News - UK DVD sales plunge...

[HEXUS]

...and still massively outsell 'booming' Blu-ray.

Read more.

[staffsMike]

I think people such as myself are sitting at a bit of a stalemate. I want to buy blu rays.. but, I can get the DVD for less than half the cost and still upscale it to look half way decent in comaprison to blu ray.

Due to this, I'm still buying DVD's unless there is a film I particularly want to enjoy the spectacle of such as the dark knight.

[Mattitude]

Originally Posted by staffsMike

I think people such as myself are sitting at a bit of a stalemate. I want to buy blu rays.. but, I can get the DVD for less than half the cost and still upscale it to look half way decent in comaprison to blu ray.

Due to this, I'm still buying DVD's unless there is a film I particularly want to enjoy the spectacle of such as the dark knight.

Same here, though Dark Knight will be a DVD purchase for me when I decide to get it - the next Harry Potter film will probably be a Blu-Ray purchase though.

[Jay]

blue-ray is really good but the cost involved is not. That being said my Media PC plays DVD, blu-ray and HD-DVD

[Funkstar]

Same here. I'll buy TV boxsets on DVD, especially older stuff (very tempted with the old Transformers cartoon box sets), but I don't want to buy films in SD any more. However BD prices are still too high.

[TheBloodyNine]

Oh no non essential media purchases down in global recession, more expensive alternative also doing badly. No ****.

Although I still don’t see the point in Blu-Ray. DVDs look fine and Blu-Ray doesn’t offer a noticeable improvement for the cost involved, I may buy a Blu-Ray player when my DVD player goes pop but I will probably buy very few Blu-Rays

[Grebowski]

Given the number of times that ive watched most of the DVD's i own, like staffsMike I also can't justify the additional premium of blu-ray.

Originally Posted by Funkstar

(very tempted with the old Transformers cartoon box sets)

Do it! I have them and they're awesome

[cheesemp]

Due to the cost of BR's I've taken to renting them from Lovefilm. I only own one blu-ray. They need to come down to just a few quid more than the DVD equivalents before I'll start buying.

[Vimeous]

I can't afford to be interested in blue-rays until players rivaling current models at £200 drop to sub-£100.

What blue-ray has done is changed my DVD price expectations. I now won't consider a DVD unless it's £7 and only then if it's something I want badly. However £3 or £5 DVD's I now occasionally buy instead of magasines, something I'd not considered before.

As for blue-rays themselves - price matters to me more than quality simply because DVD's as are so good. I agree a blue-ray is a more enjoyable thing to watch (and listen too) but not at 3-4x the cost.

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by Grebowski

Do it! I have them and they're awesome

What annoyed me about them is I saw the box sets in HMV in Edinburgh the other week for £5 each. They are £6 each in the Aberdeen store!!

I think I can get the for £4 each online, I just haven't bothered yet. If they had been £5 in Aberdeen I would have bought them yesterday when I was in a buying mood

[explicit4u]

Honestly, there is a massive noticeable difference, if you honestly cannot see the difference you either need a better TV or you need to change the distance you sit from your TV.

I think that the price needs to come down if they want it to ever hit mainstream. as for me, well i only buy really good action movies on blu-ray such as Transformers (2007 movie), i wouldn't bother getting Blu-ray for a comedy, ROMCOM, etc.

[Funkstar]

Just remembered about a discussion I had with a friend about HD.

Back when DVD was new, I way quite happy to pay £15 a disk (usually in Virgins 2-for-£30 deal) and would soemtimes even pay £20 for a new title. This was back when I had a lot less money than I do now.

However, I wouldn't want to pay that much for a BluRay. I think it's because we have all seen how cheaply DVD titles can be sold for, we don't want to pay the premiums we used to. I also haven't bought a new release DVD in years, because I know how cheap they will be eventually.

[Barrichello]

Originally Posted by explicit4u

Honestly, there is a massive noticeable difference, if you honestly cannot see the difference you either need a better TV or you need to change the distance you sit from your TV.

I think that the price needs to come down if they want it to ever hit mainstream. as for me, well i only buy really good action movies on blu-ray such as Transformers (2007 movie), i wouldn't bother getting Blu-ray for a comedy, ROMCOM, etc.

Agree. Theres a massive difference between a upscaled dvd and a good Tier 0/1/2 blu-ray disc, if you cant see/hear it you should question your setup. I have been collecting blu-ray discs for over two years, but only have around 20ish. Why only 20? price..no, not a problem - they are fairly cheap to pick up from the us. Reason, i only want the classic films i love, the classics deserving of the new tech. A good reference is this http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=858316 If its a film you know you love and will watch again and again and it falls into Tier 012 then its a fairly safe bet it will be awesome.
Stuff like tv series, random rubbish still occasionally get on dvd

[danroyle]

i bought a hd dvd player to see what hd was like and was impressed however as with most people i buy alot of my dvd's for around the £5 mark dont mind waiting 6 months to watch a film unless its a must see for me.

i will consider a cheap blu ray player once the good ones hit around £100 but then would only really get some films that must be seen in HD.

[staffsMike]

I'm not saying you can't tell the difference, it's usually instantly noticeable. I'm saying who cares about it.. as most of you seem to be demonstrating by doing what I'm doing, only buying ones you really want to appriciate in HD.

[Saracen]

Well, personally, very very rarely do I buy a DVD, BR or otherwise. There's a limit to how often I'm interested in watching a given program from a DVD, and it nearly always isn't enough for me to be prepared to buy DVDs. I'll watch it when it comes on TV, or if I'm really keen, watch a film at the cinema when it comes out.

But for me, the pleasure I get from watching a film the second time is nearly always a lot less than it was the first time, and even less after that. There's only a handful of films I'd even bother to watch when they come on TV if I've already seen them several times. It's a perfect example of the law of diminishing marginal returns in operation.

So .... at a rough guess, 70% of my enjoyment in a film comes from the first viewing, 20% from the second, and thereafter, the remaining 10%. Which begs the question ..... does the increased quality from viewing one, and maybe viewing two justify the price premium, because after viewing two, I really don't give much of a fig.

And the answer, for me, is ..... nope.


Exceptions, that I will view multiple times :-

- some music videos.
- some documentaries.

There are some documentaries where HD is, to me, worth the cost. It tends it be wildlife and natural history stuff, like the BBC wildlife unit comes up with, or Planet Earth. Those, if I was to buy them, I may well go for HD versions.

There are some music videos that I'll watch again and again. But the problem then is that it's for the music, not the images, and I may well 'watch' with my eyes shut .... in which case I might as well buy a CD instead, and usually do. But in any event, even on first viewing, those are about sound not vision, for me.

I agree with staffsMike - it's not that I can't tell the difference, its that most of the time, I don't much care and certainly not enough to pay BR price premiums. Hence, I don't buy many DVDs and am certainly not forking out either for BR media or even for the player. When players are as ubiquitous, and cheap, as DVD players are now, and when BR disc prices have come down to the point I'm currently prepared to pay for the few DVDs I buy, then maybe I'll buy the occasional BR. But not until then.