Yeah I have heard that Aussies are getting screwed on their High Speed Internet services in another forum. We don't have download quotas here in the US. Hopefully things will improve for you and your countrymen when it comes to high speed internet Ray.

rocketpig said: While DLC won't kill physical media, expect it to start taking a healthy bite out of the marketplace. Most analysts say that HDTV adoption won't even reach 50% until 2011. That means that Apple, MS, and others have at least four years to start squaring away their codecs and waiting for connection speeds to improve. Besides, downloadable HD will probably be in 720p for quite some time and while that is lower than what you get from Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, it's still good enough for most people out there and they would probably never notice the difference. Ultimately, there will always be physical media. But its market is going to continue to dwindle as time passes. I don't even buy DVDs anymore. I use HBO On-Demand, my 360, and iTunes to get almost all of the content I want in my home. I used to use Netflix but ran out of movies to watch (after about 5000 rated). This is from someone who used to purchase at least one DVD a month, often times several in a month. I last purchased one about six months ago and have purchased maybe three in the past year and a half.

Downloadable HD will be 720p for a while, just like most HD broadcasts. But also the majority of HDTV:s will be 720p (/1080i) for a while. 720p TV:s are a lot cheaper than 1080p TV:s. A 720p (usually resolution is 768) TV without a digital tuner is 35-50% from the price of cheapest 1080p TV:s. With digital tuners 720p TV has about 50% price compared to 1080p. But don't forget on-demand (which was what i was meaning when mentioning pay per view) broadcasts, they may be a serious competitor for BD or HD-DVD in a couple of years. Of course this doesn't mean that physical media would vanish, but this could eventually have bigger market penetration than physical HD medias. At least as long as there is no clear winner between BD and HD-DVD, this competition plays from day by day for DLC/streaming distribution.

Just as a question, why do people believe Blu-Ray adoption will benefit the PS3 so much? For the next 2 years (at least) Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players will be a niche product for videophiles and after that point the PS3 will be one of the most expensive Blu-Ray players on the market.

Consider that there are already cheaper Blu-Ray players than the PS3 (Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray Disc Player : $489.99), HD-DVD players are far cheaper (Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Player: $334.07), and the format war is causing these devices to drop in price as fast as they can; by mid 2008 you will probably be able to buy a $199 Blu-Ray player (as compared to a $500 PS3), and by mid 2009 I expect these will be $100 to $150 (as Compared to a $300 to $400 PS3).

BenKenobi88 said: You have download quotas? That sucks...

Yup! I’ve already killed 2/3 of my quota and I’m only 12 days into the month. You can’t imagine how I envy users in the US, Japan, Germany, Austria, Sweden … Well… almost everywhere else really.

@Darc Requiem – Cheers. Slowly, but surly, it’ll eventually happen. Just hope I’m not in a nursing home when it does

 

Blue3 said: HappySqurriel said: Blue3 said: Probably right. Wii lacks the hardware power for a good 5/6 year life cycle. I don't see how hardware power has anything to do with how long a console lasts ... The difference in quality of graphics and processing power between the N64 and Playstation was huge but the playstation continued to sell (and have Million selling games) years after the N64 was discontinued; following up on that the XBox and Gamecube both had processing power advantages over the PS2 yet had much shorter lifespans. Certainly, the difference in processing power between the Wii and PS3/XBox 360 is very large but so is the price difference. Eventually (say 2009/2010) the Wii will probably be $99 (with Wii Sports) While Microsoft is still trying to sell the XBox 360 for $200 (or more) and the PS3 is $300 (or more); there are far more people in the world who are willing to spend $99 on a console than are willing to spend $299 on a console.   lol you cant be serious.  Even Nintendo fanboys should by now have accepted the fact that the reason for N64 failure was the dumb decision to use cartridges, Nintendos greed = cartridges = no 3rd party support = N64 failure .  While PS2 games stand toe to toe with anything on xbox or GC, no sane person can say the same about wii games and PS3 or 360 games.  Why even buy a wii if a PS2 is half the price and has same quality games ? wont there be more people willing to spend $49 on a PS2 when $99 on a wii if its all about price ?

lol you cant be serious.  Even Sony fanboys should by now have accepted the fact that the reason for PS3 failure was the dumb decision to use Blu-Ray, Sony's greed =Blu-ray= reduced 3rd party support = PS3 failure .  While PS2 games stand below anything on xbox or GC,Just like anybody can say about thewii games and PS3 or 360 games. 

Why even buy a PS2 if a Wii is twice the price and has better quality graphics and controls ? wont there be more people willing to spend $99 on a Wii when it is about twice the price of a $49 PS2(which will never happen) if its all about price and the new controller and better graphics than the PS2?

 

 

Fixed it for you

tmbh said: Good point forgot to mention that download services will make the formats obselete!!!

There is always a need for storage. So the formats themselves won't be obselete. Perhaps if you were to say using them for delivering media for viewing, then possibly... But there's always a need for storage.

This passage, right here, is the key to the article:

"As for Nintendo's hit holiday launch of the Wii, Pachter appears unconvinced of the system's long-term prospects.

"We believe that the Wii will outsell its competitors by a large margin for at least two years, but have difficulty predicting whether Wii demand will remain strong or will fade thereafter,"

Basically, he's saying that the Wii will dominate for 2+ years, and after that, he really has no idea what's going to happen. He ultimately gives the edge to the PS3 based far-in-the-future price drops, but his suggestions are vague at best.

 

CTifer said: tmbh said: Good point forgot to mention that download services will make the formats obselete!!! There is always a need for storage. So the formats themselves won't be obselete. Perhaps if you were to say using them for delivering media for viewing, then possibly... But there's always a need for storage.

Agreed, although HDDs may be the primary storage unit, so perhaps you should say mobile storage.

I think an even better way to put it would be this: there will always be a need for mobile storage, but that need will most likely be dwindling on a year over year basis from now on.  

Ray007 said: BenKenobi88 said: You have download quotas? That sucks... Yup! I’ve already killed 2/3 of my quota and I’m only 12 days into the month. You can’t imagine how I envy users in the US, Japan, Germany, Austria, Sweden … Well… almost everywhere else really.

I feel your pain mate, i feel your pain,
i'm currently sitting on over 1/3rd of my dl quota with only 7 days into the month

fabinou said: 3 years ago Pachter used to say that PSP will crush Ipod. Seriously.

How an analyst could possibly predict that is beyond me.  That's just assinine.

Pachter is making a couple of predictions here.  He's predicting that BD will win the next gen war.  BD is leading right now, but it's a pretty fragile lead. 

He's also predicting that BD will drive PS3 sales.  I don't see how the PS3's sales are going to be driven by including a BD player years from now.  The PS3 isn't going to be cheaper than BD players any more -- it's already $150 more for a PS3 than a good BD player in the states -- and the disparity will increase significantly as time goes on.  This doesn't make sense.