Acer and China Huala Group announce Blu-ray allegiance
By Darren Murph 
posted August 31st 2007 7:28AM
posted August 31st 2007 7:28AM
Amidst the slew of new Blu-ray players showcased at IFA comes word that two new forces are pledging their allegiance to the BD camp. Reportedly, both Acer and China Huala Group have joined on as hardware partners, and the latter is supposedly looking to establish a "Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China." The announcements were purportedly made by the Blu-ray Disc Association while in Berlin, and while we're not exactly sure how long Acer will make us wait for more Blu-ray-equipped lappies, the more intriguing question -- you know, the one regarding concerns over piracy from a newfound authoring center in China -- has yet to be tackled by the BDA.[Thanks, AG23]
Engadget why are you giving us news on Acer and some Chinese company? We want some Iphone news man. Or at least Apple related.
Because this is Engadget, not Igadget. :-)
You're not sick of iPhone news? o_o
dfsdfsfsf - nobody likes a smart-ass.
As for Blu-Ray... What's the deal with these and the HD-DVD anyway? I kinda don't get all the hype around these because I feel like it's a technology that's come to market way too late.
I mean, CDs are going to be obsolete soon enough because digital transfer is fast and doesn't scratch. Plus with memory and storage getting bigger and cheaper weekly, compression of media isn't really necessary.
Surely in a few more years you won't need to buy a disc to watch a film, you'll gust download it.
I really think we are still a long ways from downloadable HD content due to its size. HDM is using a good chunk of its storage for the movie. I know internet connections are faster, but you'd still have to wait a good amount of time for it to download.
You also mention storage, but until you can get me a cheap solution that won't fail or that I can at least cheaply replace the data, it isn't a good solution. I have a few TB in RAID5 arrays, not something your average person is going to have. I went with RAID5 for redunancy, but even with that one disk failure tolerance, I have still had a disaster where I lost data. To be totally redundant, I would need a second array of equal size for backup and if you ask me, that is no where near cost effective!
Lastly, HD is not late to the market. Considering that HDTV is just hitting its stride and getting into the price range that the masses can afford. I'd say they are about on time when you factor in market readiness.
HD disc sources aren't as late to market as you think. HD fell into a catch-22 for quite awhile... no one would produce the content until people started buying the displays... and no one would buy the displays until someone started producing content. There were two key events that pushed the market past this catch-22.
The first was the US Government placing a deadline on the switch from analog to digital broadcast. This was more perception than anything else... people thought they'd need an HD set to continue watching anything (most don't know it doesn't apply to cable or satellite). People became open to the idea that they would eventually have to buy an HD set, even if somewhat misinformed.
The second key factor was the "thin is in" trend. People wanted thinner displays, often that could be hung on the wall or otherwise mounted in ways CRTs (direct view and RP) could not be. The only way to get this was to buy an HD set (or at least an ED set that could display HD source material). This got a large number of HD sets into homes, even if not the HD source or software.
Now people have the perception that they'll eventually have to switch to an HD display, and they also have the motivation of wanting a thin display that also happens to be HD. Once they get the set in their home and see how SD sources look on their (usually) larger and higher-resolution display... now they want HD sources. DVD, while strictly SD, is of high enough quality to please some if not most. HDTV is cheap enough from OTA, Cable, and Satellite that many are adding these sources too.
Now that these are reaching saturation (DVD much more so than HDTV) people are looking for the next step up. It's not a huge market segment yet, but neither was DVD at first. There are two major things HD Discs have against them that DVD does not. The first is that DVD had the luxury of being a MUCH more perceivable step up from the technology it was replacing (VHS) in both image quality and presentation technology. HD discs do offer a noticeably step up in image quality from DVD, but not nearly as much as the step up from VHS, especially on moderately sized displays (below 70"). The second is split formats. This gives consumers a choice... something they always say they want but often causes more confusion and stagnation. A subset of the format-war issue is price... it's a subset because if their was one format there would be more purchases and prices would fall much quicker.
So HD discs aren't as late to market as you think... they're a little late, and price (especially of BluRay) makes it seem like being mainstream is even further away. But the user base is finally there and HD is emerging from the software-display catch-22. Now is the time HD software needs to get rolling. I just hope it can get past the somewhat less perceived improvement, split formats, and associated pricing issues and become mainstream.
I don't think digital downloads of HD quality sources are quite there yet either. There would have to be a paradigm shift in consumer broadband speeds similar to the dial-up to cable/dsl shift. Right now on 5 mbps it takes me anywhere from 8 - 24 hours to download a 720p Divx HD movie, and similar amounts of time for h.264 .mkv movies. Until that time drops into the 2 hour range (where you can watch it without catching up to the download) then downloads won't be able to replace discs. Also, DRM will likely prevent any kind of portable storage, making it impossible to take a movie with you to any other display outside of your own home. Until download speeds increase 10x and DRM is sorted-out or completely gone, physical media will be the consumer's choice.