I was thinking it might be nice if Outlaw considered design & bulid of a Blu-ray payer. Even though most are in the forth generation, many still are'nt up to spec's and alot do'nt work that well. Somtimes I wonder if blu-ray will make it. I was talking to a few neighbors and they dont know much about it. In fact 2 people thought regular dvd's were high def. No one knew anything about the lossless audio or extra features blu-ray provides. In fact all of them think an upconvert dvd player "changes" regular dvd to hd material. When I told them it does enhance but its not HD, they said its plenty good enough. So if they can get an upconvert for $50 or blu at $400 who do you think will win?

Randy tee, I don't have a blu-ray player yet, and won't until someone, maybe Oppo, sells for less than $300 a machine which does a really good job with ALL digital discs, including SACD and DVD-Audio. There's a visible difference between DVD and HD, sure, but how significant that is has got to be up to each person's scale of priorities. Moral: only you can decide.

I'd be curious to see a Blu-ray offering from Outlaw, although I'm not holding my breath for one any time soon. Heck, even OPPO Digital (a company that focuses solely on disc players) is being cautious about getting into Blu-ray and the companies that developed the format are having to work at it to get all of the features in production and the performance good. Give the format some time to mature, and who knows - maybe we'll see an Outlaw player...

I think that Blu-ray will make it. The early generation of players have had more problems than DVD did, but that format certainly struggled initially as well. Likewise, plenty of people had a hard time understanding DVD at first. I've said for years that Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) is a harder sell than DVD - it offers more resolution, but that's about it. The convenience features of DVD were huge (no rewinding, direct access to specific chapters, etc) when compared to VHS. Of course, comparing any format to DVD is a tall order - DVD has been hugely successful, with faster market adoption than any previous format. I would be surprised if Blu-ray was able to top DVD in that regard, and downloadable content/VOD is going to push against Blu, but I think Blu-ray will make it.

Blu-ray is definitely for the enthusiasts market at this point. You wont see mass market adoption until the price drops below $100. People are sill moving over to HDTV.

The good thing is the movie studio's and places like Blockbuster are starting to push Blu-ray. My local blockbuster just got blu-ray in this year and every time I go in - which is bi-weekly, they have an larger and larger selection. One employee told me they're going to redo a large section of the store for Blu-ray.

Randy, your point about people not knowing is spot on. Even the blockbuster employee said the customers don't know what blu-ray means, so they have to keep them separate and not on the shelves next to SD DVD. Apparently customers pick-up the blu-ray disks and think they're the same. doh!

I think when broadcasting switches over in 2009 many more people will be aware, but the real change wont happen until prices for players and media drop considerably.

Also, remember that Sony stated that they're not selling blu-ray licenses to mass production manufacturers in taiwan and the like. In addition, they're still having issues getting mass production of blu-ray lasers. So many things need to come together before mass adoption.

Funny thing is, I explained blu-ray to my girlfriend and she liked the picture quality so much, that's all she rents. It makes a difference on the larger screens.