Blu-Ray sales tank for good reasons

[wraggster]

BLU-RAY PLAYER SALES are sucking wind as well they should. According to Cnet, sales of the DRM infected format players are dropping like rocks.

The not so bright people out there had expected sales to skyrocket once the format war was done, but it didn't. They thought was people would ignore the massive defects of Blu-ray and buy like the dumb sheep that they are, handcuffing themselves to the Sony bank account.

Surprise, it didn't happen. US consumers are still dumb sheep, but this time they are realizing what is being done to them and they aren't biting. Sony's hope of having 50% of disc sales this year be Blu-ray are more likely to happen because of falling DVD sales than rocketing Blu-ray.

The format has three problems, DRM infections, BD-J and greed. The greed part is obvious, Sony won the format war and are trying to charge people between 50 and 100% more for a product with marginally better quality. Sure, it looks better, and the 0.07% of people with 7.1 channel audio setups will be overjoyed, but for the rest, it is a small step at best over an upconverting DVD.

Are you going to buy the DVD version for $16.99 on new release sale or $29.99 for the BD? It doesn't take a genius to realize that the next iteration of Hollywood Formula #7 with Big Stars #3 and #8 isn't worth it. The movie studios have yet to convince me that The Water Horse is worth spending my money on at all, much less at twice the price for DRM'd HD versions.

That brings us to the next down side, there is no up, DRM. Every Blu-ray disc is DRM infected even if the producer doesn't want it to be, in order to get a company to manufacture it, it must be infected. Sony gets an infection kickback fee as well, so don't think it is purely for protection unless you mean it in the -racket sense.

Blu-ray DRM infections do not protect anything, Slysoft has cracked it with their excellent AnyDVD HD product, something I can't recommend enough. Basically, new DRM schemes are broken before you can buy discs with them on it, protecting nothing. It will however prevent legitimate users from using legally purchased media on legally purchased hardware. If you pirate though, no more compatibility issues, once again making Piracy the Better Choice (TM)(C)(R).

Basically the new format has DRM baked in and in your face. It costs you money, hurts only legitimate users, and is laughably insecure. Until it is abolished, just say no to Blu-ray and spend your money elsewhere, try books for example. If you must stoop to the DRM infected media, crack it and run it from your HD, it will save you immense frustration.

The last thing that makes people want to run for the hills is the badly broken BD-J abomination. Basically, when Blu-ray was 'finished', it wasn't close to done. HD-DVD on the other hand was well thought out and thorough, HD had a robust virtual machine that did all the work it needed to, and BD had none. Sony rushed a hacked BD v1.1 out, followed by 2.0, and instantly obsoleted all the money spent by the early adopters. All except those who bought Sony players of course.

There are two problems with this, other than the fact that morons spent money on a Sony format, it works like crap and it phones home, both comprise the third negative. Working like crap is the obvious one, to test it, look at one of the flagship titles, Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Disney insists on BD-J, customer be damned, and it shows. If you click on any of the options from the title menu, it pauses, you hear the disc seek, you wait, it loads, you wait more, and it decrypts, you wait a little more, and then the menu animates. It is nothing short of a disaster that you can't skip. Unless you pirate the title, once a gain making piracy the better choice (TM)(R)(C).

In any case, the BD-J support is so half-assed and broken that using it is nothing less than misery, but you also get the BD benefits as well. That is incompatibility and higher prices to soothe you while you wait and wait and wait. Whoever forced this on people should be shot.

The other down side is that to support the so called Profile 2.0, you must have internet capabilities and access. Anyone here trust Sony? Remember, these are the people who unashamedly rootkit paying customers and then tries as hard as they can to bury it, but never apologizes.

With the new BD Profile 2.0, they can run arbitrary code on your player, download and install whatever they want (You read the EULA didn't you?), and take any data they want. In return, you get the privilege of watching your legally purchased media on your legally purchased players. Fair trade, right? Once again, Piracy is the Better Choice(R)(TM)(C), it doesn't rat you out to unrepentant rootkitters even if they have a EULA behind them this time.

In the end, if you buy Blu-ray, you get a more expensive product that is likely incompatible with your hardware, DRM'd to the hilt, slow as dirt and it rats you out for good measure. All this for slightly better rez, be still my beating heart. Player sales are tanking when they should be soaring and Sony is probably wondering why.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...es-tank-reason

[ketchup]

All the reasons why I so wanted HDDVD to win, (except for the capacity part which wasn't quite as good a BR).

[mcdougall57]

i rent, so pricing doesn't really bother me

[LewisCamel]

What a load of bollocks! So.. Toshiba is a company that kissed babies and didn't want to make a profit from consumers?

There is nothing wrong with Blu-Ray. You put it in your player, and video comes on the screen! Stop going on about it!

The biggest load of crap was when HDDVD went out the window, and my £500 player is now worthless.

Also.

I'm quite sure that the movie companies backed Blu-Ray for good reasons, and the people who made that descision knew what they were on about. Not some pirate loving goon who has probably never met a general consumer because he hasn't left his bedroom for 10 years.

[F9zDark]

What a load of horse $#@!. Sony doesn't control the price of Blu-Ray movies, the movie companies does. Without competition, of course the price will go up, NOT DOWN.

How are we to know the real deal about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD? The movie companies and Sony could have simply been eating up the costs of the discs and movies to make it more appealing during the war (and thus earn more consumers). Now that they have won, they are looking to make a profit/more of a profit.

Just imagine if Sony was the only company with a console (for some reason, lets assume the Wii and 360 dropped out or failed, etc). Sony would then have no competition and could sell the PS3 at a profit; simple enough, those that want a game console would have to pay the extra buck for it.

Competition makes the world of difference to the pricing of any item.

If there were 3 or 4 OSes that ran perfectly on a PC and played every PC game out there, MS wouldn't be charging in upwards of 300-500 dollars for Windows...

[ketchup]

There is nothing wrong with Blu-Ray.

Surely you jest! NOTHING wrong?
The performance of the interactive menu system just sucks.

[/QUOTE]I'm quite sure that the movie companies backed Blu-Ray for good reasons, and the people who made that descision knew what they were on about.[/QUOTE]

Have you really followed the BlueRay/HDDVD saga? Have you understood anything about the codecs involved?
The politics, the wheeling and dealing behind the scenes?
The carving out of revenue percentages between the formay owners and the studios?
Yes? Well I don't believe it.
Even Michael Bay made a complete ass of himself with his loud and complete BS reasons why he backed BR with no sound backup to his words based on fact, just his very loud opinion on a subject he knew little about. Film director not technology professor.

The article is overly harsh on Sony though I must admit and the Piracy theme is very tired. This guy shouldn't be encouraging piracy at any time even to hit out at Sony. HDDVD wasn't exactly a free access copy friendly format either.

[jamotto]

If there were 3 or 4 OSes that ran perfectly on a PC and played every PC game out there, MS wouldn't be charging in upwards of 300-500 dollars for Windows...

Just how many OSes do people actually buy? I haven't bought an OS at a store since 1991 as the OS is included with the computer most of the time.

This guy just has sour grapes, whining about the fact that blu-ray won, is not going to change the status quo.

[LewisCamel]

Mate...

Does it play films?

Do they look good?

Are you talking out your ass?

The same answer to all is yes.

You look at the interactive menues for early DVDs. They were bollocks, And please, next time you purchase a film please do so for the quality of the film not how flashy the buttons are...

People like you will find fault with anything. Look at the bigger picture.

And what I was saying about before. The general consumer doesn't give a crap about the runnings of Blu-Ray. They care about picture quality, range of titles and that's about it. The codecs can all have a merry dance around the may ploe for all I care. All my films look amazing on my Bravia and my samsung. Why the hell would I want to understand "The politics" all the general consumer wants to do is watch a bloody film. There are "politics" envolved with any media format, and you can pick and poke at any of them! Besides Blu-Ray supports the codec that the majority of HDDVD were encoded in. At the and of the day the market can now focuson one HD format, and make gains in quality of the product faster than if there were two to cater for. I ask myself why i'm getting into this argument with you for. Go back to your bedroom and have another good study at the Blu-Ray codecs whilst I enjoy my films!

[vicious1988]

I don't own any HD players. Mainly to see who won the war so I'm not left in the cold. But also because I don't want Sony.

[Qmark]

$400 player.
$1000 television to notice any difference in that $400 player.
$30 movies.

Or, I can go to the 'evil' Wal-Mart right now. There, I can get a perfectably serviceable DVD player for about $30, buy a handful of old movies in the $5 dumpbin (Dracula!, Rudy!, all those Eastwood westerns!), and play them on a television I bought for about $20 at a rummage sale ten years ago.

Wait two or three more years. If BD hasn't imploded, it'll be worth it to the average "sheep" comsumer.