Samsung: Blu-Ray gone by 2012

[Boz]

Samsung has said that it sees the Blu-ray format only lasting a further 5 years before it is replaced by another format or technology.

"I think it [blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10", Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK told Pocket-lint in an interview.

Hoping to capitalise before it's too late..

Citing online rental sites like LoveFilm's adoption of Blu-ray titles, the move to offer cheaper players and a now clear path to adoption following the Blu-ray HD DVD battle, Griffith says the format will be a winner, although not for long.

"In 2012 we will be in a true HD world. Everything from your television to your camcorder will be offering you pictures in high-definition, and we plan to offer you that HD world from all angles."

With 4 years to go, the prospect sounds exciting, but by then Blu-ray will be, if Samsung are to be believed, on its last legs.

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.pht...ears-left.phtml

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

Personally, I think Bluray won't get sales of what they are expecting. Maybe not as low as DVD-A and SaCD but low anyway

[StevoJD]

What's to replace Blu-Ray?

Movie downloads?

[Boz]

What's to replace Blu-Ray?

Movie downloads?

Considering in the previous interviews they already said that digital downloads are already there for SD content and are already replacing the DVD content, it's not far fetched to see that they think HD downloads will be fully applicable.. They are investing heavily in OLED technology too but it's interesting to see that one of the biggest Blu-ray supporting CE companies delivering first Blu-Ray player and boosting several different models over the course of past 2+ years now says that Blu-Ray will be gone within 5 years..

I think that means that it's not really peachy situation in his opinion.

[bobbytomorow]

By then it will be what 7 years old? That sounds like a normal life cycle to me. Comparatively alternatives to DVD were announced around 2004ish. But if average household internet bandwidth does not increase by A LOT in North America from now until then I think Blu Ray will be around much longer. Because as of now most households in NA are lower than 2.5Mbps, so obviously downloading HD content is not yet practical.

[kak]

By then it will be what 7 years old? That sounds like a normal life cycle to me. Comparatively alternatives to DVD were announced around 2004ish. But if average household internet bandwidth does not increase by A LOT in North America from now until then I think Blu Ray will be around much longer. Because as of now most households in NA are lower than 2.5Mbps, so obviously downloading HD content is not yet practical.

Don't forget that Comcast just imposed a 250GB/month download limit. How long it stays at 250GB will be a mystery given Comcast's actions up to this point in time.

Boz - Samsung is probably mad because they haven't made a player than can compete with the PS3 yet, which is completely their fault. Its pretty sad that every CE company hasn't made a player comparable to the PS3 yet.

[Boz]

Don't forget that Comcast just imposed a 250GB/month download limit. How long it stays at 250GB will be a mystery given Comcast's actions up to this point in time.

First of all 250gb is still quite enough.. but in general Comcast is one provider and they are simply greedy.. That won't fly for too long. The competition will bury them. New fiber optics networks are spreading and will replace standard cable technology. Comcast is just acting like little bitches. They won't be able to do that for long anyways. Cox already said they will be expanding their offering by end of this year to 50mbps connections. I have 20mbps and that's Phoenix.

250gb a month will allow you to watch between 30-60 HD movies a month.. unless you watch movies every day and 2 of them at that.. it's still quite enough.

This will all improve over the course of this and next year anyways.. Many cable companies are already forced to expand infrastructures and with that.. there's also a bit-torrent sharing solutions that will most likely be implemented so people share bandwith. It's really a software thing from the digital download provider.

Good thing about digital downloads is that once they solve this.. the things just work.. no profiles, no BD-Java crap.. just movies at great quality from the couch in your living room and there shouldn't be any cap.. Today you have 720p HD movies.. next year as the infrastracture grows you get full 1080p for all movies, 5 years from now, additional bandwith improvements or whatever we could get even higher resolution digital downloads. And your investment would be ZERO, except for paying probably subscriptions to cable company and buying/renting the movie online, that's it.

[kak]

I'm sure you have quite a bit more information then the main dude at Samsung! :) Cause he disagrees.

Blu-Ray has been 2 years on the market and it's still unfinished.. maybe 2009 they'll have decently priced Profile 2.0 fully working standalones and ONLY then the format will be ready for mainstream.

It's obvious that patched up format will be simply replaced by something more efficient, more convenient and cheaper.

If we had HD DVD win, it would be already mainstream but now, as it seems from Samsung, Blu-Ray will never really lift off on a mass scale.

Blu-Ray has had a finished spec the entire time, the hardware was tiered. Why? I don't know. HD-DVD features never really impressed me that much and they apparently didn't impress buyers either. Every sales bit you'll find will corroborate that and you know it.

If HD-DVD won, prices would have gone back up. No way Toshiba sells the HD-A2 for $99 unless they were on the way out, which is exactly the case. None of their other units fell in price.

At the end of the day, its the BDA needing to go out and show consumers why they need to buy HDM like the DVD board did when DVD was released. The push isn't there. Disney does the best job of doing it and I've only seen the advertisements on their BDs.. which is kind of dumb.

[Angel Blue01]

I don't know, Blue-ray isn't any good without an HD television, those need to be standard before people start buy discs and certainly before the format dies. Sure it will die soon, I think, but it will be because not enough people are replacing their SD televisions and by the time they do a better format will have replaced it.

Personally, I think Bluray won't get sales of what they are expecting. Maybe not as low as DVD-A and SaCD but low anyway

What's DVD-A and SaCD? I know more than anyone I know about video formats but I've never heard of these :huh:

[goji]

If we had HD DVD win, it would be already mainstream but now, as it seems from Samsung, Blu-Ray will never really lift off on a mass scale.

Wishful thinking as I'm sure America preferred to fill their tanks then purchase entertainment items.

@bobbytomorow :

The system capacity in America is there, we can support HD movie downloads plus some, however its the big companies that will be the biggest road block which the FCC is investigating ComCast right now and some of the decisions they have made recently.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Sounds like a pretty reasonable estimate to me. However, just because it won't be the newest/best format doesn't mean it will be killed off there and then.

Dvd is strong as ever, even with the introduction of Blu Ray the past 2 years.

[roadgeek9]

I could see Blu-Ray dying eventually, it is the next Betamax. It seems great now, then we will all find out it is completely useless.

[Boz]

Sounds like a pretty reasonable estimate to me. However, just because it won't be the newest/best format doesn't mean it will be killed off there and then.

Dvd is strong as ever, even with the introduction of Blu Ray the past 2 years.

Yeah..but Blu-ray is not next DVD (even Sony executives now say so) and will never be so I think that he's right that it will perish by then.

Keep this in mind.. 97% is DVD now.. 2-3% is Blu-Ray (I'm not sure).. it is logical that DVD is still strong.. Blu-Ray is on the other hand an outsider that probably won't get more then 20-30% of the market by then if that (and that's considering HDTV expansion) and other factors. So yeah, it's much easier to replace and completely kill off something that's not widespread, don't you think?

[Xerxes]

Hmm I think that will heavily depend on high speed broadband penitration. In countries like Korea, I can see Blu-Ray been gone sooner then 5 years but in other countries it depends on how good their broadband is. Here down under, I can't see HD movie download services taking off (not with how things are currently), not everyone has access to very high speed internet and even the ones who do it's [usually] capped. Personally I prefer Blu-Ray/DVD as I like having the physical copy anyway. Well that is my 2 cents take with a grain of salt.

[Boz]

I could see Blu-Ray dying eventually, it is the next Betamax. It seems great now, then we will all find out it is completely useless.

There's a reason why Sony is pushing digital download so furiously in their products.

PS3, TVs and other devices they are coming out with have already digital downloads support.

LG just released a digital download equipped Blu-Ray player too. Many others will release digital streaming/download devices too. It's the future. Every sane and logical person knows it. Who's gonna invest in obsolete optical format for most then a few more years, especially when you already have a DVD that's pretty good looking as it is with upscaling for most people.

[mrchetsteadman]

Men lie, women lie, numbers dont. Blu-Ray has won the war for now. Will something come along and knock it off it's perch? Maybe, maybe not. We will have to wait and see.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Yeah..but Blu-ray is not next DVD (even Sony executives now say so) and will never be so I think that he's right that it will perish by then.

Keep this in mind.. 97% is DVD now.. 2-3% is Blu-Ray (I'm not sure).. it is logical that DVD is still strong.. Blu-Ray is on the other hand an outsider that probably won't get more then 20-30% of the market by then if that (and that's considering HDTV expansion) and other factors. So yeah, it's much easier to replace and completely kill off something that's not widespread, don't you think?

I really don't think it will just disappear and it will grow over the next few years. I'm not saying it will reach the height of DVD, but with no other HD format in the market and the PS3 also pushing sales it's going to grow considerably by 2012. If you look at other storage mediums like Sata and IDE, the introduction didn't kill off IDE completely, it merely took over as the new standard. Eventually DVD will die off (perhaps by 2012 or earlier), and blu ray will take it's place once a new format is introduced.

I think it's much more likely they will co-exist and the market shares will slowly change sides as time progresses.

[Boz]

I really don't think it will just disappear and it will grow over the next few years. I'm not saying it will reach the height of DVD, but with no other HD format in the market and the PS3 also pushing sales it's going to grow considerably by 2012. If you look at other storage mediums like Sata and IDE, the introduction didn't kill off IDE completely, it merely took over as the new standard. Eventually DVD will die off (perhaps by 2012 or earlier), and blu ray will take it's place once a new format is introduced.

I think it's much more likely they will co-exist and the market shares will slowly change sides as time progresses.

But there is competition already.. services like Xbox Live with HD and PSN with HD and Apple TV and Vudu are already a competition to Blu-Ray. Digital downloads are already here, maybe still not on a massive massive level but I can tell you with certainty that it's growing much faster then Blu-Ray. 10 million Xbox Live subscribers already use it, 20 million+ Xbox 360s are already available, nothing else is needed.. same goes for PS3.. new devices coming out.. a clear example of competition is the new LG device that sports Netflix digital downloads and Blu-Ray player in one.

[c3i89g]

By then it will be what 7 years old? That sounds like a normal life cycle to me. Comparatively alternatives to DVD were announced around 2004ish. But if average household internet bandwidth does not increase by A LOT in North America from now until then I think Blu Ray will be around much longer. Because as of now most households in NA are lower than 2.5Mbps, so obviously downloading HD content is not yet practical.

DVD made its US debut in 1997. I think the issue is that while DVD offered clear advantages over VHS. I've seen no compelling reason to upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray.

[Boz]

DVD made its US debut in 1997. I think the issue is that while DVD offered clear advantages over VHS. I've seen no compelling reason to upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray.

And that's it.. and I'm thinking that the ability to access all movies from your couch without going anywhere and even in HD even if not "PERFECT" to 1080p appearance would make you upgrade. That's a clear advantage over both DVD and Blu-ray, right?

[TheNay]

Blu-Ray gone in 5 years, maybe, it's possible, look how fast DVD's got replaced once they got cheap to consumers.

About 10 years.

Blu-Ray may last as discs can hold up to 100GB or more in the future which may lengthen the timeframe but what's next?

I would say Flash cards. Digitial downloads will never work seeing that ISPs are starting to put caps on the internet use.

Rogers, Bell, Comcast, etc etc are putting them on and more. So that'll slow it down I think. If that wasn't in the cards I could see it happening.

Maybe a better compression for HD video will come out, mkv's are good but could the compress it more for companies to stream video?

In Blu-ray's world, for quality I mainly see a huge difference when it comes down to DVD vs 1080P FULL HD. 720P doesn't look that much better than DVD in my view. But then again 720 vs 1080 isn't that big of a difference. Really it's all about bragging rights and a nice flat panel TV in the room, and it does look nicer than a boxy TV by far (contrast, brightness, etc).

[Tech Star]

Sorry Boz, I don't see this happening in America in 5 years. We have too slow of connections and people are still on Dial-up. Even if we do get faster connections they will likely over price it like they all ways do so not that many people will get it for Digital Downloads only. Also some people want Physical Media still and will most likely want it in 5 years also. So in my aspect I do not see Blu-Ray dieing in 5 years for Digital downloads.

[Coldgunner]

Wow, I think I missed the party!

Boz, you know where I stand on this, boo downloads, yay optical. I only request you stop using the word 'fanboy', some of us find it quite rude.

We all know where threads like this end up anyway. Bluray has currently parralleled DVD in price as well as popularity. and 7 years into the DVD lifetime we started looking for the next format. I wouldn't be suprised if we started looking at 1440p+ tv's and blurays to support it (can't see why not, just needs a revised standard). One thing we can be certain of, downloads will be restricted until ISP's get their finger out their ass, sort their networks and stop oversubscribing the connections.

Edited September 5, 2008 by Coldgunner

[se7en.hu]

I wouldn't be surprised if it were gone by then, im surprised we still got it, or even bothered with it.

[Coldgunner]

Optical has so many advantages over downloads, I can see only one advantage of downloads:

optical:

Higher bitrates

better audio

extras

no downloads needed

can just pick it up and take it to a mates

NO drm (I'm happy for them to protect the disc content, I don't like not being able to copy a download though)

impulse purchasing, my favourite!

great for building a movie library

Downloads:

don't have to go out and buy a disc

huge hit on your monthly bandwidth allowance, which most of us have (some ISP's don't but they have a 'ghost' cap they don't tell the customers)

pita to copy to portable storage, if they allow that.

most download services are rental, I want to own my copy, not have it deactivate after x days.

often quicker to buy the optical disc than download it.

Because of the rental system, you cannot really build a collection.