Blue Blu-ray

TopSpin writes "Early this year the meme circulated that Blu-ray might be going the way of Betamax, and for the exact same reason: Sony's unfriendliness to the porn industry. But at Japan's recent euphemistically named Adult Treasure Expo 2007, adult filmmakers said Sony has begun offering technical support, and this was later confirmed by Sony PR. The company stated that Sony would offer support to any filmmaker working on the format, no matter their industry. Apparently, Blu-ray is now the preferred medium for Japanese adult films."

Any consensus?

[MontyApollo]

Is there any consensus in the geek community about which format is liked best?

Re:Any consensus?

[AuMatar]

Normal DVD- cracked DRM, and most people still don't have HD.

Re:Any consensus?

[trolltalk.com]

Who wants H.D. pr0n? Do you really want to see cellulite, open pores, wrinkles, etc. all in high-def? You'll end up wishing porn really did make you go blind.

Hi-def makes it much harder to fulfill people's fantasies with real-life actors. Even the producers are complaining about it.

Re:Any consensus?

[fbjon]

Who wants H.D. pr0n? Do you really want to see cellulite, open pores, wrinkles, etc. all in high-def? You'll end up wishing porn really did make you go blind. Hi-def makes it much harder to fulfill people's fantasies with real-life actors. Even the producers are complaining about it.

I demand a sample to assess the veracity of this claim.

Re:Any consensus?

[Citizen of Earth]

Hi-def makes it much harder to fulfill people's fantasies with real-life actors.

I think the producers who use 18-year-old girls will do just fine with this medium. The producers who use 40-year-old women with fake tits—and plots—should go out of business anyway.

Re:

[Belacgod]

If I watch one more stupid repairman story, I -will- plotz, that's for sure!

Re:Any consensus?

[That's Unpossible!]

Let me know when you've got a 50-70" widescreen TV.

It has nothing to do with extreme detail, it has to do with making giant TVs look just as sharp as your 20" TV... stretching a picture made for a small TV (SD) onto a large TV (HD) looks like shit.

Re:

[Carewolf]

There are better algorithms that stretching. There is no reason a SD 50" TV shouldn't look good. Unfortunately people buy shitty DVD-players. I start grinding the axe everytime I see de-interlace artifacts, or boxy pixels on a big screen.

Rock and a hard place

[crovira]

If Sony tried that "We don't fart and we don't fuck on Blue-Ray" their share-holders would carve them up and eat them raw on vinagered rice patties.

They REMEMBER the VHS-BetaMax debacle.

That is not likely to happen again.

Like Vespasian said, holding up the sesterces collected from the public toilets: "Money has no odor..."

Re:

[dgcurtis]

Ah yes but porn is not going to determine the winner in the current format wars.

Back the in VHS/BetaMAX days, the Internet wasn't available to every joe lunchbox with a $300 Nascar computer from Wal-Mart. There is so much free porn out there that people don't need to rent/buy it.

Blu-ray has all the major studios except Universal and HD-DVD has less than that.

Not that I really care. They'll both be cheap enough very soon that you'll be able to buy both formats.

Re:

[Bobartig]

There was a rather larger issue to betamax which limited its adoption. From wikipedia (but cited in a bunch of places prior to wikipedia):

Betamax held an early lead in the format war, offering some technical advantages. By 1980, VHS was gaining marketshare due to its longer tape time (3 hours maximum, compared to just 1 hour for Betamax in USA) and JVC's less strict licensing program. The longer tape time is sometimes cited as the defining factor in the format war, allowing consumers to record entire programs unattended

Re:Any consensus?

[quanticle]

Great, as if hentai tentacle rape wasn't detailed enough...

Re:

[HTH NE1]

Normal DVD- cracked DRM,

Hasn't HD-DVD and Blu-Ray already been cracked repeatedly, with BD+ protection as yet untested in the market?

and most people still don't have HD.

You can get VGA monitors with better than HD resolution. My 21" screen is driven at 2048x1536 (QXGA), more than enough for 1920x1080p, and at less than half the price of most dual-link DVI displays (WQXGA: 2560×1600).

Still being compatible with my KVM switch and the legacy machines on it is a plus.

Re:Any consensus?

[westlake]

most people still don't have HD.

That is changing very rapidly.

30% of American households have HDTV.
44% of these households receive HD programming.
The "home theater" movie and gaming experience can be more important to buyers than HD programming

>it's easy to forget that this will often be a buyer's first experience with large screen, wide screen, projection, flat panel displays,etc.
>which is good news in the long run for Sony and Blu-Ray.

2/3 get their HD programming by cable TV. 1/4-1/3 by satellite.

30% of U.S. Households Have an HDTV: CEA [blogspot.com]

Re:

[king-manic]

Almost 1/3 have HDTV? Really? I live in Canada, and it isn't that different from the USA up here, and I cannot believe that for a second. I would say that maybe 10% of the people I know own an HDTV. And I know some people with a lot of money. Most people I know just don't see the need for it. Granted most people will probably buy HDTV when it's time to upgrade, since it's hard to find a decent SDTV, but people aren't just running out and buying these things.

Happen to live on th far east coast where ma and p

Re:Any consensus?

[hav0x]

whichever the japanese adult filmmakers choose is fine by me.

Re:

[camperslo]

whichever the japanese adult filmmakers choose is fine by me.

Something tells me that if it is the adult video industry that is going to drive a global HD format choice, it probably won't be those from Japan that do it.
I feel a little sorry for a customer buying Japanese HD adult content not knowing that in Japan all genitalia must be covered with mosaic.

How much would you pay to see HD mosaic???

Re:

[Virak]

How much would you pay to see HD mosaic???

The exact same amount I pay to see SD mosaic.

Seriously, who the fuck buys porn?

Re:

[Architect_sasyr]

The lovely people who rip it into nice manageable .torrent files for the rest of us?

Re:Any consensus?

[CastrTroy]

Which brings up a good question. Back in the 80s?? when the VHS-Betamax war was raging, there wasn't many ways to get porn. You could either buy magazines, which were just pictures, or you could buy video cassettes. Now we have the internet. With all the pay-for and free porn on the internet, I think that buying porn in a brick and mortar store will disappear pretty fast. I don't think that porn availability will be the deciding factor in which format wins this time around, because most of the people who are up-and-up on technology, who will be buying the new HD disc players are on the internet, and getting their porn from there.

Re:

[HTH NE1]

The biggest barrier I can see for the geek community in adopting one format or the other is the lack of consumer-market HD-DVD burners.

But then, Sony's Blu-Ray burner is also still too damn expensive.

Re:Any consensus?

[TheRealMindChild]

Meh. To me, it comes down to:

• How much a burner costs
• How much the media costs
• How many commercial players will support burned movies of format x

Re:

[cerelib]

If those are your only criteria, then regular DVD wins.

Re:

[MontyApollo]

HD format and capacity was kind of implied.

Re:

[cerelib]

It is not implied. The OP made no mention of capacity being a deciding factor. You could package HD content on DVD, but to get a full length movie it would probably have to span multiple discs. Given the logic of the poster, the price of burners, price of media, and device support, DVD still wins even if you consider using it for HD content.

Re:

[veganboyjosh]

How many commercial players will support burned movies of format x

This article is about format xxx, you insensitive clod!

Re:Any consensus?

[mmarlett]

The preferred format for the geek community is "teen girl". It will never quite completely erase the "big breast" format, though.

Hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Suit yourself. I'll get myself the "Teen Girl" / "Big Breast" hybrid model.

It may cost a bit more, I don't have to worry about choosing the wrong format.

Yes. Broadband

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Why bother with physical media when you can get much more diverse pr0n over the internet.

Why spend up on players etc that might go obsolete?

Re:

[HTH NE1]

Why bother with physical media when you can get much more diverse pr0n over the internet.

Do you mean, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Internet stuff tends to be formatted to prevent personal retention unlike physical media which only prevents extraction.

However, all three include a network connection to report back what you're watching.

Re:

[Jartan]

Is there any consensus in the geek community about which format is liked best?

h264 HD w/o DRM

Re:

[Cadallin]

Actually, that's a really good format. x264 with ogg audio in mkv, full support for multiple subtitle tracks. Quite found of that one. 'Cept its a touch leading edge and its taken awhile for the players to nail down their support for the containers. I wish the fansub community could decide the format wars, they often come up with stuff that's very user friendly.

Re:

[BlueParrot]

As I mainly use my optical drives for data transfer and installing an operating system, my main concern is Linux support. Any device that doesn't work with Linux is dead to me ( literally speaking ).

Re:

[Fallen Kell]

Yes to an extent. Now that the full BluRay specs are being followed (the gen 1 systems did not have the ability for overlay video which removed a LOT of the interactive content such as interviews/alternate shots/bloopers/etc. from running in a smaller picture in a corner while the movie is played). HD-DVD seems to have a better picture quality right now on the movies that have been release dual format. However, this may be player based and seems to be at this point, as there have been mixed consensus on thi

Re:

[nuzak]

blu-ray and HD-DVD supposedly use exactly the same codecs, and I don't see why they would recode with different codecs if they didn't have to, so I should imagine that differences in video quality are indeed based on the player.

Both of 'em still look damn nice. And BTW, Betamax lacked one critical advancement VHS had: longer record time. VHS soon made up the quality difference.

Re:

[MBCook]

I'd say Blu-Ray. It's holds more, it uses Java (instead of that thing MS developed for HD-DVD), it has a larger installed base at this point, has a cooler name, is backed by Apple, etc.

Me? I use DVD. I'm not going to replace my nice 5 disc DVD player with a 1 disc player for one of the HD formats while paying $600+ for the privilege. I'm waiting for prices to drop.

Apple is Blu-Ray?

[HTH NE1]

I'd say Blu-Ray. It's holds more, it uses Java (instead of that thing MS developed for HD-DVD), it has a larger installed base at this point, has a cooler name, is backed by Apple, etc.

I haven't upgraded to Final Cut Studio 2 yet, but in the previous version, it only supported HD-DVD, not Blu-Ray.

Re:

[C0rinthian]

Yeah, because Sony treats their consumers MUCH better than MS does, right?

Re:

[Trogre]

Well, yes.

Next question?

Blu-kake

[Dude McDude]

Those crazy Japanese!!!

Re:

[HTH NE1]

Yet Sony still won't let them press porn disks in Japan; they have to press them in Taiwan and import them.

Re:

[Zantetsuken]

And yet it's still probably cheaper for the porn companies to do it that way. If it really is cheaper to do so, why the hell not?

Re:

[nuzak]

Japan has some seriously restrictive porn laws (all that hentai porn is something of a loophole concerning animation). Perhaps Sony would be taxed higher or incur the possibility of contributory liability if they pressed porn discs?

The Swing Content

[HTH NE1]

The porn industry is perfectly capable of going both ways... and a few others besides.

Blu-Ray Job

[TheWizardTim]

Watch out for job postings looking for "Blu-Ray Job" experience.

Za eentaenetto eesu foru porun

[lohphat]

Avenue Q FTW!

Difference?

[lymond01]

Without looking at the tubes, I've been curious (not too) about the end user functional difference between blu-ray and HD-DVD (aside from one having fewer syllables). Is it like buying a red porsche cayenne or a blue porsche cayenne? I'm not sure how two devices can compete with each other if they are essentially the same. Will their market lifetime boil down to non-technical reasons, as stated in the article? Is there some nifty upgrade path that one allows over the other?

Re:

[harryk]

without getting to the nitty gritty details. It's something like your example.

think more like the porsche and the toureg. Both essentially luxury class suvs, one costs more than the other, but essentially still just a sporty suv.

The difference really is space. compare say ... the sporty suv to an escalade or something. Both still luxury, but one can physically fit more inside.

I believe hd-dvd is on the order of 15-20gb, where a blu-ray disc is 50-60gb. So the blu-ray disc can hold the same length movie

Re:

[Datasage]

Its 30GB for HD-DVD and 50GB for Blue Ray.

But realistically, you can compress a full length 720p HD movie to about 5 GB without much compression artifacts, with the right codec. So either format is enough for HD.

Re:

[cyphercell]

So when I have a terabyte disk on my PC in five years, do I want to do my backups with 34 HD disks or 20 Blu-Ray disks? Do I want the whole collection of star wars on one disk or two. Honestly I think the storage space will make a difference more than anything.

Re:Difference?

[GreatDrok]

"I believe hd-dvd is on the order of 15-20gb, where a blu-ray disc is 50-60gb. So the blu-ray disc can hold the same length movie, with less compression, and as a result ( theortically ) a better image."

HD DVD is 15GB (I have no idea what a gb is) per layer. Blu-Ray is 25GB per layer. Both can come in dual layer formats and so HD DVD can have up to 30GB and Blu-Ray 50GB. Both support exactly the same video and audio codecs and also AACS DRM although Blu-Ray has an additional layer of encryption which HD DVD lacks although it hasn't be used yet. Blu-Ray is also region encoded whereas HD DVD isn't so you can buy your discs from anywhere in the world if you buy them on HD DVD but you can only buy them within your own region if you buy Blu-Ray.

Picture quality wise there is nothing in it. In all the tests so far, HD DVD has been equal or better where the film is available on both formats. Truth is, a 1080p HD signal can easily fit into 30GB using VC-1. A number of Blu-Ray discs are still using MPEG2 which is less efficient and is why they don't look as good as the HD DVD VC-1 equivalent.

In the end, the technical differences are small enough not to make the slightest difference. Physically, the discs are the same dimensions and a combi drive is practical so there is no reason to believe that a cheap multiformat player won't exist. Samsung is supposed to be releasing their DVD/HD DVD/Blu-Ray combi player in europe for 400 shortly and it will support all formats fully.

Personally, I bought an HD DVD drive for my Xbox 360 so I would have some HD material for my HD TV and HD projector. For the money I would have been daft not to and there were enough films on the format to get me started. Even today, there is little to choose between HD DVD and Blu-Ray when it comes to choice of films. Compared with DVD, HD DVD is definitely clearer and has richer colours and deeper blacks. I have an upscaling HDMI DVD player which helps make DVD look very good, but HD DVD is definitely better. When the combi player becomes available I will buy one and use that instead of my Xbox 360 and also have the option of Blu-Ray.

Re:Difference?

[Night Goat]

Personally, I bought an HD DVD drive for my Xbox 360 so I would have some HD material for my HD TV and HD projector.

You should definitely look into getting an antenna hooked up to pull down some over-the-air HD programming. I thought I'd need some mega-huge antenna to get a signal because I live in a rural area, but I was able to use a powered rabbit ear antenna and I can get the five or six stations that broadcast near me. It looks really good, too. Saturday baseball on Fox is a highlight of the week for me now, because of the increased clarity and the wide screen view. You can see a lot more of the action. You might already know about OTA reception, but I'm surprised how many of my friends bought really nice HDTVs and are just using analog cable or analog broadcast TV.

Re:Difference?

[masdog]

Um...in case you haven't been to a consumer electronics store in the last six months, there are more 3rd party Blu-Ray players than there are HD-DVD players total. Unlike Betamax, this isn't a Sony-only product.

Re:Difference?.....

[Fallen Kell]

If I was a mod I would mark flamebait. BluRay has more studio's releasing video to it then HD-DVD at this point (only 1... yes, one (1), uno, ichi, une, unus, men, ein... studio is not releasing BluRay films). Everyone else has committed to the format. However there are 4 major studio's that have not committed to releasing video's to HD-DVD.

So take your analogy and reverse it and swap Microsoft for Sony, because it is HD-DVD that has less studio's releasing for it, not Sony.

Re:

[harrkev]

We had the same sort of thing when DVD-R and DVD+R we duking it out. Now, we just buy a $35 burner that can handle both and use the cheapest media that we can find. Life goes on.

Re:

[omeomi]

We had the same sort of thing when DVD-R and DVD+R we duking it out.

The difference is that nobody has any idea what the difference is between DVD-R and DVD+R. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD, however allow for differing amounts of data storage.

Re:Difference?

[Stormwatch]

The difference is that nobody has any idea what the difference is between DVD-R and DVD+R.

The difference is very clear, when you think about it. See, one is negative, the other is positive. So you use DVD-R to store emo songs, drama movies, professional images, and war-themed 3D shooters; and use DVD+R to store pop-rock songs, comedies, funny cat pics, and 2D platformers.

Who cares

[Knara]

Until there's an affordable HDDVD/BluRay hybrid player, I couldn't care less what format has what movies (or what kind of movies, for that matter).

Re:

[masdog]

I don't know about that. It seems like Blu-Ray is gaining the advantage right now. According to the wikipedia article, Blockbuster has decided to offer blu-ray in most of its stores. Target is giving Blu-ray prominence over HD-DVD. Three of the five major movie studios release on Blu-ray exclusively, with a fourth that releases on both. I think the format war has been settled.

The bigger war is still coming - Blu-ray vs. DVD. Most people won't need, or want, Blu-Ray for a couple of years, especially

Am I the only one who just doesn't care about HD?

[bigtangringo]

I really don't care for the HD craze, I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

I want storage, not HD.

[khasim]

I don't care a bit about the video capabilities.

I just want the gigabytes of storage. Inexpensive burners + inexpensive disks and I'll be happier.

Mod Parent Insightful

[Zantetsuken]

Mod the parent insightful - even if it totally fails as a video format or for games, it would still be useful for things like data backups (if it got cheap enough), maybe even to the point that it would be worth it for the average Joe Sixpack to perform bi-annual backups of his desktop or laptop (or for the bit-torrent people, all of the Battle Star Galactica episodes they've downloaded for example).

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

Nah, even now 50GB is probably not sufficient for a full backup for a lot of people. By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing.

 

Re:

[ucblockhead]

When I first got a digital camera, I could back up all the pictures onto one CD. Eventually, it was two. Then, higher resolution camera, and it was three, then four. About the time it got up to six, I got a DVD burner and could back up to one DVD.

Then, of course, more pictures, a higher resolution camera and I'm now up to six CDs per backup. Probably in a year, I'll get a blu-ray or hd-dvd burner and be back down to one disk.

the rest of us download

[acidrain]

I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

Yeah, the rest of us download our movies.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[garcia]

I really don't care for the HD craze, I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

No, you aren't but the industry definitely wants you to believe that you are. See the most recent commercial w/the dude from the Sopranos talking about his HD-DVD player and how it makes his regular DVDs look even better...

They know that consumers are unlikely to upgrade so soon after their full conversion from VHS.

---

My feeling as to why Sony is now playing with the Porn Industry is b/c Blu-Ray has yet to be crac

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[G-funk]

I didn't either, until I spent some time with HD content. My TV is small by US penis-measuring standards, it's only 32" and it's only 720p, but there's a HUGE difference between SD and HD content in some programming. CSI:Miami looks fantastic, as does Saturday night AFL, I think sport is definitely a place you can expect to see a lot of growth in HD in the near future, and where it really pays off.

Re:

[aslate]

I agree with the quality difference, and when i move out i'll probably get me a HDTV instead of a standard one.

I recently went through the BBC Planet Earth site and downloaded all the HD clips they have. I believe they're only 720p as well (just checked, they are) and so i've been playing them on my 19" PC monitor which does 1440x900. People forget that standard PC displays can often play HD content! The video is just amazing, the details on some of the footage such as the Angel Falls. Any UK resident (or s

All hail

[earnest murderer]

our pixelated vagina overlords!

Re:

[Kesch]

Yes, but now they Hi-def pixelated. I'm still trying to work out what that phrase means.

Why bother

[NaCh0]

Now you can see the blurred out parts in HD.

Licensing killed Betamax

[nurb432]

Or rather the lack of.

If sony had been a bit more receptive to licensing to 3rd parties like JVC did, BetaMax would have survied as it was the better technology at the time.

WHich is why Blu-Ray is winning

[SuperKendall]

Toshiba is the ONLY hardware maker for HD-DVD drives.

On the Blu-Ray side, you have players from Sony and Panasonic and Samsung and others (soon to be Funai players as well, the producer of the dirt-cheap DVD players for WalMart).

Sony learned well the lessons of betamax (also including have the format with more storage, and more studio backing). It's a shame the HD-DVD backers didn't bother to examine history to see where they were headed.

Porn is irrelevant

[DrXym]

Porn is not going to decide HD formats. I don't know why this idiotic meme keeps springing up. Sure it may have had an impact on beta vs VHS where porn-friendly VHS offered an alternative to going to some sleazy porno theatre. But those days have past. Porn is readily and discretely available from thousands of internet sites, satellite, and conventional formats. The impact of some format supporting or not supporting porn is fairly low. Besides, there are Blu Ray porn titles if you really want your razor rash in HD so the whole argument is moot.

Re:

[Kesch]

[Citation needed]

(Links please!)

Re:

[HappyEngineer]

It's not the porn, it's the control. If Sony is willing to effectively censor porn then they've proven they're willing to use their power to censor. Who wants to take a chance on a format controlled by someone who has demonstrated their willingness to censor?

Re:

[LoverOfJoy]

Do you really think the number of people who:
1. are considering an HD player
2. are porn consumers
3. don't use the internet
is a sizeable enough number to determine which HD format will succeed?

Sure, the number of people in category 1 will rise over time but the number of people in group 3 will likely decline just as fast if not faster.

Urban legends

[Anonymous Coward]

The original meme was wrong in the first place. Some people took an article that said that Sony would not press porn blu-ray disks, got confused, and announced that Sony wasn't going to allow porn on blu-ray. This was never the case. They never said they wouldn't license it for other people to press porn on blu-ray.

This was all said at the time, of course, but people were more interested in being clever and announcing blu-ray's demise than actually researching the matter.

Re:

[m0nkyman]

[i]This was all said at the time, of course, but [b]people were more interested in being clever[/b] and announcing blu-ray's demise [b]than actually researching the matter.[/b][/i]
You're new to slashdot or something? That's always true. Even in this post. :P

Re:

[TopSpin]

The original meme was wrong in the first place.

That may be the case. Just FYI; as submitted my story had no reference to the previous /. story. The assertion the Betamax failed due to lack of porn is (possibly well informed) opinion at best, and myth at worst. It's plausible I suppose. I may even believe it. However, I made no such allusions in the story I submitted. The fact that Sony has managed to weasel past Japanese law (by outsourcing Blu-ray porn replication to Taiwan) and set aside the (hypothesized) concerns of their own corporate govern

It's all in the name

[Alioth]

Blu-Ray won't fail because of porn, it'll fail because of its name.

Now what will Joe Sixpack think? He'll think WTF is Blu-Ray? I'll buy HD-DVD. I know what DVD is, and HD-DVD must be better DVD. So Joe Sixpack will buy the HD-DVD system because he knows what a DVD is but hasn't the faintest clue what Blu-Ray is.

Re:It's all in the name

[noamsml]

Advertising, advertising, advertising. Do you think the DVD brand sprang out of nothing?

Re:

[Heftklammerdosierer!]

Or Mr. Sixpack will think HD-DVD is just an incremental upgrade to regular DVD, while Blu-Ray is something new and better.

Re:It's all in the name

[blhack]

Now what will Joe Sixpack think?

He will have the oppurtunity to explain to the rest of the frat that blu-ray is better because it uses a blu laser, instead of a green one like cassette tapes use.

the name blu-ray sounds futuristic...unlike hd-dvd.

Not really

[bjdevil66]

Call me when:

1. Decent, large wide-screen HDTVs (LCDs, Plasmas, etc.) cost about $300-$400.
2. The HD-DVD or Blu-Ray debate is settled so I'm not buying the wrong tech.
3. Shopping for above parts or components is simplified or culled down a bit (I don't have to read a dozen articles to understand every bit of the technology - 720p, 1080i, compatibility issues, etc. - I just want it to work)
4. Hooking it all up is easy enough to where I'm not reading manuals or HOWTOs (i.e. done in less than 15 minutes - why waste

Re:

[megaditto]

Why don't you get an LCD computer monitor and a pair of glasses instead of your HDTV?

Two comments come to mind.

[LWATCDR]

PS3 the console for the lonely man.
and
Do we really want high def porn?

No preferred media for me.

[Chonine]

I am not looking to continue buying movies on plastic discs. Having movies sent through the mail or having to drive to a store should be unnecessary now. There are already a few internet on demand services for movies, and plenty of cable/satellite on demand services. Ownership services ala iTunes is probably around the corner. DRM-free would be ideal, so really whichever gets around to that first wins in my opinion. Not happening any time soon, but really not an issue in the debate. HD, Blueray, and iTunes all have it. With regards to pornography, I expect the industry will continue moving into the online direction. I suspect they will continue to be pioneers in the area actually.

8 years ago I purged floppies from my life, ripping them out of every device I had, and saving all of that data to newer disc. Around 2 years ago I pretty much purged CD/DVD from everything, sans a single portable USB DVD-RW drive I can use for anything. Magnetic and optical medium had its time. Flash drives/cards, solid state disk drives, and networks should be everything. Of course, the transition is slow, but that's why I took a stand. I don't buy software, I install new OS' from the network or an existing partition. The DVDRW drive is a read once and rip solution for music CDs, and periodic DVD backup aside from rsync. Movies I use cable on demand services, DVR, and theaters.

About the only reason why I would care for any next-generation disc medium would be for a viable backup solution. Not many available, nor cost effective at the moment. This is a pretty geeky view of everything, but I think that the general consumer trend will follow it. Most likely, both BlueRay and HD-DVD will slowly replace DVDs, but only when the cost is comparable for both the movies and for combination devices. The *real* next-generation media is when there is no media at all.

Re:No preferred media for me.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Last I heard, the Internet is not there yet. Seriously. I heard an analysis on the Digital Production Buzz that distribution of a top selling movies like Cars or Shrek is not possible with the current backbones that's available, where the amount of data on plastic & aluminum discs of the sales of just ONE movie in the first week of sales exceeded the aggregate backbone capacity several fold for the same period on the Internet. And lots of new movies are released every week.

A better codec will shrink that down, but you aren't going to cut it down by more than half without losing picture quality. I really love how HD movies look, 1080p movies on a 1080p large projected screen is exceedingly nice. I'm not going to like anything that's bitrate starved to save on bandwidth. Disney's Pirates of the Carribean regularly exceeded 20Mbps, and that was with H.264 AVC.

The *real* next-generation media is when there is no media at all.

I think "next" generation kind of falls apart here, it really applies to both HD discs and internet downloads, though I Internet movies to be the final victor in the long run. I expect that there will be DVD, HD disc and internet streaming & downloads (with several formats within that) to coexist for some time.

Blu-ray for blue movies.

[serviscope_minor]

Kind of makes sense if you think about it.

Porn never mattered in this war

[SuperKendall]

For DVD and VHS, porn was a huge deal because it was difficult to obtain discreetly otherwise.

But nowadays any kind of porn you can imagine, and many kinds you would rather not, are all online. Porn media sales are nothing now compared with total video sales. So even though Blu-Ray is getting more and more backing from adult studios, it will not really have any effect.

On a side note though Japan and the US are in the same region with Blu-Ray, so Anime or other titles (such as this adult studio stuff) can all be imported directly. I'm just hoping most anime comes with English subtitles even just for Japanese release...

Same about the PS3.

[beswicks]

Sony removing the vibrators from the PS3 controllers has clearly robbed the world of new and interesting uses and pushed back the development of Teledildonics [wikipedia.org], the bastards.

Oh well maybe these blue blu-rays are comparable with Bluedildonics [wikipedia.org]? At least the PS3 has bluetooth.

(Yes I know that things other than PS3's can play the blu-ray).

Re:

[hmccabe]

I hope the word "teledildonics" gets added to the SCIGEN [mit.edu] database. I know I just added it to my system's dictionary.

BS revisionist history

[FredThompson]

Betamax failed because Sony wouldn't license the tech to other manufacturers at an affordable rate.

The common belief is that porn made the VCR desired in households. The porn producers were smart enough to set a low price point.

Those are 2 very different things.

Re:

[HTH NE1]

It's an extension of "blue" comedy which contains more profanity.

Blue Laws of the Colony of Connecticut

[spun]

I thought it came from the term blue law [wikipedia.org], which is any law designed to enforce a moral standard. I believe that term derives from the original Blue Laws [wikipedia.org] of the Colony of Connecticut.

Re:

[HTH NE1]

Can anyone imagine what it must be like to be sitting at home with:

I actually wouldn't mind having a hybrid DiVX/DVD player. It would be something obscure to hack.

I also wish I had a Laserdisc player, and that I could get my old Videodisc player working (bought-from-eBay Christmas gift from my brother, suspect dead motor).

Right now I have more HD-DVD disks than Blu-Ray, but that'll equalize once I send in my rebate. In future releases, I've only spotted one title I want that's only on one HD format: Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD.

And I have the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive, but no

Re:High-def porn? No thanks.

[desertfool]

Or it will make them realize that the inflated breast, bleach blonde actress isn't better then normal women. It may be a *good* thing for society.

Re:

[HTH NE1]

Apple originally sided with DVD-RAM.

Re:

[Ender77]

Actually, Sony,Microsoft,Nintendo has said that they will not allow AO titles on their systems. If it was distributors they could simply sell it on the companies website.