Quote:
Originally Posted by dapriuk
Blu-Ray - last 5 years?
In the UK my impression is that Blu-Ray has only started to become accessible in the last year with cheaper players and PS3. The movies themselves are still 2-3 times the cost of DVDs which will also restrict their uptake for a while
I don't know how things stand in other parts of the world outside NA but I would guess it's a similar situation.
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Similar situation here in Oz, dapriuk. The Australian public is apparently something of an early-adopter, so we've had maybe four years of significant Blu-ray marketing, and most players sold these days are Blu-ray systems that also read DVDs, but still Blu-rays occupy only a small proportion of the video shelf space in electronics retailers and BR discs sit at prices around twice those of first-release DVDs. I'm not aware of any titles that have been released on BR that haven't already been available or else simultaneously come out on DVD as well.
Myself, I'm not planning on shifting into the BR camp. My hand was forced when DVDs first came out because my house got burgled of both my video player/TV equipment and the "Desert Island" favourites I had on VHS. For a time after I upgraded I went a bit nuts on buying discs, because they were elegant and pleasing and visually such a revelation compared to videotapes, and I confess I bought a lot of titles I wouldn't buy a second time. But to move to BR now would mean replacing <i>all</i> of my equipment - hardware and software combined - and though I haven't had a lot of experience of HD - I still have a CRT television, for instance - I find I just don't care enough about the higher specs to justify the expense.
Especially when, as others have pointed out here, the format is likely to change in the very near future anyway. Even if it stays in some optically-readable hardware format, the shorter-wavelength laser prototypes that Sony and Toshiba have recently demonstrated are incompatible with the existing Blu-ray system anyway. I'm not interested in stepping onto that planned-obsolescence treadmill.