The end of the format wars?

Question

now that blu ray has won the hi def format wars how long till it out sells dvd? or do you think maybe dvd will still be the leading contender. i been thinkin about gettin a blu ray player but i dont wanna if dvd is gonna still be around for a while. its just hard to say.

Answer 1

Blu-ray is still a niche market. It is an excellent alternative to DVD IF you can benefit. At a minimum you must have an HDTV (and preferably a moderate sized 1080p model and a good surround sound system).

Blu-ray is, and will most likely remain more expensive than DVD. Players are more complex and disks are more difficult (and costly) to produce. Prices for players are still high ($350+) and the only recommended player is a game machine. Stand alone (component style) players with excellent performance are still months away at least. Disks are typically $5 (new titles) to $20 (older titles) more expensive than DVDs of the same movie. And the choice of movies is still very limited (less than 600 vs 83,000 DVDs).

Blu-ray is unlikely to "fail", although it's far from certain that Blu-ray will replace DVD. It may remain a premium priced alternative. Certainly DVDs are not going to disappear any time soon.

If you can benefit from Blu-ray you can consider a Blu-ray player and decide on a per-movie basis whether to buy/rent the Blu-ray or DVD version since Blu-ray players not only play DVDs, but up-convert them to pseudo HD resolution (Of course you can get up-converting DVD players that do the same thing for a lot less than a Blu-ray player).

Personally I'd recommend not rushing to buy Blu-ray -- prices can only come down, hardware choices improve, movie selection expand, and the future of the format become clearer.

Answer 2

dvd, back in the mid 90's was considered just a stop gap format, but the pricing and extended movie content made it really successful. it's also the format that was adopted the quickest and "farthest" than ever before. dvd isn't going anywhere with all the content available and number of players owned. that said, blu ray may do well also, but it's too early to tell. if you can find an inexpensive player and have a monitor that can display the higher resolution... and the extra cost won't hurt you...