Just ordered 25 pack TDK inkjet printable DVDs on Amazon. It was $250 I ordered in June this year. Now it goes down to $170.

Looks like Blu-Rays are getting cheaper finally.

A Wal-Mart ad:

Blu-Ray players may well be coming down in price but could I offer a word of caution based on my own experience?

I purchased a Samsung BD2500 “quality” Blu-Ray player about a year ago. It was sold to me as “second generation” - evidently there’s been some software developments which mean that earlier players don’t play certain features which the most modern disks include on them.

Like all professionals in our business I test newly burned masters on a variety of players including a bog-standard DVD player bought from the local supermarket, a top-line multi-everything DVD player that will play the image on a dirty saucer and on the Samsung BD.

Recently I discovered that a dual sided disk failed to play correctly in the BD player once it had passed the point at which the programme was playing from the second layer. It played perfectly on all the DVD players.

I authored a second disk and got the same results. I then took both disks to my pal’s studio which has a “quality” new generation Sony Blu-ray player and both dual layer DVDs played perfectly.

I searched the Internet and discovered that certain Samsung Blu-ray players have a variety of faults none of which Samsung seems interested in solving.

My Samsung player has now been sold on eBay and a new Sony is to be installed.

So two pieces of advice, beware older generation Blu-ray players and choose even the latest Blu-ray players with care if you want them to do more than play Blu-ray disks.

The Samsung example is spot-on. We are using Verbatim BD-R and at a point we discovered that certain Samsung players wouldn't play the discs at all. Initially we thought we have some bad media, but they worked with Panasonic players and of course PS3 (after an Internet update). And we're talking singe-layer BD-Rs, so I wouldn't imagine the double-layer problems. Of course Samsung never updated the particular models with a firmware that should support a best-seller like Verbatim BD-R media (at least they hadn't last time I checked). So the solution is the one I propose to the couples when they ask. "Buy a PS3". It's an excellent machine, it has now a reasonable price, the firmware updates will never stop, plus it has some amazing games (good for the groom, not so for the bride)!

Were your BD-Rs encoded with AVC or Mpeg-2?

For larger distribution, I stay with Mpeg-2 for the format.

I had a Samsung player at a customer's house that would not play my AVC discs but would play the Mpeg-2 discs.

A player that can't play AVC must be really-really old! I think that the first Bluray players didn't have support for AVC, a format that came later since it became obvious that the size of Bluray was not enough for fitting a movie without sacrificing the quality. But I go AVC only when my project tends to last well beyond 2 hours. Otherwise, MPEG is much faster to author.

This one is a little better but twice the price:

I believe it is safe to say that full-fledged competitive forces have now kicked-in. When Blu-ray first came out, there was very little price competition. Now, there is. I believe that during the course of 2010, sub $100 prices will become the "normal" prices.

Flaky players were also a problem in the early days with DVD players. In fact, among the worst were Sony players that were manufactured prior to recordable DVD media availability. These players weren't designed to accommodate the different reflectivity characteristics of recordable DVD media. I won't be surprised to see similar problems with early Blu-ray player models.

Yes, but who actually wants it? I remember when the TV station I work at made the HD switch two years ago, and I spent an hour working with one of our anchors and the engineers reducing the detail levels on the new studio cameras because you could see all of her wrinkles and the bags under her eyes. I'm pretty sure no bride will want to see that on her wedding video =)

Plus, cable/satellite compression being what it is, you're not going to see that much detail in TV broadcasts. 4k resolution might be a bit of overkill for the evening news or "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe"

Some folks may adopt it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that 1080i/p will be "good enough" for the overwhelming majority of people for a very long time.

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

"I'm pretty sure no bride will want to see that on her wedding video =)"

Actually I find it's the bride's mother rather than bride who is sensitive - but that may just reflect our different markets, Mike!

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.