hello!
seems like they should concentrate on having cheaper BD-Burners & BD-Rs, BD Drive only won't make it.
cheers...

Completely agree, the media is almost the same price as DVD's but the players are an insane price! once they're down to £30 or less then the ball will get rolling =)

i don't think the music industry has ever embraced 3.5" floppies or DVDs

Thats not true, go to HMV in london and theres loads of DVD music there, just showing live tours and music videos mainly, but they did try, When I first saw them i was actually shocked as to hom many there was!

The reason Blu-Ray drives aren't found in more PCs--especially home-brews--is because the software to play Blu-Ray discs ranges from nonexistent to horrible. I must admit, though, one thing I miss after moving from Windows to OS X is NOT having my internal BD player available anymore.

Blu-Ray is the poster child of how not to implement new technology. Toshiba and Sony engaged in a needless HD technology battle against each other, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars pushing their own version of HD. Toshiba eventually won and said, "Yippee - here it is, the best thing since sliced bread. Everybody buy one!" Only there were no players, no media, and a lot of confusion as to exactly what it was. On top of that, the pricing for everything from media to players was off-the-charts compared to normal DVD technology, and still is in some cases. And as Richy2K9 and Kestrel mentioned, burners are expensive, few and far between and software is clunky as hell.
And this is for a technology that has been out for over a year and a half now.

Have to agree with what has been said before, too expensive and software to work with it is pretty poor to average.

Although it was Sony who actually won the HD Technology battle against Toshiba, Sony developed Blu-Ray hence the PS3 coming with a Blu-Ray player, Toshiba came up with HD-DVD which was dropped early last year.

Yup, that's true - I stand corrected.

I just use windows media classic to play blue ray movies, like a previous poster said, the software sucks, even the firmware for stand alone blueray players have issues and is hard to update.

Blu Ray 2 G*y

This tech is a non starter. Too many restrictions. Too expensive to implement. Too expensive for both equipment and media compared to DVD. Economic down turn and increased internet options result in something that will not fly. It will hang on in much the same way that vinyl LP's do, expensive, rare and of questionable value.

I only purchase DVD under $10. I rip them to a reasonably high bit rate and burn them to DVD to play on my DIVX capable player. It upscales and I get quite good results. Of course, I am older and have somewhat less than 20/20 eye sight but it does the trick. I have been to see the difference side by side and really couldn't tell of much difference.

This thing reminds of one of the key reasons VHS beat Beta. The Beta cassettes could record about 1 hour and the VHS could record 2. Sony thought people would only want to record TV programs and not 2 hour movies. Recording FTA movies and the rise of a home rental market settled the issue. An earlier example of Sony's wrong headed decisions.

The rather large collective yawn that has greeted the full scale advertising assault fo Blu Ray should be obvious to all concerned by now. We have seen the demise of the home video rental market come ever closer, there exists fewer outlets for spontaneous purchase or rental of these BR physical disks. The selling job required to push these into a majority position is going to be huge. I don't believe the firms behind this have the time, money or stomach for the losses they will incur.

Not as bad as some people think and it will only get better

Current Pricing (Approximate)
LG DVD Burner $140
Sony BD-ROM $79
Generic Brand 25GB BD-R Around $3
Software: to "Backup BD's AnyDVD HD ($79)
w/ImgBurn (free)
Playback software: PowerDVD, WinDVD or my favorite Total Media Theatre

This software solution is adequate. AnyDVD HD will Rip to the Hard Drive in either BD Structure or Image file (ISO). Imgburn which is free will then burn it flawlessly. The only thing missing although not completely (BD Rebuilder) is good software that will "squeeze" a 50GB on to 25GB BD-R

The only thing that is still pricy are the BD-R 50GB which are required for most movies out nowadays. They are around $10 each in quantity

Give it 6 months to a year and things should improve

And as far as not seeing the difference in "upscaling" DVD players and true Blu-Ray you would have to be blind not to tell the difference (no offense). Try watching a superior quality Bluray like Dark Knight on a 52" 1080p LCD and you will be amazed.

Toshiba didn't eventually win, Sony did, BluRay is Sony's standard. Recently I read some news about Toshiba applying to join BR group.

I've always had an unanswered question about this. It doesn't seem that Toshiba can actually lose with respect to Blu-Ray vs HiDef DVD. TSST is Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology. Samsung championed Blu-Ray. So, since they already build drives together, one would think that Toshiba is already in the Blu-Ray business. Now, whatever extravagant licensing fees Sony can extract to let them use the format, are another matter altogether.

The entertainment industry seems really out of touch with the economy, if they think they are going to get rapid adoption of Blu-Ray, in light with the prices they charge, There is apparently no portion of people's "disposable income" they feel they're not entitled to.

"blugay", SNGX? I've never heard it called that before.

Although, if they sold the players as loss leader items, I fear they'd want to raise the price of the discs even more. Sort of like the relationship between ink and printers.

Ten years from now when UV-Ray disc players are beginning to be availablem Blu-Ray discs and payers will be affordable, just as DVD is now. And you talk about DRM....you just wait.

Don't worry about DRM, cranky, if it can be created, it most certainly will be cracked... Nonetheless, when Blu-Ray Burners become cheaply available, or my favorite games are on Blu-Ray, then I'll succumb to the rushing Blu tide.