Mike H, I hear you. I have even seen what you are talking about on our local HD newscasts, which are really sharp HD.

I still think the technology will march ahead along the curve of Moores law. And not just the image resolution, but the CPU, software, compression and bandwidth to manipulate it. If we had more material to work with, we could do deep cropping and pan & scan in post along with lots of photoshopish features only the studios currently have.

Take a look at Moores law graphs of sensors over the last 20 years and the trend becomes obvious that we are still on the upward trend of exponential improvements.

I think that with video specs there is a "natural" rate of change. It's the same with many technology based products. For example, some of the disk drive "experts" predicted in the mid 90's that the maximum capacity needed for IDE disk drives would never exceed 512MBytes (not GBytes). These "experts" vigorously argued their point with a characteristic down-their-nose attitude. There are many other examples of "experts" in other areas who argue their "no-changes" are needed pitch.

A number of factors define the "natural" rate of change. These range from habits to technology to cost as well as many other factors including how often do people want to buy something new. The farther we slew the time line forward, the bigger the differences become. How about +50 years, holographic 3D video viewing technology in your living room; +100 years, interactive holographic displays similar to the Holo Deck on the Starship Enterprise. There are techno-belligerents that would argue the number of years and other minutia but that's not the point. Technology changes will continue but only at their "natural" rate of change.

Jim:

The rate of change has been really well documented for every technology product there is, and using the past to predict the future and create a trend line is a pretty safe bet, as it naturally incorporates all factors by being real world numbers. Once we reach the technological singularity, technology advancement will speed up beyond current trends.

That said, Im not sure that there is a "natural" rate of change for technology, only past rates of change observed from a present day perspective. Once you start studying the effects of technological singularity, you can see that at that point technology advancement will step up another exponential factor or if that point is never reached technology advancement will taper off over a long time scale.

Footnote: Im just bummed the wife told me over the weekend, out of the blue, to get the DVHS deck and tape collection out of the family room. She obviously dosen't know crap about preserving the history of technology (and leaving my holodeck alone).

Electronics manufactures are pulling the same crap they pulled when the first DVD players came out. Some players could play all discs, some could not. Same thing with BluRay. Now, some can play every Bluray, some can not. Some of them are missing support for BD-R or BD-RE. From what I have seen, department stores are not listing disc compatibility in-store on the product descriptions, merely they just put a Bluray logo and a DVD logo. They only way to know is to look up the specs on-line.

With all the ridiculous development time that went on prior to finalizing the specifications for Bluray, you'd think just some of the genius would have been applied to making sure we didn't repeat history.

Not repeating history is great in theory. But in reality, it happens all the time because the same forces are at work all the time. Products come to market as standards are still being defined. Happened with consumer tapes (Betamax, VHS, SVHS, 8mm, Hi-8, DVHS, miniDV), happened with DVD (DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+-RW, and remember DVD-RAM), and it's the same with Blu-Ray. BD-Live wasn't even an implemented part of the spec when the format wars were going on. Now it is, and the early players won't play it. Such is the price of early adpotion.

Manufacturers have been smarter in allowing firmware updates to solve compatibility options, but sometimes it's really a hardware issue, like when a laser can handle a dual-layer disc.

I expect we will see a plethora of $99-$150 models in 2010. And We are now seeing specials on BluRay discs themselves for $9.99. They have reached similar pricing levels to where DVD was 4 years ago.

By Christmas 2010, most people in our industry will have taken the leap to BluRay, and many savvy consumers will as well.

Peronne:

There have been some bummer Blu-Ray firmware updates every now and then.

I updated my LG & lost the ability to play BD-R. Fortunately you can easily downgrade LG firmware. They have since released other "updates" none of which support BD-R.

Granted, few in the consumer world play BD-Rs, but it dosent make sense to me and just makes BD distribution a tiny bit more difficult for no reason I can think of.

Jeff

Ironically, my new BluRay player just came in at the office today. I can't get the friggin thing onto the internet, but it played my DVDs nicely. I'll be testing it later with some DVD9 material to see if that works.

It is this kind of stuff that can make us pull our hair out.

Sony is the main name associated with Blu-ray and they also happen to make all kinds of HD cameras.

Why can't BD-R be ironclad in the spec of every player? Just like all of the them play 1080p24.

It is a format and they are making all of these cameras for content creators and then killing them at the distribution level, just like DVD+R & -R

One would think it would be better this time around.

Makes all of these new cameras look like a bit of a farce if you don't know if your client can even play what you give them.

The worst thing is that you do not know there is a problem until the client tries the finished product, then it is too late.