Blu Ray Vs SDHC

[Mac'nCheese]

Forgive me if this has been discussed, I swear I searched for it. Just curious... does anyone think that blu rays and all optical discs will be completely replaced someday soon by sd cards? They are so small, so sturdy, why not have a store full of movies rented on them instead of discs? You would save room on storage and could carry them around easier. Do movies play better off of blu rays then cards for some reason? Better access time or what?

 

[Hellhammer]

Well, the problem is that not all computers have slot for them plus zero TVs have it AFAIK. People also see that movies are always discs, not small cards or something like that.

Downloading and streaming is the future so I think Blu-Ray may be the last form of physical media. Many TVs have internet already so industry is moving away from physical media all the time.

 

[jzuena]

You could replace DVDs with them, but I'm not sure if affordable SDHC cards can hold as much as a BluRay. Pricewatch is showing that 32GB cards cost $70 US, which is much more than the manufacture cost of a BluRay disk, and you still have to add the cost of the movie on top of that.

SD cards are also much easier to steal, so movies would become another item that you have to wait for a floor employee to unlock a case to allow browsing. It would be good for mail order, though.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

That's all true. I started to think about this when I was burning dvds of my kids for my parents. When I get my new imac, I'm going hd. So I need to burn blu ray. They don't have blu ray. But a small flash player? Wouldn't that be easier to upgrade to? plug it in to your tv,your computer, etc? One tiny card with 1 tb of grandkids? sounds good to me!

 

[Makosuke]

This topic probably belongs in one of the discussion areas, rather than the help section, but anyway:

Well, for personal use flash media has already half replaced burnable discs--if something is only a few hundred MB most people will throw it on a pen drive rather than burning a CD.

I'm personally skeptical that by the time Blu-Ray recordable discs get to the price point at which consumers will start buying them anybody will care--assuming flash storage continues to ramp (there has been a speedbump recently, if you've been watching prices carefully), a $20 128GB pen drive is going to be preferable to a one-use $1 25GB BD-R, since a lot of new TVs, set top boxes, and DVD/BD players have USB inputs for such things now, meaning they'll slowly filter downward.

That said, while in 20 or 50 years who knows, for mass distribution I kind of doubt flash media will replace optical discs, mainly because non-rewriteable optical discs are VERY cheap to produce in bulk, while flash ROM (or rewritable flash) memory doesn't lend itself to the same sort of production cheaply. With ever-faster internet connections network distribution will take over everything other than niche market optical media.

 

[Transporteur]

Well, the problem is that not all computers have slot for them plus zero TVs have it AFAIK.

Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, should I go on?
SD is widely used and accepted as the flash drive of choice. And outside of the Apple world, you will have a hard time to find a computer without SD card slot. Even the cheapest laptops and desktops come with integrated card readers. Much more computers these days have card readers than DVD drives. The minority has BluRay drives.

People also see that movies are always discs, not small cards or something like that.

Always? You're not that old, are you? 10 years ago no one would have even thought that some day movies are played from a disc, and yet it hasn't stop the DVD to displace VHS completely.
If the technology is better, people won't hesitate to adopt it. No doubt!

Downloading and streaming is the future so I think Blu-Ray may be the last form of physical media. Many TVs have internet already so industry is moving away from physical media all the time.

Copy that!
I think integrated movie rental systems integrated in TVs will definitely have a future. Why storing hundreds of discs or cards at home that contain your movies? Let them be stored in the cloud, so you don't have to worry about that any more.

However, some people still wanna have the physical media, including leaflets and fan art, which is why physical media is still going to be sold for a long time.

 

[Hellhammer]

Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, should I go on?
SD is widely used and accepted as the flash drive of choice. And outside of the Apple world, you will have a hard time to find a computer without SD card slot. Even the cheapest laptops and desktops come with integrated card readers. Much more computers these days have card readers than DVD drives. The minority has BluRay drives.

Does SDHC work in normal SD slot? I just remember that it doesn't but I might be wrong.

Always? You're not that old, are you? 10 years ago no one would have even thought that some day movies are played from a disc, and yet it hasn't stop the DVD to displace VHS completely.
If the technology is better, people won't hesitate to adopt it. No doubt!

Blu-Ray is still pretty new, not all people has it. You remember Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, right? Movie industry doesn't like to make several formats as it costs more and also stores don't like it. I can't see DVD + BR + SD, if DVD is dropped, then maybe. BR is still not very popular so if you ask people to buy a new player in near future, they won't, unless it's very cheap.

Copy that!
I think integrated movie rental systems integrated in TVs will definitely have a future. Why storing hundreds of discs or cards at home that contain your movies? Let them be stored in the cloud, so you don't have to worry about that any more.

I agree. Downloading/streaming is today and the future, physical media is starting to retire. Prices are cheaper as well because no need for disk or dedicated player which costs extra $ of course

However, some people still wanna have the physical media, including leaflets and fan art, which is why physical media is still going to be sold for a long time.

Agree on this too. For me, the feeling of getting a new album which I have been waiting for years is unbeatable.

 

[Transporteur]

Does SDHC work in normal SD slot? I just remember that it doesn't but I might be wrong.

If your card reader isn't 10 years old, then yes, SDHC shouldn't be a problem.

Blu-Ray is still pretty new, not all people has it. You remember Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, right? Movie industry doesn't like to make several formats as it costs more and also stores don't like it. I can't see DVD + BR + SD, if DVD is dropped, then maybe. BR is still not very popular so if you ask people to buy a new player in near future, they won't, unless it's very cheap.

That's right, nothing to argue about that. A maximum of two formats is acceptable, everything beyond that get's messy. But as always, one format will win, as it was with HD-DVD vs. BR.
But I think it is quire obvious that DVD is going to be completely replaced by a newer format in the near future. If BR will do that, who knows?

I'm not saying that SD is going to be used as a medium for distributing movies, I rather see normal USB hard drives in this place. They are extremely cheap and every modern device (including all computers and a wide range of TVs) has a USB connector.

 

[Hellhammer]

If your card reader isn't 10 years old, then yes, SDHC shouldn't be a problem.

Okay, thanks for clearing that out!

That's right, nothing to argue about that. A maximum of two formats is acceptable, everything beyond that get's messy. But as always, one format will win, as it was with HD-DVD vs. BR.
But I think it is quire obvious that DVD is going to be completely replaced by a newer format in the near future. If BR will do that, who knows?

I'm not saying that SD is going to be used as a medium for distributing movies, I rather see normal USB hard drives in this place. They are extremely cheap and every modern device (including all computers and a wide range of TVs) has a USB connector.

Well, Blu-Ray is nowhere near it's maximum potential yet. Who knows how big BRs we're gonna see! What I've read, we can expect 100TB dual-layer BR disk in future. Currently, I guess the maximum size is 1TB but there is no limit in BR really..

Hard to say what will be the successor of BR or is there even going to be one? Time will show us..

 

[Makosuke]

Prices are cheaper as well because no need for disk or dedicated player which costs extra $ of course.

No, prices are cheaper for a brand new item due to no physical medium.

So far the utter lack of a resale method means that bargain hunters--ie, people like me who might well buy a used CD or DVD off Amazon for $2 plus shipping--will be limited entirely to sales that the content creators choose.

Now, on one hand, the control being entirely in the hands of content creators means they will continue to be paid for their work indefinitely, while they get zip from resale. On the other, it means you're forced to buy a "new" copy no matter what, and good luck loaning that movie to a friend.

We'll see if the world of the future comes up with a method of addressing these shortcomings, but I seriously doubt it will--there's relatively weak market pressure against it, since the creator makes nothing from resale, and all the pressure in the world to maintain it, as it keeps prices somewhat artificially higher.

 

[Meyvn]

I think either Blu-ray Disc or HVD will be the last widely adopted disc storage format, but we'll see how it goes. The reason discs became so widespread in the first place is the massive amount of data they can hold for their small size (given the technology of their respective ages, of course). When CDs came out, 600MB was an unthinkable amount of data to hold on a personal computer's hard disk drive. Same went for DVDs. When gaming systems started becoming more powerful, discs by necessity became the default storage medium for this same reason. They were also much, much, MUCH cheaper to produce than HDDs. Software manufacturers liked them also, because they provided a great way to distribute their wares given the relatively slow download speeds for internet users, let alone the fact that when CDs and DVDs first emerged everyone didn't even GET online.

Blu-ray, however, has come onto the scene at a time when most people ALREADY HAVE hard disk drives whose capacities far outstrip a single BD, and our download speeds are hitting upwards of 1-5 MegaBYTES per second when servers allow. So now, all we're left with to recommend these discs to us is that they are inexpensive to manufacture. However, as HDDs as well as solid state drives and flash memory sticks hold more and more data while becoming more and more affordable, and the Blu-ray drives themselves remain somewhat expensive, I think we're left with an inevitability.

Eventually, the convenience, speed, size and stability of HDDs, flash drives and SSDs will overtake the benefit of cheaply printing out discs in terms of mass adoption. Things without drives of any kind attached to them, like the iPad, will begin to catch on, and a combination of market forces and the relative expense of producing the lasers and mechanisms of disc DRIVES will overtake the relative cheapness of producing the discs themselves.

A company like Apple will start removing disc drives from its computers entirely to make room for a slimmer form factor or other components (and in fact, foreseeing this possibility is my theory as to why Apple has resisted the adoption of BD drives so far), and soon the rest of the marketplace will follow. Disc drives will at this point become relegated to a legacy component, useful only for transferring old files over to more modern, stable media.

Frankly, all of this seems pretty obvious and inevitable to me. What I'm more interested in, personally, is how long it will take for us to say a similar farewell to magnetic tape-based hard disk drives in favor of SSDs.

 

[Cave Man]

Just curious... does anyone think that blu rays and all optical discs will be completely replaced someday soon by sd cards? They are so small, so sturdy, why not have a store full of movies rented on them instead of discs?

You can't press flash memory. The cost as a movie delivery medium would be prohibitive. Optical media are here for a very long while.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Aha! I did not know that, thank you sir.

 

[Makosuke]

I find it amusing that Cave Man said exactly the same thing I did so much more clearly (amusing in that I obfuscated my own point):

...for mass distribution I kind of doubt flash media will replace optical discs, mainly because non-rewriteable optical discs are VERY cheap to produce in bulk, while flash ROM (or rewritable flash) memory doesn't lend itself to the same sort of production cheaply.

You can't press flash memory. The cost as a movie delivery medium would be prohibitive.

[edit: Though I would argue prohibitive is too strong of a word--Nintendo distributed a few videos (Pokemon TV show, if my admittedly hazy memory serves) on GBA cartridges at one point. Not saying that it was competitive in any way with optical media except for the fact that it played on a GBA, just that it was apparently possible to have a commercially viable video product based on flash memory several years ago.]

 

[spinnerlys]

There is also the aspect of copy protection and DRM, which is easier implemented with optical media, but that may not hold back the implementation of such measures with flash media.

 

[Repo]

we can expect 100TB dual-layer BR disk in future. Currently, I guess the maximum size is 1TB

Can you imagine waiting to burn 1TB of data to optical media, let alone 100TB? Optical media is far too slow.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

This topic probably belongs in one of the discussion areas, rather than the help section, but anyway:

Well, for personal use flash media has already half replaced burnable discs--if something is only a few hundred MB most people will throw it on a pen drive rather than burning a CD.

I'm personally skeptical that by the time Blu-Ray recordable discs get to the price point at which consumers will start buying them anybody will care--assuming flash storage continues to ramp (there has been a speedbump recently, if you've been watching prices carefully), a $20 128GB pen drive is going to be preferable to a one-use $1 25GB BD-R, since a lot of new TVs, set top boxes, and DVD/BD players have USB inputs for such things now, meaning they'll slowly filter downward.

That said, while in 20 or 50 years who knows, for mass distribution I kind of doubt flash media will replace optical discs, mainly because non-rewriteable optical discs are VERY cheap to produce in bulk, while flash ROM (or rewritable flash) memory doesn't lend itself to the same sort of production cheaply. With ever-faster internet connections network distribution will take over everything other than niche market optical media.

Aha! I did not know that, thank you sir.