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Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty tech savvy. I write code. I have a half-decent living room setup, with an HDTV and surround sound. I have an Xbox 360. I get the latest gear when it tickles my fancy. New technology does not scare me.

And I have absolutely zero urge to buy a Blu-Ray player. None at all. And I don't expect that to change any time soon. DVDs are good enough on the rare I occasion I need them. Netflix Watch Instantly is awesome. I'm at the point where if I want to watch something I can't stream from Netflix I say fuck it and watch something else.

Marco's right to be skeptical of the next generation of physical media distribution. That game is going to be over inside of five years.

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I'm all the above and I love my Blu-Ray player. Netflix Watch instantly is full of mediocre B-rated movies. Good for background noise on a saturday afternoon, yet too boring for night time viewing.

DVDs are decent but all my movie purchases or netflix rentals these days are Blu rays. I refuse to purchase drm time bombs from itunes or amazon.

Netflix Watch Instantly is full of mediocre B-rated movies. Even the foreign film selection isn't as good as I had expected it to be, considering how horrible it's A-rated movie selection is.

And about BluRays vs. DVDs. There is no comparison if you care about picture quality & movie experience, while trying to own the movie. Try watching the first 20 minutes of Dark Knight on BluRay on a decent quality screen at 120HZ, then watch it on DVD. You will buy a BluRay player.

Amen. Like "Once you had black, you never go back" (lol), once you've seen a movie in full HD, normal resolution just sucks...

DVDs are OK, but Blu-Ray players and discs are finally getting affordable, and they are a real improvement.

I'm particularly interested in Blu-Ray disks for data because I do projects today that involve burning 10-30 DVDs and my life would be easier with fewer disks.

Someday I'm going to replace my old PPC Mac Mini, and once choice I'd consider is a new Mac Mini -- it's in a wonderful form factor that fits right under my HDTV. Although I live in an average sized house, I'm very sensitive to the volume that my possessions take up, so it would be sweet to have a Blu-Ray player inside a Mac Mini, rather than having to find a spot to stash a bulky Blu-Ray player next to the game system and other paraphernalia that's around the TV.

I'm trying not to sound like a troll here but: why are you comfortable buying DRM time-bombs in fragile plastic form? I think Apple or Amazon's DRM servers are equally likely to be viable 10 years from now.

My bet is that in ten years, today's Blu-ray DRM schemes are pretty much as busted as dvd-css is today. It sure shows cracks already, and the bittorrent scene certainly seems to have no problem having high quality bd-rips.

Of course, if these online services become big enough for anyone to bother cracking the DRM, they are likely to be headed for a similar destiny.

Because at least a Blu Ray disc is a standard that is playable by a wide range of devices and vendors. You're right that Apple and Amazon aren't dying any time soon, so I should've said I don't want a single vendor determining how I play their videos.

The real question is simply whether the estimated longevity of a Blu Ray disc is greater than the estimated longevity of one of the major online video vendors. I'm not sure I'd bet against the physical media deteriorating or drives requiring replacement or upgrades before then - and since it's usually cost-neutral across the form-factors, there's a temptation to bet on software lasting longer than hardware.

While NetFlix Watch Instant definitely does have a large amount of B-rated (and lower) movies, I've still been able to find a huge amount of things that are really interesting for me to watch. For those that really enjoy blockbuster and big name titles, there really isn't much selection, but there are great films to be seen, so I wouldn't be quick to categorize what's available as junk.

There are lots of great movies on Netflix Watch Instantly, the problem is more the discovery process.

This site is a godsend for that: http://www.instantwatcher.com

Blu-Ray was good for one thing, and one thing only.

Watching Planet Earth on my roommate's 42" (with 8-speaker surround)

No, you are utterly wrong, and here’s why:

There is also BBC Life.

You might want to keep your eyes out for the Human Planet blueray release. Wikipedia says region 1 comes out on April 26th[1].

I've just finished watching all 8 parts; it was mindblowing throughout for it's stories and exquisitely shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Planet#DVD_and_Blu-ray_re...

>if I want to watch something I can't stream from Netflix I say fuck it and watch something else

Right on. Except I'll still buy the DVD for a foreign film. Netflix Instant doesn't seem to have enough of the ones I want (i.e. Y Tu Mama, Tambien).

Renting movies on discs is so old school. Who today wants to deal with something that's all scratched to hell?

I also go for the DVD when you can only get the dubbed versions of foreign films (mainly things like anime) on instant.

BluRay has scratch resistance built into the spec. Get one from Netflix and you'll notice a surprising lack of scratches.

I have two Blu–Ray players, both of which are gathering dust.

I stopped buying Blu-ray discs after one of the players warned that it needed to be upgraded to play the disc, and the other player simply wouldn't play the disc. I don't care what the underlying reasons are, I'm just not interested in playing the upgrade game with a consumer device.

We've gone back to buying DVDs which we can rip to watch on the device of our choice, or we watch video on demand from Amazon/Netflix/etc.

Let me get this straight - you would rather treat the machine as obsolete and not use it any more than extend its features by upgrading it?

I don't know what sort of Blu-Ray player you have, but both the ps3 and the netflix-capable thing my BiL has include a network connection port around the back. This strikes me as far superior to the old approach where you had to take a buggy or outdated device back to a dealer for a replacement, or sell/donate your existing model to someone if you wanted the improved model. Upgradeable firmware extends the life of the product you bought, generally at zero $ cost and requiring only a few minutes of your time.

As a kid I started hacking before I knew the name of the activity, because I liked finding out how things worked and was surprised to discover that many cheap consumer devices had the same components and functionality as higher priced ones, just disabled by a jumper or solder bridge on a circuit board. Later I discovered that many digital devices came with replaceable EPROMs and that carrying out the replacement required only a miniature screwdriver and a little patience. A good chunk of my career has revolved around selling or developing or consulting on making products more modular and user-configurable and arguing against the inherently wasteful approach of planned obsolescence. The increasing popularity of network connections on video players, DVRs, and consoles has been a big factor in getting streaming services like Netflix from concept into reality, since most people don't want to build video servers of their own.

I can see why you're pissed off with the blu-ray player that just won't play the disc; it's bad standard setting/QA not to have any kind of fallback handling. But your other player is upgradeable precisely so as to avoid this kind of problem. I bet that was even one of the selling points in the product description. I'm baffled that you consider this so much hassle you would prefer to use an inferior technology.

I consider it a waste of my time to pop a disc in only to be told the drive needs to be upgraded. Plug it into the network (because I learned that if I leave it plugged in the discs spend 30-45 minutes downloading crap over the network that I have no interest in watching) …anyway, plug it in, click upgrade, and 15-30 minutes goes by while it downloads and then does the upgrade. In theory.

If it was a once in a year thing, then maybe fine, but each of the last three BD's I tried playing required an upgrade. I went through the process twice, but it sort of kills the interest in watching the movie if I have to upgrade each time. Perhaps it was incredibly bad luck, but I really have better things to do with my time then upgrade a consumer device every time I want to use it.

I'm not the one treating the machine as obsolete, it's the media industry which has decided that the best way to combat piracy is to make its customers go through this stupid upgrade process (which may or may not work, and may or may not brick the player). And yes, I would prefer to use inferior technology if I can use it, play it, reuse it as I find necessary. I can burn DVDs once to mp4 format and play to my heart's content on a variety of devices.

Certainly, that should not be happening every time, and sounds like a QA issue at the publishing end. From what I remember of Blu-ray disc authoring, content has a tag for the firmware version it expects to see, but can be set to Require or Warn if it finds an older version present - 90% of the time Warn is more appropriate because while the disc author's firmware may be more recent the content doesn't necessarily depend on any features in that version.

I'm curious about whether these were all from the same studio or finishing house (a lot of video publishers outsource the disc authoring to a specialist company, if you are the sort of person who likes to sit through credits you'll see them come up at the very end). Chances are the publishers are not even aware of this problem, since it's not in their interest to make stuff unplayable if it doesn't have to be. Most producers are rather technophobic. I'm sort of curious about which titles were involved, but although I know some people in Hollywood it's unlikely that I'll be able to track down an answer about this.

Plug it into the network (because I learned that if I leave it plugged in the discs spend 30-45 minutes downloading crap over the network that I have no interest in watching)

It seems to me that your real complaint is that the extra features offered my most movie studios are not that great in terms of content. You do want to watch them (or you wouldn't have tried and been obstructed by the download requirement), but are generally disappointed by the quality of the supplementary content after you've downloaded it.

I don't really remember at this point whether they were from the same studio, filming house, nor distributor, nor do I care to dig into it.

As far as the network thing goes: I assume it's extra features, but don't know, it wasn't something I requested, I'd just clicked "play" on the player and, well, watched as it said it was downloading content.

Rather than finding fault with my walking away from blue-ray, could you explain to me why increasing the friction in the experience over what we were used to with DVDs is going to benefit the entertainment industry?

I've noticed that some large retailers put out new releases on blue-ray and hold DVDs for later release (two or three weeks later). A local Walmart close to me does that. So If I don't own a blue-ray player and I want to buy a new release, I have to wait longer to get the DVD or purchase a blue-ray player.

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