Blu-ray Hits Key Milestone Faster than Standard-Def

An anonymous reader writes "Slashdot has already reported on the go-go sales for the 'Casino Royale' Blu-ray on Amazon, but now comes news that the same Blu-ray disc is the first high-def disc to ship 100,000 units within the United States. It took standard-def DVD eleven months to reach that retail milestone (in 1998 with 'Air Force One'), but with 'Royale,' the nine-month old Blu-ray format now has done it two months faster."

Great....

[FunkyELF]

...I'll get a blu-ray player when I can easily rip the movies and do what I want with them including making standard def dvd backups, or transcode it for my video iPod.

Right now I can do a lot with standard def DVDs fairly easily. I'll need that functionality before I buy into any HD format. To me that functionality is worth a lot more than the extra resolution.

Re:Great....

[karmatic]

I'll get a blu-ray player when I can easily rip the movies and do what I want with them including making standard def dvd backups, or transcode it for my video iPod.

Well, it's a good thing you don't have to wait. [boingboing.net] Every disk released so far is cracked. They are going to take a stab at improving the protection, but companies have been doing that since DeCSS came out.

And yes, I went out and bought a bunch of blu-ray disks after the cracks happened, for much the same reason.

Re:

[Goaway]

They are going to take a stab at improving the protection, but companies have been doing that since DeCSS came out.

Actually, they have not, as there was no way to fix CSS once it was broken. They just had to deal with it.

A lot of lessons learned from that went into designing AACS, and it has many methods to deal with various kinds of breaks, including all that have been done so far. The battle over AACS is just beginning, and currently the ball is in the content producers' court. Future discs will not be cr

Re:

[brianosaurus]

They consider that a feature, right? The movies you buy today may not play tomorrow. Screw that!

As I said elsewhere, I'm not even getting into this fray until the DRM BS is over. I don't need a babysitter telling me where I can and cannot watch the movies that I buy. I'm also not into buying revocable rights that are controlled at the whims of greedy technophobes who think that me paying $20 of my hard-earned cash for their product is somehow ripping them off.

Don't forget! Sony promised not to start us

Re:

[Goaway]

They consider that a feature, right? The movies you buy today may not play tomorrow. Screw that!

No, the movies you buy today will keep playing forever. However, the movies you buy tomorrow may not play on the player you bought today. However, the only reason this would happen is if you extracted the keys from your player and posted them on the internet.

Re:

[Goaway]

The original claim was,

companies have been doing that since DeCSS came out.

DeCSS came out in 1999. Those seem to be from 2005/2006, so that's something like six years later. While they may technically be a result of the original release of DeCSS, it's hardly "doing that since DeCSS came out".

Re:

[brianosaurus]

I think the point is to not have to purchase multiple copies of the same movie/show/whatever. I won't move to a format that limits me to less than I currently can do with DVDs and CDs (music, too). While all bluray and hddvd titles so far have been cracked, the industry is still working to cripple the new formats and I don't want to support their blatant greed.

I'll "upgrade" to an HD format:

- after the DRM efforts collapse
- when combo players are under $200
- when disc prices drop to the same as DVDs
- when

Re:

[CohibaVancouver]

I've got more than 4000 retail dvd's and never had any need to rip it..

If I'm travelling I'll rip a collection of my DVDs and copy them to my laptop's hard drive. Then I can watch them on the road without needing to carry the original media. Also, if I'm on battery power the battery lasts much longer spinning the hard drive than it does spinning the DVD drive.

Re:

[Ahnteis]

My DVDs are stored on my file server. I can browse them with my remote from my couch on my HTPC, or any other room in the house with equipment for viewing them.

If I wanted to go nuts, I could watch them from anywhere with high speed internet.

As has been mentioned, I can also load them onto a laptop to take on a trip without adding bulk.

Shipped or sold?

[Dorkmaster Flek]

I see shipped. I'd like to know how many were sold. On an interesting sidenote, how many of those sold were to be played on PS3s?

Re:

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I see shipped. I'd like to know how many were sold. On an interesting sidenote, how many of those sold were to be played on PS3s?

This kind of reminds me how at one LPs were certified gold or platinum based on units shipped, not sales. This led to some interesting "gold" and "platinum" certifications where certain LPs were shipped by the boxcar and returned unsold by the boxcar. The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton (and others) soundtrack to the movie of _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ is probably the

Re:

[brianosaurus]

That is definitely an interesting bit. DVDs were slow on the uptake because the initial round of players were in the $600-$1000 range, ad the movie offerings were pretty sparse. I was a early adopter, and I remember buying my overpriced player, then wishing there were more movies available for it. For a while I was buying practically every movie they released just so I'd have *something* to watch.

This time around Bluray got some bonus hardware sales by bundling in the PS3. Now everyone with a PS3 is sit

Re:

[heinousjay]

Out of curiosity, what is your console of choice? I have to assume PS3, since you brought in accusations of being a 360 fanboy without there even being the slightest implication in the OP of any kind of fanboyism. I'm dying to know: what makes you guys so defensive?

Re:

[soft_guy]

This has got to be the stupidest comment I've seen in a while.

Faster?

[Intron]

The US population in 1998 was 270M, but 298M today, so one would expect a new format to hit some arbitrary number 10% faster, other things being equal.

Re:Faster?

[morgan_greywolf]

Well, it's 2 months faster -- 11 months - 2 months = 9 months or almost 20% faster.

Wait, my keyboard is being taken ove----

Great! So now we can say that Blu-Ray hit the 100,000 unit milestone at almost twice the rate of population growth since 1998! Thanks, Intron!
                                                                      -- The Sony Marketroids
     

Population growth stupidity

[douglips]

This reminds me of all the whiners saying that in the 2000 US presidential election that Al Gore got more votes "than any president in history except Ronald Reagan".

My response was that Ralph Nader got more votes than Abraham Lincoln.

Re:

[kisrael]

*sigh*

Well, Gore got more votes than the guy who got awarded the office; that's the counterintuitive bit.

It still feels like we got a president based on the rounding error that is the electoral college.

Re:

[Applekid]

If everyone upset with that were to take up letters to congress asking them to amend the constitution to get rid of that antiquated electoral college, I wonder if they would ever do it?

Presidental candidates like having to concentrate campaigns in selected states since they modify the final outcome more than predom. blue/red states or states with low populations. That way they also get to pander to said states with promises of subsidies and how they're so totally awesome and the union wouldn't be the same w

Re:

[jackbird]

The problem is that congress can't amend the constitution on its own - amendments have to pass 2/3 of the state legislatures as well, and more than 1/3 of the states have something to lose from seeing it go away. The electoral college is also a money-saver for both parties (at the expense of truly national elections and the spirit of representative democracy in general), as presidential campaigns can be restricted to a handful of battleground states instead of being truly national (I lived in New York City

Re:

[Mr. Underbridge]

Well, Gore got more votes than the guy who got awarded the office; that's the counterintuitive bit.

It still feels like we got a president based on the rounding error that is the electoral college.

OT of course, but if you don't count the dead that voted, the same can be said of Kennedy and Nixon in '60.

Re:

[kisrael]

You know, when he was re-elected, getting more votes than Kerry, who got more votes than Gore did in 2000, the pointless whining became even more pointless.

Bush won two very close elections, in one of which he got over 50% of the vote, something his predecessor never did.

Get over it.
Just to push this further in the realm of offtopic political flamage:

I'll get over it just as soon as the negative ramifications of the 2000 are finished. Hell, I'll settle for the war to be over. Sure Bush made himself a war pr

Re:

[Ahnteis]

"Rabid opponents of gay marriage came out to the poles in droves to vote for "ZOMG DON'T LET THE QUEERS CHEAPEN OUR SACRED INSTITUTIONS" resolutions,"

Because if you don't agree with them, they must clearly be deranged due to rabies?

Apparently this political debate *is* actually very closely related to the "OMG YOU FANBOI _________ OWNER! YOUR CONSOLE IS TEH SUX!" topic at hand.

Re:

[samkass]

Yup, and Bush's "overwhelming" 51%-to-49% win in 2004 which gave HIM "more votes than any president in history", except that Kerry is now in 2nd place, having earned more votes than Gore or Bush did in 2000, or anyone else in history except Bush. Population increases.

However, the US population has only gone up 10% since DVDs were introduced, and this is 20% faster. Add the fact that a lot fewer people have HD-capable sets today than had DVD-capable sets back then, and the Blu-Ray adoption rate looks unusu

Re:

[Mr. Shiny And New]

What's a DVD-capable set? Are you referring to a TV set? I curious about the number of installed TVs in 1998 that didn't have a composite video input. Anyway, the Atari 2600 came with an adapter for that years ago, so I doubt that was a real problem.

Re:

[Kadin2048]

I curious about the number of installed TVs in 1998 that didn't have a composite video input.

It was probably pretty high -- I know my parents still have an old VHF/UHF set sitting around in an extra bedroom, and almost 10 years ago there were probably a lot more.

However, the problem of TVs without composite inputs was basically solved during the 70s and 80s by VCRs. They built a RF modulator into them so that you can hook it up to your TV and just tune to Chan. 3 and see whatever the VCR is currently puttin

Re:Faster?

[Lumpy]

Funny part is the number of homes with a HiDef set is remarkably low compared to their supposed adoption rate. MOST people that have a hidef set only have a 720P set which makes standard DVD's look utterly fantastic compared to the crap on your Cable TV and only slightly better when running a blu-ray movie through it. People that own 42" and smaller will not even notice a difference between a blu ray and standard HDDVD with a line doubler running.

Until people can get 1080 native sets for reasonable prices or they atart buying the 50+ inch size sets there really is not going to be the adoption rate they think they are getting. Almost none of the customers at the company I work for want HDDVD or Blu Ray after we go an demo it in their theater. We demo on their gear and a 1080 projector. when they see the higher end projector they are all over it until a price is quoted, then they say "we will wait a couple of years, our current setup is fine." They do not like having to throw away a $10K-$20K 720p projector and buying a similarly price 1080 projector plus all their content, plus player, etc....

Re:

[PRMan]

This is so untrue. My brother has a 27" 720p HDTV and you can EASILY tell the difference between an upconverted DVD and HD.

It is absolutely true with my 50" 720p.

Re:

[elrous0]

Oh, you must have one of those new line doublers than inserts resolution that wasn't there in the original source material.

Are they made by God?

Can I get one for my VHS player, so my VHS tapes can look like 720p too?

Did you read the GREYCstoration article?

[tepples]

Oh, you must have one of those new line doublers than inserts resolution that wasn't there in the original source material.

Are they made by God?

No, they're made by GREYC Lab [slashdot.org]. That algorithm isn't real-time yet, but there do exist algorithms that can guess the high spatial frequencies that VHS and DVD-Video filter out. Specifically, upscalers with a cartoon mode may draw inspiration from hq3x [hiend3d.com].

Can I get one for my VHS player, so my VHS tapes can look like 720p too?

I haven't played with the GREYCstoration noise reduction algorithms myself, but it might be possible to tune them for the kind of noise output by consumer videotape equipment.

Re:

[jonnythan]

I have the critically acclaimed Oppo 971HD (this upconverting player got the higest score ever on Secrets of Home Theater's objective DVD player tests) on my 50" 720p plasma.

Upconverted DVD vs 720p is night and day. The difference is staggering. The difference between a true 720p image and an upconverted 480i image is substantial.

Comparatively, the difference between 720p and 1080p on a display 50" or smaller is much, much less dramatic. It can even be hard to tell in many cases, especially once you get to

Re:

[egomaniac]

You're saying you can't tell the difference between 640x480 and 1280x720 on, say, your computer monitor? You need to make an appointment with an eye doctor.

I can easily see the difference between 720p and 480p on a 42" plasma.

Re:

[elrous0]

And if YOU think that kick-ass line doubler is really adding ANYTHING other than the ILLUSION of more resolution, you must not know much about them either.

Re:

[elrous0]

I have a 42" 720p set and can assure you that the difference is VERY evident between HD-DVD and standard def. There is no contest.

I'm not sure where people get this "You have to have a 1080p set with a 60" screen to spot the difference" nonsense. 720p looks stunningly better than 480p. You would have to be blind (or viewing it on a 14" TV) to miss the difference.

Re:

[elrous0]

People who complain about "keeping up with the Jones's" when it comes to HDTV are people who've never owned one. Believe me, HDTV isn't just marketing hype. The difference is VERY real and VERY evident.

I remember hearing this same argument about DVD, incidentally. "The resolution isn't that much better than VHS/LD, why should anyone give up their VHS or LD player for that?" And the resolution difference between HDTV and DVD is a lot greater than between VHS and DVD.

Little Shiny Objects

[OctoberSky]

I would think that this also has to do with the fact that the format, although new, is still somewhat familiar in terms of the media (looks like a DVD).

When the switch from VHS to DVD occurred (lets pretend Laserdisc never existed) people were going from a big plastic rectangle to a small shiny disc. I would expect some hesitancy there, even though people were accustomed to CDs at that time. But now the change is very small, a Blue Ray disc looks very much like the tried and true DVD disc.

Re:

[l4m3z0r]

You can't just say that this 20% growth on population is just because of the births, it's also because many people just didn't die.

Your population can't grow because people don't die. It can only grow from births or immigration. Also where do you get 20%? 18 / 270 * 100 = 6.66% increase in population.

Yeah but how many 8 years old were there back when DVD was released?

This is a valid point, however, it still comes no where near the 20% you touted. I dont know exactly how to get the numbers we want

9 Years Later

[moore.dustin]

Technology adoption has grown dramatically since that time. This is similar to the Vista outselling XP story. The truth is, since XP came out the PC market grew by a huge percentage, thus making the Vista sales claim bunk.

Re:

[westlake]

This is similar to the Vista outselling XP story. The truth is, since XP came out the PC market grew by a huge percentage, thus making the Vista sales claim bunk.

The take-off point was Win 95 not XP.

"In the marketplace, Windows 95 was an unqualified success, and within a year or two of its release had become the most successful operating system ever produced." Windows 95 [wikipedia.org]

The mid-line consumer PC rated and sold for Vista Premium or Ultimate is a very sophisticated product.

In the same sense that the Bl

No surprise

[TechyImmigrant]

Could it just be that Casino Royale is a better film that Air Force One?

Re:

[ceeam]

Much more probably is that there are only a handful of BR releases now and people want to buy something to play on their new expensive players.

Re:No surprise

[Coco Lopez]

Rottentomatoes.com has Air Force One at 77% fresh, vs. Casino Royale at 94% fresh.

Casino Royale is a 17% better movie, which directly explains the roughly 17% faster selling rate.

What it doesn't explain is why Slashdot has been running so many stories direct from the Sony marketing department lately...

Re:

[jtpalinmajere]

Yes, to an extent. They're trying to make the claim that penetration/adoption of blue-ray is going faster based on the correlated factoid that X movie shipped more units on the blue-ray platform. Keep in mind that the movie was also released on DVD, so the implication is that more people chose to get it on the newer platform over the older platform.

The problem is the fact that they used a hard solid number to compare the two rather than a percentage per capita for instance. You have the factor of nation/

Actually it was even faster

[News for nerds]

if you count in Blu-ray discs shipped in the form of PS3 games.

Re:

[Mattwolf7]

Actually probably not, if you haven't heard PS3's aren't selling

Re:

[powerlord]

Yeah ... and its a good thing the MS's XBox 360 won't use the HD-DVD player for games. Helps people realize that you should buy a separate system for games and movies.

Actually I'm dropping my standalone Toshiba DVD player, the PS3 has been that good as a replacement (managing to play through DVDs with scratches that locked up the Toshiba).

I'm enjoying it as a game system, and it makes a killer DVD/Blu-Ray player (especially if you spring for the bluetooth remote which makes it helps it pass the "wife test")

Better format or...

[Grashnak]

You mean more people bought Casino Royale, a widely acclaimed addition to the ever-popular James Bond pantheon than bought Air Force One, an implausible ho-hum action movie made with a cookie cutter? I am shocked!

Depends on your definition of "Key"

[Itchyeyes]

If by key you mean some random arbitrary metric of the success of the format, then I suppose the title is accurate. If you mean a milestone with actual meaning, then I think the title is a little misleading.

Shipped?

[loafing_oaf]

Yeah, I'll bet that all those shipped Blu-ray discs are sitting at hundreds of Best Buy stores, right next to the towers of Playstation 3 systems.

It's easy to ship when you're giving them away..

[WarwickRyan]

... with each PS3 sold.

All this says is that a number of PS3 owners have registered online for their 'free' disk.

It's like Nintendo claiming to have won the console wars because of the 1-1 sales of Wii Sports..

Re:

[king-manic]

My PS3 did nto come with a blue ray movie Or a voucher for one. Not all packages sold had a free movie or a voucher.

Vista me this

[happyfrogcow]

And Vista has beat XP's numbers for the first month. What's the significance? Not much.

Accidental?

[sexyrexy]

Given that some disappointingly high percentage of people don't even know what the hell Blu-Ray or HD-DVD are, much less the difference or that they don't work in normal DVD players, how many of these orders were actually intended to be SD-DVD purchases?

Re:

[egomaniac]

More than a few, I'm sure. My mother actually bought the HD-DVD version of a movie, because she knew she had HDTV and a DVD player and assumed that it would work. And I'm not sure if I'm just going easy on her because she's my mom, but it seemed like a perfectly reasonable mistake for a layperson to make.

Re:

[Nerdfest]

I was under the impression that many HD-DVD disks have a standard def side on them. When I heard this, I just about went out and bought one ... as at the very least it means you'll only be screwed out of the difference in the price difference between the HD and SD versions.

I would have though the HD-DVD marketers would be pushing the format based on this, but they don't seem to be marketing it that much at all.

Re:

[guidryp]

I expect this happens a lot more with HD-DVD. I first thought Blu Ray was an inferior name, now I think it is better that it is names so different to normal DVD.

Well.....

[phoenixwade]

Probably gonna get modded badly for this, but....... I've yet to see a real reason to care. My level of Apathy on the Blu-ray / HD-DVD thing is so high that, um, I'm not even interested in a witty euphemism.....

It's a marketing spin, and maybe, just maybe, Sony won't repeat the betamax/minidisk/whatever format stumbles they've done in the past. But, based on the companies history alone, you'd get good odds that blu-ray ends up a niche market product.

So what? I'm still not buying HD....

[ip_freely_2000]

..until they get the Blu-Ray v. HD DVD settled. Or I can buy a player that supports both formats for about $200.

Wake me up when that happens.

In other news, 100,000 blue lasers were sold

[dattaway]

The price of blue lasers have come down too.

Shiped but not Sold?

[DeadboltX]

This article [eurogamer.net] states that Sony was GIVING AWAY 500,000 copies of Casino Royale on Blueray to the first 500,000 people to register their PS3 after the European launch of the PS3, which was on March 23rd.

So how many people actually "bought" the movie?

Not surprising...

[Donniedarkness]

...considering how a lot of places bundled this movie with the PS3. What about the OTHER blu-ray movies that have been sold?

How long before they relieve us of the old format?

[pair-a-noyd]

How long before they begin to offer new movies ONLY on the new discs thus forcing us old timers to "upgrade or die"?

I have no use for this new hi-def stuff. My old legacy dvd players and TV's work fine, thank you very much and I don't and won't shell out for new equipment, period. People throw away old CRT TV's all the time, I just pick them up from the curb, repair them and "watch on".. It will be many years before I run out of old style legacy CRT's. I get them for free and it costs me just about as m

Re:How long before they relieve us of the old form

[hador_nyc]

yeah, and you kids get off the grass too!

sorry couldn't help myself... :)

Re:How long before they relieve us of the old form

[itlurksbeneath]

If rental stores are any guide, it'll be a 5 to 7 years before you see DVD's disappear from stores completely. I remember I got my first DVD player around 97 or 98, just when DVD's were starting to show up in the movie rental places on a little shelf. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find a VHS in a rental store and it's been like that for quite a while.

Still, your resistance to change attitude doesn't hold any water. You seemed to have ditched your VHS players for DVD with no problems and I expect around

Re:

[benzapp]

I can't even begin to count how many worthless posts I've read like this on slashdot since I started reading this site in 2000. Mod this post down! The same can be said of every technological advancement since the wheel. Who gives a fuck what people think who don't see the need for a technological advancement? No one with a brain, that's for sure.

hmmm

[linuxpng]

for one.. the article and sony announcement do not say "in the US", just shipped. As another person pointed out Sony is giving away 500,000 copies for registering your PS3 in europe. http://www.siliconera.com/index.php/2007/02/12/eur opean-ps3-owners-get-casino-royale-for-free/ [siliconera.com]

Yawn...

[spiritraveller]

This is even less impressive than Microsoft's claim that Vista is selling faster than XP did.

And it suffers from the same oversight...

That is, it fails to take into account the increases in market volume and buying power which would make it a useful comparison and instead uses the same raw number to compare two very different markets in two different eras. That raw number of 100,000 doesn't mean the same thing at the dawn of the DVD player as it does now at the dawn of the "BluRay player."

A useful comparison would consist of a ratio or percentage adjusted to take those differences into account. But it's obvious that an honest comparison isn't going to impress anyone.

After 12 years (I'm making an educated guess here), all they can say is that they beat the same raw number of purchases by 2 months?!?!

There's an old saying... "you can't polish a turd."

What's the comparison to DVD sales though?

[shoptroll]

How does this number compare with the standard def sales of Casino Royale? Does this in any way show that Blu-ray is actually catching on? Could it just be that Bond has a larger appeal to everyone who already owns a Blu-ray player? How many people are purchasing the movie along with a player (which would indicate that the movie is drawing new customers)?

Could it just be that people finally have a compelling reason to actually purchase a hi-def format movie?

Standrd

[aarku]

Nice standard Slashdot proofreading!

That's because

[A_Non_Moose]

there are no blueray hddvd usenet gr... (user is duct taped to chair and muzzled by greybeards)#*&^$)No Carrier.

Yes, well

[26199]

There's not exactly a vast range of choice for Blu-ray owners, is there?

I think some form of Bayesian analysis is in order to adjust the stats so they're fair. I suspect just comparing straight numbers is highly skewed.

Broken audio on Casino Royale DVD

[reidconti]

Maybe people are buying the BluRay version because the DVD version of Casino Royale is hideously broken.

Watching the movie on my Mac Pro with a moderately priced receiver and speakers, the audio level drops were so distracting it was hard to watch the movie. The first one I noticed was during Audioslave's intro song during the animation. It continued to happen throughout the movie. In action scenes, music would be loud, and just before a punch, the audio level would drop to 1/2 or less, and then slowly b

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Meaningless numbers

[Slashdot Insider]

UMD's shipped a ton too. How'd they sell? Oh right, so many people bought them that retailers pulled them from store shelves to reclaim shelf space.

Re:

[Poltras]

What's wrong with Casino Royale? It was pure genius, from someone who watched the Bond series going down lately.
Air Force One is another matter, but hey, could've been worse, could have been Air Force Two [imdb.com] instead of Casino.

Re:

[Bassman59]

Have you seen Casino Royale? It's really not that crappy at all.

Maybe he's talking about the original version...

Re:

[rbanffy]

The original version was funny, not crappy.

Re:PS3 owners?

[jandrese]

I don't know about the PS3, but the PS2 was in a similar situation with its DVD drive. Ultimately, the DVD drive in the PS2 wasn't the best. It worked ok on simple movies, but it tended to get edge cases wrong on more complex discs. You'd see this as messed up subtitles on foreign films, "camera angle" changes that were handled incorrectly, menu choices that don't get translated correctly in the film and so on. Granted, a lot of these were bugs on the disc itself, but better players managed to work around the bugs and work correctly regardless.

Re:

[Akaihiryuu]

Try using the PS2 DVD player on a progressive scan TV. The quality is abysmal, deinterlacing artifacts everywhere. Every software player I've used on my computer has done a far better job. The PS2 DVD player is alright if all you've got is a cheap TV without component/progressive scan, but stick it on a good TV and it looks awful. I got a progressive scan Divx-enabled DVD player at Wal-mart for $37, and it beats the PS2 by leaps and bounds.

Re:

[Applekid]

Incorrectly encoded discs are par for the course [hometheaterhifi.com]. While that link has an awful lot of information on it, one thing to take out of it is that sometimes studios just don't care what kind of quality is coming out of the authoring houses. SciFi playing some Dead Like Me prompted me to get the DVD box sets and it looks downright horrible in spots on just about every DVD player.

The question then becomes, does the PS3 follow the footsteps of the PS2 as a finicky, low-quality DVD player or does it rival stand alone

Re:IMO, don't rely on a Playstation to play movies

[Afrosheen]

Yeah I'd say it's FUD because you don't own a PS3 and therefore can't have a valid opinion on the Blu-Ray functionality.

I do own one and the BR support is second to none. Furthermore since it's online, any time Sony finds a bug, they can sneak the fix in with the next firmware update. The PS3 will remain the best BR player despite what anyone else builds. Not only that but tons of magazines have already had showdowns with BR players and the PS3 wins every single time. Speed, ergonomics, correctness, etc. it wins in every category.

Now there are a very small handful of 'video purists' that criticize the lack of 1080p/24fps support which is true film and prevents 4:3 pulldown, but Sony can add support at any time via firmware. Not only that but I have yet to see *any* player support 1080p/24.

Re:

[MS-06FZ]

Yeah I'd say it's FUD because you don't own a PS3 and therefore can't have a valid opinion on the Blu-Ray functionality.

My experiences are based on the PS2, another Sony product that doubled as an economy DVD player. I don't think you can totally dismiss that, but at the same time you are correct that I don't have a first-hand testimonial from using the PS3 to supply.

I do own one and the BR support is second to none.

We'll have to see whether that holds up when the QC on the Blu-Ray discs themselves starts to decline. The problem with the PS2 which I described was with DVD releases that presumably contained subtle, minor errors in their encoding, or encoding choices that

Re:

[Afrosheen]

In my opinion the Blu-Ray QC is already flaky with production studios pretty much doing what they want and not really following a standard. Not all discs give you uncompressed PCM, every disc has a different Live Menu, and the codec they choose to encode the disc is usually a mystery. However, it's nothing like the pathetic situation with DVDs where any kid in his basement can (poorly) author a disc.

Thank god for AVSForums and their quality guide. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=75 3726 [avsforum.com]

Re:IMO, don't rely on a Playstation to play movies

[shaitand]

'Furthermore since it's online, any time Sony finds a bug, they can sneak the fix in with the next firmware update.'

So what you are saying is that the moment someone finds out how to get around the anti-customer protections that prevent you from using the player to play backups Sony can slip in a 'fix' without your permission?

Thanks but no thanks. I have a rather extensive movie collection and I take care of them. Discs are just too fragile, especially children's movies. I have a backup of each of my hundreds of discs and I have needed those backups numerous times. I also have a number of movies that I digitized from VHS and encoded to DVD. I'll pass on any player that I can't safely hack on without having to worry about repercussions from an anti-consumer vendor. Especially one like Sony that doesn't merely cater to the vile music and movie industries but is actually a part of both.

Re:

[powerlord]

I've tried using my PS2 for DVD playback, its awful.

I've also tried using my PS3 for DVD playback, it rivals a standalone DVD player from Toshiba I got two years ago. It even managed to play-through a really bad scratch on the DVD that the Toshiba just flat out locked up on.

Its also been pretty good on Blu-Ray disks.

I've enjoyed using it enough I went out and got the Bluetooth Remote (which functions just fine), and I'm ditching my stand-alone player, which also trims back 5 cables from the clutter (compon

Re:PS3 owners?

[skitzophile]

I currently use a PS3 strictly for a BD player and it works quite well. I have the BD remote control that Sony sells and it functions like a normal play would. It even boots up faster than the standalone players. However, the true videophile would say that because the source of the movie is 24fps and the PS3 outputs 60fps that you're not getting the best picture available. I'm not so sure if I'm able to tell the difference myself. Here's an article from that explains a little bit more [pcworld.com].

Re:

[bri2000]

One important difference is audio capabilities. If, like me and, I would imagine, pretty much everyone else who's bought a surround sound system in the last 10 years, you have a perfectly good amp that's not compatible with the new HD audio formats used on blu-ray but do have a set of 6/5.1 analog inputs then you'll need a player with a decent on-board decoder and appropriate analog outputs to take advantage of them. All the standalone HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players I've seen reviewed have these. The PS3 doesn'

Re:

[xero314]

The PS3 doesn't being HDMI or RCA stereo out only.

I couldn't determine if you were saying the P3 only had HDMI and RCA outs, or if you receiver doesn't have an optical in. If you were saying the former, and your receiver does have optical in, then you are just wrong because the P3 has a single optical out port. I'm not sure how else you would be hooking up 6/5.1 surround sound (not saying there are no other options), but the preferred method, if you want high quality sound, would be by HDMI or optical. There are a number of covert options available that

Re:

[bri2000]

Sorry, I was talking about the HD audio formats. The PS3 does, of course, have S/PDIF but this can only be used for Dolby digital and DTS (or, I suppose PCM stereo) - the old DVD standard soundtracks in other words. To get the linear PCM uncompressed 7.1 surround soundtrack you'll need either a decoder that can take the HDMI digital input (very rare for now) or an on-board decoder with analog outputs you can plug into your amp's anolog 5/6.1 inputs (which most surround sound amps made recently have). I'm no

Re:

[LiveOne]

Every "professional" review I've seen comparing the PS3 to a standalone player all said that the PS3 was just as good, if not better, than the first-gen standalones. Keyword here is first-gen. The big plus for the PS3 was faster loading times than the standalone. Of course, the PS3 will always be the same with each new generation of standalone. The real question is how much HD is enough? Alreayd it's very difficult to tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p.

Re:

[MrP-(at work)]

Not only more people... When DVD came out it was a big jump from VHS to DVD.. Normal people most likely didn't understand it as much, werent sure if they'd want video on disc after being used to VHS for so long. Now everyone has DVDs and bluray/hdvd are similar, just better. I think people will make the jump faster since they're used to video on disc. Also a lot of people have widescreen tvs now and they want HD content.

Re:

[photomonkey]

Imagine when everyone out there who knows he needs to back stuff up backs stuff up to a single Blu-Ray disc (all 50gb) and then the disc stops functioning.

Even if disc and burner prices come down pretty dramatically, I think we're to the point with hard disks that they're cheaper and more usable/recoverable after long-term storage and/or damage.

Re:

[ivan256]

I think we're to the point with hard disks that they're cheaper and more usable/recoverable after long-term storage and/or damage.

You're kidding, right?

Hard drives are *terrible* at returning to service after sitting un-powered for several years. And if you drop one...

Hard drives are *not* archival digital storage media, even if it makes you feel smart to backup to them.

Hard drive life cycle

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Depends on how you do it. My backup solution has a hard drive (well, a RAID array) that is replaced every year. The year-old drives then either get handed down to my gaming PC (on which a hard drive failure isn't especially critical), or they get wiped and sold. Upgrading the backup drives yearly keeps decently new drives where the new-ness is important, and I get bigger drives cheaper to accommodate my growing storage needs. Plus, they stay powered up regularly to prevent them dying from lack of use.

Re:

[ivan256]

RAID is not backup.

If you accidentally delete/corrupt/overwrite your data, you don't have any recovery.

RAID and backup are complementary. You can't replace one with the other.

Law of storage

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

When a new storage medium comes out, I drool and think only two of these and my entire HD will be backed up! Just need to wait for prices to come down!

When prices do come down, I then have five times the storage I did, requiring 10-12 disks. Once again making back ups on to removable storage time consuming, cumbersome, and fault prone.

Re:

[itlurksbeneath]

Yeah, they are down to about 480 bucks now for a burner. Looks like they've halved in price in the last 6 to 8 months. Probably another 6 or 8 months they will halve again, then again. In about a 18 months, they'll probably hit about 100 bucks, and I assume the media prices will keep dropping as well (unless the nameless, faceless media giants artificially keep the price of the media high as a deterrent to copying). Still.. I remember when DVD-R disks were 5 bucks each, so I assume they'll drop as well.

Re:

[itlurksbeneath]

Samsung's Blu-Ray player hit the market the third week of June, 2006 - 9.00000001 months ago.

Re:

[Malc]

That player hardly even works. This is a better list of players and release dates [blu-ray.com]. The new Samsung player about to hit the shelves is reportedly vastly superior.

Five combo DVD's, play in SD too

[SuperKendall]

Those discs you mentioned also all supported DVD playback, so there's no way to infer much from the sales figures of those discs. I actually think people that just bought HD-TVs are buying some of those expecting them to look better because they are "HD-DVD", illustrating the hideous mistake made in choosing such a similar name for a new format.