p*m
2 楼
Samsung Drops Blu-ray, Drives Nail into Disc-Media Coffin
Samsung, one of the world’s most prominent electronics manufacturers, and
leader in the development of Blu-ray, has announced it will no longer
produce and distribute Blu-ray players in the US. That announcement also
included Samsung’s acknowledgement that it has completely abandoned plans
to roll out a new, high-end 4K ultra high definition (UHD) Blu-ray player
originally scheduled for release this year.
It’s shocking news from a company that has been a major backer of the Blu-
ray high-definition media format since its introduction over a decade ago.
When the technology was first unveiled in the mid-2000s, Blu-ray waged a
protracted war against the rival HD-DVD format. While Samsung and Sony
backed Blu-ray – with Sony adding a Blu-ray player to its PlayStation 3
console – HD-DVD received support from Toshiba and Microsoft, the latter
releasing an HD-DVD add-on for its Xbox 360 video game system.
Despite HD-DVD hardware being generally cheaper, it lost out to Blu-ray. By
2008, the format war was decided and any remaining HD-DVD discs were
relegated to the bargain bin before disappearing completely once Microsoft
and Toshiba stopped supporting the format, Blu-ray became the dominant HD
disc format. The disc format war was a fascinating study as it ran hot
between 2006 and 2008. The battle for hearts and minds of your living-room
HDTV between Blu-ray and HD-DVD can be seen as a proxy war between PC
technology and an incumbent consumer electronics business. Blu-ray’s
victory meant many more years of relevance for the kinds of plastic and
brushed aluminum black boxes made by traditional consumer electronics
companies like Sony and Samsung.
The defeat of HD-DVD in ’08 could also be seen as the defeat of an
insurgent HTPC market, backed largely by Microsoft. Sony’s win had staved
off the threat of Television entertainment being centralized around a PC
operating system. It ensured your TV’s main display would look less like
Windows 10, and would remain an A/V receiver switching between a variety of
separate sources. Blu-ray saved the traditional consumer electronics model,
and relegated HTPC to a niche market for several more years.
But the victory was short lived. Just as Blu-ray players became more
affordable, a push away from physical media emerged. This was partly fueled
by consumer dissatisfaction with the cost of purchasing Blu-ray discs, which
, like DVDs, could cost upwards of $30 upon a title’s initial release.
Digital streaming services like Netflix offered TV-shows and movies for a
monthly subscription that amounted to far less than a single Blu-ray. With
high-speed Internet service rapidly expanding, the need for physical media
has been drastically reduced. In short, buying Blu-ray players and discs can
get expensive, while accessing streaming movies and TV shows has become
simple, straightforward, and surprisingly cheap. Today, affordable HDMI plug
-in devices and smart TVs running on-demand subscription apps make it easier
to forego any form of conventional set-top-box, and encourages a wider
audience to “cut the cord”.
Samsung isn’t the first company to ditch Blu-ray. Last year, Chinese
electronics firm Oppo Digital made a similar announcement. Although, it
remains unclear how other hardware companies, such as Sony, Panasonic, and
LG, will respond to one of its main competitors bowing out of the market.
A Lament to the Tragedy of Physical Media
Alien Quadrilogy
When the end finally comes - I will miss you, my beloved disc. I will miss
having a product, a self-contained piece of personal property that allows me
to proudly declare: “I OWN the Alien quadrilogy!” I will miss the
quantifiable quality standards of Blu-ray releases. Sure, in theory,
streaming media is capable of the same sound and picture quality as any disc
. But in practice, real-world results are very different, as the Internet
can be a cruel parent to a pristine picture.
Blu-ray discs routinely carry the latest in high-resolution, multi-channel
audio tracks. DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD are common on both 1080P
and 4K discs. But streaming media is incentivized to use as little bandwidth
as possible, and will inevitably use as much compression as it can.
Meanwhile, technologies like adaptive bit-rate streaming adjusts picture and
sound quality to correspond to your household’s available data-rates at
any given moment. This means network conditions will result in fluctuating
quality. Unfortunately, only few of us who care about optimal sound and
video quality remain. The market has spoken, and it prefers technologies of
scale over quality. Or, at least, that is the demand the market makes of us.
I’ll also miss the intangibles, like the purchase of a brand new disc. I’
ll miss that distinctive smell when cracking open a new Blu-ray box, as I
inhale what are probably the gaseous residue of countless harmful polymers.
I’ll miss the confidence of knowing the exact data-rate between player and
A/V receiver, as presented in real-time by my Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player. I
’m assured of a quantifiable constant, free of unnecessary added
compression, as I enjoy optimal picture and sound quality at all times. And
then there’s the matter of ownership.
Many of us like to collect, we may have favorite movies and shows on disc
that we actually own. And we do own them, unlike movies and shows sitting
behind authentication walls on iTunes or PSN. It’s nice having the right to
lend a disc to a friend, even with the downside of having to remember to
get it back. The always-online world of streaming and cloud media means
owning nothing, with availability at the whim of the shifting and often
temporary service licensing agreements. Your favorite movie on Netflix could
be here today, but gone tomorrow.
But smart TV apps and affordable HDMI-plug-in devices are getting better,
easier to use and cheaper, making it easier for the mainstream consumer to
join in the cord cutting trend. But there’s a somewhat unnerving reason
these devices are so cheap and readily available. It’s because they’re
spying on you. Smart TV has become a standard feature on many affordable TVs
these days, it’s almost as if the manufacturer wants you to use its smart
TV feature. And they do, because it’s a potential recurring revenue stream.
Every aspect of your binge-viewing is a carefully tracked and profiled
commodity in a big-data marketplace. You have no rights pertaining to the
data collected about you, even if you do read the fine print on the end user
license agreement.
Samsung’s Exit from the Blu-ray Market
Samsung iTunesBut today, it’s still way too early to declare the death of
physical media. With the price of 4K UHD players becoming more reasonable,
sales of players and discs are actually on the rise. According to one report
, sales of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs rose an impressive 68% in the third quarter
of 2018, suggesting there’s still life in HD players and media. So, it’s a
surprise that Samsung is abandoning the market in which it has so much
history. The first 4K Blu-ray player in the US was Samsung’s UDB-K8500.
Since 4K Blu-ray remains the best sound and picture quality available,
without the need for a Internet connection, it will probably be some time
before we see the format completely die off. But we’re left to wonder if
Apple nudged Samsung in the direction of abandoning Blu-ray. It was
announced at CES 2019 that new Samsung smart TVs will come with iTunes built
-in. Perhaps the sacrifice of the US Blu-ray player market was Samsung’s
price of admission into the Apple ecosystem.
It’s also worth noting that Samsung is terminating sales of Blu-ray players
in the U.S. market but not Europe or Asia. It’s conceivable that Blu-ray
players will continue to be available in U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico.
But it’s also hard to dismiss the weight of Samsung’s message in exiting
this market. It has been one of the dominant companies, not just in
producing HD and 4K players, but also the TVs capable of displaying the
formats. In completely abandoning Blu-ray players, Samsung is sending the
message that it believes physical media is on the way out, as it drives one
more nail into the coffin of disc media.
Samsung, one of the world’s most prominent electronics manufacturers, and
leader in the development of Blu-ray, has announced it will no longer
produce and distribute Blu-ray players in the US. That announcement also
included Samsung’s acknowledgement that it has completely abandoned plans
to roll out a new, high-end 4K ultra high definition (UHD) Blu-ray player
originally scheduled for release this year.
It’s shocking news from a company that has been a major backer of the Blu-
ray high-definition media format since its introduction over a decade ago.
When the technology was first unveiled in the mid-2000s, Blu-ray waged a
protracted war against the rival HD-DVD format. While Samsung and Sony
backed Blu-ray – with Sony adding a Blu-ray player to its PlayStation 3
console – HD-DVD received support from Toshiba and Microsoft, the latter
releasing an HD-DVD add-on for its Xbox 360 video game system.
Despite HD-DVD hardware being generally cheaper, it lost out to Blu-ray. By
2008, the format war was decided and any remaining HD-DVD discs were
relegated to the bargain bin before disappearing completely once Microsoft
and Toshiba stopped supporting the format, Blu-ray became the dominant HD
disc format. The disc format war was a fascinating study as it ran hot
between 2006 and 2008. The battle for hearts and minds of your living-room
HDTV between Blu-ray and HD-DVD can be seen as a proxy war between PC
technology and an incumbent consumer electronics business. Blu-ray’s
victory meant many more years of relevance for the kinds of plastic and
brushed aluminum black boxes made by traditional consumer electronics
companies like Sony and Samsung.
The defeat of HD-DVD in ’08 could also be seen as the defeat of an
insurgent HTPC market, backed largely by Microsoft. Sony’s win had staved
off the threat of Television entertainment being centralized around a PC
operating system. It ensured your TV’s main display would look less like
Windows 10, and would remain an A/V receiver switching between a variety of
separate sources. Blu-ray saved the traditional consumer electronics model,
and relegated HTPC to a niche market for several more years.
But the victory was short lived. Just as Blu-ray players became more
affordable, a push away from physical media emerged. This was partly fueled
by consumer dissatisfaction with the cost of purchasing Blu-ray discs, which
, like DVDs, could cost upwards of $30 upon a title’s initial release.
Digital streaming services like Netflix offered TV-shows and movies for a
monthly subscription that amounted to far less than a single Blu-ray. With
high-speed Internet service rapidly expanding, the need for physical media
has been drastically reduced. In short, buying Blu-ray players and discs can
get expensive, while accessing streaming movies and TV shows has become
simple, straightforward, and surprisingly cheap. Today, affordable HDMI plug
-in devices and smart TVs running on-demand subscription apps make it easier
to forego any form of conventional set-top-box, and encourages a wider
audience to “cut the cord”.
Samsung isn’t the first company to ditch Blu-ray. Last year, Chinese
electronics firm Oppo Digital made a similar announcement. Although, it
remains unclear how other hardware companies, such as Sony, Panasonic, and
LG, will respond to one of its main competitors bowing out of the market.
A Lament to the Tragedy of Physical Media
Alien Quadrilogy
When the end finally comes - I will miss you, my beloved disc. I will miss
having a product, a self-contained piece of personal property that allows me
to proudly declare: “I OWN the Alien quadrilogy!” I will miss the
quantifiable quality standards of Blu-ray releases. Sure, in theory,
streaming media is capable of the same sound and picture quality as any disc
. But in practice, real-world results are very different, as the Internet
can be a cruel parent to a pristine picture.
Blu-ray discs routinely carry the latest in high-resolution, multi-channel
audio tracks. DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD are common on both 1080P
and 4K discs. But streaming media is incentivized to use as little bandwidth
as possible, and will inevitably use as much compression as it can.
Meanwhile, technologies like adaptive bit-rate streaming adjusts picture and
sound quality to correspond to your household’s available data-rates at
any given moment. This means network conditions will result in fluctuating
quality. Unfortunately, only few of us who care about optimal sound and
video quality remain. The market has spoken, and it prefers technologies of
scale over quality. Or, at least, that is the demand the market makes of us.
I’ll also miss the intangibles, like the purchase of a brand new disc. I’
ll miss that distinctive smell when cracking open a new Blu-ray box, as I
inhale what are probably the gaseous residue of countless harmful polymers.
I’ll miss the confidence of knowing the exact data-rate between player and
A/V receiver, as presented in real-time by my Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player. I
’m assured of a quantifiable constant, free of unnecessary added
compression, as I enjoy optimal picture and sound quality at all times. And
then there’s the matter of ownership.
Many of us like to collect, we may have favorite movies and shows on disc
that we actually own. And we do own them, unlike movies and shows sitting
behind authentication walls on iTunes or PSN. It’s nice having the right to
lend a disc to a friend, even with the downside of having to remember to
get it back. The always-online world of streaming and cloud media means
owning nothing, with availability at the whim of the shifting and often
temporary service licensing agreements. Your favorite movie on Netflix could
be here today, but gone tomorrow.
But smart TV apps and affordable HDMI-plug-in devices are getting better,
easier to use and cheaper, making it easier for the mainstream consumer to
join in the cord cutting trend. But there’s a somewhat unnerving reason
these devices are so cheap and readily available. It’s because they’re
spying on you. Smart TV has become a standard feature on many affordable TVs
these days, it’s almost as if the manufacturer wants you to use its smart
TV feature. And they do, because it’s a potential recurring revenue stream.
Every aspect of your binge-viewing is a carefully tracked and profiled
commodity in a big-data marketplace. You have no rights pertaining to the
data collected about you, even if you do read the fine print on the end user
license agreement.
Samsung’s Exit from the Blu-ray Market
Samsung iTunesBut today, it’s still way too early to declare the death of
physical media. With the price of 4K UHD players becoming more reasonable,
sales of players and discs are actually on the rise. According to one report
, sales of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs rose an impressive 68% in the third quarter
of 2018, suggesting there’s still life in HD players and media. So, it’s a
surprise that Samsung is abandoning the market in which it has so much
history. The first 4K Blu-ray player in the US was Samsung’s UDB-K8500.
Since 4K Blu-ray remains the best sound and picture quality available,
without the need for a Internet connection, it will probably be some time
before we see the format completely die off. But we’re left to wonder if
Apple nudged Samsung in the direction of abandoning Blu-ray. It was
announced at CES 2019 that new Samsung smart TVs will come with iTunes built
-in. Perhaps the sacrifice of the US Blu-ray player market was Samsung’s
price of admission into the Apple ecosystem.
It’s also worth noting that Samsung is terminating sales of Blu-ray players
in the U.S. market but not Europe or Asia. It’s conceivable that Blu-ray
players will continue to be available in U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico.
But it’s also hard to dismiss the weight of Samsung’s message in exiting
this market. It has been one of the dominant companies, not just in
producing HD and 4K players, but also the TVs capable of displaying the
formats. In completely abandoning Blu-ray players, Samsung is sending the
message that it believes physical media is on the way out, as it drives one
more nail into the coffin of disc media.
a*g
3 楼
网络快了，光盘太不方便了。
【在 p*******m 的大作中提到】
: Samsung Drops Blu-ray, Drives Nail into Disc-Media Coffin
: Samsung, one of the world’s most prominent electronics manufacturers, and
: leader in the development of Blu-ray, has announced it will no longer
: produce and distribute Blu-ray players in the US. That announcement also
: included Samsung’s acknowledgement that it has completely abandoned plans
: to roll out a new, high-end 4K ultra high definition (UHD) Blu-ray player
: originally scheduled for release this year.
: It’s shocking news from a company that has been a major backer of the Blu-
: ray high-definition media format since its introduction over a decade ago.
: When the technology was first unveiled in the mid-2000s, Blu-ray waged a
【在 p*******m 的大作中提到】
: Samsung Drops Blu-ray, Drives Nail into Disc-Media Coffin
: Samsung, one of the world’s most prominent electronics manufacturers, and
: leader in the development of Blu-ray, has announced it will no longer
: produce and distribute Blu-ray players in the US. That announcement also
: included Samsung’s acknowledgement that it has completely abandoned plans
: to roll out a new, high-end 4K ultra high definition (UHD) Blu-ray player
: originally scheduled for release this year.
: It’s shocking news from a company that has been a major backer of the Blu-
: ray high-definition media format since its introduction over a decade ago.
: When the technology was first unveiled in the mid-2000s, Blu-ray waged a
s*i
4 楼
capital marvel 8k
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