MikeB said: Ender said: Although his wording is extreme, I agree with his general point. Digital downloads ARE the future, it just needs a few more years to develop. During that period I expect Blue-ray to continue to gain market share and surpass DVD in the home movie market. However, it's life and total sales will fall significantly short of DVD.   IMO digital downloads are part of the future like it was also part of the past. However full quality high definition movies still aren't feasible for digital distribution everywhere around the world. Many people have to slow and unreliable connections or no internet at all around the globe. The market also is not ready for this. Of course Sony and Microsoft would love to cut out the middleman as much as possible. But most people still greatly prefer physical media for their full quality content (for budget content it's less of an issue). Disc sales are very important to shops and rental services, they are everywhere. Even VGChartz isn't ready for this as it still ignores sales of online distributed console content.

 

 

I think we pretty much agree with each other.  I agree HD quality movies aren't feasbile yet, however the writing is on the wall.  Yesterday I watched a 480p movie on hulu.com, which looked good (obviously not Blue-ray quality, but pretty darn good).  Additionally, netflix and blockbuster.com offer streaming SD movies.  It's not hard to believe in a couple of years there will be a viable means to download 1080p movies online, and a few years after that it becoming mainstream. Again, IMO Bluie-ray is more a stop gap medium for movies, and it won't be as huge has DVD or cassettes.  BTW, I’m not degrading Blue-ray, heck I plan to get one, but I honestly think the MS guy has a point. 

 

LOL

TheRealMafoo said: Domicinator said: TheRealMafoo said: Domicinator said: TheRealMafoo said: This Tuesday Apple announces there new laptop line. Experts think Apple will announce that the new Mac's will come with Blu-ray drives. When the #2 laptop manufacture in the world jumps on board, it doesn't sound like a dead format.   Yeah, who better to force their users into a technology than Apple?  It's what they excel at.   I think you mean "offer the option", as I am sure the lower end units will only have DVD. To bad Vista does not offer that option :p At least the 360 will. I'm not sure what you even mean by that.  Vista is totally capable of BluRay playback/writing.  And I'd venture to say that if there really is a BluRay add on coming out for the 360, it will probably be able to connect to PCs as well. Show me a link that says vista has support for Blu-Ray.

What type of "support" are you looking for?  You can buy a vista PC with a BD drive.  And there is available software to play it back.  Less than $100 will get your existing PC this ability...

@Falcon
Yes, Sony offers blu ray in the hopes that both it and the PS3 will Succed. The Difference in What MS did is they Pushed their HD DVD Addon with the hopes it would just Hold off Sony and Blu ray. Another words they pushed a worthless peice of junk with no future on people just to hold off Sony. If you cannot see the difference in the ethics, I feel sorry for you. Now there are a ton of people who bought a worthless HD DVD addons with few movies to play on them and no future Because MS said "We got HD DVD and it's just as good as Blu ray" When all along they knew it was most likely goingto fail.

Microsoft could be the next Sega, says aj_habfan.

MikeB said: @ TheRealMafoo . The issue started with Carter, and then was really put into motion with sub prime lending by the Clinton Administration. FYI the US' national debt had the biggest decrease under the Clinton administration, the plan was to be debt free by 2013. That would mean the US would have saved huge costs with regard to interest payments. Instead under the Bush administration the US national debt doubled to above 10 trillion (10.000 Billion USD). President Bush made many incredibly stupid decisions, for instance with regard to allowing people to get too high loans enabling people to own their own (far too expensive for them) houses (he specifically encouraged this!). That's at the core of the current housing problems. The current situation is so much worse compared to the time when Clinton left office. Some radically unpopular decisions are needed for a new president or else....

 

Sorry for the off topic...

Bush did a worse job as president then Clinton, there is no question. The Government is worse off due to Bush. But Clinton, in an attempted to stop the growing gap of rich vs poor, tried to grow wealth for the poor with sub prime lending. He figured if he could get the poor into houses, they would generate wealth. While I think he heart was in the right place, I think it was the wrong way to go about it. It's why we are in the mess we are in right now. It caused the number of people who could afford a house to go up. Without the number of houses increasing, this causes the value of homes to go up. People started building houses. Until builders caught up with demand (about 2 years ago), the problem didn't show itself. Now the supply is more then the demand, and everyone who took out adjustable rate mortgages gambling that there house would always grow in value, just lost. Sadly, that's trillions of dollars worth of people.

Some congress men saw this coming, and tried to stop it (Ron Paul), but Fanny and Freddy had everyone in there pocket, so it was unstoppable. The only way you could have stopped this, is to not do it at all. If the government had not meddled in the market. This would have never happened.

It's funny when I hear people say "This economic crisis is an example of why we need more regulation of the free market". No, it's an example of why government should stay the hell out of the free market.

If MS is so strongly towards digital downloads then their next console should not include an optical drive what so ever. Just a massive HDD and an ethernet port for the Xbox720. (or an arcade version and just only an ethernet port lol)

@ TheRealMafoo

I don't quite agree with your perspective. Bill Clinton left office leaving the country in a supremely healthy state.

The bulk of those defaulting on their mortgages are the ones who bought houses after he left office. The Bush administration turned huge surpluses into amazing debts, the general market is in a bad shape.

It's the government's responsibility to act accordingly. Clinton did his best to improve things by using resources which were readily available at the time. Due to bad policies the economy weakened, the Bush administrated failed to react on this and made matters even far worse.

It's all about timing, adapt to the current state of affairs. IMO it is impossible to blame an ex-president from a decade ago for problems created in recent years by the Bush administration.

For example if I have 1 million in cash and you have nothing, it's OK for me to lent you a couple of thousand bucks. But if I lent 1 million to other people and need to lent money myself to lent you some money, that's a very stupid concept. Times change and you will have to adapt to new situations, which clearly the Bush administration failed to do. They leave a lot of a mess for any new government to fix and it will be hard.

MikeB said: @ TheRealMafoo Bush did a worse job as president then Clinton, there is no question. The Government is worse off due to Bush. But Clinton, in an attempted to stop the growing gap of rich vs poor, tried to grow wealth for the poor with sub prime lending. H[ I don't quite agree with your perspective. Bill Clinton left office leaving the country in a supremely healthy state. The bulk of those defaulting on their mortgages are the ones who bought houses after he left office. The Bush administration turned huge surpluses into amazing debts, the general market is in a bad shape. It's the government's responsibility to act accordingly. Clinton did his best to improve things by using resources which were readily available at the time. Due to bad policies the economy weakened, the Bush administrated failed to react on this and made matters even far worse. It's all about timing, adapt to the current state of affairs. IMO it is impossible to blame an ex-president from a decade ago for problems created in recent years by the Bush administration. For example if I have 1 million in cash and you have nothing, it's OK for me to lent you a couple of thousand bucks. But if I lent 1 million to other people and need to lent money myself to lent you some money, that's a very stupid concept. Times change and you will have to adapt to new situations, which clearly the Bush administration failed to do. They leave a lot of a mess for any new government to fix and it will be hard.

 

 I only said Clinton did these things, because he said he did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCSZakjyVsI

The question is at 3:19.

I always love those MS guys making statement like that and meanwhile the guy probably has a huge HDTV at home with a Blue Ray player connected to it lol...