Blu-ray prices not coming down — Page 4

blu ray is a mess:

----------------------------

-3 different profiles of players..

-some players don't support DVD's,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blu-ray_Disc_devices

-backwards compatibility is not compulsory.

-region coding...

- and of course the crazy DRM schemes (which have been broken), but

still backing them up is a complete pain..

i might give in and by a dual blu-ray/HD DVD drive just to be able to

play the inevitable movies that will be blu-ray ONLY..... just like i

need a laserdisc for movies ONLY in that format, or a DVD player

for DVD only movies..... it's just one more unnecessary piece of

hardware being pushed out there..

granted going digital only has its drawbacks also, especially concerning

disk space, but with 1T drives dropping, the problem is having a fast

connection to 'get' the files, or 'backup' your physical discs.. of course

hard disk failure is always going to be an issue too..

unfortunately unless YET ANOTHER FUTURE FORMAT comes out, with people

looking ahead to address these problems with HD content, we're just going

to go through this cycle yet again with something else (hopefully NOT BLU-RAY 2,3 etc)

later

-1

negative1 said:

blu ray is a mess:

----------------------------

-3 different profiles of players..

This is almost no different than the early days of DVD.  I remember having trouble with The Matrix in my Apex 600A and then the T2 ultimate set.  Both were pretty easily fixed with firmware updates.  The T2 set caused the most trouble since it made very heavy use of seamless branching, which was practically unheard of at the time.

As far as the different profiles go, you're only missing out on extra features.  I'm pretty sure 2.0 only adds Internet connectivity.  The movie will still play fine though.  I'm not saying I like it, but that's the reality.  Also, most players on the market are upgradeable through firmware.

 

-some players don't support DVD's,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blu-ray_Disc_devices

If the lack of "DVD" on some of those is your reasoning, then it's wrong.  I checked the Panasonic DMP-BD10 as a random example.  It's listed on Amazon as being able to read DVDs.  I honestly don't think I've seen a single Blu-ray player that couldn't read DVDs.

-region coding...

This is a problem with DVD as well, so it's nothing new.

- and of course the crazy DRM schemes (which have been broken), but

Well, it's been broken, so the DRM is almost irrelevant, just like it is on DVDs these days.  The software that's available today makes it pretty easy too.

i might give in and by a dual blu-ray/HD DVD drive just to be able to

play the inevitable movies that will be blu-ray ONLY..... just like i

need a laserdisc for movies ONLY in that format, or a DVD player

for DVD only movies..... it's just one more unnecessary piece of

hardware being pushed out there..

I think it's going to be a while before we see a Blu-ray only movie.  Of course, by that time, I suspect lots of 2.0 profile players will be under $200.

granted going digital only has its drawbacks also, especially concerning

disk space, but with 1T drives dropping, the problem is having a fast

connection to 'get' the files, or 'backup' your physical discs.. of course

hard disk failure is always going to be an issue too..

I'm setting up a media center with a 1 TB hard drive.  I simply put my DVDs into the ROM drive when I get them, rip them to the drive, and I'm done.  I can watch any movie in my collection with a few clicks of my remote.  No more swapping discs.

unfortunately unless YET ANOTHER FUTURE FORMAT comes out, with people

looking ahead to address these problems with HD content, we're just going

to go through this cycle yet again with something else (hopefully NOT BLU-RAY 2,3 etc)

Yep.  Since the media companies are stupid, you can bet that when the next best thing comes along, they'll argue about what to put in the standard.  They'll either come to an agreement or we'll have yet another format war.  That isn't likely to happen for another 10-20 years though, so it's a ways off.

adywan said:

Well here in the UK Argos now has a bluray player for under £100, so prices are coming down a lot faster than they did when DVD was new

Damn, my first DVD player was £200...

lordjedi said:

-region coding...

This is a problem with DVD as well, so it's nothing new.

... but it was easily multi-region hackable by entering a code on the remote. I haven't seen any BD players that have this feature yet.

HotRod said:

Still, £700 for a TV and around £250 say for Blu ray + a few films, you're looking close to a grand. Which for some, including me,  is a little out of the price range. An then there's the subscription fee to the HD service through satellite which is an extra £10 a month I think + the one off charge for the HD box.

Blu-ray Player £100
37" 1080p TV £450
HD Freesat digital box £120 - one off purchase, no subscription

lordjedi said:

- and of course the crazy DRM schemes (which have been broken), but

Well, it's been broken, so the DRM is almost irrelevant, just like it is on DVDs these days.  The software that's available today makes it pretty easy too.

No, this is incorrect. Once CSS was broken, that was the end of DRM as far as DVD was concerned. OK so there are newer protection schemes found on recent DVDs, but these are based on the premise of corrupting the DVD structure to confuse the ripper rather than encryption. There are several free programs that can easily deal with these discs.   

Compare the situation with BD - yes AACS has been broken, but BD+ has taken DRM to a whole new level. There is no free software that can handle this protection, and Slysoft's AnyDVD HD - the only software capable of decrypting these discs - needs to be constantly updated to deal with new releases.

lordjedi said:

unfortunately unless YET ANOTHER FUTURE FORMAT comes out, with people

looking ahead to address these problems with HD content, we're just going

to go through this cycle yet again with something else (hopefully NOT BLU-RAY 2,3 etc)

Yep.  Since the media companies are stupid, you can bet that when the next best thing comes along, they'll argue about what to put in the standard.  They'll either come to an agreement or we'll have yet another format war.  That isn't likely to happen for another 10-20 years though, so it's a ways off.

 

The "next generation" of media player is already here - flash memory cards.  It's a matter of waiting for cost vs. capacity to come down.  That's the ideal "player" when you think about it - no moving parts to break down.

Moth3r said:

lordjedi said:

-region coding...

This is a problem with DVD as well, so it's nothing new.

... but it was easily multi-region hackable by entering a code on the remote. I haven't seen any BD players that have this feature yet.

That depends on the player you have.  Cheaper players, even today, are not always hackable.  I'm sure once the Chinese are able to start making BD players, we'll get region free players.

lordjedi said:

- and of course the crazy DRM schemes (which have been broken), but

Well, it's been broken, so the DRM is almost irrelevant, just like it is on DVDs these days.  The software that's available today makes it pretty easy too.

No, this is incorrect. Once CSS was broken, that was the end of DRM as far as DVD was concerned. OK so there are newer protection schemes found on recent DVDs, but these are based on the premise of corrupting the DVD structure to confuse the ripper rather than encryption. There are several free programs that can easily deal with these discs.   

And almost all of them have to be updated constantly.  Underworld: Evolution is one DVD that not only caused problems for rippers, it caused problems on cheaper players.  Right at the end, it would lock up the player everytime at the exact same spot.  I don't know what the fix was (aside from ripping it and burning it to a new DVD), but it was a Sony DVD, so I just won't buy it.

Compare the situation with BD - yes AACS has been broken, but BD+ has taken DRM to a whole new level. There is no free software that can handle this protection, and Slysoft's AnyDVD HD - the only software capable of decrypting these discs - needs to be constantly updated to deal with new releases.

Yes, because it's completely impossible to get a "free" version of AnyDVD HD :P.  And even if you didn't want to go the "free" route, it's only $80 US dollars to buy the program.  $80 and your entire Blu-ray collection is freed from the shackles of DRM.  I may not like the DRM on Blu-ray, but between dealing with it or using an $80 program to remove it, I'll use the program.  As Blu-ray adoption continues, eventually we'll see a free program.

It seems that people with standalone players are having trouble with new Blu-ray releases as well.  That is if the AnyDVD HD forums on slysoft are anything to go by.  So not only does AnyDVD HD have to be updated constantly, but so does the firmware on standalone players.  Yay for heavily DRMed media!

Ziz said:

The "next generation" of media player is already here - flash memory cards.  It's a matter of waiting for cost vs. capacity to come down.  That's the ideal "player" when you think about it - no moving parts to break down.

Yeah, but the cost for the amount of storage is insane.  A "media player" of any size is going to need a terabyte or more of disc space.  Flash memory cards aren't anywhere near that size yet and they won't be for the foreseeable future.

I'm not very concerned with moving parts.  The only "moving parts" in my media player are the fans (easily replaceable) and hard drives.  Standard hard drives have much better reliability than flash cards.  Flash cards have a problem with doing to many writes.  They can easily lose capacity and fail quickly if the writes aren't done at random places.  Cameras, PDAs, and mp3 players do this just fine, but PCs tend to write linearly.  That's bad for flash drives.

If a 1 TB drive fails, I have a 5 year warranty on the drive.  I simply send it in for replacement.  Sure, you'd have to backup all the data on the drive to another drive so you don't have to completely rebuild the system, but that's far cheaper than anything else.  I just don't see flash memory ever being able to compete on a price/storage ratio.  We'll be waiting a long time for the price to come down and something better will likely come along before then.

Jay said:

lordjedi said:

Ziz said:

The "next generation" of media player is already here - flash memory cards.  It's a matter of waiting for cost vs. capacity to come down.  That's the ideal "player" when you think about it - no moving parts to break down.

Yeah, but the cost for the amount of storage is insane.  A "media player" of any size is going to need a terabyte or more of disc space.  Flash memory cards aren't anywhere near that size yet and they won't be for the foreseeable future.

I think he meant "media player" being a device in which you insert a flash card containing a movie, not a mass storage device containing your whole library.

I think that'll be far to small then.  For the people that like to display their collection, they'll either have these giant boxes with a little flash card in them or they'll have a bunch of tiny boxes that have no artwork.

Downloads and HD on demand are much more likely to end up being the long-term solution, as much as I hate to admit it. As a collector, I enjoy maintaining my own library and would miss owning the physical media.

Personally, I wouldn't miss it at all.  The current situation that they're trying to pass off though is unacceptable.  I'll do the broadband download thing when I can:

1) Copy the movie anywhere I want it with no limitations.

2) Pay less than the full price of a DVD (or Blu-ray) with box and artwork.  If they aren't paying for printing, boxing, and shipping, then I shouldn't have to either.  I'm willing to pay maybe 2/3 of the price right now.  So if it's $25-$30 in the store, I'll pay $20 or so at the most.  But I have to be able to take it wherever I want and burn it on a DVD if I choose.

3) No activation and any media player I want to use.

4) The movie should be able to start playing as it downloads.

Once they can do all of those (the 4th is kind of optional, I can always set it to download and watch it the next night), then I'll support downloads.  Until then, I'll continue to buy DVDs in stores and online and just rip them to the hard drive.

[FIRST OFF* sorry to derail this thread about blu-ray,

to storage devices, but bear with me, it is somewhat relevant*]

maybe i'm overdoing it (as usual)...

but i'm caught in a terrible space crunch..

for awhile....hard drive sizes were big enough 20gigs, 40 gigs, 80/120/200 etc

to keep up with storing all my vcd/mpg/ and real audio files......

heck, i used to have a removable 1 gig drive, that i used to put all my graphics on, etc.

(in the late 90's).. i never had my own high speed internet access until earlier this year,

when i gave in.. up until that point it was all dial up, so i could only download so many

gig's of mp3 and the occasional video..... even then, with a cheap cd-burner, and cheap

writable cd's, i managed to only have a few hundred of them to manage, so it didn't get

out of hand...

jump to earlier this year, now with broadband, bittorrent, newsgroups access, i know

i've download a few TERABYTES in the last few months (yes, it actually is unlimited access),

so at first, i bought a 320gig drive, which filled up in a week, and then i bought a second

one, which filled up the next week, and then i bought 2 500gig drives, which filled up

2 weeks later...so that wasn't working out......(mostly movies/tv shows/my own ripped

cds and dvds)....

i 'only' have a 400 gig drive in my computer (which crashed recently), and bought a

replacement recently, which is also full now........................... in the meantime, i've had

a dvd-rom burner, and i buy the 50 pack Single Layer DVD spindles every week, and back up stuff to those,...

so now i have several 50 pack spindles filled up with stuff also !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(maybe 800 x 4.7 gigs total)..... i bought a HD DVD drive, and have about 30 or 40 movies

on their, and have been backing them up to DVD DL also...................so anyways, my point

is, i don't really know what to do.... the BD Burners can burn 25/50 gigs to a disc... but

the price point isn't that great..

1 DVD-R single layer is about US$0. 20 or so... ($10 for 50 pack) [so .20/ 4.7 gigs]

1 DVD-DL dual layer is about US $1.20 or about 6X the cost of a single layer (i'm sure it could be cheaper)............ or [1.20/9 gigs]

Hard disk prices are falling and are about $100 per Terabyte or [$0.10 per gig]

I don't know if I can trust hard drives, or set up a Network Storage Array or what is better..

My final thought is, now I've starting getting HD rips (tv shows/movies etc)....and they

take UP HUGE amounts of space, and most don't even fit on a DVD DL (ie wookiegroomer

versions of star wars)................so i'm really at a loss on where to go...

A blu-ray burner again is overpriced, along with the blanks, although i trust optical

media a little bit more now......................................................................................

i don't think we'll seen 100gig optical or higher any time soon, and wouldn't it be

risky having that much data on one disk? i know the blu ray writable come with

a special surface to protect them , but still...........................................................

i don't know, maybe holographic storage is our only hope?

right now, i'm in the nightmarish position of trying to figure out how to organize

several terabytes of data, and be able to find something without digging through

hundreds of discs................

later

-1

negative1 said:

right now, i'm in the nightmarish position of trying to figure out how to organize

several terabytes of data, and be able to find something without digging through

hundreds of discs.

 

Categorize.

Start by making piles of discs. Start with all the categories of movies that you see in Blockbuster aisles or on Netflix. Once you get through that, start working out your own categories - or sub-categories within the standard movie ones - to suit your collection. Behind The Scenes, Fan Edits, Not Officially Available on DVD, Recorded from Broadcast, and so on.

Once you've got all these piles worked out, start putting them into Excel, or if you have a heavy-duty version of Office, use Access. If you feel the need to have everything in printed form, use different color loose-leaf binders for the various categories.

I'm also guessing you have a number of discs that are just conglomerations of whatever was clogging your hard drives at that point in time. Assuming you have as much content as you say you do and aren't exaggerating, keep in mind that part of this process will most likely involve copying and re-organizing content from one disc to another or out onto separate discs.

Phew. I dunno what to tell you -1, I know your situation is not unique, I have an old college budy who is a download addict and a packrat as well. He feels the need to collect and archive everything every created by mankind (hopefully you are not as bad as he is ;). Before the big file sharing boom, he actually purchased everything, and has a room in his house with retail DVDs stacked along the walls, filling boxes, and filling bookshelves. Same thing with audio CDs. Now he has spindle after spindle after spindle after spindle filled with all sorts of stuff. He is constantly pulling stuff off the web, and archiving it. Just about every single TV show I have ever heard of, he has backed up on DVDs within his vast collection of spindles (he has a whole argument chock full of fallacies about how it isn't illegal and that he is within his rights of fair use, whatever). I watch as this room in his house becomes more and more bloated with crap, so much stuff stacked on the floor you can barely move around in there. He too could benefit from a new revolutionary form of file storage, or a shrink! Seriously, it has got to be some sort of mental sickness. Countless hours of non-sense recorded on those discs, and countless hours spent worrying about downloads completely, running out of disc space, recording stuff on discs, ensuring all the data is verified, categorizing, printing out labels for the spindles, etc. So much work being put into this. Is he ever going to watch even a fraction of all that stuff? Even if he could, would he really want to waste so much of his life in front of a TV/computer screen to do so? After all, we only have so many hours on this earth. I think such a situation needs a little bit more help than a higher capacity means of storage.

I hope Blu Ray fails because of its non user friendly drm and such nonsense.  It would serve Sony right.  They put out a crappy game system with No good games and the load times are way too long.

PS3 is overpriced and retarded until they have the same size library of games as the XBOX360, in comparable quality. As it is the only game i know of that is exclusive at this point is Metal Gear GUNS of the Patriots.  They lost exclusivity on Final Fantasy XIII which made me lol cause now i don't have to buy a PS3 and can have my 360 which works well on my standard def tv and tell sony to shove it.

Stick with hard drives.

Seriously.  Unless you need the portability that optical discs offer, just use hard drives.  It sounds like you've spent quite a bit on disc space already.  You could build a 6 TB RAID 5 array with cheap SATA drives (5 1.5 TB drives in the array).  That would give you all kinds of space and some redundancy.  And if you want to back that up (which I do recommend), you can get 4 1.5 TB USB drives.  Back the whole thing up to the 4 drives and you're all set.

Do you really need all that stuff though?  Are you ever going to find time to watch it all?  I'm thinking the same thing as C3PX.  What good does it do to have all that stuff if you never get to watch it?  Do you have parties a lot where you just want to be able to watch whatever you want, whenever you want?

Anyway, the hard drives are probably far more likely to last then the optical media is.  Recordable CDs and DVDs are notorious for failing after a few years, so you really are better off having everything in an array on the hard drives.

Ziz said:

negative1 said:

right now, i'm in the nightmarish position of trying to figure out how to organize

several terabytes of data, and be able to find something without digging through

hundreds of discs.

 

Categorize.

Start by making piles of discs. Start with all the categories of movies that you see in Blockbuster aisles or on Netflix. Once you get through that, start working out your own categories - or sub-categories within the standard movie ones - to suit your collection. Behind The Scenes, Fan Edits, Not Officially Available on DVD, Recorded from Broadcast, and so on.

Once you've got all these piles worked out, start putting them into Excel, or if you have a heavy-duty version of Office, use Access. If you feel the need to have everything in printed form, use different color loose-leaf binders for the various categories.

I'm also guessing you have a number of discs that are just conglomerations of whatever was clogging your hard drives at that point in time. Assuming you have as much content as you say you do and aren't exaggerating, keep in mind that part of this process will most likely involve copying and re-organizing content from one disc to another or out onto separate discs.

BINGO! that's exactly what i'm doing, i've just started the first pass, at cataloging the files,

and i do have them categorized in excel, and i have started working on a basic Access database..

what i did at first was try copying all the DVD's to harddisk, and then categorizing them,  but then

i ran out of room...

and no, i wish i was exaggerating, but that's what happens when you have your computer

running 24/7, and rapidshare/bittorent running nonstop also..

thanx for the hints.

later

-1

C3PX said:

Phew. I dunno what to tell you -1, I know your situation is not unique, I have an old college budy who is a download addict and a packrat as well. He feels the need to collect and archive everything every created by mankind (hopefully you are not as bad as he is ;). Before the big file sharing boom, he actually purchased everything, and has a room in his house with retail DVDs stacked along the walls, filling boxes, and filling bookshelves. Same thing with audio CDs. Now he has spindle after spindle after spindle after spindle filled with all sorts of stuff. He is constantly pulling stuff off the web, and archiving it. Just about every single TV show I have ever heard of, he has backed up on DVDs within his vast collection of spindles (he has a whole argument chock full of fallacies about how it isn't illegal and that he is within his rights of fair use, whatever). I watch as this room in his house becomes more and more bloated with crap, so much stuff stacked on the floor you can barely move around in there. He too could benefit from a new revolutionary form of file storage, or a shrink! Seriously, it has got to be some sort of mental sickness. Countless hours of non-sense recorded on those discs, and countless hours spent worrying about downloads completely, running out of disc space, recording stuff on discs, ensuring all the data is verified, categorizing, printing out labels for the spindles, etc. So much work being put into this. Is he ever going to watch even a fraction of all that stuff? Even if he could, would he really want to waste so much of his life in front of a TV/computer screen to do so? After all, we only have so many hours on this earth. I think such a situation needs a little bit more help than a higher capacity means of storage.

[*** ONCE AGAIN, i'm veering offtopic here,

sorry about that]

ok, the truth is out !!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm the college buddy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

holy fricking cow, yes that's my situation EXACTLY , are you spying on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

that's the situation down to the exact way you described it !!!! (ok, maybe i'm a little more

organized)...... i know that once upon a time, i had friends go through this 'phase', and

i wondered what the big deal was...... it's very insidous...as i seem to be caught up in it too..

-------------------------------

the worst part is how easy it is to find obscure stuff..

there's tv sites for every tv show that you can think of.

the piratebay has thousand upon thousands of movies and games\books\software..

every time i think of a movie, i google it, and it there's waiting..

same with almost every song\video\etc....

------------------------------

yes, it's an addiction, i do agree.

every time i think i've finished downloading what i wanted,

and then someone comes along and mentions something, or there's a new edit,

or a 'high-def' version out there...................... and don't get me wrong, i still

actually buy stuff too........so it's not all just 'previews', 'fanedits' etc...

-------------------------------

in a way, it's an escape...................

i've just had 2.5 months off from work, and believe me, i've watch a very high

percentage of my downloads (>70%), that still leaves a ton of things to watch..

but i have fun programming my own shows (since i never watch tv)..so i always

end up watching a few movies every day....and several tv shows....

i used to be a huge video game fan, but i dont' play them as much, so i have a lot

of time.....

also, i live alone, don't go out/don't party/etc..etc..., so its very easy to have pretty

much every free hour (besides a few hours of sleep) available to watch and do other

stuff...............................................[basically no 'real' life]..........

YES, I KNOW ITS SAD,

YES, I WISH IT WAS DIFFERENT,

but sometimes thats what happens when you move away from your friends,

or all your friends are married, or you lose interest in going out, etc...

i'll also admit that it's kind of a hobby, and maybe the thrill of the chase is

more satisfying at times.... but in a way, it's been a good thing, because i

now have pretty much 70% of every star wars fanedit, and version i've ever

looked for... and it's taught me a lot about video formats, conversion , editting

etc... especially with all the high definition formats.....

and of course, everybody at work is always asking about what the latest stuff

is, and when they get copies etc....in fact, there's a few girls that want some things,

so it might actually be opening some doors there (i hope)..

anyways, no, i hope i don't need help, and that it will be contained, and just turn

out to be yet another phase.......LITERALLY, i might just cut off the high speed access

for awhile, and just take a break, so i can organize all the stuff.

you know what, i'm beginning to wonder (just for fun), that if someday,

there will be a way to somehow setup a huge database/site where you

can store your own version of the 'internet' , with dedicated access to

all your material, so that you can 'stream' (in high-def, or whatever)... and

not have to worry about it locally ..(of course due to copyright restrictions,

this will never happen)...

but zshare is pretty awesome at letting you stream music, without having

to save it, etc................. and youtube and other video sites, are getting

better about putting up full movies (in widescreen finally)..... so someday

you may not have to ever download anything at all.... and yes i know about

on-demand HD, and cable, but that's yet another cost, and source that i

want to avoid, because sometimes the selection isn't that great (yet)....

ah, the dilemma of modern day digital lifestyle...

later

-1

lordjedi said:

Stick with hard drives.

Seriously. Unless you need the portability that optical discs offer, just use hard drives. It sounds like you've spent quite a bit on disc space already. You could build a 6 TB RAID 5 array with cheap SATA drives (5 1.5 TB drives in the array). That would give you all kinds of space and some redundancy. And if you want to back that up (which I do recommend), you can get 4 1.5 TB USB drives. Back the whole thing up to the 4 drives and you're all set.

Do you really need all that stuff though? Are you ever going to find time to watch it all? I'm thinking the same thing as C3PX. What good does it do to have all that stuff if you never get to watch it? Do you have parties a lot where you just want to be able to watch whatever you want, whenever you want?

Anyway, the hard drives are probably far more likely to last then the optical media is. Recordable CDs and DVDs are notorious for failing after a few years, so you really are better off having everything in an array on the hard drives.

shhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! don't tell anyone, buts that what i was thinking also, i wanted to

buy a dedicated quad core computer, and set up a raid like the one you mentioned, and

make it media center... that way i can move this current computer to a dedicated video

processing/conversion/editting machine....i already have a dedicated pentium 4 that does

all the downloads 24/7 setup, so i don't have to worry about disk thrashing, space, etc..

3 whole computers!!!! for one person !!! (ridiculous, i know)...

yes, i actually do watch several movies a day, since its winter time here, and i'm not much

of a fan of going out right now..[i do bike/travel in the spring/summer/autumn when the

weathers better here on the east coast of the US]..... but for every bad/cheesy/terrible

movie, there's always some good ones there to watch, and of course a ton of tv shows

that i never got around to watching.............anyways, you can read about my reasons

why above in the reply to c3px..

thankx again for the advice.....honestly, i don't mean to sound like bragging,

but i'm glad i actually have a job that pays well in order to afford this stuff,

because for the longest time, i would just be backlogged with things, and never

could afford the right equipment to set it up correctly..... i guess not having a wife/kids/

girlfriend allows me to have a pretty large discretionary sum of $$$$ to play around

with........and yes, i'm a gadget freak too!!!! [hmmmmmmmmmm....maybe it's time

to buy another widescreen tv that actually supports 1080P!!!  must resist sales!!!!!!!!!!!!]

later

-1

negative1 said:

 

ok, the truth is out !!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm the college buddy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

holy fricking cow, yes that's my situation EXACTLY , are you spying on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

that's the situation down to the exact way you described it !!!! (ok, maybe i'm a little more

organized)...... i know that once upon a time, i had friends go through this 'phase', and

i wondered what the big deal was...... it's very insidous...as i seem to be caught up in it too..

-------------------------------

the worst part is how easy it is to find obscure stuff..

Sounds like an epidemic! Yeah, it is very easy to find obscure stuff. All these things I dreamed about owning or watching again since I was a kid, and suddenly there they are. Wholes in my comic collection and issues I had never had a chance to read, there they are, nice small compact files, read beautifully on the PC screen (not that I even have time to read comics anymore), many of them impossible to find in the real world unless you dedicate your life to searching for them, and now instead of filling up boxes and boxes, they only feel up a few discs.

I started down that dark path myself, infected by my college friend no doubt. One evening my wife and I were suppose to go out somewhere, and I had just discovered a motherload of somethings I absolutely could not live without. After a period of "Yes dear, I am almost ready, just one more second, I have something I need to take care of", "Hang on, I'm almost finished" "Just give me a few more seconds", "be there in a minute", "hold on, almost there", etc. She finally stopped nagging me, after getting a few more things started I got up and in two seconds I was ready to go out the door. I shouted down the hall way that I was ready to go, but go no response. Finally I went to the bedroom to find her in her pajamas watching TV. Needless to say, we didn't go out that night, and I felt like a total jerk. I thought of my college friend's wife, and how much she complains about how he is always in front of the computer, and decided I didn't want that to become me. The next day (after the things I couldn't live without finished downloading of course ;) I uninstalled my newgroup reader and my torrent program and never looked back... I've been dry for going on 16 months now (okay, not really, I still "sneak a drink" from time to time, but I broke the habbit of DLing just because I could.

C3PX said:

Sounds like an epidemic! Yeah, it is very easy to find obscure stuff. All these things I dreamed about owning or watching again since I was a kid, and suddenly there they are. Wholes in my comic collection and issues I had never had a chance to read, there they are, nice small compact files, read beautifully on the PC screen (not that I even have time to read comics anymore), many of them impossible to find in the real world unless you dedicate your life to searching for them, and now instead of filling up boxes and boxes, they only feel up a few discs.

err..speaking of obscure stuff... i found the 'beyond westworld' series that we mentioned

in the michael crichton thread, pm me...

 

I started down that dark path myself, infected by my college friend no doubt. One evening my wife and I were suppose to go out somewhere, and I had just discovered a motherload of somethings I absolutely could not live without. After a period of "Yes dear, I am almost ready, just one more second, I have something I need to take care of", "Hang on, I'm almost finished" "Just give me a few more seconds", "be there in a minute", "hold on, almost there", etc. She finally stopped nagging me, after getting a few more things started I got up and in two seconds I was ready to go out the door. I shouted down the hall way that I was ready to go, but go no response. Finally I went to the bedroom to find her in her pajamas watching TV. Needless to say, we didn't go out that night, and I felt like a total jerk. I thought of my college friend's wife, and how much she complains about how he is always in front of the computer, and decided I didn't want that to become me. The next day (after the things I couldn't live without finished downloading of course ;) I uninstalled my newgroup reader and my torrent program and never looked back... I've been dry for going on 16 months now (okay, not really, I still "sneak a drink" from time to time, but I broke the habbit of DLing just because I could.

ok,

i've stopped downloading the INTERNET now... it's on hold for now, ran out of blank discs.

but my resolution is TO SORT THIS STUFF out before getting more and more.

- now , i only get

--------------------

recent show/games/movies... and not just entire series for the sake of getting them...

i hope it will last!

but sometimes i feel like i'm 'wasting' my high-speed connection if i'm not doing something

with it..

i think i'm going to cut back from the super high speed access - to the low one, but the

price difference might not be that much...............hmmmmmmmmmmm...

later

-1

back on topic (sorta)..

well this is pretty inflammatory (even when i saw it):

=========================================

ps3 a sinking ship

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/siliconalley/personal-tech/2008_12_sonys_ps3_a_sinking_ship_sales_plummet_sne.html

more commentary:

-------------------------

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171823

http://www.examiner.com/x-1726-Minnesota-Game-Examiner~y2008m12d12-Sonys-epic-fail-The-5-major-blunders-of-the-PS3

ok, so they're getting clobbered by nintendo/microsoft..still..

well, i dont' think that will help blu-ray obviously.......but if that was one

outlet where the market penetration would help the sales of movies,

it probably wont..

but then again with the sales down all across the board, you could

say regular dvd's/players sales are down also..

later

-1

negative1 said:

back on topic (sorta)..

 

well this is pretty inflammatory (even when i saw it):

=========================================

ps3 a sinking ship

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/siliconalley/personal-tech/2008_12_sonys_ps3_a_sinking_ship_sales_plummet_sne.html

 

more commentary:

-------------------------

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171823

http://www.examiner.com/x-1726-Minnesota-Game-Examiner~y2008m12d12-Sonys-epic-fail-The-5-major-blunders-of-the-PS3

 

ok, so they're getting clobbered by nintendo/microsoft..still..

 

well, i dont' think that will help blu-ray obviously.......but if that was one

outlet where the market penetration would help the sales of movies,

it probably wont..

 

but then again with the sales down all across the board, you could

say regular dvd's/players sales are down also..

 

later

-1

The ps3 is a sinking ship as a console.  As a console it's a total failure.  Not enough games, hard to program for, very expensive.

Blu-ray on the other hand is surviving and thriving without PS3 sales.  Standalone players can easily be had for under $300 (under $200 if you don't mind a slower profile 1.1 player).  With that large of a price difference, there's no reason to get a PS3 if all you want to do is watch Blu-ray movies.

Sales of regular DVDs/players are down, but they're still far higher than Blu-ray.  Perhaps the after Christmas sales will give us another run of cheap Blu-ray players.  The movies themselves are in line with standard DVD now, so player prices are still the only thing slowing adoption.

i think that blu-ray is just a stop-gap measure before another standard takes its place, or more people go digital..

just as digital downloads have replaced/outpaced physical sales with music.. it COULD happen with movies also, given the right combination of infrastructure / pricing / availability...

i'd like to think blu-ray will become a high-end videophile niche, much like what happened to laserdisc....

it will never go away, unless and IF, (and that's a big IF), they start discontinuing dvd's, and go blu-ray exclusive.. that would really push the format along....or have some (*AHEM STAR WARS*) movie that would also push it further..

again, the PS3 factor is really fading away.. PS3 sags in battle against xbox 360/wii http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123050978162738293.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop 

"But early results from this holiday season aren't promising. U.S. sales of the PS3 fell 19% last month from a year earlier, while sales doubled for the Wii console and rose 8% for the Xbox 360, according to research firm NPD. "

later

-1

negative1 said:

i think that blu-ray is just a stop-gap measure before another standard takes its place, or more people go digital..

 

just as digital downloads have replaced/outpaced physical sales with music.. it COULD happen with movies also, given the right combination of infrastructure / pricing / availability...

 

i'd like to think blu-ray will become a high-end videophile niche, much like what happened to laserdisc....

 

it will never go away, unless and IF, (and that's a big IF), they start discontinuing dvd's, and go blu-ray exclusive.. that would really push the format along....or have some (*AHEM STAR WARS*) movie that would also push it further..

 

again, the PS3 factor is really fading away.. PS3 sags in battle against xbox 360/wii http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123050978162738293.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop 

 

"But early results from this holiday season aren't promising. U.S. sales of the PS3 fell 19% last month from a year earlier, while sales doubled for the Wii console and rose 8% for the Xbox 360, according to research firm NPD. "

 

later

-1

But one thing that never seems to be taken into account is the price of the consoles. The PS3 here is still £299 whereas the Xbox360 can now be got for as little as £100. Plus the Xbox360 & the wii can be chipped/ hacked so you can play backups. The PS3 can't. Once that can be hacked then sales will start to take off as long as they start to get better games for the PS3. The ones available at the moment aren't that great compared to ones on the XBox. But has nothing to do with how well blu-ray is doing.

Digital downloading for movies will never work here in the UK as long as BT continues to charge such high prices for lease of their lines. All but one ISP has download limits. Even ones that say they are unlimited have what they call fair usage policies. You can download a couple of GB (sometimes its even as low as 700mb) and then your speeds drop so much that you only just about surf the net let alone download a movie.

DVD's took a long time to take off because many people said they were happy with their videos. The same thing is happening with Blu-ray. It will be a couple of more years before we see which way the format will go.

But with the way the financial climate is at the moment sales will continue to drop for most things as money becomes tight.

Jay said:

Anyway, the PS3 is no longer the only game in town for a Blu-ray player in its price range, so in that respect, its effect on the success of Blu-ray is tapped.

oh #*$(#*$&($&# , i just helped my parents buy a new 52" 1080p HDTV,

(along with 5.1 speakers, brackets, tv stand, etc), and guess what,

yes, a #$&#(&$( blu-ray player too................BUT NOT FROM SONY, its a samsung

player, so at least i feel a little vindicated.... because once i showed them the

difference in quality, they felt it was worth it... also, that and the fact they

needed a new player for DVD's anyways...

so yeah, some people are getting them..

At this point, Blu-ray hardware manufacturers have moved so many units that Blu-ray's future as a format looks very bright. I don't see it ending up like laserdisc at all.

it didn't look too bright to me, i see a ton of low quality quick-rehashes being

put out as quickly as possibly on blu-ray ..... yeah, like we need all those

comedies, and romances, etc in hi-def..... anyways, THERE IS NO WAY, that

the breadth/depth/variety of movies on blu-ray, and the number of titles

will EVER match dvd/laserdis/vhs numbers anytime soon... especially if they

want people to replace their old libraries yet again in a different format, for

what, the 4th or 5th time now?

wasn't it hard enough convincing people that had VHS/laserdiscs to buy DVD's,

and now they want to do it again? that's why i think that it will always be

relegated to a niche status .... i guess we'll see how well blu-ray does in the

coming year.... i know i'm not buying ANY of them..

later

-1