The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — With a $10 to $15 price difference between standard DVD and Blu-ray movies, Ira Hall was skeptical about how much better a Blu-ray could be over what’s become the norm.
Hall, 24, of Terre Haute has owned a PlayStation 3 for nearly a year. Because the PS3 is Blu-ray compatible, Hall said he thought he’d try Blu-ray.
Last month, Toshiba announced it would no longer produce HD-DVD players or movies, making Blu-ray maker Sony the winner in the high-definition DVD format war and leaving customers wondering what’s next.
Hall’s girlfriend, Katherine Butler, she said she would recommend Blu-ray movies for people thinking of upgrading their DVD players.
It’s better “especially with movies with special effects,” Butler, 23, of Terre Haute said. “The color is a lot sharper and there are more details.”
Movies that use computer-generated images or animation are also better to watch on Blu-ray, Hall said.
He said he and Butler have been trying “to take advantage of getting older titles with special effects to see the difference” from the first time they watched them.
DVD obsolete?
People shouldn’t let that Blu-ray section of the video store scare them, even if it is growing similar to how the DVD section grew in a VHS-filled video store years ago.
When DVD replaced the VHS, it was a big value to consumers in that they didn’t have to worry about rewinding anymore, said Anand Chokkavelu, entertainment and media financial editor at the financial services firm Motley Fool.
Blu-ray’s backward compatibility helps and hurts it, he said. A standard DVD player cannot play a Blu-ray movie.
It doesn’t force people to get rid of their DVD collection because the player can play DVDs and upconvert them to high-definition, but it’s that same feature that allows people to cling to the cheaper DVD, Chokkavelu said.
“In terms of prediction, it’s hard for me to tell,” Chokkavelu said. “It depends on who wants to be the first studio to say, ‘We’re not doing anymore DVDs,’ and lose those sales. It would have to be a concerted effort. So in my opinion, DVDs will linger just like the VHS lingered for quiet sometime after DVDs came out.”
Bill Ivester, a director of operations for Blockbuster, said Blu-ray rentals are doing better than the company anticipated. Blockbuster is bringing in the new releases on Blu-ray as they come out and adding any new releases that have come out in the past six months to the section, he said.
Depending on the store, there could be 30 to 100 titles available on Blu-ray.
Ivester said he doesn’t expect to see a huge Blu-ray presence in the store until the third quarter, which is July through September.
“I don’t see DVD dying anytime in the near future, in the next year or two years,” he said, because Blu-ray players are backward compatible. If the title isn’t on Blu-ray in the store, people can still rent the DVD, giving the stores and customers more flexibility.
Employees at Circuit City and HH Gregg are seeing more Blu-ray player sales, and customers are coming in to buy standard DVD players or upconverting DVD players, too.
Doug DeFord, sales manager at HH Gregg, said Blu-ray players and upconverting players have the technology to fill in colors on a standard DVD to automatically enhance the picture.
One thing a Blu-ray player can do that an upconverting player can’t is enhance the sound, DeFord said, because a Blu-ray player broadcasts in 7.1 surround sound while an upconverting player can only broadcast in stereo.
“Upconverting players get close, but can’t go the extra mile,” a Circuit City employee said.
Standard DVD will always be around, he said, because there are going to be people who can’t afford the switch or just don’t want to because they don’t watch that many movies anyway.
High quality, high price
A standard DVD player can be found for as little as $25 compared with the cheapest Blu-ray player, which can be found for close to $400. High-end upconverting players are about $200.
Even a PS3 costs $399.99, the Circuit City employee said, which he said was the best value because people can play games on it, too. A lot of older customers buy them because their children and grandchildren play the games and they watch movies with it, he said.
Prices for Blu-ray players were in the $1,000 range about 11⁄2 years ago, but DeFord said the Blu-ray player prices are coming down faster than DVD players did when they were first introduced.
Differences are visibly noticeable when comparing Blu-ray discs with standard DVD discs, but the employee said a Blu-ray disc is harder to get finger prints on or scratch.
Storage space for a Blu-ray disc is greater than a standard DVD disc with 50GB compared to 4.7GB, Sony spokesman Greg Belloni said, which is how Blu-ray can offer “the true cinematic experience.”
That experience may cost more than just the price of a Blu-ray player because, Belloni said, people without a high-definition television would not be able to spot the Blu-ray benefits as easily as those with the HDTVs.
“… Those consumers can really get by with a standard DVD player,” he said. “However, anyone with HDTV should consider a Blu-ray disc player so that they can get the most out of their high-definition experience.”
Some people gave their living rooms total HD upgrades, DeFord said, because they’ve also been selling a lot more surround sound systems.
“You don’t go to the movie theater to listen to the front speakers,” DeFord said. “You want the whole experience.”
While it would appear that Blu-ray players and discs are where the market’s headed, Rob Enderle, principle analyst of the Enderle Group based in San Jose, Calf., isn’t convinced.
Blu-ray players in stores now are not complete because they don’t have the network connectivity capability like the players expected to hit stores this summer. So if security schemes are changed, Enderle said there’s a chance that new discs won’t play on old players.
“DVD was clearly the only thing that was on the horizon when it came out,” Enderle said, which is why it was able to catch on. “… The difficulty Blu-ray has right now is with an incomplete product, the follow-up product is already starting to ramp in the market and we didn’t have that with DVD.”
Enderle said the only safe affordable Blu-ray system to buy now is the PS3 or if people want to hook up their computer and Blu-ray drive to TVs.
“Unless you really like chasing leading-edge technology, you probably want to hold off on a Blu-ray [player],” he said. “At the very least, you want to hold off until the network connecting decks show up at the end of summer.”
Downloads, the follow-up product, already are available through Apple TV, Microsoft Xbox and some cable or satellite providers.
For between $229 and $329, people can buy a 40GB or 160GB hard drive that can be plugged into the TV. Using a wireless Internet signal, viewers can buy movies, TV shows or music videos.
Movies in standard definition format are $3.99 for new releases or $2.99 for older titles. High definition titles are a dollar more. The movies are stored on the hard drive for 30 days before they expire and erase themselves.
OnDemand program that some cable providers have for customers is similar to this except people paid for the hard drive when they received their cable box.
With this on the horizon, Enderle said people’s movie collections are going to shrink.
“When the market goes to downloads, I think for most of the movies, you’ll see people just rent them,” he said, “and then occasionally, they may buy a movie and store it and keep it.”
Moving away from DVDs to Blu-rays or downloads isn’t going to happen overnight.
“It’s going to take a while, for downloads to really ramp, we’re talking about five years,” Enderle said. “ … I honestly think this last Christmas was the last real window that HD, whichever format, had to really ramp into volume … with the upscaling DVD players being good enough, you can hang on forever.”
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