Blu-ray won't enjoy the same decade-long dominance DVD did after it succeeded VHS. But that's not because there will be other challenger physical disc formats. Rather, instead of buying discs from Amazon, Best Buy or Wal-Mart, people will begin getting their entertainment in the form of digital downloads in larger volumes.
It's always cheaper to pirate than pay for Blu-Ray, yes.
That is where 98% of HD streaming is done right now on Torrent and other sites. I'm all for free HD in every conceivable format, but it seems the movie companies and various agencies don't care too much for it for some odd reason.
For digital downloads to succeed legally, they need an unlimited rental plan like Netflix has and enough people with high bandwidth to make it work. Personally I think Netflix sucks hard. Their selection is always limited to a fractions of available content (rotates month by month) and so you CANNOT watch what you WANT to watch WHEN you want to watch it. AppleTV does much better, but rentals are expensive if you watch a lot of movies (and don't come down much even when they're old).
Buying movies online is a RIP-OFF compared to BD since they typically cost as much or even sometimes MORE than a BD and yet you don't have a physical medium, your movies are tagged so you cannot sell them or use them on other people's equipment (no re-sale value); they use inferior audio formats (ATV for example is only Dolby Digital, same as DVD) and sometimes they lack extras. Buying a BD usually means you get a digital copy for FREE with it, plus you can re-sell the BD disc itself and it will play on anyone's BD player. Until streaming (not pirated) addresses these concerns, they will be limited to those that hate discs, menus, etc. (although once you start adding extras back in, menus start appearing again ala iTunes Extras, but at least the movies themselves have been unfettered thus far with FBI warnings, previews, etc.)
The other thing about streaming is that it affects DVDs too. DVDs are just as irrelevant in light of streaming (more so in that SD video takes less time to download and thus slower connections work better). What keeps DVDs selling at Wal-Mart are their CHEAP prices. They are 'grab' items at the cash register now for goodness sake. If BD was that cheap, they'd be selling much better too.
They did not, but you know what? All I know is that four years down the line, DVDs outsold VHS, bar none. VHS was history.
The local video store down the street from here still rents VHS tapes so define "history". They were available for sale long after DVDs came about. It's funny how people's memories cloud reality, but DVDs were introduced so long ago, it's not hard to imagine why.
VHS was never really a buyer's format, let alone a home theater enthusiast's format, though. The quality was god-awful and got worse over time. Real home theater buffs back then (there were a lot less due to high prices for equipment and titles) bought Laserdisc, not VHS. VHS was largely a rental format over most of its history. I remember when new VHS releases cost $80 until a sufficient rental time passed (Laserdiscs seemed cheap at $45 by comparison and at near-DVD quality on a good player). Plus you had to rewind tapes; they had no extras, etc. They were very poor value. They wore out over time (DVDs will last a lifetime if taken care of) and so BD's only major advantage over DVD is resolution and many people lack the televisions capable of really showing that advantage, especially when BDs are priced so much higher (Laserdisc didn't sell well at $35-50 either, even among LD owners as most can't afford to buy a ton of movies at those prices). And so ultimately, the PRICE of the movie is what determined a winning format. DVD
was an improvement over laserdisc, but not by leaps and bounds. The primary differences was that DVDs were a LOT cheaper and a LOT more compact.
DVD quality was like a revelation by comparison (you couldn't miss it) and it didn't require a new TV set to enjoy it and at the time piracy over the Net was pretty limited compared to today (and let's face it, Napster proved MOST of the world's population would rather get it for free than pay for it and apparently most do not equate downloading copyrighted material with stealing or we wouldn't have seen 85% on online user figures on illegal MP3 downloads).
Blu-Ray also had the HD-DVD format war to contend with that didn't happen with DVD. Blu-Ray is a tough sale (but still outpacing DVD in a time-frame comparison) because it requires a brand new TV (and not just any TV; it has to be large enough to see the quality improvement at a given viewing distance relative to the viewer's living room) in many cases to appreciate the quality difference and that quality difference the ONLY real thing going for it over DVD. That doesn't make it pointless. Streaming has potential, but 1080p at Blu-Ray quality levels isn't exactly real-time streaming for most of the world's population (you need 50+gbps consistent). Otherwise, you're just waiting for a download and it comes down to whether it'd be faster to drive over to Wal-Mart than wait 4-6 hours for Vudu to finish downloading....
Blu-Ray has been around for over 6 years now and it still hasn't done that. If it did, how come movies are still coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray? Why
How long did VHS movies come out after DVD was introduced? I'm sorry, but your comparisons don't give much thought to the past at all. If you want to provide some side-by-side graphs of DVD versus VHS over time versus BD versus DVD over time, it'd be a little more interesting than just listening to you whine about how Blu-Ray sucks and Hulu rulez.
not only Blu-Ray? And yes, of course when you price it the same price as the DVD people will buy the Blu-Ray, there is no question. But show me your figures that support your claim that 'blu-ray is ahead of the game'. It is not, and it won't be because like I said, digital media is gaining momentum.
While difficult to find graphs online for some reason, here is an adoption graph for year 3:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgethd.com/media/2009/01/cesbda-0008.jpg
There is a graph inside this PDF up until year 5 and BD is ahead until year 5 where DVD slightly surpasses it and that is despite all BD's setbacks (format war with HD-DVD, smaller differences versus DVD compared to DVD versus VHS and requirement of HDTV to see the difference). All in all it's not been doing bad at all given the obvious there. When you factor in digital streaming to boot, it's doing far better than it should, by your calculations. When disc prices come down further, DVD will become irrelevant, especially if they start including them with all BD purchases eventually (for the car, for example).
http://www.media-tech.net/fileadmin...f/enews/Las_Vegas_2011/Victor_Matsuda_BDA.pdf
So really, Blu-Ray is a victory, but not as big as you claim it is. And definitely not big enough to offset the Betamax failure. And I am being nice by not
pointing out the gazillion audio formats (includign the 3.5 floppy disk) Sony tried to use. There was a time when Sony was relevant...
WTF does Betamax have to do with anything? I thought this was about Blu-Ray versus streaming? BD already won the format war against HD-DVD. You're comparing Apples to Oranges.
TV is going, it's only going to more heavily integrate with your personal iOS device (how exactly I couldn't hope to tell you, I don't watch TV)