I still don't see any evidence of this. There is not, IIRC, an actual legal requirement that all BDs must contain at least some HD content. It's not enshrined in law or contracts or anything like that. Now of course it would probably just be good business sense to have all BRs have some HD in them, because customers would be confused if they didn't. People *expect* Blu-Rays to be in HD. But there is no legal, formal requirement that they do. If a company wanted to release a BD that had only SD content, they could. It would probably be a bad idea, but they still could do it.
Over time, the two plastic pieces of the disc deteriorate and start to come apart, exposing the thin metal layer to the air, which will quickly rust and break away. There is no debate that this happens, it is just a question of when, anywhere from 10 to 100 years. I can honestly say I've only had a handful of CDs this has happened to, all early-ish releases, and a few DVDs with issues likely caused by this. We all have to remember that in 1000-2000 years, we will all long be dust but it is likely we would want people to look back on our civilisation the same way we look back on the Greeks, Carthaginians, Persians or Romans, and as they left us their culture in stone, we owe the future little pieces of ours. Everything has its time and everything dies, but heck, in 2000 years time what are they going to study in classics if there are no records of the Marvel movies?!!
Bluray is just the format of the medium, it does not describe the format of the content. You could use Bluray to put a whole season of a show in SD on one disc for example (7 seasons DS9 on 7 Bluray discs). BTW Wiki states, a bluray will last 30 to 50 years until it could become (partly) unreadable.
Vinyl acetate recording cylinders from the Victorian era can be played back today, on original or recreated machines, about 150 years on. Some have started to wear down and need digital enhancement, but some can be played as they are.
Exactly what I was saying a page back. It's about marketing/consumer expectation, rather then any licensing stipulation. Various FAQs from authoring houses, and major Blu-ray related sites, etc. mention it could be used for standard definition content. ex. http://www.discmakers.com/products/blurayfaq.asp http://www.hughsnews.ca/faqs/author...al-logical-and-application-specifications#4.6
Not to mention, but vinyl LP's are also the easiest technology to get working from a reverse engineering point of view, where if nothing worked, you could at least build a player-device to playback the recording. Whereas to reverse engineer a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray player.... But as far as physical media goes, we are going to have digital media for a long time. I've shot videos for people where they want to share the video with family and friends, or they are part of a group that maybe wants to describe what they're organization does, and it is easier to go the DVD route as most people have a DVD player, plus with a physical object people are more likely to watch it than if you put it on YouTube or Vimeo and just give people a web address. With a slip of paper people can lose it or throw it out without actually viewing the video. Also there are areas out there that are still dial-up only, so people prefer physical media over download.
I thikn in the context of the thread, I don't think anyone is sayong Blu Rays and DVDs will be coasters in 10 years (well, maybe CDs and some DVDs) but that physical media will no longer be a dominant method of distributing consumer music and video. It is already becoming an anachronism for music except for the old and idealistic, and they frankly love vinyl more. For video the traction that "on-demand" and streaming services are getting is storng and irreversable. Physical discs will have a place, but not a really central one.
Sure the streaming and "on-demand" services are gaining traction in the city centers, but in rural areas (and I'm not just talking farms, but smaller villages, etc.) those services are pretty well dead right now, especially since most rural areas either have not been upgraded to high-speed internet, which you need for streamlining/"On-demand" videos, or the internet providers have zero plans to upgrade them from dial-up due to low demand versus high cost of getting the internet out to those places (unless it's by satellite, which has it's own unique situation of being both dial-up and high speed on the same service). Even where I live, if people are trying to access video on cell networks, there are some areas where there is very little coverage (and this is in places that are called towns) and the HD video---even SD video to a point---takes quite a while to load (that's why you see Youtube and Vimeo still offering the option to view the video in 120p and 240p). So until something comes along that is able to provide high speed internet to all people in both city centers and rural areas, there is still going to be a demand for TV shows and movies on physical media.
Since we're talking about video here, I know CED technology died in the '80s, but is there any way (theoretically) to put HD video on a CED? Or would that require like a thousand discs per hour to view an epsiode of...DS9 for example? LOL. I'm assuming here that CEDs if stored appropriately will outlast DVDs and blurays if I'm understanding all of this correctly (since CED is vinyl from what I understand)? Sorry, I know this is a major digression but I find all of this fascinating.
CED's were said to have about the same level of image quality as a VHS, held only 60mins of video/audio per side of the disc and were prone to wear (approx 500 play throughs) due to being an analog media rather than optical like CD/DVDs.... Dust and small debris would also build up like any old record and thus, also prone to skipping. Putting an HD video onto a CED would be pretty much the same as attempting to put an HD video on a VHS tape..... Your image and audio quality would be greatly reduced. VHS, Cassettes, Vinyl Records and CEDs do not work based on data size / file size like CDs, DVDs, Blu Rays, etc.... They more rely on the physical run length of the media being used..... In that optical discs generally rely on readers that load the stored data into memory and plays back. In order to do what you seem to be suggesting, a system would have to read the entire CED to memory (or most of it) to collect the data properly in order to play back HD quality for a few seconds. Based on how CEDs were made to play, which is to feedback the information in real time, the amount of data required to display HD information would need to have the disc rotate around for 60mins per side as the stylus slowly read the information.... And you would need to build a system to store that information in the first place as the original CED systems read and played the information in real time due to being analog & not digital. It is also why when you pause a CED, you don't get a still image on tv, but rather you get nothing on screen because it stopped receiving and transmitting information.
Well, yes. Whether that is sufficient to make producing the discs commercially viable remains to be seen, they will certainly start to command a premium. Also a tremendous number of technologies are coming along, and some existing ones like satellite already work very well in rural areas. Technical barriers like this will go away, and probably pretty quickly.
A demand...yes. But not enough of a demand to necessitate the continuation of a medium. The US and the UK have broadband penetration of over 70%. Technology doesn't wait for the minority. Sorry.
In Germany physical media hasnt declined at all. Bluray + DVD is at its peak actually (and almost three times than VHS units):
Along those lines, I just read an article that said in Japan most music is still bought on CD. So I don't think phsycial media is going anywhere just yet...
That might be true, but broadband just basically means not dial-up. So you could be on broadband but have speeds of 0.5 megs.. And even those people in areas which can stream HD services some people might prefer physical media. There is a difference between downloading a song at a few megs comapred against a HD movie which could be several gigs. Even with a slow connection most people can download a song. And one other thing to consider not everyone has or wants an internet connection. Sure in twenty years time things might be different, and yes physical media might disappear but I don't think we will see it within the next decade. In the UK I belive whilst physical media sales were down in 2013, blu-ray sales were up by 10%. So perhaps it's a mixed picture.
Yep. Here on the other side of the world (in Australia) we were going to get fibre optic to every house, but then the conservatives got it and squished that. People are downloading and streaming, but watching HD on the internet is not automagic, and who knows when it will be.... (Australia is also a captive market where we pay about twice as much for everything as everybody else, so those downloads mostly come from the northern hemisphere via various copyright-circumventing programs.) So in a few years we'll be happy to take all those old silver discs off your hands, I guess.
Exactly. Supply and demand curves are going to shift regardless of the fewer and fewer people living away from population centers.
I was at Target the other day and one of the new bluray releases I was looking at had a DVD included which I found odd. What's the benefit of that? Is that common (speaking as someone who owns a bluray player and rarely buys blurays)?