Blu-ray officially for movies 2005/2006

[Filip Kovcin]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Source: The Digital Bits / EE Times

Columbia TriStar has officially announced that it plans to support the Blu-ray Disc high-definition format with movie titles. The studio will begin launching all its new titles on Blu-ray Disc (which was co-developed by parent corp Sony) starting in 2006.

-->>>

is this concidence or what - who owns columbia pictures?

SONY -isn't it?


just curious,

filip

[Mark Ramey]

Obviously Sony would want to put their Blue Laser product out there.

Of course Toshiba and others in the DVD "consortium" are also working on a Blue Laser DVD format/player, some of the same "players" (companies) are on both sides of this equation. They are also under investigation for potentially slowing the developement of the Toshiba backed format so the Sony backed one can be out first.

Sony's crams approx. 23 Gigs onto a DVD whereas the Toshiba only puts approx 18 Gigs on the same disk. The Toshiba product is planned to be backwards compatible and play existing Red Laser DVDs as well.

Both obviously could provide HD playback.

I'd rather have to change a disk on some of the longer features and still be able to play my library of DVDs in the future.

From some of the other articles I've been reading depending on how your local TV station/cable company/DBS provider compresses their MPeg streams (for multicasting, for instance) you may not see your full HD glory on your nice big HD set over the air.

I'll try to re-find some of these articles, I've paraphrased.

MR

[Pasty Jackson]

Unfortunately, a new player is necessary for the new format. Standard DVD players can only handle around 8mbits/sec of information and High Def stuff is around 19mbits/sec. So unfortunately, the new players will be required not only because they have a different type of laser system, but because they will be able to read a much higher bandwidth of information. But yes, most of what I've read says that they will be backwards compatible with standard DVD's.
Hey, at least it's not as bad as the switch from VHS!!

[Mark Richman]

Just wait a year after Blu-Ray comes out and you can either play your DVD's in the players or you can probably transfer/copy/backup your red laser DVD's to blue laser.

I want the extra space blu-ray provides, I want to put more than an hour and a half of mpeg 2 on DVD.

the problem is Sony will want to sell it's own media type. Example Memory Stick and Miny Disc. I see a cartridge style disc media being very expensive.

my 2 cents.

Mark

[Chris Hurd]

Is it too soon for blu-rayinfo.net?

[Rob Lohman]

No, that's not too soon. BUT, blu-ray isn't only for video work
so to speak...

[Mike Tesh]

I wrote and article about this a couple years ago. You can read it here:
http://www.visionengine.com/board/vi...pg=valueofdvds

I'm going to reference what I said in the article because I feel exactly the same today.

When DVD's were first released they had several big selling points to them.

1. DVD's were digital (no loss in quality after so many watchings)
2. Twice the resolution of a VHS tape.
3. Better then CD quality sound. (people could relate to CD quality sound versus tapes as they already had CD's)
4. No need to rewind (Be kind rewind :p )
5. Bonus features up the wazoo
6. Nice packaging (4 color picture printing on disks versus text label on tape)
7. Able to play in computers, car decks, laptops, ect.
8. Chapter markings
9. Audio Commentaries
10. Subtitles
11. Multiple languages
12. Players could play audio CD's

Plus as time went on DVD's became cheaper to produce then VHS tapes and easier to navigate through. So you have seen more episodic material released on it, such as many television shows that would have never been released on VHS.

People could clearly see the benefit because there were a lot of them. Surprisingly there are still many people who don't even have DVD's players yet. Like my girlfriend. She's still satisfied with VHS. Even though I make films and hang around her all the time and have educated her on many aspects of it all. To her it's about the programing and not the quality. To most of my buddies DVD is about ease of use and not necessarily quality. I've noticed they are just as happy with a VCD as a DVD.

Of course this should be very apparrent with the MP3 craze. It's all become about portablity and ease of use and less about quality.

Plus most people don't even own HDTV's yet to take advantage of these blu-ray discs. HDTV probably won't saturate the public more for another 3-5 years. Even then it wil need more programming to sell better.

I have a feeling that Blu-ray will be what laser disc's were in the era of VHS. Expensive with a limited selection. I just don't think most people care enough.

[Ryan Koo]

Well, considering Columbia is owned by Sony, who is part of the blu-ray consortium, it's not really suprising they've announced this; they're trying to do away with the other H-DVD standard because they know the major Hollywood studios won't back two standards.