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Matt H

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Actually this bit is something I want to pick up on...

 

I know we are the type of people that want the 1080p high quality, BUT how many people in the 'real world' really know what it is. Casey, you and I both know we are tech-geeks, so would go out of our way to make sure we had zero noise and all that rubbish, but joe-public.... I look at people like my dad who still has a CRT and has zero interest in HD. Does anybody actually know what the market penetration of HD is, I'll qualify that a bit further and say, does anybody know what the market penetration is for people who would pay/want 1080p films compared to those who would be satisfied with lower quality.

 

People are still buying DVDs in higher numbers than blu-ray which does say something.

 

I actually do wonder, as I have many friends who say they can't tell the difference between SD and any form of HD, to which I ask them where they've misplaced their white stick.

 

I'm not sure on market penetration for either, but I'd assume it's a lot lower than DVD was this long into the format launch.

 

At least HD-DVD is out of the way, but yes, the price of Blu-Ray is still akin to DVD's 1st year, whilst Blu-ray is now into it's 3rd year but prices for HW and media have not dropped. I do remember paying £400 for a DVD player and £25/disc in the 1st year. There's still BR disks at £20/disc which is stupid. I think they're stifling themselves with keeping the price points of DVD as they are due to sales being fine, rather than dropping the price of DVD and BR to try and get BR picked up more. For example a film at £13 on DVD vs £18 on Blu-ray quite frankly a £5 premium for HD is stupid, manufacturing / authoring costs will be far lower than that.

 

I do await an online media store, where I can buy and retain usage of media, rather than just ad-hoc rentals / streams. With technology advances in de-duplication, or as you say big libraries already with many media corps this is not impossible.

 

Edit : I was thinking that last year they'd drop the price of BR for the Christmas season, PS3 had been out 2 years nearly, most film companies backed BR, players were sub £200.

 

Maybe it's the tanked economy.

 

Having also said that... how many people do you know that have a BD-RAM drive in their workstation? I remember CD-RAM and DVD-RAM being the must have when they launched and storage on them seemed colossal at the time. Now with 2Tb HDDs yes a 50/75Gb dual/triple layer BD is reasonable, but I think the idea of it as a storage medium isn't as good as CD/DVD was at their launch/prime times.

 

Roll on RAID array boxes for the masses and the price of SSDs lowering.

 

I always wanted to look at the cost of starting file/media hosting for the masses, a la Rackspace but just for storage with a good portal / protocols to be able to play it. After all it'll just primarily be storage + deduplication + bandwidth. Heck the more data the better the hash table would be for deduplication and costs would lower as the thing scaled.

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I can easily tell the difference, but then I know about tearing and all other sorts of things as well.

 

Most consumers don't really care.

 

I know someone (early 30s) that asked me if all HD content can be played back in slow motion a la the Sky ads...!! People are beginning to think HD means 60FPS slo-mo.

 

/users/matt_h/facepalm.gif

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but do you have sky/virgin? their quality is awful on compression and yet nobody seems too bothered with it.

 

I have sky HD, but wouldn't dream about paying for the HD channels. They are noticably better (free ones), but the quality isn't good enough and the fact that the HD versions of normal channels broadcast most of the stuff not in HD is ridiculous.

 

People are still buying DVDs in higher numbers than blu-ray which does say something.

 

Like Scott says, it's everything to do with cost. Every single rental I had from Lovefilm was a blu-ray. I can't go back to DVD qaulity now when there's the choice.

 

It was only two nights ago when I sent a text to one of my mates saying the same thing; adding that when DVDs first came out, we were astounded by the improvement over VHS and one-day, we'll be saying

 

'I could never go back to blu-ray'!

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My GF is another person who says she can't tell the difference when SD and HD. I don't think it's because she can't, or other people can't, it's more to do with the fact that they don't really care enough.

 

Any of the side by side comparisions can easy show the difference.

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I always wanted to look at the cost of starting file/media hosting for the masses, a la Rackspace but just for storage with a good portal / protocols to be able to play it. After all it'll just primarily be storage + deduplication + bandwidth. Heck the more data the better the hash table would be for deduplication and costs would lower as the thing scaled.

 

You handle the storage side, and I'll take the media distribution side, and together we can take over the industry muhahahahaha :p

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I was actually just compiling a list of resources for you and was coming back to edit my post, but your attitude stinks so you can work it out for yourself. :Pling:

 

If you think that's bad, there's another fifteen and a half thousand for you to have a trifle through that are probably much worse ;)

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My GF is another person who says she can't tell the difference when SD and HD. I don't think it's because she can't, or other people can't, it's more to do with the fact that they don't really care enough.

 

Exactly. My other half doesn't care at all how good the image is as long as she is watching something enjoyable.

 

She still watches Buffy on VHS FFS!

 

I think that we can take from this that women are hindering technological progress.:D

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I highly doubt you did. I imagine you still have as much information gathered as you did in your first post and the 20mins was spent sulking :)

 

Well that's where you're wrong, I was putting together a word document for you with various ways to stream HD stuff and a recent project I was involved with for a customer's home cinema system, the only thing I sulked about is wasting my time doing it. I know various other people think you're a moron, but I generally reserve judgement...

 

However now I can see how you earned your reputation for being that moron, I can now also see why Martini puts so much effort into trying to wind you up now.

 

Anyway, I'll step out the thread being as I don't have anything useful to say.... :cool:

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http://www.veetle.com

 

Lovefilm became gradually worse. I started in 2004 and it was great. CSI box sets. Got them, ripped them for personal use, and sent them back. I know, shame on me.

 

Then they grew and low and behold (Microsoft, Vodafone et al) they became crud with very poor customer service. Phoning to cancel says it all. Same with Experian. Has anyone tried to cancel that? They offer you a reduced rate. I am still a member but pay only £2 a month to track me credit.

 

And yes, bring on the copyright comments.

 

HD is the way forward. Has anyone tried HD porn? Didn't Bluray win because Porn chose it? Hahaha. Maybe just a rumour

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