So BD will be dead within 5 years?

[The_Lhc]

professorhat:the_lhc:

professorhat:I honestly can't see downloads for HD content being mainstream for a very long time. It's going to take a massive investment in the existing infrastructure country wide - I know this is being done gradually, but in the next 5 years? No way in my opinion.

That's a UK-centric opinion though, go to Japan or Korea and you can pretty much do this NOW. Fiber to the home? No problem...

I think South Korea is investing something like $21Bn to bring gigabit to the home, no chance of that happening here (any time soon, as you say, gradually...) but the tech companies won't be worrying about us here in the UK.

True, but then I'm not particularly bothered in how they buy movies in Japan or South Korea...

obviously, but the point is technology companies develop for the worldwide market, they're not going to hold off the "next big thing" just because backwards Britain is 5 years behind everyone else (and the rest...).

 

[professorhat]

Well I kind of understand where you're coming from, but they're also not going to ignore such a large market. Britain certainly isn't alone with its aging telephone infrastructure, so when you factor in a lot of the countries in Europe and elsewhere around the world, it's a huge market. So whilst they might be downloading movies in Korea, Japan and the US, most of the rest of the world will still be buying HD discs for a number of years yet.

 

[Anonymous]

Deleted due to house rules violations - Mods

 

[Anonymous]

Fisty1967:I think the same issue exists with all technology purchases. No sooner have you bought the latest and greatest piece of kit than the manufacturers are working on bringing out an even better version exploiting even newer technology.
IT (particularly desktop pc) products are even worse than audio/visual for this. A 3 year old PC that is getting slow often cant be upgraded be adding a faster video card, processor or memory because the interface standards or socket types have changed - so often a complete replacement is cheaper than an upgrade with legacy parts.
Sure - from a cost per viewing standpoint, buying an AV system and running it into the ground without further investment will give you your lowerst cost per view over the lifetime of the product. I'm sure there are a few people out there with black and white tellys whose investment in av products amounts have amounted to about 5d (old money) over the last 25+ years ;-)
At the other end of the scale, I'm sure there a few technophiles out there who always have to have the latest and greatest product on their shelves at home aswell - as significant cost.
Somewhere in between is where most of ut sit I think.
Having jumped on the dvd bandwagon 10 years ago with an original Wharfdale from Tesco (£350), I've recently acquired a BR (Sammy DP-P1500 for £180). If I get 5-6 years out of this player - my personal view is that I will be pleased with that. However, I recognise that some people will not want to invest this sort of money with the potential limitied lifespan of this product.
Having been a big fan of cryus products - a big inlfuncing factor for me personally is upgradability. Cyrus have always offered an upgrade path from their older products to their current products - should you succumb to upgradeitis. It sort of helps protect the investment made in their products.
I was very pleased that BR players support the playing of DVD disks (most even upscale)- as I personally mave a large collection of DVD's and didnt want to lose the value of that investment. Whatever supersedes BR - as long as the players support playing DVD and BR disks as well - I will probably jump on that gravy train aswell.
In another 5 years - who knows that delights will out there !

Should have got a Mac. My G4, although 5 years old now is still on par to a newly brought pc today albeit a £300 one. Granted it was a top end mac but I knew it had to last longer than 1 year and quite cheap in that respect.

I remember the Wharfedale 750 because I brought one from Tesco but I only remember paying £150 for it, which at that price thought it was a worthwhile investment for myself and friends to get into DVD.

Buying an AV system is less of a worry as long at it has multiple connections, these can last for longer than any format, I recently upgraded mine only to have HDMI connections, less wires = wife friendly.

I brought in to HD-DVD only to discover that one month later Toshiba was pulling the plug, although with the fire sales I'm still enjoying HD discs at rock bottom prices. The price was I paid for the player was £150... so it comes down to price imo. If your willing to set a figure to get into a format then it will last as long as you want it to.

I also have a PS3 but don't buy many BD discs, the reason? purely because of the price of the media, once they come down to the price I pay for DVDs (£5 or therabouts in my case) then I'll reconsider, in the mean time I'll continue buying games, it takes me a month to finish one of those, if I do at all but still enjoy playing them even at 42yso, so the price again is relative.

BD may well continue for another 5 years over the 4-5 it's already been around, at which point, even if it hasn't become mainstream, there will be enough discs to satisfy my hunger for HD and that's discounting the legacy players that will be around by then I'm also sure SD's will still be with us then as well.

My only quandary in the immediate future is how big can my tv/screen go without swamping my small abode??? 42" or a PJ looks inviting.

 

[nads]

the_lhc:
that's funny, because I can remember loads of people on newsgroups (remember them?) and indeed, in magazines, complaining that a number of early DVD releases didn't fully take advantage of the format and didn't have remastered video, or weren't anamorphic transfers etc etc. it'll be no different with BD, give it 18 months and these concerns will be largely forgotten, as they have been with DVD.

But BD has been around for 3 years (ish) already.

what brought about my post at the start was a few things.

I bought Iron Man DVD the other day and put it in my HD DVD to upscale it to 1080p and i got a message saying it was not permissible to upscale this product!

Err WTF the display showed 560p (?) turn DVD of and back on and sorted it upscaled fine.

But it got me thinking could this be the next thing for the HD disc format stopping upscaling. ( or just a hickup in the software).

so i went off reading about BD again.. posted 2 things that i found and then got tied up at work.

But interesting reading.

 

[Big Chris]

PJPro:They are putting in place a mega backbone down here in Bournemouth as an experiment. But won't provide any improvements for me unfortunately :-(.

Even if it works, I very much doubt they'll roll fibre direct to premises out across the whole country. Fibre to the cabinet (Green metal junction box, normally on the corner or junction of the road), is more likely. But even this could well cost billions.

As an Openreach engineer, I reckon I'll be working on copper for many years to come.

 

[manicm]

Another way of seeing this is - you now make a massive investment on a new AV system i.e. a new BD player, LCD and AV amp to take advantage of the player. Roll forward 5 years - I think the tolerance level of even the most hardened AV fundi is gonna wear thin if yet another disc format comes along.

Sony and its camp know they're already pushing their luck hard with BD right now, and it's only uphill from now...

The future if home AV is definitely not clear-cut.

 

[pete321]

I would have thought BD will last longer than 5 years, yes it may change with bigger capacity discs for the next HD format past 1080p, but how high definition can you go before the human eye can't distinguish the difference? Whilst 1080p looks great, the difference between that and 720p isn't that much at a distance. I think I could see an improvement with the next palnned HD format of 1920p, but past that I don't think I'd notice the difference at normal viewing distances and on the average sized 40"-50" telly.

Take SACD and DVD-Audio, whilst I think they sounded great, particularly the former, they put out frequencies that only your pets can hear!

 

[Anonymous]

I read those Samsung comments a while back. I can't see it happening myself, certainly not in the UK. I was a nearly adopter of cable broadband (back when Telewest first rolled it out) and in the last eight years or so I've seen speeds increase and allowances drop. There are very few ISPs who offer true 'unlimited' packages and I really can't see the situation changing in the next five years. The cost of upgrading the infrastructure will be huge.

I read an amusing article on the web a while back. A guy in the States ordered a copy of V for Vendetta from Microsoft's download store, then ordered a copy on Netflix to see which would reach him first - the download or the good old fashioned disc via the US postal system. It wasn't the download.