Blu-ray: Obstacles and Advantages

A few years back when blu-ray was just starting to come about, Richard Weber wrote in an article entitled “The Age of Blu-ray” detailing some of the main benefits of blu-ray technology:

A standard DVD or DVD-R disc has about 4.7 GB of storage, but the new Blu-ray discs have over 25 GB of storage on a single-layer disc and 50 GB on a dual-layer disc! And all that extra space, over 10 times more than a regular DVD, does not go to waste. Movies in Blu-ray format will have crystal clear, life-like High Definition picture and superb digital sound. This unprecedented high quality combined with a 1080p High-Definition TV will be like nothing you have ever seen before. Are you salivating yet?”

Weber goes on to mention the pricing of blu-ray players and media presenting a rather large obstacle to its adoption where players were starting at $1000 and easily going up from there. To avoid such a major investment into one’s home theater environment, Mr. Weber recommends holding off until the much anticipated Playstation 3 is released with its included blu-ray player.

As I mentioned, this article was written years ago when this technology was up and coming. However, I think that one of the main obstacles dampening the rapid adoption of blu-ray remains pricing. These days, the Playstation 3 has been released and already upgraded to a revised “slim” model as well. The price of blu-ray players has dropped significantly allowing most home users to purchase a semi-decent player in the sub-$100 range. Despite the drastic drop in price among blu-ray players, the price of blu-ray movies and media remains fairly high. At $20-25 per movie, each movie purchase now becomes a well thought-out expenditure.

Not only does blu-ray technology offer many benefits to improve the home theater and movie watching experience for all users, it also poses a threat to its own adoption. The majority, if not all, blu-ray players offer at least some minimal form of upscaling capabilities. The appliance handles taking a normal DVD quality input and convert it on-the-fly to a 1080i, and sometimes full 1080p, output stream. This means that you do not have to run out and buy blu-ray versions of your entire DVD collection to enjoy the improved quality of high definition content. At nearly $25 per movie, it becomes rather difficult to justify the replacement of all your current DVD movies with new blu-ray versions. I mean, why spend hundreds of dollars to purchase new blu-ray films when you can get nearly (and often times indistinguishably) the same quality from your current DVD’s?

I also think that Sony’s DRM practices will also play out to be another major hindrance to the adoption of blu-ray. I will be writing more on the details of the digital rights management (DRM) that Sony uses with the blu-ray technology later.

So what do you think about blu-ray? Do you like it or are you still holding on adopting it in your home theater setups? What do you think are the advantages and obstacles to blu-ray technology these days? Chime in and let us know the above and your thoughts on the current state of DRM in blu-ray and how it effects your decisions in the home theater arena.