Quote:
Originally Posted by MacEachaidh
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.
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I also do not like the planned-obsolescence treadmill and upgrade only when forced to. I was satisfied for many years with my 13" CRT TV/VCR combo because I had to hang it off a wall and the wall mount I had to use could handle only so much weight. I resisted upgrading to an LCD because of the expense so I was waiting for prices to go down. When the USA mandated that most TV stations switch to digital broadcasting, even though I did take advantage of the government subsidized converter boxes, the directions that came with the box were more complicated than the ones for my TV/VCR so I delayed hooking it up. I also saw one in use at a friends house and how much of a pain it was to use. The final switchover date got pushed back a few months and during that time, LCD TV prices dropped some more so I went ahead and got a 32" LCD that weighed a pound less than the TV/VCR. I haven't regretted that decision.
I haven't switched over to Blu-Ray Disk yet because I don't want a separate player for it and my present computer may require some modifications to take a BD drive. The difference between a movie or TV show broadcast in standard def. and in HD is stunning, however, before I go to the trouble of upgrading software and hardware to BD, I want to compare a normal DVD playback to an upscaled one and see how the upscaled version compares to a BD version. I have a BD/DVD movie bundle I'm supposed to try at a friend's house (she has the equipment) so we can make the comparison there; I just haven't gotten around to doing so yet (shows how eager I am to do it). I have a lot of DVDs already so if I can be satisfied with an upscaled DVD using software on my computer, I probably won't bother with a BD drive, let alone a player.