Is Blu-ray dead? Tech Sites around the Net are calling it a “death spiral” and we’re now looking at the downfall of the winning high definition format. Many non-PS3 Blu-ray players are still in the USD $200.00 range, a bit high for mass market adopters, and people aren’t planning to run out and buy a Blu-Ray player in our economic slump.
What’s the market share of the Blu-ray product? Four Percent. Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 have a lot of battle scares after the fight with HD-DVD to “win” the format war. In the end, Sony won the battle but the war was not with the HD-DVD format, it’s with the average Joe consumer.
Does this effect the PlayStation 3? One of the up sells of the PlayStation 3 was the Blu-ray capabilities, it games and it’s an entertainment device all-in-one. It’s a great deal right?
“The advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.” (zdnet)
The obstacles against the Blu-ray format are huge, especially with NetFlix coming to the Xbox 360, high definition download options and licensing costs on the Blu-ray to movie creators. Blu-ray won’t die in this generation of PlayStation 3 consoles but many folks, including Apple, are pausing to see if it has any chance at all to break into the industry.
Four percent just isn’t enough to inpsire confidence.
It’s contest time again! This time, we’re giving away the Xbox Live Arcade version of Defense Grid: The Awakening, a great tower defense title. You can read GameStooge’s review here, which has gameplay videos.
I first started following the TD Podcast back in 2007. My buddy Luke clued me in that TD was doing a ‘cast, and said I should start following it.
So I did.
Boring story.
I actually only started about 3 weeks ago. I got sucked into pod-casts actually only 4 weeks ago also by podcasts on retrowaretv.com So I seeked out new and diffrent pod-casts. I do have to say this is one of my favorite because of the format that it’s been put in. Also i’ve sorta cherry picked previous episodes in the back log of pod-casts. It’s always so intresting to look back and see what we believed would happen today. Even it was only three months ago.
I started getting addicted to you lovely chaps, when i was reconmended by the lovely bird known as twitter. Its interesting to listen to you guys and see how wrong you got the future 😀
This is actually my first one, the Defense Grid cross-promotion pulled me over here. I guess that was the point of the cross promotion huh? 🙂 I had no idea you guys did a podcast. I regularly listen to the 2o2p one and majornelson and oxm and I love your common man cocktails video podcast, very professionally done. But now that I know you also have a gaming podcast, i’ll add this to my weekly listening pleasure.
@Bushmaster2000 Hey hey! Welcome to the show, this one isn’t as explicit and does prove to be unique and different than the other casts, so you probably won’t get too much redundancy and a completely different perspective (esp. considering we’ve got three folks and one being a women, you can get a bit of a different perspective on things)
@David: Wow, glad twitter got you hooked, promoting a podcast is tough with all the other audio shows getting in our way. At least I know twitter has done us good!
@Jareske: Our format is a bit different than other “professional” shows because we’re not in the industry and we’re not living and breathing it everyday, we’re taking it more from a gamers perspective and the reactions of what a gamer might say when they hear the weekly news… or so I think 🙂
@Stephen: Glad you’re still on board. You’ve been around awhile and we’re used to hearing more from our newer listeners. Ya never know who still sticks it out for the long run, considering the audience is growing I guess we’ve got to be doing something right.
Same thing as Bushmaster 2000. I listen to some of them in french (quebec) but also the GT and Screwattack one. Planned on listening to this one for sure 🙂
The truth be told, up until a link from gamestooge.com about a contest brought me here, I had never heard a TD Podcast. BUT, I am now currently listening to one of the newer podcasts and I must say that it’s pretty good. I like the mix of content covering multiple services and consoles and the banter between the hosts.
It’s refreshing to hear the opinions of people that have no direct affiliation with a big media outlet or game company. I feel I’m getting a more honest opinion of the gaming community as a whole, and not just the highlights from a group that wants me to buy into their product(s).
Thank you. I will definitely be returning to listen to the TD Podcast.
Hey im from cooktown & listen to da cast today…… Give me, Give me Give mee!
I got hooked after a friend told me about it. If I’m not gaming at least I can listen to a podcast about it.
The contest is over, and the winner will be announced soon.
The winner is VanIslePimp. Everyone had great comments, but only one can get the code.
Thanks everyone for entering!
Thanks for holding the contest! I look forward to your next podcast. Now I’m off to play some Defense Grid: The Awakening. Thank you again.