When Will Blu-ray Dominate DVD?
Posted in Commentary on May 19th, 2008 by Dave
These days I see a lot of postings and rumblings about how, now that Blu-ray has defeated HD DVD, there is no sign of rapid price drops or promotions that it would need if it is to also dominate standard DVD. The aspect of these posts that amazes me somewhat is that they seem to come from a position of surprise or disdain.
These kinds of posts inspired me to write a commentary article pointing out what I feel are the obvious reasons behind this apparent lack of drive to dominance in the sell through video market. You can check out the article here or from the link in the side bar under Featured Articles.
Have fun with it, and if you have anything to add or want to disagree, feel free to comment below…
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May 20th, 2008 at 6:46 am
What you failed to mention: Most people have multiple SD-DVD players in their homes, portable SD-DVD players and some even SD-DVD players in their vehicles.
The biggest problem that the consumer is faced with, buying a BD movie with no portability. Meaning, if they have a sole BD player in the main room, Jr. can’t play the BD in his room, or in the car or in the card dvd player, resulting in the consumer having to double-dip.
Buying multiple BD players at the current pricing point isn’t feasible for most. So unless BD players come down substantially in price, making it affordable for consumers to replace all their existing SD-DVD players to embrace the BD format, or unless BD starts making dual format discs for a modest price over single format, a lot of consumers are going to continue to purchase SD-DVDs over BDs.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am
It is interesting to see that a number of titles are including digital copy in their packaging.
In order to do this they are including a DVD as a second disc, since most people have DVD drives in their PC and do not have Blu-ray drives.
If that becomes popular it would appear to solve the problem of portability. Certainly if a DVD is a desired feature for the HD package, it is apparently not too much additional cost to add one.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Always price does matter, as well as advertise.
Since, HD DVD rose a white flag. Blu-ray camp seems do not care about what is going on around with them anymore. download service video system will not like to into the all the homes across the globe, but it will be happen in some point close as 5 years with where high-speed calbe is available. They don’t have much time to enjoy their victory, unless they want dying silently while high-speed
net cable spreads before blu-ray sets on every home around the globe.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Personally I don’t see downloads replacing sell through packaged media any time soon, if ever.
I could see the potential of streaming video, like the Netflix service making inroads into the rental market, but for the sell through market people want a physical product they can hold in their hands - otherwise they would just rent movies…
Perhaps the downloads versus discs will be a topic in a future commentary post…
May 21st, 2008 at 4:14 am
Yes, Dave, your statement, “In order to do this they are including a DVD as a second disc”, would solve the portability problem, but I haven’t seen any BD packaged this way. Out of the 15 blu ray discs that I own, none have a secondary disc.
I believe it would be cheaper and wiser for them to add anotherlayer to the BD and incorporate the sd dvd version. it would be too easy for someone to buy a BD with the additional SD disc and turn around and give or sekk the SD disc to someone else, which could cut down on the potential number of studio sales.
But nonetheless, until they incorporate the DVD in with the BD package whether it be a seperate disc or an additional layer, I, along with many others that are in the same situation, plan to be very selective when purchasing BD titles.
Too bad though, because this can only slow the adaptation of BD. Let’s hope the studios understand this and decide to do something about it.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:58 am
It is a pretty new feature being used by Fox and soon by Lionsgate.
Take a look for Juno, Hitman, AVPR or the upcoming Rambo and The Eye discs from Lionsgate.
I also don’t have any of these discs yet so I am not sure that the second disc has the full SD movie on a DVD but I will try to find out.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
I did some research and it appears that for the Hitman title at least the second disc only has digital copies, no actual DVD movie, so sadly it would seem that while they cater for PC and portable device users they do not cater for secondary DVD users.
I believe that JVC developed a combo-like disc with BD and DVD but have never heard much about it let alone any desire to use it from the studios.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:24 am
You commented that a slower uptake of Blu-ray is “okay” and suppose that BR will eventually become mainstream and not end up a dead-end niche like Laserdisc. I think that you assumption is wrong, and milking both the DVD stream and keeping the BR stream high-priced will keep DVD alive long enough so that BR gets skipped in favor of the “next big thing”.
Whether that is cheap downloads, streaming, or the next-gen optical system is irrelevant. The point will be that BR never gets enough penetration to withstand challenges from both DVD and the “next big thing”.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
The problem with Bluray is one of perception, and the window is closing.
If you own Bluray and compare it to the cable HD broadcasts like HD Net, MGM-HD and HBO-HD, the two formats are not even in the same league, yet to the consumer who has not waded in, this is what he is told, and what he believes. HD is Bluray.
So while the studios maximize profits, and delay the release of Bluray titles, the enthusiasm wanes, and people shift from buying, to renting, to viewing, to not caring and moving on to other things.
First rule of sales, strike while the iron is hot. If the studios had any sense at all they would release a disk on Bluray first, and wait 2 months before releasing the DVD, or roll out the combo package of Bluray and DVD only.
Let the DVD consumer salivate, and reward the Bluray owner with availability and premier status. Even at Bluray’s 1% of households, and 10 % of sales, as a studio head, I would take a 33% increase in profits in a heartbeat.
The DVD buyer isn’t going anywhere, but the opportunity to turn over the entire collector’s catalogue is going to vanish in market innovation. VUDU, cable bandwidth increases, and new technology.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:12 am
“The difference between Laserdisc/VHS and Blu-ray/DVD analogy however is that Blu-ray will very likely eventually become the dominant format, where Laserdisc was always a niche product.”
I am amazed that you felt you could just state that Blu-ray “will very likely eventually become the dominant format” without the slightest evidence to support the statement. You are as bad as those knuckleheads at TheDigitalBits who supported Blu-ray over HD DVD not because it was the best technology but because it was “going to win eventually anyway.” (The fact that it did in no way changes the fact that they didn’t have a legitimate reason to support it.)
Besides, what’s wrong with being a niche product? Is market dominance the only indication of success? Isn’t just being a good product and a profitable business reason enough for a given format to exist?
This whole HD experience has been the dragging down of the industry to the unfortunate level of the video game “wars”, where companies throw business sense out the window in a vain attempt to dominate the marketplace. You would think Sony would know better given the fact that they are still hurting financially from the bad business it took to dominate two video game eras.
“Currently HDTV and Blu-ray are considered premium products - over time HDTV will become the accepted norm and Blu-ray will dominate DVD.”
You wrote this over a year ago and it is still the case. It’s unlikely to change any time soon. With the economy still in trouble, people aren’t willing to upgrade to HD for the minimal (to them) advantages. I am the only person in my extended family (five households - thirteen people) to own any HD player. But I’m not the average buyer. I have a Blu-ray player, HD DVD, Laserdisc, Videodisc, Beta, VHS (yes, still!), etc., etc. So I’m not “Joe Average”. “Joe Average” has shrugged at Blu-ray and unless something *big* happens soon (and if the goverment forced HD switchover wasn’t it, I’m not sure what can be) it’s clear that Niche-ville is Blu-ray’s final destination.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:31 am
You have your opinion and I have mine.
I continue to see improvement in Blu-ray Market share over the genres on a per title basis.
This combined with reductions in manufacturing cost for Blu-ray discs and players will eventually lead to the studios using Blu-ray discs for all of their releases.
The studios have the option to decide what they want to produce. When Blu-ray players are a small additional cost over DVD players, people replacing DVD players will buy Blu-ray players.
When the discs more or less cost the same to produce, there will be no incentive to make DVDs which have much less capacity.
Since there is no competing format, I see it as inevitable.
Not tomorrow, but just as VHS is gone, DVD will eventually become obsolete - and there will probably be a yet another new format being released before that happens.
Feel free to see it as not inevitable, but there is no need to resort to name calling.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:33 am
What I don’t get is the assertion that it is now or never.
It really isn’t like that. There is next year. And the year after that.
While one could argue that downloads or VOD will take more market share (and I don’t doubt that they will), this will primarily cannibalize the rental market.
For sell through packaged media, I see Blu-ray eventually taking over.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 am
I just finished reading all comments in regards to this post that is over a year old now, and have seen very valid arguments coming from several different angles. If I might have the honor, I’d like to offer up yet another perspective, one that I’ve still yet to see show up anywhere in regards to many of these ongoing DVD vs. Blu-ray discussions constantly taking place nowadays.
In starting, I must admit that it is my personal opinion Blu-ray will continue to retain only a small portion of the market share, if not forever, for at least quite a long time. The main issue I feel, is that while Blu-ray ‘generally’ (more on this later) offers an upgrade in both picture and sound, it really doesn’t do anything to blow DVD out of the water, something that DVD did to both VHS and Laserdisc.
Laserdisc, while better looking and sounding than VHS, was dominated by VHS due to the fact that it was:
1. EXPENSIVE (at least here in the U.S.A.), and VHS was not…
2. CLUNKY (too large and fragile, and not very portable… the discs were easily scratched and damaged, and took up too much shelf space, which is why you could usually not get them at video-rental stores), VHS on the other hand, was extremely portable and very hard to damage (unless you intentionally tried to).
3. INEFFICIENT (unless you had a top-of-the-line and extremely expensive LD player, you had to manually change and then ‘flip’ over the disc, sometimes up to 3 of them just to get through one movie), while VHS on the other hand, allowed for uninterrupted playback (unless the film was over 3 hours long, a rarity).
Now when DVD came along, it absolutely destroyed both VHS and Laserdisc because not only did it provide far superior visual and audio performance, but it was also much more portable, cheaper to produce, harder to damage, and capable of lasting a lifetime if properly cared for (unlike VHS which would eventually wear out, and the fragile Laserdisc, which was commonly plagued with “freeze” issues among cheaper players as well as the infamous ‘Laser Rot’ problem on many discs). Not to mention that DVD’s significantly increased technological capabilities almost universally allowed for complete uninterrupted playback, as well as a slew of fun and interesting never-before-seen bonus features. And while certain VHS and Laserdiscs did have bonus features, they were few and far between, never anything like what DVD offered. Hence, DVD provided a ’significant’ reason for consumers to upgrade…
So then along came HD-DVD and Blu-ray…Two competing formats, that in my opinion, doomed themselves from the beginning for a couple of reasons. Outside of the fact that the heavily saturated DVD market didn’t really ‘need’ either of them, both formats spent their early days not only fighting one another, but also making some huge mistakes in how they released and marketed their products. Meaning, there wasn’t really anything new about them when compared with standard DVD other than a ’supposed’ increase in picture and audio quality. A quality that no one could know about or see, because both formats really failed at initially getting demo players into the stores that could show or compare the HD material to that of standard DVD. And by the time this started happening, HD-DVD was already defunct, pretty much leaving Blu-ray to make the following mistakes all by itself:
1. EXPECTING EVERYONE TO UPGRADE THEIR HOME THEATER SYSTEMS. I don’t know who was in charge of first marketing Blu-ray and or HD-DVD, but where they really miscalculated, at least in my opinion, was in the idea that everyone was just going to automatically rush out and blow several hundred, if not thousands of dollars, on the necessary equipment to maximize their Hi-def viewing experience (like a new 1080p 50-inch widescreen tv, and 7.1 surround sound system). The great thing about regular DVD was that it could look and sound great on the same TV sets we watched our old crappy VHS tapes and Laserdiscs on, and it could also look and sound great on a widescreen TV with a surround system…but now with Blu-ray, unless you’ve got some pretty nice equipment, there’s a decent chance you might not even notice a difference when comparing it to your regular DVD. Doesn’t sound very intriguing does it?
2. OVERDOING IT. This is my biggest pet-peeve with many Blu-ray titles that have come out the past few years, especially releases of older catalog titles, movies that I grew up with and actually saw at the theater when they were initially released. As a person who feels most movies post 2000 completely suck, it’s important for me to be able to enjoy the greats of the past…Unfortunately, and this has taken place on even some of the more recent DVD transfers, I’ve noticed some heavy ‘tweaking’ on certain films…so much so that now the more time goes on, I start to get really nervous when I see 25 year old films appear newly re-released on DVD or Blu-ray without even the slightest hint of print damage and/or grain, something to me that’s a tell-tale sign an image has been digitally ‘dicked’ with…Sadly, some Blu-ray transfers appear so overdone and ‘digitally screwed with’ in my opinion, that they no longer look or sound like the ‘film’ we saw theatrically. Add in the horrific ‘DNR’ monster and ‘audio boosting’ that’s now plaguing many newer releases (of not just Blu-ray, but also DVD), and you’ve got a serious quality issue in my opinion. Just off the top of my head I can name a few Blu-ray discs that no longer even remotely resemble their original theatrical counterparts: THE ROAD WARRIOR (has a ‘color timing’ issue), THE LAST STARFIGHTER (horrible case of ‘DNR’ and slight ‘audio boosting’), ROCKY (over-lit transfer that compromises the original cinematography and shadow detail), UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (again, ‘DNR’ and over-lit transfer), and VARSITY BLUES (the image just looks too digital, too ‘perfect’). Now, this is not to say that the Blu-ray versions are at all “inferior” to the DVD versions, because to tell you the truth, the Blu-ray pictures do appear much crisper and cleaner, especially on a large widescreen TV. However, the fact of the matter is that, at least to me, some of them just simply don’t ‘look’ like the film did in the theater, and to me, that’s a big problem…
3. ELIMINATING BONUS FEATURES? I thought it was hysterical when many of the early Blu-ray’s started coming out, especially films that had great DVD special edition releases, like “THE TERMINATOR,” “COMMANDO,” and “CAST AWAY.” The reason I say this is because each of the above movies I just mentioned, and many more I have not, are actually “missing” key bonus features that were, and still are available on their DVD counterparts. Why would any company trying to get a new format or technology off the ground, especially one that’s promising the “next level” of technology, waste their time offering a product that’s missing key features, especially when the space is available on the format for them (plus much more)? I’ll tell you why, because the studios want to keep re-selling the customer the same title over and over again, and to me, this is a very bad idea. Try as they might, I don’t think the movie studios understand that not all people are idiots, and most won’t continue to re-buy basically the same product over and over again, with only slight, if any, modifications to each.
4. DOUBLE DIPPING BLU? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Blu-ray’s whole pitch was “PERFECT PICTURE, PERFECT SOUND.” If this is the case, why then may I ask, are we already beginning to see many ‘double dips’ on Blu-ray titles that claim to be ‘remastered’ or ‘new transfer.’ If it’s in 1080p shouldn’t it only need to be done once? Especially after all the chances and attempts they’ve had to get it right on standard DVD? No, of course not, and I’ll tell you why, because the studios know that all the Blu-ray saps out there who bought the same movie 6 times on DVD, and then upgraded to the Blu-ray version, will most likely fork over the money to purchase the same title yet again…and in this economy, especially when the format is struggling, who better turn to in order to make more money than Blu-ray’s elite and completely over-indulgent customer base? I guess I can end this section by simply asking all those who own Blu-ray players and fancy home theater systems, how many times will you re-buy the same movie? And how much of your life have you wasted watching the same movie and same bonus features over and over and over again? Have you nothing more important to do, other aspects of life to experience? All I tend to think of when I hear of these people who own the same film in 5 or 6 different formats and/or editions is that there are children out there starving in the streets, who don’t even have the means to feed themselves… Perhaps we could ’skip’ an edition or two of a film we already have 5 copies of and donate that money to those who are genuinely in need…
In closing, I must again reiterate that I just don’t feel Blu-ray will ever become a dominant video format for the reasons I stated above. I may be wrong of course, for only time will answer that. However, I must say, from the bottom of my heart, that perhaps it’s time for us as both a society and a country to start pulling ourselves away from this over-indulgent obsession with the ’screen’ that we have glued ourselves to over the past ten years, and start focusing on things that have true meaning in life… like people who are struggling to provide themselves with the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. I think we’d find that as a race of beings, we’ll get much more joy out of that than we will having the ability to stick our ear up next to surround channel rear-left while we zoom in 10x on a single frame of a movie that we’ve already seen 50 times anyway, just so we can say things like “Wow! Look at how clear the background picture is!” and “Sweet! I can now hear a drop of water coming from speaker #7 that I never heard before at the theater or on TV!”
December 5th, 2009 at 8:23 am
A lot of good points are brought up here, but not one of my biggest annoyances about Blu-Ray: it’s too darn complicated for the mass market. Sure, the technical crowd (myself, and probably most of the readers here) don’t mind upgrading firmware now and then or configuring internet settings. But let’s not kid ourselves, we’re a minority. The little old lady down the street just wants to buy a player, get her son-in-law to hook it up, and start watching movies. She doesn’t care about blogging about her movies via BD-Live and certainly isn’t going to upgrade her firmware when one of the grandkids brings over the latest Blu-Ray movie to watch! And don’t even tell her she has to carry a USB stick out to the mini-van to upgrade the player in there!
So IMHO, Blu-Ray is never going to truly approach the level of acceptance DVD has until the players become “zero maintenance”.