RUMOR: Xbox 360 20GB SKU to be replaced by 60GB SKU

[-tkf-]

The fact that you are expressing this with such certainty makes it look like you came to your conclusion first and then went about finding a way for the facts to back it up rather than looking at the facts and seeing what conclusions could be drawn.

1. We don't really know what was going on behind the scenes. To imply that the only reason that the HD DVD add-on existed was to sabotage BluRay seems pretty narrow-minded to me.

I never saw the reason why Microsoft would add the HD-DVD for any other reason than trying to mess things up for Sony. They invested heavily in the VC-1 codec which the Blu-Ray camp played nicely by just adding it to their spec. I think Microsoft had other plans with VC-1 until it got included into BR. Thankfully it will not be used alot with HD-DVD gone.

They never had the the right hardware to actual support HD-DVD but still made a addon that to HTF could only be considered halfhearted (no HDMI and when they added HDMI it was not to full spec).

They clearly backed HD-DVD and aparently was a factor when Toshiba started to get shaky when they found out what a launch before Blu-Ray would cost. Toshibas first HD-DVD player was a incredible expensive machine to produce (it was a complete PC with a few expensive needed chips for the HD-DVD part)

To HD-DVD´s credit, the launch was what made this a fight and not a simple victory for Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray was way behind from the start and didn´t have either Hardware nor Software that could compete with the HD-DVD launch.

Until the flawless HD-DVD launch Blu-Ray was a clear winner on paper with broader support and the PS3, everyone thought it would only be a matter of time until HD-DVD would die.

What i think would be the real intersting part is some good suggestions about why Microsoft wanted to give their consumers a HD-DVD choice so early and why only a HD-DVD choice. They couldn´t expect to make any money from it, and they never thought people buy consoles for HiDef playback since they made a great deal out of how the PS3 wouldn´t benefit from BR.

Even Warner that had a part (afaik) in the HD-DVD patent pool could see what would benefit the movie industry the most.

I really hope that Microsoft makes the addon, creates a build in HDMI loopthrough and get the sound support right.

Everyone should access to HiDef

 

[eastmen]

Everyone should access to HiDef

I'm not sure I understand. I have an xbox 360 and I have acess to high def. I was just watching 300 in high def on my 360 through a download.

Even Warner that had a part (afaik) in the HD-DVD patent pool could see what would benefit the movie industry the most.

Warner was in both patent pools . Its also been said by some of those in the know that they recieved a very impressive sum of money (through marketing , production , etc ) to go to bluray.

Personaly I could see the benfits of both formats. Beowulf , 300 , heroes , transformers are true next generation titles , they have video and sound on par with any bluray title and also features that greatly surpass anything that has been done on bluray so far. Some of these titles are half a year old and it seems like they will be a full year ahead with titles like batman begins in terms of featuers.

As for bluray , we don't even know if that will last, it could simply die out and digital downloads or another media type can come in and take over.

 

[mrcorbo]

No, it wasn't doomed to failure. But it wasn't a guaranteed success and prior to the HD DVD launch, there was plenty of reason to think BRD would win out. Toshiba invested their money because they thought they had a chance, they weren't pushed into it by MS. MS backed the HD DVD camp as a 'best of both worlds' manoeuvre. If HD DVD won, they got some royalties.

And strengthened a competitor against their own digital distribution plans that (in that way) is the same as BR. And they get royalties from BR, too. The main difference is HD DVD also incorporated another MS technology, HDi, for their interactive functions allowing them to receive another royalty payment and further encourage authoring on a MS platform.

If it didn't, it didn't, but as long as the format was out there it'd slow BRD down which is better for an MS distribution network. If the format war had been dragged out for two more years and people didn't know which platform to buy into, wouldn't cheap downloaded movies that run on your MS PC or Console be all the more appealing?

I'm not sold on the necessity of disk-based formats faltering for digital distribution to take off. If it is going to become popular it will do so on it's own merits and likely for similar reasons that it has taken off for music. Convenience, cost effectiveness and acceptable quality.

Let's get real here. Would you say that DVD is faltering? Of course not. Yet it hasn't stopped digital d/l services from growing in popularity and number. I don't see why if the utter domination of the DVD format isn't enough to stymie DD why the gradual adoption of an HD disc format will be able to do it for HD movie d/l's.

Did I say that my conspiracy theories were about MS not releasing a BRD drive now, or was I only talking about why the HD DVD drive was launched in response to AzBat's comment -

I edited my post to properly direct that comment. Sorry about that, in following the thread I wrongly attributed that sentiment to you.

 

[mrcorbo]

I never saw the reason why Microsoft would add the HD-DVD for any other reason than trying to mess things up for Sony.

They actually thought 360 owners would want it? They wanted to compete with PS3 on bullet points? Toshiba asked really really nicely ?

They invested heavily in the VC-1 codec which the Blu-Ray camp played nicely by just adding it to their spec. I think Microsoft had other plans with VC-1 until it got included into BR. Thankfully it will not be used alot with HD-DVD gone.

For precision:

VC-1 got added to the BR spec at the request of studios like Warner who had been working with and learning the ins and outs of VC-1 encoding tools with a massive amount of technical support from MS for their HD DVD titles and didn't want to have to purchase and learn yet another set of tools to do their BR releases. It didn't help that neither competent h264 encoding tools nor 50 GB BR discs (to accommodate acceptable-quality MPEG-2 releases) were going to available at BR's launch. Everybody remember those early ass-tastic 25GB MPEG-2 BR releases?

So now you have a large community of video-compression engineers with extensive experience working with VC-1 and it's support tools and MS has a large amount of feedback both in terms of requests and criticisms from engineers at their partner studios and the actual visual results of the encodes done for HD DVD and BR to further improve their tools and codec implementation. Why would these studios now choose to dump VC-1 in favor of h264?

They never had the the right hardware to actual support HD-DVD but still made a addon that to HTF could only be considered halfhearted (no HDMI and when they added HDMI it was not to full spec).

I think you are overestimating the importance to all but a very small minority of the lack of HDMI and full HDMI audio support. And I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who does care.

 

[AzBat]

And for those speculating that there will be no BluRay add-on becuase MS is anti-BR, let's apply Occam's Razor:

1. The HD DVD add-on was undesirable to >97% of your user base (3% attach rate minus the people who bought it to use as a PC drive). Is a BluRay add-on going to be significantly more attractive? Could they reasonably anticipate the kind of sales it would take for it to make sense for them to commit to developing, testing, supporting (software upgrades, warranty and repair, infrastructure to build, warehouse, ship) and selling (promotion, getting stores to dedicate shelf space to yet another 360 accessory) a new product that offers the exact same functionality as a prior product that consumers clearly and emphatically rejected?

Isn't that reason enough for MS not to pursue a BR add-on? Does attaching additional factors to this decision that may or may not be valid serve any purpose other than to attempt to spin the decision so it fits a preconceived bias?

My thoughts with regard to the lukewarm reception of the add-on has been the uncertainty of the HD disc war. Who wants to buy into an expensive piece of hardware and a whole bunch discs without knowing if it's going to end up being the winner? Personally, that's the biggest reason why I didn't purchase it. I wanted to wait until the format was over before making my investment. With that said I don't think the 97% of the user-base chose not to buy it because it wasn't attractive technology or didn't have value.

Anyway, I don't think the requirements for doing a Blu-ray add-on will be more complicated or more expensive than doing the HD-DVD add-on. That's provided the 360 is technically capable of handling BD-J and the higher bit-rates. Microsoft should have it somewhat easier considering the experienced they gained the first time around.

Tommy McClain

 

[bkilian]

My thoughts with regard to the lukewarm reception of the add-on has been the uncertainty of the HD disc war. Who wants to buy into an expensive piece of hardware and a whole bunch discs without knowing if it's going to end up being the winner? Personally, that's the biggest reason why I didn't purchase it. I wanted to wait until the format was over before making my investment. With that said I don't think the 97% of the user-base chose not to buy it because it wasn't attractive technology or didn't have value.

Anyway, I don't think the requirements for doing a Blu-ray add-on will be more complicated or more expensive than doing the HD-DVD add-on. That's provided the 360 is technically capable of handling BD-J and the higher bit-rates. Microsoft should have it somewhat easier considering the experienced they gained the first time around.

Tommy McClain

You seem to be quite cavalier about throwing around Microsoft's money. Let's put it this way: Our team is about 100 people (the folks who wrote the software for the HD DVD addon). Let's call the Cost to MS per person for a year $150K average -- That's salary, equipment, and benefits. (I believe we use higher than that, but I can't remember what it is). so now we're talking $15 million a year in pure headcount. We've worked on the software in the HD DVD addon for 3 years now, so that's $45 million now, just for headcount. That's not counting anyone on the XBox team yet. Even if we could pull together a Blu-ray addon in just a year, that's _still_ another $15 million already, plus the inevitable software updates for at least another year. Call it $30 million over and above the $45 million we've spent on the first addon. Let's say we made 20% on the addons (I have no idea what the real number was, but 20% would be high), then our total profit on the HD DVD addon would have been $12 million.

The economics just aren't there to pursue an expensive addon that we've already seen does not appeal to a huge majority of our customers.

Like I said before, we have bigger fish to fry, our team isn't lacking in stuff to do.

 

[one]

Let's put it this way: Our team is about 100 people (the folks who wrote the software for the HD DVD addon). Let's call the Cost to MS per person for a year $150K average -- That's salary, equipment, and benefits. (I believe we use higher than that, but I can't remember what it is). so now we're talking $15 million a year in pure headcount. We've worked on the software in the HD DVD addon for 3 years now, so that's $45 million now, just for headcount. That's not counting anyone on the XBox team yet. Even if we could pull together a Blu-ray addon in just a year, that's _still_ another $15 million already, plus the inevitable software updates for at least another year. Call it $30 million over and above the $45 million we've spent on the first addon. Let's say we made 20% on the addons (I have no idea what the real number was, but 20% would be high), then our total profit on the HD DVD addon would have been $12 million.

Was the development of the Xbox 360 add-on the sole job for the 100-people team? Didn't they write testing tools for other vendors that implement iHD, or develop HD DVD-related infrastructure in Windows Vista such as Protected Media Path? To me it looks the development of the reference HD DVD player design later supplied to Chinese vendors was their main job and the 360 add-on was their first testbed, though unfortunately it might be the last too. Unless they plan to reuse the technology elsewhere it doesn't make sense to heavily invest in it.

OTOH, supplying a Blu-ray add-on for 360 is purely about marketing reasons. Microsoft don't have to hire a 100-people team to write a Blu-ray software stack which isn't reusable, it would be far cheaper for them to buy a license of a third-party software such as PowerDVD and port it to 360.

BTW, can you comment on our older assumption about the HD DVD add-on that it may have the player software loaded in the add-on side?
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1129848&postcount=368

 

[AzBat]

You seem to be quite cavalier about throwing around Microsoft's money. Let's put it this way: Our team is about 100 people (the folks who wrote the software for the HD DVD addon). Let's call the Cost to MS per person for a year $150K average -- That's salary, equipment, and benefits. (I believe we use higher than that, but I can't remember what it is). so now we're talking $15 million a year in pure headcount. We've worked on the software in the HD DVD addon for 3 years now, so that's $45 million now, just for headcount. That's not counting anyone on the XBox team yet. Even if we could pull together a Blu-ray addon in just a year, that's _still_ another $15 million already, plus the inevitable software updates for at least another year. Call it $30 million over and above the $45 million we've spent on the first addon. Let's say we made 20% on the addons (I have no idea what the real number was, but 20% would be high), then our total profit on the HD DVD addon would have been $12 million.

The economics just aren't there to pursue an expensive addon that we've already seen does not appeal to a huge majority of our customers.

Like I said before, we have bigger fish to fry, our team isn't lacking in stuff to do.

There are others here that can probably pick apart your figures a lot better than I, but I will say that you didn't seem to have a problem spending all that money to just sell 300K units. Even if we use your economics and all the units sold at an average $180 per and you made 20% on them, then you probably made just over 1 million LESS than on your hypothetical Blu-ray add-on. The economics just aren't there eh? You can't tell me the market dynamics of selling a new add-on amidst the end of the format war wouldn't spur better sales? Your blind anti-Blu-ray stance is showing. Might want to get that looked at.

Tommy McClain

 

[-tkf-]

I'm not sure I understand. I have an xbox 360 and I have acess to high def. I was just watching 300 in high def on my 360 through a download.

Your watching a rented movie in what you consider acceptable quality, i am buying movies in the best possible quality i can afford.

Its also been said by some of those in the know that they recieved a very impressive sum of money (through marketing , production , etc ) to go to bluray.

The number was 500 million dollars and it was NEVER backed up by any credible website unlike the Paramount rumour.

and it seems like they will be a full year ahead with titles like batman begins in terms of featuers.

In many ways HD-DVD was ahead, first in Quality then in Features in both cases it was just a question of time.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm not sold on the necessity of disk-based formats faltering for digital distribution to take off. If it is going to become popular it will do so on it's own merits and likely for similar reasons that it has taken off for music. Convenience, cost effectiveness and acceptable quality.

The disk format doesn't need to falter to encourage downloads, but it does help. consumers are faced with choices, and you want to give them every reason to choose your product/service over the alternatives. If the alternative is a messed up format where you can't get all the film you want on one system, and a download service that's going from strength to strength offering pretty much everything you want and at lower prices, that has a much stronger draw for the downloads than a download service with a limited collection of titles and at lower quality versus a standardised disc format that'll have every film and TV series you could want being backed and pushed by all the movie companies and CD goods companies and which you can take round a mate's house and watch together.

Any and all HD download services were in a stronger position before BRD won out.

 

[Rangers]

There are others here that can probably pick apart your figures a lot better than I, but I will say that you didn't seem to have a problem spending all that money to just sell 300K units. Even if we use your economics and all the units sold at an average $180 per and you made 20% on them, then you probably made just over 1 million LESS than on your hypothetical Blu-ray add-on. The economics just aren't there eh? You can't tell me the market dynamics of selling a new add-on amidst the end of the format war wouldn't spur better sales? Your blind anti-Blu-ray stance is showing. Might want to get that looked at.

Tommy McClain

Look, he's right, the economics aren't there for a Blu Ray add on. At $300 and above it doesn't make any sense because you would be better off simply purchasing a PS3. At $200 it just barely makes sense, take me, I own a 360, I would have to think long and hard about dropping $200 on a Blu Ray add on when I know that for 200 more I can just get a PS3. At $100, it makes a lot of sense (provided stand alone and PS3 prices stay where they're at).

Now, given Blu Ray stand alone prices, and the price the 360 HDDVD add on was compared to HDDVD stand alone prices, what do YOU think the odds are they can get one out in a timely fashion for $200 or less (and $200 is still not compelling versus PS3 imo)? I'd say slim and none, and slim just left town.

 

[eastmen]

Your watching a rented movie in what you consider acceptable quality, i am buying movies in the best possible quality i can afford.

But that is not what you said.

You said that bluray was the only way for everyone to enjoy high def. I find my downloads look amazing for the price I pay. I have instant acess(well about 15-20 minutes) and it falls between fios on demand and bluray in terms of quality. To many people out there the quality is more than enough . TO many people out there they can't see a diffrence between upconvert dvd , xbox live and bluray. I know many of these people .

The number was 500 million dollars and it was NEVER backed up by any credible website unlike the Paramount rumour.

If you follow who started the paramount rumor and who was backing it up later on , its no more credible than some of the avs insiders who constantly provided correct information they shouldn't have had acess too .

But I guess if we don't hear about it from a credible source even though the hd dvd versions of the movies were selling just as well as the bluray counter parts .

In many ways HD-DVD was ahead, first in Quality then in Features in both cases it was just a question of time.

Isn't it sad that we are left with the format that needs to play catch up ? We are still waiting for a title as feature rich as batman begins which is almost 2 years old at this point. Let alone beowulf , heroes , transformers , 300 .


I'm not sure that the format that one out was the best. I own both and the quality of both is top notch but when I pay $30 or $35 (thanks fox) for a bluray I feel like i'm over paying because as you said the format was allways behind and when I pick up the next harry potter or what have you , i'm going to wonder where hd dvd would have been at this point had it survied and if bluray is still playing catch up with features.



Anyway as I said we don't know if bluray will survive . I'm betting in another 2 or 3 years flash media will be a huge driving force of movies. Buying a movie on solid state medium would make many of us happy. No scratches

 

[AzBat]

Look, he's right, the economics aren't there for a Blu Ray add on. At $300 and above it doesn't make any sense because you would be better off simply purchasing a PS3. At $200 it just barely makes sense, take me, I own a 360, I would have to think long and hard about dropping $200 on a Blu Ray add on when I know that for 200 more I can just get a PS3. At $100, it makes a lot of sense (provided stand alone and PS3 prices stay where they're at).

Now, given Blu Ray stand alone prices, and the price the 360 HDDVD add on was compared to HDDVD stand alone prices, what do YOU think the odds are they can get one out in a timely fashion for $200 or less (and $200 is still not compelling versus PS3 imo)? I'd say slim and none, and slim just left town.

IMHO, an add-on at $250 or less is very compelling to me versus a PS3, but I don't think the market would go for it. It would need to sell for $200 or less. And that's provided it ships this year. I think that the manufacturing work for such a drive is negligible. Lite-On drives can be bought for $150 or less at retail. The only complicated part left is the software to make it work. Maybe I have a little more faith than most do, but if the 360 is technically capable of handling it, I think it's doable. I can understand their hesitation in doing one. But I don't think the economics of the situation are so cut and dried. There would be a totally different market dynamic at play. Consumers would be safe in knowing that purchasing it would be a secure long time investment.

Unfortunately I think the economics are a smoke screen for 2 reasons why they won't do it. 1) I personally feel that Microsoft doesn't want BD-J support on their system. Even if it's capable of doing it. Politics or technical? Not sure. 2) They believe Marketplace rentals in sub-par HD quality are better than a Blu-ray disc. It may make them more money, but if I can't keep it or get all the additional content then I don't want it.

Tommy McClain

 

[bkilian]

There are others here that can probably pick apart your figures a lot better than I, but I will say that you didn't seem to have a problem spending all that money to just sell 300K units. Even if we use your economics and all the units sold at an average $180 per and you made 20% on them, then you probably made just over 1 million LESS than on your hypothetical Blu-ray add-on. The economics just aren't there eh? You can't tell me the market dynamics of selling a new add-on amidst the end of the format war wouldn't spur better sales? Your blind anti-Blu-ray stance is showing. Might want to get that looked at.

Tommy McClain

Um, we weren't expecting to only sell 300K drives, we were hoping that HD DVD was going to eventually win, and doing everything we could to help that along. We also, as was implied above, were using the Addon code as a technology demo for our software stack, which would have made us a lot more money in the long run. All the Toshibas use our interactivity stack, and we were in talks with a number of other manufacturers. None of these things would hold true for Blu-ray, so we would have to make all of our money on the addon. It just wouldn't happen.

Was the development of the Xbox 360 add-on the sole job for the 100-people team? Didn't they write testing tools for other vendors that implement iHD, or develop HD DVD-related infrastructure in Windows Vista such as Protected Media Path?

BTW, can you comment on our older assumption about the HD DVD add-on that it may have the player software loaded in the add-on side?
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1129848&postcount=368

Yes, and no. We also helped the studios author titles. All of those are costs though. We gave away our testing tools, and authoring knowledge.
There's a lot more to making something run on the 360 than "porting it over". When we originally pulled over the h.264 decoder, it did about 1 frame a second. It took us months and some innovative work from the XBox team to get it to full frame rate at HD DVD data rates. It would probably take more time to get it to BD data rates. Our interactivity layer was highly optimised so that it could run on a single thread and not use the graphics chip (the H.264 decoder uses all the shader pipelines)

And yes, indeed, the software for the drive is stored on the flash inside the drive. The flash in the console is only just big enough for the dash, with a little left over for title updates.

 

[AzBat]

Um, we weren't expecting to only sell 300K drives, we were hoping that HD DVD was going to eventually win, and doing everything we could to help that along. We also, as was implied above, were using the Addon code as a technology demo for our software stack, which would have made us a lot more money in the long run. All the Toshibas use our interactivity stack, and we were in talks with a number of other manufacturers. None of these things would hold true for Blu-ray, so we would have to make all of our money on the addon. It just wouldn't happen.

Gotcha. That better explains it. So the add-ons weren't really done to give customers a choice, it was make to money off the manufacturers with your tools? And since you can't sell any tools for Blu-ray, there's no reason to do an add-on. In essence it wouldn't matter if the HD-DVD add-on had a higher attach rate since the sales could still never come close to what you could make off a manufacturer. Makes total sense now. Thanks for the clarification.

So what's next on the agenda? Native Blu-ray support in Media Center? My computer may not be up to it, but I'm sure it's a welcomed update from many others.

Tommy McClain

 

[Zassk]

To all of you asking why won't MS sell a Blu-Ray add-on, isn't it as simple as this: Toshiba offered to subsidize the HD DVD add-on, and no company has offered to subsidize a Blu-Ray add-on?

MS has no interest in subsidizing an add-on itself. Clearly the only companies who were interested in subsidizing HD hardware were Toshiba and Sony - because no other company has thus far subsidized its standalone players.

An add-on needs to be attractive compared to standalone player prices. Even at Blu-Ray's inflated prices, we are told to expect $299 units next holiday. A Blu-Ray add-on for XB360 would have to be $149 to be attractive by comparison. Now tell me, what hardware company will supply an add-on for that price?

 

[bkilian]

Gotcha. That better explains it. So the add-ons weren't really done to give customers a choice, it was make to money off the manufacturers with your tools? And since you can't sell any tools for Blu-ray, there's no reason to do an add-on. In essence it wouldn't matter if the HD-DVD add-on had a higher attach rate since the sales could still never come close to what you could make off a manufacturer. Makes total sense now. Thanks for the clarification.

So what's next on the agenda? Native Blu-ray support in Media Center? My computer may not be up to it, but I'm sure it's a welcomed update from many others.

Tommy McClain

Not at all, we were building the tools before we even thought about an XBox addon. We shipped the first Toshiba long before we shipped the addon. We didn't need to make the addon to prove our code worked, but since the addon did become a reality, there was no reason not to use it as our technology demo.

Doesn't matter what I say though, you'll happily twist it to fit your warped world view.

 

[one]

Yes, and no. We also helped the studios author titles. All of those are costs though. We gave away our testing tools, and authoring knowledge.
There's a lot more to making something run on the 360 than "porting it over". When we originally pulled over the h.264 decoder, it did about 1 frame a second. It took us months and some innovative work from the XBox team to get it to full frame rate at HD DVD data rates. It would probably take more time to get it to BD data rates. Our interactivity layer was highly optimised so that it could run on a single thread and not use the graphics chip (the H.264 decoder uses all the shader pipelines)

And yes, indeed, the software for the drive is stored on the flash inside the drive. The flash in the console is only just big enough for the dash, with a little left over for title updates.

Thanks a lot that makes things pretty clear. But still a third-party can make an offer to develop and sell a Blu-ray add-on for 360 or "Xbox Ultimate" if there's a market.

So what's next on the agenda? Native Blu-ray support in Media Center? My computer may not be up to it, but I'm sure it's a welcomed update from many others.

Though Vista already has necessary drivers, Microsoft won't be able to add a BD player software itself to the OS since Intervideo and EU will go after them

 

[Tap In]

yea not sure why we're trying to crucify bkilian as though he has this anti-Br agenda... he's just trying to illuminate the situation


thanks for the insight bkilian

 

[-tkf-]

But that is not what you said.

You said that bluray was the only way for everyone to enjoy high def. I find my downloads look amazing for the price I pay.

Compromise is what HD-DVD was all about, "good enough" can fall of a cliff an die. I hate it with a passion. I accept that others may be fine with it, it´s their choice. For me HD-DVD was never about highest possible quality, it was only about Compromise. Interestingly i have found many of the die hard supporters of HD-DVD to be among those that have no problem accepting even lesser quality from download services.

If you follow who started the paramount rumor and who was backing it up later on , its no more credible than some of the avs insiders who constantly provided correct information they shouldn't have had acess too .

Afaik it actually came from within Paramount and it was posted on by an actual Journalist. I would be very interested in a to a credible source about the BR deal.

Isn't it sad that we are left with the format that needs to play catch up ? We are still waiting for a title as feature rich as batman begins which is almost 2 years old at this point. Let alone beowulf , heroes , transformers , 300 .

The catchup part is pretty much done afaik, for me it has always been about the movie though. And since i have a PS3 i never have to worry about the Support for the different Profiles

The thing is, HD-DVD never were able to do anything that BR could not. However, HD-DVD was never able to grow 40% in space and bitrate. And the early HD-DVD lockdown on the required onboard memory, lowres PIP and other "features" would have allowed the BR features to become even more feature rich. But as i said, i don´t really care. Give me my movie and i am satisfied.

I'm betting in another 2 or 3 years flash media will be a huge driving force of movies. Buying a movie on solid state medium would make many of us happy. No scratches

I´m taking the bet, and i hope i lose ;-)