Seagate CEO: Blu-ray won the battle but lost the war

[gijoela]

Hum, sounds like I work for this guy..

Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology says"People are saying Blu-ray won the war but who cares? The war is over physical distribution versus electrical distribution, and Blu-ray and HD lost that," he said during a breakfast meeting at the Consumer Electronics Show here this week. "In this, flash memory and hard drives are on the same side. The war is over and the physical guys lost."

http://ces.cnet.com/8301-13855_1-984...g=2547-1_3-0-5

And he goes on to say...

Hollywood, Watkins said, will have no choice but to get into home delivery of content in a big way. People are leaving home less and less. And if the movie studios don't deliver their content to their home, people will watch whatever they can find on the Internet. (for freeeeee)

Some poster comments...to this story..

One guy said.."So true. The Blu-ray/HD-DVD war is far less significant than the VHS/BetaMax and DVD/Whatever that other one was called wars, because by the time the "winner" is widely adopted, downloads will have taken over. I'm just going to stick with my regular, cheap, DVDs."

But...Another poster said..."The main problem with hard-disks being the repository of HD media bought and wired over the web is that most if not all online movie services don't do re-downloads, because they are seen as an easy way for people to share their accounts online, pay once and download many.

I don't have to stress the caveats of hard-disks as storage media, as long as they are mechanical devices they are prone to be defective, and if they go bad (I've had 3 hard-disk failures this year, one of them being a Seagate shipped with my MacBook, btw), there goes your precious movies and you have to pay for them again.

At least Blu-ray is a format that is thought-out to be upgradable, TDK is supposedly testing a 200Gb disk."

It's becoming a more apparent that a thumpping, a louder drumbeat is beating at CES that HDM is at a do or die state and I for one think that Watkins is correct.

Hey TIME WARNER - They are starting to scream NICHE format!

You are too little and too late to the Blu Ray party.

[bear89103]

I wrote this to another poster who's posting similar things to you. So I'll just copy it here and would appreciate a conversation with you on this....

The following comment is not written to be malicious or contain any offensive tones. I'm merely making a point. So please take this only as a mere conversation between myself and you.

But if you are so against high def media and don't see any hope for it in the future, firstly why support either one format in the first place? And secondly, if it is as you say, why continue to post here? People that I know who are truly non-believers about something tend to move on and go somewhere else. Remember, the opposite of caring about something isn't hate for it. Rather it's apathy towards it. Your continually posts regarding the death of high def media makes it appear that you're more trying to convince people rather than actually believing in it and moving on.

Again, not trying to be mean, but seriously if you don't believe in high def media, why even post here other than to purposefully antagonize people?

[winstonshu]

yawn. more sour grapes quoting of anything that suggests BD is a lost cause.

tell me again why you'd be glad DD is the future if you're a fan of hi-def movies with all the extra bells and whistles? tell me how the DRM and business model are going to work out for you?

[Roshan]

When people are upgrading their TV they will look around and see that blu ray is better then any other home distributed media.
Also why not get a blu ray player that upscales. (people will not rebuy but will get new releases)
The main factor is hd dvd vs blu-ray causing cunfusion. (hd dvd alone causes confusion.

[BRDNOW]

Thanks bear89103

[theflux]

lol yes I can see it now. 3.5 inch hard drives with a movie on them. You'll need a wheelbarrow to move more than 15 or so at a time from the sheer weight. If you think scratching of disks is a problem, be sure not to drop one of these puppies.

The guy's an idiot, and he needs to shut up and get to work on an affordable 128GB SSD for my PS3.

[Sus Ano]

The five stages of grief (and HD-DVD ownership):
1-Denial- "HD-DVD can still come back and win. It will be around forever”
2-Anger-"I will never buy blu-ray! Damn company X for cheating me!"
3-Bargaining-“Toshiba will soon make dual format players that will be super popular”
4-Depression-“SDVD and downloads will win, there is no point in enjoying high def movies on my home theatre system”
5-Acceptance-“HD-DVD was pretty good tech, but it didn’t sell enough to easily attract more studio support. And one way or another without studio support, a video format is dead… I wonder if the PS3 is as good as they say because I really liked watching movies in high def”

Well the good news is the OP is solidly in the depression stage. Assuming they have worked through denial, anger and bargaining the next stop is acceptance.

Oh and what exactly do you expect the CEO of a hard drive company to say? For that matter while legal downloads MAY become more common we are still years from a sufficient infrastructure to make them universal. Not to mention an entire generation of people could not fix the clock on their VCR, still don't quite get how to hook up an HDTV, and can barely surf the net - yet they are going figure out how to make downloads work?

[venk]

Gee...A hard drive company pimping digital downloads, SHOCK!

[Roshan]

Originally Posted by Sus Ano

The five stages of grief (and HD-DVD ownership):
1-Denial- "HD-DVD can still come back and win. It will be around forever”
2-Anger-"I will never buy blu-ray! Damn company X for cheating me!"
3-Bargaining-“Toshiba will soon make dual format players that will be super popular”
4-Depression-“SDVD and downloads will win, there is no point in enjoying high def movies on my home theatre system”
5-Acceptance-“HD-DVD was pretty good tech, but it didn’t sell enough to easily attract more studio support. And one way or another without studio support, a video format is dead… I wonder if the PS3 is as good as they say because I really liked watching movies in high def”

Well the good news is the OP is solidly in the depression stage. Assuming they have worked through denial, anger and bargaining the next stop is acceptance.
Oh and what exactly do you expect the CEO of a hard drive company to say? For that matter while legal downloads MAY become more common we are still years from a sufficient infrastructure to make them universal. Not to mention an entire generation of people could not fix the clock on their VCR, still don't quite get how to hook up an HDTV, and can barely surf the net - yet they are going figure out how to make downloads work?

Just Hate for sony.

[kalim1998]

Originally Posted by gijoela

Hum, sounds like I work for this guy..

Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology says"People are saying Blu-ray won the war but who cares? The war is over physical distribution versus electrical distribution, and Blu-ray and HD lost that," he said during a breakfast meeting at the Consumer Electronics Show here this week. "In this, flash memory and hard drives are on the same side. The war is over and the physical guys lost."

http://ces.cnet.com/8301-13855_1-984...g=2547-1_3-0-5

And he goes on to say...

Hollywood, Watkins said, will have no choice but to get into home delivery of content in a big way. People are leaving home less and less. And if the movie studios don't deliver their content to their home, people will watch whatever they can find on the Internet. (for freeeeee)

Some poster comments...to this story..

One guy said.."So true. The Blu-ray/HD-DVD war is far less significant than the VHS/BetaMax and DVD/Whatever that other one was called wars, because by the time the "winner" is widely adopted, downloads will have taken over. I'm just going to stick with my regular, cheap, DVDs."

But...Another poster said..."The main problem with hard-disks being the repository of HD media bought and wired over the web is that most if not all online movie services don't do re-downloads, because they are seen as an easy way for people to share their accounts online, pay once and download many.

I don't have to stress the caveats of hard-disks as storage media, as long as they are mechanical devices they are prone to be defective, and if they go bad (I've had 3 hard-disk failures this year, one of them being a Seagate shipped with my MacBook, btw), there goes your precious movies and you have to pay for them again.

At least Blu-ray is a format that is thought-out to be upgradable, TDK is supposedly testing a 200Gb disk."

It's becoming a more apparent that a thumpping, a louder drumbeat is beating at CES that HDM is at a do or die state and I for one think that Watkins is correct.

Hey TIME WARNER - They are starting to scream NICHE format!

You are too little and too late to the Blu Ray party.

dude, you're just embarrassing yourself.

[bowl-o-rama]

This guy is the CEO of Seagate Technology. Seagate builds Hard Drives. If optical discs fail one day his business will thrive.

[Stormkeep]

Most people like to own a physical copy of the movie they buy. I agree that digital downloads and VOD are a big part of the future, but a whole lot of people are still going to want to buy a physical copy of it.

Even with downloadables, most people will want to be able to burn a physical copy to some form of media as well... in case of hard drive failure. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have all of their ipod tunes backed up to some form of media.

Of course Seagate would say otherwise...duh, they make hard drives.

[DAMNSAM77]

Sounds like the head honcho of Seagate (one of the top Hard disk and flash memory manufacturer) is trying to sell his own product at the expense of making his competition "Optical Media" look bad or obsolete.

Ofcourse he is gonna give any listening ear his own sale's pitch.

If you are talking more disk space than 50GB to compete with forseeable flash memory growth then look no further than the quad layer 100GB BD discs which were tested by Hitachi to be compatible even with 1st generation BD players with a somewhat comprehensive firmware update.

Optical media has surpassed flash media in size and price since the inception of flash media. When Flash media was introduced 10 yrs ago as a prototype, they were as small as 10-100 MBs when single layer DVDs were 4.5GB and CDs were 700MB. Now you can buy 8GB flash memory cards or up to 12GB for well over $200, when a dual layer DVD-RW is less than a buck, about 25-50 cents. And dual layer 50GB BD discs are as cheap as $20, while single layer 25GB BD discs as low as $11 per disc. Kinda expensive but its at 2-5% the cost of similar size more convenient flash media.

The price gap and current max available size GAP between Flash Media and optical media will take another 7-10 years to close. People are complaining about how expensive BD-R discs are ar $12 per 25GB layer, so why would they now embrace $200 16GB flash cars?


Neither Flash memory nor HD VOD will replace optical media, at least not in the forseeble next 7-8 yrs when Flash memory prices and super high speed 100Mbps internet access drop to a more consumer friendly price range.

From now until 2015 optical media will remain king, at least when it comes to delivering full quality full featured high definition movies and games.

[EShy]

Of course is trying to promote his own product, and that makes his comments biased.

The real questions for HDM, and it doesn't matter if it's BD or HD DVD, is how can they compete with upscaled DVDs and downloaded HD software.

For most average consumers these other solutions will be more then enough. most of them don't have libraries with thousands of DVDs, and could probably live with downloadable media instead of buying physical media, as long as it's not limited in any way (DRM will always be a problem).

Personally, I prefer owning the physical media, I'm guessing most of the members on forums such as this one are the same way, but the average consumer who is getting used to downloading music and not owning CDs, might feel different.

The question is, can HDM carve a big enough market share (compared to DVD) before downloaded media is ready (and that means good download speeds, which is still far for most consumers)

[mitchelljd]

Originally Posted by venk

Gee...A hard drive company pimping digital downloads, SHOCK!

True, its kinda BS a tech company pumping the "demise" of physical formats.

fun fun fun. it's not like i dont like ppv via xbox, directv or others. soon to be itunes.

but i do like blu-ray cause it isnt compressed to hell. if you like HD-Lite. go ahead and enjoy your Downloaded movies.