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Sony Announces Date for Blu-Ray Roll Out
yermoungder writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Sony Pictures on Tuesday said it aims to deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to U.S. stores on May 23 to coincide with the entry of compatible disc players, a new step in an industry war for control of home movie viewing.'"
But I'm not buying either format if they can't put out a player for $300 or less. If PS3 is that "$300 Bluray player" then so be it, I'll get a PS3.
Given Sony's history with its proprietary formats (e.g. Beta and AIT) I would not invest in Blue-Ray until it is well established.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
So, what exactly is the reason for customer to upgrade to either HD-DVD or BluRay?
I only see one fundamental benefit between $NEW_DVD_FORMAT and DVD:
1) larger capacity - whether this mean more content or higher resolution.
I see many drawbacks between $NEW_DVD_FORMAT and DVD:
1) more expensive media and released product -- why is a consumer going to pay more for a BluRay movie than a DVD? I bet the movie studios will say "because that will be their only choice"... As to resolution, how many people are willing to pay more *PER MOVIE* for better than current DVD resolution. There has been such a long and successful marketing campaign for DVDs that convinced people that DVD resolution is *GREAT!*. Now someone's going to have to convince people that DVDs suck. Yeah, right...
2) DRM - nobody wants to *PAY EXTRA* for less control. If you want BluRay to succeed, give the players away for $25 - (meaning cheaper than a standalone DVD-ROM drive current cost).
3) format war uncertainties. Nobody wants to make the wrong choice and be stuck with worthless electronics junk.
4) lack of a problem - from a consumer standpoint, what exactly is wrong with DVDs? Seems like everyone loves them. What problem does BluRay solve? Oh, my freedom problem... yeah right
5) the next dvd jon - it's just a matter of time until any protection in these new formats is broken. Consumers will not stand for constant changes in fundamental technology formats as a primary strategy to enforce DRM.
if I have only one digital port, it's going to the Direct-TV HD box. and all the rest of these guys can just go whistle.
it may be YOUR intellectual property, but it's MY credit card.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
yep, this is it. pay us more $$$ feature is the only 'real' thing that most people will see.
:) high five sony, you're just on the roll right now :D
i wear glasses, and as they don't make it with 0.0001 accuracy, they make it with 0.25 accuracy. therefor my picture is always a bit fuzzy. i can't see one damn thing wrong with any of the current dvd-s that i use, and i certainly wont see the extra pixels that bluray ads.
and every monkey in the sony office knows that bluray discs in some kind of ripped format will be out sooner than you can say "you can't pirate this".
if the movie can be seen and heard by the consumer, it can also be ripped. it doesn't solve the problem, it just adds one more way to do it. a new and incredibly expensive way.
ofcourse sony can say that the pirated versions that are some kind of cheap non-high-digital rips, are crap in quality compared to their supreme bluray picture, but they will still be good enough for most people to watch. and that's what they'll have on bittorrent and buy on cheap made-in-paiwan dvd's.
they should make producing movie dvd-s etc. so cheap for themselves that there would no need for piracy, but instead they drive the prices up with a new incompatible format and hope for profit
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Frankly, I'm going to just sit back and watch others get ripped off while the format wars start. I have not seen one compelling movie in the last 3 or 4 years so why would I want to see the same bad content only at a higher resolution for a significantly higher cost? Or maybe, its just that I like music more then movies. I'll buy a $2000 stereo system but not $2000 on a TV + disc player.
Heck, at the prices they're offered now, I might buy a few DVD players in case they decide to discontinue them for something with extra copy protection crap I never asked for. At least I'll be able to play plain-old music CDs, MP3 CDs and DVDs and the DVD movies I bought.
Oh yeah... sign my up for that! Well... two out of four ain't bad but Sony needs the console version of the "killer game" like XBox's Halo. Something everyone's been waiting for in HD. And "50 First Dates" ain't even close.
I see all these posts about, "I don't see the benefit of upgrading, other than some more capacity on the disk".
/. so I assume everyone here is aware that DVD's only output 480p, which is only marginally better than a television broadcast.
I'm not following that line of thinking... This is
The obvious reason to upgrade is to get substantially more pixels, 1080i, 720p, and I would assume 1080p at some point in the future. It seems like this would be pretty clear, I'm not sure why people keep asking why the new formats would be better.
Of course if you do not own a high-definition television of a reasonably good size then you probably don't need to upgrade, atleast not for a while until these type of discs become the norm. But if you are the owner of a standard-def television you should be aware of the resolution limitation and not have to ask why other people are interested in higher resolutions.
Those of us using DLP/Plasma/LCD television that are capable of 1080i/720p/1080p and that are of reasonably large size fully understand the need for a higher quality format to become standard. For us, the DVD looks awful in comparison to what we see on our HD television channels and our Xbox360's, or the output from our PC's. And we are clearly interested in being able to purchase a movie with twice as much data in it, to more accurately represent what you would see from film at the theater.
I will be curious to see how many of the hi-def dvds that are released are actually resampled from the film or original source as is required. Obviously sony is doing this for their initial releases, but I'm sure many movies will be converted to the new format in their 480p form.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...