February 19, 2008, was supposed to be a watershed day in the short history of home entertainment. That was the day when consumers could finally march into stores and buy the next generation of DVD player with confidence, safe in the knowledge that they hadn't just blown $400 on the digital equivalent of the 8-track tape player or the Betamax machine.
That was the day when Toshiba announced that it was throwing in the towel on its HD-DVD format, one of two competing and incompatible standards for encoding discs for high-definition video. After two years of bitter rivalry, HD-DVD had lost the format wars to Blu-Ray, a standard backed by Sony and other media giants. Blu-Ray, named for the bluish laser used to etch the data, had a disc capacity five times greater than its predecessor, enough to hold the mass of information needed to play super-sharp HD video with state-of-the-art sound.
Tens of millions of consumers now have HDTV sets in their homes, so Toshiba's surrender freed them to jump off the fence and go get that high-def DVD experience they'd been waiting for.
Funny thing, though: Here it is nearly nine months later, and almost everybody is still sitting on that fence.
"We're still looking at it," said Jim Waddick of Kansas City, who owns a 62-inch projection TV and home theater system. He sees the $200 to $300 price tags on Blu-Ray players, and the limited choice of models, and wonders if Hollywood really is on board with this latest shiny-disc format.
And it's not like HD entertainment is an itch he's desperate to scratch: In addition to three dozen hi-def channels available through Time Warner Cable, Waddick can rent HD movies through Time Warner's video-on-demand service. He's even got a Mac mini hooked up to his TV for downloading and watching HD titles straight from the Internet.
"After all the wars between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, I expected there to be a real commitment to Blu-Ray," said Waddick.
You may recall the last time we had a big format war, it also involved shiny discs. First-generation DVDs were challenged by DIVX, a rental-only format backed by some major studios and retail store Circuit City (which would go on to lose $114 on its gamble). Consumers soon rejected DIVX because it rendered the disc unusable after 48 hours unless the renter called a phone number and paid more money. The death of DIVX in 1999 seemed to unleash a pent-up demand for the compact, feature-laden video format, and DVD sales took off.
Of course, that may be one reason there hasn't been a run on Blu-Ray discs -- shelves all across America are already filled with first-generation DVDs. Not many titles are out on Blu-Ray and those that are generally cost more. And two other factors have uniquely bedeviled Blu-Ray. One is the rapid growth of download services that offer high-quality, if not high-definition, video at the push of a button; the other is the decision, made two years ago by the companies that backed Blu-Ray, to rush their product onto the market before it was really finished.
At an average of $315 per unit, the cost of the average Blu-Ray player has declined 14 percent in the past year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Still, $315 is several times the sticker price of a typical first-generation DVD player. Price cuts should be announced in the next couple of weeks, as retailers fearful of a soft holiday shopping season do whatever they can to get customers into stores. Blu-Ray players under $200 should soon become a common sight.
Even so, the CEA estimates that only about 1.7 million of the new devices will be sold in 2008. The trade group does project that sales will triple in 2009, to 5.8 million units. Tens of thousands of movies and TV shows have been released on DVD, but the number of Blu-Ray titles available right now hasn't even cracked the 1,000 mark (though it will by Christmas).
"It's important to remember that it's still a very new technology," said Shawn DuBravac, an economist with the CEA. "And not every product is meant to have the adoption rate as DVD players. You probably won't see that with Blu-Ray."
So why invest in a new DVD player? From personal experience, I can say that Blu-Ray delivers a top-of-the-line home theater experience that meets or exceeds the sensory effect of watching network shows like "CSI" and "24" in HD. Blu-Ray discs hold a gargantuan amount of data -- 50 gigabytes per disc, or the equivalent of more than 10 DVD-R discs -- which means that video quality need not be compromised. Online services and cable and satellite TV all compress HD video to make the download times faster. Compressed video is often noticeably less sharp and fluid than uncompressed video. That's an advantage Blu-Ray can claim, and it's obvious to most people who compare its video quality to downloads (or even HD movie channels like HBO and Starz).
It's worth remembering, though, that most Americans picked the inferior VCR format over Betamax, and that laser discs never really caught on, and that when people first brought HDTVs into their basements, it was to watch standard-definition DVDs on their big screens -- even when HD cable was available, many didn't spring for it. Superior video quality is nice, but price and convenience matter, too.
Indeed, after Blu-Ray won the format war, Microsoft raised the white flag. The software and video game giant had supported the losing HD-DVD format in its Xbox consoles, but has repeatedly denied any plans to switch to Blu-Ray. Instead, Microsoft says it will support digital downloads.
Even when price isn't a factor, consumers are balking on Blu-Ray. Robert Bruce, proprietor of SoundFX in Kansas City, said his high-end customers are asking about download services more than they are about Blu-Ray. One such service, which is on display prominently in his showroom, is the Vudu box. This small, Internet-connected appliance can instantly download more than 10,000 movies and TV shows at fees that start at 99 cents. Vudu has more than 1,100 high-definition downloads starting at $4, which means its HD library is larger than the total number of Blu-Ray titles on the market.
"We want Blu-Ray to succeed, we really do," said Bruce. "But the feedback we get from our customers is that there aren't that many titles that grab you. If the 'Star Wars' trilogy was out (on Blu-Ray), if all the 'Lord of the Rings' were out, and were really well done, people would be telling us, 'I've gotta have that.'"
That could start to change this holiday season. For instance, the upcoming release of the animated hit "Wall-E" won't be offered in HD on Vudu, but it will be available on Blu-Ray discs. If studios start favoring Blu-Ray in that fashion, it would probably have an effect similar to when Tower Records stopped carrying, well, records.
And the CEA's DuBravac argues that Hollywood hasn't begun to exploit the full potential of Blu-Ray. With its massive storage, for instance, "you can actually have the director's picture superimposed over the movie, pointing things out" -- in other words, a video commentary track. (Or perhaps even a hologram -- what "Star Wars" nut wouldn't like to see the image of George Lucas beamed into his own film?)
But there's one other concern that gives people like Waddick pause. They've read Internet horror stories of early adopters who bought a Blu-Ray player, then discovered that not all Blu-Ray discs would play in it. That's because the machines were rushed onto the market in order to compete with HD-DVD players before the Blu-Ray standard was finalized. The earlier players can usually be made compatible with newer discs through a software upgrade, but the tales of woe have hurt. SoundFX's Bruce said the format is "known to be evolving."
A lot of grumbling about Blu-Ray would go away, however, if the price fell dramatically -- $149, anyone? With retailers desperate to avoid the holiday blues, it still may be a Blu-Ray Christmas after all.
(Blu-Ray discs are easy to spot in the store: Their cases are about an inch shorter than regular DVD cases, and they have a distinctive blue strip along the top of the case.)
It took me three years to get a DVD player. It cost $220.
In the next six years, I collected another bunch - two computers with DVD drives, one that came as a credit card perk, and a portable player for long car trips with our son.
In 2004, I even bought a Panasonic DVR (no longer being manufactured) so I could convert a fairly large videotape collection before the tapes were all obsolete.
With all that "regular" DVD technology in my home (and office and car), I have NO NEED for Blu-Ray...especially when everything that's released on Blu-Ray is also on "regular" DVD.
In the present economy, there is no pressing need to "require" this technology. And as such, I won't.
Posted by: Jeff | November 17, 2008 at 03:33 PM
After years of replacing their VHS libraries with DVDs, people aren't anxious to do it again with Blu-Ray. I think people realize that their collections of watched-once titles are gathering dust, while they purchase, rent, or download new titles. If they can download or rent titles whenever they want, why buy?
Also, most people are unaware that Blu-Ray players can play their existing DVDs, eliminating the expense of replacing them with Blu-Ray.
Posted by: Cliff | November 17, 2008 at 04:42 PM
Funn you say that, given that Woot had a BluRay on sale today for $139.
[Are you sure you weren't looking at an internal BD drive for a computer? That's about what they're selling for.--AB]
Posted by: AMNewsBoy | November 17, 2008 at 05:30 PM
The Woot deal was on a standard Blu-ray player, not an internal drive or anything like that.
[Well, they've just been one-upped by Walmart....--AB]
Posted by: Laurel Krahn | November 19, 2008 at 01:46 PM
The simple fact is that Blu-Ray discs are overpriced and will soon be obsolete. The improved picture is not $10 better than a DVD and consumers only adopted DVDs since they had a much better picture and were about the same price as videotapes.
It's just another example of media companies overpricing new technology. Price Blur-Ray at the same price or a dollar higher and they may survive but I'm betting that download devices will wipe them out (See CD sales versus iTune downloads).
Posted by: J Sim | November 20, 2008 at 05:23 PM
Blu-ray is not a upgrade from dvd , it's a forced technology people could care less about , the data transfer rate is miserably slow , this why ps3 has to "INSTALL" every game , they cannot run it from the disc .
I will never touch blu-ray it's a stupid technology not needed by anyone except greedy old business men.
Posted by: FG | December 18, 2008 at 07:42 PM