The
stakes are high for Blu-ray this holiday season. As we've stated before, it's the first such season where it's not competing directly with HD DVD, and coincidentally enough, also the first in which it is competing (at least to a small degree) with HD streaming. To that end, a number of studios and consumer electronics outfits have agreed to fund a $25 million marketing campaign dubbed Tru Blu, which involves airing persuasive commercials on channels that "attract heavily male audiences." With Blu-ray deck prices expected to reach the
$150 area come Black Friday, we'd say BD still has a good chance of
being successful this winter, but it's going to need every ounce of gusto it can muster.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
D @ Nov 7th 2008 7:13PM
Blu-Ray is destined to be a niche market. Those discs gotta come down in price if they expect to take off at all.
TrentD @ Nov 8th 2008 11:59AM
They're less expensive than DVDs were two years after release. Chill out, people, it's still early in the adoption phase.
DVD4ME @ Nov 8th 2008 8:31PM
"Early adoption phase"...........what a crock of shit, BR is DVD with a few tweaks, the expensive BR format is a result of sony again trying to dominate consumer choice and dictate what people buy, forcing a product onto consumers at inflated pricing, it is all starting to blow up in their faces and fall apart, great job, sony needs a swift kick in the nuts for their arrogance IMO!
zargon @ Nov 7th 2008 7:58PM
They should be forced to dump that $25 million into something worthwhile, like our educational system.
TrentD @ Nov 8th 2008 12:02PM
Right, all private companies should cease operations and give all their funds to public programs.
Seriously, why waste your time posting something like that?
TrentD @ Nov 8th 2008 12:03PM
Oh, and forced by whom? Obama? Do you seriously think private companies should be controlled by government or something?
Gus @ Nov 7th 2008 8:41PM
BR is all ready $3.5 billion in the hole, hey, what's another $25 mill during a recession, money well spent flogging a 90's styled format
Valicore @ Nov 7th 2008 9:27PM
They can spend all the money they want, no one is going to take the time to understand what they're saying in commercials. The people that would understand already know about it or don't watch commercials period.
Maybe they should spend that 25 million subsidizing the prices of the movies.
squiggleslash @ Nov 8th 2008 8:47AM
Or fixing Blu-ray. Make it less of a gamble to invest in. Add combo disks. Fix the "Digital Copy" issues by implementing mandatory managed copy (and this time backdating it.) Remove BD+ from the specification.
And make it possible for publishers to publish low volume runs without it being prohibitively expensive.
I'd like to see "Profile 1.2" and "Profile 2.1" implemented, supporting HD DVD on Blu-ray media. Now that the BDA isn't, in theory, at war with the DVD Forum, such a thing should be possible, and it'd close the loop, making sure that BD really could do everything HD DVD could with only a firmware update required for all existing Profile 1.1 and Profile 2.0 players. Alas, that would require recognition that HD DVD did it right, and I don't see them doing that.
Joe Maki @ Nov 8th 2008 7:16AM
The cost of entry is coming down. Now in order to become mainstream the disc prices need to follow. I've been an early adoptor (2 - HDDVD and 1 - BD player). I still buy very few discs. Sorry, I refuse to pay $30 for a movie unless I know I love it and will watch it multiple times.
Kyle @ Nov 8th 2008 12:00PM
When will these people realize it is the overpriced discs that are keeping people from buying Blu--$27-$30 for a single movie?! I had no problems paying $500 for my first DVD player, but the discs weren't way overpriced like the Blu discs are now.
TrentD @ Nov 8th 2008 12:04PM
Where do you spend $30 for a movie? The highest I ever paid was $27, a year and a half ago. On average, I pay less than $20 per movie now.
DrXym @ Nov 9th 2008 5:44AM
Trying to pitch HD is a tough nut to crack. The best ads I've seen to promote an HD format were for Sky HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEgm1A_ZMTk
I thought they were arresting ads and demonstrated the extra detail that HD offers even though the ad itself is in SD.
Miguel @ Nov 9th 2008 9:10AM
I agree with many of the posters who say the price of blu-ray movies need to come down. Ive had my PS3 for 6 months now and have yet to buy a movie. I'll rent but I wont buy movies at more than $20 if even that. I think the key price point for movies is the $10 to $17 range. Once it reaches that point I think blu-ray will take off.
LonnieDvD @ Nov 9th 2008 3:25PM
Nice try, but this Tru Blu ad campaign isn't enough. They need to drop the prices, and get rid of their DRM crap.
Gus @ Nov 9th 2008 6:15PM
I was shopping at Target yesterday and was faced with the choice of 5 older but good DVD titles or 1older but good blu ray title for the same $, I bought the 5 DVDs .