Samsung: Blu-ray Has Five Years Left, OLED the Next Big Thing

By Marcus Yam
published

Since the launch of the format, Samsung has been one of the pioneers of Blu-ray Disc player hardware. But oddly enough, the company believes that Blu-ray Disc will have a much shorter life span than DVD.

Despite having been mostly on the winning side of the high-definition format war, Samsung believes that Blu-ray Disc will only have about five years left in it.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn’t give it 10," said Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, to Pocket-lint.

At the current moment, though, Blu-ray Disc sales are brisk for the Korean electronics manufacturer. "It’s going to be huge," said Griffiths. "We are heavily back-ordered at the moment."

Strangely, Samsung believes that the next big thing after Blu-ray Disc for the company won’t be another media format, but rather a new generation of television technology – specifically OLED displays.

Samsung claims that its OLED technology is ready, but is being held back from market due to high manufacturing costs. "We will launch the OLED technology when it’s at a price that will be appealing to the consumer, unfortunately that’s not yet," explained Griffiths, adding that 2010 might be the year OLED starts hitting mainstream. "It’s gonna be big, but at the moment it’s a great story, not commercial, product."

While there is little debate that OLED is an exciting avenue for the future of displays, it does seem a little odd that Samsung is putting its faith in a display technology, while showing pessimism for a media format that could provide content for such OLED products.

Regardless, five years is a ways off for Samsung’s product cycle, and in the meantime it will focus on selling more Blu-ray Disc players and rolling out LED backlit LCDs.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • they are probably thinking that there will be no need for this kind of phsicall devices. if there will be the posibility to rent movies direct from an online media center where's the need for blue-ray discs or any other kind. 5 years might be to short for stuff like this to become main stream, but I see it happening in 10 years.
    Reply
  • bdollar
    i agree that is probably what they are thinking but it would have been nice if the article said it. I have never read an article where they say something has a limited amount of time left without talking about what will take its place. odd.
    Reply
  • maximiza
    I don't belive it. You can't trade, lend to a friend, or resale downloads. The download business model is a suckers deal. You can still sell old vinyl LP's for cash but with downloads you will need a 10 terabyte media server in your house with a 10 jigawatt room cooler so all you storage ram wont overheat.
    Reply
  • jwclark
    Who said anything about storing everything at home? Comcast already offers movies on Demand. That's not the same as owning a movie, but it's really only a step away. Granted there are problems with the idea but nothing 5-10 years can't fix. It could also fit in with the idea of cloud computing. You can watch any of the movies that you 'own' on any computer or TV.
    Reply
  • NAXDON
    The next big thing: Digital media. Not blu-ray. So that could be understandable why he is saying 5 more years for the blu-ray medium. But for now, thats just a prediction.
    Reply
  • shakumdown
    This article appears to be written with a different title in mind, such as "Samsung: Blu-ray will be prime revenue generator for the next Five Years, but OLED will be the Next Big Thing!"

    Also, 10 terabyte media servers in homes are not uncommon, I currently have a 12 terabyte media server in my garage...

    PS. DVD, CD, & Blu-ray are all Digital media, they are disc versions of portable media storage, where as flash memory are more compact versions of portable storage for digital content.
    Reply
  • grieve
    5 years is unrealistic…

    How many people still own a VHS? Almost everyone I know has a VHS and a DVD player or combo… I personally have a blue ray (ps3) but don’t buy disks as they are too pricey, im still a normal DVD guy.

    I honestly even wonder if blue-ray will take over for DVD… everyone seems to have a large collection of DVD’s and lets face it there not going to break anytime soon.

    I do think one day universal and whoever else will say “ok, no more disks… everything is pay per view downloads” but we will still find a way to burn them to a removable media of some sort (blue ray).
    Reply
  • falchard
    Considering how sophisticated Korea's Internet Infrastructure is, I can see why they would imagine Blu-Ray to go obsolete, and all discs for that matter. With fast internet speeds there is little need for them.
    Reply
  • Pei-chen
    jwclarkWho said anything about storing everything at home? Comcasthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast already offers movies on Demand. That's not the same as owning a movie, but it's really only a step away. Granted there are problems with the idea but nothing 5-10 years can't fix. It could also fit in with the idea of cloud computing. You can watch any of the movies that you 'own' on any computer or TV.Does it count towards the 250GB monthly cap?
    Reply
  • Nik_I
    i think that it's not specifically blu-ray that's going to die in 5 years, but more likely optical discs altogether. they seem to have somewhat lost their purpose.
    Reply