Remember DVDs?
Posted by Matt Kolowski on Thu, Aug 27, 2009
I sure don't.
When was the last time you bought one? And no, Season 3 of Buffy doesn't count. Nerd.
I consider myself, among other things, to be a movie buff. I had quite the extensive DVD collection growing back in the day, all the way from Apocalypse Now to Zoolander. But I honestly can't remember the last time I bought an actual DVD.
A few years ago when HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were slapping each other around, I bought the HD-DVD add on for my 360. That thing was amazing. It had the highest quality picture I had ever seen. (I still haven't seen any better). But I felt a change in the winds, so I sold that thing while the getting was good. I saw that Blu-Ray was going to win the battle, but most certainly wasn't going to win the war. Sure, Blu-Ray is a better product than DVD's, but...no one really notices besides movie buffs and tech nerds. And that's really not enough for a new format to replace one that's already etched in the minds of regular consumers...for now, anyway.
DVD sales aren't so hot anymore. Why? You can download versions from Amazon, iTunes, and just about everywhere. I rent movies all the time on my 360, HD if at all possible. A lot of people have Comcast or Verizon, so they just rent them ON Demand. Oh, and there's Netflix too, which I can stream on my 360! Obviously, the HD streaming quality is higher than DVD, but it still in no way compares to actual Blu-Ray disc quality...but you know what? We have a history of choosing poor quality over high.
BETA over VHS, SACD over CD, and heck, Pacey over Dawson. I still can't believe Katie Holmes picked that loser of James Van Der Beek. But back to Super Audio CD, do you even remember that? Probably not, but they were a high quality audio format that while sounded alot better than regular CD's, nobody wanted them. It was the same with DVD-Audio. What about Laserdisc? Or even Vinyl? Don't forget how bad the CD industry is thanks to the iTunes store. I usually give people a snooty look at Best Buy when I see them rummaging through the CD rack. How tacky, am I right?
Blu-Ray is light-years ahead of what you can stream online to your computers or your flat screen, but even I don't want to get a Blu-Ray player. I'd rather sit on my couch eating cheesy poofs while my dog licks my feet. I click a button and I'm instantly watching Miss Congeniality 2 in streaming High Definition.
God Bless America.