Blu-ray Sales Up 91 Awesome Percent

I guess that's why blu-rays are still so expensive. When I can get a new release DVD for UNDER $20 (Canadian!), but the Blu-Ray of the same is $30+, I have to sit long and hard to see if the extras and 1080p are worth it over upscaled DVD.

And I have an HD-DVD player with an excellent upscaler, a PS3 with a decent upscaler, too. But a 50% increment in price, well, that's 3 movies on DVD vs. 2 on blu-ray.

Worf

@imTheKing: Only problem with that argument is that HD downloads are ALREADY happening. They are ALREADY eating away at DVD and Bluray. Back when DVD was trying to gain traction no one was saying, "oh, Bluray will take over soon enough, don't worry about DVD's." There was nothing else. You went from VHS to DVD. We ALREADY have an alternative to Bluray in our HD transition. HD downloads are NOT that far away.

ninjamurf

@Bandit: Well, "most" people have screens smaller than 50" so it may be a case of not wanting "overkill" (and over price) than it just being "good enough."

ninjamurf

I bet sometime in the future (if) when blu-ray start selling nearly 5 million players in half a year and makes up about 60% of the video market you'll still find some way to downplay it...

Jitty

@Dillinger23: How typically elitist. The jump is NOT that big. Again, 480i to 720p/1080i...BIG jump. 720p/1080i to 1080p...NOT that big of a jump. Most people are NOT going to rush out and buy a MORE expensive 1080p TV just to experience the "wonders" of bluray.

ninjamurf

@Dillinger23: Wow, bluray nuthuggers coming out of the wood work? Just get over the fact that "most" people don't have 1080p televisions...or bluray players...nor do they see the need for them. 480i to 720p/1080i was a BIG leap. From there to 1080p? Not so much.

ninjamurf

@Save me: great, now Giz is gonna get a cease and desist letter . . . in crayon.

@Bueller: hit me up when you have some more, my awesomeness is a little low right now :-(

@Noobs-R-Us: 2003, really? I was all DVD by 2001. I didn't even consider myself an early adopter.

@dirtybacon: The RedBox replaced the DivX concept as the short term movie rental. Much easier to control the distribution than it is the person watching it.

@Bandit:

Does your projector have high enough of a resolution to take advantage of blue-ray? I would think projecting it would defeat the point of the higher detail level... could be wrong though

ilves

@Dillinger23: yeah how in the hell did that happen? He must be politically tied.

imTheKing

@jdale: You should have BD-Live either way. Some discs won't even load without the option. I've found a few really kick ass features with BD-Live but as 92BuickLeSabre stated, there aren't many, if any, for most people.

imTheKing

@tande04 mile island in the sun: Blu-ray is going to hold its place for a long while. HD Downloads have a very very long time to go.

imTheKing

@92BuickLeSabre: Agreed. but being a Gizmodo reader, you mine as well have it. And I would expect a player with BD- Live can be upgradable, which is something we want when it comes to investing in an incomplete spec.

HD DVD shouldn't have lost, plain and simple. Sony bought themselves a format war victory only to step in a big pile of dogsh*t.

@Dillinger23: it's a god-damned travesty.

Can any of these sales be attributed to Netflix?

Thats good news, hopefully Blu Ray is here to stay. I love getting new releases from Netflix on BR. I never have to wait like I used to with DVD's. I usually get to watch them on my PS3 the day they release.

LEWD98

I bought the new LG BD390 Networked BluRay player that does Netflix, CinemaNow, and YouTube over wireless, or a direct Internet connection. I can also stream music from my PC directly through my LG which plays through my home theater system! This is way cool!

JP The BAMF

"So Blu-ray numbers might be up, but it's on the backs of people who have short attention spans and post-$199 players, which is exactly what Blu-ray's backers didn't want."

I'm not really seeing how this is a valid argument. You're really pointing to assertions you made in a previous article but the evidence of increased sales invalidates those assertions. How is low cost multifunction BD players really bad for the format? Sure maufacturing will shift to the lowest common denomenator, but it always does. In the end the additional functionality (Netflix) only serves to make the BD player more attractive. Ultimately once the player is in the home it's an option for content. Streaming video is not serious competetion for BD at this point. People may watch Netflix or YouTube on the DB, but they're still buying the big movies on disc.

PyrateKitteh

@W10002:Watch a dark movie like Beowulf upscaled on dvd then watch it on blu-ray if you cant tell the difference then you either don't have an HD tv or are blind.

Dillinger23

@tande04 mile island in the sun: Using the cellphone point, based on that chart it appears it took cell phones just under ten years before they started to sell exponentially. Most everything listed has that curve at the beginning before it reaches a point where sales start to shoot up. While I certainly would not argue that BR will have that moment, my point merely is that we are way too early into the process to declare anything until it has had a number of years to set itself. I actually agree with many of the reasons folks say that it will never replace DVD's, however that does not mean we can draw any conclusions yet. I dare say that much of our less than enthusiastic attitude toward BR has more to do with the parent company and the demise of HD-DVD than the sales numbers. That is just my obnoxious unsubstantiated commentary, though.

@ninjamurf: And you have a star. Wow.

Dillinger23

@tande04 mile island in the sun: Yea, i cant wait to take my shitty 6 MB dsl (which is all that is available 1/2 mile outside downtown fort worth) and download a 30 GB HD movie.

Keep dreaming.

Dillinger23

"According to Singulus Technologies AG, Blu-ray is being adopted faster than the DVD format was at a similar period in its development. This conclusion was based on the fact that Singulus Technologies has received orders for 21 Blu-ray dual-layer machines during the first quarter of 2008, while 17 DVD machines of this type were made in the same period in 1997.[48] According to GfK Retail and Technology, in the first week of November 2008, sales of Blu-ray recorders surpassed DVD recorders in Japan.[49] According to the Digital Entertainment Group, the total number of Blu-ray Disc playback devices (both set-top box and game console) had reached 9.6 million by the end of 2008.[50] According to Swicker & Associates, Blu-ray Disc software sales in the United States and Canada were 1.2 million in 2006, 19.2 million in 2007, and 82.4 million in 2008"

Kevin Kim

I swear there is a huge Sony tax on players and blu-ray discs and I never liked Sonys standards (I can't believe they have USB ports on the PS3 and not just Memory Stick slots). I don't want to pay $200 for a player and I got a really good deal on an HD DVD Blu-Ray player and I want to buy everybodies HD DVD's off them because its just as good (but not that capacity I know). No offense to Sony but it seems like they are in the market to make everything proprietary instead of being in the market because its a great market to be in (any of their markets).

@Bandit: double that. Can't beat BluRay on the HD projector.

glamajamma

@Noobs-R-Us: Yeah it is. People believe it because its true. Blu ray is a place holder at best.

@Monty: The problem is that adoption rates like that aren't linear, they're usually exponential.

By that argument it should take cellphones 100 years to reach saturation since thats how long it took for normal phones

NY Times graph

Awesome - in two or three years you can once again buy all the same content in 3Dray.

sharkync

@dirtybacon: Oh, that is memory lane. I actually purchased a DivX/DVD player (on closeout) from Circuit City, I think, to play DVD's way back when. As I recall that player only lasted me a year or so before it burned out, and the video quality was surprisingly poor compared to standard DVD players. I never once played a DivX disc in it, and frankly never understood the concept of toss the disc away after use. But, some marketing genius out there probably made a few bucks off of that concept before it failed miserably.

@Noobs-R-Us: Heck, I just figured out LOL does not mean "lots of leftovers" last week, but I assume Wiki has something to do with some hula mishap? This computer stuff is complicated, man.

So, based on the wonderful world of Wikipedia, it sounds like it took six years for DVD to shut down VHS. While I actually do question whether BR will ever eclipse DVD sales, based on that time period, there are many years to go. I also remember many a conversation with fellow geeks during the first few years about how DVD will never succeed. Which is all to say "plus" at the beginning and "minus" at the end sort of adds up to "who knows".

And yet, people wanted to believe that we're going to start downloading all our movies. Ha! Blu-ray is not a step we can skip to HD movie downloads. It will be DVD -> Blu-ray -> HD downloads.

Noobs-R-Us

I have been renting Bluray almost exclusively for the past few months from Netflix since they added the fee. There are shorter waits and more selection. It goes great with my 110" projected image. On a 50" screen the difference wasn't so great and that's the problem; for most people, an upscaled DVD is "good enough."

@Monty: Ever heard of Wiki? "In the U.S., mass retailer sales of DVD Video titles and players began in late 1997. By June 2003, weekly DVD Video rentals began outnumbering weekly VHS cassette rentals, reflecting the rapid adoption rate of the technology in the U.S. marketplace."

Noobs-R-Us

@Monty: yeah, there was those DivX discs that failed at the beginning as well. I know I adopted early, and I remember it took a good 2 - 3 years for a lot of my friends to jump on board.

Does anyone know the point at which DVD was released to the public and how long from that point that it became a product that started truly competing with VHS sales? I ask because if we are truly comparing the success of BR to DVD we need to put them under the same time comparison model. Sales of the actual movies are not necessarily a good point of comparison due to Netflix and other new sources of media, but certainly the sales of players is an excellent indicator of whether they actually have a chance of success, and that point of comparison needs to be the same time period that DVD had. As I recall, DVD was not an overnight success.

@Save me: Grover Cleveland?

@Lite: is on a boat.: I just sold some Awesome the other day. I had a little too much in stock, so I had to reduce my inventory.

@jdale: For what it's worth, I have yet to find a use for it.

Thinking about getting on the bandwagon.... does BD-Live have any use whatsoever? Or should it be completely ignored when picking a player?

jdale

Only reason I got one is it came free with my new tv ($200 dollars off if bought together). Other wise I would have been happy with just the new tv- Panny 46g10.

JimmyJames1

91% Oh my gawdzzz!! *pffft* So they sold 100 blurays last year and this year they sold 191? DVD still owns the market...as you mentioned. Just don't have any need for 1080p hardware at the moment.

ninjamurf

To be honest, I don't see Blu-Ray really worth buying unless someone has a high-end HDTV. Only then does Blu-Ray's picture quality appear so apparent that it makes the purchase worth-while. Until then, why would someone buy a $30 movie on blu-ray when it's $10 on DVD and the picture quality isn't much different on a person's... 720p TV?

When I first popped in the Ratatouille Blu Ray disc, my PS3 purchase was immediately justified.

Aunt_Snowman

This has to be somewhat tied to the numbers for 1080p televisions right?

We still have a 720p/1080i television (which is fine for our small apartment and we don't envision replacing any time soon), but we still have a Blu-ray player. But only because it's only because it's multi-functional (Netflix streaming).

Otherwise, we would have gladly stuck with our old DVD player until we upgraded our TV.

@Save me: I always thought the same thing.

CooperDToo

@tande04 mile island in the sun: Really? I always think of Alfred E. Neuman when I see, hear or read about anything Bush does/says.

NarcoSleepy

Somehow I missed the blu-ray part and read the headline as: Sales of Awesome up 91% which I thought would be actually pretty awesome if it were true.

Well, I used the excuse that we needed a Blu-ray player as a way to get my wife to let me buy a PS3. she loves the great hi def movies, I love Metal Gear. Everyone is happy.

OldSchoolGadgetLover

finally, i may only have 3 Blu-Ray monies, but disregarding that, i'm glad to see they are gaining more traction...
i mean come on they're awesome

PS3 checking in... But I have to admit I started off being an HD DVD person...

@Save me: Yeah thats what I think any time I see any of Bush's pictures.

Thats cool. Here's to hoping that in the future, all (movie and game) studios make full use of the space in those discs.

Off topic but every time I see that image, I'm reminded of Grover from Sesame street.

Just in case you knew someone else named Grover.

Yup, BluRay ftw.

@ninjamurf:

Actually if you wanna get technical people spent $407,000,000.00 on Blu Ray, so do the math and see just what an increase that really is.

dalejrfanfreak

@kaiz3n:

Tell you what. A single layer blu ray holds 25gb of info, where a single layer dvd holds 4.7gb. Perhaps movie companies should charge 6 times as much money for the movies on blu ray? You also forget that Blu Ray discs come with a scratch resistant coating that basically means you'd have to try to scratch the thing to ruin it. Have fun with your HD-DVD's, something tells me you might have a hard time finding new releases though.

dalejrfanfreak

@nathrat:

Oh please. HD-DVD wasn't better to begin with! Sony didn't buy a victory, in fact you could argue that because of Blu Ray they are losing the video game console war. Drink Kool-Aid much?

dalejrfanfreak

I own a 720p HDTV and a PS3, to me the difference is clear and I refuse to buy dvd unless it's a comedy movie that is dirt cheap. Otherwise, I HAVE to have the blu ray version of a movie, there is no alternative. Maybe now gizmodo can post another "why blu ray is killing itself article" so I can link back to this. You should also keep in mind how much the economy sucks. It's much worse now than it was a year ago and Blu Ray is continuing to sell better and better. All of you in the comments saying the difference is very small are insane.

dalejrfanfreak

@DeusExMach has jumped the snark: Amen.

s0crates82

Yeah, let me know when I can get an affordable all-region player, and I might start buying discs. In the mean time, it's for rentals only.

I'm sorry, but Bluray just looks so weird and creepy to me. I really don't think it looks better than dvd. If anything, it just looks wrong and unnatural. My wife offered to let me buy one and I turned it down because I don't like the way it looks. I guess I'll have to come around eventually, but for now I'd rather not have one.

whiteflea

so that 11 million people that are just going to have to trasfer their media to digital about 4 years from now. Sorry it may be adopting fast but blu-ray to me is nothing more then laser disc.

Jarek James

@whiteflea:

dont think ive ever heard anyone saying blu-ray looks weird and creepy...if you cant see that the quality is much better than DVD then maybe you need to pay a visit to your optometrist

Kevin Kim

Well, I'm not a hater, but I still don't see the point of switching to Blu-ray yet... or ever.

I have a big DVD collection, Blu-ray players and media are still a high price to pay, it's not a media switch as big as VHS was to DVD, and the only true advantage I see is having crispier/better image quality, which is good, but I don't care about it much (I'm fine with watching movies on my PSP).

And it's also not an image quality improvement such as VHS to DVD was.

All this added to the fact that I'm not that much of a movie fan anymore...

With Sony and other companies advertising and pushing the new tecnology on the market, I have no doubts it'll sell great... but I'm not buying it.

Well, maybe when it gets cheaper I will get a Blu-ray Burner though...

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@ninjamurf: STREAMING HD video sucks ass. To this day, it sucks ass. Hulu has proven this along with netflix. The quality is sub par. If we were to cater to the general trailer park modular, then streaming HD video would be fine.

As I said before, MOST people DO NOT have the connection to sustain downloads for HD streaming. In my home I have 50mb down and 30mb up but end of the day, the average user does not have that. It's a niche right now and it will continue to be until quite a while down the road. Last related post on Gizmodo even detailed how streaming HD content has along way to go and how there are still quite a few people on sub par connections. It's not like I'm making this up. Just because you are able to stream video and you don't care about the quality of the end result, doesn't mean that everyone else wants to have that same service.

imTheKing

@imTheKing:8 years away? HD downloads are already happening. Period. It may only be the lucky few, but those lucky few are the early adopters, the ones generally ahead of the curve. If they have the ability to get HD downloads than they might not want or need Bluray and DVD's, thus eating into their sales. It is those early adopters that new technologies like Bluray count on to reach market acceptance and then saturation. Bluray ALREADY has competition in ITS market with HD downloads and Bluray isn't even the de facto standard yet. It would be like if DVD's came along back when VHS and Beta were still fighting it out.

As for most people not having the "connection" to support it how is it that I can record 2 HD feeds over the very same line my internet is on at the same time? The connection is there, it just needs to be utilized properly. (Oh...and since when is HD video "shitty ass"?)

ninjamurf

@ninjamurf: HD Downloads are about 8 years away. Do you seriously think psychical media is going to vanish because you can stream shitty ass HD video? I mean really. The government FINALLY changed over from analog to digital and you truthfully believe we're going to jump all the way to HD streaming when most people in the US don't have a connection to support that.

imTheKing

@imTheKing:HD streaming is a niche market, kind of like, oh, I don't know, Bluray?! DVD didn't have any competition. HDTV (720p, 1080i) didn't have any competition. All that was required was for the public to reach critical mass on its acceptance. Bluray ALREADY has competition with downloaded content. And it doesn't have to all be streaming? We can download HD content overnight and watch it tomorrow. Kind of similar to what we do with DVR's now.

MOST people DO NOT have "the connection to sustain downloads for HD streaming."

MOST people DO NOT have "1080p televisions or Bluray players."

HD streaming may "suck ass" today, but Bluray players were too expensive when they came out. Every technology has its hurdles to overcome. It's not like HD streaming is going to get WORSE. People aren't going to get SLOWER connections. As I said, the pipeline is ALREADY there, it just needs to be utilized properly. Most likely by a cable company offering HD streams but they don't have any real incentive at the moment to open the pipe to the outside internet providers of HD content.

ninjamurf