Harris Poll results indicate little Blu-ray interest, even as HDTV sales go up
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jun 19th 2009 10:39PM
posted Jun 19th 2009 10:39PM
posted Jun 19th 2009 10:39PM
The amount of electronics thrown away rather than recycled in 2007.
The EPA reports that 82% of electronics disposal in 2007 ended up in the garbage (mostly landfills) rather than a recycling center. (source: EPA, July 2008)
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I love HD but I don't plan on buying Blu-Ray myself. DVDs are good enough for me. I do want more HD TV channels that have real HD, not shows upverted.
But I only bought my 1080p TV for video games.
Blu-Ray doesn't offer enough for me. Better picture but to me, it's not much better then DVD. I only notice a big diffrent in quality when I am watching sports in HD and nature shows. They it look crisp and amazing.
You don't see a noticeable difference in picture quality between DVD and Blu-Ray? WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT are you out of your mind? Did spell check miss something, are you confused over which cables to use or are you just a troll looking to start up some angry replies.
"And if you want to get down to it, Hollywood doesn’t record most movies in HD quality. Some movies are yes, most aren’t"
Most hollywood features are actually shot on film, which has far higher resolution than 1080p HD video.
the day everyone says technology is "good enough" will be a very sad day.
No kidding Wes. What happens when consumer entertainment development is not the largest reserach sector in the world as everything out there is already good enough looking or sounding. Companies could have to start innovating the way we interact with media or we as a society could start caring more about social issues like poverty, education of children, human rights or countless other things than entertainment media.
A very sad day indeed.
In regard to Brian, I understand what you mean. Most people have 37-42" tvs. Not a lot of people have 72" or 60" TVs with the latest feature sets were blu-ray really starts to shine over traditional DVD upconverted. For a lot of people, upconverted dvd is good enough if it costs 1/3rd or 1/2 the cost.
Now that sad thing, this whole survey was back in April. Before the Economic Issues and Financial Worries about big-ticket items and spending on luxury items. I wouldn't be surprised if that 7% planning to invest in Blu-ray this year might have dropped down to 4-5% or less. I believe this too was before Hulu's big watch-anything-anytime advertising campaigns on all the major networks during primetime too that's been going on. Maybe that'll be another -0.2%.
Most of the pro-sport channels are using 1280x720P, not 1920x1080i/P. Why you wasted your money in watching 1080P display is strange. What gaming platform are you using that you know the games are being generated in 1080P? A lot of claims out there and little evidence.
Also, how wide is your 1080P HDTV and how far back is your typical viewing distance? For a 50" 16:9 1080P HDTV the viewing width would be 43.6", and if you sit farther back than 65.4" then you eyes are not going to resolve the entire 1080P resolution unless your eyes are better than 20/20.
Maybe you don't see a difference because of the way you are using the HDTV. How you can say you do not see the difference in a six-fold increase in pixel resolution and a much larger color palette is bewildering.
Who gives a fuck, blu ray is a messed up bag of hurt, DRM laden shit, slow loading buggy players, expensive discs for what??? A little better AV quality, wopdee fucken do
If you can't tell the difference between dvd and blu ray than your TV is not big enough. Also, you do not have high end equipment. Third, you are sitting too far from you TV. Everything looks good on a 32" TV from 30 feet away. The difference is strinking if properly set up. Many people refuse to accept the fact that Blu-ray is superior cause of the cost factor. They comfort themselves that what they have is good enough. Most people are not detail oriented, so they would not see the difference. It is not just the sharper picture we are talking about. It is about contrast (the difference between the white and black), the color (vibrant) and the depth of picture (120hz TVs create a sense of depth in the picture, some love it some hate it but it is there). This effect is rarely noticeable on DVDs, Broadcast or home video recordings but this 3D effect is really noticeable onBlu Ray. We are not even talking about the unparalleded clarity of picture. Hope this helps you jump on the Blu bandwagon.
@Brian: check out http://www.tweaktv.com/tweak-my-tv/ to make sure you have an approximation of where your settings should be. It'll really help compared to out of the box settings, but it's not usually as good as using a calibration disk. Also, the sound on Bluray is worlds ahead of your cable tv shows.
@Mr. Lawler: and people still think 128kb/s MP3s sound ok too... hopefully we can get past this era of over-compressed everything someday soon. I don't know anyone who, shown the same clip on DVD and then on BD in a properly setup system could not tell the difference.
Did I say I didn't see a difference? No I did not. I said DVDs are good enough for me and Blu-Ray didn’t offer enough of a difference.
Obviously I can see a different, just it's not worth changing over. And this is what MOST people will tell you is why they aren’t going to Blu-Ray. It’s not worth the extra cost.
And what cables are you talking about? I don’t know about you but I use HDMI and have been for years. And am probably more technical about things then you are, which this stuff is my job.
And if you want to get down to it, Hollywood doesn’t record most movies in HD quality. Some movies are yes, most aren’t. Such as Star Wars II was the first movie done in all digital but they dumb down the quality as they recorded because they felt users wouldn’t like how different it looked compared to movies in general. Most movies are upverted.
"And if you want to get down to it, Hollywood doesn’t record most movies in HD quality. Some movies are yes, most aren’t"
Most hollywood features are actually shot on film, which has far, far higher resolution than 1080p HD video. 35mm film is over 37 megapixels and large format file even more so.
I find it hilarious that someone who claims technical expertise makes comments like this "Hollywood doesn’t record most movies in HD quality. Some movies are yes, most aren’t."
Can we safely assume the job you claim requires such knowledge is actually at the home theater department at Best Buy?
So we have one person talking about what Hollywood SHOOTS film in (print or digital). And then another talking about what they actually put on the Blu Ray disc for the consumer.
Ever taken giant digital pics and had to downsize them to fit on the media? Anyone who actually knows want to chime in *again* on how often studios hook us up with 1080p BR discs.
I know it's getting better, but some of the re-releases are still plagued with inferior video. There was one last week where the special effects maxed out at a lower res, making it fairly noticeable.
agreed brian. i just turned 30, my eyes and ears arent what they used to be. dvd is nice enough
Woot! If I cut my income down to $50k-$74.9k then I can afford more of these things!
Two HDTVs in our house, big movies buffs (we pretty much only watch movies/shows on DVD) and we have zero interest in Blu Ray. I work in the tech arena, we make in the top 10% of income earners in the US and most of our friends are in the same bracket. Not a single one of them has a BR player.
And yes, good enough may be an apt description. I simply only care if my football is in HD. The rest... irrelevant. Stories are the same. I bought into DVD in 2000 for ease of use and widescreen. I see no benefit to BR beyond a better picture (extras are junk that I never watch and 5.1 sound is fin) and quite frankly that means nothing to me. We don't buy DVDs any more (no use, they'll never be rewatched), so Netflix gets us by just fine.
I did think of one person with BR - my parents. Yep, my 60+ year old parents bought a BR player a few months back. for the life of my I still can't understand why. Other than two folks over 60 I do not have a 30 or 40 something friend with BR. As downloaded media becomes bigger I see that winning my interest before BR. But even that has to deliver a movie to my HDTV for less than $1 per viewing (about what we pay for DVDs from Netflix). .
I don't understand the mentality of owning an HDTV if you're not going to watch the best HD content. But hey you're a tech guy, so you must be smart!....
Long live hd-dvd :)
If you are going to say long live HD DVD, at least spell it right!
Yeah, long live a format that even its creator wouldn't support. Cowsumers are amazing. Moo!
Nah consumers are not crazy.. they buy HD DVD because you can buy Transformers in pristine 1080p picture and incredible audio for a $1! You heard it for a $1.
Another proof that consumers are not crazy is that they are not buying into Blu-ray. Why? Well I'm guessing until the format actually works right and is finalized and by then who knows what will happen. Other sources are becoming much more interesting.
Most don't care to get the best speakers or uncompressed stereo audio on a cd but there are audiophiles that actually do care and claim to notice a difference. When it comes to video it's a lot easier to notice the difference in video than audio. Its nothing like comparing uncompressed audio to compressed mp3. Companies like Disney take a lot of time in remastering footage on Blu ray because there is a lot less compression involved and a lot better compression methods where you preserve quality for presentation.
If you rip a 720 by 480 dvd that is 2 hours long and convert it to a lossless video with the same 720 by 480 settings, the file size will around 120 GBs.
Put a dvd on your computer, convert it to a lossless format using the same color space then convert it right back to dvd then repeat the process 5 times and see how much quality is degraded each time.
If a 720 by 480 movie was made for and put on blu ray then it would look a lot closer to how good a high quality jpeg image looks meaning the quality seems lossless. But 1080p is in so what you get is something fairly close but not quite. They choose 1080p over a lower resolution since people are getting bigger tv sets and low res would mean a great image would be stretched and not look as good.
Blu ray is a nice step. but it is not as big of a step as vhs to dvd so it's understandable why people aren't catching on.
A side note I spend average on a blu ray disk just 15 dollars.
I have a ps3 so why not take advantage of it's blu ray player. Just the other day I bought 3 blu ray disks for 30 bucks. Why would I get it on dvd instead? That is some good pricing.
Its interesting that some would come on here and say that DVD is enough for them and find no need to get an HD format for their HDTVs. Of course, I'm betting those same people are using up-converting DVD players to get fake pixek resolution of those DVDs instead of getting real resolution.
They'd rather have the fake resolution than the genuine article. And they spend their time chiming in on a Blu-ray thread justifying their cow-thinking. Fake is great to a cowsumer heading to the slaughter house. Moo.
BTW... This study says plan to purchase this year, not plan to ever purchase. It also says 7% were interested. 7% of the US population is 21 million, correct? Well that's a lot of players to sell for this year. If 21 million players sell this year during this economic slowdown, that would be considered a runaway success.
So although 7% may sound like very little to the naysayers its not when you use real #'s.
Does largely make sense to me. Ironically, I suspect HD DVD's name would help it right now if it was around, whereas last year it seemed to be a problem because of the number of people who thought it was red laser.
...and, actually, I've seen an astonishing improvement in compression quality over the last two or three years, so I'm actually wondering now what the whole point of the format war was. A dual layer red DVD ought to be able to hold three or four hours of very high quality HD video (using the latest implementations of H.264) and a moderately decent, if not lossless, sound track. I go to the cinema, watch something that could be an upscaled DVD, go home, watch something in glorious ATSC (MPEG2 - yeah, MPEG2, @ 1080i), and find the latter looks better than the former. Even Dish Network's version of Cinemax in HD looks and sounds astonishing, at a rate of around 2-3Gb per hour of video. I'm not kidding. And that, obviously, is video converted in real time. Do it manually with people overseeing the process, looking for artifacts and adjusting the compression as necessary, and you'd be looking at similar bitrates for video that's visually free of noticable artifacts.
It's like the introduction of Hollywood supported HD formats happened at exactly the wrong time, at a point where the choice was either a very expensive blue laser technology, or a very low quality compression system. A little restraint, and we could have been looking, perhaps as early as this time last year, at $50-100 3XDVD players with HD/SD flip discs, and disc prices little different to regular DVD.
Instead we have an incompatible and expensive format very few people outside of the videophile community have any interest in.
Great work CE and Movie industry!
I don't understand the people who say DVD is good enough - then why do you own an HDTV? Yet these same people just have to have football in HD and claim they can't live without it - so why would a movie be any different?
Blu-ray is leaps and bounds better in PQ than DVD. Not just resolution - but color, saturation, and overall picture stability. Aren't those the same reasons you want your football in HD?
Go back to VHS and a 13-inch tube tv if something is "good enough" for you...
I agree completely. Saying there is no or little visible difference in BD over DVD is astonishing to me. Unless you're connecting it via coax or composite video the image simply pops. Even on smaller displays. And for all you haters out there, if you are happy with your DVDs that's fine with me but stop trying the bring the rest of us down.
Not shocked that HD DVDs are still selling big. The price for 1080p movies regardless if it's dead format or not are from $1-$5. That's pretty damn nice deal considering that you'll still get the same quality as Blu-ray.
This is simple economics. People don't want to upgrade to Blu-ray because you pay a premium for the player and the media is a premium as well. Blu-ray disks don't work on all of the other DVD players. In my house we have 4 DVD players and 1 up at the cabin. So I have to replace 5 DVD players at 250 a piece? Please. Half the DVD players I have are $40 bucks.
I can get a new release DVD for 14.44 the first week they are out at Walmart. That same disk is 22 - 25 bucks. There are very few places to rent blu-ray disks. The alternative is to upscale, and it does a 'good enough' job that its not horribly annoying.
Totally ignorant to say 'go back to VHS'. The difference between VHS and DVD is something everyone understood. The difference between an upscaled DVD and a blu-ray is harder to tell if you don't have a nice system.
But did you manage to buy all new HDTV's for each location? If you drop the money on an HDTV and then watch SD content, I've got some miracle snake oil I'd like to sell you....
For the record, I didn't buy an HDTV until I also had HD content available to watch on it, blu-ray and cable...well because it is a bit foolish to buy an HDTV only to watch stand def content on it. That's like buying a high end audio system to play your old cassette tapes on...doesn't make sense...
I'm going to go out on a limb here and this is my own opinion, but those who buy an HDTV and say DVD is "good enough" must fall into one of the following categories:
1. Idiots
2. Liars
3. All of the above.
It is completely illogical to drop the $$$ for an HDTV and then play LOW DEF content on it and declare with complete confidence that it is "good enough". Only a moron would admit to that. I'm not saying that if you watch DVD's on your HDTV then you're an idiot, no that's not the point I'm making, I'm singling out those who bought and HDTV to ONLY watch DVD's. And streaming content doesn't count in this debate, if you bought your HDTV only to watch HD football, you have your reward. I'm specifically tasking those who claim DVD is good enough...now if you're not into movies or physical media, fine, you are ok as well. But anyone who actually admits to being a movie buff and paying for one or more HDTV's and then admits to paying for DVD's to watch on those HDTV's, well, pick your category from above...
JimC
It’s been my experience with Blu-ray supporters who say people saying DVD is good enough don't know what they are talking about usually fall under one of several categories:
1) They're elitists
2) Paranoid about their format's success
3) DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT
4) Have too much money for home entertainment
6) Delusional about format qualities
7) All of the above
Just because somebody doesn't hold the same opinion about something that you do doesn't make them inferior to you, it just means they have the right to their opinion, and when you consider that Blu-ray is often 25-30% more costly than DVD, in times of economic upheaval good enough will occur. I know people who have bought media going all the way back to the beta/vhs war and bought into LaserDisc because of its higher quality and they have even said that there are only a few exceptions where Blu-ray is a major upgrade to DVD, and even then they weren't willing to pay retail, or discounted retail, for the they bought, they waited for it to come down in price before buying it. Blu-ray is too young to be cheap but with emerging formats and delivery methods coming down the pipeline quicker than the HD market's popularity emergence it is doomed to fail without some major changes, because people are becoming less and less concerned about the media storage process and quality, and more and more about how much it costs, not to mention streaming media which can be changed in seconds and loaded in minutes vs DVD and Blu-ray which requires the user to get up and change out the discs and then completely reload the machine taking up more time than streaming media buffering time is a factor now also.
3dpenguin, I thank you for your opinion but you're completely off the mark. I'm not being elitist, if you carefully study my comment, the point may penetrate your preconceived canned response....
It is doubtful you will get my point so I'll spell it out for you. Saying DVD is good enough is an OPINION based on not on quality because most if not all who do a side-by-side comparison *will* see the difference, just ask any Best Buy salesperson. The "good enough" only comes into play when someone is unwilling to pay the premium for the blu-ray. The illogical aspect of this stance however kicks in at this point: if you are a movie buff and has paid the premium for an HDTV and now can chose between buying low def DVD's or HD blu-ray, and you *now* chose to not take advantage of the HD premium you paid for in your display by choosing the content that will not take advantage of that display, then I say you're illogical, possibly an idiot, or you're lying because you realize you bought way too much TV and now have to live with the fact that you bought a premium display that you cannot now take advantage of. It is often too much for someone to admit their mistakes so rather they justify to themselves that "good enough" is good enough...I'm not being elitist, if you want to watch low def movies, why invest in an HD display...tell me that is a logical thing to do...just about same as when I see people in the office with a 24" HD display but have their windows display settings to 800x600 and don't have clear-type text enabled...totally wastes the investment of the HD display....
helen, this is not actually true. Some are shot in higher quality but some are not shot in higher quality. Film can be better then digital but sometimes It’s not. This is just like the whole analog Vs digital debate on which looks better. Most film is not done is 35mm. Some movies are they they exspect to use the higher quality.
BarkingGhost, just because something is shot in lower res doesn’t mean it won’t look sharp. You can see a difference on how it was shot compared to how your screen can display it. A prime example is sports. Yes some are done in 720p while others are in 1080i. When I watch CBS using 1080i for the NFL I see a huge difference between Fox’s 720p. However, when I am watch ABC/ESPN doing baseball in 720p it looks pretty close to being the same as 1080i that CBS does.
The bottom line is it all depends on the user and time after time the surveys always show that people doesn’t don’t see much of a difference between DVD and Blu-Ray while they saw a huge difference between VHS and DVD. No matter how good Blu-Ray is, the general public doesn’t see it that much better. And a big part is most movies still and in the past aren’t done in high enough quality. However, as time passes they will be done in better quality.
It has been my experience that those who didn't see the difference really never looked. Once I showed them the blu-ray version, they were sold. I even went as far as letting a friend borrow my second blu-ray player, to let him experience it. He was hooked and immediately bought one. So my opinion is, those who say there is no difference are either are not being truthful, what they really are saying is that they are either unwilling to take a look or are incapable of discerning quality, there is no other logical conclusion...
Blu-Rays do look far better. Some are a HUGE LEAP in quality. For example the older James Bond movies. They looks ok in DVD, but for the Blu-Ray releases, they went though them, clean them up, fixed them. If it was just a DVD re-release, it'd be a major Improvement, but on Blu-Ray, the difference is HUGE!!! Night and day difference. I don't mind watching SD content. I stream Netflix. Have a huge DVD collection, and quite a few HD DVD's, which I also did the red2blu program and will be getting a bunch of them into Blu-Ray format, and I own quite a few Blu-Rays also. There have been a few very poor Blu-Ray releases, but for the most part, Blu-Ray (and HD DVD) look and sound far better then DVD. I still hate hate the SLOW JAVA crap on Blu-Ray over the faster HDi of HD DVD for sure, and so I do limit my BD LIVE stuff because of the LONG WAIT TIMES!!!
I think the main problem is people are buying too small of a HDTV for their viewing distance. It's either because of cost, or they don't want this HUGE HDTV in the room overpowering everything else(The wife!!!). Or it need to be small enough to fit into a old SDTV cabinet. Blu-Ray is not going to look any better then DVD on a 42" HDTV from 12 feet away!!! I have my 50" screen and am under 7 feet from the screen. I can see a clear difference. Also part of the problem is incorrect cable hookup's, or not switching there BOX from 480i mode over to 720P, 1080i, or 1080P and so they're watching 1080i content scaled down to 480i because they didn't switch viewing mode on their BOX from the default!!! Think your watching HD content? Make sure and push that INFO button for your HDTV and make sure it shows a HD resolution and not 480i and check ALL of your hardware!!!
I'm not interested in Blu-Ray either. For me it's simply a matter of DRM. I refused to buy DVDs until a method of copying DVDs came out. Now, I don't pirate any movies, and I don't lend out my DVDs so they can be copied, but I do want to be able to use the movies I buy wherever I want to use them (movie jukebox, iPod, laptop, DVD player, etc.). Until I can similarly make unrestricted personal copies of a Blu-Ray disc that I own, I won't be interested in Blu-Ray.
There is one MAJOR factory everyone is leaving out. EYESIGHT. If someones vision is poor or they're glasses prescription is off, they will never be able to tell the difference! My wife, in-laws, and several other people cannot tell the difference between Blu-ray and regular DVD even though I can. I have to agree on the fact the players still cost too much and load WAAAAY to slow. I have tried searching for a comparison on player loading times but have found nothing that is up to date, just "Fastest player yet" These movies would load alot faster if they just left the stupid Java Menus out. All I care about is the movie, not the menus and bonus features!
@pat -- "Yet these same people just have to have football in HD and claim they can't live without it - so why would a movie be any different?"
Because football viewing is all about watching the action. Movies do not really depend on visuals the same way. Seeing if a football touches the ground on a catch matters to me. Seeing Nicole kidman's pores or a special effect in great detail - it does nothing to improve the movie's story. Movies, to me, are about story, writing, acting and directing. Picture quality is pretty much not something I care about for a movie. If I watch Casablanca on a BR will it suddenly be a better movie? Will Superbad be funnier if it's in BR? Will I care more about Martin Riggs if I see his truck pull down a house in 1080p? Nope.
Different priorities. NFL football is important to me. Seeing things more clearly in a movie... one of the least important aspects of a film (after FX which are the LEAST important thing about a story).
JimC, switch to decaf, bud. You should enjoy you BR movies. I won't buy in. I bought hundreds of DVDs and realized that was a waste. There is not a movie made that will become better to me because the picture is clearer. Yrp, 1080p looks pretty. The depth, the clarity, the richness of it all is impossible to ignore. I'm not ignoring it, I'm simply saying for what I do with my TV (no video gaming), no TV shows, mostly movie watching and NFL Football, BR does not alter anything enough to make me interested. I don't see enough benefit or longevity in BR to make it worthwhile. BR isn't gonna brick like my 3DO from the early 90s but likewise I don't think it's going to become a defacto standard in the next 5 years either. It's more niche.
Xbox and PS3 are accepting physical media isn't the wave. The world's leaving media behind. I will not buy into another LaserDisc. No point as I'm happy with what I have.
If i'm totally wrong then one day a movie I want will not be on DVD and only on BR. On that day I'll drive to the store and buy a BR player. But I have a feeling that day won't come before the day that I can get 1080p movies from Amazon/Roku online for $1 rental fee.
I'm happy for you, but that doesn't speak to my point but thanks for playing...
To JimC,
People buy HDTV for many reasons. The main reason is "everyone else is getting it, so should we". Second reason is that it is just not easy to buy SDTV anymore. You go into BestBuy and you will see tons of LCD, plasma, and occasionally DLP, but you cannot see a tube TV.
Content wise, you can still use HDTV for TV, in case people forget. OTA programming, cable, satellite etc. Lots of HD content there.
You can also play Xbox 360, PS3 games, both of which are HD gaming consoles. You know, you do not really have to watch Blu-Ray if you have a PS3. There are games for it.
And you decide to buy a Blu-Ray player, that is an option too. Good for you.
You people can't read...I'm talking about those who say DVD is good enough, I realize people can buy HDTV for many different reasons other than blu-ray. That wasn't my point. My point is claiming DVD is good enough is a falsehood and illogical. It is not that DVD's are good enough, it is that even though you've paid for Hi-Def, you're settling on Standard Def not because picture quality is "good enough" but because you either have no idea what your missing or you found that blu-ray is too expensive, but neither of these speaks to the truth of DVD being "good enough". Only thing is good enough is DVD's price, so let's not conflate blu-ray's capabilities with your inability to take advantage of your display capabilities.
If you bought your HDTV for playing games, watching HD cable, or anything other than DVD or blu-ray, then don't reply to this comment...