Samsung Exec Says "Blu-ray has 5 years left"

[Ian]

Interesting read over at Pocket-lint...

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news. ... left.phtml

Samsung has said that it sees the Blu-ray format only lasting a further 5 years before it is replaced by another format or technology.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10", Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK told Pocket-lint in an interview.

Hoping to capitalise before it's too late, Griffiths believes that 2008 is the format's year.

[deinabog]

Can't say I agree with this. it's a given that Blu-ray players, recorders, and media will drop in price over the next years or so and when that happens more people will buy them. This reminds me of when DVD made its debut back in '97. The players were expensive as were the upgrade kits for PCs (anyone remember Diamond and Creative's first efforts?). Eventually the price dropped and people started buying them instead of VCRs.

The human need to hold physical media will ensure Blu-ray sticks around for quite some time yet. Since the format wars only ended earlier this year it's premature to start predicting Blu-ray's demise. It sounds like making the players is a bit expensive for Samsung right now. Or this dude just doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Ian]

Or this dude just doesn't know what he's talking about.

I think this is the case.

I agree with the need to hold physical media. If you look at the music industry, downloads have taken a huge chunk of sales, but there are still alot of people buying CD's... especially those that aren't satisfied with the low bit rates of downloadable tracks.

[Dartman]

On anything critical I want hard physical copies, too easy to loose to hardware crash or something. Plus I like round shiny objects...