HD Disc Format War Not Over By a Long Shot

[kennyt]

Originally Posted by prerich

I P.S. What color is your gear?

Uhhhhhhh.......

[prerich]

Originally Posted by kennyt

Uhhhhhhh.......

I may be building a BD/HTPC and I would not want it to conflict with his gear. There are cases out there that look like Aragon equipment and such. I just want to pick out something that's classy, roomy and able to fit in his rack/equiment stand and not scream "Hi, I'm a computer".

[kennyt]

i know, pardon me for taking your words out of context!

[deacongreg]

gstarr,

You are right, most people (the mainstream consumer) do not care. We certainly only clouded the issue more with the format war.

And, low and behold, the record companies do not care. Thus, the demise of SACD and DVD-A. People on this forum have to realize that the high end community represents a small market, compared to the rest. Now, there have been opportunities where we could have gotten more people to gain interest. I believed High Definition was one of those areas.

But, we shot ourselves in the foot, with the format war.. We don`t get many chances like this!!

A few weeks ago I listened to Dan at Krell at Sound by Singer talk about why he made the KID for the I - Pod. 125 million people have bought those little music servers. 125 million!!!!!!!!!!! They are hoping to tap somehow into that marketplace. Dan and Krell have the vision, what about the rest of the industry??!!

[goldear]

Originally Posted by prerich

I'm in the process of answering those questions now, that proposed box is probrably going to be the best think I've come up with yet. You will receive an email from me tonight or tomorrow. P.S. What color is your gear? I know the tact is silver. (Since you live at a distance, I'm not taking any chances)

Most my gear is black, though there are a couple slivers of silver in between. The color really shouldn't be that big a deal. I'll be looking out for ya.

[Vinyl Rules!]

Originally Posted by deacongreg

gstarr,

You are right, most people (the mainstream consumer) do not care. We certainly only clouded the issue more with the format war.

And, low and behold, the record companies do not care. Thus, the demise of SACD and DVD-A. People on this forum have to realize that the high end community represents a small market, compared to the rest. Now, there have been opportunities where we could have gotten more people to gain interest. I believed High Definition was one of those areas.

But, we shot ourselves in the foot, with the format war.. We don`t get many chances like this!!

A few weeks ago I listened to Dan at Krell at Sound by Singer talk about why he made the KID for the I - Pod. 125 million people have bought those little music servers. 125 million!!!!!!!!!!! They are hoping to tap somehow into that marketplace. Dan and Krell have the vision, what about the rest of the industry??!!

If you really want to be depressed, click on: http://tinyurl.com/2pzeeu

To quote a bit from this read, Why doesn't my local Blockbuster carry Blu-ray Disc movies? In fact, why are my trips to Blockbuster so infrequent these days?

I'm thinking that Blu-ray -- and high-definition optical disc ownership in general -- just isn't that appealing. I've watched Blu-ray movies on the best televisions money can buy in Circuit City, Best Buy and Tweeter, and while the picture looks terrific, it just doesn't have me reaching for my wallet the way DVDs did when they were first introduced. Maybe it's because it's an evolutionary improvement in video quality and not the revolutionary jump that occurred when DVDs overtook VHS tapes.

So I've come up with these four reasons why I -- and probably most of America -- won't be heading down to Wal-Mart to buy a Blu-ray player anytime soon.

And it goes on to say These days, I prefer the video-on-demand services I get off my set-top cable box. They're cheap and easy to use. According to Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming issues at media research firm Park Associates in Dallas, Internet movie downloads and video-on-demand rentals will represent a $1 billion market in two years. If you include advertising dollars, it will represent a $7 billion market in 2010.

Also coming down the pike is the ability to buy movies from your cable provider and store them either on your set-top DVR box or store them with your cable provider just like any online storage service offers free capacity today, according to Cai.

"Cable service providers with video-on-demand services are a strong contender to Internet video downloads," he says. "If you can fairly easily rent or buy a movie through a cable box, you'd probably rather do that than ordering a movie through an Internet site."

I think the "evolutionary improvement" comment and the fact that Blu Ray is not a significant jump over DVD like DVD was over VHS will kill off Blue Ray. YMMV, of course, but Joe and Susie control the mass market, not us.

Now here's another consideration: Do older people or younger people have more discretionary income? Right - older people do. But, how sharp is their vision?

How many of these older people with the money to buy Blu Ray really have good enough vision to really appreciate the difference between 720p and 1080p?

No company I know has even researched this question because the people in the executive suite are generally all on the young side and this question has simply never occurred to them.