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This is a first for Dell. Click on this link http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1530?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab and then click on Tech Specs and go down to Optical Drives. Both, the DVD and the Blu-Ray burners are slot loaders.

O...M...Gosh.....!

Wow man, Dell is actually stepping up (although there may be some PC users that beg to differ since slot loading drives can't handle the smaller diameter discs...), and I fear that Apple may be a little behind in industrial design. The current MBP design works, but it's very tired and ordinary. The Dell doesn't look that much better, but at least it's new and different.

Slot loading BR/DVD drive on a Dell! What's next...?
 
O...M...Gosh.....!

Wow man, Dell is actually stepping up (although there may be some PC users that beg to differ since slot loading drives can't handle the smaller diameter discs...), and I fear that Apple may be a little behind in industrial design. The current MBP design works, but it's very tired and ordinary. The Dell doesn't look that much better, but at least it's new and different.

Slot loading BR/DVD drive on a Dell! What's next...?


Nintendo Wii...

I have external slot-loading DVD burners (one FW and the other USB), and both handle the smaller discs...
 
You seriously think prices won't come down as a result its complexity? I'll pose a few examples that will shoot that idea to pieces (one of which i brought up a few pages ago). The computers that sent Apollo 11 to the moon was exceptionally complex and expensive (by today's standards, with inflation, billions of dollars), now the iPhone has greater computing and communications power than all the computers involved in the launch (put together). Another example, in the early '80s a brand new technology for listening to crystal clear audio came out... it was called CD's, a player cost upwards of $800 dollars (mind you lasers were a pretty new consumer technology in those days, and were very tough to manufacture cheaply), also this was just a player, that means you needed an amp and speakers as well... in the modern time you can by a CD player for $20... how could blu-ray player's never approach DVD players in cost? That just seems irrational considering that everything gets more complex, yet, every drops in prices...

And Apollo 11 went to space when? And how many Apollo Rockets did we make? And a CD player cost $800 when? And how many do we make now?
I'm very much aware that costs come down over time, and when the volume of manufacture is increased, but the issue here is that a specific optical format isn't expected to be relevant in 20 to 50 years, and there are serious doubts that it will reach the near 100% saturation that DVD and computers have reached. We have a timeframe of about 2 years to make BluRay stick and the pricing structures that are in place are not going to be impacted that severely in that timeframe.
The manufacturing line for BluRay discs is not going to drop to 15% of it's current cost within 2 years. Blue laser diodes, pickups, and all the other components will not drop that dramatically in two years and the license fees for the technology aren't expected to disappear either.
I completely agree with the basis of your argument and we will see BluRay players and even the discs get cheaper, but not nearly cheap enough quick enough to be able to dominate the market the way that DVD did.
We shouldn't forget that right now there are other options for viewing video content that weren't as competitive when DVD came out. Internet download, HD cable, HD broadcast OTA, and even upsampled SD DVD all look pretty damn good on an HD set. And let's also not forget that not everyone has an HD set and the desire for HD content.
While I'm feeling pissy, the flipside of the complexity argument can argued with this analogy... I also do a fair amount of carpentry (not professionally) and if you look at the standard tools in that trade, the complexity has gone way up and so have the costs. A $20 hammer is now a $300 nailgun, a $20 handsaw is now a $175 wormdrive circular saw. The nailgun has come down in price since it's very first introduction, but then has been the same cost and more for the last 15 years. The circular saws actually cost more than they did 20 years ago due to ...wait for it... complexity and cost of quality components!
 
And Apollo 11 went to space when? And how many Apollo Rockets did we make? And a CD player cost $800 when? And how many do we make now?
I'm very much aware that costs come down over time, and when the volume of manufacture is increased, but the issue here is that a specific optical format isn't expected to be relevant in 20 to 50 years, and there are serious doubts that it will reach the near 100% saturation that DVD and computers have reached. We have a timeframe of about 2 years to make BluRay stick and the pricing structures that are in place are not going to be impacted that severely in that timeframe.
The manufacturing line for BluRay discs is not going to drop to 15% of it's current cost within 2 years. Blue laser diodes, pickups, and all the other components will not drop that dramatically in two years and the license fees for the technology aren't expected to disappear either.
I completely agree with the basis of your argument and we will see BluRay players and even the discs get cheaper, but not nearly cheap enough quick enough to be able to dominate the market the way that DVD did.
We shouldn't forget that right now there are other options for viewing video content that weren't as competitive when DVD came out. Internet download, HD cable, HD broadcast OTA, and even upsampled SD DVD all look pretty damn good on an HD set. And let's also not forget that not everyone has an HD set and the desire for HD content.
While I'm feeling pissy, the flipside of the complexity argument can argued with this analogy... I also do a fair amount of carpentry (not professionally) and if you look at the standard tools in that trade, the complexity has gone way up and so have the costs. A $20 hammer is now a $300 nailgun, a $20 handsaw is now a $175 wormdrive circular saw. The nailgun has come down in price since it's very first introduction, but then has been the same cost and more for the last 15 years. The circular saws actually cost more than they did 20 years ago due to ...wait for it... complexity and cost of quality components!


Want to bet?

It wasn't very long ago that DVD recorders were expensive and people said they wouldn't drop as much or as fast as they did.

There's nothing magical about blue lasers. Yes, they were hard to make the first time, but the volume will be there. They have value not just for BR, but for other communication processes, as well. There's nothing else in BR drives that is significantly different than DVD drives, although slightly tighter tolerances.

And your prediction that BR's window is only 2 years is silly. There's absolutely no evidence of a trend that would lead to that conclusion. What percentage of movies are downloaded vs. purchased on disk? Has it reached 0.01% yet? Even for music which is much more mature, annual sales exceed 300 M CDs (roughly 3 billion songs per year) in the US compared to it taking Apple something like 7 years to reach 1 billion songs sold (and they have a huge percentage of the total. CDs are still around - and selling millions of units per week. Given that only a small percentage of users have the bandwith to download HD content as well as the fact that transferring video to a TV is harder than transferring it to an iPod means BR is likely to have a longer life, not a shorter one.
 
Want to bet?

It wasn't very long ago that DVD recorders were expensive and people said they wouldn't drop as much or as fast as they did.

There were two tough goals for DVD recorders, laptop size and dual layer. Those were serious technical challenges but the market size was there to justify the development. As far as the drop in cost I used to have a $2500 DVD burner that burned $30 blanks. I bought it in 1998 or 99 iirc. It took about 4 years for burners to drop to "cheap" prices and that was after people had widely adopted the format as both a media and data system.
Don't forget that the landscape was very different when DVD came around. VHS was crap, the internet was slow, data was outgrowing CD capacity, and you could tell the quality difference immediately on any TV, no expensive HD set needed. DVD was a uniquely successful format because of all these reasons that BluRay just doesn't have.

There's nothing magical about blue lasers. Yes, they were hard to make the first time, but the volume will be there. They have value not just for BR, but for other communication processes, as well. There's nothing else in BR drives that is significantly different than DVD drives, although slightly tighter tolerances.

That's an understatement for sure. But I recognize your point that the prices will come down eventually. They will. But, will the market be there by the time they do? Right now Blu-Ray is being subsidized on the PS3 and "simple" players are still $400 to $500 retail with little or no margin for Sony.
BTW, did you remember that there never even was a HD-DVD burner released? They couldn't get one engineered that was reliable or cheap enough. That says something about the level of complexity and tolerances involved.

And your prediction that BR's window is only 2 years is silly. There's absolutely no evidence of a trend that would lead to that conclusion. What percentage of movies are downloaded vs. purchased on disk? Has it reached 0.01% yet? Even for music which is much more mature, annual sales exceed 300 M CDs (roughly 3 billion songs per year) in the US compared to it taking Apple something like 7 years to reach 1 billion songs sold (and they have a huge percentage of the total. CDs are still around - and selling millions of units per week. Given that only a small percentage of users have the bandwith to download HD content as well as the fact that transferring video to a TV is harder than transferring it to an iPod means BR is likely to have a longer life, not a shorter one.

A format has to attain a certain critical mass or it will be cast aside. How many DVD-Audio discs do you have? SACD? MiniDisc? There are plenty of format flops out there and those are just the ones that were the "new CD". The danger for BluRay is that it will become a niche delivery medium for collectors while the majority of the market gets their content through other means. It is not written in stone that Blu Ray is the replacement for DVD. If people conclude that they don't need to invest in Blu-Ray to get the content they want, then they won't. I'm not saying that in two years everyone will be downloading all their HD movies and that Sony will be bankrupt, but that the Blu-Ray format has a better than 50% percent chance of just not catching on in the mainstream. I think they have less than a 10% chance of getting anywhere near DVD saturation levels.
There's quite a few people in the DVD business who have conceded that Blu-Ray is probably the last optical disc format we'll see. Steve Jobs is aware of this, why else would he be pushing a discless MBA, AppleTV, and iTunes movie rentals while ignoring HD authoring in iDVD and DVD Studio Pro.
Trust me, I wish this wasn't the case as I make my bread and butter in the optical disc business, but we're going to ride out the last years of optical's heyday and transition into the other media. It's not the end of the world, just another transition in how we get our content.
 
There's quite a few people in the DVD business who have conceded that Blu-Ray is probably the last optical disc format we'll see. Steve Jobs is aware of this, why else would he be pushing a discless MBA, AppleTV, and iTunes movie rentals while ignoring HD authoring in iDVD and DVD Studio Pro.

Come on! Do you really believe this drivel? Who are the quite a few people who believe this is the last optical disc format? That is like saying that 45 nm is the smallest chip size ever. Improvements will be made, storage will get better, faster, smaller.

Steve Jobs and Apple have never made any such commitment. The MBA is a unique light weight travel computer for a special niche of consumers. They are not about to pull optical drives from their entire line up of laptops. They did it in the MBA to eliminate weight and save space, otherwise they would have included a DVD drive. Not having one is definitely a negative for the MBA. Haven't you been reading about the "compromises" Apple "had" to make to reduce size and weight. If Apple could have fit a DVD drive in the MBA effectively, they would have.

Apple hasn't ignored HD authoring, they simply were waiting for the format wars to consolidate on a standard. Now that Blu-ray has won, you will see Blu-ray drives in mac pro, imacs, and mbp. Apple will definitely add HD support in final cut pro and other products before year end or they will loose significant market share to Adobe Premier and other packages. Professionals are definitely going high-def in a big way.

Apple TV and movie download services have two big obstacles.

Obstacle One, download bandwidth and infrastructure. The US does not even have broadband available in 50% of the households. Of that broadband most is DSL with less than 1.5 mbps download speed. There is no way consumers will be happy with the compressed garbage that they will forced to download at these rates of transfer. Infrastructure changes are very slow at getting upgraded, because it will take a massive re-investment in cabling, switching stations, ditch digging in easements for laying cable or optical lines, etc.

Two, content providers are not going to relinquish control of titles to Apple or any other download site. They will control the market by releasing to blu-ray first, and then holding off on releasing to Apple. That is why Apple is having such a hard time with movie downloads. Their catalog is very limited and studios are reluctant to release their top titles.

The high-def blu-ray market is just beginning. People are just now buying record numbers of HD tv's. The US is just now forcing digital broadcasting of TV. The blu-ray drive is just now ready to take off. Prices will drop and they will drop fast. Predicting a 2 year life for blu-ray is just plain ridiculous.
 
Come on! Do you really believe this drivel? Who are the quite a few people who believe this is the last optical disc format? That is like saying that 45 nm is the smallest chip size ever. Improvements will be made, storage will get better, faster, smaller.

Who? The DVD industry. That's who. The people who make their living off this stuff. Improvements have been made but they've been made in compression, hard drives, bandwidth, storage costs, etc. There isn't a huge demand for another optical format, just like there isn't a huge demand for another consumer tape format. That doesn't mean that DVD and even BluRay disappear completely, but it does mean that they can be marginalized to some degree.

Steve Jobs and Apple have never made any such commitment. The MBA is a unique light weight travel computer for a special niche of consumers. They are not about to pull optical drives from their entire line up of laptops. ...

Didn't say that they were doing it today. The writing is on the wall just like the imac with no floppy drive. There will come a time where the optical drive will be an option. It won't be this year, but eventually it will happen.

Apple hasn't ignored HD authoring, they simply were waiting for the format wars to consolidate on a standard. Now that Blu-ray has won, you will see Blu-ray drives in mac pro, imacs, and mbp. Apple will definitely add HD support in final cut pro and other products before year end or they will loose significant market share to Adobe Premier and other packages. Professionals are definitely going high-def in a big way.

Actually, Apple has ignored it. They released an update to Final Cut (which has done HD for quite some time), but not DVD Studio. They pulled their booth from NAB. Compressor was updated with new codecs to compress your HD content to all sorts of delivery mediums. BluRay authoring is the missing link and I sure do hope they come out with a good solution.
The other big problem with adoption of BluRay outside of the "Hollywood Studios" is replication costs. BluRay is prohibitively expensive in anything under 20,000 units due to mandatory DRM license fees. This creates a bit of chicken and egg situation where smaller studios won't invest in it and the consumer is left with fewer choices and less incentive to buy in.

Apple TV and movie download services have two big obstacles.

Obstacle One, download bandwidth and infrastructure. The US does not even have broadband available in 50% of the households. Of that broadband most is DSL with less than 1.5 mbps download speed. There is no way consumers will be happy with the compressed garbage that they will forced to download at these rates of transfer. Infrastructure changes are very slow at getting upgraded, because it will take a massive re-investment in cabling, switching stations, ditch digging in easements for laying cable or optical lines, etc.

Most consumers are happy with DVD. Those that have HD sets (a minority) think that DVD looks pretty good upsampled and many incorrectly believe it to be HD. They also watch SD cable, HD cable (compressed), HD OTA, VideoOnDemand, Tivo, and play games on their HD sets. This isn't 2000 where DVD was competing against VHS and cable. BluRay has to compete with all the other options before we even talk about movie downloads.

Two, content providers are not going to relinquish control of titles to Apple or any other download site. They will control the market by releasing to blu-ray first, and then holding off on releasing to Apple. That is why Apple is having such a hard time with movie downloads. Their catalog is very limited and studios are reluctant to release their top titles.

see above. It doesn't matter.

The high-def blu-ray market is just beginning. People are just now buying record numbers of HD tv's. The US is just now forcing digital broadcasting of TV. The blu-ray drive is just now ready to take off. Prices will drop and they will drop fast. Predicting a 2 year life for blu-ray is just plain ridiculous.

My point wasn't that BluRay has a two year life, but that it has two years to catch on and establish a market for itself or it will be relegated to niche status. Things don't look that good for Blu-Ray's chances with all the competition from other media compared to Blu-Ray's costs.
I don't want to declare BluRay dead, but I'm not convinced it will be a success either. DVD will be around for a while because of the installed base, but BluRay has a short window to establish a foothold or consumers will bypass it completely.
 
There's quite a few people in the DVD business who have conceded that Blu-Ray is probably the last optical disc format we'll see. Steve Jobs is aware of this, why else would he be pushing a discless MBA, AppleTV, and iTunes movie rentals while ignoring HD authoring in iDVD and DVD Studio Pro.
Trust me, I wish this wasn't the case as I make my bread and butter in the optical disc business, but we're going to ride out the last years of optical's heyday and transition into the other media. It's not the end of the world, just another transition in how we get our content.

HVD anyone? :D
 
Didn't say that they were doing it today. The writing is on the wall just like the imac with no floppy drive. There will come a time where the optical drive will be an option. It won't be this year, but eventually it will happen.

There is no writing on the wall. Please stop comparing the floppy to the optical drive. When Apple dropped the floppy, it was useless. The storage capacity was too small to hold most any file. The transfer speeds were woefully inadequate. Dial-up internet was at it's maturity and could easily handle floppy sized files. Floppies were not the industry standard for movies, video, HD content, music, etc.

Actually, Apple has ignored it. They released an update to Final Cut (which has done HD for quite some time), but not DVD Studio. They pulled their booth from NAB.

They haven't ignored it. They were waiting for the right time. Why do you think they are now talking to Sony? They pulled out of NAB because they didn't have anything monumental to release and Apple is trying to pick and choose it's venues these days to save costs and maximize their control over the sales pitch.

Most consumers are happy with DVD. Those that have HD sets (a minority) think that DVD looks pretty good upsampled and many incorrectly believe it to be HD. They also watch SD cable, HD cable (compressed), HD OTA, VideoOnDemand, Tivo, and play games on their HD sets. This isn't 2000 where DVD was competing against VHS and cable. BluRay has to compete with all the other options before we even talk about movie downloads.
When DVD was released it's competition was VHS, Cable, Satellite TV, OTA, theatre and rentals.

It realy isn't much different now for Blu-ray. There is HD cable, HD satellite, HD OTA, theatres, DVD, and rentals.

Blu-ray 1080p is vastly superior to 480p DVD, Even more than DVD 480p was to VHS 480i. Large screen HD TV's were one of the biggest selling items last christmas. DVD looks anemic on a 50" or better HD TV. 1080p blu-ray on a 50" HD TV just has to be seen and fairly compared to standard DVD and consumers will be hooked. Prices will drop. The market for HD video is already growing rapidly based on the sales of new electronic HD gear.
 
There is no writing on the wall. Please stop comparing the floppy to the optical drive. When Apple dropped the floppy, it was useless. The storage capacity was too small to hold most any file. The transfer speeds were woefully inadequate. Dial-up internet was at it's maturity and could easily handle floppy sized files. Floppies were not the industry standard for movies, video, HD content, music, etc.

agreed. i think it is silly to compare an optical drive to a floppy. the floppy was phased out by optical. if optical is ever removed, it will be because something better has come out, not because the world becomes completely digital.
 
There is no writing on the wall. Please stop comparing the floppy to the optical drive. When Apple dropped the floppy, it was useless. The storage capacity was too small to hold most any file. The transfer speeds were woefully inadequate. Dial-up internet was at it's maturity and could easily handle floppy sized files. Floppies were not the industry standard for movies, video, HD content, music, etc.

Again, this isn't happening today, but it will eventually happen. Thankfully DVD still has some legs left.

They haven't ignored it. They were waiting for the right time. Why do you think they are now talking to Sony? They pulled out of NAB because they didn't have anything monumental to release and Apple is trying to pick and choose it's venues these days to save costs and maximize their control over the sales pitch.

I like Apple too, but I'm not going to imagine or invent excuses for them. The HD formats have been around for a long time and they have done some very good things on the edit side like ProRes and making FCP fully scaleable, but they haven't released anything for BluRay or real HD DVD authoring (though the HD DVD content on a SD DVD was a nice trick).


When DVD was released it's competition was VHS, Cable, Satellite TV, OTA, theatre and rentals.

It realy isn't much different now for Blu-ray. There is HD cable, HD satellite, HD OTA, theatres, DVD, and rentals.

Rentals were VHS, theater shmeater, the real difference is that way more people watch time shifted TV, VOD wasn't there at all, and internet video was nearly nonexistant. Even if you ignore downloading movies to burn to DVD, there is a ton of good video content online. The bottom line is that there are only so many hours a day to consume video content and now there are way more options competing for that same time.

Blu-ray 1080p is vastly superior to 480p DVD, Even more than DVD 480p was to VHS 480i. Large screen HD TV's were one of the biggest selling items last christmas. DVD looks anemic on a 50" or better HD TV. 1080p blu-ray on a 50" HD TV just has to be seen and fairly compared to standard DVD and consumers will be hooked. Prices will drop. The market for HD video is already growing rapidly based on the sales of new electronic HD gear.

I agree that 1080p looks great on my 54", but honestly a good movie with good cinematography looks good enough upsampled from a DVD. I'm not replacing my catalog of DVDs with BluRay, but I do buy new ones in HD/BD, and even then not all the time depending on the price difference. For a lot of consumers though it's irrelevant because they don't have an HD set. A lot of people who do, have smaller ones that don't show the difference as much as a 50"+ set does. Are they knocking each other over to get Blu Ray players?
You should take a look at what a DVD looks like on a good upsampling DVD player connected with HDMI. Keep in mind too that not everyone is as concerned with the quality difference. Not having to rewind was a big deal too for DVD.

We can go on forever with the back and forth but I'll restate my opinion one more time. BluRay is in a much tougher spot than DVD was in gaining widespread adoption. Increased competition for consumers time, cost, installed HD base, smaller perceived difference in quality, and equivalent alternatives are all going to make it very hard for BluRay to reach a saturation point in the market that will make it a successful format. Throw in some consumer confusion during the HD DVD format battle and it's doubtful that BluRay will see anywhere near the adoption rate of DVD. What's left? A niche market for movie collectors and a method of one off sample delivery for HD studios. That might be enough to keep Sony happy, but it won't be the future of media delivery.
 
I'm Satisfied So Far...

I recently switched from a pc to an iMac and I'm very happy with what I have so far and right now I have no real need for blu-ray dvd's on my computer...blu-ray would look great on my tv, don't need it for much else.
 
Guys, guys... c'mon, pull the arrows out already, ok?

This thread is an amazing example of how, with one commonly-observed set of events, different people can draw completely different conclusions. I guess that's human nature and all, but...

Alright, let me tackle this.

Standard Def. vs. High Def.:

I have to start here, because this is the basis for everything else discussed up-thread, and in my post here. The entire basis for high-def, fundamentally beginning here in the U.S. and then traveling around the world, as it is generally presented or assumed to be, is a lie. High-Def does not exist in any way, shape or form because of consumer or even entertainment industry demand. Period. It exists because the BROADCAST industry -- and nobody else -- wanted a way to hold onto the frequency spectrum they had, and were forced by the FCC, beginning back in the late 80s, to come up with a justification for it.

I'm not trying to say that high-def isn't a worthy successor -- at least, as the standards have come to be refined now -- to standard-def analog NTSC / PAL / SECAM, because it certainly is, but only insofar as I might qualify it as being "on a purely technical basis".

The reason you still don't see a mega-fold adoption and absolute market saturation of HD paraphernalia is because this is NOT a from-the-ground-up kind of thing. This is NOT even another iPod-like phenomena. And when you add in the latter-day intellectual property and DRM efforts which have been, effectively, grafted onto this "great new technology", it should come as no surprise there's plenty of folk out there who are balking at it.

I, for one, own nothing that's high-def (except, naturally, my computer equipment), do not subscribe to even ANALOG full tv service, and don't even personally own a television set. There's nothing on that I want to watch, NOW. Why the heck would I want to spend a bunch of money (which I can't justify) on equipment to show me a higher-def version of content that I ALREADY DON'T WANT TO SEE ?!?!?!?!?!?!? (But, admittedly, I can only speak for myself on that point.)


Blu-Ray, DVD and the Floppy Analogy:

Actually, I can't help what the rest of what you said, SPG is actually very astute to make this observation. Why is that, you might ask? Well...
  1. At the time floppy drives were still in meaningful common use, computers were in no way considered to be substitutes for televisions, VCRs, (heck, even DVD players), stereo systems, etc. So trying to say there was no "entertainment content" on floppy, or merely arguing against them on the basis of speed, reliability and capacity is a straw-man argument at best.
  2. Floppy discs were NOT superseded by CD-ROMs. They were superseded by SyQuest and then by ZIP drives, both of which were a darn sight faster, more reliable and held vastly greater storage capacity. Magnetic media as a WHOLE was ultimately REPLACED by CD-ROMs.
  3. To this day, the most common distribution of computer data is NOT on DVD, but still on the hard-working 700MB CD-ROM.
  4. It's worth noting that, even in light of the popularity of CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and now even DVD-R and DVD-RW, there is an ENORMOUS market in the modern equivalent of the floppy, the USB flash-media drive. The cost per megabyte is far higher on them than it is on optical media, yet they came into existence largely after lower-cost optical media, and despite that are in many areas actually dominating the storage market.

Blu-Ray's "Window of Opportunity":

While I think it may be a touch naïve of SPG to think Sony would, in any sense, let Blu-Ray go by the wayside (trust me, as a former Sony employee, I can tell you first hand you simply have no idea how Sony's going to fight to keep Blu-Ray from failing, nor how far they may be willing to go to save themselves from another loss-of-face embarassment such as the failures Connect, MiniDisc, their line-up of proprietary, ATRAC-using portable media players, eVilla, oh, the list just goes on and on...). However, what SPG says is correct: there is a window of opportunity for adoption, and it certainly will be interesting to see if Sony is actually successful this time.

Tell you one thing, tho... and you folks may laugh at this, but I'm being utterly serious: the porn industry is very seriously not happy about Blu-Ray winning the fight, so don't think for a moment there aren't some very deep pockets out there to produce yet another contender for high-def-friendly content distribution.

Besides, do you folks honestly believe companies out there like having to pay licensing fees to companies such as Sony for the privilege of "just using" their media to distribute whatever it is they're distributing? Imagine having to pay a royalty to the John Q. Doe Asphalt company, or to Ford / Honda / Chevy / etc. every time you wanted to drive somewhere on an asphalt road, and in someone's vehicle. But anyhow, I digress...


Apple Support for HD Content Creation / Editing:

Apple has been wise to sit this one out and wait for something to settle out as a so-called "standard". And I still, myself, think of Blu-Ray as being a "standard", so-called because it is not in any sense officially sanctioned by any independent authority out there, or by the defacto standard of public adoption and usage. Imagine if Apple decided to jump into this and had picked HD-DVD instead? It'd be like PCI-X all over again, only worse this time because the Mac community would (legitimately) bitch about how we'd been marginalized (again).

So, come on!
 
Who? The DVD industry. That's who. The people who make their living off this stuff. Improvements have been made but they've been made in compression, hard drives, bandwidth, storage costs, etc. There isn't a huge demand for another optical format, just like there isn't a huge demand for another consumer tape format. That doesn't mean that DVD and even BluRay disappear completely, but it does mean that they can be marginalized to some degree.

You keep saying that. If it were true, why don't you provide some quotes? How about providing a reference to all these DVD industry personnel who say BR is end of the line and won't last long?

Or are you just blowing smoke?
 
You keep saying that. If it were true, why don't you provide some quotes? How about providing a reference to all these DVD industry personnel who say BR is end of the line and won't last long?

Or are you just blowing smoke?

Sorry, I don't usually make a transcript with all my phone conversations and business meetings. I'm also not going to quote my peers' private email to prove a point so let's just say I'm blowing smoke?

Ignoring what I hear from people in the business, since it's just opinions anyway, let's look at what is available publicly:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2005/nf20050713_8906_db011.htm
But a new story is picking up steam in Hollywood -- the once red-hot DVD market is cooling off faster than the moguls might have expected only months back.

Variety this January:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978576.html?categoryid=20&cs=1
Final results for the year are trickling in -- and they all show significant erosion in DVD sales, despite a tsunami of B.O. hits hitting shelves over the holiday season.

On Monday, the Digital Entertainment Group released figures putting the dip in domestic DVD sales at 3.6%, a slight improvement over earlier tallies that showed a 4.5%-5% drop.

And here's Barron's take on the future from this past December:

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2007/12/21/cds-are-dying-are-dvds-next/

December 21, 2007, 2:36 pm
CDs Are Dying. Are DVDs Next?
Posted by Eric Savitz
The compact disk is gradually becoming an endangered species. That’s not new information, but it is an ongoing trend that investors in media stocks continue to struggle with. Meanwhile, there is a new wrinkle in the changing face of digital media: the DVD also appears to be fading.

Michael Nathanson, an analyst with Bernstein Research, notes today that through early December, DVD sales were down 4.1% for the year, including a 2.1% decline in the fourth quarter, citing data from Nielsen VideoScan. Nathanson notes that this would be the first down year in the short history of the DVD. Nathanson thinks that media retailers will soon do with DVDs what they have done with CDs, and reduce the amount of floor space they devote to the category.

None of these mean that you should throw out your DVDs, but it doesn't exactly give a ringing endorsement of the future strength of DVD, let alone BluRay.
 
ok so this is a heated debate, will apple put blu-ray drives in their machines or is there even a need. my question is, why would apple rush to put a blu-ray drive in a machine with a 15 inch screen (or thereabouts depending on the machine). honestly i dont think you could tell the difference, especially considering the screens currently in use across the board. Im not saying it might not eventually happen, but just because apple is in talks with sony doesnt mean we can expect to see the drives anytime soon. but hey, i would love for apple to prove me wrong
 
Sorry, I don't usually make a transcript with all my phone conversations and business meetings. I'm also not going to quote my peers' private email to prove a point so let's just say I'm blowing smoke?

Ignoring what I hear from people in the business, since it's just opinions anyway, let's look at what is available publicly:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2005/nf20050713_8906_db011.htm


Variety this January:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978576.html?categoryid=20&cs=1


And here's Barron's take on the future from this past December:

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2007/12/21/cds-are-dying-are-dvds-next/



None of these mean that you should throw out your DVDs, but it doesn't exactly give a ringing endorsement of the future strength of DVD, let alone BluRay.

OK. So you don't have any evidence to back up your claim that 'the entire industry' says that BR will be the last optical format. You're expecting us to believe that you are some hot shot with lots of private information that no one else has. Sorry, that doesn't wash.

None of those quotes say anything of the sort, either. Mostly, they say that DVD sales recently have been disappointing. That's a long way from saying that optical storage is dead.
 
OK. So you don't have any evidence to back up your claim that 'the entire industry' says that BR will be the last optical format. You're expecting us to believe that you are some hot shot with lots of private information that no one else has. Sorry, that doesn't wash.

None of those quotes say anything of the sort, either. Mostly, they say that DVD sales recently have been disappointing. That's a long way from saying that optical storage is dead.

This is going nowhere. I'm not a "hot shot" but someone who's worked in the optical disc business for nearly ten years, which makes me a newbie to the guys who developed Laserdisc and launched CD. The information that I do have is conventional wisdom amongst most people working in the optical disc business. The industry listserv that I subscribe to is purely "off the record" and so I can't quote. I don't take this forum so seriously that I would violate the terms, so fine...it doesn't wash, move on.
The two points that seem to have gotten your knickers in a twist are that eventually optical disc formats will no longer be relevant, and that BluRay is the last consumer optical disc format we'll see. I don't see what the big deal is.
Eventually every format loses it's position as media leader when technology advances. They may stick around in some form if they're genuinely irreplaceable like print, but it's simple evolution. If your CD/DVD drive in your computer crapped out today, how long could you last without it? You could get music and software off the internet, transfer files with your iPod or external drive, and yes, it might be inconvenient to live without it but you could get by just fine for quite some time. Is it so hard to imagine that in 10 years you wouldn't need it at all?
For right now DVD has a place as much because it came up as both a data delivery and a media delivery platform that was a compatible size with the established CD. BluRay is trying to do the same thing but in a smaller market of HD set owners that have other attractive options so it's more difficult to say whether it will catch on (I'm hoping it does with some changes in license fees). As far as being the last consumer optical format, what else is there? Super duper HD TV sets in the pipeline? Nope. Is there a burning need for a method to transport more than 50gigs of data in a handheld size? Well not only does my iPod do that, but I have a 160gb USB/FW hard drive that can do it and not have to wait nearly an hour to burn. And flash memory is jumping in capacity while dropping in price. Simply put, optical discs have their limitations and there are much better options in other formats. In this landscape how is it that there would be a need for another optical format? I saw my first BluRay player on a store shelf in Japan FIVE years ago. I heard about it's development a couple years before that. How many new optical formats are currently mentioned as being in development to replace BluRay or DVD? None. Of course we can hold the door open for some secret lab working on a breakthrough, but even that's a far cry from developing and launching it as a successful consumer format. A consumer format nobody is looking for.

As far as the DVD sales numbers, that's the beginning of the end. Across the board in all the markets besides Hollywood the numbers are even more disappointing. They will continue to trend down and eventually hit an equilibrium point that will stay constant for a bit, then there will be another drop that puts optical into a smaller legacy position like vinyl LPs.
 
As is typical in a MR thread, there is a lot of wisdom and sound arguments floating around... many of which are backed by sound evidence and general knowledge.... SPG, MikeTheC I salute you both. I read all of your posts and they are all truly an example for us all.

Some other arguments for some reason just aren't reaching that point, even some of mine.

Mike, I love the breakdown that you gave a few posts back, especially the part talking about the comparison of Floppies and DVDs, and bringing up the all too forgotten life of the Zip Drive, and flash. To me, (personally that is) Zips drives failed because they were a day late and a dollar short for wide spread use, and their main problem was the drive that needed to be attached to them. When it failed, you have to go and find another one just like it, and you couldn't use any other disc with any other drive.

Main point, BR will have it's market and come into it's own, but as many people are saying, it won't be adopted as widely because there are other forms of media to compete with it, and I know (just take a look around) people are tired of changing their computers, TVs, disc players, music players, cell phones, electronics every few years.

The idea of going from VHS to DVD and seeing a notable change was another good point. Going from DVD on an SD TV to HD on an HD TV is noticeable, but you need the HD TV to see that difference, then the player, then the discs.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31530/113/
 
As is typical in a MR thread, there is a lot of wisdom and sound arguments floating around... many of which are backed by sound evidence and general knowledge.... SPG, MikeTheC I salute you both. I read all of your posts and they are all truly an example for us all.

uh, thanks? I didn't think there was that much too it. I probably wouldn't have come back to this thread except that I was fascinated by the hostility to an idea that is conventional wisdom amongst the people who are most impacted by it. That and I accidentally subscribed to instant notifications of posts.

Any idea that bucks the status quo is going to get attacked and that's fine. The challenge and response is how peer review works to filter out the bad ideas and prove the worthy ones. It's just funny to find what is status quo for one group to be near heresy to another.

oh and one more thing...it's still just opinion. I like to think that mine are a little more informed opinions, but really we're all wrong sometimes no matter how well informed our opinions are. Thanks for reading them and hopefully we all learn something here.
 
This is going nowhere. I'm not a "hot shot" but someone who's worked in the optical disc business for nearly ten years, which makes me a newbie to the guys who developed Laserdisc and launched CD. The information that I do have is conventional wisdom amongst most people working in the optical disc business. The industry listserv that I subscribe to is purely "off the record" and so I can't quote. I don't take this forum so seriously that I would violate the terms, so fine...it doesn't wash, move on.
The two points that seem to ha

So, IOW, you have absolutely no evidence to back your claim that BR is the last optical disk format we'll see and the 'evidence' you did provide doesn't say anything like what you claimed it said. And the fact that there are already experimental formats to supercede BR doesn't mean anything - those companies are throwing money away just for kicks. After all, Mr. SPG knows everything about the industry and his 'conventional wisdom' is all that matters - even if he can't support it with evidence.
 
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