Quote Originally Posted by Ajani
While I agree with the comments about increasing screen sizes and resolutions being the trend in video... keep in mind that all of these increases in sizes and res have come hand in hand with decreasing costs each year... 2 years ago a 52 inch lcd projection tv and most 32 inch LCDS were selling for around $2K, now they can be had for around $1k (the new models, not used ones!). The audio market has not been nearly as advanced in pushing higher quality products at lower prices (quite possibly because audio companies often use a 5 year shelf life for their products while TV models are upgraded every year OR the audio companies are just greedy and lazy).
Television technology marches forward, and as it does, prices come down. As consumers buy up these things like hot cakes, the forces of economy of scale kicks in. The Walkman portable cassette and CD players benefitted from this. The video world has benefitted from this with each successive format that has come out. Whether you are taling televisions, DVD or bluray players. This only works if the industry is healthy, and the music industry is not very healthy right now. You are correct in two areas. The record companies are greedy, and that greed is fueling alot of fear, and they do use a 5 year shelf life.





That is possible, since blu-ray has already been around for a few years and if it fails to supplant standard dvds, then its shelf life may be even shorter...
Funny thing is, they said this about the DVD when VHS was king. The easist way to get the public to embrace bluray is to slowly de-emphasize the DVD. By releasing the bluray first with interactive features and other content the DVD will not have, heavily promoting this along with the fact its HD, you can get the public to gravite towards it while not endangering DVD sales to those who are not ready to make the switch. Keep in mind, the studios and the CE manufacturers have been through this transition before. This is how they did the VHS to DVD transition.




While I see the relevance of studio support and agree that the new video formats have far more studio support than the audio formats have, I think they KEY factor is the consumer and not the studios.... Blu-Ray/HD-DVD are still luxury products (since dvd is still much cheaper).... Studios can push an expensive format all they want, but it doesn't mean anything unless the customers are willing to purchase it....
VHS was much cheaper than DVD in the beginning. As the economy of scale kicked in, that change pretty dramatically. My first DVD player was a $1200 first generation Toshiba 3008. It couldn't even do Dts. In less than two years most DVD players were about $500. At CES almost all of the new models were priced under $500. You can find a Sony S300 for $268 on Amazon. That same player was $499 three months ago. You can find a Samsung 1400 for $288 online, and four months ago it was $599. As each generation comes online, the preceeding generation prices drop considerably. Interestingly enough, the price drop of bluray players has come alot quicker than the prices of DVD players at this same time in its history. Time doesn't freeze, and neither do prices of CE.

I agree wholeheartedly with the point about players dropping below $200 increasing sales... but keep in mind that consumers (not all, but a very significant portion) like lower prices... so as I've said before... when HD format sell for the price of regular dvd products then they can easily take over the dvd market (as long as they accomplish that before downloads take off).
Isn't apple a pretty sucessful company? Let's face it their computers are not cheaper than their competition, they are more expensive. But Apple is doing well, very well. The public will pay for what they want, regardless of price. HD DVD came out of the gate cheaper than bluray. Inspite of this there were more Bluray players sold in December leading up to christmas than HD DVD players. Even the bluray enable PS3 which was at one time more expensive than most HD DVD players outsold them all.

According to every analyst that covers the film and video industry says that downloading to own has years to go. The market for rentals is pretty stagnant in terms of revenue, and while demand is there for computer savvy folks, the general public has not shown much interest in letting go those disc.

The Trend in video is a good one and hopefully will continue: better reslolution and larger scale at decreasing prices - once Blu-Ray and HD-DVD catch up with this trend (lower prices) then they may have a chance to supplant DVD before downloads takes over the market.
Apparently the studio believe the latter. I know the studios( and the one I work for in particular) have done extensive research on the feasible of switching to downloading, and the research at this point is very negative and looks that way for at least 5-10 years. You just cannot erase a culture of disc purchasing(going back to vinyl) in a few short years. That kind of culture shift will take decades.