HD battle long over - How goes the war?

Well… it’s been a while since the HD war ended. HD DVD player owners have an expensive upconverting DVD player - save for the HD DVD titles already out there. The spoils go to Sony - or do they? So far DVD sales well outpace Blu-ray sales and it seems people are turning their attention more to streaming formats. Here are some reasons that I think Blu-ray won the battle but is losing the war.

1. People have no clue what HDMI cable is. I talked to people with 50″+ size LCD screens who are using component connections to hook up input, while some own Blu-ray players and hook them up with YPbPr (component video) cables or the coaxial connector. While debates go on if HDMI is better than component YPbPr video cables, it is clearly better than coaxial. Any friend watching Blu-ray on a huge TV with the degraded input of coaxial or single RCA video is not going to run out and buy one. One of DVDs biggest advertisers was owners of DVD players. People need to be more educated about this stuff so they don’t wonder why their Blu-ray movies look no better than their DVDs.

2. Another education issue. Some people think everything they see on an HDTV set is HD. Even the local access channel is thought to be HD when it’s pumped into their $2k TV. Well obviously this isn’t the case. There are special HD channels on cable that generally run in a different channel range than their analog equivalents. Satellite programming is generally mostly SD and only supplies a limited number of HD channels as well. The image will be much better on the HD channels and that’s assuming that the right connectors are used.
3. Streaming HD media is another issue. While people to like the physicality of disks, more are moving to streaming video. While some sources of streaming HD uses bitrates much lower than disks, the quality generally trumps a DVD of the same movie. And since modern codecs steal bits from flat areas, the detailed areas generally remain crisply HD. Many that are savvy enough to want HD are ‘generally’ comfortable with streaming media - especially for a movie that the person only cared to rent anyways.
4. Price is another issue. While I’m sure Sony foresaw $500-$1k players being greedily snapped up with HD’s vast superiority over SD being the driver, it would be mistaken. SD->HD is not the same jump from analog->SD (digital SD, that is) was. I love HD. For some reason the SD I used to think was crisp looks like a blurry mess to me now. But it’s not worth $500 to me. Even DVD players didn’t really take until they hit $100. The average person won’t see Blu-ray as this must have thing and will only get one when price wise players are competitive to a DVD player. The assumption that someone that just paid $1k for an HDTV flat screen won’t be happy to plug a $40 DVD player into it is a false one. Media is a bit more expensive but I don’t see that as an issue. Once you have a player, your going to pay whatever feeding it costs.
5. To a lesser extent, duplication. Right now very few simple tools exist for backing up Blu-ray disks exist. Whether your intent is to truly back up or to pirate (I won’t get into the legality of the latter), Blu-ray doesn’t really have a way to do it. Of course it’s intentionally harder as studios want the second chance to protect their copyright their media and now can do it with Blu-ray. Being able to watch duplicates of movies is an incentive to buy a DVD player. (Especially attractive to someone only willing to shell out $40.) But even if your concern is that your $30 original of your kids’ favorite movie is only a scratch in the right place of being a coaster, you will be concerned there is now a way for the average person to protect their investment. Ways of backing up Blu-rays do exist, but they are far too complicated for the average person.

I hope the Blu-ray committee sees a way to bring the prices down further (they have gone down a bit), unless they feel the investment is only worth it if they can sell the players at current prices.

What do you guys think? Reply with any other obstacles or your opinions of mine. Thanks.