Dell offers laptop under $1k with Blu-Ray drive

[Hulk]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11289

It's a good start but I hope we start seeing these Blu-Ray drives being able to burn BD as well.

[Apulo]

It's not really the drives that need to come down in price (that'll happen soon enough through competition), it's the media. And from what I hear, they are expensive to make because they use an inorganic burn layer. Very good for archiving as this is much more stable than the organic dye used in CDR and DVDR.

To save costs, manufacturers are planning to switch to cheaper organic dyes, but these will be incompatible with current readers and writers. Some may be firmware-upgraded to compatibility, but not all. So if you buy a standalone device now, and it plays BD-R, it may not in a year or so...

Seems the -R folks haven't learned that the consumer wants stability before he invests in new tech (just look how Bluray has taken off in Japan now the war is over).

[Dr Mordrid]

By the time they get their act together someone with smarts may decide to make SD based movie kiosks & video players, which would be particularly attractive once 128g SD's come out. Burning those would be a non-issue.

[Hulk]

Yes. The only reason I posted was because if the major manufacturers start to push the players that's a first step. After that perhaps the writers will follow. And when/if enough writers get out there there will be more demand for affordable media.

I remember when CDR's cost a $5/disc because of the "manufacturing difficulty." Now they cost about ten cents a piece. Now I'm not saying BD will make that kind of market penetration but I think the first step is seeing the BDROM drives in mainstream systems.

And I see Doc's point regarding SD. I don't want to get into that again but I do think we are moving into an HD world at a fairly rapid rate.

But as always let the formats fight it out for the consumer's dollar and the best contender will win.

[Dr Mordrid]

Put these in the same display space;

BD with moving parts, high costs, a large player and the same excessive space for storing your movie disc collection as DVD.

"HDSD" the size of your thumbnail capable of carrying most of your movie collection in a case the size of your checkbook and a player the size of a modem with a USB 3.0 port and HDMI output. Now price it to hurt BD.

I think I know who'll win.