Sony developing Blu-Ray successor - could hold 1TB on a disc

[spaceforarent]

Well I am not sure there is a point to the Blu Ray set then.  I mean the show isn't in HD and if there is only one disc less when all four discs could fit on one Blu Ray what is the point really?

Better packaging maybe? And if not, then because the discs are less likely to get scratched?
Though with a dvd set you can watch it more places.

[Pak-Man]

Blu-ray already looks as good as TV can possibly look and has the capacity to hold any given movie plus enough bonus features that I'll never have the time to watch them all. Until they can actually fill a Blu-ray with meaningful content, I'm not gonna scramble for the next format. Could be nice for game discs, but even those are rarely utilized to their full potential these days. DVD storage has hit the big brick wall. Sony should just be happy it's their format that drove it into it.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

And people ask me why I haven't gotten a blu-ray player yet.

They had this...or were close to perfecting this....at the time they released blu-ray.  They just hadn't announced it yet.

It's like game systems.  They release "less than" versions of what they already have to get buy them and a set of games...and then another and other set of the same games....instead of releasing what R&D just came up with.

And even with 1TB, they'll still make multi-disc box sets.   

QFT.

And the movie discs instead of having 5 to 7 "extras" you'll watch one time and never again they'll put 30 mini-documentaries and "behind the scenes" features....that you'll watch one time and never again!  Along with a dozen movie trailers that you can't chapter-advance through!

[MrTorso]

There is always something "better" on the horizon concerning electronics.

[SJP]

Well I am not sure there is a point to the Blu Ray set then.  I mean the show isn't in HD and if there is only one disc less when all four discs could fit on one Blu Ray what is the point really?

Not QUITE true.  Yes, it stinks that they can't all fit them onto one disc, but there is definitely a quality difference when you see even a non-HD source on a Blu-ray compared to a DVD.  Even if your source is only 480i or 480p max (say, from a videotape or digital source), the higher resolution can smooth out some of the more glaring defects.  Also, thanks to the wonders of a little thing called "compression," even standard def source material isn't as clean and clear as it could be on a DVD.  It was actually "The Simpsons" movie that pointed out how bad this can affect the picture:

No real spoilers, just sticking a long, technical thing here:
During the Homer and Marge scene at the end of the movie (the 360 spin around them), the DVD becomes hideously blocky on a good HD set.  I'd never seen that happen on a professionally sold DVD, and thought maybe it was a disc read error.  Nope.  You may notice on the back of some Blu-rays a little thing in the corner that says something like "AVC@30MBPS."  What this basically means is the average rate of compression during any given scene in the movie.  See, even HD material can't fit on a Blu-ray without compression; the thing would take up HUNDREDS of gigs of space, possibly even terabytes.  So, when the movie maker compresses the movie to make it fit on a disc, the computer program looks at each scene and decides what information can stay and what can afford to be lost.  If a screen is nothing but black, it can throw out almost all the information, and you'd get a Megabit per second (or "bit rate") that's really low, say, 1.0 or so.  On a brightly lit, dramatic scene with lots of color and movement, the computer has to be more picky about what it removes, and even if it removes SOME data, the bit rate is going to be high, around 30.0.  At a rate this high, you really have to be looking in order to spot digital artifacts, like the blockiness I mentioned earlier on the Simpsons movie.  And keep in mind, the average bit rate of any movie would be in the mid-to-high twenties...I think Blu can safely handle up to 40, but the movie has to be small to keep that kind of rate.

However, a DVD is only a fifth to a tenth of the size of a BD, and thus has smaller compression rates.  The highest a DVD can have is a 9.9 (it should do 10, but there are issues on some players with a rate like that), with the average being about 4.5 to 6.  When you go below those rates, the picture and sound get really screwed, which is why when companies cram 5 or 6 movies onto a single DVD (like in the 50 horror/public domain movie set I own) you get a movie that makes an EP videotape look like a Da Vinci masterpiece in comparison.  Even with standard def material, you can compress them at a MUCH higher bit rate on a BD than a DVD, and you'll end up get a standard def picture that is almost HD quality, simply because the source material isn't crammed to fit on the disc.

If this still doesn't make sense, watch a movie with lots of shadows in it on DVD...the bigger the screen, the better.  Look at those shadows.  If you can see large areas that look smeared or grayer than they should be, THAT'S compression at work; the compressor assumed, since there's nothing to really see there onscreen, that it shouldn't put work into making it look good and save disc space.  95% of the time, that will go away on a BD.  Some crappy ones will still have noticeably areas like that, but they tend to be smaller and less annoying.  I'm still waiting for somebody to release "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" in Blu...I know the movie is intentionally low budget and silly, but along with the original "The Thing" DVD, "Dead Alive," and "Caddyshack," this is one that suffers from a poor transfer, combined with horrible compression, with gray shadows that spoil its goofy, black and white splendor.

So yeah, there definitely a chance that the Blu-ray will be worth it if you've got it.  I still say if you don't have one yet, wait until 3D takes off...once Avatar comes out in 3D, chances are a LOT of TVs and players will be bought, and prices will drop like a stone.

(I didn't much care for Avatar, by the way, but I do think right around December everyone should buy stock in James Cameron. )

[LordZordec]

I still have a plain tube TV and a VCR tethered to a DVD recorder.  Not that I havent been able to afford more technology.  I just havent had a good reason to invest in it.

Maybe 20 years from now I will go to Goodwill and buy a 42" Sony Ultra High Definition set for $35.

[Doctor Who?]

I still have a plain tube TV and a VCR tethered to a DVD recorder.  Not that I havent been able to afford more technology.  I just havent had a good reason to invest in it.

Maybe 20 years from now I will go to Goodwill and buy a 42" Sony Ultra High Definition set for $35.

You wouldn't be Jack Benny by any chance would you?

[Variety of Cells]

You can debate all you want about whether more space is necessary on discs, but you are overlooking the fact that physical media is being used less and less in favor of streaming or downloading.  You can already stream HD over the internet; and while it might not look quite as good as blu ray it is a hell of a lot faster and cheaper, which people care about more. 

I really can't foresee there being another format battle.  By the time a new format is needed, streaming will be so much faster and more widespread that a new format just won't be marketable. 

[TTYT]

You can debate all you want about whether more space is necessary on discs, but you are overlooking the fact that physical media is being used less and less in favor of streaming or downloading.  You can already stream HD over the internet; and while it might not look quite as good as blu ray it is a hell of a lot faster and cheaper, which people care about more. 

I really can't foresee there being another format battle.  By the time a new format is needed, streaming will be so much faster and more widespread that a new format just won't be marketable. 

That's great, but for folks who need - or are required, like by law - to have a physical medium for archival/record-keeping purposes, this is gonna be great.

Not to mention with digital distribution - especially streaming - what you wanna watch may not always be what's available. That's my main bitch about Hulu and the like.