Andy Pennell's Blog

I agree that at this point Blu-ray on 360 doesn't make much sense.  Even so,  I'll be very interested to see what happens for the next generation of consoles.  Even if it's three years from now,  I don't think that the infrastructure will be ready for a pure digital distribution scenario.  And DVD won't provide enough capacity as were already seeing developers trimming down content or issuing games that span multiple DVD's.  So what then?

Hi Andy.

I think your blog entry shows you are still affected by some bitterness related to the failure of the hd dvd format, which is of course is understandable :-)

Anyway, I think a blu-ray add-on for the 360 would be great, for all the same reason the hd dvd driver was great. I get to see high def movies with great sound. I think most hd dvd add-on owners would like a blu-ray drive, now that hd dvd dead - for the same reasons they bought the hd dvd drive. We want to see high def movies - we didn't buy it just to have a hd dvd drive ;-).

I live in Denmark, and don't have access to video marketplace or netflix. From Microsoft standpoint I don't understand why they remove one of the PS3's (the only?) selling points and give the xbox 360 customers the option to by a blu-ray drive.

So right now I am considering buying a PS3 only due to blu-ray playback. I would never consider the PS3, if I could by a blu-ray add-on - then I could have one console to rule them all :-).

/René

andypennell:  It's funny,  I was about to ask a followup re: using HD-DVD just for the data aspect.  You raise good points, but wouldn't you benefit from economies of scale by going with Blu-ray over HD-DVD (assuming we're ignoring the movie-playback angle and strictly using the format for data)?  That way you get the size benefits but don't have to muck around with that BD-J nonsense.

And you're right, it's not hard to imagine flash media being a viable format down the road.  Plus it'd be ironic to see the next generation of games go back to the cartridge roots of their ancestors :-)

OK, I get all of your points as to why MS supporting Blue-Ray is a bad thing Andy.  But what your (MS) doing, is making me buy a PS3, because the stand alone Blue-Ray players are an unknown quantity if Sony choose to roll out a new profile.

MS offer downloads, but they are only for American users, the rest of the world has 2 choices, buy a PS3, or take a gamble on a stand alone player, either way, this is not a win for us consumers, nor is it a win for Microsoft.

I love my Xbox360, and I love the HD-DVD player, and I would love a Blue-Ray player to make my Xbox give me the best of all worlds.

I fail to see why you think this is a good situation?

I bought an HD-DVD drive for my xbox about a year ago from a second hand shop (£14) and I think it was the bargain of the century, especially as the HD-DVDs have averaged around £6-7 each for my collection (now up to around 43 discs). My only gripe now is that there are some films I want to get in HD which I can't without going Blu (The Dark Knight for eg). I succumbed with Hellboy II and bought the DVD.

I am very close to buying a Bluray player now, but I want to wait until the prices come down a bit further. I was even thinking about getting a BD drive for my PC and streaming it, but I can't seem to find a way of doing it (one I would need to get a wired connection to do the HD signal). Tversity could do it if I ripped the Blu-Ray onto my HD.

I wonder how long it will be until someone finds a way to hack in to the xbox to allow you to install a BD drive in the HD-DVD caddy... I'm not even sure if it would be remotely possible, but he would be very popular!

I'm also pleased with the portable device feature as I have a huge external drive with lots of divx films on it! I just wish you could use the external drive to save downloads (I've only got the 20Gb HD drive :-( ).