Blu-ray up, DVD down in 2008

HDTV, PVRs, PPV and VOD is not helping optical disc sales either....

Duh. Thanks for pointing out those (glaring) omissions. - Jared

Good to see the BluRay format growing... everything old has to make way for the new. But it'll have a tough time ahead competing with these services... Hopefully it will win, we all love quality.

DVDs were the best affordable image quality available during its growth, but now other technologies are providing similar quality or slightly better, hence the drop in sales.

The next natural step is Blu-Ray which is again the best affordable image quality available, but for how long?

No problem! Someone had to do it. Nice chart though!
-Crabby

Interesting thing I just noticed looking at the chart again -- in 1999 the DVD had sale/rental numbers almost equal to Blu-Ray's current figures, and VHS was still the juggernaut.

If you believe history repeats itself, then we've got about nine years before the next format comes along. SD, anyone?

Yah DVD was expensive and slow to start as well. All the people that dump on bluray because its expensive, probably weren't the early adopters on dvd either. The only thing about replacing bluray though, is that bluray is HD quality. So now were getting to the point where were limited by the size of tv one can fit in their house. They're might not be a pressing reason to replace bluray unless people have 100 inch plus tv's in their houses?

I was an early adopter of DVD back in the late 1990's. I paid around $400 for my first DVD player. Back then, the picture quality difference between DVD and VHS made the choice easy. Today, I hesitate to spend the money on a Blu-ray player because I do not see a difference that is worth the price between DVD and Blu-ray on my 2004-vintage, 42-inch, 768P LCD-projection HDTV. I also hesitate to buy a bigger, 1080P HDTV because I am not sure the juice is worth the squeeze.

Good point, now let's see if Blu-ray can rake in $2.5 billion this year, or come close. That will be a good measure of the format's success (or failure).

Maybe to be on the safe side, you should check out the new Panasonic DMP-BD70V VCR-Blu-ray combo unit.

You should cleary see the difference in image quality between native 1080p from Blu-Ray and upscaling from standard DVD.

For your screen size, assuming you have a well qualibrated Full HD TV, you should be sitting at maximum 10ft from the screen to notice some of the benefits of 1080p. The closer you get ot the TV, the bigger the difference will be with 720p or standard definition.

I've still got a VCR that I can hook up to my PC and "rip" VHS tapes with using an ADSTech device! I did this recently with the movie "High Strung" (with Steve Oedekerk & Jim Carey) as it is not available on DVD in North America. Very funny film IMO.

DVD sales will slow primarily because people have replaced their VHS collections with DVD - and are now looking to a variety of ways of obtaining their content. I have this past Xmas, at a friend's house witnessed a few blu-ray movies on a 50 inch Panasonic Plasma TV, in full 1080p.... you can notice the difference with hi-def, sure... but is it worth all the extra money.... I'd still have to say NO. The movies that show off the hi-def best are going to be sci-fi... would never buy comedy movies in hi-def, as 1080p jokes don't make me laugh any harder And telling people that blu-ray sales are up is like saying more mp3 players sold this year than last. The transition from DVD to hi-def is going to be a very long process.

Looking at the chart, by 2001, DVD already had over %50 market share. 1999, it had similar sales to that of Bluray but in just a matter of 3 years time it already grabbed a huge part of the market away from VHS. Bluray, being out for over 2 years now, hasn't even come close to what DVD accomplished. I think you people that have this "pipe" dream of Bluray eventually dominating must be smoking something. Even if Bluray sales are 2.6 billion in 2009, it still will be a drop in the bucket to DVD. DVD sales have declined probably because the discs are cheaper to rent now. The figures are also based on rentals. When you add in Redbox, Netflix, and other online rental options that are offered, the numbers are going to be skewed because the movies are cheaper to rent than they were in the past. 1$ movies, you can't beat that and I will take the SD over HD any day for a $1.

Shaolin: DVD players were first introduced in 1997, not 1999. So in '99 dvd had similar to blurays now which have also been around for about 2 years. So if you want to see where bluray sales are you'd have to give it another 3 years.
To they guy who says the quality difference isn't worth the price and thats why bluray won't catch on. Why do so many people believe the prices will remain static. We've seen quite the drop in bluray prices over the last year and will continue. DVD's were horribly expensive 10 years ago, now look how cheap they are. As bluray continues to drop in price, it will become more competive with dvd. Blurays aren't always going to heavily out price dvd. I think bluray works great for comedy and sci-fi. Once you see how sharp the picture is, its hard to go back. Give it a few more years when bluray prices are more inline with dvd, and almost everyone has an hdtv, I can really see bluray taking off.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to go into a video store and ask for them to hook up a 4-year-old, 768P HDTV to a Blu-ray player to see if I can detect a picture quality difference.
I used to have a HTPC with a Blu-ray ROM on which I played a few Blu-ray movies, and I have to say that I failed to see a picture-quality difference that was worth the extra cost. Not to mention the black bars at the top and bottom and that wasted about a fourth of my screen's real estate.
When I rent HD movies (720P or 1080i) from my cable company, they look better because they occupy my entire screen, even though I can only use 720P.

@Zod

"DVD players were first introduced in 1997, not 1999. So in '99 dvd had similar to blurays now which have also been around for about 2 years. So if you want to see where bluray sales are you'd have to give it another 3 years."

By 1999, DVD had been out for 2 years. By the end of 2008, Bluray has been out for 2 years, relevent. They are nearly at the same figures for being out for 2 years. So the question is, is Bluray going to grab anything near what DVD did? I don't think so. Another thing to take into account, are sales. By year 2, DVD had %6 total sales. Bluray, by year 2, has only %3.3 of the total sales so the numbers may be similiar but they are not the same. We would probably have to go back to 1998 for DVD to have similiar total sales or even 1997.

Like I have said before, if Bluray wants to take off, they should concentrate on the PC market more. Storage is becoming a big issue and DVDR's are just not cutting it now. I have over 90 DVDR's of music, some even DL, and I am waiting for something as cheap as DVDR's to hit the market. The Bluray Discs are still too pricey along with a burner to be a viable storage solution. Bluray could hit the PC market and force the phase out of DVD from there. It would be easier to do it from the PC side than settop boxes. Once DVD is booted from the PC side, nothing would be able to stop it from dominating the entertainment market.

Blu-ray will be dead in a year.

1)The company that brought us rootkits - people have not forgotten about this. That's why most techies wont buy blu-ray, they remember the rootkit.

2)DRM. DRM and more DRM. Blu-ray is so locked up in DRM that just on principle, most people under 30 years old wont touch it with a ten foot pole. The future is free and open-source, DRM is a dinosaur.

3) Physical media - nobody needs it. Broadband is ubiquitous and it's going to all be about downloads in the future. No reason to keep or spin a shiny disc. Only old folks (well, again, those over 30) feel a need to keep a 'library' of 'discs' in their house. The techies and younger generation are wired, and have no need for it.

4)No difference from upsampling. Maybe when magnified and on a 100 inch TV the difference can be detected but everyone I talk to says they can't see the difference at all between Blu Ray and upsampled DVD. Blu-Ray is a scam basically to re-sell you all the same movies when you can already have them looking just as good.

5)$30 for a movie? Sorry, old men, the new model is free. If people think they can keep charging for "IP", they're wrong. "IP" is dead; information can't be constrained. There's always a Hacker. So every time you try to charge for IP, someone will be there to break it free. Want to make money? That's not our problem, you guys have to figure it out, because charging money for software, movies and music is dead. In the future, those who want to create for the love of creating will still create great software, movies and music and they will be shared with everyone.

@ bobthom (guest): "Blu-Ray is a scam basically to re-sell you all the same movies when you can already have them looking just as good."

Amen to that! The blu-ray folks are just trying the same shite that the music industry has pulled time and again. To sell you the same product again...and again and again - only in a different form. From vinyl, to 8-track to cassette to CD to SACD etc. Each time people go kicking and screaming because they don't want to change. They don't want to buy everything again.

Sadly, Blu-ray will not die in one year. Not with Sony willing to run the company into the ground with yet one more failed proprietary format. They are project over a 1 BILLION dollar loss this year and simultaneously are hinting at a price cut on the POS3.

Remember the PSP and the UMD? What a flop!

Well Blu-ray is UMD re-loaded and they will take this format as far as they can even if it means Sony is destroyed in the process....

I'm a techie and under 30. If I buy a movie which is already a very rare occurence, I want the physical disk with the shiny box and all the bonus stuff they can put on the Blu-Ray. I want to feel it in my hands and see it on my shelf.

Buying the CD, DVD or Blu-Ray is more about the pride you have in owning it and displaying it to your friends and relatives, otherwise you might just as well not buy it and DL a compressed version instead which is exactly what I'm doing when I just want to "watch and trash".

Using wrong generalities is an extremely bad way to argue anything.

@bobthom "3) Physical media - nobody needs it. " If I want to back up something I do need it. I hope you are not trusting a HDD to back up your data. Everyone knows that anything with moving parts eventually fails. With a optical disc, you don't have to worry about the disc being worn out if you get good media in the first place. Archiving my music is vitally important to me especially around a 2 year old that likes to get a hold of discs to test their flexibility and durability.

Upconveting is not near the quality of a good blu ray, at all. Even on a 42" 1024x768 native resoltion plasma, BR is looks far better with increased detail, most notably in dark scenes.
Upconverting cannot add detail that is not there, and that is a major difference. Nothing compares to BR's HD quality. Downloads and VOD is compressed crap. No cable or satellite (except maybe the premium "big dish" ones) broadcast anywhere near the quality of a BR.

Sony, Sony Sony... BR is not all about Sony ! I don't like Sony but I know the facts. Sony was one of the inventors /developers of DVD too. They collect a portion of the royalties on DVD just like they collect a portion of BR royalties because they are one of the 18 BR patent holders. Did you know that ? DVD has DRM too. Just because it was broken doesn't mean it isn't there.


Anyway, you can settle for SD and upconverting as I did for years. I am a HD enthusiast so am very happy with my new BR player. I'm not running out an re-buying any movies but any new HD worthy movies I want will be on BR, and I can rent BRs at my local stores. You can get BR movies off ebay trusted sellers for much less than retail.
The biggest knocks against it are the firmware update requirements and high cost of the movies.


bobthom, I look forward to your Utopian future.

Remember the higher quality Betamax big win over VHS?

When people say things like "Blu-ray looks far better" or "incredibly better" or "unbelievably better", that is a subjective opinion. One person's "far better" is another person's "not worth the extra money".
It's like the stereo "experts" who claim that a certain amplifier or set of speakers sounds "far better" than others.
Some people can neither detect a worthwhile difference in sound, nor a worthwhile difference in picture quality, and some people rationalize the superiority because they went into debt or spent a lot of money to buy something that is supposed to be better.
And some people probably do have more sensitive eyeballs, ears and corresponding brain lobes to make the differences worth the money to them.

We have SACD and even CD and vinyl yet everyone prefers MP3. You cannot gamble a format on resolution alone. Blu-ray would need several advantages to do well. It would have to be better, cheaper, easier to use or have special functions like portability etc. It has nothing going for it other than higher resolution, which as mentioned is subjective and dependant upon your equipment. Sony is going down.

Hey Crabby,
Well I'm not so sure. DVD took off without those advantages, it was not cheaper or easier. Better picture and sound did it, and at the time it had a major knock against it vs. VHS: it could not record. It was very uncommon concept for people to buy a movie-player at the time, everyone was used to recording on their players (VCRs). But the more expensive format (equal or more than BR costs today!) was adopted for its improved picture and sound anyway.
If Sony is going down, its because of disastrous PS3 dev. costs & losses, and the fact they don't make the best TVs & electronics anymore. Actually they don't make alot of products they used to.

You make some good points, I agree 100% about the PS3 for instance. Sony will pull a Captain Ahab with that conslole and Blu-ray- then blame the "economy". Look, they are STILL stubbornly producing and *trying to* peddle UMD movie discs for the PSP @ 22 dollars a pop!

As for the comparison of DVD against VHS- what alternatives were around then to compete with DVD? See how long it took anyway? I just think, that was then and this is now. It's a different market today.

In the 80's and most of the 90's it was not nearly as convenient to record a TV show on your VCR and play it back as it is to record one today and play it back on your DVR. Most people only recorded a couple of shows regularly, or maybe a movie on HBO or Showtime. There were no VCR menus to find your show times and set the recording nor was there a list to show what was on your tape. Recording TV was a cumbersome "feature" that was used sparingly by most people. Most VCR's were used for watching rented VHS movies. VHS tapes, compared to DVD's, were like checkbooks compared to debit cards today, both in relative size and functionality.

I have always viewed the Blu-Ray format as more of the answer to the Laserdisc format Vs. VHS wherein DVDs are the VHS's of today and Blu-Ray is more akin to the Laserdisc and more of a videophile standard.


I am perfectly satisfied with DVDs (Except for the propensity lately of #%@! Ultimate DVD sets being issued without trailers much less actor bios) and don't forsee shelling out what will amount to thousands of dollars in hardware alone just to view $30 priced versions of movies with much more extra content than I'd care to become interested in when all I want to do is see the movie.

I know the 2/17 Digital TV necessitates getting a new TV and would be the perfect excuse to 'upgrade' as it were, but as I said, I don't want to dish out that much for something that would essentially quantitatively devalue some of my DVD collection in terms of habituated acceptable quality.

Really, I could care less about the image being incredibly sharp, except wherein it'd become destracting to my viewing (Make *better* movies, not sharper or cleaner-looking junk is my motto). And I wonder how much fewer movies will make the transition to the format seeing how expensive it is processing movies for the DVD format. I know alot of people are still waiting for many older movies to appear on DVD for the 1st time!

As someone else mentioned, my primary interest in the format was its possibilities as a archival format for the PC and this seems to be the *least* well-developed and advanced aspect of it.

I was enthused for the format over HD-DVD when it was 1st announced and that has slowly faded to general disinterest and disillusionment. I imagine that if Blu-Ray won't supplant the archival niche that DVD-Rs fill for archivists, some other format will come along (And is coming I don't doubt) and Blu-Ray will be left with peaked movie sales while the PC archival backup market is lost to them.

I'm not anti-Blu-Ray and realize it's a superior format to DVD's in many ways, but I also feel its still has a way to go before being as economically viable as DVDs for alot of people, especially now and in the next few years with the way the economy is. Who knows how this will affect the further adoption of the format in general. If advertisers don't lose half of their target ad base with the passing of the 2/17 Digital TV rollout, then maybe I'll be more optimistic about *considering* getting a Blu-Ray set top player one day. )

I fail to see why so many people believe that BluRay has a great future as a storage medium, just pulling costs off the web (in Australian dollars):

1500 GB Hard Drive $240 or 16 cents per GB
BluRay 10 pack $150 or 60 cents per GB
BluRay Burner $300

So to store the same amount of data as a $240 HDD you're looking at spending $1,200 to do it on BluRay ($900 to match a second HDD).

Then there's the fact that HDDs are faster, eraseable, you don't have to worry about splitting your data, you don't have to stick around swapping disks, you just issue the command:
Xcopy D: L: /d /e /v /y (where D: is your data drive and L: is your backup).

So why wouldn'd one just buy a spare HDD, sync it once a month or so and leave it a work or a friend's place?

@bobthom, pfft, whatever.

1,) and 2, er sony does'nt own, and will ever own bluray, they are part of a LARGE group of companies that are pushing the format.

3) you can shove that sideways, coz i want something in my hand, than watch my films go bye bye when my hard drive goes duff!!

4)are you kidding me? seriously? the first time i watched an upscaled dvd to near HD, my wife even noticed it, and when i took my ps3 to the old boys to show him on his HDTV, he bought one for his xmas as he was so impressed, and he as blind as a bat! it is way sharper than dvd quality. oh BTW over here you csn't buy a CRT in the high street for love nor money.

5) and here comes your real reason, you're a movie pirate. nothing wrong with that, done it myself at one time, but in these times it now becomes a matter of when, and not if, the MIAA/RIAA gets hold of you!! so its back to buying for me!http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...lies/7/doh.gif

when the bluray writers come down in price, i think we will see you back on here saying how great it is!!(if you're not broke/gone to jail by thenhttp://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...ies/2/wink.gif)

just looked just now, you can buy a bluray writer for 127 gbp (187.17usd)

thats not bad for you pirates out there, and it will get cheaper!!

ahuh and it's just super easy for older people to use right? Oh no it isn't? Oh what is easy to use? Optical Disc's. Just put in the tray and press play.What does it take for every day users to play movies that are stored on hard drives? First you would have to plug it into your computer. Second use a program to purchase and download a movie legally. Third you will have to find a device that will play that copyrighted content onto your tv. Oh and I'm sure everyone knows about the xcopy command. Last thing to note is of course download limits and speeds. We know the stories about that.

Are you sure that you're actually replying to what I said?

Your comment is about how it is significantly easier to watch a video from an optical disk as opposed to a hard drive and I'm in no way disputing that.

My comment was that as a backup medium BluRay discs are initially 5 times as expensive as hard drives (dropping to 3.75x) and aren't as convenient.

@Steveo: "just looked just now, you can buy a bluray writer for 127 gbp (187.17usd), thats not bad for you pirates out there, and it will get cheaper!!http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...ies/2/puh2.gif"
Arrrrr! Steveo- I'm afraid you don't speak for us pirates...and I can tell ye- we ain't buyin' no 187 dollar optical drive fer our computers!!!! Everyone knows that a real pirate would rather pay fer a good haaaarrrrddd drive and a quick connection. Am I right mateys?

To get us on board, yer gonna have to drop down to a 60 dollar BR writer, if ye want us to crack our cases and then we ain't gonna be doin' no writin' ! We'll be too busy a readin'! Har! har! har! http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...4/bigsmile.gif

its coming down though, that was mean't to be my point.
"To get us on board, yer gonna have to drop down to a 60 dollar BR writer, if ye want us to crack our cases and then we ain't gonna be doin' no writin' ! We'll be too busy a readin'! Har! har! har! http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...4/bigsmile.gif"
lol, to humourous for your own good sometimes crabby.
give it a year i reckon and we will see that sort of price. it was about 5 years down the road before we saw DVD writers go for £30 over here. i bought a dvd+ writer about the forth year( i think it was about then, my memorys quite bad), while everyone was scrapping over +/- dvd formats, for £115 then in the next 3 weeks they fell to about £80.http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...lies/7/doh.gif

i'm personally looking forward to when they get that cheap, not to copy my films, but so i've got a better way to archive my hard drive on the laptop, than buy bigger hard drives everytime.(and to keep all my rented DVD films on!:bigsmilehttp://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...es/2/smile.gif

@ Kurt_Aust

you need to go back to this point in the DVD's lifespan to see that the prices for the writable disks back then were just as expensive as the bluray ones are now.

so really you're not allowing for the costs to come down in terms of lifespan of the product.

as i've said in my above post, everyone is gonna have to wait another year before we see major drops in blu-ray writable hardware and writable media, much like when DVD first came out.

"Anyway, you can settle for SD and upconverting as I did for years. I am a HD enthusiast so am very happy with my new BR player. I'm not running out an re-buying any movies but any new HD worthy movies I want will be on BR, and I can rent BRs at my local stores. You can get BR movies off ebay trusted sellers for much less than retail."


yeah, i can second that! i'm not rebuying my dvd collection, unless, of course, its one of my downloaded poor copies!http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...ies/2/wink.gif amazon seems quite cheap to buy br too!! over here they're doing a buy 2 get one free deal!

I remember when I paid $300 for a Dvd burner and they were selling pretty well at the time. So I would assume pirated would pay $200 for 25gig's of storage.

Well I bought my first 4x DVD burner for $280 and at the time DVDs were a compeditive backup option, but now we have flash drives for the small stuff and USB or eSATA HDDs for the large stuff.

BluRay prices would have to drop by 80% right now to be compeditive on price but still would lag on convenience in some ways.

In a years time BluRay prices will doubtless be lower, but it's reasonable to expect that HDD prices per GB will also be lower.

I kind of agree with your last point, however, it wouldn't be the first time i've lost everything on my hard drives, and not had it backed up on a DVD!!

however, if you look at memory sticks/cards, then i can't see them getting cheaper in the near future, even compared to even BR!!

i am only including the media BTW not the BR writers in themselves, as if you were to think like that, then you could argue that you paid over the odds for your DVD rewiter for $280 when you bought it.

I would rather back up on optical media, than a HDD!!

and i think there are a lot of folk that think likewise!

I don't feel that filesystems on HDD's have become well enough equiped to failsafe crashes yet!

Hell, my PS3 threw all my films and music that i hadn't backed up down the pan, when the fujitsui sata HDD drive went wrong!

Steveo- you might want to try an alternate way to backup. I know if you don't have a lot to back up that optical is great. Having said that. There is nothing worse than losing a HDD. I use Windows Home Server and all you need is a clunky old pc around to use for your server and a couple three HDD. It automates a smart backup of all the PCs in the house and I don't have to do squat. I have no worries. With this system there is no way in hell I will lose any data and I don't have to sit around marking discs with a sharpie, then storing the darn things and twiddling my thumbs as I burn and swap discs. (My wife takes a lot of pictures and I used to back up to optical as I was paranoid we would lose them all.) I can even lose an entire system HDD in any PC in the house and simply put in another HDD - call up the server and it drops the image on it from backup and it is right back the way it was. From the time I close the case and boot up to the time the PC is completely restored- to the way it was - maybe 15 20 minutes. It has restored one PC that I hosed messing with some software, with funny ViiV drivers that kicked Acronis True Images ass. It knows which one went gunnysack and fixes it right up. I can also stream my entire movie collection, photos, videos or music with the server to any PC in the house with the (free) My Movies Windows Home Server plugin. Not to mention I can host files and also access my PCs that are on standby at the house from work. I often surf the net from work using my home PC so they can't tell WTF I am doing. It is something to think about...

yeah, i could do that, was actually looking at setting up with a USB hub(£60) that connects to my wireless router, that allows an external HDD to backup the systems daily, then setup a daily sync with my pc and laptops. however, as i've been saying, once Br media comes down in price, all i will need to do is back up with a couple of disks, for what i think will be a cheaper option for most(once the writers come down in price too).