HomeA very short Thanksgiving edition of the roundup this week, as news was light on the ground, no doubt due to the festivities.
So there were the Black Friday sales, some of which is still going on, leading up to Cyber Monday. Early indications are that sales are down 10% compared to last year, but once the Blu-ray sales results for the week are uploaded, it is expected that Blu-ray and DVD sales will be lower this Black Friday than compared to the last. Some of that is related to the fact that Black Friday seems to have morphed into Black November, with all the sales that preceded the actual deals on BF. The other main reason of course is that disc sales have been down all year, as more and more people embrace digital (won’t be too surprised to see tablet and smartphone sales up this year as a result).
Ultra HD Blu-ray is going to be an expensive upgrade for most
The BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) is hoping that Ultra HD Blu-ray will help reverse, or at least stall the decline of discs. Unfortunately, it failed to get the product onto the market in time for this holiday season, but they have managed to get a new promo website up. The website gives the average consumer information, in the easiest to understand format possible, on why UHD Blu-ray is better than Blu-ray or DVD. It’s not just the 4x resolution, but also things like HDR, 60fps and wide color gamut. Of course, you’ll need a display that can properly take advantage of these advances, as well as a new UHD Blu-ray player, and the discs themselves of course.
That’s a lot of money to spend for the average consumer, many of whom are watching Blu-ray on small, budget priced LCD TVs. And for those that really want 4K (or near 4K) content, they’re probably already watching it, via Netflix, Amazon or via Sony’s (overpriced, IMO) 4K video player and Video Unlimited service.
A slight copyright detour before we come to the end of the road (for this edition of the WNR), Google now receives more than 25 DMCA take-down requests *per second*. And yet, barely a dent has been made in the battle against piracy (most likely because 90% of pirates don’t even use Google or any search engine to find pirated content). More on this story early next week.
And that’s it for this special abridged holiday edition of the WNR. See you next week!
