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Blu-ray Gone In Five Years, Samsung Claims
schliz writes "Samsung expects Sony's Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high-definition format war in February." Maybe that means five years from now will be the perfect time to stock up on cheap Blu-ray disks and equipment.
That's it! This is the last time. I'm changing my settings to ignore articles posted by timothy. I suggest you do the same.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Does that mean the PS3 isn't future proof?
1) Sony brags about a 10yr lifespan. :)
2) The PS3 has been out for 2yr
3) According to Samsung Blu-ray will be "superseded" in 5yr
4) So, the PS3 will be "superseded" 7rs into life
5) But just because a better tech comes out doesn't mean they'll stop selling PS3s. PS2 has been selling strong for the last 2 years with no signs of letting up.
6) I bought a PS3 for a Linux CELL dev box. So I don't care either way
I've often wondered why Slashdot editors don't RTFA themselves, particularly, why they don't go back to the original source article when it's readily available on-line. The text (not the headline) of the article makes it clear that first of all, Griffiths isn't saying Blu-Ray ONLY has five years left. He's saying it has AT LEAST five good years left, but less than ten, in his opinion. Secondly, the business about OLEDs makes it clear that the thrust of the timeframe discussion is with respect to a profit stream. That is, there are five good years of profits left in Blu-Ray, but in the future, Samsung sees OLEDs as a long-term source of profits. Which is reasonable. After all, CD players are still around, and Sammy still makes 'em, but they're not a major revenue source at this point. From that perspective, of hardware profits, they're basically dead, although from a software perspective, CDs are still the #1 media delivery mechanism.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Stick a flash drive in and watch a movie? You mean like "Ghostbusters?"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
We do need more data storage capacity for HTDV, because even with Blu-Ray, there's too much compression. That's the cause of the usual annoying artifact that moving objects are blurred at the edges and stabilize a few frames after they stop moving.
Displays are currently ahead of transmission and storage. Right now, LCD displays are capable of 1080p at frame rates into the 70Hz range, and some game consoles can output imagery approaching that range. But the data rates from most video media can't get up there yet.
"Digital cinema", as seen in theaters, currently comes in 1080x2048 (compared to the 1080x1920 of HTDV), which digital cinema people call "2K", and 2160x4096, or "4K". But their frame rates are low, 24 FPS normally, 48FPS at best. The number to shoot for is slightly above 70; Showscan established in tests years ago that humans can't tell the difference between 70FPS and higher rates, and there really is a noticeable improvement in audience reaction between even 48 FPS and 70 FPS. So we should probably be going for 72FPS.
The future of storage and transmission may be FrameFree compression. This is a combination of motion detection and morphing for image interpolation. When it works well, the frame rate is effectively limited only by the display and decompression technology. It also allows generating slow motion video from regular video, and is used for that in sports applications.
So there's the market target: 4K, 72FPS display, framefree compression, a 150 inch screen, a Super Bowl stream with enough bandwidth, and a case of beer.
It says essentially Samsung isn't going to produce BluRay drives as "it will be superseded in five years," so hey are concentrating on their blockbuster technology, OLED, which will eventually supplant LCD according to the Samsung PR rep.
Actually, I just picked up a few blu-ray movies at best buy for $15 each - on sale from normal price of $24.99. Admittingly, they're not new releases, but still.... quite a good price for a few 1080p releases.
You've just described what the movie studios would *like* to see happen. It won't be happening this time around, thankfully for Joe Public.
...which is not to say your comment wasn't insightful. Just that it isn't a done deal - the dreams of the movie industry are unlikely to come to fruition this time around. If they want to wean the public off DVDs and make them deal with more copy-protection pains, they're going to need to come up with something a LOT more compelling than simply better picture quality. Their best bet - and perhaps their only chance of persuading the public to switch would be to drop the price of Blu-Ray titles to significantly *below* those of DVDs - but there's little to no chance of that happening.
See, last time around the upgrade had a value proposition that anybody could see and make sense of. No more rewinding tapes, better longevity (so long as at least a modicum of care was taken with the discs, anyway). Significantly better picture and sound quality - the jump from VHS to DVD offered a much more noticeable benefit than the step from DVD to Blu-Ray has at the screen sizes at which most consumers are using. There was actually a good reason to upgrade, and a large portion of consumers hence did. The disadvantages to upgrading were pretty-much non-existant. DVD players rapidly cost no more than a reasonable VHS player, were far more reliable, and the media didn't cost that much more than the VHS tapes did. The only real disadvantage was region-coding, but then most consumers only bought in their home market anyway and hence never even noticed this problem.
This time around, most consumers simply don't see the advantage in Blu-Ray and its ilk. The players are vastly more expensive than a regular DVD player, the movies are vastly more expensive than a regular DVD, the format has built-in limitations aimed at preventing piracy that also end up inconveniencing the consumer, and the sole advantage is that picture quality is better - although at the screen size of the average consumer, the change is far less noticeable than it was when switching from VHS to DVD. Hence, most consumers aren't upgrading to Blu-Ray.
For that reason, the movie industry simply isn't going to find itself in a position to discontinue DVD sales in favor of Blu-Ray. If it tries, it will quickly find a major impact in its bottom line when DVD sales tank but Blu-Ray fails to take up the slack.
Dude - Blu-Ray just killed HD-DVD. And in my area Target and Best Buy have both pretty much doubled the shelf space for Blu-Ray movies... And most of the TV's for sale are 1080P format now - and you know the sales guys are pushing Blu-Ray with the HD sets.
Walk into a Best Buy, a Fry's, or a Circuit City and see how many Blu-Ray players are for sale. I'm sorry, its already here to stay.
Don't say it's only a matter of time until it is cracked. Only poorly designed systems have been cracked the good ones have stood up for decades.
Decades? Really? I suppose you're also going to tell me that you've been writing java for the past thirty years? Have we really had any unbreakable DRM schemes that are that old? I don't think so.
As Steve Jobs said, "To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still 'hide' the keys which unlock the music on the userâ(TM)s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation."
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!