I was just thinking, now that the competition (HD-DVD) is pretty much gone, and the fear of investing in a potentially obsolete product gone will you be buying a Blu-Ray player anytime soon?

Me? Maybe. When I get my "Economic Stimulus Package" check in the mail. Maybe. My current DVD player has been acting up.

Only thing is that now with no competing format what will happen to the prices for players and media? I would guess nothing, I mean no reason to lower prices anymore now, and no reason to raise prices although they really could and nobody could stop them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2008 01:57AM by mikebw.

Bought one (PS3) last July. I've built quite a nice library of titles already (~50), thanks to the many BOGO deals Amazon and Fry's offered in Q4 2007.

Don't know about prices of players, but since WB made their announcement there have been far fewer good deals for media, in effect raising prices.

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It is what it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2008 02:57AM by N-OS X-tasy!.

As OWC Larry stated in a previous thread:
"With a single HD format, ought to see more competition from more hardware providers. And maybe Apple will finally add blu-ray playback support that Windows has had available for a year. "

I wasn't really considering how individual manufacturers would be affected by this result. I guess before they were probably reluctant to market one type of player over the other, but now there is little reason to hold back, and with that we have competition between brands. As it stands right now Sony has the market with their PS3 game console / Blu-Ray player by a good margin I bet. Maybe soon we will see a good standalone Blu-Ray player for less than the PS3.

And the Apple thing- I was disappointed that they didn't include Blu-Ray support in the latest models. Expectations for this to be present in subsequent revisions are high. I would really like to be able to burn 25 or 50GB discs for backups. I mean sure, we can burn bunches of DVD's now for backups too, but photo and music libraries are getting so large it's becoming a real hassle to do that.

No hurry here. Perfectly happy with HD content on TV and upconverting DVD player thru HDMI on my 55" set. Maybe if there's a super deal or I decide to dump ComCrap once and for all and subscribe to Netflix.

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Maybe when the players hit $50.

I have no desire for Blu-ray video content.

I would like to have a fast Blu-ray disc burner (at a reasonable price) for burning data discs.

What's replacing Blu-Ray ?

Believe it or not I have a brand new Sharp Blu-Ray player sitting in a box that
my FIL gave us after he bought a new Sharp Aquos LCD TV. He had no
desire for it so we ended up with it. We thought about keeping it but after my
wife saw the prices of the Discs we decided we're not going to pay $25-30 for
a disc. We have an excellent Pioneer 5 disc changer with Progressive output
hooked up to our 50" Sony 3 LCD projection that does quite well. I'm going to
sell it to help pay our taxes this year and wait until they come out with a
multiple disc player and for the disc prices to drop. Once you've had a DVD
changer it's hard settle for less. We have a library of nearly 400 DVDs and
we're quite happy with our set-up we have. When bargains like the 2 DVD's
we just purchased start showing up, Patriot extended cut and DaVinci Code
for $6 then we'll consider getting one.

For me, SD DVD is good enough as an interim format, but after watching 720p material, it's easy to see the improvement.

But it's pricey enough that I can wait for quite awhile.

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I am that Masked Man.

All you can do, is all you can do.

There’s trouble — it's time to play the sound of my people.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

I have a PS3 now, but I will buy a set top BD player once the specs have settled down. The set top BD players you can buy right now are essentially obsolete since they don't have networking built in. The 2.0 spec requires networking and has on-line features that 1.x owners will be sorely missing. I can't see paying $300+ for something that will be tech junk in 6 months (when the 2.0 players should be in stores, and at lower prices than we see on 1.x players now).

I was expecting optical media to be replaced with downloads. However, with some of the high speed internet providers looking to cap subscriber's transfers or charge them more, this technology may be further off.

I actually went to buy 4 movies I wanted and look at BluRay players since ˆ was going to be at one of those big box retailers. But none of the 4 movies I wanted were out on BluRay, so......not yet

Regular DVD quality is enough for me at this time. Still looks awesome on my home theater projection system.

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sunfalcon
Regular DVD quality is enough for me at this time. Still looks awesome on my home theater projection system.

Trust me, if you have a good 1080p projector and a medium to large screen 92" +, once you watch a well encoded BD movie you won't be able to watch an upscaled DVD again. It's why you have a HT in the first place. The problem, though, is just like when DVD first came out, there are a lot of poorly mastered disks. These don't meet the potential of BD, especially some of the older titles studios rushed though to make some quick $ off early adopters. Rent the BD version Cars, Fifth Element, Blade Runner: Final Cut, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I want the burners to drop to under $100, and the media to under $2 for 20GB.

I just added my second PS3 now that the first one is pretty much a dedicated media center and the kids were on my case about playing games. Picked up the older 20gb version, minus hard drive off eBay for just over $200.

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i guess it depends on how much you watch movies at home (or TV at all really)

whos buying 92"+ screens for their house?

>> Rent the BD version Cars, Fifth Element, Blade Runner: Final Cut, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

are you saying those are good or bad?

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

I'll wait for the Blu-Ray version of Mac the Ripper to come out.

Quote
jdc
>> Rent the BD version Cars, Fifth Element, Blade Runner: Final Cut, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

are you saying those are good or bad?

Good. Really good. Make sure it's the remastered version of Fifth Element, though; the original Blu-Ray of that title is infamous for its low quality. The remastered version is MUCH better.

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It is what it is.

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So now that Blu-Ray has won, will you buy?

I doubt it. There's a fair amount of good HD broadcast content and I will get my HD movie fix via Apple TV rentals.

To be honest since getting an HD-DVR from the cable company we don't have time to
watch everything that we record as it is. We have like 20 HD channels and although it's
1080i it still looks awesome on my 50" 3 LCD Sony RP. As I mentioned earlier we have a huge
DVD library but we don't watch them nearly as much as we used to. Second son goes off to
college this fall so maybe there will be more time then.

Not at this time. I recently bought an Apple TV and have been ripping my DVDs a few at a time. I did rent one HD movie from Apple, and although the quality isn't as good as BD, it was more than enough for me. Also, it seemed like the rips picture quality looked better than the disc it came from. Plus, I really like having my library at my fingertips.

I think downloading content will be the direction in the future. I'm betting BD won't be around as long as current DVDs have, and we'll be downloading BD quality before we know it.

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Mr. Lahey: A lot of people, don’t know how to drink. They drink against the grain of the liquor. And when you drink against the grain of the liquor? You lose.

Randy: What the @#$%& are you talking about?

We bought one before Xmas and were very happy to see that Blu-Ray came out on top.

When the prices are comparable to the current prices for DVD players and discs, maybe. No improvement in picture quality would be sufficient to induce me to watch The Fifth Element, though.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2008 10:30PM by ka jowct.