Blu-ray boom prompts festive cheer
DVD sales still in the lead, though
The Blu-ray message is steadily creeping in consumer conscience, it seems. Why? Because sales of Blu-ray films in the UK rose by almost 400 per cent last month, compared to the same period in 2007.
The Dark Knight led December's Blu-ray sales in the UK
According to figures from industry body the British Video Association (BVA), almost 1.5m Blu-ray films were sold in the UK during December 2008. Batman flick The Dark Knight took the top spot, with 281,000 copies sold during its first three weeks on sale in Blighty.
It’s worth taking the BVA’s figures with a pinch of salt, though. Because it’s hardly surprising that UK Blu-ray figures rose in December ’08 when you remember that HD DVD is finished, the cost of discs and players are both falling and the simple fact that people like to watch movies over Christmas.
A total of 3.7m Blu-ray films were sold in the UK last year, according to the BVA’s figures. But an analyst from market watcher Screen Digest told The Guardian that Blu-ray disc sales could rise to 17m over 2009.
UK Blu-ray sales may have performed well over the Christmas period, but there’s still some way to go before the format overtakes DVD films – of which a whopping 253m discs where sold last month. ®
COMMENTS
@M7S
Films are generally recorded on actual film which has a far higher resolution then even blu-ray can do. When you've got a screen that big in the cinema you need something way higher resolution. While you can't use existing digital masters made for DVD, you can always take the film master and make a new digital one.
As for TV, a lot of older shows will only have been recorded in SD rather then HD and this aren't worth buying on Blu-ray, most of the shows that are now coming out on blu-ray are recent ones that have been recorded in HD with both HD transmission and Blu-ray/HD-DVD in mind
Patrick
Patrick was talking about his HDTV's lowly resolution.
Mine does 1080p.
Why buy older films anyway?
I thought blu-ray players were meant to play standard DVDs, with upscaling as an optional extra on some models. Also older films/TV shows would not have been recorded in any kind of HD format, so purchasing re-issues on more expensive disks is surely a bit of a con on the part of the studios.
Or have I misunderstood?
@Patrick
Dvd is indeed 720 × 576, but most Bluray discs are 1080p which is 1920 x 1080, not 1280x720. As for the TVs, sure a lot of the _basic_ ones are only HDReady and thus limited to 1080i/720p, but pretty much any tv of 40" or larger will do full HD. There are some 32" tvs that can as well. A quick check also shows you can get full HD tv's for £400 or so.
Even so, I'll agree that the prices are a little high at the moment, but that mostly due to the fact that most manufacturers need to recoup their investment in the production lines (which is considerable as they pretty much have to replace existing DvD lines). Once that is over, the costs should fall a fair bit.
Prices
Err.. hate to burst the ranters bubble but where on earth are you paying over £20 for a film?
The biggest films around at the moment are the likes of The Dark Knight (£15.99), Hellboy 2 (£13.98) etc
The comparative standard defs are only 2 or 3 pounds cheaper at the moment so its nowhere near as bad as it was. The main difference is how quickly the prices fall after release, DVDs drop to under £10 pretty quick whereas BD seem to stay up although that also seems to be getting better with the likes of Play offering quite a few at £9.99 at the moment and the many 3 for 2 offers.
Obviously we'd all like the prices to be exactly the same but with any new technology you're bound to pay a premium for a while but to say they are over £20 is complete and utter tosh.
If you are paying over £20 perhaps try learning how to use that new fangled "Internet" to buy your disks?
