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schliz writes "Samsung expects Sony's Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high-definition format war in February."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.
PS3 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:PS3 (Score:5, Funny)
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"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10", Andy Griffiths, Samsung UKâ(TM)s director of consumer electronics, told website Pocket-lint.
I wonder why everyone is so keen to take tech advice from a small-town North Carolinian sheriff... [wikipedia.org]
Re:PS3 (Score:5, Funny)
future proof of what though?
Why, future, of course!
The whole project has been carefully and hermetically sealed to ensure that not a drop of future can get in.
Protected from Future? (Score:3, Funny)
future proof of what though?
Why, future, of course!
The whole project has been carefully and hermetically sealed to ensure that not a drop of future can get in.
Aw, but Future [swannysmodels.com] is such great stuff! It makes a nice gloss coat for both before and after you apply decals... you can dip clear parts in it to get a brilliant shine that won't haze from super glue fumes... You can even use it to make small clear windows... It self-levels, you don't need to thin it before airbrushing it, it's dirt-cheap and available at just about any supermarket. Hell, you could even polish your floors with it, if you wanted to...
ehh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The article starts out saying Blu-Ray will be superseded within 5 years and then goes on to talk about OLED technology with absolutely no mention of what might supersede blu-ray?
That's what I get for actually RTFA though; a few paragraphs loosely related with no actual technical information.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Funny)
You RTFA? I try not the even RTFS when it's got "Blu-Ray" in the title...
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Funny)
I don't even RTFC, but I can say with authority that you're wrong and stupid. Probably ugly, too.
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:ehh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not saying you're not right or wrong but it's not just size and speed that matter. You also have to look at production of the media itself. If the media is easier cheaper to produce then it gets a big leg up. Right now I'd imagine that DVDs are cheaper to produce than flash drive. I have nothing to back that up with other than cost, I'm not sure what the comparison of Flash to Blu-Ray is.
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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 poi
Re:ehh.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why shouldn't people do this instead: Blockbusters HQ / iTunes Store / etc -> internet -> Home
Eventually, perhaps, but sneakernet (or tirenet) may be faster for large file sizes depending on distance and speed of connections. For me it would be faster to nip down to the video rental place with a usb stick for anything over 1 GB.
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.
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Pressed DVDs probably cost pennies to make, BluRay is a bit more expensive but in the long run the disks will be as cheap as DVDs. Flash drives cost about $7 per GB. A DVD movie is currently 5-9 GB. Blu Ray is 25-50GB. I think optical media will be around for a while. Though I'm not sure about BluRay, I suspect that for most people DVDs are good enough.
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.
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.
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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 al
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:ehh.. (Score:5, Funny)
"Where all the thoughtful analysis have gone?"
It's (they've?) apparently eloped with the grammar.
Re:ehh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, I had an N64 up until late last year. It was damned fast. With the introduction of the original Playstation, we had
Loading remainder of comment, please wait.....
load times. Yes, we can fit a lot more data onto those 750MB disks than the cartridge tech of the time. Now they're giving away 1GB Flash drives with a box of cereal. You can easily buy 16GB drives now, and that's got 4x the info of a DVD.
It'll be much easier for "Them" to lock down each game with a globally unique serial number when you're burning Flash drives; much, much harder than when you're pressing CD / DVD runs. Microchip will sell you chips (by the reel, of course) that are pre-programmed and have an incrementing sequence in one section.
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.
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Don't say it's only a matter of time until it is cracked. Only poorly designed systems have been cracked the good ones have stood up for decades.
Decades? Really? I suppose you're also going to tell me that you've been writing java for the past thirty years? Have we really had any unbreakable DRM schemes that are that old? I don't think so.
As Steve Jobs said, "To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one us
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20 years ago, we stuck a card into our atari/nintendo/sega to play a game.
Yes, because at the required capacities, solid state media was more cost-efficient than magnetic media of the time. Then, starting in the mid-'90s, growing adoption of CDs and DVDs made optical media the least expensive. It wouldn't surprise me if advances in design and manufacture might swing the market back in solid-state's favor soon.
Consider as an example the current state of the portable games market: Nintendo DS with its posta
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Which was the smarter design choice?
Honestly, there's an argument to be made both ways. While miniaturization is great, for the most part, at a certain point things get to be "too" small, or, putting it another way, too easy to lose. Especially with something like a game system that is used mainly by kids who, let's face it, aren't always the best at keeping track of things.
My Atari-400 still works 25 years later (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The speed of the development of flash drives will make the optical drives obsolete.
Provided that, within 5 years, the cost of that flash memory is competitive (or better than competitive) with optical drives.
Until that happens optical drives will be here to stay.
And, BTW, DVD was supposed to have superseded CD by now.
Re:ehh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ehh.. (Score:4, Interesting)
BluRay movies push 20+ gigs of storage. The cheapest 16 GB flash drives are like $40-$50 aren't they? And that won't even hold the movie.
A blank BluRay disc probably costs around $1 I'd guess, and they can go multi-layered.
It will be years and years before flash storage drives will be cheaper than an optical disc, but the nice thing is that discs scratch were as flash drives hold up quite well (even through washing machines).
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:4, Interesting)
A year ago, 8G flash drives had just slipped under $100. Today, 32G flash drives have slipped under $100. Needless to say, progress probably won't slow down any time soon, and that starts making flash drives look very attractive...
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Single-layer (25GB) Non-rewriteable Blu-Ray discs are $8-$10/each. [pricewatch.com]
Single-layer (25GB) rewriteable Blu-Ray disks are ~$16-18. [pricewatch.com] (look for BD-RE)
HOWEVER:
A Blu-Ray burner will set you back > $200 [pricewatch.com]
16 GB USB flash drives can be had for ~$40 [microcenter.com]
32 GB USB flash drives are twice the price at ~$80
So yes, *RIGHT NOW*, if you buy a BD burner and a spindle of 10 BD-RE disks, you'll spend less money than you would if you bought an equivalent amount of USB flash storage.
This isn't the fairest comparison, because with the fla
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Stick a flash drive in and watch a movie? You mean like "Ghostbusters?" [slashdot.org]
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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
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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: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.
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Fluff piece (Score:3, Insightful)
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Would that be the same people who said that LaserDisk was the last physical media format for movie distribution?
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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 i
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."
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.
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.
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...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 the
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
Article summary: Guy smoking crack. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he's right, and BluRay will be gone in 5 years, but he's clearly smoking something.
The article says that BluRay is going to be huge for a while, but in the long term Samsung is backing OLED displays.
WTF?
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Yup, send that guy back to 7th grade english class please. Seems to have entirely skipped the part about supporting the premise you start with.
I know we don't need articles that need 20 years of education to read but a least a couple years worth would be nice.
Re:Article summary: Guy smoking crack. (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously every movie will be distributed in a dedicated OLED display.
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.
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The poor people who do drugs are poor because of the drugs. I see a lot of them at Farley's here in Springfield (the hippie bar next door to the gay bar). I used to go there a lot when the beer was cheap, I seldom do any more since they raised the price of draft so it's the same as everyone else. As I'm thin, the gays next door sometimes think I'm gay and hit on me and I don't care for that at all.
Here are excerpts from two of my older journals about drug addicts and how they get their money. The second one
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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.
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Dude - Blu-Ray just killed HD-DVD. And in my area Target and Best Buy have both pretty much doubled the shelf space for Blu-Ray movies... And most of the TV's for sale are 1080P format now - and you know the sales guys are pushing Blu-Ray with the HD sets.
Walk into a Best Buy, a Fry's, or a Circuit City and see how many Blu-Ray players are for sale. I'm sorry, its already here to stay.
Clearing his desk as we speak... (Score:5, Insightful)
Great way to, er, halt sales in their tracks.
Re:Clearing his desk as we speak... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Superceded by what? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the new display format (codenamed "Death Ray") will not only play movies with unprecedented levels of detail, it will also actively seek out and destroy older technologies. It is recommended that you put all of your old DVDs, BluRay discs, video casettes, and laserdiscs into a lead-lined safe and sink it at least 500 feet into the ocean prior to installing your new Death Ray player.
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.
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BluRay may be nice for the media center, but until you can play the same discs in every other media player you own, BluRay disc
Re:Superceded by what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, everybody just stop buying now; wait for five years to see the new technology and then pay a premium to be the first.
I just bought an analog, 42 inch flat screen CRT less than five years ago. I have no reason whatever to buy Blu-Ray, as with my analog TV Blu-Ray won't look any different but the disks and players are damned expensive (I need a new DVD player, mine's worn out. $30 at Wal Mart, how much is Blu-Ray again?). I don't see buying a new TV any time soon, so I guess I'm lucky, I'll transition from DVD to whatever superceds blu-ray.
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DVDs were a huge improvement over VHS; Blu-ray is a minor improvement over DVD.
Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
And we all know, because we're moving up the spectrum, the frequency is decreasing. Therefore, products will come out quicker!
Jeeze!
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:5, Insightful)
Blu-Ray is to DVD as LaserDisc was to VHS
A cool toy for those movie buffs.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Uses Chrome to google AmigaHeretic
Surprise! An idiot who was stupid enough to buy into the dead HD-DVD format.
High five retard! You bitter tears are hilarious.
Re:Blu-Ray = LaserDisc (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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
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Bingo. I can get DVDs or Blu-ray for the same price from Blockbuster Online (and Netflix is the same way). I have a PS/3 and a nice big 1080p screen... but at least half the time I'll choose DVD just because I can play it
What the fuck? (Score:4, Funny)
Blu-Ray to be superseded in five year; Samsung is backing OLED!
I fucking dare you to make those two thoughts form a coherent sentence.
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.
New technology (Score:2)
Someone may just make a better disc in 4 years. Here is the thing, it isn't about a better disc, but what that disc offers. BluRay isn't about 25 gig layers, but about 1080p, uncompressed audio, etc.
5 years from now, we'll see the first prototypes of quad HD (2160p) prototypes, but it won't mean anything for probably 10 years after that. The prototypes need to become mass manufactured, become common in the homes, and then people need to manufacture content at that resolution.
Most HD movies, CGI work, dig
Errr.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes sense (Score:2)
The next-gen HD stuff is already in production with that new 150" panasonic that has 4xHD, and 16xHD researchers claim that will be the broadcast standard as early as 2025... so maybe leasing that equipment makes more sense than owning it if a higher-res version will be out potentially before the lease expires. (F&F from google searches)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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A person doesn't need the best materials to listen to music in order to be a music fan. A person interested in the best materials is more of an audiophile. The same goes for movies. If a movie buff is interested in huge TVs, surround sound (cable? OTA is best for HDTV), etc then they are more of an Audio/Visual-phile
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.
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People don't need the best to be fans. Who's the bigger fan, the guy with hardback first editions of every Stephen King book who's never read them or the guy who has every paperback with ha
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.
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Current resolutions won't look as good on a 12' screen as they do on a 60". (Yes, we're a long way from something that size, but it's about the size of my window and a size I could well imagine watching TV/Video on, comfortably, from 8 or 9' away).
It would be like sitting just far back enough in a cinema screen to see the whole screen without turning your head. And your current 1920x1080 resolution will not cut it on a screen that size (Would still look good, but not as good as it could). Not everyone's cup
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I dare say BD is there now given our current viewing technologies.
No, it's not even close. The problem is that there is very little content that comes close to pushing the limits of BD and it is very, likely things are going to stay that way.
The problem is that the cost of properly mastering BD is very high.
The cost to properly master a VHS tape was around $50-100,000 adjusted dollars.
The cost to properly master a DVD disc is around $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 adjusted dollars.
The cost to properly master a Blu-Ray disc is in the $25,000,000 range. Really.
To take advantage of
I can do that! (Score:3, Funny)
OLED screens are on their way out because internet speeds are getting faster and cheaper every year.
Intel will fail at selling quad-core processors because Logitech just introduced an optical 4-buttons mouse with a scroll wheel and a touch pad.
Microsoft Windows Vista will start selling like hot cakes once Windows 7 is out because it's going to rain on launch day.
Wow, this IS fun! Now where's my paycheck?
Silly Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
I've often wondered why Slashdot editors don't RTFA themselves, particularly, why they don't go back to the original source article [pocket-lint.co.uk] when it's readily available on-line. The text (not the headline) of the article makes it clear that first of all, Griffiths isn't saying Blu-Ray ONLY has five years left. He's saying it has AT LEAST five good years left, but less than ten, in his opinion. Secondly, the business about OLEDs makes it clear that the thrust of the timeframe discussion is with respect to a profit stream. That is, there are five good years of profits left in Blu-Ray, but in the future, Samsung sees OLEDs as a long-term source of profits. Which is reasonable. After all, CD players are still around, and Sammy still makes 'em, but they're not a major revenue source at this point. From that perspective, of hardware profits, they're basically dead, although from a software perspective, CDs are still the #1 media delivery mechanism.
Still too much compression (Score:5, Informative)
We do need more data storage capacity for HTDV, because even with Blu-Ray, there's too much compression. That's the cause of the usual annoying artifact that moving objects are blurred at the edges and stabilize a few frames after they stop moving.
Displays are currently ahead of transmission and storage. Right now, LCD displays are capable of 1080p at frame rates into the 70Hz range, and some game consoles can output imagery approaching that range. But the data rates from most video media can't get up there yet.
"Digital cinema", as seen in theaters, currently comes in 1080x2048 (compared to the 1080x1920 of HTDV), which digital cinema people call "2K", and 2160x4096, or "4K". But their frame rates are low, 24 FPS normally, 48FPS at best. The number to shoot for is slightly above 70; Showscan established in tests years ago that humans can't tell the difference between 70FPS and higher rates, and there really is a noticeable improvement in audience reaction between even 48 FPS and 70 FPS. So we should probably be going for 72FPS.
The future of storage and transmission may be FrameFree [framefree.com] compression. This is a combination of motion detection and morphing for image interpolation. When it works well, the frame rate is effectively limited only by the display and decompression technology. It also allows generating slow motion video from regular video, and is used for that in sports applications.
So there's the market target: 4K, 72FPS display, framefree compression, a 150 inch screen, a Super Bowl stream with enough bandwidth, and a case of beer.
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No, we don't. Dual-layer Blu-Ray has AMPLE storage for 1080.
There is no "Blu-ray". There is single OR dual layer Blu-ray. There is Blu-ray with MPEG-2, OR WMV9, OR H.264.
And lossy video codecs are NOT a fixed target either. They improve over the years, and are better/worse depending on the implementation.
The fact that some movies look less than perfect on Blu-ray only says that the producer of the disc
1080P will be obsolete in 5 years! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would Blu-ray be obsolete? WHY? We dont even have broadcast HD TV in 1080P, and even if we did, it would be compressed to shit. Even on my FIOS TV, verizon is comperssing the signal so much that all fast motion looks absolutely terrible.
Its not High DEF, if you're compressing the pixel detail (high definition) out of the picture.
Blu-ray will be around for a while. The market will not tolerate a replacement in 5 years. I know the big suits would love to have us rebuying our films every 5 years in new formats... but thats just fucking ridiculous. It will force consumers to simply give up and revolt. DVD will then win.
No one is going to tolerate standards that change so fast, that they are no longer standards.
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.
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Only a few, few places will have the necessary network speeds in five years.
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In five years, physical formats won't mean a thing. Media Files will be downloaded if the infrastructure can keep up.
I live in the US, you insensitive clod!
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DVD players have been under $30 for almost 5 years, and you just got one "now"?
Wow. I thought I was cynical.
Re:I only just now bought a DVD player. (Score:5, Funny)
I won't tell you about my 8-track player then, I guess... The Partridge Family collection came with it.