Blu Ray wins... but who cares?

[Looker]

I never heard of Blue Ray till I saw it tonight on the news..........
Me very low tech

[buttafly]

ya, me too...... Stogie says I am  Luddite .....  that weirdo  Elton John declared this recently also, who knows if it's good or bad

   one of my family members was telling me recently to buy an I-phone....... she says I can "surf the web even when you aren't home".....  oh ya?   and why, exactly, would I want to do this??   as I say, I want to get on and off this foolish thing as quickly as possible, and certainly not "surf the web" {?} on something with a 3-inch screen.

not to mention putting 400 bucks more stock money into the hands of that greasy little bald guy and all his alternative followers

'But you can also save 5000 songs'


cool, my  Creative Zen can hold 15,000 songs.... I have about 2000 in there and can't even find any more I like


 "but you can also make fone calls"

  My Virgin pay-as-you-go fone cost me  40 bucks and 20 whenever I top it off; works like a charm and is 1/2 the size too

 "But, But ....."

 No......apple and all their shit sucks, and I have everything I need right now including 4 TV's, 3  DVD's  4  computers and 2 stereo's; end of story.

[Looker]

Funnily enough I work in the technology sector, although not extreme hi-tech and not much to do with electronic. So I'm not opposed to progress and machinery but I don't need more than what I have..which is basically nothing
I will never have an I-Pod or anything fancy. I just don't need it.
Wish could be better in using computer instead of having to beg for help around at times..well..next life maybe
I still use my Olympus OM-1 I got in 1979 and do not own a digital camera. Call me Jurassian..maybe!

[allstar88]

i thought blu ray was a porn star?

[stogie bear]

I'm becoming less and less reliant on my mobile phone these days. It's got all the gizmos, etc, but it's become a curse. I almost never take it with me when I'm out. If it's important they'll sms...

[buttafly]

(stogie bear @ Feb. 21 2008,01:10) it's become a curse. I almost never take it with me when I'm out.

so true, ask MM how often I have my cell phone even turned on when I am in Thailand; maybe 10% of the time?

 If it's important they can come find me... SMS is just as bad as  calls on a cell fone IMO, damn I am so tired of seeing people looking at their fucking fones in disco's and on the train or at a movie theatre, etc... fuck, have fun what you're doing and forget whoever wants to get ahold of you, if they were important they'd be with you already.

[SamplerDoc]

I wonder if the Blu Rays will work on the Current DVD Players  

[Snick]

David Pogue, they techy guy at New York Times just wrote an article on this subject. And echoes my views, direct download is still years away for most of us (plus most systems have insane usage restrictions)
----

The Good, Bad and Ugly of Movie Downloading
By DAVID POGUE

Ten days ago, Netflix announced that it would abandon HD DVD, Toshiba€™s entry in the high-definition DVD format war. Six days ago, Wal-Mart dropped HD DVD, too. Then two days ago, Toshiba surrendered, marking the end of the most pointless format war since Betamax-VHS.

Man, if they have Friday beer bashes over at Toshiba, this week€™s will be a real downer.

Why did so many companies dump HD DVD so fast? Intriguingly, one often-cited reason is the approaching era of Internet movie downloads. The logic goes like this: as long as there€™s a format war, consumers won€™t buy DVD players of either type. By settling on a single format €” it doesn€™t really matter which one €” the movie and electronics industries can at least start milking the remaining years of the DVD€™s life.

In fact, though, the Internet movie download era is more distant than pundits think, for four colossal reasons.

First, downloadable movies require high-speed Internet connections €” and only about half of American households have them. That number won€™t change much for years.

Second, downloaded movies don€™t include the director€™s commentaries, deleted scenes, alternate endings, alternate language soundtracks or other DVD goodies. It€™s just not as rich an experience.

Third, movie downloads don€™t deliver the audio and video quality of DVD discs €” even standard-def ones. Internet movies are compressed to download faster, which affects picture quality, and offer older, more compressed audio soundtracks than modern DVDs. (Check out the astounding quality-comparison photos at http://tinyurl.com/3e488m for details.)

Finally, today€™s movie-download services bear the greasy policy fingerprints of the movie studio executives €” and when it comes to the new age of digital movies, these people are not, ahem, known for their vision.

For example, no matter which movie-download service you choose, you€™ll find yourself facing the same confusing, ridiculous time limits for viewing. You have to start watching the movie you€™ve rented within 30 days, and once you start, you have to finish it within 24 hours.

Where€™s the logic? They€™ve got your money, so why should they care if you start watching on the 30th day or the 31st?

Then there is the 24-hour limit. Suppose you typically do not start a movie until 7:30 p.m., after dinner and the homework have been put away. If you do not have time to finish the movie in one sitting, you cannot resume at 7:30 tomorrow night; at that point, the download will have self-destructed.

What would the studios lose by offering a 27-hour rental period? Or three days, or even a week? Nothing. In fact, they€™d attract millions more customers. (At the very least, instead of just deleting itself, the movie should say: €œWould you like another 24-hour period for an additional $1?€)

Then there€™s the fact that to protect their cash cows, most studios don€™t release their movies on the Internet until a month after they€™ve been available on DVD.

Despite these limitations, plenty of companies are staking out property on the digital-download frontier. Some deliver movies to your computer screen, which will never appeal to anybody but nerds; virtually nobody gathers the family €™round the old Dell on movie night.

Several boxes, however, deliver movies straight to your TV, usually for $3 to $5 each. Here are their report cards.

Apple TV ($230). Thanks to a free software upgrade, Apple€™s sleek little box has taken on a whole new life. It now connects directly to the iTunes store €” no computer needed. Movies are stored on the Apple TV€™s internal hard drive.

Standard-def movies begin to play only a few seconds after you€™ve selected them; you watch the beginning while the rest is downloading. High-def movies take several minutes to begin playing.

In a couple of years, Apple TV may be the box to beat. The movie store is fun to navigate, picture quality is high and wireless networking is built-in, unlike its rivals. You can buy episodes from any of 650 TV series on demand (usually $2 an episode, no ads), which its competitors can€™t touch. Finally, of course, the Apple TV does a lot of other stuff; it can display all the music, pictures and movies from your Mac or PC and play podcasts and videos from the Web.

But the Apple TV movie store€™s shelves look a little bare. Fewer than 1,000 movies are available, and only 100 are in high definition; compare with the 90,000 titles offered by Netflix on DVD, 900 in high-def. (Apple points out that its store€™s music catalog started out tiny, too €” 200,000 songs, compared with 6 million today.) There are some silly bugs in the debut software, too.

Instant gratification: A-. Selection: D. Overall movie joy: B.

TiVo/Amazon Unbox ($100 and up, plus monthly fee). Here€™s another box whose original purpose was something other than movie downloads. But among its blossoming portfolio of video features, TiVo lets you rent or buy movies downloaded from Amazon.com€™s Unbox service.

At least you no longer have to order these movies at Amazon.com, using your Mac or PC (although you can, if you prefer to type movie titles with a real keyboard instead of fussing with on-screen alphabets). You can do the whole transaction right from the couch.

Show time is not instantaneous, either; on high-def TiVos, you can€™t start watching until 10 minutes after you order, and on older models, you have to wait for the whole movie to download (1 to 5 hours). Selection is still slim: 3,200 movies are available to rent; 4,700 available to buy. None are in high definition.

Instant gratification: B-. Selection: C. Overall movie joy: B-.

Xbox 360 ($350 and up). Yet again, here€™s a box whose movie service isn€™t the primary attraction (here, it€™s games). In this case, though, the movie thing isn€™t just secondary €” it€™s way, way down the list.

You have to watch movies within 14 days, not 30. The remote control isn€™t designed for video playback. You pay using a confusing system of Microsoft €œpoints,€ which you must buy in $5 increments. And although there are plenty of TV shows available, only 300 movies are in the catalog at any given time, about half in high definition.

Instant gratification: A-. Selection: D. Overall movie joy: D.

Vudu ($300). This compact black box comes loaded with the beginnings of 5,000 movies. When you rent or buy one, therefore, playback begins instantly. About 20 new movies arrive on the box each week, pushing older ones off the 250-gigabyte hard drive.

Vudu is the only dedicated movie box . The interface is pure and clean, picture quality is tops and the remote has only four buttons (plus a terrific scroll wheel).

On the downside, many of those 5,000 movies are pure direct-to-video dreck (anyone for €œSan Franpsycho€ tonight?). Confusingly, movies on the list come and go according to Vudu€™s deals with the studios. And you need a pretty fast connection; basic DSL subscribers need not apply.

Instant gratification: A. Selection: B+. Overall movie joy: B+.

When competing with the humble DVD, Internet movie boxes do poorly on price, selection and viewing flexibility (that is, how much time you have to watch). Their sole DVD-smashing feature is the convenience; you get the movie right now.

Meanwhile, other sources of instant movie gratification are emerging. Comcast, the nation€™s largest cable TV company, offers 1,000 on-demand movies each month, many of them free; by year€™s end, it intends to increase that number to 6,000 (half in high-def) €” and you don€™t have to buy a special box.

The point is that the whole Internet-movies thing is still in its fumbling, bumbling infancy; someday, we€™ll look at these limited-selection, limited-time services and laugh.

In the meantime, congratulations to Blu-ray, the winning next-generation DVD format. Clearly, spinning silver discs will remain the dominant movie-delivery method for years to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008....d=print

[stogie bear]

Interesting article and he has a couple of points, but he's way off the mark on most things.

[Grinder]

Yep Apple Tv - got one of those babies too. Great for playing my tunes throughout the house thanks to the wireless connection plus brilliant for hi-def movie trailers that change regularly at i-store. Quality.

[buttafly]

(Snick @ Feb. 21 2008,12:01) The point is that the whole Internet-movies thing is still in its fumbling, bumbling infancy; someday, we€™ll look at these limited-selection, limited-time services and laugh.

the key point

   don't you all remember when we HAD to choose between Betamax and VHS??

     and damn, if you didn't get the Betamax  you were just missing the boat!!  how could you watch  VHS when such a better technology was just sitting there on the shelves waiting to be rented {and of course, please buy the more expensive Betamax  machine to play them}.


both; dead formats within 10 years


   Think, as usual, I will sit this blu-ray crap out.... my DVD player[s] are fine, as is my 35-inch TUBE  TV..... I watched football on that the past 4 years and there's nothing wrong with it, damned if I am going out to lay down 2 grand on a flat-screen Hi-Def piece of shit for nothing  when we all know newer and better technology is just around the corner.

   dig up this thread in 2010 and have a good laugh when Blu-ray and all this other shit is in the dust bin

[Monkey]

Second, downloaded movies don€™t include the director€™s commentaries, deleted scenes, alternate endings, alternate language soundtracks or other DVD goodies. It€™s just not as rich an experience.

I hate all that crap on DVDs and the 'extra bonus disc', I can't see me ever watching any of it. I just want to see the movie.

I don't care which format wins/loses on anything, I never buy any technology until it's dirt cheap. I didn't even get a DVD player until they were cheaper than a few packs of cigarettes...

[stogie bear]

Welcome back, mate!

[Tomcat]

The Economist Intelligence unit published a report last week.  Hollywood will drag its heels but one development is on trial now in the form of a special flash card dongle that downloads in 17 seconds.

You take the dongle into a local booth and just plug the fucker in and download the movie you want. Trial TV sets have been made that accept the dongle and its being used now in Ireland i think....

So you will need another box to take the patented dongle.  This will roll out in around one year if the trial works...

PS
I think there is a picture in this weeks Economist

TC

[stogie bear]

Now THAT is a smart idea. Go to any 7/11 or corner shop, buy the access code and plug it in your TV...
Who needs a fookin' bit of plastic.