5 ms·

I guess Microsoft is still reeling about losing the HD format war to Sony! tbh, I think everyone knows that video streaming is the future and not physical disk

I guess Microsoft is still reeling about losing the HD format war to Sony! tbh, I think everyone knows that video streaming is the future and not physical disks. I give the format two years.

beaumartinez 16y ago
Two years? Yeah, because the whole world has cheap access to 10 Mbaud internet connection.
- Maakuth 16y ago
  Good point. Bluray will probably be the last optical media we'll have for movies, but I don't think it'll get replaced completely very soon, as there's a lot of places with consumers willing to pay for HD content, but without great enough bandwidth to stream them from the web.
- joey_bananas 16y ago
  I bet 99% of all people who might be interested in Blu-Ray does.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    I ostensibly have a 12Mbps connection, yet only get between 2-6Mbps depending on the time of day due to contention. And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Things have a long way to go before a majority of westerners have access to solid, reliable 10Mbps connections.
    - rue 16y ago
      > And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Clearly you do not.
      - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
        I think the missing phrase is relative compared to the average. "Good" broadband in many parts (the majority?) of the US is still crap shoved upon citizens with no other choice but dialup.
        petercooper 16y ago
        It's not missing - the word "reasonably" covers it with "reasonable" meaning fair, average, not excessive.
      - petercooper 16y ago
        You can't know that without knowing where I live. It's reasonably good by British standards, though perhaps not in an absolute sense. My connection is somewhat above the surveyed "average" speeds and stability for the UK, as frequently reported in the media here. One such story puts the average true throughput of a 10-12Mbps DSL connection at around 3.3Mbps: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a251311/uks-average-broadband-speed-up-25-percent.html http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a251311/uks-avera... .. As mine is usually around 5-6Mbps (though dropping to 2-3 at peak, sometimes) my connection is, I believe, "reasonably good" by national standards.
        rue 16y ago
        > You can't know that without knowing where I live. Yes, I can. It is an absolute measure. Yours may well be well above the average for the region or even the nation, but it is still not good. Mind, slightly tongue-in-cheek since estimating actual required level of service is a bit tricky. I meant it mostly in the sense of "do not let the telcos tell you that is 'good enough'". Personally, I would put the "reasonably good" barrier for this day and age at about 20/10Mbps. (I pay about 40€ for a nominal 100Mbps - which, in a quick test right now, gives me 24/13Mbps to/from the UK, over Wi-Fi LAN).
  - omnigoat 16y ago
    Hi! I live in Australia, where the majority of people on ADSL2+ have speeds less than or equal to 4mb/s. Due to the geography (technically, topography) of our country, high-speed internet is particularly tricky to roll-out. Not for perhaps four years more will we have any speeds greater than there are now. So your comment sounds particularly naive, in this part of the world.
- pinksoda 16y ago
  FIOS offers up to 50Mbps now in the US. Several Asian countries have had 50-100Mbps for years.
  - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
    Yeah, if you happen to live in a newly-wired building in a major city or suburb. But if you're talking about replacing TV or DVD/Blu-Ray, it's not about what the fastest guys have, it's about the slowest 5-10% have. Even if you assume "everyone [and that's 1/3 the country] still on dial-up is such a late-adopter they're not even interested in HD yet", a lot of that broadband is less than 1 Mbps. And many broadband consumers have monthly bandwidth caps. People with >1Mbps uncapped broadband is probably too small of a market to make purely digital distribution viable.
    - reduxredacted 16y ago
      Yeah, if you happen to live in a newly-wired building in a major city or suburb. The latter part of your statement is true. They're not wiring up rural areas. However, I live in a neighborhood that doesn't have a home newer than 30 years and am receiving AT&T U-Verse, 20Mbps down (and consistent). I don't believe the future is in shiny discs. The near-future probably isn't in exclusive streaming video, but the longer term likely is. We're a few technological break-thrus away, perhaps, but for what my opinion is worth... I believe it'll get there.
      - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
        Yeah, but that's private homes. It's one thing to drag a cable to a house, it's another thing to rewire an apartment complex.
mikemol 16y ago
You know, some of us like to be able to watch a large block of multimedia data multiple times without chewing through bandwidth allocation, or spending exorbitant amounts of money on a high-end DOCSIS or crap-hardware VDSL connection. I have several Blu-Ray discs, but I've loaned them (and my PS3) to my parents until I get around to getting a BD drive for my Linux box. I do miss watching video in 720p, though; interlaced DVD is unpleasant, to say the least. Hulu and boxee would be nice for some things, if the streaming servers for baseball games wouldn't get bogged down, or something causes a stutter or pause as bandwidth runs thin. Also, I get poor cell signal in my new ground-floor apartment, so my $80/mo cell bill providing service to my smartphone isn't doing me any good. I switched to using Google Voice for the time being, but that doesn't well if something's hogging bandwidth. (Just because I can rate control going out, doesn't mean I can rate control what's trying to come in from the other side of that pipe.) I wired my apartment to avoid wifi noise, but 6Mb/s DSL just isn't good enough for some common network multitasking activities. DOCSIS in apartment contexts is a horrible choice; you quickly get too many people on the same loop. VDSL may or may not be available; tech says one thing after a test, phone company's system says another. With VDSL, though, I'll get tied to a crap router with a built-in 802.1x identifying key, so I can't use my own setup.
- fragmede 16y ago
  >(Just because I can rate control going out, doesn't mean I can rate control what's trying to come in from the other side of that pipe.) Rate control of what's trying to come in from the other side of the pipe is half the point of putting voip traffic in its own QOS class. (The other half being rate control of data going out.) You may not be able to for some reason, but any good QOS system should let you do that.

I guess Microsoft is still reeling about losing the HD format war to Sony! tbh, I think everyone knows that video streaming is the future and not physical disks. I give the format two years.

beaumartinez 16y ago

Two years? Yeah, because the whole world has cheap access to 10 Mbaud internet connection.

Maakuth 16y ago
Good point. Bluray will probably be the last optical media we'll have for movies, but I don't think it'll get replaced completely very soon, as there's a lot of places with consumers willing to pay for HD content, but without great enough bandwidth to stream them from the web.
joey_bananas 16y ago
I bet 99% of all people who might be interested in Blu-Ray does.
- petercooper 16y ago
  I ostensibly have a 12Mbps connection, yet only get between 2-6Mbps depending on the time of day due to contention. And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Things have a long way to go before a majority of westerners have access to solid, reliable 10Mbps connections.
  - rue 16y ago
    > And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Clearly you do not.
    - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
      I think the missing phrase is relative compared to the average. "Good" broadband in many parts (the majority?) of the US is still crap shoved upon citizens with no other choice but dialup.
      - petercooper 16y ago
        It's not missing - the word "reasonably" covers it with "reasonable" meaning fair, average, not excessive.
    - petercooper 16y ago
      You can't know that without knowing where I live. It's reasonably good by British standards, though perhaps not in an absolute sense. My connection is somewhat above the surveyed "average" speeds and stability for the UK, as frequently reported in the media here. One such story puts the average true throughput of a 10-12Mbps DSL connection at around 3.3Mbps: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a251311/uks-average-broadband-speed-up-25-percent.html http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a251311/uks-avera... .. As mine is usually around 5-6Mbps (though dropping to 2-3 at peak, sometimes) my connection is, I believe, "reasonably good" by national standards.
      - rue 16y ago
        > You can't know that without knowing where I live. Yes, I can. It is an absolute measure. Yours may well be well above the average for the region or even the nation, but it is still not good. Mind, slightly tongue-in-cheek since estimating actual required level of service is a bit tricky. I meant it mostly in the sense of "do not let the telcos tell you that is 'good enough'". Personally, I would put the "reasonably good" barrier for this day and age at about 20/10Mbps. (I pay about 40€ for a nominal 100Mbps - which, in a quick test right now, gives me 24/13Mbps to/from the UK, over Wi-Fi LAN).
- omnigoat 16y ago
  Hi! I live in Australia, where the majority of people on ADSL2+ have speeds less than or equal to 4mb/s. Due to the geography (technically, topography) of our country, high-speed internet is particularly tricky to roll-out. Not for perhaps four years more will we have any speeds greater than there are now. So your comment sounds particularly naive, in this part of the world.
pinksoda 16y ago
FIOS offers up to 50Mbps now in the US. Several Asian countries have had 50-100Mbps for years.
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  Yeah, if you happen to live in a newly-wired building in a major city or suburb. But if you're talking about replacing TV or DVD/Blu-Ray, it's not about what the fastest guys have, it's about the slowest 5-10% have. Even if you assume "everyone [and that's 1/3 the country] still on dial-up is such a late-adopter they're not even interested in HD yet", a lot of that broadband is less than 1 Mbps. And many broadband consumers have monthly bandwidth caps. People with >1Mbps uncapped broadband is probably too small of a market to make purely digital distribution viable.
  - reduxredacted 16y ago
    Yeah, if you happen to live in a newly-wired building in a major city or suburb. The latter part of your statement is true. They're not wiring up rural areas. However, I live in a neighborhood that doesn't have a home newer than 30 years and am receiving AT&T U-Verse, 20Mbps down (and consistent). I don't believe the future is in shiny discs. The near-future probably isn't in exclusive streaming video, but the longer term likely is. We're a few technological break-thrus away, perhaps, but for what my opinion is worth... I believe it'll get there.
    - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
      Yeah, but that's private homes. It's one thing to drag a cable to a house, it's another thing to rewire an apartment complex.

mikemol 16y ago

You know, some of us like to be able to watch a large block of multimedia data multiple times without chewing through bandwidth allocation, or spending exorbitant amounts of money on a high-end DOCSIS or crap-hardware VDSL connection. I have several Blu-Ray discs, but I've loaned them (and my PS3) to my parents until I get around to getting a BD drive for my Linux box. I do miss watching video in 720p, though; interlaced DVD is unpleasant, to say the least. Hulu and boxee would be nice for some things, if the streaming servers for baseball games wouldn't get bogged down, or something causes a stutter or pause as bandwidth runs thin. Also, I get poor cell signal in my new ground-floor apartment, so my $80/mo cell bill providing service to my smartphone isn't doing me any good. I switched to using Google Voice for the time being, but that doesn't well if something's hogging bandwidth. (Just because I can rate control going out, doesn't mean I can rate control what's trying to come in from the other side of that pipe.) I wired my apartment to avoid wifi noise, but 6Mb/s DSL just isn't good enough for some common network multitasking activities. DOCSIS in apartment contexts is a horrible choice; you quickly get too many people on the same loop. VDSL may or may not be available; tech says one thing after a test, phone company's system says another. With VDSL, though, I'll get tied to a crap router with a built-in 802.1x identifying key, so I can't use my own setup.

fragmede 16y ago
>(Just because I can rate control going out, doesn't mean I can rate control what's trying to come in from the other side of that pipe.) Rate control of what's trying to come in from the other side of the pipe is half the point of putting voip traffic in its own QOS class. (The other half being rate control of data going out.) You may not be able to for some reason, but any good QOS system should let you do that.