Blu-ray Chief: The Disc Will Still Rule

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Andy Parsons, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, says the high-def disc is in no danger from digital downloads and Video on Demand.

“I’m fond of recalling the old visions of the past that the paperless office would completely obliterate the need for paper,” Parsons said yesterday at a CEDIA Expo luncheon, according to Home Media Magazine. “It seemed like a very reasonable, logical prediction decades ago that turned out to be completely wrong.”

Since Blu-ray's victory over HD DVD, some tech enthusiasts have suggested the high-def disc will have a short life span and will be replaced by Net-enabled download services. In fact, one UK-based Samsung executive said this year that he believes that Blu-ray will last about five years, "certainly not 10."

But Parsons, who also serves as Pioneer's senior vice president, noted yesterday that about 15 million Blu-ray discs have already been sold.

“We always use content sales as a great barometer for how we’re doing,” Parsons said, according to Home Media. “It’s a very pure number. It’s something real we can look at, and there’s no spinning it.”

David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, said there's room for both the high-def disc and downloads, which are delivered to home via the Net.

“The two can coexist,” said Bishop. (But) in terms of ease of use, it’s still skewed toward physical media.”

Several other studios executives at the luncheon predicted a huge fourth quarter for Blu-ray sales.

“There are no obstacles, no mixed messages for consumers. It’s all Blu," said Steve Feldstein, senior vice president of marketing communications for 20th Century Fox.

“You’re going to see a landslide of great content now in the fourth quarter,” added Bob Chapek, president of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. It’s now about penetration, proving that Blu-ray is the complete DVD replacement.”

Source: TV Predictions

Holstein912

[Holstein912]

As consumers we should know better than to rely or depend on a technology lasting more than five minutes. Now it seems the Blu-ray disk technology, long described as the “Holy Grail” of home entertainment, has only five years of life left in it, according to someone very close to the product.
I think (Blu-ray) has five years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10," according to Andy Griffiths, Samsung's UK director of consumer electronics, talking to website, Pocket-lint. His comment was immediately picked up by dozens of other sites devoted to the Consumer Electronic industry.

But at the same time Panasonic launched two new Blu-ray players, which are described as fourth generation products and adding Blu-ray “live” to the specification. Blu-ray “live” compatibility enables users to connect to the internet to download images, subtitles and other data, and take part in interactive activities and multi-player games linked to bonus cinema content found on Blu-ray Discs.

Mr Griffiths didn’t suggest any replacement device, and we’ll be sure to ask the relevant engineers at the giant IBC broadcasting convention a week from now what they might have up their sleeves. Certainly, NHK’s technicians are working on very thin high speed flexible optical discs capable to playing at a staggering 250 Mb/s (to handle Ultra HDTV) but this product – still very much in the Lab – is described as being more suited to boosting storage capacity for archived material in a professional or broadcast environment.

Of course, it could always be said that we are living at the end of the lifecycle for packaged media. Whether vinyl disc, cassette tape, Versatile Discs (in any size or variety) might all end up going the way of (much missed) eight-track tape, and just a curiosity in a museum. The alternate is fibre to the kerb of your home and delivering all the data, entertainment and visually-rich HDTV programming that anyone could want.

Satellite broadcasters in the US are already starting transmission at 1080p (although not at the superior 50/60 frames per second rate) in order to show their bandwidth capacity over IPTV suppliers and even cable operators. Maybe this is another possible future, where 1080p – eventually at 50/60Hz – is downloaded to a stacked array of TeraByte (or even PetaByte) home storage devices and the need for Blu-ray evaporates. Watch this space.

Source: Rapid TV News

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