It is acceptable to post the entire article from ZDNet without excerpting?
If not, please correct for me.
Thanks.
Ping!
Another question.
Why is ZDNet and Robin Harris so in the tank for Sony Blu-Ray?
Not yet, but its close. As long as BD discs sell for 30 dollars while sitting next to it is the same movie for 15 dollars on DVD, BD will have a very tough sell.
How prevalent are blue ray discs selling now that HD DVD bowed out of the way? How many computers are shipping with BR players? From my understanding, they aren’t selling well at all. Apple won’t put blue ray in their computers and Steve Jobs publicly ridiculed Sony/BR for it’s excessive fees stating:
“Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.”
“Phil Schiller chimed in with ‘We have the best HD movie and TV options in iTunes.’”
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/10/14/steve-jobs-calls-blu-ray-a-bag-of-hurt/
I recently bought a divx compatible upconvert toshiba dvd player for $65. It’s awesome. Why would I pay premium prices for a slight upgrade in resolution on disks I already own and rarely play anyway?
Bill Gates said that B-Ray would be the last physical media standard. Perhaps he was more right than he realized.
May be of interest.
I have a Blu-Ray player. It plays excellent HD video. However, the difference in video quality is not worth the double pricing of the Blu-Ray content discs that are available. DVDs that sell for $12 are $30 for Blu-Ray for the same entertainment content. Also Blu-Ray movies are not necessarily released at the same time as their DVD versions.
The other reason that Blu-Ray is going to die is that the cost of solid state Flash memory technology is nosediving. 32GB Flash drives are available for under $60 and as the volume increases and technology develops, they will soon be available for under $10. Content could be provided on Flash drives for the same cost as burning a Blu-Ray disk... and soon even less.
not necessarily dead... hinges on the market penetration of large sets though (50” & up). I have one of the best upscaling players available at any cost, and there is still a significant difference on larger displays vs bd. with 50” 1080p panels breaking the $1k barrier this Christmas, it may still have life yet. I am not a fan of HD downloads yet... the picture quality is still very marginal (worse than a good upscale), which makes sense, as the hd on-demand bit-rates are usually less than that of a good dvd. there is only so much you can do with data by interpolation :)
I told Santa I wanted a new Sony Playstation so I could play Blue-Ray movies as well as play the games.
Will HD-DVD make a comeback or is it history?
>Open for discussion. Is Blu-Ray dead already?
If it is, then it’s good news.
I didn’t like Blu-ray from the beginning; and I didn’t like HD-DVD either, simply because of their ridiculously draconian DRM schemes, but these licensing terms are REALLY stupid.
No. This guy is nuts.
It will take over DVD sales in a few years. It will be the primary medium on which movies are distributed on.
I have a PlayStation 3 (integrated Blu Ray player and Game Console) and a high quality Sony upscaling DVD player too. (Both HDMI connected)
On a 40” or better HDTV there is NO comparison. Blu Ray wins hands down on video quality, audio quality and copious additional content. It’s the author that is smoking crack.
Price is an issue, but Blu Ray disk discounts are frequent and becoming more so.
I have a wonderful up conversion DVD home theater from Panasonic. An entire system with excellent speakers cost $325. If there’s a difference in the picture of the upconversion and Blue ray I’d be surprised. I watched the 50th Anniversary remastered “The Searchers” and thought I was riding with the Rangers in Monument Valley.
“The Blu-ray Disc Association hoped for a massive cash bonanza as millions of consumers discovered that standard DVDs looked awful on HDTV”
This guy is nuts, in fact I even question whether he really knows anything about DVD, HDTV, home theater, etc. Regular DVD has always looked very good on HDTVs (this is assuming a movie with a good transfer to DVD to begin with). I bought my first HDTV in 1999, a 56” Toshiba, along with a Toshiba progressive scan DVD player (very expensive back in ‘99), and was knocked out by the picture quality on such a big screen.
Blu-Ray will eventually become the standard as prices fall for players and movies.
Downloading movies would be great but I don’t have the space to save a bunch of movies on my hard drive. I could probably keep 10 movies on there without cramping my other computer uses. I don’t want to download a movie, keep it on my hard drive for 6 months and dump it to make room for more.
What is needed is a way to “legally” record the downloaded movie to a (singular) cheap disk for long term storage.
I’m hangin’ onto my Beta and my 8-track. You guys are gonna come around.
One of its killers - OPPO DV-980H