According to Blu-ray.com, major studios are making a significant push to further the appeal and adoption of Blu-ray by enticing consumers with low prices. Several examples were cited in this article, but the kicker is the prediction that DVD is finally headed out.
Adams projects 9 million Blu-ray ready homes at the end of this year, up from 3 million at the end of last year. He said the format still has less than 10% market penetration, after discounting those PS3 gamers uninterested in buying movies.
Once the number of homes hits the 25 million to 50 million range, Adams said, studios should be able to safely phase out DVD completely.
Much like the PS2 spurred DVD forward; the PS3 is doing the same for Blu-ray adoption. Now that the PS3 has hit the magical $299 price point, this trend will obviously continue. I think we are still a while off from true digital distribution that is viable based on bandwidth and HDD space. Seriously, some of those Blu-ray releases have a heck of a lot of material stored on the shiny disc.
Well just recently, the standards body which controls the DRM for Blu-Ray approved managed copy, which would let you legally rip the movie to your hard disk.
But it would be up to the individual studios how to price those copies. It’s more of an enthusiast feature though and probably would result in more pricey players.
For the mass market, it would make more sense to drive down the price of players and discs, which are still too pricey.
But I’ve learned that if you can ignore the hype, it’s better to wait to buy discs. Last year, I got the Dark Knight and Wall-E at release. Still haven’t gotten around to watching them. Well now, I could save about $5-10 each.
Digital distribution will not match the quality of Blu-Ray for a long time, if ever. Instead, it would be a convenience thing and the mass market is willing to give up quality for convenience, as the progression from CDs to MP3 has shown.
And pricing will never undercut package media by enough to make the loss in quality worth the tradeoff. Because the studios aren’t going to give up margins for higher volume. Just as the record companies still charge the same or more on iTunes, even when bittorrent is their competition, movies for download will always be priced as if they’re on media with packaging and distribution costs.
Which is ridiculous, because not only do they not have the same manufacturing and distribution/inventory costs, for the consumer, there’s no way to sell or trade used digital downloads the way they can discs or other physical media.
What I don’t get are individuals touting digital downloads over media, unless they have a vested interest in the downloads business somehow.
wco81 – I agree about waiting. Most of the time I just watch for amazon sales before ordering. Every once in a while I preorder something new, but more often than not, I wait for something like the James Bond collections to hit $29.99.