This Blu-ray boondoggle has gone far enough, and it is time to clear the air. The Blu-ray format should have failed two years ago, but the entertainment and electronics industries are keeping it alive. We have all seen the commercials. You buy a DVD, try to play it, and you get slapped in the face with a commercial for Blu-ray. The music is fast and loud. Your screen is filled with explosions and cars flipping over. The sound effects blast through your speakers. Spider-man looks like he’s about to jump right out of the screen and land on your lap. As the excitement builds, the announcer implores you to gaze upon the incredible clarity of Blu-ray. The problem is this is all taking place on your entertainment system. You are enjoying the wonderful spectacle that is the Blu-ray commercial because you already have a decent entertainment system. If you enjoy the sights and sounds in the commercial, then you do not really need anything else. Call it a day, and enjoy what you already have at home.
Here’s the deal. Blu-ray is a ridiculous format. If you are not using it yet, do yourself a favor and do not go down that dead end street. If you are already on Blu-ray Street, get off now, cut your losses, and stop wasting your money on a format that will be obsolete in a few years.
On HD screens properly connected to HD players, Blu-rays are more clear than DVDs, but the difference does not really matter that much. Really, are DVDs that bad? Just ten years ago, people were awe-struck with the clarity of DVDs. In the past couple of years, however, Sony and the other contributors and members of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) have managed to convince a lot of consumers that Blu-ray is a major leap in technology.
In reality, Blu-ray is little more than a glorified high-capacity DVD. Sure the image is nice, but the cost is way too high, the title and equipment selections are limited, and the price to assemble a true full HD entertainment system is out of reach for most people. The problem is that if you do not have a spectacular entertainment system, you will not be able to appreciate a sufficient difference between DVD and Blu-ray. There is just not much quality to access, and accessing it is just too costly.
The real purpose of Blu-ray is not to benefit consumers. The entertainment and electronic industries are who really hope to benefit from Blu-ray. DVDs are fairly easy to copy, but Blu-ray discs are not duplicated so easily. Blu-ray discs are produced with a more advanced and expensive technology, and they hold much more data. Blu-ray discs also allow for other more sophisticated electronic copy protections. The entertainment industry has realized they cannot stop people from copying discs, so they are trying to move to a disc that is so expensive to duplicate that many people will not bother. Also, by using such large files for Blu-ray content, the entertainment industry makes the downloading of Blu-ray content cumbersome and time-consuming.
Also, the electronics industry hopes to benefit from Blu-ray by pushing consumers to replace their existing DVD equipment with new Blu-ray equipment. What better way to sell electronics than to make existing electronics obsolete. This is what they are doing. They know your DVD player is going to last for ten more years. Since you are not going to buy another DVD player for a while, the electronics industry has just chosen to make your existing one useless.
The biggest drawback to Blu-ray is its inevitable obsolescence. The era of the disc is rapidly coming to a close. Soon, we will all be moving to fully digital downloadable content. Movies will be transferred over the Internet and flash drives. Few people will be using discs, because discs will be largely unnecessary. If you want to see what is going to happen with movie content, all you have to do is look at the music industry, which typically stays five-to-ten years ahead of the movie industry.
The music industry abandoned cassette tapes for CDs years before the movie industry abandoned VHS tapes for DVDs. Currently, CD sales are plunging as the consumers force the music industry to move toward downloadable digital music. At some point, the CD will be relegated to obscurity. This same thing is going to happen in the movie industry as well. Video discs (DVDs, HD DVDs, Blu-rays, etc.) are the movie industry’s counterpart to CDs. If you want to see what is going to happen to Blu-ray and the other video discs, just watch what happens to CDs over the next couple of years. As goes the music disc, so goes the video disc.
In summary, DVDs are inexpensive, and the quality is very good. Blu-rays are expensive and they do not provide enough quality to justify their associated expenses. Video discs of all types will be obsolete in a matter of years anyway, so why start investing in a new format? The Blu-ray Disc Association, the movie industry, and the electronics industry are trying to jam Blu-ray down our throats. If you have not already said no to Blu-ray, consider the poor prospects for the technology and consider swearing it off. The era of fully digital downloadable movies is just beginning. You really should be saving up your money so you can enjoy digital downloadable content once it becomes the new standard for all video.
8 comments:
I can't remember the last time I read something so ill-informed.
I recently purchased a 50-inch plasma TV and an Apple TV (which supports both 720p and 1080i output. The image quality improvement over DVD is HUGE. You write about the "cost of a full HD system"...huh? If I want to add blu-ray capability I can get a player for about $240...done! Where are all the additional costs you speak of?
Resolution, colour depth, widescreen, the benefits of HD are major. Your column equates blu-ray directly with hi-def. blu-ray is just another delivery method (and by the way, it's currently the only way to rent true 1080p movies - most cable and satellite 'hi-def' services only support up to 1080i.
It's arguable about the distinction between 1080p and lesser imagery, but to even remotely imply that there is little difference between DVD and hi-def is ill-informed. A simple google search will show you hundreds of sites that quickly prove you wrong. Just take a dvd and blu-ray of the same movie to a stereo shop and you see how wrong you are.
http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html
Here's an obvious comparison that disproves everything you wrote.. and you consider yourself knowledgeable enough to write a blog about this subject?
Dear Anonymous from 6/04/2009 8:35 PM
Here we go again. All you are saying is the picture is clearer. Is that the only good thing about Blu-ray you have to say?
Please enlighten everyone with some real facts about Blu-ray's benefits. Where are all of the groundbreaking features in this "indispensable" technology? Nobody ever complained about DVDs being blurry until Blu-ray came out. Now, suddenly, DVDs are just horrible and antiquated.
We can see you already drank the blue Kool-Aid. Now, please attempt to explain to everyone why they should spend extra money on Blu-ray technology. Here's a hint. You need to say something more than, "Wow, look at that picture!" We all learned about that astoundingly sharp picture long ago at the beginning of this massive Blu-ray marketing campaign. Give us something substantial.
As for HD system costs, how much did you have to spend on those two nice TVs? They sound pretty expensive. Certainly, you would consider a TV to be part of just about any entertainment system, correct?
Dear Anonymous from 6/04/2009 8:39 PM:
That's the Web page you chose to support your argument? Those images are from ripped files from two different media on a computer using software. Have you considered differences in the actual transfer technologies used by the studios from several years ago compared with those of today? Have you considered the effects or limitations of the software on different types of media? Have you thought about the way that particular computer's graphics card might handle HD? Have you begun to consider the effects of digital compression on image files of different resolutions being displayed at the same dimensions on a Web site? (At the very least, you should have considered that one.)
The problems with this Lord of the Rings comparison could go on and on, but they do not need to. Anyone who has watched the Lord of the Rings movies on DVD knows the images were not nearly as blurry as those depicted on that Web site. Besides, this is just a repetition of the same old argument: Blu-ray is clearer than DVD. So what? We all know that. What else does Blu-ray offer that people really want or need?
My response wasn't directed at Blu-Ray, if you had bothered to actually read it. It was debating your comments that the difference between DVD and hi-def are nominal, thus the LOTR samples are very relevant. Just in resolution alone, a half-decent transfer to hi-def will look better and sharper to most people, period. I agree with some of your viewpoints on blu-ray, and I think it's relevant to note that perhaps there are going to be no long-term winners in the physical distribution of digital media. With hi-def on demand from my cable provider and also an Apple TV, I can't remember the last time I rented or bought an actual disc.
I would likely have bought into blu-ray if the price of media was more reasonable. To see some lousy 90's comedy re-released on blu-ray and selling for $27 is ridiculous.
Dear Anonymous:
Since you are so concerned about who is fully reading things, did you happen to notice you are commenting on an article about Blu-ray? Did you happen to notice the word Blu-ray appears in most of the sentences? A typical person might assume the article is about Blu-ray. Trying to misstate positions and twist this into a trivial and convoluted HD debate is a bit silly and a waste of everyone's time, especially yours. Clearly, one cannot write an article about Blu-ray without mentioning HD features. If you are going to read all sorts of weird things into that and start grasping at straws, you are not going to benefit much from any sort of discussion.
By the way, several questions have been posed to you in the previous comments. Have you not read them? Do you understand the questions? Do you find these questions too difficult or embarrassing to answer? Are you trying to hide something? You have done an abysmal job of defending your position--whatever it is.
If you are going to post comments here claiming someone is ill-informed, you should at least provide some substantial information to correct the record. So, here is yet another chance for you to enlighten the world with your extensive knowledge of A/V technology. Please give us some real information to prevent the possibility that others may be so ill-informed, and please do not come back here with more lightweight arguments and links to spurious JPGs. Come up with something solid this time and demonstrate your vast expertise in this field.
So what did you tell us, Editor, that is so technologically advanced and profound that retorting with "the picture quality is better with Blu-Ray" doesn't suffice?
You just regurgitated some facts from random google sites. Hell, I can do that too but what purpose does that serve?
You've been told the answer many times and on various sites but you're too ignorant to comprehend. Blu-Ray has superior image quality and sound, period.
If you play the same movie on the same system setup, with all things being equal, Blu-Ray will come out on top. That is all that is needed to force Blu-Ray as the latest and greatest. It is irrelevant if it's only going to last a short time or if it'll be aorund for the next 2 decades. It's also irrelevant for a consumer to want or care to know about the techno babble behind it.
It's like if I want to go out and buy a sports car, depending on what specifics I desired (high horsepower, great handling, sleek look, front engine, rear engine, foreign, domestic, etc) doesn't mean I have to be able to understand or know the thermodynamic science behind the braking system or be a structural engineer to know which chassis is stronger. All I need to know is what my seat-of-the-pants tells me.
The same goes with video equipment. Whichever gives me better quality for my eyes is what will get my money.
Get over yourself, Blu-Ray wins...period, game over, you lose.
Alex,
So, your argument is essentially that you are ignorant and like pretty pictures. That must be what it takes to blow money on Blu-ray and feel good about it.
So, there you have it, folks. If you are a moron who is easily dazzled by colorful moving pictures, Alex says you should join him and spend money on flashy but pointless technology. Way to go, Alex! Hopefully, you will have some friends soon.
By the way, Alex, your mom's Dodge Neon is not a sports car. So, stop trying to impress us.
Post a Comment