If you spend a lot of time online talking to like-minded enthusiasts, especially on sites like ours, it may seem like Blu-ray is everywhere and that the format is as mainstream as DVD by now. But how many people do you know in real life who have Blu-ray players and watch Blu-ray discs?
If you count my PS3 and laptop, I currently have five Blu-ray players in my house, as well as hundreds of discs. Yet I’m the only person in my family who has ever watched a movie on Blu-ray. Of people in my office, I’d guess maybe two or three have Blu-ray players. Among friends I have real-world interaction with, certainly less than ten are Blu-ray adopters. Is this a common experience for our readers?
For the purposes of this poll, the PS3 will only be counted as a Blu-ray player if the owner regularly uses it to watch Blu-ray movies.
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lordbowler
My sister finally got a blu-ray and she is a very late adopter.
Dail Whiteley
i bought my first and only blu-ray player a year and a half ago , i bought my mother a blu ray a year ago and i have a friend that has a blu.
HuskerGuy
Voted 6-10 (honestly it may be a bit more as I think about it) as myself and many of my friends use our PS3s for gaming and movie watching.
I know of maybe 4-5 folks at my office who have standalones. I don’t think anyone in my family or my wife’s family owns one.
Personally I have 3 (2 PS3s and a laptop).
UltimateFlynn
I can only think of friends who have PS3’s and don’t know anybody with standalone players.
I think this year we will see the big adoption rate. At my work there was a large No-Tax event last week and all Stand-Alones, PS3’s, and HDTV’s were sold out by the end of the day.
I assume it was much the same way everywhere else.
Shayne
I can think of 2 and they are both because of me. My little brother had a ps3 before, but as far as I know the only blu rays he has I bought him. And I just bought a player for a friend for christmas, so technically they don’t even have it yet.
William Henley
My brother and I are the only ones I know with a PS3, and everyone else has at least one stand alone player. I just ordered my second player for the bedroom (sadly i only have an SD CRT in there, but I can play my movies now).
I voted 11-20, but could be more. My parents, my brother, my sister, the guy who got me hooked, my pastor, my uncle, the music leader at church, the guy who runs the sound with me at church, we upgraded the church itself at the begining of the year, several of my co-workers.
Dick Ward
In my close circle of friends, it’s just me and my PS3.
Jane Morgan
11-20. Parents, sister, some aunts and uncles and family friends have 50″ panasonic plasmas and blu-ray players. At least ten of my friends have PS3s. But I work at a university in a big department with a lot of tech guys, so it probably skews my numbers. My brother is the only person I can think of that doesn’t have an HDTV. His kids think my condo is better than Disney.
Vortex
Out of those who own a Blu-ray player, how often do they watch Blu-ray movies?
It’s like owning a HDTV, how many watch most of the contents from HD source such as Blu-ray? HD content providers don’t broadcast everything in HD, so having a “HD provider” doesn’t count as 100% HD.
vihdeeohfieuhl
I voted 1-5. We have a large family, and yet, only my brother-in-law has a blu-ray player. And that is only because I sold it to him for $50 as a favor when I upraded one of my players.
I do believe he would have probably purchased one by now, but part of me thinks this really might not be the case. I just bought my Mother and her husband a Blu-ray HTIB for Christmas, and only two of my friends have them.
I don’t know how many of you can identify with this, or may have experienced this, but honestly, it seems like most of my family and friends look down on us for having HDTV’s and blu-ray players. I get the feeling that they believe that such equipment costs a lot more than it actually does at this point in time, and think that we are frivolous and excessive with our spending.
When they come over and watch a blu-ray on our 65″ VT 25, you get the sense that even though they enjoyed the experience, they probably start saying negative things about us the second they leave our home.
Yes, I know we are in the minority owning 4 HDTV’s and if you count our 2 PS3’s, five blu-ray players, but we have always been very thrifty and crafty when it comes to finding the best possible deals, selling for top dollar when upgrading, trading with other enthusiasts etc. I even try to make them aware of that so they won’t have such a negative perception.
One thing that really bothers me is that they all seem to find ways to spend just as much, or more money on other hobbies and the like. One spends thousands per year on bikes and biking equipment. He literally buys a new — and more expensive — bike every single year, and he owns at least 3 bikes at all times. Another spends thousands per year on camping gear and practically every camping toy or leisure item ever made. They have spent more on camping equipment than any of us tech geeks has ever spent on our home theater gear. It’s not like they are all saving their money. They just spend it in different ways.
I wonder if anybody else has ever gotten the feeling that their friends and family have a negative perception of them for their home theater enthusiasm and gear.
Jane Morgan
I have a big family too. For a lot of them it’s a cultural thing. There’s a lot of right-wing nutjob, anti-Hollywood, anti-technology sentiment. They never watch movies, never play video games (not even casual ones), watch very little TV, and a few of the older ones refuse to subscribe to the internet. My grandma even refuses to get a computer, because she thinks the government will be able to spy, inside her condo, through the screen.
William Henley
My family is known for frivorlous spending on tech stuff, but we always shop around. My dad shopped for about two years to get an HDTV that he liked at a price he liked. My HDTV was about $100 more than what I was planning on spending (almost three years ago now), but I got a much bigger TV than I was planning on, and a great deal on it. My uncle is the worst – I think he spent a good 7k on his rear-projection some 10-12 years ago, then spent another $700 on a tuner.
My pastor “counsled” me about my finances until he bought his HDTV and found out they were not nearly as expensive as he thought. Then I started getting talks about all the spending I do on movies (From everyone), until 1) I introduced them to Amazon and 2) started pointing out how much they spend on their hobbies, especially after I started pricing stuff, because they introduced me to a few things I was interested in. Yeah, no, they have spent way more on their hobbies than I have spent on mine. Musicians are the worst – they just seem to have no concept on how much they spend on instruments, cables, amps, replacement parts, etc until you itemize for them.
I do currently have the biggest BLU-RAY collection out of everyone I know (in fact, probably have more than all of them put together), but I have nowhere near the largest DVD collection – that would be my uncle and my brother second – and also have the third largest laserdisc collection of anyone I know (well, maybe fourth if I want to count Josh Z as an online acquaintance).
winklepr
Absolutely agree and understand vihdeeohfieuhl!
vihdeeohfieuhl
Jane,
Well put! I think you hit the nail on the head! 90% of my family and extended family are obsessive republicans that fit perfectly into your eloquent description. I’m not sure why I never realized how much this played into the way that they respond to home theater enthustiasm. They respond to my audio set up with even more incredulity than they do my video gear.
One thing that is interesting through is that I have a good friend who doesn’t really fit into this category. Him and his family frequent the internet, they subscribe to cable television, and they even have a Sony HTIB system hooked up to a 27″ Sony Triniton. He seems to take his home theater seriously, and will even bash new HD technology and Blu-ray. He will actually say things like, “Oh it looks great until there’s movement, and then it just gets all blurry.”
I’ve tried to tell him that he was probably witnessing this on the wrong type of HDTV and that even if this were the case, it’s better than watching films on a 4:3 television that you can barely even see anything on. He seems to think I’m crazy. He doesn’t even understand 16:9 versus 4:3. He doesn’t understand that blu-ray doesn’t just give you a better and higher clarity picture, but also adds details that he never even knew were there, and produces colors that he will never see.
It’s completely mind boggling to me! He acts like having a nice television and home theater set up is sacrilege, but he upgrades his smart phone to whatever is newest and most expensive every few months, and spends at least a couple grand a year on computer equipment.
besch64
I know three households with BD players, but none of them have made the jump from DVD to BD.
It makes me sad and confused.
besch64
In fact, during the last two Criterion sales at B&N, my friend (who owns a PS3) only bought DVDs. And that includes movies available in both DVD and BD. For those who don’t know, Criterion charges the same price for DVDs and BDs.
He said he’s waiting for the right time to go all-in BD. But up to this point the only movie he’s bought on BD was The Graduate, and that’s because it came with a DVD copy.
It makes no fucking sense to me at all. No fucking sense.
Patrick A Crone
To be honest, I only have a few of my friends own a blu ray player and it’s the form of a PS3. And of those friends, only one buys BD on a regular basis. Most of my friends and family don’t notice the difference between DVD and BD. Or they at least don’t feel it justifies the differance in price. As strange as it is, I kinda enjoy the exclusivity of BD. It reminds me of the old Laserdisc days where I was one of only few people that adapted to the format. True, BD is much larger than Laserdisc ever was. But I kinda get a kick out of showing friends the real differance in quality between DVD and BD when they have already dismissed the format as overpriced. It’s hard to argue when you see the difference BD makes to films like The Dark Knight and Back to the Future.
William Henley
Wish they had a “like” button – I would like your comment!