The Death of DVD

[dsheinem]

Bluray was obsolete before it came out.

WTF are you talking about? Is there some other cheaply and easily reproducible medium that holds that much data? Overpriced, sure - but the actual technology is still pretty impressive, especially considering they are still pushing total storage capacity/dual disc capabilities/etc. WHy would you think a still evolving medium was obsolete from the start?

Besides, costs continue to drop. I usually spend around $10-$15 per catalog title and $15-$20 for new releases, which is what DVDs typically cost until just the past year or two.

Why in God's name would I need to buy a movie on Bluray when I have a PS3?

For improved picture and audio quality? I'd put up the Blu-Ray of almost any film against your streaming video any day.

Sometimes I think your posts are specifically designed to bait me into an argument. You are quickly becoming my forum nemesis, Inazuma!

[MrPopo]

Bluray as a data storage is fantastic and will last until the next major breakthrough in storage density. Bluray specifically as a movie medium is going to be a bit more interesting to see.

[Inazuma]

Bluray was obsolete before it came out.

WTF are you talking about? Is there some other cheaply and easily reproducible medium that holds that much data? Overpriced, sure - but the actual technology is still pretty impressive, especially considering they are still pushing total storage capacity/dual disc capabilities/etc. WHy would you think a still evolving medium was obsolete from the start?

Besides, costs continue to drop. I usually spend around $10-$15 per catalog title and $15-$20 for new releases, which is what DVDs typically cost until just the past year or two.

Why in God's name would I need to buy a movie on Bluray when I have a PS3?

For improved picture and audio quality? I'd put up the Blu-Ray of almost any film against your streaming video any day.

Sometimes I think your posts are specifically designed to bait me into an argument. You are quickly becoming my forum nemesis, Inazuma!

Like MrPopo said, Bluray is great for burning all of your downloaded media to, but for watching movies, it is obsolete if you compare it to the internet. I'm not just talking about pirated material either. Of course that's a big part of it but the bottom line is, you can have an overall better experience with something downloaded off the internet than from buying a Bluray.

Let me take you through a typical viewing experience with me. Everyday I visit one website that pulls information across the internet for all kinds of Japanese media. I download all the latest episodes of the shows I like (which are posted about one day after airing in Japan). These files are all in 1080p or 720p, have no TV channel logos on the screen, absolutely no commercials, and they have chapters. They also have no English subtitles to annoy me. I can play them on the computer and simply drag them over to my HDTV (got a dual monitor setup on one of my computers) or I can stream it with my PS3. The PS3 will upscale it to 1080p if it isn't already, and it looks fucking excellent. I have complete control over it in every way. After I have a DVD's worth of episodes downloaded, I burn em to a DVD and store in a CD binder. Oh yeah, this is completely free too.

If there was an equal or better service out there that was legal, I would be happy to support it. The potential is out there and maybe someday the companies will provide it.

Bluray is bad to me for a few reasons:
- Unskippable company logos and advertisements.
- Only works on a Bluray player. Can't watch it on the go via ipod.
- annoying menus with flashy animations that take too long.
- it's much harder to copy/backup/share with friends/etc.
- After an episode airs on TV, you often have to wait months for it to come out on Bluray.
- Way the fuck expensive. $25 for a few episodes of a TV show or a movie? I think $1 or less per TV show would be a fair price. If it was an online download, they could do that and still turn a big profit.
- You have to get permission from Sony to release a Bluray, right? On the internet, anything goes.

Sometimes I do download Bluray rips but I don't think the very small quality difference is worth waiting months for. I can't fit as many episodes on my hard drives/DVD's that way either. The average 400 meg video that was recorded off the TV looks extremely good to me.

By the way, I bought around 450 DVD's before I realized I could get a better experience with downloaded media. I have since sold every DVD.

[Dylan]

I see.

Inazuma, I'm guessing you watch a lot of anime? In that case, it makes since how the jump to blu-ray hardly benefits what you like to watch. Blu-ray hasn't impressed me either as far as animation is concerned.

dsheinem, I'm guessing you watch a lot of regular movies and whatnot? In that case, the quality improves noticeably for the type of media you watch. The jump in quality over standard def is much more noticeable and justifiable in light of what is being rendered.

I think you two have different views based entirely off of how useful the technology is because the benefits are different from where you stand.

[dsheinem]

I download all the latest episodes of the shows I like (which are posted about one day after airing in Japan). These files are all in 1080p or 720p, have no TV channel logos on the screen, absolutely no commercials, and they have chapters. They also have no English subtitles to annoy me. I can play them on the computer and simply drag them over to my HDTV (got a dual monitor setup on one of my computers) or I can stream it with my PS3. The PS3 will upscale it to 1080p if it isn't already, and it looks fucking excellent

"Fucking excellent" or not, it still comes down to picture and audio quality. Not all 1080p is created the same - just because it says 1080p doesn't mean it is on par with BD. The larger your TV the more noticeable the quality differences will become. Even a Blu-Ray rip via torrent is not usually actual Blu-ray quality - they are frequently compressed in some form along the way. Don't even get me started on audio...

I don't have much of an opinion on TV on Blu-Ray as I don't own any at the moment. I do own some of my favorite older shows on regular DVD, and I find that it is faster to rip those to my PC and transfer to portable players (like the PSP) then it is to wait for the torrent to download. For current shows I tend to use my HD-DVR.

When it come to movies, to my mind it is just as easy to pop in a disc as it is to go to the trouble of copying data from one place to the other. Ads on BD are always skippable, and many films just start right up from the opening titles when you pop them in (especially Warner releases). I don't give a shit about watching movies on portable devices.

[Inazuma]

I know Bluray is higher quality for video/audio but that minor difference isn't worth all the time and money it takes. Maybe if Bluray only cost a few dollars per disc, I might consider waiting months for it to come out, but with the way things are right now, the internet easily kicks the shit outta Bluray, at least for me.

I wasn't aware that Bluray lets you skip the ads. I'm really glad to hear about it because that was one of my biggest complaints with DVD's.

[crux]

First of all, the time-line of the original post is all wrong. VHS didn't sell like wildfire in 1975, and in fact also had competition with Betamax until the latter's sales dropped in 1981. If we're going to count the beginning of sales, DVD entered the market in America in 1997, not 2002.

Secondly, Betamax is a large factor to the success of VHS later on. Competing formats can be a good thing (as we see every year with videogames), and DVD had absolutely no competition except for VHS players that were already installed in the same homes. VHS certainly had more impact, simply via the fact that it was the first major format that allowed its users to play, pause, and rewatch videos, made even more promising by the fact that it could record. In fact, the impetus for DVD to record home television was that much lower because every home that contained a DVD player already had a VHS recorder.

If you want to get technical, VHS changed formats over the years, such as Super VHS. What we're really talking about here is optical discs, and as the technology continues to evolve it's only natural that DVD wouldn't have as long of a history alone in the limelight. And DVD's history isn't over. Blu-Ray simply doesn't represent the kind of change DVD was to VHS, so we're not going to see DVD disappear overnight, or even in the next decade.

As for this flash drive stuff, let's not forget that it's still a much more expensive format ($14 for 8gb? Blu-Ray can hold up to 50GB). And then, let's not forget that Blu-Ray really was an outdated format from the start. Due to Sony and Toshiba's eagerness to push a new optical format to the market, they completely ignored emerging technologies, like Holographic Versatile Discs, which are far superior (they can theoretically hold data up to 6 terabytes on an optical disc). I simply don't see flash memory catching up to that kind of capacity for the same price any time soon (meaning the next decade or longer).

Also, I'm not sure what kind of internet you folks have. Downloading a true 1080p movie? A 90 minute 1080p movie can be up to 22GB, which doesn't even include some bonuses that I appreciate, and doesn't even necessarily include true high definition audio (which hasn't caught on yet in general). Broadband simply isn't sufficient to stream that kind of data yet, which frankly is the only way I have the patience for watching movies through the net. (I also don't pirate, if that's at all relevant.)

[PharmaceuticalCowboy]

All of you audio and video-philes are crazy. As long as I can watch a tv show or movie in all of it's blurry glory that was torrented from the internet then I won't be giving any but the best of media my money, especially if it's an overpriced piece of plastic such as a blu-ray. You all may care what it looks like, but if it's free, I sure as shit don't.

[Jrecee]

DVD movies will be released for the next 5 years, at least. As a blank media format it will be around even longer. Bluray won't take over until the prices on players have gotten so low that there's no way to warrant offering an inferior version (dvd) under it because the prices of the two players will be the same. We'll start seeing $99 bluray players very commonly by xmas 2010 if I had to guess.

[MrPopo]

DVD movies will be released for the next 5 years, at least. As a blank media format it will be around even longer. Bluray won't take over until the prices on players have gotten so low that there's no way to warrant offering an inferior version (dvd) under it because the prices of the two players will be the same. We'll start seeing $99 bluray players very commonly by xmas 2010 if I had to guess.

Not just the prices on players, but the prices on movies. When you start seeing the average price of a Blu ray movie at $15 then you'll start to see it selling well.