Subscribe by EmailBlu-Ray vs. DVD: The New Format War?
May 14, 2008 by Patrick Biz |
By Patrick Biz
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
With HD DVD now buried six feet under and all major Hollywood studios onboard in the Blu-ray camp, the stars are aligned for next-generation format sales to finally take off. Surprisingly, prices aren’t falling, and customers still aren’t buying.
The War Has Just Begun
Don’t laugh, Blu-ray vs. DVD is really THE new format war. When comparing specs from Blu-ray and DVD players, on paper, Blu-ray has a clear advantage. But on the field, it’s a different story. Truth is, there are many reasons why consumers are happy with the traditional DVD format:
- They barely see the audio/video improvement
- They already own a DVD player
- DVD Players are much cheaper to buy
- DVDs are 30% to 40% cheaper than Blu-ray disks
- Video stores have considerably more DVDs for rental
- While this one may seem odd, the fact that DVDs are easier to copy also plays in favor of the old poorly protected format
Upconverting DVD Players: Simply Too Good?
If you want to take your DVD collection to the next level on your sexy high-definition television, get yourself an upscalling DVD player, also known as an up-converter, such as the Sony DVP-NS700H/B, the OPPO DV-980H or the Panasonic DVD-S54K. Equipped with an HDMI cable, these players upscale the 480p signal to 1080i/1080p by using complex maths to improve color ratios, contrasts and the overall picture quality. Of course, with a native signal of 480p, they cannot beat the native resolution of a Blu-ray disk that’s 1080p. But the wow effect is not significant enough to make people drop 400 bucks (and up) on a Blu-ray player.
Not Enough Bang For The Buck
This is where DVDs overtake Blu-ray by a mile. Looking at the concept of bang for the buck from a mathematical and graphical perspective, we understand that when prices go up, devices usually provide more features. At a certain price though, quality cannot sustain value as cost increases substantially, while the product itself has less and less to offer. DVDs and up-converting DVD players are comfortably sitting in the bang for the buck area of the graph, while Blu-ray has not yet fallen from the overpriced zone.
Christmas 2008
While many of you may be tempted to wait for the holiday season before taking the next-generation format highway, experts are expecting no significant decrease in price in the upcoming months. Surprisingly, Blu-ray prices have gone up since the death of HD-DVD. Also, the rising price of oil increases transportation costs, and directly impacts the production of plastic.
The format war is far from being over, and the economical situation resulting may restrain the Blu-ray group from making it to your living room. All things considered, DVD may end up being a stronger contender than HD DVD ever was.
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To only replace a disc with a disc this soon just isn’t convincing anyone of a benefit.
I think it is more of a catch 22.
Prices are high because no one is buying, and no one is buying because prices are high.
What I would like to see is an apple TV with standard outputs…oh well.
But if you’re happy with the ones you have, wait until their give their last breath to change
To me, quality of DVD vs blu-ray is less important than quality of the content of program I am watching. The story is all too familiar. The more we push the envelope on one front, the more we have to upgrade on all other fronts to maintain the status quo. It reminds me of software bloat. Bigger hard drives, faster processors, higher bandwidth are required to accommodate growing OSes, clunkier software, and bigger files. At the end of the day, are we really any more productive? I resent the fact that the industry changes so quickly and people are more or less forced into a perpetual upgrade cycle.
I have no intention of getting BlueRay, ever, except if they drop *all* of the DRM, especially through out the HDMI chain. Yeah, unlikely, just like me buying into it either. There is no usability advantage at all - it’s actually an extreme drop in customer usability from what is already a pain with DVD region coding.
Firewire originally was the answer to moving video and audio for maximum usability and use options but it was trod under by the MPAA before it had a chance at adoption. It would have allowed full *digital* transfer between *any* device at all. The need has never gone away. We can still dream.
What the MPAA needs to worry about is substitutes. Not substitutes for the technology broken by their DRM but rather entire attention span substitutes like *simply not watching movies*. It’s apparently an unthinkable concept to them.
I’ve substituted *all* broadcast TV and Radio or newspapers here in the states because all are such awful infotainment/propaganda wastelands. I prefer to spend my attention on something more valuable (which is almost anything else). It’s well withing the realm of possibility for many more to embrace this option broadly. Who would thought that newspapers would be doomed as badly as their are back in the 1980s?
I know many will say that Hard drives today are really cheap, but a hard drive is not the best medium for backup.
When our TV quits, we’ll necessarily replace it with an HDTV. Then might it be sensible to get a Blu-Ray player, but not before.
Plus for all this I don’t see the need for discs anymore since I converted all my dvds to divx, xvid and really I don’t know where those are even at now (perhaps in the attic or basement?) I use a set top box about the size of a book to watch movies on that.