What’s the future for Blu-Ray

[Don Blish]

Originally Posted by Chris Rackauckas

Remember, youtube has an HD mode now. Even less people are going to get off of it.

Yeah, I looked at YouTube's so called HD service. Instead of 720x1280 or better, it was a very highly compressed 480x853. In TV speak, that is ED, but at that data rate, it is a poor widescreen SD.

I have both a PS3 and a player, make BluRay projects that look great and enjoy inkjet printable BD-R discs at $9 each. There is no extra "royalty" to Sony for small volume duplicates

[Dave Blackhurst]

It looks like almost all the new crop of "consumer point and shoot" cameras are including some flavor of HD, be it 720 or 1080... People are going to want to store and share that video, and they are going to be expecting it to look as good as displaying directly on that HDTV...

BR has a window of opportunity, and with those new lower licensing fees, all that needs to happen is for players and burners to break the $100 price point... and DVD will begin to fade, probably pretty fast.

In the end, we still probably burn CDs for smaller files, DVD's for mid size archives and projects, and BR for the big stuff... it's actually a pretty logical archival system when you think about it. It's just that BR hasn't hit the sweet spot price wise yet, but if you think about it, there can't be that much difference in the components and mechanisms between an obsolete "CD player" and a BR player... once those license fees drop (hopefully sooner rather than later from the article I posted...), BR could hit big time.

[Simon Denny]

Good point David,
It will be an interesting time for the HD format and you are right, under $100 you can afford it.
I remember when the first DVD players came out at over a thousand bucks, that seems like a long time ago. I think with the local consumer market going HD that this will be computer, ipod, hard drive, memory stick, what ever is the cheapest form of sharing files.
In guess with all things, as consumers desire a product this will drive the cost down as other companies start making the same thing but cheaper. Yes we could see the Blu-Ray take off but at the same time I wonder.

I just remembered something I read or saw on TV or something.
The person said one day will we have a device the same size as a cigarette packet that will hold every movie ever made.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good evening,

What a lively discussion thread.

Sony totally messed up with the entire Beta think back in the dark ages, yes I was there and even back to four track tapes of Herman's hermits!

forgetting all the tecno garboli, it will boil down to bucks. lower prices, higher production.

I recently bought a bl ray player. I was real impressed with the improved DVD images!!!! Blue ray images had far more detail, almost to much to be honest.

I loved the blu ray images I burnt onto a a dvd disc. I will be getting a burner sooon.

I suspect bl ray will saty around, it has much to offer in more than just the movie area. I am not sure archiving is one of them as hard drives are so cheap.

HD video is marketed to stay so bl ray will pretty much stay.


I would wager sony is going to back off and let this take hold, if not they could see a repeat of the bata thing!!

It will be fun to watch, I would rather not have to buy a different system!!!

[Tom Roper]

"Best" is the defeated archrival of "good enough."

SACD, DVDA were high quality audio formats that lost to mp3. People can't carry around their big screen televsions. Personal convenience rules.

Are parents going to purchase movies for their kids on Blu-ray if they can't play them in the car on road trips? Even if your next car came with a Blu-ray player, would you want to wait 2 minutes to get past the "Don't Steal" warnings? Would wireless broadband, BD Live and BDJava make it a must have for your car? Would you stay parked long enough to enjoy the movie yourself? Would you see a difference on the small screen?

I think if DVD dies, all optical dies including Blu-ray, but I think both will survive albeit in separate quality tiers of the same niche...copy protected Hollywood films.

For everything else, EVERYTHING can be better served with ubiquitous media players where open source and convenience rules.

My $0.02

[Mark Donnell]

Although I got flamed on another thread for suggesting that Blu-ray is not the future, I will again state that I believe that until the costs and complexity associated with producing Blu-rays comes way down, only major producers will invest the time and and money necessary to make Blu-rays. I think that downloading entertainment files is the future, and that TVs as we know them will be rare in another ten years. The computer / media center will be integrated with the entire house. I also greatly dislike the idea of further compressing my DVCPRO HD and converting it to a multiframe long GOP MPEG format as is necessary to put it on Blu-ray. For now, I'll play the files on a computer and output the video via HDMI to my TV. The quality is stunning, and its easy to do. I also very much like the Western Digital media player, mentioned earlier in this thread. Although you do have to compress and convert the files to another format, it is easy to do and provides a good quality HD picture that can be shown or supplied to clients with the player ($ 100). I await further flaming.

[Dave Blackhurst]

NO flames Mark, it's a wide open field. BUT I've since seen the news snippet I posted earlier from another source... once the licensing comes down, the dam will burst on BR, and if I read it correctly, the hope is to offer a combined DVD/BR license for less than current DVD licensing...

You have to consider that the shiny silver disc format has been a remarkably scalable solution (CD-DVD-BR-?). BUT as you point out, 8G jump drives (thumb drives, lipstic drives, whatever you want to call them) are down to $15... That's 1-2 hours of HD content, plus or minus, depending on compression.

I believe that some BR discs are actually including an "iPod" ready portable media file. In the future, logic would suggest that when you purchase a specific movie/content, they might well include several file formats that the purchaser can simply transfer as needed - very good value proposition, for next to no investment, and it discourages pirating big time, why be a criminal when you can just buy the legit content once!

I recall moving a big stack of LP's and thinking, "I could rip these and have the whole thing in my pocket..." Certainly size and portability matters, so MAYBE the shiny silver disc will prove itself too big to remain practical, but I'd be reluctant to bet on it just yet.

If the BR licensing hits by mid year at very favorable terms, I'm betting inexpensive BR players and burners will be THE hot Christmas item... All those people who got HDTV's last year will be wanting to actually see some HD content on them, instead of the crap cable feed!

[Chris Rackauckas]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

so MAYBE the shiny silver disc will prove itself too big to remain practical

Man, we've become spoiled. :P

[Greg Laves]

I am enjoying all the differing opinions and points of view. And I have some questions.

Who is paying for a licensing fee of $15,000 and how large is your distribution? How many copies are you producing? Because I have put out product on BluRay and I haven't paid any licensing fees other than any fees that might be hidden in the cost of the blank disc. As for producing BD coasters, I would suggest that before you burn any project, do your first copy on a re-writable disc. That way you will eliminate any bugs without producing coasters.

[Chris Leong]

I agree. If/when Sony backs off from that licensing plan of theirs, then BRDs will become the next step up in optical storage. However, since consumer SSDs are just starting to hit the market now, and the codecs in general are becoming better and more efficient, we'll see how long optical in general lasts.

If Sony keeps on going with their licensing strategy then I think only the majors will still play along, and most everybody else will go pure digital. I don't know about the stability of
50GBs in an optical. For me 25GB and above

Greg
I've put out BRDs too, and for me it's been hit-and-miss. Down at my local Best Buy, the BRDs I burn play on some machines, not on others. Most of the menuless BRDs will play just fine, also the BRDs with DVD style menus tend to play okay, but when you start to try and make a BRD with the extended menus, then AACS tends to kick in and I've found myself out of luck, re-recordable or not. Hence the coasters. I know how to burn them, they just don't always work in all my clients' machines.

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Chris Leong

Greg
I've put out BRDs too, and for me it's been hit-and-miss. Down at my local Best Buy, the BRDs I burn play on some machines, not on others. Most of the menuless BRDs will play just fine, also the BRDs with DVD style menus tend to play okay, but when you start to try and make a BRD with the extended menus, then AACS tends to kick in and I've found myself out of luck, re-recordable or not. Hence the coasters. I know how to burn them, they just don't always work in all my clients' machines.

I'm so used to viewing digital files on my computer without problem that a glitch with an optical disc brings me crashing back down to reality. The future is a container format like Matroska but the big studios are so into pushing Blu-ray and wading toe deep into the digital download market I don't expect the push to come from them. It's got to come from Indys who need to reap the reward of lower cost distribution.

Hitachi said they have plans to deliver 4-5TB hard drives in 2011 via CPP-GMR technology. The future is most definitely a digital file sitting in a container with appropriate rights management and I'd prefer that governing body behind the rights management be one that caters to all content creators.

My hope would be that there would be a few licensing bodies setup and that an acceptable amount of competition would allow for affordable licensing of DRM technology for all parties involved.

I have no hope that Blu-ray is the technology to move us forward. It's the video version of SACD. We all know how SACD turned out.

[Greg Laves]

Originally Posted by Chris Leong

I've put out BRDs too, and for me it's been hit-and-miss. Down at my local Best Buy, the BRDs I burn play on some machines, not on others. I know how to burn them, they just don't always work in all my clients' machines.

Funny.... Best Buy has always been one of our favorite BluRay "test" locations. And we ran into similar problems in the early days. We have a Sony BD burner with Sony software and when we first started burning BD's about the ONLY machines that would NOT play our discs was any Sony. They would play fine in anything else. Sony kept saying that their machines just needed a firmware upgrade. The store would get the firmware upgrade and nada. Ironically, they always played great in a PS3. Now our discs are created in Encore with menus and they play in just about everything. It is rare now when one doesn't play in some BD player.

[Steven Pustay]

I'm a part timer (Full Time School Teacher, directing school TV station for Cable TV Affilitate) and so far have 11 weddings this season, 2 of which are BluRay. Not bad odds and clients at wedding shows seem very interested.

I just delivered my first full length BluRay Wedding, more than 2 1/2 hours of content for a Bride and Groom. I originally delivered the wedding for them in HD dvd format (burned to SD dvds ... so very limited file size ... wedding only, no reception footage), but promised them that I would burn a BluRay when the technology was available for the Mac.

I use FCP, compressor, and Encore to burn the Blu Ray. They're gorgeous and it turns out all the rumors about outrageous burn and render times are overstated.

I'm excited about the prospects of BluRay and am suggesting to Bride's a purchase of a Sony Playstation as the player.

Steve Pustay

[Chris Leong]

Greg and Steven

I'm with you guys in recommending a PS3 to my clients in the future (if they insist on going BRD). That seems to be the one machine that has always played everything I burned at home, right from the start.

Is it Encore CS3 you're using? Gotta try that, maybe that will help.

Thanks!
Cheers
Chris

[Greg Laves]

Yes indeed. Encore CS3.