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schliz writes "Samsung expects Sony's Blu-ray technology to be superseded within five years, despite winning the high-definition format war in February."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.

Comments

ehh..

[nuclear305]

The article starts out saying Blu-Ray will be superseded within 5 years and then goes on to talk about OLED technology with absolutely no mention of what might supersede blu-ray?

That's what I get for actually RTFA though; a few paragraphs loosely related with no actual technical information.

Re:ehh..

[shawn(at)fsu]

Not saying you're not right or wrong but it's not just size and speed that matter. You also have to look at production of the media itself. If the media is easier cheaper to produce then it gets a big leg up. Right now I'd imagine that DVDs are cheaper to produce than flash drive. I have nothing to back that up with other than cost, I'm not sure what the comparison of Flash to Blu-Ray is.

Re:ehh..

[morgan_greywolf]

The speed of the development of flash drives will make the optical drives obsolete.

Provided that, within 5 years, the cost of that flash memory is competitive (or better than competitive) with optical drives.

Until that happens optical drives will be here to stay.

And, BTW, DVD was supposed to have superseded CD by now.

Re:ehh..

[Enderandrew]

BluRay movies push 20+ gigs of storage. The cheapest 16 GB flash drives are like $40-$50 aren't they? And that won't even hold the movie.

A blank BluRay disc probably costs around $1 I'd guess, and they can go multi-layered.

It will be years and years before flash storage drives will be cheaper than an optical disc, but the nice thing is that discs scratch were as flash drives hold up quite well (even through washing machines).

Re:ehh..

[Beardo the Bearded]

Hey, I had an N64 up until late last year. It was damned fast. With the introduction of the original Playstation, we had

Loading remainder of comment, please wait.....

load times. Yes, we can fit a lot more data onto those 750MB disks than the cartridge tech of the time. Now they're giving away 1GB Flash drives with a box of cereal. You can easily buy 16GB drives now, and that's got 4x the info of a DVD.

It'll be much easier for "Them" to lock down each game with a globally unique serial number when you're burning Flash drives; much, much harder than when you're pressing CD / DVD runs. Microchip will sell you chips (by the reel, of course) that are pre-programmed and have an incrementing sequence in one section.

Re:ehh..

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, a master press to produce commercially sold DVDs costs thousands of dollars to produce. I think I remember several years ago hearing $15k to make one. Once you have a master though, producing that single DVD over and over is extremely cheap. Supposedly ~$0.20 USD per DVD for a large run.

OTOH, a flash chip that only needs to be written once in the factory could probably be produced much more cheaply than whatever methods we are using today. There would also need to be less controller circuitry as you don't need to be able to write to it.

It would be interesting to see something with essentially the same form factor as an SD Card, but with the capacity (50GB) and compatibility of a Blu-Ray disc. They'd probably be a lot more resilient, but much easier to lose. And to make the switch worth it, they'd probably have to bump the capacity to something like 100-200GB. Probably even add support for 4K video.

Re:ehh..

[poot_rootbeer]

20 years ago, we stuck a card into our atari/nintendo/sega to play a game.

Yes, because at the required capacities, solid state media was more cost-efficient than magnetic media of the time. Then, starting in the mid-'90s, growing adoption of CDs and DVDs made optical media the least expensive. It wouldn't surprise me if advances in design and manufacture might swing the market back in solid-state's favor soon.

Consider as an example the current state of the portable games market: Nintendo DS with its postage-stamp-sized cartridges, and PlayStation Portable with its 1/3-size DVD-type optical disks. Which was the smarter design choice?

Re:ehh..

[Mad Merlin]

A year ago, 8G flash drives had just slipped under $100. Today, 32G flash drives have slipped under $100. Needless to say, progress probably won't slow down any time soon, and that starts making flash drives look very attractive...

Re:ehh..

[Hal_Porter]

Pressed DVDs probably cost pennies to make, BluRay is a bit more expensive but in the long run the disks will be as cheap as DVDs. Flash drives cost about $7 per GB. A DVD movie is currently 5-9 GB. Blu Ray is 25-50GB. I think optical media will be around for a while. Though I'm not sure about BluRay, I suspect that for most people DVDs are good enough.

Re:ehh..

[bonehead]

Which was the smarter design choice?

Honestly, there's an argument to be made both ways. While miniaturization is great, for the most part, at a certain point things get to be "too" small, or, putting it another way, too easy to lose. Especially with something like a game system that is used mainly by kids who, let's face it, aren't always the best at keeping track of things.

Re:ehh..

[melstav]

Single-layer (25GB) Non-rewriteable Blu-Ray discs are $8-$10/each.

Single-layer (25GB) rewriteable Blu-Ray disks are ~$16-18. (look for BD-RE)

HOWEVER:
A Blu-Ray burner will set you back > $200

16 GB USB flash drives can be had for ~$40

32 GB USB flash drives are twice the price at ~$80

So yes, *RIGHT NOW*, if you buy a BD burner and a spindle of 10 BD-RE disks, you'll spend less money than you would if you bought an equivalent amount of USB flash storage.

This isn't the fairest comparison, because with the flash example I'm providing, the reader is encapsulated with the storage, so you're paying for it every time. (as well as packaging) That being said, almost every computer these days has a USB port, as do many set-top boxes. Not every computer or home has a BD player.

The price of flash continues to drop. The price of BD media and burners will come down. The question will be, which falls the fastest?

Re:ehh..

[Hal_Porter]

I misread http://www.dramexchange.com/

Actually MLC flash for flash drives is awesomely cheap 32Gb 4Gx8 MLC averages at $6.30. So $1.57 per GB. So a drive to hold a movie would be worth $16.

But it's still much more expensive than a pressed DVD.

Flash will kill hard disks in notebooks at these prices though.

Re:ehh..

[fyoder]

Why shouldn't people do this instead: Blockbusters HQ / iTunes Store / etc -> internet -> Home

Eventually, perhaps, but sneakernet (or tirenet) may be faster for large file sizes depending on distance and speed of connections. For me it would be faster to nip down to the video rental place with a usb stick for anything over 1 GB.

Re:ehh..

[Ascoo]

Why not just assign each customer/member a flashdrive during signup, which each drive having a unique serial ID.

Then they can just go to the local Blockbuster, use a kiosk to download a movie, come back home and watch it. When they're done, there's nothing to return since the DRM that's encoding on to the movie files prevents the end user from playing that movie again after say.. a week. Blockbuster would only need a kiosk that can take a raw movie, encapsulate it with drm based on the flash drive serial key of the member using it. Doesn't seem so hard. Hell, it could just be a premium service that charges the customer $XX at initial membership. For that he/she would get discounted prices at the kiosk and never worry about a movie being out of stock. hrm.. Sorta like to the old Divx scheme people had in the past, but with reusable media.

Granted the only reason this is better than using the internet to get the movie is SPEED. USB transfer speeds of flash drives + time to the store usually are much shorter than the download speeds of the average customer.

Re:ehh..

[jebrew]

Locking to the serial number would certainly up the difficulty for copying, but it won't make it impossible.

Really, all I'd think they'd go for is impractical. Much like piracy of HD movies for the present, ripping/encoding them just takes too long (for me anyway...I like to keep copies of my DVD's on my NAS for easy viewing anywhere in the house...or back yard).

Errr....

[sunking2]

Given that this article makes absolutely no sense, here's my interpretation. Samsung sees no future in blue ray, so will not invest a whole lot of money in developing a bunch of players (which stinks because thats what we need to drive down prices). Instead they are taking that money and concentrating on OLED displays, hopeing there is more money for them in the display business than in the player business.

An Observation From A Big Music Fan

[pandrijeczko]

I don't claim to be a huge film or TV buff, there's a few movies and TV series I enjoy, I own a mid-range widescreen TV but could give two hoots about the occasional bit of blockiness on the screen or surround sound. If people do want top quality movie and TV entertainment, then good luck to them.

But as a music fan, it's always struck me as really strange how, in the video world, everything is moving to High Definition and Blu-Ray yet in the music world, many people seem to want lower quality compressed music downloads rather than shiny CD disks.

I've spent as much on a reasonably good hifi as a lot of other people spend on video equipment and I *really really* don't get what is the big deal with compressed music - sure, I use MP3s of my collection on a portable player for travelling and the gym but I don't see how someone who buys compressed music can be classified as a music fan when a "movie buff" is never going to be taken seriously unless he/she has got a huge TV, cable, surround sound, etc.

Re:An Observation From A Big Music Fan

[Hellasboy]

A person doesn't need the best materials to listen to music in order to be a music fan. A person interested in the best materials is more of an audiophile. The same goes for movies. If a movie buff is interested in huge TVs, surround sound (cable? OTA is best for HDTV), etc then they are more of an Audio/Visual-phile

Re:An Observation From A Big Music Fan

[east coast]

For my part I think of film buffs and music fans as being knowledgeable about their respective arts. Having a great HD TV and all the associated trash doesn't mean much to me (as a fan) if you don't know Kubrick from Lucas just like having a great stereo doesn't seem to mean much if you can't tell Steely Dan from Slayer.

People don't need the best to be fans. Who's the bigger fan, the guy with hardback first editions of every Stephen King book who's never read them or the guy who has every paperback with hardly any covers or spines left due to reading them over and over again?

The value of a collection and it's playback hardware is not inherently equal to the enthusiasm of the fan.

Re:Superceded by what?

[sm62704]

Ok, everybody just stop buying now; wait for five years to see the new technology and then pay a premium to be the first.

I just bought an analog, 42 inch flat screen CRT less than five years ago. I have no reason whatever to buy Blu-Ray, as with my analog TV Blu-Ray won't look any different but the disks and players are damned expensive (I need a new DVD player, mine's worn out. $30 at Wal Mart, how much is Blu-Ray again?). I don't see buying a new TV any time soon, so I guess I'm lucky, I'll transition from DVD to whatever superceds blu-ray.

Re:Superceded by what?

[AusIV]

I've said from the beginning that neither HD-DVD or BluRay would displace DVDs. I have a DVD player in each of three computers (one of which is my media center). My stepmother has a DVD player in her car so my sister can watch DVD's on long road trips. My mom has a portable DVD player she can watch on the plane (or other places she finds herself with plenty of time to watch a DVD).

BluRay may be nice for the media center, but until you can play the same discs in every other media player you own, BluRay discs aren't going to be displacing DVDs.

Re:Limited by the eye

[Icarium]

Current resolutions won't look as good on a 12' screen as they do on a 60". (Yes, we're a long way from something that size, but it's about the size of my window and a size I could well imagine watching TV/Video on, comfortably, from 8 or 9' away).

It would be like sitting just far back enough in a cinema screen to see the whole screen without turning your head. And your current 1920x1080 resolution will not cut it on a screen that size (Would still look good, but not as good as it could). Not everyone's cup of tea, but hardly preposterous.

1080P will be obsolete in 5 years!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Why would Blu-ray be obsolete? WHY? We dont even have broadcast HD TV in 1080P, and even if we did, it would be compressed to shit. Even on my FIOS TV, verizon is comperssing the signal so much that all fast motion looks absolutely terrible.

Its not High DEF, if you're compressing the pixel detail (high definition) out of the picture.

Blu-ray will be around for a while. The market will not tolerate a replacement in 5 years. I know the big suits would love to have us rebuying our films every 5 years in new formats... but thats just fucking ridiculous. It will force consumers to simply give up and revolt. DVD will then win.

No one is going to tolerate standards that change so fast, that they are no longer standards.

Re:Blu-Ray = LaserDisc

[Dr. Manhattan]

Because there's nothing worth paying twice as much for. I'm sorry if I don't want 'liscense to wed' or 'Juno' in HD, it just seems pointless. There haven't been more than a handful of good action movies in the past few years, practically none that I wouldn't call cheesy comic book movies.

Bingo. I can get DVDs or Blu-ray for the same price from Blockbuster Online (and Netflix is the same way). I have a PS/3 and a nice big 1080p screen... but at least half the time I'll choose DVD just because I can play it somewhere besides the family room. If it's not an F/X blockbuster, there's not really a point to HD.

Add in the generally minimal quality of movies these days, and, well, I too am not shocked by the number of Blu-ray discs not flying off the shelves.

(But, "cheesy comic book movies" or no, I have to admit I will be getting Iron Man on Blu-ray. :-> )

Re:Article summary: Guy smoking crack.

[sm62704]

The poor people who do drugs are poor because of the drugs. I see a lot of them at Farley's here in Springfield (the hippie bar next door to the gay bar). I used to go there a lot when the beer was cheap, I seldom do any more since they raised the price of draft so it's the same as everyone else. As I'm thin, the gays next door sometimes think I'm gay and hit on me and I don't care for that at all.

Here are excerpts from two of my older journals about drug addicts and how they get their money. The second one is more germaine.

I'd let this woman named "Odie" (yes, the Garfield dog, and the name fit) who'd been evicted stay at my apartment for a few days, let her eat my food and drink my beer and Pepsi and let her use my computer. This was strictly out of the goodness of my heart; I wasn't even getting laid. Not even so much as a blow job.

Yes, I'm a fool; at least, when it comes to women. But I already said that, didn't I?

She stole my spare car keys and traded them for crack. I discovered the car missing the next morning. Odie had left with her friend (and, unknown to me, my keys) the night before. The next morning when I discovered my car missing I called the cops, who took a report about noon. Six o'clock that night after much beer and whiskey (what would you do if YOUR new car you'd only made one payment on got stolen?) the cops called and said they had my car back. I took a cab to the car, and the cop told me that the young woman they found with the car - not Odie but some other woman - had used it to try and kill her parents. This girl's mother was in the hospital with two broken legs. My driver window was smashed, there was glass all over the inside of the car, a mark on the front bumper (leg marks?) and a big scratch on the hood, along with some miscelaneous dings.

(From Ask Slashdot: Women Tuesday December 05 2006

I stopped by Farley's after work for a beer, and I'm sitting there at a table sipping, listening to the annoying beeping of the illegal gambling machines that are in every bar in town when a skinny, ugly, skanky looking bitch sits down at my table.

"Hi, I like to fuck and smoke crack. My husband's in prison, he likes dick even more than I do. Ya wanna smoke some crack and fuck? Hey buy me a beer!"

The uncyclopedia has this to say about crack- "Crack is something that is sold by both drug dealers and prostitutes. The only difference is that a prostitute can wash her crack and sell it again."

I politely refused, but the bitch wouldn't leave me alone. That's what I get for walking into a bar like Farley's wearing my white collar shirt that buttons up the front that I wear to work; in that place I'd have looked like Donald Trump, only without the extra weight and stupid looking combover. Can't that damned fool afford a decent wig? I thought he was supposed to be rich? WTF?

But anyway, if you're looking for a prostitute don't pick one up in a dive like Farley's, and don't get a skinny one even if, like me, you''re attracted to thin women. Skinny whores are almost always crack whores. Find one that's got a good figure if you can afford her or a fat one if you're a cheapass like me.

As the skank was talking crack, I realized that we nerds have much in common with crackheads

From The Crackwhore and the Nerd Friday December 21 2007

Congressmen are probably cheaper than cocaine!

Re:Limited by the eye

[rtechie]

I dare say BD is there now given our current viewing technologies.

No, it's not even close. The problem is that there is very little content that comes close to pushing the limits of BD and it is very, likely things are going to stay that way.

The problem is that the cost of properly mastering BD is very high.

The cost to properly master a VHS tape was around $50-100,000 adjusted dollars.

The cost to properly master a DVD disc is around $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 adjusted dollars.

The cost to properly master a Blu-Ray disc is in the $25,000,000 range. Really.

To take advantage of BD you need recent High Definition film or video cameras (these alone are hideously expensive), access to HD editing equipment (millions), access to a studio with 7.1 recording capability (I believe there are a total of THREE in the USA), studio time (millions), etc.

Basically you can rule out anything other than certain big-budget Hollywood summer action films released in the last few years. At absolute best you can expect to see 10 discs per year that actually take advantage of the resolution and features of Blu-Ray.

The trend is actually in the opposite direction, with low-bitrate "High Definition" downloads becoming the "standard".