248w ago - Planning to buy a Blu-ray player? Hold on. It's already battling public indifference, technical problems, laughable features and downloadable movies. Is it any wonder Blu-ray is doomed to fail? Here are five reasons why it's heading for the grave...
1. HD movie downloads
OK so the picture quality's not quite there yet, but Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others have already seen the future of movie viewing at home - and it doesn't come on shiny 12cm discs.
Instead services like iTunes, Xbox Live and Vudu already offer HD movies over the internet, enabling you to see the movies you want without having to hack down to the video store in the pouring rain.
With fibre-to-home broadband slowly being rolled out in the UK, who knows what the next few years will bring.
2. BD-Live
Have you seen the demos? BD-Live is a joke. It's a second-rate attempt to offer interactive features that HD DVD did first and much, much better.
It won't work on old Blu-ray players (they don't have the persistent storage) and may not work on new ones: it's not mandatory for Blu-ray player makers to include it in the hardware they sell.
Result? Large doses of confusion and frustration for anyone (un)lucky enough to buy a Blu-ray disc with BD-Live features on it.
3. Samsung thinks Blu-ray is finished
You know, the world's number one consumer electronics maker, Blu-ray stalwart.
Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, told Pocket Lint that Blu-ray would be dead in five years, and that it certainly wouldn't last 10.
He believes the format will be replaced by either a new kind of physical media - most likely flash memory cards if Toshiba's IFA 2008 keynote is anything to go by - or downloads. Go figure.
4. Sony thinks Blu-ray is finished
Blu-ray is not only finished in terms of spec, but it's also finished as a format. Optical disc technology has gone as far as it can go.
Or so says Take Miyama, Sony product manager for home video marketing in Europe believes. He told Electric Pig that "in the future, if [our emphasis] we have a physical media format, it will change physically. It won't look like an optical disc."
Talk of a
500GB Blu-ray prototype will only prolong the agony.
Sony has already hinted at its future direction with the launch of Bravia TVs in the US that can directly receive movies streamed over the internet. Blu-ray player not required.
5. DVD is good enough
Despite the fact that Blu-ray movies are expected to hit to 12 million sales in Europe this year, they still account for just two per cent of video sales in countries like the UK.
Even by 2012 DVD will still have the edge - and that's according to the Blu-ray Disc Association's
own over-enthusiastic predictions [PDF link].
The plain fact is few of us are ever likely to swap extensive DVD collection for their Blu-ray equivalents, especially when prices for Blu-ray movies and players are still so high.
Given that many cheap DVD players now have some kind of upscaling capability, DVD will prove 'good enough' in terms of picture quality for many years to come.
i loved this guy. very sad. he looked so tough and mean but was a really nice guy and a great actor. sad day....
~Jennifer
Jennifer Peterson
Sony Electronics Blog Moderator
Sony Electronics
http://www.Sony.com/ElectronicsBlog
I say this because there is a good majority of the people in this world that are like me.
What is like me? Well I prefer to go to the store and buy a psychical copy of what I own rather then order it over the internet. Why is this? Well there are some major flaws with ordering over the internet.
1 Psychical Objects: If you order a psychical Object from a retailer such as amazon.com, There is a small chance (About 10% maybe less) That the object will be broken when you receive it. This has happened to me multiple times. And I don't order stuff over the internet very often anymore because of that fact.
2 Downloads: Downloads have a few flaws in them selves. Although I can order it for cheaper most of the time. The main Issue is space.
Now this wouldn't be a problem. If we had say.. 20 Terabyte hdd's. However this is a long ways away before video game consoles get that advanced.
My next problem with downloads is the time. Downloads are very time consuming and most of the time I have to leave my PS3 on over night to download a full game. So going to the store is a no brainier to me.
So in my opinion I can Either.
A: Grab my key's drive to the store. pay about 10 more USD then I would over the internet. Drive back. Pop it into my disk drive. and go from there.
B: Order something over the internet for the same price I would get it at the store. Wait for it. It arrives to me. Has a 10% chance of being broken. I send it back wait another 6 weeks until I finally call them. They say "We forgot to ship it" And then I wait another 2 weeks until it finally arrives, and then stick it into my disk drive. Or...
C: Order it over the internet Slightly Cheaper and wait for 10 hours when it downloads.
I my self would go for A but if you don't that's your opinion and I respect it.
Like how on the PS3 you can't copy a game bought on PSN onto your external HDD. You have to be careful not to accidentally wipe your entire HDD or delete the file. This is where back-ups would come in handy. Even though you can ask for another copy of the game by emailing Sony, you can't keep asking them for a new copy every time something happens.
Basically, Blu-Ray and all forms of optical media will still stay alive until a smaller form, in terms of physical size, of optical media comes out.
Blu-Ray will take a while to catch on. Companies are not helping the format by releasing 'DVD players with upscaling technology' that is supposed to give you the same experience as any other HD movie or not researching in ways that they can manufacture Blu-Ray at a cheaper cost, so as to appeal to the price factor many of us have.
Also, If you believe in the Mayan calendar, we will all be dead in 2012, so it won't matter.
In all honesty though, the death of Blu-Ray does indeed mean the death of optical media. New technologies are coming out every week that make basic electronics better; the resistor, transistor, and inductor are not the three kings any more. Technology like memristors will make boot instantaneous on computers within a very short time frame.
I'm sure everyone has heard of the atom thick carbon transistor. Just these two new (kind of new, at least outside of theory) elements could lead to technology of paper thin computers, once again not far from now. That being said, Blu-Ray won't be dead by 2012. Electronics as we know it will be dead by 2012.