Killing BluRay, new Oppo BR 83

I think BluRay will make a bigger difference on screen sizes above 50" - FWIW.

Some others opinions.

On the software side:

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/blu-ray-disc/report-global-blu-ray-sales-jump-not-quite-enough-offset-dvd-decline-16088

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/05/12/best-buy-leads-retailers-in-blu-ray-disc-sales-surge/

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/02/23/report:-blu-ray-disc-sales-top-100-million-year

On the Hardware side:

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6636897.html

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/05/08/report:-blu-ray-player-sales-72%25-first-quarter

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/05/06/blu-ray-player-sales-rising

And from the disks are dead crowd:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42950/99/

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Blu-ray+vs.+video+download+vs.+streaming.-a0200881654

Macdatexas,

It may not matter if BluRay is much better than DVD or not - it won the format war at a time of transition from "low" def to "High" def, and it is the product sales people will be telling there customers to buy when they come in to upgrade to HD TVs in increasing numbers. The extent of the transition will depend on BluRay price points at the time most of the population makes this conversion. So they will pull the trigger when people go into a store to replace their DVD player with a new model equipped with HDMI connections so they can hook it up to their new HD TV. Unlike the VHS to DVD transition, BluRay players are backwardly compatible - so not stranding peoples existing DVD collections.

As for the hard media versus digital on demand products, there are plenty of people who will continue to create demand for "take and go" movies for use both at home, in their mini vans and on their laptops and portable disk players. I do not predict the immediate demise of BluRay as you suggest anytime soon - as much as Microsoft still licking their wounds over HD-DVD and trying to stay relevant pushing broadband solutions - would like us to believe.

You can now get a laptop with BluRay for $700 and a stand alone BluRay player for $160 - both well within reach of the upwardly mobile middle class consumer. No $20,000 dollar projectors needed to make that sale.

Macdadtexas,

We will have to agree to disagree - perhaps my old school perspective is clouding my mind. I have not fully warmed to mass digital storage and playback of my music collection because I am so dumb I need/like to have the jewel case / record sleeve to remind me what song I am listening to and who is actually playing what instrument. I use iTunes a lot on my laptop when I am on the go and even though much ancillary information is embedded with the music files, I still find it an inferior interface all around to hard media.

I also find streaming video downloads are currently too unreliable/unstable and I am not yet pleased with the sound or video quality I get even when they happen to work to specs. Maybe these technical problems will all be solved and the user base will grow large enough fast enough to put pressure on the content providers to solve their legal and logistical problems and abandon BluRay and other physical media right away (except LPs in your new world order) in favor of all digital video and audio on demand all the time - but I doubt it.

All the things you say will come true someday at a scale of use broad enough to replace BluRay as the next video "format", but I say not for a while. People are apparently still going to Blockbuster and they have replaced about 60% of their DVD selection with BluRay disks in my neighborhood store.

Only time will tell.

Macdadtexas,

You said at first:

"The advenet of internet based movie downloads is already available in HD. Granted, it's only 720 and no HD soundtracks, but does anyone believe that is not coming, and quickly. I love using my AppleTV to rent movies, never leave the house, and don't have to return. Honestly, I have bought a bunch of movies that way, since I have such a big network storage capacity. I think this will be the dominant AV format going forward, both movies and music."

Then you say:

"I'm sticking to my guns on this one, BluRay may overtake DVD someday, but both will fall away and downloads for movies will join music downloads as medium by which people recieve this content."

I agree, BluRay will overtake DVDs, and then downloads will overtake both.

I disagree that Internet downloads "will be the dominant AV format going forward..." from now on as you infer in your first post.

You can't have it both ways. Its like saying a 2 year old is a "dead person" because they will die someday. There is still a lot of life left in BluRay, and it is far from peaking. If in two years BluRay is already toast, you can revive this thread and rub my nose in my general lack of prescience.

Macdadtexas,

So what you are saying is that the downloads are good enough for you now, and that it will probably be good enough for everyone else soon... end of (your) story.

I honestly think that there is a lot of work needed to make high quality downloads as user friendly as plopping a disk into a player and pushing the "play" button. The downloaded audio is nowhere near the same level of resolution as BluRay, where the difference can even be detected by non-audiophiles listening to very modest Theater-in-a-Box BluRay systems, let alone listening to the Oppo or higher level players feeding a modest to extravagant audiophile system.

But the real issue here is video quality and many more people are able to detect and care about differences in video resolution compared with audio resolution, why I think BluRay has a better chance in the marketplace vs downloads than SACD vs iTunes. For now, BluRay is 50% higher video resolution (1080p) than what is available from downloads (720p at best), noticeable even on modest sized HD screens (except I will grant you that the smaller Pioneer plasma screens at 720p have such great color and image depth, you might forgive them their lower level of resolution).

For the occasional viewer of movies, a decent 40" or larger screen with a BluRay in-a-Box theater system, both available from Costco for well under $1500, playing a BluRay disk will provide the highest level of enjoyment per ongoing $ invested hands down - without the added HD download subscription costs. Increase the quality of the playback components from there and BluRay totally kicks a$$. The question you will ask is - who cares?

I suggest that the combination of familiar technology (disk and player versus download and local storage) and noticeably higher video performance will create a useful product life cycle for BluRay. Interestingly, the BluRay format will likely receive the greatest support, at least initially, from opposite ends of the consumer spectrum. High level consumers who want the very best audio and video performance will or have already opted in, and those entry level consumers who are least comfortable with computers, networks and online services or who don't want or can't afford the extra expense of HD downloads services will choose BluRay. What I will call here the "iPhone generation" will gravitate to downloads first because they are A) comfortable with networks, downloads and attracted to shiny new gadgets and formats, B) accepting of low resolution video and audio as long as they can get it "NOW", and C) tolerant of or oblivious to exorbitant monthly subscription charges.

Finally, even if the majority of people eventually go to downloads as the preferred source for regular viewing, they will want a system to view disks and share media (it is less rewarding to wrap a gift certificate with a download code and put it under the tree in December) and with DVDs being replaced on store shelves with BluRay disks, that will be the format used for fixed media going forward into the foreseeable future.

Macdadtexas, what exactly did you tell us?

Read this link for an update on the format wars:

http://hometheater.about.com/b/2013/08/06/blu-ray-disc-sales-up-15-percent-for-the-first-half-of-2013.htm

Basically, it says Bluray player and disk sales are up and disk rentals are down. On-demand and streaming are both up, but still a small part of the total market. So more people than before are buying Blurays and players, less people than before are renting Blurays and DVDs, and while more people than before are downloading or streaming content, more people overall still get their kicks from disks.

On a personal note, since this thread was started in 2009 I bought a new Bluray player, a mainstream Panasonic BDP that I basically use as a disk transport and Internet media server for my AVR and TV. My two grown kids don't even have a cable TV account, but both stream Netflix and Hulu off the Internet and both rent disks from RedBox. My 20 something son actually owns a Bluray player too, while my daughter uses her laptop to watch disks.

You said streaming is the future. I never really disagreed with this, I tried to support your point above by saying that my kids generally get their entertainment from streaming/downloads/cloud supplemented with disks. My son is a budding audiophile, has no dedicated two channel disk spinner in his system, and only uses disks in his car, mostly his girlfriends old CDs. He does however recognize a difference between the audio quality of a well engineered soundtrack on BluRay compared with what is available to stream.

My original point was that BluRay was/still is a valid bridge to the day when equal quality streaming is routinely available, and that in some cases, owning a physical copy may make sense indefinitely.

You said BluRay is dead, I said it is dying. I pointed out again above that while the currently available statistics tend to support my point, my children's behavior supports your thesis:-)

PS - since the original post, I upgraded my HT system and find it is used about 60% for music, 20% for movies and 20% for TV programming. I still prefer the sound and picture quality I get from BluRay over streamed content. My system in my office is entirely computer based. While the sound quality is good, I find it a clunky interface and have so far rejected the time necessary to set up similar in either of my home systems beyond connecting to my iPhone for non serious background listening, FWIW.

kn