PS3 Fanboy

They aren't talking about audio-videophiles that want the absolutely best quality they can get. They are talking about average joes, who would see upscaled DVD's and Blu-Ray side-by-side and couldn't tell the difference between the two (one of my own family members can't tell the difference between low-def and Hi-Def. They just don't posess the ability for some reason).

That said, I don't think Blu-Ray has anything to worry about, seeing as how they have absolutely no competition right now. Noone is very excited about the prospect of being permanently rented a movie via digital download, only for the DRM servers to go bust and for all those movies to be useless. Not to mention that it's not cheap enough right now, when compared with just going to the store and buying. On top of that, people actually like to have the box, and the physical media, to do with what they please.

I do however think the PS3 would be ALOT worse off right now if it hadn't come with Blu-Ray as a standard. I know alot of people (myself included) who bought it firstly as a Blu-Ray player, and secondly as a console that would one day have Metal Gear Solid, and a trucklord of quirky foreign RPG's (thanks to it not being region locked). Blu-Ray is the sucessor to DVD, and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. It's Blu-Ray's sucessor that will need to fear the digital downloads.

hey mine too!!! the ps2 was my first dvd player as well, shoot i still use it as a dvd in my daughters room :)

Blu-Ray is the successor to DVD - O RLY?

According to the stats, DVD sales aren't dropping. SO how can another format be the successor if the current format still reigns supreme?

The A/Videophiles out there (myself included) are a small minority in the home entertainment industry. Hi Definition video is definately the future - whether or not it's going to be on a physical disc remains to be seen.

As for poorly compressed video... where are you getting your online content from?!

Prices for upconverting DVD players are dropping like flies. The average consumer doesn't have an unlimited budget and if they can pick up an $80 upconverting DVD player that will get CLOSE to 720p or 1080i, that's a whole hell of a lot more attractive than a $400 PS3 or $550 BluRay stand alone player.

Which brings up another point... now that the BDA has a "monopoly" on the HD market, why don't they lower prices? If the BDA truly wants to push the format, drop the player prices and make it competitive! Oh wait.. I did say Monopoly right?

Who are these people that want Digital Downloads anyway? I am sick of reading about the ‘Digital Download Revolution’, and how ‘everyone’ is putting off buying Bluray because they are waiting for Digital Downloads; absolute b*llocks: I bet 99% of people asked didn’t even have an Internet connection or know what Bluray was. The questions was very likely ‘loaded’, “Would you prefer to go to the crowded shop, driving through all the nasty traffic, pushing through crowds of people to buy a High Def Bluray disk for £35, OR, would you like to sit in the comfort of your own home, never moving an inch from you comfy sofa, click on a little button and buy the latest movie for only £4?”. Put it like that and everyone will say yes to the latter.

If the reality were explained:

What would you prefer? Blueray disk, where you buy the disk, put it in the machine and it plays, or Digital Download where you have to own an Internet connection for £x per month before you even start; you usually need buy the download again if you want to watch it again the future; you can’t lend it to a friend; the quality is ‘similar to’ that of ‘proper’ hi-def from Bluray, (it’s not as good if you really look at it, and the sound is compressed to death, but hey, we make more money this way); the DRM locks your purchase to the machine it was downloaded on, so you can’t watch upstairs unless you download it again, move the player, or have a network point to it stream it to; When your player breaks, all your music and other content go with it and you have to download it all again; you can’t sell your downloads on eBay to raise cash for new material; it will take about 3 hours for a film to download, and even then it probably won’t be complete because you really need a faster (more expensive) Internet connection (didn’t we mention that when you signed up?).; you get no nice box art, sleeve notes or anything else; when the service of off-line, you can’t watch anything (xbox live). Etc.

At the end of the day, the 'general public' are a bunch of cheap-skate, slow to learn, even slower to change, sheep. They don't adopt ANYTHING new until it's on the verge of becoming obsolete. Look at TV, the vast majority of people are only just getting Free View Digital in UK because the decoder boxes are now £15. Hell, most people would still have a CRT display if the cheap LCD TVs hadn’t come into existence, and if you look at the quality of a sub £300 LCD TV, you will understand why people aren’t adopting Bluray just yet – you can’t even get a decent standard def image out of one of these crap boxes, so why would you bother with Hi-Def?

You only have to look at the Nintendo Wii to see that people want value, not technological advances: Wii is cheap, it’s fun, it’s simple to use and understand, and you don’t need to incest in an HD TV to get the best out of it.

High def is still way too new a technology for the average consumer – I know loads of people who have JUST started using the Internet, and where I live, the maximum speed I can get is 2Mb, and will be until they upgrade the exchange in 2018; I really can’t see anyone in my town going the Digtial Download route for at least 20 years (I am talking about Digital Download being a commonplace thing that everyone does – not something that the digerati do because we are obsessed with technology).

Price drops will come. It appears the BD group are recouping money post fight, but it won’t be long till they are competing with cheep players from china. After all DVD ended up being a 'monopoly' however prices steadily dropped over its life, have you forgotten how expensive they were at first? A single format has more advantages than disadvantages anyway. As for a successor not outselling its predecessor, that happens all the time, a few 'hardcore' types get it first and slowly the market turns onto the new product, they were still selling cassettes for ages after CD's came out, same going for DVD and VHS.

Meh, it took awhile for upconverting dvd players to drop in price. When i first had a "cheap" dvd player, it was a Chinese brand that I could pick up for "free" as long as I picked up two 20lb bags of rice at 99 Ranch market =P Otherwise I never saw a "cheap" brand name dvd player until yrs later when DVD began to go mainstream. BD is still in its infancy, and with the recession hitting and poor consumer involvement w/ purchases, the economy in America isn't getting the boost it needs. You're not going to see a drop in BD-related-anything unless the economy here gets its arse off the couch. And with the constant increases in minimum wage, there'll just be gradual inflations going on. We've increased minimum wage here what 3-4 times in the past several years. Just giving Americans more money to spend while at the same time, driving up prices of everything. Anyone remember when a McDonalds breakfast "value" meal cost $2 something? Now it's almost $5.

agelgamer, please check your facts before posting mindless drivel.

DVD sales down, Blu Ray Sales up.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1222
"the first quarter of this year was no different, showing an overall drop in DVD sales of 1.2% from Q1 2007.

However, Blu-ray sales saved the day - just as studios have hoped they would - and when combined with DVD sales resulted in an overall increase in sales of 1% over last year."

Like the PS3 and Blu-ray, when the PS2 came out, it was the cheapest DVD player on the market.

My stance was originally clear, and it agreed with what you're saying, but it got edited to heck. So naturally, it's now vague and ambiguous. Basically, if you ever read any of my posts and it consists primarily of simple sentences (no commas, no tangents, no parentheses!) then chances are pretty good it is no longer what I had written.