Blu-Gay: Read or die in squallor!!!!!!

[dusematic]

Am I reading http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060406-6544.html right to understand that the cheapest standalone Blu-Ray player announced so far will retail at $999? 


Blu-Ray will fail. People have known and loved the terms “HD” and “DVD” now for years, and with a format combining the two terms, it’s clear who will win the battle.


Not to mention the loss they will be taking on each unit even if they retail the PS3 at $600.  Can I get an Amen?

[schild]

The price keeps going up. It's total bullshit aimed at first-adopters.

HD-DVD might not have enough...uh third party movie support. We'll see though. The backwards compatibility native to HDDVD is what I think will really help it. Much like it helps the Playstation brand. I'll never quite understand Sony's hatred of HD-DVD other than it isn't THEIR format.

[Lantyssa]

I'll never quite understand Sony's hatred of HD-DVD other than it isn't THEIR format.

Sony needs another reason?

[Trippy]

Am I reading http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060406-6544.html right to understand that the cheapest standalone Blu-Ray player announced so far will retail at $999? 

Blu-Ray will fail. People have known and loved the terms “HD” and “DVD” now for years, and with a format combining the two terms, it’s clear who will win the battle.

Not to mention the loss they will be taking on each unit even if they retail the PS3 at $600.  Can I get an Amen?

There's a signficant difference in material costs between a top-of-the-line early adopter "I MUST BE FIRST ON THE BLOCK TO GET ONE" standalone Blu-ray player with all the bells and whistles and a bare Blu-ray drive. Samsung announced a while back that they are aiming at around $500 for their Blu-ray *burner*, which is a better indication what the material costs of the bare drive is going to be.

As for Blu-ray vs HD-DVD that may not really matter since both formats use a blue ray laser and there will be players coming out that will play both formats.

[dusematic]

Even in your best case scenario, a $500 dollar Blu-Ray player exceeds the cost of an entire Xbox 360 system with just one component.

[Trippy]

Even in your best case scenario, a $500 dollar Blu-Ray player exceeds the cost of an entire Xbox 360 system with just one component.

Sorry I guess I wasn't clear: That's $500 RETAIL PRICE for a BURNER. The manufacturering cost for a bare non-recording Blu-ray is going to be way under that price especially since Sony is making their own drives. Even the idiots over at Merrill Lynch weren't stupid enough to think a Blu-ray drive was going to cost Sony $500 (they were guessing $350). The guys over at The Register were guessing $100 for the drive price. Personally I think it'll be closer to $150 or so.

[dusematic]

Touche.

[Murgos]

DVD burners (and CD burners for that matter) when brand spanking new were more than those prices listed above.  This is typical early adopter pricing, nothing to see here, move along.

[dusematic]

The larger point is that Blu-Ray is more expensive, harder to produce, requires more licensing fees, and is not backwards compatible.  Sony will bleed money selling PS3's at $500, and HD-DVD will prevail.  But then, you knew that.

[Miasma]

The price keeps going up. It's total bullshit aimed at first-adopters.

HD-DVD might not have enough...uh third party movie support. We'll see though. The backwards compatibility native to HDDVD is what I think will really help it. Much like it helps the Playstation brand. I'll never quite understand Sony's hatred of HD-DVD other than it isn't THEIR format.

I've been mostly ignoring this technological slap fight but do you mean that I can't play my old DVDs on Blu-ray?  I had assumed both would have support for the older format, even if they had slap in an extra laser head.

I don't like either of these new formats, I don't see the need for them, it's just a bunch of slimeball executives that want us to buy our stuff all over again.  I really hope both fail.

The larger point is that Blu-Ray is more expensive, harder to produce, requires more licensing fees, and is not backwards compatible.  Sony will bleed money selling PS3's at $500, and HD-DVD will prevail.  But then, you knew that.

Yeah, and betamax should have won because it had higher quality in a smaller form factor.  Facts don't mean anything in this, the only thing that matters is which consortium is the bigger bully.

[Murgos]

Blu-Ray has the backing of the porn industry.

What I actually expect is that within three years you will be able to buy a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD/DVD/CD combo drive from Best Buy for 60 bucks and the Next Big Thing will be on the horizon (probably NOT disk based).

[Yegolev]

Listen to Murgos.  Don't stir you panties into a froth over the price of bleeding-edge tech.  Only a few years ago, DVD players were ridiculously expensive, now you can get one for $30 that is easy to de-region.

[Trippy]

The price keeps going up. It's total bullshit aimed at first-adopters.

HD-DVD might not have enough...uh third party movie support. We'll see though. The backwards compatibility native to HDDVD is what I think will really help it. Much like it helps the Playstation brand. I'll never quite understand Sony's hatred of HD-DVD other than it isn't THEIR format.

I've been mostly ignoring this technological slap fight but do you mean that I can't play my old DVDs on Blu-ray?  I had assumed both would have support for the older format, even if they had slap in an extra laser head.

You will be able to play your DVDs (and CDs) in Blu-ray players. HD-DVD does offer simpler backwards compatibility to DVD both in the logical disc structure and in the physical materials used to make the disc. Blu-ray's deviation from the DVD physical spec is what allows it to fit more data on each disc. This will make HD-DVD disc manufacturering cheaper than Blu-ray disc manufacturing in the short term. On the other hand, Blu-ray discs come standard with TDK's "Scratch Proof" coating (aka Durabis) which means they will be much harder to scratch compared to HD-DVDs which use the same plastic coating as DVDs.

[angry.bob]

Blu-Ray has the backing of the porn industry.

What I actually expect is that within three years you will be able to buy a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD/DVD/CD combo drive from Best Buy for 60 bucks and the Next Big Thing will be on the horizon (probably NOT disk based).

Next big thing is Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD). They already exist and burn 1.7tb to a cd sized disc.

[Yegolev]

Next big thing is Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD). They already exist and burn 1.7tb to a cd sized disc.

Well, hell... that's what I'm getting.

[Murgos]

Sure, better disc tech does and will continue to exist I will give you.  It's been a half assed consumer solution since it was introduced in 83 (?) though, delicate and requiring complex and delicate machinery to use (Discman anyone?).

I am actually anticipating cheap flash memory to take off.  Maybe I am hallucinating though, still in 5 years or so I expect you to pick up a little thumb drive looking thing with your favorite movie on it for 15 bucks.

I expect everything digital to come packaged this way the advantages over disc based media are numerous, smaller cheaper packaging, solid state devices with all the inherent advantages (DRM, non existant load and seek times, high speed transfer, superior data retention, much cheaper hardware to use it with, much less power use, blah blah blah).  Write once read many will be very easy to make and DRM and will allow kiosks in 7/11 where you can load a disposable drive with the new releases of games/movies/music/whatever.  Retard level easy error correction and checking (you will never ever burn a bad drive, if it passes QA at the plant it will work, period).

Affordable 40 gig flash drives will be out in the next 18 months.

18 months after that multiple hundred gig flashdrives will cost 1/2 as much.

18 months after that TB flash drives will cost 1/2 that again.

5 years.

edit: case in point: I have a 1 gig thumb drive in my pocket.  I have carried that drive around with me for 2+ years now IN MY POCKET.  I can use it on almost any computer in the world at any time that has nothing more than a $5 USB port.  It has never corrupted any data that has been on it.  No disc will ever be able to do that.

[dusematic]

Amen

[Stormwaltz]

I believe the VHS users said the same thing about the kids these days and their expensive, new-fangled DVDs.

Blu-Ray has my support. Unlike HD-DVD, it's an actual improvement over current tech. Which is not to say I'm going to rush out and buy one. I also didn't rush out and buy a flat widescreen plasma TV when Circuit City was selling them for $10K, or a DVD player when they were $500.

Point is, the price will go down, and HD is - in comparison to Blu-Ray - so incremental an improvement as to be pitiable.

The real question, IMO, is whether we *need* a "next generation" DVD at all. What we have seems to cover most uses adequately.

[HaemishM]

The real question, IMO, is whether we *need* a "next generation" DVD at all. What we have seems to cover most uses adequately.

We don't. We really, really don't.

[dusematic]

RUDY! RUDY! RUDY!

[HaemishM]

You're eating paint chips right now, aren't you?

[Merusk]

The real question, IMO, is whether we *need* a "next generation" DVD at all. What we have seems to cover most uses adequately.

We don't. We really, really don't.

But the bottom line does!

Somewhere, a long time ago, I read an article about revolving formats, and how it was planned to have everyone re-buy their media every 10-15 years.  This was to ensure some sort of self-fueling profit cycle or some nonesene.  I laughed at the time, but I begin to wonder.

[HaemishM]

My 8-Track of Peter Frampton Alive agrees with you.

[Shockeye]

My 8-Track of Peter Frampton Alive agrees with you.

I have an 8-track of Queen's News of the World sitting in a box somewhere.

[Miguel]

Affordable 40 gig flash drives will be out in the next 18 months.

There are some practical limitations that will however start coming into play.

For example, a 1GB flash drive is most likely using a single 8Gb NAND flash die, which is currently selling on the spot market in China for roughly $25.  In order to get 40GB you would need forty of these chips, costing (today) over $1000!

In order to approach cost parity to hard disk drives, you need to be talking sub $1 per GB.  Most HDD's are at the sub 50 cent per GB level today, so $1 per GB is still twice as much.  Even given the average decline in NAND spot market pricing extrapolated over 18 months, we will be lucky to be operating at around the $5 per GB level in 18 months.  This is still over $200 for a 40GB NAND flash based drive!

The biggest limiting factor is the density of the NAND chips themselves.  The big guys like Samsung and Toshiba are starting to run into technological limitations at the 32Gb level (or 4GB per chip) even on their cutting edge process technologies, which is sub 65nm.  Even assuming they can run at 32Gb in a cutting edge fab they are not going to be able to charge sub $5 per GB and still be able to recover their costs.  You cannot sell a product in a brand new fab running a high density product for below cost.

Lastly there is the power limitation and form factor limitation.  The USB standard defines 500mA for bus powered devices the absolute maximum, with 100mA being preferred.  The 100mA level would allow 5 USB devices to run bus powered at the same time which is the standard set forth by Microsoft.

A 32Gb NAND flash device would give 4GB of storage, which means for 40GB you would need 10 flash devices.  Assuming you wanted a good write bandwidth, you would need to program 4 devices in parallel, each requiring around 50mA is active read/write current which puts the power requirements for flash alone at 200mA.  This doesn't count the USB controller or the voltage regulators either.

For form factor, this isn't as big an issue IMHO.  10 flash devices could theoretically be fanagled to fit into a thumb drive format given die stacking technology that we have today.

About the only thing I can see happening in the next few years is for the polymer storage or magnetic array storage technologies taking off.  These promise much higher densities in comparable die sizes to what we have in the market today.

My prediction is that we will see a leveling off in USB thumb drive density around the 8GB to 16GB level, which is where the 32Gb NAND flash chips start to hit their technological barriers.
In 18 months I would guess that a 32Gb chip is going to cost roughly $15 (or right about $4 per GB), putting an 8GB thumb drive at roughly $35 and a 16GB drive roughly around the $80 level.

[angry.bob]

Somewhere, a long time ago, I read an article about revolving formats, and how it was planned to have everyone re-buy their media every 10-15 years.  This was to ensure some sort of self-fueling profit cycle or some nonesene.  I laughed at the time, but I begin to wonder.

As far as straight audio or video, human senses really don't need anything more precise than the current cd/dvd technology provides. Despite what faggy audio/videophiles say, human senses barely take advantage of what's provided by those. No human can detect the .0000005 difference in the treble levels you'd get from a new, bigger technology.  Until we get holoprojectors or whatever, DVD's are fine. Where new technology is handy is storage. Right now I have about 3tb of external hard drives on my desk. I'd much prefer that all on 2 hdv disks. Or even better, a 40tb internal drive. Or whatever the hell.

[Murgos]

Affordable 40 gig flash drives will be out in the next 18 months.

There are some practical limitations that will however start coming into play.

For example, a 1GB flash drive is most likely using a single 8Gb NAND flash die, which is currently selling on the spot market in China for roughly $25.  In order to get 40GB you would need forty of these chips, costing (today) over $1000!

Are you actually betting against Moore's law?  I've actually seen an image of a 1nm (10 Angstrom!) quantum dot device.

I don't know if you carried out your thought's all the way to conclusion but you will notice that your prediction for the next 18 months and mine are identical.

40 GB for $200 in 18 months (we are at 8GB for $212 now BTW).

Hundred(s) of GB for $100 in 36 months (less than 1$ per GB).

A TeraByte for $50 in 54 months -or- disposable low double digit GB devices for a quarter.

The technology probably won't actually be Flash (certainly not as we know it today), that was me keeping the conversation simple, but to the layman on the street?   They wont know the difference, except for maybe a different looking connector.

[Miguel]

Are you actually betting against Moore's law?  I've actually seen an image of a 1nm (10 Angstrom!) quantum dot device.

Not so much as that I think I have a different definition of the term 'affordable'. ;)

$200 for 40 GB does not an affordable drive make in this industry, where a vast majority of sales volumes for thumb type drives are done on an 'impulse' level.

In fact not two weeks ago I attended a presentation from a large manufacturer of photography equipment, where they want over 80% of their solid state media to fall under the $20 level, where it's most attractive for purchase at your local Walmart or Costco.  Anything that small costing more than $20 needs to be locked up and requested from an employee, which puts it out of the 'impulse purchase' category.

I bet you would be surprised to know that over 75% of the total flash capacity goes into very low density (like less than 256MB) applications like small thumb drives and SD/MMC cards since all of those fall within the impulse purchse category.

As for the new technologies, I agree there is some exciting stuff on the horizon however for the vast majority of it we haven't figured out how to manufacture it with good yields leveraging existing semiconductor infrastructures.  At my previous company, I was involved in some research with organic polymer storage technologies, which yielded some promising results.  However we were at a loss to figure out how to make them in large quantities. ;)

I can tell you that the hand wringing is already in full swing at just about every semiconductor company (mine included) since 'traditional' floating gate and nitride storage designs just literally stop working at less than 45nm.

[Polysorbate80]

Somewhere, a long time ago, I read an article about revolving formats, and how it was planned to have everyone re-buy their media every 10-15 years.  This was to ensure some sort of self-fueling profit cycle or some nonesene.  I laughed at the time, but I begin to wonder.

As far as straight audio or video, human senses really don't need anything more precise than the current cd/dvd technology provides. Despite what faggy audio/videophiles say, human senses barely take advantage of what's provided by those. No human can detect the .0000005 difference in the treble levels you'd get from a new, bigger technology.  Until we get holoprojectors or whatever, DVD's are fine. Where new technology is handy is storage. Right now I have about 3tb of external hard drives on my desk. I'd much prefer that all on 2 hdv disks. Or even better, a 40tb internal drive. Or whatever the hell.

Blasphemer!

You should notice a difference between HD and standard-def video (or at least you should, if your cable company doesn't compress the everliving fuck out of all its digital channels like our local crapheads do.)

Some people don't "see" it immediately; it takes a while to click.  Case in point with the upgrade from VHS to DVD:  I bought one of those $500 (well, $450) DVD players.  I'm a video producer, the difference in image quality was blatantly obvious to me, but the wife got pissed that I would throw money away on something like that when VHS was perfectly fine and she "couldn't tell the difference."  Bitched about it for days. 

A few weeks later the optical head malfunctioned, and I got home and she surprised me by demanding I take the DVD player back and get it repaired IMMEDIATELY because after becoming accustomed to it, she'd discovered she could not stand to watch the VHS any more. 

[Engels]

I don't know about tech upgrades, but somebody needs a wife upgrade for sure.

[Yegolev]

ZING!

[HaemishM]

I don't know about tech upgrades, but somebody needs a wife upgrade for sure.

Those are a lot more expensive than Blu-Ray.

[Sky]

Late to the party, but I've spouted this line before:

Does the PS3 ship with Blu-Ray?

If yes, Blu-Ray wins.

That is all.

[Hoax]

All I know is that for once I can tell the difference in a tech upgrade.  Things encoded in h264 (or whatever its called) look slightly better (I NEVER NOTICE) then things encoded in .xvid I have noticed an increase in processor use but not a noticeable increase in file-size.

Oh I totally noticed the difference between HD TV + HD channel but only with sports watching regular sitcom/drama on HD is a fucking waste anything but sports or a movie in widescreen is pointless.  Hockey and Soccer esp get much better on TV w/ HD.

I'm bored... sorry.

[Trippy]

Blu-Ray has my support. Unlike HD-DVD, it's an actual improvement over current tech.

Where are you getting that idea from? HD-DVD supports, well, HD, which DVDs don't. It doesn't support 1080p which Blu-ray does so it is going to be obsolete quicker than Blu-ray unless they manage to shoehorn that into the spec at a later date without making all the existing players obsolete. Both formats support the same video codecs and similar audio codecs. Blu-ray, on the other hand, has copy protection up the yin-yang. Both are using AACS (the finalization of which caused the delay of the PS3) but Blu-ray has two additional copy protection schemes on top of that. Another technical difference is that HD-DVD supports iHD which supposedly allows for more interactive content compared to Blu-ray's Java-based approach (Java is needed also to support Blu-ray's RomMark copy protection scheme).