M$ isn't part of the blu-ray association. stop pulling stuff from thin air

People want cost effective entertainment. They may go to the movies or go to the park or beach rather than an expensive restaurant or trip to disney world. Dvd upscale offers a vey similar experience to blu ray at a fraction of the cost.

Thanks for the accusations, but I didn't say anything about blu-ray being anything like betamax.

my bad about that part, you where a victim by proximity

Add-ons on any console rarely take off. Just look at Sega's 32-X, the MS HD-DVD player, the PS2 hard-drive kit. All afterthoughts - all phailures.

MS made a huge step into the download direction with the streaming of Netflix. That's where they wanna go. And to make it - IMHO - as painless as possible. I can imagine they will sell a small license to view a said movie as much as you want - anytime - for one fee. Then, you can throw it on your mem card and go to a friend's house, log into your account and do the same thing.

Guess what? You can almost stream HD content if you have a fast-enough connection. And trust me, it will only get faster.

So, instead of spending $25-$30 for a Blu at Wally World, hop on LIVE, buy the license for half that, and go. And guess what - you don't actually have the file on your drive - it's on a server and won't take up space on your hard drive.

Blu Ray will never, ever replace DVD - streaming will happen much faster. And streaming will slow piracy big time.

BR is secondary, just like HD-DVD was. Sony raped their 3rd system by whoring it to drop price for the non-gaming audience. There is no reason for other videogame systems to go BR. Microsoft didn't see a need to help out HD-DVD (hence why it died out) and neither will they for BR. They are looking at things that matter that will actually draw large crowds. Unlike Blu Ray....downloads are the future. The next big screen style will be hologram. I saw it on CNN during the Nov 4th results of the US presidential elections. Will-I-am from the Black Eyed Peas was talking to Wolf Blitzer via Hologram live. It was great.

come on it's a no brainer.... and you all know... stop trying to convince yourself the jump between \BR and DVD can be compared to the one between VHS and DVD.... it's worlds appart.... and I don't see the gain you have with BR that justify the price none what so ever... there are already other means out there cheaper and better on every single point we can consider on BR... whcich was not really the case between VHS and DVD...

your parents grand parents may be a target... even though parents are already most of them computer and internet knowledgeable.....

I don't know a single person around me under the age of 35 that is not using more live streaming DVR VOD or DL than purchasing DVDs or blu ray.... hell i have a netflix account the last time I actualy used the phisycal disc renting was 10 month ago I still have the 3 DVDs here... it even when through2 different houses.... and better yet I haven't even watched them... and U watch about 3 to 4 movies a week... I use netflix live streaming for TV shows I go directly online on the website of the network to watch them ligaly for free with less commercial and in HD on my screen.... and the rest I don't have there I use XB Live video on demande.... I haven't even illegaly downloaded somwthing in almost a year....

and the people I know that don't do that like I do legaly are all using torrents...and I know people on every single continant as an international in a university... and I see a lot of them go through (count in thousands)... without saying that I go through a lot of trend analysis through my field of study which is advertising and marketing and just my pure sens of observation I learned to have... yeah BR will pick up because that will be pushed to make money... IT WILL NOT have a long life time and will be take over sooner than later no question asked...

reasons
it's already an obsolete technology either you like it or not....
it's not reliable....
it's not cost efficient...

and that for the distributor as well as the customer... the interest for both side is really short...
harder to protect against piracy than live streaming...
cost of production and ecological factor is answered by itself... highly negative...
they can cut middle men... so cut price for the customer....

people buying BR are simply buying in a hipe pushed by advertising... and are just some other victimes of high cost marketing BS from Sony again (don't worry all corporation do the same it's just Sony is one of the master for that... anybody remembers minidisc ????) so yeah it will pick... but just the time the investment is covered and the format is somehow supported.. which won't last every indicators shows it won't... i.e. hulu commercial during the superbowl... they even advertise for movie being avaiable on consol networks now when they release HD movies... so you want to buy a BR player go for it.... come back to me in 5 years we'll see who was right.....

As of last week, the BR version had 60% marketshare of sales. And being we do not have any other indicator, it's the best we have to go by.

I'm not trying to say the BR has already replaced DVD, but it's most definetely not the betamax.

Sony already pays MS plenty of royalties for use of MS's VC1 codec for blu-ray movies.

Not like Sony had much choice since their original codec choice made HD-DVD look superior to blu-ray. But MS is all about streaming now, as if the Net Flix deal didn't clue you in.

Some of you guys downtalking BR at all costs seem to live in their own small bubble, or to be in utter denial.

1) streaming content is nice and everything. But when will everyone who want to see a movie have a steadily reliable 30-40 Mps connection (that's the bandwidth of a BR during playback)? And you have to have this connection _wherever_ and anytime you want to see the content. Want to see a movie while commuting on a portable reader? Want to entertain kids with their favourite Pixar movie during a car travel? Want to bring a few movies at a friend's in the middle of nowhere? Is streaming the answer in these cases? I think you need a physical digital medium.

Plus you talk as if USA or NA is the whole world. There's no Netflix in the rest of the world, and in most countries there's not the net infrastructure required for a reliable distribution. Things will get much better in say a 5 years timespan, but why should I buy _today_ a DVD if I can have so much better content with $5 more?

2) given that _today_ we need a better medium, BR is an obvious upgrade because it is back-compatible with the bulk of DVD content out there. And having 10-100x space on a disc is also great for games and software, as new PCs and laptops are more and more coming with BR drives instead of DVDs.

3) going back to the original topic (consoles): don't delude yourself by saying that DVD is "good enough" for games. There are several games on xbox360 _right now_ that span several discs. And while changing the occasional disc in Lost Odissey might not be that bad (how many of them? 4?), what about less linear, free roaming games where disc changing is not as easily interspersed with gameplay.

Case: Id's "Rage". John Carmack already said that their greatest trouble with the 360 version is the storage medium. They will have to go with lesser res megatextures in the 360 version to fit the game in 2 DVDs... and only the licensing costs are keeping them from using the 3 DVDs they need to match the PS3 and PC versions.

And the bigger, the more complex, the less linear games become, the worse this will be an issue. Compound by the fact that xbox360 doesn't even have an HD as a base spec.

In the 3 years from today to next gen xbox, I think that they will have to bite the bullet: there will be multiplatform games that will have HD and/or BR as a requirement for the xbox360 version. Then, with the next gen, an HD will be in the specs and a better optical storage will be needed because, again, in 3 years from now there's no way that the greatest part of the userbase can see downloading 50-100 Gb as viable or convenient. MS could go with their own optical format, but in 3 years BR will have a significant share of the movie market, especially for newfangled blockbusters, thus it just makes sense for their drive to be able to read BR _in addition_ to any digital distribution.

For the next-next-gen (6-10 years from now) the bandwidth availability will have probably improved enough to seriously think about ditching discs in some cases... then we can talk again :)

Edit: typo