Blu-Ray

You can get a player for ninety nine bucks.

Check out Wednesday's article in the "Wall Street Journal": "Dreaming Of a Blu Christmas" (behind a pay wall, unfortunately, but you might find it via Google, Rupert Murdoch is so concerned with making bucks that he doesn't see he's heading straight towards irrelevancy).

It looked like Blu-ray was gonna fail. Because it was just too expensive and the Internet was going to deliver movies.

But just like the public refrained from buying CD players at first, waiting for digital audio tape to break through, people now realize Net delivery of movies is years off, and the disc may survive.

Actually, it's way more complicated than that. Many people are popping for $150 Blu-ray players, because of their Internet capabilities. Yup, you can get Netflix via your Blu-ray player. But not everything.

You see the movie companies are crippling Internet delivery the same way the record companies crippled DAT. It's just a finger in the dike, but rather than debate the flick fold, let's look at the music possibilities.

There's no longer a reason to buy a conventional DVD player. Blu-ray population is going to grow exponentially. Now that laser prices have dropped, which is why Blu-ray player prices have taken a dive, it's only a matter of time until Blu-ray enters the computer field. Soon it'll be de rigueur to get a laptop with Blu-ray built in.

Is the music business gonna fuck this up one more time?

I can't get over the Tom Petty Blu-ray disc, the one in his new live compilation. It sounds ASTOUNDINGLY good. Truly equivalent to the master tapes. Do you think people wouldn't want to hear the master tapes of their favorite albums?

That was the promise of CD. But it was a joke.

But now we've got a second bite at the apple.

Forget multi-channel. It failed twice. It's too complicated and people don't need it. Just go stereo, in Blu-ray.

Of course, it's gonna start slow. Just like CDs and Internet delivery of music. But it could grow.

Assuming the prices are cheap.

Yup, ten bucks for a Blu-ray disc.

Blu-ray player sales only took off when decks dropped from their $999 price upon introduction three and a half years ago to the dirt cheap prices of today.

Do I think discs are the future?

No.

But how much is it really going to cost to enter this market. If the labels can play with vinyl, they can do this.

Forget Jimmy Iovine trying to sell files in some newfangled way via Best Buy.

We want the highest quality today.

This is how you bring back sound. How you get people to invest in good speakers. You get closer to the music.

I was listening to "Tangled Up In Blue" on my iPod today. And I thought how I had an SACD at home. But I don't have an SACD player, almost no one does. But I've got a Blu-ray player, it's in the PS3. And when prices drop just a bit more, I can install a Blu-ray drive in my Mac Pro. And listen to the true master tapes via my Aux speakers.

I can't wait.