Wal-Mart to Exclusively Support Blu-ray

[wazzledoozle]

I think digital downloads on demand are a long way off. It is convienient, but not currently practical for most consumers.

And $400 for a Blu-Ray player and movies at $30-40 a pop are more practical?

Streaming is definitely more practical right now, and will only get more practical as time goes by. Even if in 4 years you can get a blu-ray player for $50 and movies for $15, everyone will have a super fast broadband connection and some form of set-top box.

And in four years, everyone who doesn't have an HDTV right now will be upgrading. Those people are going to go for the most convenient way to get HD movies, which means skipping the disc player.

 

[newtekie1]

And $400 for a Blu-Ray player and movies at $30-40 a pop are more practical?

Streaming is definitely more practical right now, and will only get more practical as time goes by. Even if in 4 years you can get a blu-ray player for $50 and movies for $15, everyone will have a super fast broadband connection and some form of set-top box.

And in four years, everyone who doesn't have an HDTV right now will be upgrading. Those people are going to go for the most convenient way to get HD movies, which means skipping the disc player.

No it isn't currently practical. Most people currently don't have a broadband connection fast enough to stream HD content off the web. People are still going to have to buy set top boxes, even if it is an Xbox360, it is still $300 for the damn thing. If you get it through cable, you might get the box for free, but really you are just renting it from them, just like all set top boxes you get with cable.

There are huge hurtles that have to be overcome before HD on demand is practical, it certainly isn't practical right now because of those hurtles.

And Blu-Ray movie prices are already heading down into the $15 range, Best Buy has a bunch of $15 Blu-Ray movies. And do you think the on demand movies will be free? You can bet your ass they will be a good $10 a pop at least, and you get to watch them once or twice and that is it. No thanks, I want a physical copy I can watch any time I want.

 

[wazzledoozle]

No it isn't currently practical. Most people currently don't have a broadband connection fast enough to stream HD content off the web. People are still going to have to buy set top boxes, even if it is an Xbox360, it is still $300 for the damn thing. If you get it through cable, you might get the box for free, but really you are just renting it from them, just like all set top boxes you get with cable.

There are huge hurtles that have to be overcome before HD on demand is practical, it certainly isn't practical right now because of those hurtles.

360 cost doesn't matter, it already has market penetration for another purpose. The majority of internet connections in the US are in fact broadband, and it's not like people can't also download a movie instead of streaming it.

Services like Netflix show that people really don't care about owning a movie. You watch once or twice, and send it back.

 

[newtekie1]

360 cost doesn't matter, it already has market penetration for another purpose. The majority of internet connections in the US are in fact broadband, and it's not like people can't also download a movie instead of streaming it.

Services like Netflix show that people really don't care about owning a movie. You watch once or twice, and send it back.

The fact still stands that most of them are not fast enough to stream HD content on demand. You've got a majority of broadband customers using 1.5Mb/s connections or slower. With companies like ATT pushing 700Kb/s connections for $9.99 a month, you can bet most don't have the connection speed to stream HD content in a reasonable manner. And I don't even want to get into the number of people connected via satellite and their horribly slow connections that just barely qualify as broadband.

Interesting you should bring up netflix. It also proves that On Demand digial downloads don't work because their On Demand feature is failing horribly.

 

[imperialreign]

although Wals-mart taking the side of BR doesn't look good for HD-DVD; I still don't think it's over for the HD format. Keeping in mind, that what Wal-mart wants, wal-mart gets, and if other corps aren't willing to meet their desires, wants, demands, Wal-Mart drops their merchandise like it never existed, pulls everything off the shelf and packs it into a warehouse somewhere in the US to be auctioned off for dirt cheap. Although Wal-Mart is currently backing BR, we still haven't seen what K-Mart/Sears and Target will do, and they typically go against Wal-Marts types of decisions.

Again, I also still feel that the more predominant BR becomes, the more we're going to see Sony and Pioneer start squabbaling over the liscensing and royalties. Even though it's a shared technology between the two, they never see eye-to-eye about things.

 

[Ravenas]

And $400 for a Blu-Ray player and movies at $30-40 a pop are more practical?

Streaming is definitely more practical right now, and will only get more practical as time goes by. Even if in 4 years you can get a blu-ray player for $50 and movies for $15, everyone will have a super fast broadband connection and some form of set-top box.

And in four years, everyone who doesn't have an HDTV right now will be upgrading. Those people are going to go for the most convenient way to get HD movies, which means skipping the disc player.

Maybe you don't realize this, but cable isn't free. If you get a digital cable package from comcast where I live with all of the channels, it's 129$ a month (and I'm not talking the hd package, if you want that it's 10$ more) + the fee for renting the cable box (unless you buy one). At that point, they charge you 4.99$ - 5.99$ per movie (and there is no option to buy). Trust me, I have it in my house.

I think Blu-Ray is way more practical in the long run.

Furthermore, I don't know where you getting this info that Apple TV has bad HD quality, because I have no complaints about the HD rentals from iTunes. I could do a side by side of a Blu-Ray and a iTunes HD movie in 1080p and there would be no difference.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Blu Ray/HD-DVD really doesn't matter. By the time it reaches the price level that DVD was at, streaming video will have replaced all physical media.

Just look at what cable companies are doing with "On Demand" services. You can order and instantly watch 720p movies from your tv remote, never leaving your couch. Americans love anything that can save even a wee bit of time, and the savings of on-demand services are immense.

It's cheaper for the movie studios as well. No more physical media to mass produce, distribute, and produce players for. All they need is bandwidth and a set-top box.

The next generation of consoles probably won't even have disc drives.

i pretty much agree with you but i have to say that the compression cable companies use totally destroys the purpose of high definition. a movie at 1080p using avc looks much better than an on demand cable rip of the same movie at 720p. a lot of people say that most people do not care about picture quality, but i would ask them why bother with high definition then. the goal from day 1 of home movie industry was to replicate the cinema going experience at home. that means the absolute best/sound possible. you wont get that from your cable company for a long long time. they dont have the technology to push ~50mb/s video to everyone's home. so maybe in say 10 years we will see a real increase in performance from our television providers. for now movie studios will continue to produce discs we can all buy.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Maybe you don't realize this, but cable isn't free. If you get a digital cable package from comcast where I live with all of the channels, it's 129$ a month (and I'm not talking the hd package, if you want that it's 10$ more) + the fee for renting the cable box (unless you buy one). At that point, they charge you 4.99$ - 5.99$ per movie (and there is no option to buy). Trust me, I have it in my house.

I think Blu-Ray is way more practical in the long run.

Furthermore, I don't know where you getting this info that Apple TV has bad HD quality, because I have no complaints about the HD rentals from iTunes. I could do a side by side of a Blu-Ray and a iTunes HD movie in 1080p and there would be no difference.

i too have comcast and am overpaying for shitty looking hd content. i will by no means purchase their crappy on demand rentals. also, ive seen the apple tv hd movies and yes they look pretty good, but i can tell there is a very big difference in color, sharpness and brightness. also, the audio is not as crisp in 5.1

 

[wazzledoozle]

Maybe you don't realize this, but cable isn't free. If you get a digital cable package from comcast where I live with all of the channels, it's 129$ a month (and I'm not talking the hd package, if you want that it's 10$ more) + the fee for renting the cable box (unless you buy one). At that point, they charge you 4.99$ - 5.99$ per movie (and there is no option to buy). Trust me, I have it in my house.

I think Blu-Ray is way more practical in the long run.

Furthermore, I don't know where you getting this info that Apple TV has bad HD quality, because I have no complaints about the HD rentals from iTunes. I could do a side by side of a Blu-Ray and a iTunes HD movie in 1080p and there would be no difference.

That comparison is impossible, Itunes HD movies are in 720p.

 

[mdm-adph]

I still think Blu-ray was chosen over HD-DVD because the encryption hasn't been fully cracked on Blu-ray yet.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Itunes movie downloads outsell blu-ray and hd-dvd.

The war is won before it even got underway.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Let me go ahead and start singing, shananana shananana hey hey hey, goodbye!

 

[Easy Rhino]

a battle between apple tv and blu-ray would be interesting. personally if i buy a movie i want a physical copy of it. furthermore, i am an audio/videophile and can easily tell the difference between a 1080p AVC blu-ray movie running at 50-60Mb/s versus a 720p HD x264 rip running at barely 3 Mb/s. now a lot of people may not mind, but if you want HD content then why buy the expensive HDTV to watch crappy movie rips?

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

a battle between apple tv and blu-ray would be interesting. personally if i buy a movie i want a physical copy of it. furthermore, i am an audio/videophile and can easily tell the difference between a 1080p AVC blu-ray movie running at 50-60Mb/s versus a 720p HD x264 rip running at barely 3 Mb/s. now a lot of people may not mind, but if you want HD content then why buy the expensive HDTV to watch crappy movie rips?

QFT!

The difference is night and day! Some people would rather save HDD space and make all their A/V suffer.

I'll never understand...:shadedshu

 

[wazzledoozle]

99% of people don't care about the difference between a 720p video and 1080p.

A certain part of my family recently got a 40" 1080p lcd, and they were talking about how great tv and movies looked now. Previously they had a ~27" crt. They also got their first dvd player with this tv, and a 5:1 surround sound system. To them, it's greatest thing since color tv, even though are were watching the same analog cable as before, and dvd's through composite cables.

I recently switched the dvd player to component cables and turned on the progressive scan mode, and I thought it looked better, but they could barely tell the difference.

There is a big placebo effect with people switching to HDTV's, and I think blu-ray and other companies are lost in an upgrading spiral that people don't care about. DVD's at 480p look good enough to 99% of people, so now what really matters is convenience and price.

 

[Kreij]

Bah ... until they start making televisions and selling disks that play in 1600p, I'm not interested.

I can play my games in that res, why not my movies?

MO PIXELS !!

 

[Easy Rhino]

QFT!

The difference is night and day! Some people would rather save HDD space and make all their A/V suffer.

I'll never understand...:shadedshu

me neither! but it is their choice. it doesnt make sense tho to spend 1000+ on a nice hdtv set and watch crap movie rips.

 

[Easy Rhino]

99% of people don't care about the difference between a 720p video and 1080p.

A certain part of my family recently got a 40" 1080p lcd, and they were talking about how great tv and movies looked now. Previously they had a ~27" crt. They also got their first dvd player with this tv, and a 5:1 surround sound system. To them, it's greatest thing since color tv, even though are were watching the same analog cable as before, and dvd's through composite cables.

I recently switched the dvd player to component cables and turned on the progressive scan mode, and I thought it looked better, but they could barely tell the difference.

There is a big placebo effect with people switching to HDTV's, and I think blu-ray and other companies are lost in an upgrading spiral that people don't care about. DVD's at 480p look good enough to 99% of people, so now what really matters is convenience and price.

its pretty simple, if you dont want to spend the money for blu-ray then dont. instead use your $1000+ hdtv to watch crappy movie rips.

 

[yogurt_21]

The fact still stands that most of them are not fast enough to stream HD content on demand. You've got a majority of broadband customers using 1.5Mb/s connections or slower. With companies like ATT pushing 700Kb/s connections for $9.99 a month, you can bet most don't have the connection speed to stream HD content in a reasonable manner. And I don't even want to get into the number of people connected via satellite and their horribly slow connections that just barely qualify as broadband.

Interesting you should bring up netflix. It also proves that On Demand digial downloads don't work because their On Demand feature is failing horribly.

see the whole problem with that argument is that "most people" don't give a rats ass about hd, so they wouldn't be buying Blu-ray either. and those who can afford blu-ray can afford fast internet. The idea that someone could afford an HDTV, Blu-ray player and enough discs to make the purchase worth it, while not having high speed internet is ludicrous to me. I mean seriously, theres no way there's that many of those people out there.

 

[Kreij]

see the whole problem with that argument is that "most people" don't give a rats ass about hd, so they wouldn't be buying Blu-ray either. and those who can afford blu-ray can afford fast internet. The idea that someone could afford an HDTV, Blu-ray player and enough discs to make the purchase worth it, while not having high speed internet is ludicrous to me. I mean seriously, theres no way there's that many of those people out there.

Not everyone who can afford an HDTV and all the extras can get high speed internet.
For example ... ME !

 

[wazzledoozle]

Not everyone who can afford an HDTV and all the extras can get high speed internet.
For example ... ME !

You're in the minority. Big business really doesn't care about you

 

[pentastar111]

I will continue to buy DVDs that are easy to backup so the original stays in the case unscracted. DVD upconverting FTW

 

[newtekie1]

You're in the minority. Big business really doesn't care about you

Actually, almost everyone in the US have access to broadband in one form or another, mostly satellite. Outside of bigger cities, cable and DSL is very rare. I know at the beginning of 2007 only ~50% of homes in the US had a "high" speed connection, and I am willing to bet at least half of those were on connections of 1.5Mb/s or less, which is no where near fast enough to stream HD content. Hell, I am on a 5Mb/s connection and it still takes me 5 minutes 30 seconds to download a 2 minute and 30 second trailer at 1080p at close to the full 5Mb/s. So it would take over 3 hours to download a hour and a half long 1080p movie. And I have one of the fastest internet connections available in my area.

Yeah, HD Content on demand isn't even close to a viable option to consumers currently. Yes, setting it up to download the file and then watching it later a decent idea, but again it would take less time to just drive to my local block buster and rent the movie for $3.99. I'm not saying it isn't going to happen, it just isn't currently practical. Maybe once we all have 10+Mb/s connections in our homes it will be practical, but not currently with the current connection speeds in the US. It might currently work for 720p content, but not 1080p.

 

[yogurt_21]

Maybe once we all have 10+Mb/s connections in our homes it will be practical, but not currently with the current connection speeds in the US. It might currently work for 720p content, but not 1080p.

we're actually on our way, cox is at 12megs, and so-cal has a company (roadrunner I believe)offering a 30meg down 2 up for 119$ a month and a 15 meg down 1 up for 70$ a month.

a couple more years and those speeds will be streamlined. granted in a couple years blu-ray will be cheaper and more viable. so i dunno, right now it seems no matter what the consumer is screwed. lol

 

[Easy Rhino]

we're actually on our way, cox is at 12megs, and so-cal has a company (roadrunner I believe)offering a 30meg down 2 up for 119$ a month and a 15 meg down 1 up for 70$ a month.

a couple more years and those speeds will be streamlined. granted in a couple years blu-ray will be cheaper and more viable. so i dunno, right now it seems no matter what the consumer is screwed. lol

well first, i would say it will be atleast 4-5 years before something like 15Mb/s connection costs the same as today' standard cable internet connection. by that time blu-ray movies will be as cheap as DVDs.

the ONLY thing APPLETV or other on-demand style streaming HD movies has in its advantage is convenience. you simply will not impress people with crappy 3Mb/s rips of 50Mb/s movies when they spend $1500 on a shiny new HDTV.