Is Blu-Ray here for the duration??

[onsuper8]

We must be well behind the times here in the UK then....

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2009/01/02/bluray ... ing_d.html

[MovieStuff]

Roger, people over 40 don't count -

They do now. And you asked what people are doing with their removable drives. The answer is that whatever they are doing, they aren't using them to currently watch Batman Begins. Movies and, particularly, HD content is being viewed either through transmission or via BluRay. But portable hard drives are not even on the radar in terms of day to day usage for movie watching on television.

So, ask someone who is 20-something, in college and ask them - they are the future - literally.

Well, the funny thing is that I pretty much did just that. My nieces, my nephews, my cousins, my friends kids are all in their 20s and they are pretty much clueless about how technology works. They think a CD and a DVD are the same thing because they look the same. They can download I-tunes to their I-pod and they can click on a play button on YouTube but that's pretty much it. They couldn't buy a clue about how to hook up a computer or what a portable hard drive is all about. Granted, there are some geeky kids in their 20s that know more about computers than I will ever know but they don't represent the large demographic at this point. The future? Kids are lazy now. I suspect they'll be lazy then. Could be wrong but I've got history on my side. ;)

They will not be buying DVDs or Blu Ray or whatever.

As Nigel suggests, they both create and utilize the cloud.

And yes, they do swap hard drives...that's sort of the whole point why external 500GB HDs cost under $100US.

Because all these kids are handing each other portable hard drives to watch "Batman Begins" on? You have to be kidding. I have never witnessed any such thing. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist but, honestly, I don't think it's as pervasive as you are implying.

[super8man]

Riddle me this then (in keeping with the spirit)...how come people get "throttled" by NetFlix for "consuming" movies too fast? Is it really possible to return 8 discs the day after you receive them? Apparently, the answer would imply a "yes."

[MovieStuff]

Riddle me this then (in keeping with the spirit)...how come people get "throttled" by NetFlix for "consuming" movies too fast? Is it really possible to return 8 discs the day after you receive them? Apparently, the answer would imply a "yes."

The answer would imply they are using some like this:

http://duplicatorexpert.com/product_inf ... ucts_id=38

Cheap at $165, wouldn't you say? And with this, anyone can rip a DVD copy at the press of one button. And that DVD can be played on any existing DVD player without the need of a computer. And this is just one of many standalone, no-computer-knowledge-required DVD duplicators out there from Walmart, Radio Shack, Target, Best Buy, etc.

Also, for those that are computer savvy, they can use one of many simple (and free!) ghosting programs that will copy any CD, DVD, or BluRay in its entirety really quickly and then burn that to another disk, which only takes about 20 minutes, even for a full length feature.

So while I do agree there is a lot of copying going on, I see no evidence that it is going to an external hard drive as the preferred viewing source. I also do not see the copying of an existing disk as the eventual threat to BluRay or disk media in general that people here seem to be implying. I mean, even if that were true, you can't copy the BluRay disk to a hard drive without the BluRay disk. ;)

Roger

[reflex]

We must be well behind the times here in the UK then...

Ahh, but a 400% increase is relatively easy to achieve when you're selling a fringe format. According to that article, Blu-ray sales accounted for only 1.4% of total optical disc sales in 2008. The other 98.6% of the market is still buying DVDs.

[Angus]

I agree with S8Man. By the time Blu-Ray gets traction it will have been left behind. The Cloud. The Cloud casts the only shadow.

Good Luck

I thought Blu-Ray was already replacing DVD?

Nobody who's seen blu-ray is anything other than highly impressed. Its better even than watching HD television (less compression in most cases).

DVDs will continue to be available for some time because there's a lot of SD material out there and not everyone wants to upgrade...but for the next few years at least Blu-Ray will rule. Until and unless they upgrade HDTV's to higher resolution than 1080. And given that people don't like buying TVs more than once a decade or so...that ain't happening soon.

[Angus]

And what exactly are people doing with 500GB hard drives??? The external kind?

Backing up gigs of digital photos and documents probably, If they are anything like us lot, they're backing up home made films/videos.

I have Bit Torrent. I use it rarely, and for specific purposes. When American friends/relatives visit they can't always keep up with their favourite shows, and I can download an episode or two so they don't miss them. I use it if I have somehow missed something I really wanted to see...and I admit to sometimes downloading music from a band/artist when a friend says "Check out these people, they are really good".

I certainly don't use BT to download movies to keep. I buy DVDs and Blu-Rays and I record off-air onto DVD (prior to 2004 I used to record to tape).

Most people I know have a reasonable collection of DVDs. And for the record, most people I know are not movie buffs. The supermarkets wouldn't stock racks and racks of them if nobody bought them.

[Angus]

We must be well behind the times here in the UK then...

Ahh, but a 400% increase is relatively easy to achieve when you're selling a fringe format. According to that article, Blu-ray sales accounted for only 1.4% of total optical disc sales in 2008. The other 98.6% of the market is still buying DVDs.

Its also likely that Blu-Ray sales are rising because in early 2007 virtually nobody in the UK owned a Blu-Ray player because you couldn't obtain one under £300. Today, if you know where to look, you can get a really nice brand name player for £150...and if you don't know where to look the same player can be had for £225 in Curry's for goodnes sake. And currys aren't evne cheap. Their own brand Blu-Ray player can be had for £180. Blu-Ray discs are starting to appear in supermarkets at discounted prices. Blu-Ray is a mainstream consumer format right now, in a way that Laserdisc never was (in the UK at least).

Video tapes and DVDs were the same. When nobody owned a player, disc sales were very low. As more people owned players, disc/tape sales increased...prices dropped...and VHS (later DVD) became everyday items.

Just think back to 1999. It was unthinkable that newspapers might offer DVDs free, or that major blockbusters might be on the supermarket shelves for £3. Even 2-disc special editions for a fiver. Now it is everyday.

[onsuper8]

I jumped into HD last year and we are spending most of our time re-watching our DVD collection as the upscaling on the Blu-Ray player is brilliant. Woody Allen's opening sequence to Manhattan never looked so good!

[super8man]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... om-lg.html

Seems even NetFlix is creating the cloud....interesting development...I was thinking more of a TV that downloads during offpeak times...same same in the end...

[MovieStuff]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... om-lg.html

Seems even NetFlix is creating the cloud....interesting development...I was thinking more of a TV that downloads during offpeak times...same same in the end...

Yeah, I read that with some interest. I know that you can already stream NetFlix to your computer. But so far, all the NetFlix that I've seen on the computer were sub-quality, even compared to regular SD transmission. The image was blocky and the motion staggered. I haven't seen any indication that the NetFlix streaming for HDTV sets will actually be in HD; just that customers will be able to watch something on demand. If they do stream in HD, I'd be curious what the quality is like.

Roger

[Jim Carlile]

I'm not too sure about this cloud, but I think there will always be a place for fixed media. Something like this, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/Murnau-Borzage-Fo ... B001EZE5E2

Maybe I'm old and sentimental, but I'm not too cool about the idea of doing all the legwork for a company in downloading a file, and paying for it while not even getting a nice booklet or two.

As for the Mac v. Windows virus arguments, there are some technical reasons why Macs have less problems-- I found this once on some Slashdot link:

I occasionally get the popularity argument from Windows weenies who don't understand the UNIX security model and think "security through obscurity" is what protects the average UNIX or Linux machine from intrusion. I'm quick to point out to them that another piece of software that is very popular and runs on UNIX with its backside fully exposed to the Internet doesn't suffer from the constant security breaches that seem endemic to Windows, thus blowing the popularity argument out of the water. Of course, I'm referring to Apache.

The security woes that plague Windows are there because security in that vaunted operating system was an afterthought -- a "bolted on" feature that was suddenly necessary when Microsoft finally got a Windows networking model in place and it became possible for user B to get into user A's machine. Contrast that to UNIX's security model, which was built into the kernel itself, starting back when Ken Thompson was hunched over that old PDP-7's keyboard some 35 years ago. 35 years of continuous use and development have given the UNIX community a lot of time to find and elminate security weaknesses. While I wouldn't be so naive as to suggest that all of them have been found, the facts say that UNIX is far more secure than anything Microsoft has produced to date.

As Tony pointed out, security breaches in the UNIX space are inevitably due to misconfiguration or some similar sort of administrator error, not from inherent defects of design. Windows, unlike UNIX, came from a single user environment where the notion of security didn't exist. Short of a scratch rewrite of the Windows kernel, where all aspects of system access control are in one place and follow a unified model, I fail to see how anything is going to be changed.

[MovieStuff]

I occasionally get the popularity argument from Windows weenies who don't understand the UNIX security model and think "security through obscurity" is what protects the average UNIX or Linux machine from intrusion. I'm quick to point out to them that another piece of software that is very popular and runs on UNIX with its backside fully exposed to the Internet doesn't suffer from the constant security breaches that seem endemic to Windows, thus blowing the popularity argument out of the water.

Here's the thing:

Is UNIX or Linux not showing signs of attack because people are attempting to write viruses for them and failing -or- because no one really cares about attacking an OS that is in the minority so they don't bother?

To me this is the issue. I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that Windows is secure. That has never been the argument, even though the Mac-elite try to make it the focal point when it comes to discussions about virus attacks. The relative superiority of the Mac OS security is immaterial unless there is evidence that someone is trying to breach that much vaunted security on a regular basis and is failing.

Is there any evidence this is happening on a regular basis?

People are either writing viruses specifically to attack the Mac OS and failing -or- they aren't bothering to do it at all. And if they aren't bothering to do it, then the question is "why not?". Just because it's hard? I mean, if defeating the Mac OS security brings such valuable bragging rights, I would think the internet geek-forums would be full of wannabes looking to be the top, chest beating alpha male. If not, then the concept of "security through obscurity" isn't so far fetched.

Roger

[Jim Carlile]

Yeah, I'm not sure why Mac viruses and spyware isn't more of a big deal, though there's talk that it's becoming so. Unix guys are convinced that it's a technical issue rather than inclination-- I wish I knew more. Maybe time to call up Leo Laporte and ask him...

BTW, I realized after reading the Amazon reviews that I probably picked the worst possible example of DVD advantages with the Murnau box set I cited-- apparently, it's a mess-- scratched disks and everything else that can possibly go wrong with fixed media. But I like all the goodies you get packed away that you can't get from that 'cloud.' Also, I agree with Roger about the collecting aspect of DVDs-- do younger people who are into downloading get the same satisfaction, pride of possession, all that stuff?

[super8man]

Under full disclosure rules, I must admit I do have some analog technology:



Get a load of those titles...rock on!!

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