Blu-ray is pretty much a waste of time...

by Nick Doerr { Dec 6th 2006 at 3:00PM }

No, this isn't going to be a post about some definitive news about the downfall of Blu-ray. Since news has been kind of slow the past seven days (believe it or not), we're going to give everyone what we like to call a "discussion opportunity". Personally, Blu-ray isn't meant for movies. Hear me out.

I was checking out my external hard drive's contents earlier and noticed that the entire series of Arrested Development is about 10GB -- one season is actually in "HD". Now, maybe watching a single movie on a 50GB capacity Blu-ray disc is fine by you, but I don't think that's where the money will be. If Blu-ray starts utilizing that space to put entire series' onto a single disc and marking up the price a measly $10 (so you'd get all of Arrested Development for about $35), there are many people out there who'd start picking up their favorite shows.

Another example: Justice League and Justice League Unlimited -- a total of 91 episodes -- are taking up a total of 13GB on my hard drive. Scale them to 1080p, pack in some neato extra features... price it at $50. You'd be stupid not to buy it! Heck, while we're in the animated show realm, if you purchase box sets of anime, you know sometimes they'll charge criminally exorbitant prices for those DVDs. Plop them all on a single Blu-ray and... perhaps you won't have to buy the perfect collection of Evangelion for $129.99.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the prices would be the same, if not higher. But, but... think of the shelf space you'd save! I really do think that Blu-ray would have a really nice market if they did something like this. I'd go out and buy more shows if I could have them all crammed onto a single disc for a fraction of the cost of one season of the DVD's. Now, it's your opportunity to discuss this theory.

Tags: Blu-ray, Playstation 3, Playstation3, PS3, Sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ben @ Dec 6th 2006 3:06PM

I agree, I think that it was WAY too early for the DVD to be replaced. At this point of time, DVD is all we need. I think Blu-Ray may fail just because it is ahead of it's time.

Snpo @ Dec 6th 2006 3:18PM

i don't think your hdtv rips of arrested development count as "hd", bluray for tvshows would be a good idea, but you have to realize that dvd resolution is 480p so lets say they sold us LOST in 1080p on bluray disks even with the 50g dual layered, i don't think the whole season would fit on a disc, because the real reason for having bluray is to have the high possible quality. (except for those mpeg2 encoded dvds!)

also i just bought evangelion collection for like $45. not $129 ;)

Calel @ Dec 6th 2006 3:25PM

I concur, everyone agrees that the wow factor for the DVD to HD jump isnt all that impressive (compared to the VHS to DVD jump) so why push for the new large/uncompressed codecs? I'm saying this and I own a 1080p TV. The truth is I love divx and xvid movies, I love being able to fit entire seasons on a hard drive and stream them to my TV. They look fine for most applications (some pixelation in fast action scenes. If I could have DVD quality encoding and hours upon hours of video all on a BD disc, I'd jump at that. I think most people would.

Snpo @ Dec 6th 2006 3:41PM

if sony allowed the ps3 to play divx, then you could technically burn a bluray disk full of those divx/xvid movies and play them off the drive, that is if sony ps3 let you use ac3 audio (most divx/xvid movies use it) and built in decoder for divx/xvid ( $40 dvd players at walmart have it!) then you would be set. i for one re encoded a bunch of stuff using H.264/AVC with AAC audio and they look and sound great, and don't take up too much hard drive space.

SuicideNinja @ Dec 6th 2006 4:17PM

Interesting.

The only good purpose I can see for Blu-ray is data backup. Backuping up an entire hard drive on one disc would be fantastic.

SuicideNinja @ Dec 6th 2006 7:05PM

"backuping"? I must be really tired today...

Channeler @ Dec 6th 2006 4:45PM

I would be highly surprised if the PS3 didn't play AC3 since that is what most DVDs are encode in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac3

hawkeye @ Dec 7th 2006 9:15AM

Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are shooting themselves in the foot by not making burners available and affordable. I'd gladly (ok, reluctantly) pay for the burnable discs to archive data if I didn't have to sell a kidney to buy a drive.

Movies, I'm only kind of excited about. 50GB+ of portable, cheap, easy to use storage? I get giddy thinking of that.

JK @ Dec 6th 2006 11:24PM

Just wanted to point out that your season of Arrested Development came from an HD (probably 720p) source, but it was likely to be downsampled to a lower resolution (I know my "HD" shows are def. not 720p, check the properties to find the actual resolution). Now add in the fact that it was encoded in DivX or XviD, which reduced sizes dramatically. They are lossy encoding schemes, they don't retain all the original data. Assuming the downloaded HD shows are only 480p widescreen when you d/l them, a true downloade 1080p divx episode would be almost 3x the size. My eps of Heroes and such are 350mb as it is, 1080p would make those about 1gb. If you encoded at a higher quality to preserve the original quality as much as possible, each ep could be 1.5-2gb. 24 eps would be 48gb right there. Add in extras, additional languages and subtitles and more goodies.

New formats just make it easier to throw more stuff on less discs. Think back to CDs and ask yourself why you are less ok now with throwing things on 8 CDs rather 1 DVD?

Tin @ Dec 6th 2006 6:58PM

uhh.. 30mbit/s video requires around 13GB an hour. 20mbit/s video requires around 8.5GB an hour. These bitrates are common on blu-ray discs. I say blu-ray is definitely not a waste of time.

4ham @ Dec 7th 2006 12:58AM

Stuffing entire seasons onto a single disc? Yes please. I love my collection of tv shows, anime and whatnot, but find myself ripping or d/l them so as watch them all at once without changing discs.

Snpo @ Dec 7th 2006 12:24AM

"I would be highly surprised if the PS3 didn't play AC3 since that is what most DVDs are encode in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac3

Posted at 4:45PM on Dec 6th 2006 by Channeler "

the ps3 does not play videos with AC3 audio track, unless they are an actual dvd or bluray, none of my encodes with ac3 audio work, nor a lot of other peoples.

Pseudonym @ Dec 7th 2006 12:01PM

Which is all why Linux on the PS3 is a wonderful thing. Get your VLC on it, and it will play the darn thing like a movie-wielding maniac. Agreed, no manufacturer with a mind of his own would release stuff that requires Linux on the PS3 to be run, but once the burners drop in price, you can always make them yourselves.

MIchael @ Dec 7th 2006 12:26PM

With storage capacity increasin exponentially dont you think its just a matter of time b4 we have terrebytes and no need for discs? Solid State!

pixelator @ Dec 7th 2006 2:27PM

HDTV is, like it or not, the new standard (albeit running behind schedule). It's being adopted at a rather high rate by consumers and providers, alike. HD content is, whether you see a significant difference or not, the new big thing in broadcast content. The HD hype machine is in full swing.

With more people getting HD sets, HD cable/satellite and watching their favorite shows in HD, it's pretty shortsighted to proclaim that 'DVD is all we need' (I remember the Laserdisc contingent saying basically the same thing in 1997). As an HDTV owner, if I watch Battletar Galactica on Universal HD (albeit only Season 2 right now), I'm going to want that same experience if I plunk down cash on the box set, not upconverted 480p. That may be fine for some shows and films, but after watching the Blu-Ray 'Click' on my Panasonic, I can vouch for a big difference between that and even 1080i upconverted DVD.

Will Blu-Ray or HD-DVD suddenly wipe out DVD? No, it's going to take time for the HDTV market attain a sufficient size to make the format take off - and I don't see that happening for another 2+ years. But are HD optic media formats a 'waste of time' or 'doomed to failure'..? Not unless the HDTV and HD broadcast/cable markets somehow go away, and that doesn't seem likely.

Like I told the Laserdisc holdouts 10 years ago (who were all saying that DVD was a 'doomed format' since HDTV was 'just around the corner'), people will want what they see as the 'best' format and they'll adopt it, sooner or later. This time around, it's not even really like the jump from VHS (or LD) to DVD was. Blu-Ray is simply high cap/res/def DVD and the players have full backward compatibility. Unlike 1997, people aren't going to have to dump their old collection to adopt the improvements of the new standard. That's another reason you won't see a HUGE swing over to Blu-Ray immediately like you did with early DVD, since people will be able to keep their existing collections and get only the new films, shows and special editions in the HD format.

Just like how I think the PS3 will go, this will be a slow adoption that'll take some time. But like the PS3, my suspicion is that it will wind up on top in the end.

Thameth @ Dec 9th 2006 1:11AM

No offence, but you guys are highly uneducated about HDTV and the HUGE file sizes even compressed HDTV requires. The "HD" stuff downloaded off torrents and such are nowhere near true HD resolution or quality. One of those 350mb Heroes Episodes you get online is the equivelent of a 92kbps MP3 compared to a full quality uncompressed WAV file.

Real HD images will easily fill a 50GB BluRay Disk. Thats why all HD you basically see no mater if its OTA, Cable, BluRay, HD DVD, or Sat is compressed. Which means its nowhere near its full potential.

I work at a Television network and have seen full uncompressed 1080i HDTV coming directly off studio camera's onto profession Studio Monitors, it blows away anything you'll see at your local Best Buy or Sound Advice even on their most expensive plasma's, LCD's, or DLP's. Mainly because the signal being fed into those are all majorly compressed.

So this entire post is basically bunk and really shows that the editor here at PS3Fanboy doesn't have a clue about HDTV.

Thameth @ Dec 11th 2006 9:29AM

I apologize for the typos up above, I forgot to proof read before sending....

vox @ Dec 10th 2006 1:01AM

The very fact that you would be able to get more content for less money is exactly why Blue Ray will fail.

Use your brain. Why would any smart company who is managing to sell anime dvds separately for insane prices, release the entire lot on a single blu ray at a reasonable price??

Sure it's what I want, but it's never going to happen in a million years. Why? Greed.

Spence @ Dec 12th 2006 4:31PM

Dudes, I like where your head's at, but I think it's unrealistic to expect studios to put out an entire series of a TV show for $35 or $50, when they can (and are) getting double that. Even if it's true that all these shows could sit on a BD disc, studios also like labels like "FIVE DISC SET" and whatever. Most DVDs that have two discs could have all their content on one disc. Sad, but those are the marketing facts.

GL @ Dec 29th 2006 7:59AM

"17. The very fact that you would be able to get more content for less money is exactly why Blue Ray will fail."

vox, at what point do you assume that "more content for less money" wont happen with BD discs? Hmmm? It's not an all or nothing gamble here. The movie companies DO have the ability to choose what goes on each disc and how much to charge for it.