Planet Bob

Just found "Death Jr." for 10.- in a bargain bin

And last night just before going to sleep, I saw Metroid Prime 3 for 20.- on amazon.de! I think that was some 24 hour deal only, since today it's up at 42.- again. Lucky me!

Since my shopping list felt a little thin lately, I doubled its size by adding those:

 

Battalion Wars 2

De Blob

Disaster: Day of Crisis

Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

The Secret Files: Tunguska

Oh, I love Christmas shopping, especially when buying stuff for myself!

 

So today I finally got Okami for the Wii and also Onimusha Warlords for the PS2. I can't use the later yet, but it was only 5 Euro and I have this feeling I'll get a PS2 for Christmas

Yay, more Christmas shopping! Added Battalion Wars 2 to my Wii collection today and also picked up Devil May Cry and Maximo for the PS2.

 

That means in case I should really get a PS2 for christmas, I have Capcoms PS2 launch lineup ready to go for the holidays!

I almost bought a Blu-Ray player yesterday, but the stores were out of the model I wanted - the Sony BDP-S350 (discounted $100 this weekend). Blu-Ray players have finally hit the sub-$200 price point. I didn't see anything gaming-related that interested me. You'll like the PS2 though - tons of good, affordable games for it.

Investing into Blue-Ray is pretty bold IMO. I was always pretty certain that it'll die just like any other format Sony is trying to force onto the market like UMD / Mini Disk. And I'm not alone, querying Google for "blue ray betamax" delivers 1.2 Million hits

 

I fully agree on the PS2 though. Everyones going to trash it right now, I see ten thousand PS2 games in every gamestop I'm walking into, so cheap you don't even waste a thought on eBaying them. When Looking for a copy of the first Onimusha on friday for example, I found 7 in a single shop

Blu-ray has outpaced DVD adoption

Western European consumers will have acquired Blu-ray drives at more than six times the rate buyers had bought standard disc players by the end of 1999.... In the U.S., customers are acquiring Blu-ray drives at three times the rate

Blu-ray has outpaced DVD adoption

Western European consumers will have acquired Blu-ray drives at more than six times the rate buyers had bought standard disc players by the end of 1999.... In the U.S., customers are acquiring Blu-ray drives at three times the rate

 

The PS3 is boosting the installed hardware base, still I don't see the mainstream picking the twice-as-expensive Blue-Ray movie over the DVD cousin.

 

My wifes 20 year old CD Player broke earlier this year. When trying to replace it for her birthday, to my surprise I figured that standalone audio CD players ceased to exist. I ended up buying a DVD Player for our stereo, that is actually better than the DVD Player we have installed for the TV

 

So while we now actually got forced onto the hardware, do we already own a single Audio DVD? -> No!

Dunno how Europe is doing, but from what I've seen here, Blu-Ray is quickly gaining acceptance. The price drop in players is going to help the most. I was surprised what a strong presence the format has in the stores now. The discs are gaining a significant foothold in the DVD section, and the players are everywhere (they had stacks of Samsung Blu-Ray players everywhere in Best Buy for $189). I think this will be a make-or-break season for the format.

 

From my perspective, I've been spoiled by even the relatively small amount of HD programming on AT&T U-Verse, and I think that others with HD on cable and satellite are probably thinking the same thing: HD looks so much better, it's really hard to justify buying any more DVDs, when many Blu-Ray discs are very close in price. For example, Amazon has the 3-disc Wall-E DVD for $22.99, and the 3-disc Blu-Ray for $24.99.

 

The PS3 on the other hand, I think has an uphill battle now. I'm not even remotely considering one, because the price is way too high. A stand-alone Blu-Ray player is less than half the cost of a PS3, which doesn't even come with a Blu-Ray remote. (Besides, the games for it are just crazy expensive.)

 

I think many of the Betamax comparisons are likely leftover from the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD format war.

I doubt Blue Ray will make it here in Europe.

 

DVD is more than good enough for at least 95% of the customers, so becides a few marketing victims, that only leaves video enthusiasts.

 

Also DVD players are cheap as hell, reliable and not that much infected by all that DRM bullshit. DVDs cost less than half a much as Blue Ray discs, often you get them for free in TV magazines. The BR players I have seen so far have startup times even worse than a PC.

 

Why would any average customer want that? I pass.

I doubt Blue Ray will make it here in Europe.

That article I linked to seems to imply it's being adopted more rapidly in Europe (6x DVD rate) than the US (3x), though it doesn't mention what the DVD adoption rates were.

 

The US does get a bigger picture gain by going Blu-Ray - 480 -> 1080 scanlines vs 576 -> 1080 for PAL users.

That article I linked to seems to imply it's being adopted more rapidly in Europe (6x DVD rate) than the US (3x), though it doesn't mention what the DVD adoption rates were.

 

Yup it actually doesn't compare the markets at all. Europe could be 6 million vs. 1 while America could be 300 million vs. 100

 

I also wonder how many Blue Ray players are not one of the 17 million PS3.

 

And finally, installed hardware means nothing. There's at least 40 million UMD players (read: PSP) on the market, yet UMD is completely dead for movies.

Most people who play movies on the PSP do so from memory sticks. I own a PSP, and I'd never consider buying a UMD movie, since I don't want to carry around the extra discs. Plus, I don't like re-buying a movie when it's a step backwards in quality. Admittedly, I'm not real thrilled about re-buying movies again with Blu-Ray, except that 1) I've already re-purchased to get better quality when going from LPs to CDs, and from VHS to Laserdiscs/DVD; and 2) I don't own that many movies in the first place, since I only tend to buy ones that are going to be watched repeatedly, not necessarily the latest hits/blockbusters/everything in a particular genre. I've become rather selective, for the most part.

 

I do hope Blu-Ray doesn't become the next Laserdisc, but I don't think that will happen. Laserdiscs never hit mainstream for a whole lot of reasons that I think Blu-Ray is avoiding: incompatibility with other video formats, clunky playback (having to change sides and/or discs), ungainly media size, huge heavy hardware, poor marketing (considered a videophile format, not one for the average consumer), marginal improvement in quality, limited title availability, crazy expensive prices for boxes sets. Blu-Ray is skirting those last two a little bit, but it already has far more public awareness than Laserdiscs ever did, far more studio support, and a raison d'être that laserdiscs never had: a boom in HDTV sales. Prices are going to continue to drop, and make the choice between a DVD player and a Blu-Ray player mostly academic.

I also wonder how many Blue Ray players are not one of the 17 million PS3.

Less of an issue than you'd think - a number of people have purchased the PS3 strictly to use as a Blu-ray player, in part because it was able to keep up with the revisions to the Blu-ray spec. While mine does see gaming use, it sees a lot more action as a Blu-ray player.

 

New Blu-ray 2.0 spec makes PS3 the most future-proof player

 

Sony's PlayStation 3 tops another "Best Blu-ray player" list

 

I've watched many movies on my PSP, but not one was on UMD - they've all been ripped from my DVDs via HandBrake.

More Blu-Ray players on the market now are 2.0 or firmware-upgradeable to it, including the BDP-S350 model I was looking at (and its Costco equivalent the Sony BDP-BX1). The load times are reportedly coming down as well. It took a few years for DVD players to get the kinks worked out.

It's going to be very interesting to watch. I'm on the save end thankfully, as I'm the extreme opposite of the "early adopter", usually buying stuff when it's going obsolete already.

 

E.G. I won't buy a flat TV before my 34" Black Trinitron Sony breaks and it don't looks like it ever will, it seems unbreakable

E.G. I won't buy a flat TV before my 34" Black Trinitron Sony breaks and it don't looks like it ever will, it seems unbreakable

I've got one of those for 13 years now too (28"). Works like at it 1st day, only the remote control needs a replacement soon.

Yes - I also refuse to replace my 28" CRT TV (Panasonic Quintrix) until it breaks. I bought it when wide screen TVs were just becoming popular (around 10yrs ago I think) and it is still working perfectly. LCD TVs seem to be getting cheaper/better each year, so I figure I'll be able to get a very nice one when it finally departs.

 

Chris

More Blu-Ray players on the market now are 2.0 or firmware-upgradeable to it, including the BDP-S350 model I was looking at (and its Costco equivalent the Sony BDP-BX1). The load times are reportedly coming down as well. It took a few years for DVD players to get the kinks worked out.

That's true now, and I fully expect purchases of PS3's for use only as a Blu-Ray player will decrease. When the price of the PS3 was the same as the non-upgradeable players it made sense to go the PS3 route.

 

I went HDTV in 2001, but only because my old set broke and I couldn't see buying a non-HD set when NTSC was going to be phased out soon (this was before the USA's analog cutoff was pushed back to 2009, I think the original cutoff was 2006). The red gun in the old set stopped working and all I could see were cyan colored people

I think this will be a make-or-break season for the format.

Considering the current state of the economy, I'd say that means Blu-Ray is @#$#@ed, then.

 

The price drop in players is going to help the most. I was surprised what a strong presence the format has in the stores now. The discs are gaining a significant foothold in the DVD section, and the players are everywhere (they had stacks of Samsung Blu-Ray players everywhere in Best Buy for $189).

We'll see. This article at Slate.com has this to say:

At the moment, investing in Blu-ray is risky. There's a reason manufacturers are slashing Blu-ray players' prices—the things aren't selling very well. Meanwhile, several tech and entertainment companies—among them Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix—are working on ways to bring out more HD movies over the Internet, eliminating the need for discs. If these efforts take off, Blu-ray may die.

Who knows, really, how things will turn out but Blu-Ray is being squeezed from both ends here: they need people to quickly abandon the old format (DVD) but slowly adopt the newest format (on-demand/download HD). Or if downloadable HD can't overcome technical/licensing hurdles...

Downloadable HD, in my opinion, only works for rentals. For people who want to own movies, long-term storage is a problem. All hard drives die, and consumers are going to be really irate when their movie libraries start biting the dust. Few consumers back anything up, and as far as I know, the HD-based players don't have any built-in capabilities for backing themselves up. Plus, you still have to have the device/service to download/store/watch the movies with.

 

That said, I've watched some movies over U-Verse, and they look pretty good (although even in HD, you still see quite a lot of compression artifacts). But I like the extra features of DVDs as much or more than the movies themselves. That's a big missing piece in the downloadable market from what I've seen.

 

I'm hoping Blu-Ray makes it. But I haven't bought a player yet, either.

 

Edit: A Blu-Ray player is currently #4 on Amazon's electronics best-seller list, with additional models at #12 and #19.

 

I went HDTV in 2001, but only because my old set broke and I couldn't see buying a non-HD set when NTSC was going to be phased out soon (this was before the USA's analog cutoff was pushed back to 2009, I think the original cutoff was 2006).

My 20-something-year-old 27" JVC was dying (and had been steadily going downhill for years). So when I got a new TV in mid-2007 I knew I'd be going the HD route. Fortunately, I got in after a big round of price cuts, and only recently have comparable sets dropped lower in price. For high technology, that's pretty good.

All hard drives die, and consumers are going to be really irate when their movie libraries start biting the dust.

Same goes for Blue Ray since its content is protected. And I have seen DRM server dying much faster than any harddrives. Even the players can become disabled, if they find any gap in the protection implementation.

 

So what do you have then? A nice booklet for a movie you cannot watch anymore.

Added Battalion Wars 2 to my Wii collection today

 

Ooopsa! I just won me a second copy of this, participating in the holiday contest from http://nintendowiix.net/