Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
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The crazy part of all of this is the price differences. Amazon sells really good movies on Blu for $10-$20 and I'm sure we all take advantage of that. The screwed up part is that Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and all of the others have to sell some average new movies on Blu for $30! If all the movies were $22 no matter what the movie, I think it would be easier for consumers to digest...Q
Blu Ray discs are easy to come by for less than some bricks & mortar stores might sell. If people want to buy in a more expensive store, that's their own problem. At least they can choose since their player is not tied to a single service provider.
It's also worth bearing in mind that the situation for blu ray is absolutely no difference at all from DVD ten years ago. Proto-truth tellers were crying in 1999 about how expensive DVDs were compared to VHS. Fact is that as a format expands, so do the number of discounts. DVDs cost a lot to begin with and as the selection increased the prices began to fall into the pattern we see today. Same will happen with Blu and there are already substantial discounts on some Blu Ray titles (even in places like Walmart).
Interestingly I still have a confirmation email from an order I made 10 years ago, and there isn't much difference between costs for the formats. Of the disks that are available in both formats, some are a bit more expensive, some are a little less.
@Xym said ........"It's also worth bearing in mind that the situation for blu ray is absolutely no difference at all from DVD ten years ago"........... do you honestly think the comparisons will continue?? You have to be joking, you can not be serious!
Forget pricing for a moment, what about the FACT that unless you have a 42" or bigger HDTV, there really is no point in buying BR unless you are a fanboy.
And what about the fact that DVD offered massive improvements in functionality, portability, performance and convenience over VHS, coupled with the fact DVD revolutionized EVERY SINGLE EXISTING TV on the planet? ....and DVD had NO competition!
Blu ray, for most, only offers improved picture quality, yet somehow it is comparable to DVD??!!
Either, your drunk from to much new years drinking, or you are smoking something illegal, not even Darren Sony Murphy, prats on like you do how BR will conquer the earth, no one but you continues to bleat that BR is on par with DVDs growth and will continue to grow to the same levels.
DVD wasn't backwards compatible with VHS, everyone had to burn their VHS tapes, yet DVD flogged VHS, do you really think a product aimed straight at the niche male PS3 crowd, that IS backwards compatible with the biggest home entertainment revolution to hit the planet 'DVD', is going to over throw this massive product in the same fashion as DVD did too VHS, your an idiot, plain and simple!
J6 isn't going to bother updating his BR player every second week to keep up with the constant studio paranoia either in order to keep watching movies, J6 will get jack of that very quickly, and as I said earlier, play his $10 cheaper DVD on his BR player and spend the difference on beer and pop corn,
And before you start with the usual rhetoric, grow up cry baby your such a dumbass etc etc, one of DVD's main drivers for massive growth was the PS2. By comparison, blu rays main driver, ie 95% of the market, is languishing in 3rd place behind the 360 and Wii, so the major contributor to BR's growth, is tanking by comparison this generation, PS3 sales currently down 16%.-Fact!
Other then those all ready mentioned, throw in a crippled economy, downloads, many other HD options to choose from, sony itself, and probably the biggest factor again that everyone forgets about, the fact that you can still buy and play DVDs on your BR player unlike VHS.
Blu ray has a strong presence in the young male PS3 crowd, and there is no question it is a quality product, but most people don't care about extra quality, price is king.
Maybe BR will eventually end up with 20-30% market share before something else comes along, but there are just too many factors weighing against blu ray for it to ever seriously challenge DVD's throne.
People are buying HDTVs *anyway* so trying to pin Blu Ray's future on HD as if that's a bad thing is quite odd. HDTV takeup is assured, not least as its virtually impossible to buy an SD set any more. In five years SD sets will be in a minority by some margin. And with it, people will ensure their next player will be a BD player and it will be backwards compatible.
And despite what you claim, you can very easily see the benefit of Blu Ray on any size HD set at its optimum viewing distance. People with smaller sets will tend to sit closer to them because they are for the kitchen or bedroom, people with larger sets tend to sit further away because they are for the living room. I can easily see the difference between SD & HD on a 20" set because of where I sit in relation to it.
I agree price is a factor but then again it was with DVD. I don't like paying full price for crap titles and nobody else does. Which is why stores are already discounting some BD titles and the trend will continue in exactly the same way it did for DVD. As a format grows and the selection grows, stores must discount more on meh titles to shift them. Walmart has recognizable titles selling in-store from as low as $9. You pretend BD is some special exception when it isn't.
As for me calling people dumbass, crybaby etc., it is when they make some stupid remark borne of residual HD DVD bitterness or an outright hypocritical statement for the same. Stick to points and lose the hate and you will get a civilized response.
In 5 years, when HDTVs become the majority, it is to late for blu ray, game over and as for viewing distances, your splitting hairs, J6 couldn't give a flying FK about that.
I've not got a residual bitterness born from HD DVDs loss, I think it was a better product and I think,had the consumer been allowed to decide the outcome it had a far better long term future and product strategy, but that's only my opinion, other then that I don't give a shi*.
HD DVD faced the same up hill battle as BR for all the above named reasons, but at least HD DVD recognised it wasn't going to kill off DVD and wanted to embrace downloads, and recognised price was more important than power, that gave it a fighting chance. I admit openly to being anti sony, I hate the contempt they treat consumers with, and what it is trying to do with HD media, I think we all loose long term because of sonys short sightedness and arrogance.