Hardware Do we need Blu-ray drives?

That's cause Cyberlink charge you more for upgrading to 5.1.. 7.1... HD quality. They don't bundle the full set in OEM software as the drive manuf. doesn't want to pay the extra for all the licenses.

The full Cyerblink suite for BD costs $100 or something stupid. It's licenselicenselicenselicenselicenselicenselicense

 

I'm with most of this thread, I don't have an internal DVD drive, let alone a BD drive. I've only got an exterrnal USB dvd drive, for the occasional time when I get physical CD/
DVD/games as gifts.

 

You don't mention the new high capacity blu-ray disks that are coming out and you neglect also to mention the "M disks" that are coming out in both blu-ray and DVD. The M disks will give users the option of archiving large amounts of important data on disk for personal retrieval at any time. The M disks are said to be good for hundreds of years. 100 GB disks are coming out and probably in the future we will see 1TB disks. This coupled with the M Disk improvements make the blu-ray system a viable option.

One could argue that cloud storage may supplant this option, however, with cloud storage you are entirely dependent on a third party storage system. If their system goes down ALL of your data could be lost - and yes I know that they have redundant backup systems.

The primary reason for blu-rays is what you mention, to play blu-ray movies. The picture quality is noticeably better with blu-ray movies and their price is rapidly dropping.

Also you fail to mention that with the advent of 3D movies, DVD lacks the capacity for this format. I also am not a big 3D fan and I question whether it will catch on but blu-ray has the capacity, DVD does not.

DVD's picture and sound are not comparable to blu-ray. I have a blu-ray player on my computer. I paid $100 for the blu-ray burner and $65 for Power DVD Ultra 11. So the investment was not outrageous.

 

I had a Blu Ray drive...... but then I sold it when I found out I had to pay extortionate amounts of money for software to play BDs. How come I can buy a £30 BD player from Tesco that will play everything, but I have to spend more on a PC BD drive and then buy software on top of that!

 

It is fascinating that you mention VLC will now play blu-rays. I would be very interested to see how well it works. Unfortunately with DVDs VLC was very buggy and the ease of use cannot compare with Windows Media Center or Power DVD (I own Power DVD Ultra 11). While VLC is free, I would not consider it for DVD use because it is so buggy and hard to use. I would be very concerned that their blu-ray quality will have the same problems.

 

I have a PS3, it's brilliant for playback of blu-ray films - but only 10% of the films I have are on blu-ray and with DVD upscaling and only a 1080i TV I don't really benefit from the what shoul be extra definition etc....

Back to the PC, games are sold on DVD's and Blu-Ray is not standard in PC builds, when Wrath of The Lich King was released it came on 5CD's (how long had DVD's been sold as standard on PC's by then).

The challenge is that apart from capacity, what does it bring to the PC user, write speeds don't look to be an improvement over DVD speeds (granted you are writing to a higher capacity disk, thats not the point, the perception is that it's slow.

By the time this product has the opportunity to be 'standard' on PC builds, the 'next big thing' will be out, delvelopers simply won't release blu-ray based games if the userbase of the drive is not greater than 80% of it's target market - this should of been a stepping stone to something, instead it's cornered itself into being the standard for films and probably PS4.

Shame really and as for HD-DVD, in terms of benefits and progression, am I mistaken in thinking that this offered more than just 'good for movies'?

 

I personally don't use and have no need for a Blu-ray drive, my HTPC also has no optical drive. SDHC/micro SD/USB Flash would be a more interesting format for distributing media physically.

I can't see myself buying a Blu-ray R/W any time soon and think optical media aren't the future. We just need to get rid of crappy compression and get higher speed internet to say bye-bye to shiny coasters.

 

Again, the pirates are ahead of the industry on this one. You're able to download either the full Blu-ray disc image with AACS removed or a slimmed down copy which has just the main movie and one or two audio tracks (with no further compression applied). The resulting file can be easily played in VLC or MPC-HC with no issues.

And there you go - Blu-ray quality video with neither the clutter of an optical drive nor the bloated playback software that you need to pay to unlock features. If only Hollywood were smart enough to make it as simple as this...

 

While VLC (apparently) now can play BD format discs it _CANNOT_ decrypt the content. And therein lies the rub, since you can count the number of (commercial) unencrypted BD discs on one hand, if that.

As for the necessity of BD or any other optical format I see it mainly for archival purposes. HDD prices per GB are certainly better than BD-RE prices per GB, but I wouldn't trust the contents of HDDs not going bad for more than a couple of years at most. Even with optical formats there's a need to make sure the archived data is still valid. That need would be even greater with magnetically stored information.

Oh, and I for one love to own my music, movies and games on physical media. Sure, streaming and downloading can be more convenient, but I like to be able to actually hold what I've paid money for. Alas, Big Content really loves the idea of us not owning any thing. And yes, I'm aware that I do not actually own e.g. the music, but I can put a disc into my CD player at my own leisure.

 

My main uses for my BR drive is to rip my own collection, archive photos, backup of important documents and the occassional burning of movies that my friends request.

So, i still have uses for my DVD/BR drive.

 

I have looked at putting a BD drive in my PC, but can't be bothered with having to run additonal bloat.

I'll just stick to watching BD movies on my stanalone Panasonic Player and the DVD in my PC will continue to be used for DVD's and CD's via WMC

 

We don't own anything that can play blu-rays in our household.

Why?

Because the only 1080 screen in the building is my U2311H, all of our TVs are still good old fashioned CRTs and will be until they stop working!

 

I think it comes down to either being very useful for those who have media pc's or generally watch a lot of media and like high quality or pretty much useless for those who don't. Really just a usage case thing but no longer essential that's for sure.

 

Steam gets all my money for pc sales last thing that came on a disk that I brought was Starcraft 2 and after install that disk was no longer needed

My DVD drive is now never used got a USB one that I keep just in case but I don't even install windows of a disk far quicker to USB stick it on ( ms website provides files and the way to do it for those interested )

I'd half expect metro to be a digital Only release

 

I'd argue absolutely not. I haven't had an optical drive in my PC for almost three years now. Everything is digital delivery. Sure I have a blu-ray player in my lounge, but backing up blu-rays eats hard drives space faster than I eat Peanut Butter Kit Kat Chunkys. We've abandoned physical media for music, and increasingly for games; only a matter of time before video too, especially with the rise of services like Netflix and Love Film Instant.

All hail our physical media-less future!

 

I found a solution to all my blu-ray woes, I went to Richer-Sounds and purchased a Sony player, works every time.

 

Use Blu-Ray Drive loads, Use ODD for much legacy softwares and games and movies ... need Blu-ray drive... Yes Physical Media is dying out, but it'll be a while before the internet infrastructure is solid enough to stream and store everything in the cloud. Till then, I'll keep my ODD thanks

 

Hd_dvd was smaller capacity wise. It's only benefit at the time was it was cheaper to convert fabs to support it and the industry had been quicker to devise standards for the format, esp, interactive features. Otherwise, blu-ray was better purely because of capacity. There was rumours at the time of features that would be at the limits of hd-dvd's capacity with 7.1 surround dts hd ma and way beyond the 2 hour mark. Can't attest for the truth in that.

 

A blu-ray drive is absolutely necessary if you want to rip your blu-ray discs into a digital format and store them on your local HDD for easy + simple streaming.

I've found that the digital copies that come with some blu-ray discs are useless. They are filled with DRM, expire within one year, and can only be watched in a specific format and/or device. Yet another pathetic attempt to stop piracy that actually encourages it.

 

I haven't installed a DVD drive in my machine in years, let alone a blu-ray drive.

Physical formats are dead.