Recent Comments:
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending August 3rd, 2008 {Engadget HD}
Aug 13th 2008 3:19PM squig,
"1. Standardization. All players need to play all Blu-ray discs and access all features of those discs. This means Profile 2.0 support, support for writable media, etc."
I have a first generation Toshiba DVD player. Know what, it does not read any burned discs! This idea that all players need to support every feature is hogwash. I have yet to use any of the whiz-bang features on either blu-ray or hd dvd that made the features worth having. As long as the picture and sound are top notch then you can keep the rest.
"2. Reliability. All players need to play all Blu-ray discs. This, in practice, means the deprecation of BD+."
Please provide information on this rash of players that do not play blu-ray discs. Especially any that have not been fixed in firmware.
"3. Upgrades to integrate cleanly into a future that's clearly going to be online. This means, initially, standardized download-and-burn discs, with standardized media stores following shortly. It also means mandatory managed copy, no "We'll leave it off some earlier disks", if a disk doesn't have it right now it should be officially withdrawn."
The whole download-and-burn issue is a question for the studios. This has been implemented on DVDs for a couple of years now and there is almost zero interest in it. The studios don't trust it and the average Joe does not want to bother with it. The price for a d&b DVD is often more than the packaged media.
Managed copy is also a question for the studios. It is their IP and their choice to allow you to copy it or not. It is still not 'legal' in the US to copy DVDs. As long as the studios can get congress to back them up on this idea then you should not expect the right to make back-ups.
So, out of the three points you made, only the first one is with the format. The second one is with the CE companies and the third one is with the Studios.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending August 3rd, 2008 {Engadget HD}
Aug 13th 2008 11:16AM ateneum,
We go through this almost every week but here it is one more time.
The pie chart showing 10% for blu-ray is the percentage of sales for only the top 20 titles. You take the number of discs sold in the top 20 for DVD and compare against the top 20 for blu-ray and you get the 10%/90% percentage. This is UNIT volume and not revenue. This is considered important as the vast majority of sales for movies come from the top 20.
The dollar figures are revenue numbers and can be compared directly to each other.
VIA ditches motherboard business, focuses on processors {Engadget}
Aug 11th 2008 12:26PM So, Nvidia and now Via both have dropped out of the chipset market. That must really be a tough market right now. Who is left AMD, Intel, and SiS? I have not liked anything I have gotten from SiS in a very long time.
Consumers delaying Blu-ray purchases, can't find value proposition {Engadget HD}
Aug 1st 2008 1:30PM So much for analysts...
It is pretty clear that Blu-ray's adoption is tied directly to HDTV adoption. As HDTV sales increase so will Blu-ray's. They will not be tied 1-to-1 but rather, Blu-ray will always be some percentage of the number of HDTVs. This is pretty simple to understand.
The second thing that is easy to realize is that Blu-ray will be adopted by more people as the price comes down. The price is dropping, pretty quickly in fact, to the point where it is a no-brainer add-on to any HDTV purchase. I imagine the following spiel happening thousands of times per day in electronics stores everywhere.
"You are getting a great new high definition television. Don't you think you should get a new high definition disc player too? I mean you do want to take full advantage of you new TV and the best way to do that is with a Blu-ray player. We have them on sale today for as low as $xxx"
As the percentage of the price of the player drops in comparison to the price of the TV more and more people will pick them up. This is logical and expected for Blu-ray but by no means guaranteed to happen.
Sony introduces another hot China-only PMP, the PMX-M80 {Engadget}
Jul 31st 2008 11:26AM Well, I would argue that it is overpriced for the average American too; however, China now has about 300 Million people that are considered middle class or better. Then when you compare that to America's total population of about 301 Million you see why China often gets these cool little devices first.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending July 20th, 2008 {Engadget HD}
Jul 30th 2008 1:21PM Spiza,
There is no reputable place to get weekly sales numbers. I assume you are getting yours from VGChartz? Their numbers do show the 360 getting a bump in sales. But it shows more that the PS3 had a decline in sales. Neither of these have anything to do with FFXII or Netflix or the movie store.
This should be expected. The 360 has the 20GB units on clearance for $299 which is boosting their sales. At the same time Sony has announced that if you wait a month you get 80GB instead of 40GB for the same price so their sales are down.
China's Blu-ray competitor CBHD brings HD DVD back from the dead {Engadget HD}
Jul 28th 2008 7:02PM Your answer, like your actual comment, is just so much FUD.
"BD+ makes it impossible to build a Blu-ray player capable of playing every Blu-ray title."
Where did you drag this from. BD+ has been part of the standard since well before the first players were released. On top of that the only players that could not play discs have ALL since been fixed thanks to firmware updates. I might add that more than a dozen HD DVD discs and players had a similar problem. These were software problems in the firmware and not something wrong with the blu-ray standard or BD+.
"... and the issues with the lack of standardization support ..."
Are you arguing that new feature profiles are a bad thing or that the BDA does not provide support for their standard? An evolving standard is very common in consumer electronics; and, DVD itself has had dozens of changes to its standard. A modern DVD player will do dozens of things that my 12 year old Toshiba will not.
"... and poor scalability for the online future ..."
This part really makes no sense to me. All BD-Live (2.0) machines must have ethernet support and 1GB of local storage. In what way is this limiting scalability?
I am sorry, but your comment and response are both inaccurate.
China's Blu-ray competitor CBHD brings HD DVD back from the dead {Engadget HD}
Jul 28th 2008 3:44PM Please explain to me the following statement: "Blu-ray isn't capable, thanks to BD+". What does BD+ have to do with Blu-ray's capabilities?
China's Blu-ray competitor CBHD brings HD DVD back from the dead {Engadget HD}
Jul 28th 2008 11:45AM JimC,
Actually Nfinity reminds me a Young Earth Creationist.
Similarities:
spew garbage out of both sides of their mouths: check
ignore what is happening in the real world: check
twists science and facts to support their distorted view of the world: check
But, the reason that Nfinity is still allowed to post here is that people keep responding to him. Engadget knows that as long as they let him troll he will bring in the comments. Comments equal content for Engadget and content is king so Nfinity is tolerated. However, lately I have begun to think that Nfinity is possibly paid by Engadget.
Either of the above reasons would mean that Nfinity is not going anywhere. So, the only way for us to get rid of him is to start a campaign against replying to any thread he posts in. What is really tough about that is that he posts in every blu-ray story.
BenQ hacks 33% from its BR1000 Blu-ray optical drive in Taiwan {Engadget HD}
Jul 21st 2008 4:48PM All of the players are moving in that direction. It will just take time. My guess is it will be XMas 2009 before you see stand alone profile 2.0 players at $100. But you will certainly see sub $200 1.1 players and $250 2.0 players this year.
