Microsoft dismisses Blu-ray as "historic phenomenon"

[Hulk]

First HD-DVD was cracked, then BR, now BR+. The studios must be pulling their collective hair out. When are they going to realize that you can't create a copy protection system when you put the keys on the users computer.

This is useful for many people I think. You buy HD discs and you want your purchased movies on your hard drive for easy access to your "library" of favorite movies. You can demux only the streams that you want and end up with a 15GB to 20GB movie. Large, but not so much that you can have 30 or 40 of your favorites movies at hand.

[UtwigMU]

With current limited bandwidth, especially in remote areas, buggy software, complexity of connecting PC to TV, network problems, for average consumers (you know people who hire someone else to install their printer), physical media will stay for a long time.

Bluray will replace DVD simply because players will become cheap and they'll still play existing DVDs and eventually HD movies will reach price parity.

It's much simpler to rent or buy DVDs/Bluray. For instance, daily papers here now come with cheap books or DVDS (7 Euros for DVD and paper). Monthly NetFlix-like sub costs 6 EUR.

So downloads won't replace physical media in next decade.

[mmp121]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2277472,00.asp

[paulw]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2277472,00.asp

Here's a thread from guys who have tried it..

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic348071.html

[Mehen]

Same as the death of HiFi.........

HiFi will never die.

[Nowhere]

BTW, somewhat offtopic, but since this is the currently active thread about Bluray/HD-DVD and the thing isn't worth it's own...

HD-DVD and the Early Adopter Premium

Supposedly one can buy very cheaply good HD-DVD player, which is also an excellent upconverting DVD player (some there say cheaper and comparable to best "only DVD" upconverting players). Of course movies are dirt cheap.

Why such prices never get here...

[Fluff]

For me a 720p version of a blu ray movie without any extras that fitted on a DVD-9 (e.g. mpeg 4)would probably be enough quality for me. It would probably also save the planet a little bit )

[Brian Ellis]

Absolutely. The BBC stated just last night that 70% of subscribers in the US and Europe don't even have broadband. In this country, it is closer to 80% and those that do are limited to 1 Mbit/s download, theoretically, typically 600-800 kbit/s in reality. Our communal offices and three of the largest businesses in our village, that I know of, are still on DUN at a theoretical 56 kbit/s.

Lewis' prediction is male bovine excrement.

[Evildead666]

Back to bluray for a mo:

The 2.0 revision or BR is out, but what if you can't upgrade your BR player/recorder ?
Does that mean that lots of people who HAVE bought BR players aren't going to be able to have all the functions of new BR titles ?
PS3 is upgradeable, so no prob there, but what about the others ..?

[Sasq]

*points to his home country
**points out 99% of broadband subscribers there have somewhere between 20~60gb data cap per month

[Jessterw]

There were rumors not so long ago about Netflix coming out with a device similar to the Apple TV, but dedicated to movie 'rentals'; representatives of the company have even hinted or said as much.

What I would envision for such a device would borrow largely from Netflix's current model. Users would pay a flat subscription rate that would allow for some sort of n-movies out at a time system, adding movies they want to watch to a queue - as I said, Netflix's current model. The difference being that based on various factors, movies in a user's queue would be slowly downloaded and then stored until other factors signaled they were now allowed to be watched.

Obviously, that first movie or so might not offer a true on-demand experience depending on bandwidth or whatnot. The upside is that the system could factor in bandwidth usage limits to manage the download of queued movies. This would allow movies to be downloaded over time in anticipation of being watched, but wouldn't negatively impact other Internet activities or any monthly bandwidth restrictions.

Probably a little far-reaching and not of the complexity that any provider is going to be offering, but it would solve a lot of issues with on-demand Internet video (of the HD variety). That said, it still has some of the same inherent problems that any sort of downloadable video does.

Physical media definitely isn't going anywhere and I imagine DVD will actually still be with us for quite some time.

[Mehen]

Imagine what it would be like at Christmas time... (bandwidth, data xfer caps, etc).

[Hulk]

There were rumors not so long ago about Netflix coming out with a device similar to the Apple TV, but dedicated to movie 'rentals'; representatives of the company have even hinted or said as much.

What I would envision for such a device would borrow largely from Netflix's current model. Users would pay a flat subscription rate that would allow for some sort of n-movies out at a time system, adding movies they want to watch to a queue - as I said, Netflix's current model. The difference being that based on various factors, movies in a user's queue would be slowly downloaded and then stored until other factors signaled they were now allowed to be watched.

Obviously, that first movie or so might not offer a true on-demand experience depending on bandwidth or whatnot. The upside is that the system could factor in bandwidth usage limits to manage the download of queued movies. This would allow movies to be downloaded over time in anticipation of being watched, but wouldn't negatively impact other Internet activities or any monthly bandwidth restrictions.

Probably a little far-reaching and not of the complexity that any provider is going to be offering, but it would solve a lot of issues with on-demand Internet video (of the HD variety). That said, it still has some of the same inherent problems that any sort of downloadable video does.

Physical media definitely isn't going anywhere and I imagine DVD will actually still be with us for quite some time.

That idea actually sounds quite promising. I have found Netflix to be a great business model and bet they will adapt to the market in new and innovative ways. In addition, since you must have an HDCP protected chain from "soup to nuts" to view on Netflix it's not hard to imagine that viewing method being MORE secure than rental discs. If the big movie studios investigate this and find this to be the truth that could get them releasing vial download before optical media.

As for the death of Hi-Fi. Hopefully as storage devices gets larger bit-wise and physically smaller we will see a resurgence of high quality audio. I am hoping for DRM free Flac downloads. Right now Amazon is doing 256kbps DRM free downloads and they aren't bad. Good enough that I have been buying them despite my general dislike of buying lossy compression audio. On that note I have a pretty decent set up, Mirage M5Si speakers, older ADCOM pre-amp, and a Hafler 9505 amp and I think pretty good ears. I did used to own and run an audio recording studio in the '90's. Anyway I am hard pressed to hear a difference between 256kbps and 44.1/16 bit LPCM. But then again when doing this comparison I have to use the DAC's in my surround sound receiver and it's performance may be below the resolution difference between the two formats I am comparing. Either that or my ears have degraded over the years to the point where I can't hear the difference! Which isn't all bad as I can save some money on hi-end audio gear.