Blu-Ray

[Germansuplex]

I'm quite excited that the format war is over, that format being Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. Now that Blu-Ray has emerged as the victor, I think we'll start seeing the format more heavily developed and advanced. Double-layer Blu-Rays can hold somewhere in the vicinity of 50 GB of data, and that would be a huge help for data backup. External drives are nice, but I always feel safer when I have some data DVD's safe in a container on a shelf for backup purposes. Three or four double-layered Blu-Ray discs could probably hold my entire iTunes library: lossless audio, lossy audio, videos & all.

Sorry, I didn't quite know where to post this, but I figured it may spark up some discussion on the format war.

I do own an X-Box 360 HD-DVD Drive. I'm not sure what I'll do with that now. I also wonder if Microsoft will incorporate Blu-Ray into the X-Box lines one day, seeing as they were huge backers of HD-DVD.

 

[bobb-mini]

I for one am not *that* excited.

Few years after DVD double layer blanks became available, they are still expensive (relatively speaking) and sometimes tricky to burn.

BR is *only* like 3x (6x?) better than DVD. I dunn get excited about anything until they reach 10x+ better.

And at today's HD rock-bottom prices (and very reliable), makes u do a double-take whether the price differential/convinience is worth the trouble.

I wait until blanks drops below $5 and drives available under $150.

 

[bdb]

That's pretty much my take on it as well. Blu-Ray disks are more expensive to manufacture than HD-DVD, so they may end up like dual-layer DVD - always pricey, even per gigabyte. And dual-layer Blu-Ray would likely be even more so. I've never seen anything documenting how much more it costs to make them, so this may or may not be a significant issue.

Single-layer DVDs are 4.7GB; single-layer Blue-Ray is 25. Its a little over 5 times the space. Currently blanks cost about 100 times as much, so its not even worth considering right now. We'll just have to wait and see how fast and how much this changes in the future.

Pre-recorded Blu-Ray can also has dynamic DRM, which can be changed any time the studio desires (e.g. every title could have to be individually rever-engineered). If its used to its full extent, this could make ripping disks much less common. This coud affect both the popularity of pre-recorded Blu-Ray disks as well as the price of blanks.

I think Toshiba initially believed that HD-DVD could have a life of its own as a lower-cost data storage, but the tide was shifting too hard so they gave up. Personally I see Blu-Ray's winning of the HD format war as a big shot in the arm for regular old DVD.

 

[pohatu771]

As far as movies go, I'd rather buy discs instead of downloads.

It's a lot easier to take a DVD to other people's houses than to bring my iPod and connect it.

 

[JMG]

ehhh... my DVDs still look awesome on my HDTV. When you can get a blu-ray player for less than $100 then I'll be interested.

 

[Germansuplex]

Obviously, double-layered Blu-Ray likely has a long way to go before being affordable (if it happens at all), but much like blank single-layer DVDs, I think it's only a matter of time before Blu-Ray becomes as affordable as DVDs.

Players are bound to drop below the $100 mark. DVD's became mass marketed right around the time DVD players got to be around that range, and it wasn't long after that the VHS section become a little display at the end of the DVD aisle. The reason DVDs have taken off so much is because of the affordability of players and movies. Sony has to know that $300 players and $30 movies will not fill the aisles as long as DVD is around. As mentioned, standard DVDs still look pretty damn good upscaled. So I think it's a given prices will come down dramatically. It's just a matter of time.

 

[hyroboarder]

At first I wanted hd dvd to win because I wanted the (at the time) 200$ xbox 360 add on player. Last Christmas however we broke down and bought a blu ray player w/ 5 free discs. Picture quality is just so much better than dvd's I can't believe it.

 

[bobb-mini]

Am more excited about flash memory or whatever they put in the Touch and USB dongles. Lately seem like their capacity doesn't double every 18 months following Moores' but every freaking 6 months!

If everything the same, I rather plug in a stick in my HD video screen than a unwieldy 5" disc. Me think 5" disc is passed its prime.

 

[kylo4]

blu-ray discs cost about $3-4 to make the actual disc. They cost a lot more because they use a special coating that makes them three times as scratch resistant as DVD's.

I have a nice 80GB blu-ray player, I'm sorry, PS3 (forgot it played games there for a second). I wasn't buying into it at first until I bought one and from that moment on all my purchases will be blu-ray if possible. My dad hates upgrading stuff and kept saying everything people who haven't seen it do until I played him the movie and he didn't smile or anything. Kind of grunted and said, "You're right."

I picked the 360 add on for $50 after the format was announced as over because I could still mail in for the 5 free movies, I got King Kong and the remote, and these 1080p films are going to be insanely cheap in the coming weeks. It' a win win because $50 nets you a decent DVD player as is.