"PS3 is dying on the Shelves" I think NOT!!

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Why is everyone saying the console is expensive ?? Why do people say its expensive at release ??

True, if you havent got £300 then its a lot of money, but I remember the Amigas and Atari ST's, they were £299 when I got my ST. The mega drive was about the same at launch, the PS1 was that price, so was the 1st Xbox and the PS2!!!!

With Inflation, todays consoles should realisticaly be £500, I'm just glad they are not. £299 of todays money is nothin compared to 17 years ago when I got my ST.

We like value or another way of putting it, we are all cheap ar**** :D
 
Blu Ray is a solution looking for a problem.

Most people out there aren't going around bemoaning the picture and sound quality of DVD. Yet that's the chief selling point of BD.

This contrasts sharply to the situation of VHS vs DVD. The bulkiness of the physical format and its durability plus flaws in picture and sound quality were obvious problems long before DVD came along. In addition to fixing those shortcomings, DVD added a host of features like anamorphic widescreen, multiple soundtracks, proper surround sound, subtitles, a menu system and extras.

Again I agree with you in part. You are also right in the fact that their is an element of niche marketing. Not many people have massive hd tv's, or 7.1. surround.

DVD is a great format and upscaled DVD's do look great which is probably a big underestimation of Blueray development.

The problem that needs the solution is storing larger amounts of data.

VHS wasn't the best format when it came out. Betamax was, marketing saw the end of that and shouldn't be underestimated imo. We have only just had the withdrawal of HD-DVD from the market and the uptake of bluerays is still just as good as the same cycle in DVD sales when it was released. This is despite the difference being less pronounced (which I totally agree with)

As said by other posters before price is paramount. Price of blueray players are coming down. If you can afford one and it plays DVD's as well you'll buy one. You can keep your DVD collection (as I have) and buy Bluerays for your newer purchases due to the size of either format being the same.

You couldn't do that with VHS and DVD

I think that both formats can exist side by side for quite some time, which imo is a good thing as again I would never have got a blueray player if it made my DVD movie collection extinct :)
 
Well I don't agree that the jump is not as big with Blu-Ray from DVD over VHS to DVD,

My first S-Video DVD player and the DVD's that were available didn't look that much better than VHS, a simple menu, 2 sided disk, no features, surround sound not DD. Wasn't the resolution the same on a tube 576i or something? OK it was a digital copy but it didn't offer much other than size and being able to skip to your favorite parts.

Now Blu-Ray has 1080p resolution thats 6x the detail, 7.1 PCM sound again about 4 or 5 times the sound quality, large menus and features, web links, interactive games, loads of space for extras, digital copy's, trailers and all on one side with a pure 100% signal transfer with HDMi now to me thats a bigger jump.
 
Why is everyone saying the console is expensive ?? Why do people say its expensive at release ??

...relative to other consoles. Not the atari ST lol.


Tell you what I hate about BR is the menus, I miss the funky DVD menus. The Alien legacy boxset comes to mind (NOT QUADRILOGY) or the Diehard ultimate collection...now those were menus, none of this autohide taskbar **** lol.
 
Why is everyone saying the console is expensive ?? Why do people say its expensive at release ??

True, if you havent got £300 then its a lot of money, but I remember the Amigas and Atari ST's, they were £299 when I got my ST. The mega drive was about the same at launch, the PS1 was that price, so was the 1st Xbox and the PS2!!!!

With Inflation, todays consoles should realisticaly be £500, I'm just glad they are not. £299 of todays money is nothin compared to 17 years ago when I got my ST.

so true, but i think the lifecycles have shortend. maybe its just me but my amiga cost £450-£500, the upgraded memory and hardisc was more, the 1084s (cant belive i remember that lol) monitor was more still.

the amiga lasted for me in various states for over 7 years of constant usage where as the xbox in the uk at least because of delays only seemed to be around for 3.5 years in its full strengh and all of a sudden 360 came out. now i know time flys but arent we looking at 4 year life cycles for early adopters per console

also, headsets may not be free on the next models, the ones with the larger hardrives which will be needed next gen even more so than now and with the charge units, new second or third controller, and perhaps camera or fancy keyboard attachment end up costing £500 also. the base models are great VFM considering tech for £300 but as ive said there seems to be about 2.5-3years less life and a desire to charge for the ability to play last gen games that you have already bought !


regarding blueray on xbox 720 ?! its a matter of pride & money, sony will charge microsoft in some way to use the tech and i guess being a rival format and one that has garnered a temporary posistion in the next gen console war for ps3 by virtue of extra console sales for people into BD they wont use it.
i know it sounds mad but MS are all for HD rentals and downloads at 720p/1080p

id wager HD-DVD will be MS`s choice, multilayer with same storage as BD but being an updated spec it may have a faster speed and the ability to play any new formats a BD player cannot. coupled with an almost mandatory need to copy most of the game to a massive HD and download otherbits online also.

there is no need to go BD for MS, the money they save by saving HD-DVD i.e buying the whole tech cheap will allow for once again a more dedicated games machine with more power (and more noise/heat/reliablity issues)

i.e same old same, MS big power, Sony quirky class home hub, nintendo will probably keep the wii 1 and add an expansion unit for better GFX so as not alienate the market they went for, i.e people who dont care about GFX or BD just fun family party games with the option to have better gfx on the same game disc written in by the manufacturers

well thats my imo :D
 
People seem to forget that the PS2 didn'thave the best start, but that went on to sell OK :D.

In the first 2 years of the PS2 (March 00 to March 02) it sold 24 million. In the first 2 years of the PS3 it sold around 18 million. The PS2 has gone on to sell around 124 million in around 8 years! If those figures are projected forward then you are looking at PS3 sales of around 90 million in the same period. Obviously that's not a very scientific projection though and things could happen either way to improve or reduce that.

Now considering that the PS2 had very little competition (just a failing Dreamcast for most of that 2 years) and the PS3 had to battle from the off against the strong 360, I don't see how folk can say it's selling badly?

Sure it's not going to go on to dominate like the PS2 did, but that's a good thing and it's great to see a competitive MS and a very competitive Nintendo this time. Even so, the PS3 is not that far off the PS2's sales performance. That's got to be good for the gaming industry as a whole.
 
Hopefully these hybrid discs will become the norm then everyone can live in harmony :)

Gizmodo UK : First Blu-ray DVD Hybrid Disc Launching

Hey what a great idea! blueray one side, dvd the other. I hope they are joking with the price though at £68 per disc??? Only thing I'm wondering is how you would label the discs? I'm pants at putting stuff away and would hate to have to put a disc in my player everytime I needed to know what it is.
 
Well I don't agree that the jump is not as big with Blu-Ray from DVD over VHS to DVD,

My first S-Video DVD player and the DVD's that were available didn't look that much better than VHS, a simple menu, 2 sided disk, no features, surround sound not DD. Wasn't the resolution the same on a tube 576i or something? OK it was a digital copy but it didn't offer much other than size and being able to skip to your favorite parts.

Now Blu-Ray has 1080p resolution thats 6x the detail, 7.1 PCM sound again about 4 or 5 times the sound quality, large menus and features, web links, interactive games, loads of space for extras, digital copy's, trailers and all on one side with a pure 100% signal transfer with HDMi now to me thats a bigger jump.

Agreed, to me the step to from SD (DVD) to HD (HDDVD/BluRay) has been larger than the step up from VHS to DVD in terms of PQ etc. It was more the features of the DVD that impressed me the most (no rewinding, jump to where ever you wanted, extra features etc.). I remember that the whole 'multiple angles' thing was really hyped but never really materialised in the real world. PQ was better due to the enhanced resolution of DVD (330×480 for VHS and 720×576 for DVD) but really most of the advantage came from the move to widescreen. The vertical resolution wasn't that much different.

The move from 720 x 575 to 1920 x 1080 is much bigger IMO and if you compare the two on a nice large well set up screen (say 50" +) then the difference is staggering in terms of detail and clarity.
 
LOL, theres me going on about how good BD is, I've just gone to watch my new copy of Transformers on BD and it wont load. :rotfl: Tried it on 2 PS3's a US one and a UK one.
The disk is multi region so it should be ok as disk two loads fine but the film just hangs at the loading screen. :( Rubbish Blu-Ray.:rotfl:

Anyone else had that trouble?
 
LOL, theres me going on about how good BD is, I've just gone to watch my new copy of Transformers on BD and it wont load. :rotfl: Tried it on 2 PS3's a US one and a UK one.
The disk is multi region so it should be ok as disk two loads fine but the film just hangs at the loading screen. :( Rubbish Blu-Ray.:rotfl:

Anyone else had that trouble?

Very strange! Personally i've got Transformers on HDDVD and that works fine so not sure what the issue is there.
 
Hopefully these hybrid discs will become the norm then everyone can live in harmony :)

Gizmodo UK : First Blu-ray DVD Hybrid Disc Launching

That is absolutely fantastic, apart from the price. They should aim to replace both DVDs and Blu-Ray discs with this single format. :thumbsup:
This is brilliant as people who don't have Blu-Ray players can buy these discs and watch them on their standard DVD players, and then when they get a Blu-Ray player, they can watch them in HD! :thumbsup:
If they made it a Blu-Ray/DVD/HD-DVD combo, then even Xbox owners would be happy :eek::D
 
People seem to forget that the PS2 didn'thave the best start, but that went on to sell OK :D.

In the first 2 years of the PS2 (March 00 to March 02) it sold 24 million. In the first 2 years of the PS3 it sold around 18 million. The PS2 has gone on to sell around 124 million in around 8 years! If those figures are projected forward then you are looking at PS3 sales of around 90 million in the same period. Obviously that's not a very scientific projection though and things could happen either way to improve or reduce that.

Now considering that the PS2 had very little competition (just a failing Dreamcast for most of that 2 years) and the PS3 had to battle from the off against the strong 360, I don't see how folk can say it's selling badly?

Sure it's not going to go on to dominate like the PS2 did, but that's a good thing and it's great to see a competitive MS and a very competitive Nintendo this time. Even so, the PS3 is not that far off the PS2's sales performance. That's got to be good for the gaming industry as a whole.

As long as the PS3 sells in the region of 35-40 million consoles in a total of 5 to 6 years I'll be more than happy because that will more than likely guarantee a PS4. :thumbsup:
 
LOL, theres me going on about how good BD is, I've just gone to watch my new copy of Transformers on BD and it wont load. :rotfl: Tried it on 2 PS3's a US one and a UK one.
The disk is multi region so it should be ok as disk two loads fine but the film just hangs at the loading screen. :( Rubbish Blu-Ray.:rotfl:

Anyone else had that trouble?

Yes. Had exactly same problem, the bonus disk would load but not the main feature. It was something to do with the on-line connection. I unchecked a box on ps3 menu to do with the disk automatically going on line. It should then ask you if you want to connect, I said no and it loaded up fine :smashin:

edit: can't remember where in menu - should be in BD settings
 
Yes. Had exactly same problem, the bonus disk would load but not the main feature. It was something to do with the on-line connection. I unchecked a box on ps3 menu to do with the disk automatically going on line. It should then ask you if you want to connect, I said no and it loaded up fine :smashin:

edit: can't remember where in menu - should be in BD settings

Just went into Allow Internet connection settings for BD and changed it to "ask"

Thanks.

Blu-Ray is great after all :thumbsup:
 
Aye, that was it! glad I can help. I nearly cried when it wouldn't load :D
 
Chowyun - It hasnt Hung, its Downloading, my Blu-Ray of Transformers spent about 10 minutes on the Loading screen, so i just went and got some refreshments for the movie.
 
The problem that needs the solution is storing larger amounts of data.

If the general public are happy with the picture and sound quality they are getting from DVD then there's no impetus to store larger amounts of data as it won't be needed.

From a computer point of view with terabyte drives now becoming commonplace for holding media collections at one end of the scale, high capacity backup tape systems for backup and usefully large flash media being there for transporting data at the lower end, there isn't a huge amount of demand for a high-density writable optical disc medium.

BD is set to be a niche for AV fans, if people are waiting for it to become mainstream by stealth through PS3 sales they'll be waiting a looooong time.


If anything is likely to really get mindshare as a new way to watch video it'll be downloads/VOD just as downloads of music have taken off in the music market co-existing with CD and leaving SACD/DVD-A in the shade as niche markets.


Sony have tried to be all things to all consumers and failed to succeed in any of the markets. I like the PS3 for its flexibility (I bought in to the PS3 once Sony announced they were dropping most of the cool features of the original model, since I wanted to get one before they disappeared) but I am far from a mainstream consumer and the PS3 and BD platforms just aren't the appealing consumer prospects that the PS2 and DVD were.

As for those who say who cares how many PS3s sold or if it is outsold, the problem is that to get the most of the PS3 games need to be programmed with it in mind. When games are developed first on another platform and ported onto the PS3, the PS3 suffers. When the PS3 is not the market leader, this means that it does much worse in terms of great games than it would were it the leader. And of course, this situation is self perpetuating.

I well remember the old line that the PS3 would be so clearly the superior machine that it would be well worth the premium. The demonstrable fact is that the 'inferior' Xbox360 has actually turned out if anything to have better implementations of games where they exist on both platforms - thanks in large part to it being the primary platform due to a bigger base and stronger sales.
 
With Apple producing both hardware and software it has an advantage. Windows has to work with an infinite variety of set ups. In terms of costs a console seems cheaper until you remember you need to start all over again every few years. Also games cost more and sometimes aren't the sort of games I like to play. I play the Total War games a lot which don't appear on consoles.
 
Hybrid disks are only 25GB. That's less than the HD DVD disks. I'd like to think the current disks are on 50GB disks for a reason. Also HD DVD was on hybrid disks as they were the 'official' succesor to DVD. I don't know if the DVD consortium has changed their mind yet.
 
I'm confused about what the problem is, if indeed there is one!

Hd is the next step in home av entertainment - as dvd was to vhs. Blu ray won the format "war".

Blu ray will gradually take over from dvd, it's supported by a lot of companies and is now the hd standard.

Ps3 is not the dominant console, we're all agreed that this is a good thing - competition means more choice and better deals for the consumer.

Ps3 is a higher end piece of kit than the other consoles, it costs more but it does more. For those of us who love gaming and movies it's the ideal machine.

It may not sell as well as the other consoles, but as well as what's already been said about it being on sale for less time, it's still selling a lot. It's hardly going to be dropped as a disaster and no more games made for it.

So long as they keep making blu rays, which they are, and keep making good games for ps3, which they are, and there's lots of people to play against online, which there are, then it's all good surely?
 
BD is set to be a niche for AV fans, if people are waiting for it to become mainstream by stealth through PS3 sales they'll be waiting a looooong time.

Can't agree with that at all. BD will essentially just take over from DVD. Players are already around the £100 mark and will be £20-£30 in no time (as well as built into TV's etc.) and DVD production will cease with all films just released on Blu Ray only in a few years time. All existing DVD's still play in Blu Ray players so the transition can be very smooth indeed (unlike VHS to DVD which was a far larger hurdle to get over.

Blu Ray discs are already comparable to DVD's in cost (although still higher) and discs can be had for around the £10 mark now. HDTV's are now dirt cheap (much cheaper than CRT ever was) with 42" 1080p sets for around the £500 mark and 50" sets for not much more! 32" HDTV sets (which was a pretty big size for CRT) can be had for around £300!

HDTV channel numbers are growing at a rapid rate with 30 now available via Sky HD.

Blu Ray is already becoming mainstream and is very much in the public domain now. If it was still niche then mainstream stores like Tesco, HMV, ASDA etc. wouldn't dedicate the shelf space to it. Give it another year when the prices of HDTV's and BD Players & discs have dropped even further and more and more people will be buying Blu Rays over DVD's. Having Blu Ray built into what has been the biggest brand in video gaming over the past decade also helps bring it to the mainstream.
 
Laser disk was a niche market and that lasted a long time, I paid £600 for mine in 1994 which equates to about £900 now :eek: I could only go to specialist shops to get films and they cost me £35-£40 each.

The cost of BD is nothing compared to that and the PS3 for that matter plus like others have said Asda, Tesco, HMV and others wouldn't stock it.
Movie studios want it and prefer it over DVD and seen as they have the most say on what they decide to put their films on it's a no brainier.

So far it's looking like Sony's plan for getting Blu-Ray started has paid off with the PS3 for the sacrifice in sales and lead on the console side.
Consoles come and go every 5 years or so but Blu-Ray could last 20 years like DVD will and I'm certain Sony know theres more money in that over just selling a short term video games console.

Come 2011 or even further down the line like say 2016 when new consoles are out it would be silly to think that DVD will be good enough for the amount of data those things will need, and downloading wont be main stream enough by then so 400gb Blu-Ray disks will be the main format choice, imo
 
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One of the things against Bluray is that most people dont appear to care about PQ.

My Dad got a new LCD at Christmas and he never bothered to set it up properly leaving and atrocious picture - I sorted it but he was quite happy.

People are buying huge TVs and having awful pictures but really dont care so a minor improvement from DVD to BD isnt going to make people switch. Tape to DVD was different in that you were changing the methods of storage - tape was old and DVD looked new and fancy. BDs are on DVDs so that mental upgrade isnt there.

People will only buy BD in mass if then NEED to. While you can get everything in DVD cheaper people wont be inteseted to any degree. I think BD has to be cheaper than DVD and I cannot see that happening. Also if the latest releases maybe came out on BD first that could help.

If not I think the reality is BD wont replace DVD ever it will just run along side as a better quality format until streaming etc takes over.
 
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