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Blu-ray has ‘5 years left’ |
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| Chris Forrester, on 04-09-2008 |
As consumers we should know better than to rely or depend on a technology lasting more than five minutes. Now it seems the Blu-ray disk technology, long described as the “Holy Grail” of home entertainment, has only five years of life left in it, according to someone very close to the product.
"I think (Blu-ray) has five years left, I certainly wouldn't give it
10," according to Andy Griffiths, Samsung's UK director of consumer
electronics, talking to website, Pocket-lint. His comment was
immediately picked up by dozens of other sites devoted to the Consumer
Electronic industry.
But at the same time Panasonic launched two new Blu-ray players, which
are described as fourth generation products and adding Blu-ray “live”
to the specification. Blu-ray “live” compatibility enables users to
connect to the internet to download images, subtitles and other data,
and take part in interactive activities and multi-player games linked
to bonus cinema content found on Blu-ray Discs.
Mr Griffiths didn’t suggest any replacement device, and we’ll be sure
to ask the relevant engineers at the giant IBC broadcasting convention
a week from now what they might have up their sleeves. Certainly, NHK’s
technicians are working on very thin high speed flexible optical discs
capable to playing at a staggering 250 Mb/s (to handle Ultra HDTV) but
this product – still very much in the Lab – is described as being more
suited to boosting storage capacity for archived material in a
professional or broadcast environment.
Of course, it could always be said that we are living at the end of the
lifecycle for packaged media. Whether vinyl disc, cassette tape,
Versatile Discs (in any size or variety) might all end up going the way
of (much missed) eight-track tape, and just a curiosity in a museum.
The alternate is fibre to the kerb of your home and delivering all the
data, entertainment and visually-rich HDTV programming that anyone
could want.
Satellite broadcasters in the US are already starting transmission at
1080p (although not at the superior 50/60 frames per second rate) in
order to show their bandwidth capacity over IPTV suppliers and even
cable operators. Maybe this is another possible future, where 1080p –
eventually at 50/60Hz – is downloaded to a stacked array of TeraByte
(or even PetaByte) home storage devices and the need for Blu-ray
evaporates. Watch this space.
© Rapid TV News 2008
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