Blu-ray Prognosis: Samsung gives Five Years to Live, BDA says Life Eternal

Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) founding member and hardware manufacturer Samsung doesn’t see much of a lifespan for the nascent Blu-ray optical disc format, but the format’s cheerleaders over at the BDA claim the optical disc is as ubiquitous as paper and predictably give the format a long, healthy life.

• BetaNews: Samsung UK exec: Blu-ray's got five years to live
• Wired: Disc Makers Swear Discs Won't Die

In a recent interview with Pocket-lint, Samsung’s UK Director of Consumer Electronics, Andy Griffiths doesn’t put much faith in the staying power of Blu-ray and expects it to be replaced by another format or technology in the coming years.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10."

- Andy Griffiths, Director, Consumer Electronics, Samsung UK, via Pocket-lint

DVD, the immediate predecessor to Blu-ray made has made it over ten years from its 1997 debut before another technology was introduced to succeed it.  That is less than half the time span that consumers were stuck with VHS before DVD came along.

While the interview is a bit short on exposition of that opinion, it is widely held that the Internet will spell the end of physical media.  Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix , a company currently almost dependent on shinny plastic discs, has said his company is beginning to transition from physical media to downloadable content.

Contrary to these opinions is that of another Andy from the US who likens Blu-ray Disc to paper for utility.

"I'm fond of recalling the old visions of the past that the paperless office would completely obliterate the need for paper. It seemed like a very reasonable, logical prediction decades ago that turned out to be completely wrong."

- Andy Parsons, Chair, Blu-ray Disc Association Promotion Committee, via Wired

The sentiments that Blu-ray was here to stay were echoed by other BDA members from movie studios Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox who’s very lifeblood is in shiny plastic discs.

Believe what you want but I am hard pressed to see the logical parallel between the ubiquity of paper which requires no specialized device to either write to or read from and any electronic format that requires proprietary, specialized, complex equipment to use which is then is loaded with function limiting circuitry and programming, read digital rights management (DRM), to further limit utility and control end use.  Paper has lasted for thousands of years for its pure utility and ease of use.  Imagine paper loaded with DRM; special inks that are illegible without proper the proper reading glasses, proprietary paper made only to absorb proprietary inks, and the capability to report improper mixing of brands back to the manufacturers so that they could sue users for intellectual property rights infringement for an improper, unlicensed paper/ink combination read with unauthorized glasses.

The Renaissance would never have occurred and we would still be living in the Dark Ages.

So, where does the most likely outcome for Blu-ray lie?  As always, the most likely outcome lies somewhere in the middle.

Shinny plastic discs have been the dominant format dating back to the introduction of the Compact Disc in 1982, usurping LP and cassette alike.  DVD also did a relatively quick number on VHS, but times have changed.

The music industry is suffering through a sustained downturn in CD sales and digital distribution is on the rise, both by legal and illegal means now that digital distribution through the Internet has matured enough to make it quick and easy.  As Internet capacity continues to grow and download speeds improve, it is unrealistic to expect that digital distribution will not do to the sales of shinny plastic discs with movies on them what it is currently doing to sales of shinny plastic discs with music on them.  It is only a matter of time.

There will always be some people, raised in the days of physical media, that prefer owning an actual object and will antagonized into staying put by the overly restrictive, unstable DRM foisted on downloadable media.  No one wants to see their music/movie collection evaporate simply because the company they rented it from closed down an authentication server to cut cost or jolt sales artificially.  Those who grew up with physical media will see it as a safe bastion from such loss, even as the media companies continue to seek ways to lock consumers out of disc purchases to spur continued sales.

As for the whole rental verses purchase issue, it would be an unfathomable level naïveté if anyone actually believes that the constant barrage of non-negotiable End User License Agreements (EULA) included with every type of digital media is not an attempt to turn purchases into rentals.

For those growing up now, physical media will not inherently provide the sense of ownership that those of earlier generations will seek in having a disc.  Discs will not go away completely, but the market will atrophy for them quite considerably as market dominance shifts to digital distribution and to those comfortable with its use.

Blu-ray will make it more than 5 years, but not as the market chosen preferred format for movies and music, irrespective of what the movie industry wants.

Technology, as it always has, continues in its developmental acceleration and when the convenience of digitally downloading and watching a movie is on par with downloading and listening to music, when downloading exceeds the convenience of popping a movie disc into the old player, that is when disc will start to rapidly fade.

The speed at which shinny plastic discs will fade as the dominant form of entertainment media will simply be a function of the disparity in convenience between the old and the new.