With Toshiba’s announcement that it is to cease manufacture of HD DVD players, the High-Definition format wars are now over. With Blu-Ray left standing, some, such as Rob Beschizza at Wired are now saying that digital downloads will now kill Blu-Ray.
It’s an argument I want to support and many of you reading this will feel is a sound one, but it’s not going to happen anytime shortly. Here’s a few reasons why
Old Habits/ Age Dies Hard
I’m probably in the last generation who will ever remember a world without widespread computer use and internet everywhere. Younger generations (often called the “digital generation”) only know a world where anything can be accessed or downloaded at the click of a mouse button. To paraphrase many a politician, the young people are the future, and the next generation has nearly already abandoned CD’s, and physical media like DVDs and Blu-ray are next. But that doesn’t account for the many others who, as Rob Beschizza points out, already buy DVDs by the millions and will likely buy Blu-Ray now that HD wars are over (and as they did before DVD’s with VHS). Substantial generations have grown up with physical media, and this isn’t about to change tomorrow. Like music downloads though it will start to change, but like music that is going to take at least 5-10 years.
Access (or I want to watch movies on my TV)
I asked my mother the other day why she hadn’t downloaded something (legally of course) after she had purchased the physical media instead. Her response was simply that she didn’t want to watch it on her computer. Although many reading this will never give a second thought to watching video on their computer, there are still people who prefer consuming video on their TV sets. To be fair, HD on a 1080p 40″ TV set provides a better experience that on my 17″ Macbook Pro, although the TV set doesn’t easily come to bed with me.
There are ways of brining digital downloads to TV sets, but none have anywhere near the penetration yet to offer a serious alternative to DVD and Blu-Ray. Apple is now offering HD movie downloads via their Apple TV box, but try and find more than a handful of people who own an Apple TV. Others offer a similar service such as Vudu, and there’s even Microsoft Media Center, and yet none are mainstream. Until such time net or network enabled devices become mainstream, TV and physical media will retain the upper hand.
Broadband limitations
The US internet community cried long and hard when Time Warner announced it was considering capping downloads on its internet plans in January, and yet I’m sure most non-Americans reading about it would have simply said welcome to our reality. The problem going forward is the days of cheap unlimited internet access in the United States may well be coming to an end as more and more download video and use P2P services. The low cost of bandwidth itself was a historical quirk that came about due to the first dot com bubble. That extra remnant capacity is being used now, and the costs of increasing capacity will likely be passed on to consumers. If this means more capped internet plans that immediately puts a constraint on the amount of video that can be downloaded. Outside of the United States this is already the case with capped plans in many countries, restraining potential growth in downloads (simply users will only be able to download so much content.)
Combine this with the need for high speed internet access that isn’t universally available. Digital video will not become dominant where it takes hours, sometimes days to download, when users can simply rent or buy the title on physical media.
Conclusion
As I said in the introduction, I’m all for the supremacy of digital downloads. I own two net enabled TV devices, a Zensonic network DVD player that allows me to stream content from any computer in the house or my NAS drive to my main TV set, and I’ve recently added an Apple TV to my line up. I wouldn’t swap this setup, and yet I’m still in the vast minority. Blu-Ray will likely be the last big/ mainstream physical media technology ever and it will have a strong future. The various factors needed for mainstream digital downloading and viewing will eventually combine to finally kill Blu-Ray (and the domination of all physical media) sometime between 2010 and 2020.
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Hi,
“Did you hear about the red ship and the blue ship that collided? Ans: Both crews were marooned ”
Too many standard, too many battles and confusing.
More jokes and quotes at http://www.xlpert.com/quotes.htm
Very true, Duncan. Just yesterday I was in our local DVD-rental place and it was full of people renting videos for Sunday night. I was doing the very same thing… and yes, it just confirms that P2P is still not killing such places.
Downloads take time, there are bandwidth limits… and on-demand rentals are not mainstream just yet… just as you’re saying.
At least now we know it’s Blue Ray we should buy if we want to jump on HD bandwagon.
@Duncan,
I grew up in what you call the Digital Age, download mp3s even download TV shows and movies, however as I get older (I am 27) with a stable job as a software engineer, I find myself purchasing more and more movies on DVD and now Blu-ray. I feel digital download can only be as good as mere rental replacement.
This past year the DVD industry saw a high $16 billion in sales of DVDs, those people who purchase DVDs, purchase them for the sake of owning a physical mint condition, I sure as hell won’t spend $15, or even $10 for a digital download of a movie that I technically don’t own hosted on someone else’s server. Features such as on-demand video, or FIOS will only replace my need to drive out to blockbuster to rent a movie.
But, when Spider man 5 comes out in 3 years, I’m sure as hell going out and purchasing a Blu-ray disc for that movie.
I agree - as I wrote earlier today:
http://www.parislemon.com/2008.....u-ray.html
Though I used to think digital distribution had a real chance of sneaking up on HD-DVD and Blu-ray while they were busy fighting it out, I think the studios got together quick enough to end that war so Blu-ray can reign for at least a couple years. Plus HD digital downloads can hardly be called “HD”…
Sure! I can use blu-ray to store my downloads :p
I agree….. For now.
We own an Xbox 360 which can, as you know, stream video via media center, which is great, if you’re technically minded enough to download content on the PC and have the extender configured (ie. I can do it, my mum probably can’t).
I also (poor fool) own the HD DVD add-on. I have purchased two movies so far.
However, I often rent movie direct to my xbox 360 via the marketplace blade. These movies are in full HD, and I have, to date, rented more movies via this service than I have watched on HD DVD. And my mother is comfortable enough with the interface that she now wants one for their home.
I think, with accessable options such as this, and Apple TV (I’ve yet to see v2), downloads will have much more of a place in the future, just as soon as we get some sensible DRM on the content. For example, Microsoft has yet to figure in what to do for homes with multiple consoles (we now have two xbox 360s, a cheap arcade one is in the bedroom purely to act as a media center extender, as it was a cheap way to stream all my media content around the house) on its movies, TV content and even arcade games (which are all tied to the console itself).
Once the DRM and pricing (for purchased content) is sorted, and there are more delivery mechanisms in place, then we’ll be off.
Sweden: 100mbit no limit for $45 (290 sek)
(Blu-Ray / VHS) = (HDDVD / Beta)
http://www.creditomagazine.es
Maybe in the US, it is not that easy to get HD content on your TV (you don’t have many choices). With all IPTV deployments in Europe, it’s different. The only matter is quality. HD at 5/6MBps (current bitrates used for HD VOD here) is not HD. I for sure won’t buy a Blu-Ray player before it is below Eur150. I don’t have a flat screen panel anyway, although I work in an IPTV/HD/mobile encoding company
online movie rentals are flawed as of this moment and will remain as such for another 7-10 years…..plus with the reliability of the net going worse every day i dont see blu-ray being killed by ps3 movie downloads or even the apple tv.
physical media is far more attractive,valuable and reliable…….plus for any1 who likes to have movie libraries blu-ray for now is the way.
Let’s all blame Fred Wilson
Blu-ray reign at least for 10 yrs. Network infrastructure provider(NIP) like AT&T and Bells don’t make a single dime from Apple and M$’s movies downloading business model. So there is no incentive for NIPs to upgrade their infrastructure. In my view, AT&T, Walmart and movie studio are perfect partners. By keeping exist network infrastructure, AT&T can continue to milk their old network for more money; Walmart can keep their profit from physical medium which account in billions and Movie studios can remain in control of their IPs. Everybody win except M$ and Apple.
In a way, the consumer also lose because we will struck with slow and expensive internet for a long long time. I think only government can real do anything about it.
Enjoy the MAZIC!! only on http://moviemazic.com
Excuse me?? Toshiba has made NO such announcement! It may be widely rumored that they will make an announcement in a matter of days or weeks, but as of Monday morning in Japan, Toshiba has NOT announced that they are pulling out.
Please get your facts straight, Duncan. Crunchgear took an NHK article and completely misquoted it as a done deal. Don’t jump the gun if you are stating things as facts.
“I’m sure most non-Americans reading about it would have simply said welcome to our reality”
There are not data caps in the UK nor Scandinavia and I don’t think they have them in most of Europe. I wonder why you think they do. Maybe you were thinking of Kyrgyzstan.
Of course downloads will be bigger than blu ray, the arguments that I’m hearing against this scenario are similar to those levied against mp3s in the Napster era and we know how that played out.
Convenience is everything these days, no one cares that iTunes rentals are not “proper” HD” in the same way that most young people don’t seem to care how badly their lossy mp3s sound.
DVD was the last mass consumer disk format, it will go the way of the floppy. Get some perspective people, try talking to some young people. Physical media is going to die.
I want to see these 3 devices brought together in one box:
- PVR (record shows on hard disk)
- DVD/Blue-ray player/recorder
- Mediastreamer (play movies/music/pictures from network shares and internet)
I don’t understand why there isn’t a single device on the market today that can do all of these things while each one individually has been available for more than 5 years.
And I know some people will say to get a Media Center PC or hack something together with linux. But I want a device that my wife can still operate when I’m dead! A device that you unbox, plug into your TV, ethernet and cable and then: showtime…
Anyway… I might be a little offtopic here… I’ll be heading back to my couch
Reality check:
- Most modern PC’s and laptops are easier to hook up to a television than the average old school VCR, and certainly easier than the average home theater set. Especially with your MacBook (and all other Macs) it’s pure plug&play, as simple as attaching any monitor.
- Broadband limitations are mostly a US and third world problem. For most of Asia and Western Europe, downloading a movies or TV-shows is not a problem.
- Old habits die hard? LP? Gone. Tape? Gone. CD? Going…..
But what will kill Blue-Ray most of all (or at least restrict it to a niche market) is that there is simply no real mainstream demand for it. Just like there is no real mainstream demand for CD-quality music, 256 MP3/AAC is good enough for most people, QED. CD’s are mostly still being sold to a decreasing number of people who can’t/won’t handle downloads, but in video DVD already covers that quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.
Rick
seriously, how many people connect computers to their TV sets? Windows MCE worked on that very basis, and it never took off. That it’s simple to do (at least for us) doesn’t equate to people doing it on mass. I had an MCE box attached to my computer for a couple of years (Arrington still does), mainstream users dont want a computer attached to their TV. Embed internet functionality into a PVR, DVD or TV player itself, different thing.
The main reason that Downloads will not replace hard media is that the Owners of the content have priced it that way. If I buy a Blu-ray disc, I am fairly well guaranteed that I will be able to play it in the future,even if I buy a different brand of player hardware.
If I purchase a movie via Amazon unBox, I can not load it onto my iPod (DRM), if I purchase a movie via iTunes, I would not be able to play it on my XBox360. If I purchase a movie via my XBox360 interface, I can not load it on my appleTV. ( I do not actually own an Xbox360 nor an AppleTv, btw). DRM kills customer flexibility and makes me very nervous. I can easily take a physical disc to someone else’s house and play it there. How do I transport and play my AppleTV movie over at Sam’s house? When electronic media is licensed in a way consistent with physical media, it will have a chance.
Electronic media rentals are licensed with much too restrictive rules to ever compare with the physical discs I can get from NetFlix or my corner store. I would prefer electronic downloads, but refuse to pay the price.
@Nan You’re so right, there isn’t really a big fight between what is more practical, downloading or physical media. I think Mike has the typical doomsayer syndrome, I would rather quess that by 2020 downloads amount to roughly 25% of video rentals and purchases, physical media will never become 100% obsolete and blu-ray will not be the last standard (nor will this be the last standard war)
For those who want to enjoy the Internet from their recliner and in turn cancel their cable TV check out this guy’s set up http://techavid.com ……
I stumbledupon it . What do you think?
The big question is whether people will buy a Blueray player or an Internet appliance. Old habits are slow to change, but it will take tremendous effort to convince consumers to buy substituting technology that does not create massive added-value. That’s my experience from working with analog to digital switch-off for few years. Also if you just had a look around next time at rental store you can see that most of the video rentals are made by the under 30 crowd. Network connections are totally ubiqutous at least here in Europe. If that is not the case at your home country I would seriously consider talking to your representative and make them adjust the local telecoms legislation to force more competition.
$100 video-on-demand HD set-top-boxes are available right about…. now!
No need for XboX 360, PS3 or other expensive boxes. The sub $100 HD VOD box technology is available today, it’s name is DivX Connected.
There are Sigma Designs based solutions that also cost below $100 to provide HD video streaming box, without the need for a computer in the home.
It’s incorrect to say bandwidth isn’t sufficient for HD video streaming. You can get decent 720p quality to your HDTV for less than 5mbit/s using Mpeg4 or H264.
The bandwidth cost of delivering a HD movie over the Internet is much much cheaper and faster then getting a Blu-ray disc. The bandwidth cost of delivering a 4GB 2 hour HD 720p movie stream is less than $0.20. If you want to double the quality, double the bitrate, double the resolution to 1080p Mpeg4 or H264, the bandwidth costs are below $0.40.
Who in their right mind finds it makes more sence to go buy Blu-ray discs? Blank Blu-ray discs cost $20 still, which is more expensive per GB then hard drives. 40GB of storage on a Blu-ray disc for a movie is ridiculous. 4GB is enough for 2-hour 720p and 8GB is more then enough for 2-hour at 1080p. Blu-ray should store 5-10 movies per disc, but studios surely wouldn’t see much of a business model around that compared to charging people ridiculous amounts of money per movie as they are used to. Nobody is going to pay $100-200 for a disc with 5-10 HD movies on it.
Here in the UK all four of the TV access players are pushing on-demand services, and three of them are pushing set-top boxes with harddrives hard.
The only one not doing it - HomeChoice (owned by Tiscali) - is not doing it because their business model is intimately tied to on-demand.
Of note is that two of these (HomeChoice and BT Vision) are based in part on delivery over ADSL, and as far as I know Virgin Media (the only remaining cable company of any size) also offers or plan to offer an IP based solution to reach the areas it hasn’t wired. While this is NOT HD yet, they are offering this on 2Mbps ADSL, and there are now lots of 8Mbps ADSL offerings in the UK and some trials up to 24Mbps. HD won’t be a problem, though streaming straight from a provider without arrangements with the larger ISPs to put hardware in their networks might be.
In particular both Sky and Virgin try as best they can to tie HD to set-top boxes with storage, meaning that as their customers migrate to HD a huge percentage of the market will have the hardware needed to handle downloads.
I think the market here will be conditioned to consider downloads as “normal” very quickly. The one problem I see is that there’s no forced unbundling of the set-top boxes from these services.
However the UK does have a good starting point in the 30+ channel FreeView that’s using unecrypted DVB-T, and so as the download sources become more widespread it becomes increasingly easy to offer boxes that can get the 30+ FreeView channels + on-demand services (this is what BT did with their BT Vision service - they don’t offer any extra channels, just extra on-demand services - for them it’d make little to no sense to not offer hardware manufacturers access to their on-demand services, as that’s where their money is coming from)
As for BluRay - I’m not buying until someone has satisfied me that I’ll always be able to rip them to my media server. The improved picture quality over DVD’s just isn’t compelling enough.
I do think BluRay will have a few years before downloads seriously start eating into it, but then again it’ll take a few years before BluRay gets any kind of serious penetration. Our local DVD/music “super stores” only have 1 tiny shelf of BluRay discs at the moment, compared to 40+ of DVD’s. When I moved to the UK in 2000 DVD penetration was already much further along than BluRay is now, and the perceived benefits of BluRay vs. DVD is much smaller than DVD vs VHS - especially given that most people still don’t have HD TV’s, and that upscaling DVD players have gotten fairly good.
So expect 5-10 years before BluRay is dominating the market for physical storage of movies.
In other words it’s the download market as it’ll be 5-10 years from now you should be looking at as competition, and my bet is that downloads compete much more with BluRay penetration than with DVD sales - I believe the people who care enough about picture quality to buy a new player at this stage are also more likely to be tech savvy enough to consider downloads. So BluRay may never experience the rapid growth that DVD’s did, partly because the value proposition isn’t as good, partly because there is another option.
It’ll be an interesting one to watch. At this point I have about 400 DVD’s and I consider the physical media only backups…
I think that media (like CDs/DVDs/BluRay) will die off. Im not going to support it. Ive never really liked using that media, and Im finding that in my life - not having to care where my content is stored (specifically on physical media) is such a better idea. With online storage and backup at a reasonable price - the only thing holding (most) people back is cost and transfer time. And that may be the tipping point.
Duncan
Why is it harder to connect a computer that you already own to your TV than buying some stupid box from Apple to do the job? As far as having an interface that is easy to use I would think that most people are very familiar with Explorer or Finder and the good ol’ double click to start playback.
As for the download capping, could you please provide a source? I’ve never come across such thing in all of Scandinavia, nor in Taiwan where I’ve resided as well.
Still, I think that it will take at least five years for downloads to take over, that’s just how things work.
Duncan Lives in Australia and there the Data caps are tough but providers in the US already have “invisable’ caps (Comcast) or investigating hard caps (Time Warner).
The Reason Australia Lacks Unlimited Internet Plans
http://forums.mactalk.com.au/s.....hp?t=32769
I’m an Aussie that will return to Australia this year after living 5 years in the US and I think its going to be a challenge to adjust to a capped internet .
Download will replace physical media only when I can push a button on my remote, choose ANY movie I want, and have it on my HD TV (oh, and store it locally to see again whenever I want).
Currently I can’t have that, because, a full DVD movie is a 9 GB download, there’s download limits (at least in this bit of Western Europe I live in), and there’s not a decent VOD service (doesn’t have the image quality I demand, and doesn’t have the movies I want, only blockbuster crap).
So, while I wait anxiously for that day to come, there’s still quite a bit to go.
Ease of connectivity is not the issue when it comes to hooking up a computer to a TV. Sure, it’s as easy as buying a cable and doing it, but the Boomer generation ain’t doing that, and actually, the VAST majority of my generation (Gen X) aren’t either. That’s the majority of the population. Most people want a dedicated product, not a hub, that’s just a fact.
For those of you curious about watching the movie on your TV instead of your laptop, I have written a post about it here
http://technologyforthemasses......n-your-tv/
Streaming will kill tangible media…
For those who say downloading takes time ? THats news to me … ever try sucking down a movie from a newsgroup or better yet just streaming it from one of those cool sites?
Far too many factual or questionable errors in this piece. This seems to be happening often. Is there an editor to this, or can people just post items as will?
Duncan,
Actually I connect my laptop to my TV (using s-video) all the time to watch movies / tv shows I download via bittorrent. As a result, I have canceled my cable premium channels because I get a lot more and newer movies using bittorrent. Any movie I want, I can find it and usually downloads within 3 hours. I have even downloaded movies that are not yet released on DVDs and / or still in the theaters like Atonement, Alien Vs. Predator Requeim, etc. And they are DVD quality, not filmed with camcorder, how they do it I don’t know but I gladly watch them. There is also a bittorent tv show finder, TED. It will automatically find the latest (or any) episode of popular TV shows, etc. Better yet, these tv shows have ZERO commercials. I will never go back to cable premium channels, there is no reason to.
Hello readers, this thread has turned into an interesting topic on digital media.
I blog about many of the issues and reasons WHY a lot of this does not happen. Find it by clicking on my name above.
On this topic, however, see my comments on why optical media will ALWAYS be needed, even in a download world.
http://www.crafted.com.au/blog.....n-the-web/
Also, I recomend my post on what Adobe are up to, it is an interesting one.
The post byline “Adobe’s plan for world domination”.
http://www.crafted.com.au/blog.....omination/
James
@Duncan - thanks for a reasonable piece of common sense journalism that is so lacking in todays media.
@Ali - you should have bought a PS3 if you want to sling media around to different consoles.
We have the same situation as your setup ..except we can download our games to multiple PS3 consoles.
Like iTunes it’s up to 5 machines .. with management capabilities to deactivate and reactivate consoles when you trade/sell/buy new PS3’s in the future.
The PSP downloads also work the same way .. so if you have multiple PSP’s in the house (like us) you only pay once for the game but you get to use it on multiple machines.
The Playstation is nicely thought out in regards to sharing your content.
Agreed Duncan,
Though digital downloads do have massive appeal, there is still something about being able to hold the the media (your purchase) in your hand.
Early last year I spent a couple months waiting for my “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” DVD to arrive in Aus from Amazon, when I could have downloaded the episodes from Amazon and watched them fairly instantaneously instead.
What stopped me was wanting to have the unprofessionally produced media in my hand, rather than relying on my computer for viewing, or for that matter having to rely on my less-than-perfect knowledge to transfer those digital files to DVD, for flawless watching on the TV.
“To be fair, HD on a 1080p 40″ TV set provides a better experience that on my 17″ Macbook Pro, although the TV set doesn’t easily come to bed with me.”
I have come to realize that the angle of vision on my 17″ MBP is wider (bigger) than my 43″ Plasma TV….
But with my Plasma TV comes:
- more comfort
- 5.1 channel sound.
Downloads will kill BlueRay, but network providers will go back to pay-per-gigabyte.
Not according to Toshiba:
“There have been many reports in the media over the weekend, but Toshiba has not made a decision on the future of the HD DVD and we are currently assessing the market and reviewing future strategy,” company spokeswoman Junko Furuta said.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c.....0ed09c2ca4
I live in Canada and I have a 20 Gb per month download limit. As of now, I regularly use 10 Gb per month for game demos and other computer related stuff. It seems ridiculous to me to even think I could fit enough movie downloads into that kind of package without going over my download limit. And then I would have to pay 7,99 CDN for every Gb over 20… Makes movie download much less attractive all of a sudden. Couple that with the fact that when I buy a movie, I can lend if to family members…
Also, comparing music download to movie download seems like a very poor comparison. With a 5 Gb limit, how many songs can I download? With the same 5 Gb, how many HD movies can I download? I sure don’t get the same entertainment value in both cases…
Its going to take a long time for download content will compete with a full 1080p lossyless sound of blu-ray disk. Physical HD disk provide better picture quality than downloading or streaming HD content. It will be a long long rough road for downloads to equal the quality of Blu-ray disk. NOBODY CAN ARGUE THAT…. ALLOW ME TO RANT NOW…
THE NEXT HD MEDIA WAR WILL BE ALL ABOUT QUALITY NOT SUB-PAR CONTROLLED DOWNLOADS. DO YOU THINK DOWNLOADING COMPANIES ARE GOING TO ALLOW YOU TO BURN OR COPY THAT MOVIE FILE GOOD LUCK, NOT TO MENTION THE SPACE HD MOVIES USE WILL EAT UP A HARD DRIVE SPACE QUICKLY. ITS CRAZY IF YOU EVER THINK I WOULD GIVE UP MY PHYSICAL MEDIA ITS THE ONLY THING THAT I CAN PHYSICALLY OWN/STORE/COPY. What is the point of HD downloads if the picture quality of that media is sub-par 720p, Another note once a movie is in a download form as a user you loose the freedom of what you can do with that file. You think these companies will allow you to copy or burn them to a disk hell no, even if you could it would still be sub-par to Physical media blu-ray disk.
@Duncan,
“To be fair, HD on a 1080p 40″ TV set provides a better experience that on my 17″ Macbook Pro, although the TV set doesn’t easily come to bed with me.”
I see what you did there
What, you mean you’ve never hauled your 40″ hdtv into your bedroom just becuase you can? what would that make me, if I had done that? Not that I have, mind you, I’m just saying…
blu-ray may be the next standard for movies, but I could honestly care less.
I don’t watch enough movies to warrant purchasing a player, and I wouldn’t for it’s current price.
I’m perfectly able to stomach a Screener until I can get my hands on a high quality digital copy. I’m a fi\ully informed user, and I download most the content I watch (majority of it being TV I don’t get to watch when it’s broadcast if I’m busy). And I’m sure the current young generation can stomach downloads. Unfortunately, the level of penetration there is still pretty weak. At 21, I can torrent perfectly fine, and fine anything mainstream quite easily, and download in a couple hours, unfortunately, ask my friends about it and while the majority might know what a torrent is, they probably don’t know the routes around to get everything they want. My social circle drops into high school at the youngest, and the young’uns probably are still happy with physical media for at least another generation.
No, my money is bet that blu-ray penetrates into the data industry as a whole, where people need to store their super high quality pictures, and I know I would love to burn 25 GB at a time for my constant need of memory.
Datawise, there’s still a need to backup large quantities of data and the like. Next, the gaming industry and the like are still large businesses ever hungry for room on their discs, and DVD will eventually phased out (likely they’ll find a new home as installation discs or the like).
Apart from the much discussed bandwidth issues about HD downloads, portability is the main problem. People want to be able to share their dvd collection, and while many people can easy transfer songs between iPods (actually, iTunes makes it a bit hard), watching purchased movies will still, for the most part, be a thing people do at the confort of their own homes. Right now, the penetration of Blu-ray players vastly outnumbers that of HD download set-ups, so at any rate, this war was won by Blu-ray (things look iffy next format standard though). The number of dedicated players out there make it much easier to bring over a blu-ray to a friends and watch it on their set-up (using PS3 perhaps).
A possible stab at this might be the growing popularity of sd cards and the like. It’s a bit more feasible to think of transferring the movie to a sd card or usb stick, and just plugging it into a TV for viewing pleasure.
As far as I know, however, this is in no way supported by the TVs or the HD players, but is always something to ponder about.
I will agree that blu-ray will not be quite as easily adopted as the DVD. There are more options out there, and the venturesome young teen will probably be able to illegally pirate the movie while the majority of us are still debating about which content to spring for.
One thing you’re failing to see are current DVDs offering. BR offers an HD improvement to a media that for non-sophisticated users is still perfectly fine. If you don’t own a digital TV of 50 inches or more with 1080p capabilities, why do you need a BR player? You will be perfectly fine with a 480p player or if you want some better image, buy an upconverting DVD player for 50 bucks and enjoy your old DVDs at 720p or 1080i resolution that will look about the same as a BR on a small TV
Buying a BR player to watch it on a non-1080p TV smaller than 50 inches is a waste of money. Sony will tell you I’m wrong, but read around and you will see. Or do a test yourself and be convinced
Unless manufacturers decide to phase-out the current DVD format and quickly push BR, it will be very slow to implement, and digital downloads will beat them in the process (5-10 years)
2 words: data archiving. I haven’t seen a music CD in years, or a movie DVD in months, but I constantly use DVDs for archiving. When Blue Ray burners get cheap enough, I’ll have one even though I have no intention of ever watching Blue Ray movies. Discs are more portable than buying a new hard drive, and way cheaper than buying (yet) another flash drive.
This important use of optical media is almost entirely overlooked.
Mr. Riley,
You need to acquaint yourself and understand “DWDM:” Dense Wave Digital Multiplexing. This is why Verizon is deploying fibre to the home - They understand DWDM and because they know how to use it and what it can do, they will be able to very easily upgrade their network with DWDM. This means they will be able to offer 1080p downloads to the customers long before 2010 whilst other Telco’s and Cable Companies can only dreaming about this capability.
Verizon is the ONLY major Telco to understand why it was so important to bite the financial bullet and run fibre directly to the home. Virtually all the others are running fibre to a neighborhood switch, but the final connection from this switch is a really slow copper wire connection to a customer’s home. What this means in a practical sense is that with DWDM and fibre to your home, Verizon will be able to send thousands of TV channels and multiple 1080p movies to your home whilst their competitors will be stuck trying to compete with Verizon using old, obsolete, outdated, really slow copper wire connectivity to their customer’s homes.
And in case you didn’t know, Verizon’s is the largest local telephone company in the US, and they now have, after their acquisition of GTE, almost as many customers as AT&T had before the DOJ broke up AT&T into seven different local telephone companies.
So why is DWDM such a great technology? Rather than bore you here, go to http://www.wikipedia.org and first type in “OC-1” to understand how fibre networks function, then type in “DWDM” and your jaw will drop. The short version: Before DWDM, only one signal could be sent down a single strand within a fibre optic cable. Now, with DWDM, hundreds of signals can be sent down just ONE strand.
Bottom line: If you have fibre connected directly to your home and your carrier is deploying DWDM (like Verizon is), Blue Ray downloads and Blue Ray VOD will be here in less than two years.
Mr. Riley, please do a bit more research and fact checking before you try and scare your readers with such inaccurate information as you have written in this article I am responding to. I am disappointed in your lack of due diligence in researching your facts before you put finger to keyboard.
Respectfully,
Vinyl Rules!
[A former SONET SME (Synchronous Optical Network Subject Matter Expert) for both GTE and Sprint]
Blu Ray may have won, but i doubt the majority of people care about buying blu ray movies for the hd quality, almost everyone i know do not care. most people are upscaling dvd as they have a huge collection and most of them will not go and buy them again on blu ray. I myself upscale DVD and download HD movies off the net then stream them through my xbox 360 to my hdtv.
The experts dont have a clue. I do not want to download movies. I want to be able to buy and have the DVD in my library.
How can you compare people wanting to buy an MP3 vs. a full movie? MP3’s are popular because people want 1 or 2 good songs and not 13 crappy ones (CDs). MP3’s are listened to on the go (bus, gym, etc). Movies I want to watch and home and I dont want to download DRM’d movies. Experts=Idiots.