I'm not a hard core DVD/Blu-Ray fan as some here. I collect and have a rather large collection (almost 1000, though it'd be over if I count box sets as more than one). I follow the trends, though don't always jump on them. I have started to buy Blu, as Disney, in particular, is now either making people wait for just the DVD or only putting out bare bones editions in DVD. I can see that it is superior, but it's not the leap from DVD as DVD was from VHS. The cases are almost the same size, just shorter. Picture and sound are better, but and it's a big but, to see the difference you have to invest a lot of money. With DVD, all you had to do was buy a new dvd player.

With Blu-Ray, you have to buy the player (and yes, I know they are coming down in price), but you also have to buy a new TV otherwise the old one is not hi def. Most people don't just go out and buy a new TV because there's a new format to watch movies on. They wait until their old tv needs to be replaced. And the new TVs are still fairly expensive. Especially in today's economy, people aren't going to go out and drop 500-2000 bucks just on a whim.  (And I'm sure there are cheaper, but how likely are they to be decent sized?)  And then, if you want enhanced sound, you'd want to get some sort of sound system...another chunk of change.

I do live in a rather conservative community. Quite frankly, a lot of people still are angry that VHS is no longer available. The likelihood that these people would ever upgrade past DVD is rather slim. When I worked at a store that sold DVDs, I still had to inform people what Blu-ray was and that you couldn't play it on a normal DVD player (And that was just this last May). The stores around here are offering more and more Blu-ray, but DVD is still the dominant format of choice.

As for streaming...I can easily see it being the rental choice. Want to watch something, just download and watch. But I think most people who collect movies, would rather have a hard copy. What happens if your computer crashes? Do you automatically get to download the movie again for free? Or do you have to repay? What happens if the company loses it's right to the movie and you lose your copy. You're out the money for it. And, quite frankly, I can see most companies making you repay, maybe a lesser fee to re-download, but some sort of fee. To me, I would never do that...what a waste of money having to pay money for something that's easily lost. And how stable are these digital copies? Computer files can easily be corrupted.  There are too many issues for me to ever rely on digital for me to ever seriously buy digital only. And if you have a large enough collection, the space needed on a computer is still way to expensive to store it.

Now, I'm sure I'm not going to change any die hard's opinion, and as I said, I'm no expert. But I do feel like I'm more of the average collector. One's that's interested in the movie itself, not having the newest technological wonder. Blu will become more popular because a lot of studios are pushing it and making you chose to either buy it or go without the movie you want to see. But I don't think this will happen as fast as DVD did.

Does that work for multiple computers, though? I know a while ago, I tried to download some of the ones I had purchased on my laptop (I had been using a desktop until then) and even though I authorized the laptop, it wouldn't download the purchased music. (It was the same account.)

Quoting LJG:

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Does that work for multiple computers, though? I know a while ago, I tried to download some of the ones I had purchased on my laptop (I had been using a desktop until then) and even though I authorized the laptop, it wouldn't download the purchased music. (It was the same account.)

I know you can "restore" your songs back from the iPod to the computer but I didn't know you could do it without an iPod. But maybe Apple have changed their policy...

Quoting Voltaire53:

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isn't willing to bay the premium for little gain.

'little' really is in the eye of the beholder. When we went from VHS to DVD, the resolution stayed the same (480p) except that the image & audio were digitally encoded and thus non-degradable (versus tape where depending on the number of playbacks, the quality took a hit)

Blu-ray jumps ups the ante from 480p to  1080p (a pretty big increase) and offer lossless audio.

For me, the jump from VHS to DVD was the biggest revolution as we moved to a medium that offered menus, extras and stable quality on a digital medium.

However, the biggest jump in quality for me is the move from DVD to Blu-ray for the above-mentioned specs.


I think the general public still sees DVD as a revolutionary way to watch movies but doesn't realize how big of a quality improvement Blu-ray really is (by the way, I have not stocks in a Blu-ray affiliated company, just giving my opinion here)

Quoting Taro:

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I think the general public still sees DVD as a revolutionary way to watch movies but doesn't realize how big of a quality improvement Blu-ray really is (by the way, I have not stocks in a Blu-ray affiliated company, just giving my opinion here)

Though I globally agree with you, I think DVD was really a big increase in quality. DVD, at least in France, has a resolution of 576 (not 480) and the image is much more precise than with VHS, with also a better sound, and generally a film ratio that respected original, not the horrible pan&scan we had too often with VHS.

Blu-ray is a new step in quality, but it needs to have a rather large HD screen to see the difference with DVD, specially if the DVD player allows a good upscaling. If your screen is smaller than 32', it is hard to see the difference between a Blu-ray and an upscaled DVD. With a more than 44' HD screen, the blu-ray is really a great experience. But many people have not yet very big screens, and do not see a real difference.

Quoting Taro:

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Quoting Voltaire53:

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isn't willing to bay the premium for little gain.

'little' really is in the eye of the beholder.
For me, the jump from VHS to DVD was the biggest revolution as we moved to a medium that offered menus, extras and stable quality on a digital medium.
However, the biggest jump in quality for me is the move from DVD to Blu-ray
I think the general public still sees DVD as a revolutionary way to watch movies but doesn't realize how big of a quality improvement Blu-ray really is

Of course you only get that quality increase with an HD TV - and IMO a pretty large one at that - which, as mentioned, only 1 other person out of, say, 8-10 family/friends, has for a start so they will get no benefit.

Plus taking into account good upscaling and from my experience most people watching even a decent set up don't even notice whether I put in the BD or the DVD unless I specifcially point out specific areas where the extra sharpness shows or show a particular comparison.

In my experience the picture just has to be good enough "not to be annoyingly bad" for most watchers (even assuming a big TV and decent eyesight); I'm not actually all that 'picky' myself a lot of the time (maybve I'm too used to watching a lot of 60s and 70s archive TV) but even I'm amazed how much horrible pixilation and break up there has to be on a low bandwidth SD transmission before most people will say "this picture doesn't look very good in places"... honestly for most people I really think the biggest benefit of DVD over VHS was direct access, no mangled tapes and smaller packaging - I reckon a lot of them don't appreciate the quality issue hardly at all.

...and whilst it may not be true for the sort of person who would frequent these forums all the above is without even mentioning the vast numbers of people stretching 4:3 material to fill their widescreen because they 'don't like the black bars' and when they do they don't even notice the distortion... can you really say they will appreciate HD when they can't even notice that?

So, to be fair, yes you're right, it is in the eye of the beholder whether it's a big or a little gain... but for the vast majority of people I think picture quality is such an unimportant issue once it reaches a certain 'acceptable' standard I can't see enough of them bothering to go BluRay at least until it's part of the standard "replace things when they break" path rather than deliberate adoption for the benefits.

I agree with the image issue...my mother just bought a new widescreen tv. She has the settings set up so that the screen is filled at all times, stretching the screen. Bugs me that the picture is often stretched and I can tell immediately when it is. She can't. Even if I point it out, she doesn't notice it. But the black bars bug her. Even when it's explained that she's losing picture watching a FS movie, she'd rather watch a movie in that format than WS because of them.

Quoting bbbbb:

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Quoting Taro:

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For me, the jump from VHS to DVD was the biggest revolution as we moved to a medium that offered menus, extras and stable quality on a digital medium.

However, the biggest jump in quality for me is the move from DVD to Blu-ray for the above-mentioned specs.

DVD also brought DD and DTS 5.1 audio. Losless is downright useless compared to that jump from VHS.

The DVD manufacturers had it right when they Didn't include a coaxial ( cable ) output only component jacks RCA video/audio  jacks and HDMI.., If they had coaxial out you can be sure people would have hooked it up to their TV thru Channel 3..