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So, Blue Ray won the new "format war". More and more movies are coming out on Blue Ray. It's definitely here to stay. With the new mandatory HD broadcasting starting next year, more and more people will be getting HD equipment. But there's still a bajillion DVDs out there and people love their DVD collections. I have plenty and I don't really plan to replace them, just buy Blue Ray titles for newer things.

So what do you guys think.. will DVD remain as the standard for movies for many years to come, and blue ray will just be fore the "elite" that love super HD quality and have home theaters? Kinda like the old days when there was VHS and Laserdisc? Or will Blue Ray totally wipe out DVDs, the way DVDs wiped out VHS? Wadaya think?

Blue ray will replace DVD as DVD player sales drop off.

You do know that all DVDs play on blue ray players don't you?

Now there is one format, as more product comes on line in terms of both discs and players/recorders you will see a move more and more towards the blue ray then they just won't sell DVDs anymore.... however given that all current computers have DVD players it will be a few years off.

Also computers have started mounting blue ray players (don't think there is a burner yet) but as portable hard drives are so cheap now is there any point in a blue ray recorder for computer?

I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, we may end up with Blu-Ray drives in our PCs, or we may skip to whatever next-gen optical format there is. But most people aren't going to re-buy all their movies that are on DVD with Blu-Ray movies, and I think that, even in slow-internet america, Blu-Ray will be superceded by digital downloads and on-demand type services before it has enough time to really permeate the marketplace. The people who don't move on to that will be perfectly happy to stick with their DVDs, since Blu-Ray doesn't have really any features other than resolution going for it. At least with DVD vs VHS you had advantages like picture quality, chapter selection, not having to rewind, etc. Now you've got "better picture if you have a really nice TV". Not quite the same.

lambadomy wrote:I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, we may end up with Blu-Ray drives in our PCs, or we may skip to whatever next-gen optical format there is. But most people aren't going to re-buy all their movies that are on DVD with Blu-Ray movies, and I think that, even in slow-internet america, Blu-Ray will be superceded by digital downloads and on-demand type services before it has enough time to really permeate the marketplace. The people who don't move on to that will be perfectly happy to stick with their DVDs, since Blu-Ray doesn't have really any features other than resolution going for it. At least with DVD vs VHS you had advantages like picture quality, chapter selection, not having to rewind, etc. Now you've got "better picture if you have a really nice TV". Not quite the same.

Lambadomy you bad boy refusing to buy again your movies? You are the type of guy that refuses to buy a second or a third copy of your stuff when the record companies change formants, aren´t you? Report yourself to the RIIA to suitable punishment for spreading this kind of subversive thoughts

M.

Not only is it better quality picture but more info can be stored. As more and more releases both movie and DVD they will have to go onto blue ray or you buy 3-4 DVD discs.

The powers that be do believe however that this should be the last changeover before its all digital downloads from one source to another with no acctual devices needed to facilitate.

Movies will never not fit on a DVD. They already convert movies filmed in 70mm or 35mm or 1080p HD into 480p to fit on a DVD, there's no reason they'd change that. With a DVD, you just get a lower resolution. "Better quality" and "more info" are pretty much the same thing. Blu-Ray players can decode VC-1 and I think some other compression algorithms but they still mostly use MPEG-2 for Blu-Ray movies, the same compression used for DVDs

Anyway, the question is what do people actually want or care about. Most people I know are just barely now getting HD TVs. With an upconverting DVD player I'm not sure how many of them would care about the difference between a DVD upconverted to 720p and a Blu-Ray film at 1080p. There is an obvious difference, but we're talking watching a movie here. There's only so much people are willing to invest in hardware and discs. DVDs are dirt cheap and Blu-Ray movies will need to drop in price quite a bit to compete for average joe consumer, I think.

Anyway, I guess it could go either way. Maybe things like Netflix will remain more convienent to people than just downloading it or doing it on-demand, and maybe people really ARE clamoring for more lines in their video. But I don't think so, and I just don't see anyone I know replacing even a single DVD they own with the Blu-Ray version, except for a few exceptions (movie-industry people or people with serious A/V setups, wall projectors, etc)

Of course it will happen. People are getting in a huge fuss about this when it's really no different than when VHS went out. Sure Blu-Ray's are more expensive than your average DVD but I can remember when VHS would cost ya over a hundred bucks a pop. Now they're next to impossible to find anywhere but the internet, mark my words the same thing will happen with DVD. And I agree with Gonads and lambadomy, I'm not going to be rebuying all my stuff on Blu-Ray just buying new stuff as it comes out. Eventually DVD will be phased out just as VHS has been. People didn't believe it would actually happen when it did but look where we are.

what I kind of think.. Blue Ray will be a "specialty" format. Joe Sixpack made the forced switch to DVD. DVDs play perfectly fine in blue ray players. DVDs will probably always be cheaper than Blue ray discs. People have DVD collections and won't replace them. Hell, they're still selling vcr/dvd combos because people still have old tapes they watch. My GF has a whole rack of tapes she won't replace. Eventually more and more blue ray players will be out there and more and more blue ray content will be available but I think the general public will keep DVDs popular as long as they can.

As far as downloading goes... I'm not totally convinced of that yet. I think in general people are packrats and want to "keep" stuff. They like having a shelf full of movies over a hard drive full of them. People like to be able to bring a DVD over to their friend's house to watch it, which you can't do with downloaded stuff. Downloads will be so copy protected that sharing will be extremely limited. And streaming sucks. If I'm going the download route, I want to have a movie that I can access anytime and not have to connect to some server to be able to watch it. If I cancel my cable, I don't want to lose my movies. I think true, perfected downloadable content is a ways off and a format will need to be standardized and perfected just like DVDs and Blue Ray.

So I think it will stay with DVDs as the main format, with blue ray as more of a popular niche for "movie nerds", moving on to downloads but not anytime soon.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Not only is it better quality picture but more info can be stored

Agree somewhat with the better picture. HD looks great, but do they look -that- much better than SD? On a TV smaller than 42", even with 1080p, probably not. On a 42"+ HDTV, maybe, but YMMV. I also find it hillarious that very little actually outputs to 1080p. HD is really just a slick marketting tool.

Agree somewhat with the "more info can be stored" portion... but what kind of "more info"? Other than the HD visuals taking up more room, what are you going to put on that extra space? You can add fidelity to the audio track, but in all seriousness, the Sony's SUPERBIT system was a bust, as you can't really hear the improvements in audio without a high end speaker system. The studios already are having trouble adding extras. A commentary track doesn't have to be high fidelity, and takes up not much space at all. Most featurettes that the studios include are produced at standard definition, are rubbish and don't take up much space either. Deleted scenes also take up a small amount, and are usually SD.

If the above are the only reasons to migrate to a newer format, DVD has a long useful life ahead of it. Granted, marketting and supply will probably kill off DVD in a few years, but unlike VHS, where it is possible for the tapes to wear out, DVDs do not seem to suffer from the same kind of death through "wear and tear".

keezus wrote:DVDs do not seem to suffer from the same kind of death through "wear and tear".

... providing you don't have kids

My nephews visit often, and my star wars prequel dvds have all been destroyed by sticky fingers. Luckily they're the star wars prequels so they don't really matter much...

The only way Blu-Ray replaces DVD is if they stop selling DVDs.

There's no real incentive for Blu-Ray. DVDs last practically forever and look great. The players are dirt cheap.

Blu-Ray is an answer in search of a problem. Now in 5+ years, when everybody has huge 50+" widescreen DTVs, then there might be a push. But I think we'll be streaming video rather than buying...

keezus wrote:

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Not only is it better quality picture but more info can be stored

Agree somewhat with the better picture. HD looks great, but do they look -that- much better than SD? On a TV smaller than 42", even with 1080p, probably not. On a 42"+ HDTV, maybe, but YMMV. I also find it hillarious that very little actually outputs to 1080p. HD is really just a slick marketting tool.

Agree somewhat with the "more info can be stored" portion... but what kind of "more info"? Other than the HD visuals taking up more room, what are you going to put on that extra space?

Data. When I burn disks with data on them, I'm usually burning DVD's these days. The only exception is when I burn CD's full of mp3's to play in my car stereo because it won't read DVD's. Your standard single density DVD holds 4ish gigs of information. Go to double density (the standard for movie disks) and its up to 8 gigs. If you go to blue rays, you get to 25 gigs for single layer and 50 for double. That's a significant increase in storage capacity. So something (like my anime music video collection) that takes up 4 DVD's now would only take up one blue ray. Its the same thing that happened when DVD's came out to replace CD's. That extra disk space makes it a lot easier to ramp up the scale of things like video games as well. Better graphics, more audio tracks, longer game play all due to simply having more space on the disk...oh yah and let’s not forget that it makes disk swapping in mid game a thing of the past.

I for one plan to embrace the technology as soon as the price for Blue Ray burners gets down to something reasonable.

Disk swapping.. I used to hate that, playing wizardy on floppies that were actually floppy and you have to flip the disk or put in another one when you get in far enough.. but at least we don't have to find random words out of the rulebook for copy protection anymore.

Oh, that was horrible.


Instead, we have DRM which can turn "off" your purchased software at any time...

I still think that minidisks could've been a hit.

Small disks inside plastic casings? They were the asbestos cat to the cds' paper dog in flamy hell.

I am still fond of my 300+ VHS tapes, and prefer to buy new Doctor Who adventures in that formet, owing to them being a lot cheaper.

Blu-Ray will eventually replace the DVD, no doubt about it. As for Downloads, perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I prefer the hardcopy rather than a purely electronic one.

Destrado wrote:I still think that minidisks could've been a hit.

Against MP3 it was a format waiting to die.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I am still fond of my 300+ VHS tapes...

What's a VHS grandad?

George Spiggott wrote:

Destrado wrote:I still think that minidisks could've been a hit.

Against MP3 it was a format waiting to die.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I am still fond of my 300+ VHS tapes...

What's a VHS grandad?

The stuff he keeps the majority of his porn on.

Nonsense. Thats on DVD. Better quality and that.

But a VHS son, is an older version of films and that, with the added bonus that, when flung with great gusto, can brain a burglar into next week. Show me the modern Home Media that do that and still be viewed afterwards.

Some of mine survived a House Fire!

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:But a VHS son, is an older version of films and that, with the added bonus that, when flung with great gusto, can brain a burglar into next week. Show me the modern Home Media that do that and still be viewed afterwards.

Some of my friends and I used to clip AOL CD's and turn them into ninja stars. The kabosh got put on that when one got inbedded about an inch into one of us. Darn things are sharp. I must admit though that they are not viewable afterwards.

As the unfortunate recipient of a VHS to the Noggin, I can tell you it flipping hurts.

And when you have Three Hundred of them.....

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:with the added bonus that, when flung with great gusto, can brain a burglar into next week.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:As the unfortunate recipient of a VHS to the Noggin, I can tell you it flipping hurts.

Who's house were your robbing?

I wasn't.

My brother thought it might be good for a laugh and chortle.

It wasn't.

It just hurt. But it did point out how much home defence I have!

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:But a VHS son, is an older version of films and that...

Pah! Cine-film's where it's at, aerodynamic and heavy.

In the latest film my lil indie company made, someone got half their neck sliced off with a precisely hurled CD. It was pretty yucky. It can slice flesh, you just need to get the right amount of spin on it.

I'm so glad I didnt get the X-box HD/DVD

You guys are weak.

Laserdiscs are where it's at.

Laserdiscs? Nonsense.

One good stegging of a VHS Casette, and your girly 'Like a CD but bigger. And less successful' Laserdisc will shatter!

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I wasn't.

My brother thought it might be good for a laugh and chortle.

It wasn't.

It just hurt. But it did point out how much home defence I have!

Okay, I lold, and i can see it happen.
BUT, and you can trust me on this, some of the limited edition dvd cases are quite stury and up to the task LOTR for example does a fine job clobberin people without loosing any of its purdiness. Now that I have received my Babylon 5 all-movies-and-episodes-in-one-box box, i can assure you, that thing will kill you when flung to the head. its awesome.