All,

I guess that B&O need to come with such a separate player soon, because I guess all of us won't by a BV7-40 for that sake?

Story is also that BC2 will not be possible to upgrade to Blueray. Which I would have like to seen an a great option and kicker for the BC2  extension and position in all Beolink setups.

Beosound 5/BM5 is said never to have the DVD capab

Or will the option be that all of us will rely on the BS3 systems capabilities to drive/operate a 3rd party Blueray player?

The last option is currently the only option for  BV8 and BV4 owner, and will so be until this question is answered! I guess I stumbled upon a big "black hole" in B&O strategy here!?

Cheers

Kalle mentioned is his recently Talk To THe Nation, that B&O are not going to launch a new DVD/Blue Ray  or harddisc recorder.

With the new and improved PUC B&O are able to control most other players, so it shoulnd't be a big problem. And looking back on the DVD2 and HDR2, who would want  B&O to make new products like that.

B&o are simpley to slow to keep up with the technology. There are not a stand alone BD player on its way from B&O. My gees will be that if there are one cumming it will be a new bc2 with BD??????

The BeoSystem 3 is also out dated in therms of BluRay and HD sound. yes it can get a PCM signal from a BD player but i cant decode the HD soundformats its self. There is also flavs on the picture signal, because of the HDMI version 1,2. The standart today (and last 3 years) has been 1,3.

B&O if you are reading this.......... You are to slow, to old in technoligy. Keep up ore lower your prises by 50% 

Well,

B&O will do neither. If they are to lower their prices, they need to shrink down their costs per unit, i.e. become a mass producing main stream company. That would kill B&O really fast IMHO. They are not able to jump on every technology train and there is no need to do so. The rest of the industry is shooting itself in the foot at the moment - again IMHO.

If you want a cheap swiss-pocket-knife-which-can-do-everything-but-nothing-right type of device - then B&O might be the wrong choice. 

According to B&O the idea is to keep your TV screen for a longer period and exchange external devices, should it be necessary.

This is a good way to give B&O customers more flexibility and is a lot more attractive, financially, then buying STBs that cost 1000+ Euro

and are performing equally to their less costly non-B&O counterparts.

Best regards

Alex

P.S No, a stand-alone BluRay player has not been announced as of yet. B&O just teamed up with Deutsche Telekom in Germany

to boost IPTV. So it seems they take a different approach to HDTV.

Thanks all for the input, evene if I'm not that interested in starting another "not keeping up with technology/ too high price" discussion, cause there is a few of those already around.

I'm more interested in the strategy from B&O and what message we buyers should go for in the coming 2 years:

- As a buyer: please rely on 3rd party BluRays or STB's. We, B&O, will not provide any new product with BluRay nor upgrade for BC2. We expect you owners of BV4,9,8 etc will facilitate this with the new and improved PUC B&O to be able to control most other players...

- Please go ahead with those investments and don't fear that we will within this timeframe launch any similar B&O product that you wished you spent the money instead on.

- The only exception is the planned upgrade of BV 7-40 III to BluRays capabilities, which also be a standard feature of BV 7-40IV

I don't think Kalle articulated this in his speach. It was around stopping "repackaging" a 3rd party technology under the hood of B&O and not new basemodule in the product line, where I guess actually a BluRay is. There where still a lot left for interpretation in Kalle's speach , unfortunately!

Cheers

cjocc

We will not be building one. Aside from enthusiasts looking for a branded box (remember the DVD 1?), there is no reason for us to do so. The architecture of the BeoVision 7 demanded an upgrade, but it only works there as a value-add. If we were to start to build a stand-alone player, there would have to be some useful innovation beyond a Sony or Samsung and frankly we're better off focusing our resources on the core product portfolio.

And the other issue is that Blu-Ray was dead from the start. Unlike music, the tendency is to rent video content, not to own it. Most non-enthusiasts seem to be looking at the media thinking, a new player for 4-5 times the cost of my old one? Discs that cost 2-3 times the cost of the old ones? A miniscule number of available titles? I don't think so. See articles like this one: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14664

The fact remains that by the time Blu-Ray dips into an adoptable price range, digital video will be even more mature and cost even less. Apple TV and rental services like Netflix via Roku already deliver rental content for a few bucks, if not free after a low monthly subscription fee. Bit Torrent is making uneven leaps toward legality, distribution channels of which will lead to the DRM free trade of video. And although some of these services are partially mature or yet to launch, they'll be up and running by the time Blu-Ray players are $99 and discs are $9. 

I'm not saying BR are worthless, but they're somewhere between SACD and regular DVDs in terms of adoptability and that's just not enough in a world where digital video is coming so quickly. 

TripEnglish

So in other words, you support my "points"...

No upgrade to BC2, rely on "new and improved PUC B&O for control" and that BV7 is the exception!

cjocc

Yep! I started the reply earlier and came back to it. Things move quick here on the boards!

Hello all you BV4 and BV 9 owners!

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

Cheers

cjocc

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. It is a technology that was developed but caught up on too quickly, and will be quickly replaced by digital media. 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......

As I understand it, B&O will not make its own BD-player, and I really agree that it would be an unnecessary move. BD is already old. B&O should move on to IPTV with full force.

This article is worth reading - the movie studios badly mishandled the introduction of high-resolution audio/video, and now they're trying to catch up -- but people are seeing downloads as a more attractive alternative. That said, analysts believe that Blu-ray will move from"early adopter" to "early majority" during 2009. That may happen, if the present trend of pricing BD much lower, just a few dollars over DVD, takes hold among the studios (but they don't like to drop the price.)

If you have large screen projection at home, then you want BD. If your flatscreen is under 60", then you're set with HD-Ready, which is available from Roku, Netflix, AppleTV, MovieGiants, and lots of other outlets, and that's the market that is picking up speed. The studios even prefer it, as they have better controls over the source of illicit copying than they do with BD disks - but there's nothing against them supplying BD over the net, of course, with the same tracking control that they're "enjoying" at lower resolutions today.

http://news.cnet.com/is-dvd-movie-pricing-holding-blu-ray-back/

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 $$ driven and ROI driven, so the studios will went to get the best possible return for their $$

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).

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.

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.)

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 $