I don't know about any of you guys, and I don't know what your customers want, but I'd be perfectly happy with a Blu Ray player that has a 1080p video output and a Dolby TrueHD audio output and you can leave all of the other bells and whistles off of it if it means an instant-start and stable player. Some of these "wonderful" additional features that I've read about seem really lame. As it is, I almost never look at any of the extras on a standard DVD. Do any of you actually watch a film with the director's commentary turned on? It seems so self-indulgent on their part. I just read an article with somebody from Disney saying that with "Blu Ray Live" the grandchildren can watch a film at the same time as their grandmother who lives on the other side of the country. Am I missing something here? Do people actually do this?

I agree with david....forget all the extra B.S. BD Live, pop up menus, extra features? Who gives a crap. Just give us a good quality movie reproduction on a player that works and works well.

Just tested out the new netflix xbox360 deal last night. It's a stream, not stored on the drive, functioned w/o a hitch. We watched Eyes Wide Shut :-O The movie is already artsy in its look and I could tell the compression was definitely not up to snuff. For us at home on a casual basis, no big deal. To recommend to a client, not so fast.

agree

because near future is in 5 days not 5 years. No one knows what will be because4 no one has the full picture. The majority of music is still sold on CD (well at least at the start of this year) even though the ipod/itunes came out in 2001 and DL files are small. Yes many will take that CD and put it on the ipod but then they also have it to throw it in the car or in an other device when needed.


as all camera phones will be good enough in that field.

I doubt it, not because camera phones won't have good pictures but because people like having stand alone cameras, everyone I know has a camera phone and in a jiffy it is useful but then when they go on vacation, out comes that three year old camera that takes worst pics. The same reason that even though people have made SW for PDAs and there is a section for them on this site most people would rather use the right tool for the job and so skip on the PDA and get a remote.


things will change, that is not the issue, but the direction, who knows, maybe BD will be the last disk based system, maybe it will be short lived. But who knows? To move from one format to an other you need three things
1) you need that people feel there is an advantage (i.e. it needs to be better)\
2) content owners need to think the time is right (i.e. old format not bringing in the $$ no use pushing tech too fast because then you lose revenue and dishearten the consumer)
3) you need the equipment to have extremely low margins

We could have had something better then SD-DVD years earlier, for example why couldn't there have been DVD V2 based on AVC instead of MPEG 2 in 2003? Didn't MS even tried introducing WMV-DVDs in 2003. But why did it not happen? because 2003 was too early for a new format. No one wanted it.

If new formats come out every year or two (or three or four or anything that is too often) you will kill the market. Joe who bought X on VHS and then LD and then DVD and then D-VHS and the WMV and then BD and then formatX will at some point wake up and say "why am I buying this shit when it is only good for such a short time and I will upgrade it?"

as for why am I not willing to bet what the next format will be, the reason is easier. I dont know what will be that benefit to consumers that makes people want to upgrade. Will it be like BD better PQ/AQ will it be something else? Right now and for at least the next 5 years DL is a none factor most people (even if they wanted) could not be using DL and getting results anywhere near DVD let alone BD (by this I mean 50% of movie sales and rentals being DL). But by then maybe people would want 4kp instead of 1080p and that would require 4x the capacity, maybe real 3d (same quality but with two pics one for each eye) which would require 2x the capacity, maybe people would want higher frequency (120p instead of 24p), maybe it will be a better colour space (16 bit instead of 8bit)...... if these are the benefits people are looking for then the next format will need to be able to handle a lot more then BD can now, and will the internet be able to handle it at that point in time?

I think peoples issue with your post(s) isn't that you think DL will eventually be main stream, I think most of us think it might happen, it is this, DVD came out in 1997 and in 2006 (less then 10 years later) BD came out, chances are that BD will be just as old, if not older, when it's real competitor will be introduced. Did you skip DVD? did you think DVD will eventually fade out so I won't buy a DVD player? That is the part that makes no sense what so ever. Obviously one day BD will get replaced it mighty be DL and it might not, but it will definitely not be around for ever. But as a person and especially as a CI you can’t put a blind eye at the here and now because of what you believe might happen in a few years especially since you might be totally off.

Afraid to. Still have a stack of bad 2500s,1700s and 950s.

The average consumer may like the concept of streaming HD - until they see the actual 1080p quality they can get on their 5mbit internet connection compared to a BD. It may be fine for a crummy "rental" movie you're pretty sure you're never going to see again, but if it's a movie I want to keep, collect and enjoy multiple times, then I want good quality.

So the average consumer may like the concept of downloadable high-bitrate movies - until they realize that it will take hours to download, you'd need a big hard drive array to hold ~150 movies (at BD bitrates), and they won't have that handy physical disc in case the device dies or is stolen, or for use at the cottage, or for the kids to play in the den.

I do believe that the future of media distribution is downloadable content from the internet. But not yet, and it's not close enough for anyone to ignore BD as being what's right for right now.

i do agree that blu ray will have its market share over the years obviously.
especially since they are talking about 3D blue ray discs now.


i also see that blu ray isnt selling as well as everyone expected it to.
its pretty expensive at this point.

blu ray and digital downloads are pretty much at the same place right now in terms of market share (nothing to back that up)

digital downloads are cheaper.
hard drives are cheap.

and its way easier to download...

i just got xbox 360 upgraded to NXE and with the netflix HD streaming,
and my apple tv for hd downloads and streaming, and my directv on demand movies,
im pretty much set.

hd on these boxes really looks good enough for most ppl and the people that will need better hd quality will get the blu ray. but they are a small % of the population , while most others will be concerned with cost, and ease of use (getting movie without leaving couch)

"Good enough" is a tricky metric. The mass market doesn't really know what "good enough" is until they're told that something is or isn't (if they aren't technically inclined, how else do they know what is possible or if what they have is as good as it gets?). If the industry had never come out with DVD, DVRs, HD and BDs, I'm sure the average consumer would still be using a VCR in EP mode and it would, for most of them, be "good enough".

not even close. BD is also growing much faster.

the reason you have nothing to back it up (except taht it is no where near true) is that BD is around 10% (so interesting to compare to DVD) and DL is less then 1% so anyone not interested in DL does not consider it worth mentioning and anyone that is interested in DL won't bother because it does not help to sell the DL concept.


BD is actualy growing faster then DVD was in the same time frame.

I have just installed my first BD-P2500, and I would recommend it over the BD-P1500 model as the new BD-P2500 has addational memory and seams to work faster. Give it a try if you like the BD-P1500 you will like the BD-P2500. Also I found the BD-P2500 did a good job with a standard DVD and a great job with Blu-Ray.

KGS

Sony BDP-350 programs flawlessly with a great startup time. Tried others ... hate them all.

I vote for the LG BD300.

It ejects from off in under 4 seconds and loads Blu-ray discs faster than the PS3.

It features discrete IR commands for on and off.

To top it all off it has Netflix watch now in HD.

I'm lucky enough to get to play with a a bunch of Blu-ray players and so far this is my favorite one.
You can read my entire review on Engadget.
[Link: engadgethd.com]

And that's going to be the biggest downfall of downloaded Movies. Timewarner has already taken steps in certain areas to limit bandwidth per month. They do not want you downloading to your vudo or apple tv. They want you purchasing PPV movies from them. So the more it catches on the more strict they will become. There are already areas in which they have a 10gb per month cap on downloads per month with a 1$ per gb overage fee. Average High def quality movie being 6-8gb. So after your allotted 2 movies per month you will be looking at a $6-8 charge per movie from your isp on top of whatever you are paying for the distribution service. I would almost guarantee any move like this would me across the board by most isp's that also offer entertainment packages.

At the same time they are advertising that you can watch HBO on your computer.

samsung bd-p2550
sadly only a best buy item,

but it receives ir commands within seconds of being turned on,
has netflix AND PANDORA streaming.