I don’t want a Blu-Ray player.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving, probably my favorite holiday of the year.   On Friday, we’ll see some of the cheapest prices for Blu-Ray players ever, but I still won’t want to buy one.

In my mind the Playstation 3 is actually the best player on the market right now.  It has the greatest number of features, it is full-spec (which some of the original players weren’t) and it has an impressive collection of games behind it.

But for the sake of playing High Definition content, I’m not interested paying $400 for the base PS3 model and then shelling out $30 every Tuesday when new releases come out.

The way the movie industry is pricing things, it seems to me like prices are just too high for the everyday user.

Additionally I won’t be buying a Blu-Ray player because I don’t see it establishing itself like the DVD player.  Make no mistake, there is a phenomonal difference between DVD and Blu-Ray, just like there was when DVD replaced VHS, but there are other options available to the consumer now that weren’t available when I just HAD to own the Matrix on DVD. (It was in fact my first DVD purchase. I picked up the movie before I even owned the player.)

The number one competitor to Blu-Ray is the one I’ll be using: Digital Downloads.  Your favorite movies, TV shows and internet shorts all available for download at the fastest rates that you can get.  Apple has the market nearly cornered with iTunes, but there are other options out there.  The number one competitor right now has to be streaming downloads from Netflix and even Amazon’s Unbox comes to mind.  Plus there are other options creeping around.

There’s also something that’s even more popular, albeit a frowned-upon method that people can get their programming.  Torrents.   People are turning to torrenting because they want a restriction free system.  They want to be able to watch it on their computer or burn it to a disc or copy it to their iPod or iPhone without being told that they can’t.

I hope that the movie industry learns from the digital pitfalls that ensared the music industry.  The music industry is still suing its customers today in an unpopular campaign against file-sharing.  Instead of seeing the future and the AMAZING profit potential that it brought, the industry stayed shackled to the past–clinging to the compact disc.  Look at iTunes and the money its making, phenomonal.  Now if the music industry had figured that out ahead of the curve, it would have been in a much better spot.

Now the TV and Movie industries are seeing their content on file-sharing networks and have an opportunity to respond.  NBC and FOX have done a great job offering up HULU.com it’s where I go to see the funny clips from SNL.

That’s why I’m not feeling Blu.  There are other options available that look better to me than plunking down the large amounts of money they’re demanding at this point.

Prices may be low comparatively on Black Friday to what they were, but prices are still too high to give it a try.

If Blu-Ray is around long enough where players cost $50 and discs are at DVD price levels, I’ll take another look, but until then I’m sticking with digital downloads.

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