Why HD-DVD/Blu-Ray sucks

[Whizzard9992]

The player is $400+, and a single movie is MINIMUM $25. Most are $30.

$30 is a little outrageous for a movie. $20 is almost pushing it. As it is, I pay $150/month for digital cable that's compressed.

In fact, most people don't even have TV's capable of viewing the HD content.

I think they rushed HD media to market and priced it way too high. I refuse to pay $30 for a movie when I can $15 for a regular DVD where I probably won't even tell the difference.

 

[DTSyr]

But HD televisions are available. How can HD ever be the standard if there is no way of playing HD media(other than broadcasting). Sure, it may not be worth the purchase now, but it is only a matter of time before HD becomes the standard and DVD becomes the legacy format that VHS is today. Eventually, as costs go down, HDTVs will become more and more common in households, just as color TVs did in the past. But only if there is a reason to own one, and I see HD-DVD/Bluetooth taking the mainstream long before HD brodcasting does.

 

[chunkymonster]

I agree with you, $30 is too much to pay for a movie. Such is the way with all newer technology. Shame of it is, while HD tv's may be available, the tv's and associated media only cater to a niche market, for now. The technology isn't as mainstream as people would have you beleive. The majority of tv watchers still have analog tv's and get there signal via broadcast!

Until the FCC enforces all digital broadcast signals (2009?!?), it's not worth the thousands of dollars for an HDTV...say what you will, but it just isn't...Comcast offers over 300 channels with their Platinum package and only 30+/- are Hi-Def...for $160+/- per month, wtf...sure it's great eye candy and you can brag to your friends, but for the average consumer, it isn't worth it.

In all fairness, the technology has to start somewhere and all those folks who forked out the dough for an HDTV need to justify their purchases...hell, when you spend $3000 or more for an HDTV, what's another $30 for a movie?!

 

[PaulWJones]

Agreed.

I suppose it's all like any new technology, expensive at first.

I guess I did not really expect High-Def DVD to be cheap, initially. I remember paying $600 for a DVD player, and I remember $30+ movies, and not really being able to rent DVDs, but being stuck with videos (and boy, those were ugly, particularly regular VHS).

I was really disappointed to see HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both pop up as formats in another format war. That will keep people from buying, which will keep the price up, and delay the whole thing. I'm all for competition, but this lack of convergence is just screwing it all up. I see the EU is investigating it, not that I hold out much near-term help from government regulation, but lets hope at least the various licensing terms don't preclude someone from building a dual format deck. After all, that's when the whole DVD+R/DVD-R mess became a non-issue for most of us. Just need a high-def equivalent.