Say hello to Blue Ray and bye bye to your current DVD writer

[susie]

http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2003/03/03/rtr894807.html

[BJ_M]

only one word



sweet

[andy416us]

[hothandiman]

The Holy Grail has arrived!! I still think we are headed for a format war with blu-ray?? Also, $3,800--WOW! Most likely 2-3 years before the price comes down enough so I could afford one.

[drewson99]

$30 per blank, that is sick. were dvd-r ever that high? when I got into dvd-r the most expensive were 5-6 bucks.

[sammie]

DVD-Rams were pretty expensive. I think in the $25 range. Have no idea on the recorders. First I remember where the Pioneer DVD-R's and they were in the $600 range.

[thxkid]

The Panasonic DMR-E10 was the 1st consumer DVD recorder and 2.5 years ago it was $3500, I got the same machine 6 months new from amazon.com for $399. Its not so important about the recorders, how fast will the players hit the market, DVD players had all ready been on the market 3 years and falling in prices, that Sony DVD recorder will stay high until players come out and APEX puts one out for $100, do a pool I bet most people here spent less than $300 on their current DVD player oand less than $1500 on their recorders. Gonna have to see some cheapo Blue Ray players and the DVD Movies, before this becomes main stream and blanks less than 5 bucks also.
Thats OK did you see Philips is offering the entire guts of their DVD+R recorders to ANY company for $100, so watch out for those APEX DVD+R recorders coming soon for $250 or less.

[SaSi]

Two years ago, DVD recorders for PCs were 5.25" Full Height drives, had a front panel LCD display and cost $2,500. Media were priced accordingly.

In two years time we will have thrown away our current P4/3GHz PCs (two times I guess), first to get the new Itanium @ 6GHz and then to get the brand new "don't'know-it's-name-yet" @ 10GHz, our current Hard Drives of 200GB will be replaced by the 2,4TB drives giving 250MBytes/sec transfer rates and, by the way, we will throw away our CD-Recorders and DVD-Recorders to buy Blue-Ray Disks (BRDs ??).

Why the fuss. I am happy when new things come along. That is called progress. It costs money, and if enough people spend, we all are in business, in one industry or another.

Happy burning

[MOVIEGEEK]

Go Sony!
Like what was said earlier more companies will produce Blu-Ray writers and the cost will come down to earth in 2 years time.
As was quoted in Forbes article:"Blu-Ray does not support DVD-RAM or DVD+R/W"
This will certainly end the -R/+R debate,making DVD+R the forgotten step-child as Beta is to VCR.

[LanEvo7]

Yes, i bought the correct format dvd burner.

[sammie]

THXkid has it right. It will always be a high end toy till consumer standalone players become common. Most folks put that as 5 - 7 years out till they hit 50% of the standalone market.

I have a feeling the +/- debate will fade away rapidly as the ray vs. laser debate grows. My guess is both technologies + and - will hang around then fade away as the HDTV generation burners take over. I suspect the dual media burners will do more to sway the battle than blu technology. -Rs are cheaper to they will take a larger and larger share, but the burners will allow you to copy a +R whenever you need to.

[kitty]

Live for today, dream for tomorrow

[mreed80]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't going to be able to record DVD to DVD. For example, if you rent, I mean own , a DVD and want to make a back up, will this allow you to do that?

[BJ_M]

sure you can back up a dvd to this ... no problem ... but does it make sense to? i mean backing up a 24$ dvd to a 30$ disk doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me ...

[sammie]

Well, I presume we could do some flavor of something we do here. MrReed80. Not enough info yet to say what exactly yet, but I presume the worst case is we have to figure out what the native file format it plays is and come up with a codec that works with one of the tools. Best case is it plays absolutely normal MPEG2s or VOBs without having to do anything special. The real issue is as BJ_M put it, why would you want to for now with the cost factor.

If you mean where are the HD DVDs there aren't any yet and may not be any for a while. First the obvious circular argument, can't have media till you have a player and no need to have a player till you have content. That always takes a year or two to sort out.

The second piece is that studios are threatening not to release HD content until a next generation uncrackable copy protection is in place and DVD Jon is convicted as a warning to all others who even think about trying to write a decrypter. I think that may be the biggest hurdle to overcome before there are a significant number of consumer boxes out launched.

Until then, I guess we can all enjoy 0 loss DVD back-ups or our DVD-9s or a jillion VCDs or DiVX movies ona single disk.

[Tiribulus]

Every meaningful piece of information relating to this will change and alternatives/offshoots will be toyed with by the time it hits mainstream. There are also people in this world who will defeat every form of multimedia encryption on sheer principle even if were made a hanging offense. It's fun to speculate, but it's too early to know much of anything about the version of this any of us will end up with.
Tiribulus

[mreed80]

That was kind of what I was looking for. I just don't see them making a product that will allow you to put in a DVD and then get it copied. This seems to me more like a VCR to use with HDTV.

And as for the big deal about the DVD-R and DVD+R, I imagine them both being replaced by a better solution like blue ray soon enough anyway.

And in 3 years when this is all on the market at reasonable prices, you will be able to find DVD-RW writers for under $50 and a 100 pack of DVD-Rs for $20, so you can always just convert your DVD+Rs to DVD-R if that is your fancy for a cheap price. The only inconvience of course would be the time spent doing it.

[baker]

First off this is my view and noboy elses so dont go bashing me for it.

How many of you own a vhs recorder???(intresting poll, tgpo are you listening!)

Well now how many of you own a svhs recorder???

Which is the better??? Svhs,

Now the blue ray vs dvd scenario is totally different kettle of fish.

Blue ray is a totally new format which has bomb loads of space compared to our crappy 4gbs dvd-rs. However "the consumer"is what mattes, the average joe. You walk up on the street to a dopey looking guy sitting on the corner and ask him what he would want in his home theather system, he will instantly say "dvd" hasn't a clue what DTS,AC3, mpeg etc.... are but now dvds are a public thing. like vcr.

Svhs was and is fantastic but will just stay on the shef for film companies etc,,,

something similar will hapen to blue ray...

Us pc users might be affected but its unlikely, by affected I mean computer BRD recorders (i like that!!). And the average joe will have no use for a BRD recorder for about 20yrs... no, wait for about EVER as there are no good soureces yet availible to the consumer.

FINAL VERDICT-
DvD- here to stay for a very very very long time
BRD's- Movie company stuff and unlikely to be used by the home consumer, its compaatiblilty is doubtlful as most tv broadvcasters are sticking to their trusty svhs recorders for their 1000000's of copies of old tv shows etc...

[sammie]

I didn't mean to imply it really would be "uncrackable" Tribulus (note the smiley). Only that studios were stomping there feet insisting that law makers and hardware manufactures bow to their wishes first before they agree to a format. Something that could delay any finalization of what the consumer player format will finally look like. As you very correctly pointed all of the meaningful specifics will probably change a couple of times before that happens.

[wayned16]

3,500 yen each not dollars

[sammie]

Nope, you're exactly right Baker. Till theres a killer app (HD content), there won't be any consumer move towards it, and who knows if blu whichever will even be the technology of choice by then. DVD rentals just passed the 50% at Blockuster in gneral and VHS at my local Blockbuster is about 10:1 over DVD per their manager when I complaied about their strong bias towards tape. This may be driven more by computer market than by consumer market for a long while, which unfortunately may mean prices won't fall as fast as they did with DVD burners.

This may also explain where I've seen a bit of renewed interst in DVD9 dual layers by some companies. (YES, I KNOW THERE IS NO SUCH THING RIGHT NOW!) They may feel there is enough of a window before high def takes off to squeeze in 3 or 4 years of good sales.

Heck, in 5 years DiVX 7.0 may allow HD recording on DVD5's which play on your $60 APEX standalone for all we know right now.

[bokkasrealm]

I think Blu Ray will take over but only if can offer the same bang for your buck and more. Blu Ray recorders have to come down to at least mid-range camcorder prices and the media will have to be $3 at least. Also, these players will have to do everything current DVD players do like play VCD, SVCD, MP3, DVD-R. Blu Laser can really only be signifigant if it allows for more storage and maybe even Tivo capabilities.

Can you imagine a box that size with Satellite tuner/Tivo programmed/all format reader(vcd, scvcd, dvd-r, mp3, jpeg), and burning capabilities for cd-r, dvd-r and blu dvd-r? And offer all of this with HD recording for the blu ray? That would be so damned sweet!

[sammie]

.....actually, backtracking a bit on my own post. I can think of one thing which might push it faster... these new ethernet based media centers. They look like they are going to make playing things much less dependent on the actual recording media form. So yeah, a TiVo like device attatched to a media center, then we could upload rips to a BluRay disk. Sounds nice and I could see that happening faster than broadly accepted Blu-ray standalone DVD players. Of course that may mean the world has moved more towards a PPV model .

[version20]

Blu Ray will take a loooong time before it catches on with Joe Consumer, because many people even as we speak are still (or have just) reluctantly making the switch to DVD. That Blu Ray offers more storage space will mean nothing to these people who are likely content that their new DVD player already plays discs that store an entire movie. What is the incentive to switch up? And remember, I am not talking about you or I who would kill for this storage.

The only benefit of blu ray will be for actual data storage for most people. There are not enough people interested in "backing up" or archiving home videos to even really propel the sale of current DVD burners. Those of us who read these forums are among a verrrrry tiny minority of consumers.


-v20

[energy80s]

At long last the future is beginning to arrive!!

I do honestly believe that this will be the replacement for VHS as a home recording medium. DVDR doesn't have the capacity or the momentum to replace VHS, you need something with much higher capacity. And the price isn't as bad as I thought it would be ... considering it's the first one in production. A couple of years ago DVDR disc were £20 each in PC World - now they're down to under a fiver! Mail Order comapnies are offering brand named DVDR discs for a little over a quid. It will only be another couple of years before Blue Ray discs are in the same catagory. Standalone DVD Recorders were the guts of £1500 2 years ago, now they are down to £400. By 2005 Blue Ray will see the same reductions.

The future's bright ... the future's BLUE!

[Cole]

I really hope that we are not heading for a "every year a new format" scenario. It just seems to me that new formats are being pumped out before the previous one has been established. History I think prooves the point as there are formats that lay waste for whatever reason: eight track cartridges, Betamax, Laserdisc, Minidisc etc.

I am not saying that we shouldn't be chasing better quality, but once we all shell out for our Blue Ray machines, will we then wish we hadn't as some clever clogs releases another "far better system". Fair enough, the die hard gadget buffs will quite happily purchase and throw loads of money at the bottomless pit that is their hobby (and have every right to if they want), but if I had just spent £500+ on a DVD player/recorder, I want to be able to have good use out of it before I need to upgrade. Bearing this in mind, now that DVD is very much established in the public, Blue Ray will have a hard time getting established as the general public may not want to, or could not afford to keep buying new equipment.

[susie]

Well you can put more than one dvd movie on the Blue Ray disc since the capacity is 23 GigaBytes.

sure you can back up a dvd to this ... no problem ... but does it make sense to? i mean backing up a 24$ dvd to a 30$ disk doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me ...

[susie]

Best thing to do is go with the price.
In my opinion, blank CDRs are still the best choice. You can burn a whole movie on 2 blank CDRs (SVCD format). I have got a few movies that are so GOOD in quality but only take up 2 blank CDRs. The person who did the dvd rip must have spend so much time with CCE to encode them to such high quality that the movies looks almost like the original quality.

I really hope that we are not heading for a "every year a new format" scenario. It just seems to me that new formats are being pumped out before the previous one has been established. History I think prooves the point as there are formats that lay waste for whatever reason: eight track cartridges, Betamax, Laserdisc, Minidisc etc.

I am not saying that we shouldn't be chasing better quality, but once we all shell out for our Blue Ray machines, will we then wish we hadn't as some clever clogs releases another "far better system". Fair enough, the die hard gadget buffs will quite happily purchase and throw loads of money at the bottomless pit that is their hobby (and have every right to if they want), but if I had just spent £500+ on a DVD player/recorder, I want to be able to have good use out of it before I need to upgrade. Bearing this in mind, now that DVD is very much established in the public, Blue Ray will have a hard time getting established as the general public may not want to, or could not afford to keep buying new equipment.

[susie]

If the Blue Ray Disc are erasable then it would be a good choice to replace the VCR with it.

At long last the future is beginning to arrive!!

I do honestly believe that this will be the replacement for VHS as a home recording medium. DVDR doesn't have the capacity or the momentum to replace VHS, you need something with much higher capacity. And the price isn't as bad as I thought it would be ... considering it's the first one in production. A couple of years ago DVDR disc were £20 each in PC World - now they're down to under a fiver! Mail Order comapnies are offering brand named DVDR discs for a little over a quid. It will only be another couple of years before Blue Ray discs are in the same catagory. Standalone DVD Recorders were the guts of £1500 2 years ago, now they are down to £400. By 2005 Blue Ray will see the same reductions.

The future's bright ... the future's BLUE!

[BJ_M]

i dont think erasable (yet) ... i need one or more for High def use . I pay anywhere from 10grand to 40grand for a high def server ... if i can buy something that do the same thing for only 4grand .. neat ..

i will have to see how heavy duty it is though .. for commercial/industrial use .. looks a little to "high end home" in the picture vs. something mounted in a rack and working 24/7

we shall see ---i will certainly buy one as soon as available in japan ..