The war between the two high definition formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, seems to have come to a bloody end. Company after company has pledged its allegiance to Blu-ray, and things look grim for Toshiba. However, many in the industry claim Sony’s victory will be short lived in the face of a new nemesis, digital downloads.
Tech.co.uk’s James Rivington goes over the facts and tell players why he believes that Blu-ray will survive in the face of digital downloads. I agree that Blu-ray is safe for now. Many people, myself included, want to actually own a physical copy of their media. If I have a catastrophic failure of my computer, I can always rebuild from the discs I have on hand. However, many distributers of digital downloads want to limit the time period and number of installs you’re allowed to have. So in the event your game becomes corrupted or your CPU frags itself, you may actually have to repurchase your games if you bought them via digital download.
In short the digital download is renting or leasing where as Blu-ray is buying. Until they change that, I will be purchasing hard copies of all my media.
[Via Tech.co.uk]
News source: Gaming Today
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What a waste is all I can say, so much for the enviroment! As for the digital download's vs blu-ray, whats that gotta do with gaming? PC games won't come on blu-ray anytime soon, if ever, and PS3's don't have enough hard drive space for game downloads to be an option.
Last edited by SIE on 31 Jan 2008 - 20:47
and yes i agree, i'm getting sick of it, whereas a lot of actual good news is never making it to the front page. I dunno why i still bother with neowin, its one of two websites i visit every day (second one is mininova lol)... i should replace this news site with a better one for sure....
Find a site where Vista isn't being bashed. There are none, except microsoft.com, because Vista is a massive disappointment and the entire world knows this.
George W. Bush and Microsoft Vista - two of the worst things to happen to America since Bill Clinton.
so yeah, if the options are buy a physical disk or buy the one time download for the same price the decision is obviously a physical disk. but any company that runs this model will soon find out from irate customers who dont read the fine print its a loosing enterprise. just follow the Steam model, what else could the consumer want? its the best of both worlds.
The issue I believe is bandwidth. There's no way people will download 10GB+ per movie when their ISP's either a) Throttle Speed, b) Charge Outrageous prices for anything of decent data transfer, and c) have caps of how much you can download a month.
You download 6 Hi-Def B.R. Quality movies, and you basically have eaten your Rogers Hi-Speed Express cap of 60GB, for example.
Admit it , you lost./
What the hell has happened to Neowin?????
wonderful way to lose credibility. You stop reading the article right after
"The war between the two high definition formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, seems to have come to a bloody end"
you can clearly see his bias right at the start. How can you expect that he's going to say that digital downloads that are everywhere even today won't have a chance to take over Blu-Ray in the next year or two.
How ironic of you.
He raises some obvious points:
1) Blu Ray has won unofficially
2) The majority will not adapt well to change.
3) The internet is not ready for distribution of full HD.
I find it sad how bitter some of you HD DVD supporters are. If you claim that downloading is the future then why did you bother buying an HD DVD player?
Considering he owns both HD DVD and Blu-Ray it's obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. And to say he "doesn't post anything of use" is just completely wrong.
The point is, Neowin shouldn't be posting someone's opinion as a news article on the front page. Especially from some random site off the internet about gaming. It's just stupid to do. They want people to take Neowin seriously but they post complete garbage on the main page. THe forums are great but the main page is a complete joke. Anyone can copy and paste from the internet.
Why not? Maybe it's a good opinion?
I think maybe there should be a disclaimer that it is opinion so that some people don't get all worked up about it.
Opinion: Blu-ray vs. Digital Download: Why Blu-ray is the Future
Now that blu-ray has the lead, why must people bash blu-ray, saying it's only due for a quick death? Blu-ray has won, give it up. Enough is enough already.
Are you saying then you won't ever own a BD player to avoid jumping on this "bandwagon"?
Are you saying then you won't ever own a BD player to avoid jumping on this "bandwagon"?
People avoid products simply because of the company who invents them. I hope no one owns a CD player here that is anti-BD. Reason being, Sony was the first to release that too...
Source
Does it matter one way or the other, and the whole BD vs HD-DVD thing is getting old. I'll pick the format with more movies... right now I have a BD cause I got it for free, in some ways I wish HD-DVD would win, the region-free and lighter encyption is more filling, less calories kind of thing.
At any rate, news without sources is like tofu without spices... plain, boring, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Are you saying then you won't ever own a BD player to avoid jumping on this "bandwagon"?
People avoid products simply because of the company who invents them. I hope no one owns a CD player here that is anti-BD. Reason being, Sony was the first to release that too...
Source
Yes, but given Sony's recent track record (rootkits, etc) I dont see why I should support them. I will wait until the format war is finally dead and buried before I actually decide what to get.
Enough about this too...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
Yes, Sony was first to launch a consumer Blu-ray product, but they're quite far from "Sony" anymore. Besides, how is Microsoft a so much better option, given their business practices? They haven't done the rootkit thing, but pretty much anything else anticompetitive in the book instead.
It's already dead. There's now two HD formats on the market, but no war.
Source
Does it matter one way or the other, and the whole BD vs HD-DVD thing is getting old. I'll pick the format with more movies... right now I have a BD cause I got it for free, in some ways I wish HD-DVD would win, the region-free and lighter encyption is more filling, less calories kind of thing.
At any rate, news without sources is like tofu without spices... plain, boring, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
You conveniently left out a major point. Sony was part of a consortium that created the industry standard CD Audio format. Sony did NOT invent the CD. They were a contributor. Whether or not they were the first to put a unit on the market is irrelevant. With BlewRay, Sorny decided to screw the market by shunning an industry-wide standard (Google the news from a few years ago when Toshiba & Sorny were on the table discussing merging of the formats). Sorny unleashes rootkits on its paying customers and in the case of BlewRay, needlessly screws with the botched format so that newer revision discs will not play at all on prior gen units.
I'm never buying a BlewRay player, ever. I say that with complete assurance because I get all my HD content online and it works great for me.
Porn has moved online, my friend.
Do you really need p0rn in HD? There are some things and people that you don't want to see in 1080p.
It's 100% incorrect.
-Betamax has/had loads of porn released on it(just like Blu-Ray does) it was only a production plant that decided not to manufacture it(just like Blu-Ray). Nothing to do with the format or rules imposed on the format.
-The porn industry covers such a *******TINY*******(I cant no emphasis that enough) it plays zero role when considering a mass consumer take up of a format.
VHS won in the end with longer record times and more manufacture support(more companies made VHS than Betama
Both are the same. And to be more precise you buy the right to watch the film. You own the physical disc, not the contents. Having said that, there's nothing wrong with buying online and burning a backup copy.
The article title should read "Blu-ray vs Digital Download: Why Blu-Ray is the best option now."
Like a lot of other people, I too am tired of reading these "opinion" blog posts in place of actual news.
Exactly!
Digital distribution of games (whether it be from say Steam or TotalGaming.net) lets usres re-download their games unlimited. It's your game. It's not like renting in any way.
Besides, digital downloads have a far greater chance of being portable to new hardware than a physical copy so hopefully (I really do hope), this won't be an issue.
When movies can be downloaded in a few minutes in the majority of homes AND home entertainment centers are linked to a net connection then it will be a viable option. Also Storage atm will be an issue for mainstream users. I doubt most PC's have more than 300 - 400GB of HDD in your average family so again, storage will be another area that is and will need to continue to develop.
In the future but, I think it will have it's place. In the meantime it'll be used by a few individuals but won't go mainstream nearly as fast as some thing and bluray will be dominent for that period.
Last edited by Smigit on 01 Feb 2008 - 03:07
Over here in Sweden, we have 100 Mbps lines pretty common now, at least in cities, but digital downloads are still not big, even in DVD quality. This seems like it will be a slow change.
Probably the only sensible post on this thread at all.
Where the model falls apart is the distributors for the movies are left with a choice - let people download it or let people buy/rent a physical format.
Consumers expect the digital version to be far less as it doesn't have a physical component (even though the physical component production cost under $1 with packaging).
Because of this distributors have a choice of bowing to consumer demand and taking a revenue and profit cut for the sake of the consumers' convenience, or stick to the physical side of things and maximise profit.
Going by their push towards higher capacity formats and lawsuits through the MPAA it is pretty clear they are going to pick profit and lawsuits over consumer convenience until the convenience factor can be proven to make them more money overall (or piracy forces their hand).
Sony FTW !!!!
Blu-ray will rule and so do "LaBatts Blue" the Canadian Beer
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