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In Reply to: RE: it's officially over posted by Joe Murphy Jr on February 19, 2008 at 00:13:27
Charles Hansen of Ayre has always been spot on predicting market trends. He’s a damn good engineer too. That’s why I have always trusted his predictions.
Here's what will happen:
"...If it were up to Sony and Panasonic (and Ole Lund Christensen???), we would have a new format every 3 years so that they could keep people on an endless upgrade cycle and keep selling new hardware..."
That’s right, in 2010, we will have a new Pure-ray disc(amazing new lasers that ultilize all the seven colours of the rainbow) or Plural-ray disc (implying combination of myriad different coloured lasers) ! The format developers for this single-coloured laser Blu-ray format ain't going to recoup their money spent on R&D. As to which name would be used on the next new generation discs, the horizon is still very cloudy inside my crystal ball, so while waiting for the cocaine induced purple haze to clear, let's examine his other predictions first.
"...But the software industry (movie studios) are raking in money hand over fist with standard DVDs. There are 60,000,000 stand alone DVD players in the US alone. The biggest growth market for DVD is yet to come in developing countries (China, India, et cetera). These markets don't give a fig about high definition video...."
He's highly, definitely right. All the DVD marketing & film company guys I spoke to in those 2 countries universally claim that the reasons why DVD got off its butt in their markets is due to pirated DVDs that brought the prices down, so that even the shirtless, poor Chinese and Indian farmers can afford to buy the discs. Blu-ray disc code is unbreakable, so these poor Chinese or Indian farmers ain’t never gonna get their hands on High Definition video. DVD is more than good enough for these peasants.
"...How long do you think it will be before there are even 10,000 Blu-Ray players at $4,000 a pop? Two years? Three years? How much money can a movie studio make selling Blu-Ray discs to 10,000 potential customers?..."
So what he underestimated Blu-ray potential sales a little bit? Sales figures are for sissies like Dewy. Film companies like Paramount and (to a lesser known fact) Warner, actually are making money, not by selling Blu-ray discs or HD-DVD discs, but by getting under-the-table money (in the millions) from Toshiba and Sony respectively. (why else did you think Warner defected to Blu-ray and defecated on HD-DVD???) So when that money ran out, the high moral Warner Brothers will go back into HD-DVDs.
And Hansen may yet be proven right again for his next statement.
"...The reality is that there won't be strong market penetration in the US for *any* new format until the price drops below $200 for a player. (That's exactly what happened for DVD.) But that would erase the entire reason for even making Blu-Ray players. Once the players become a commodity, the Japanese cannot compete against the Chinese. Then they'll try and sell you Purple-Ray..."
Yes. It's going to be called Purple-Ray! You heard it here first.
"...Blu-Ray ain't gonna fly for consumer electronics. Computers, yes. There the demand for a removeable recording format that can store 50 GB is huge. It's just not practical to back up a 100 GB hard drive onto DVDs..."
No wonder Sony cap the HDD on their PS3 at 80GB only. They must have hired Hansen as their consultant! He’s got a first hand look at the impending disaster waiting to happen.
Look out for the world’s first Purple-ray disc player from Ayre. Hurray! It’ll be the first time he’s well ahead of other manufacturers. Racerguy and I will be the first in line to buy one.
Follow Ups:
the realm of video and the high res audio will be dominated by the mass market companies. That is a fact I've observed for the past decade or so.
The reason is simple: money. Most high end companies are rather small and and have limited resources and manpower. People like Sony and Panasonic have access to hundreds of engineers and multi millions of dollars. High end companies can not even dream of matching salaries paid to top engineers of Cisco, Microsoft, Atari and others in the compute design and software field. A great engineer employed by those companies probably earns more than the heads of most 'high end' companies. Just where do you suppose the brightest and most talented designers from universities and colleges are going to seek work, you suppose?
A high end company can not afford to commission proprietary specialty chips: the return on the investment is simply too small to justify the cost. While high end audio likes to see itself as catering to the elite and being a leader in technology, the sheer size of the high end market is too small and consumers are probably more worried about appearance and prestige than true performance.
The digital/video field simply moves far too quickly for the typical high end company to probably even keep abreast. The last really high end attempts in the venue were the development of the Ultra analog chip, now basically extinct, and the development of the HDCD by Keith Johnson and Reference Recordings, now a foot note in the history of digital. At the time of introduction both were quite an improvement, I thought, but their failure simply points out the limited scope of the penetration of the high end into a mass market commodity.
The sweeping success of MP-3 and the ipod further demonstrates that the masses are not so concerned with extreme fidelity as they are with convenience and cost. The proliferation of the Chinese audio invasion further demonstrates the public's preoccupation with low cost.
Dvds may be very popular in China, but at $1 per disc, jewel box extra, most studios are not profiting from its proliferation. The public may also will put up with the video taped versions of movies, but as the Chinese economy develops a middle class they too will want a better disc.
Remember, high res video is the provenance of an owner of a larger TV set. I believe in the US 50 inch screens are now rapidly becoming the norm. If the prevailing set size in China is 20 inch, high res is not really viable, simply because of the size of the set. High res video simply does not make much of a difference.
Surround sound similarly was not important in Europe and Japan, again because homes were smaller and thus the typical consumer had no need of a sound system that was larger in presentation than what the TV set can provide. Now that Plasma and LCD's are common place and significantly more affordable, surround sound is making significant inroads into those foreign markets.
Blue ray penetration into the market is highly dependent on the size of the screen you watch. The size of the screen is determined by the general economic status of the individual. Prices are dropping rapidly, however, so you will see a proliferation of larger and larger sets. Prices are also dropping significantly for Blu ray machines, and I see machines in the under $400 price category already, and I am not consciously trying to keep up with the technology.
This places further strain on the resources of the high end. While Ed Meitner has been able to do it, it was only with the cooperation of Sony. Sony considers itself to be high end. Their excellent high end ES CD transports have never really been released to the general high end manufacturers. As one Sony administrator I spoke to commented: "why bother with the flies around a cow when you can get the whole cow itself?"
Stu
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Rather sad, as I believe he is one of the better sources of audio information out there. I just wish he wasn't so "out there" on this one.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
make a Blu ray player, because he is also a good businessman.
But of course he will defend his current products until he release the Blu ray.
It was the same story with SACD.
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