Sony Optiarc: Piloting Blu-ray Through the Crisis

I don't see DD replace physical media anytime soon. A hard drive can fail, a Disc cannot.

Fixed - thanks!

Right, that's the critical point. More and more people who don't think about it tend to go for hard drives (not just one) to do backup or archiving because of low cost per Gigabyte. But they basically confuse storage with TRUE backup.

Best,
Patrick

After all the stuff SONY has said to put us odwn on the internet and in addition to the rootkit and other BS they pull I have no intention to adopt their expensive bluray discs until i have no choice but to do that.

i own a 1080p upsampling OPPO w/ Panasonic 42" plasma and i also have decent cables and a rackmount power conditioner and i got a great picture here.
bye bye bluray

You seriously think that compares? Perhaps my eyes are sharper than yours are, but can tell the difference between upsampled, and source material.

Upsampling cannot create the details lost to lower resolution.

Whoever thinks that discs don't fail hasn't used them enough. Standards change over time. It becomes more and more difficult to find players to read them, especially recorded ones. Incompatibilities come to play between recording formats and players. They get scratched easily and fail. The sun damages them. Heat warps them. They are by no means a good long term backup strategy.

I think it's ignorant to believe that higher prices would have helped the bottom line. It assumes that people buy it no matter what and have unlimited resources. Lucky if you do, but not realistic for the majority.

Say there was only Blu-Ray and prices were still at $800 per recorder. How many people would buy this and then spend $30 per disk, especially in this economy?! Unless you're storing HD video, the 9 GB of a DL DVD go a long way. Neither is really suitable to back up a 1 TB hard drive anyway. An external HDD may be a better solution anyway.

On the core business: Frankly, with movies in the $30 - $40 I certainly wait until they are on sale for $15. Without the sales, I won't buy as it's much cheaper to rent several times. Hence high prices would probably others deter from buying as well. So while higher prices in theory help sales, they also significantly reduce potential buyers ... especially in times of a crisis.

I have a lot of DVD's that disagree with you. While I think Blu-Ray will be the physical standard, DD is coming faster than even I thought it would. Between netflix streaming, especially if they can up the content, and other services (you're going to be able to get 1080p streaming soon) it's becoming very appealing to just have a digital copy. Add in the iPod, iPhone, Zune HD and disks are slowly being shown the door.

MS even announced they're going to test out selling downloadable full games for the 360. We'll see how this goes, but if they price it right and give us a larger HD that could work.

How does that compete with a physical copy?



How so? I buy CD's, rip them in the format of my choice, and the quality of my choosing, then but them on my media player. I don't see how MP3 players change physical distribution.



Eh, With the bandwidth caps that are being imposed, and the fact that Microsoft only allows using their special hard drives, that limits the number of games I can have.

Right now, I can walk into a store, buy a game, and it comes with it's own storage (a Disc), and I immediately get the product. I don't have to wait for it to download and hope the network isn't congested.



That's an issue with players, the Disc hasn't failed to store it's information.



What the hell are you doing with your Discs? Why are they sitting in the Sun for extended periods? Why are they in hot spots? How do they get scratched in their travel from their case to the player and back?

I'm not really talking about writable discs, because I don't actually know anyone that uses them for anything other than installing an OS.

@ Tindytim

His 'upsampling' unit comes with accelerated auto photoshopping features. Any lack in detail is replaced with computer generated details

I don’t feel that the true purpose for writeable BD drives in a computer is for content delivery, especially where businesses are concerned. A BD player is about the movies, games and other entertainment sources. Writable material on any new format is primarily for data archival purposes until well into any standards lifespan.

Mainstream computers had CD’s as standard equipment but not writable disks for the longest time. Same for the DVD drives in mainstream computers. And as with DVD writable disks, how many people out there have DVD capable car stereos or portable players to be burning massive MP3 music collections for portable use.

Except for the portion of the population that creates backup copies of DVD movies, how many people use their DVD burners for more than archival storage of important files or tons of pictures from digital cameras etc.?

Just my humble opinion, but optical disks of any type are by far the better medium for true backups. Optical disks do not "fail" as you say in a server room. They are not CD's left on the dashboard of your car.

If you have direct sunlight on a backup disk for long enough to harm it you obviously work for a company that uses its gardening staff to do IT work and has a data center that doubles as an open air courtyard. The same goes for having enough heat to warp a disk.

Also an archival backup on an optical disk will retain its data without risk of data loss for your entire lifetime...and your children’s lifetime....and their children’s...well you get the picture.

Archiving data on separate disks which rotate by day or week also gives you a hard time constraint on how much data you can possibly loose. The disks not in use at the time can be stored in relatively cheap fire proof safes and water damage is not anywhere near as harmful to an optical disk as it is for a HDD.

With incremental backups to hard drives people tend to have all the backup data on the same drives which is really not a wise move.

Careful, without [sarcasm] tags, someone might think such technologies exist.

I'm talking video. To have an entire season of the Office on a portable player, that I can also connect to a TV in HD. No disks to lug around or get scratched, or just dirty (which happens way too much when you have kids)

I'm saying it's becoming a real prospect to ditch physical media completely within a year, and I'm leaning on going that route. And so far, companies have been largely unsuccessful in implementing bandwidth caps. If we create the demand, and the cable companies don't meet it, someone else will. I promise you on that one.

There are some things I will want a physical disk for but they're the exception rather than the rule. I'm still waiting for a Blu-Ray version of Star Wars and LOTR.

I've used CDs since they first became popular in the early 90s, scratched them, overused them, didn't take good care of them, and I have yet to have a single disc fail on me outside of ones that were burned bad, and I think that's either a Vista or DVD-burner problem for me. I've only had one disc break and that was because it was defective and had a hairline crack in the center ring that got bigger and bigger until the disc stopped working.

wtf is with the grammar today? almost every article I've seen several 3rd grade mistakes... common. "we learned their about their recipe"

You can rip Video as well.

This is what I don't understand. You rip your content to the format of your choice, then put it on whatever players you want. If you need to convert it to another format, or you lose/accidentally delete your only file, just rip it again.

A Disc to me is insurance that I always have a copy of the highest quality, and I have something nice to put on my shelf.

fully mature my AS@ !! The day I don't have to worry whether a blu ray movie is going to play correctly on my PC is the day I'll consider it mature. Sick of this BS...

As general rule I'm past that. I have a big shelf in my basement loaded with DVD's CD's and games. I don't use them to decorate, I tuck them away, out of sight. I don't need the disks, especially if I can just pick up a remote and just choose a movie or game to play. If they do the DRM right so I can download it again should something happen that's way better than a disk that can get scratched or lost in a fire.

I'm not trying to convince you to ditch disks, I'm just saying for me, I'm okay with not having them if it means more convenience and it takes up less space in my house.

I dont plan on using bluray for archiving, 25GB per disc may be alot by disc standards but an LTO-4 tape will store 800GB (1TB+ with compression) hell a DDS4 tape can store more than a BR disc and thats a ten year old format so I dont see Bluray as a viable archiving method unless your a mere home user in which case 1 or 2 dvd-r's would most likely suffice (if you need more then that you should invest in tape, its alot cheaper per gb than bluray)

ofc for movies I will be getting one

I store everything on hard disks. I have far too many CDs and DVDs to take care of them properly - they sit in large drums. When I get a new game, a new music CD, or a new movie, they get ripped to my hard disk and the disc gets put away. I don't want to spend my time shuffling disks about and trying to find the right one. I've had enough of them skip and blunder through movies and installations. The hard disk, however, has never failed me. Ever.

Complain about optical media all you want, but written and stored properly, optical media definitely provides a more reliable long term storage solution than current mechanical hard disks, and even most flash memory provide.

I would love to see write-once flash technology. Think of all those game cartridges back in the day that withstood a tremendous amount of abuse, sun, humidity, dust, and read cycle wear and tear, yet they still lasted and maintained (for the most part) data integrity for years! If we make write once flash drives that are read-only after the first write, that would substantially reduce the wear and tear, as typically erase/write tends to produce more heat and cause more wear than strictly read cycles. These write-once flash memory modules would be very tough, like flash drives. They would be a great place to store, transport, and archive movies, photos, whatever, and the flash technology is constantly being produced cheaper and cheaper and in larger capacities.

Selling write-once memory devices could also be a (temporary at least) solution to DRM. Consoles are proprietary and only work with their own games (unless hacked/modded somehow). You could make a USB/Firewire/eSATA reader for your brand of games. The games can't be copied, because this reader doesn't write, and the game will only play in that reader because it physically cannot fit in any other I/O port on your computer. It's a hardware solution that won't require any SecureRom or other DRM software to be installed, and copying could be prevented at the hardware level within the device. This could be used for high-definition movies as well. The modules would all be read only, just like your old Nintendo games, and be encrypted in a way that only the device, when connected to your computer, can read and display the material. I really think media companies should go this route. No more scratched, cracked or sunburnt discs. The movies and games would be a lot more durable, shock proof, etc.

We're a long way from there right now, though, and Blu-Ray still provides a compelling solution. I'm seeing sales on blu-ray burners for $150 now, and I said over a year ago, that when I can get a $100 BURNER, I will adopt blu-ray. It's getting very close, now!! And $100 is worth it. I have a high-definition camcorder, and a powerful editing workstation. I want to take all the high def. footage of my three-year-old and make blu rays. Since it's now a ratified standard, I can send the blu ray discs (that I made myself!!) to my father and my mother & father in law, and they will be able to watch videos of their grandson in HD. Both of them have HD plasmas, but no HD or blu-ray players!! In fact, my mom and my step dad have DirectTV, but not the HD version. It's a 55" plasma TV!!! But now, I can just get them each a blu-ray player, and they can play normal movies, blu-ray movies (if they are on a good sale!), and my home videos in perfect HD quality.

I'm not a Koolaid drinker, not a die-hard Sony fan (in fact I have an HD DVD player and about 35 HD DVD movies!), but they really sum it up well here:

"Blu-ray is already well established in professional markets, and it is a matter of time until BD products will finally reach low mainstream price points. We believe that there will be a coexistence of both technologies for many years to come."

Discs and burners are getting cheaper, and when more people can burn blu rays in their homes, more people will be able to also play them, and that includes me. There are movies that I like enough (like the new Star Trek or the Dark Night) to pay extra to have them in Blu-ray. But I don't spend that money now because I don't have a blu-ray player. There are lots of people in my situation. When they can afford a blu-ray player that fits their budget, they will be able to appreciate the higher quality, and storage benefits if they're going to use it as a data backup solution.

This also makes it finally practical to backup the raw HD footage on optical media. I only have my HD footage on hard drives, and if my HD's die, the footage is gone! I have most of it backed up on two different drives, but that's still not as reliable as having an optical disk in an inexpensive fireproof safe. That's where I want to back up my critical stuff, but blu-ray just isn't quite where my budget will allow it yet. It's getting closer though.

um BD has been outdated since its release. Consumers will stick with DVD and i'll copy things to my hard drive before you see me purchasing anything from Sony. I've been burned too many times from them in the past...

optical discs can and do fail without any physical manipulation by a user... i have several verbatim and major brand CD-R and DVD media that has oxidized and the layers came away from the medium while sitting in individual jewel cases in a dark and temp controlled storage closet... just because the standard states they 'should' last a certain length doesn't mean manufactures, either through cost cutting measures or unknowingly acquiring poor quality chemicals, can't put out discs that just don't last. and it's nearly impossible to determine this without suffering a bad disc. having gone through literally thousands of blanks and dozens of brands, even tho they're all made by 3-4 producers, i can tell you that the blanks hardly ever live up to their given life spans.

Meh. The problem with blu ray is that it has to replace so much existing infrastructure. It's not easy to transition from producing DVDs to produce Blu Rays, unlike the easy transition from DVD to HD DVD. So you have challenges on the supply of the physical media, and the ridiculous licensing costs which have only now begun to come down to reasonable levels. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if Blu Ray gets replaced by a better, lower cost format before it becomes main stream.

I'd rather buy an external HDD than bluray.
External drives are becoming very cheap.
Even 64GB flash drives are cheap.

So, what's the point of bluray again?
CDs are outdated. Move on.
I'd rather download a movie or game anyways.

Agreed. This seems to be trend of the industry now. HD content streaming/DL'ing directly to your entertainment device/HDD over the internet (Ex. LG is producing HDTV's with Netflix HD movie streaming built in).

i remember when the main plus of HD-DVDs was that they could be made using the same stuff as DVDs where as blurays couldn't. Good to see that blurays too are now as easy to make as HD-DVDs were, effectively canceling out the one good thing HD-DVDs had going for them. not that i mean to make a HD-DVD hate post at this late stage, i just mean that its good that they haven't gotten too lazy after winning the war.

Consumer burnable optical discs be it CD or DVD fails for they are manufactured to be chemically simulating the laser dynamics of true press-mastered discs, thus very very poor backup choices for long term (3+ months) so if the same thing is still stick with Blu-Ray expect me to be adopting them only when what here today gone in the way of 8-track and vinyl. If you don't believe me, then you haven't seen a disc being stored in open room; those must be stored in air-tight (uh exaggerated) closed cupboard.

I hope one of those special DVD making process does take form from academics to some true use. One of them is already beating Blu-Ray amount to a pulp. It would be ideal if the same super DVD disc, if put to a standard player it goes standard def, but into an HD player goes HD.

You ignorant naysayers and Sony haters can rate me down all you like, but you're full of crap and need to get off your freaking soap boxes. I try and make an educated post with some good ideas and good technical information that's backed up not only by data from others but my own SEVEN YEARS of experience in the video editing industry, and you start rating me down.

"Blu-ray media like all commercial optical media will have a 50+year shelf life. The media format can be either MO or WORM. A long shelf life with WORM capabilities make this media perfect for archiving of mandatory compliant data, Medical Images, Video, Document Imaging and number of other near line archival uses. Because of Blu-ray random access capabilities it is also better suited for small files than our tape technology libraries."

http://www.optical.com/optical_storage/blu-ray.php

Blu ray disc manufacturers such as TDK also put very solid anti-scratch coating on the discs which also improves durability. I'm sure some of you have had problems with blu-ray and other optical media, but it's nowhere NEAR as unreliable as mechanical hard disks. Rate me down all you want. I know my facts. Are there crappy discs? Yes. Do research and try and buy good ones - Taiyoo Yuden are said to be very good. Many companies make discs that test out at 30 yrs plus. Some of the cheap crap we buy at stores doesn't last two years, like some have said, but I stand by my post, and those who rate my above post down show just how little they know.

Why do I even bother trying to be helpful and informative here. You guys would rather have a Sony-hate party and drink your own negativistic piss. Be my guests.