Adopting Blu-Ray

[Gary Huff]

2010 has been the "Year of Blu-Ray" for me. I purchased a set top player, the Samsung BD-C6500, I've begun a small Blu-Ray movie collect, and I purchased an LG Blu-Ray burner for my desktop and will begin archiving some important video projects to recordable BDs. I went with Blu-Ray because I was tired of having multiple playback devices: an Oppo unconverting player for DVDs and a WD TV player for downloaded HD content. I also wanted wireless Netflix connectivity. Blu-Ray movies can be had as cheaply as their DVD counterparts now, and I've been blown away by the quality and features, even on my 720p plasma with an old HTIB (home theater in a box) Kenwood system. Call it a nerdgasm if you want, but I wanted to give my thoughts on the format and why I think it's doing quite well for itself, despite the naysayers.

1) Optical disc is not dead...yet. It has some great competition, including cheap flash memory and terabyte hard drives, but as a proven long-term storage medium, I don't think it can be beat at this time. Even for those who download their movies and music, these collections can grow pretty large and Blu-Ray is a pretty enticing medium given its storage capacity and lack of moving parts.

2) If ISPs start instituting bandwidth caps, this could seriously harm the concept of downloadable movies and TV shows for the next few years. It is a convenient way to access the content you want, but what happens if your hard drive crashes and you lose all of your movies? I know a lot of people who have significant collections and if they had to re-download due to a hardware crash, it could take a long time, especially if they are only able to download one or two movies a month because of a cap. Music is a different beast because it's a lot smaller in size, even if you're downloading lossless, and I think that's why it has taken off like it has.

3) I see people from all walks of life mulling the Blu-Ray section and picking up discs. The cost of entry is pretty cheap now. The numbers have shown significant growth, despite the poor economy. I agree that Blu-Ray doesn't have the same "wow" factor that DVD had, in that DVD had so many clear advantages to VHS. But I think as people become more exposed to actual HD programming, they'll start realizing that they aren't content with upconverted DVDs. I know I wasn't.

If I would change anything about the format at this time, I would drop the "Digital Copy" option that certain movies come with and instead make that disc the DVD version. I think that adds more value than including an iPod version.

 

[JeganRX]

2010 has been the "Year of Blu-Ray" for me. I purchased a set top player, the Samsung BD-C6500, I've begun a small Blu-Ray movie collect, and I purchased an LG Blu-Ray burner for my desktop and will begin archiving some important video projects to recordable BDs. I went with Blu-Ray because I was tired of having multiple playback devices: an Oppo unconverting player for DVDs and a WD TV player for downloaded HD content. I also wanted wireless Netflix connectivity. Blu-Ray movies can be had as cheaply as their DVD counterparts now, and I've been blown away by the quality and features, even on my 720p plasma with an old HTIB (home theater in a box) Kenwood system. Call it a nerdgasm if you want, but I wanted to give my thoughts on the format and why I think it's doing quite well for itself, despite the naysayers.

As cheaply as DVDs? Maybe a lot closer than it used to be, but it's still not quite the same. With that said, the deals you can find online at times are great on BD. I do completely agree that it's nice to unify players (I'm not there yet, but my PS3 serves most purposes), and the Blu-ray format does look amazing.

1) Optical disc is not dead...yet. It has some great competition, including cheap flash memory and terabyte hard drives, but as a proven long-term storage medium, I don't think it can be beat at this time. Even for those who download their movies and music, these collections can grow pretty large and Blu-Ray is a pretty enticing medium given its storage capacity and lack of moving parts.

No moving parts? The players have moving lasers do they not? Trays? I mean, yeah, it's not a tape, but it's still moving. That's not the issue at hand though. I agree that optical is not quite dead yet - it will die in a few years when people shift to locally stored media, but I severely hope that when that happens, it's at a point that matches BD quality. I'm fully aware of the data storage and bandwidth requirements (though to be fair, BD datarates are ridiculously high, unnecessarily so), and we are certainly not there yet. Terabyte drives may be dirt cheap right now, but many people would fill up multiple TB drives quite fast with their movie collections - especially if they're in HD. My fear is that - as has been happening for years now - people will be satisfied with "good enough" HD, which the web has been providing for a little while. The bitrates on most HD streaming video is absolutely terrible, and this is echoed in the terrible encoding on digital TV due to the starved bitrates.

2) If ISPs start instituting bandwidth caps, this could seriously harm the concept of downloadable movies and TV shows for the next few years. It is a convenient way to access the content you want, but what happens if your hard drive crashes and you lose all of your movies? I know a lot of people who have significant collections and if they had to re-download due to a hardware crash, it could take a long time, especially if they are only able to download one or two movies a month because of a cap. Music is a different beast because it's a lot smaller in size, even if you're downloading lossless, and I think that's why it has taken off like it has.

I fully agree with this. A well managed system would allow re-downloading of already purchased material (much like iTunes or Steam), but this IS very hampered by ISPs. Fortunately, capping is not a universal standard right now (it's growing though....), but the problem is also just practical speeds. Downloading an HD movie at BD quality would be ridiculous given most speeds in the world. The US in particular, which is undoubtedly the largest consumer of movies, is terribly behind in internet speeds. This is yet another reason why "good enough HD" could unfortunately take over.

3) I see people from all walks of life mulling the Blu-Ray section and picking up discs. The cost of entry is pretty cheap now. The numbers have shown significant growth, despite the poor economy. I agree that Blu-Ray doesn't have the same "wow" factor that DVD had, in that DVD had so many clear advantages to VHS. But I think as people become more exposed to actual HD programming, they'll start realizing that they aren't content with upconverted DVDs. I know I wasn't.

This is unfortunately true. BD adoption has been picking up, though it's slower, though I'd have to unfortunately disagree with the idea that most people can see the difference. I still meet a large number of people who simply cannot tell the difference between SD and HD (which is somewhat understandable on HDTV due to terrible encoding, but completely unbelievable with BD).

If I would change anything about the format at this time, I would drop the "Digital Copy" option that certain movies come with and instead make that disc the DVD version. I think that adds more value than including an iPod version.

I like the idea of digital copy, but it shouldn't be format-locked. It should simply be a rip of the BD that you can choose to create in a variety of formats. This would be logistically difficult to implement, but it'd be flexible. I'm not too fond of the DVD idea because I fear people would link the two in quality.

 

[Gary Huff]

No moving parts? The players have moving lasers do they not? Trays? I mean, yeah, it's not a tape, but it's still moving.

Your Blu-Ray drive can catch on fire and explode and your data would still be safe (as long as the disc wasn't in it at the time!). That's my point. The medium on which your actual data resides has no moving parts.

And as for there still being an availability of readers in the future, well, you can still purchase equipment to play LPs, read ZIP discs, VHS, ect. I think you'll still be able to buy Blu-Ray drives in case one dies for the foreseeable future.

I like the idea of digital copy, but it shouldn't be format-locked. It should simply be a rip of the BD that you can choose to create in a variety of formats. This would be logistically difficult to implement, but it'd be flexible. I'm not too fond of the DVD idea because I fear people would link the two in quality.

The problem with the Digital Copies is that it's iTunes exclusive. A DVD can be ripped into any number of formats for the portable media crowd.

 

[John Morrison]

I don't know. I've got a Samsung BluRay set-top-box hooked up to my LCD TV - and a few BD movies. The BluRay Movies that are near as cheap as a newly released DVD seem to be half a decade old DVD movies copied to a BluRay and up-rezzed. Not starting out as HD mind you - but SD uprezzed, and then copied onto BluRay as an HD product, so they can call it BluRay and sell it for the price of a newly released DVD. They don't look bad (although some do look a little softer) - but they don't impress me as looking better than the same SD movie on DVD. I'm finding that most (all?) of the material from four or five years back and further seem to follow that trend.

The new releases on BluRay still cost 30% more or even higher, unless you can find a time-sensitive deal somewhere that evaporates after midnight. I was surprised that The Kingdom of Heaven - The Directors Cut on BluRay, didn't have the BTS material that was on the DVD version (although, to be fair - it was an entirely different movie, much longer, and an awesomely shot production). Right now, there are very few movies I want to own on BluRay.

I'm sure that'll change in time, but now - not so much.

 

[Gary Huff]

Which movies are you talking about? And DVD had the same problem of using transfers that had been done with Laserdisc. I'm not saying to go out there and purchase every movie you can find on Blu-Ray, you obviously want to research even the bigger titles to make sure they had a proper transfer.

 

[OldCorpse]

I don't know either. I find it hard to get super excited about BD. Sure, you get slightly better image quality on new material, and you have more storage compared to a DVD, but... it just is not that much of a leap for the price premium. DVD vs VHS - sure, I can see the big leap in every way. But DVD vs BD... meh. Once the price premium compared to DVD disappears, we'll talk, but by then, who knows, BD in turn may be superseded. Frankly, the format wars bungled things - the fight dragged on so long that technology kept marching on and had time to get far enough, that I feel like just waiting for the next great thing, instead of investing in what I feel is a very transitional solution right now. I don't wake up thinking "what I really need in my life is a BD player". It's just not that exciting - a baby step up, and saddled with all sorts of licensing issues. I'll pass for now, but that's just me, and hey, to each his/her own.