Sony, and no doubt the investors and backers of Blu-ray, are well aware of the adoption woes that the technology is currently facing. A victory over HD DVD is hollow if it means nothing but lackluster sales in the face of customers still overwhelmingly favoring the older DVD. This is something Sony has been concerned about for some time, and while they have recently sought to reorganize and find a new way to make Blu-ray attractive, the truth is that Blu-ray is simply not performing as well as they\'d hoped.

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Is it really that surprising that Blu-Ray players haven't been selling in vast majorities? First, those who could afford Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, purchased 1st/2nd gen players. Those who had HD-DVD got screwed over pretty hard at a pretty quick pace. I'd be bitter, too.

Then, Sony and other Blu-Ray developers kept their prices at $300-500 ranges for the next several gen. products. It wasn't until recently that players have dipped below $200, and the majority of those players are off-brand.

In this market, where people need to be thrifty, they can't afford to just jump at the next big technology with a 1st gen asking price. You can buy a 40" LCD 1080p television (mainstream brand) for about $700-800. Asking $300-500 for a player just seems silly in contrast. I know it took years to get LCD/Plasma down to those prices, but people are watching their wallets now... and most people just can't justify handing over that kind of money for something that isn't going to make much of a difference with their run-of-the-mill home theater experience. Now $150-250? That's a different story... but those prices are just now coming into the fold.

The pricing is still the problem. As polidiotic mentioned, the prices were in the $500 range and just recently dropped below $200 - and on rare occasion at that. On the other hand, you can buy a VHS/DVD player for $50.

There is also the lack of media for a Blu-Ray player. Six months ago, if you went to Blockbuster or Best Buy to rent or buy a Blu-Ray video, the available titles fit on one 4-foot wide rack. Who the hell is going to pay $500 for a player, and triple the media price over a DVD when Blu-Ray titles comprise less 2% of all media releases?

Just like the PS3, Sony has stumbled and bumbled their way through their Blu-Ray promotions and marketing making it one of the most unattractive high-tech purchases around.

In my humble opinion, the 'victory' of blu ray over hd dvd extinguished any chance of having a widely disseminated successor to the classic dvd format. I learned that blu ray technology was superior and personally preferred it, even though it required an increased investment in the existing production infrastructures. I did not guess that it would not became an instant success because of political reasons...

i dont mind shellin gout 200 for a player if the stupied new release moves wernt 30-35 bucks a pop. that is retarded. once they get below 20 (like a nomral dvd) i will buy a player.

Makes sense to me.

Could it possibly be that "less than $200" IS the problem? When DVD players are selling for $50, only people with lots of disposable cash will buy BR.

I own a BR Player but still do not own a BR disk. It not worth it to me to pay an extra 10 to 15 bucks to get a movie in BR. I rent movies all the time in BR because there is little to no difference in cost. If it was the same to own I would be buying BR instead

BluRay has two insurmountable problems:
1) Embedded DRM (AACS, etc.) - that nobody with an IQ above 90 will touch (unless they are masochists)
2) HDCP/HDMI - which just doesn't reliably work, and has a new connector design every 18 months.


No thanks.

The people who buy $50 DVD players probably won't see any difference going to a $200 Blu-ray player because all the players getting to that price point and the equipment it's likely plugged into will be of poor quality anyway. Clearly there's a market for people who'll buy anything blindly because it's cheap and they would be oblivious to better picture and sound quality. Hence, spending more money for basically what will be the same product to them is hardly justified.

People I know either own a PS3 or own upscaling DVD players which do an extremely good job improving the quality of DVDs. I havent watched an upscaled DVD on a big telly and thought "That picture is crap".

Also the price of second hand DVDs is through the floor. I usually go through the pre-owned bin at Blockbusters and find 5 cool DVDs for £10. That is roughly $14?

A Blu-Ray player and disc need a good-enough HDTV for the complete experience. If you don't have an HDTV, don't buy a Blu-Ray player. IMO it's as simple as that.

The reason that Blu-Ray is not taking off is that saving HD video to a hard drive is the much better way to go. Disc oxidize in 5 years and quality is lost.

Like guest further up said. The DRM and HDCP implementation is the issue. The quality may be awesome, but the hardware and software that powers it is third rate. The second is of course as mentioned, the cost of the Blu-Ray's themselves. New releases that come out near $50 (Australian) is a joke. It costs less than that for three or four people to go to the cinema's.
Cut the copyright protection, scrap the regional coding and the price to produce will naturally be cheaper.
Either that or bring back HD-DVD........

Blue ray player is a one time investment. The main problem is the price of the blue ray disk. Here in india a xbox 360 pro and a ps3 80 gb both costs 24K rupees. But a xbox 360 game costs 1900 and a ps3 game costs 2500. Thats a gap of 12 to 15 us dollers. So xbox 360 is more populer. A movie dvd goes for 100, but blue ray would have costed 600. So they dont even release hd titles here.

oh lol i forgot i got a blue ray drive in my dell studio xps desktop :) kind of forgot i owned it since i dont have any blue ray disks.. have borrowed a couple tho. they look good but not light years away from dvds upscaled with my 360 (26inch hd telly here so larger would make a difference).

Blueray - so cool i forgot i had it..

I think winning the format war may be the worst nightmare for Blu-Ray. All Blu-Ray got from winning that was the fact they get to stay of shelves longer, it doesn't mean its going to see success and it doesn't mean its a good format.

I was saying the same exact thing Tengeta, I personally stream my movies onto my HDTV w/ netflix and xbox 360, I'm absolutely sick of my discs becoming scratched and giving me problems. I just can't wait till all games and movies are downloaded or streamed... Much easier to store a digital library, especially when you can log back on and redownload it if something like a hard drive crash happened.

Once your disc gets scratched... It takes all kinds of effort and trouble and even money if you wanna go that route to get those DVD's fixed... It would also bring the prices down for movies if they didn't have to package them, but I'm not even a big movie guy anyways, that's why I'm fine streaming movies that have been out for a while.

I still use the big clunky 4:3 tvs lol... so no point in getting a blu-ray if i got that. HDTVs are still waaayyy to expensive for me to invest into with my tight budget. It'll more then likely be awhile till I even invest in an hdtv, let alone a blu-ray player.

I'm not going to pay 200 usd for a sylvannia blueray player, you gotta be kidding me.