Why Blu-Ray is a lost cause

Blu-Ray as a video medium is a lost cause, plain and simple. Sony bet the farm on a disc format that serves very little purpose currently, and will become even LESS significant in the future.

What is Blu-Ray? Its a physical optical disc that boasts 5x-25x the storage capacity of traditional DVD media. Its also incorporates a software standard for movies and video which support HDTV resolutions & slightly better sound quality than traditional DVD's. Perhaps more important to the movie studios, it supports DRM restrictions which help protect their IP's from piracy.

Sounds great at first, until you realize a few things about it:

On the movie front, Blu-Ray does nothing for movie studios. DRM is a joke as the image constraint token isn't even implemented, allowing people to rip HD movies whenever they please. With the advent of EBAY, AMAZON, CRAIGSLIST, etc. people sell their used movies after watching them a few times. This means the movie studios lose money on a sale every time someone passes off their purchased movie to someone else. The only saving grace of Blu-Ray as a movie media is that its the only physical media in production that supports high definition video.. But in the next paragraph we'll see what even that is nearly pointless.

I haven't been to a Blockbuster in ages. There's this thing called pay-per-view I can get right through my cable box where I can watch just-released movies without having to drive to the video store only to find out they've rented out all the good movies. There's also Netflix where I can get my movies digitally right to my PC or Xbox 360. This is great for me as a consumer, and this is great for the movie studios who don't want people reselling copies of movies on physical media.

As far as Blu-Ray as a storage media goes, sure its big. Its also slow and expensive. For the price of a Blu-Ray drive, I can buy a Terabyte drive array, which is equivalent to 20-40 (depending on the # of layers) completely filled-up Blu-Ray discs. The drive array is about 100 times the speed of reading from a Blu-Ray disc. Only recently have extremely large software packages come close to filling up DVD9's. Why would anyone need to purchase a Blu-Ray drive?

So yeah.. Blu Ray is slow, expensive, and above all, pointless. Unless your name is Sony and your idea of running a business is to come up with a proprietary physical media format.

Yeah its pointless, that's why its selling like hot cakes. And a well know developer just said that the blu ray its his favorite storage media. :roll:

But whatever makes you sleep at nights

I guess in the long run I like the extra storage for games but when it all comes down to it and you have actually seen the 360s HD-DVD player or the PS3s BD drive upscale a regular DVD and realize what a small difference it makes in how things look the new HD media formats were really more hype than an actual advance.

People will move on and buy them because they like me believed the hype but really the difference between VHS and DVD was like night and day while the difference between DVD and BD or HDDVD is like night and slightly before night.

Guess what Bluray>Dvd>vhs>cd>tape>8 track lol. Its called technology things move forward, and bluray won get over it and ride dvd for the rest of your life lol if that make you happy.

Also bluray just won the format war only about 6 or 8 months ago. Dvd didn't just take over vhs there was some time inbetween where both lived together. All I've got to say is that I had online nascar races saved and wanted to make them into a movie format but guess what a normal dvd couldn't hold all of the info so I had to cut it down. But with a new bluray drive I will be able to put the whole uncut version onto a bluray disk. Seems there is a place for bluray and movies is a small part of its application, just stop and think instead of being a fanboy.

P.S. Sound quality is greatly improved over DVd with bluray, I can't stand to watch a reg. dvd now so visual quality is greatly improved, Bigger games, more features in games, more storage space, protective coating that actually works. PPV or downloadable movies not even close to quality of bluray. Less clutter with less disks.

blu ray hasnt passed 10% in movie sales revenue since it released and digital downloads/netflix is taking off very fast. This is nothing like the dvd/vhs era. people have more options today

http://formatwarcentral.com/index.php/2008/06/06/blu-ray-market-share-reaches-10-week-ending-june-1st/

You know you've hurt the PS3 fanboys bad when all they can come up with is "wrong forum" and "bu bu it won teh HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray format warz!!1"

Blu-Ray is the very heart of the PS3 & by relation the basis for the 360-PS3 system wars in general. Pretending this has nothing to do with System Wars destroys 90% of all "my PS3 is better than your Xbox 360" threads.

Please come up with some valid arguments to prove blu-ray is anything but a flop. For the person who said blu-ray is selling like hotcakes, what were you smoking? blu-ray is a commerical flop and that isn't going to chance.

DVD has some legs on it as a movie format, and digital distribution is the future and you cows know it. You have no argument that legitimizes blu-ray in ANY regard, and the proof of this is the fact that nobody has even ATTEMPTED to present one.

Nice link so thanks for confirmation of bluray is the next format that is having sales growth. You did notice that was a mile stone report for bluray and that would mean that it is growing in popularity. Like I said its only been like 6 months since bluray won the format war if it has been that long takes time a marketing for a format to finally be the new gen and not the next gen.

Hdtv sales are continually growing and with that growth bluray will sale. Plus with all the compression on ppv or any cable or sat. service provider or downloadable content people are wanting to see what true hdtv is about and to justify spending a $1000 or more on a tv. I know I'm tired of all of the compression on Dish with them trying to add so many hd channels that what they do got looks like garbage compared to a bluray movie.

blu ray will be here for the next 10-15 years unless they come up with something new or just use bigger discs.

blu ray in 3-5 years will be more popular than dvd now. the movies will be cheaper as well as teh players

Theres millions of people like me that like to have a physical disk. I also buy movies more than I rent them so this is full of tons of fail.

Not to mention, most of the US still does not have high speed internet access. Im sure those people would love to download a full HD movie with dial up...

Your argument should be: Digital Distribution vs. Storage Mediums.

Not everyone has a broadband internet connection that allows them to stream HD content to their computer, and not everyone has pay-per view access.

I used pay-per view for a while, and recently went back to using Blockbuster and their mail service. Comcast charges $6.00 for an HD movie rental. I can get a package with blockbuster online to ship me two Blu-Ray movies for $15 a month. If you watch more than 3 movies a month, what's the point?

We need a new larger storage medium to handle the ever growing size of all types of data, including movies. HD is growing, and it isn't going to adopt digital distribution overnight. Plus there will always be consumers who want to have a physical copy of the things they buy, like myself.

Blu-Ray as a video medium is a lost cause, plain and simple. Sony bet the farm on a disc format that serves very little purpose currently, and will become even LESS significant in the future.

What is Blu-Ray? Its a physical optical disc that boasts 5x-25x the storage capacity of traditional DVD media. Its also incorporates a software standard for movies and video which support HDTV resolutions & slightly better sound quality than traditional DVD's. Perhaps more important to the movie studios, it supports DRM restrictions which help protect their IP's from piracy.

Sounds great at first, until you realize a few things about it:

On the movie front, Blu-Ray does nothing for movie studios. DRM is a joke as the image constraint token isn't even implemented, allowing people to rip HD movies whenever they please. With the advent of EBAY, AMAZON, CRAIGSLIST, etc. people sell their used movies after watching them a few times. This means the movie studios lose money on a sale every time someone passes off their purchased movie to someone else. The only saving grace of Blu-Ray as a movie media is that its the only physical media in production that supports high definition video.. But in the next paragraph we'll see what even that is nearly pointless.

I haven't been to a Blockbuster in ages. There's this thing called pay-per-view I can get right through my cable box where I can watch just-released movies without having to drive to the video store only to find out they've rented out all the good movies. There's also Netflix where I can get my movies digitally right to my PC or Xbox 360. This is great for me as a consumer, and this is great for the movie studios who don't want people reselling copies of movies on physical media.

As far as Blu-Ray as a storage media goes, sure its big. Its also slow and expensive. For the price of a Blu-Ray drive, I can buy a Terabyte drive array, which is equivalent to 20-40 (depending on the # of layers) completely filled-up Blu-Ray discs. The drive array is about 100 times the speed of reading from a Blu-Ray disc. Only recently have extremely large software packages come close to filling up DVD9's. Why would anyone need to purchase a Blu-Ray drive?

So yeah.. Blu Ray is slow, expensive, and above all, pointless. Unless your name is Sony and your idea of running a business is to come up with a proprietary physical media format.

WillieBeamish

Wow so very short sighted.

The DRM works much better then DVD and they never intended on cracking down on people buying used movies but with Best Buy and Amazon thriving more new copies will be sold.

Your second paragraph only addresses the RENTING aspect of blu ray movies. The movie studios dont make most of their money off the renting but off the BUYING which is only increasing. Yes DD will hurt the renting market but not the purchasing market because people will still want to own their favorite movies and build collections with exotic collector box set editions that only hardcopies provide. Here is an article showing that with all your factors the Blu ray market is only growing. http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1537

"Through the first half of the year, consumer spending on Blu-ray titles is up $200M or 300% from the same period last year. Studios, such as 20th Century Fox, are seeing approximately 8% of title sales in the Blu-ray format, with the expectation that it could rise to as much as 12% by the end of this year."

And as for your comments on it as a storage device they are just wrong. Blu ray reads faster then DVD and on a constant basis all around the disk. So no its not slower and DVD9s are getting filled up already and we havnt even tried filling them with uncompressed sound and HD film which takes up tons of room. As for price, it will get cheaper just like DVD. DVD didnt start at this price, it took time and same will happen to blu ray.

Cable, Internet, Radio, and TVs are all switching to HD, its only obvious movies will too.

Now why would downloadable movies take over anything just curious? You think ppv hurt showtime or hbo? Most of these choices people talk about has been there for quite some time. You may be happy with everything you got being stored on a hard drive that can fail. But most joe blows want to see what they purchased. Downloads is just another medium to get merchandise out to the public, it is by no means what the standard will be, such as a format a physical piece of property.

Also I don't think I spent the money I did for my tv nor anyone else just to have a compressed filled movie experience lol.

Theres millions of people like me that like to have a physical disk. I also buy movies more than I rent them so this is full of tons of fail.

Not to mention, most of the US still does not have high speed internet access. Im sure those people would love to download a full HD movie with dial up...

Vasichko

QFT

I also like to have physical discs. A cabinet full of movies in your living room just looks cool. Can't say the same about owning a lot of DD files.

The DRM works much better then DVD

Javy03

This made me lol. DRM for DVD took years to crack. It only took a few months to crack Blu-ray.

Using pay per view and digital downloads to crush Blu Ray is not a strong point. PPV has been around a long time and has never hurt any previous formats. I don't think digital downloads will become the majority for awhile. Being able to download them through your PC/Xbox 360 is not enough. If you could do your netflix downloads through your current TV without it being hooked to a PC/360 then it has a chance of being more main stream.

Blu-Ray does make a difference in picture quality but again it is not as revolutionary as the jump from VHS but there is a good enough difference. DVD took a long time from when it arrived until it became main stream. People are slowly upgrading to new technology. So to say that it is not the dominant force now is just expecting too much.

Also people have been able to re-sell stuff for a long time. To say that people will resell Blu-Rays and that is why it is bad is a joke. I remember going to the video store in the 80's and buying used VHS so that argument is non-existant.There is a lot yet to be seen from this technology so to complain it is dead at this point is a joke of an argument.