There are some bad transfers, but in the main most BD titles are a vast improvement over DVD.

Even if Doug did supply with evidence, the fact is that HD DVD went there too, buying exclusivity of several studios so neither Doug nor the format he defends enjoys any moral high ground on the matter. And his riposte was just a diversion from the simple reality that Blu Ray enjoyed widespread industry support and HD DVD didnt.

Give it a rest Doug. Storage isn't moot. Lots of disks use more than 30Gb thereby proving that the space can easily be used. Indeed disks like The Godfather use 40Gb for the main feature alone. As for HD DVD being "better designed", the point is entirely academic since Blu Ray already surpassed it when HD DVD was alive and not its dead.

Doug, it would never have worked on all disks. Go look at at the aacs files on HD DVDs some time. The manifest files point at non-existent servers and they're filled with untested values. The server values changed from disk to disk so one disk might work while another might not. MC was always an academic point for both formats. Blu Ray just chose to sideline it rather than put stub files on the disk. Chances are if HD DVD had survived long enough to see a player capable of MC, that it would be filled with per title specific patches to work around the broken files on the disk.

As for better designed, in some ways HD DVD was distinctly worse as you well know. I suppose if we were to subjectively compare BD 1.0 to HD DVD, that overall HD DVD would come out ahead. Then again 1.1 and 2.0 turned up in HD DVD's lifetime and easily surpassed it. All while maintaining backwards compatibility. Not that many of the alleged features such as PIP or internet connectivity are worth a damn on either format.

Blu Ray was created and promoted by an industry consortium consisting of manufacturers, computer companies and content providers. You say it as if it's a bad thing.

Well you do get to see Jenny Agutter wearing a skimpy dress in HD.

Of course the cell could handle transcoding but it's not a magic wand. It would still take hours to transcode the content from disk to HDD. Also, yes the PS3 does support external drives, but only FAT32. At the very least large files would have to be split into chunks.

IMO It would be such a niche feature it would scarcely be worth bothering to implement it. The only way out is if managed copy were tied to a download service, such that if you inserted the BD, that the PSN download service would permit you download the equivalent digital copy. Even that would be fraught with all sorts of technical and legal issues.

Managed copy would be pretty useless on the PS3 (as it is elsewhere) unless accompanied by transcoding ability. Even a 250Gb model would only store ~ 10 full size movies before it ran out of space. If it could transcode them down to 4Gb or less it might be more useful. Then again, it would likely take 3+ hours to do this, which would turn a lot of people off.

Maybe Sony would have a way to tie it to downloadable copies of movies, since I doubt the other options are practical.

The manual for my series 6 prints the GPL and LGPL at the end so I'm not surprised its running Linux underneath. Lots of set top boxes do too. Not sure I'd want to risk bricking an expensive TV though by installing dodgy firmware.

If studios need a clue how to launch BDs (or DVDs), just look at The Dark Knight and you will learn all you need to know: Person inserts disc, movie plays. It's not hard is it?

Instead some studios seem DETERMINED to trip you up for minutes before grudgingly letting you play what you stuck the disk in for. Iron Man wants you to download some stupid BD-Live stuff, other apps throw up user agreements, Disney inflicts trailers. The sad part is none of this is necessary or desirable. It's only there because marketing idiots want to boost hits for the online store, or exaggerate metrics by inflicting mandatory actions on users.

If I want to watch some stupid trailers, put a link in the menus that point to them and let me choose. If I want to go online, put a link that leads to it. Forcing this shit on people just annoys them. In my case it annoys me enough that it affects my purchase decisions. Forcing people through some mandatory sales pitch in this day and age is just rude.