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Is Bluray Dead?
- Thread starter Epsilon88
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You are not alone. I like having a hard copy too and think that many other people do also.
I'm not sure that I'll ever buy BluRay.
While it's great to own a physical copy of a movie, that's no use to me if I can't rip it to play on a mobile device, laptop etc. So with BluRay's strong DRM, I don't consider it to have the same usefulness and status that DVD had.
If digital downloads take over from BluRay then I won't really be upset.
Having said that, I don't feel the same need to 'own' movies and TV as I do with music. I can listen to music unlimited times and not get bored of it, but with most movies one watch is enough. I'm happy renting content at the moment.
While it's great to own a physical copy of a movie, that's no use to me if I can't rip it to play on a mobile device, laptop etc. So with BluRay's strong DRM, I don't consider it to have the same usefulness and status that DVD had.
If digital downloads take over from BluRay then I won't really be upset.
Having said that, I don't feel the same need to 'own' movies and TV as I do with music. I can listen to music unlimited times and not get bored of it, but with most movies one watch is enough. I'm happy renting content at the moment.
Currently there is nothing that can equal a Blu Ray as far as video and audio quality--so until that changes, Blu Ray is THE format for pure movie enjoyment.
Beta was around for a while when VHS hit. VHS was around for a long while when standard DVDs hit. DVDs will remain for quite a while still. I know people who don't even own a Blu-ray player. My parents would have never bought until forced had I not bought for them. Friends as well. Bluray players are growing in popularity because they're including things like netflix, pandora etc. It's a real nice feature, I don't have it but my TiVo has a few options.
I really don't think we're going to see physical media tossed away for a while. MacNut made a good point, bandwidth limits are the root issue here. Cox in Greensboro NC tried to throttle bandwidth (test city) and I don't think it went well. We pay a substantial amount of money for a service and if they're going to throttle us and hinder things like downloading movies instead of buying physical media then it will never work.
Nope. They still release new movies on DVDs and nowadays often include a standard DVD in the Bluray package.
I own a lot more Blurays than I thought but firestarter is also right, it does prevent me from actually getting those movies onto my iPad and NAS drive to view from my Mini.
Jobs was just saying that to make it sound like a good decision and to all but force people to buy from iTunes. Blu-ray still hasn't even completely replaced DVDs. I don't know of a single movie that is Blu-ray only, rather than on both, and I still even use DVDs on occasion. Blu-ray also far surpasses the video and audio quality of iTunes, as many others have said, and even with my high speed internet connection, downloading a SD movie, let alone HD takes long enough to be annoying.
No, Jobs is a businessman and what he says is what's good for Apple the business, not the objective-gospal truth. It's not personal, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have strong feelings about BluRay's 'management'.
If Apple shipped BluRay drives in their computers then you'd be a lot more inclined to buy BluRay, since you could watch it on your laptop.
But Apple doesn't make money from that - they only make money from selling downloadable movies from the iTMS. If they don't sell BluRay drives, you're much more likely to go for a download instead.
Eventually all content will be downloaded. Jobs would rather hurry that process along, then confuse matters by having people keep buying disks.
Contrast this with PC manufacturers. It doesn't matter to Michael Dell whether you watch a DCD, a download or a BluRay - so he's completely happy to sell you a player.
Given that sales have increased 80% over last year (sept-sept) I would say it's still very much alive. At the moment, digital downloads compliments it but can't come close to supplanting it. Maybe in a decade when caps are 500gb a month and speeds are 50mbps or greater on average things will be different. From my viewpoint, BD has some legs left in it yet.
I think Steve is right only when the conditions apply. Right now, the majority of American's do not have broadband Internet service because it isn't available where they live, myself included. With that alone said, Blu-ray and/or DVD will be around for a long time because I cannot download or stream full length HD or non-HD videos. So I by DVD's and Blu-ray's. Plus I like having the video on disc so i can play it anywhere I want, on any device I want.
It's funny how Apple and even Microsoft are both saying Blu-ray is dead and they both refuse to add it to their hardware. Microsoft recently said they will not add it to their XBOX even though consumer demand for it is there. That is one sticking point between folks who are deciding between XBOX and PS3.
But I don't think the Blu-ray medium is going away.
Steve is very particular about what he does and doesn't approve of. You can bet it is all for the bottom line, and this is just another marketing move. If he says Blu Ray is "dead", many will believe him and the iTunes store.
I don't understand why it has to be either Blu Ray or Digital Download. I think they will coexist and both be very successful. Blu Ray is really catching on much faster than that of DVD, and when you consider what DVD was up against at the time that is great news. When I want to watch a show quickly and don't care about quality, Digital Downloads are great, but a lot of times I want to watch them on my HDTV and be amazed by what I'm seeing.
Most of the early arguments against Blu Ray are now false. Blu Ray is on par price-wise with DVD releases (most of the time you get a Digital Copy, DVD, and BD of the movie), Bonus features are absolutely amazing and interactive, and it's getting a lot of support from publishers. If Disney is now only making its Diamond Editions available on Bluray (with included DVD), that has to mean something.
As pretty much everyone has said, no BD movies aren't dead, nowhere close in fact.
I don't understand why it has to be either Blu Ray or Digital Download. I think they will coexist and both be very successful. Blu Ray is really catching on much faster than that of DVD, and when you consider what DVD was up against at the time that is great news. When I want to watch a show quickly and don't care about quality, Digital Downloads are great, but a lot of times I want to watch them on my HDTV and be amazed by what I'm seeing.
Most of the early arguments against Blu Ray are now false. Blu Ray is on par price-wise with DVD releases (most of the time you get a Digital Copy, DVD, and BD of the movie), Bonus features are absolutely amazing and interactive, and it's getting a lot of support from publishers. If Disney is now only making its Diamond Editions available on Bluray (with included DVD), that has to mean something.
As pretty much everyone has said, no BD movies aren't dead, nowhere close in fact.
Maybe Jobs needs to look at the Blu-ray releases of the Pixar movies and the recent Diamond Edition of Beauty and the Beast. The picture quality is OUTSTANDING, and the 720p downloads you get from the iTunes Store can't come close to matching what you see on a good Blu-ray release.
Was Blu-Ray ever really alive? The only people I know with it have PS3s. The Blu-Ray selections at rental locations and big-box stores here are pretty lacklustre. Even on my big screen streaming is fine for television shows and DVDs are great for movies.
Maybe I'm just not enough of a tech nerd to appreciate the extra pixels.
Maybe I'm just not enough of a tech nerd to appreciate the extra pixels.
Canon has already made a consumer prototype. I'm not saying it will happen soon, but it will happen.
It's not really a tech nerd but an audio-visual nerd--which I will admit to much more readily than a tech nerd--and to us those "extra pixels" are important. Netflix, and RedBox have a nice selection of Blu Ray rentals, and Amazon has most available to buy. But I am not one who will buy them--I didn't get burned by DVD but by the format before that--the Laser Disc. But I'll continue to rent Blu Ray until on-demand can equal the Blu Ray performance.
That's a concept, not a prototype - they're not going to produce it. There's definitely a point in capturing at 4K (and maybe even beyond, as RED are planning to do), my point was more to do with delivering that kind of resolution to screens where anything higher than 1080p is impractical.
Blu Ray adoption is faster than DVD adoption.
Apple wants it to be dead because it's competition for their 720p itunes content. Why do you think they've not added blu ray drives to Macs yet?
Apple wants it to be dead because it's competition for their 720p itunes content. Why do you think they've not added blu ray drives to Macs yet?