Similarly, there are some that talk like BD has already lost the chance of mass appeal, but it hasn't. Yet.

I think this is correct, but it really has nothing to do with what I've been talking about. The next widely adopted "format" (physical or not) will have better usability than DVD.

I don't see why not. No one is forced to buy a Blu-ray player. History is littered with failed products that were pushed by companies.

I meant more "destroy" in terms of usability.

No, I'd need to get my keys, go into my car, drive to the store, pay for the Blu-ray disc, then I can play it. I mean, if we're going to have the full comparison here.

VOD is far from prime-time. If someone can do it correctly, then it will become very popular. Right now we've got tech that was a pipe dream only ten years ago. In ten years, hopefully it will be ready.

Actually, it has everything to do with what you said, or to be more precise, with what you failed to address. You don't know what can be improved in terms of usability yet you keep referring to it as the selling point for the next mass format. That is why I questioned you repeatedly. Yet, on the factual side of things those who are involved in the business appear certain that such mass substitute isn't on the horizon, physical format or not.

No one was forced to buy a DVD player either but when the technology was agreed upon by the studios and retailers there was very little doubt that it would be a success. Therefore, looking at the 5-10 year curve noted as the most likely period when physical media is likely to peak gives me a good reason to believe that the "next" big thing is somewhere in the very, very distant future.

Pro-B

My questions were rhetorical and intended to present some of the complications of the Blu-ray Disc format as seen by an average consumer. I am quite familiar with the answers to all of them, having been "here" since this forum was a thread in the main DVD Talk forum.

I disagree about the position memory ("resume play") stuff. I believe that the CE manufacturers could implement a PM solution that was independent of disc flags and the like, but they choose not to. Perhaps there is some clause in the BD licensing agreement that prevents them from doing it. Whatever the reason, it is one of those annoying little things that makes me wonder what the designers of the BD format were thinking. How could they be that stupid not to have PM as a mandatory feature of the format?

Yes, it is just a little thing, but it demonstrates to me how half-baked the format is.

I know what you are trying to say, but I have to disagree (at least to a point). Yes, Divx was intended to be competition for DVD, but it failed to achieve any kind of critical mass, so it never really offered any real competition. The number of players and discs sold for that format paled in comparison to DVD. The fact that it really only lasted a year is proof of that.

If that's how anything I have said has come across, then I apologize for that. I don't think Blu-ray is a rousing success today. But, I have yet to see anything in its progress that is significantly different than the way DVD developed, so I have every reason to expect it to continue to follow that same rate of adoption. So, I don't view it as a dismal failure, either.

That's the thing I don't get. The rollout of Blu-ray is tracking with the DVD rollout so closely it is amazing (even including the recent expansion/promotion at Walmart). Maybe the logical thing to do is to see how it continues to develop, and see if it can make the next "jump". The fact that it hasn't done so already doesn't mean that it can't, or won't, but many seem to be talking as if that were the case.

It is not incumbent on me to say exactly what would make the next delivery method more usable, but one example that comes readily to mind is instantaneous access.

And usability is not the "selling point" of the "next format", it is what has made every widely-adopted media format successful. It's the reason why Laserdisc, DVD-Audio, Minidisc, etc. did not succeed.



DVD succeeded because it was noticeably more usable than VHS tapes. It had nothing to do with studios pushing the format. People don't go out and blindly buy whatever big corporations tell them to. As I said, history is littered with failed formats that their backers wanted terribly to succeed.

Perhaps that "what" hasn't been discovered yet. He did define it as something that streamlines the ease of use.


Define success. Laserdisc was a successful format. If BD attains the longevity and penetration that LD did is it a success? No consumer CE product save the television and radio has been as proliferated as the DVD. What evidence is there that BD will rise to even greater heights when DVD itself is plateauing/declining?

VHS is/was as successful as DVD, as a technology. The number of VHS recorders/players sold is staggering. But it never achieved the same level of success for pre-recorded media as DVD. Although, much of the reason for that was the pricing structure that was established from day one for DVD, courtesy of Warren Lieberfarb.

Then there is very little to be concerned about, as this thread partially implies, that what we have currently at hand isn't going to be around for quite some time. I find it hard to believe that something which has not been discovered yet will spell the death of physical mass media formats in a near future.

Pro-B

The above observation goes very much against what you have been arguing on this forum for quite some time now. I don't believe for a second that VOD, which is by all means the closest competitor physical medial might have, is going to provide noticeably better usability options. Other than improved delivery, which according to numerous sources America will have a difficult time coping with in a possible mass market given that the infrastructure for it is simply unavailable hence more than likely demanding massive investments, I don't see another fundamental improvement VOD can offer. If anything it is very likely that it will eliminate a lot of the options people nowadays factor in when they decide to purchase and own a film (improved transfers, added bonus features, collectible coverwork, etc). Add to that the security issues which the studios will face allowing worldwide access to their HD libraries, something parties such as Fox are notorious for having issues with, and I not only believe that VOD isn't a credible threat for physical media in a foreseeable future (perhaps as DVDPolizei mentioned it will end up being a tiny complimentary option only) but also find it very unlikely that VOD will unify and entice the studios to have their entire libraries at the fingertips of dedicated pirates...forcing them, the majors, to destroy BR.

The likelihood of having another mass physical format...it isn't even serious to debate that such will be adopted by the studios in a very, very distant future.

Pro-B

Peak has to do with volume/traffic. The making money part has nothing to do with it. This should be rather obvious.

Pro-B

I've already said I changed my mind on this issue, but I haven't made some sort of 180-degree switch. :hscratch:

Those are not very good examples. Laserdisc was a success - not a DVD-level success, but it certainly made a lot of people a lot of money over the course of a good number of years. Minidisc did have usability advantages over CD, but it was not a success. It provided the same sound quality and usability of digital audio, in addition to being smaller, more durable and more easily recordable. Clearly, what you call lack of usability was not the reason minidisc failed.

I think this is a gross oversimplification. You're telling me marketing had nothing to do with the success of DVD? That's extremely naive. DVD's usability was certainly a factor in its overtaking of VHS, but so too was the marketing push and collective backing from a number of corporations. Your "failed formats" argument is a red herring. Just because "history is littered with failed formats that their backers wanted terribly to succeed" does not mean their backers marketed those products effectively or that there weren't other factors involved in those failed formats besides usability.

In order to support your assertion, you'd have to show that all successful formats succeeded strictly because of their usability. Laserdisc already puts a hole in your assertion, because it was a viable, financially-successful format that according to you, had about the same level of usability as the existing alternative (VHS).

I don't think anyone here necessarily expects Blu-ray to be a success like DVD was. DVD was more than a success. It completely transformed the home video market. Blu-ray is simply looking to fill in the market that DVD created, and so far, it is well on its way to meeting those expectations. It does not have to completely eliminate DVD from the market to be a success. Additionally, there is potential for some significant usability advantages with BD-Live technology, so don't count it out yet on the basis of your usability criteria.

:up:

Pro-B

Sure it did, but it was never a widely-adopted consumer format. That is what we are discussing here.

But were the advantages/differences enough to supplant CDs? Obviously not. I'm not sure a smaller size inherently improves usability.

What did laserdisc offer that VHS did not? Better quality. In what area was laserdisc successful? The niche enthusiast market. This is not a coincidence.

is it? i don't want to delve into the pit of semantics too much here, but what constitutes "widely-adopted"? your claims about success or failure depend on a well-defined standard, which i have not yet read.

in the CE world, i think we can safely say that a smaller form factor has been shown to be a desired usability advantage and just one of multiple advantages that minidisc had. additionally, you're not doing anything to back up your claim. if i point to a product with usability advantages that didn't succeed, you will simply state those usability advantages were not enough. if a product succeeded, the usability advantages were enough. these statements are not evidence of your premise, they are developed from your premise that usability is the only factor that matters. you still haven't shown where that premise was developed from in any way.

this is both a deflection and a reversal of your take that laserdisc failed. you still have not done what is necessary to support your assertion, which would be to provide some evidence that all successful (however you're defining that) formats succeeded strictly because of their usability, which also requires you to provide evidence that other factors, such as marketing, had absolutely no bearing at all.

Minidisc (until very recently) did not have CD quality audio.

No, but Minidisc is damned cool! (And the sound quality is pretty darned good.) I love the editing features of Minidisc. It would have been the perfect replacement for audio cassettes.

I'm with Tracer on most of what he is saying.

The combination... lack of extra utility over DVD, expensive equipment requirement (HDTV), and marginal improvement (for the average consumer running a 32"-42" screen at 8-12 feet)...

A niche like Laserdisc. That said, home theater is more popular these days, and Sony shoved blu-ray into the PS3, so it's going to be a big fat niche - good for us.

I've never expected to see people changing over from DVD in droves, and I've yet to see any evidence to suggest it will happen.

That said, Sharp thinks the biggest selling screen will be 60" by 2015, so maybe when displays start getting bigger you'll see some movement.

May have already been posted - but downloads overtaking physical Blu-ray media won't be happening until broadband opens up.
With companies like Time Warner still experimenting with limiting users to less than 5gb a month and charging $2 per gig over that - hi-def media downloads will be a while coming.

Well ok, I'm glad you clarified yourself. Because the average Blu-ray inquirer wouldn't have noticed your rhetorical debate and would have wondered why nobody responded. :)

Of course Blu-ray isn't perfect. Neither was DVD when it first came out. Flippers and Snappers bugged the shit outta me. Then came better quality transfers. Hell, we still get remastered editions on DVD which are decades overdue.

HD DVD didn't allow resume play, either, if you recall, so it's not just Blu-ray which has this problem.

There are theories which range from wanting you to see the previews again to being a multi-layered chaotic mess if resume was implemented. I can understand both possibilities. But probably, it comes down to a lack of standardization from studio to studio.

For my own resume play fix, I simply click back on the chapter where I last left off. It's stupid, but I'll have to say I will do that and have the chance of watching an awesome picture in HD, versus having resume on a lower-res DVD movie.

I agree to a point, BUT, virtually every TV sold from this point forward will be an HDTV thanks to the broadcast conversion AND Blu-ray has one advantage that Laserdisc did not, backward compatibility. I can definitely see J6P upgrading to a Blu-ray player when his DVD player buys the farm, especially after prices come down.

As an aside, I don't recall ever seeing Laserdisc, DVD-A, prerecorded Minidiscs, et al at Walmart. Just having the retail space is a start.

In addition to the resume play when stopped, that you mention, I was hoping that the BD designers would enable the position memory function of many DVD players, so that when the player is turned on again with a disc already inside, it resumes where last stopped. This is especially useful for TV on DVD since one can queue up the next episode and the player will start right up there the next time the player is turned on, and skip all the boot screens and menu stuff.

I also had a player (Panasonic) that would remember positions on five different discs and resume play at that point whenever that disc was inserted. This was useful for putting together a demo program for visitors. It worked with most but not all DVDs, so it appeared to be flag dependent.

They can do this stuff with DVD but can't be bothered to do it with the new super-duper whiz-bang Blu-ray Disc format?

I don't see Blu-ray becoming outdated for at least 10 years. Same with DVD. And CD. It will be a long time before CD becomes truly outdated because people hear very little difference between a CD and whatever is "better" than CD quality. Same with Blu-ray. Most people won't be able to see the difference between Blu-ray and whatever is "better" in quality (1440, 2160, 4k) unless they are sitting in front of a 70"+ TV. Heck, most people don't even see the difference between upconverted DVD and true HD on 42" TVs. And DVD will stick around for a long time because they are cheap/ubiquitous. The only way to make DVD outdated is if BD becomes as cheap as DVD (both the players and the media).

Downloads will become the next "in" thing in 7-10 years when we get reliable 50 mbps Internet speeds. As previously mentioned (in another thread, a while ago), Korea & Japan already have those speeds now, and I can't imagine us not catching up to them in 7-10 years. When downloading HDMs becomes as easy as downloading MP3s now, I imagine the physical media will take a hit. But outdated? No. CD sales have taken a big hit as a result of MP3 downloads but they certainly are not "outdated" by any means.