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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nfinity @ Apr 29th 2008 6:10PM
And understanding of market economy shows us that prices can't fall if you have limited production.
This is obviously no shocker. Sony and BDA is doing exactly the same thing they did with movies on PSPs, which was ultimate failure.
Again, one more proof that Blu-Ray, unlike HD DVD, wasn't consumer choice.
Well I guess, by 2010 all these HD digital distribution venues will be flawless thus making Blu-Ray a dud anyways.
joe @ Apr 29th 2008 9:10PM
Nfinity- I think that there are still some pretty sever challenges for BD bit this is totally different than the psp model.
First of all there are many players by many makers. Right now Sony dominates the market but they don't own it.
Psp movies required that you view them on a psp. Initially you could only view them on a 3" screen. That is a big limitation.
Sony worked hard to get Hollywood on board with BD. The psp only took Sony movies. BD players work with anyones movies.
HD-DVD for all it's supporters wasn't able to hit mass market even with vastly lower prices.
Sony seems to have done the market research right. Gamers drove HD-TV adoption. They also rate highly on media purchases. The mass market wasn't and still isn't ready to adopt HD movies at any price.
BD has time to get ready. I've seen less than $250 BD players and most movies cost me around 20$.
That is pretty comparable to the price I paid for my first dvd player but BDs are less than I paid for dvds in 1999. Comparably BD is costing me less than DVD's when I factor in inflation.
Even if there was a perfect mode of digital distribution today it would take years to catch on. BD is doing just fine for now.
Wait for Christmas 08 and the DTV switchover in 09 for the real indication of BD success.
EQC @ Apr 29th 2008 9:07PM
Nfinity: HD digital distribution has many hoops to jump through before it can take over anything.
1) Price: the majority of people don't want to pay full price for a non-physical copy. That's just silly. The requirement for a lower price is made stronger by the next two points: quality and DRM.
2) Quality/Bandwidth: these two go together. People need a fat internet pipe to download lots of HD-quality video. The US still sucks for real broadband penetration and speeds. So, *legal* HD-downloads will likely be lower-quality for quite some time until bandwidth is easily available and cheap. Why would anybody want to spend $100/month for top-notch internet and $25 per lower-quality movie when they could just buy the true 1080p movie for $25 at the local store?
3) DRM must be gotten rid of. There have been enough situations already in which DRM'ed music has been killed because somebody decided to turn off the servers that validate the DRM. Even big companies like Microsoft, apparently, aren't reliable enough to let DRM'ed purchases actually be purchases. If I'm spending $25 on a movie, I want to know its mine forever. With a disk, that's guaranteed as long as I don't lose it...with DRM'ed electronic copies, there is no guarantee of anything.
4) Multi-device friendliness: They need to make it fast and easy for me to take a downloaded copy and play it on my computer, in my living room home theater, on my bedroom TV, etc. Disks do that now. Downloads do not unless you're significantly tech-savvy and willing to break some rules.
h0mi @ Apr 29th 2008 9:35PM
Your PSP reference ignores 1 major issue that UMD had. Well, 2 really.
1- The UMD was worthless since a consumer was limited just to using it on a PSP that could not (then) output to a TV.
2- The ability to rip DVDs onto UMD discs and convert other video sources into PSP friendly formats without the need for (at the time, relatively) difficult homebrew methods.
UMDs don't offer any value over DVD when priced the same (and UMDs usually were $10+ more). At $5? The UMDs sold and were pretty nice to pick up, even if you could find a DVD for $10 or less.
worldbfree4me @ Apr 29th 2008 11:57PM
This is all hogwash really, because down on main street where I live with about 2OO+ Million other people, HD anything is just not in the cards. Most of the people I know that have an XBox or PS3 use a normal SD set for the display. Sure, they would love to own an HD set or player, but at what cost? $300-$400 for the set, $50-$100 for the player and $5-$10 for the media? And by then the next gen hardware will already be here and priced accordingly. As far as digital downloads go, the Cable and Sat providers will be Trojan horse that makes this so called fantasy a reality in the near future as mass adaptation to digital set top boxes that is being spear headed by your Uncle Sam as a way to make my Grand Ma and Pa get rid of there 20 inch floor model that was built to last 20+ years, so they say, will already be in place by the time the technology matures. And if one can simply stream or download an actual copy of HD/SD content for a reasonable price from there local media provider or cop it over the air legally or illegally, then this I believe will be the catalyst that will slowly began to displace both the stand alone player and disc as the media of choice in our homes as there will be no need to own these extra pieces of soon to be obsolete hardware. If this was true for games currently, I would would definitely sign up as a customer. Imagine if you could simply log on at a connected Home or Hotel, PC or TV and play any game you want for a monthly fee. It may happen my friends, because I am probably not alone when I say that I am sick of accumulating obsolete media hardware...ie Video Game Player, Video Movie Player, or any other so called Multi Media Player at unreasonable prices. $10-$50 monthly for indefinitely instead of $700 here, $500 there, would save me and the planet a lot of space and clutter!