Blu-ray is Booming

[Vince Paske]

http://www.tvpredictions.com/blu071408.htm

 

This is a great article about how Wall Street, full of rich people who dive into the hype, have no idea what the masses of people really want - or for that matter, understand how to use.

Yeah, its going to take a few years for Blu-ray to come to matching DVD sales, but it's going to take much longer for the masses of people to have fast enough connections and more importantly, the tech savvy to deal with the devices.

So stop arguing about Global Warming and comment about this instead!

[AJLynn]

He's right, isn't he? I remember the first time we were all told that movies on the "Information Superhighway" (this was shortly after they upgraded the "Information Highway" in the early or mid '90s) was going to kill VHS. Heh. That was several years after "Video On Demand" on these stupid set top cable box addon thingies was supposed to kill VHS. Heh.

 

VHS got killed by better physical media.

 

Why do people still not believe Walter Benjamin? The man was a fracking genius. Objects have aura. Hand made objects have more/different aura than machine made objects but they both beat the crap out of no object.

[Devin Johnston]

It may take a few more years but downloading content will eventually overtake hard media as the primary way people view movies. That's not to say that there won't still be a market for hard media but it won't be nearly as large as it is today. Check out what Microsoft just did.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/14/microsoft-and-netflix-announce-partnership/

[Jeff Mottle]

It make take a few more years but downloading content will eventually overtake hard media as the primary way people view movies. That's not to say that there won't still be a market for hard media but it won't be nearly as large as it is today. Check out what Microsoft just did.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/14/microsoft-and-netflix-announce-partnership/

 

What about the ISPs, most have caps on how much you can download before they start to deactivate accounts. I'm pretty sure that most places do not have the infratructure in place for everyone to start downloading 2GB of movies all day long.

[AJLynn]

No no no, now you're thinking like the "This Samsung is an iPhone killer!" people. You can't change culture with technology. The reverse works, but there's no way to cause large scale adoption of a technology people don't already want.

 

iPod did what it did because people wanted a good portable MP3 player, DVD worked because people already knew they liked CDs and it was easy to say "this does for video what CDs did for audio". Blu-Ray is working because everybody up to and including my grandparents loves HD even when they don't know what it is, and now there's only the one format. Nobody wants to pay for video off the Internet. (Okay, that's not true. 98% of people don't want to pay for video off the Internet.)

 

Even Apple can't get this off the ground.

 

The issue is already decided, for probably another decade.

[Devin Johnston]

What about the ISPs, most have caps on how much you can download before they start to deactivate accounts. I'm pretty sure that most places do not have the infratructure in place for everyone to start downloading 2GB of movies all day long.

 

That's true and probably will hinder the growth of downloads until more bandwidth is made available, at some point that will happen as everything electronic gets faster over time. Also as more devices are made capable of downloading content and the public becomes more comfortable using them people will gravitate towards their use. I will say though that having that shiny disk in your hand is strangely satisfying.

 

No no no, now you're thinking like the "This Samsung is an iPhone killer!" people. You can't change culture with technology. The reverse works, but there's no way to cause large scale adoption of a technology people don't already want.

 

iPod did what it did because people wanted a good portable MP3 player, DVD worked because people already knew they liked CDs and it was easy to say "this does for video what CDs did for audio". Blu-Ray is working because everybody up to and including my grandparents loves HD even when they don't know what it is, and now there's only the one format. Nobody wants to pay for video off the Internet. (Okay, that's not true. 98% of people don't want to pay for video off the Internet.)

 

Even Apple can't get this off the ground.

 

The issue is already decided, for probably another decade.

 

So are you saying that at no point in the future will downloading take over as the primary way people watch video? That just doesn’t seam possible considering services like netflix which already make it so easy and cheap.

[Sawyer]

People like being fascinated with stuff. Cooler neater things thats what people want. Apple does it well but I can't get inspired about the Itv thing. I looked into it and it left me really uninterested. Even if it does the exact same quality as Blu-ray I just want blue-ray because its more interesting.

[Ky Lane]

Personally, i dont think people still hold much value for virtual things. Speaking to some of my non-technology-inclined friends, they find it weird not to get a DVD in hand to play when they want kinda thing. I guess theres still alot of evolution to go before we discount physical interaction?

[shaneis]

That's true and probably will hinder the growth of downloads until more bandwidth is made available, at some point that will happen as everything electronic gets faster over time. Also as more devices are made capable of downloading content and the public becomes more comfortable using them people will gravitate towards their use. I will say though that having that shiny disk in your hand is strangely satisfying.

 

There's more to turbo-charging the Internet than electronics - someone has to invent a carrier medium that out-performs optical fibre (recently made 100x faster) and then swap the old backbones for the new. Even that will only address inter-continental delivery. It is then up to national governments to install line/ cable infrastructure that maintains the level of data delivery. Sure, servers and data exchanges could be up-to-spedd quite soon, but there is a few squillion meters of cabling to lay to tie it all together. It may all go wireless as well but that technology has a long way to go before it matches the wired speeds.

 

So are you saying that at no point in the future will downloading take over as the primary way people watch video? That just doesn’t seam possible considering services like netflix which already make it so easy and cheap.

 

No, he stated "The issue is already decided, for probably another decade." At any rate, there is still the matter of infrastructure, be that public or private. Sure, the telco's can have it all up and running but you still need the consumers to buy all the gadgetry to enable them to comfortably watch video on their TV screens. To this, the consumer market as a whole will need a certain level of technical ability, something that the genX and younger can deal with, but try convincing a baby-boomer that they need to pick up some computer skills so they can watch a movie online.

[Antisthenes]

for some reason i don't see much of a future for optical media. it is too fragile. no matter the size.

[shaneis]

for some reason i don't see much of a future for optical media. it is too fragile. no matter the size.

 

It's nowhere near as fragile as data stored in an electromagnetic state. Sheesh, you can drop a DVD, get it wet, sit it beside a high-powered magnet, set off an EMP and then throw it to your friend across the room...AND it will still work. Try that same acid-test with electronic storage media.

[WAcky]

anyone hear about this?

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/07/pioneer-develops-16-layer-400gb-blu-ray-disc/

 

My whole pc and a little more

[Devin Johnston]

anyone hear about this?

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/07/pioneer-develops-16-layer-400gb-blu-ray-disc/

 

My whole pc and a little more

 

Read the last sentence in the second paragraph.

 

Still I agree there is a lot of infrastructure work needed before "everyone" can download their movies in HD. It's not all up to the hardware though, who knows what new compression algorithms will be developed in the next 5 years. It's coming, whether it's here before blue ray has finished it's run is something no one knows.

[WAcky]

Yeah but i will buy games on disc for as long as i can. I just love owning a physical item you know?

[shaneis]

Read the last sentence in the second paragraph.

 

Still I agree there is a lot of infrastructure work needed before "everyone" can download their movies in HD. It's not all up to the hardware though, who knows what new compression algorithms will be developed in the next 5 years. It's coming, whether it's here before blue ray has finished it's run is something no one knows.

 

Did you visit the link included in that sentence? You're referring to something that one person said that they believe might happen. At any rate, that same person goes on to say...

 

"The thing about Blu-ray discs - and this is the crucial thing - is that not any time soon will you be able to download the amount of content you need for a big triple-A title down a typical 2, 4 meg broadband connection. That's not going to happen now or in the next year."

 

Considering he's talking about AAA game titles, we can safely place that on the same level as HD video content.

[Ky Lane]

He has a tendancy to read what he wants, then read into it what he wants and call it cold hard fact.

[Devin Johnston]

Did you visit the link included in that sentence? You're referring to something that one person said that they believe might happen. At any rate, that same person goes on to say...

 

"The thing about Blu-ray discs - and this is the crucial thing - is that not any time soon will you be able to download the amount of content you need for a big triple-A title down a typical 2, 4 meg broadband connection. That's not going to happen now or in the next year."

 

Please read the entire article, MacDonald said that you won't be able to do that within the next YEAR. He had previously said in the same article ""In five years' time, my belief is that the majority of content won't be delivered on disc. That has many implications for developers and the way we organize our industry." I'm pretty sure that the content you're going to be downloading for these next gen consoles will equal if not surpass the file size of HD video. In any case I’ve already said that I don’t think this will happen for 5-10 years.

 

He has a tendancy to read what he wants, then read into it what he wants and call it cold hard fact.

[shaneis]

Please read the entire article...

 

I did. It's still just one man's opinion on what he thinks might happen in the future, not an edict passed down by an omnipotent being.

 

I won't be entering another semantic debate.

[Ricardo Eloy]

One thing we must remember is that we are simply wondering what is going to happen based on what WE know. It's somewhat like when we watch Wall*E and say "wow! This is high-end stuff". It's is high-end, but has been on production for the past 3 years, so it's actually "old" technology. I think the big guys (Sony, Microsoft, the game and movie studios) have already figured out where this is all going. Not saying it will be 100% downloaded, but I guess we will be seeing a transition from real to virtual in the next years. There will still be room for physical media, of course, as people love to go out, pick up a case and bring it home to watch with the family. But there will also be a lot of people who will simply sit in front of the TV and order a movie or game. Just to take a very common example, see how many people download content (movies and mostly game demos) from XBox's Live. Those are 1+GB downloads, and lots of people do it on a regular basis.

[Vince Paske]

Speaking for myself, I can see downloading for rentals but not for movies I want in my collection. I think holding movies on a hard drive is a tenuous prospect as all hard drives fail eventually. There is the potential for disc rot, but all the cd's from the 80's I've played from time to time still work.

If I can set up a downloading process through my Tivo in which I can select movies to download, much like a netflix que, so the movie I select a day ahead of time is there - and most importantly - in FULL 1080 P, not some sissy 720 p nonsense or compressed like crazy, then I would buy into downloading movies.

Quality matters to me, Best Buy is 10 minutes away - I can grab a hard copy faster than a download...but, to reiterate, for movies to rent, or to check out prior to buying, a convenient download would be ok.

[AJLynn]

Sony's probably got a vague concept but as a general rule Microsoft never understands where anything is going. Since Bill Gates' prediction that nobody would ever want more than 640k of RAM they have been wrong every time they tried to predict any technological trend.

 

These are the same people who came up with Bob and Clippy, thought the Internet wasn't going anywhere until 1995 then spent $100 million per year on MSIE development with the result that it was worse than the Mosaic version they started with, declared OpenGL dead with the Vista prerelease and were certain that the way to make Xbox 360 more appealing to a mass audience was to make it look like a miniature Packard Bell PC from the early 90s. The fact that they seem to invested something in digital downloads (following up on Xbox's spectacular HD-DVD successes) is a negative indicator for digital downloads' imminent success.

[Ricardo Eloy]

I don't think the Blu-Ray vs HDDVD thing is a good example. That had more to do with companies trying to make their techs the standard than any other thing.

I do think that the success of Live and devices such as TiVo mean something. People are getting into digital content. Music was first (everyone has a MP3 player nowadays), so I don't see why the same couldn't happen to movies.

 

Update: I was following Sony's E3 press conference. Here's a part of what's been said (I think it's worth bringing this up).

 

Extract from IGN:

 

 

12:24 pm -- Talking about movies and TV download service. A Sony-united effort, he says. This isn't just about Sony content, though. PSN Video Delivery syste, Sony pic, Fox, MGm, Lionsgate, warner, disner, turner, funimation They will all be down on day one/. TV in SD and HD. 1.99 an episode. 2.99 to 5.99 for movie rentals. 9.99-14.99 for purchase. Mmovie purchase. After you download it to your PS3, you can transfer to PSP. It can be on multiple devices at once. Eric Lempel, directo of PSN operations is going to walk us through it.

 

12:25 pm -- You go to the store. New video tab. Click on it, and you're in the video store. New Arrivlas, movies, television, anime, availble in hd, rental purchase tabs. Can search by studios. Paramount's in on this deal too. Into the Lionsgate film section. 3:10 to Yuma, Bratz, etc. MGM - Lars and the Real Girl, etc.

 

12:28 pm -- Sony Pictures - GHOSTBUSTERS! Walk Hard, ec. Walk Hard is $2.99. Gives you the file size, running time, etc. Gives you a preivew just like when downloading a game. SD movie should take about an hour to download a two hour move. However, you can start watching a minute after you start downloading.

 

12:29 pm -- Cloverfield. HD rental is $5.99; purchase for $14.99. Now we're talking about getting the stuff to PSP.

 

12:30 pm -- Either link the system with a cable or go to the PC Store and do it like any other game. Don't forget, Slims can display on TVs, folks.

 

12:31 pm -- Jack says there is something up there for everyone. GOES LIVE TONIGHT. THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE. Sony isn't f^&*ing around!