The future of Blu-Ray? Watch porn

TalkBack 26 of 30:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

The Last Mile

We have often heard that the biggest obstacle to truly fast broadband access (as in Europe, and the Far East) is the "last mile". That last stretch of fiber or coax cable that reaches your house from you ISP. Even with FIOS, I can go to the video store, rent a Blu-Ray movie and start watching it before I finish downloading an HD movie. Now add to that the time it takes to transfer it via wireless connection to my HDTV/Media Center. The popcorn is stale and the soda is flat.

And if that's not enough, then Comcast is talking about imposing download limits to its customers. What if others follow Comcast? Imagine downloading one or two movies a month and then you hit your monthly limit. Then your Internet usage bill climbs or you shut yourself down for the rest of the month. I don't think the porn industry would appreciate the sudden drop off in internet traffic towards the end of every month.

Still, there remains the problem of saving the movies you downloaded. Online storage may not be an option due to significantly lower upload speeds and the possibility of usage limits. Or there are external hard drives that may hold 100 movies. But they are mechanical, and fragile. If you drop one, then it's good-bye hardware and movies. Drop a DVD and the odds are all you need to do is dust it off. Blu-ray media is now prohibitively expensive so you save them in SD as a backup if your external hard drive fails. So there you are with a library of SD DVD's anyway.

Bottom line when all is said and done, the expenditure in time, effort, bandwidth and media (most likely you will need dual layer DVD's) is probably not worth the difference in the price you pay for Blu-ray. Don't forget that a Media center PC costs significantly more than a Blu-ray player.

Like any emerging technology, we will see the price of Blu-ray come down. Blu-ray movies and blank media will approach current DVD prices. Besides, when was the last time a DVD or Blu-ray player blasted your screen with the infamous BSOD?

Posted by: benoddo   Posted on: 01/06/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
• VMware Infrastructure: A Guide to Bottom-Line Benefits VMware Frustrated by the costs of maintain ever larger data centers?or building ... Download Now