Anti-Bluray Drive *Having a Good Old Rant*

[tri3limited]

[Rant]
I'm fed up with the consistent want of Bluray for consumer products!

Bluray burners are one of the most pointless creations on the planet as it stands. Who on Earth requires this product? Nobody!

Home users who made the mistake of buying a trendy HD camcorder need a Bluray drive as badly as they need the HD handycam, which by the way is not badly at all. No one needs to film their family at the beach on a low grade HD camera just because it has the word HD in it, let alone burn it to Bluray to give to relatives, so that they can go out and get a Bluray player especially for the occasion. Just burn it to DVD.

Professional video production companies don't need Bluray drives and Bluray burners in their Macs and PCs... Why you might ask? Well surely if the client really truly demands the product in HD they are obviously in a position where they can afford to have it published by an authoring company and will probably be looking to sell the product or store numerous copies in-house. Second of all, the editors don't required Bluray as they keep the files on their systems/servers so there is no need to store bluray versions of the file. All in all most clients are only after a practical solution so therefore DVD is more than enough.

Prosumers... Well this is the target market for the drives, as these people aren't in a position where they need the equipment, it's more that they just want the latest and greatest. They will be the people with 3CCD HD camcorders who are just dying to burn off that 'Independent Film' they made that lasts all of 10 minutes. Once again DVD is more than suitable for these people and better again, these are the people with a computer attached to their living room tv so they don't even have to burn the disc!

Transferring huge 30GB files... Get an external HDD! It's far far cheaper than getting a Bluray burner drive + those expensive discs.

People wanting to watch HD on their laptops. Well utilizing that Bluray drive will sure utilize your battery power. Store the files locally if you have the space. Store them on a portable USB drive if you don't have enough space, it'll still use less power than the Bluray drive. Oh and if you're watching films on your laptop, don't have the space or are willing to use an external drive... Watch a DVD! After all I'm sure the quality won't ruin the film completely!

The exceptions... I am allowing exceptions here for Video Authoring companies as well as Video Publishing companies. I also make an exception as far as a Bluray drive (read only) for people who simply want to watch Bluray DVDs on their HD PC screens/TVs of at least 20".
[/Rant]


Well please feel free to comment, and give a persuasive argument here... I'm up for a bit of a debate!

Please, when you post your arguments and comments classify yourself (or the group you are siding for) into one of the above groups (Prosumer, Pro, Home etc) or one of your own.

Makes it a bit more of a challenge then!

 

[dukebound85]

dvd drives were expensive too at some point

i want blu-ray for data backup
you mention using hd's but i want a static medium and the cost of blu-ray, both burners and disks will go down in future

 

[Mangaroo]

i want a bluray drive for backup too, im already at 4 external hard drives, im hating the wires and heat so much that i just unplugged them. Bring on bluray for home & especially without a doubt for pro.

Bluray vs external for backup

*Smaller, each disc takes up a lot less space then an external.
*Doesn't take up another bloody power socket + electricity bills per disc like each external does and if the external is USB - you can imagine all of the damn usb problems you are going to have, especially with notebooks! *looks at damn macbook*, spent the entire morning rearranging 2 usb devices so that they get enough power (just a webcam and vx revolution receiver - and the vx rec. is plugged into an external powered sources ffs!)
*Longer life then your average external, ive heard some blurays last like what 100 years? And by the time they need to be backed up, the bluray burners will be considerably faster and so it would take quite a bit less time to backup then externals.
*Eventually cheaper, apart from one off cost of the burner/player, it will of course eventually be cheaper to get the discs, just like with DVD although at this time, i guess for external drives to get sales, their storage sizes will increase considerably so it will probably be pretty balanced (unless prices of the discs come down to dvd prices ...then it's bluray backup paradise baby)

Home users who made the mistake of buying a trendy HD camcorder need a Bluray drive as badly as they need the HD handycam, which by the way is not badly at all. No one needs to film their family at the beach on a low grade HD camera just because it has the word HD in it, let alone burn it to Bluray to give to relatives, so that they can go out and get a Bluray player especially for the occasion. Just burn it to DVD.

It seems like you want time to stand still... progress will happen regardless, seriously the whole of your rant is like you just really don't want to spend $100 to get a burner when it inevitably comes down to that price as you are content with dvd whereas a lot of us are not. Don' buy it! The rest of the world will and i bet you will too!

10 TIMES less discs to store the same amount of information...

 

[tri3limited]

25/50GB storage... and you don't want a HD? DL DVDs surely aren't a bad option then?

I take it you would be in the Prosumer category? Maybe home user?

Thanks for your view and take on things. A pretty good argument.

EDIT:
To Mangaroo; Surely then your home/work environment would be covered in discs rather than say 10 external HDs with the amount of data you're implying

2ND EDIT:
To Mangaroo's edit; Great point about future pricing and size increases. 2TB HDDs for similar prices to 320GB HDDs in the future vs 50 Bluray discs for $24.99! Bargains either way! (I realize in this case the Bluray is cheaper!)

3RD EDIT (It's better than making a new post after my own! )
You're right about the future, but in relation to the next, say for example, 3 Mac revisions Bluray would be pointless and expensive for Apple whilst not extending it's current user base on that feature alone.

Loving the feedback by the way (and to let you know, i'm not completely anti-bluray... I have a PS3 and create HD Encore Bluray menus on some projects that are sent to publishers)

 

[Mangaroo]

haha sorry for making you edit so many posts, I tend to post before I think things through, my bad!

DL DVDs aren't bad at all, and if it were not for bluray, I would be transferring most of my things to DL...but only gaining twice the space...which would be too much hassle for what its worth. But i agree its not bad at all, and i think for most people it would be enough. But more freedom/less size restriction is great, I won't have to worry too much about the size of my photos/scans.

Very frequently i gather collections of my photos about the same subject that reach about 20 GB and it would just be so much nicer to have whole collections on a single disc rather then scattered. And it's not just for photos but also for music / ebooks / movie backups. All those DVDs you bought? Convert them to 700mb files and you can store 70 of them per bluray disc! No more looking for that DVD, there would be just one or two bluray discs (unless you have some mega collection!) near the tv A-M N-Z etc ^_^

We don't need it all, but it will come with quite a few benefits for some users....and i think the reason that it might take quite a bit of time is that you are right in that most people don't need or want it, only for bluray movie backup/piracy..

Edit: about apple incorporating it, yeah i dont really think it is necessary and would put a lot of people off. However, perhaps an option for the Mac Pro.

A lot of the people tending to buy the mac pro just get the standard configuration which is a dual QUAD core. Fact is, very few applications use 8 cores well, (rendering with maya aside since most people who get it will be using it for photography/design/music/movies). You see lots of photographers/designers etc (people using photoshop/painter) getting 8 cores because they just assume its better, which it is! But the gains you get for that $600 (uk price around £300 for the extra quad core) are pretty minimal...these people have money to kill and the blu ray option might see quite a few sales if its offered in the mac pro configuration. And I kind of dislike Apple for setting the default as 8 core to be honest. They know that very few people would buy the extra quad if it was not for the default configuration. Either they dont mind tricking people to waste their money or have plans to do some large multi threading improvements (Grand central - Snow leopard). But even that is unlikely to use all 8 cores...even steve said it himself about multithreading and current applications...yet it is still the default. Sorry for the offtopic rant!

 

[tri3limited]

Great post about the Photo/Music/Film collections... Thats probably as good an argument as there is! Definitely a prosumer kind of thing but none the less a great point!

 

[sushi]

i want blu-ray for data backup you mention using hd's but i want a static medium and the cost of blu-ray, both burners and disks will go down in future

I used to backup to optical drives, CDs, then DVDs.

Now I just backup to external HDs for the most part.

Quicker and easier to do.

Burning discs takes a lot of time. With the external HD option, I am more prone to complete my backups.

Great post about the Photo/Music/Film collections... Thats probably as good an argument as there is! Definitely a prosumer kind of thing but none the less a great point!

I routinely backup my HD to and external HD.

However, when I import pics, I tend to burn a DVD of them at that time.

So I guess looking at it again, I do both.

 

[tri3limited]

Sounds like this is a really 50/50 area from the first few responses alone. I was kinda hoping for that!

Great point on the speed issue sushi, and a key point for the next few years until burners are up to speed.

Although with faster disc burning speeds comes larger flash memory and faster HDD speeds, and better technologies for data backup.

As a slightly off-track addition to the debate; does anyone see portable flash/hard drive overtaking disc based media in the future? especially as downloads will play a huge part in the future of music and film distribution.


REMINDER: Please don't forget to vote! Even if you're not interested, don't wish to post or simply don't care... That's what the fence is for!!

 

[Mangaroo]

As a slightly off-track addition to the debate; does anyone see portable flash/hard drive overtaking disc based media in the future? especially as downloads will play a huge part in the future of music and film distribution.

maybe, but i sort of hope not, i love how easy it is to store discs

 

[revenuee]

why do we even need CD's? why not just store everything on floppy's?

this is a ridiculous argument.

I'm a home user and I have an HD camera --- because even at 3CCD NTSC video doesn't look as good as a 3CCD HD camera on my HD tv.

Because Blue ray DVD's look better on my HD tv then standard DVD's.

are you shooting video/photography in film? editing by splicing manually? do you do all your prints by hand? Do you have a black and white tv? are using a cellphone that's the size of my powerbook?

are you looking to have the world stand still? what are you even arguing?

 

[dasikes]

Somewhat pro-Blu-Ray.

It's apparent to me that the OP does not work at a video productions company. Not because any of his information was incorrect, though. Everything said about storage, prosumers, and average consumers are true. Though I can see the benefits of BR for storage, the technologies price is just not justified yet.

However, for those who work in video productions professionally (not wedding videographers ) part of the job is keeping up with and ahead of technology.

Example: Earlier this year, we purchased our first HD camera. We're not ditching our Mini-DVs or anything, we've simply purchased a single HD camera. We're doing this as it is becoming in demand. The demand is not yet high enough to go all-HD, but digital video is going that way fast, so we had to make a jump in that direction.

After BR was decided over HD-DVD, it became apparent that BR will overcome DVD in the future. Not necessarily anytime soon, but it will happen. So, we purchased a single BR drive to go into one of our Mac Pro's drives. This way, we can go ahead and get to know the technology for when it catches on more, and will be prepared when that time comes better than others, and therefore stay on-track if not ahead of the competition.

If a company simply waits until the new standards are accepted, they'll always be behind.

EDIT: HOWEVER, I am NOT for Apple including BR drives yet. That will bring prices sky-high, and is totally impractical at this point. Everyone arguing for its use for storage: not yet. It's just not justified for that reason yet.

 

[revenuee]

However, for those who work in video productions professionally (not wedding videographers ) part of the job is keeping up with and ahead of technology.

You make the argument yet -- And I agree with you. Just like it wasn't cost effective to include CD drives when the first PC's came out in the late 80's early 90's - then it wasn't cost effective to include DVD-R in the late 90's early 2000s-- and sometime in the future, their will probably be a new technology that isn't cost effective to include YET.

I quoted the "wedding videographers" point because it's interesting. If you consider the AGE group of people that get married, they are usually the ones that are in the KNOW about technology. And often, because they see that they can get their DVD's in BLUE ray, and their PS3 has Blue ray -- I wouldn't be surprised if more and more young people start asking about it. Just like HD camera recording is becoming pretty standard ... at least among my many of my old contacts.

best

 

[tri3limited]

Wedding Videos!! I'm shocked by the insult! haha... Seriously though there's no way i'm going bak to them! lol

As a production company though you surely can see the lack of need for a Bluray drive though. I'm unaware of the need to have the disc drive?

I edited a short RED clip once for a client but i have no need to burn it to disc as that is for the publication company to do, not me. We have a bluray drive but it's only use is for DVDs (mainly to install software and upgrades).

EDIT: Using RED example as something higher than HD to show the relevance of the drive.

So unless your company produces very low numbers of Bluray discs it seems irrelevant.


All in all i'd like to remind people that i'm just trying to create a debate here that maybe Bluray isn't the best way forward. I see what is being said about me wanting the world to stand still, but i'm in agreement with Apple in not feeling it's worth implementing now, and in my personal view if ever. Surely by the time it's widely adopted the next generation of portability will be available.

Looking forward to some more responses and good arguments.

 

[tri3limited]

Just thought i'd also mention.

I'm not anti-HighDef just not a firm believer in Bluray burners to be more precise.

I'm watching Sky Sports HD1 atm, and I do love my PS3 to bits! I just can't see why most users would need or necessarily use a Bluray burner. There are obviously exceptions... I'm just interested in other people's thoughts on this

 

[revenuee]

Just thought i'd also mention.

I'm not anti-HighDef just not a firm believer in Bluray burners to be more precise.

I'm watching Sky Sports HD1 atm, and I do love my PS3 to bits! I just can't see why most users would need or necessarily use a Bluray burner. There are obviously exceptions... I'm just interested in other people's thoughts on this

I think we all have to remember is YET. No one has to do it YET. But what happens when more and more camera's go HD and SD becomes absolete ... more importantly HDD -- we will need larger storage --- and it will simply be the standard.

With that said -- maybe something new/better will come out by then -- and Blueray will go the way of Beta, or Laser Disk --- since Beta at least still has a presence in TV

 

[tri3limited]

With that said -- maybe something new/better will come out by then -- and Blueray will go the way of Beta, or Laser Disk --- since Beta at least still has a presence in TV

Can someone here who is pro bluray, possibly revenuee (strongest pro comments so far) explain to me why they would like or need to use this at this moment in time? and maybe how they see the future of video... similar to the music industry?

 

[revenuee]

Currently,

Short of my own personal desires do be able to record my HD video (for personal use) onto a Blue Ray video -- non

There was time where I was working in photography, during University

one of my favourite devices in the field was a stand alone CD burner -- something like this http://ezdigimagic.com/.

I could take my 512 card, shoot my photo's and burn a CD as a negative -- instant back up

each CD was MUCH cheaper then carrying around several CF cards.

NOW that is shooting at 6 mega pixels

near the end of my time working in photography, I started being exposed to these http://www.phaseone.com/

digital back that allowed for (at the time) 40 mega pixels -- this one allows for 60.

with file sizes ranging from 40 - 100 MB per photo -- how quickly would a CD fill up? or even a DVD?

compact flash cards are growing in size every year --- with samsung even having a 64 gig card.

a medium format camera with a digital back and a blue ray stand alone burner would be a photographers WET DREAM.

The future of music? currently most CD's are recorded in stereo -- DVD's in 5.1 -- now we are seeing Blue ray in 7.1 --- How soon do you think we'll see music albums in blue ray at 7.1? i don't think it's to far. -- or for that matter integrated Video/Music Cd's --- where you can play your album in a player in your car, or play the same disk in your video player and play the video

all that will take up space, LOTS of it.

I agree -- RIGHT NOW ... most people don't "Need" blue-ray -- it's all want ... but outside of food, shelter, clothing, it is all WANT by the standard sociological definition.

 

[CWallace]

I am pro-Blu-Ray, though I don't expect to use it as a data-backup medium.

For optical backup, unless it has true random-access (i.e. - DVD-RAM), you have to erase and re-copy the entire dataset each time you want to backup which is a time-sink. When I was on Windows, I could just use an xcopy script to copy the files that had changed since the last one and it would overwrite only those files, leaving the rest unchanged. Even with the slow burn speeds (due to the CRC checks which helped protect my data), it was faster then burning a new copy of all the data (unchanged or not) to DVD+RW.

To my knowledge, Blu-Ray does not offer random access recording, so you have to wipe the disc and re-burn the entire dataset each time. I was considering HD DVD-RAM, but with the death of the base format, I assume it is dead and will never be released.

So now I copy everything to external HDDs. It's easy enough to plug it in once a week and do a differential copy in a matter of minutes and then put the HDDs off-site. And because the capacities are epic (1TB+), I can now back-up everything whereas before I would not backup music or video files because they took too many discs.

 

[minik]

I'm pretty much a normal home user here. Since I bought a 60GB PS3 back in 2006, I started to obtain movies on Blu-ray disc. Honestly, I don't remember my last DVD purchase/view, it's all about Blu-ray to me.

As for storage, you really cannot ignore the capacity on a signal 12cm optical media.

I hope Apple offers Blu-ray disc drive on its' MacBook Pro line in the near future.

 

[tri3limited]

I agree -- RIGHT NOW ... most people don't "Need" blue-ray -- it's all want ... but outside of food, shelter, clothing, it is all WANT by the standard sociological definition.

Favorite response by far. We are in a consumer generation all after the latest greatest, while just chucking the old stuff (or is that just England!).

I don't know much about photography but i thought megapixels weren't overly important in photography, more individual camera functions... but that said i have a Prosumer's D40 for the odd picture here and there! Shows how much i know about this field!

I have a feeling that i didn't quite take the right approach with calling this thread a "rant" especially as im more concerned about other people view on this, and am looking at it as a progressive discussion lol.

EDIT:
To minik; I can see your point in it being nice for portable bluray in the MacBook Pro range, maybe even as BTO, but would you prefer to see other advances such as better battery life etc before Bluray?

 

[revenuee]

Favorite response by far. We are in a consumer generation all after the latest greatest, while just chucking the old stuff (or is that just England!).

I don't know much about photography but i thought megapixels weren't overly important in photography, more individual camera functions... but that said i have a Prosumer's D40 for the odd picture here and there! Shows how much i know about this field!

I have a feeling that i didn't quite take the right approach with calling this thread a "rant" especially as im more concerned about other people view on this, and am looking at it as a progressive discussion lol.

it's not all about megapixels, it's about the glass more then anything.

BUT you have to remember that a CCD in your D40 is roughly 1.6 x 2.4 cm

the full frame CMOS chips are 2.4 x 3.6 -- the equivalent of 35 mm film (that's why it's called full frame)

where as medium format and large format can be 6 cm x 4.5 cm -- or larger in the past -- nearly 4 x the space avaliable you can fit more mega pixels without the problems of noise to signal ratio -- particularly common in compact cameras that have a 1 cm by 1 cm (maybe) chip and try to fit 10 mega pixels

 

[tri3limited]

Cool, always nice to know! I pretty much get what you mean and thanks for the film reference... Makes a bit more sense!

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

If you people complain so much about the need for Blu-ray and don't care so much about price, try Pioneer's newly developed 400GB (I think..) optical disc.

http://www.macworld.com/article/134303/2008/07/pioneer.html?lsrc=mwweek

But, as someone mentioned, Blu-Ray is not for backups. It's for the next generation of HD video content. And right now, they are at least $300 for a blu-ray drive, and the discs are mighty expensive. As of right now, it's not price-effective. Maybe once it gets more popular and price drops below $200 I'll consider it. For one blu-ray disc, I could buy lots more dvds and store more data.

 

[sushi]

I agree -- RIGHT NOW ... most people don't "Need" blue-ray -- it's all want ... but outside of food, shelter, clothing, it is all WANT by the standard sociological definition.

Isn't that the truth.

Favorite response by far. We are in a consumer generation all after the latest greatest, while just chucking the old stuff (or is that just England!).

Personally, I am waiting for the BlueRay successor.

Seriously, there will always be something newer and greater coming down the pike.

As for using BR for backup. Myself along with some friends have discovered that CDs and DVDs don't always retain their information over time. I remember when CDs came out, it was advertised as holding information for a 100 years. This was modified to 30 years. And now some say 10 years.

Well, I've had CDs fail that were 5 years old.

The medium is lower quality these days which I think accounts for the decrease in stable archive time. Not sure where BR weighs in for longevity. Nonetheless, something to consider if using as a backup.

 

[tri3limited]

Good point about lots more DVDs per Bluray disc at this current moment in time.

All in all i suppose i got significantly peeved off at all the people who turn round and say how important Bluray is to them in future revisions of Apple products, when I'm pretty sure people just want it for the sake of it.

In my opinion i think Apple are heading in the right direction by eliminating the disc drive from the Air and this is the direction Mr. Jobs is heading, as done before with the floppy drive. It would cut costs, save battery, bigger HDDs, lighten the product and leave more space for other features or better cooling systems. Most software companies have their software available for download, and iTunes has the music and films.

If you think I'm right or wrong please let me know.