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Blu-ray Aims to Replace DVD in Three Years

Marcus Yam (Blog) - March 16, 2007 8:38 AM

Consumers wanting to take home this year’s best picture, be it Babel or The Departed, have the choice of DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. According to Frank Simonis, European chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, consumers three years from now will only look to Blu-ray.

Reuters quoted Simonis during the CeBIT technology trade show in Germany as saying, “Within three years it will just be Blu-ray.”

This isn’t the first bold statement made by members of the Blu-ray Association. During this year’s Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, the Blu-ray Association announced itself as the winner of the HD format war, claiming that it had bested the competing format of HD DVD.

While analysts label the Blu-ray Association’s announcement at CES as premature, the Blu-ray Disc format has recently taken the HD movie market lead away from HD DVD. Blu-ray movie sales more than doubled those of HD DVD during early 2007, a trend that continued through February. Total sales of Blu-ray movies also recently surpassed HD DVD, although the HD-race still remains a close one.

Simonis’ statement could come from optimism for the upcoming European PlayStation 3 launch on March 23. Sony’s new console is given much credit to Blu-ray’s recent pull ahead against HD DVD, as the PlayStation 3, although a games machine at heart, is not only an excellent Blu-ray movie player, but also the cheapest one on the market.

Even if Blu-ray manages to emerge victorious in the high-definition war, it seems like wishful thinking of Simonis’ part to believe that DVD could be that quickly ousted. According to figures from analyst firm In-Stat, the worldwide DVD player installed base in 2005 consisted of 140.8 million machines. In comparison, there are less than 2 million Blu-ray players in homes today, with the vast majority of those machines being PlayStation 3 consoles.

Blu-ray gaining home entertainment majority in three years would also mean another thing: near full-market penetration of HDTV by 2010. Analysts at Leichtman Research Group Inc. and Kagan Research LLC, however, project that that only 55 percent of U.S. households will have at least one HD-capable set by 2010.

At this point, selling more than 140 million Blu-ray players, ridding the retail space of DVD movies and putting an HDTV in every home within three years sounds like an impossible feat.

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Are there really only 140 million DVD players in the world? I would have thought the number would be much higher.

What I want to know is...what percentage of the population understands (or cares about) the difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? At least when "VHS vs. Beta" was an issue, the average American could tell one type of videocassette from the other.

And believe me, I'm not asking that question as a technophile who believes that the American public is regrettably ignorant on the HD issue--I'm asking that question as somebody who has 300+ DVD's and absolutely no interest in replacing any of them.

I'm always amazed how good DVDs can look. There are some dogs (like the recent Superman Returns) but overall....they're close to HD quality at times (especially animated Pixar-type films).

I hope HD gains ground in HT eventually but this format war is nuts and I hope the public continues to boycott this nonsense.

I just ordered an upconverting standard-def DVD player (the Oppo 981) to go with my new projector. I don't want any part of this whole HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle.

I know not one person who has either of these players and I don't care. I'm not replacing my DVDs.
Even if Blu-Ray is outselling HD-DVD by a 2-1 margin (which isn't true), what does that make it, 20 to 10 in favor of Blu-Ray?

Some more thoughts I’ve had on DVD…

Looking back, it was six years ago this month (Wednesday, March 21, 2001, to be exact) that I finally bought a DVD player. Hard to believe, but back then there was no such thing as a $40 DVD player--I went to Sam's Club and paid something like $180 for a bare-bones Zenith model. Anyway, in the first few months, I did pick up some of the DVD-exclusive titles that had spurred me to upgrade in the first place, including the two-disc versions of "Boogie Nights", “Citizen Kane” and “The Phantom Menace”, the three-disc "Toy Story Ultimate Toy Box" and "From The Earth To The Moon". (By the way, when was the last time you heard the phrase “DVD Exclusive”?)

However—in the future, will we see such packages as these becoming exclusive to either Blu-Ray or HD DVD?

At the same time, I also collect NHL videos. Give hockey credit for being the one sport that has led the way for other sports into the DVD arena; it was first discovered that up in Canada that hockey fans would be willing to purchase full-length DVD’s featuring the original broadcasts of classic games in their entirety. So-called “sports highlights” DVD’s now seem to be becoming a thing of the past—instead of watching a “commemorative video” of last years’ World Series, one can now buy the entire World Series in a boxed set. (Even better: the NCAA recently announced that it will be offering its entire video library—nearly 5,000 games of college sports going back decades—on DVD at http://www.ncaaondemand.com/ ) In addition--entire seasons, indeed in some cases the entire series, of many TV shows are now readily available on DVD. Was there even any notion ten years ago that a market for this stuff even existed? The size of the DVD is what makes this concept practical—to get back to the topic of the thread, how can either Blu-Ray or HD DVD improve upon, rather than duplicate, one of the greatest things that DVD has going for it—its portability?

These are the things that have won me over to the DVD format. While I can appreciate all of the technical advances in picture and sound that will continue to be made, and while I fully expect DVD’s to eventually become obsolete (I’ll go out on a limb though, and state that it will take a lot longer than three years) the fact remains that nobody is going to junk their video library overnight so that they can buy a whole new format which only offers about 1% of the material currently available on DVD.

Finally—the other thing that consumers are no doubt keeping in mind should they decide to go ahead and buy one of these new HD players: What are the chances that the format they choose will ultimately wind up becoming the “Beta” of the two? Urban legend has it that it was the wider availability of pornography on VHS that led to the “defeat” of Beta (despite the apparent fact that according to all accounts I’ve read, Beta is technically superior, and is still in wide use in many professional video/broadcasting settings today) but it would seem just as likely that people simply preferred VHS because the players were cheaper and the movies were just as abundant.

Personally I've never thought DVD's were all that special to begin with but since VHS has become all but extinct now we're essentially forced to watch everything on DVD's anyway and I for one don't see what the big deal is about them at all. For one thing I only have a cheap 7-year-old 25-inch tv with no amps or any kind of external speakers hooked up to it so for me the picture quality has never really blown me away and quite frankly on just about every single DVD I've seen the sound quality just sucks with basically all the music and background effects drowning out the dialogue so that I have to turn the volume up all the way just so I can hear what people are saying. Now I realize this may just be my set-up and if I ever get a brand-new tv with amps and surround sound speakers that my experience with them may be a whole heck of a lot different, but for now on my little tv with built-in speakers DVD quality for me is really no different from VHS. In fact up until early last year I was still watching videos on my trusty VCR and except for the occasional movie I was having zero problems with it. It's not like I'm gonna stop watching DVD's anytime soon though even with my sound issues but again that's mostly because VHS is a thing of the past and DVD's are everywhere now whether you like it or not.

I just think it's effing arrogant of these companies to expect people to have to replace their players, discs, and peripherals every five to ten years. It's nuts. Who can possibly afford to do this?

I agree with AMW - I personally have no desire to start collecting all over again. This whole 'replace your collection every few years' stuff is why I stopped caring about videogame consoles.

No way I will be replacing my current collection. Hell, I've finally started getting rid of movies I know I will never watch again. I've been trading them in for concert videos and TV show collections.

I plan on waiting out this whole damn format war and when I do eventually buy a player it will be able to play my existing collection to.

What I will do is buy assorted HD discs as new movies come out instead of the DVD version like the upcoming "Happy Feet" which should look spectacular on my SXRD in the HD-DVD format.

But I won't be buying older titles like I did on DVD except for movies where an upgrade would justify the cost.

One thing that made converting from VHS to DVD easy was the great bargains available back in the infancy days on websites. They were basically giving DVD away to get the format going. So I have tons of DVDs.

But HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs are not cheap at this point. They average around $30 each.

I lost out twice, on Betamax and Laserdisc, so I never took the DVD plunge and have only got one disc, The Beach Boys' 25th anniversary gig. I'll probably amass maybe a hundred essential gigs and movies before a new format takes over. That's okay, the player is so cheap now anyway. But if I do make an HD format investment, it'll be the FIFTH AND LAST ever video investment for me.

Now is a great time to buy DVD's as you can get many back catalog titles on sale from $3.99 - 9.99, thanks no doubt to the HD push. Buy them up like crazy because the new players play the old discs. When you watch them on an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player, they look even better. Or even on a standard DVD player with an HDMI cable connected to your HD TV. There will be no need to replace them unless you want to. All this worry is for not.