Condensed from a much more bloated
article (click)Some tech pundits are saying that Blu-ray won the battle but may be losing the war. In early 2008, after a hotly contested battle against the backers of the HD-DVD format, the Blu-ray camp appeared to emerge victorious in the high-definition DVD wars. But even though prices on Blu-ray players are falling, consumers are not flocking to buy them.
So...HD-DVD is officially dead and buried, right next to BetaMax in the technology graveyard. Nobody is making or selling HD-DVD players, and studios are not releasing movies in HD-DVD format.
But there was always a third horse in this race. The great minds that control the entertainment industry assumed that once the Blu-ray/HD-DVD issue was settled, consumers would kick their good old-fashioned standard DVD players to the curb, then run to the stores and buy high-def DVD players. But that hasn't happened, at least not in convincing numbers.
Is it because many people can't really tell the difference between standard DVD quality and high definition Blu-ray?
Or is it a money problem? Blu-ray movies are more expensive than the same title in standard DVD format, and many consumers don't want to spend a few hundred dollars to upgrade their DVD player, then pay more for the movies on top of that.
Or maybe there just aren't enough people owning HD TVs? It would be silly to buy a high-def Blu-ray player or movie, and connect it to a television set that can't display high definition content.
Another factor to consider is that many of the standard (cheap) DVD players on the market today can "upsample" DVDs to almost HD quality. Upsampling is a technique used to take a movie that's recorded in standard definition, and with the magic of software, make it look almost like high definition. To the untrained eye, or the average consumer, that may well be good enough
So..for lots of reasos, Blue-Ray isn't taking off.
But check this out..definitely a cool feature of Blu-Ray:
Netflix recently announced that they will begin streaming movies via the Internet to Blu-Ray players. The Samsung BD-P2500 and LG's BD300 players both support the Netflix digital download option, and cost about $400. Just connect your player to the network router, and it will download movies from Netflix in as little as 30 seconds. You can also fast-forward and rewind, just as if you were watching the video on a disc. Netflix is initially making 12000 movies available via streaming, and you can bet they'll be expanding that if the idea catches on.