People just not that into Blu-ray

£30 or £3?

When buying a film, I buy Blu-ray where possible. But at £30 per movie, it's friggin expensive. The DVD upscaling on my PS3 is good enough for a lot of movies anyway (at least the ones that I don't warrant as 'good enough' to bother with full HD).

@Ben Norris

"Thanks to the miracles of digital as long as the signal gets there it will be perfect so those £80+ HDMI cables that the likes of Currys and Comet try to sell you are absolutely pointless."

Not so fast there. For short cable runs between devices with decent quality transmit and receive hardware, an el-cheapo cable will work just fine. Start trying to send digital data across longer lengths, from a device which isn't quite as good at generating a clean signal, or to a device which isn't quite as good at pulling a valid data stream out of the received signal, as they could be, and you start to learn that even in the digital world, there are still times when you need to pay more for the bits of wet string linking your devices together.

It's not just a question of getting the signal to the other end of the cable, it's a question of getting it there without distorting it so much that the receiver can't pull anything intelligible from it - when it comes to sending signals down a bit of copper wire, especially at high bit rates, the analogue world has a nasty habit of gatecrashing the supposedly perfect digital party. So whilst I'd be happy to predict that in the majority of cases, people buying expensive HDMI cables *are* being ripped off by dodgy salesdroids, there are some situations where higher quality cables are absolutely essential.

I'm just an average Joe

I bought a portable CD player in 1986 because the quality was awesome compared to my portable tape player.

I bought a DVD player because the quality was far superior to VHS

But blueray? Yeah the quality is a bit better but nowhere near the extent to justify ditching my collection of DVD's for BR.

I need to have the same massive leap to even think for a second about replacing my film collection. My DVD has a sharp picture, lovely sound and that will do ta.

Withnewspaper and I

The "buy all your favourite films... again" bandwagon has arrived at platform 2.0, Absurdville station.

I bought a newspaper a week ago for a free copy of Withnail and I. What was on the back of the DVD sleeve? "Buy this film on Bluray from the whateverth of June/July".

Yes, they actually gave away the *entire film* on DVD as an advert for the Bluray disc.

@Citizen Kaned

"@"BD movies insist I watch all the crap the studios/publishers/whatever shove on the front of every movie - so I have no control" - you mean like DVDs do? or do you watch too many copies to remember this?"

Umm, rather than assume anyone who doesn't enjoy sitting through enforced trailers, FBI/FACT warnings etc. must be watching dodgy DVDs, how about considering that they are probably using a DVD player which simply ignores all the restrictions baked into the disc, and allows the user to skip these annoyances... How many Blu-ray players offer a similar level of control to their users, hmm?

Life span

So, the DVD in the same point in it's development was suffering the exact same problems. the discs were over-prices, blah blah blah.

Dvd has been in my household for the last 10 years... in those ten years, we've seen prices of DVD discs drop from £20 to circa £7.99 for alot of new releases, Bluray will go exactly the same.

As for loading times - Theres almost no difference between the last dvd I bought and the last Bluray I bought - I'm playing both through my PS3.

I must be in the minority that enjoy the Bluray experience.

@the fuzzy wotnot

"What's the point in having HD is the content was shot in normal quality?!"

Anything originally shot on 35mm film, is in HD already. The problem is poor quality film that has either degraded over time, or was pretty bad quality to start with. These need a lot of restoration work before being released, to clean them up. Ironically, they are in much higher definition than films, like the newer star wars, that were shot digitally.

HD-DVD

Having just bought an XBOX 360 Elite in preference to a PS3 I'll soon be investing on a HD-DVD drive for the XBOX. The way I see it is I'll be able to pick up a whole load of cheap movies which I can enjoy in 720p (only got a 720p telly) and then when the price of Bluray comes down to near DVD prices (I mean the players and the discs) then I'll get either a Bluray player or PS3.

I'm not convinced that download are going to take off just yet (even with 20 Meg broadband on Virgin it still takes a while to download 4GB of data) but maybe in a couple of years when the speeds go up a bit (say to 50/75/100 Meg) then I can see it happening.

Rob

Very little worth watching

I bought a big HDTV a couple of weeks ago, and feeling that I ought to experience some proper HD on it I started researching bluray players. But then I had a look through all the blu-ray discs currently on sale on Play and Amazon, and there are probably no more that 10 that I would take even if offered to me for free! So many recent shit hollywood c-list films, so few classics that a film enthusiast who might be tempted to invest in a premium format would care to watch - whoever is in charge of deciding what gets released needs firing, into a brick wall.

So I've concluded i will not waste money on a bluray player, but might get a PS3 for use as a media pc which will handle discs and stream all my downloaded content, and may even get me back into playing games.

As for what i've actually been watching on my new TV, mostly low and standard quality downloads, and freeview. I've not even bothered to put a dvd, the best quality source available to me, on yet.

hmm part II (REDUX)

@"I have a PS3, I had it with a bog standard CRT for a good year. I finally decided I wanted to free up the 2ft by 5ft space my jumbo CRT took in the living room and bought a flat screen. Obviously I bought a HD Samsung. The only difference between playing GTA with and without a HD connection is that I can read the text clearer going through HDMI." -man! your eyes MUST be BAD!

ps3 SD = 30HZ

ps3 HD = 60Hz.

that ie enough to make me want to move. the ps3 on SD is terrible. i guess its due to the samsung TV (they are all crap, the ones i have seen anyway - we have 5 here at work :() their monitors suck too. and to be honest GTA is a crappy looking blurry game. try some of the 1080p games, they will blow you away! or even something like tomb raider (new one) looks better than 90% of CGI films lol!

@"Your eyes cannot tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray disc, anyone who says they can is lying to save face because they think they're stupid for not being able to tell the difference." - as before. get rid of that crappy samsung and get a decent 1080p 24fps dropdown TV. the quality increase is massive.

people are also missing the much better quality sound aspect, althouigh i guess many people still use the TV speakers?

@"1) I have yet to see any HD/BluRay movie show a better picture quality than my current, standard TV.

2) Sound is way, WAY more important than picture

3) Too bloody expensive (players and discs)

4) Too much DRM

5) Why waste money on BluRay when 3D is 'round the corner?

I'll probably buy an HD telly once my current one dies, but only because that'll be what I can get; not because HD is any better."

come round to one of our houses who have a decent rig then. and read my above point about sound quality, much sharper, althouigh i have a decent set of speakers all round my lounge.

everyone here moans abouy DRM, yet the next piratebay article we will see all your names coming up with downloading crappy qualiuty movies and music. remember its the pirates than necessitate DRM. you cause it yourself. and btw - BR on PS3 - if i stick the disk in, then turn on the tv the movie is ready by the time i sit down. wow, what a major inconvenience. to be honest its better than the crappy piracy bullshit you see at the start of all legit DVDs (that you cant skip either)

@""My best friend has gone back to watching VHS and I don't blame him! He can watch a film or a tv show and stop it come back to it a few days later and pick up exactly where he left off! How many people can do that with their DVD's or Blu-Ray? Not many."" - erm. any decent dvd player for the last 10 years will do this. the ps3 can remember too.

@"I recently bought Xbox 360 and HD gaming is a great step up, I never realised what I was missing until I upgraded my old original Xbox 3 months ago, but HD TV and DVD, give me a break, it ain't worth it!!!" so, gaming in 720i or whatever is amazing by the same movie in 1080p is no difference? way to contradict yourself there!

@"Umm, rather than assume anyone who doesn't enjoy sitting through enforced trailers, FBI/FACT warnings etc. must be watching dodgy DVDs, how about considering that they are probably using a DVD player which simply ignores all the restrictions baked into the disc, and allows the user to skip these annoyances... How many Blu-ray players offer a similar level of control to their users, hmm?" - fair point. i have never seen one that can skip PUO stuff. i cant even FF some on DVDs! in fact is PUO a directive from the DVD authors? what dvd player does this? or is it a PC one (i can skip as i use anydvd on my home machine... but have never found a bit of dvd s/w on a pc that comes close to a standalone dvd player/ps3 etc.

China threat

"If the Chinese invade with a lesser-DRM'ed über-HD format of their own choosing"

They're pushing CBHD now. China Blue High Definition.

Guess what CBHD is?

Yes, it's HD DVD, rebranded! And Warner are signed up already.

Even the players look identical to the Tosh line up, right down to the menus!

(however the codecs are a little different, but that's down to China not wanting to pay for expensive codec licenses so they developed their own /ripped-off new codecs. Blu-Ray was a non-starter due to the massive licence costs and restrictions).

Really I see it as whatever China can pump out cheap vs Downloads/Streaming. 5 to 10 years from now that is. At the moment HD is a non-starter for most.

Even Sky HD is failing big time with very buggy boxes and still a £10 a month additional sub.

Blu-ray changed my viewing habits

I used to buy about 50% of the DVDs I watched. Now, I don't see the reason to buy an old format and since I don't have a Blu-ray player yet there is no sense in buying the new discs. Instead, my AppleTV collection is growing. Same DRM crap but at least I can watch the movies on any computer in the house as well, instead of having to buy yet another drive. If I need to see a movie as soon as it's released on DVD (iTunes is usually a month behind) I go to TPB.

Thanks, Blu-ray. If it wasn't for your expensive players and discs I'd still be buying DVDs.

pointless

There is such a thing as on-demand. And it is avaialble in hd. And for a tenth of the price of a blu ray disc you watch the movie you want when you want.... Most movies you will watch only once anyway ... no point in having the disc.

physical storage is dead. streaming is the new thing.

RE: hmm part II (REDUX)

"remember its the pirates than necessitate DRM. you cause it yourself."

Wow, you live on what exactly planet?

FYI, DRMs are not meant to fight piracy - piracy is an annoying but acceptable side-effect. The DRMs are there to control how and when you use the content. If you control that, you can charge the user for any new way he could find to watch your movie, you can restrict the number of times the content is watched, you can withdraw your permission to watch the content completely, forcing the user to pay for it again.

Unless your idea of piracy includes such things as watching a movie while skipping the ads, watching at home a movie you bought in another country, watching a movie you bought on any other device of your choice, piracy has really, absolutely nothing to do with DRMs.

Am I noticing a trend here?

No one wants to upgrade from XP to Vista / Windows 7, most common reason given - "XP works just fine for me, don't need to upgrade and don't want your pointless bloat and DRM"

People don't want to change from DVD to BD, most common reason given - "DVDs work just fine for me, don't need to upgrade and don't want your pointless bloat and DRM"

OK, its only two things, hardly a trend, but is it the way things are at the moment? There has been no huge improvement in the products on offer.

People expect better, not more of the same but with chains attached.

The last thing I bought that actually made things better than they were before was a Thompson DVR / Freeview Box that I bought in 2004.

Since then everything on offer has been a new version of a previous product with no real improvement on the last.

If..

Bluray players were a price where someone who needs a new DVD player would think ' thats not so much more and its future proof' then they would sell more. Even if the end user doesn't intend to buy Bluray disks just yet.

I would - if they made a wall mounted one that would attach to the wall next to my wall mounted TV.

BTW, what media player do people here use? Want to dump all my DVD so can stream from a PC on to TV's around the house. (Wireless if possible)

LOL, the Toshiba loonies are out.

The 100 people still hurt by HD DVD and havn't moved on, clearly all got emailed and have arrived here to pretend Blu-Ray sucks...

The funny thing, the HD DVD loonies claimed they cared about HD and were videophiles, clearly they aren't, or they would have embraced Blu-Ray by now.

PS, clearly many people havn't heard of managed copy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System#Managed_Copy

Many discs already have this, allowing you to make SD copies of the HD movie you own, and copying them to portable devices like the PSP and iPod. I have about 4 disc that have it so far, I expect more to arrive, as companies want to justify the small price increase over DVD.

Got both - still prefer HD-DVD

No region coding and all players came with a network port as standard in case a firmware update was needed.

A good number of the budget (hah!) Blu-Ray players out there are old models with the older profile and no network port to update the software. They're also glacially slow to use. Apart from the PS3, even the latest Blu-Ray players are pains to use. One or two minutes to get as far as the first screen seem to be standard. Then that screen is the unskippable 'You thieving bastard' copyright warning. After that, I think Disney hold the record in requiring a further TWELVE button presses to get to the main menu.

As for the movies - yes some of them look amazing in Blu-Ray - especially animation; but for the average brain-dead kickboxing cyborg timetraveller movie that's about the limit of my intellectual capacity these days, DVD will do nicely thank you very much.

I guess I'm in the minority.

I'll add my voice to the "few" number of people in this thread who've posted that they actually like Blu-ray.

@The Avangelist: "Your eyes cannot tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray disc, anyone who says they can is lying to save face because they think they're stupid for not being able to tell the difference."

That is a deliberatively provocative statement, and quite false. I can quite easily tell the difference on my TV. From DVD to Blu-ray is as different as VHS to DVD. Especially if you have a Blu-ray movie that's actually been produced correctly - as opposed to many that are just whipped off in the format but without any particular attention to doing a good job with it. This is not me just being "stupid" but an objective and empirical statement. There are movies that I've watched in both DVD and Blu-ray. With the Blu-ray I've been able to read text on signs in the background that cannot be read on the DVD version.

I only buy Blu-ray at this point, and the movies I currently own on DVD that I consider to be the best I am slowly converting over. (Others I will just keep on DVD.)

@The Avangelist

"My best friend has gone back to watching VHS and I don't blame him! He can watch a film or a tv show and stop it come back to it a few days later and pick up exactly where he left off! How many people can do that with their DVD's or Blu-Ray? Not many."

I bought one of the first DVD players released, a sony, and it had the ability to store the position in up to 9 films I believe. That's around 1997.

Heh

I never had the money to get into laserdisc, so DVD was a godsend to me. Movies in their OAR at a decent price, with lots of great extra features that I could watch on my computer. I spent all my money on them, and have a nice little collection now.

There is no reason for me to upgrade. If I ever get a TV and want to buy a player, I might then, and just buy newer films on Bluray, but I can't even remember the last time I bought a newer movie... maybe about a year ago?

Also, I hate the cases they come in, go figure.

Fool me once...

Problem for BD is twofold, first, the normal marketing curve (innovators>early adopters>mass market>laggards) for digital media has been broken; all those innovators and early adopters have already made the jump to downloads (illegally or otherwise) or streaming, rendering their BD device redundant (I use my PS3 almost exclusively for playing back downloaded content - I probably own 10 BD discs max), even if the quality isn't as good as BD (a lesson the film and TV industries should have learned from music; for the majority of people, availability trumps quality). Without these ealry adopters telling friends and family to get BD, all the marketing in the world won't help BD succeed.

The second problem is that the adoption curve for HD TVs has hit the mass market, but the mass market wouldn't know HD content if it bit them on the arse - most people assume if their TV says "HD enabled" that's what they're getting. The most salutary lesson for me was showing my (Luddite) brother the difference between SD and HD by flicking between a ITV SD and HD football broadcast using the red button on my Freesat box; the direct comparison was what it took for him to get the point of HD.

re: too pricey for what it gives

You realise the Xbox doesn't do Blu-Ray? Infact it barely does HD, which was tacked on as a afterthought,

Many Xboxes don't even have HDMI, and the ones that do, use a old obsolete version that does not do audio.