Blu-ray 'to bloom', now HD DVD's dead

Expect demand for Blu-ray Disc technology to explode this year, with 29.4m homes around the globe owning a BD player by the end of the year, it has been claimed. The forecast comes from market watcher Strategy Analytics (SA), which admits that the vast majority of those machines will be PS3 games consoles. Some 13m BD- …

[Mark W]

Greedy Manufacturers?

Since the announcement that Blu-Ray's won the format war, and HD-DVD is dead, has anyone else noticed that the cost of Blu Ray players has gone up by about 30%.

For example - Amazon listed the BD-P1400 from Samsung at £199 prior to Feb 2008 (just look at the comments). Now the price is £278.44 - and other players have gone the same way by both Sony and Panasonic.

So once they win the format war, putting the prices up will just kill off adoption.

Plus Blu-Ray disks seem to have also gone up in price.

Oh the joy of capitalism.

[phix8]

Er, no!

Maybe twice as much storage as a dvd! Ooh, and with twice as much quality the increase in storage is .. hmm, nothing.

So blu-ray dvd sets will take up just as much room. Look, dammit. Until you can give me the entire star-trek TNG show on a single disc stay in your goddammed laboratory.

[Mark]

Fantastic news for PS3...

"Some 13m BD-compatible consoles will be purchased worldwide this year"

Considering Sony have shipped 11million this year, that means the PS3 tally at the end of the year will be 24million.

I doubt 360 will reach that, and it's mighty close to Wii sales...

Looks like it's the end of the road for 2000-era DVD based 360...

[Mark]

@Mark W @phix8

@MarkW.

PS3 is the same price today, than it was before HD DVD died. Ever considered that standalone player prices are determined by exchange rates? Also take a look at the price of the Panasonic BD-30, it's cheaper. Basically you have cherry picked some stats on a particular model, and pretending it's across board price rises...

@phix8

BD storage is over 5x more than DVD. (dual layer DVD = 9GB, dual layer BD=50GB)

[Steve Evans]

@phix8

That's easy... Plenty of 1TB hard drives out there these days :-D

[Anonymous Coward]

should change the subheading to article name

title:

Blu-ray to bloom now HD DVD's dead, analyst forecasts

-no shit sherlock

[Iain]

Not now, probably

With the mass fire-sale of HD-DVDs currently ongoing, I think I've stocked up on enough new movies to keep me busy until at least autumn. I got a standalone player to replace my 360 drive too, since I needed a new standard-def player anyway, and it was only £60 - it does such a good job of upscaling that spending large amounts of cash on a Blu-ray device even when this stack runs out isn't desperately important to me, either.

Minor irony value - the new HD-EP30 sits on top of my Laserdisc player, underneath my Minidisc recorder and record deck; it's like the museum of dead tech on my hi-fi shelves. Microsoft should be worried; there's a 360 in there as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE Greedy Manufacturers

'Blu-Ray disks seem to have also gone up in price'

Not where I live. On average they have dropped between £5 - £10 even for new releases.

Everybody seems to have forgotten just how long it took DVD to reach the levels it did and just how expensive they were when VHS were still the biggest sellers

[Tim Lake]

As a PS3 early adopter

I am already building a decent library of BD movies and have to say that the difference is totally worthwhile on a decent HD TV.

Phix8, blu-ray is primarily designed to hold high def movies so the extra space is needed for the extra resolution, however, BD writers are available and it is entirely possible to rip your DVD collection and re-burn it to fewer Blu-Ray disks.

Would you honestly re-buy Star-Trek at the same quality as DVD but on fewer disks?

[Joe Blogs]

Emmm.. what?

"Expect demand for Blu-ray Disc technology to explode this year, with 29.4m homes around the globe owning a BD player by the end of the year, it has been claimed.

The forecast comes from market watcher Strategy Analytics (SA), which admits that the vast majority of those machines will be PS3 games consoles. Some 13m BD-compatible consoles will be purchased worldwide this year, compared to 4m standalone players and 2m computers with BD drives."

13m PS3s plus 4m standalones plus 2m PCs equals 19m, and the other 10.4 million BD devices are....???

Paris - coz her maths are just as good!

[Tom]

Er, what?

You fool, what DVDs have you been using? they must be pretty special, seen as the rest of the world havn't got access to your amazing 24gb DVDs, a dual layer BD can have up to 48gb of storage. Can you tell me where I can buy a large quantity if these DVDs, I'm going to try and introduce them over here and win the format war myself....

[Anonymous Coward]

shame

Shame we're in a really sh-- region. Woohoo we can play stuff from Europe, Africa and Australia!

Sadly now Japan is with the Sceptics.

Why is it we get all the downsides of being americanised and non of the benefits?

[J.Butler]

Prices...

I notice they've all gone up considerably in price.

I suspect the discs will be getting a price hike now aswell.

All in all, I think I'll avoid until someone comes out with something worth having at an acceptable price.

[Jon Brunson]

@phix8

Completely agree. I can rememeber "back in the day" when DVD was first announced, they seemed to be marketing it as a mass storage device saying things like "every episode of The Simpsons on a disc the size of a CD!", but that seems to have gotten dropped in favor of "extras" - woohoo(!)

Why on earth can they only fit four episodes of Voyager on a single DVD? Like you, I'd have one disc with everything on in acceptable quality over HD on multiple discs any day.

[jai]

re: Er, No!

i thought BD discs could hold 50gb - that's ten times the storage of a dvd, isn't it?

in low-res divx you're bound to be able to fit as much of your trekkie show in 50gb as you like, no?

[Filippo]

agreed

They should make BRs with a whole season of a TV series, in DVD quality, on a single disc, for somewhat less than the price of the 1080p version.

I can think of a few series for which I'd buy this version, but not an overpriced 1080p version.

[paul]

@phix8 - Much more space than DVD

DVD 4.7G

Bluray 50G

10x more space.

Also , dont believe the xbots when they say Full 1080p content is coming to you via the walled garden internet anytime soon. 2012 perhaps, but not 2009.

Dont talk to me about sky HD - its poor and most sports are just upscaled (by sky mind) SD. Even then its 1080i not 1080p.

Watch a blu ray and then watch something else - you will tell the difference especially if your close to the telly.

[Andy Pellew]

RE: Greedy Manufacturers?

So what account have you taken of the "normal" ending of Christmas/ New Year Sales?

Or could this post be more accurately titled "Things are cheaper in Sales Shocker!".

Sorry, didn't mean to insert a bit of reality into your argument there. My coat is the one with "HD DVD, Betamax, and 8-track Tapes Rock!" written on the back.

[Graham Wood]

@paul

You're cherry picking somewhat there..

DVD:

Single layer = 4.7GB

Dual layer = 8.5GB

BluRay:

Single layer = 25GB

Dual layer = 50GB

Any reason why you compared single layer to dual layer? It's 5x the space, not 10x.

Having said that, going to MPEG4 rather than MPEG2 means that the capacity is "better used" as well - so the effective gain is more than you might expect... (Yes I know that view is simplified)

[Tom Chiverton]

Why would I buy a new player

Why would I buy a new player when my 1080p LG upscales the content from my years old DVD player (still uses SCART for heavens sake !) fine ?

The studios wouldn't have a Cunning Plan to stop selling DVDs would they, to force people to upgrade ? Because that worked so well for Vista (and LPs, come to think of it !)...

[Sean Aaron]

Still not interested

I still see nothing compelling about HD media. My SD-DVD content looks great and all I see getting released on BD is films that if I'm interested in I have in remastered DVD form or I don't give a toss about. Putting multiple series on 1 BD would be compelling, but it isn't there.

Interactive content? Not interested. Region-coding? Not interested...honestly this is going to be a niche format and will not replace DVD. This is the end of the line for physical media outside of special interests.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Shame

> Why is it we get all the downsides of being americanised and non of the benefits?

There are benefits?

[LPF]

@Paul

I think you will find that ASIA at least has connections, fast enough to do it, as they have fiber like no ones business all over the place. Net2, can transfer the data required for HD in minutes, and its mostly through new protocols being used to cut over head, so HD over the net is not as far off as you predict.

As for SKY, the diffencre between 1080i and 1080p , unless you are some kind of mutant is not noticable to 99% of the human population.

Also sorry to burst your bubble, I have a 46" LCD that can take 1080p and I have watched both HD films and Upscaled ones and the difference between the two, means that BD better drop its prices real quick! BD I predict will be niche at most, and by the time HD TV have a big enough pentration to make HD a must have, the NET will be delivering it. .

[Giles Jones]

Won't be getting one yet

First I would need a TV with 24Hz refresh.

Secondly I use Shuttle PC with MythTV for all my audio visual delights and this would need a Blu-ray ROM drive and Linux software to play it (remember the problems Linux users had with DVD playback?).

I will only get a blu-ray player once the technology has settled down, there's too much in the way of firmware upgrades going on which shows the specification is still in progress.

I'd also want to see if they make you sit through 5 minutes of trailers and copyright messages before you can watch the disc (no wonder people rip DVDs).

[Steven Knox]

Still no reason to buy.

The vast majority of existing content is recorded in < DVD quality. No amount of processing is going to add compelling detail to these shows.

Most new shows recorded in HD don't have details which require anything over DVD quality. Those which do usually suck in terms of quality of content.

The only HD content I've seen which is even remotely compelling is a very short list:

Planet Earth

Blue Planet

Now I love those shows, but I'm not spending @$300 just to watch

them in HD.

BD adoption should not be measured in terms of players sold anyway, as PS3 skews those results. There's no definitive way to tell if a PS3 is being used as a Blu-Ray player, a gaming machine, or both. So the only metric that matters is disc sales. As long as the content is not compelling, that metric will be relatively low.

@Joe Bloggs -- the other 10.4 million will be ones that were sold before this year. The 29.4 million figure is the total number of households which own a device, as stated in the article, not the annual sales. Paris's reading comprehension is quite stellar, too, no?

[adnim]

errr

"Will you be one of the 18.8m people buying into BD this year?"

No!

When burners are £30 maybe.

[Man Outraged]

@AC RE: RE Greedy Manufacturers

AC Wrote:

"Everybody seems to have forgotten just how long it took DVD to reach the levels it did and just how expensive they were when VHS were still the biggest sellers"

Yeah well you seem to have forgotten what a quantum leap a DVD was from a VHS. What's going to pursuage the majority of the population with average sized TVs and average tastes and budgets to go high-def when the majority of viewers don't know what I'm on about when I complain about the compression artefacts on Freeview.

IN 2-3 year's time 4GB SD cards will be throw-away cheap and people will be watching movies direct from SD on portable players. Or downloading if the British ISPs stop wasting money struggling onwards with Phorm and start installing more bandwidth.

The disc is dead - why anybody would spend any money on either format is beyond me. "Struggle on" with DVD and save your money for the next genuine leap forward.

[glenn]

@ Mark re:Fantastic news for PS3...

How does it look like it's the end of the road for 2000-era DVD based 360? What about the option for MS to release an add-on Blu-Ray drive for the 360, not too dissimilar to the outgoing add-on HD-DVD drive? Personally, i couldn't give two f*cks about blu-ray movies, as the amount of new films worth buying is so low that it's just not worth the expense of upgrading. Also, i'm not so idle that i won't get off my arse to change discs from a dvd box set.

[Anonymous Coward]

fan-boys

Payback on all the Sony fanboys who celebrated and bragged when HD-DVD was chopped. Blu-ray was always overpriced and its only got worse now that they've killed off the competition.

I'm still stocking up on my cheap HD-DVDs many of which are cheaper than even the standard DVDs.

Won't touch Blu-ray until I can get a decent player for under £150 which is actually a FINISHED Blu-ray player, in otherwords when it can finally do everything a bog standard cheap HD-DVD player could do 2 years ago.

[TimM]

ASDA and grannies

Blu-Ray will only "bloom", at least anywhere like DVD has if a player is on sale in ASDA for £20 and your granny is likely to buy them.

Until then, BR is restricted to the smaller percentage of the population that actually gives a crap rather than just being happy with their 21" CRT tucked away in the corner of the living room with no surround system like the vast majority have (or maybe their 24 or 28" widescreen CRT they bought in the last 5 years, though probably a 28" LCD they'll eventually replace it with).

And be honest. Would your granny buy a PS3? Come on! A Wii, maybe.

Paris, because even Paris wouldn't buy a PS3.

[paul]

@graham

Yes dual layer DVD exists, but most dvd players will not play it. Can you think of a film that comes on a dual layer?

Blu Rays can be dual layer from day 1.

[paul]

@LFP

Asia , well korea/japan has 250mb/s internet/ India and china? I dont think so.

Europe and the US will have nothing like that for ages. Africa , Middle east etc are in dream world.

So what % of worldwide population will get 250mb/s internet b4 2012?

2% maybe? Blu ray as an offline medium can reach anyone/anywhere as long as there is a post service.

I will give you an edge on protocol, as they can be adapted where as blu ray players cannot. ie a protocol developed in a couple of years wont be in the blu ray players bought today.

A 1080p film might be able to be downloaded, but will either require a super computer to decode using new protocol.

OR have such low bit rate, it will be worse quality (this is the route at the moment). 250mb 3mins movie trailers for example.

Interlaced vs Progressive is very noticeable in fast moving / sports. Not so much when paused. e.g. 720p broadcast is better in some instances than 1080i even with the smaller no of pixels.

[Morely Dotes]

No Sony products here, ever!

"Will you be one of the 18.8m people buying into BD this year?"

No.

Sony is the only major corporation ever to have been caught distributing consumer products which were *meant* to install rootkit viruses on PCs, and they did it not once, but twice.

No way in Hell will I ever buy another Sony product. Not now. Not ever. Never!

And my plain old DVD is good enough.

[foof]

I'll buy one when

they cost the same as a HD-DVD player six months ago.

Superior format be damned. (splitting hairs, really) Average Joe consumer lost out when Blu-Ray won. We are still over a year away from an affordable player and at least two years away from a $99 unit.

[Anonymous Coward]

ARghhh...

All these people with tiny, crappy display devices (I'm including your 46" LCD TV in there, too, LPF) are saying, "HD is pointless!"

Right - in exactly the same way that CDs are pointless vs. 8-tracks if you play them on a boombox.

Displays will get better; the fact that you have a lousy one now says nothing about the viability of a given format five years from now.

I've got a quite nice 1080p front projector aimed at a 100" screen. The difference between DVD and HD is staggering, to say the least. I haven't gone bluray yet due to the price and lack of content (and appropriate HD space for timeshifting and convenient access) but I'll definitely be there when those issues are solved.

[TimM]

Re: @Graham

"Yes dual layer DVD exists, but most dvd players will not play it. Can you think of a film that comes on a dual layer?"

I can think of thousands. Almost all DVD videos are dual-layer, and all DVD players play dual-layer DVDs as a mandatory part of the specification.

Easy to spot also. Look at the inner ring around the centre of a DVD disc and look for the manufacturer labels and codes. With dual-layer discs you should see two sets with one clearly behind the other. Also, it used to be that most dual-layer discs were gold in colour compared to silver for single layer although that's not so reliable these days.

[Sooty]

@paul

"Yes dual layer DVD exists, but most dvd players will not play it. Can you think of a film that comes on a dual layer?"

Erm, not sure what you are thinking of, but almost ever dvd player in existence can handle dual layer, and pretty much every film comes on a dual layer disc? look on the back of a couple, DVD9 is dual layer.

only the very first generation of dvd players couldn't do dual layer, but that was before most peopel had even heard of dvd.

dvd burners are a different matter, it took a lot longer before dual layer burners became the standard, but even those could always read dual layer disks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypocrisy and double standards

I actually like reading news about Blu-ray. It always turns into a verbal fight, usually with 2 grouping, namely those that have accepted Blu-ray more or less, and the firm nay-sayers.

It is quite funny to read with what passion people write about the subject. It always makes me laugh when people say they will never buy a product from a company because said company have been determined by a court judge to have broken the law. This attitude would, of course, mean that the same people would never buy a DVD player, TV, mobile phone, car, gasoline, etc. - why? Because almost any company over a certain size have been in a conflict with the law at one time or another. Does this then mean that it is okay to break the law? No, of course not, but please leave hypocrisy and double standards at the door.

Now, onto the subject - having seen quite a bit of HD material myself, I actually went out and bought a Blu-ray player after Warner decided what optical media they wanted to invest in, and I must say that I have been completely blown away. Anybody comparing DVD and Blu-ray, and coming up with that they look alike either do not have an HD TV or need glasses. Of course, older films and indie productions benefits less than modernly shot films, but the quality upgrade in HD is very noticeable and I would happily suggest other people to try it. One can get hooked on a very good movie, and good visuals just make it even better.

Perhaps in a few months, maybe a year, we could get back to the usual, and much more entertaining discussion about the general lack of good manuscripts in Hollywood these days (no offence should be taken from this :))

[Sketch-UK]

The real clincher for Blu-Ray is...

...when George Lucas finally releases the Star Wars Hexology (if that's the right word for a 6 part work).

[W]

Stop. Back the f*** up. Let's take a look at the TV setups.

Everyone who bigs up HD invariably needs to refer to the size of their telly in order to qualify the comment. Although the amount of biggish crt tvs dumped on the footpath is on the rise too, so maybe that's not such a big hurdle.

But personally, my setup consists of a VirginMedia box and a cambridge dvd player. Visuals go via scart to a 14" portable tv/vcr. Audio goes to a cambridge amp and modest speakers. It's every bit as pleasurable to watch than the crappy 20"+ supermarket lcd jobs that folk are buying before dumping their perfectly decent old boxes.

The possibilities of lcd are totally undersold by these dodgy discount panels. And they're often placed in the corner of a living room, thus providing no advantage over the box it replaced! And there is such a thing as proportion too. Sure, sometimes it might be nice to have something a *little* bigger, but I rarely consider my portable to be woefully undersized in it's 'living room of an average 2 bed flat' location.

As for the sound quality! Sound is a big part of the deal. Again, my modest amp + speakers setup might not be 5.1 surround, but it's a darned sight better than the sound coming out of most folk's cheapo big standalone tvs.

So. Back to blu-ray... The vhs to dvd quality jump was obvious to everyone who had a telly. The same cannot be said for the dvd to blu-ray jump. But folk will probably buy en masse if/when it hits a pricing sweet spot (i.e. supermarkets stock 'em). Because there are enough folk that believe the frikkin' hype and/or are prepared to invest in the necessary vulgar, oversized black rectangle for their lounge.

Once they have, and dvds are more difficult to get hold of than bluray (and when the 14" portable packs in) I'll probably take advantage of the economies of scale that the sheeple have financed. And I might finally invest in that media centre pc and discreet projector i've promised myself inorder to take advantage.

And I'll probably wonder how I ever lived without hd. But dvds are wholly sufficient for me at the mo, and you don't miss what you never had, eh?

Interesting aside: the amount of people I know without a telly is on the rise.

[W]

TV buying is similar to the "American Fridge" madness...

It all seems back to front to me - like lusting over an big ol' 'merican fridge with ice makin' door.

But then realising your kitchen isn't big enough. So you move house to get enough space for your fridge. But then you realise that you're totally skint, and in any case, you had an ice tray in your old fridge. And furthermore, you can never eat all the food in the fridge if you fill it up.

Should've just gone out to a restaurant and saved yourself the hassle.

See also: the "gotta have a Dyson but I'm not sure why" effect. Before the realisation dawns that Henry was the guy for you all along.

[Mark]

@Morely Dotes

Please show us where they were distributing Viruses..

My understanding, is they uses rootkit-like techniques to hide their copy protection on 100,000 or so CD's There was nothing malicious about it. Infact, if you were not interesting in pirating their CD's, you would not even know you had it.

It did not do any damage per-se, nor did it replicate itself onto other PC's. A virus is BOTH of these things.

By not buying Sony products, you are the only person losing out...

[Steve Rowsell]

BD or no BD? That is the question.

The short answer is 'No - I won't be joining the BD revolution'.

The longer answer is that after spending hundreds (thousands?) of pounds on a VHS collection over the years that is still in the process of being replaced by DVDs, I have no wish to start the process all over again.

The previous post mentioning the difference between the jump from VHS to DVD versus the jump from DVD to BD makes a very valid point; the difference in my view is much smaller, more so if you have a DVD player that upscales your existing DVDs.

Now I realise that I am about to get leapt on by:

- numerous Sony/BD/PS3 zealots with foam coming from their mouths,

- people who only see such discussions as a forum to boast about how they've bought a $10,000 BD projector and have knocked all the walls of their house through in order to get a 200" screen up, (but who probably really use a 14" black and white portable TV in a 1 room bedsit directly above the neighbourhood cat lady)

- people explaining that although 50gb Blu Ray discs will still mean studios fitting 4 episodes of a series on a single disc, it'll be so much better for my overall viewing pleasure in the long run, ('you'll be able to see people's nose hair and everything' - woo...great!)

- boffins trying to explain exactly why I couldn't possibly live without BD, providing in-depth data to support this conclusion, whilst having little idea that if you spend a movie pondering bitrates and resolutions, you really are missing the point and ought to really consider a better class of movie than 'Generic Buddy Shooty Car Chase Movie 8 - The Return of the Revenge', or 'Crappy and Wholly Unamusing Spoof Movie 22').

So, I'm going to save them a job and explain why I will not be joining so many other sheep and jumping on the BD ship.

- If my eyes, (I'm blessed with 20/20 vision apparently), tell me there is little difference in image quality between DVD and BD, I can't see the point of 'upgrading'. This is of course unless each BD player comes with an independent team of experts, (equipped with lab coats, clipboards, pointing devices and heavy spectacles) to stand in the corner of my living room, so that they can interject at key points in movies to explain where and how my viewing experience has been significantly heightened.

- I have no desire to pay through the nose for another of Sony's products, (after they deign to release the product for we poor unimportant Europeans)

- I don't want to build a fairly large collection of BD movies only for them to be superceded by another apparently superior format a handful of years later

So there you go, a flawless set of reasons why I will not be adopting this format. Argue as much as you want, these are my reasons, 100% valid and personal to me and however hard you try, you won't change my opinion on this.

Feel free to try though, as I could do with a laugh...

[Alex]

comical

Some of you guys are born comedians... no really you are! lol!!

I'm really interested in reading all of the posts, and can only come up with the assumption that quite a few have not seen the difference between a HD-DVD/BluRay movie and an upscaled DVD... (Note the use of BOTH formats, no matter who won). You CAN tell, yes, you CAN. Watching on a 32inch or a 40inch, it is like night and day. If you don't want to buy a HD source player (whether that be an actual player, or a mchine not purposely built for playing films) because you think "it's just as good on an upscaled machine, then I sugget you get your eyes tested, and probably some glasses.

Like I said, it's like night and day..

Personally, I gave HD-DVD and Blu Ray equal chances and tbh i didn't really care who won so long as i had a format to buy. Will all of you PLEASE remember that this same, exact process happened with DVD... Oh yes it did! My first DVD burner was bought with my first pay packet and it cost a whopping 400 notes! MORE than a BR Burner is now... DVDs were 20 notes a shot AT LEAST!

BR Discs have NOT increased... PLay, Amazon, Tescos, HMV, etc all have offers on and have a healthy cost for a disk. I get the distinct feeling that all these "BR discs have sky rocketed to astronomical proportions" peeps want the moon on a stick.. yup, the Moon on a stick. part with your hard earned cash, or shut up.

Shortsightedness seems to be rife here... both physically and in the ol' noggin'.

honestly.... *Shakes Head*

[W]

Re: "...part with your hard earned cash, or shut up."

"part with your hard earned cash, or shut up."

How about 'part with your cash or don't'?

Why should I shut up when I'm not abusing anyone? All I'm doing is stating facts and opinions.

1. As I said, no-one can sell BluRay without mentioning the caveat of screen size. That's the main hurdle. Even with a big telly, can they honestly tell the difference or not? Very often no, due to their cheap kit. Never mind though, many many folk will buy BluRay because they've been told it's "the future" by the manufacturers.

---

And by those who feel the need to publicly preach about their kit under the guise of offering valuable public service education when really they're just trying to justify their purchase to themselves.

---

2. For those with snazzy kit across the board. That's nice. I'm sure I'd appreciate it if I had the same boxes that you have. But, for me, other things like bills, food, gigs (in RD - real definition), cinema subscription, and booze all come first. Toys after. This is not up for debate. As Steve Rowsell said: It's my opinion.

3. There is such a good thing as "Good Enough". It's why some folk buy Fords and Vauxhalls. They have other priorities. That BluRay is better is not up for debate. But is it *good enough*? As I said, I'm sure I'll get a flatscreen telly/projector/BluRay player to replace my modest setup when it breaks and/or the price is right.

[PIB]

@Alex

I agree with you completely: I came to the conclusion a while back that some of these self proclaimed 'experts' have never seen the technology they're panning.

I can't think of any other explanation for their blatantly absurd and ignorant remarks.

[Iain]

@Mark

"Infact, if you were not interesting in pirating their CD's, you would not even know you had it."

Not true; everyone who put left autorun on and inserted an infected disc in a machine had the rootkit installed, leaving them open to a remote exploit, as well as degraded performance and an inability to rip audio for personal use.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too little too late for Blu

Buy the time Blu-ray gets around to providing a range of final spec stand-alone players at mass-market friendly prices it will be too late.

That means sub $150 - $100....and that's not happening for a very very long time.

They don't stand a hope in hell of ever getting the genuine mass-market away from DVD and their HD TV services (usually with DVR) fast enough for Blu-ray to survive.

They are well and truly stuck in the PS3 niche.

Even the early adopters don't need Blu, anyone with any sense is buying up cheap HD DVDs & downloading.

The PS3 fanboys can rage away & shout it's not so but outside of their PS3 niche no-one could care less.

People should also stop misrepresenting what has been said.

No-one said there is no difference between high def & regular DVD, what people are saying in large numbers is that the difference isn't worth a huge cost (especially the high costs Blu-ray demands).

[TimM]

@Alex

"You CAN tell, yes, you CAN. Watching on a 32inch or a 40inch, it is like night and day"

And there is the flaw in your argument. Fact is the *vast* majority of the population (in the UK at least), *do not* have TVs that size. Even 32" is big for most people.

Forget yourself, your nerdy or young affluent friends, the population of El-Reg readers, Blu-Ray.com nutheads, and pretty much the entire base of PS3 owners who are demographically males between 12 and 30-something with money to spend.

These people do not make up the majority of TV and DVD player owners in the UK.

The vast majority have a small CRT they have tucked in the corner. Forget what you see on sale in Dixons, Currys, Comet, etc.

Think about it. What type of TV do your parents and grandparents have, and their friends, and their friends friends, etc?

The actual potentially interested demographic for HD in the UK is maybe some 20% of the population. The rest couldn't give a rats if it's night and day on a 32" or bigger telly!. DVD on the other hand is so saturated that it reaches the majority of TV owners. What's going to make them buy into HD, let alone Blu-Ray? Jumping up and down saying it's night and day isn't going to do it. That they bought DVD at all was more to do with convenience than quality, plus the fact that VHS really had it's day. Considering Blu-Ray on say a 21" CRT vs a DVD... I can assure you it's not night and day.

[W]

Amen brother.

"And there is the flaw in your argument. Fact is the *vast* majority of the population (in the UK at least), *do not* have TVs that size. Even 32" is big for most people."

"Considering Blu-Ray on say a 21" CRT vs a DVD... I can assure you it's not night and day."

Amen brother.

I repeat "no-one can sell BluRay without mentioning the caveat of screen size."

[Stephen Ware]

To TimM ref @Alex Yes size matters !

'And there is the flaw in your argument. Fact is the *vast* majority of the population (in the UK at least), *do not* have TVs that size. Even 32" is big for most people....'

And the flaw with YOUR argument...? Yes in the past the average telly was 20, 24, 28 inch . Why was that ???

Simply Because CRT were extremely expensive large and heavy, impossibly so for moving around the house, never minding finding one that was say 42 and remotely cheap enough for the average consumer. Now with LCD and Plasma you can get a 47'(!!) for under a 1000 ukp and prices are continually dropping.

The average telly size now sold has shot up in the past decade from 21' to between 32'- 37' (Do a quick google for proof) and there is no doubt with prices dropping that will increase to 42' soon. And if that is the AVERAGE sold then you can bet there is a large perecentage of the population that are buying 42', 48' now....Sharp have also been quoted as saying average size will be 60' by 2015...

Somebody is buying all that stock in Comet/dixons etc. otherwise they wouldn't be selling em' !!

And yes I have checked my friends and they are all buying slowly Large LCD's...The last one a 42' JVC...mmm very nice

Might I suggest you get with the times....

[Dom]

Another Option?

HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle? The winner? Probably Blu-Ray. BUT there is another option on the horizon - Holographic Media.

These discs have a capacity of 300GB!

Capacities of over a TeraByte (1024 GB) are promised within the next 2-3 years. The American TV Industry has already begun to adopt these drives for portable HDTV cameras, because no other media has the capacity.

Someone mentioned having the complete Star Wars "hexology" on a single disc. With holographic media it is possible - not only in HD, but 1080p HD. Even developers of Blu-Ray predict a MAXIMUM of 8 layers (at 25GB/layer) which makes Blu-Ray's total potential of 200GB - so Star Wars on a single Blu-Ray disc is just not going to happen. The potential for this form of media is huge. Not just having the all films from a series, but having "the making of", deleted scenes AND space for the obligitory computer game. Seeing as a Blu-Ray game has already had to be cut down to fit on a single disc, holographic media is the next logical step.

True, solid state media has potential, but it is a long way off.

[Alex]

@TimM

"And there is the flaw in your argument. Fact is the *vast* majority of the population (in the UK at least), *do not* have TVs that size. Even 32" is big for most people"

Interestingly, you are indeed wrong. The uptake on 'large' flat screens is unprecedented. CRTs are being dumped at local waste tips faster than they can actually recycle the darn things, and this is all by families. Now, where you argument could fit is with the kids who have a blu-ray player in their bedroom.

But that is besides the point. The vast uptake of PS3 (for example) purchases demographically is by males between the 20-35 according to numerous sources (El Reg being one of them) who have means to buy said machine and screen.

I do, however agree that if you have a screen less that (say) 32" it is somewhat pointless to upgrade to a HiDef player.

Peace