What are your opinions on Blu Ray? I don't think that it is going to catch on, but you never know. What do you all think?

unless the price comes down, I don't think it will be popular. I doubt the average family will spend $600 on a player. like I said before, this is going to be Sony's betamax all over again

I think the whole thing is just ridiculous. There is NO way that I would pay that much!! Why do they have Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players out at the same time, anyway.

Until the price comes down on a HD-DVD player, I will stick to my traditional DVD.

I have to say... I know many people who LOVE new technology. But, I have yet to meet anyone who has a Blu-Ray player.

I know people that love Blu-Ray but to be honest it is way to pricey for me at the moment. I just cannot see spending that amount of money for something that is so new and just might not make it.

this is going to be Sony's betamax all over again

I had to laugh at that! You are not the first person I have heard say that. I don't quite understand the point of Blu-Ray myself. But there are some people (ok very few) that really like it......or so I have heard. lol

High Definition film formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray are the natural progression for HDTV's. If you're on a regular TV Set, you will not see the difference. You can use your regular VCR and DVD player. However, the lower the source quality, the worse the picture gets on an HDTV. These formats are necessary for the HDTV's to get the best possible picture quality that you paid for.

unless the price comes down, I don't think it will be popular. I doubt the average family will spend $600 on a player. like I said before, this is going to be Sony's betamax all over again I'd agree with Firewire that it's the natural progression which makes me think that as everything else starts phasing out over the years that the price is going to come down some. However BluRay is very expensive to produce that it's questionable as to whether the consumer is going to see a price break in the near future. Unlike VHS going to DVD and cassette going to CD, this is one technology that the public doesn't HAVE to upgrade to now to be part of the tech world, so it may take longer.

The cost to produce HD-DVD is the same. It's basically a software change to get the line to change over. However, Blu-ray requires both retooling and software changes, increasing the price of production. It really does feel like the VHS to the BETA. Although BETA was superior, the cost and availability of VHS made it the dominant standard. Even Walmart carries HD-DVD players now, but I have yet to see a Blu-ray machine.

In reality all logic will go out the window with this one. I think Blu-Ray will win from a marketing standpoint. It sounds more futuristic and new. With the majority of people having very little knowledge about the actual tech specs that apply to Blu Ray and HD in general, I figure the sound is what will count.
(If you can believe what you read on the internet, Blu Ray is currently outselling HD DVD...)

I don't think either format will really win, like PAL vs NTSC. The depth of penetration of both broadcasting formats is just such that neither will replace one another. Co-existance.

What exclusive titles are there for HD DVD or Blu Ray? Most of the major studios produce titles for both. If the majority of titles are being released on both formats, it comes down to the few exclusives that decide for the consumer, and it may be that there are exclusives on either format, but not on the other at the same time - the customer will end up getting a hybrid player or two players. At that point, it comes down to the features (as far as a consumer would likely be concerned about).

One thing that may be of interest is that society has been "trained" to believe that more discs = better. e.g. two disc special edition! 12 Disc Lord of the Rings! etc. For supporters of both formats, the BluRay tech advantage may end up being transparent to the end-users. While HD DVD is technically lower capacity per layer and lead to more discs, BluRay has the ability to reduce the number of discs, but that does not necessarily mean they will for marketing purposes as I've just described.

So what would they do with the extra space? As a supporter for both formats, the movie company may do nothing - just encode the movie to one spec. Yes, there is the capacity to use less compression, but that's a waste of time encoding movies to two different compressions, figuring out what the optimum compression is for the movie to fit well on the disc(s), avoiding the use of double layers where possible... It's a hassle.

Early on, HD DVD movies have come out on the top end as far as video quality goes because companies are forced to use the newer mpeg4 compression tech to fit the movie on the disc. With Blu Ray, some have resorted to mpeg2 compression since it's a well understood compression scheme from all the years of DVD, and the fact that it fits easily on the higher capacity Blu Ray discs. But now that Blu Ray production is getting to mainstream on the encoding side, we're seeing the same quality in video between the two formats as the movie companies actually just used the same video files and burned them to disc according to the hardware.

End Result: no advantage to the BluRay specs on the end-user side.

But let's not forget the number of potential buyers of BD movies due to the Playstation 3. Blu Ray may win due to attrition with this, although interestingly enough, there has been a report of WalMart ordering 2 million HD DVD players for holiday 2007.... something's up there...


It's still extremely early though to really tell anything about one gaining ground over the other. It's a mess.

It's one thing to look at sales between HD DVD and BluRay, it's another to see just how much more skewed the picture looks when you include DVD sales, which are orders of magnitude greater. By the time everyone gets an HDTV to justify an HD disc format, the market penetration both formats may be too significant to really give up on one. Again, Blu Ray through PS3...

Messy. Just Messy.

The war will never end.

I don't personally see the purpose of pushing to get these formats out, yet. But, then, no one asked my opinion. I think it'll be quite some time before I change over.