• Did Blu-ray as a physical medium, ever take off?
    69 replies, posted
Once I bought my ps3 back in the day I only bought blu-rays moving forward. All the streaming services now kinda make blu-rays redundant though.
[QUOTE=Dr McNinja;46667390]Once I bought my ps3 back in the day I only bought blu-rays moving forward. All the streaming services now kinda make blu-rays redundant though.[/QUOTE]Only if you have good internet.
[QUOTE=Chains!;46660784]Yes, because they're used in PS3/PS4/Xbones.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure the Wii U uses them too
Powerdvd works just fine here, with 4 screens connected, and with DTS Master/Dolby TrueHD bitstreamed to my receiver.
i feel like Blu-Rays would be more popular if you didn't wind up paying $50/month + cost of individual discs to use them
$50 a month?
We've got 3 blu-ray players in this house and my step-father still buys DVDs for some reason. Streaming hasn't taken off over here since the average bandwidth is way too low (It's like 15Mbps, I'm on 5Mbps, good luck matching blu-ray quality)
Streaming never really matches Bluray quality anyway. [editline]10th December 2014[/editline] I've started trying to rip and transcode my Bluray movies now because the software I picked up to try and play them normally, last I checked, still doesn't support the BD menus.
Is MakeMKV the best software for ripping them or is there something better I can buy? I normally rip them and stick them on my NAS, having physical media is great for back up.
[QUOTE=TheLolrus;46661304]Maybe if they'd stop packaging DVDs and 3D Blurays and regular Blurays and UV digital download codes together they wouldn't be so expensive and more people would buy them. I'm buying the Bluray, why do I need a DVD too?[/QUOTE] I thought it was pretty obvious. Its for backwards compatibility reasons. If you want to play the movie on a device that only plays DVD's, you would need to convert the Blu-ray to DVD, which is way beyond the capability of most people, who don't even own Blu-ray capable PC's let alone the technical know-how. Same reason the digital downloads exist. The intended audience isn't for people who exclusively watch movies in the living room. Its for the people who also watch movies on laptops and in-car DVD players and mobiles.
It'd be nice if they sold them separately though. The backwards compatibility argument doesn't really make sense because the DVD is probably already available as its own product anyway. Just sell the Bluray as its own thing, and if you need to watch your movie on a DVD device then buy the DVD. It'd probably even come to the same price as the combo packs are now, and it would mean cheaper movies for people who only need the Bluray.
[QUOTE=FullStreak12;46687269]$50 a month?[/QUOTE] $50 for the program (according to Google, I'm not dumb enough to pay for this shit myself), plus the movie industry puts out new keys about once a month (in my experience). When the new keys are out, the programs have to update, and they're probably charging full price for the new versions because that's generally how payware works on Windows.
[QUOTE=TheLolrus;46688623]It'd be nice if they sold them separately though. The backwards compatibility argument doesn't really make sense because the DVD is probably already available as its own product anyway. Just sell the Bluray as its own thing, and if you need to watch your movie on a DVD device then buy the DVD. It'd probably even come to the same price as the combo packs are now, and it would mean cheaper movies for people who only need the Bluray.[/QUOTE] Pressing a thousand DVDs costs about 10 dollars in total it wouldn't save any money for the customer, instead needing them to spend more
[QUOTE=TheLolrus;46688623]It'd be nice if they sold them separately though. The backwards compatibility argument doesn't really make sense because the DVD is probably already available as its own product anyway. Just sell the Bluray as its own thing, and if you need to watch your movie on a DVD device then buy the DVD. It'd probably even come to the same price as the combo packs are now, and it would mean cheaper movies for people who only need the Bluray.[/QUOTE] A lot of combo packs I've seen are maybe a couple bucks more than the individual Blu-ray or DVD. And when they aren't, it price gauging, plain and simple. The physical product isn't why its more expensive, I guarantee it. It only costs maybe a dollar for them to produce a set.
Maybe it's just my local stores being assholes then.
[QUOTE=TheLolrus;46689047]Maybe it's just my local stores being assholes then.[/QUOTE] Also if your looking at new releases, it tends to be a bit more slanted since they tend to jack the prices up for cash in on the initial home video sales. It levels off more on older releases.
The problem with Blu-ray is that we moved past the optical disc format in a lot of use cases. In the cases where we do need them, yeah they are taking off, even if slowly.
[QUOTE=lavacano;46688651]$50 for the program (according to Google, I'm not dumb enough to pay for this shit myself), plus the movie industry puts out new keys about once a month (in my experience). When the new keys are out, the programs have to update, and they're probably charging full price for the new versions because that's generally how payware works on Windows.[/QUOTE] I think the blu-ray player hooked up to my TV cost me about 50 euros. Granted, I don't have a 5.1 system but it damn sure does the trick.
[QUOTE=Psyke89;46689938]The problem with Blu-ray is that we moved past the optical disc format in a lot of use cases.[/QUOTE] This is very true I think. Neither my macbook or my desktop even have disc players. My xbox one has all the games digitally downloaded and loaded up with streaming services. I get 100mb/s internet so discs in general are kinda superfluous for my home.
[QUOTE=Psyke89;46689938]The problem with Blu-ray is that we moved past the optical disc format in a lot of use cases. In the cases where we do need them, yeah they are taking off, even if slowly.[/QUOTE] I still prefer DVD to boot my various installation media because I've had bad luck with USB booting. The fact that I consistently lose every flash drive I come in contact with probably doesn't help.
[QUOTE=Dr McNinja;46697522]This is very true I think. Neither my macbook or my desktop even have disc players. My xbox one has all the games digitally downloaded and loaded up with streaming services. I get 100mb/s internet so discs in general are kinda superfluous for my home.[/QUOTE] Hot frak. Where in the US can you even get speeds that high?
The trouble with Blu-ray is the DRM. It just makes life hard for people who don't want to make pirated copies and the people it's meant to stop just find a away around it.
[QUOTE=Ardosos;46702145]Hot frak. Where in the US can you even get speeds that high?[/QUOTE] We have that easily in South Dakota. I friend of mine has 200 Mbps at his frat house even. I only have 60 at my apartment though.
A benefit of Blu-Rays is that they are ready for archiving. You have to rely on online services for streaming, and hard drive storage is relatively prone to spontaneous data loss as opposed to optical media. I would buy more Blu-Ray movies if only they weren't priced significantly higher than DVDs.
[QUOTE=Silikone;46706031]A benefit of Blu-Rays is that they are ready for archiving. You have to rely on online services for streaming, and hard drive storage is relatively prone to spontaneous data loss as opposed to optical media. I would buy more Blu-Ray movies if only they weren't priced significantly higher than DVDs.[/QUOTE] I hear so many people complain about HDDs being prone to spontaneous data loss and power failures and shit but I don't really get that, never happened to me in 10 years and the current drive I'm using from 2007 hasn't even had data loss or even bad sectors yet, and I've used that for more than archiving. Although if you're just using it for archiving and backups, then data loss should really never happen considering the (hopefully) small amount of data written. Obviously if you're doing something like NTFS or dumb filesystems like that, then any read operation of [b]any[/b] kind will also be a write operation. [editline]13th December 2014[/editline] If you want to be 100% sure though, new drive ever 5th-7th year and you shouldn't ever lose any data unless you're doing something wrong.
[B]Relatively prone[/B] as opposed to optical media. This is a fact.
[QUOTE=mastersrp;46706486]I hear so many people complain about HDDs being prone to spontaneous data loss and power failures and shit but I don't really get that, never happened to me in 10 years and the current drive I'm using from 2007 hasn't even had data loss or even bad sectors yet, and I've used that for more than archiving. Although if you're just using it for archiving and backups, then data loss should really never happen considering the (hopefully) small amount of data written. Obviously if you're doing something like NTFS or dumb filesystems like that, then any read operation of [b]any[/b] kind will also be a write operation. [editline]13th December 2014[/editline] If you want to be 100% sure though, new drive ever 5th-7th year and you shouldn't ever lose any data unless you're doing something wrong.[/QUOTE] The reason for that is that it is entirely random. Writes and read operations don't really matter. The cause is not always "wear and tear". All it takes is a drive to have one small defect, but it may not be apparent. It may show up days months or years after the drive is purchased. Generally as a rule of thumb, for long term archiving, you want something a bit more permanent and less prone to mechanical failure like flash, optical, or hell even tape. But even not all of solutions are perfect and have their own downsides.
Hard drives don't necessarily die gradually. A mechanical failure can instantly make the data difficult to recover, and malware can do big damage too. Backups exist for this reason, and that's where Blu-Ray comes in.
[QUOTE=Demache;46706618]The reason for that is that it is entirely random. Writes and read operations don't really matter. The cause is not always "wear and tear". All it takes is a drive to have one small defect, but it may not be apparent. It may show up days months or years after the drive is purchased. Generally as a rule of thumb, for long term archiving, you want something a bit more permanent and less prone to mechanical failure like flash, optical, or hell even tape. But even not all of solutions are perfect and have their own downsides.[/QUOTE] Optical disc or magnetic tape would probably be a better alternative to flash, considering the "wear and tear" really applies in that area. But sure, defects can really hit mechanical drives hard, but I don't see why that wouldn't be an issue with things like BluRay or even SSD.
[QUOTE=mastersrp;46706906]Optical disc or magnetic tape would probably be a better alternative to flash, considering the "wear and tear" really applies in that area. But sure, defects can really hit mechanical drives hard, but I don't see why that wouldn't be an issue with things like BluRay or even SSD.[/QUOTE] Optical discs aren't a good format for archiving anything. Many manufacturers of writable optical media use junk adhesive compound that can cause the disc to de-laminate and make it useless. The optical ink in the writable media also diffuses over time and you lose the contents. Then there's something called "bronzing" where the reflective layer starts oxidizing and again makes the disc useless. I used to think optical backup was a good idea until years ago I brought my 1-3 year old optical backups out of storage only to find them in various stages of decay and most of them were pretty much unreadable. Long term archiving (ie. write once and read back months/years later) is solely tape backup territory.
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