The latest poll on Blu-Ray

http://blogs.zdnet.com/home-theater/?p=1075

So, this blog indicates that the so-called extinct format of HD-DVD is still outselling Blu-Ray.

The way this piece is written is troublesome. You should never exclude PS3 from the coverage of Blu-Ray player sales. I have no clue in the world why any rational empirical investigator would ever do such a thing, except out of pure study bias. You want to show poor uptake for Blu-Ray, so you exclude the top selling player. The primary function of the PS3 is Blu-Ray playback. Truth be told, it is a distant 3rd place as a game console. People like me seldom play games on our PS3s. We use them because they are the most advanced media consoles on the market. Nothing beats PS3 as a media player.

Nevertheless, this blog does eventually put a grip on the real issue. The poll at the bottom indicates that 41% of the people surveyed believe Blu-Ray movies are too expensive. I would qualify that in with the following tag: to buy and to rent. The cheapest Blu-Ray disks are about $9.99 on the shelf at Frys. These are Universal/NBC/SciFi channel made for Cable TV movies. That is, this is not sort of material videophiles desire in the first place. The more normative price, even when sharply discounted, is around $25. With tax or shipping (hopefully not both) it's $27.

In sharp contrast, the full spectrum of HD-DVDs {which is a very short spotty list indeed} can be had for less than $10. Most can be had for $7.99. This includes some damn good stuff. The whole first season of Battlestar Galactica can be had for $10.00. I can get The Sting for $7.99. I can have the Bourne movies for the same price.

There is a serious lesson here for Hollywood. Drop your prices and they will buy it. For some unseemly reason, Hollywood seems hopelessly fixated on the $30 price point. I understand their logic and it is utterly defeated by the realities of the market. Studios believe you should be willing to pay $30 per Blu-Ray. More than 3 people will watch it, in all likelihood. You can see it as often as you like. It kills both DVD and the theater experience. Since tickets cost about $10 per seat, why wouldn't you buy the movie at $30?

1. Perhaps we are not willing to buy until we know we like the film
2. That means we saw it at the theater at a high cost.
3. Maybe we make far less money than Hollywood thinks.
4. Maybe Hollywood produces cash at such a vastly different level of scale that they have lost all touch with typical Midwestern average people.

In any case, accept what the market is telling you, oh Hollywood studios. Make $11.99 the top price for any Blu-Ray. Sell many more at $8.99. Watch the system take off and fly.

One thing I want to insist on: If you can't tell the difference between a Blu-Ray and a DVD, you are vision impaired. Seek Lasik vision correction now. You have some real problems. If you say there isn't much quality difference between a DVD and Blu-Ray, you are just plain damn wrong. You can be mathematically discredited very quickly. Further, I can run a controlled experiment that will embarrass you. Of course, we know these kinds of statements, challanging Blu-Ray's undisputable quality, amount to thinly veiled sour grapes.

Of course there is the possibility that you connected a PS3 to a plain old fashioned NTSC CRT. If you did this, you are just a plain old flaming fucktard, and there is nothing I can do to help you.

From whence comes this rubbish about Blu-ray failing?

One of the most persistently irritating aspects of CNET.com is their twice a week habit of publishing prophesies of doom upon Blu-ray. From whence comes all this rubbish?

Does it come from sour grapes? Is Blu-Ray just too expensive for these pee-ons to afford?

Does it come from a long-standing alliance with Microsoft? Let's remember that Microsoft backed the looser in the highdef war: HD-DVD.

Does it come from mis-predicting the outcome of the war? Let's remember CNET told us HD-DVD would win because of price advantages. This multi-component false prophecy yielded multiple black eyes. The entire basis was false. HD-DVD was never really cheaper than Blu-Ray... At least not during the war.

Does it come from the vast amount of traffic they get every time they publish one of these rants? It seems that each time one of these hit-pieces gets published, the item rises to the top of news.google.com. Remember this means page views and click-throughs. That adds up to dollars and cents.

Is it because John C. Dvorak no longer yields this sort of controversy and traffic with anti-Mac hit-pieces, and the revenues he once generated have to be replaced? Let's remember John C Dvorak now uses a Mac. {According to rumor he was offered a Dell or a Mac at his new place of work. The company John hates more than Apple is Dell, so he took the Mac.}

Could it be that they own stock in download firms?

Could it be that it is difficult to rip Blu-Rays and trade them on the Internet (although this is done on Bittorrent).

So just what is the substance of their argument and does it have any merit?

1. A year after HD-DVD died Blu-ray still isn't doing more volume than DVD.
2. Blu-ray players are not selling. (At least the ones that aren't PS3s aren't selling)
3. Blu-ray players are more expensive than upscaling DVD players.
4. Blu-Ray discs are more expensive than DVD disks.
5. Downloads will replace DVD. Blu-Ray will not replace DVD.
6. Apple isn't supporting Blu-Ray as they once said they would.
7. I can't rip my Blu-rays, and watch them on 2.5 inch portable LCD screen, as I can with DVD.

This, in short, is the full case they make against Blu-ray. Each time they post these 7 points, and they do so about twice a week, posters knock each other over to make the usual ripostes.

1. Two years into the format's life span Blu-Ray is way ahead of where DVD was in terms of acceptance.
2. PS3 constitutes 70% to 75% of the total installed base of all Blu-Ray players because it is the finest value in the land. It is the best damn media player in the world... for all types of media. Critics are foolish to expect inferior media players (which are often more expensive) to sell in the face of such tough competition. You cannot simply disregard the PS3 because it is not “A true Blu-Ray player” such an argument is utterly false, fallacious and preposterous.
3. Since Blu-Ray players offer 622% better resolution and quantum improvement in audio, we would expect them to be more expensive than upscaling DVD players. Surely you do not believe that much quality comes for free? Do you really expect a 0.0% difference in marginal price and profits?
4. Diddo for the disk. The disks are too expensive on average, but they are remarkably better.
5. Now we reach the absolute balderdash, poppycock and rubbish. How are we to disinfect the ignorant of their ignorance? It is clear to anyone who understands binary bandwidth issues that HDTV and broadband are a mismatch made in hell. The typical broadband connection carries approximately 2.5Mbits to your computer. The typical video image stream on Blu-Ray is approximately 24-35 Mbits. Let's call it 10x higher. That's just the video. Then you have the audio stream. For uncompressed PCM, that is another 4.6Mbits. For compressed, but lossless, DTS-HD MA, we're talking about 1.5 to 2.5Mbits. Remember, we're talking about 7.1 surround sound sample at 24 bits and 96Khz in a best case scenario. A typical Blu-ray movie occupies something like 17GB of space. You try downloading 17GB of anything and just see how long it takes. Now you can compress the hell out of the stream, but then you decimate the quality. You can reduce the resolution, but then you aren't offering HDTV. Some people protest that they are downloading their movies right now. I do solemnly assure you that if you are downloading it now, it certainly is not HD. Even the crap Apple is downloading to you is just 720p. What you see on Netflix is standard def 480p. No crap-hounds, I am sorry to inform you that the Blu-Ray spec was designed from scratch to be almost untouchable. Until the mode, mean and median bandwidth in this country hits a brick solid 40Mbits, you are not going to be able to offer a service that streams Blu-Ray quality video through the net. The consumer market just can't handle it. The business model is not workable. Some fools may try, but they will lose lots and lots of money. Certainly FIOS has the potential to yield Blu-Ray bandwidth. How soon will FIOS become ubiquitous? With the current recession, project 10 years. That is a nice, long happy life span for Blu-Ray to prosper and become the institutionalized standard. If media tech writers understood anything about binary bandwidth, they would not embarrass themselves by stating that downloads will supersede Blu-Ray.
6. So Apple is not supporting Blu-Ray as they said they would...? And...? Let us remember that Apple is a very little company after all. A lot of their Macs are being used to run Windows. That's how much market influence they have. Apple wants to sell you 720p movies through Apple TV, a product which is the biggest market failure they have offered in quite some time. Everybody who owns Apple stock knows that AppleTV is not doing well at all on the open market.
7. Point 7 utterly defies logic. Do you really think you can display 1920x1080 pixels on a 320x240 screen? What made you think that HDTV was made for 2.5inch LCD? Truly, some people do not understand the entire concept of HDTV.