What’s the future for Blu-Ray.
Will Blu-Ray take over from SD DVD players or will Blu-Ray be bypassed in favor of players like Apple TV and the WD HD TV media player. If the later happens how will media be distributed, will it be on SDHC cards or memory stick via USB.
I have not been ask for one single HD DVD in the past few years since shooting HD.
I have been conducting a survey amongst friends and most say HD looks fantastic (and it is) but some are just happy with their SD DVD and can’t see the point in upgrading again for something that does the same as what they have. When I mention the USB WD HD player then they get excited and can see the benefit.
I wonder what the future holds for HD DVD players. I like the idea of the WD HD Player but which way will the consumer go.
HD DVD players are still expensive in Australia and also the media to burn .

Cheers
Simon

I've been having a heck of a time making BRDs that play on actual players. In the end I've just included the price of a WD HD player and a USB lipstick drive to my media costs (my local electronics store has the WD player on sale now for $99 - which is the cost of the three latest BRD coasters I have sitting on my desk.)

Sony's AAC copyright protection and other profit-making processes may make sense to the studios but everybody else seems to be going the streaming route, and not even in real time on demand, just pay per play and let it load when it can (background loading) for the public, and digital delivery (not physical disks) for the rest of us.

What's the point in paying through the nose (what is it now? $15k per title royalties to Sony?) for some disc standard that will kill all but the biggest businesses? And leave us "amateurs" the option of a menuless direct burn to BR-D for free or something that won't play reliably on anything at Best Buy?

I think Sony will be in its own little sandbox over in the corner on this one.

Remember all those monolothic film studios before digital video came along? The huge 24 track studios that cost an arm and two legs just to cut s music demo? I think this feels like a last hurrah - like a dead dino that just doesn't know it yet.

Hey Chris,
What size lipstick drive do you give the client?

Hey Simon
Whatever is the next size up to fit the project. Currently I'm working on a five minute industrial piece that will loop in an exhibition/trade show rig, so I have a small collection between 4GB to 16GB that I'll send to client and then restock later.

Don't forget it's just an H264 Quicktime movie and usually I'll MP4 it at the highest quality setting, maybe squish it just a little bit (around 2-6%, or between 94-98% quality) to get it to fit on a drive. So I'll output same as source on FCP, check the file size, maybe Quicktime Pro or MPEG Streamclip it down a touch, then reach for the lipstick drive that it fits into, done and dusted.

Anything larger and I've built some of those laptop sized 2.5" USB powered packs that go up to around 230GB for around $120 or so, or used a client supplied USB drive. (or ftp'd/yousendit/megauploaded it to them) But the 3.5" SATAs are around, what $99 per terrabyte now, the bare drive? Plus around $50 or so for the casing?

The future's bleak as far as becoming "the" next thing.

Enthusiasts that have 7.1 surround and projectors will flock but
look how long laserdisc lasted yet never took control.

consumers can now have 8TB of storage at home. They have home networks
and want to shift stuff around at their whim.

Blu-ray's not helping you if you're a small developer. Where does Sony get off telling
you that AACS encryption is mandatory? That'd be fine if AACS was free but it's not
so there's more $$$ out of your pocket before you've even thought about profit.

Let's face it

The biggest consumers of media are city dwellers

City dwellers have access to decent broadband. Broadband is getting scary fast
(Cable co 50Mbps and Fiber Optic 100Mbps in areas) .

The argument about instant playback is a riot. Time how long your Disney DVD starts
after you've gone through 5 previews, a Blu-ray propaganda advert and the anti smoking
adds.

Consumers don't want that shit. My gf and I are more than happy to stream some Netflix and I'll eventually leverage iTunes, Hulu and other formats.

Will I buy Blu-ray? Of course ...there are those movies you just have to have. Will I ever have as many Blu-ray titles as I have DVD. Doubtful.

By 2015 I figure buying an optical disc to watch a movie will feel about as antiquated as
popping in a philips cassette to play music.

Panasonic just layed off a small village of workers. Sony's losing money in the millions and consumers are looking at $25 disc prices like a cat with two heads.

The movie studios have their feet planted in both camps. When optical discs collapse they'll just remove the foot and accelerate their VoD, download biz.

What Harrison said, especially about the city dwelling part. Great points.

The WD HD player is selling here in Aus for around $190 plus a 16GB USB stick is around $100.

I was thinking of selling this as part of my package for clients to get HD into their homes.
But at this current price it might not be the best option right now.

I have a blu-ray player and a small collection of disks. For big spectacle type movies it's fantastic. For example, "How the West Was Won" which is a huge production from the 1960's shot in 3 panel Cinerama is really impressive. That process used very wide angle lenses with amazing depth of field, and the detail in the landscapes is unlike anything I've seen before. "2001" is also great as is "Blade Runner". Then there are some other movies where you would have to look closely to notice the difference from regular DVD. But I really can't complain, I'm glad I bought it.

There is a real shortage of titles at this point; I've already bought just about everything I want to own. But soon they will release the Star Trek movies on Blu-Ray, so I will definitely be making some more purchases then! CBS & Paramount Announce First Star Trek Blu-ray sets - TOS S1 & All TOS movies coming April/May [UPDATED] | TrekMovie.com (http://trekmovie.com/2009/02/16/cbs-paramount-announce-first-star-trek-blu-ray-sets-tos-s1-all-tos-movies-coming-aprilmay/)

As far as authoring my own disks... not really interested.

Simon
That's what they were usually priced at, over here. But times are a-changing. And quickly too.

Boyd
I agree, I love watching those movies that were shot for the big screen and not with the big screen as a marketing afterthought. I have a PS3 that plays most of them well and a few select titles that I really loved enough to own both DVD and BR copies of.

However, I make these things for a living too, or should do - but find more and more clients choosing the H264 route instead. Out of the 70 or so little projects I've worked on in the past year, all were shot in HD, around 66 were delivered in SD, around 60 of those in DVD or smaller (i.e. 6 were SD broadcast masters), only 4 were actually finished in HD. Only one made it all the way through to BRD: the other three were H264 deliveries.

Maybe as analog SD goes away in the USA, this mix will change, but actually now that I already made the investment to bring my entire production and post pipeline up to HD standards, it makes little difference to me cost-wise what format I finish in.

I would just have thought that if BRD were to be as popular as DVD now is, that it would have taken off a lot better than it has by now.

I'd also like to add that not many of the older or smaller budget films will have their producers or distributors fork up the $15k fee in addition to the remastering fees to get their titles up onto BRD.

So, as quite a few of the older, smaller budget but yet still good films didn't make it from VHS to DVD, so a lot more of the films now readily available on DVD won't make it to BRD.

But I'm very doubtful that the DVD process will go away, like, say, the laser disc process did. Heck, you can still go out and buy VHSs somewhere in town, right?

Film making isn't like other forms of manufacture: you make a car, you sell it once as new, then immediately it's a used car. An old car, at old car prices.

You make a film, it sells again and again - for new prices, maybe discounted, on sale, whatever, but still as new, not as old. A reprint is cheap and is not the cost of a new film.

It's like the process of film making would be not like making a car, but like making the mold to make new cars - you make the mold, you stamp out a few thousand cars, you sell them, stamp out a few more... like that.

Right now the DVD stamp doesn't cost anything. Sony wants us to pay them tax for their stamping.

So for the smaller folks, it's much easier to keep the copies stamping out on DVD (so call it 480i or 525i, it's just old style TV/DVD, but digital, not analog), just as it is, bringing in its rentals, than endangering the smaller movie's existing royalty stream by trying to give it a dubious new life as a BRD release - and paying Sony through the nose for the may-be privilege.

So I say that the DVD stamping process will stay on for a heck of a longer time. For one thing, the players won't have to have a D to A converter in them any more, so they'll be cheaper to produce.

And the programs producer in the newer HD formats will be distributed closer to the raw file formats then ever before - also saving money in the stamping process. And some of them may even make it big enough to go for the big bucks - and then $15k per title to Sony won't seem a big deal at all.

Come on now...

Is Blu-Ray a profit center for Sony? You bet. Is Blu-Ray good technology? Yes.

How much overlap was there between good old VHS and those shiny new-fangled discs? I can go right now and walk into the local rental store (national chain) and get VHS tapes. Why is it that just because Blu-Ray has not yet taken over from DVDs that people want to toll the bell for it?

You don't think DVDs were expensive to cut when they arrived? At this same point in DVD history, the recorders were still $1k and the media costs were more expensive than Blu-Rays are. And all the same hand-wringing and nay saying happened then too. And all the consumers said the same thing.. my tapes are fine, why do I need DVDs? And all the DVDs (and VHS tapes) came with advertisements for the new DVD technology.

But there were no www based forums back then. it was rec.xxx.xxx on usenet. And it was a lot different.

Optical is still a long-term delivery solution in the right form factor, with Hollywood support, and players coming from most major manufacturers. Unless that changes, I don't see it going away any time soon.

Perrone
But at no time in history did someone say "hey, you want to make a VHS/DVD? Pay us $15k per title for the right. Plus the cost of the media, and the hardware, and the software". Every time before, the open architecture solution won.

Hey Chris,
What size lipstick drive do you give the client?

Simon,

I have a 26 minute project shot at 1920x1080 that rendered to a 1280x720 at 60p HD WMV file came in at just under 1GB. On my quad core Q6600 Dell with 4GB RAM and an Nvidia 8800GT 512MB card the render took 12 hours in Pinnacle Studio 12.

But I was picking up 4GB Sandisk thumb drives on sales at about $19.95, then 8GB at that price level (Verbatim and sometimes Sandisk) and the latest was a 16GB Sandisk at $19.95 (again on sale).

I need to try a 1920x1080 render on that one sometime when I won't need my editing machine for a day to day and a half to see what size it would come in at, comparing some shorter sequence test renders I'm going to guess between 1 to 1.5GB.

So we can get quite a bit on these thumb drives (is this what you guys mean by "lipstick" drives). I'm retired and while I do a project for others now and then I'm primarily into this for my own pleasure. I love the WD TV and being able to show my own created content on my TV in HD.

Perrone
But at no time in history did someone say "hey, you want to make a VHS/DVD? Pay us $15k per title for the right. Plus the cost of the media, and the hardware, and the software". Every time before, the open architecture solution won.

Is that right? Do you remember how long it took before the industry would even LET people burn DVDs? They locked up mpeg2 so tight NO ONE could play. Not until they had Macrovision and CSS and whatever other protections were out there, did they even ALLOW burners to hit the market. We are still reeling from some of that which is why the market for DVD rippers is what it is.

Back then, it was a The DVD Consortium, today it's Sony with others now joining in. Who knows what it will be tomorrow.

Run the timeline. DVD was introduced to the US in 1997. It took until June 2003 before rentals of DVD surpassed VHS. SIX years...

Remeber the format wars of DVD? writable DVD: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED | Emedia Professional | Find Articles at BNET (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FXG/is_1_12/ai_53578863)

6 different standards. That article, written in 1999 is hilarious when you consider where we are with BluRay:


The real advance in DVD-R, however, is DVD-RW (DVD-Rewritable). Recently accepted for consideration by the DVD Forum's Working Group 6, and soon to be identified as DVD Forum Book F, DVD-RW is the rewritable version of DVD-R, the "other" rewritable format endorsed by the DVD Forum. When the next generation of 4.7GB DVD-R drives reaches the market, sometime in Q2 1999 at a price between $3,000 and $5,000, 4.7GB DVD-RW will come along for the ride.


And we're complaining about BluRay prices....

I'd have to say I'm with Perrone on this one. One can argue that the costs and restrictions imposed by Sony might impede we small fry, but as Perrone said, it's a long term delivery medium in the right format. It is for many users, especially the older demographic that have been buying VHS and DVDs since disco died.

I had a client that wanted BD so bad he bought me the burner. If he hadn't, I probably wouldn't have one. But I am doing key retail projects on BD and DVD and boy, can you tell the difference.

As for movies, I own two. "No Country For Old Men" which looked great but I could have lived with the DVD, and "We Were Soldiers". The sound and visuals were epic! I haven't found another movie locally that I'd want to see on BD.

As for downloading, aside from some issues highlighted in previous posts, a big potential issue is the move by US cable companies to place a monthly cap on how much a user can download. While everything I've read says nothing's set in concrete just yet, I've seen figures from 20-50GB/mo. That would be about a max of two movies a month, if you don't want to get your email. To be fair, these rules are being formed in response to the huge amount of Torrent downloads. There is also some talk of tiered pricing based upon the amount of data downloaded. I would not be surprised to see a US cell phone style pricing model with high costs for overages.

But that's just me talking and I sometimes forget my own name.

The download figures are a bit off. When we need to press discs we of course make sure the discs is all inclusive for the areas we distribute.

The thing I like about digital distribution is that I can more easily tailor my presentation and I never run into production problems or warehousing different SKU.

With a DVD or even Blu-ray you have to deliver the movie 3 or more subtitles and soundtracks localized to various countries you will distribute and other items in addition to menu changes and more.

Now with a digital file I'm going to ensure that I've only included the data I need for English speaking people in North America. I may have other files targetting different languages but those can be a seperate choice for download and thus never affect my data size.

Bandwidth is precious and it will get more expensive for heavy users. But we've got future encoding improvements that'll cut our data by half and more infrastructure improvements that will increase our available bandwidth.

Blu-ray is a capable format and will likely be the last optical format and the perfect bridge to a new digital world. I've got no problem investing in it but unlike with DVD I will not buy just any old movie in HD. It's got to actually take advantage of the superior features of Bluray and deliver an outstanding product.

The price per movie is higher and thus my threshold for making a purchase has make a corollary increase as well.

Dude, we're dinosaurs.

Some of us were around for the VHS/Betamax wars (and even the OLD VHS), we on "records" in 33 1/3, 45s, and I still have some 78s. I had 8 track tapes too.

But for every one of us, there are 10 teens or 20-somethings with Playstations, iPods, etc. who don't understand all the fuss. BluRay for the younger ones will be their FIRST optical experience.

In the indie video market, we like to believe we influence the market. We don't. You know who does? Data.

What do you think the installed base of Xp/Vista is right now? What happens when MS decides to ship on BluRay instead of DVD? I watched it happen from 3.5" to CD, and from CD to DVD. I installed Win95 on over 200 workstations when it came on 22 floppies. Or 1 CD. We couldn't use the CD because our servers didn't have them back then.

My install in January of Windows Server 2008 took over 20GB. How long before you think THAT starts shipping on Blu-Ray? And SQL Server, and every other backend piece from MS.

We are a speck on the landscape of media format. And it'll be a LONG while before software companies ship software on flash media. Any of you have SDHC slots on your desktop? How about an expresscard slot? What do you think the discussion is at HP, DELL, and IBM? Do we go BluRay next cycle, or flash.... I know what my money would be on.

Cycle: PC manufacturers ship BluRay in home PCs > Public wants to use their new drives > media demand skyrockets, media prices plummet, BluRays get cheap > video market takes advantage of cheap prices.

Happened with CDs (especially home audio guys), happened with DVDs, and will happen with BluRay.

Perrone
In time, you may be right. Absolutely. 25/50GB opticals? In time, they'll go away.

Question is, how fast? DVD fast? Or Laser Disc fast?

Moore's Law says very fast indeed. In fact they may already have gone away, before they've even taken a hold.

Right now I can put all my movies onto HDDs and watch them straight to my HDTV without any of the Blu Ray nonsense.

And I can give my clients full HD program masters without it too. Thousands of copies, if I want to.

So why would I pay Sony for that honor?

I'm not talking about hardware pricing or availability or format wars.

I'm talking about per-title licensing fees just to burn a disc. We've already gone around that by direct to HDD, streaming, etc.. In the past there was no way around DVDs or laser disks. Now there is.

Maybe Sony will one day say hey, here's our AACS architecture, you can burn BRDs without paying us per title. Like the other media you've mentioned. CDs, DVDs etc. Then the recorders will be cheap, the media will be less expensive, it will become popular. But $15k per title? Or else it won't play?

The difference is that none of those CD-R or DVD-R (or +R) people ever said "hey, every CD or DVD master you burn, you will pay us $x or else no CD or DVD player will play your discs". That's my point. We could do all of that, even make 3/4" master tapes, that without paying the piper for every title. That's why it became popular. If you recall, that's how JVC "beat out" Sony before, and how IBM "beat out" Apple, back in the day. They didn't really beat anybody out, they just opened up their architecture, made it royalty free, and let market forces take care of the rest.

The paradigm has changed with the times. The media's software is being separated from its traditional hardware as more and more multinationals get into the act of digital information distribution.

And yes, the lipstick drive and the thumb drive are one and the same animal. It's just my personal name for it because you say 'thumb drive' and people here go 'huh?" but you say 'lipstick drive' and they go 'oh. right.'

Of course jm2c, ymmv etc.

Perrone
In time, you're right. Absolutely.
But 25/50GB opticals? In time, they'll go away too.
Question is, how fast?


Didn't take the industry too long to move away from single speed, single sided DVD either. Sure we'll move on. One company has already demonstrated a 10 layer Blue laser disk.


Right now I can put all my movies onto HDDs and bring them straight to my HDTV without any of the Blu Ray nonsense.
And I can give my clients HD program masters without it too.
So why would I pay Sony for that honor?


Suppose you had 100 clients? Or 1000? Are you going to give them all HDD? It's a solution that does not scale. Optical Scales nicely. Get some nice footage from the car show or school play? Great. But now every participant or parent want's a copy for $10. Fair price for DVD (or Blu-Ray). Can you do that with a HDD? They don't need fancy menus, just a disc.




I'm not talking about hardware availability or format wars. I'm talking about per title licensing fees just to burn a disc properly.


Define "properly".



We've already gone around that by direct to HDD, streaming, etc.. In the past there was no way around DVDs or laser disks. Now there is.


In the past, there was no home video market. It wasn't created in earnest until the DVD showed up. Not many at home had 8mm/hi8, or even miniDV. Needed a universal format to display on. CDs were pretty limiting.



The paradigm has changed with the times. The media's software is being separated from the hardware.

To a degree, that's true. But the media has to make sense. HDD for distribution makes no sense. Flash, until there are slots in home PCs doesn't make sense either. When I can pop an SDHC or SDXC into some unit in my entertainment center or my desktop, that will make sense.

Didn't take the industry too long to move away from single speed, single sided DVD either. Sure we'll move on. One company has already demonstrated a 10 layer Blue laser disk.

Agreed. But SSDs are already here.


Suppose you had 100 clients? Or 1000? Are you going to give them all HDD? It's a solution that does not scale. Optical Scales nicely. Get some nice footage from the car show or school play? Great. But now every participant or parent want's a copy for $10. Fair price for DVD (or Blu-Ray). Can you do that with a HDD? They don't need fancy menus, just a disc.

I do have 100 clients and a lot of them are getting HDD/direct digital streaming media, directly into their Tivo's, DVRs, whatever. Plus they're asking for regular DVDs too. If I had to pay the $15k royalty that would make it $150 per disk.


Define "properly".

With menus.


In the past, there was no home video market. It wasn't created in earnest until the DVD showed up. Not many at home had 8mm/hi8, or even miniDV. Needed a universal format to display on. CDs were pretty limiting.

VHS was the first home video market. We were there, remember? And CDs are still the medium for music - but on the brink of change too.



To a degree, that's true. But the media has to make sense. HDD for distribution makes no sense. Flash, until there are slots in home PCs doesn't make sense either. When I can pop an SDHC or SDXC into some unit in my entertainment center or my desktop, that will make sense.

Oops, sorry, screwed up the imbedding, above.

I was talking about clients who have commissioned small films. For them, flash already makes sense. They pop the thumb/lipstick drive into the WD HD player, the menu comes up, they use their remotes, like a Tivo or DVR. Done deal. They then still want their DVD copies for distribution. Only one of them even had a Blu Ray player and asked for a BRD. And the also asked for digital copies and DVDs as well.

Yes, we're in transition. But I really to believe that streaming media and the TiVo/DVR machines will take over as the distributors cut out the middle people (i.e. the video stores).

Look at cinema. The MPAA wants to stream movies via satellite directly into theaters. Why? Because if the cinema returns don't match the electronic ticket sales, they can cut the feed. They can't do that with prints.

Hi Perrone & Chris:
What we're really talking about is what I will refer to as "The last bit bucket." I think Blu-ray DVD is indeed that last bit bucket. From now on, there will be no *public" portable media format, such as Blu-ray DVD. There will only be *portals* whereby you *access* the data you want when you want it. The data will all be streamed to delivery via the Internet. All movies, music, and Tv will de delivered in this manner. Folks who want to collect the box set of the 19th Season of Lost will be able to do so by downloading a Blu-ray DVD image, or just the hyper compressed video file and manipulate that as desired on their PC or MAC.

We may see several private *Intra-Nets* spring up to service certain forms of public exhibition of digital content, such as IMAX digital and Hollywood Studios. Historically, we know the Hollywood Studios like to keep a finger in every pie going, so wherever there is a volume market leverageable, then you will see a studio presence there.

Let us not forget how expensive it is for the studios to author, mass replicate, warehouse, and ship their entertainment via DVD and Blu-ray to the so called home video market segment, which actually is larger than domestic box office. I think the big screen experience is far from over as well. The studios will want to look for the lowest common denominator of all of their market segments, thus bits will be streamed instead of packaged and sold.

Ok, well here's some input from the newer generation that has never seen a beta in his life.

Movies are watched on the computer. I know a lot of people who just watch dvds right from their laptop daily. Put it on the tv every once in awhile, but usually people just don't do that anymore. Also, a lot of the video watched is directly from Youtube.

What does this mean? Everything is digital. Pure digital. I know a ton of people that wish their dvds could just all be on their ipods. What will the consumers buy? It's going to head all digital.

Granted, I saw a BRD movie, and it was amazingly nice, but it passed its time already. I was so happy to hear about it a few years ago when I was recording all of my stuff and running out of disk space. 25 gig disk... that would be a space revolution... then came the 1T SETA harddrives for $100... that one is still keeping me busy.

So I think with the i7 quad quadcores being the $1000 computer now, and 1T drives easy to get and a 160gig ipod with video is what half the people are carrying around, movies are going to go digital.

Personally, I think the whole notion of a tv separated from the computer will disappear in 5-10 years. It already did for me, I got wintv. I think it will be a big screen tv with a computer hooked up and a wireless mouse and keyboard. They need to make some advanced picture in picture thing so that way you can have your facebook chat in the bottom right while watching a movie and it's sold to my generation.

I can’t predict the future but I don’t see many homes upgrading to Blu-Ray unless you can buy the HD players for under $100 or less.
I’m still amazed at the quality of SD DVD’s that I hire from the Video shop and I can get a SD DVD player for $30. (Wish I could compress even to this standard)
If boxes like the WD media HDTV continue and the price drops, connecting your computer, hard drive etc is the future.
I wonder how the consumer will obtain these files/movies to use? disk or downloaded files?

Can you believe I had a couple request that if I shoot their wedding that I supply a Blu-Ray DVD as well as a SD DVD. I only posted the other day saying I have never been asked how odd is that.

I'[ve not been able to find the original source or a link of this article, sorry for posting the length, but think it's on point - came to me in a newsletter, but I think it sheds a LOT of light on the future of BR:


Blu-ray founders Panasonic, Philips and Sony are currently working with other Blu-ray Disc patent holders to establish a one-stop-shop license for Blu-ray Disc products. The license, which covers essential patents for Blu-ray Disc, DVD and CD, is expected to stimulate the growth of the market for Blu-ray Disc products. "By establishing a new licensing entity that offers a single license for Blu-ray Disc products at attractive rates, I am confident that it will foster the growth of the Blu-ray Disc market and serve the interest of all companies participating in this market, be it as licensee or licensor." said Gerald Rosenthal, CEO of the new license company. The fees for the new product licenses are US$9.50 for a Blu-ray Disc player and US$14.00 for a Blu-ray Disc recorder. The per disc license fees for Blu-ray Disc will be US$0.11 for a read only disc, US$0.12 for a recordable disc and US$0.15 for a rewritable disc. According to the company, as a result of the efficiencies obtained with the combined license offering, the royalty rates for Blu-ray Disc products are expected to be at least 40% lower than the current cumulative royalty rates for individual Blu-ray Disc, DVD and CD format licenses. The license company is expected to be launched mid 2009 and will be based in the United States with branch offices in Asia, Europe and Latin America.

I can’t predict the future but I don’t see many homes upgrading to Blu-Ray unless you can buy the HD players for under $100 or less.
I’m still amazed at the quality of SD DVD’s that I hire from the Video shop and I can get a SD DVD player for $30. (Wish I could compress even to this standard)
If boxes like the WD media HDTV continue and the price drops, connecting your computer, hard drive etc is the future.
I wonder how the consumer will obtain these files/movies to use? disk or downloaded files?

Can you believe I had a couple request that if I shoot their wedding that I supply a Blu-Ray DVD as well as a SD DVD. I only posted the other day saying I have never been asked how odd is that.

I've been getting decent results shooting AVCHD and rendering to SD as well as experimenting with burning BR to a standard DVD with some success... I anticipate delivering in those two formats, regular DVD for the majority, and BR on DVD for those that have a player (the test disks worked fine at the local BB on their demo Samsung...)

I think BRay is going to be extremely short lived. HD-DVD didn't quit because it couldn't win, it quit because there isn't enough runway to pay for the battle with BR with split revenues. Commercial BR for movies may last a few years, but I believe SD and other solid state is going to overtake optical in the near future. In addition, streaming video is really beginning to mature. I just watched a streamed movie on Netflix and was surprised how good it was. Just look at Vimeo, YouTube, and now Facebook(arguably the best?).

Personally owned physical media will diminish in popularity over the next 5 years. Solid state will likely be the mainstay for what you physically own.

My $0.02.

Remember, youtube has an HD mode now. Even less people are going to get off of it.

Don't forget the possible wild card of a technological breakthrough. But ultimately the winning delivery method will be the one that fits into the viewers' desires. What muddies that water is that younger demos are comfortable watching content on computers. Those of us who lived through the 60s (didn't say "remembered them") are more comfortable stuffing media into a box and pressing a button. But that could all change.

Whoever figures this out will make a bunch of money.

Ok, well here's some input from the newer generation that has never seen a beta in his life.

Movies are watched on the computer. I know a lot of people who just watch dvds right from their laptop daily. Put it on the tv every once in awhile, but usually people just don't do that anymore. Also, a lot of the video watched is directly from Youtube.

What does this mean? Everything is digital. Pure digital.

...It also means it will be streamed and delivered via Internet portals rather than purchased off of the shelf of a local retail outlet.

I know a ton of people that wish their dvds could just all be on their ipods. What will the consumers buy? It's going to head all digital.

Granted, I saw a BRD movie, and it was amazingly nice, but it passed its time already. I was so happy to hear about it a few years ago when I was recording all of my stuff and running out of disk space. 25 gig disk... that would be a space revolution... then came the 1T SETA harddrives for $100... that one is still keeping me busy.

So I think with the i7 quad quadcores being the $1000 computer now, and 1T drives easy to get and a 160gig ipod with video is what half the people are carrying around, movies are going to go digital.

....The new TV set is your cell phone and laptop or iPOD.

Personally, I think the whole notion of a tv separated from the computer will disappear in 5-10 years. It already did for me,

...End of next year.

I got wintv. I think it will be a big screen tv with a computer hooked up and a wireless mouse and keyboard. They need to make some advanced picture in picture thing so that way you can have your facebook chat in the bottom right while watching a movie and it's sold to my generation.

...HP already makes two different large screen TV's with built in HDD's and wireless network and keyboard and mouse and remote. Their flat screen TV's have an RJ 45 Ethernet Gigabit Lan jack as well. The future is now.

I think all points discussed here are valid, but I would like to add my 2 cents.

First of all, DIgital distribution does make sense... In the US. Internet is still developing in most countries and markets, and Internet speed, in many countries, is still years away to what you get in the US.

I have a Lacie Blu-ray burner and Toast 10 for mac, and I must say that a small narrative featurette I did -53 minutes- encoded beautifully with this software (with a pretty basic menu, for sure), with avc variable bit rate that goes from low 20'ies to the 30'ies (Mbs) looks absolutelly stunning, very, very close to my DVCPRO HD 1080p master. The file size is, however, 9.5gb. I can't see files of these size working for downloads, at least not in the next 3 to 5 years.

Blu-ray is as close as we got to a Mass Market HD High Quality format. One cannot compare APPLE Store's 720p Apple TV capable films to Blu-rays and the uncompressed audio and 1080p picture quality. Blu-ray is probably the medium that pushes best the 1080p capable TV LCD sets that are sold worldwide. With bigger and bigger television sizes becoming cheaper, consumers will more and more demand better quality.

Blu-ray is proving to be successful and its sales are equalling DVD's in many regions. I'm no Blu-ray spokesperson, but it makes to me business sense to be able to distribute in this format.

Remember, youtube has an HD mode now. Even less people are going to get off of it.


Yeah, I looked at YouTube's so called HD service. Instead of 720x1280 or better, it was a very highly compressed 480x853. In TV speak, that is ED, but at that data rate, it is a poor widescreen SD.

I have both a PS3 and a player, make BluRay projects that look great and enjoy inkjet printable BD-R discs at $9 each. There is no extra "royalty" to Sony for small volume duplicates

It looks like almost all the new crop of "consumer point and shoot" cameras are including some flavor of HD, be it 720 or 1080... People are going to want to store and share that video, and they are going to be expecting it to look as good as displaying directly on that HDTV...

BR has a window of opportunity, and with those new lower licensing fees, all that needs to happen is for players and burners to break the $100 price point... and DVD will begin to fade, probably pretty fast.

In the end, we still probably burn CDs for smaller files, DVD's for mid size archives and projects, and BR for the big stuff... it's actually a pretty logical archival system when you think about it. It's just that BR hasn't hit the sweet spot price wise yet, but if you think about it, there can't be that much difference in the components and mechanisms between an obsolete "CD player" and a BR player... once those license fees drop (hopefully sooner rather than later from the article I posted...), BR could hit big time.

Good point David,
It will be an interesting time for the HD format and you are right, under $100 you can afford it.
I remember when the first DVD players came out at over a thousand bucks, that seems like a long time ago. I think with the local consumer market going HD that this will be computer, ipod, hard drive, memory stick, what ever is the cheapest form of sharing files.
In guess with all things, as consumers desire a product this will drive the cost down as other companies start making the same thing but cheaper. Yes we could see the Blu-Ray take off but at the same time I wonder.

I just remembered something I read or saw on TV or something.
The person said one day will we have a device the same size as a cigarette packet that will hold every movie ever made.

Good evening,

What a lively discussion thread.

Sony totally messed up with the entire Beta think back in the dark ages, yes I was there and even back to four track tapes of Herman's hermits!

forgetting all the tecno garboli, it will boil down to bucks. lower prices, higher production.

I recently bought a bl ray player. I was real impressed with the improved DVD images!!!! Blue ray images had far more detail, almost to much to be honest.

I loved the blu ray images I burnt onto a a dvd disc. I will be getting a burner sooon.

I suspect bl ray will saty around, it has much to offer in more than just the movie area. I am not sure archiving is one of them as hard drives are so cheap.

HD video is marketed to stay so bl ray will pretty much stay.


I would wager sony is going to back off and let this take hold, if not they could see a repeat of the bata thing!!

It will be fun to watch, I would rather not have to buy a different system!!!

"Best" is the defeated archrival of "good enough."

SACD, DVDA were high quality audio formats that lost to mp3. People can't carry around their big screen televsions. Personal convenience rules.

Are parents going to purchase movies for their kids on Blu-ray if they can't play them in the car on road trips? Even if your next car came with a Blu-ray player, would you want to wait 2 minutes to get past the "Don't Steal" warnings? Would wireless broadband, BD Live and BDJava make it a must have for your car? Would you stay parked long enough to enjoy the movie yourself? Would you see a difference on the small screen?

I think if DVD dies, all optical dies including Blu-ray, but I think both will survive albeit in separate quality tiers of the same niche...copy protected Hollywood films.

For everything else, EVERYTHING can be better served with ubiquitous media players where open source and convenience rules.

My $0.02

Although I got flamed on another thread for suggesting that Blu-ray is not the future, I will again state that I believe that until the costs and complexity associated with producing Blu-rays comes way down, only major producers will invest the time and and money necessary to make Blu-rays. I think that downloading entertainment files is the future, and that TVs as we know them will be rare in another ten years. The computer / media center will be integrated with the entire house. I also greatly dislike the idea of further compressing my DVCPRO HD and converting it to a multiframe long GOP MPEG format as is necessary to put it on Blu-ray. For now, I'll play the files on a computer and output the video via HDMI to my TV. The quality is stunning, and its easy to do. I also very much like the Western Digital media player, mentioned earlier in this thread. Although you do have to compress and convert the files to another format, it is easy to do and provides a good quality HD picture that can be shown or supplied to clients with the player ($ 100). I await further flaming.

NO flames Mark, it's a wide open field. BUT I've since seen the news snippet I posted earlier from another source... once the licensing comes down, the dam will burst on BR, and if I read it correctly, the hope is to offer a combined DVD/BR license for less than current DVD licensing...

You have to consider that the shiny silver disc format has been a remarkably scalable solution (CD-DVD-BR-?). BUT as you point out, 8G jump drives (thumb drives, lipstic drives, whatever you want to call them) are down to $15... That's 1-2 hours of HD content, plus or minus, depending on compression.

I believe that some BR discs are actually including an "iPod" ready portable media file. In the future, logic would suggest that when you purchase a specific movie/content, they might well include several file formats that the purchaser can simply transfer as needed - very good value proposition, for next to no investment, and it discourages pirating big time, why be a criminal when you can just buy the legit content once!

I recall moving a big stack of LP's and thinking, "I could rip these and have the whole thing in my pocket..." Certainly size and portability matters, so MAYBE the shiny silver disc will prove itself too big to remain practical, but I'd be reluctant to bet on it just yet.

If the BR licensing hits by mid year at very favorable terms, I'm betting inexpensive BR players and burners will be THE hot Christmas item... All those people who got HDTV's last year will be wanting to actually see some HD content on them, instead of the crap cable feed!

so MAYBE the shiny silver disc will prove itself too big to remain practical

Man, we've become spoiled. :P

I am enjoying all the differing opinions and points of view. And I have some questions.

Who is paying for a licensing fee of $15,000 and how large is your distribution? How many copies are you producing? Because I have put out product on BluRay and I haven't paid any licensing fees other than any fees that might be hidden in the cost of the blank disc. As for producing BD coasters, I would suggest that before you burn any project, do your first copy on a re-writable disc. That way you will eliminate any bugs without producing coasters.

I agree. If/when Sony backs off from that licensing plan of theirs, then BRDs will become the next step up in optical storage. However, since consumer SSDs are just starting to hit the market now, and the codecs in general are becoming better and more efficient, we'll see how long optical in general lasts.

If Sony keeps on going with their licensing strategy then I think only the majors will still play along, and most everybody else will go pure digital. I don't know about the stability of
50GBs in an optical. For me 25GB and above

Greg
I've put out BRDs too, and for me it's been hit-and-miss. Down at my local Best Buy, the BRDs I burn play on some machines, not on others. Most of the menuless BRDs will play just fine, also the BRDs with DVD style menus tend to play okay, but when you start to try and make a BRD with the extended menus, then AACS tends to kick in and I've found myself out of luck, re-recordable or not. Hence the coasters. I know how to burn them, they just don't always work in all my clients' machines.

Greg
I've put out BRDs too, and for me it's been hit-and-miss. Down at my local Best Buy, the BRDs I burn play on some machines, not on others. Most of the menuless BRDs will play just fine, also the BRDs with DVD style menus tend to play okay, but when you start to try and make a BRD with the extended menus, then AACS tends to kick in and I've found myself out of luck, re-recordable or not. Hence the coasters. I know how to burn them, they just don't always work in all my clients' machines.


I'm so used to viewing digital files on my computer without problem that a glitch with an optical disc brings me crashing back down to reality. The future is a container format like Matroska but the big studios are so into pushing Blu-ray and wading toe deep into the digital download market I don't expect the push to come from them. It's got to come from Indys who need to reap the reward of lower cost distribution.

Hitachi said they have plans to deliver 4-5TB hard drives in 2011 via CPP-GMR technology. The future is most definitely a digital file sitting in a container with appropriate rights management and I'd prefer that governing body behind the rights management be one that caters to all content creators.

My hope would be that there would be a few licensing bodies setup and that an acceptable amount of competition would allow for affordable licensing of DRM technology for all parties involved.

I have no hope that Blu-ray is the technology to move us forward. It's the video version of SACD. We all know how SACD turned out.

I've put out BRDs too, and for me it's been hit-and-miss. Down at my local Best Buy, the BRDs I burn play on some machines, not on others. I know how to burn them, they just don't always work in all my clients' machines.

Funny.... Best Buy has always been one of our favorite BluRay "test" locations. And we ran into similar problems in the early days. We have a Sony BD burner with Sony software and when we first started burning BD's about the ONLY machines that would NOT play our discs was any Sony. They would play fine in anything else. Sony kept saying that their machines just needed a firmware upgrade. The store would get the firmware upgrade and nada. Ironically, they always played great in a PS3. Now our discs are created in Encore with menus and they play in just about everything. It is rare now when one doesn't play in some BD player.

I'm a part timer (Full Time School Teacher, directing school TV station for Cable TV Affilitate) and so far have 11 weddings this season, 2 of which are BluRay. Not bad odds and clients at wedding shows seem very interested.

I just delivered my first full length BluRay Wedding, more than 2 1/2 hours of content for a Bride and Groom. I originally delivered the wedding for them in HD dvd format (burned to SD dvds ... so very limited file size ... wedding only, no reception footage), but promised them that I would burn a BluRay when the technology was available for the Mac.

I use FCP, compressor, and Encore to burn the Blu Ray. They're gorgeous and it turns out all the rumors about outrageous burn and render times are overstated.

I'm excited about the prospects of BluRay and am suggesting to Bride's a purchase of a Sony Playstation as the player.

Steve Pustay

Greg and Steven

I'm with you guys in recommending a PS3 to my clients in the future (if they insist on going BRD). That seems to be the one machine that has always played everything I burned at home, right from the start.

Is it Encore CS3 you're using? Gotta try that, maybe that will help.

Thanks!
Cheers
Chris

Yes indeed. Encore CS3.

Ok, well here's some input from the newer generation that has never seen a beta in his life.

Movies are watched on the computer. I know a lot of people who just watch dvds right from their laptop daily. Put it on the tv every once in awhile, but usually people just don't do that anymore. Also, a lot of the video watched is directly from Youtube.

What does this mean? Everything is digital. Pure digital. I know a ton of people that wish their dvds could just all be on their ipods. What will the consumers buy? It's going to head all digital.

Chris, I am one of the dinosaurs and I think input from someone who has never seen a Beta tape is vital information. And no doubt your generation will be still be buying and creating products long after I am gone. From my point of view, I don't want to watch movies on my computer unless my computer is hooked up to a home entertainment system. My edit computer has a 24" 1920 x 1200 monitor and I don't want to watch movies on it either. I want to sit back in the recliner with a drink in one hand and popcorn in the other and I want to be able to relax and get lost in watching something entertaining in a big picture format and I want to listen to a theater surround sound system. I can see very little need to have movies on an iPod unless I am going to be traveling somewhere and have hours to kill, where I would be completely idle and bored without it. Otherwise, I am not interested. While an MP3 player is great for music while you are jogging or traveling, I am not going to watch an iPod while working out. And if I shoot a corporate video, I really doubt that my client will ever see it on an iPod or display it at a trade show on a typical computer monitor, for that matter. But you have made me think about aspects that I have not really considered before. And that is a good thing. Thanks.

Chris, I am one of the dinosaurs and I think input from someone who has never seen a Beta tape is vital information. And no doubt your generation will be still be buying and creating products long after I am gone. From my point of view, I don't want to watch movies on my computer unless my computer is hooked up to a home entertainment system. My edit computer has a 24" 1920 x 1200 monitor and I don't want to watch movies on it either. I want to sit back in the recliner with a drink in one hand and popcorn in the other and I want to be able to relax and get lost in watching something entertaining in a big picture format and I want to listen to a theater surround sound system. I can see very little need to have movies on an iPod unless I am going to be traveling somewhere and have hours to kill, where I would be completely idle and bored without it. Otherwise, I am not interested. While an MP3 player is great for music while you are jogging or traveling, I am not going to watch an iPod while working out. And if I shoot a corporate video, I really doubt that my client will ever see it on an iPod or display it at a trade show on a typical computer monitor, for that matter. But you have made me think about aspects that I have not really considered before. And that is a good thing. Thanks.

No problem. But it truly is something you should consider since I saw the change myself. About 4 years ago group projects were done in front of a TV (you know how that goes). Now, someone pulls out a laptop and is sharing Youtube videos or they just put the dvd in there. Actually watching a big TV screen is an event these days which involves popcorn and a pretty decent group of people :P.

Now, when I edit music, I always play it in uncompressed on a set up monitor system, even though I know it's going to be heard in MP3. I think the same goes with video: you shouldn't change your editing practices, get it perfect for the big screen, but just realize that my age (senior in high school) group, which is a pretty big group for this, is just watching it where it's convenient, so portability means more than quality sometimes (look at MP3 vs something like FLAC and you see the difference).

Also, I don't think it's a trend, I see it as a new habit. Even teachers are showing youtube videos... sometimes fun, sometimes educational, but it's all of the computer. So I think that video people, although getting the best highest quality product possible (that means, BRD for some applications), need to begin to tailor somewhat to the internet. I'm not endorsing the habit (I only watch youtube videos while with people... though I have friends who watch 70+ videos a day *I calculated it*), but it's pretty institutionalized now.

Even with all of this, the big screen still has its spot.

Oh yeah, and thanks for the thanks. I was hoping I wasn't just slack here :P. I really only know music gear (I come from gearslutz if you know that website), so I gave some advice in audio, but I'm glad to know I could give some information somewhere else. I'm having fun in this addition to my repertoire.

Could someone who has the Western Digital box let me know if you can set it to repeat a movie, like for continual playback?

Thanks!

Great thread.

I personally own a Sony BDP-s350, I waited till it came down to under £150 before I got it (and I got 5 blurays with it)

I agree that the 'generation' gap is a huge factor.

I make wedding DVDs, I shoot in HDV, and have only in the past few weeks looked into HD delivery (whether its Bluray, usb drives etc...) and I am still undecided as to what is the best option.

I dont have a Bluray burner yet, but will no doubt get one in the very near future.

I have only just ver recently (this morning) figured out how to bluray onto a standard DVD-R - using encore cs3 and nero to burn a udf, had to search ages online and a few trial n errors, but I got there, and the qulity is stunning.

Of course, you can only get about 20 mins of bluray on a single DVD-r (when i press the display button on my BR player, it says the disc is 'DVD-R AVCHD), but after seeing the quality compared to upscaled DVD, i'm 99% convinnced about getting a bluray burner, and offering that as an option to my couples (clients)

The other (or additional) option is creating a HD data file.

I dont have a WD media drive (although it does sound good) but I have an xbox360.

I experimented with a few of the settings in adobe media encoder, made some samples in HD wmv format, the quality was very good, way better than upscaled DVD, but it was not as good as the Bluray DVD-r (regualar 4.3gig DVD-r) that I made.

The main problem i found with the wmv files was the dreaded 'motion judder', while tweaking certain settings made the judder better, it never eliminated it. I tried, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, interlace, deinterlaced, a whole load of tweakable options within Adobe Media Encoder, but I could not eliminate the judder in panning shots for example.

Getting back to the future of bluray, i think that an aspect that has been perhaps overlooked is the 'collector'

I am a movie fan, I have over 500 DVDs, and about 30 blurays (so far)

I like 'owning' a physical disc. I too have an ipod, use it more for watching tv/films rather than music, but only when I;m travelling, on the train etc...

I would rarely watch a whole movie on my computer screen when I can watch on a big plasma in the livingroom at equal or greater qaulity.

Perhaps the 'collector' aspect is also a generational thing (i'm 26)

I have no problem about not owning 'physical' music, I'll happliy buy an mp3 from itunes, have on my comp and on my ipod.

But I do like owning a physical version of my movies, was DVD, now its bluray.

So (selfishly) I kinda hope bluray does replace DVD, but I also want to be able to deliver to my clients in any way they want (bluray, DVD, data file on USB, HDD, Internet FTP etc...)

Any thoughts n the 'collector' aspect, and waht about motion judder when creating HD wmv files for playback on an xbox360 (I'm assuming it would be the same on the WD HDD player?)

Keep the duscussion goin!

James

This has been an incredibly informative thread!

I thought I'd comment on the question from Mark re: the repeat options on the WD player. I was curious about this myself, and while I don't own one personally I tracked down the user manual on the wd website.

The answer is yes, you can set repeat functions for video. 3 functions to be exact:

1) Normal – The video file will only be repeated once. When playback is
completed, the previous browser screen is displayed.
2) Repeat One – The current video is played repeatedly until you press
STOP or BACK.
3) Repeat All – All the files in the current video folder/playlist is played in
sequence, and repeatedly, until you press STOP or BACK.

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/wdtv/ENG/UserManual.pdf - page 30 is where I found this info.

Thanks everyone for your comments in this thread - it has been very helpful!

Sincerely,
Dave