Bluuuu ray

[owl]

So, Blu-ray is apparently the next format and HD DVD is set to go the way of Betamax.

I don't think it'll take off that well, though. For a start, DVD is good enough quality for most people, or at least the difference it's great enough that everyone is going to buy a new copy of films they already own.

Secondly, there are so many ways to play DVDs that don't play Blu-ray. Most computers will, set-top boxes and portable DVD players. It's not just a case of the VCR wearing out and replacing it with a DVD player.

And thirdly, aren't we all meant to be downloading all our visual media off iTunes, like, the week after next?

Comments

[carissa-lynn.livejournal.com]

I think it will take off, but it won't be as quickly as VHS took over beta. That is probably a wrong analogy, anyway, When the VHS/Beta wars were happening, there was no other way to view movies except on TV. Nothing like the VCR existed before so when the VCR won that "war" it was a definitive victory. The changeover will be more gradual, like when VCRs went out and DVD players first came in. As people start to buy higher quality TVs, they will then buy blue ray players and disks and pretty soon, you'll wonder what happened to DVDs.

I don't think people will ever solely buy their media on iTunes. Watching on a tiny computer screen (or even a large one) just does not give you the same watching on a big TV.

[owl]

I wasn't really comparing the Blu-ray versus DVD to Betamax versus VHS, I was saying it will be slower than the replacement of VHS by DVD because the jump in quality and convenience isn't so big.

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

It'd be pretty amusing if everyone did decide to get their movies off iTunes, because the Internet would go splat just like that in short order.

[owl]

Sure everybody's downloading them illegally anyway.

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

The existing illegal (and to be fair there's a chunk of legal downloading going on as well, especially with the release of that iPlayer thing) is thrashing the hell out of ISPs. If substantial numbers started using it as their primary source for obtaining movies and TV episodes (even worse, at Blu-Ray level quality which produces huge files) things will get dicey.

This problem is, as far as I know, mostly a British and American thing. British because BT are crap (and Virgin Media aren't much better, really) and American because their telecomms people aren't much better and have to contend with massive distances they have to run cabling over.

[owl]

Having had experience of both, I'd say that BT is much, much more useless than Virgin. I'm using Virgin at the minute and haven't had any problems with it, the speed's fine, whereas BT...we have two A4 folders called 'the BT Incompetence Files' at my dad's house.

If the media downloads are borking the ISPs so badly, I wonder that they aren't cracking down themselves instead of the government doing this ban thing.

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

They're between a rock and a hard place. If they crack down on the downloads, demand for their more expensive services will drop quicker than Frank Bruno against Mike Tyson; if they don't, they face overload.

Virgin Media is in a somewhat rosier place than most British ISPs, their network is simpler newer and hence better, but they've got monkeys running the place. I've had nothing but gyp with them. First, they couldn't be bothered to send me a PIN that actually worked so I could actually start using the service, and then, to really rub it in, they disconnected me a few months later for being behind in my bills despite my being on a direct debit from a bank account with several thousand pounds in. Turned out their billing system had gone crazy and decided that I owed them some stupidly small sum (about 20p if I remember right) and promptly given me the order of the boot. Rubbish, they are.