[PCWorld]

Post your comments for U.S. Sales of Blu-ray Players Soar: NPD Group here

[GraysonPeddie]

I already have a BD-ROM in my computer, so I don't need a separate Blu-Ray player. My HTPC is connected to my HDTV for Blu-Ray playback.

[superdynamite]

Wow, Sony was right. PS3 is the future. Sony also said that PS3 sales would reach 150 million by 2016. I'm beginning to agree with their prediction.

[tek101]

If you connected through HDMI ...Your good to go....:p

[kentuckybootleg]

I'm sorry but you guys never seem to report the DOWN side to Blu-Ray which is you have to receive firmware updates periodically for certain movies to play. You see, Sony and most major movie studios don't really care about quality or about your happiness. They just want a new toy they can sell to you kids that is more concerned about stopping piracy than quality. My brother works at Best Buy and he can tell you about the load of ticked off customers who bring these players back. They are never told that they either have to be connected to the internet to receive updates or receive a disc or in some situations people have had to bring their machines in for the upgrade. A lot of bull just to watch a movie, huh? No thanks, I'll stick to my Upconverted DVD player along with 52% of the people who return their blue ray players.

[Woochifer]

You're citing old/irrelevant info. Those issues primarily affect a handful of older players (mostly from Samsung), not anything that's current.
I also know someone who works at Best Buy, and nearly all of the BD players made within the last year do not have the compatibility issues that affected some first and second generation models.
How quickly people forget that this is no different than the first and second generation DVD players, which had similar playback compatibility problems (especially when dual-layer disc media and DTS soundtracks got introduced). The difference is that with BD players, at least the problems can be corrected with downloadable firmware updates.
If you want to stick with upconverted DVD, that's your choice. Those of us who want to watch actual 1080p HD movies on our HDTVs will go with Blu-ray.

[gashman]

Blu Ray is phoenomenal and a PS3 was a great investment for me and alot of people, gaming and blu ray all under 1 roof. :D
What a great purchase I made with my new panasonic plamsa to show my PS3/Blu ray quality :^0

[kentuckybootleg]

Mostly from SAMSUNG, eh?
This link says otherwise: (http://www.blu-ray.com/firmware/)

[Woochifer]

Uh check again. The link does not say anything regarding how serious the firmware issues are. In fact, all that the link does is list the latest firmware versions for every Blu-ray model that has downloadable updates -- nothing about how often it was updated or what issues the update fixes or if the firmware had ever been updated in the first place. Compared to other manufacturers, Samsung's firmware updates have been more frequent and had to address more serious compatibility and performance issues. Panasonic's list is longer only because it has put out more models than Samsung.

[kentuckybootleg]

I've personally talked to the sales guys at the Walmart Supercenters and they say the BRays are just flat when it comes to title sales. IF one must buy one of these machines, go for the PS3. Why not have a gaming option, not to mention it seems the most reliable when it comes to this format. I wonder how much longer optical disc formats are going to be around for anyway?

[Woochifer]

Sales are "flat" only because Q1 and Q2 are traditionally the slowest months for home video sales to begin with. Blu-ray player sales are running double the pace that they were a year ago. If you query these Wal-Mart sales guys, check and see if the figures they cite are year-to-year comparisons, or just trend tracking compared to the holidays when sales hit their peaks. Comparing March sales with the holidays is not an apples-to-apples comparison because of how seasonal home video and consumer electronics sales are.
As far as the PS3 goes, I would have made that recommendation a year ago when most BD players were still selling for more than $300,and the PS3 was still outperforming most of them. But, now it's much more of a tossup, with player prices inching closer to $200 (which is half what a PS3 goes for), the DVD upconversion capabilities on the newer models now greatly improved over last year's models, and more BD players incorporating networking capabilities and Netflix streaming (which the PS3 still lacks).



At some point streaming and downloading options will gain momentum, but at this time, Blu-ray revenues are ahead of all downloading and PPV options COMBINED. And the growth rate for Blu-ray is ahead of downloading. Physical media won't go away anytime soon so long as downloading can't even match BD's growth rate. And given the current balkanized state of the downloading and streaming market (i.e., different services with different studio alliances, different file formats, different hardware requirements), there is no unified marketing force to help consumers make this transition. Despite the wishful thinking on the part of techies, transitions in consumer electronics always take years to complete. I mean, despite all the hype and doomsaying, music downloads still generate lower sales than the CD format.

[smax013]

Woochifer said:

At some point streaming and downloading options will gain momentum, but at this time, Blu-ray revenues are ahead of all downloading and PPV options COMBINED. And the growth rate for Blu-ray is ahead of downloading. Physical media won't go away anytime soon so long as downloading can't even match BD's growth rate. And given the current balkanized state of the downloading and streaming market (i.e., different services with different studio alliances, different file formats, different hardware requirements), there is no unified marketing force to help consumers make this transition. Despite the wishful thinking on the part of techies, transitions in consumer electronics always take years to complete. I mean, despite all the hype and doomsaying, music downloads still generate lower sales than the CD format.

Not to mention that not everyone has a broadband connection...let alone a very fast broadband connection. You can stream with a rather slow broadband connection, but downloading movies (especially HD movies) over a slower broandband connection (say a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection which a LOT of people have since it is cheaper than faster DSL or just about any cable connection) can still take quite a while.

And then there is the issue that downloadable content to my knowledge is generally not available in 1080p. I know for sure that Apple's HD content is only 720p. Don't know what others might offer. And I have no clue if any of the streaming content is HD or not...nor what resolution if it is HD.

[Woochifer]

And we're not even on the subject of ISPs imposing data transfer caps on their service, or throttling the transfer speed on video downloads. The flaw with many techies' vision of the digital living room is that the average consumer is not as enamored of technology for its own sake as the average tech reviewer is. Basically, consumers do not want the PC experience (i.e., program crashes, malware, constant security updates, complicated configuration issues, broken web links, incompatible file formats, etc.) in their living room.


Consumers will go for something new if adds to their home entertainment experience, but only if it keeps things simple and reliable. Most consumers just want to punch a few buttons on a remote and be done with it, AND they want the thing to work without having to jump through a bunch of hoops to get there. That's why media PCs have flopped in the market, and why DVRs have taken off with close to 30% market penetration.


Blu-ray is only now beginning to settle into a relatively stabilized state (in much the same way that it took the DVD format a few years before its early bugs got ironed out). Downloading and streaming are not even close. You've got multiple services and devices on the market, each of which has different studio alliances (and thus different programming choices), different cost structures, and different default formats, some of which are proprietary. There is no single device or service out there that supports all or even most of the programming on the market.


Outside of Blu-ray, the only 1080p programming I'm aware of is the limited selection of 1080p on-demand video rentals currently offered up by Dish and Directv. And even there, the maximum data transfer rate I believe is less than half the 54 Mbps bandwidth for Blu-ray and it does not use lossless audio. I've seen that online HD streaming is slowly rolling out, but the success of these services will ultimately depend on the programming, and right now nearly all of the HD downloads are 720p and rental-only, and consumers have to navigate through multiple providers for different programs. I've read that iTunes will offer HD movies for purchase, but that selection will be limited. These are gradual baby steps, and it will take time before downloading and streaming are simple and ubiquitous enough for the living room.

[kentuckybootleg]

This seems to tell the real tale:
http://www.betanews....-sky/1241718885