Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Doubts have been cast on the success of the Blu-ray format ever since it debuted. Initially, the format appeared to be doomed due to a poor adoption rate, thanks mainly to a host of factors, including the PS3's initial tribulations, popularity of the DVD format, and the steady rise in the popularity of digital downloads."

Blu-ray won the format battle against HD-DVD, but it has yet to win the war for HD-content delivery. The opposition? Digital downloads, for one. Personally, I'm a fan. VUDU's HDX rentals are extremely high quality and their full HD library is the largest anywhere. Other competitors include Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon/TiVo, and Netflix; each with varying pros and cons.

The other opposition? Interestingly enough, standard-def DVD. While it's not true HD content, the output of an upconverting player provides a very satisfying experience, particularly if the movie is good. And consider that many people can't tell the difference between SD and HD on their HDTVs. Basically DVD quality is, in many instances, good enough. While the DVD to Blu-ray quality difference is significant, it's not as big of a leap as VHS to DVD. I remember VHS video artifacts & that interfered with my enjoyment of a movie. Very rarely have seen a DVD issue that is a limitation of the media.

What do you think?

"With Thanksgiving this Thursday, shoppers will be lining up at the doors to stores on Friday for Black Friday deals. One of the best Black Friday deals I have seen so far comes from Walmart. Walmart is offering a full 1080p Blu-ray player from Magnavox for only $128. You aren't getting high-end features at that price so forget about DTS HD Master or Dolby TruHD sound like you would get from the PS3 or a higher-end dedicated Blu-ray player. Honestly though, the average consumer doesn't have the hardware needed to decode these HD sound formats, so it's not that big a deal that the player doesn't support it."

It's been said that this is the year that Blu-ray will "take off" - and by "take off" I mean actually start to gain some traction in the market, because by most accounts Blu-ray has been a sputtering, stuttering failure. Yes, it won the war against HD-DVD, but it's still getting throughly trounced by plain old DVD. Driving down the cost of the player is one important factor - I believe $99 will be the tipping point there - but the cost of Blu-ray media is by far the biggest factor keeping consumers away in my opinion.

When you go shopping and you see a new movie in DVD format, and the super-deluxe version at that, you'll probably see a price tag of around $24.99. That same movie in Blu-ray format? Likely $35 to $40. So which, as a general consumer that probably doesn't know the difference between 720p and 1080i, are you going to percieve as being the much more expensive platform? With the world economy as it is now, Blu-ray has no hope of gaining real consumer traction in the marketplace - it will "win", eventually, by simply being there when regular DVD is eventually phased out - but that will take eight to ten years.

Your eyes do not deceive you: that's a Blu-ray player and my first three Blu-ray movies (don't judge my taste in movies yet though, keep reading). The amplifier that I purchased a few years back is on the fritz - it keeps cutting out - so I decided to replace it with a new one that I purchased a couple of months ago. Installing a new amp is a pain though, since and I've been focusing on trying to finish my digital wall project (more on that later - it's finally done!), I haven't gotten around to installing it. Since I needed to rip apart my home theatre setup and re-position things to make space for the amp, which is much bigger than my previous one, I figured I might as well make the jump to Blu-ray. Re-programming my Harmony remote is also part of the equation, so I thought now was the time. Read more...

"Jobs may claim that 'Blu-ray is a bag of hurt', and I don't disagree (keep reading), but even if it wasn't, why would Apple incur additional system cost (versus red laser optical drives) that the format's miniscule market share suggests wouldn't translate to proportionally incremental revenue and profit...and that would detract from the company's primary revenue and profit mission going forward? For the content creation professionals and bleeding edge enthusiasts that demand Blu-ray capability, Apple can continue to rely on third-party hardware from companies like Amex Digital and LaCie, coupled with third-party software from folks like Adobe and Roxio."

I'm a bit surprised Apple doesn't offer Blu-ray drives on their higher-end Apple Pro computers, given that many of those people are the media-creating type, but seeing as Blu-ray is currently a disaster, I can't blame Apple for leaving it off of their consumer-grade products.

"CNET's Crave on Friday reported on Nielsen's latest VideoScan figures, showing that Blu-ray Disc's market share in the video disc market has slumped in the past week. According to Nielsen, Blu-ray's market share dropped to just 8 percent of the overall market, giving DVDs a whopping 92 percent ownership. Granted, those figures show only one week's performance, and Blu-ray may have a huge week soon and capture more of the market, but let's be honest with ourselves: do we really think that will happen? According to a study released in August by ABI Research, more than half the people it surveyed had no plans to buy a standalone Blu-ray player in the near future, and 23 percent are considering it, but not until 2009. When your format is limping along with just 8 percent of the market, the last thing you want to hear is that only 23 percent of the population actually wants a Blu-ray player."

Don Reisinger has put together an interesting piece on the future of Blu-ray, and it confirms what I've felt since last year: neither HD-DVD nor Blu-ray offer enough advantages over upscaled DVD to win over the hearts and minds of consumers. Blu-ray won the battle with HD-DVD (much to my dismay), but it faces a long, drawn-out war with regular DVD. I firmly believe that Blu-ray is only going to oust DVD through a long, slow war of attrition - and it's going to take a full decade before DVD is really gone from the store shelves. What's your take on the future of Blu-ray?

"Photodex Corporation today announced the release of ProShow Gold 3.5, the latest version of its award-winning slide show software designed for consumers and photo hobbyists. ProShow Gold 3.5 gives users the ability to create high resolution Blu-ray slide shows from start to finish. No complicated formatting or conversions - users simply create a slide show in ProShow Gold and output directly to Blu-ray."

1080p HD video looks great, but getting the right kind of content onto your HD display isn't always easy - if you're into creating photo slide shows, ProShow Gold is some of the best software on the market for that purpose. They've just released version 3.5, and they've added direct Blu-ray output.

Amazon.com has kicked off a big sale on their Blu-ray discs, and the prices are finally starting to get reasonable: many of the DVDs are under $20, and some are in the $15 range - and with Blu-ray players now selling for under $300, we may finally start to see some momentum for this format. There are 83 Blu-ray discs involved in the same, so there's a little something for everyone. [Affiliate]

"Microsoft has said it has no plans to develop a Blu-ray add-on for its Xbox 360, and will focus on digital downloads instead. You might recall that Microsoft had thrown in its lot with Toshiba and the HD DVD revolution, selling add-on boxes for its Xbox 360 console. That revolution ended far short of the palace gates, with HD DVD vanishing like snow in the sun, and the general expectation has been that Microsoft would begin to offer a Blu-ray add-on, given that Blu-ray has emerged as the winner in the HD wars."

This doesn't surprise me at all - I just didn't see Microsoft wanting to give Sony even a quarter for every Xbox sold. I hope they really do focus on digital downloads, and by focus I mean "start to kick some major ass" - they have a lot ways to go.

"Before we attempt to calculate what's at risk here for Apple, let's think about what the company has to gain -- or what they might THINK they have to gain – by delaying. Apple clearly sees a huge part of its future in content distribution including TV shows and movies. I can only guess that Jobs sees Blu-ray as a threat to that download business and this decision to delay Blu-ray deployment is an expensive stalling action, buying time for Apple to launch its own true HD alternative. Yes, you can download some movies from iTunes in 720p right now, but in the surging HD market 720p is no longer good enough. The obvious standard is 1080p and right now you need Blu-ray or BitTorrent to get that. Putting on my near-futurist hat, then, I'm guessing Apple is working madly to deploy its own 1080p download solution and is hoping the world will wait for it."

An insightful article by Robert X. Cringely about why Apple, a core supporter in the Blu-ray camp since 2005, hasn't equipped a single Mac with a Blu-ray drive. It makes a twisted kind of Jobsian sense when you ponder all the variables. Apple's new Apple TV is a big leap up from the first version, and the infrastructure is in place for Apple to do some impressive things in the downloadable HD video arena...but not without help moving those gigantic files around. Some big things are happening here.

Meanwhile, I'm still sitting here staring at my Xbox Live Marketplace TV shows section and wondering why there are only three items of content and one of them is a UFC event from two years ago. Sure, Microsoft has added some new HD movies, but overall I still perceive the effort as being rather feeble. Microsoft has the infrastructure in place (Vista + Xbox + Zune + Windows Mobile) to do some amazing things, yet year after year they only manage to inch forward. What gives?

"They just started selling the 20DB which includes a number of Pioneer parts and a bit of their own goodness thrown in to make a marzipan cake of audio tastiness. The difference is truly staggering when you look at audio gear like this but the price is even more so. I guess we can all dare to dream."



For the $16,900 that this beast will run you, you could instead pick up 42 PS3's. You could actually put together a VERY nice home theater for just what this box runs. But, the nice thing about the high end is that often some of the features will eventually trickle down to the rest of us.

"Online video rental company Netflix Inc said on Monday it would exclusively stock Blu-ray high-definition DVDs after a decision by some the world's biggest movie studios in favor of the Sony Corp developed format. Netflix has stocked DVDs using both Blu-ray and the competing HD DVD format developed by Toshiba Corp since they first came on the market in early 2006. Four out of six major Hollywood studios have recently decided to publish high-definition DVDs only using Blu-ray. Netflix said that with such a clear signal from the industry, it will only buy Blu-ray discs going forward and will phase out stock of HD DVD by about the end of the year."

Hmm, I wonder whether this happened because there weren't enough takers for the HD DVD format. Given Netflix is the leader in movie rentals, I wonder if this really signals the demise of HD DVD. I know Microsoft has backed this format very strongly and the XBox 360 (which has support for HD DVD) has been doing very well. So I wonder whether this also signals that not enough people are using the XBox 360 has a high definition media extender?