Can Blu Ray be topped?

It'll just come full circle back to VHS

Online delivery will grow and eventually will an online format surpass BD in quality. Its an evolving process.

Internet bandwidth will improve, compression technology will improve.

I dont think a new physical format is needed. BD is pretty good as it is, its convinience that can improve, and once you have convinience, the next step is to improve quality so it equals BD and eventually surpass it.

The best way a new physical format can be created, would be that its delivered online and created on a physical medium in our home.

Undoubtedly it will be topped or at least improved upon. I'm expecting much higher resolutions to be forthcoming in the not too distant future.

If we try to guess what might be 'state of the art' home AV technology Post-2020...?!

From the NHK Annual Report 2010...

Quote:

5.2.2 Optical storage technology

We are advancing with our research on thin optical disks and holographic recording technology for future program archives and Super Hi-Vision （SHV）[link to the NHK Annual Report 2009] recording equipment．

■Thin optical disks

Thin optical disks with thickness of 0.1 mm are promising candidates for program archives and home SHV recording equipment because they can rotate at higher speeds, thereby giving them higher data transfer-rates. In FY2010, we developed a high-capacity drive system using thin optical disk drives. In parallel with this development, we proceeded with the development of near-field optical recording technology for increasing the recording density of thin optical disks.

Figure 1. Prototype compact thin optical disk drive

[So we might need to replace those optical media players 'just one more time'...?! ]

Yes

Japanese have always had a love for recordable discs. In US we moved on to DVRs but they stayed with recordable discs. So for them, even in 2010, talking about discs makes sense.

As to the original question, I wrote this article on future of home video for Widescreen Magazine. I have recently uploaded a copy that you can read without subscribing: Digital Video Revolution: Did We Miss a Step?

I'm convinced that in the future many people (enough people to make something profitable) will still want a physical medium in their hands rather than something stored in a cloud somewhere or in a storage device that could break down. With that said, I envision holographic movies with full-sized actors in our living rooms, much as in "Star Trek," and all activated by tiny, penny-sized discs or cards or balls or whatever. I'd give it another hundred or more years, though.

It mentions 48 Mbps max, but shouldn't it also add that 3D Blu-ray titles can have 60 Mbps?

Me too. I want something physical for the money just outlaid. I have a few films on a HDD that I can stream, and the convenience is great, but there is something about owning a physical packaged media.

I think HDD will be the next thing, but when is the question. When BD first announced the 50gig disc, there was talk about 100gig discs and many questioned the need. AFAIK, the best they have done is a 66gig disc. So HDD might just be the answer if we actually move to 4K.

Full digital delivery through internet could never work for the next few years because many people have bandwidth caps.

I wouldn't mind if they distributed BD content on a USB drive. If/When flash memory storage becomes cheaper and faster than optical then we won't need optical. As knowledge/research in quantum states grows, new storage options will be available.

By that time 4kx2k will start to become commonplace.

This is something that has been discussed since around 2008. HVD (Holo-graphic Video Disc) was one idea, solid state with the Internet as a delivery medium has always been the other. Only hold back with the Internet as a medium, is providers and their caps, and the slow speed along with the congestion they place on the nodes, is the other problem.

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=...&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Sure it can. The real question is this, is there a real need? If the adoption rate in the US for HDTV and Blu-ray is used as an indicator then I would say there is not a large market for SHDTV in the foreseeable future.

There was a replacement for CDs in the form of DVD-Audio and SACD. Could you ever buy either of these at Walmart, Best Buy, etc.? Just because something is better than its predecessor does not mean it will be successful.

Me to. Once you have the physical media in your hand, nobody can take it away. Some business deal gone bad won't cause it to be extracted from your shelf. The same cannot be said for downloaded content. The issue is more on the business/legal side than the technical side. Even if/when bandwidth issues are resolved, there will always be non-technical issues in the way of having everything you want to see available by download. Look at XStreamHD, not exactly a big success story there.

As far as 2K and 4K... Will there be enough people to buy it? No matter how nice the technology is it still has to make money. And then there's the amount of time it takes to build a catalog on a new format. There are still tons of movies I can't get on BD, and some I will possibly never see on BD ever. I would much rather see more stuff on BD than have another format causing a distraction. And, good grief, I sure don't want to wait out any more Format Wars.

It's generally thought that BD is the last of the mainstream physical media .. but that's not to say that it won't be with us for a while ..

That is a problem but a solvable one. See below.


Actually, it is completely technical issue. The issue is a technical sin that we have not erased.

When you buy DVD or Blu-ray, the content protection system makes sure the movie goes with the disc. Separate the two and the disc doesn't play (i.e. if you didn't hack the copy protection).

When we moved to the world of DRM, we made a change that broke this. When you download content using DRMs, we don't "bind" (lock) the content to your hard disk but rather, the identity of the computing device or set-top box. This was done because unlike optical discs, hard disks are generic and do not support any method of locking the content to said hard disk. As a result, the file can easily be moved and a different notion had to be invented which was the CPU/computer/STB binding.

It is completely possible to go back to media binding. SD cards for example support a copy protection that does this and has since inception. It is a lousy system from robustness point of view so will not garner HD content but it does show that the capability can be there if consumers want to hold the content in their hand as they say.

With media binding, the service provider can go out of business and your content will still be good. With host binding your content will also continue to play but should you ever upgrade your host, it stops. This is what is broken and should have been fixed long time ago.


You are right there. Licensing content is far more challenging than building technology to carry it!


We had a recent discussion on this. Net of it is that you are right: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1393347

There are a couple of big threads about Netflix going disc-less eventually, maybe applicable to your query.

Judging by the popularity of mp3 and iTunes + the lack of software from the super-dupper SACD/DVD-A etc, I'd say BR stays for a while, and if there is a higher bandwidth technology, super-HD TVs, it's gonna be awhile. Ezy access/delivery/watch anywhere/anytime seems to me is the immediate future.

This year at the CEDIA Expo and CES they were saying Blu Ray will be dead in 2 years everything will be streaming.

Who were saying that?

OPPO, Pioneer, Sony ect

Are there any quotes online from them saying "Blu-ray will be dead in 2 years", and "everything will be streaming"?

It seems strange that all those BDA members would be saying that. Are they all saying in 2 years no Blu-ray titles and no DVD titles will be sold at all? I think it is unlikely that will happen.

True because for many, DVD is still 'perfect' so why would they want to upgrade? Beyond BD is really going to be niche.

The reps were saying it to us in person and it's not they are going to stop selling its just people are getting tired of paying $30 for a BD and quite a few AV stores only Carrie 1 or 2 models around my area and we only Carrie Oppo and 2 Sony models and the only reason I have the Sony's is because my mother is upper management so had to keep her happy.

LOL. I'd be hot gluing a SONY badge onto the OPPO and have it so that it slightly crooked too

Not if you gonna get is as a bonus. If you create a new format you can include anything in the specs. The challange is that not many are going to buy anything for the extra resolution.

Take HDTVs as an example. People bought flatscreens and got HD resolution as a bonus. They were not buying CRT with HD. Because HD wasnt the primary reason. Big and Flat was the selling point.

So any new superresolution format would need something else to attract the consumers, if you solve that pussle you can add a new resolution.

And last year they said that by now 3-D was going to take over the market and dominate the home-theater scene. The only thing that ever really dominates any technology is hyperbole. But who knows? Who would have foretold even ten years ago the complete dominance of cell phones we see today, or iPads and tablet computers, flatscreen HD TV's, various handheld devices, etc. But two years? I don't think so. Heck, not everyone even has a computer yet, let alone high-speed broadband. Give it another ten years, and let's talk about it.

John