Blu-ray Gone In Five Years, Samsung Claims 554
schliz writes "Samsung expects Sony's Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high-definition format war in February." Maybe that means five years from now will be the perfect time to stock up on cheap Blu-ray disks and equipment.
Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Stupid article, OLED is a display technology, blu-ray is a storage technology. They are not rivals, but co-exist. Meaningless rubbish article on Pocket-lint, obviously not examined here by anyone with any AV knowledge."
"Does he think that OLED is going to replace BD as a storage medium?I fail to see how that is even possible considering one is a TV and another is a disc format and video player. Idiot shouldn't be allowed to speak anymore, doesn't know what h is talking about"
"...why would Blu-ray be incompatible with OLED? how is a new type of screen gonna change anything? might look better, brighter.. but....how does that effect anything?"
"OLED is going to take over from LCD as a display technology, and that will spell then end of BlueRay data storage? wtf?"
And, finally, this gem:
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
I believe it (Score:4, Insightful)
Blu-ray has remained very expensive; if Sony can't get more market penetration - and fast - there won't be any resistance to the introduction of newer technology. Winning the war against HD-DVD will have been a Pyrrhic victory.
Clearing his desk as we speak... (Score:5, Insightful)
Great way to, er, halt sales in their tracks.
Superceded by what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, everybody just stop buying now; wait for five years to see the new technology and then pay a premium to be the first.
This is pretty ridiculous, isn't it? I mean sure, a new technology will come along... a new technology came along and superceded video tapes, too, but they still exist!
Stating that the technology will just be "gone" is ridiculous.
There's a difference... (Score:5, Insightful)
Between being "superseded" and "universally adopted".
Technically, Blu-ray has already superseded DVD in many, many aspects. But Blu-ray now still has very little adoption. What really matters is not whether Blu-ray will be (technologically) superseded, but the cost-benefit of the technology. If Blu-ray gets adopted by the general consumer due to falling prices, it'll be around awhile so long as the next generation is more expensive especially relative to its perceived benefits, much like current situation with DVD as it is. Blu-ray being technologically superseded in 5-10 years is hardly surprising by itself.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The speed of the development of flash drives will make the optical drives obsolete.
It's possible to buy 32GB flash disks today and the speed at which they are growing far outnumbers the speed of the development of the optical drives.
So expect that in a few years you will insert a CF card or USB stick into your media station and watch the latest movie.
Re:Well, Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Only a few, few places will have the necessary network speeds in five years.
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny part is, that any new cheaper/better display medium should FUEL blu-ray sales, not the other way around. Except for many people apparently being half-blind, the other thing holding them back is the cost of a good HD set to enjoy it. If people could afford a 100" video wall at home the blu-ray sales would skyrocket.
Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:5, Insightful)
Blu-Ray is to DVD as LaserDisc was to VHS
A cool toy for those movie buffs.
Re:Superceded by what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that VHS was popular and entrenched in the market before something else came along. With Blu-Ray that doesn't seem very likely. Beating HD-DVD has only caused prices to go up since there's no longer a need to compete, and HDTVs are still a relatively small market of TVs in people's homes and will continue to be so for years to come. Factor in things like people still figuring out how to make good looking HD content and plenty of people who still don't see anything wrong with DVD and VHS and you can begin the see the friction preventing Blu-Ray from making any ground in the next few years. By the time those things are overcome there's a good chance there'll either be a better format, or HD content widely available online, making Blu-Ray obsolete before it ever gets a chance to be the default format that everybody buys their content in.
Although we often think of the average consumer as clueless about longetivity and future-proofing I've seen a lot of evidence that the general public aren't convinced by Blu-Ray. It's only just won the HD Wars and yet already the average guy on the street can smell Blu-Ray's blood in the water.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure: Blu-Ray to be superseded in five year so Samsung is investing in display production capability instead; Samsung is backing OLED in that field.
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone seems to want to blame the Samsung guy, but it seems more likely that the author (Kathryn Small) shouldn't be writing for any kind of a technology publication. The title of the article "Blu-ray 'gone in five years', Samsung claims," doesn't quite match what the guy from Samsung says. He says he doubts Bluray will be around for more than 5-10 years, but will be huge in the mean time. He says, "We are heavily back-ordered at the moment."
And then the author transitions into talking about OLED in a way that makes you think that OLED is a competing technology to Bluray. Either she misunderstands the connection, or she's just a sloppy writer and used a shoddy transition to talk about something that's only peripherally connected. But it sounds like she may have strung together several comments from Samsung that weren't entirely connected.
Even Sony doesn't really expect Bluray to be around for 20 or 30 years. It's far more likely that we'll be relatively media-less in the future, and more distribution will be online. That transition is coming, but only as quickly as fiber can be laid, which is to say not for several years at least. Griffiths (Samsung) was probably just commenting on that commonly accepted prediction. So if the idea was connected at all, he may have been saying, "Since media isn't the future, we're focussing on displays".
Yeah, I'm reading between the lines a bit, because the writing of this article is pretty weak.
Limited by the eye (Score:5, Insightful)
What will a new format bring us? More storage space? Higher Resolution video?
While I can see a use for more storage space for data files, I don't see a new disk format dethroning BD for video. Your screen and more importantly your eyes only have so fine a resolution. Beyond a certain threshold, more resolution doesn't do you any good. I dare say BD is there now given our current viewing technologies.
At some point there's not enough perceived benefit to justify changing out the media. Look at CDs as an example. There's no reason why you couldn't cram more music data on the disk for higher fidelity recordings, but at the same time there's no reason to cram any more data onto CDs. Most people can't perceive the difference between a recording made at 44.1 KHz and a 96KHz sampling rate. Even fewer have the equipment to reproduce it.
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blu-Ray sales will skyrocket when I can buy a player with all the standard features for 50 bucks.
Re:ehh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article summary: Guy smoking crack. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, this is the entertainment industry we're talking about. You know, the same people who think that workable DRM isn't a pipe dream?
You know why Hollywood movies cost millions upon millions of dollars to make while Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning cost a few grand? Why RIAA CDs cost $20-$30 while indie CDs cost $5-$10? It's because cocaine is damned expensive, makes you greedy and sociopathic, gives you a sense of entitlemant, makes you stupid, and makes you think it makes you smart.
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know, I've seen some pretty big, HD LCDs at Best Buy the other day for under a thousand, this being less than a decade after 15 inch LCD's with bad pixels costing around $4000
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
We're closer than you think. You can buy a BluRay drive for $140.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=598&N=2010100598&SpeTabStoreType=1 [newegg.com]
The way I see it, I bought a PS3 for $400. At the time, the comparable XBox 360 was $350. I got a BluRay player with the PS3 by spending the $50 extra.
The nice thing about the PS3 is that it has built in wifi, and I get firmware updates frequently adding all the new features before more other BluRay players get them, and it is even easier to install the firmware.
Re:Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be years and years before flash storage drives will be cheaper than an optical disc.
So is that less than, equal to, or greater than Samsung's claim of five years?
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would I go to Blockbuster to rent a movie on a flash drive?
Blockbusters HQ -> internet -> local Blockbuster -> flash drive
Home -> car drive -> local Blockbuster -> car drive -> Home (x2 because you have to return the damn flash drive)
Why shouldn't people do this instead:
Blockbusters HQ / iTunes Store / etc -> internet -> Home
Be aware there's going to be DRM on the movie in both cases (to prevent copy/to expire the movie once the rental period is over), so there's really no point talking about it.
Re:Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about that, a lot of people talked about LD, but it was poorly marketed (most I usually saw about it was 3AM commercials) and I don't remember seeing rows of LD's at WalMart prepared for discount mass consumption.
LD itself was also less durable than VHS, much larger, and the players were God-awful to work with.
Re:Superceded by what? (Score:3, Insightful)
DVDs were a huge improvement over VHS; Blu-ray is a minor improvement over DVD.
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Would that be the same people who said that LaserDisk was the last physical media format for movie distribution?
Re:ehh.. (Score:1, Insightful)
And, BTW, DVD was supposed to have superseded CD by now.
mp3's superseded CDs. Cost can't do it alone, the magic combination is the ratio between cost and convenience. Apple has already proven that people are willing to shell out $300 for an iPod and 99cents/song to have all their music in one place, even though the quality is technically inferior. Doing the same for movies isn't much of a stretch. What's quality compared to reaching in your pocket and playing your favorite show whenever you want?
Re:Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, here's the thing. I don't think Blu-Ray's failure (and yeah, it really is failing) has anything to do with the technology. It has to do with movies. I have 8 blu-ray movies, 5 I got for free with my ps3. Every time I go shopping a go over to the blu ray section and look to see what's out and every time I look I come back empty handed. Why? Because there's nothing worth paying twice as much for. I'm sorry if I don't want 'liscense to wed' or 'Juno' in HD, it just seems pointless. There haven't been more than a handful of good action movies in the past few years, practically none that I wouldn't call cheesy comic book movies.
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The speed of the development of flash drives will make the optical drives obsolete.
Probably not. Maybe Ghost Busters is out on Flash Drive, but how many people want a pile of USB's laying around? Also, what are they going to play it on? Do they have to buy a new player, or are they going to hook up their computer? Joe Sixpack doesn't know how to hook up his computer to his TV, and he probably doesn't want to buy a long cable or move the computer if he did. Sure, there's the Apple TV type solution, but that's out of range for most people to have something stream their movies. I think more people will be buying PS3's in the future, and other BluRay players will drop in price around the holiday season.
Fluff piece (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:2, Insightful)
Yah except that Blu-Ray has sold far more units than LaserDisc, has the backing of every major studio and has clearly demonstrated its dominance over HD-DVD.
Also I don't remember LaserDisc being on display for sale in the front of Walmart, Fry's, Best Buy and every known store or even commercials like "get this movie on DVD and Blu-Ray today!!". Comparison to LaserDisc doesn't stand.
What movie buffs?
You mean the people that have gotten sick of going to the theater to cough out $50 by the end of the night. The movie theaters are moving into our living rooms and there have been countless experts predicting that HDTV sales will rise this season although by only single digit percentages.
The hardware gets cheaper and so do the movies over time, it is very simple. Listen bookmark this post and look back at it in 5 years, when majority of people and Blockbuster(if they don't go bankrupt by than) only stocks Blu-Ray. History repeating itself, other than that it is more of 'put your money where your mouth is' if you think that product will take over Blu-Ray. I doubt customers/investors will trust Samsung as much anymore since they have lost faith in their HD-DVD product and screwed over a lot of buyers, stocks of HD-DVDs are not replenished with Netflix.
Until HDTV with 36"-42" get within the $500 range than I might buy, they are getting pretty damn close and compared with having to pay for movies/gas/candy/parking/crowds than the alternative home theater is looking more appealing. I don't own either a Blu-Ray or HDTV but my friends do and that is where we all wanna go to have a good time or watch sports games/movies.
Your formula fails basic economics and social understanding.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The speed of the development of flash drives will make the optical drives obsolete.
It's not even flash disks. All physical sales will become obsolete with the take-off of digital downloads. With the advent of legal movie downloads and on-demand TV services, most physical media sales will, I predict, be dead within twenty years.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why in the world would I stick a rented flash stick in any device I own? That's like connecting my computer with ever computer the flash stick has been in.
I swear, people remember nothing for health class.
Re:ehh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But if they are selling flash drives in standard formats (e.g. CompactFlash, SD), you can just copy them bit for bit. That is what they don't want.
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Samsung have much more interest in hyping displays because they are one of the main display manufacturers. BluRay is a Sony thing that Samsung and a load of other people license.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once the studios have determined that Blu-Ray has reached sufficient market penetration, they will stop releasing new movies on DVD.
They did the same thing with VHS which is what ultimately killed it off (drove the final nails in the coffin) in the format, before that there were always a number of holdouts for whom VHS was "good enough"
With DVD they will try to kill it off sooner, primarily because DVD is relatively easy to copy and so they can start turning on image constraint for new releases.
Blu-ray is fragile (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that content companies will enthusiastically move to a physical media that is not fragile. People have to buy replacement CDs, DVDs and now Blu-ray discs all the time because the physical media is so prone to damage.
There are plenty of alternatives that are sturdier, but the content companies will lose money if people only have to buy one copy.
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the PS3 does have USB ports, and a simple software update could allow it to play movies from a flash drive.
Still, it's a crazy idea. The movie industry is all about profits, and it's ALWAYS going to be cheaper to make a little plastic disc than a small circuit board with memory chips.
I'm sure Blu-Ray will, in fact, be superceded at some point, but it won't be flash memory that does it.
Re:An Observation From A Big Music Fan (Score:4, Insightful)
I've spent as much on a reasonably good hifi as a lot of other people spend on video equipment and I *really really* don't get what is the big deal with compressed music - sure, I use MP3s of my collection on a portable player for travelling and the gym but I don't see how someone who buys compressed music can be classified as a music fan when a "movie buff" is never going to be taken seriously unless he/she has got a huge TV, cable, surround sound, etc.
Not to be too harsh, but I think you're confusing "music fan" with "audiophile" or maybe even "music-equipment fan." It's not about classification of tastes and habits, it's about accessibility and quality. Quality is inversely proportional to accessibility.
People for whom music is a constant companion do not necessarily need the highest quality at all times. Radio taught us this. Would you say that someone in the '50's listening to Alan Freed on the radio was less of a music fan than they who bought shellac and vinyl for their home phonographs? Does someone who watches Tarkovsky with a VCR hooked up to a 19" TV know any less about the movie than someone with a 108" flat panel and amplifiers soldered by the children of nimble priests?
To be sure, the experience of watching a movie or listening to music in a purpose-built environment is going to be different than this, and the word to describe it is "quality." What I'm saying is that one's home theater or listening room says nothing about appreciation for movies and music. Compression just allows people to have music in more places, or more music in a given place, similar to the definition of "compression" itself.
The big deal is that compression allows music to exist in more aspects of a person's life, just like radio did. It makes it more portable and allows the listener to select what they're going to listen to (unlike radio). Selection is common to both MP3 players and video/audiophile equipment, so that cancels out.
Accessiblity vs. quality, same as it ever was.
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
People believed that for different reasons, though. LaserDisk was simply supposed to be so superior in quality that there would be no need to improve on it. That was nonsense, of course.
The point now is that nobody really doubts we will eventually have enough bandwidth to make streaming a feasible alternative to physical media. Also, content owners have every reason to favor streaming over sale of physical media. I am not saying that users will necessarily have the same preference (I certainly don't), but it isn't like we are going to get a choice.
My Atari-400 still works 25 years later (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They did the same thing with VHS which is what ultimately killed it off (drove the final nails in the coffin) in the format, before that there were always a number of holdouts for whom VHS was "good enough"
That's actually pretty insightful. I only bought a DVD once my video rental store no longer carried VHS. Toward the end it was really nice, since their back catalog (which was mostly VHS) was really cheap.
DVD didn't really have too much of an advantage over VHS for my small-ish 25" TV. The sound was pretty equivalent, and the ability to seek was not really very important like it was with the difference between CD and tape. By the time I bought a DVD the players were $15 :)
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For the vast majority of consumers, DVDs had so many more compelling reasons for people to upgrade than BluRay ever will.
BluRay will remain a niche offering, as there are relatively few compelling reasons for the majority of consumers to upgrade from DVDs.
The studios will not stop releasing DVDs as long as the majority of the market is purchasing them.
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
BluRay will remain a niche offering, as there are relatively few compelling reasons for the majority of consumers to upgrade from DVDs.
The studios will not stop releasing DVDs as long as the majority of the market is purchasing them.
This only holds up during the beginning of the tech cycle for BluRay. There are a few factors that will lead to wider adoption and preference.
1) HDTV prices will continue to fall. As the cost of an HDTV approaches that of it's Standard definition counterparts more people will purchase HDTV.
2) BluRay players will begin to fall in price and saturate the market as people buy them to at least up-convert their current DVDs
3) As BluRay discs drop in price to be negligibly more expensive than DVDs, and people already have BluRay players, consumers will start preferring BluRay over DVD.
This has all happened before, but without the ease of transition offered by BluRay players being able to, for the most part, up-convert the technology they are replacing.
Re:An Observation From A Big Music Fan (Score:0, Insightful)
I've spent as much on a reasonably good hifi as a lot of other people spend on video equipment and I *really really* don't get what is the big deal with compressed music - sure, I use MP3s of my collection on a portable player for travelling and the gym but I don't see how someone who buys compressed music can be classified as a music fan when a "movie buff" is never going to be taken seriously unless he/she has got a huge TV, cable, surround sound, etc.
People with expensive home theaters are called "movie buffs" because they obviously like movies, and people who spend $1500 on power cables are called "schizos" because they are obviously insane.
Anyway, compressed audio is indistinguishable from 16-bit/44.1khz PCM*. Even with your expensive speaker setup, you couldn't distinguish a CD from a good 128kbps MP3. This is because your ears cannot extract anywhere near 128kbps worth of detail from what they hear. Why waste bits on sounds you can't hear?
*Disagree with this? Put up or shut up. Pass an ABX test, and THEN I'll listen to your opinion.
Re:PS3 (Score:1, Insightful)
Samung is wrong. The Blu-ray Disc format will be superseded completely in two years unless R&D and initial manufacturing costs are abandoned in favor of a successful format.
In other words, the price needs to come down and the number of data layers need to go up simultaneously. Right now.
This will allow BD to compete with increasingly inexpensive and very data dense hard drives as a backup medium and a data transport medium (sneakernet & via mail)
For HD movies, HD DVDs have created a standard where 1080p material fits perfectly within 30 GB. An 8 GB microSDHC [meritline.com] is $27 today. In two years time a 32 GB card is going to be comparable in total manufacturing cost to a BD disc unless Sony's asinine licensing fees are dropped.
Flash media is going to overrun BD discs, if video-on-demand over the internet has not already, in two years.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider that you have to go to the video rental place twice...
Why? You enroll with Blockbuster and shell out $10 for a BlockBuster-Blue USB stick. When you want to rent a movie, you take it in, have the movie loaded on to your stick with a DRM time bomb making it playable for 48 hours, and take it home. No need to return until you rent your next flick.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We've seen this upgrade path repeatedlywith the introduction of cassettes tapes, CDs and DVDs. Each technology upgrade comes with a higher price/profit margin for the content providers. I expect BlueRay will be the same.
Indeed we have seen it repeatly: the price spikes higher initially and then settles to the same prices as the previous format and then the previous format is phased out. In the end CD's cost no more than cassette tapes - DVD's costed no more than VHS. Eventually you might even see the older format cost MORE because it's seen as a legacy format that it's costing them more to support than the mainstream format.
Eventually, BluRay will be as cheap or cheaper than DVD's, and at that point it will make no sense NOT to upgrade.
Re:Article dosen't make much sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
...can you even buy a blu-ray movie for 50$? I don't really see blu-ray replacing dvd in movie sales unless blu-ray becomes cheaper. Last time I checked (admittedly, this was a while ago) blu-ray was still twice as expensive as dvd. I have no interest in buying an HDTV, so blu-ray has absolutely nothing for me. Except added cost, of course.
Firstly your cost estimates on the movies themselves are sorely out of whack.
Secondly, you are not the target demographic. If you think $300 for a high definition media player or $25-40 for a high definition movie is too expensive then you're going to have to face the fact that your opinion is meaningless to the movie studios. No, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm trying to give you a sense of perspective.
For people in the target demographic who earn enough money and are in a secure financial position they're not concerned about the nominal cost of a BluRay player or the movies. They're concerned about getting what's good/best for their needs/wants and that's that. Poor people quibble over nickels and dimes.
I'll leave you to your regularly scheduled bubble now.
Re:ehh.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Finally! A reason for Americans to force ISPs to upgrade their infrastructure, and what do they do? They decide to start driving more instead to avoid the hassle.