Blu-Ray

Originally Posted by rumbleweed

Without trying to drag this out, I still believe Blu Ray will go the way of VHS. That is not go away but drop from the mainstream of content delivery in favor of streaming. Burners and players will continue to be avail for home use in authoring and distributing, but will fall out of the mainstream of commercial content delivery. Content players will be small and hard-disk equipped so the content can be stored and played at a later date and location. The focus of the semiconductor industry customers is currently on streaming delivery.

Well, as you say, we can go back and forth all day... streaming is a great idea, but there are too many cons to this. I think the industry may try to push this, but as consumers, we ultimately have the ability to bite, or leave it on the shelf. I guess I don't need to say that I won't be biting.
I've seen way to many hard drives go belly up to store anything of value on them, not to mention the damage that one heavy thunderstorm would do, which is way to common. How many times have you had to turn your dvr in due to it locking up? (twice for me). If aware, optical media will always win out over such volatile media such as hd's or flash. While the "sheep consumers" may see the initial "coolness" in this kind of delivery, wait until they loose thousands of dollars worth of content because of a surge or sag.

And again...above and beyond the delivery issues, there must be an upgrade soon to media....something to replace DVD media which is now ancient.

Sorry, I just don't see what they are telling us we should do, happening, or being accepted.

I do not see the value of owning a DVD player anymore. I only use it to watch rental movies. As soon as Wii makes Netflix available (I already own a Wii) I will probably go that route. For $8.99 per month, when I can't sleep, I should be able to find some old John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movie to watch.

My first computer in the house was in 1995. I have had one hard drive failure. I have replaced many drives to go to larger drives. I think I still have about a dozen drives collecting dust in the drawer. My fist was 1.2 gig, but I donated that to the local high school when it still was big enough to be useful. I think the smallest in the drawer is 6 gig and the biggest is 720 gig.

I don't have much use for any hard drive smaller than 1T. But, I won't be upgrading disks any time soon, so what I have may be around for awhile longer than the previous dries were. So I might have a higher risk of failure.

I have seen (I believe) bit rot occur. This is where a disk not being used suddenly has the data damaged while it is in the drawer. The next time I bring it out and go to read some data from it (photo backups), the backups are damaged.

Backing up a hard drive to another hard drive and storing th3e backup outside of the computer is not very reliable, in my experience.

Rather than continuing to make hard drives bigger I wish they would add ECC. With decent ECC you could create a radial scratch, from the hub to the outside edge, and have no loss of data, as long as the heads don't crash on the scratch.

So with today's technology, what is the best way to back up a terabyte of data? Another disk drive is, I think, the best option, but it is not adequate.

Wayne...you have alluded to perhaps the biggest issue with disc media, the lack of permanence. From the tests I have read, I get nervous when a disc hits 10 years old. And this is an outside number, although nobody really knows for sure. Currently, I'll take my chances with multiple hard drive backups when possible. AppleTV - remember that from the original post ;-) - is basically an input device, since it's hard drive is currently 160 GB. Not much, so hence the use of a computer for storage. Fun to speculate on what we are in for in the future!

My understanding of Blu Ray was that, until you got to large monitors (like 42"), it didn't buy much visually over S-video. I haven't any empirical evidence to support this though. I'd point out one difference between VHS and Blu Ray from a market POV would be that VHS made it mainstream. Blu Ray apparently hasn't and based on discussions here may never make it.

On the storage front, I'd say that portable storage will continue to evolve in solid state form with perhaps a layered VLSI packaging. The interesting thing to me about storage is how does one back up a 2TB drive? Answer, with another 2TB or larger drive. The first full backup will take a while ;-)

BTW, Apple TV seems to be more of an Apple experiment than a serious commercial offering. As everyone has pointed out, there seems to be limitless possibilities here but Apple, for one, doesn't seem interested in exploring them. I think they've been preoccupied with the mobility market. I'm sure everyone has heard the rumors of an impending iTablet.....btw, I think I need one of those ;-)

Phil

Bluray is dead? Wow! It's just getting started (I sure hated to see HD-DVD go away). It's really only in the last few months that I've seen a very broad selection of BluRay discs, and especially that I've seen a pretty fair selection in the stores. I just got a BluRay player for my home theater, having used HD-DVD-only for the last couple of years. Now I can watch either. All my home HD movies are, so far, in HD-DVD, so I have to keep that going.

As with some other commenters above, I'll not be going to streaming video (wireless or otherwise) for movie watching (nor for my home HD movies, either). For one thing, I see no particular reason to tie my computer in to my TVs, except maybe on special occasion, and the two aren't within easy reach of each other anyway (nor will they be), and I won't watch movies (maybe a brief excerpt) on the computer. Of course there's also the bandwidth issue, as well as, "How do I watch this movie in the TM?" The latter is only rarely an issue, but I have to address it for those rare occasions.

To add my 2 cents to the above question(s) about editing/writing HD/BluRay/etc.:

I use Pinnacle Studio 12 (14 is out now), and can write HD-DVD or AVCHD to standard DVDs, obviating the need for a BluRay burner, PROVIDING, that you don't need to write more than about 24 minutes on HD-DVD (a little more on AVCHD), or about 44 minutes on a DL disc (again, a little more on AVCHD). For longer movies you'll need a BluRay burner.

This program does a fine job of editing the HDV from my Sony FX1 and outputting either of the above two formats, in addition to doing nice standard DVDs. And this on my almost 5 year-old computer. Studio is also, from both my own experience and from comments from other folks, the closest NLE (Non-Linear Editing) software to being intuitive, the easiest to use.

Oh, yes. It can (with a BluRay burner) also put out BluRay (or AVCHD) movies on BluRay discs.

Note, too, that the output HD quality is excellent, generally matching or exceeding the quality I see on HD programs on Comcast cable, and even matching all but the very finest I've seen on HD-DVD and BluRay commercially produced discs (better than a very few of them), even though the FX1 (and HDV in general) is 1440x1080 anamorphic, rather than 1920x1080.

Originally Posted by P and B

My understanding of Blu Ray was that, until you got to large monitors (like 42"), it didn't buy much visually over S-video. I haven't any empirical evidence to support this though. ...

Phil

Well, I can see the difference on a 22" $300 Vizio HDTV (HD cable, HD-DVD and BluRay), so I'd have to disagree. I will say, though, that if your DVD player is hooked up with component cables (three RCA jacks for/red/green/blue, not the single RCA jack composite that is usually yellow, or the multi-pin S-Video), the difference between a standard DVD and an HD DVD (of either sort) is small (though visible) on the above Vizio set. Small in that, sometimes you have to actually look for the differences, rather than have them stare you in the face. With an HDMI connection on a 52" 1080p LCD set, some material (Phantom of the Opera, for example) on HD-DVD and Standard DVD has fairly small differences (some in detail, and some in color).

[MudDog]

Like everything else, it's just a matter of time. Streaming is not going to go away and when bandwidth is sufficient, it will take over. Being able to access your media from anywhere has already been solved - only issue is, is it fast enough from everywhere....no, not yet.

I have over 100Gb of data (pictures, movies, music) that needs to be backed up. I could get 25 DVD's or I could get an external hard-drive, but what happens when there is a fire and both your computer and your backup are destroyed? I had used a home NAS (network disk) solution for several years and those drives were mirrored, but the backup wasn't off-site.

Then came on-line backup...carbonite, mozy and now a host of others.

For less then the cost of a harddrive every couple of years, I have unlimmited online backup.. It's off-site and they are responsible for maintaining the infrastructure. For backups, love it.

Then about 6 months ago, Mozy (now owned by EMC) launched a beta of decho (digital echo) where now thru a secure web front end, I can access the data I'm backing up from any PC/Device that has internet access and can even share content with others (likely a DRM fight on this part of it in the future). With sufficient bandwidth, I would be able to watch my movies, view my pictures and play my music. Bandwidth is not there yet, but it will be (my first PC was a Commodore 64 and the Hayes 300 baud modem cost more than the computer...when 1200 baud modems came out a few years later, we were really flying).

It's only a matter of time before the DVR/Streaming devices are a standard part of the televison itself. You can already stream with most game consoles and they are becoming internet aware (e.g. Xbox and Netflix) without having to have a PC somewhere in the house driving it. At someoint, I would expect to be able to point my game console, my cell phone, or the TV itself to something like my Decho site and press play...regardless of where I am.

Like everything else, there will be the early adopters on the bleeding edge and there will be the people that don't want anything to do with the new technology. Markets usually cater to both and everyone in the middle until the non-adopters become such a small percent (world wide) that there's no longer money in doing it. I can still buy a VHS player today, even though it's been dead for years. I can still by a new 5.25" floppy drive today if I really wanted one...


Just saw this breaking news...unless your home movies are in 3D, they're now officially dead regardless of the media you're saving them on....

Gads, my brain hurts. Who started this thread anyhow???

Just a thought
With 3D television, we can now sit inside our TM's around our 20 LCD 3D TV displaying a roaring fire. This will prevent the destruction of our forests for firewood, and eliminate greenhouse gases. This is progress.

Originally Posted by lnussbau

Bluray is dead? Wow! It's just getting started (I sure hated to see HD-DVD go away). It's really only in the last few months that I've seen a very broad selection of BluRay discs, and especially that I've seen a pretty fair selection in the stores. I just got a BluRay player for my home theater, having used HD-DVD-only for the last couple of years. Now I can watch either. All my home HD movies are, so far, in HD-DVD, so I have to keep that going.

Again, don't let this make you totally abandon the BluRay platform, as I don't believe this for a second. I think there may be a GreenRay, PinkRay, BeigeRay or some other favor in the distant future, but for at least the next 5yrs, I would put my money on BluRay. There is nothing on the horizon right now that come close to filling this slot. There were tons of standards, compliance, and licensing issues in the beginning, which have all be worked out for now. I think we'll see something give soon.