The next version of Blu-ray, BDXL

Psi*

Psi*

Tech Monkey
Just when i was about to make the tumble into a Blu-ray writable drive, I see this. It makes no matter whether this will be a winner or not, but suddenly I will wait ... longer... before i dive in completely.

I have a bit of a life-style change coming up & was considering "home" entertainment/PC super system. That does not mean the best of everything, but I am comfortable with a bit of future proofing. To me, for a respectable home entertainment system this wouldn't mean a hexa-core ... quad likely... but I like the idea of the latest in Blu-ray. Maybe some other stuff such as a nice large monitor (wall mounted sort of scale) for movies and adequate for gaming & general relaxed mode computer use. Eyefinity is begging also ... but for later threads.
 
Tharic-Nar

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
I honestly wouldn't bother waiting, the price would be unbelievable and won't come down to a sane level for at least a year or 2 after. Dual layer is 4 times the price for twice the density, so one could argue a quad disc would be 8 times the price over a dual disc, so 16 times the price over a single disc, this of course after prices settle. Coupled with the price of the drive, i wouldn't be surprised to see the reader alone selling for $500-$700 at launch, maybe drop to $200-$300 after the first year. Couple this in with 'minor revisions' to the standard and hardware, there's a good chance zero-day hardware would be obsolete and non-compliant within a year without firmware updates (if the device even allows for a firmware update).

Content won't make it's way to quad discs any time soon either due to poor uptake. It's hard enough to convince people to buy BD in the first place, now they're pushing an even better BD that physically looks the same but incompatible. They'll have to call is 3D-BD just to distinguish it from regular Dual layer BD, forcing 3D content as well.

They say it'll be of interest to 3D content producers, guess that throws a spanner in the works for PS3 Users that are supposed to be able to watch 3D with current discs. What's amusing is the difference between content publisher and re-writable sizes, 128GB vs 100GB, they trying to fight piracy on another level now? I could so easily rant over that, but i'll spare you the rhetoric. :rolleyes:
 
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Kougar

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Tharic does make a good point... even if you did wait for a compatible BD player that was affordable, there is no guaranteeing it will not itself become outdated by a new BD revision or some other development shortly thereafter. Blu-ray movies certainly don't need the room, current 50GB discs are more than sufficient for even the worst offenders. It's a very safe bet movies won't need anything more... unless perhaps they start including 3D versions side-by-side on one disc. (but again they can just use two, so that's just an excuse really)

It has taken a few years for blu-ray drives to reach the sub $100 market, and blu-ray burners still cost closer to $150. The hardware changes should be minor so I don't think it will take more than two years for such devices to become affordable, but still two years is two years. Even today, the cheapest, rewritable, 50GB BD disc costs $40 each on Newegg. ;) Write-one versions are $10 per disc.
 
J

janettwokay

Obliviot
I'm at the point in my life that my VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray items are sitting there gathering dust. What my family does today is stream as much media as we can from the 'net, be it places like Comcast, Xfinity, Hulu, ABC, CBS, Blockbuster, Netflix, and a thousand & one other places. I'm tired of wasting money on tapes and discs. I'd rather pay a nominal fee on a monthly and/or yearly basis for media that my family wants to watch on either our HDTVs or computers (PCs as well as Macs).

So, if I were you, I wouldn't buy anything. I'd spend my money on ensuring I had a good Internet connection and a decent computer / home network.
 
Kougar

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
janettwokay said:
I'm at the point in my life that my VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray items are sitting there gathering dust. What my family does today is stream as much media as we can from the 'net, be it places like Comcast, Xfinity, Hulu, ABC, CBS, Blockbuster, Netflix, and a thousand & one other places. I'm tired of wasting money on tapes and discs. I'd rather pay a nominal fee on a monthly and/or yearly basis for media that my family wants to watch on either our HDTVs or computers (PCs as well as Macs).

So, if I were you, I wouldn't buy anything. I'd spend my money on ensuring I had a good Internet connection and a decent computer / home network.
Click to expand...

And that's very true, I honestly feel the same way about it as the annual costs are certainly much less to go that route. I just hope more sites like these start adding higher quality content/streams to make it a genuine replacement for physical media.

The only downside is not everyone has access to an internet connection that allows this... either the only ones available are slow, unreliable, too expensive, or it is hobbled by a fixed data cap per month.
 
Tharic-Nar

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Fit the entire Lord of the Rings box set onto it.... no wait, still not big enough...

Nah, if you go the 3D route, or more accurately 'Stereoscopic' route (will marketing stop calling it 3D, Please!!), then that immediately doubles up the size of the film, since you need twice the framerate to keep things smooth for each eye, but isn't 24fps per eye going to cause discomfort, need 30 as a minimum surely...(ignoring TV refresh here). Anyway, it means they can either bump up the frame rate for stereoscopic or bump up the resolution for SuperHD... 4k resolution, 60inch TV, 2 inches away from screen.... "Oh look, there's a hair protruding from that spot... in 3D!!" :rolleyes:
 
Psi*

Psi*

Tech Monkey
Good points. I think I also had in the far back of my brain, backup method for the work PCs ... but I keep forgetting about external HDD docks.:confused:

So kind of an interesting article anyway?
 
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