Blu-Ray: Street date for any drives yet?

[MonsterMan]

I want one of those BenQ BW1000's!! Any word on a street date yet?
Better still, what's going on with those holographic drives? Last I heard a few major disc manufactures had jumped on board...

[dolphinius_rex]

I'm sure when you hear the price you won't be interested. Unless of course work for a large professional company, which has use for a drive that costs $1000+ with media running roughly $100+ per disc.

These are NOT going to be consumer units.

[MonsterMan]

Do you mean Blu-Ray/the BW-1000 or HVD? I know HVD will not be cheap, which really, really sucks

[Ian]

Blu-ray will not be cheap. Period.

You might want to think about putting a kidney on eBay.

[rdgrimes]

Blu-ray will not be cheap. Period.

You might want to think about putting a kidney on eBay.

That's just for a few recordable discs.

[dodecahedron]

Blu-ray will not be cheap. Period.

You might want to think about putting a kidney on eBay.

That's just for a few recordable discs.

OK a lung and half a liver.

[jsl]

BenQ said approx €500 for the BW1000 according to heise.de.

[dolphinius_rex]

it's not just the high price for the drive, but the media will be super expensive!

[Ian]

BenQ said approx €500 for the BW1000 according to heise.de.

That's like $675US.. too expensive for 99.9% of consumers.

[MediumRare]

BenQ said approx €500 for the BW1000 according to heise.de.

That's like $675US.. too expensive for 99.9% of consumers.

Well usually if something goes for €500, you guys get it for $400 US. But that's still too expensive for 99.8% of consumers.

G

[vinnie97]

I'm sure when you hear the price you won't be interested. Unless of course work for a large professional company, which has use for a drive that costs $1000+ with media running roughly $100+ per disc.

These are NOT going to be consumer units.

You overshot it by more than $300!

[Ian]

I think people forget that its going to take awhile before Blu-ray or HD DVD replace current DVD technology. You're going to need to convince Joe Sixpack and his technophobe mother that he needs to upgrade to this new technology. At $400.. or even $300.. it's not going to happen.

Here in the US, HD content has just started to take off. Even I am going to have a hard time justifying a new BD player when the movies available look just as good on a normal DVD.

[rdgrimes]

when the movies available look just as good on a normal DVD.

"Normal" DVD's don't look anywhere near as good, but you won't know that unless you have a big screen HD monitor that is capable of displaying the difference. (and of course if the movie was mastered in HD and not MPEG-2.)

Folks watching on a 40" or smaller screen, even a HD screen, won't see any difference unless it's a true 1080. Therein lies the main reason why HD has not taken off as hoped.

But even MPEG-2 could look better on a HD/BD disc, if it's mastered at a high bitrate and not compressed to make room for "extras" on a DVD-9 disc. GIGO. With enough room for high bitrates, considerably more quality is possible with the added space on a HD/BD disc. This assumes all of the "extra" crap that gets squeezed onto DVD's nowadays.

And let's not forget that you could easily put several high quality films on one HD/BD disc. Or an entire TV series, etc., etc.

[dolphinius_rex]

I'm sure when you hear the price you won't be interested. Unless of course work for a large professional company, which has use for a drive that costs $1000+ with media running roughly $100+ per disc.

These are NOT going to be consumer units.

You overshot it by more than $300!

Really? Let's wait and see

We've heard an ESTIMATED street price so far, from ONE brand name only, and that is probably the cheapest drive quote we'll see, since at least here in Canada, BenQ's DVD Burners are the cheapest you can buy. I'm still confident that Sony and Panasonic will be quoting street prices of $1000+

And of course, there is a difference between $US and $CAD

[Ian]

"Normal" DVD's don't look anywhere near as good, but you won't know that unless you have a big screen HD monitor that is capable of displaying the difference. (and of course if the movie was mastered in HD and not MPEG-2.)

My point was just that there aren't a lot of movies mastered in HD yet. even if you buy the movies with higher bit rates, your selection is pretty limited.

Now if George Lucas would get off his ass and released HD versions of Star Wars I might change my mind.

[dolphinius_rex]

as it turns out, I'm pretty close to the movie industry here in Vancouver, and I can tell you that probably 5% of all movies shot in Vancouver use HD Camera's. Most of the time, it's DVCam, or BetaCam, or something similar.

It'll be a WHILE before we see this sort of thing change... HD Camera media is REALLY Expensive, and most productions are far too cost conscious.

[vinnie97]

I'm sure when you hear the price you won't be interested. Unless of course work for a large professional company, which has use for a drive that costs $1000+ with media running roughly $100+ per disc.

These are NOT going to be consumer units.

You overshot it by more than $300!

Really? Let's wait and see

We've heard an ESTIMATED street price so far, from ONE brand name only, and that is probably the cheapest drive quote we'll see, since at least here in Canada, BenQ's DVD Burners are the cheapest you can buy. I'm still confident that Sony and Panasonic will be quoting street prices of $1000+

And of course, there is a difference between $US and $CAD

Fair points!

[MonsterMan]

$300-400 I could deal with. Wasn't so long ago I paid $300 for a 2.4x TDK DVD+R drive.

I don't care about HD content one bit; I want it for the massive per-disk storage. One drive and a few discs would work great for a media center pc, with all the movies in DivX or NeroDigital format. Granted, HDD's are getting cheaper, but it's hard to drop in another drive into an SFF (most have room for 1 or 2 HDDs); it's not hard to just burn another disc.

If the cost is too prohibitive, then I'll grab on of the 300GB Western Digital hard drives (which are now $169 @ newegg!) and back it up with alot of DVD+R or DVD+R DL discs...

Prices should drop fairly quickly, though. DVD recorder prices went way down faster than CD-R (anybody else pay $750 for an 8x Plextor drive?)drive prices did, hopefully in a year Blu-Ray will be cheap(er)...

[dolphinius_rex]

$300-400 I could deal with. Wasn't so long ago I paid $300 for a 2.4x TDK DVD+R drive.

I don't care about HD content one bit; I want it for the massive per-disk storage. One drive and a few discs would work great for a media center pc, with all the movies in DivX or NeroDigital format. Granted, HDD's are getting cheaper, but it's hard to drop in another drive into an SFF (most have room for 1 or 2 HDDs); it's not hard to just burn another disc.

If the cost is too prohibitive, then I'll grab on of the 300GB Western Digital hard drives (which are now $169 @ newegg!) and back it up with alot of DVD+R or DVD+R DL discs...

Prices should drop fairly quickly, though. DVD recorder prices went way down faster than CD-R (anybody else pay $750 for an 8x Plextor drive?)drive prices did, hopefully in a year Blu-Ray will be cheap(er)...

It really depends on the demand for the drives. I don't think it will take off as quickly as many people expect, since for the most part, people are pretty happy with DVDs the way they are. There is no incentive to switch to HD or Blu Ray. Also, the driving force behind massive blank media sales (video piracy) will have no interest in this format for a long time, so media prices will stay VERY high for a while. So players may come down in price, but the burners probably won't.

[The Belgain]

So how long do people think it'll be before we see media prices drop to a reasonable level (i.e. something approaching the same price for GB as current DVDRs)? I'm not too bothered about the price of the drive as long as the media is reasonable...

[dolphinius_rex]

So how long do people think it'll be before we see media prices drop to a reasonable level (i.e. something approaching the same price for GB as current DVDRs)? I'm not too bothered about the price of the drive as long as the media is reasonable...

The same price per GB? So maybe ~$1.50 USD per disc? I'm not even sure there's any reason that will happen.