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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bozster @ Oct 30th 2008 8:49AM
Not sure Ben but the future is looking pretty bleak. Even CNET editors who have been for Blu-Ray and been optimistic are now pretty much saying it's not great.
Robin Harris a ZDNet editor and a person who has been in data storage and media market for over 20 years raises a lot of good points.
At this point I'm fine either way but I just simply find it harder and harder to rent Blu-Rays little less buy them when I am starting to get all the sleek HD content from multiple sources. The fact that quality difference might be 10-20% in favor of Blu-Ray is really not a huge deal breaker, it's really not as if the difference between these other HD sources and Blu-Ray is night and day.
If people are satisfied with DVD upscaled, the HD versions even if lower quality then Blu-Ray are still HD.
Vudu with regular HD and HDX movies are unbelievably well executed. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do. Waiting 4 hours for Blu-Ray quality movie rental is just as good as waiting for it in the mail if not a lot sooner depending on your connection can be done faster.
Netflix HD over Xbox 360 but definitely soon on other platforms will further create a discreprancy with Blu-Ray.
The key issue here is what HD is good enough for mainstream consumer.
Where I personally find a disconnect with HD purists is the notion that majority of people MUST HAVE uncompressed audio and 40mbps 1080p HD video stream when in fact it's the other way around. It's the niche that demands this and essentially optical media at this point is pretty limited as far as expandability. Once we get to 4k movies, we won't need to upgrade a lot of things with digital downloads. You just get a bigger movie to download, with optical media (Blu-Ray in this case) we need to reinvent the wheel again.
I think the only question that remains is how long we will wait for digital downloads to expand. I would say fast then Blu-Ray in general as many people can already use existing computer and console devices to access digital downloads, for Blu-Ray they have to buy new player as well as discs.
Just seems very backwards in today's fast paced and digital world.
Bozster @ Oct 30th 2008 9:09AM
Is there a reason why the link to the relevant article to my post was removed? I have seen other users posts urls just fine. The article is addressing exactly the topic in question.. I'm not sure why it was removed?
Ben @ Oct 30th 2008 9:10AM
Yes, we don't allow links in the comments. And no, we don't catch them all the time. Usually we delete the entire post, but when we are feeling nice we edit it out.
Paul @ Oct 30th 2008 1:31PM
"You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments."
Bozster @ Oct 30th 2008 5:04PM
I'm not sure what the rule is then. I guess I'm allowed to link articles and info that only agrees with the original post?
ChadT84 @ Oct 31st 2008 10:26AM
This is one of the most biased blogs I've seen. Especially, when it comes to Blu-ray.
Robert @ Dec 29th 2008 4:54AM
One item no one seems to discuss when it comes to HD media coming from the internet is the ISPs. Specifically, the little discussed, but increasingly popular concept, of bandwidth caps. Time Warner Cable's High Speed Internet is currently conducting a test of this in the Beaumont, TX market. Their fastest connection, 22mbs, has a bandwidth cap of only 40gb/month. That means once you've downloaded 40gb, either your internet shuts down or you pay an outrages per megabyte overage charge. (Like cell phone minutes) With your average Blu-ray movie using more than 20gb, and as high as 40gb, you could burn an entire months worth of internet watching a single HD movie. I believe much of this has to do with the increased internet traffic overloading the coax cable supplying the connection. When FiOS becomes more common this may not be an issue, but it took 50 years to lay all the coax cable currently used. So, who knows how long it will be before FiOS has widespread availability.
The other issue I think of is why is 5 years till bluray is replaced such a bad thing? Consdier that in 1997 DVD was first released in the U.S. and didn't get mainstream popularity until early 2000. So essentially DVD has existed for a little over a decade but only been popular for around 8 years. Bluray format was finalized in 2004 and is now starting to see popularity. Sure other formats are in research and development, but remember that the blue laser optical format was first tested in 2000. Just as DVD's were becoming popular. Considering the pace of technological advancements, a 5 to 10 year span of popularity is expected. Just as the lifespan of the next media will probably also be replaced just as quickly.
My point is, a person could say that I'm not paying for something that is going to be replaced in 10 years, and those people are probably still watching black and white 12 inch TV's with an analog antenna on the roof.