Blu-ray is Penetrating the Market
The Blu-ray Disc Association was proud to announce its successes in growth throughout 2008. With the growing number of HDTV sets in homes, it’s only natural that consumers are looking for content to drive all those new pixels.
Blu-ray Disc promotions group chairman Andy Parsons cited DisplaySearch numbers, claiming that 10.7 million players have sold since the launch of the format. Parsons added that this number doubles DVD’s progress at the same point in the format’s life.
“A lot of people think of DVD as an overnight success, but actually if you look back, we have some data from CEA market research that shows three years into the launch of DVD 5.4 million players had shipped into the U.S. market. So if you are comparing DVD to Blu-ray we are actually looking at a considerably larger number of players that have shipped in only 2.5 years into the life of Blu-ray, so we are doing quite well.”
Of course, the 10.7 million figure includes PlayStation 3 consoles, which is still the Blu-ray player most consumers own. With prices on stand-alone machines dropping as low as $99, however, expect the scales to tip the other way throughout 2009.
Overall, 2008 saw three times as many Blu-ray Disc players sold when compared against 2007.
Clearly, so many people care about Bluray. The unfortunate thing is that if you watch a Bluray from 15 feet away, you're not going to see much difference compared to a normal DVD. Bluray is higher quality, for sure, but only at closer distances can the eye actually use that higher res. It's nice for LARGER screen size TVs. It's still not there yet, at least, not for the cost.
All my HD DVD's have better image quality then the Blu-ray.. why is this? not sure why. I bought a high quality 150 dollar HDMI cable from thesource for this Blu-ray player and still, image isn't as sharp as the HD-DVD.
When you have a 96 inch screen at 1080p/24 and can look at the fine details, HD-DVD was better in terms of quality. Too bad they didn't make it.
the 2 things holding it back were price and HD-DVD competition. the latter is gone, so now its just a matter of how fast the price can drop on Bluray.
I bought a high quality 150 dollar HDMI cable from thesource for this Blu-ray player and still.
What is a "Flagship sound system" any who? You show me some content in 7.1 or 7.2 from what i know the majority of content (including BD) is all 5.1...
Did the salesman tell you to buy a HDMI cable worth $150? You got ripped off HDMI signals are in digtal so you will either get a signal or you wont its not like analogue connections/cables that can be plagued with interference.
I agree with malveaux. And the fact that those numbers are inflated by PS3 sales would mean a drop so the comparison of DVD or even less.
As for HDMI, I went with aapl's brand and don't have any problems with quality so far. My view distance is around 13' and is a noticeable improvement over reg. DVD. I would imagine blu ray will get even better, especially since its competition is dead.
That's compared to 5.4 million DVD players that didn't have a trojan horse gaming console in the same time period.
Is that really brag worthy? Sure, I guess if you just look at the numbers but numbers without context tell no tales.
I also wonder if these numbers count people like me who bought a BD burner for my computer and use it also as my player.
As for the HD difference - I have a little old 42" LCD HDTV that I use at about a 6.5' distance from couch to screen. I can tell you HD TV channels AND BDs have a significant quality difference. Sure, if I take my glasses off, my DVD and BD of Bladerunner may look the same - but with my poorly corrected vision I can easily see a huge difference in image quality. Sorry, I just don't believe people who say "there really is no difference" - maybe for you, but my experience tells me otherwise. (Then again, I've never detected a difference between 5.1 and 7.1 sound systems - but my hearing sucks also. Heck, getting old just sucks.)
7.1 works best for very large living rooms with plenty of space behind your couch or for small auditoriums. In the average sized living room, 7.1 will not provide a sound experience that 5.1 does not already provide. And for the record, 5.1 and 7.1 have no bearing on the actual quality of the sound. It relates to the number of speakers only.
Blu-ray certainly does have a picture quality advantage over DVD so it's not in the same circumstance as 7.1 audio. However, the smaller your TV, the less noticeable that benefit becomes. So if anyone is still rocking a 13" Emerson, stick to DVD.
Cable does matter, the amount of data slipping through that cable requires a good clean signal to get the best out of it.
I was just trying to explain the thing i did to even try and milk the best quality out of bu-ray but again, it was good quality but my HD-DVD player pumped out a bit more quality, the faces/rock/background were so defined, a tad more then the Blu-ray.
Since Blu-ray doesn't have competition anymore, movie producers don't have to use the larger 50GB discs for higher quality because..really, whos going to compare when a huge majority only has blu-ray?
As for my sound system http://www.sony.com.au/homecinema/catalog/product.jsp?id=HTDDW7000#
Basically all i'm saying is when you expand the 1080P screen to 100 inches, you can see a difference.. Or its my Blu-ray player that isn't pumping out what is needed, either way its a bit frustrating. All companies imo need a form of competition.