The Avengers on Blu-ray in France

Peter Motte · Post by **Peter Motte** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 10:29 pm

MRotten wrote:Will Blu-ray go the way of Laser Discs, those oversized monstrosities that were all the rage for awhile and then disappeared?

I think so, yes.

Peter Motte · Post by **Peter Motte** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 10:31 pm

Alan wrote:Anyone who remembers the trouble to which you had to go to buy a Laserdisc (and I'm one who does), will tell you that LD never gained the high ground in High Street stores like Blu-ray has (certainly in the UK and Europe).

Well, I don't see lots of BluRay, either, you know.
More: past Christmass the shops weren't even offering it: no players, no discs.
Imaging: during the present season! And when HD-DVD had already given up.
And I still don't see a lot of BR in shops.
Yes, I see reviews in newspapers. But I don't see discs in shops.

Peter Motte · Post by **Peter Motte** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 10:32 pm

Dandy Forsdyke wrote:
Peter Motte wrote:Anyway: yesterday was a memorable day. My parents and I watched the last episode of the 136 Avengers episode we have on DVD.
We started watching everything in January 2008.

Next: watch all of them... a 2nd time!
Really? I'm impressed. You've timed that just right to watch them on the new Optimum set!

I'm foresighted.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 11:14 pm

Peter Motte wrote:Well, I don't see lots of BluRay, either, you know.
More: past Christmass the shops weren't even offering it: no players, no discs.
Imaging: during the present season! And when HD-DVD had already given up.
And I still don't see a lot of BR in shops.
Yes, I see reviews in newspapers. But I don't see discs in shops.

Clearly, we're not looking in the same shops, Peter.

Dandy Forsdyke · Post by **Dandy Forsdyke** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:17 am

I can honestly say, when I visit my local HMV, I go up the stairs to the DVD section go past the new releases and the first section to my left are all Blu-ray. It's just that one section so far, but the first row of discs I see. Also I've noticed TV commercials saying "On Blu-ray from Monday" no mention of DVD sometimes.

LaserDiscs passed me by completely I'm afraid. By the time I was aware of them they were obsolete.

Peter Motte · Post by **Peter Motte** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:06 pm

Alan wrote:Clearly, we're not looking in the same shops, Peter.

Well, some shops will have them, of course, but certainly not all of the shops.
I've just been in a supermarket, and our discussion in mind, I decided to take a look at the audio visual material.
Indeed, no BR.
They had DVD's, however (The Dark Knight Returs at 10 euro's; Watchmen was still at 19.90 euro's - all on DVD, nothing on BR).

There could be a difference in the English market and the Belgian market, but past year I was really surprised that I didn't notice any shop offering BR players during the Christmas season.

I also have the impression that BR is doing better than laserdisc, but Sony put BR's in their Playstation 3, so lot's of people do have a BR player anyway (e.g. my brother).
And that means some people will buy movies on BR.
But that doesn't make it into a success.

For the time being, the DVD market is bigger than the BR market.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:26 pm

Peter Motte wrote:For the time being, the DVD market is bigger than the BR market.

Well, no-one's denying that, least of all Sony, the company behind Blu-ray.

However, the format had grown quicker than DVD and the revenues from the format are better for the video labels as Blu-ray discs tend to hold their value, whereas new DVD titles are inevitably heavily discounted within a couple of months (I'm talking movies here).

MRotten · Post by **MRotten** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:50 pm

It seems to me that having two formats is confusing. Remember the battle between VHS and Beta? Logically, Beta should have prevailed. The cassettes were smaller and some say better in terms of picture quality. But VHS won that battle, for better or worse. I always preferred Beta and still do. Now with the DVD vs. Blu-ray battle, who will win? Can both survive, or will the marketplace only allow one to dominate and the other to quietly fade away? Blu-ray is supposedly superior, but, honestly, how much better is the quality?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 4:50 pm

It's not the same as VHS v. Beta. The real battle was Blu-ray v. HD-DVD and that's over, thank goodness.

This is basically the high definition v. standard definition.

They can survive together - and I suspect that will be the case. I don't expect Blu-ray to defeat DVD, but to be honest, I don't think that was ever the intention.

Peter Motte · Post by **Peter Motte** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:31 pm

Alan wrote: whereas new DVD titles are inevitably heavily discounted within a couple of months (I'm talking movies here).

Yes. I wonder why...
All in all it are the film companies themselves who drop the prices.
Maybe BR remains expensive because there isn't a lot of choice?