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Comment by orbitur | Hacker News Reader

The key here is that they only recently started breaking even on the PS3, and it was released in 2006. I think they've learned their lesson.

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Part of the issue was trying to cram a BluRay player into the console at a time when BluRay players were new (and could cost $1k). HD-DVD hadn't even lost the battle when the PS3 came out. That, and going with the Cell processor probably really pumped up the cost.

Blu-Ray "won", right? So it sounds like that was money well spent.

Yep. IIRC at the time Sony said something to the effect that they were willing to lose $4B in the short term to ensure that Blu-ray won the format war.

But what happens if and when digital video goes completely to a streaming/download model? And what about 4K/8K? Can Blu-ray as it stands even support that, or would there have to be yet another disc format?

I'm wondering if perhaps Sony won a Pyrrhic victory here.

Ultimately, all the protons in the Universe will decay, rendering movies obsolete. I'm wondering what the point of anything is, knowing we will all become nothingness some day.

(To be less abstract: they probably made back the money already. Everything else is gravy.)

I think Blu-ray will live out its full allotted decade of life; whether Sony makes back their $4B during that time is questionable but it's their strategy tax to bear. 4K will probably be download-only (and probably fiber-only).

> 4K will probably be download-only (and probably fiber-only).

Legality aside, I'm a member of a private movie tracker. High quality 1080p rips come in at ~12GBs or more for ~1h45m of content. I have an 80Mb connection, and it still takes me about 30-35 minutes to complete the download.

1080p, let alone 4k, downloads are years away for the average consumer. What are they getting these days, 20Mb + download caps? So sure, fiber only, but my god it's a long way off.

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