Ballmer re-ignites 360 Blu-ray speculation News

nah can't see it, what is the point when if you get your timing right you can buy a half decent brand blu ray player for £100 anyway?

Agreed, theyre pumping all their money into natal. No point in funding an accessory that doesnt add much if anything to the xbox. its already got download able 720p films (and most people still dont have a HDTV let alone a 1080p screen) and most games this gen still arent reaching the full capacity of a DVD.

Personally I think the guy's showing his age and getting confused with the HDDVD add on!

Steve Ballmer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc

A Blu-ray addon makes a lot of sense when you consider that many people in the UK have the console and a nice television set to play it on but are stuck with sub 2meg internet connections due to living in a part of the country that hasn't pulled it broadband finger out of its ass.

For those people, who would be waiting a long time for an HD movie to download, an addon is a cracking idea.

this guy regularly talks through his backside, then withdraws his statements. MS stance is DD, having Blu-ray would undermine that and make 360 more expensive than PS3.

Why would MS hurt it's own DD service by giving an alternative that will most likely only cost them money?

BR players have become unexpensive anyway. You can pick one up for as little as 99€ with some luck. Also the 360 can't use TrueHD and DTS-MA, so it would be like a very low-end player. If they really made an add-on for the console, it would have to be no more than 49€.

@Buztafen, you couldn't add a bluray for games though, it'd just be for video. If you started releasing games on bluray, what do you do for all the people who don't actually want to buy the add on?

absolute nonsense why would msoft go down the route of backing a format that has failed to truly take off. the transformes director was right when he said msoft never truly backed HDDVD and it was just a stalling tactic while they established DL movies on XBOXLIVE. I predict that blu ray will remain the physical media format(with SDef dvd) for the next 2/3 years, then download services like netflix etc..will grab the majority of the market while BR will remain a" niche".

@donnie080208

I'm assuming that you are a Microsoft fanboy if you think hd movie downloads will be the standard in the next 3 years. Im having a conversation!

Blu-ray will eventually become the only format to watch movies on it's just that MS can't admit that. If blu ray is taking it's time to take off for whatever reasons this maybe imagine DD most of the people only have standard connections which would make it really hard to download them. It certainly is the future but not yet connection speeds needs to improve.

you know... if Sony had said this... "the future of movies is on-demand actually as opposed to via distribution on physical media"

the news would have been spun very differently IMO and we'd be seeing statements from the likes of HMV etc. getting very angry.

BTW: I'm feeling very cynical about the games journalism today :-)

@Anthony_Daniels

ok, Donnies comments may be a little optimistic but you're wrong to discount everything he's saying. What if Sky release a new box with streaming? What happens if the Zune video store really works? Blu Ray's going to be available as an HD format for a long time but it's most certainly not the future and services such as Netflix in the US clearly show DD is possible sooner rather than later.

Developers, developers, developers.

I prefer to have the 360 as a pure gaming console and have a standalone Blueray player for movies. Best of both worlds. If you mix them you end up offering a console that do both half assed. Just look at the PS3. Oooahhahahah.

Anyone who thinks that DD will be the norm in anything under 5 years obviously hasn't seen the state of broadband in the UK.

Also don't forget that many people like to have a collection of movies, you can't collect download rentals from your favourite on demand service and it's simply not practical to download and save a load of HD format movies from the internet (especially in the UK where the download could take days to complete) and for these reasons Blu-Ray will only increase in popularity, until a bigger and better format comes along that is.

@ Anthony_Daniels

Shit shit sorry! Mouse slipped, meant to click on plus. Have a double fine ++ from me.

Anyway, it's far too early to ditch or even boycott HD physical media. The UK has appalling broadband speeds across most of the country and a population that likes to own and hold what it pays for. Maybe if we all had South Korea's infrastructure...

Anyone know what the US is like for BB speed? That's where Microsoft will be getting their data from. [Insert baseball ref. Include "world series" ref]

@Donnie
You need to do some research sunshine. BR has exceeded DVD's original market penetration in a much shorter time. DVD took ages to get to the average consumer and that was largely due to PS2.
As HDTV (you can't really buy a non HDTV that is larger than 24"" these days) takes traction, as it already has, the obvious coupled piece of kit is BR. Now BR discs are comparable to DVD prices 3 yrs ago (online - supermarkets - ignore HMV), there is no reason to buy DVD (unless you are talking about a £3 film) if you have a BR player.

Online download services are Niche now and will be for some time. Just cause you or a few others use it, does not make it standard. For the average Joe, they want to watch movies in their lounge, not on a PC. Most homes do not own a media streaming device in the lounge, and ownership of a PS3/Xbox fall into niche (though expanding) market :-).
(if the wii could stream high def content then.....)

UK market needs to up Broadband speeds beyond 20 Mbits to the door for HD movie download to even be bearable.
The future though (I work for a large telecoms Company) is 10MB Ethernet to the door (thats megabytes not megabits like your DSL is right now). Until that happens, Download is niche for now. Unless you are a pirate.

Don't Sony make blu ray? And wouldn't microsoft have to make a deal with Sony to create the drives?

In other words it's not really something that is going to happen now is it.

Downloads are the future, its inevitable its just a matter of time, two years ago people said downloads were too big, now you can watch 1080p stream instantly on a bog standard broadband connection!

What I want is a subscrition service, say £20 a month and for that I can watch any movie any time, its happening to music and it will happen to movies as well (infact movies are more probable because a) you dont watch movies over and over again and b) people need more portability for their music listening)

I think Blu ray will be the defacto standard for a decade for phyical media but it will be a pretty niche product for those who want the very best, things like lossless sound etc.

Don't get me wrong I love my blu ray collection but i'm finding it harder to justify the cost over DVD when DVD's are so heavily discounted and while everyone I show it off to is impressed no one I know follows that interest up by buying their own players because as the benefit over DVD is marginal to most people. I think the same people would line up to buy a £100 box that gave them any movie they wanted at any time for a reasonable monthly fee.

@muscleblade

the PS3 is not half arsed at BR. It's very capable, faster than most standalone players, (though they are quickening up) and now supports (through the slim) DTS MA 7.1 Bit streaming. Picture is great and my stand alone player (panasonic) isn't that much of a leap (PQ wise) over the PS3.

Half arsed at games? only if you really need badly ported Mulitplatform games :-)
(but you probably do have the better combo if i am being honest)

@penhalion

No sony do not make blu ray, blu ray is made by a many manufacturers all of whom are in the blu ray consortium.


The largest beneficiary of Blu ray royalties is in fact Panansonic

"the transformes director was right when he said msoft never truly backed HDDVD and it was just a stalling tactic while they established DL movies on XBOXLIVE."

I feel sorry for those who got duped into buying HD-DVD players by Microsoft. Actually, not really.

/Nelson laugh

Well blu is coming down in price online (well not for boxsets the raping gits!) so an add on would make sense as it does dent PS3s USP slightly, only slighlty though as it's not "in the box" as with PS3.

More people owning the stupid pricey tech means (hopefully!) the chances are higher for realistic prices on boxsets in the future, hell it might even mean less high street inflated pricing on blu in general so bring it on MS!

"UK market needs to up Broadband speeds beyond 20 Mbits to the door for HD movie download to even be bearable. " INTERNET speeds in the u.k.,u.s., and most of the major markets will be up to scratch for at least 720p DL in 2/3 years. allready vigin offer a 50mb broadband. plus you allraedy have sky tv offering films on demand etc. BLU-RAY just has too much competition from all sides to ever reach the market penetration of DVD. I know speeds are slow in rural areas ,poor countrys but you have to remember it is the "wealthy" west like the usa etc.. who will make digital downloads a sucess, where the vast majority of next gen consoles are sold. BTW do you think the worlds BIGGEST software company msoft havent done their research into these percieved problems

@GamerG

And you are right, take for example latest Wolverine/star trek film, £10 on play.com for the DVD, £17 for the BR.
For me, I rent on on BR from Blockbuster for £3-4 (or 5 of £10). Far cheaper than buying DVD/BR.
The films I have to have in my library, then it's a BR purchase.

"Download is niche for now. Unless you are a pirate." The amount of people that torrent movies shows exactly why widespread DL movies are very close in most developed countries, look at the way p.c. gamers go on about STEAM selling millions of games that dont appear in the charts. why are movies an exception ? 720p will be very satisfactory for the vast majority, without the multiple language,7.1 sound,full 1080p etc. which take up most of the BR disk, and i might add very few people take advantage of.

Anyone know what the US is like for BB speed? That's where Microsoft will be getting their data from.

On average slightly slower than the UK but they have the same problems we do - fast internet capable of HD streaming in the cities, but still too many people with slow connections in outlying places to mean it can replace physical media.

In theory at least, our problem should be easier to fix because we have far less ground to cover.

An on demand HD movie for would probably take a week to download!

@gdeagle Actually judging by details from a quick google. An average 1080p movie file with no extras is 8.6 Gb taken over a 1.5Mb/s DSL, which is reasonable even for yokels, it would take just shy of 13 hours to download this file. Given BT the laggards of the DSL world are now moving to ADSL 2+ in the next three years we should see a lot of people on 6-8 Mb connections. A quick bit of mental arithmetic suggests this would mean 3 and a quarter hours to download a film. Not great not quite streaming but certainly not a week. And this is suggesting in 3 years the tech will have stood still.

donnie: "INTERNET speeds in the u.k.,u.s., and most of the major markets will be up to scratch for at least 720p DL in 2/3 years. allready vigin offer a 50mb broadband. plus you allraedy have sky tv offering films on demand etc..BLU-RAY just has too much competiation from all sides to ever reach the market penetration of DVD. I know speeds are slow in rural areas ,poor countrys but you have to remember it is the "wealthy" west like the usa etc.. who will make digital downloads a sucess, where the vast majority of next gen consoles are sold. BTW do you think the worlds BIGGEST software company msoft havent done their research into these percieved problems"

commercial internet speeds will indeed be up to scratch in 2/3y time, but it being available does not mean that it will be subscribed to by everyone. This site shows that at this moment avg speeds in the states is 4.2mbps, which is too low for movies, but high enough to have a comfortable internet experience. Do you think that everybody will immediately buy into 20mbps speeds just for movies and lose the ability to have a physical product? I seriously doubt that.

as for MS nd the BIGGEST software company: has it occured to you that maybe their "DD's the future" shit is only to rain on Sony's BR parade? Do you think they can mention that "BR's the future"? Wouldn't that be like supporting Sony's decision too much and leaving them out in the cold?

@gdeagle: gon't think you'll have to download 35Gb of stuff. You'll probably have to download 5Gb or so. 720p, lower bitrate, and only one audio track on DD640 max. What are the specs for Xbox Live on-demand movies? That would probably be the standard quality. Not quite BR, but more than DVD.

Donnie,
Virgin is Niche (but do have great speeds) as it's very area specific.
Sky is Niche 10%-15% (esp. HD - again less than 20% of sky subscribers)

I agree, give it 3 yrs and we'll be all downloading content of some sort, (though it needs to be 1080p - as every panel in 2012 will be 1080p).

It's not just rural area's that have shite broadband, general perception in the UK is below average. Our network is only fit for todays standards/requirements, (email, web surfing, online gaming). Our networks are not 21st century yet. Where as some of the old eastern block countries are! (due to being late in the game so are buying today's kit for the first time, rather than having to upgrade already invested infrastructure)

"BTW do you think the worlds BIGGEST software company msoft havent done their research into these percieved problems"
They did announce download domination about 2 yrs ago. I think they were forecasting that for this year. It was when BR finally nailed HDDVD into the coffin.
To be honest, that's not their fault as they were relying on infrastructure. If we had Korea's or Japans networks, we'd be streaming like mad now.

Personally, I support BR as a physical media, and downloading/streaming services do us all a favour, like you said competition and that's only good for the consumer - choice and price.

Alright, maybe not a week but it would not be an impulse thing like "I'm bored, lets watch a movie" while I can get 6 meg in the day it slows to around 0.5 meg between 5 - 11 pm I can't even stream iplayer during peak times let alone a movie.
So I guess if I planned to watch a movie in advance it would be ok.

Absolutely depends on how it is sold, and rights holders attitudes.
Ideally I see this going as a netflicks/itunes style service. Pay a fixed monthly fee and download a list of movies. The service uses times when your PC/console is inactive to download, overnight say. builds up a queue of films and downloads 1-3 of the list and then downloads the next whenever you delete one. Ideally you could also purchase the films at a reasonable price unlocking them for you to use as you wish.
With the way the film companies view IP this is very unlikely but stranger things are happening. 2 years ago is you had suggested something like spotify could exist everyone would of said it will never happen.

The other thing with this is it ignores the possibilities of flash media. I can see a world where easily scratched disks are replaces with flash memory. I would buy on flash, the prices for flash mem are crashing and you could easily set up huge always up to date movie rental shops in photobooth style kiosks. This would rule out download speeds. I don't know what the future is but it is certainly a more open field than the Blu-ray league would like.

@donnie (again)
"The amount of people that torrent movies shows exactly why DL movies are very close in most developed countries, look at the way p.c. gamers go on about STEAM selling millions of games that dont appear in the charts. why are movies an exception ? 720p will be very satisfactory for the vast majority, without the multiple language,7.1 sound etc.. which take up most of the BR disk.......blah"

Yes, there is a market for Download - we are not arguing that (though Torrent is illegal - tsk), it's the fact its not a fast service till the network is ready and BR will be around as the physical media of choice for some time.

Yes,you are right the Steam service works... The XBox live service, soon to be PSN movies, apple store and netflix already offer an alternative download service that will be available to everyone.

I downloaded a movie rental off the apple store. Standard def, watched on my computer. Not great for a movie experience.
Will take a look at the Sony PSN service next month to see how that fairs as the consoles are in the lounge, - ideal for watching movies.
I think download is definitely ideal for rental. Storing a purchased movie, is another logistical nightmare. (RAID - Terrabyte drives).

What if Sky release a new box with streaming?

Back in the summer Sky already announced there are going to offer streaming via existing Sky HD set-top-boxes.

"Sky has also confirmed the launch of a comprehensive ‘pull’ video-on-demand (VOD) service next year, to provide Sky+HD customers with additional choice and control to complement Sky+ and the current Sky Anytime ‘push’ VOD service. This new service will use the broadband capability of existing Sky+HD boxes."

http://corporate.sky.com/media/press_rel...

"(but you probably do have the better combo if i am being honest)"

Thats what i think too :-). I know the PS3 Blue Ray isnt to shabby nor is the best exclusive games. My Blue Ray player is better though and the 360 has the best version of multiplatform AAA titles ( we can all agree on this by now) and the best exclusives IMO. I cant live without the Halo franchise and i love Gears 1+2. The PS3 cant offer me anything i dont already have better.
I own 70+ full price retail games for my 360 so money is not an issue for me though.

DD for movies will not be significant for the entire life-time of the xbox360, also not during its half successor xbox natal or how they will brand it. since i am from the future, i do know that. or it's just my opinion take your pick.

Any BD drive released for the Xbox 360 would be an add-on and used only for movies anyway so it's too late to have any impact on the console for games storage. Now that standalone BD players can be bought for £100 or less, there's far less need to purchase one for a console and, of course, you'd only be able to use if for as long as that machine lasts.

Any Xbox 360 owners wanting a BD player would be far better off buying a standalone unit. Even though I own a PS3, I picked up a £150 Sony BDP-350 player (Profile 2.0) in the summer in case my PS3 ever broke down. Ironically it did exactly that last month so I'm glad I bought one when I did.

If you discovered that the average size of a 1080p movie is 8.6 GB then all I can say is I would not like to watch such a movie as the quality can't be that much better than DVD quality given that those discs can hold 9 GB!

I watched the 98 minute remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre on BD yesterday and the average bitrate was 30 Mbps, which is 3.75 MB per second, 225 MB per minute and 22,050 MB or 22 GB for the entire movie! I've seen some BD movies that almost hit 50 Mbps so I don't believe for one second that that 8.6 GB figure is correct for top-quality BD releases. Maybe for the kind of lesser quality stuff you see on Sky HD or the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace maybe.

Firstly i dont think MS would do this as an add on.. there is no point. BUT do i thnk they should do this for the 720... absolutely. Games are already appearing on two or three DVD's, and DVD is (spacewise) not looking good. Will MS do that, I am not convinced.. not sure MS would want to give Sony money... but I do think they need to do it.

As for "Da internet Speeds"... Donnie you do know that at the moment the government are trying (and failing at the moment) to try and get 2mb as the minimum internet broadband speed. Yes there are companies offering 20mb like BT and Sky offering 16MB, but that does NOT mean that the whole country has access or the money for it. The average internet speed is quite low... so downloading a BR movie is going to take an age. Also take into account the ISP's, they throttle bandwidth when it gets busy, and get stroppy at just the low res BBC iPlayer, you think they are going to allow GB's for a movie... hahaha living in a dream world mate.

One final thing... just because you have a 20MB connection does NOT mean you get 20mb. Remember contention ratio... if you have lots of people in your street all downloading at the same time, your connection will slow. Movie downloads is not going to work for at least another 10 years and then we are still waiting on ISP's to upgrade the tech in the exchanges and sort out contention issues etc.

@makeamazing - I pay £35 per month for a 24 Mbps connection but where I live I typically get 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. I also have a fair usage limit in place of 75 GB per month (not counted if you download between midnight and 6 am). Now if I used that to download games and 1080p movies at 10 to 20 GB then I'd quickly exceed my limits. Thus downloads for HD content is just not going to happen in this country (UK) any time soon. I predict that it'll be almost a decade before almost everyone in the UK can download stuff quickly and without usage policies in place.

It's the reason I believe that physical media for movies and games has a lot of life yet and that the next generation consoles *will* use optical drives. Downloading MP3s (music) at around 100 MB per album is not the same as downloading GBs for movies and games; that's why people have embraced them over buying CDs.

Every year they go on about downloadables taking over yet every year is still hasn't happened, physical media is here to stay for a while yet. Interesting that he's changed his stance slightly, whereas in the past he was saying digital distribution will take over he's now saying 'probably'.

I hope people that say DD on films will takeover in 2-3 years are right, cos i for one will embracethat kind of internet backbone that will be needed for us all to do that.

But lets face its not going to happen, yes for some, for all of us not even close Blu ray is the only HD option that does not discriminate on where you live.

Blu ray & DVD are also the only place you can get every single film, Show me a film downlaod service where every movie studio has signed up and also where you have the option to buy as well as rent.

Last point to those that think MS would spite themselves because they might have to buy a Blu ray license off sony to make a drive. What do you think sonys vaio laptops run off? These companys however competitive d business with each other all the time.

Darren/IronGiant

Yep, 8-10 yrs seems fair.
I'll conceed Download services will be in full swing by then.

@GamesProgrammer
I think the PSN service looked as though most of the movie studios were inboard (I couldn't think of a studio that wasn't -though no doubt smeone will pick this up).
I can't comment on the Xbox service as I don't use it.

@Darren I did say a quick search first result in 1080p movie file size http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.... It does make it clear this will provide the video res says nothing about audio I would guess a lot of the transmission rate there is 7.1 or whatever ridiculous numbers they are now lossless audio. I am not saying that the download would match a blueray for a true movie buff with a £10,000 full dobly video rig but most people listening on a pos sony all in one sound rig or even on the speakers that come with their TV would not be able to tell the difference.
Also worth remembering ADSL 2+ services from a lot of big providers, Be internet owned by O2 provide no download caps. Also ADSL 2+ lines are non contended. If you get 1Mb on a standard 8Mb line you will get 8Mb+ on an ADSL 2+ service. BT are rolling out this service nationwide as we speak.
I don't know weather DD is ready for the limelight personally I think to many people love buying something physical and we will see a much longer period of transition than we did for audio. I just think saying that there are limitations technologically speaking is wrong.
Last thought I promise, all of this is not taking into account the geniuses out there developing lossless compression, it is possible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_da... if they do this you can drop the filesizes even further at the cost of processing on the receiving device. File size on disk or while playing does not necessarily indicate how big a file transfer might be with a little tweaking.

@fingersthebeaver

Going from Dolby Digital (5.1/TruHD) or DTS to the DTSMA 5.1 (or more) audio track is very noticable on a £300 AV amp. Once you have experience DTS MA, you'll never want to listen to anything less.