Are you kidding?...where did you get 34 years from?
If that's correct, then I'm a heck of a lot older than I thought!

The guy from Samsung was clearly talking about what product will replace the lost revenue from when he anticipates BD to fall off. He's discussing the long term of his company, not the BD format in particular.

In other words, they are putting their eggs in the OLED basket because they don't feel that BD has a lot of life left in it, and to wait until [they feel] BD falls off would be suicidal.

BD has nowhere to go but up. I don't care what that article says. More and more people will want the HD content.

I wouldn't say it was terribly clear, but that does make sense. It is poorly written though, and can easily be dismissed because of the way brief quotes are given with no context. And some summaries of his words are used instead of quotes.

And there are multiple other devices that can bring HD into peoples homes (VOD boxes, VuDu, AppleTV, Xbox 360, PS3 Network, Blu-ray, etc.). Blu-ray is NOT the only HD source available regardless if the quality is better than the previous mentioned items.

Blu-ray will continue to rise, I mean, can it really drop any lower than it already is? But eventually it will sit a certain % compared to DVD. I (and I imagine nearly everyone else here) would be fine with Blu-ray remaining niche (i.e. 20-40% compared to DVD sales) if that meant it would be sold right along side DVD for years to come vs VOD taking over. That, of course, all depends how well BD does this Holiday season as its the make or break time for Blu-ray.

I just downloaded two "HD" movies from the PSN last month. Fucking atrocious quality - can't believe this is what some services are passing off as HD. Didn't even have DD 5.1. This has been my experience with some of the 720p offerings from Xbox as well.

Add to that the recent precedent being set by Comcast to start limiting accounts to 250GB, and it seems we're basically faced with either lousy HD quality from VOD to decrease bandwidth consumption or paying higher account premiums.

If people want to use some of these VOD services so they can say they are getting HD, that's fine, but IMO disc-based 1080p with lossless audio (Blu-ray and formerly HD DVD) is now the benchmark for true HD, and anything else is a compromise.

You're use to Blu-ray/HD DVD quality, of course the 720p downloads won't look (nor sound) as nice. No biggie for most. And 250GB only? That's probably more space for 98% of people using the internet. Even HD downloads are only 3-5GB...that would mean the user would need to download 50 movies a month to go "over". Restrictions may suck, but it will wind up affecting very few people.

Ive dabbled in HD downloads through AppleTV and 360...and yeah, its no where near as nice as Blu-ray. But they have many movies not on disc yet...so...

Your comment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. BD wasn't mentioned by him at all and that is where your argument that there was an announced expectation pertaining to BR's viability fails.

Pro-B

Blu-ray is the only physical format to offer 1080p quality on a mass level. Everything else you mention are downloading options. At best comparable to Blu-ray not equivalent.

Pro-B

Re-read what I wrote.

That must have been a pretty awkward thing to tell him. Those kinds of conversations are always hard. You feel like a prick for telling him that and he feels stupid for buying a player that can't play curtain BDs.

I went from a PS3 (40GB model) to a standalone Insignia Blu-ray Disc Player (NS-BRDVD) that is 1.1 compliant and can't have a firmware upgrade because of no Ethernet connection option. Although the discs load slower and it has fewer features than the PS3; It has always played every BD I've put in the player thus far. I only had a problem with Bee Movie pausing for a second a couple of times throughout the movie.

I'm not that interested in BD-Live, but if I wanted to check out some of the features I would just use my PS3. Players will get better.

do you look at vhs and see it as having been a niche?

The download I got actually looked worse than the DVD I had - no shit. It was Hannibal. It looked so bad I had to delete it and just wound up watching my DVD. The download was almost 9GB too. For one movie.

What, no option to burn an update disc? This is how I have updated my Panny and Sony players with new firmware.

Pro-B, if Griffiths is not talking about Blu-ray here, what do you imagine him to be talking about? LCD vs OLED? If the reporter was asking a question about Blu-ray, and Griffiths was speaking about LCD vs. OLED . . .

. . . what, then, would that have to do with the paragraph I've bolded wherein he reportedly cites a bunch of Blu-ray facts and figures?

Yes, the article is written rather poorly, so I can understand some of your confusion. But unless the writer is just plain making things up, I don't see how anyone can arrive at your [apparent] conclusion.

It's pretty clear -- to me and a few others here, at least -- that he (Griffiths) seemed to have been commenting on a number of different technologies including both Blu-ray and OLED; the author of the article seems merely to be condensing what Griffiths had to say about each.

I'm sure all movies look different - Ive rented a few HD duds but others (Hard Candy) looked amazing. I wish Apples .99 rentals include an HD option. Any know if VuDu's do?

It may be clear to us, but to hard core Blu-ray supporters its not (much like Warner's recent disheartening comments about Blu-ray in Germany).

Even if it is ture, that still means Blu-ray would have a 7 year life span which is pretty damn good.

We should also note that this is just Samsung's view of Blu-Ray assuming the article is accurate. They've already proven themselves to be quite inadequate at producing a decent Blu-Ray deck, so I'm not sure how much stock should be put in their assessments of anything related to the format.

If Panasonic, a major studio or Sony themselves said something to the affect of "5 years left", it would be a much bigger deal IMO.

I'm pretty happy with BD where it is right now, with the exception of DNR issues and WB's audio shenanigans. I'm already spending a ton of money every month on BD releases. If this is where it stays, as long as studios and CE's continue support I'm happy.

Excellent point. It'd be interesting indeed to hear what Sony and Panasonic would have to say about this.

Samsung and SONY have been the only two hardware manufacturers to openly point out that OLED will be the technology that would phase out LCD. They are also the two major hardware manufacturers to have heavily invested in the technology, and planning to have it on the market in a very near future (aside from SONY and their offer at the moment). Yes, I believe that the comments addressing the specific time frame pertain to OLED vs. LCD.


I already addressed the paragraph you bolded on another forum but I would not mind clarifying again: if the words were spoken by Mr. Griffiths they would have been quoted as are the rest of the statements in the article - in "...". They are not. Which points only to what I earlier noted, that this is the editor's interpretation of Mr.Griffith's words. As are the rest of the clarifications in the article. Furthermore, Stuart Miles did not conduct an exclusive interview with Mr. Griffiths as it appears that the provided quotes are from a much larger text addressing a multitude of topics. Hence, the reason why both of the article posted in this thread offer their own interpretation of what was announced. Suffice to say, neither of them quote portions of Mr. Griffiths words where the term Blu-ray is present. All of the additions are added by the editors.

If this isn't clear it certainly should be as neither of the articles provide exclusive as a disclaimer. They both rely on secondary transcripts.

Ciao,
Pro-B

But that still raises the question, what would (or more importantly, what could) a new format offer that Blu-ray cannot already provide?

If you want to debate whether physical media will be completely replaced by downloads/VOD, that is one thing -- and I am on the side that believes it will never happen. But, if you believe that another physical medium will be developed that will replace Blu-ray, the question I have to ask is, why?

DVD replacing VHS made perfect sense, since what it offered, both in terms of convenience and features, far surpassed what VHS could do. Likewise, Blu-ray "replacing" DVD makes sense, since DVD cannot offer HD content in a viable way (yes, HD content can be written to a DVD, but the capacity constraints make it unreasonable to expect many feature-length films to fit on a single disc). So, what would be the leap that would make me, as a consumer, desirous to buy into another format to replace my Blu-ray player?

I think that's a pretty tough stretch.

The first quote had to be a direct answer to a previous question -- whether it was a question asked by the author of the article or not. Could the author of the article have gotten mixed up and added "Blu-ray" by mistake when, as you assume, Griffiths meant LCD? Sure -- it's possible. If so, a retraction to the article(s) should be made. I suppose anyone with enough interest could even contact a representative from Samsung for further clarification. Otherwise, the author of the article specifically sites Blu-ray stats and figures which Griffiths was discussing, and in that particular quote they intentionally specified (by adding [Blu-ray] to his quote) that he was indeed talking about Blu-ray -- even though he didn't say the actual word in that sentence . . .

I don't know. Now that I really give it some thought I think maybe it's all part of some evil scheme by the Republicans, the Reverse Vampires, and/or the Trilateral Commission.

I'd also love for someone here to tell me what physical media in 5 years is going to replace BD.

Sony, Panasonic, and other manufacturers have invested heavily into BD. It took 5-6 years of development before the format made it to store shelves. Does anyone here really think they're working on yet another format that will start launching in 2013-2014? And if so, what is it going to offer that BD doesn't? 1080p is going to be here for quite some time.

And since you have no idea what the question(s) was you assume that the editor's clarification is credible? It had to be a direct answer? This is a stretch. The quoted paragraphs containing the said gentleman's exact words aren't as Blu-ray isn't mentioned once.

You built your entire argument on an assumption, I take what the exact words the gentleman produced to be sufficient to dismiss the speculations this thread has produced.

Pro-B

I guess I also assumed it was the author's job to report the facts. I guess I just granted the guy a level of competency/credibility based on his stature as a journalist . . .

As for my idea of what the question was (because I do have an idea), how about "Mr. Griffiths, do you believe that Blu-ray will be the dominant form of Home Entertainment Media for the next 10 years"?