I do not think the comparison is exact. Blu-ray begun with a war with HD-DVD, and many users waited for the end of war before looking at HD (a I did). So, we should compare Blu-ray today with DVDs after 3 years...

While I think surfeur has a good point, I agree with you, Charlie.

As a Blu owner, it would be nice if they picked up the speed, but at this point there aren't enough people jumping on Blu because, for the majority of the people, the upgrade isn't worth it to them. And the Catch 22 is studios will be slower to release back catalog because the sales won't be there.

I'm glad that smaller companies like Synapse have started releasing in Blu, but I still find myself buying older movies on DVD because either the Blu is not available or the price is not worth justifying. While there have been price drops over the past year, Blu still needs to come down more if it's going to do any real competition to DVD to the average user.

Where are those numbers coming from?  Do those numbers only include Hollywood Studios or any DVD release?

If I filter the Invelos database, I see 23665 Blu-Rays worldwide. This is of course including child profiles, but I would assume a lot more than 5000 titles are available.

Quoting CharlieM:

Quote:
Apparently, there are only about 3000 BD titles available after 5 years.  DVD in the same period had 20000.  Today there are supposedly 150K titles on BD.

BD has a while to go....

Charlie

First you say there are 3,000 titles available, then you say there are 150,000. Am I the only one who is extremely confused by this statement?

I checked my largest local online retailer to see what's actually available here right now. They currently offer 2053 BD titles and about 20,000 DVD titles so it's a ratio of 1:10. 150k sounds nice but I wonder how they arrived at that number... Realistically they have never been available at the same time to the same people.

I have Blus of Night of the Creeps, New York Ripper and Galaxy of Terror, so anything else is just gravy from here!
The format rules, watch Galaxy of Terror in HD and try saying it doesn't, you can't! Comparing the New York Ripper BD to the old dvd is comical how bad the dvd now looks.

I believe that Blu-ray will eventually push aside DVD in the same way that DVD pushed aside VHS. Even with DVDs extreme popularity, it took the halting of VHS film manufacturing to get some people move over.

To think that Blu-ray should have taken over faster than it has now that the format war is over, that they would take over "much sooner" because the quality is better I believe works on the false comparison of "Blu-ray is to DVD as DVD is to VHS". Many people still own only a VCR or had to move to a DVD/VCR combo if their old VCR broke down. Others record movies from tv and save. Many watch movies from their computer at not-so-high-def resolutions. If buying something for the little kid to watch or something not that important, why spend more on Blu-ray when DVD (as was true with VHS in its day) works just fine. A large percentage of people still don't own HD TVs. It's not all about perfect picture clarity for everyone else and means the extra expense of an HD television. Some just "want to watch a movie."


On the plus side, BR has the benefit right now of exponential growth with a larger collection of films to choose from that hasn't yet been released.  They also have the knowledge of whether or not the DVD version sold well a few years earlier to tell them if printing the BR copy would be worth the money.