Hardware Do we need Blu-ray drives?

for me personally the only reason i have dvd drives are for installing windows (and perhaps for networking drivers also, though usually windows picks them up). As for blu-ray, i'd have pretty much no use for it. All my media is on a nas, so i wouldnt use it for watching movies.

In fact, when USB3 gets to be common place to the point where USB3 memory sticks get affordable, il probably end up putting a bootable copy of windows on a memory stick, then i'd have no use for DVD drives either!

 

While I will probably get a call from the MPAA this week for saying so, I have a Blu-Ray drive and own several Blu-Ray movie discs. The PowerDVD software is awful and playback is terrible even on a well-equipped media centre, plus its integration with WMC is naff at best.

As such, it makes my life easier to keep my Blu-ray drive on my main PC, rip the disc once I've bought it and then dump the resultant file to my home storage NAS box then stream to my media centre from there. I retain all the useful chapter information, subtitles and so on by storing it in MKV format. And playing the file doesn't cause WMC to soil itself.

 

I have an external blu-ray (salvaged from a broken laptop and put in a case), I bought 1 film to test it and never used since except to install Windows on netbooks but thats lessened with the use of USB sticks

I think everyone (average population) though blu-ray would win thanks to the PS3 and that MS's preference to streaming was a silly idea but with fast internet from the likes of Virgin and cheap streaming sevices it far easier to rent a move this way than to buy a disc or rent and dela with posting.

All my PC's have DVD drives as I have a big DVD collection but I don't use that much either as all computers are networked for streaming

Other than burning a DVD for photo DVD's or backup peoples files I don't use my drives much

 

My only exposure to blu-ray was when my (then) flatmate bought a new 40" Sony tv, and a BR player came free. So, we set it all up and stucka BR film in and were impressed. Then we stuck a DVD in, which the player upscaled and found not much difference between that and the BR.
I think on my 22" monitor I'll be just fine with DVDs.
(if you can tell the difference though, feel free to spend loads of money on a home theatre setup, I just don't need to)

 

The point of Blu-Rays is a simple, read-only format for selling HD films on to the masses. That is really its only purpose - take any aspect of that reason out and there are other formats that do it better.

If your the kind of person who understands the benefit of HD over SD, chances are you'd rather watch a film on a TV, not a monitor, so the only reason anyone would need to use a Blu-Ray disk in a PC is storage.

However, USB sticks for personal use and the cloud for everything else just makes better sense, so Blu-Rays are redundant. Where you absolutely have to get a physical copy (the OS is always useful), DVDs are cheaper and no less usable.

 

Dont have any disk media in my current PC.
I do have a USB one in a box "just in case" but thats maybe once in a year.

 

^ This - there are two reasons for owning a BD drive; one, for long-interval backups stored at a remote location (e.g. the office, or a bank safety deposit box, away from the risk of fire and theft), and two, for ripping BluRay movies for a home movie server. That way you only need one physical drive, you have the long-lasting original disc, and you have the on-demand convenience of streaming media within your own home. The next home server I build will have a BluRay writer for exactly these reasons - and cheers to whoever mentioned M-discs; now I know exactly what discs those six-monthly interval backups will be on!

My current home server has a DVD drive, and flash-card reader with integrated floppy drive. For the minimal cost involved, I find it better to be ready for anything than be inconvenienced later down the line...

 

better to have something and not use it, than need it and not have it

 

Well I recently bought a BluRay 3D player, a LG md660 and it playes everyhing, streams everyting from network or plays anything from attached usb sticks or HD.

it costs only 99 euro. And I did not buy it for playing br discs either...


Why should I watch movies on a PC? Where I need to buy expensive software and upgrade hardware to play BR discs, and buy expensive 3D bluray drive for PC

You can buy a 32GB USB stick for less then 20 euro or 64GB for 40 euro to backup important data. You can even upload your data to a box nowadays. Games you can download also.

I can't put a BR disc into my smart phone or tablet....

Any type of optical disc is not used today at all by me. The last time I burned a DVD was 6 years ago.
Never had a br drive. did not find any use for it. Also the wait time to write a disc is 2000 times longer then writing to external HD (sata or USB) or Stick of any kind. It probably is saver on that media then on Optical discs anyway.

Lets face it. DVD and BR discs are going to be obsolete in less then a decade. Everybody will stream from the net...

 

You cannot make detail that isn't there, there. /end of argument.

I have a budget/mid range home theatre setup of seperates and I can hear the difference between hd and SD let alone see it. The seeing is incredibly obvious. You sir may unfortunately need glasses, a hearing test or to rethink how far away you are from the tv. Also, with a proper av receiver and some decent speakers, plus satellites and sub... the difference is there by the truckload.

One of the things that made a big difference to my hearing with music especially was bi-wiring the speakers. There is a lot of control.

Hd streaming is dogs dinner also... And i don't like waiting for a download.

 

I only own a slim USB external DVD drive for the rare games I buy on DVD and updating the FW on my Crucial SSD (because they can't be arsed to release a FW for use with USB drives)

 

Once again I am amazed at the amount of luddites on the site

 

Frankly blu ray playback support needs to be added in to windows media player. It was annoying that WMP took a few years to add DVD play back support back in the day and just as annoying now that Blu Ray support isn't standard.

For me I have a Samsung BR player in my computer, in part to replace the noisy DVD drive I had previously. This sucker is maybe 1/3rd the volume and is about 50% faster and is SATA over IDE as well.

Frankly I think I have watched about 30 minutes of BR on my computer to test it out and see how it looks (pretty good, but not as good as watching it on my 42" LCD). Mostly I just use it for 720p rips of BR movies I own to load up on my file server for my media players and ipad for convenience sake...in which case it works flawlessly.

 

On the note of SD or microSD distributed video content...it would be interesting, but to darned expensive. A BR disk pressing probably costs less than 50 cents to manufacture in bulk quantities. At best a 2GB SD card is going to cost in the range of $1 to manufacture and at best you could have anywhere from okay to very good quality H.264 SD video content on a 2GB card. If you want DVD quality low loss compression you'd need to spring for a 4-8GB SD card, which would be $2-4 to manufacture. For Blu Ray full 1080p quality H.264 feature length movie, you are looking at least a 5-8GB movie for acceptable quality for most people, which means minimum 8GB card and ~$4 to manufacture, or 8x the price of a blu ray disk (or more).

If you want lower loss video compression at 1080p you are going to need more like a 16-32GB SD card, which is probably going to be $8-20 to manufacture, or 16-40x more expensive than a Blu Ray disk.

Even at higher loss video compressions, if you are going to distribute it on physical media, it is going to take costs to come down more on NAND flash to move away from optical disks (and frankly most people aren't going to mind good quality H.264 video, heck I rip most of my stuff at good quality settings with 720p and upconvert for my TV/PC to 1080p and it looks very nice, if not quite BR 1080p quality levels...but I have to toggle between them to really notice a difference). You would still have to compromise on video quality at least a small amount and some people WILL care.

I do think it is a good option once micro SD card slots are de facto standard in basically all tablets and phones (thanks for that Apple, you douches). You could then look at DRM for the micro SD cards that the movie is coming on and then people can't complain as much about not being able to take their movies with them. Sure having a bunch of micro SD cards isn't super convenient, but it isn't that bad. A dozen micro SD cards and their cases probably wouldn't even take up a medium sized pocket in a tablet case/bag or your pocket for that matter. Once memory prices get low enough, a $1-3 premium isn't that much to add to the cost of a $10-20 movie.

 

No, we don't (most definitely) need BR. Me personally, I did burned maybe 3 or 4 CD/DVDs over past decade. Times changed. Send optical media where it belong - into dustbin of history. It is about time.

 

So how would you propose to distribute high definition movies?
To rule out optical media would be madness. Yeah, you may not use it for your PC, but for other applications, it works and its reasonably cheap.

 

Short answer no, long answer "its nice to have".

I got a laptop and a netbook both lacking any form of disk based media reading format. There is occasions where I miss a dvd drive but only for reading disks like older games I haven't repurchased on steam and copying music. Now apps like deezer have rendered my music CD's obsolete since I can download to my phone, the only problem, Once my subscription is up its lost. Save with lovefilm and netflix. As for blu ray, again BR-ROM is all that is necessary. Being able to rip films and go on my merry way. I'm never gonna write to disk, either the files are too small ie. usb stick or too big, portable HDD. Sitting waiting on a disk to burn is slow and no where near as easy as a USB stick or portable HDD. This leaves blu ray in limbo, not fast enough, relatively expensive and not as reliable. I've been burned with so many DVD's failing I won't risk burning to disk. Dropbox has largely made USB useless but I still carry a USB stick for on the go quick saves since uploading to dropbox can be slow with so many clicks. Everything will go digital download, or on demand monthly subscription. I prefer the former for games, movies and music where I occasionally go back to and want to watch say on my phone. Internet streaming is still a no go there relatively. Orange where kind enough to offer 2 swapables with my contract and deezer is an awesome idea (app sucks mind). On demand music is brilliant since its relatively low bandwidth. Then arises the problem of cost, £5 a month for orange customers (if not in your contract). If your into music and buy new albums on a weekly basis, it pays for itself, For me, if it wasn't included I wouldn't use it.

It comes down to two pints, Owning media or having the right to access what you want where you want. Personally I prefer owning and downloads (itunes, amazon) allow me to do this at great prices that content on disk cannot provide. Stream works if your content heavy and lack storage. I don't think its one or the other, its both. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but together, they will eventually make all forms of disk irrelevant. Steaming needs a quality boost (LTE, infinity etc will eventually provide that) where as downloads are more cost of storage dependent be it at home or the mystical cloud.

 

My PS3 is in the living room for the misses to use as a blu-ray player.

I have replaced the DVD players in 3 of my machines with Blu-Ray as they die. Why? Because my computer screens are higher native resolution than the TV in my office and with 5.1 connected to my gaming machine its ideal for watching movies. Having said that I have about 15 Blu-Ray movies against about 600 DVD's so it doesn't get that much use. (BTW - VLC coupled with AnyDVD works really nicely) My laptop has a full HD screen so that's good for a couple of films when I am working away.

Why do my DVD players die?. Because, unlike it seems the majority of people here, I use them a lot. I buy cheap DVD's (Ex rental 3 DVD's for £4 or £1 each without the cover) and rip them to my network server for playback anywhere in the house. I have to burn a lot of iso's for work (OS install discs, rescue CD's / DVD's, Boot discs, image discs etc) and the average DVD player lasts between 3 and 6 months. Hence I will keep at least one machine with a DVD and eventually replace the others with Blu-Ray players (not writers, far too expensive both up front and for media)

Also, thinking about it, I still have a lot of legacy games which need the DVD in the drive to play. I know I can get round that but I can't really be bothered.

 

Edit to the above - Before anybody asks, I can't use a USB stick or external drive where I am using DVD's for work as most of my (corporate) clients have locked down machines which won't allow writeable media to be used for security reasons - hence finalised session DVD's only.

 

BD still fails due to high media costs, scarce of good and easy BD authoring, that's all.

Burners are cheap now.