9 reasons why Blu-ray will succeed
Is success in the cards? The Dark Knight Blu-ray sold 600,000 copies on launch day.
(Credit: Warner Bros.)I've been seeing a lot of articles lately about Blu-ray's fuzzy future, how it's doomed, and how its success will be short-lived even if it does take off. Well, that may well end up being the case, but I gotta say, from where I'm sitting, there's a far greater probability that Blu-ray will do just fine--for a long time. And I'm not saying that because I'm a fanboy or a shill for Sony. I'm saying it because a lot of simple market factors point toward it doing just fine. Here are nine reasons why I'm right.
1. Digital downloads will not eliminate the need for discs anytime soon.
Let's address this first since this is the biggest factor that people cite when trumpeting Blu-ray's defeat. If you haven't noticed, here at CNET we spend a good amount of time covering new streaming video platforms and services and really enjoy testing these new products. Everything from Hulu to Netflix streaming video to Slingbox to Apple TV to Vudu all show promise. That said, all these products have some limiting factors, including lack of content selection, pricing hurdles, and most particularly, bandwidth issues, which affect video and audio quality.
Case in point: The other night I was running Netflix's video streaming service on my Xbox 360. I fired up the movie, The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen on a large rear-projection TV. It looked like crap. How crappy? Well, bad enough for my wife to say, "Get that off the screen right now." (The hazard of watching virtually everything in HD is that everyone in your household over the age of 7 becomes a video snob).
Next, I tried The Wiggles to better results. The program had brighter scenes and less movement, so the picture wasn't quite as soft and pixelated. My 5-year-old could handle it just fine. However, I had to leave the room after 5 minutes in extreme pain. (It was due to the content, not video quality. Man, that's some bad music).
Now, I'm sure folks who've got Verizon's Fios installed in their homes are getting a much better picture when they stream their Netflix video. But I'm dealing with cable internet from Time Warner in Manhattan and while it's acceptable for streaming video onto a 22-inch computer monitor, the pipe really isn't fat enough for blowing things up too far beyond a 32-inch set without things getting pretty fuzzy. (Our video guru, David Katzmaier says he's happy with the bandwidth he's getting from Time Warner in Brooklyn, but he says he, too, runs into some pretty rough pictures, especially those that involve a lot of action sequences).
I can't see Time Warner and other cable Internet providers suddenly delivering more bandwidth anytime soon (if anything, my connection seems to have gotten worse in recent months). DSL is even worse in a lot of cases--unless you're willing to pay ridiculous rates for top-of-the-line bandwidth offerings, which are usually geared toward businesses not consumers. And there's also plenty of talk about ISPs throttling back on bandwidth to police illegal downloads of music and yes, movie and TV shows.
The incoming Obama administration is reportedly going to be offering incentives to providers for building out broadband offerings and increasing bandwidth (eventually, anyway). Whether that has any impact or not, I still think we're a good 3-5 years away before the pipes really get fat enough for many of these IPTV/ streaming video services to reach their full potential and move from niche to mainstream status. In that time prices for both Blu-ray players and discs will look a lot like what you see today on their DVD brethren (see reasons #4 and #5).
2. Having one clear standard is a big advantage.
One of the problems with digital video streaming and downloads is that there's no standard for the industry to coalesce around. It's all a hodgepodge of stuff with various factions competing against each other with the consumers stuck in the middle of it all. That will slow adoption.
3. Blu-ray isn't going to be replaced by another disc format anytime soon.
When both Blu-ray and HD-DVD were in the midst of their little battle for the right to be crowned winner of the next-generation DVD format wars, there was lots of chatter about skipping this generation of disc technology and moving on to something that offered capacity beyond the 50GB you could store on Blu-ray discs. My favorite was "holographic storage," discs, which could carry like 10 times the amount of data.
The problem is, no one's got the money or marketing power of Sony and its allies to bring out a new disc format, even if it is technically better. Also, Blu-ray is plenty good enough and will be for the next five years, if not longer, especially when they start adding special layers and all that fun stuff companies do to eke more out of a technology.
Yeah, Blu-ray's got plenty of downside competition from DVD, but there's no upside pressure coming anytime soon from some higher-end format. This is it for a while, folks. Blu-ray is the de-facto standard for high-definition discs.
4. Prices for large-screen HDTVs will continue to drop.
Yes, we're dealing with a serious recession here. But people are still buying HDTVs (maybe not as many, but there are certain necessities in life, and a good TV is one of them; it's the American way). And with prices becoming more affordable for sets 50 inches or bigger, you've got a growing base of installed users who are ultimately going to want to get the best picture they can out of their TVs. Eventually, DVD isn't going to cut it for people with large-screen TVs. And at the end of the day, Blu-ray looks significantly better than DVD--or pretty much anything else, including most HDTV broadcasts--on TVs 50 inches or bigger.
5. Prices for Blu-ray players will continue to drop.
By this time next year, there will be several sub-$100 Blu-ray players on the market. Once you get to those price points it becomes much more of a no-brainer for consumers to purchase a Blu-ray player. Yes, you 'll be able to buy a decent DVD player for $60. But if you tell someone you can have a player that plays back "HD" discs and DVDs, he or she will think hard about shelling out the extra cash. And it will also help if...
6. Prices for Blu-ray discs will drop to near DVD price levels.
In a small number of cases, we're already finding examples of Blu-ray versions of movies that cost virtually the same as their DVD counterparts. In the coming months, you'll see the prices for Blu-ray discs gradually drop with the gap between Blu-ray and DVD prices narrowing. They have to. This is how businesses work. You get the cost of production down to the point where you can spur demand and still manage to turn a tidy profit.
While people aren't going to buy as many Blu-ray discs as they did DVDs (plenty will rent from Netflix and other outlets), they're still going to buy some. Given the choice of renting an HD movie on demand for $6 and buying the disc for $15-$20, you're going to get your share of folks buying a tangible, physical product. And let's not forget that the price for watching movies in theaters is getting ridiculous ($12.50 per person here in Manhattan). Buying a pristine copy of the movie for $15-$20 is going to seem like a bargain, especially for a family of four--or more.
7. Sony will sell lots of PlayStation 3 game consoles.
As Sony trims the price on its PS3, it will sell more of them. Many more. And every PS3 has a Blu-ray player in it (and we still think it's the best player out there). This has always been Sony's Trojan horse for the platform. Don't forget it.
8. Sony can't afford to have Blu-ray fail.
Sony won the war with HD DVD, and now it's got to take that win to the bank. Sony and its partners will do everything in their power to make it succeed. That's a lot of marketing juice.
9. Sony and its partners will figure out a way to have Blu-ray resonate with the public.
In several market research studies, Blu-ray has run into a basic problem: a high percentage of consumers don't understand just what Blu-ray is and what it does for them.
I always liked the name HD DVD better than Blu-ray because I thought the name translated better to the average consumer. Some argue that Blu-ray is a better name because it connotes something new and different (and presumably better). Well, when you have people misspelling your brand's name (Blue Ray), you have a problem.
I would encourage Sony to embark on a whimsical, self-deprecating ad campaign that educates consumers about its platform and teaches them how to spell its product correctly. As we used to say here at CNET--whenever we saw our site incorrectly referred to as c-net, C|Net, or CNet--spelling is telling. When everybody knows how to spell Blu-ray correctly, the format will be a success. I'll bet my old HD DVD collection on it.
As always, feel free to agree or disagree with me and list your reasons you think Blu-ray will make it, fade away, or muddle about in a place between success and failure, forever eliciting praise and criticism.
Note: For more reasons why Blu-ray isn't doomed, read Matthew Moskovciak's excellent post recounting what early critics had to say about DVD and how it relates to Blu-ray today.
Additional reading: See CNET's Quick Guide to Blu-ray and current list of top-rated Blu-ray players.
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter.

1: Sony PS3 is not all that great because:
A: I waited for a clear HD wars winner before I purchased. I bought a PS3 because at the time it was the least expensive Blue-ray player. Well, I'm pretty unhappy with that purchase. The PS3 falls pretty short for an "Entertainment Unit". I should have waited for one of those "Sub $100 Blue-ray players" you claim will be available. I thought the PS3 would be better than it is. Did you know there's no zoom function when playing a movie on the PS3? Even $25 DVD players have a zoom. Older widescreen DVD movies may not scale properly, and without a zoom function you might as well forget about playing them in the PS3.
B: Have you tried using the browser in the PS3? What a piece of junk. Crashes all the time, no back or forward buttons in the browser (you have to use the controller buttons). Who wants an "entertainment unit" that requires you to use those crappy game console controllers? Cripes, half the time the browser won't even display a graphically busy page without running out of memory. Sony should pay another company to make a browser for them because apparently they have no idea how to do it themselves.
C: What's the Bluetooth for? I love the idea, but if you buy a Bluetooth device, and it works on the PS3, there's not really any support for it. For example, I have a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but I can't use them in any games, and browsing isn't any better because you can't move the browser window, zoom or go back or forward by using the mouse anyways. There's no "driver setup" for you to customize the devices. The only thing their good for is if you need to enter text in a window. I suppose it's fine for a headset, at least games are building in support for them. Speaking of games...
D: The PS3 games suck. This is supposed to be an entertainment unit right? Not just a video game console? When I have guests over, I would like to enjoy some local multiplayer games with them. Most of the multiplayer games are the same old console deathmatch garbage that has been around for years. This is fine for kids playing the game console daddy bought them, but for an adult to shell out $400 or more for the system, $200 for accessories and another couple hundred for games this is not the type of game you'd want from an "entertainment unit". To this day the best "entertainment unit" I've ever seen is the old Amiga computer system. This had games for multiplayer, sequential (or turn based) multiplayer, split-screen multiplayer and awesome games for multiple people to play in a living room. Even the old Nintendo and Atari systems did a better job. I don't know about you, but my guests don't bring a PS3 system with them when they come over.
Many of the PS3 features are good ideas, but poorly executed.
So, if you think the PS3 is going to be Blue-ray's savior, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
2: Here in Canada new Blue-ray movies cost AT LEAST $10 more than their DVD counterparts. DVD movies, especially those filmed digitally, look great on my 42" LCD TV. Blue-ray looks marginally better. HD is nice, but those regular DVDs have been getting a lot better in recent years. I'm not paying more for a new movie in Blue-ray format than I would pay for a DVD. I have a movie collection of over 450 movies. Of those, maybe 20 are Blue-ray. The only Blue-ray movies I own were purchased for $16 CDN or less, and they're all older movies. I can get a new release DVD movie on special for $19 CDN, most new release Blue-rays are over $30CDN.
3: You're right about the name, but forget about educating people...just change it. The name Blue-ray just plain and simple sucks. Look at device names throughout history: Wire recorder, reel to reel, cassette, 8 track tape, LP records (and 45s), VCR, USB Flash Drives. These names are descriptive. What does Sony come up with? Betamax (duh) and now Blue-ray. Look Sony, get a brain and fix the name. At the very least take the stupid hyphen out. What would be wrong with Blueray? Who puts a hyphen in their product name? You're ASKING for people to spell it wrong!
4: The players are STILL expensive. At this time LAST YEAR Toshiba had $130 HD DVD players on the market, AND many HD DVD movies were available for just over $10. Are Blue-ray players and movies worth more just because Sony designed them? Like all Sony products, overpriced.
And finally I have to say, that's it, I am refusing to use the hyphen any more. From now on, it's going to be Blueray to me. Hyphenated product names are just as dumb as hyphenated citizenship.
the web browser is great now i fact please return your ps3 and shut up we dont need idiots using it
You said it best.
Most the games (not all) that are on X360 are on ps3 (minus your halo and gears of war)
People like you should be banned from posting comments until you do your research.
[CNET Editors' note: Personal attacks deleted.]
that really drives the point home!
I'm sorry tho...HD DVD is dead =X hahah yea...it's not returning from the dead...I don't believe that all major movie studios will waste their time switching to HD-DVD even if by some sort of miracle HD DVD happens to return.
K...not a big deal, but no great games? Are you kidding? Yes, there are not as many exclusives as Xbox 360 may have, but the few that are there, are pretty awesome. Heavenly Sword, God of War, Gran Turismo 5, MGS4, Ridge Racer 7, LiTTLE BiG PLANET, plenty more... and theres going to be plenty more coming soon.
We can go on and on talking about how PS3 is a great entertainment system, but we all have things to do...unlike you , just trashing the PS3 for no good reasons. All your points are either incorrect or just ignornantly overlooked =P
I'm guessing ur not too knowledgeable about the PS3. . . Helpless. . . You don't deserve to own a PS3 ! ! !
GO RETURN IT IF YOU CAN . . . Or JUST SELL IT ! ! !
Thank You...(plz dont) COME AGAIN (talking about stuff that u have no clue about) =P
As for the PS3, you said you bought it for Blu-ray. Why do you need a zoom feature? Does your TV lack one? I know non-anamorphic movies are a pain, but the zooming shouldn't be THAT big of a deal. Especially if you're watching Blu-rays.
If you're using it for movies and games, why bother with the web browser? It's not supposed to be a fully functioning computer (consider the ability to browse the internet as a bonus, at least that's how I look at it).
Also, why would it be a Blu-ray savior? I don't think Blu-ray needs to be saved at this point...
If you bought it for playing Blu-rays, remember it has some of the fastest (if not THE fastest) load times, decodes ALL HD audio codecs, it's a profile 2.0 player, and so far I haven't head anyone complain about any Blu-rays not working in their player (save for damaged ones). I'd say the PS3 is a pretty powerful little machine.
As for games sucking, meh, it all depends on taste. While I enjoy the Wii, others hate it. Go figure...
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6449_7-6886764-1.html
And this one--on pricing of Blu-ray players and discs--isn't too nice either:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-10103714-82.html
There are more. And for the record, I did not care who won between Blu-ray and HD DVD.
David wrote in the article in reason #9 "When everybody knows how to spell Blu-ray correctly, the format will be a success."
Megatroid u cant kill Blu-ray ok buddy and keep on zooming into ur dvds that look "marginally worse", who ... does that?? Blu-ray Blu-ray Blu-ray sucesss!!!
[CNET Editors' note: Offensive content deleted.]
Forget the medium, and next time maybe try focusing on the content. So much hype has been stirred up over which type of discs do what, and which ones have the greatest quality, or give you the biggest bang for your buck, etc, etc. I think what people, and hollywood, have really lost touch with, is quality. Not the quality of the picture, but the quality of the content that is represented by that picture.
I mean, when a movie is being sold on a platform of "the best digital quality 3d movie you will ever see!... For at least two weeks!", then we may have certainly dropped something on the way to the present. Oh yeah, meaningful content. Perhaps when people quite focusing on worrying about the type of medium that they're using, they can focus on something thats at least a little more interesting. Something that possible rhymes with "hood gory spline". And no, that isn't the newest 3d digital, more real than real life, amazing quality movie. Thats a feint sense of wit, slapping you in the face, telling you to get a life.
BTW : PS3 sucks. I don't care what you bought it for, you'd get more use out of a toaster oven.
Lol, to start off, saying your amazing PS3 is so amazing simply because it can play movies and old games, is a lot like saying you bought a HD television, so that you can watch local stations in analog. However, I do believe that there is a point in what you said. You obviously don't play the older PS and PS2 games because they surpass all others in high definition quality! I'm sure, that instead you play them because they have good stories, and intriguing ideas. That sense of quality content seems to have been replaced by HD images of late, swapping one for the other instead of incorporating both. So go ahead, keep watching your movies and playing your old games on your brand new PS3! I'll enjoy my toast, knowing I've probably already played every worthwhile game you own, on my PS2... Cuz I didn't have to fork over money for an overpriced machine so that I could watch movies and play old games. 8)
@BaylorX
I'm not sure what the people of Canada have to do with anything... Or how their country looks even remotely like a hat. Now if you're referring to the way Canada sits on Top of America, let me remind you that Alaska sits on top of Canada. So you'd actually be wrong. Or at least, only half right. In a sense, America would also be their hat. Since Greenland, actually sits on top of Canada as well, I think Canada would actually trump America in terms of senseless, if somewhat randomized hat analogies. Then again, who am I to talk? I'm just a simple Californian. I must not understand the complex social hat relationships between countries.
Now, traveling back to the matter at hand, I don't actually own any VHS tapes anymore. Not since I transferred them to discs a few years back. Believe it or not, I actually own DVDs, HD DVD's and even (gasp) Blu-Ray discs too. How you understood me to say that I wouldn't buy anything other than old video formats, is beyond me. I simply said that they are all great quality and its petty to fight over which will succeed, considering that the new (hmm, Blu-Ray?) will phase out the old. Not necessarily because the old wasn't good, but because the new is better. Also, because the new is the new. My point was that the less time we focus on which discs are going to be used, the more we can focus on the content of those discs. Those who try to argue for or against the discs are acting quite pointless, as it won't ultimately matter what they say, because what will happend will happen regardless. A sense of inevitability, if you will.
Now, I believe your argument is that I'm insane if I think Blu-Ray doesn't look "magnitudes" better if I blow it up to a "good size display", which is more like saying that eventually you can prove that on a screen large enough, that you can find magnitudes of difference. However, I think that you may be shocked to find that in the midst of such modern times, that isn't the size that "most people" need or use, as was my restriction. So your the exception to the argument. Good for you. I know I can watch my DVD's HD DVD's and Blu-Ray disc all on my 42" Television set. Now, that my friend, is more than a necessity, its a luxury. ;)
@ps3owner
I'm sorry, I don't speak moron. :D
Toaster2s suck. I don't care what you bought it for, you'd get more use out of a bottle of glue!
I'm glad you wrote this last reply to your original comment. You made your point much more clearer.
Not a lot of games out for that toaster oven, though...
Now, here's how Blu-Ray can win: Everyone hates disks. They harken back to the bad old days of computers without hard drives. Let the Blu-Ray disk be simply the delivery medium to upload the legally owned content to a digital player. Then stow away the disk, hopefully to never need it again (until a new player is bought). This same thing can be done with online digital delivery, and the business model that FINALLY develops it will win--Blu-Ray or online delivery.
--mark d.
By the way, I bought "The Dark Knight" on Blu-Ray, and for a couple of bucks more it came with a code to redeem a digital copy of the movie from iTunes. It's not an HD copy, but it's still good quality, especially since I mostly watch it on my iPhone on planes. I can watch that movie over and over.
Time will only tell with that.
But Blu-ray was always the better format over HD-DVD. HD-DVD had some advantages:
1. A clear name
2. Cheaper players that had advanced features before the Blu-ray players
3. Cheaper discs.
But there was one advantage that Blu-ray had over HD-DVD. Capacity. I'm not sure you can over-rate that advantage. It allows you to store larger movies, more bandwidth, better and more add-ons. And think of computer storage. Just remember... you always need more capacity. So, Blu-ray had to win.
feqw mmore to say consumers are really dumb when it comes to actal products people still dont understand the concept of bluetooth see there is too much ignorance but the fact is that we all just want better and affordable format see the thing is blue ray is a disk hard drives have been out longer and will continue to be out for a really long time there is nothing to replace it unless a blu ray hard drive lolz but that most likely wont happen no need really the problem is format and codecs im tired of all these codecs floating around there should be just one player one file type etc but the thing is if we where able to take our divres to a store and they download it there with a quick download and a back up licence boom never lose a movie even through a hard drive failure etc thats it really
I do however know that many people run off of supposed 10 Meg service here and when I stream to my 360 it looks like crap. I really like NetFlix and its Blu-Ray service for an extra buck per month.
I also like owning a copy on disc of the movie/media because when people come over and want to watch movies on my 52 inch Samsung LCD (thanks Cnet for the review) they can pick a movie and it seems more personal. (Makes a great piece of Art if you have the shelving for it!)
I think someday as tech gets older it will be much like iTunes/digital online in that most people will store them to a device or if the internet gets more bandwidth stream them from a server...
When my kid is 23 like me there will probably be Super Blu or Ultra HD, lol!
Will Blu-Ray stay relevant? Probably not.
If the studios backing Blu-Ray were smart...and to this point, they have not been...they would drop prices on media pronto. I'm still buying loads of HD DVD's while they are cheap, and I'm not dropping $30 on BD's anytime soon.
funny enough, i like my ps3, but... as blu-ray players were only $200 usd this thanksgiving i picked up a couple. work great and less noisy than ps3.
Personaly the convieniance and 'price' of downloading media (generaly HD) has prevented me purchasing a BR player. but then again I must be one of the few who genuinely dont want to own pysical media.
"Can't we all just get along"?!
It seems people are concerned Blu-ray will fade away, if downloading takes off. Even if Hi-def downloading becomes popular, I can imagine people wanting to save their movies on (BD) discs, instead of filling up their HDDs. Blu-ray might lose some ground to services like Netflix and Blockbuster, but I can't see this bullying Blu-ray out of the business anytime soon. If anything, it will keep Blu-ray on its toes to develop better content and create some healthy competition. Hurray to that.
I agree that the name "HD DVD" is more self explanitory than "Blu Ray",I own both formats and think the better format lost.
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by cobratronik
January 15, 2009 9:06 AM PST
- Right on, David. It's highly fashionable at the moment to prematurely pronounce the death of Blu-ray. As they say "if it bleeds, it leads" (in so much as any tech-death story is capable of bleeding). I would however allow the outside possibility that Blu-ray may never completely replace DVD. This of course, is far from saying it is a dead format. Like you my household has embraced Blu-ray, and if given a choice of formats we'll pick Blu-ray over DVD/streaming video every time. Having said that, I'd say that for a majority of people the audio-visual superiority that Blu-ray offers is not immediately compelling enough for the choice to be a no-brainer, given the current cost differences. I think you're right on target about Sony's marketing being critical in determining Blu-ray's long-term fate. Perhaps Blu-ray could become like Apple, with a highly stable but smaller market share (a boutique brand if you will). Only time will tell. In any case, viva Blu-ray!
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