Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*

AlphaWolf said:
You are comparing year one of DVD with year 7 of bluray? Last year wasn't a bad year, its been a steady decline over the last 3 or 4. Netflix, vudu, hulu etc... physical media is dying.

And some PC games are released on discs, many are not. I expect it will be the same on consoles going forward.

If optical wants to make any kind of comeback, they need a solution that isn't just huge capacity, it needs to be an order of magnitude faster than current formats. They have reached the limits of how fast they can spin a disc and it's still too slow.
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I think the numbers cover vhs, dvd and blu-ray, so I am really not comparing anything just pointing out how sales were back then and I am sure it was a good business with those numbers.

And i do not expect optical media to make a comeback hell, it's not even gone now and it's in the ps4 and xbox 1 in order to make a comeback you have to be beat first, right? . I think it's a real risk that physical media will be gone in the next generation. Without any new format it's more likely, but with a new 300GB format there may be a chance :)

What pc games weren't released on disc?
 
AlphaWolf said:
And some PC games are released on discs, many are not. I expect it will be the same on consoles going forward.
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It is as from XB1 and PS4 where every disk game gets a download option, in addition to download titles. Although you may have been excluding download games, I think them worth including, as they can be games of considerable quality and value.
 
-tkf- said:
I looked over the numbers a bit more, it would seem that buying movies is dying, the gains in VoD doesn't make up for the loss in Physical sales.. :-/
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the catalog of movies is worth less.


In the 20s to 70s the only way to see movies was to go to a cinema or watch it on tv. That's why movies like snow white and gone with the wind grossed so much (adjusted for inflation these are the highest grossing movies of all time)

In the 80s you got beta and vhs . For the first time you can buy movies. But of course they were very expensive. Then came dvd and it was quite easy to buy your fav movies in high quality for the first time. So people went on buying sprees .


The problem for bluray is that those movies are $8 bucks or more on bluray but Netflix / hulu and others have all those great movies for free.

So who wants to invest in library of movies that you can stream for a low monthly cost ?

Of course there will always be colectors or people who really love a movie and want it. I own the goonies , back to the future trilogy , star wars , jaws , Indiana jones and other iconic movies that I love and want in high quality.

But for me I went from having almost 2,500 movies on dvd to having 50 movies on bluray.

most of my sane friends (me being insane) went from maybe 100 dvds or so to a dozen or two of bluray


Optical will fall away there isn't much need for it and streaming will just become higher quality at the same bit rate.
 
It is intresting that the Blu-Ray group hasn't made any decisions on a 4k format. Sony/Panasonic look to be pushing with own tech solution. What will Samsung and LG back? GE Holodisc?
 
Maybe they will back fiber. I don't think it will matter as I doubt the people who haven't upgraded to blu-ray are really just waiting for 4k.
 
Bluray can do 100GB or 128GB on triple or quad layer, that's hardly more than a firmware upgrade. Drives have to be faster too but I think that's done. The other piece of the puzzle is "HDMI 2.0".

I believe that if 4K home video is launched it will be that way. It's cheap. Not too much industrial costs and new $100 bluray players will support it.
 
Regardless of storage medium I think 4K might require always online or online activation for viewing ... if you look at the ridiculous security and limitations on that Sony box with a couple of 4K movies then the studios are getting rather serious about making piracy hard (there is always the analogue hole, but with online you can put individualized watermarks in).
 
MfA said:
Regardless of storage medium I think 4K might require always online or online activation for viewing ... if you look at the ridiculous security and limitations on that Sony box with a couple of 4K movies then the studios are getting rather serious about making piracy hard (there is always the analogue hole, but with online you can put individualized watermarks in).
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The noises are that the studios are uninterested in physical media for 4k and the travesty of those Sony 4K players may be their plan. Red has a similar box too, although I believe it's targetted at studio execs watching rushes rather than you or me. It seems that the studios are either going to simply restrict 4k to the 'haves' with good broadband and a tolerance for less than ideal image quality (I loathe streaming) or just wait until fast broadband is more widespread and then foist this BS on us all.
 
I think we probably don't need new physical storage for 4K... current Blu-Ray is already more than enough for 1080p, and H.265 is supposed to be able to provide much better coding efficiency than H.264 (current number is ~35% reduction in bandwidth). That'd be enough for 4K (e.g. H.265 level 5.1 for 3840x2160@60 is designed for 40Mbps on main tier).
 
Lalaland said:
The noises are that the studios are uninterested in physical media for 4k and the travesty of those Sony 4K players may be their plan. Red has a similar box too, although I believe it's targetted at studio execs watching rushes rather than you or me. It seems that the studios are either going to simply restrict 4k to the 'haves' with good broadband and a tolerance for less than ideal image quality (I loathe streaming) or just wait until fast broadband is more widespread and then foist this BS on us all.
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The only reason the Sony 4K player exists is because the PS4 hasn't been released yet. Still, the issue is how to store 100GB HEVC movies when affordable hard drives top out at 3TB for $120. That's only 26-27 movies. For a person who owns 200-400+ movies, you'd need 10 drives. That's just plain clunky. Also, you'd only want to download that file once, so it better be in a common file format playable on any 4K player.
 
dagamer said:
The only reason the Sony 4K player exists is because the PS4 hasn't been released yet. Still, the issue is how to store 100GB HEVC movies when affordable hard drives top out at 3TB for $120. That's only 26-27 movies. For a person who owns 200-400+ movies, you'd need 10 drives. That's just plain clunky. Also, you'd only want to download that file once, so it better be in a common file format playable on any 4K player.
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A single 4K movie for download shouldn't require more than 20GB.
 
Awesome, I've googled the "Sony 4K player", never heard of it before. So it's a bluray player without bluray drive, kind of :LOL:. But a 2TB hard drive is nice.

it's $699 but I guess it costs them less than $200 to manufacture. Well done.
 
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