I've been spending a bit of time looking around the internet at various topics about blu-ray. The whole subject seems to be a bit of an epic flame war so i thought why not bring a little conversation to bit-tech about this illustrious tangible format. So as i recall late last year the masterminds behind HDDVD threw in the towel and blu-ray was crowned champion of HD optical technology. With the ps3 up until recently being the cheapest way to get the blu-ray format into your home and onto your HDTV, it seemed an expensive yet attractive investment. Though much speculation exists about wether or not were just looking at another minidisc experience. 2009 is going to be a year of investment, your investing in things you buy to last you longer. I recently bought a 32" HDTV from Samsung and i spent a bit more to get a series 5 1080p model because i am investing in this tv lasting me a long time. With skepticism lurking underneath blu-ray like the wispers in the street as a known prostitute walks by it's hard to see wether or not this format is going to superseed DVD, but that's the question i'm putting forward to you all: With HD streaming becoming more common do you see blu-ray as a format that will be with us as long as DVD has? Or do you see it as just another beta-max in the sky soon to be knocked of its little sony-made podium? Lets discuss people! Condiment.
I think bluray will help HD start being the norm, but I'm fairly certain that bluray will rapidly get eclipsed by internet streaming as the industry at large is slowly moving more and more towards using networking to get things across.
I disagree, the isps won't let HD streaming become the norm anytime soon, around the world isps are tightening their throttling rules, so HD streaming is out of the window as a mainstream thing until the governments everywhere step in and pay for fibre to home as the isps are not willing to pay for it. Due to the throttling and no investment politics of isps and dvds being bargain bin articles (wtih the margins down the drain accordingly) the movie industry will keep pushing blue ray.
HD streaming has a long way to go before it can match blu-ray in terms of picture quality. on a 32" you might not see it as much, the compression is a big deal. HD streaming doesn't even reach the quality of bittorrent downloads, let alone BDs. i think blu-ray will be with us for a few years yet. i doubt it will ever have the marketshare DVD had at it's peak, blu-ray will always be sharing the market with DVD and streaming, but i don't think you'll see it dying off anytime soon. it's definitely worth getting a blu-ray player if you've got a good TV.
I didn't mean it would happen within a year or so, but definitely within the next 10 years. You can already stream HD content through Netflix without problems.
A short answer is an emphatic yes. Don't listen to the hateful naysayers out there that the majority of seem to spread FUD. It's gotten old. BD isn't going anywhere; it's here to stay. I'll quote recent info supplied by the DEG from CES '09 regarding this very same topic... Double the adoption rate of DVD, so I'd say it's probably not going to become vaperware. Bottom line I always state is....buy it if you want to, don't buy it if you don't want to. Period.
Nonsense - I already stream HD content all the time. It's longsince been legitimized by iTunes and both Youtube and Vimeo (and probably others) allow HD streams. No, it's not low-compression 1080p, but I've got plenty of very high-quality HD content that you can still stream over a decent connection (6-8Mbps 1080p; my 720p BSG is about 3Mbps x264 and looks wonderful). ISPs can try to throttle things all they want, but the ones that succeed the most at that will be the ones dying off as their customers abandon them. Hell, if we're planning to redefine what constitutes a broadband connection in the states (something, I believe, Obama has pledged to do), the ISPs won't have any other choice. In any case, I'm not putting a cent into Blu-ray. Mostly because I don't believe that it has any real life-span to it, though my complete avoidance of all things Sony certainly comes into play as well. EEL - those numbers may be true, but how many PS3 owners (which make up a VERY large portion of all Blu-ray playback devices - probably 75%+) actually use it for something other than just games? If they're seeing 8% market penetration of players, are they seeing 8% or more of media sales going out on Blu-ray discs? Because if not, it's really just a statement of gaming consoles.
Those numbers most likely only include those PS3 owners who use it as a Blu-Ray Disc playback device. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but up to Sept. of last year the PS3 has sold approx. 17 million units worldwide. I'm sure that number is higher after the holiday season that just ended. I'm sure the numbers can be dug up from somewhere. Here's an interesting link which has some interesting data. Could be worth a look. And some more recent data from the DEG as of two days ago.... The units sold that are capable of Blu-Ray playback can be argued over, but the sales figures from the software tells a more accurate story, correct? The minor slip from last year's numbers are obviously due to the economy's condition worldwide.
It's going to be here to stay, unlike my games, when it comes to films, I like to have a physical copy, and I'm sure a lot of people do too. ISPs are also dick heads with their bandwidth.
I'm guessing that Blu-ray and streaming will co-exist for some time. As I write this, from the darkest part of west Cornwall, our 8mb lines are struggling to provide more than a 1mb connection. Even if we could get enough bandwidth to stream a movie, not everyone wants to be tied to a computer. Personally, I prefer to hold a physical copy of a film (in BD) and watch it when I like without having to worry about buffering, bandwidth and download limits.
Of the people I know with PS3s - including myself - two of them use it purely as a Blu-Ray/DVD player, and two use it for a mixture of games and Blu-Ray/DVD playback. No-one I know uses it purely for games. It's a small sample size, I'll grant you, but it's the only one I've got.
The problem is that a lot of people think that DVD's are OK to watch on an HD TV. As far as they're concerned, BluRay is just like DVD, just more expensive - and when you can buy a DVD player for £20 from Tesco and DVDs for a fiver, where's the incentive to upgrade? The real problem is that there isn't such a huge leap in quality from DVD to BluRay as there was from VHS to DVD. I now buy BluRays exclusively where I can, because on my projector the difference between BluRay and DVD is very noticeable - even with a high-end upscaling DVD player.
Bingo. I have tried (and failed) so many times to explain their wrongdoing to a lot of people, many assume that because they have a HDTV that what they are seeing IS HD which, as we know is not the case unless you have something HD connected. However the past year has seen a big drop in Blu-Ray prices and inreased availability, it will catch on eventually. The difference between minidisc to CD and DVD to blu-ray is that fact that blu-ray has far more space whilst minidisc was just smaller in diameter with no increased memory. I say the former is a more important factor. The only way blu-ray is going to be phased out is when something superior comes out - it's gonna be a while yet I believe. Even though the Internet is becoming far more popular in terms of streaming (and HD streaming), there is still a worldwide problem of bandwidth (and the costs of it) so blu-ray is the way to go.
That's the reason why I've kept my parents from getting an HDTV, because I know that whenever they'll figure out there's a difference in picture quality, they'll come and ask me why, and won't understand why, and will be pissed off.
Yes sure, for you it might appear as nonsense, but have a look at this, that's what unlimited broadband means for many.
Yes. It's just going to take time. They said VHS would never sell and it did and the same was said for DVD. HD-DVD died because it lost market support.
Corrected. HD DVD died before market support was big for either format. It died because the studios defected to BluRay (for whatever reason) before it could get a real foothold, despite being the only non-proprietary format and the only format which was endorsed by the DVD Forum.
I think it will be here for awhile yet. Hopefully since I just bought one I would love to have streaming video but the infrastructure here jsut sucks. They voted on whether or not tax money should be used for putting in more fibre, but it got shot down So I think after blu ray will come the solid state formats. And then streaming, after the system has been brought up to date.
