BluRay for all.... Next Gen viewing!

[BlackListedB]

This is worth sharing, Good news and some bad... as a new standard on top of HDef as we know it, a new player and RECORDER?!?!? Is required for UltraHD playback of movies and that means a spendy deck and possible media available to take advantage of it. The UHD sets aren't terribly expensive given the cost of original DVD and flat screen sets. HDTVs and scalers for example.

 

I remember it well, being a home theater nut with no cash to invest. Prices for HDTV started at $6000USD and went up from there!! Scalers were required for getting content input looking good on the TVs from a myriad of sources.

 

Anyway, the upshot is it's backwards compatible. But I wonder if this means an attaching BD Ultra drive for Xbox One?! (I bought two HD-DVD externals just to get a power adapter I needed, and both of them worked as it turned out! haha)

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/212500/blu-ray-disc-association-completes-ultra-hd-blu-ray-specification.html

 

 

[Huckleberry Pie]

It'll take time for it to take off though. Bluray's been out for like ten years and yet recording media for it's still at a premium. Not to mention that the cheapest "Blu-Ray" stuff you can find here in my place are those bootleg DVDs ripped off BD sources hence the faux moniker.

[BlackListedB]

You're right about the time line in regards with Sony's commitment to BluRay via Playstation 3, setting a precedent for optical disc introduction via PS2 and 3, Blu Ray was the major cost, costing Sony $100 USD per unit because they couldn't get a sell through price consumers were up for as Panasonic learned some years before with the original 3DO (Goldstar, now LG, made their own version of 3DO hardware)

 

$599 I believe was the original SKU retail price.

Nearly a year after Microsoft Xbox360 with plain-jane DVD-ROM

 

What locale are you in where there's no HD retail?

Did you have access to HD-DVD prior? (Xbox expansion drives were oddly supporting non-gaming only)

 

I'm most happy that BluRay can be used for HD expansion based on it's size I suppose.

With PC's graphics cards offering capability for the new format, I imagine, should be somewhat easier for PC home theater users then those who want stand alone

 

[Huckleberry Pie]

Yeah, the PS3 was so expensive at the time that $599 became something of a joke to many gamers. I currently live in the Philippines atm, where cheaper media formats are the norm - as a matter of fact, VCDs are still being sold, mostly for budget-priced films and children's titles.

[BlackListedB]

It was no joke for Sony who lost 100 American greenbacks per unit as they started implementing BluRay without compromise (for a lesser SKU as suggested in the press and by consumers) It was in reality, the right move to counter the lesser contingent supporting HD-DVD, however, HD-DVD I can tell you from personal experience in use, it's no worse for wear as far as HD films go, it's just that BluRay has proven more effective at doing more then movies! haha

 

As an aside, if you love quality audio as well as video, help find and support what's out there in the catalogs for Super Audio CD from Sony and the DVD Audio format, if you buy a Panasonic brand player, you're likely to get DVD Audio decoding, if you buy Sony surround equipment, you should be able to decode SACD, both stereo and surround. DVD-A or DVD Audio is the better choice like BluRay however, as it simply does more then SACD can! They both sound fantastic for pure HQ digital audio though. The sad fact is the public went ape for streaming portable MP3 codec music, while it's severely handicapped by compression. SACD and DVD-A look to do away with that and offer the highest digital quality possible that I know of.

Then there's DTS alongside Dolby Digital.

DTS started in theater surround as a sync'd disc along with the motion picture film projection, but it became adopted standard for DVD as well, so you'll see it used for high quality film on disc as well as plain DTS audio CDs, they do not play any other audio tracks however, DTS takes up ALL the available space!

Edited May 22, 2015 by BlackListedB

[Huckleberry Pie]

It was no joke for Sony who lost 100 American greenbacks per unit as they started implementing BluRay without compromise (for a lesser SKU as suggested in the press and by consumers) It was in reality, the right move to counter the lesser contingent supporting HD-DVD, however, HD-DVD I can tell you from personal experience in use, it's no worse for wear as far as HD films go, it's just that BluRay has proven more effective at doing more then movies! haha

 

As an aside, if you love quality audio as well as video, help find and support what's out there in the catalogs for Super Audio CD from Sony and the DVD Audio format, if you buy a Panasonic brand player, you're likely to get DVD Audio decoding, if you buy Sony surround equipment, you should be able to decode SACD, both stereo and surround. DVD-A or DVD Audio is the better choice like BluRay however, as it simply does more then SACD can! They both sound fantastic for pure HQ digital audio though. The sad fact is the public went ape for streaming portable MP3 codec music, while it's severely handicapped by compression. SACD and DVD-A look to do away with that and offer the highest digital quality possible that I know of.

Then there's DTS alongside Dolby Digital.

DTS started in theater surround as a sync'd disc along with the motion picture film projection, but it became adopted standard for DVD as well, so you'll see it used for high quality film on disc as well as plain DTS audio CDs, they do not play any other audio tracks however, DTS takes up ALL the available space!

It ain't indeed, most especially at the time of the PS3's first release. They invested so much into high-end tech at the time, i.e. an oddball PowerPC-based-but-still-an-arse architecture, a GPU based on the 7800GTX core, and of course BluRay thrown into the mix. Microsoft used conventional DVDs besides the ill-fated HD-DVD (via an external drive) on their 360, but it was at the cost of using more discs for complex games like L.A. Noire, Max Payne 3 and of course GTA V. The multiple disc problem wasn't that much of an issue though, unlike the N64 before when developers are severely constrained with expensive cartridges, and making a two-cart game isn't entirely feasible at all.

 

And yeah, both DVDA and SACD never seemed to have taken off unlike the legacy Red Book format dating from the early 80s. Americans basically snubbed VCD in favour of the higher-quality DVD format, and yet we're yet to see the higher-def audio disc formats being given a chance despite optical formats getting cheaper over time. I don't mind a 128kbps MP3 myself as my sense of hearing isn't as fine-tuned anyway, but anything clearer than what we're spoon-fed with would be a welcome change.