General Forum

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

Dave — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:10:28 GMT

I'm still sticking by this opinion - blue-ray is just not a media format i take seriously. Don't see it taking off!

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

elephant — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:58:36 GMT

hmmmm

The studios will not be concerned by markets that do not have a fast enough Broadband service, as these markets tend to not have the disposable income levels necessary to purchase movies anyway.

Isn't that us here in Melbourne ?

I am on an expensive (compared to the UK) plan that is speed capped after 36GB per month where the 36GB is split into 24GB between midnight and noon and another 12GB for use in the afternoon/evening ... so if I were to have a brain storm and get a high definition video on demand one evening I would use 15 nights of capacity in one night !

I think blu-ray is the way to go until Australia gets a decent broadband infrastructure ...

PS jb - if you know of a really good plan please let me know !

jldmelb:

IMO industry will push towards Digital Media (online downloads) due to the decreased costs. Downloads eliminate costs of materials, printing, distribution, third party margins, etc. They will be able to offer a downloadable movie at a much lower cost as the only costs will be making and marketing the movie itself. It seems to be the logical progression. The studios will not be concerned by markets that do not have a fast enough Broadband service, as these markets tend to not have the disposable income levels necessary to purchase movies anyway. Before the movie hits the end user it is all $ driven and ROI driven, so the studios will went to get the best possible return for their $

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

soundproof — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:37:48 GMT

Cost of BD shouldn't be a factor to B&O's customers, given what they pay for other components in the chain. But there aren't enough of them to carry the format, and a wider adoption of BD has been very slow in coming compared to initial projections.

It's a great format, and quite interesting with the audio releases on BD-disks, in higher resolutions. In the latest Stereophile they're checking out the Sony BDP-51FD player, showing that they are starting to cue in to the format. (But I can download the same resolution straight to my harddisk, over the net ... HD-DVD and BD spent time fighting each other that should have been spent establishing one format.)

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

tournedos — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:16:10 GMT

Puncher:

The government has committed to us having a minimum of 2Mbs connections by 2012 (or something similar).

We're going to have at least 1 Mbps by end of 2010!

I have yet to see an online service that (officially) sells to Finland, though.

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

Puncher — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:46:37 GMT

I wouldn't disagree with anything posted about HD VOD - however, for me that's still the future. Here in the UK I have a 512Kbs ADSL connection due to distance from my exchange. I believe others in the UK (Peter and young Alex spring to mind) have similar or worse connections. The government has committed to us having a minimum of 2Mbs connections by 2012 (or something similar).

Still Blueray on PS3 for me then for the foreseeable future (if I had a HD TV of course, rather than my CRT).

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

Jonathan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:10:52 GMT

IMO industry will push towards Digital Media (online downloads) due to the decreased costs. Downloads eliminate costs of materials, printing, distribution, third party margins, etc. They will be able to offer a downloadable movie at a much lower cost as the only costs will be making and marketing the movie itself. It seems to be the logical progression. The studios will not be concerned by markets that do not have a fast enough Broadband service, as these markets tend to not have the disposable income levels necessary to purchase movies anyway. Before the movie hits the end user it is all $$ driven and ROI driven, so the studios will went to get the best possible return for their $$

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

soundproof — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:50:27 GMT

Hulu High-Def and Netflix streams prove that it is possible to stream with good quality, but that's not the point.

I can get 1080i/5.1 material straight to my AppleTV, and I can begin watching the movie after about one minute of buffering - watching the movie then takes place without any glitches or stops, in excellent HD-Ready quality.

Your download speed is a factor, of course, but a lot of people have excellent speeds at home already. What I do, is that I just tick off a number of movies I want to watch, and then these are stored on my harddisk - with AppleTV for 30 days, with other solutions until you watch them. I can also buy movies, then they are on my harddisk for as long as I want - I can burn them to Blu-ray, of course, should I wish to (the ones I bought).

The point is that even with an internet connection, you get excellent 1080i/5.1 channel streams (direct viewing). Higher resolutions, you just download to your harddisk, where it's stored until you want to watch. That's what kids (and others) around the world are doing with Pirate Bay - where by the latest count every single movie released on Blu-ray was available for download, in full resolution, with no compression of either image or sound.
What the kids do is download the movie to their computer, and then watch it on the flatscreen or projector at home (when they watch it on the computer, they choose lower resolution files.)

Of course this is the way of the future. Just check out the hundreds of Video Podcasts available for free through iTunes Podcasts, to see how fast this is moving now.

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

beodude — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:40:27 GMT

soundproof:

BeoDude - Blu-ray as a format is here to stay, disks as the storage medium is not. The disk is a stopgap medium, as pointed out above.

Check out Pirate Bay for 1080p format movies, and you understand why the movie studios would prefer selling those files to us instead. With downloads, as I have mentioned before, the buyer's ID is embedded in the file. If you illegally copy it and it is distributed, then it's much easier for the owner of the material to take action against you.

And that's why disks are dying as a format of preference for the originators of material. As Roger points out, convenience for the user; and as I point out, security for the seller.

Here are the movies available on PB, in 1080p: http://thepiratebay.org/search/1080p/0/99/0

And it's really moot whether "you" have broadband or not - more than 500 million households do, and each of them have access to a large number of content stores, just a click away.

Ahh, I see now what is being said. However, I will always be reluctant to give up physical media as it feels like you will never truly own a movie, but just be able to rent it from services like VOD.

As a matter of interest, how good are these services - does it really stream at full 1080p quality with 6.1 channel sound? I doubt most people even have a broadband connection capable of handling this.

eg if a movie takes up 10GBs of space on a blu-ray disc, and lasts say 2 hours, then your internet connection would on average have to deliver 5GB of data in 120mins or 7200 seconds.

This works out to 5Mbps. This is probably an underestimate as Blu-rays have capacities well over 10GB. Most people in the UK have trouble getting downloads of 2Mbps nevermind 5Mbps.

In order to view such a film, it would have to be downloaded first which would take many hours. Unless the UK upgrades its broadband service, this is not a feasible way of receiving HD programming/movies. Perhaps via cable it is faster - i don't know what speeds cable is capable of achieving.

I suppose the easier way is to stick with satellites which already dish out 1080i and 5.1 channel sound.

Sorry if this is a little long and boring, but it'd be nice to get some more opinions on this subject to see what the general feel for services like IPTV and VOD is.

Beodude

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

soundproof — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:20:03 GMT

BeoDude - Blu-ray as a format is here to stay, disks as the storage medium is not. The disk is a stopgap medium, as pointed out above.

Check out Pirate Bay for 1080p format movies, and you understand why the movie studios would prefer selling those files to us instead. With downloads, as I have mentioned before, the buyer's ID is embedded in the file. If you illegally copy it and it is distributed, then it's much easier for the owner of the material to take action against you.

And that's why disks are dying as a format of preference for the originators of material. As Roger points out, convenience for the user; and as I point out, security for the seller.

Here are the movies available on PB, in 1080p: http://thepiratebay.org/search/1080p/0/99/0

And it's really moot whether "you" have broadband or not - more than 500 million households do, and each of them have access to a large number of content stores, just a click away.

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

Roger — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:58:46 GMT

I had a BeoCenter 2 teamed up with a BeoVision 9, and replaced the BC2 with a BeoSound 5 - and a Sony S550 Bluray. The PUC/STB-C takes care of the control. The new players from Sony are tiny/small and will easily fit on the "bird table" (rear plate of the stand near the floor) and are out-of-view. I do love the much improved quality of sound and picture (the S550 will decode DTS-HD and pass it on as PCM mulitchannel to the BeoSystem 3, unlike the S350 from Sony) - but I am not happy with the loading of a disc: to kneel behind the telly compared to the much better ergonomics/placement of the BC2 placed on e.g. a floor stand next to the tv...

But my cable supplier (GET) has introduced 1200 fairly up-to-date movie titles as Video-on-Demand (VoD) and I can rent a premiere movie several times for the price of buying the same film on disc. And when I have time on my hands to watch a movie, the VoD is available at the press of a button - no need to run by a store to buy a disc. Neat. And they even have an HD sample movie available as VoD!

But I still do hope that B&O will pursue the BeoCenter 3... wasn't it David Lewis that once said that customers shouldn't have to kneel to program their VCR? My BV9 setup works great if you can get a girl in a coctail dress to do the loading of the discs...

Roger

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

beodude — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:34:00 GMT

Flappo The Grate:

bluray reminds me of laserdisc

a stopgap format that never really made it as it wasn't easy enough to use

i'd drop blu ray tomorrow if the uk itms had hd films that you could buy not just rent

the whole physical media thing is SO last century

Bluray is simply the next most logical evolution from dvd and is not a stopgap format. Blue lasers have only recently been developed whereas red were around for a long time. The most obvious way to improve the storage capacity of a disc is to pack the bits closer together, which means blue lasers are needed to read them. I think physical media will always be around as long as the hard disk drive is still in use as a major storage device. Hard disk drives are just not reliable enough to risk not having a physical backup. You are also not going to run out of storage space as you can just keep buying discs more easily than buying lots of hard disks to store the data and also back it up.

Also what makes Blu-ray difficult to use? I don't think there are any problems with the discs or players.

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

Flappo The Grate — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:18:56 GMT

bluray reminds me of laserdisc

a stopgap format that never really made it as it wasn't easy enough to use

i'd drop blu ray tomorrow if the uk itms had hd films that you could buy not just rent

the whole physical media thing is SO last century

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

tournedos — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:42:10 GMT

jldmelb:

My thinking is that Blue Ray is kind of like DAT (remember that?), where the progression went from Vinyl to Cassette to DAT to CD to MP3. Most people skipped the DAT step.

I don't think DAT was ever seriously offered as a consumer format. It had a good life in professional AV industry, though, and even as a computer backup technology. Perhaps you mean DCC?

I think the slow release of Blue Ray and the decision over which format was to be universal killed any chance of a decent lifespan. Most people will not follow the VHS to DVD to Blue Ray to Digital (online) , rather they will go VHS to DVD to Digital and skip the Blue Ray step. I know I will......

I agree Blu-Ray may be a transient phase, but it is here now if you want FullHD movies, and not *that* expensive. Online HD (or any) content simply isn't available in large parts of the world - unless you're into stealing your movies - and many people can't get high enough bandwidth for any money.

All in all, I think B&O will do well not supporting BR directly, they have more relevant problems to sort out with the limited R&D resources. Connecting a foreign player is no problem.

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

The_Beonic_Man — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:34:38 GMT

beodude:

cjocc:

Hello all you BV4 and BV 9 owners!

How do you tackle this? What is your strategies going forward?

Cheers

cjocc

The easiest way is just to buy a 3rd party player - preferably one that can be controlled by the BS3 controller. I bought Playstation 3 for our BV4 and am very impressed with it. Excellent picture from BD and also excellent upscaling from DVD. Sorted for the next few years at least. I don't think IPTV can replace BDs as you can't build up your movie collection from it. You'd have to store it on a hard drive. IPTV would replace terrestrial tv instead. However it'll take some time as ideally we need optical fibre cables up and down the country for better ADSL connections. So until then, satellite and BDs are the way to go for HD sources.

My thoughts exactly. I don't think Bluray is dead just yet, I hope not anyway because I haven't even had a chance to try a disk yet! 160GB PS3 here I come!

Simon.

Re: Is B&O coming with an separate Bluray player soon?

beodude — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:29:02 GMT

cjocc:

Hello all you BV4 and BV 9 owners!

How do you tackle this? What is your strategies going forward?

Cheers

cjocc

The easiest way is just to buy a 3rd party player - preferably one that can be controlled by the BS3 controller. I bought Playstation 3 for our BV4 and am very impressed with it. Excellent picture from BD and also excellent upscaling from DVD. Sorted for the next few years at least. I don't think IPTV can replace BDs as you can't build up your movie collection from it. You'd have to store it on a hard drive. IPTV would replace terrestrial tv instead. However it'll take some time as ideally we need optical fibre cables up and down the country for better ADSL connections. So until then, satellite and BDs are the way to go for HD sources.