[Leonardo]

Blu-Ray... could someone fill me in?

those little players in bestbuy seem expensive!! I think I'm gonna wait until I have a plasma tv and enogh money to pay rent and eat

No need for a Blu-Ray in my 19" $99 tv

[Mihai]

The Playstation 3 will have a Blu-Ray player in it, so you could buy that and have game console for the price I don't know when the PS3 will be available in Europe though, probably spring 2007 or even later.

But wait, you're in Miami, so you can probably get one in Dec 2006, if you are lucky enough to find one...

[Leonardo]

I'm not interested in buying it.... I just wanted to know what is it?

is it the same as a hd dvd?

[Maxer]

It's the alternative to the HD DVD, it apparently holds almost twice the information that a HD DVD does which comes out to be about 50GB. Problem with it is that it takes things like games an extremely long time to load and Blu ray's cost more to produce than HD DVD's. Then you have the different factions backing them, Microsoft want's HD DVD to succeed and Sony wants Blue Ray's to work, and behind each new technology is a group of companies that have their own reasons for wanting each technology to become main stream.

The problem as I see it is there isn't a big demand for HD yet as most people don't own HD TV's. Then there is the move by cable companies and the internet to have totally digital content that can be ordered at the press of a button, kind of like how I tunes works. I think it's kind of dumb to spend all that money on a new player and media for it when in a few years everything is going to go to downloads anyway.

[Mihai]

Yes, but you will still need a way to store it
Storage is actually a pretty big problem, with data amounts increasing. DVD's are no longer enough, and there's the problem of life span (DVD's rot). i'm not sure what the lifespan of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disks are, but if it's about the same as a DVD, we'll have huge storage problems in the future if no media comes out to adress the issue.

Imagine people with huge dvd collections. They problably don't know that in about 10-15 years, most of their dvds will have problems with playback. A bad solution would be to move all that data on hard drives, but those only have a lifespan of about 3-4 years, if you're lucky

[Maxer]

There are several companies working on that problem, one promising technology I've seen is storing holographic data on crystals using lasers. Using this method you get a vastly larger storage capacity without the problems of current media and access times are at the speed of light and you can get data transfer rates up to a gigabit per second.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/13/7/7

[Leonardo]

the battle of betamax vs VHS is back

[michaelplogue]

the batle of betamax vs VHS is back

that's pretty much it.......

[aitraaz]

Imagine people with huge dvd collections. They problably don't know that in about 10-15 years, most of their dvds will have problems with playback. A bad solution would be to move all that data on hard drives, but those only have a lifespan of about 3-4 years, if you're lucky

Ok, so, lets say, for archiving work, whats the best and most durable solution for backup then? .dat tapes? what else??

[Maxer]

Tapes are the best and only long term storage solution, the best DVD's or CD's are only going to last about 5 years before they start to deteriorate. It's a sad fact that we are all doing digital work and we have no long term storage options beyond a technology that has been around longer than many of us have been alive.

[Leonardo]

Tapes are the best and only long term storage solution, the best DVD's or CD's are only going to last about 5 years before they start to deteriorate. It's a sad fact that we are all doing digital work and we have no long term storage options beyond a technology that has been around longer than many of us have been alive.

and the sad part is that I didn't even know about it!!! All my school work is gonna be lost forever not to mention my full collection of pron