Blu-Ray Vs. DVD
- Thread starter Buktu
- Start date
- Status
The companies do not win when BR becomes a commodity product. They make very little on a $100 DVD player compared to a $500 DVD player. They invested Billions of dollars, and being forced to compete at a lower price point is not going to help.
Obviously not winning the format war is more costly; but turning BR into a commodity product is not good either. I remember the outrageously expensive DVD players that first came out... and people bought them. They dropped in price as time went on, as they became cheaper to make and as the companies behind the DVD technology were making their money back on their investment.
Again, this is why the big companies (Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony) want to move away from DVDs-there is NO MONEY IN THE HARDWARE. Panasonic and Toshiba want to make money on the hardware. Being forced to compete with a product that is selling under cost is not a great way to compete with a new high tech product.
This is not like the DVD era. DVDs were already hitting mainstream when the PS2 arrived. It had already sold for YEARS at inflated prices. Why would a consumer buy a $300 Sony BR player when they can have a $300 Sony PS3 that plays games and BR movies?
Some will want the extra quality of a nice dedicate player, but the massive sales of the lower priced DVD players demonstrates most consumers are value oriented.
Obviously not winning the format war is more costly; but turning BR into a commodity product is not good either. I remember the outrageously expensive DVD players that first came out... and people bought them. They dropped in price as time went on, as they became cheaper to make and as the companies behind the DVD technology were making their money back on their investment.
Again, this is why the big companies (Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony) want to move away from DVDs-there is NO MONEY IN THE HARDWARE. Panasonic and Toshiba want to make money on the hardware. Being forced to compete with a product that is selling under cost is not a great way to compete with a new high tech product.
This is not like the DVD era. DVDs were already hitting mainstream when the PS2 arrived. It had already sold for YEARS at inflated prices. Why would a consumer buy a $300 Sony BR player when they can have a $300 Sony PS3 that plays games and BR movies?
Some will want the extra quality of a nice dedicate player, but the massive sales of the lower priced DVD players demonstrates most consumers are value oriented.
The question is, how many people actually bought a DVD player before it dropped below $200? I know I didn't... In fact, I can remember back when PS2 was first selling that it was a lot of people's first DVD player. The fact is, while companies surely would love to make the enormous profit from a $500 BR player, they won't begin selling like hotcakes until they are a reasonable price (reasonable from the point of view of the consumer). I won't argue with you that for hardware makers, they would make more money if BR naturally won out without PS3 pushing it because it could sell for a high price for a little while and gradually lower to current DVD player ranges.
Acert93 said:
My bold above.
This is something I've been wondering. Typically products of this nature are priced within tiers. For instance Widget A costs $5 to make but sells for $9.95. Widget B costs $5.50 to make, but it wouldn't necessarily be priced for $10.45. It could very well be $9.95 as well.
So basically I'm saying that if the costs between BR & HD-DVD aren't that significant (and really, no one here has been able to show any proof either way) then the final cost to the consumer could very well be the same.
All pure speculation on my part.
Acert93 said:
Your memory is quite faulty. The PS2 launched in early 2000. Blockbuster didn't even launch a SINGLE DVD into their outlets until September 1999. There were only about 6 million DVD players on all of North America in 2000. Everyone knows that DVD sales didn't really take off until the Matrix hit DVD. The Matrix was the "killer app" to that drove DVD sales.
Moreover, most people I know used the PS2 as a *second* DVD player, not their first.
The installed base of HDTVs today is bigger than the installed base of DVD players when the PS2 launched. 10 million HDTVs now, 15 million by end of 2005, and 47 million predicted by 2007. The HD naysayers need to stop with the sour grapes and start saving up their money and joint the rest of modern civilization.
There is a market to feed it. 15 million HDTV owners by years end, who traditionally have higher incomes, acquire and adopt high end hardware earlier, and buy more games and movies. Would DirecTV bother spending billions on launching HD-satellites if they didn't think there is going to be a huge market in 2006/07 who will pay for this?
Blockbuster will likely go HD much faster than VHS->DVD. They progressed to carrying 6 types of console games very fast (including DC and NGAGE where I live) and they are going to carry PSP UMD very soon.
The margins on selling $40 HD movies are mucher higher than games, because they are simply selling what they already have. The cost to remaster these movies at Hi-Def is minimal. Sony will make more *profit* selling BD movies from Sony/MGM than they will from first-party game publishers they own, simply because it costs way more to fund a game than republish movies from your archive.
PS3 is unlikely to canablize those sales. BR players won't be that expensive after ramp up. History is not repeating itself, it's moving faster. Look how fast dual layer DVD burners dropped in price. Much quicker than when DVD burners were introduced.
Vs today, where they have to compete with $27 DVD players from China? Of course BR will have higher margins, but that isn't the only reason they are pushing it. Consumers are DEMANDING it. If you are one of the 15 million people who own an HDTV, you will be very annoyed at poor DVD quality vs BROADCAST HDTV. How come watching a movie with commercials over the air has higher quality than my DVDs? That's why HDTV owners want HD discs.
Depends on implementation. Still, they could have used a different frequency (900mhz for example). its frankly lame. It's a memory-stick style decision. BT works well. It is a standard. Lots of other devices can interface with it, like BT keyboards, mice, cell phones, headphones, etc. I have BT wireless headphones too.
MechanizedDeath
Regular
Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time of its launch (March 2000), the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player in Japan. Costs aren't a big deal for optical drive. Note how drive prices drop quickly these days. It's not like the CD drive which was priced high for a long time. DVD prices have come down much quicker, as have burner priced. I expect the same from BR. Sony doesn't need to make a profit off the PS3 hw, and they don't need a lot of the logic a standalone player needs. Cell will do a lot of that functionality in sw. So they need a spindle motor, DRM/controller logic (which I assume will be on the I/O chip) and a blue laser (which they have a cheap version designed already). Worrying about the cost of the BRD drive is silly IMO. I've said it a bunch already. Physical costs are gonna be marginal compared to DVD as far as Sony is concerned. Especially since this "BRD player" will ship in volumes way beyond any other HD video player on the market. Economies of scale plus already reduced component costs makes this a non-issue IMO.
As for the relevance...meh. It's a nice bullet-point, which makes it a nice selling-point. Expect some lame movie pack-in and lots of marketing. But as far as it being a necessity? Maybe not until late in the cycle, at which point all the advantages of the medium would have already had their effect on the userbase. All IMO. There's a reason Sony committed to putting a BR drive in the PS3 a long time ago. I think they showed it in a slide over a year ago. It's something they can put inside a lot cheaper than MS and Nintendo. Really can't discount the huge advantage Sony has making most of the components. It's something MS and Nintendo might be forced to look into if they plan on staying competitive with Sony through the future gens. They'll at least want to own some fabs IMO. PEACE.
As for the relevance...meh. It's a nice bullet-point, which makes it a nice selling-point. Expect some lame movie pack-in and lots of marketing. But as far as it being a necessity? Maybe not until late in the cycle, at which point all the advantages of the medium would have already had their effect on the userbase. All IMO. There's a reason Sony committed to putting a BR drive in the PS3 a long time ago. I think they showed it in a slide over a year ago. It's something they can put inside a lot cheaper than MS and Nintendo. Really can't discount the huge advantage Sony has making most of the components. It's something MS and Nintendo might be forced to look into if they plan on staying competitive with Sony through the future gens. They'll at least want to own some fabs IMO. PEACE.
MechanizedDeath
Regular
Acert: PS3 is a ROM drive. BR is much more than a ROM video format. It's strength is its R/W ability. That and dedicated decoder/encoder logic is what will account for the ridiculous costs of standalone players (BRD or HD-DVD). So really, they're not competing on the same playing field. PS3 has "crippled" HD playback simply b/c it only has playback, it can't record squat. A nice way for Sony to keep from cannibalizing their own premium BR lines IMO. But then again, I don't think their CE divisions are doing so hot anyway, so maybe they want to make the competition bleed too. PEACE.
PEACE.From "Q&A: Epic Games' Mark Rein talks next-gen" GameSpot interview -
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/20/news_6126181.html
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/20/news_6126181.html
Personally I think your all missing the point, what you should be lloking at isn't media size it's transfer rates and more importantly latency.
Given streaming in games is likely to be more common in the XB360/PS3 era, unless the streamed data can be organised into very large blocks the seek time is going to be the limiting factor.
Size could be an issue, but only for audio and video in the short term at least.
Given streaming in games is likely to be more common in the XB360/PS3 era, unless the streamed data can be organised into very large blocks the seek time is going to be the limiting factor.
Size could be an issue, but only for audio and video in the short term at least.
Mordecaii said:
I wouldn't say that, the budget minded people more than likely don't have hdtv's yet, and everyone I know with a hdtv would buy a $500 player to get full use out of there tv because the cable services still don't offer full hd support and it's very few local hd channels, alot of people that buy hd monitors buy a $400 tuner
MechanizedDeath
Regular
But what happens today doesn't dictate tomorrow. I don't think anyone anticipated the adoption rate of DVDs back in 2000. PS2 comprised a significant portion of worldwide DVD sales for the first year or so. So if prices on HDTVs come down quickly due to some new tech next year or so, then suddenly HDTV resolutions become a more significant factor. It's hard to say, so I like the future-proofness of it all. Not that it'll make much of a difference to sales anyway. PEACE.pegisys said:
Here's the difference. Those standalone BR boxes are likely to record as well as playback. Of course they will have other niceties, such as better remote control and such. Maybe faster access, better buffers for layer change, probably hardware decoding of VC-1 and H.264, maybe support for lossless codecs which are part of the standard that the PS3 may not support, etc.
Not sure there will be a lot of people buying $1000 units. But the recording ability, when it comes down in price under $500 or under $300, should have some draw.
And BTW, if people are buying $1000 units, would they go for a Toshiba HD-DVD or a Sony/Panasonic BR? Even not taking into account that HD-DVD recording capabilities are limited?
mckmas8808
Legend
There are too many reasons with Sony doing this its an advantage to them as a company investing in blu-ray and an advantage to them for as for a making games on a videogame console.
Anyways in the real-world if people go to say Bestbuy and see a $600 HD-DVD player and the employee explains to them what the difference is and that same person finds out that he can get the same high definition of a movie from a product that cost about half the price obviously more people will want to save half their money and spend the rest on buying high definition movies. $300 worth of HD movies would probably be at least 12 movies assuming that BR movies are priced at $25.
Also everybody here has forgot that Dell, HP, and Apple are really supporting Blu-Ray in a huge way and will be putting them in their computers. Do I really need to explain why this will help blu-ray defeat HD-DVD? Ok I will. If a person goes to Bestbuy lets say during Christmas season in 2006 and one hour later finds out that he or she can buy a next-generation movie player for almost half the price of a HD-DVD player and can use it in their Mac, Dell, or HP computers well I think more people will choose that choice instead.
Anyways in the real-world if people go to say Bestbuy and see a $600 HD-DVD player and the employee explains to them what the difference is and that same person finds out that he can get the same high definition of a movie from a product that cost about half the price obviously more people will want to save half their money and spend the rest on buying high definition movies. $300 worth of HD movies would probably be at least 12 movies assuming that BR movies are priced at $25.
Also everybody here has forgot that Dell, HP, and Apple are really supporting Blu-Ray in a huge way and will be putting them in their computers. Do I really need to explain why this will help blu-ray defeat HD-DVD? Ok I will. If a person goes to Bestbuy lets say during Christmas season in 2006 and one hour later finds out that he or she can buy a next-generation movie player for almost half the price of a HD-DVD player and can use it in their Mac, Dell, or HP computers well I think more people will choose that choice instead.
So your expecting games to require 34 gigs that u would need to switch out 4 dvds (what ff8 came on 4 cds irc) .
So you really expect that the hand full of games that need more than 4.5 gigs of space on the ps2 / xbox will suddenly jump in size by 30 gigs ?
Come on be real . I highly doubt any game next gen is going to need more than 15 gigs of room .
As for the rest when ps2 came out dvd was already accepted as the next standard and the adoption rate of dvds were growing in the tripple digits each year .
When the ps3 comes out it will most likely be the first bluray player and it may find itself only supported by sony and only have sony movies on it and disney movies on it .
And there will be hd-dvd which will most likely be on the market for 6 + months with an equaly impressive amount of movies (most likely more because of the time advantage )
This simply doesn't compare to the ps2 / dvd issue as so many people want it too
MechanizedDeath
Regular
1. Adoption rates always grow rapidly at first. When you start off at zero, or near zero, adoption rates start off near infinity and then drop from them.jvd said:
2. There are already BR players either on the market, or planned for this year. PS3 won't be the first player. And as far as movies are concerned, it'll be like UMD. I really hope for unification, b/c I see both HD format stalling badly if they don't get on the same page.
3. Um, you don't know how many movies will be out for HD-DVD. The same applied for BRD, no one knows b/c there aren't any. And players should end up out at the same time, although that's also unknown. What's known is that unless it fails, it doesn't matter how many HD-DVD players there are. The userbase will be eclipsed quickly by the PS3. No other HD format player will ship in anywhere near the same volumes as PS3. The PS2 is still far and away the best-selling DVD player on the market. It's not even close AFAIK.
4. It doesn't compare now b/c the PS3 will be the only next-gen system with a blue-laser drive. You cannot deny it'll make a great bullet-point which will be promoted heavily. And yes, it will make a difference to a lot of people. Perceived advantages are sometimes better than real advantages, whether we like them or not.
I don't think BR matter much for games. Optical drives are so damn slow that who really cares? Hopefully all systems have an HDD built-in, or at least a flash drive to remedy load times. But as far as marketing hype is concerned, Sony pretty much won the drive war b/c neither of their competitors will be able to match them. PEACE.
mckmas8808
Legend
No not suddenly buy eventually. Over two or three years devs are going to want to use that extra space. If a developer doesn't have to worry about compression as much because he has 54 available Gigs then wouldn't that make the graphics or sound in the game better?
THat isn't allways true . Numbers can quickly drop off and fall down . Look at mini disc
The only player i've heard of is around 800$ and may not be compatible with the final specs of bluray that sony itself admits aren't finallized .
hd-dvd should have more by the very fact that it will be out in mass force before bluray
as for the ps2 comment that is just fanboy speak . Normal players are on sale for mabye a year at most and there are many many diffrent models . That is the dumbest comparison i've heard .
Yea ? and if bluray fails how great of a marketing point will it be ?
I don't think your going to see a leap of 8times (sl dvd to sl bluray) in data needs this generation and I really really doubt we will see a 12.5 jump in capacity needs in this generation
Even a 3 time leap to me is alot . Esp with future compresions (why not have your normal maps in 3dc compresion as you can fit twice as many in the same ram footprint in the gpu ram )
- Status
