CES 09: Blu-ray format could be in jeopardy, might bring down PS3 with it

imdaboss - 352 days 19 hours ago

yep and they are going to keep coming next is PS3 doomed like 100000000000000000 times

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Genesis5 - 352 days 18 hours ago

Yeah I see everyone is turning to DD. The adoption rate is 0.5% while BR is at 12-14%,. How come these so called journalist never use any facts.

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eagle21 - 352 days 18 hours ago

punks just look weak!

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Bill - 352 days 18 hours ago

even Sony's first generation game lineup offers more of a gaming experience than what the competition has currently. Games such as Heavenly Sword, Lair, Rachet, Uncharted, GT5P, MGS4, and the soon to be released Killzone just proves what true next gen is.

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AclayPS3 - 352 days 18 hours ago

Blu-ray has been adopted far faster than DVD was in the same time frame, so how is Blu-ray in jeopardy?

"For better or for worse, the fate of the PS3 and that of the Blu-ray format will forever be intertwined."

^^That statement isn't true because look at the UMD format. The UMD format is literally dead, but the PSP still uses UMD's for it's games. If somehow Blu-ray was to fail, the PS3 would still use Blu-ray DVD's for it's games and would still be selling.

With more HDTV's being adopted each and every Year, Blu-ray is a no brainer, and HDTV's and Blu-ray go hand in hand.

Sure, Sony has new HDTV's that will be able to download movies Wirelessly, but I can only imagine a few percentage of people will be able to afford those HDTV's.

Whether people like it or not, Blu-ray is the future physical format and isn't going away anytime soon. Digital Distribution has a LOONNNG way to go before it gets anywhere near mainstream.

Before these journalists say that Blu-ray is in jeopardy, they should compare "Paid" Digital Downloads in comparison to Blu-ray sales. The reason why I put paid in quotation marks is because more people download stuff online for Free/Illegally compared to people that actually pay for what they download.

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Ghoul - 352 days 18 hours ago

Ok i tried to buy "Wanted" on bluray today (today is release) it was SOLD out in the inner city and i live in a Capital City in Germany.

It was even sold out yesterday in a store wit sold it 1 day earlier, the "walkbye" pick up rate is incredible, and i havent seen ANY media in 25 years except tapes with such a immense success in that time frame

Blu Ray is FAR from dead.

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hazeblaze - 352 days 18 hours ago

Too bad we've already received news that the adoption rate of blu ray has been faster than dvd.... This article fails.

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BulletToothtony - 352 days 18 hours ago

Even thou I like a "LITTLE" and i do mean little controversy.. the mods on the site are letting way too many things slip thru..

These type of "OPINIONS"
and also people like BREAKFAST.

Come on guys, NEWS for games and GAMER zone.. let's keep it clean please!!!!

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skimming - 352 days 16 hours ago

Since Netflix integration, my watch-instantly-queue has grown to 148. My family's been watching shows and movies at least 2 hours a day. My xbox has been used for movie and TV watching more than gaming ;)

Once PS3 has Netflix integration, you guys will also do the same. I just wish they get more DD integration (Hulu, YouTube, etc). Can't speak about HD as my TV's only SD. I hear that many of the shows is/will be in 720P.

Really my only beef for Netflix are 1) navigation takes a long time, 2) sound is only stereo (i think this is also being addressed) and 3) no subtitles. These shortcomings are all vastly outweighed by the pure convenience. Some site the lack of titles, but since I have Netflix DVDs, that doesn't bother me much.

PS3 guys, just wait until you get it, you'll love it as much as I do.

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EXCLUSIVEGAMER - 352 days 15 hours ago

looooooooooool

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badz149 - 352 days 15 hours ago

PS3 users can already use Hulu (in the states at least) and other streaming channels using the browser. it's free (as always) and there'll always BD for the best experience available on the market! for the mean time, I can't DD beating BD(physical media) any time soon but I'm no sorcerer nor I can see the future but what I know is to actually 'own' the thing that we pay for and resale value are something DD can't really provide and that's HUGE advantage for physical media.

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TheTwelve - 352 days 15 hours ago

Well if it isn't our biased contributer Rowland again!

12

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prunchess - 352 days 14 hours ago

Didn't rowland post another of these "BLURAY IS DEAD\DYING\FAILING\STRUGGLING& quot; kind of stories yesterday?

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skimming - 352 days 14 hours ago

I can't wait until xbox gets Hulu but if I had to choose one, I'd probably choose Netflix...

If PS3 gets Netflix, I'll probably get one just for Netflix integration so I wouldn't have to pay for xbox live.

To all that think BD > DD, I've watched Mission, Spiderman 3, Munsters, Twilight Zone, Alien 1,3 on the Netflix the last two days (lot of it on background). I bet I watched more content than you did on BD.

Just saying, don't knock DD until you've tried it for reals. You'll get it soon enough; keep pushing Sony to do Netflix!!!

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blackpanther25 - 352 days 13 hours ago

countless people try DD all the god damn time its not new. I mean i dont go to the movies. I just wait for DVD rips and download them through torrent and IRC. I don't even use a tv anymore i just watch all my stuff on hulu and fancast lol (or worst case download it). DD is great but it kills the bandwidth and Comcast is pretty tight on my a$$. I do buy blu-rays all the time as well they both have their advantages but DD has a long way to go especially with the ISPs

oh and skimming it's called renting. I dont even have to leave my house to rent blu-rays and they come in mail the next day. Back to the point DD is great

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Skerj - 352 days 7 hours ago

PS3 has Netflix integration in the form of PlayOn. You get a 14 day trial to see if you like it, then the program is 30 dorra after that. I was a beta tester for like 2 months and instantly bought it as soon as it was up, it's that good. Hulu, CBS (boo), Youtube, and ESPN streams are added as well without opening up the browser and it's all nicely integrated in the XMB.

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Consoldtobots - 352 days 6 hours ago

that "article" is so full of unfinished thoughts and poor logic, I doubt it would get accepted in a 5th grade english class. For one he talks about there being 10.5 million bluray equipped homes with 8 million of those being PS3's. Which in his mind means that Bluray is doomed. Why? I guess we'll never know SINCE HE NEVER FINISHES HIS THEORY to it's conclusion and just jumps right into how much the Wii has sold in the very next paragraph. These gaming journalists need to go back to grammar school and LEARN SOME proper writing.

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SL1M DADDY - 352 days 5 hours ago

But alas, it is yet another such idiot that knows not what he speaks of. Yay for journalism and the underbelly we have witnessed here!

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majorsuave - 352 days ago

The person that wrote this article is an idiot.

What will be the 'make it or brake it' point for the PS3 is games.
Most of the people that wanted to buy a PS3 wanted it to play games, so it will be the key factor in the long run.

Blu ray is an added bonus, nothing else. If some folks bought it because it was the least expensive blu ray player back then, so good for them, they can browse the intarweb with their bluray player and stream contents from their pcs as well, that, even if bluray dies, is still a good thing.

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NickIni - 351 days 23 hours ago

Well, despite Blu Ray sales being up 400% here in the UK, "blu ray is dead". Ok...

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likedamaster - 352 days 15 hours ago

Unfortunately most xbox 360 owners are tired of both 3rd and 1st person shooters. Uncharted 2 might be a different story.

on topic/
Microsoft should adopt something like Bluray nextgen so that bigger games could fit on the one disc and not suffer from unnecessary compression due to disc space issues, etc. Just a thought.

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jlytle1234 - 352 days 15 hours ago

"Unfortunately most xbox 360 owners are tired of both 3rd and 1st person shooters"
apparently you werent alive when gears 2 came out and im sure youre going to put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes, and sing "lalalalalalalala" when the halo 3.5
(not an insult, just forgot what its called) comes out.

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spectyre - 352 days 18 hours ago

"One of the biggest obstacles is potential customers doing an end run around Blu-ray by downloading movies digitally."
Blu-ray being such high quality video and audio will not be able to be replaced by digital download at todays internet speeds and usage limits. However, because of its smaller capacity, regular dvd might be in trouble. Looks like the Xbox is doomed.

Edit: forgot to type "sarcasm"

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Ugly American - 352 days 18 hours ago

I have a PS3 and I buy Blu-Ray for a big release here and there (Iron Man, The Dark Knight). Since I had 300 DVDs stolen in my last move, I have been replacing them using iTunes before I would buy them on Blu-Ray or DVD again. With my 160 GB iPod, I can take almost all of my movies with me wherever I go... and they are still in HD. Digital Downloads are not my future (I know that I am only one person), DD is my present.

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Karum - 352 days 18 hours ago

I didn't know older ipods, or any at all for that matter supported HD resolutions.

The content on iTunes can barely be called HD.

You've been conned mate.

My definition of HD is that offered by Blu-Ray, you know lossless audio and the best picture quality on offer. Nothing else is a factor and doesn't even register as HD on my radar.

The day digital download is as viable and convenient as buying a BR movie and produces the same quality of picture, resolution and audio then I am all for it. Until then DD is up there with HD-DVD.

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thor - 352 days 18 hours ago

What does Blu-ray offer? It offers a high-capacity optical disk. 25GB at the minimum. There is NO WAY that the average person is going to download 25GB worth of data for anything. I sure as hell wouldn't - it'd clog up my internet for days I swear.

Digital Distribution might catch on at some point, BUT that would be people downloading STANDARD DEFINITION films. If an HD film is only 3GB - surely it could have fitted on a DVD in the first place and there'd have been no use for Blu-ray! So it MUST be missing something - audio quality, video quality, special features MUST be missing.

WHY is it NEVER MENTIONED regarding Digital Distribution that it's STANDARD DEFINITION that will catch on - HD is not truly even available! Not to mention the various disadvantages of it.

What will happen when PC games are released on blu-rays as well as a 5-DVD set? Are we going to download them?

25 GIGS. THAT'S THE ISSUE. Download 25Gb, or buy a disk which has 25Gb of data on it. What would most people do? Blu-ray is the obvious choice.

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akiraburn - 352 days 8 hours ago

@Thor, to add to your point and in agreeance, you may already be aware of it (as you questions may have been rhetorical), but what IS being lost is quite a lot when you are talking in terms of true HD quality. As Karum said, it's lossless audio and the best quality picture currently available. If it's alright, I'm going to break down the terms there so that people unaware can really understand what that means.

Lossless audio, simply means audio that's not losing any quality when we compress it. If you were to make an MP3, that's called a "lossy" compression, because you lose a lot of frequencies when compressing into that format. So lossless, in essence, is the closest thing to the original recorded source. The other things to keep in mind is the capable sample rate, number of available channels, and bitrate that the audio will be at.

Sample rate, is a HUGE factor in this. Although a lot of this is dependent on the movie house who is working on it, sample rate basically resembles the true overall clarity of the recording. The idea, is that when something is recorded or used digitally, there is only so many times that the recording system can take virtual snapshots of what is going on. (trying to explain this without too much technical detail). 44,100 samples per second are taken on a regular CD audio (known as 44.1k). 48K is the sample rate of DVDs. And on Blu Ray, with uncompressed PCM, you are capable of 96k. This makes all the difference in the world for clarity.

Having a 7.1 track of lossless audio really means having 8 channels of audio coming together, which in terms of file size, can turn into a LOT of data. Especially if you are offering multiple languages, or other speaker configurations.

And for bitrate, the amount of bits per second also has to do with quality sound, as that is the definitive "smoothing" process between each sample taken. It's basically how many bits of information are in each sample. Basic audio CDs run at 16 bits per sample (1.4MB per second), DVDs can run at 5MB/s, and Blu Ray at a whopping 54MB/s. This means even more overall clarity from your sound source.

Now video-wise, 1920x1080 at 60 frames per second interlaced (or 24 under progressive) is the overall video capability. That's a massive amount of video to be processed, creating shades of numerous amounts of colors in a smoothness that is unattainable otherwise. Again, this takes up a LOT of space. The idea though, is for the video to come out looking as perfect as possible, and to do that, a lot of space is needed.

Thus this concludes the explanation, and evidently, you can see the differences. With a web stream, or DD, or anything like that, you are not receiving a full quality HD title, you are receiving a scaled down version, one that compresses the video and the audio to usually 1/10th of what they are otherwise. Some may say "well I can't see or hear the difference". Well to be frank, that's either a bold-faced lie, or someone that did not have an accurate comparison. I am sure that given a scenario with a side-by-side comparison of the two, you will see and hear a drastic difference. And for amazing titles like The Dark Knight, Iron Man, 300, Terminator 2, Rambo, and many more, this makes blu ray the true choice if you are actually interested in quality. Not just in video but especially in audio as well.

To add, 25 or 50 gigs is not something that is practical to download at this time, and as time goes by and the overall download speeds increase, so will the size of these movies and games, so I do not believe that we will see a point where DD becomes a replacement to true High Definition audio and video, at least nowhere in the relative future. As it is, games like Sacred 2 clock in at 25GB (and to top it off have a minimum 20GB install). I can't imagine hopping on D2D, buying the game, and having to wait practically a whole day just to download and install it. Plus, some people just like knowing they have a physical medium to have their content on. "Building a collection" as it were.

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Cajun Chicken - 352 days 18 hours ago

Oh and 3-D versions of those respective films.

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butterfinger - 352 days 18 hours ago

I got were the 360 and the Wii. lmao.

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Raoh - 352 days 18 hours ago

you answered your own question.

1. people are associating blu ray with only sony, a direct competitor to the 360. not realizing that blu ray is bigger than sony, sony is just its main promoter.

2. they bought the hd dvd player.

3. they bought a 360. if blu ray games become popular, the 360 is left out or with butchered dvd copies of blu ray original games.

4. they also dont know why they are standing with microsoft on this. the reason microsoft is not down with blu ray is because the movie studios and media groups decided to not use a form of windows or microsoft software for internet features on blu ray. people think its because microsoft loves them and wants to save people from the big bad mean blu ray disc.

the fear is real.

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hitthegspot - 352 days 18 hours ago

the much anticipated (and needed) portable Blu-ray player? WTF is the portable player? Once that is announced and put on the shelves in Best Buy the flood gates will open.

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Raoh - 352 days 14 hours ago

the portable blu ray player was announced, i think from either toshiba or samsung.. cant recall, my brother showed me the web page the other day but i was too drunk to remember where :)

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Narutone66 - 352 days 13 hours ago

http://www.pcworld.com/arti...

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Raoh - 352 days 12 hours ago

yes we do :)

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chewy317 - 352 days 6 hours ago

Gamertell specializes in writing bs about the ps3, these people need to think first before writing. Look at the site it was probably made within 10 mins. what a joke website by a xbot how sad.

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ravinash - 352 days 1 hour ago

Yes, Sony would miss out on a lot of income from their new format along with all the other partner companies that own BlueRay.

But what about the PS3?

First the PS3 is a games console and most people who buy it are for games. This would not change that, plus if the movie industry stopped making films on BlueRay, it would not stop games being produced on this format. Why would they go back to DVD?

Second, there are cheaper BlueRay players out there now, so people looking to buy just a player are more likely to buy those.
So if BlueRay went under, this is where the sales will be missed.
The only loss to the PS3 here is no more BlueRay films.

So for the most part PS3 would be unaffected if BlueRay disappeared.

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Jason 360 - 352 days 1 hour ago

But the PS3 is losing as a games console to.

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