stanley d
Hi I live in Melboune Australia, i Remember 4-6 years ago you whould walk into a video store and you whould find all Tapes and maybe a little shelf of dvds.
Now i walk into a video store all you see is dvds and a little shelf of bluray or Hd-dvd disks
How long should it be until Bluray is everywhere insted of dvds?
also what is bluray?
and how much gb are the disks?
Answer Blu-Ray is doing ok... but here's the thing -- it may never completely replace DVDs. There was a very compelling reason to replace tape with DVD... a disc is much easier to handle, random access, digital vs. analog, much better quality, etc. Blu-Ray is a nice upgrade, but it's going to be seen as more of an evolution than a revolution, particularly since every Blu-Ray player also plays DVDs.
What will happen in the next few years is that high-end DVD-only players will vanish... every player at, say, $200 and above will be Blu-Ray. Then it'll drop to $100 and above, and at some point, most people will have Blu-Ray players. But they may not have them yet in the kids rooms, the car, the boat, the portable, the laptop, etc. So people may still buy DVDs for some time yet. At present, disc sales are closing in on around 10% of the laser disc market.
The push toward digital televsion world wide may help here, since most digital TVs are high-defnition... people will get used to watching HD. This kind of thing never happened with high definition audio, both because most people do not have stereos good enough to really tell the difference between CD and DVD-Audio or SACD... and also because the format war there ended in a stalemate.
Blu-Ray delivers video up to 1920x1080, in 60fps interlaced, 50fps interlaced, or 24fps progressive formats today. It suppports the same MPEG-2 video standard as on DVD, but also two more advanced formats, AVC (also called MPEG-4 part 10 or H.264) and VC-1 (formerly known as Windows Media Video 9). Audio can be up to 8 tracks (7.1 surround sound), and they support raw (PCM), several near lossless compressions, and some new versions of the DTS and Dolby audio standards used on DVD. Blu-Ray also supports a form of the Java language, which allows far more complex user interfaces to be defined than on DVD, along with interactive features and live internet connections.
Each layer of a Blu-Ray disc stores 25GB of data, and like DVDs, they can be two layers (currently), for up to 50GB of data. The format is actually a new revision of UDF, so many computers can't yet read these without extra software along with extra hardware. The laser used is a blue-violet laser at 405nm. There are both ROM (BD-ROM), write-once (BD-R) and read/write (BD-RE) versions of the Blu-Ray disc.
Lots of people like to claim that digital downloads will beat out Blu-Ray, but in practical use that's 5-10 years away, unless you sacrifice quality (which is precedented -- very few digital
music downloads even match CD quality, much less something better). Consider a $20 Blu-Ray disc (US price, on-sale) which can store up to 50GB of data. At common US internet speeds, that will take around 24 hours to download, assuming your network actually averages around 5Mb/s for a full day (and also assuming that the new download limits, in the range of 300GB/month, are removed by commercial ISPs). That will currently cost me $5-$10 in computer storage, depending on which HDD I put the download... in addition to the price, which is likely to be comparable to a DVD or Blu-Ray purchase, anyway.
That would work, if you're not much of a collector.. you can fit 20 or more of those discs on your 1TB HDD (what, you don't have a spare 1TB HDD... I have over 4TB external storage... I'm a video guy, what can I say). But the price advantage is still well in favor of the Blu-Ray. Imagine a box set... I paid $40 for "Lost: Season 3" on Blu-Ray, somewhere around 300GB worth. That would have been a full monthly use of internet on many systems, taken a week to download, and it would cost as much in HDD space as it cost to buy on Blu-Ray.
So sure, downloads are coming... if you're happy with sub-DVD quality, they're already here in force. But for HD at top quality, maybe downloads start to compete with rentals at some point (particularly over closed networks like satellite, FiOS, or cable), but I don't think they will catch on as purchased until well after Blu-Ray is fully established.
Are all Blu-ray DVDs 1080p?
briancarld
If so will I be able to play a Blu-ray DVD if my TV only supports 1080i?
Answer
The current official Blu-Ray DVDs are all released in 1080p format. The audio on the other hand, varies (anywhere from 5.1-7.1). If you do not have a 1080p HDTV (and most of us do not, myself included), your Blu-ray player will downscale your image to match your resolution setting, whether it be 480i or 720p. Note that if your Blu-Ray player is a PS3, you may have some varying degrees of success. Sony has not quite fixed their firmware, only plugged up the holes (like using duct tape to attach a bumper to a car).
I'm amazed by the statements of the BB guy above. What he says is absolutely untrue--especially on larger screens and depending upon the media you are viewing. Most high-speed and sporting HD events will appear much better in Progressive Scan mode versus a higher resolution Interlaced (720p vs. 1080i for instance). The difference should also show up more clearly on a plasma vs. LCD.
While I have nothing but respect for Best Buy technology employees in general, we appear to have found one who is a bit full of himself--at least he said what he did with conviction. Two years working with HDTVs every day and you haven't figured out there's a difference between 720p and 1080i? Hook up two 50in lcds (one running 720p and 1080i) playing a NASCAR event, and I dare you to say the same thing again. Geez.
At least he was right about the cables. HDMI and DVI in general will give you 1080p resolution, while Component (RCA w/2 audio and 3 video) cables will give you 480p-1080p with 2.1 sound. HDMI will give you full 7.1 surround, while DVI provides no audio capabilities. Optical cable is an interesting choice, and will provide up to 5.1 surround.
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