WTF is a blue-ray?

In answer to the original question, I think pysical media, ie: discs will be around for quite awhile. I know that I prefer physical media over digital downloads, I like having the disc in my hand, the case to look at, liner notes and other inserts to read, I like to feel like I own something, it's mine, I can hold it and look at it, I own it and can watch it any time I want to, forever. Digital downloads seem to be a bigger pain in the ass to me, from what I've read around here are not very cost effective (at least from my point of view), and you have nothing to show for it but a file on your hard drive.

Stores handle what they have room for, with all these other media types coming out they devote less room to DVDs and I hate that. I find myself buying more of my DVDs online which sucks for the B&M stores because they're not getting my money anymore. Selection is truly horrible too. I rarely find anything that I want to buy at the price I want to pay. But, even though selection and prices are a concern of mine, I don't see physical media disappearing anytime soon.

Just my humble opinion, -kd5-

I'm with -kd5-. I think it'll be a long time before physical media will disappear. Harder to get? Yes. I find myself buying more online than in an actual store. I think the industry would LOVE for us to go over to only digital, but I don't that the majority of actual consumers want that.

Digital media is way to easy to lose. And then when you lose it, you have to repay for it. You do. Think of all the digital copies out there that expire. I've bought dvds with digital copies that have expired before I've even bought the thing. Maybe some company out there says that if you have to redownload it, you can for free, but I doubt many will.

Not to mention space. I know I don't have the computer space to store all my movies. And what happens when the hard drive fails (and they do...I've gone through that often enough!)? Have a backup for how many movies? And the time it'd take to put it on a drive is insane.

On top of that, I like having something to hold in my hand. To look at when making a decision. I can bring over a dvd to watch at someone's house a whole lot easier than I can bring over a laptop and then try to either squeeze around that or try to hook it up to a tv. I think people forget that not everyone is a huge electronics nut and has the money/time/knowledge to be able to set a complex theater system up as well.

I really meant movies I own physically stored on my hard drive, I wasn't clear. I totally agree with you.

If doing that is it even worth worrying about backing up files you already own twice, of course if a hard drive was to fail you would loose all that work and time spent moving them to the hard drive.

It would be for the sake of convenience, not backing up....the minimal protection I would have from having two copies would just be a minor bonus.

I may have worded that in a way it could have been taken different then I intended, more about backing up the time it took to transfer and copy the files to the drive, since the masters are owned it may not be worth worrying about double backups unless there was so happen a extra hard drive around. The convenience of computer access for shows is quite handy.

My nephew gave me a Blu-ray player for Christmas. It has some kind of feature where you can connect it with your computer to access movies on the web, via some streaming service or other (Netflix? I'm not sure). I asked my nephew how to do it and he sent me a very complicated diagram that I couldn't make head or tail of. I decided to check the instruction manual for the player, but I haven't done that yet. I suppose that when I need to do it--i.e. when I need to access a film I don't have in my collection--I'll figure out how to do it.

But until then, I have enough movies and TV series on tape and disc to last me the rest of my life. I keep making vows not to tape or buy anything anymore, but last night "Mildred Pierce" was on HBO and since I read the book and re-watched the 1945 film version last year, I wanted to see HBO's take on it. I wasn't in the mood to watch Depression-era dramatics, so I taped it. And last Friday, I visited a Japanese store in Manhattan that sells used DVDs. I found 2 DVDs containing the first episodes from 2 classic Japanese TV shows from the 1960s that I'd never seen, "Mighty Jack" and the legendary "Ultra Q," the precursor of "Ultraman," both produced by Godzilla effects genius, Eiji Tsuburuya. They were $25 each, but so rare that I happily paid the price. Otherwise, I'd have to spend hundreds of dollars on the Japanese box sets. So, there's always something I really want that I don't have that if I come across I have to buy. Maybe these episodes are available on YouTube. Maybe they're not. I don't like watching things on YouTube.

But then, I'm an old dog who has trouble learning new tricks.

One of my buddies does the media server thing...now, I am not so lazy i can't get up and change a disc to watch a new show but even I will admit, the cool factor is very very high when you can just click on anything in your library and play it virtually anywhere in the house.

concerning the OP's post....wasn't it WB that made BD win? You know...the last nail in the coffin?

Sure PS3 had BD that's a major plus...but...I think it was WB that made the difference when they announced that they'd go BD....no?

That's the way I remember it. If I recall, at least one other studio (Disney, maybe?) was on the fence as well and tipped to blu after Warner did.

In early days of the format war, Blu-ray had Sony, Fox, and Disney as exclusives.

HD-DVD had Universal as an exclusive.

Both formats were supported by Paramount and Warners.

Around the summer of 2007, Paramount dropped blu-ray support (allegedly with "incentives" from Toshiba).

About six months later, Warners dropped HD-DVD support and finished off the HD-DVD format.

The format war was ultimately decided by blu-ray's superior copy protection/DRM, which put Disney and Fox in firnly in their camp. HD-DVD had soft support from all of their studios except for Universal, who refused to support blu-ray out of spite directed at Sony. Once Warners jumped ship, Toshiba and Universal were left holding the bag and that was pretty much that.

Blu-ray also succeeded because of the much higher storage capacity. That's the same sort of reason that VHS won. Beta had better quality, but VHS could hold twice as much video.

I'll disagree with that. I still remember when WB jumped ship and then Toshiba adjusted their presentation. While technologies can support certain things, getting studios to actually use them to the greatest potential is another thing. Anyone remember when DVD was going to be great because it could put all those subtitles on? Instead, for the majority of movies, we got Spanish and French.

Also, Beta didn't just go away. It was still really popular and found a home elsewhere, like in the news industry.

Betamax lost out as a consumer format, which was a huge loss, but it isn't the failure everyone makes it out to be. Even today Betacam SP and Digital Betacam are still the standard tape formats in the broadcast industry.

Are you saying you think it would be harder to go through your collection once it is digitized? I actually did this very recently and could not disagree more. I did this with over 1000 films and thousands of TV shows. I find myself watching way MORE movies since. It's so much easier, especially if you use the right media browsing program. Once you have everything in order with nfo files, etc., I suggest giving XBMC a try.

I have a HUGE collection and the entire process of digitizing your collection is cheaper than you think. 1 TB HDDs are under $100, XBMC is free.

It is an "improved" DVD with better video quality and supposedly "better" audio quality that plays on a machine that is about 1/4 as fast as a DVD player.. oh yeah and most of them lack the basic resume feature that all DVDs have.

Many 2TB drives have been under $80.

As you said, it may make some people watch films or shows more often because everything is right there.

There is still a significant segment of the population that likes to watch movies at home and does not care for one reason or another to download digital media. This market consists of the technologically challenged, who will pay a buck to get a best seller from a kiosk at the convenience store, kids and those who buy DVDs for kids who will watch something hundreds of times and aren't very savvy technologically, collectors who enjoy possessing physical media, and those who loan/give disks out to other people. The studios and retailers are not going to ignore that market.

Streaming/downloading is a good idea in theory. But there are so many problems. You could be downloading the movie or show and the computer craps out on you. Or the file gets corrupted, the internet connection gets disrupted, or you run out of computer space and can't download the whole file. With dvds and blu-rays, 99% of the time they start right out of the gate.

You're rewriting history by saying it was Disney that ended up causing blu ray to win the war. It was WB.

Out of the thousands of movies I have stored on my hard drives, not one time has any of those things happen to me.

+1 on WB tipping the scales. Paramount helped HD DVD claw back a little, but WB finished it.

He was making a joke about the misspelling

Although there'll be (as mentioned) the no tech crowd who wants a disc there's also the size factor helping those who like physical media.

Movies are much bigger than a CD - even more so HD. Takes longer to download and puts more strain on the internet and they're already complaining about congestion for the net - could you imagine if *everyone* drop discs, let alone cable, and starting streaming HD movies off the net?

Not to mention bandwidth caps now being implemented.