Guess what? One of THX’s chief scientists says Blu-ray is toast. Laurie Fincham was recently interviewed by Home Cinema Choice Magazine and when asked about HD DVD’s recent death he commented with this,
“Personally, I think it’s too late for Blu-ray. I think consumers will only become interested in replacing DVD when HD movies becomes available on flash memory. Do we really need another spinning format?” he told the magazine.
“In the future I want to be able to carry four to five movies around with me in a wallet, or walk into a store and have someone copy me a movie to a USB device. Stores will like that idea, because it’s all about having zero inventory. I don’t want to take up shelf space with dozens of HD movies.”
“By the time Blu-ray really finds a mass market, we will have 128GB cards. I would guess that getting studios to supply movies on media cards, or offer downloads, will be a lot easier than getting them to sign up to support a disc format.” he concluded.
DVD Town brings up a good point regarding Star Wars, though. We may not see the epic intergalactic love story on a HD format. That would suck. Big time.
The problem with flash cards is that no one will pay a premium for a file that has no packaging. Would you pay $20 for an ISO file (or whatever) of Star Wars in HD? I would rather pay $50 and have the file on a Darth Vader shaped thumbdrive than pay to put a file only on a drive of my choice.
This THX guy fails to see that many people (especially Star Wars fans) like to have something to hold in their hands and show off to their other geek friends - it is what we live for. Sure it takes up space and is not practicle - but it is shiny and purdy and I WANT I WANT I WANT!
Nerds are a niche market…SD cards and flash drives will take over. It just makes sense everything else is getting smaller why wouldnt movies do the same.
I doubt that.
I think most collectors want persistent media.
Maybe movies will only be available on flash drives for people to watch once but there needs to be a medium to store it for a long time for collectors.
You guys are both wrong. It will be downloadable media. There is going to be any Media you an hold in your hands. Just like with Music.
What an idiot.
We will see it in HD. First, althought eh Dr. is not an idiot, i doubt he has sway over GL and his ideas to make money on the franchise. Secondly he only says that the optical format is dead.
I agree.
While I think he’s completely wrong (people love their tangibles), one idea of his did intrigue me. Notice he said “walk into a store and have someone copy me a movie to a USB device” instead of downloading the movie from the internet. Maybe in areas where broadband isn’t available, there could be a market for these kind of shops. I could also see Apple opening up iTunes kiosks in airports, so people could download a movie or an album before getting on a flight; or on a college campus where there isn’t enough bandwidth for everyone; or maybe in hotels, so people could download a movie or an ebook for on the beach. Hell, even if you did have access to broadband, would you be willing to pay a 5-10% markup to get instant access to a movie, instead of clogging up your bandwidth for hours at a time?
Yah that sounded simple and great for flexibility, but what about controlling of copy right???
That sounded like a big big no go when copy right is concern.
Well… I guess a scientists can never be a good businessman…..
And perhaps, Mr. THX scientist, while the Blu Ray format that SO MANY of us have are chomping at the bit waiting for some gorgeous high def STARWARS we’ll gladly spend the money on for the series. you can take your time inventing the 128gb thingy that doesn’t exsist yet.
Well,
I may be an idiot, but I’m a Star Wars fan. I still have my original VHS copies and my box set DVDs. I’ll definitely buy the flash memory copy if it comes out. Until then, throw me a bone and print a few Blu-rays for us die hard fans. Is it really that tough! Heck, there’s a few laser disc copies floating around on Ebay I’m looking at.
What does THX or Lucasfilm care whether Blu-ray is going to last? The point is, they could release Star Wars on Blu-ray now, providing a high definition experience for fans who have the technology, and making a tidy profit in the process. These companies are all about profit, no?
And if/when it ever becomes viable to put high def movies on a memory chip, so be it — yet another medium to re-release Star Wars on and make even more money.
Whether or not you foresee Blu-ray technology as having a long or short shelf life, the fact is that it currently provides the highest quality viewing experience available, and thus should be taken advantage of until something better comes along.
That being said, I disagree with the THX dude. I think Blu-ray will be widely adopted, as the bundled sales of HDTVs and Blu-ray players continue at major electronics franchises, and I think it will have many years of success before being replaced by other technologies, such as memory chips or streaming.
what he (Laurie)just said is the WHOLE reason why vinyl is still so popular and still being made, you outlay hard earned $$ on something that doesnt really exist ,and can be lost just as easy ,yet with cd,dvd and vinyl you go home with something that you can physically touch ,read and look at and own. Travis is correct in what he says,
im all for analogue , long live wind up watches and vinyl
Regards
Gary
When I was at a film festival here in Derry Ireland Rob Coleman was talking about Revenge of the Sith and spoke about the “High Def Six Pack” like it was allready decided; So I guess that means that we will be treated to a typicaly late arrival of the Starwars films on a HD home format, thus giving the other format releases a good long run in the shops.
Rusty
I know I am a day late and a dollar short to comment on this subject, but I just wanted to say, I used to respect George Lucas, but now I just think he’s an ass!
I have loved Star Wars since it came out in 1977….and bought Laser Disc, VHS, DVD copies and, THX Certified Editions, Special Editions….Back a few years ago he said he was waiting for HD ‘Blue Laser’ technology in order to release a difinitive set of 6 discs…and now he’s holding out for something better than Blu-Ray????…WHAT AN ASS!
I truely believe GL is looking to release on Blu-ray. However, Blu-ray doesn’t yet have the consumer penetration that DVD had compared to VHS when he made the DVD collections.
Like any good man with a bucket of money, and the chance to make more buckets of money I think he’s wise to wait a bit longer, allowing the market to build and then having a better chance of moving more units off the shelves initially, then he would if he released now and then had units be sold over time.
My dream though would be to see the THX remastered original, and the special edition in the same set. There is more than enough space on a 25 gig disk for both versions.
We’ll also get some insight into how he’ll release them when we find out if he’s going to release Clone Wars in season disks or a few episodes per disk release.
Lets hope he goes for a season release.
GL, if one of your guys reads this we are waiting, but we wont wait long, there are HD 1080i versions already out there and they will make it into peoples homes fast.
Sten
Ok seriously Mr.THX scientist do you how long it would even take to put a High-def movie on a flash drive. A Blu-ray movie is at least 30gb so tell me how long will that take to transfer on a flash drive. Let me tell you much longer than 30 minutes. Blu-ray is not gonna die for some flash drive thing that would take forever to load and im not even gonna talk about downloading. Why would I waste my time waiting for some data transfer when I can just pick up a disk at a local movie rental store and go home and pop it in. Easy no hazzle and I get it done in less than 15 minutes. The shelf space isnt gonna matter when you are spending thousands of dollars on computer hardware and crazy expensive internet just for you customer can download the movie a few minutes faster. No company will want to go into a cyber headache. So Mr.THX scientist you might not like it but ill bet Blu-ray has a lot bigger chance to stay than your little flash drive.
I think you’ll always be able to buy both movies and music. It just needs to be released in a cool format. How else can people give such things to eachother? A download link on christmas morning? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t mind a small cover with a little cool flash-card in it, instead of discs. But it needs to be in some sort of awesome package. People like design too, you know. And you don’t get to enjoy the design if it’s only on a screen.
Since when is Star Wars an epic intergalactic love story?
im surprised he didnt say that usb will be obsolete by then and we will just have it beamed straight into our brains via braintooth.
Vincent made a good point. Although flash drives and downloads are the easier, and maybe even better format, with the concern that the big movie industry has about copyright infringement, and people pirating their movies, the flash drive/digital media format is not for them. You put a movie on a flash drive, and people are going to be giving to everyone they know, and its going to make the pirated movie industry a nice profit, making it even harder to be traced.
Lets face it too store any movies to hd quality with dts 7.1 channels of sound and all of the extra’s would take up huge terrabyte hard drives and super fast pc’s with optical/hdmi out puts. Most computer’s unless they are particular;y designed for the afforementioned struggle and cost a fortune. Your hifi rack would be full of hard drives and take ages to run. I personally feel at the present blu ray is the safest way and most effective prposition. Lets face it THX did the cheap on star wars by doing a direct transfer from laser disc to dvd.
As much as a media card being the future.. you also have to look at it from the economy standpoint. for example, every time that a new format has come out, haven’t we had to shell out oodles of money to buy something to play and support that new format. With our economy the way it is, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
The Scientist just needs to face the fact that Blu-Ray won the format war, and it will probably stay around for a good 5-10 years more before anything more extreme comes out.
Sure its a nifty idea and all but why pay to download something when you can just download it for free?
Just like music, sure people use iTunes but I’m sure the vast majority of people get their music illegally.
I’d like to chip in my $0.05c. Although I might reiterate what some people have said, I hope I might be saying it in a more concise manner.
1) The concept of being able to transfer movies in an electronic format is a horrendous idea to movie studios. This will allow the easier proliferation of their movies over the internet (copy protection systems will be cracked by *someone* as soon as they are released), and result in a complete breakdown of the supply-chain systems - the middle men still need to make money somehow.
2) Right now, we do not have the technology to allow extra fast transfers. The files containing these movies in high definition are very, very large (at the very least, 10GB - depends on what kind of technology is used to compress them). Transfers would take ages and just clog up the queues at stores, especially during times of peak demand.
3) Having disc media allows transportability on many different levels and less chance of incompatibility - most blu-ray players will play the blu-ray discs without problem (taking into account region codes etc) whereas i have had cases where DivX files that play on my computer will not work on another computer.
Hence, Blu-ray media will be around for some time to come. The technology is just overpriced for the time being - when newer technologies come to the fore, the take up of Blu-ray/1080P technology will be immense and more mainstream than it is today. However, this is reliant on various factors such as how long this global financial crisis is going to last, when global visual medium standards are 1080P minimum and so on. I can’t wait for a time when Blu-ray prices drop, and then I will be going on a spending spree!
I must agree with the THX scientist as I’ve had the same thoughts for a long time. Video game consoles had cartridges which came in a case much the same as a dvd does.
They were nothing more than flash memory (ROM’s actually) in a plastic box. There is no reason why a movie couldn’t be stored on flash memory encased in a plastic box.
They could be of similar size to a dvd and plug straight into a player in much the same way as a game cartridge.
You’d purchase them exactly the same way as a DVD only there would be a cartridge inside instead of a disc.
Digital quality movies on cartridge.
No loss of picture quality due to scratches.
Well my opinion, as discussed earlier here too, is that George Lucas is waiting with the Blu-Ray release os SW so that he will get as much money out of DVD’s first.
The same thing happened with SW on VHS. SW finally started coming out on SW when DVD was in the horizon.
Probably when SW finally comes out on Blu-Ray (as it most surely will, cause there’s lots of lots of extra money to be made on Blu-Ray when its an intermediate format for more compact mediums of the future) it will mark a milestone and the release will probably mark the end of the Blu-Ray era.
Blu-Ray is not perfect in my opinion. It has a lot of limitations like DVD. I’m sure there will be for i.e. huge leaps in storage capacity for discs and mediums in the upcoming 20 years that will make discs obsolete.
But at the moment I’d not be so worried though. I wouldn’t consider DVD’s or Blu-Rays disappearing from shop shelves in a long time. They have now like the same status as CD discs as extremely reliable mediums.
Also, what if you want to watch a film more than once? Or want to watch more than one film more than once? Do you wander down to the download store, get the thing copied, go back home, watch the film then trundle back to the store? Or do you have it stored at home on a 500 TB drive, which you would need for a decent film collection. And when the drive inevitably breaks down, there goes your films. It’s always slightly irritating how these guys who are supposed to be so smart sometimes make the dumbest comments.
I would imagine them pre-loaded on a flash drive and you would borrow them in the same way you do a dvd. The only difference is they are on a memory stick/flash drive rather than a disc.
The movie would be loaded onto a flash drive/memory stick. You could watch it as many times as you liked. Flash memory doesn’t break down like a hard drive as there are no moving parts.
You can fast forward, rewind etc just the same as you do with a dvd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory
64g flash memory would easily hold the equivalent of a Blu-ray disk with the same full HD picture quality.