So Blu-ray has won the format war...?

Question

For how much longer will standard DVDs be available, is now an appropriate time to buy a Blu-ray player, or could Blu-ray still fail?

Thanks

Answer 1

Here's the way I see it shaking out. Blue ray is here to stay... until something better replaces it. There's no reason blue ray players can't play standard DVD's... Blue ray has a shorter wave length diode, so it should be able to read the longer wave length red laser, standard DVD's. Look for players that will play both. Could blue ray still fail? Perhaps, but I don't think so. Toshiba has already thrown in the towel.

Answer 2

Yes, standard DVDs will be around for a long time still, simply because the Blu-Ray players will still play DVD. So you will be able to find bargin DVD's and watch on your Blu-Ray player. I would say though in about 3 or 4 years there wont be anymore DVD new releases movies coming out, just older movies and shows. Since blu-Ray is intended for  use on a 1080p HDTV I would say that if you don't have HDTV it is not worth buying Blu-Ray. If you do have an HDTV what is the resolution? If it is 720p you still wont benefit from the best picture quality Blu-Ray offers.

But if you are ready to jump up to Blu-Ray then I would say get a PS3, its the best Blu-Ray player available even if you do not want to play games on it.

Answer 3

Standard DVD is still the cheapest format to produce at this point and most people owns a DVD player anyways. Until Blu-Ray becomes widely acceptable interms of price, and production stability, DVD will be here to stay for a while. Two good indicators of when to buy a Blu-Ray is when you see Blu-Ray widely available on PCs and laptops, and when the empty Blu-Ray discs becomes popular and priced similarly if not a little more expensive to the empty DVDs now.

Answer 4

First I would like to say "XstreamHD" will kill off Blu-Ray sometime in late 2009. You cannot beat Super Fast Full 1080p w/ Full 7.1 DTS HD Master Audio Downloads at an awesome price. Watch 4 Hi Def films at the same time in different areas in your home.

http://www.xstreamhd.com/

Only buy a Blu-Ray Stand Alone player "Profile 2.0" for less than $200. It may take years for them to come at that price, but it will be worth the wait. Blu-Ray players today are plagued by compatibility issues due to different profiles.

HD DVD showed to be a much more stable format and always had finished specifications. People would get the odd error message here & there, but a basic firmware update resolved them.

Even with a firmware update for current & past Blu-Ray players, they will not be able to update to profile 2.0 specs. If you can find a great priced HD DVD player that should be the route to currently take right now with more than 1,000 HD DVD films to choose from along with HD DVD players being the best SD DVD up-converting players in the market today.

It's unfortunate that the consumer friendly HD DVD format lost this Hi Def War. Sony paying off the industry with millions upon millions got them the win in the end. Clearly the consumer did not choose Blu-Ray over HD DVD.

Best Regards,

Answer 5

Blu-ray won the HD format war ... it didn't win anything vs DVD.

DVD will be around at least as long as Blu-ray ... and probably longer since Blu-ray will be replaced in a few years with the next new thing (Blu-ray 2?).

Blu-ray is, and will remain, a premium priced HD ALTERNATIVE to DVD.

When you consider there are over 81,000 DVD titles and the number is going up by hundreds per month  -- much faster than the number of Blu-ray titles (currently about 520 total) -- plus DVDs are everywhere (including many placed Blu-ray doesn't make sense, e.g. Cars, portables players), and the majority of consumers can't benefit at all or get minimal benefit from Blu-ray vs upconverted DVDs the chances of Blu-ray REPLACING DVD are essentially zero.

Besides, the studios will make more money continuing to support both DVD and high priced Blu-ray disks, than they would be killing off DVD. And in the meantime Video on Demand (VOD) / download will slowly evolve and by appealing to consumer desire for convenience will kill off the rental market for physical disks.

So, Blu-ray won't fail -- there is definitely a market -- but it will remain a niche format.

As to Blu-ray players be sure you can benefit before buying, and as of today the only player recommended is the PS3 game machine. If you want a stand alone player wait for the Profile 2,0 machines expected this summer.

Answer 6

Well, they have not technically won the war until the Blu-ray standard becomes a commercial success and very pervasive.  I actually doubt that the Blu-ray standard is going to be around all that long.  And by the way... they didn't "win the war"... they bought the war....

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02...

Answer 7

DVDs will be readily available for ATLEAST 4-5 years.

i would wait for Blue Ray 2.0 compliant players to come out (they will have 1GB storage and internet access along with some other upgrades)

Blue Ray wont fail now. is already been proven more reliable than HD-DVD (which would randomly spit out a error codes). the reason it was struggling initially was cost, but Blue Ray cost has come down significantly.