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?

"Jeez Louise. A conference organizer asked if I could put together a DVD loop of my funniest Web videos, to play in the registration area while attendees stand in line. No problem, I thought: I’ve got all of the original iMovie projects backed up on DVD, in clear cases, neatly arrayed in a drawer next to my desk. (My hard drive wasn’t big enough to hold those 50 videos a year.) Guess what? On the Mac I use for video editing, most of the DVD’s were unreadable. They’re less than four years old! Tried them on another machine. About half of them were readable."

David Pogue discovered the dirty little secret about optical media... it deteriorates over time. Even commercially pressed media may fail. I recently bought an out-of-print CD from eBay that plays primarily static. Fortunately, it was only a $1. I used to backup all my tax returns and supporting data to a CD-R. I pulled one out when I read this story and guess what? It's a good thing I have my 2002 return backed up elsewhere because I'm not getting it off the CD.

"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.

"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?

"Savvy PC users will ask, "What's the big deal? I've been ripping DVDs to my PC's hard drive for years." Fair enough, but RealDVD adds some relevant bullet points to the equation. First off, it's legal: That's because the program retains the DVD copy-protection, and even adds a further layer of DRM to the files. (Real is standing on the precedent set by the Kaleidescape's 2007 court victory.) So you shouldn't have to sweat a prison term for copyright violation next time you're toting your laptop through airport security. Secondly, it's transportable: you can rip the discs to an external USB hard drive and watch them on up to four other PCs on which you've installed the program. (OK, you can do this and more with underground DVD rippers, but the point is that RealDVD is offering a reasonable degree of viewing flexibility, instead of locking the movies onto just one computer.) And thirdly, the software is easy to install and use--anyone familiar with, say, iTunes should have no problem ripping DVDs with RealDVD."

This is a feature that I really would like to see Microsoft include as part of Windows Media Center out of the box. From the FAQ, it appears that Real's offering does not currently integrate with WMC, but they plan on adding that in the future. Hopefully the legal spin is just cnet's spin because if the best thing you can say about your product is that it is legal, I think either the marketing or development team needs a kick in the butt. Finally has anyone ever heard of a person being even approached, much the less imprisoned for carrying ripped movies on a flight, or is that just more fear-mongering on the part of the article?

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]