Microsoft: Blu-ray Will Be Passed By As a Format

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An advantage to Blu Ray is that the discs take a lot more punishment. I have both a 360 and a PS3. I have had 360 discs scratch to the point where they won't read. (Thanks to my kids). I have yet to scratch up any of my PS3 Blu Ray disks (Either games or movies). Now if they would just make DVD discs that indestructible.
 

Cons29

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sadly, not everyone has good internet connection, i dont know about you guys but from where i am, it sucks big time. and it will take years before any major improvement will happen here(speed wise). when players become cheaper(also bluray movies), things will pickup.
and besides, i still prefer having a disc, i collect movies that i like(dvd and a few bluray).
it takes me hours when i download games from steam, i just buy from steam when games i like is on sale. but other than that i still buy them on dvd
 

Cons29

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sadly, not everyone has good internet connection, i dont know about you guys but from where i am, it sucks big time. and it will take years before any major improvement will happen here(speed wise). when players become cheaper(also bluray movies), things will pickup.
and besides, i still prefer having a disc, i collect movies that i like(dvd and a few bluray).
it takes me hours when i download games from steam, i just buy from steam when games i like is on sale. but other than that i still buy them on dvd
 

tarheelfan

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Digital will obviously be the future. However, the infrastructure is not there to support it meaning that Blu-Ray is likely to be around for a good while. Like others have mentioned, broadband speeds and pure availability are not up to snuff to make digital distribution the preferred method. I'm sure most people on this sight are cruising with good speeds of 7mbps or more but there are plenty of people who can't even get 1.5mbps speeds, and won't for years. I live near a major research and technology hub and the best we can get is the Road Runner Turbo which is 10mbps but of course most people are lucky if they get 6 of that. Can you imagine the chaos on a Friday or Saturday night if everyone who normally watched a movie on disk streamed it over the internet? I think it would break our current system of internet.
 

rhelme

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What will be funny is the first MS XBOX360 game to be bigger than 10 Gigs, and "require" people to install it or parts of it. Yet we just went through the 4GB debacle, so whats going to happen now.

People still rub the price of the Systems in my face, but when you get down to the basics, they are equal. I love he people... you can get an Xbox for 199 or 149.... But you have no storage, so you have to buy their Proprietary HDD which is another 100 or so. So you want wireless, well thats at least 60 to 80 dollars.

The PS3 just came with everything it needed, and it cost more, but the consumers tend to look with one thing, their wallet, and not think about the cost of everything in the cart being at or more than a base PS3.

I think Digital Downloading is great, but its not perm, and the media tends to get overwritten or aquire errors a bit easier. A strong magnet for a science experiment (Had this happen for real) or a lightening strike the house (again for real and had all the protectors in the world) and I lost EVERYTHING. The only way to have saved that would have been a house surge protector installed by the power company... talk about an investment.

Right now we are at 25 gigs per layer with 1 and 2 layer discs... A format upgrade has been approved and will be a simple update for 99% of players that will upgrade them to 33 gigs per layer and set them up to allow for 4 layer reading (but only 2 - 33 layer writing). Thats a good chunk of space on one disc. 132 Gigs per Disc is pretty damn'd impressive.

"Microsoft will stay with 9 Gig per disc and make you have a 1 Terabyte HDD in your system.... buy if we had 6 games max out the 132, there goes the HDD... Think about all the disc swap.

Please insert Disc 4 side 2.... Please insert disc 12 side 2.

Until we all live in South Korea or Japan and have 100/100 to our house, Blu-ray will live a VERY long life in the world. Not just the US.

People FORGET very quickly that the US is huge (Now this will sound bad, but most liberals forget that.... they are the ones that tend to say if it works in Sweden or Denmark or Amsterdam, its because of how small they are, sorry if I offended anyone, not my intent).

I like the idea of opening one disc, putting it in, and not having to worry about switching them out, it just does not work.

Microsoft/Adobe doesn't see their own hypocrisy here do they... they complain about Apple being closed and not allowing Flash to be used, and here we are, in the same position, except with the object being those that want Software on a Blu-Ray drive for MS, or the ability to have one. DVD-9 can only hold so much and so many textures and not everyone will have an internet connection, and eventually not everyone will have one fast enough. Sony will have this covered, hell they have had it covered since day one. Microsoft will be the ones hacking and slacking their way to the near top... but always be a step behind and always have a finger in their customers wallets."

Most of this is my personal opinion, the parts in quotes are, and I didn't mean to offend anyone who is liberal as I'm socially liberal, buy fiscally conservative. To each his own.... I will carry my small bag with the latest game home, while "Jack" will arrange a delivery of the game to home as it weighs too much to take home.

Irony, and parody what would we do without it??? Oh wait, ask the Chinese..
 

Fargus

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Personally, I've never considered Blu-ray a viable commercial success. Even without streaming media being added to the mix, flash drive technology is a much better solution for the consumer. No costly player/burner drive to purchase, just plug into a USB port and you're ready to go. Easier and lower costs on the production side as well. DVD technology is a dead end.
 

shin0bi272

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[citation][nom]adrianmoore[/nom]Portable games were sold on cartridges for years. Why not make SD cards cheaper and sell games on these. They have fast I/O and the density doubles every year. Problem solved in my opinion.[/citation]
^^ This^^
 

shin0bi272

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one other thing that some people hinted at but didnt out right say was that if you go digital download and the company doesnt allow you to redownload a movie or game you have to make a copy of that onto your hard drive... who wants to start stock piling hard drives for a movie library? Then what if one of those goes bad? you have to have a backup for your primary disks too... so double the number of drives right there... all so you dont have to put a disk in a drive? seriously?

Way to go there microsoft... you fail again.
 

Griffolion

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Its all nice and lovely having 1080p streaming but can any nation's internet infastructure handle every household doing this if Blu-Ray is to be replaced by digital content? Right now, no. In the future, possibly, but there will always be a market for physical media and Blu-Ray is the best for that right now. I get a big feeling that MS is only saying this because of the fact they backed the format that Blu-Ray beat into the ground.
 

back_by_demand

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DVD came along whe there was it was the best thing around and there was nothing better as a future replacement.
BluRay arrived when there already was digital distribution and streaming.
People could already see BluRays replacement when it was still trying to beat off HD-DVD.
 

tbq

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I still think MS should have put the HD-DVD drive inside the 360 rather than sell it as an optional accessory. Internal drive would have allowed developers to cram more game onto a disc, make piracy harder, and probably changed the outcome of the format war since millions of HD-DVD players would have been in homes before the PS3 was even released. I think they said initially it would have increased the manufacturing cost of the system $63, which would likely have been a worthwhile expense compared to the $100+ million they lost when HD-DVD was killed.
 

daglesj

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I have zero interest in buying a BD player. I took a long hard look at my DVD collection about a year ago and realised that 90% of them had only been watched once.

They were just taking up space. So I took 90% of them and gave them to the charity shop. I dont regret it.

I just dont want to keep stacks of movies around. I'll never part with my CD collection but movies...nah not so important.

So I really have no intention to replace one pile of crap with another pile of BDs.

If I dont get to see a movie at the cinema then I rent it for $2 from the library on DVD. DVD is still a fine format. Do I need to see the latest Jack Black movie in HD...No.

BD will pass me by.

As for the 360/next 360 incarnation I've always supported the SD card solution. Mount them in a rugged custom cartridge and away you go.

MS could get clever and make the cartridge and slot capable of taking two SD cards back to back if need be for extra capacity.

No need for optical discs anymore.
 
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[citation][nom]wavetrex[/nom]It is already obsolete.I have cancelled completely the idea of having a blu-ray reader or burner, 25GB or even 50GB capacity isn't worth it.With today's multi-TB HDD drives, and 20+Mbps internet, there's absolutely no point in storing data on a (fragile) CD-like format.Buy a game from Steam (or similar), download it in less than 1 hour, play. Even faster than going to the store to get the disk. End of story.[/citation]

This guy got marked down a lot but I don't really understand why. Seems on the money to me
 
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Considering most ISP's are capping there service I highly doubt streaming will be the waive of the future unless the caps are removed.
 

g00fysmiley

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physical media won't go away that quickly. many of the most hardcore console fans are people in rural areas which are unable to download large files due to less than stellar internet connections. unless they start selling games on flash drives for these users or our internet infastructure does some major outreaches to these people in the near future i can't see the next gen being viable as digital only... that or the next playstation will way outsell the next xbox
 

steelbox

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I have just an 300Kb broadband internet connection not near enough for 1080p streaming playback, some times not enought for 420p youtube streaming, so yeah i hope blu-ray satisfies my fix for hi-def movies for some time into the future.
 

noble

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There is always going to be some compromise in quality when streaming content over traditional home copper based cable or DSL lines. 50GB of data in a couple of hours ? No way! Wait until 3D becomes mainstream and screen resolutions go even higher. IMHO there is always going to be need for more data space to provide better quality. Unless of course quality comes out of play (e.g. MP3)
 
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