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So, why are do so few retailers have good inventories of B-R movies? The big guns, like Costco and Sam’s Club, have sparse inventories. Locally, Fry’s has the best selection, and Best Buy is second. After that it drops off drastically. The best way to judge the popularity of B-R is by the movies on retailer shelves, and by that standard B-R is doing so-so.

There is no comparison between any streaming media and Blu-Ray. As much as I want to go 'discless,' Blu-Ray is clearly superior in picture quality and sound quality/options for sound.

Blu-ray has a quality edge streaming can't match. Some people actually care about that. And let's not forget that the movie companies are positioning themselves to greatly increase the price of streaming media. Netflix is about to lose its license from Starz that has let it stream movies for a small price. It could be disastrous for them if the movie companies succeed.

Meanwhile, Blu-rays are coming out at an accelerating rate, and are selling very well. Amazon is a big player there. Best Buy and Frys have some good deals on junk mostly, but Amazon has great prices on everything. And no doubt Netflix will continue to ship Blu-ray as long as it makes sense, and in fact it might mean their survival to continue considering the threat they face on licensing streaming video.

It's still to early to tell, but streaming faces multiple threats. Licensing, cable companies and other broadband providers greedy to be more than the pipes it streams through. My guess is that Blu-ray will have a long and profitable future if they keep disc prices down.

This post has been edited by leicaman: 08 January 2011 - 06:48 AM

Apple should allow playback of Blu-ray disks on Macs, at least as an option. Remember the Apple CD fiasco? History repeats!

I guess everything is a matter of spin. Yes it is true that Blu-Ray disc sales have doubled over the past year. But basically they have doubled from minuscule to slightly more than minuscule. The number of DVD titles dwarfs Blu-Ray titles. The switch from standard TV to HD TV should have prompted the conversion to Blu-Ray discs and yet it had only a minor effect.

By the way, I bought one of the first Blu-Ray players and I bought a DVD player on the first day the technology was available. Sure, the Blu-Ray is technically superior to DVD (and HD DVD), but Sony has really loused up relationships with movie studios, distributors and manufacturers with their policies and licensing fees. The format war with HD DVD didn't have to happen, but Sony pursued the war to a pyrrhic victory. Sony should have cooperated with the other guys to create a format with the technical prowess of Blu-Ray with the support of all parties instead of their greed to control the format and collect fees.

Blu-Ray isn't going to die, but it won't come anywhere near the success of DVD. Most of the top classic titles aren't coming to Blu-ray any time soon and forget about the more obscure older movies. Streaming won't die or replace Blu-Ray either.

What we left with is multiple weak solutions that will continue to coexist for some time.

jedi228, on 08 January 2011 - 08:19 AM, said:

More revisionist history. It was Toshiba that broke ranks and decided to push their own format. You may not remember, but Toshiba created HD DVD and built 99% of the players in that format. The other Japanese and Korean hardware makers sided with Blu-ray.

Let me guess, you were one of those people who at the end of the war said that it doesn't matter and streaming was going to win anyway.

I wish Apple would simply let us run Blu-ray on Macs if we wanted to. If there are extra licensing fees, it could be up to the user to pay them. Or they could be included in the price of the Blu-ray drive.

They should add it as an option on the "Configure your new mac" page.

Streaming just isn't ready for GOOD quality yet. yes the general masses can't see the difference, but some can. even Cable TV looks better than most streams at the moment.

The speedy 'Tubes' just are not big enough yet for most people either....

Oh, and I only want disks with all the special additional video features. (BD Live is a joke, however)

I agree with others. I’m disappointed that Apple hasn’t adopted B-R. It’s otherwise nearly impossible to record, edit and publish high-def movies. Shoot, Apple hasn’t even fully accepted that most consumers are recording video in AVCHD.

applecrate, on 08 January 2011 - 06:40 AM, said:

Sure, but the more telling thing to me is there are a precious few movies where I am compelled to seek them out on BluRay. For most of the mediocre fare offered, streaming (or over-compressed cable or satellite) is more than adequate

Mildew, on 08 January 2011 - 12:14 PM, said:

I've been catching up on Stargate Universe (just in time for it to get canceled ) and Netflix via my Apple TV is noticeably better than the HD I have recorded on my Tivo from Comcast (and it's not my Tivo - it faithfully records bit by bit the stream from Comcast). I deleted the episodes I had on my Tivo and canceled the Season Pass (probably redundant at this point - agian )

I suppose that whatever the difference in the ATV Netflix client is, it will make it's way to the other Netflix clients - but right now for all but the select few movies I am a real huge fan of and wanting to see them at their absolute best (like The Fifth Element) streaming is way more than satisfactory now.

Disney/Pixar (and, thus, Steve Jobs) have all made quite a bit of money on the "bag of hurt" of late. Other than pride, there's no reason Apple isn't already offering BD drives as an *option* at the very least.

We've been buying more BD/DVD combo packs over the past couple of years; BD for home, and DVD to rip for portables and Roku streaming for our kids.