nope, don't really see much value in them... not owning a HDMI receiver that supports HD Audio signal decoding... nor having an HDTV over 42" that would take advantage of the high bitrate HD content... i prefer using an HTPC and can live with upscaled or streamed HD just fine. Netflix FTW! Dishnet HD service!

Its the natural progression of tech...5 inch....3.5 inc...cd...dvd..blue ray.. not a real surprise but exciting none the less. Go Toshiba!!

NO. Blu-Ray Disk = DRM crap.

I hope it will be backwards compatible with CD and DVD, and is able to burn CD's and DVD's!
I'm not about to change my DVD writer for a reading device that can not save data to a recordable.

What is the point of BluRay?

Billions spent on increasing the capacity of a disk 5 times. For home movies users I can see a point, for computer users pointless. For portable storage we have flash drives bigger, faster and can be reused.

We need to try and seperate the idea of high capacity media from high definition content, what BluRay does is enforce HDCP. If content protection in the factor then moving away from rotational optical disks should have been the goal all along.

If I had the money Toshiba spent on HD-DVD I would have looked at SDHC cards. Large enough to hold tons of Hi-Def content, compatible with all SDHC readers in computers, laptops, portable devices. Adding an SDHC reader to an upscaling DVD player is easier and cheaper than having disk reader that reads Blue and Red lasers. Physical media is the size of a postage stamp and the surface wont scratch, even an oversized protective plastic case with the movie poster on it could be the size of an old audio cassette.

The only thing to do to keep the studios happy would be to find a way to make them read only, (not hard), and to disable copying, (bit harder). If they crack the non-copy bit then the capacity of the media can scale up much higher than optical. Sony have already said a new type of Memory stick could do up to 2TB.

C'mon Toshiba, get your thumb out your ass and get on it!!!

I will never be buying a bluray player. For one, my HD tvs are all only 720p. The upgrade to 1080p only makes sense for a larger TV of which I do not have the room for. Besides that, the bluray players and discs are expensive.

I'm waiting for the first service to offer downloadable HD content whether it be on Xbox Live or Netflix or whatever. To me, that makes way more sense than.

I imagine a future where you can go to a high speed download kiosk (or use your computer) and download movies that you purchase to digital media like flash drives. Screw this bluray crap. It's worthless.

I own a sony BD player and it is good and all but i often never use it, all the monies i play in it are DVDs and it is upscaled but there really seems to be pointless in buying it, except that i will be ready for future digital Media storage

back_by_demand: like your point but i think there's something about extremely small media that turns off the mainstream... just look at the fate of sony's minidisc... while there was more to it's failure than it's small size it's not the first of the mini physical media formats out there. microSD has been around for quite a while now and still very few devices use them in their native format.. almost all devices need an adaptor to at least the miniSD format if not full SD... why? i think people tend to loose stuff easier once it gets to a certain size and then people fear having stuff that small around children so it becomes this big mess and those are the kind of people that make up the bulk of the target audience for something of that nature.

i think this would be the biggest obstacle to overcome for a media format such as that.

There are BD roms and BD writers. The BD writers are backwards compatible with prior formats. BD writers are a bit more expensive, around 180 dollars right now. BD roms are about 80 dollars.

People that don't have high-definition are making it hard for us to get rid of the "high" moniker. With this division in the population, I am forced to pay more for the "better" format both on physical media and Dish/Cable. I bought HD-DVD originally and then bought blu-ray after HD went down. The point being that I recognize both are BETTER than DVD when dealing with ++def content. I don't believe our Internet bandwidth will be good enough to support uncompressed video/audio for several more years (need 40+Mb everywhere for EVERYONE before it's a good idea for a permanent shift). BTW, you can't change the MPAAs mind about content delivery. They have made up their mind. Blu-ray disk offers the BEST video and audio available and allows us the ability to see a movie the way it was intended. I don't really care for the BD-Live stuff that's all interactive, but that will improve too. I have owned an "HD" television for 7 years. This 7-year-old TV still benefits from the BETTER format. You can get a blu-ray player for $98 at Wal-Mart right now, and $99 BD-Live enabled one at BestBuy. They upconvert your old DVDs well and will give you MUCH BETTER picture and sound. The reason why optical disks are used for this content is that once the mfg process is mature, the cost is almost nothing to produce these items. The more market penetration, the more profit for the mfgr. This causes the price to come down for us too. So stop whining about new technology that is BETTER. You sound like my grandparents who still have VHS.

buy.com has BD-R blanks on sale for $4.10 per disc (in a 10 pack spindle)! Wow! I think I'll wait a few more years until the price becomes reasonable.