MacBook Air

[The Green Guy]

On a quick note ... Bluray is on avg 45gigs but up to 120 I believe ... it will be years before digital distribution and hard drives catch up to that amount of streamable/downloadable data. I love digital distribution too. I downloaded Warhawk to my PS3 so its there when ever I want to play it, but you won't be downloading Bluray quality movies until the country lays down tons of fiber optics.

[shwiger]

iPhoto isn't close to photoshop for clarification. LOL thats like comparing an Apple 2 to a top end Alien-Ware

[Mutiny]

Originally Posted by shwiger

iPhoto isn't close to photoshop for clarification. LOL thats like comparing an Apple 2 to a top end Alien-Ware

They are about the same price. ZING!

[DESTOROYER]

Originally Posted by The Green Guy

On a quick note ... Bluray is on avg 45gigs but up to 120 I believe ... it will be years before digital distribution and hard drives catch up to that amount of streamable/downloadable data. I love digital distribution too. I downloaded Warhawk to my PS3 so its there when ever I want to play it, but you won't be downloading Bluray quality movies until the country lays down tons of fiber optics.

True, but I don't think Blu-Ray will catch on either. The cheapest Blu-Ray player out there is $400 according to Best Buy's website. The average consumer isn't going to want to spend that much on a player just because it is HD, when they can get just about the same quality with Apple's or even Xbox's downloadable service. Once you buy the player, the movies still cost $20-$30, while the rentals are only $5. Most people are only going to want to watch the movies once, or even twice, and that still beat's the price of Blu-Ray's. I really don't think Blu-Ray is going to catch on just because it is so dang expensive in the end.

[The Green Guy]

The cheapest DVD player 10years ago was $400 as well. I remember buying my first DVD player from Sears in 1999, it was a JVC open box return and I got it for only $249.00 The same can be said for how much the disc's cost back then with the prices of Blu-ray disc's now. It's the nature of the business. People spent the money and they will spend the money now. It may be hard for you to remember, and the prices may seem ridiculous, but thats the way media has been going back decades. Even VCR's cost $400 or more in the beginning of their life cycle. We are not witnessing anything new in a pricing structure, just the next evolution in technology.

[DESTOROYER]

Yes, but their is something cheaper out than Blu-Ray that produces the same quality. For me and you, yes we are going to have Blu-Ray's, Green-Rays, and heck even Gamma-Ray's, but the average consumer is going to find the cheapest buy, and right now that is the digital distribution services. Your right, downloads won't ever have the quality that me and you want, but it will please the average consumer. All there was back then was DVD's. VCR's quality was no where near DVD's, but the same cannot be said in Blu-Ray vs. digital distro. If you are not looking for it, they are going to seem like the same quality.

[shwiger]

define average consumer. you keep throwing that out their but what does it mean to you? i consider the target market for a blu-ray player is the 30+ mens age group that are around the 60k+ salary range. And to see if the blu-ray format is taking off just look at the number of movies that are on blu-ray now...almost every new moive and at my local target there is a bigger section of blu-ray than regular dvds. The people at target aren't stupid so they are probably selling blu-rays or else they wouldn't keep buying them to resell them.

I do not think the downloadable movies will replace have a hard movie for a long time. At least ten years. We may all have our homes all computer synced but most people do not.

[DESTOROYER]

People who don't follow the tech world. People who are going to buy a HD TV this year because cable is going digital. Most of them already have Flat-panel TV's. I am not saying that the Blu-Ray format is not taking off, but what I am saying is that in the end I think digital distro is going to become king, just because of how cheap it is. I know that's what I would go for if I wanted a HD solution right now. It's very hard to tell the difference between the 360's or AppleTV's resoultion and Blu-Ray resoultion. If your not looking for it, you won't notice it. I just don't think anybody can pass up how cheap it is not to get it, and diss Blu-Ray.

[Photofinishron]

NewEgg has a couple of Blu-Ray players for $329 and $359. As well as a blu-ray burner for computers for $329.

No HD-DVD burners or players.

Ron

[The Green Guy]

Statistically people like "stuff". What "stuff" well there is physical ownership to having a collection of things. "Hey did you see my neighbor's collection of movies, wow I've got to borrow some of those!"

Somebody mentioned Target ... let me see if target has anything I can download movies to ... okay they have Apple TV, again as much as we love Apple, they just don't have the penetration or name recognition that Sony does in the household. So, I don't see them being the leaders in digital distribution. Maybe our cable providers ... well I can download something for 24hrs, but then its gone and I have to download it again. My set top box does feature HD-DVR, but that just records what's on TV and I can't get the latest movie releases on TV. Oh wait, I have an Xbox 360 ... nope can't keep them movies either. There isn't any real ownership with digital distribution. Sure you can buy movies using Apple TV, but who knows how that works? Consumers don't. They don't see any store displays saying "Download all your favorite movies today!", "Coming this Tuesday for digital distribution ... Transformers!" Not gonna happen. Retailers have way more influence in our world than many realize. If digital distribution does get popular then they will lose tons of money on disc movie/game sales and in turn will refuse to sell the systems that offer that option. Its very sensitive territory. Retailers don't make money on the players/systems, they make money on the movies/games.

When Warhawk PS3 came out it put its pinky toe in the water to see how cold it was. It was pretty cold, retailers knew what Sony was doing and said that they had better have some copies of that game for their store shelves or they would stop selling PS3's. On top of that they demanded that the down loadable one not be available at a discounted price. Sony got around that by packing in a blue-tooth headset. At the time PS3's weren't selling that good anyway, but they definitely couldn't afford to take any more losses.

I have an external hard drive connected to my PC with over 300gigs of Anime on it. I love it, its all there nicely organized. I can access it with the flick of a switch. I just don't know if I can see that technology in living rooms anytime soon though. It's not easy enough to get access to the content.

As for quality, downloaded movie content, the kind you get with Apple TV, Cable Company or your 360's, its all at DVD standard quality. It looks decent and downloads in a decent amount of time. But those tangible store shelf available blu-ray discs, they look amazing and don't require any internet downloading at all. It has literally 10x a better picture. Pop in a dvd it will probably playback at 4.5Mbps. Pop in a Blu-ray and it will probably playback at 45Mbps. That's a super leap in streaming data for superior visual and audio quality.


... LOL, so much for a quick reply