Video formats

Jim Garten wrote: Dean wrote: But blu-ray hasn't surpassed or replaced DVD in 6 years so I doubt that it never will Now it looks like it will be suffering serious competition from internet video streaming on demand from services such as Netflix and LoveFilm. Couple of interesting points there - I've worked for a large film company for 8 years now in the home entertainment side (ie video/DVD/BluRay etc); when I first joined, VHS was in the process of being elbowed out by DVD & that format is no longer being manufactured, let alone sold... then in came BluRay. Over the last 5 years or so, DVD & BR have happily sold side by side with BluRay by no means outselling DVD (quite the opposite, in fact). So far as sales are concerned, these are definitely dropping on the physical medium side as many switch to the streaming sites; definite comparison to CD vs Downloads, I'd say. Personally - I do prefer BluRay; to my aging eyes, looks better, sounds better (not quite the difference between VHS/DVD, but still a large improvement).

Equality 7-2521 wrote: How long did it take DVD to pass VHS?

DVD was introduced on 1995 - sales of DVD passed VHS in 2002 - so 7 years, VHS was discontinued in 2005. Blu-ray isn't even close after 6 years.  

Edited by Dean - August 15 2012 at 13:28

It looks better, and nowadays costs marginally more. The machines themselves have dropped in price considerably. If you have a HD tv and like to watch movies in disc with good quality, I don't see any reason not to upgrade (provided you have the means to do it, of course).

Equality 7-2521 wrote: I would say that's a pretty good benchmark and that the VHS to DVD conversion should have experienced more inertia than the DVD to Blu Ray. The one factor I could see having a demonstrable affect would be time of use. How long were VHSs prominently used before the introduction of DVDs? I think that's relevant. People may be more reluctant to switch to a new media unless a certain sort of critical time has passed since the previous conversion.

We can speculate a number of possible explanations, I suspect the only thing time adds to is the size of each users existing library - which makes it increasingly harder to change to a new format, so there would be a trade-off between cost of investment in the hardware against cost of investment in the software

Dean wrote: Blu-ray doesn't have that - all it offers is higher definition (and as I've said, in Europe that not a big improvement, it's slight improvement), but to all intents and purposes it's just an expensive form of DVD in a different box - to most consumers it's the difference between hardback and paperback books

I'd disagree the difference isn't all that marked; I do find BR to be considerably higher quality, both in picture quality and sound than DVDs - I don't have a top of the range player, I don't have a top of the range TV, so it's not that (maybe my aging eyes just want to see an improvement, so they're telling me it's better, but I don't think so).

Another improvement (which I was very sceptical about) is the better picture I get on existing DVDs when played on the BR machine (upscaling - another useless word for the dictionary); not a huge amount, but again, noticeable.

Where BR does fall down (and this is not a fault in the technology, but the manufacturing) is on occasion where I've bought an older film (eg The Usual Suspects) on BR, the transfer hasn't been done very well at all & instead of high definition, all you get is more noticeable grain. It is well worth reading reviews if you are buying an older movie on BR to make sure it's been transferred well.

Dean wrote: Jim Garten wrote: Dean wrote: Blu-ray doesn't have that - all it offers is higher definition (and as I've said, in Europe that not a big improvement, it's slight improvement), but to all intents and purposes it's just an expensive form of DVD in a different box - to most consumers it's the difference between hardback and paperback books I'd disagree the difference isn't all that marked; I do find BR to be considerably higher quality, both in picture quality and sound than DVDs - I don't have a top of the range player, I don't have a top of the range TV, so it's not that (maybe my aging eyes just want to see an improvement, so they're telling me it's better, but I don't think so).  Not saying it isn't noticable or better, it's just not that great ... all I was intending to show is the difference between USA and Europe - going from NTSC to HDTV is a bigger step than going from PAL to HDTV which could explain the bigger uptake of Blu-ray in the USA compared to Europe (15% of US households vs 3% in the EU). The only thing Blu-ray has going for it is this improved resolution, and it seems that was not enough to convince the buying public to switch en mass to the new format - people are happy watching DVD quality films (and how far do you get in a film before you stop noticing picture quality?).

Why the film industry waste any money producing Blu-Ray products if people are not switching to this format?

If you  have a huge TV...I mean massive, then the difference is far more noticable. Or at least the limitations of DVD are. Plus bluray has lossless audio which some people swear by.

Edited by Snow Dog - August 16 2012 at 06:27

Snow Dog wrote: If you  have a huge TV...I mean massive, then the difference is far more noticable. Or at least the limitations of DVD are. Plus bluray has lossless audio which some people swear by.

I used to watch the extras all the time; for example, some of them on the Lord Of The Rings extended sets were genuinely interesting as were those on Saving Private Ryan, Gettysburg (the older one, not the new TV one) & Schindler's List - the problem is, especially when you're dealing with technical & CGI led movies, the extras tend to tell you how it was all put together - it's like watching a really impressive magic trick, then the magician shows you how it was done; takes away the magic, somehow.

Generally now, I'm not too worried about them (nice to have if you want them though)