It News – 9/4/08:
Samsung expects Sony’s Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high definition format war in February.
“I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn’t give it 10”, Andy Griffiths, Samsung UK’s director of consumer electronics, told website Pocket-lint.
“In 2012 we will be in a true HD world. Everything from your television to your camcorder will be offering you pictures in high-definition, and we plan to offer you that HD world from all angles.”
But Samsung is backing a different technology in the long-term. At the IFA trade show in Berlin this month, both Samsung and Sony demonstrated cutting-edge OLED screen televisions.
Considering that Samsung is literally eating away market share from Sony it’s no surprising to hear that kind of comments.
Delivering content on a disc sounds so obsolete.
I second the #2… Blu-ray is already on the edge of obsolescence. There is no more need for content delivery on hardware and the convenience of the Internet can’t be beat. Only thing that could help them are greedy American Internet providers but market will iron that quickly as well. If Samsung talks about new screen technology, they are on the right track, but if they are wasting money on some kind of hardware delivery… they are equally obsolete.
Our own example: we are “first adopters”.. Our first HD TV was back in a day of few hundred pounds of CRT HD TVs… Well, we didn’t even consider either BR or HDDVD. Our content comes from the satellite or Internet. No plans for BR player even if they drop to sub 100$ level. No need for it.
#2 I agree. In 5 years downloadable content may supersede HD delivery. Today, my Apple TV downloads 720P content that looks marvelous. We can both see where this is going.
Has everyone forgotten The bandwidth caps that most Internet providers have? Not to mention most Blu-ray discs are FAR superior in quality than ANY downloadable content.
The Blu-ray disc is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Have any of you tried to download HD content at the quality of a Blu-ray disc? You are looking at almost 25 GB.
There are just to many got’chas with blue ray.
I might could have gone the other way because the price point was starting to move into my territory and the standards were all in place and the thing worked when the studios killed it.
I’m not even sure when the final version of blue ray will be shipped if ever.
#5 Point taken that BR looks superior. Of course.
However, there are a couple of factors to consider.
– A 25GB BR movie uses MPEG2 which is an obsolete CODEC. The newer H.264 used for downloads (and satellite) delivers the same quality ion 1.2 the space. Now you’re down to 12.5GB.
– Then, you in include all the multiple languages, views, tracks, and garbage that does not need to be downloaded.
– Then, you consider the “good enough” factor of upscaled content and the “I can’t tell the difference” crowd.
– Finally, the convenience factor and ability to archive in a disk drive is a huge element.
Still, I agree with you in terms of quality but as much as I like to think I’m an early adopter, I have no interest in buying another spinning platter when I’ve already seen the future with AppleTV, Roku, X-Box and soon the Play Station.
It’s official. I’m gonna skip BluRay and use the money to fight world hunger…or go golfing.
#5 – J
Blu-ray wouldn’t make much of a difference on a small TV like ours.
#7
Agreed, it’s just like turning a 2MB .bmp file into a 250k .jpg file.
I purchased a Sony PS3 when they first came out, because it was a blu-ray player as well as a game console. I’ve purchased about 10 Blu-ray titles. With Amazon, iTunes and Netflix, I haven’t purchased another Blu-ray title for over six months. So I don’t really care if Blu-ray becomes obsolete or not.
The real problem Blu-Ray (and any new He-def format) faces is that many people have a collection of DVDs which look pretty good played back on an upscaling 1080p player. So why bother replacing your DVDs with the same Blu-Ray titles?
I might get “Ironman” or “Dark Knight” on Blu-Ray – to get the maximum impact of the big-budget special effects. But the Blu-Ray version of “Dude, where’s my car” isn’t high on my must-have list.
Blue ray is a DEAD END format because one company (SONY) has control of future development. All deals will involve massive sacrifice to the SONY alter, and few average consumers will belly up to the SONY alter to pay.
Blueray will flounder in mediocrity until something better comes along to supplant it. Te worst thing that could have happened to Blueray was the early folding of HD DVD.
Look at the difference between a DVD and a VHS tape. Blueray does NOT have that difference to the average consumer. Therefore the average consumer (me) will not buy them til they are the same price as a standard DVD.
Don
DEAD ON! holographic discs are just around the corner. they will be able to store so much information that compression will not be needed. with better kinds of displays it will blow present stuff away! also, download on- demand content of high quality will in time be the standard so that commercial discs may be redundant! temporary store/replay on record media (flash) will allow portable use. the best is yet to come.
There will always be a need for hard media at retail. Impulse purchases are roughly 40% of all sales, and without a shelf presence you lose those impulsive eyeballs.
Discs suck, big, fragile, and easy to scratch. It’s all a scam by the media distributors to have us pay for the same product over and over again. It’s been years since I’ve bought a disc, and will probrably be a long time before I buy the next.
There are definitely two kinds of people.
1-“physical media is here to stay”
2-“downloading/streaming is where it’s at”
I think we will end up somewhere in between. The next gen of TVs will connect directly to the net, bypassing Roku/AppleTV/Tivo/HTPCs etc etc.
There will be physical media superior to Blu-ray within 5 years or so; or solid state storage may simply take over.
One thing’s for sure: we will never see a product/format as successful as DVD again, ever.