BengaBenga said: MikeB said: BengaBenga said: JaggedSac said: PS3 sales sure are helping out ALOT. Almost makes those graphs worthless.   Yep, that's the issue. Since probably about 2/3 of the graph is PS3's the graph is almost useless. I want to see a graph that shows the sales of the actual discs. Cause we don't really know how many people are using the PS3 as a BD player, it is after all the successor to the most successful game console ever.   Personally I have always stated that the PS3 is the main reason why Blu-Ray is outperforming DVD (which was hailed as the fastest adopted consumer tech!!). As you know movie sales outperform DVD as well, so it's a big factor and I think it will become an even bigger factor in the future. More PS3 owners will buy better HDTV, a slimline PS3 is likely to hit the market, etc. Athough I agree, I disagree with your conclusions.   That's strange, cause I really don't make any conclusions, aside that you can't really say anything about the state of BD based on a graph that includes the PS3, without knowing how many PS3 users use it as a BD player.

I don't agree that it's useless at all, PS3s are Blu-Ray capable devices. For instance not everyone was using SMS on their cellphones when introduced, but if you can't count them in hardware adoptation charts then you would have an install base of 0 units. SMS has been a huge success despite not everyone using this ability.

It's very likely a vast majority of PS3 owners will use the Blu-Ray movie playback feature, by renting or buying movies at some point. Disc sales are already very solid at this point of a new format's lifecycle (better than DVD, dwarfing VHS), the amount of Blu-Ray capable devices is very solid.

Considering everything, I would even say the bulk of more educated (on this topic) movie enthusiasts would rather pick a PS3 over the bulk of standalone players out there (from a quality and value perspective).

Star Scream said: Blu-Ray will soon take over, no doubt. The advent of cheap BR players is really helping the format's adoption - especially in places like UK, where they are significantly cheaper than PS3.

 

well i dont know where you live but in the uk, standalone players are getting cheap especially the mid range ones, asda have a nice sony one for £175, im thinking of buying one to keep upstairs.

but bluray films are still more expensive than dvd. a premium new dvd sells for around £13.75 whilst a premium bluray release goes for £17.95 so a bit of difference there, but prices for BD films will come down.

i can clearly recall when i 1st got a samsung dvd player in 1998 the 1st film i bought was matrix and that was £19.99 so its safe to say bluray films will get cheaper also.

Electro General said: MikeB said: @ Fumanchu Mike you should be charging Sony for all the free marketing you do!! I just like accuracy and I like the technology, I had read all the HD DVD propaganda from 360 fans the last few years. I have been attacked beyond believe for stating Blu-Ray was performing well. Maybe you can understand. Fact remains, technically HD DVD was well inferior, less storage, lower bitrates, no mandatory scratch protection, bad load and eject times for available players. Then why are you so interested in the PS3. Thats 3 year old tech. Enlighten me please

 I think you are mixing things up, I like Blu-Ray technology but I love the Cell technology!

If you really want to know, I have been advocating similar approaches to processing technologies since the early 90s. Coming from an Amiga background (heterogeneous multi-processing) there were some innovative forward thinking new solutions, one of which was the multi-processing BeBox computer (inspired by the Amiga) in 1995. The hardware approach was very right, sadly with the Windows and MacOS dominance, legacy software compatibility is more powerful than innovation and the market was being held back from any real such advancements for a decade. Luckily legacy compatibility plays less a part with game consoles and allows for leap frogging competitors from a core technology perspective.

Being a tech enthusiast, I also followed the demoscene a lot. Programmers and artists who really explore ways to get the most out of the hardware. This isn't really possible on ever changing diverse PC hardware and I never liked this and also Windows has become so horribly inefficient.

So it's a combination of different factors why I like the PS3 so much. It has a solid technological foundation together with a solid userbase and very talented developers supporting it. The PS3 is market changing hardware, not only for Blu-Ray but also serves as a stepping stone towards (long overdue) much more modern computing architectures.

MikeB said: Electro General said: MikeB said: @ Fumanchu Mike you should be charging Sony for all the free marketing you do!! I just like accuracy and I like the technology, I had read all the HD DVD propaganda from 360 fans the last few years. I have been attacked beyond believe for stating Blu-Ray was performing well. Maybe you can understand. Fact remains, technically HD DVD was well inferior, less storage, lower bitrates, no mandatory scratch protection, bad load and eject times for available players. Then why are you so interested in the PS3. Thats 3 year old tech. Enlighten me please  I think you are mixing things up, I like Blu-Ray technology but I love the Cell technology! If you really want to know, I have been advocating similar approaches to processing technologies since the early 90s. Coming from an Amiga background (heterogeneous multi-processing) there were some innovative forward thinking new solutions, one of which was the multi-processing BeBox computer (inspired by the Amiga) in 1995. The hardware approach was very right, sadly with the Windows and MacOS dominance, legacy software compatibility is more powerful than innovation and the market was being held back from any real such advancements for a decade. Luckily legacy compatibility plays less a part with game consoles and allows for leap frogging competitors from a core technology perspective. Being a tech enthusiast, I also followed the demoscene a lot. Programmers and artists who really explore ways to get the most out of the hardware. This isn't really possible on ever changing diverse PC hardware and I never liked this and also Windows has become so horribly inefficient. So it's a combination of different factors why I like the PS3 so much. It has a solid technological foundation together with a solid userbase and very talented developers supporting it. The PS3 is market changing hardware, not only for Blu-Ray but also serves as a stepping stone towards (long overdue) much more modern computing architectures.

 

Demo Scene is not about pushing hardware to its limits as much as it is about finding a limitation in what you're doing in order to give the appearance of more advanced visuals ... Often what is done is not much different from pre-rendering backgrounds (as was done in the Resident Evil Remake).

While Windows (and other modern operating systems) does have a large overhead, if it is taking more than 10% of your system resources you're doing something wrong and gaining 10% of processing power is pretty meaningless in terms of improving visuals now.

Anyways, the primary reason why the ever changing hardware approach of the PC became the dominant approach is because hardware is cheap in comparison to the cost of optimizing most programs ... Adding $25 at retail to the cost of every program ends up being far more expensive to the average user than telling them to spend $1000 to upgrade their computer every 2 (and now 4) years.

@ HappySqurriel

Visual appearance = Visuals. The artists explore boundaries and seek workarounds for limitations, at least that what the Amiga demoscene was like. To show off your coding talents, imagination and creativity.



The x86 IBM compatible became dominant, because IBM had a strong relationship and good reputation amongst businesses. Its awful multi-media (and thus gaming) abilities were looked at as non-important (maybe even useless), managers didn't know the potential of multi-tasking (like copy and pasting between programs), better multi-media power (like audio-visual feedback), etc.

Because people used IBM computers at their work, many when buying a home computer would pick an IBM compatible Personal Computer so they could do some work at home as well (nomatter far more advanced software existed for other systems). Later marketing played an important role, if there was 1 Amiga ad, there would be 20 PC ads from various different companies, etc.

Much better results were reached on the Amiga (both multi-media and professional software) than on 80's MSDOS PCs.

MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel Demo Scene is not about pushing hardware to its limits as much as it is about finding a limitation in what you're doing in order to give the appearance of more advanced visuals Visual appearance = Visuals. The artists explore boundaries and seek workarounds for limitations, at least that what the Amiga demoscene was like. To show off your coding talents, imagination and creativity. Anyways, the primary reason why the ever changing hardware approach of the PC became the dominant approach is because hardware is cheap in comparison to the cost of optimizing most programs The x86 IBM compatible became dominant, because IBM had a strong relationship and good reputation amongst businesses. It's awful media (and thus gaming) abilities were looked at as non-crucial, managers didn't know the potential of multi-tasking (like copy and pasting between programs), better multi-media power (like visual and audio feedback), etc. Because people used IBM computers at their work, many when buying a home computer would pick an IBM compatible Personal Computer so they could do some work at home as well (nomatter far more advanced software existed for other systems). Later marketing played an important role, if there was 1 Amiga ad, there would be 20 PC ads from various different companies, etc. Much better results were reached on the Amiga (both multi-media and professional software) than on 80's MSDOS PCs.

 

We can argue the semantics of the demo scene all you want, but you and I both know that just because people could look at a game like Resident Evil: Remake and think it looked similar to a HD console game does not mean that it was nearly as demanding as a HD console game ...

 

Now, IBM became so popular and profitable because they convinced companies (rightfully so) that more powerful and newer hardware was cheaper than highly optimized software. A large portion of companies still operaterate based on custom software, and the cost of this software is directly related to the number of man hours it takes to create it ... Now, a $100,000 server may look like a massive expense to run a piece of software but when you're dealing with software with hundreds of thousands of lines of codes (and in many/most cases for legacy business applications) millions of lines of code, that $100,000 represents a drop in the bucket to optimizing an entire application.

@ HappySqurriel

But even that wasn't true, they were rather expensive. People thought they bought something outstanding (marketing). 80's IBM PCs are worth nothing and only really suitable for the trashcan nowadays, Amigas from the 80s can still be worth owning and selling.

A look at the 80s:
http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_3 (demos copy & pasting, etc)
http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_2
http://www.archive.org/details/amiga3000 (voted as best computer by professionals)

MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel Now, IBM became so popular and profitable because they convinced companies (rightfully so) that more powerful and newer hardware was cheaper than highly optimized software. But even that wasn't true, they were rather expensive. People thought they bought something outstanding (marketing). 80's IBM PCs are worth nothing and only really suitable for the trashcan nowadays, Amigas from the 80s can still be worth owning and selling. A look at the 80s: http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_3 (demos copy & pasting, etc) http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_2 http://www.archive.org/details/amiga3000 (voted as best computer by professionals)

 

IBM's hardware may not have been the most cost effective, but it was much cheaper for companies to buy new hardware ever 2 years than it was to spend money trying to optimize code to add complexity to an application ...

For home use Amigas fell into an odd market where people who were looking for games and were looking for a stable platform choose the much less expensive (and far more popular) home consoles, people who were looking for high performance in their games choose PCs because of their constantly improving hardware, and people who were looking for a personal computer choose Windows Based PCs because they were what they used at work and it was easier than learning another OS.

Blasphemy! Every smart person on this website noes that teh blu ray was a mistake and failing.

DD is teh futzort.

 

Seriousley though what's insane about that first graph is that they counted multi-unit houses as one.

The real question is

How many PS3s that are in homes without another BR player are receiving extensive use as Blu Ray players?

If 90% of homes that have one or the other do not have both -- and only half of those PS3 owners are using their console as a BR player, then the technology true "adoption" ("utilization") rate is much lower than its reported "adoption" ("distribution") rate.

Mike from Morgantown

Using this same rubric -- the Wii is at about 20 percent with 10 months to go. (I bring this up to show that consoles which are not included on the chart may be outperforming other technologies).