A law of consumer behaviour which I have come to respect is that people will
almost always trade convenience for quality. In other words, true
audiophiles and cineastes are rare: most people just want their digital
media to be convenient and easy to use, which is why people junked higher
quality CDs for lower quality MP3 music files. Because people are so time
poor, they'll quite happily pay a premium for extra convenience, and whether
it's the iPod and iTunes, or digital radio instead of FM, it's almost always
ease of use rather than improved quality that gets people to adopt new gear.
This is one of the reasons that I've been so sceptical about the
high-definition DVD formats. They're no more convenient than the current,
perfectly good DVD, and although they're better quality, the kind of people
who care about quality will have got hold of a good upscaling DVD player,
which can do a great job of squeezing more performance from ordinary DVDs.
At that point, the difference in quality simply doesn't justify paying the
premium. At Amazon.co.uk you can get a copy of Scorsese's gangland
masterpiece Goodfellas on DVD for £3.98. The same film on Blu-ray
will cost you £17.98. If you go DVD, you'll also be able to afford copies
of, say, Raging Bull, Casino, and The Departed and
still have a little change left. So you have to ask yourself: do you like
movies, or do you like high-definition movies?
Of course there is one type of consumer who cares about movie quality and the
movies: the home-cinema buff. Home cinema is one application where Blu-ray
really does punch its weight. Once you've blown up an image to the size of a
decent home-cinema screen, small differences in picture quality become much
more apparent. The ambitious home-cinema buff tries to squeeze as much
performance as he or she (who am I kidding? He...) can out of the system,
which means using the best quality video source available. Like so many
decadent habits, from spa baths to cocaine, home cinema used to be a hobby
that only obsessives or the mega rich could indulge in, but the incredible
price drops we've seen in consumer electronics over the last decade mean
that it's no longer something that only the super affluent can afford.
So if you can climb out of the bath and blow your nose, and beg, borrow or
steal a decent projector and hook it up to a PS3 showing a Blu-ray film, the
results can be really impressive. Take one of the earliest films released on
the format, the revamped Bond vehicle Casino Royale. This film caused
much ribaldry at the time because it was so shamefully stuffed with lame
product placement. At one point, hilariously, Bond checks out the
surveillance recordings in a hotel security system and it's made quite clear
that they've all being recorded on Blu-ray disc. The product placement is
still naff, but stick this film on Blu-ray through a decent home cinema
system and the results are amazing – and definitely over the top for
surveillance recording. Action sequences like the opening parkour
extravaganza, with those death-defying crane leaps against a blue, blue sky,
look simply breathtaking.
But will this thing go mass market, or remain the preserve of the movie nerd?
You can see retailers are starting to give the format more promotion: I went
to HMV in Oxford Street last week and chatted to a sales guy and obvious
film buff who proudly pointed out that they've doubled their in-store
racking for Blu-ray films. He confessed that he and his colleagues had been
blown away by the beauty of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on
Blu-ray, standing slack jawed in front of a display plasma and seeing that
film's elegant sixties space stations as if for the first time. My local
Blockbuster has also dramatically increased the rack space it's giving to
Blu-ray promotion.
The success of the format is a big deal for our corporate overlords: clearly
the entertainment giants want to sell us many of the same films yet again on
the new format, but will we fall for it?
According to recent research from Futuresource Consulting, by 2012 between 40
and 50 per cent of consumer spending on video discs will move to Blu-ray.
For that to happen players have to get cheaper, the studios have to open up
their back catalogues of older movies at reasonable prices, and retailers
have to get behind the format, all of which Futuresource is confident will
happen.
I'm still not completely convinced: the elephant in the corner is the prospect
that new forms of online delivery will make actually buying a disc with data
on it seem as redundant as Super 8 cassettes. I have plenty of movies on
hard drives, and you can't beat the convenience of fifty movies that are one
click away. On the other hand, I do miss the physical token of the DVD
packaging, and examining someone's actual DVD collection on their shelves is
much more fun than scanning a database of video files.
I asked Mai Hoang, senior analyst at Futuresource Consulting, but she was
remarkably confident that despite the lessons of the music industry,
consumers were going to keep buying discs with movies on them for some time:
“Consumer habits don't change overnight, and consumers still prefer to have
their films on a physical disc. Overall movie revenues will be predominately
packaged media over the next five to ten years,” Ms Hoang said.
She also reckons that Blu-ray adoption so far has been on a par with sales of
DVDs at the same stage: “Of course the format war made people hesitant, but
now it's gaining momentum. In 2008 in the UK we're anticipating total sales
of 4.5 million titles, In 2012 we're expecting sales of 93 million titles.
We've seen a very strong push from Sony and other studios. HMV are working
very closely with them, installing in-store kiosks to demonstrate the
benefit,” she said.
So that explains the Kubrick fan. I asked her what she thought were the
critical success factors in order to get widespread consumer adoption of the
format.
“It's about getting consumers aware: the format wars were more focused on
competing with HD-DVD, not demonstrating the benefits of high-definition
over DVD. The install of PS3 was a big factor. This year we're looking at a
total installed high-definition hardware base of just under 2.4 million
players in use. By 2012 we expect that to be 12.9 million combined player
base of PS3s and standalone Blu-ray players.”
And amazingly, it doesn't look as though we'll all have to go and buy The
Sound of Music one more time, although I might have to get The Fifth
Element one more time:
“Most sales have been new-release driven. We don't expect consumers to replace
their whole collection, although there is some replacement of key action
titles where high definition really makes a difference. It will appeal to
the mass market. The broadcast TV industry has driven consumer appetite for
high-definition content. TVs are HD ready, and it will all encourage more
title sales moving forward,” Ms Hoang said.
So who knows? Maybe the future won't be Orange after all, but instead a nice
marine Blu. Of course neither I nor the good people of Futuresource really
know. In the end you, dear reader, and your shopping habits will decide. In
the meantime I'll be watching Pan's Labyrinth on Blu-ray one more
time.
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Michael Parsons helped to launch The Industry Standard magazine, and was the
launch Editor of CNET.co.uk
