available on Instant watch how much of it is available on Blu-ray, hmmmmm?
You can’t have have it both ways.
If available titles is really your concern then Blu-ray’s slightly over approx 700 (available right now, not announced) is beaten senseless by DVDs 90,000+.
Blu-ray is primarily a niche game console format.
It’s got little chance of breaking into the mass-market, not when you need a huge HD TV to ‘see’ 1080p properly and a very expensive audio set-up to benefit from the improved audio it offers.
With the type of HD TV most buy
(32″ – 42″ 720p sets)
and the usual audio in most homes
(Vanilla Dolby Digital, at best)
It really isn’t the huge leap on from DVD the Blu evangelists would have us believe.
November 24th, 2008
Interesting little discussion. Sears just had a two day special on good Panasonic players for only $150.
http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/142905
Expect to see the prices on players fall as the 2008 holiday season progresses and then ends.
Here’s my read on this current tech situation: Once you own an HDTV, you become used to the high def pictures of TV shows and movies you receive that way. You prefer them. Then when you see Blu-Ray 1080p movie playing in a store, a light goes on–I have an HDTV that would really show new movies with this incredible picture and give me awesome sound too if I got a BR player and maybe a BR ready HDMI receiver and surround package (HTIB) to go with it. Price will hold some back, but those who want that best quality will spring for it now, or soon, to enjoy that crisp picture, etc. The problem with assuming that downloaded films will displace BR is that the downloads are low resolution and will not look that good on today’s HDTVs, not even as good as a standard DVD. Upconverted DVD’s look better than the downloads on HDTVs, but none of these look and sound as good as the Blu-Ray technology. The big negative about BR is not that BR players cannot show DVD’s because they can and they even upconvert them. The big minus is the price of a Blu-Ray movie. Even when you get a good deal on one, it still seems expensive. I guess it all just depends on your budget and how much you care about the HD performance of your entertainment. I just got the Sony BDP-s350 BR player and the HTIB Sony HT-ss2300 receiver and surround to go with my HDTV Sony KDL-46XBR4. All the items were bought with deals and discounts. HDTV was $1999 delivered. BR player and HTIB receiver/surround were $225 and $240 delivered. They all synchronize together with Sony’s remote and HDMI 1.3 cabling bought from monoprice for $15 delivered. There are deals out there, you just have to work on finding them, then you have to spend the cash.
January 20th, 2011
This has been one of the most interesting posts I have seen in a long time!