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

[Trueno07]

The future of blu-ray will be intersting, because this is really the first time that a format has been "upgraded" instead of completely replaced.

Will be interesting.

 

[rhino13]

I always like physical media.
Too bad Microsoft is pushing so hard against it.
It can't hurt to give the consumer the option.

Well maybe it can if you refuse to use high density optical formats, so you can cling to archaic DVD standards.

 

[Strider-Hiryu_79]

LOL @ all the readers taking microsoft for their word on this.

Remember microsoft also said "HDMI is the next fad" and we all know how that turned out. For those that don't microsoft eventually ended up eating those words and started equipping latter versions of the 360 with hdmi out ports.

 

[vic20]

I love Steam and Xbox LIVE Marketplace. No looking for a disc when I want to play something, no CD keys to lose. If my hard drive dies I can just re-download a purchase.

But there is some huge pitfalls to not using physical media. Once my Steam install got corrupted after I moved and I didn't have internet yet. I could not even login to my offline profile so I was hooped until I got online again to reinstall Stream.

I bought Halo3 for my 360 from the marketplace but it took almost 8 hours to download. Walmart is a 5 minute drive and it was the same price. I felt stupid for that.

Also what happens if Steam gets bought out by a company like Apple? You can't re-download iTunes store purchases. If you don't backup and your drive dies you're screwed bad. Until Apple changes this policy, I refuse to buy anything else from iTunes. Steam and MS let you do this.

I never have to worry about not being able to use my old games that don't need to be activated. With digital content, there's no guaruntee down the road. My old Nintendo still works and so do the cartridges. But one day I have a feeling I will still be able to play that downloaded Halo3 for whatever reason.

I have a receiver that does DTS Master Audio and Dolby True HD so my Bluray player is going to stick around for some time yet too.

 

[hakesterman]

Streaming Video at any speed will never take the place of Disks. Internet speeds change with volume of
usage as a whole. Furthermore Streaming Video does not look anywhere near as Good as true Bluray discs do. As a few others have stated, Microsoft got their butts kicked by Sony and haven't mentally recovered from it. Just remember MS, just because you wish for it or say it doesn't make it happen. The fine people of this entire World will determine what comes and goes not you. Same to you steve Jobs and all your Tekkie friends, you have no control over us..................

 

[alidan]

lol when bluray discs come down in price to about 1$ a disc, thats 40$ a tb, or even less (dvd was at one point 17 cents a disc) you will see hard drive having a hard time keeping up. they may be faster, they may hold more, but a blu ray can hold 25gb and wont break nearly as easily as a harddrive will.

and so we are clear, 2tb is the hard drive bottleneck if what i read from western digital is correct, if they make there hard drive higher dencity, they have to increase the ecc, and even than, you arent getting a major bump in hdd space, but looking at how badly the 500gb platters preform compared to the 250, yea. blu ray as a storage medium inst there yet but with in a year it will be.

and i didnt mention ssd because who knows when they will be price competitive with hdd much less blu ray as a storage medium

 

[skervy]

another excuse for the crapboxes shortcomings. as for bluray being obsolete because of downloads your all retarded. like plenty of the comments say not everyone has the option of 20mb+ streaming. not everyone has 50tb of hard drives bootlegging movies. not everyone has a dedicated media pc for their family. and im sure people would much rather have their kids putting a 15$ bluray into a 100$ player then handling their 2000$ pc.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]mikem_90[/nom]The idea is to exert more control over what the customer does with their purchase, only its no longer a purchase. You're 'licensing' the software/movie/whatever. So they can take it away any time they feel like.Sure Pirating is not the best thing in the world, but we may see a LOT more of it if companies think they can take the right to own something away from the customer and force people to buy it again several times, make it so they can no longer sell or give it to someone else.See: Supreme court case about man trying to sell his Adobe Suite to another person.Content providers would rather you keep purchasing copies of the same thing, not be able to share with friends. Be it be games, movies, software, books, anything.[/citation]

look up something called acta, its a international treaty that makes piracy a harsher punished crime than if you went out and killed a baby.

 

[chickenhoagie]

I won't completely stop needing DVD's or Blu-rays until i have internet fast enough to download full 1080p movies within 5 minutes, or download full 2GB video games also within 5 minutes. Otherwise, I would rather spend my time taking a quick trip to the video store.

 

[viometrix]

just as a back up media, bluray is here to stay. i can back up all of my important on one disc, takes me 20 dual layer dvds.

 

[matt87_50]

lol, if you are so in to digital downloads, why do you continue to charge like a bazillion dollars for tiny proprietary hard drives for your consoles...

you have no idea MS, just typical company BS, conveniently seeing the future as the one they just happen to be targeting.

now yes, I fully agree that leaving out a BD drive in order to keep it cheap was a great idea. the xbox's power to cost ratio is epic.

but it was an EQUALLY good idea for sony to put a bd player in the ps3. making sure people got full use of the HD panel from day one. and a real jack-of-all-trades. both have a target, and both target them well.

and the fact of the matter is, we're still sitting here, nearly 4 years after BD and the ps3 took off, arguing weather Digital distro or BD is better...

so basically, MS, stfu with your BS. just offer a BD player, for a reasonable price. do a survey to see if people want it. I don't care. but quit it with the trash talking.

 

[zaam]

I for one, am not giving up physical media any time soon. With my internet connection, even grainy youtube videos still lag and have to buffer often. I dread what will happen if I try to stream an actual HD movie.

And don't get me started on my terrible lag when playing online games.

 

[webdev511]

Blu-ray = LaserDisc. Okay so it will have more sucess than LD, but not nearly the penetration of DVD.

Anyone here not think SDXC will be affordable in the next 4 years?

 

[K-zon]

If consoles lose hard backed media , will have no clue what to do. I dont mind digital download, for i use it more as a Support feature from a company thats not really that for those needs at times. But again are. Weird. Still dont know why Xbox doesnt go with HD-DVDs, if they have to rely on the shear fact that Blu-ray can hold more info to sell a Halo title , i dont know anymore. In terms of digital downloading having something that contains 25-50g of info on it already would be useful cause as said in an earlier convo some people just dont quite have the extra funds to shell out for exclusive HDs for xbox, be nice and HD caps increase as time goes on. But still till this day on may part of full hd still has yet to seen and i finally got a 160g drive for my pc. Yes Blu-ray can do more with what they have to offer, but if xbox isnt going that way and leaving online as the only way to distribute games and other media the one part of the experience of personal entertainment is lost, cause it does take some work.

 

[ALANMAN]

[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]
[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]

A majority of America does not have 20Mbit internet, and some places are lucky to have 5+. Add to that bandwidth caps and you can see why physical media will be around a while.

 

[mikeynavy1976]

I don't have access to any streaming versions of movies that have both Blu-Ray video quality, and definitely not HD Audio quality (TrueHD and DTS HDMA)

 

[Darkv1]

I don't think that Blu-ray will be going away anytime soon...or at least I don't think that it's going to go away due to digital downloads or streaming. Streaming is all well and good (love me my netflix) but it doesn't solve the issue of many users wanting to own a copy of their media. Digital downloads provide a better solution to the "ownership issue" but even when using MKV or similar formats HD files tend to be large (8GB+). Many users would find that their connections were either too slow to quickly DL these files or even if connection speed isn't an issue a bandwidth cap might be...and don't even get me started on the DRM that accompanies most digital downloads. Also it seems odd that Microsoft would want to pass up the opportunity to have a denser storage medium than DVD...instead of ending up with some games requiring multiple discs...

/end rant

 

[adrianmoore]

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.

 

[jsc]

Stories like this remind me how lucky the people living in the U.S. are. In Saudi Arabia, a 4 Mbit/sec "broadband" connection that will hopefully run consistently at 2Mb/sec will cost about $70 month.

 

[Dougie Fresh]

Lack of physical media would be the worst thing to happen to content. Relying solely on streaming means being at the mercy (more at the mercy) of broadband providers like Comcast who already put caps on bandwidth. Imagine them becoming the sole provider of media that's distributed on physical media today -- music, movies, games, etc. without any competition. We'll be paying through the nose for them to "provide" us with what we can get today from several sources. You think your $200+ cable/phone/internet bill is bad now? And, if you think the telecom providers and 4G are the answer how much is THAT data plan and phone going to cost you just to watch movies, listen to music and play games on THEIR platform?

Long live physical media and lots of players.