Blu Ray... I'll sit this one out
33thirdcom
2,049 Posts
I am kind of surprised that no one on here has brought up the blu-ray/HD DVD war that finally just ended. I think its pretty amusing overall as I am sitting this round out and already set on digital downloads from here on out. What i find amusing is that Sony put all this work into blu-ray but the reality of the situation is Movie Downloads are on the rise and will probably become very mainstream in the next 5 years, maybe 10 years max. Anyone else watching this unfold?
Comments
Are movie downloads (legit, I'm assuming) going to be available in HD?
I'm pretty sure Sony's develpment of this new format is based on offering a better viewing experience to keep people buying DVDs in the first place.
Well from what people tell me Apple offeres HD downloads via Apple TV/iTunes. And from looking at the experience the music industry has had with trying to push CDs as being better quality over Music downloads I don't think most consumers care about having the absolute best quality, but really care about cheap and convenient. I know that illegally throgh Bit Torrents you ca get HD content and I believe download sites like CinemaNow and Vongo offer or are going to offer HD content very soon.
Ahh, I hear you. Like you said, downloading movies will be a lot more common in 5-10 years. Right now though, there are a lot more barriers to entry for most people than downloading music. Maybe Blu-Ray will be enough to hold Sony down until then they can get into the digital game when people are ready to pay for it...
There's a gang of HDTV torrents everywhere.
HD-dvd looked like the favourite for a long time, and its only the fact that Sony put a Blu-ray player in the new Playstation that's swung it for them. The playstation hasn't sold that well, so Hd-dvd and Blu-ray player sales must be pathetic.
I partially agree with this, but Sony's put themselves in a good position and I doubt that they will let downloads take away their shine. They have a few things in the works in regards to portable media, blu-ray and downloads and they all tie in with the best blu-ray player available, the PS3. The PS3 is the only player on the market that fully blu-ray 2.0 spec compatible. Not only that, if the spec upgrades, the PS3 can be upgraded to fit the spec via firmware update. That's good look. Some, if not all, blu-ray discs will come with a "ripped" version of the movie that can only be uploaded/viewed on psps. Blu-ray's DRM is notoriously hard to crack, so it might be awhile before you start seeing backups in the pipeline.
On the subject of downloads, if blu-ray takes off, which I believe it will very shortly, people the general public) won't be as interested in downloaded movies unless there's some sort of great incentive, like them being extremely cheap in comparison to a blu-ray disc. I would not put it past Sony to lower the cost of blu-ray discs, the ps3 (which seemingly has new cheaper sku's monthly) and the psp. I'm sure the PS3 will be as ubiquitous as was the PS2 soon. Sony's lost enough format wars to have the savvy to stave away any form of competition, even if that means co-opting some of the competition's delivery methods.
i'm confused, isn't HD anything higher then 480p? and if that is so isn't most of the stuff downloaded on a computer already in high def?
plaese to school me
The PS3 has the fast growing sales curve of all consoles. The price has been steadily dropping and the title selection is growing. Not only that, people are realizing that it's the cheapest and best blu-ray player.
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If no one else gets to it, I'll answer after lunch.
Sayin. I'm eventually going to get a PS3. I had determined this far before the "war" was determined, so I would have been in the blu-ray camp by default. I'm psyched. It'll have dope games, a web browser, and I read that with a recent firmware upgrade it can now upscale regular DVD's which is a very good look.
Firmware upgrades are
Also a lot of websites offer video that is allegedly in HD, but most of it is not 1920??1080 a.k.a "Full HD."
this should sort you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television#TV_resolution
Of course watching bluray on a 17 inch computer screen is not quite the same as a huge TV.
i agree, they definately aren't going to be getting my money spent on blu-ray movies... PS3 maybe but that would only be because sony is getting ready to drop a shit ton of games for the PS3.
for real. I'll get Blu-ray discs from Netflix, but I'm not trying to re-cop movies I already own on DVD, especially if the PS3 upscales as good as they say it does.
With Appletv at 720p max, it does not LOOK dope. Get it to 1040p and it will look incredible.
Its also first gen for Apple, I kind of look at it as the first gen iPods... yeh 8-15 gigs is cool, but talk to me when you can store 50-100 GB of data aka now.
With the way technology is going I guess I was surprised that people are still trying to push any physical media as the "next thing". I am trying to figure out when flash drives will replace hard drives in computers, since they went from 2GB capacity to 8GB capacity in a year.
I'm pretty sure holographic media will trump everything once it gets standardized and cheaper. 1.5tb's and up on one single disc.
No one and I mean no one's gonna wanna dl a tb worth of data over just inserting a disc into a drive. Unless we see internet2 type speeds coming down the pipe soon, physical media just has to be there.
The thing about keeping data in the cloud is that bottlenecks and more often than not throttling hurt something fierce. Physical media will always need to be around, backing up to the cloud isn't the best of ideas for now or anytime in the immediate future.
Another thing here is that we're really only talking about shuffling very simple media types over the net. Mp3's and Avi's for the most part. Even with MKV's (the bleeding edge of video codecs), options are very limited as opposed to what you can do with a 50GB blu-ray disc.
I grabbed a 1080P Mkv rip a few months (Downloaded in just over an hour) ago and it's tough to even think about going physical media anymore. And the shit looks amazing...
Motorola released some DOCSIS 3.0 modems today. When ISP's start moving over to DOCSIS 3.0 ur really gonna start to see some speeds increase on a whole. I really believe in 5 years, physical media won't be much of a big deal any longer. Terabyte drives will be the norm and most will have Media Entertainment Centre's & Extenders of some sort with pretty much zero physical media used.
You can bet on it.
It IS the future. My brother has a similar system installed in his home and he did not buy a single DVD for 2 years now. Movies and music are all downloads and stored in his terabyte network drive.
You can already stream lost off abc.com in psudo hd, how long before you got a codec that puts 1080 hd in an imbedded flash plugin? I give it 6 months tops.
Chances are you wont be downloading anything.
i live in a small apartment and watch everything on my computer.
Blu ray is cool for the ps3 i guess, but thats only taking off because so many 360's just become bricks.
yeh I agree with you regarding actual downloading, I mainly use Downloading as a term covering streaming or actual downloads.
Not to mention, if net neutrality goes bye bye, you better move to Korea if you wanna dl half the content you're getting for free/cheap now. You'll probably have to go to your ISP's webshop to purchase whatever limited supply of DRM'ed media in the proprietary codec of their choosing.
Naw... It will just force people to start using encryption. You'll also start to see the masses move to darknets.
And DRM doesn't work. There will always be someone to find a workaround. Plus, it just makes things more difficult for people who actual want to make a purchase. To a point where they will just give up.
When net neutrality goes, all those bets are off. DRM will be back in style like anyone's business. Why? Because users won't have a choice of where to go for media.