Home-theater buffs will gasp in horror, deride me and mock my lack of taste for what I am about to say. But the evidence is hard to deny: Sony is finally starting to realize that compressed, downloadable movies -- as opposed to physical media like high-definition Blu-ray discs -- are the way of the future.
This may come as a surprise to HD fanatics and observers who have watched the entertainment giant spend billions promoting the Blu-ray format. The push included a $3.3 billion dollar investment in the Playstation 3 game console, which supports Blu-ray discs. Now as more consumers watch movies online, Sony is hedging its bets on Blu-ray, by introducing two new ways to stream movies directly to the home. The first method comes with the new Playstation 3 firmware and allows PS3 owners to order from a direct-download movie store. The second method uses a device called the Bravia Internet which connects to Sony's Bravia TV line.
These new add-on technologies seem like attempts to wage a two-front war against competitors in both the physical media and streaming arenas, instead of focusing all of its considerable resources on the right format for the future. Even though Blu-ray trounced Toshiba's rival HD-DVD format, Sony seems to have realized that it merely won a small battle in the wrong war. Now Sony is skirmishing on the new front, streaming media. Its most recent volley came with the announcement that Bravia Internet owners will be able to download Will Smith's new movie, Hancock, before the DVD release.
So why is Sony now hedging its bet on the expensive "Blu" format, that was supposed to make the PS3 console the machine of the future? The company assumed that HD alone would be a big enough draw for Blu-ray, but interest simply hasn't materialized. Right now, only 25% of American households own an HDTV, and just a fraction of those users actually view any HD media. As for the other Blu-ray features -- HD-DTS, Master Soundtracks, multi-streams -- I doubt any of them are must-have features for the average consumer. I'd even wager that most HDTV owners will barely notice the difference between 1080p resolution Blu-ray and 720p streaming media. These touted Blu-ray features end up being largely irrelevant to anyone not owning a $20,000 home theater.
On top of that, the media industry is predicting that by current projections, Blu-ray sales won't overtake DVD until 2012 and that's more than enough time for Netflix, AppleTV, Tivo, or Hulu to multiply the number of streaming HD customers who no longer need physical media. These users will enjoy a virtual library many times larger than most individuals could own, accessible at any time. The very idea of owning a movie could fade away in lieu of subscription models or simply the cheap price of renting.
If Sony's hedge is successful, what will happen with Sony's hardware investments in Blu-ray and the PS3? Right now, Sony has an expensive, money-losing, Blu-ray box in the PS3, that can't seem to decide if it's made for watching movies, playing games, or streaming media. It's classic Sony behavior, releasing devices and proprietary technologies which don't focus on the features that average consumers crave. It happened when Sony's miniscule RAM-based MP3 players were largely ignored for Apple's hard disk-based iPods. Storage space -- not physical size -- ended up being the feature music junkies desired. It's happening again with the Playstation 3, and Sony's last-second repurposing of the expensive device to download movies isn't a good fit when other streaming devices are much cheaper.
Sony's other innovation, the Bravia Internet box, only works Sony's Bravia televisions, as an expensive add-on to an already premium priced TV. This walled-garden strategy with the Bravia
Comments
One of the most efficient video stream encoding today is the H.264 AVC. This is being used for IPTV to deliver near DVD quality (non-HD) videos. The advent of upconverters to HD (integrated onto TV or a separate device) will put more pressure on Blu-Ray format as well.
Wow the guy who wrote this must be very bitter or just hate Sony real bad. Poor guy he needs to buy a PS3 and get his eyes checked cause 1080p looks much clearer than 720p.
Oh, brother. Another Sony worshiper.
1080p might be slightly clearer than 720p, but it doesn't matter, since the overwhelming majority of sets being sold have been 720p/1080i. Add to that the fact that NOBODY CARES!
A little off-topic, but what no one ever seems to talk about is the fact that a typical house antennae pumps through pure HD signals - FOR FREE. In my area, I have 3 HD PBS stations right off the bat, HD networks, etc. No cable needed (unless you're really jonesing for some junk cable "news" programs or maybe you'd like to phone into a shopping network, and . . . sigh! I do miss ESPN, but oh well). In fact, my house antennae's HD channels simply blows cable signals away.
You can get exceptional HD quality with the right set, be it a Sony Bravia (which I love) or anything else. Not a DVD/Blu-Ray related topic, but I just had to say. . . since quality in on the mind.
@Eric, your right. The over-the-air HD signals are uncompressed which means that you get better picture technically. However, OTA HD signals requires the antenna to be strong enougjh (with enough fidelity) to get the complete uncompressed signal. Some folks consider external antenna unsightly (those in multi-tenant units may not be allowed to erect an external antenna). The other issue with OTA is the quantity and selection (there isn't many).
@mcm, I agree that only a small portion of consumer base has 1080p capable sets. As evident by Blu-Ray slow sales, cosnumers are happy with 1080i (which can be done easily via upconverter) from a regular DVD or standard video stream. I believe most (if not all) sets capable of 720p can do 1080i.
@mike, although it is an option, there is no need to get a PS3 to play Blu-Ray discs. Soon there will be cheaper/slimmer Blu-Ray players on the market if one really has the need for 1080p video. I do agree 1080 looks better than 720 though. However, there is much to be said about the screen that supports that resolution. A Sony Bravia at lower resolution may look better than a generic screen at higher resolution. There is much more to quality of picture than just resolution.
No, no, no.
When we all get extremely high speed internet connections globally, enough to download the enourmous HD video files, with all the HD audio, and assuming that the host of said files hasn't had to trade off some quality against file size - then people might be interested.
But the fact is people do care about quality and people do want 1080p at high frame rates and crystal clear visuals for their 1080p screen to show of their kit - and as such those folk will not be satisfied with compressed lesser quality downloads. Not to mention, who want's to sit and wait for these lesser quality downloads, devoid of extras, and anything physical to rely on where a failed hard drive would let you down.
Downloads are good, but Blu-Ray discs are far superior in nearly every respect - for the foreseeable future at any rate.
Sony announced movie downloads for the PS3 shortly after launch, so the contention that this is Sony "now hedging their bets" is a little behind the times. As we've all seen with DVD, widespread availability of movie rentals does not slake the consumer's thirst for movies they can own, and since most all movie downloads available currently are time-locked rentals, it's pretty obvious to assume they'll have the same effect (or lack of). Factor in that downloads for the vast majority are slow, cumbersome affairs for SD, nevermind HD, movies and the road to download dominance looks to be a long one.
DVD upscaling
DVD Download DL
dude i like how the fact he stated...
"Blu-ray sales won't overtake DVD until 2012 and that's more than enough time for Netflix, AppleTV, Tivo, or Hulu to multiply the number of streaming HD customers who no longer need physical media."
blu-ray is doing way better than any of those on sales.... netflix does well RENTING MOVIES not sales.
and blu ray sales are improving more and more... and good luck convincing the studios to give movies that would be easier to copy... i dont think movies will make the same mistake music did
It's already obvious that Blu-ray is intended to be exactly what many of us have said all along, a niche high-margin product.
Sony's new BDP S350 $400 player is proof of that (along with all the other high cost players).
Their Bravia HD TV service & the PS3 downloading services just confirm the obvious.
High def TV services are the big deal this time around - how could high def all the time on your high def TV set not be the winner?
Downloads are a perfectly acceptable way to get movies etc; you don't need that ridiculously wasetful uncompressed audio and excellent results can be had in DVD5 or DVD9 sizes already - and this currently by amatuer if talented enthusiasts, Lord knows what the professionals could do with professional tools.
I wouldn't count on downloads too much. Why? The bandwidth caps are coming (see TW:RR & Comcast). AT&T is interested in them as well. Suck it up while you can kids, ISP's (many of them offering VOD, what a coincidence) are going to try kill downloads BEFORE they catch on with the majority of the public. Want to sue them for it? Well if they've been an ISP for more than a few years, I'll guarantee years of memos complaining about bandwidth costs.
Oh and FYI for the 1080p haters:
Go to Broadcast Engineering and you'll see that 42"+ 1080p had the single biggest sales gain last holiday season and with 1080p sets less than US$1000 they're going to sell more and more. Heck, the price difference between 720p and 1080p is pretty much negligible now. The big markup is now in 120Hz LCD's (see the Samsung ToC sets). that are US$2500 or so.
I don't know why people cling to downloads right now. No easy way to transport movies, and very limited space, permanent renter status, and DRM that makes Blu-Ray copy protection look good.
20,000$ home theater? Gimme a break. 50" LCD (Sammy, $2k), PS3 ($399), Onkyo 605 (new, 450$), Speakers (7.1 really, but add 2.0 for my deck, 1200$), Wires, et al ($150) = $4199 or $4408.95 after tax. Could've come in cheaper but I bought speakers to put on my deck and weatherproof speakers are freakin' expensive. Granted I installed it all with my brother, but this isn't rocket science.
"dude i like how the fact he stated...
"Blu-ray sales won't overtake DVD until 2012 and that's more than enough time for Netflix, AppleTV, Tivo, or Hulu to multiply the number of streaming HD customers who no longer need physical media."
blu-ray is doing way better than any of those on sales.... netflix does well RENTING MOVIES not sales.
and blu ray sales are improving more and more... and good luck convincing the studios to give movies that would be easier to copy... i dont think movies will make the same mistake music did"
I wonder how many years it took DVD to overtake VHS?
Oh and a blast from the past, it's: DVD WILL FAIL!
"The DVD demos given to date have been carefully prepared, short demos. No demo has been given of a full length DVD disc. So far, they have all been under 15 minutes. At that timing, the DVD disc can easily encode at the maximum data rate and sustain it for the time required for maximum quality. And even in these *prepared* demos, artifacts in the picture have been easily seen by non-critical viewers! If artifacts are visible at the highest data rates, what will the picture look like at the very low rates needed for a feature length film? One can only guess at the ugliness of it all. Also, in every demo comparing DVD to LD, the LDs used have NOT been commericaly available LD's, but rather, ones made by the companies especially for the demo! Is this not highly suspect??? All witnesses who have seen these staged demos have said that NO LD on the market looks as bad as the LD's the DVD demos used. It is obvious that the companies don't want us to see a real, quality LD compared to a special, tweaked DVD. (which, by the way, is the VERY BEST they can do!) When DVD was compared to VHS, the VHS tape used was a worn rental copy from a local video store! Of course DVD will be expected to look better under these circumstances. Yet in every case, viewers preferred the VHS because it didn't have motion artifacts and strange pixelization artifacts that the DVD had."
"DVD is just a bad idea. It is being forced upon a uncaring and unwanted public and is an inferior product that simply isn't needed or desired. DVD exists only for one reason. Greed. Motion picture studios are always looking for a way to sell the same stuff over and over again and they think DVD is the answer. Electronics giants are always looking for the hot new gadget that will make consumers junk their existing products and they feel that DVD is the answer. Its not. Actually, it is an answer to a non existent question. A question that has never been and never will be asked. "
Yep, the sky is falling AGAIN.
http://www.robertsdvd.com/failure.html
The negative slant on this review and most of the linked stories is incredible. Good on the previous poster to point out that the $20,000 home theatre statement was a farce. I'm not in love with Sony, but they are demonstrating considerable leadership in both the gaming and home theatre arenas.,,
OTA signals ARE compressed in MPEG-2 format. Due to bandwidth limitations, 720p and 1080i are the highest resolutions supported. The only place you'll be able to use 1080p is with BluRay/HD-DVD or with a PS3/Xbox 360.
By the way, has Sony fixed the issue where the PS3 won't work properly with TVs that only display 480i/p and 1080i signals, like certain early Sony TVs? Games on the PS3 that run at 720p are downsampled to 480i/p instead of upsampled to 1080i like the Xbox 360 can do.
Yes, OTA broadcast is 1080i maximum (and 50 or 60 of these half frames per second). The flat panels and projectors sold today are rapidly moving towards "FullHD" 1080p. Buyers shelling out for their home theater rarely say "wow let me save a few hundred bucks and get equipment that only does 720p or 1080i".
While Blu-Ray is 1080p, in point of fact it only does 24 frames per second. You'll want equipment that handles that. Why 24? Because just about every movie ever shot, the film is 24 fps. Newer equipment will internally double or quadruple the frame rate with repeated or interpolated frames.
Lastly, if we look at the math the ISPs will in fact not be able to choke this down. A 25-30GB blu-ray movie can be readily compressed down to 8.5GB with the h.264 codec (which is at least twice as effective as the old MPEG-2 codec used for 10 years now on DVDs). And then licitly or illiicitly downloaded or streamed over the internet. So if I watch 10 movies a month, I can't imagine even Comcast crying crocodile tears and claiming that downloading 85 GB a month is bringing their fiber network to its knees.
Bonus post: $2000- 3000 Home Theatre
Sony AW-15 720p $900 or HW-10 1080p projector $2000 soon, DaLite 92" 2.8 gain retro-reflective glass bead screen $250, Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers $300, HTPC (or upsampling DVD/BR player) $600. As long as you have some light control in your room, its like having a 92" plasma TV, and the HD makes DVDs look like VCDs. I can certainly plan a $5000 or $10000 home theatre but honestly it is diminishing returns, this one gets you 80% of the way there.
The issue isn't 720 vs 1080, it's that streaming and download services compress movies to reduce required bandwidth, destroying HD picture quality with visible banding, color shifts and artifacts equally apparent on all screen sizes. Blu-ray is safe until streaming and download services have equivalent quality.
Downloadable content has a FAR harder time ahead than Blu-ray, as you can't get everything in one place.
The writer of this article has done very little research at all. As noted 1080p sets were the biggest sellers in December 2007 out of ALL tv's and HDTV's throughout the first six months of 2007 accounted for 71% of ALL tv sales in USA - which means...stunningly....YES! Even J6P is buying HDTV's now...and they're buying 1080p sets AND 7.1 receivers.
Some people are stuck in the past with no ability to learn from it. DVD took almost five years to outsell DVD and seven years to outrent it, with very little increase in resolution.
Blu-ray sales were up in Q1/08 by 351% over the previous Q1, yet because Sony is offering downloadable content now all of a sudden they don't support BLu-ray anymore, they're hedging their bets?
Go look up how much Sony have spent refurbishing their SonyDADC locations to add Blu-ray Disc support, add that to the PS3, look at what Oerlikon, Singulus, CInram, Panasonic, etc., are doing with their replication lines. If you still think they're hedging their bets then I have a new planet I've discovered that I'd like to sell you.
Let me guess, they're hedging their bets by still making DVD's too right?
Foolishness abounds and some poor schmuks across the internet think that your opinion piece is actually "news". That's right Shane R. Monroe - I'm looking at you.
BigJim - good points except plenty of the Blu-ray movies use h.264 codec already, so how do you shrink down 25-30GB to 8GB using the same codec without removing massive amounts of information?
The only way to distribute massive HD films on the Internet is to use peer-to-peer networks. Indeed, real HD movies are to big (20 to 30 Mb/s bitrate, 15-30 GB files) to be distributed through regular streaming or web download.
At UbicMedia, we have designed a system especially devoted to filmmakers / directors / producers / studios who want to release their films on P2P while controlling how they are watched, and eventually being paid for each viewing, for instance using Paypal…
In you're interested in understanding how it works, just have a look on http://www.pumit.com, there is an HD demo. You can also test it on a documentary film released by the producer himself : http://clients.ubicmedia.com/KanariFilms/indexEN.html
Interesting read.... I liked the comparisons of technologies.
One thing that I think everyone needs to consider is the influence of the internet. When we go back to the golden era of DVD vs. VHS I believe DVD did not stand a chance until the internet intervened. It was when tools such as ecommerce, and forums were coming of age and we were able to purchase new release DVD's for under $10 while the competing VHS was still selling for $15-$20 and the brick and mortar chains couldn't sell a DVD even it was on sale for $19. It was a no brainier. I don't know how they (e-tailers) were able to do it but millions of consumers were able to start very large DVD collections using these internet tools. A few years later after several mergers and the dot.com bust the brick and mortar's followed suit offering $10-$14 new release sales.
On average if you started early with DVD I would estimate I would spend $60 a week on DVD's but that in comparison to Blu-Ray is DVDs 6 vs. Blu-Ray 2 again a no brainer.
As long as DVD's are still selling in the $10 range the majority IMHO will continue to buy them.
If people never cared about quality, then we all be watching B&W TV with monophonic sound.
while digital distribution has growth potential, there are still many questions to be answered.
Fair use? DRM? Storage? In-home networking/streaming? Proprietary boxes (AppleTV vs. Roku/Netflix vs. Tivo Unbox)? True ownership (if my system crashes do I have to pay again)? Services shutting down (does my content still work)?
Not to mention that many US homes still don't have broadband and those that do still have relatively slow connection for HD streaming. Heck, some providers are still claiming 768k DSL is highspeed. How do you think streaming downloads work over that connection? Service providers are not going to give bandwidth away for free especially when they have their own services that are directly competing with the other download services. Do you think Comcast would rather have that $5 fee over Apple? Service providers especially those that own the pipes are going to make it harder for third party providers unless there is a revenue sharing plan.
Sure we hear about some areas getting 50Mbps service, but how much are people paying? Comcast wants $150 in the Twin Cities. BD looks like a much cheaper option especially when you factor in the hidden costs associated with downloading.
I am not arguing against downloads, but I doubt they are going to take off as fast as some of these 'futurists' claim.
huh think about that ppl when u download the hd file its ok like 700mb for a movie but 8gb for movie its just insane!!!
sorry sony u faild i have no respect for u anymore becuz the greed sony is greed company!! want sell/c blu ray for more money !!
Post new comment