Whatever your views on the take-up of blu-ray, surely we can all agree that having a stable, portable, recordable, storage medium limited to 8gig for the foreseeable future is ridiculous?
Whatever your views on the take-up of blu-ray, surely we can all agree that having a stable, portable, recordable, storage medium limited to 8gig for the foreseeable future is ridiculous?
I can sympathize with this lament. But at the same time, I don't find the use of DVDs to be ridiculous.
USB powered 2.5" drives and flash based USB drives have completely changed the our appetite for writable optical media. People generally aren't writing and archiving books of dozens or hundreds of optical discs anymore. Some still do, but their numbers are rapidly on the decline.
This combined with the fact that almost all software can be distributed on a single DVD, means that there really isn't that high of demand for blu-ray drives in computers, except for watching movies.
I can sympathize with this lament. But at the same time, I don't find the use of DVDs to be ridiculous.
USB powered 2.5" drives and flash based USB drives have completely changed the our appetite for writable optical media. People generally aren't writing and archiving books of dozens or hundreds of optical discs anymore. Some still do, but their numbers are rapidly on the decline.
Their numbers are on the decline because backing up GB/TB's of data on a DVD is absurd at 8gig a disc.
It's still the safest way to back up and I hope they hurry up and get higher capacity RW discs asap! I have a 1TB drive that's packed up with all my music on it and it's proving a nightmare to retrieve it all. I manage to back up a bit to disc before I got bored and I usually back up films, but now that HD films are often over 8GB it's not possible anymore.
Portable storage just isn't keeping up with memory needs at the moment. And a 2.5" hard drive isn't very practical to distribute your HD home movies to the family.
Their numbers are on the decline because backing up GB/TB's of data on a DVD is absurd at 8gig a disc.
It's still the safest way to back up and I hope they hurry up and get higher capacity RW discs asap! I have a 1TB drive that's packed up with all my music on it and it's proving a nightmare to retrieve it all. I manage to back up a bit to disc before I got bored and I usually back up films, but now that HD films are often over 8GB it's not possible anymore.
Portable storage just isn't keeping up with memory needs at the moment. And a 2.5" hard drive isn't very practical to distribute your HD home movies to the family.
I agree to an extent. But there are reasons for the decline of DVD-R other than just limited capacity.
Rewriteable optical media has never been terribly popular. As a result, almost all of the optical disks ever written are of the WORM variety, write once read many. Because of this, most users consider optical media to be less convenient. They were willing to use it when there wasn't a viable alternative. Now that thumb drives and external usb drives are dirt cheap, users have switched to those options for many scenarios that used to be served by DVD+/-R.
While storage requirements are ever growing, it is quite clear that portable media has reached the point where no more storage is needed for a large percentage of computing tasks. Pretty much all types of data and files can easily be stored in bulk on a single thumb drive... with of course the exception, as you pointed out, of video and to some extent, music.
Which begs the question, is video storage in and of itself enough to make the computing industry switch to a new removable media format? My guess is yes, eventually, and it already has to some degree. What hasn't happened is manufacturers bundling the hardware by default. It can still be purchased and/or installed by that small percentage of users that desire the functionality.
Also, you say it is a "nightmare" to retrieve music from a 1TB hard disk. Could you explain that? If anything, hard drive based storage is the most convenient option available.
As for distributing HD home movies to the rest of the family? Sorry, I couldn't resist chuckling. What percentage of users do you suppose would make use of that functionality if it were available today? My guess would be somewhere between 0.01% and 0.001%.
The only true demand I see for writable blu-rays is for the purpose of video archiving. At this time it doesn't seem that this comprises a terribly large or profitable market. Hence, it makes perfect sense for most computers to be shipping with DVD rather than blu-ray drives.
I had been backing up my data on DVDs for both home and off-site storage and found it to be a pain. Right now the price on portable HDs has fallen to a point where I cloned my HD to a portable 500GB HD. I use two 500 portables, one for off-site one for home storage and switch them out every month.
Having said the above, I would welcome a 25 or 50GB BD option for just the data as a redundancy safeguard to the portable HD.
On a side note I can't remember when I last burned a DVD.
Also, you say it is a "nightmare" to retrieve music from a 1TB hard disk. Could you explain that? If anything, hard drive based storage is the most convenient option available.
Well the drive is broken and Disc Warrior's not helping, so as far as I can see I need to take it somewhere to get them to transfer the data I've not got backed up on DVD-R if that's possible.
Quote:
As for distributing HD home movies to the rest of the family? Sorry, I couldn't resist chuckling. What percentage of users do you suppose would make use of that functionality if it were available today? My guess would be somewhere between 0.01% and 0.001%.
Yeah crazy! They might as well scrap iMovieHD and Final CutHD as well seeing as how no one ever uses them.......
The whole reason I bought into Apple all those years ago was because of its stable desktop editing and then later DVD authoring apps. I now find them almost redundant as any longer HD video is just stuck on the drive unless it's down-converted.
This isn't a new situation by the way. When I first started editing digital video back in 1996 DVD burners were practically non-existent and the situation was almost identical. In fact I have posts in threads almost identical to this one with people arguing that DVD burners are unnecessary now that Zip-drives are available, and nobody requires data-storage more than is capable on a CD-R!
Blu-ray burners are coming, but god knows when. Probably when the price falls and the writing speed increases. Of course they're already here if you want them, just not built into Apple's.
The only true demand I see for writable blu-rays is for the purpose of video archiving.
Peoples memory needs increase a little every day, and a lot every year. Remember that new computer you bought six years ago with a 60gig drive? Now it's 1TB, next year 2TB, then 4, 8, 16, etc.
Recordable media's always the last thing to catch up as the development cycle is slower than that of hard-drives. I'd expect to see 500GB discs before too long to meet this need.
My point in the last few posts was to temper your assertion that "surely we can all agree that having a stable, portable, recordable, storage medium limited to 8gig for the foreseeable future is ridiculous".
While the long-in-the-tooth nature of DVDs is certainly lamentable, their widespread use over the alternative of blu-ray, is anything but ridiculous. I wasn't trying to prove that higher capacity isn't desirable, nor that storage needs wouldn't increase. Rather, that it is quite logical for the majority of people to buy computers not equipped with blu-ray. It isn't ridiculous at all!
While storage demands will continue to increase, the enlightened realization is that there are absolutes in regard to capacity needed for various types of data. For instance, storing text is no longer much of a consideration when sizing hard drives or removable media. Now that hard drive are cheap and ubiquitous, the same is almost true for images. Nearly 100% of computer users can store their entire lifetime of pictures on a single external harddrive. We haven't reached that point for movies yet, but the time will come. A couple decades from now we'll likely reach that milestone for 4k video.
Which brings us back to figuring out where we currently stand in this progression. Now that external hard drives have largely taken over the personal backup market, the main draw for removable media is watching movies and distribution of software or video. Given the processor and storage demands of HD video, most people aren't producing it at home yet. This leaves software distribution and movie playback. Except that nearly all software, except for high-budget games, fits on a single DVD or even CD. Not to belittle any of these motivations. Just pointing out why most people aren't clamoring for higher-capacity removable media like they were in the era of floppies.
Also, Eric Taub of The New York Times' Gadgetwise Blog has conducted an informal "Blu-ray vs DVD View-Off" and he's just posted a column based on his findings. Here's a couple of interesting comments:
"The difference in picture quality between Blu-ray and standard-definition DVD was very obvious. But the difference is accentuated when you get the chance to flip back and forth between the two."
"The cost difference between the two [DVD and Blu-ray] is barely more than $100, and once that declines even further, there will be little reason for the average consumer not to choose Blu-ray when looking for a DVD machine."
Well said, Eric.
It makes me wonder if there will be any DVD only machines in a few years.
By 2013, Blu-ray players will be found in only 16.3 percent of PCs shipped, up from 3.6 percent this year, iSuppli said, meaning DVD players will continue to be the primary optical drive in PC systems through at least the year 2013, according to Michael Yang, senior analyst for storage and mobile memory at iSuppli.
That's 2013, people.
That's past the "Blu-Ray will be good for the next five years" timeline we kept hearing about.
The chances that Apple is going to ship a Mac with Blu-Ray just went from slim...
Remember in the early part of this decade when Jobs admitted they had missed the boat with CD burners in their G4 towers? I was one of the ones that had to buy an outboard burner!
They'll ship with a Mac eventually ( after everyone else has one at this rate ).
They'll ship with a Mac eventually ( after everyone else has one at this rate ).
Hasn't every other PC manufacturer offered Blu-Ray for about two years now? I guess we're just supposed to be happy with the 63 movies Apple has available for purchase as low-bitrate 720p files on iTunes.
If I want to watch Blu-Ray I'll do it on the TV where from a distance the resolution is completely noticeable. My MBP screen is 1440x900. I can't enjoy full HD (aka the whole point of Blu-Ray) on my display anyway.
Like I've already said a Mac with BluRay will ship eventually.
Quote:
People familiar with Apple's thinking have suggested in recent months one of these moves could see the company finally embrace Blu-ray -- a technology once derided by Chief Executive Steve Jobs as a "bag of hurt" from a licensing perspective.
I doubt apple will add bluray drives, unless bluray becomes a main stream optical storage media. It seems the SD card/usb flash is the next gen storage.
Either way, It would be nice if we are allowed to rip dvd/bluray movies and store them in the itunes library. I do have an external LG HD-DVD/bluray drive I can still use for the occasion.
For now, LG BD390 probably is most flexible bluray player out there on the market that would easly make all HTPC's obsolete and it is priced very close to ATV, around $280 from amazon.
I do need a very fast bluray drive and a fast cpu equipped mac/pc to rip and encode video files on a fly.
well the basic difference between blu ray disc and DVD is its capacity to store data. Blu Ray disc can store much more data compare to DVD almost 4 times more, But the Blu ray players are much costlier than DVD players.
well the basic difference between blu ray disc and DVD is its capacity to store data. Blu Ray disc can store much more data compare to DVD almost 4 times more, But the Blu ray players are much costlier than DVD players.
Not for long! I saw one at Walmart for $100.00! The more they buy, the more they make, the cheaper they are.
The average price out there seems to be around $200.00.
Hmmm, i've been a vocal critic of blu-ray but that guy is completely nuts. His reasoning consisted entirely of an unsubstantiated assertion that cheap electronics might not work very well so don't buy a cheap blu-ray player.
Comments
That isn't what I said. Of course more will sell at a lower price.
But primarily to consumers new to the market and those wanting replacement machines.
However, Marz referred to a pent up demand for PS3s, which I still don't believe is there.
People who couldn't afford a PS3 moved on to one of the lower priced consoles.
Nobody sits at home waiting for four years for a console price drop.
Actually, a lot of people did. Many of them I know personally. A couple of them frequent this very board.
Whatever your views on the take-up of blu-ray, surely we can all agree that having a stable, portable, recordable, storage medium limited to 8gig for the foreseeable future is ridiculous?
I can sympathize with this lament. But at the same time, I don't find the use of DVDs to be ridiculous.
USB powered 2.5" drives and flash based USB drives have completely changed the our appetite for writable optical media. People generally aren't writing and archiving books of dozens or hundreds of optical discs anymore. Some still do, but their numbers are rapidly on the decline.
This combined with the fact that almost all software can be distributed on a single DVD, means that there really isn't that high of demand for blu-ray drives in computers, except for watching movies.
I can sympathize with this lament. But at the same time, I don't find the use of DVDs to be ridiculous.
USB powered 2.5" drives and flash based USB drives have completely changed the our appetite for writable optical media. People generally aren't writing and archiving books of dozens or hundreds of optical discs anymore. Some still do, but their numbers are rapidly on the decline.
Their numbers are on the decline because backing up GB/TB's of data on a DVD is absurd at 8gig a disc.
It's still the safest way to back up and I hope they hurry up and get higher capacity RW discs asap! I have a 1TB drive that's packed up with all my music on it and it's proving a nightmare to retrieve it all. I manage to back up a bit to disc before I got bored and I usually back up films, but now that HD films are often over 8GB it's not possible anymore.
Portable storage just isn't keeping up with memory needs at the moment. And a 2.5" hard drive isn't very practical to distribute your HD home movies to the family.
Their numbers are on the decline because backing up GB/TB's of data on a DVD is absurd at 8gig a disc.
It's still the safest way to back up and I hope they hurry up and get higher capacity RW discs asap! I have a 1TB drive that's packed up with all my music on it and it's proving a nightmare to retrieve it all. I manage to back up a bit to disc before I got bored and I usually back up films, but now that HD films are often over 8GB it's not possible anymore.
Portable storage just isn't keeping up with memory needs at the moment. And a 2.5" hard drive isn't very practical to distribute your HD home movies to the family.
I agree to an extent. But there are reasons for the decline of DVD-R other than just limited capacity.
Rewriteable optical media has never been terribly popular. As a result, almost all of the optical disks ever written are of the WORM variety, write once read many. Because of this, most users consider optical media to be less convenient. They were willing to use it when there wasn't a viable alternative. Now that thumb drives and external usb drives are dirt cheap, users have switched to those options for many scenarios that used to be served by DVD+/-R.
While storage requirements are ever growing, it is quite clear that portable media has reached the point where no more storage is needed for a large percentage of computing tasks. Pretty much all types of data and files can easily be stored in bulk on a single thumb drive... with of course the exception, as you pointed out, of video and to some extent, music.
Which begs the question, is video storage in and of itself enough to make the computing industry switch to a new removable media format? My guess is yes, eventually, and it already has to some degree. What hasn't happened is manufacturers bundling the hardware by default. It can still be purchased and/or installed by that small percentage of users that desire the functionality.
Also, you say it is a "nightmare" to retrieve music from a 1TB hard disk. Could you explain that? If anything, hard drive based storage is the most convenient option available.
As for distributing HD home movies to the rest of the family?
The only true demand I see for writable blu-rays is for the purpose of video archiving. At this time it doesn't seem that this comprises a terribly large or profitable market. Hence, it makes perfect sense for most computers to be shipping with DVD rather than blu-ray drives.
Having said the above, I would welcome a 25 or 50GB BD option for just the data as a redundancy safeguard to the portable HD.
On a side note I can't remember when I last burned a DVD.
Also, you say it is a "nightmare" to retrieve music from a 1TB hard disk. Could you explain that? If anything, hard drive based storage is the most convenient option available.
Well the drive is broken and Disc Warrior's not helping, so as far as I can see I need to take it somewhere to get them to transfer the data I've not got backed up on DVD-R if that's possible.
As for distributing HD home movies to the rest of the family?
Yeah crazy! They might as well scrap iMovieHD and Final CutHD as well seeing as how no one ever uses them.......
The whole reason I bought into Apple all those years ago was because of its stable desktop editing and then later DVD authoring apps. I now find them almost redundant as any longer HD video is just stuck on the drive unless it's down-converted.
This isn't a new situation by the way. When I first started editing digital video back in 1996 DVD burners were practically non-existent and the situation was almost identical. In fact I have posts in threads almost identical to this one with people arguing that DVD burners are unnecessary now that Zip-drives are available, and nobody requires data-storage more than is capable on a CD-R!
Blu-ray burners are coming, but god knows when. Probably when the price falls and the writing speed increases. Of course they're already here if you want them, just not built into Apple's.
The only true demand I see for writable blu-rays is for the purpose of video archiving.
Peoples memory needs increase a little every day, and a lot every year. Remember that new computer you bought six years ago with a 60gig drive? Now it's 1TB, next year 2TB, then 4, 8, 16, etc.
Recordable media's always the last thing to catch up as the development cycle is slower than that of hard-drives. I'd expect to see 500GB discs before too long to meet this need.
While the long-in-the-tooth nature of DVDs is certainly lamentable, their widespread use over the alternative of blu-ray, is anything but ridiculous. I wasn't trying to prove that higher capacity isn't desirable, nor that storage needs wouldn't increase. Rather, that it is quite logical for the majority of people to buy computers not equipped with blu-ray. It isn't ridiculous at all!
While storage demands will continue to increase, the enlightened realization is that there are absolutes in regard to capacity needed for various types of data. For instance, storing text is no longer much of a consideration when sizing hard drives or removable media. Now that hard drive are cheap and ubiquitous, the same is almost true for images. Nearly 100% of computer users can store their entire lifetime of pictures on a single external harddrive. We haven't reached that point for movies yet, but the time will come. A couple decades from now we'll likely reach that milestone for 4k video.
Which brings us back to figuring out where we currently stand in this progression. Now that external hard drives have largely taken over the personal backup market, the main draw for removable media is watching movies and distribution of software or video. Given the processor and storage demands of HD video, most people aren't producing it at home yet. This leaves software distribution and movie playback. Except that nearly all software, except for high-budget games, fits on a single DVD or even CD. Not to belittle any of these motivations. Just pointing out why most people aren't clamoring for higher-capacity removable media like they were in the era of floppies.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents
Also, Eric Taub of The New York Times' Gadgetwise Blog has conducted an informal "Blu-ray vs DVD View-Off" and he's just posted a column based on his findings. Here's a couple of interesting comments:
"The difference in picture quality between Blu-ray and standard-definition DVD was very obvious. But the difference is accentuated when you get the chance to flip back and forth between the two."
"The cost difference between the two [DVD and Blu-ray] is barely more than $100, and once that declines even further, there will be little reason for the average consumer not to choose Blu-ray when looking for a DVD machine."
Well said, Eric.
It makes me wonder if there will be any DVD only machines in a few years.
Personally I doubt it.
Jobs is a genius.
By 2013, Blu-ray players will be found in only 16.3 percent of PCs shipped, up from 3.6 percent this year, iSuppli said, meaning DVD players will continue to be the primary optical drive in PC systems through at least the year 2013, according to Michael Yang, senior analyst for storage and mobile memory at iSuppli.
That's 2013, people.
That's past the "Blu-Ray will be good for the next five years" timeline we kept hearing about.
The chances that Apple is going to ship a Mac with Blu-Ray just went from slim...
Remember in the early part of this decade when Jobs admitted they had missed the boat with CD burners in their G4 towers? I was one of the ones that had to buy an outboard burner!
They'll ship with a Mac eventually ( after everyone else has one at this rate ).
They'll ship with a Mac eventually ( after everyone else has one at this rate ).
Hasn't every other PC manufacturer offered Blu-Ray for about two years now? I guess we're just supposed to be happy with the 63 movies Apple has available for purchase as low-bitrate 720p files on iTunes.
People familiar with Apple's thinking have suggested in recent months one of these moves could see the company finally embrace Blu-ray -- a technology once derided by Chief Executive Steve Jobs as a "bag of hurt" from a licensing perspective.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...imac_line.html
They've taken the iMac as far as it can go. There's not much innovation that can really do with it that makes sense.
Touchscreen- Nope
Quad Core - Yes
Blu-ray- Yes
LED Display- Yes
Smaller chin- Nope
It's becoming a pretty boring computer IMO.
Either way, It would be nice if we are allowed to rip dvd/bluray movies and store them in the itunes library. I do have an external LG HD-DVD/bluray drive I can still use for the occasion.
For now, LG BD390 probably is most flexible bluray player out there on the market that would easly make all HTPC's obsolete and it is priced very close to ATV, around $280 from amazon.
I do need a very fast bluray drive and a fast cpu equipped mac/pc to rip and encode video files on a fly.
well the basic difference between blu ray disc and DVD is its capacity to store data. Blu Ray disc can store much more data compare to DVD almost 4 times more, But the Blu ray players are much costlier than DVD players.
Not for long! I saw one at Walmart for $100.00! The more they buy, the more they make, the cheaper they are.
The average price out there seems to be around $200.00.
Not for long! I saw one at Walmart for $100.00!
Yeah, but there seems to be some contention as to whether you should buy them.
Yeah, but there seems to be some contention as to whether you should buy them.
Hmmm, i've been a vocal critic of blu-ray but that guy is completely nuts. His reasoning consisted entirely of an unsubstantiated assertion that cheap electronics might not work very well so don't buy a cheap blu-ray player.