What's your opinion on Blu-ray technology?

While predicting the future based on divine revelations while are nice....

http://www.proactionmedia.com/dvd_media_formats.htm#DVD-R (same site)

 

You know I posted that right above your post right?

LMAO, I remember PC drives were selling for only a couple hundred dollars when PS2 launched.

 

Huh?, either way, you said the reason DVD went down in price so much is because of PC DVD burners, but it seems dismissing the fact that there will be Blu-Ray burners. I dont see your point.

 

Of course you don't see my point. It's kinda difficult to see the point when you ignore what was written.

 

You kind of have no valid points in your arguments/posts. Generally little back up, but lots of crystal-balling.

Example: "LMAO, I remember PC drives were selling for only a couple hundred dollars when PS2 launched." as well as others.

Thats enough of me replying to you though.

 

I specifically remember buying my current DVD burner in late 2004 for 80 dollars, and remembering there were much more expensive burners in the 100-120 price range. While I cant specifically remember 2001's prices, I think 400 sounds about right for 2002 DVD burners. Funny prices seemed to come down to 30-50 dollars months after i purchased mine. :/

edit:
Checked my old invoice, It was a Pioneer DVDR-108 for 78.00 after shipping. The price of the closest drive now, a Pioneer DVR-111D(I beleive a better model) now is 36 dollars on newegg.

Anyways, my point is, to say the Blu-ray drives prices wont fall anytime soon is arbitrary.

 

DVD-ROM drives.

How much are BD-ROM drives? $200? We'll be seeing a HD DVD-ROM drive for Xbox later this year. That same HD DVD-ROM is/will be availalbe for PCs.

Unless BR movies get hacked in the next couple of years, BR burners will not drop in price anytime soon. That's the sole reason why people started to buy DVD burners ie to copy DVD movies.

 

If we "really have no idea" why the baseless assumption that game sizes will increase 3-4x in only 5 or 6 years? Given the fact most games are still ~2-4gb I think it's obvious that the majority of titles will not exceed dvd capacity before the next generation of consoles comes around. And for the odd ones that do, you may have to swap discs, not a big deal, and at least you'll do it on a fast loading, reliable dvd drive.

If you're building a console just to play games what are the pros/cons of a next gen drive:
pros: don't have to split games over multiple discs
cons: higher price and/or less powerful system, less reliable drive, slower load times, delayed launch

Doesn't add up to me. I can understand why Sony is doing it, and I'll probably be happy to pick up one of their BR drives at less than cost, but for games I don't see it being necessary at all.

 

"I think it's obvious that the majority of titles will not exceed dvd capacity before the next generation of consoles comes around"

Sorry, this is non-sens ! The passage of every generation to its successor was caracterized by a considerable evolution of space requirements. From Cartridge to CD; from CD to DVD...
A next GTA WILL NEED A BR...A next GT will need a BR...exemples are numerous.
BR is one of the advantages of PS3. Sorry to point out the obvious, but why is it that when it comes to a PS3 related affair, FUD starts to emerge ? I doubt BR will affect games prices...and I doubt developpers would refuse such an opportunity...No, I don't understand the logic behind it, sorry !

 

Throwing extra discs at a game is not the same as adding their capacities and treating it like one contiguous storage medium. A large portion of the data on the first disc would have to be duplicated on the second disc, leaving little room for new data. It simply does not stack up to one big storage format like Blu-Ray, and developers will be forced to make cutbacks soon enough, if they haven't already.

PS2 games grew several fold even within the same generation. PS3 games will see a similar growth, in addition to the cross-generation growth we always see. Couple this with a 7 fold increase in the number of pixels on screen, higher quality audio and more geometry, there's no hope for DVD as far as I'm concerned. The Xbox 360 is well behind the 8-ball.

 

The maximum capacity for DL DVDs is 7.95 GB (DVD-9), for anything bigger you have to go dual-side.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.3

 

and yet you only gave two examples...

At the end of the day GC discs are 1.5GB and PS2 discs are 8GBs...doesn't mean 8GB discs were needed for 99.9% of games.

Reread what you quoted...

 

Funny what happens when you only take HALF a sentance. I never said they won't grow, maybe read again.

 

oops..

 

Unfortunately, I have not one, but three opinions on Blu-ray technology.

As an engineer and geek, I can only applaud the rise in capacity. My photo backups will fit one one disc instead of five! The server can be realistically backed up on several discs, not a whole spindle!

As a consumer, I have the feeling I'm about to be royally screwed, as Hollywood makes its best to make me buy my movie library again. I don't believe there will be much convenience to be gained in fitting more stuff on one disc, as they like to give the user "value" (read: more discs in the box filled with garbage) and wouldn't wan't to lower the prices or ask $200 for a single BDROM box with a single disc with, say, all of Futurama on it.

As a game developer, I'm deeply concerned about the ability of my studio to produce the amount of content. Ferfockssake, if it wasn't for audio, our last project would have fit comfortably on a CD!

 

What will be interesting to see will be, IF people are actually going to re-purchase their library. From my small sampling of friends and family, all of our DVD collections FAR exceed(ed) what our VCR collections were. I don't foresee most of my fam and friends rebuying anything. I, however, am sure to repurchase one or two, ok dozens of titles. I mean I was buying DVHS tapes at $20-50 of movies that I already had on DVD. While most titles were noticably better, there were some that were only slightly better looking,.

To your first point though, I still say I would rather dump that money into a hdd, at least until I don't have to worry about computer x having or not having DVD/CDRW, or HD-DVD, or BD-ROM, and I don't see that area being cleared up for years to come.

I also don't see multiple discs going away anytime soon, from a videophile point of view, there will always be that nagging, albeit probably unwarranted concern, that if they had not put all of the episodes/movies on a single disc maybe it could have looked even better.

 

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/699/699152p1.html

"One area of DOA4's development that caused problems for Team Ninja was disk space. Team Ninja filled up the entire disk for its first Xbox 360 title, and even had to make adjustments as reports came in daily of having reached the final few megabytes of space. This isn't a problem with DOAX2, as the team is keeping a close eye on space as they work."

There are also a number of dual-layer/dual-disc games on the PS2, including Onimusha 4, Grandia III, Star Ocean III, Xenosaga, and Champions of Norrath. There can be delays while switching layers on dual-layer discs, as evidenced in movies and some of the listed games. Hopefully, developers will be able to minimize that delay with optimized data placement.

 

What you have to bear in mind is that the movie companies are going to be pushing HD formats because the current DVD format's encryption is broken due to the reliance on a simple secret key. The DeCSS open source library will play encrypted DVD movies from any region, and because of the secret key has been cracked, anyone can decrypt an encrypted DVD. It is likely that the movie studios will offer blu-ray movies at a discount compared to DVD movies or maybe not even release some movies on DVD to allow for this.

Another advantage of blu-ray is that it's capacity will allow a compendium of movies to be put on a single disc (capacities will go up to 250MB), so it is going to be useful even for non-HDTV users.

Also HDTV may not be huge at the moment, but it will catch on very quickly when high definition movies become available on blu-ray format.

 

Repeat after me:

My Blu-ray player will playback (and possibly upscale) my existing DVDs..

My Blu-ray player will playback (and possibly upscale) my existing DVDs..

My Blu-ray player will playback (and possibly upscale) my existing DVDs..

My Blu-ray player will playback (and possibly upscale) my existing DVDs..

...

(Sorry, but this argument comes up over and over again, and it's tiresome. Blu-ray or HD-DVD are the most backwardly compatible new home movie formats yet, possibly, and in a lot of cases may make your DVDs look better than ever. Simply start buying Blu-ray movies instead of DVDs once you get a player, you don't have to replace what you've already got, though you may want to in the case of some of your favourites.).

 

BD-R disks are $48! There goes Sony's profit margin!

Just think, every disk Sony produces will put them deeper in the hole. I see bankruptcy coming in 6 months.