"Blu-Ray has five years left" - Samsung

[Ian Laurie]

As a fan of bluray, this may seem a bit biased. But i think you all would have to agree( i mean you bought red cams right?) that the quality is FAR better than downloads. But another thing to consider, BD-RE and BD-R discs are not the organic dye type suggested earlier in this post, The organic dye is being developed for BD-R HTL. This is just companys being resistant to changing equipment. using the non organic dye discs is why i use them for data storage, particularly of old red footage. Also in developement are discs capable of holding 3.5 hours of 4k cinema footage. Good thing if you ask me. And as for the guy who bought all those standard def movies... they still work. I have only bought a few repeats of movies I REALLY liked. there will always be new movies so why worry about buying them all. Besides the broadcast market is not going to support another jump in tv design anytime soon. 480 TVs lasted what, nearly 80 years... Once 1080p settles in it will be long time before the industry will be allowed to jump forward another leap, leaving bluray as a capable means to get the most out of your tv for many years. DVD came to late to last like vhs did do to the jump to HDTV and to early to be prepared for the shift. HDTV is just settling in and I would expect bluray to do the same. Oh and as for the quality difference in picture, believe it or not, I set up my dvd player on my friends parents TV back before most people even knew what dvd was. an hour into the movie he said to me, " I don't see a difference in quality" I immediately picked up a remote and switched back to his satellite signal at which point he pulled his tv cabinet apart to find out why his satellite was so bad all of a sudden. I would suggest that most people would have the same reaction on an HDTV if they went from watching a bluray to watching a dvd. I know i do.

 

[Kaku Ito]

I'm sure people will adopt if the price becomes reasonable. Many may be interested in such a system vs. tape archival simply because tape is viewed as obsolete, even though it really isn't. My biggest concern with such archival solutions is that the chemicals used on BD media are essentially the same chemicals that have been used for DVD and CD media for years. And we are now seeing that the longevity is nowhere near as good as the manufacturers had stated. So just like any other data storage method, these "archives" will still eventually need to be serviced and migrated to other forms of storage in the future. We also have to consider that the just as tape is fading away, so will the optical disc. In 30 years, the photochemical dyes in those discs will be struggling to hold data, perhaps even at a failing point. And the only hardware around to read BD media will be expensive specialty or legacy equipment.

Yeah, I'm thinking we'll see quad-layer per side BD media and the drives to read/write it sometime in the first half of '09. There were several manufacturers talking about such a thing at E3 and Siggraph. It's one of those things that has been "working in the lab" for a year or two now.

I wasn't thinking too much of the long term, but I missed that debate point in this thread. I guess 1TB SATA drives are the temporal archive place at this point? So we can move over to the right device when that is available.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I guess 1TB SATA drives are the temporal archive place at this point? So we can move over to the right device when that is available.

Personally, I would never do this. HDD's are simply not designed to sit on a shelf and store data.

For now, the "right device" is probably LTO tape. it's really the best way to go for now, until something truly better comes along. Comparing costs, tape is about the same price as hard drives. But it's actually designed to sit on shelves. LTO tape is pretty much the standard all over the world for any form of serious backup and long-term data storage. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about tape circulating in the production industry lately. For some reason, people still fear an IT-centric workflow and while people have trusted tape to store archived video footage for decades, they are suddenly leery of it for archiving data. Weird.

 

[Matthew Scott]

Unfortunately Blu-Ray has not been meeting industry expectations. Consumers can't see enough of a difference from SD DVDs.

Wait till bigger (70") TV's become affordable, then people will see.....

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

The difference is significant, IMHO.

But a good setup is neede to see that...

Or good eyes. :biggrin:

Oh and BTW, in the future, content will be free for personal use and ad-supported.

It is inevitable. :devil:

 

[Mark Ian Parkinson]

This is an interesting read.

I wonder what will replace Blu-Ray?!? Perhaps another color of 'Ray'?

"Samsung has said that it sees the Blu-ray format only lasting a further 5 years before it is replaced by another format or technology. "

The article is here.

I think Blu-Ray will last for another 5 years. There are new disc technologies such as HVD or Holographic Versatile Disc that can store up to 3.9TB of information. The storage capacity is two times the capacity of most of the largest hard drives today. Eventually Disc formats I believe will become history in about 20 years from now.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

There are new disc technologies such as HVD or Holographic Versatile Disc that can store up to 3.9TB of information. The storage capacity is two times the capacity of most of the largest hard drives today. Eventually Disc formats I believe will become history in about 20 years from now.

I would love so. We could finally have the perfect archival tool.
But every time it's the same story.
Every time we are lead to believe that the next one is THE one.

 

[Digital Upstart]

"you guys are missing the bigger picture

banana storage, mark my words, they are gonna use bananas to hold terabytes of data
Posted by banana, Banana Republic"

Actual quote from a guy commenting on the original story. Stock up on bananas, guys. You heard it there first.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

yes...

 

[Nik Manning]

It is all about ease of use. If apple decided to make the apple tv available for purchase in every best buy for $99 and offered 1080p streaming to your tv then it would be the new format. It is not about better, faster, etc. It is just ease of use. The smart people make products for people who are not as smart as them. The masses are easy to please. Blu-Ray will determine how long they last. If Blu-Ray players are $199 or less and movies are $19.99 and less the will last the 5 years. I agree that hardrive storage is the new hot stuff. It happened with music, photos, and it will happen with movies.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

I don't think Blu-Ray will ever catch on. I just got an AppleTV set up, and I'm shocked at how good it looks. That. . . and all of it's brethern. . . are the future. And that's great by me, because that is exactly how almost all of us making indie features will end up making our money.

Stephen

 

[Matt Newcomb]

Blu-Ray is just an intermediate format. It will not be a VHS, or a DVD, it's just something to get us by until we figure things out.

 

[Paul Doherty]

So you like little plastic boxes with neat pictures? This makes you feel all warm and fuzzy?

Last week I went camping, and I brought along my "Movies" 500GB external drive. It has something like 440GBs of mostly 720p and 1080p movies. I was able to plug it into my laptop at night, in my tent, and choose any HD movie I wanted -- then play it right off the external drive on my laptop at 1080p. Somehow, I wasn't missing the plastic boxes. :wink:

This has to be the most ridiculous and self-contradictory comment I have encountered in a long, long time!

LMAO!!!!

The very essence of camping is the absence of high-technology.
"Roughing it" is perhaps the fundamental and defining quality which allows the individual to legitimately define the experience as "camping".
Watching 1080p movies on a 500gig geek-o-matic "Movies" drive in one's tent at night is the last activity which ought to be associated with "camping".
Try going for a nocturnal walk - life abounds at night, you might see some :cold:
Maybe stargazing is more to your liking - for that activity you could justify a bit of tech, such as a telescope or camera. You might even be able to justify the laptop, for daily camera downloads.
But the 500gig geek-o-rama HDD has GOT TO GO!!!!!!
:innocent:

 

[DRappazzo]

"The very essence of camping is the absence of high-technology.
"Roughing it" is perhaps the fundamental and defining quality which allows the individual to legitimately define the experience as "camping".
Watching 1080p movies on a 500gig geek-o-matic "Movies" drive in one's tent at night is the last activity which ought to be associated with "camping"." -PD

I could not agree more, the idea of camping to me is getting away from any kind of screen and enjoying the natural world without the distractions of all the modern conviences. I do understand why some people would want to watch movies in a tent, but if you want to watch a movie why not just stay home.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I do find it hard to believe that Blu-Ray will ever catch on as well as SD-DVD did, most people I talk too, just average movies watchers outside of hte business, dont even understand the difference between the two enough to want to pay for the upgrade. I imagine that by the time the prices on players and disks come down enough to enitce more of the consumers another format will come along and offer even better quality.

 

[Nova Invicta]

OK until it goes wrong

OK until it goes wrong

Just recently had my forth PC with a failed hard drive that contains i-tunes collection, photos and video. Yes this is backed-up but many consumers dont have this stuff backed up so loose everything. I tried Apple i-TV frankly its rubbish & now resides in the loft, the BBC have the i-player fine for catching up on missed shows but painful to download and viewing not as good even on 1080P TV as original broadcast.
Whats my point? sometimes were dummies that want to believe everything thats new is better well its not always so. I like the fact that Blue-ray gives me a physical disc with a sleeve with information, its better picture & sound quality offset the physical storage in my home. I buy selected tracks from i-tunes but if I want the complete album I buy the CD. We can shop for anything online but shopping malls are testament that consumers want more than a quick fix a tactile feel doesnt come from a mouse click, and quite frankly if Im going on a camping trip the last thing I want is a computer & a hard drive to watch movies on a 17" screen what a waste of the outdoor experiance and the picture quality hopefully the movie has is totally lost just because we can do something doesnt mean we have made progress.

 

[ArchieCruz]

So perhaps a momentary inhalation of fresh air is in order so as to put things in perspective:blush:

- Removable standardized dimension discs (CD/DVD/BD et alia) have a place in computing communities. Since the dimensions of the discs have basically not varied in 20 years, many, many aspects of the manufacture and use of these discs has remained. This means retooling to accomodate the newer, better, higher density format or 'book' has been minimized. This is a GOOD thing.
- BD is the next level up in terms of data density of storage
- As customer demands for greater data density increase, so has pressure on industry to deliver that density.
- As customer demands for higher resolution of information (yea- movies, multimedia, music etc) increases, then it follows that industry has to deliver.
- In sync with the rollout of HD-TV & HD content production , a client delivery medium that fulfills a number of requirements had to be selected. BD won that lottery.
In summary, 5 years is a decent amount of time in La La Land- translating into roughly 10 sheeples years. Sheeples are the mass market- not you or I.
Personally (see my prior post), I'm thrilled to back-up my DVD backups of data (project files) onto a denser medium that STILL FITS into every compartment that my 20 years old CD-ROMs fit into.
I hand out CD's & DVD's like candy cause their so cheap.
It will feel great to send out my corporate collateral rich media/multimedia on a BD in the next year!
5 years from now we'll send them something the size of an SM or CF card with that much density. Maybe taped to a box of chocolates :sorcerer:

 

[Uli Plank]

It's already happening, even if it's not chocolate yet. There's a music publisher we have been working for on a backstage video for a famous German rock singer. They are handing out USB sticks with the web version of our film as a Christmas gift to DVD buyers now.
No BluRay version in sight, even if we thought we are smart by producing a master in HD…

 

[Tim Wildenhain]

where can you get 1.5 terabytes for 300 bucks?

http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/usb_1.5tb.htm

That one's $161

http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_1tb_32mb.htm

These start out at $84.99 and have 32mb cache.

 

[Tim Wildenhain]

Ok, To add to the conversation, the "Blu-Ray is dead" argument is far far far too early in it's infancy to make any claim one way or the other. Technology, especially one that changes an existing standard, always moves very slowly. I remember hearing about this thing called the Digital Versatile Disk back in '96. Was going to be great, allowing for up to 18 gigs of data to be stored! 2 years later, it was the Digital Video Disk. It took about 5 years for me to have a hard time finding VHS tapes in the stores. We're really only what 2 or 3 years into the Blu-Ray thing and it had a long drawn out format war to boot which hampered any market adaptation. So, all things considered, Blu-Ray is doing quite well.

Also, some things to note; The superior product does not always mean the standard format. Beta and VHS are a perfect example of this. Beta was released in the 70's, and in the 80's VHS came out and quashed Beta, even though Beta was a superior format. Laser Disc came out in the early 80's too; but never caught on, again Laser Disc was the superior format. It takes time for things to become standard.

Let's try and get HD tv standard in households (which it is not btw) once that happens, I think Blu-Ray will pick up, it'll be here to stay for quite a while. It'll also pick up once the media get's cheaper. I've heard some people say that it's already cheap - maybe for older movies. Dark Knight as an example was $14.99 for DVD, $29.99 for Blu-Ray - that's double the cost for essentially the same media! Online ordering may be different, but online ordering hasn't replaced the retail market.

It's doubtful that solid state or HD type media will be the replacement for optical media. MPAA and DRM will probably prevent that going forward, regardless of how much sense it would make. DVD disks can be played an unlimited amount of times. SSD's are limited and *WILL* die eventually.

 

[Alberto Caprioglio]

Are we talking about storage for professional/personal archival/collection on a shelf or about storage medium/drive for daily use (=high speed access/reading/writing, ergonomics...)?

It's not just as simple as saying "hello, look what I have found: it's good to have 500 movies on hard disk (or clay or whatever)"

The main problem is this damned fact (what a news, isn't it?) that not much has changed with time, and it seems that in 2010 like in 1990 when the mortal, ordinary people were prohibited from knowing what on earth a magneto optical disk was - as if one's data were not serious enough to be safe, as if individuals could not be musicians, writers, photographers, videographers, filmakers or anithing, therefore couldn't own valuable data enough to be worth keeping safe... Has anything changed in the approach, apart from the phisiological increase storage capacity and speed?
Do people have a real choice between cheap plastic medium lasting few years and then fissolve... and reliable, long term archival medium?

I thing it's still the same.
While in some other fields not too far away, there have been opposite examples, examples of professional approach borrowed by non professional use - professional mediums such as open reel recorders commonly found in good home hi-fi setups till some decades ago - the data storage seems it necessarily must be a pain for individuals, professional or not.
Why, for any serious, let alone professional, use, are the hundred of millions individuals must share the same tools made for the least serious and most casual use?

How is it possible that a musician, a film maker, a graphic studio, a designer, a... oooh eat your disk somebody who is/needs/feels like/wants to be serious about a simple (but in his/her case important) activity as saving data, has to use exactly the same unreliable solutions as any 12 years old hopeless lazy child with no interests in life and who couldn't care less normally does when such monkey only has to dumps somewhere a bunch of hopeless songs taken from another failed drinking cousin's old cassettes?
There is something wrong in different needs being treated all the same, and all at the lowest possible term.

Our needs can't be the same as those of a next door grandmother, babies and boring small criminals. I see choice that are only apparent and not real, like square feet of different colors TDK VERBATIM SONY... DVDs, oh yes, the fantastical freedom given by the differentiation +-R/RW, you know when the shop can put them, when only to find DVD-RAM is obviously an heresy that no student/shop has ever heard of... DVD or hard disk?? is that a choice? have any of the mediums available have anything in common with realiable?
no, all in the same bag, the your fruit seller's cousin and the ambulant barber with one leg all save their data on the same joke.
Yes, I know this sounds quite exacly like the kind of message we seem to be designated to recieve by advertising, but... it is a joke! there ARE differences amd not like in benetton advertising where it is all pretending now the eskimo in the north pole and the masai in the savannah forcely wear to show the same sweater but is accepted because it's a photograph. I can't force important data into the same dump designed for storing children's school pig grunt samples, be it the usual 500 giga hard disk or the USB pendrive with. Those doesn't make a choice, these are not proper technologies for serioulsy saving any kind of data, they are made for buying and throwing away in one year and use in that time like a pair of shoes. Hey, shoes may last longer, bacause some shoes are well made, and you CAN choose shoes, unlike recording media.
In fact, I prefer to archive RED data on shoes than on disk.