Why the blu-ray format deserves to die

[robkelk]

Seems I'm not the only one who doesn't like the supposed "next great disc format".

The Inquirer: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... ank-reason]Blu-Ray sales tank for good reasons

Even though it's obvious the author has an axe to grind, I can't disagree with anything he says...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Wiregeek]

DRM crippled, proprietary, patent locked, proprietary, crippled, proprietary, and.. bullshit.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Morganite]

Question is, what happens next?

I've heard somewhat mixed reviews of the performance of upconverting dvd players. I know hd-dvd looks extremely nice on a good tv. If blu-ray does fail, is
there going to be something else to fill the void?

-Morgan.

[Bluemage]

More than that, will it fail as a data format and a movie format, or just as a movie disc? It's still a freakin' huge disc format, so will it be the
next DVD for people trying to burn large amounts of information?

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[jpub]

Meh. I'm probably getting a PS3, but I doubt I'll have an HDMI capable TV for ages. I especially doubt I'll ever get a regular blue-ray player
until they hit sub-$50.

[Angryoptimist]

As far as I know, every other 'HD-format' existing or proposed is/will be also similarly encumbered.
If it gets cheap enough, quickly enough, I might get a writer and use it for backups.  I have a wistful rememberance of the days where the data I would want to back up did not have two orders of magnitude on the capacity of discs I had for backing things up.  No interest in the movie thing, though.
I've got an HDMI 'http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... rchInDesc=]TV' (there was a sale at the time).  And a PS3.  I'm not necessarily recommending either, though.

• %[link=http://xkcd.com/1288/]XKCD #1288]
  
• %[link=http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxreplace/?src=search]FoxReplace for Firefox]

Two great tastes that go great together!

[deadpan29]

Personally, I expect the next big "format" on the hardware to be something more akin to a flash drive or a ROM card than an optically read disk.
File formatting and copy protection are a separate issue.
----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[hmelton]

Consumers Not Buying Blu-Ray Format Despite Format Win

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http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/arch ... =nl_texblg

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howard melton

God bless

[Bob Schroeck]

Personally, I expect the next big "format" on the hardware to be something more akin to a flash drive or a ROM card than an optically read disk.

Well, given that the newly-discovered memristor can be used to build memories that are an order of magnitude or more smaller than current state-of-the-rat, and are apparently pretty damned fast, I'd call that a no-brainer.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Wiregeek]

so the next big removable mass storage is gonna be.. a flash card?

I can dig on that. 128gb SD, here I come!
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Epsilon]

Wiredgeek wrote:

---

so the next big removable mass storage is gonna be.. a flash card?

Yes.

There are, in fact, a number of lawsuits currently ongoing regarding them and who will have the DRM rights to them.

---------------

Epsilon

[Wiregeek]

DRM rights

I'll bet there's like one guy in his boxer shorts screaming that 'noone' should have a legislated DRM, and noone is listening to him.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[robkelk]

Which is a frickin' shame, because DRM only penalizes the honest consumer. (Everyone else works around it...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Wiregeek]

DRM is the most efficient and effective way I can think of to promote and nurture the growth of a vibrant and widespread content piracy industry.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Epsilon]

That's certainly the common wisdom.

However, DRM is here to stay. Railing against it is sort of like railing against taxes or credit cards. It makes you feel better, but will accomplish nothing.

--------------------

Epsilon

[Acyl]

Enh, well. Corporate and related government entities might listen if stuff, y'know, fails.

Can't comment about Vista, but the fact Blu-Ray isn't doing well is hardly a surprise. There's not enough stuff on Blu-Ray, and as a result most stores don't care to stock it. Most folks don't see it as significantly different from DVD, either.

DVDs are significantly better than VCDs. And the defunct laserdiscs, which were too big, and VHS, which is just too old. Blu-Ray, though...

...there's no real functional difference between a Blu-Ray disc and a DVD. They're both the same size and shape, it's not like Blu-Ray's magically more compact. There's no major added functionality, just higher video quality. And how much video quality do you really need? My TV isn't that big or that good. Still, I have DVDs. I can enjoy the quality on those. But a Blu-Ray disc really wouldn't look much better on my screen.

The only Blu-Ray adopters I know are PS3 owners.

I have no plans to buy a PS3.
Honestly, I see this working out pretty much the same way as UMDs. The only people who have a use for UMD movies are PSP owners. And even then, most PSP owners don't buy those. I don't. If I use my PSP while I'm travelling, I'll damn well play a game, not a few minutes of some movie. And if I'm not travelling, why the hell would I want to watch something on that tiny screen when I have a TV?
-- Acyl

[robkelk]

However, DRM is here to stay. Railing against it is sort of like railing against taxes or credit cards. It makes you feel better, but will accomplish nothing.

Which is why I'm also boycotting the format...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Necratoid]

The thing that bugs me most is that on a movie DVD there is so much extra unused room. What I mean here is that if you encode it competently, a DVD holds far
more that a movie DVD suggests it has capacity of. They just can't give me enough extras to fill the disk space on a DVD.... on a significantly larger
format... they are basically giving me less content (relative to disk space) than DVD did on Blu-Ray.

DRM however is a same old, same old thing. Sure it sounds annoying and even more annoying than making it so I can not bypass the previews on my home DVD
player (unless the player has some odd design that means I can fastforeward(Weren't DVDs meant to ditch that annoying requirement of VHS tapes?)).
However, if you think back to the start of DVDs.... you remember the brlillant idea of regional encoding. This was when I couldn't get a DVD to play on my
spiffy new DVD player... solely because they added a microchip, to the DVD player, that had the sole function of reading a tiny bit of data and telling me if I
could actually watch my legally purchased DVD... without buying a new machine, when my old machine was perfectly capable of playing the DVD, minus a few lines
of garbage code. I had a friend who bought a region free bypasss chip and welded it in himself to bypass this.

It saddens me that I want to bootleg simplely to bypass the annoying extra 'features' that mean I have to wait ten minutes to get to the menu screen.
I bought your shiny, new, video disk thingie to avoid watching previews for movies that I don't want to seee (that are frequently not ones I want to
see)... why are you punishing me for dealing with you again?

I know Sony learned how to win a format war, after their mistakes with there smaller machine and smaller media, that held better vieo, all around technically
supier Beta video tape.... but why the explitive are they channeling Stalin/Lenin/Mao in the victory lap? Win the war.... then starve 20 or 30 million people
(media players) with your malignant tactics and inability to run the post war adminastration. The way Sony wins the new format war and then attacks its
customers... is the same kind of fail that resulted from the massive shift of massive communist regimes from agriculture to industry (we who do not believe in
God (the gods) demand he/they/she/it provide us with an infinite amount of free food.... or the unfed starve... their lack of faith disturbed us Important
people anyway). Only once they (Sony) win the war, the governing force decide to attack their own guys (and customers) with red tape and propaganda, rather
than just sell them stuff (feed them) they want.

It the same kind of logic that whatever idiot the have running Cartoon Network badly, this week uses when they decide to take up 24 hours showing the same
movie the executive loves on loop... when more people are home to watch the channel.... decides Cartoon Network will only show different kinds of Scoobie Doo
all day... or that Cartoon Network should show less of that popular anime stuff and more live action shows.

[Epsilon]

that had the sole function of reading a tiny bit of data and telling me if I could actually watch my legally purchased DVD...

Region encoding is okay on its face. It prevents cheap importers from undercutting the prices of local distributors. Its not worse than tariffs on
imports.

And anyone who thinks that eliminating tariffs on imports is a good thing had better take a good long look at themselves the next time you complain about
outsourcing manufacturing to Mexico or customer service to India.

Many people, especially on the internets, think the purpose of DRM is to stop piracy.

It isn't.

The purpose of DRM is to stop casual piracy. To make it more annoying to pirate a piece of software than to pay the regular price. The idea is
to make Joe Sixpack who can't tell the difference between a crack and a torrent pay for their stuff. And there have been a lot of successes in this.
Witness Valve's "Steam" network, which has been enourmously successful despite being essentially a gaint piece of malware whose only purpose is
to prevent you from playing games. Witness also X-Box live or any similar stuff. They all make money.

The trick is to make the DRM virtually unnoticeable to the average viewer. And most of them won't notice it. Oh god, it takes ten second rather than five
for my movie to start! Most of them will be out of the room making popcorn while this happens.

Now, there have been hiccups in the process, which there are bound to be. But just because there have been a few strains on the system dones't mean the
idea itself is inherently wrong.

---------------------

Epsilon

[CattyNebulart]

Region encoding is okay on its face. It prevents cheap importers from undercutting the prices of local distributors. Its not worse than tariffs on imports.

Region Encoding is a bad idea, and tariffs are a quite different issue. This would be listed as parallel imports, and you still pay tarrifs on them if any unless they are smuggled goods. Parallel imports are legal in many countries. Also I frequently bounce between the US and europe, should I buy 2 players? An illegal region free player? Just not buy movies? The last one is what I'm actually doing but i still get DVDs as gifts.

And anyone who thinks that eliminating tariffs on imports is a good thing had better take a good long look at themselves the next time you complain about outsourcing manufacturing to Mexico or customer service to India.

A different and much more complex issue.

Many people, especially on the internets, think the purpose of DRM is to stop piracy.

It isn't.

To be fair that is the usual reason given.

The purpose of DRM is to stop casual piracy. To make it more annoying to pirate a piece of software than to pay the regular price. The idea is to make Joe Sixpack who can't tell the difference between a crack and a torrent pay for their stuff. And there have been a lot of successes in this.

Like the DRM on bioshock? or the DRM on microsofts plays for sure site? DRM systems have so far only been a sucsess for those that sell them, and a catastrophe for civil liberties.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/

Witness Valve's "Steam" network, which has been enourmously successful despite being essentially a gaint piece of malware whose only purpose is to prevent you from playing games. Witness also X-Box live or any similar stuff. They all make money.

Steam and Xbox live are content distribution systems, their purpose is to cut out some of the middlemen and so drive down costs. If it wasn't for reliability issues and forced patching I would love steam. Ussualy games go from developer to publisher to retailer, sometimes with a few more steps before it arrives at the customer, and the big publishers take a big cut of the profits and try to lock smaller ones out of the market. Steam bypasses this and goes from publisher directly to customer for the most part. It also gathers data that na be used for marketing and to make better sequels. the DRM in steam is more of an afterthought.

The trick is to make the DRM virtually unnoticeable to the average viewer. And most of them won't notice it. Oh god, it takes ten second rather than five for my movie to start! Most of them will be out of the room making popcorn while this happens.

if DRM was virtually unnoticeable it wouldn't be a problem.however DRM is quite noticeable. It also used to be that you had rights to the stuf you bought, with the DCMA if the DRM would block those rights then you lose the right. Which is backwards, if the DRM blocks your rights you lose the DRM.
also libraries, schools and similar institutions have other rights and responsibilities than normal people, but they suffer from the same DRM.

Now, there have been hiccups in the process, which there are bound to be. But just because there have been a few strains on the system dones't mean the idea itself is inherently wrong.

There is a few stains and then there is broken beyond belief. Intelectual property law, especially copyright law needs a major overhaul. possibly a return to where it was at 1900, but an update would be better.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[ECSNorway]

The main reason Beta lost out to VHS, really, is because you couldn't fit a full two-hour movie on a standard Beta cassette.

And the industry was shudderingly terrified that they'd lose out to VCR-to-VCR piracy when they first came out, too. Tried to get Congress to ban them,
especially movie rental places.

And today there's a Blockbuster on every street corner.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Balentius]

Necratoid wrote:

---

It the same kind of logic that whatever idiot the have running Cartoon Network badly, this week uses when they decide to take up 24 hours showing the same
movie the executive loves on loop... when more people are home to watch the channel.... decides Cartoon Network will only show different kinds of Scoobie Doo
all day... or that Cartoon Network should show less of that popular anime stuff and more live action shows.

Thank you! I thought I was the only one that was frustrated about this - it seems like every weekend, they repeat either a scooby-doo movie or a
pokemon movie... Or at least for a good part of the day.

OK, back to the Blue-ray rant.

Not going to buy it, unless I have an amazing need to get a PS3, for at least 1 year. No reason to at this point.