Audio Video News

[THE FOLLOWING IS THE FIRST STANCE IN A POINT-COUNTERPOINT DEBATE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF BLU-RAY. THE OPINION IS THAT OF TECH WRITER COREY GREENBERG. TO READ THE REBUTTAL, CLICK ON THE LINK AT THE END.]

I don't know if I'm the first CE writer to say this, but Blu-ray is the new SACD, the new DVD-Audio, the new failure. It's clearly, obviously, dead. Finished. Roadkill. Missed its window. Toshiba and the rest of the HD DVD mob should get down on their knees and thank their lucky stars they got out of this [SEMI-EXPLETIVE] match only a billion in the hole, because the Blu-Ray boys are going to lose a lot more than that before this debacle is over.

I was one of the original rah-rah pundits for DVD-Audio. I cheered its potential in the pages of S&V years ago, when my young, dew-dappled heart still held out hope that the CE industry wasn't totally idiotic and doomed to fast-mo failure. My God! Five-point-one channels of pristine, uncompressed 24/96 audio! In terms of virtual 3D audio reality, there isn't anything you can't do with this format. Which is why it held zero interest to both music label and consumer alike. Because neither cares anymore about audio quality. So, dead format, along with the even less cool SACD.

I don't care how much data you can fit on a Blu-Ray disc. Really, it's immaterial. I get gorgeous HD movies over broadband and what I can't get licitly I download. Ten out of ten home theater experts couldn't tell upconverted DVD from Blu-Ray from a distance of more than 4 feet from the screen if their lives depended on it. Ten years ago Blu-Ray would've made me [EXPLETIVE] my pants. Today it's about as useful as an Iomega Jaz drive.

Kids, listen to your Uncle Corey [photo, left]. Blu-ray is now and will only ever be a delivery agent for video games until the picosecond Sony figures out how to serve the games in real time to dumb terminal PlayStations with a subscription model, at which point Blu-ray the Wonder Disc will be end-lifed without fanfare except for some inane Gizmodo min-wage turdlet's Photoshopping of "Its Brains Out" over the word Ray.

Stop worrying about Blu-ray. It's already dead. Buy an AppleTV and be ahead of the game, for once. -Corey Greenberg

[TO READ THE COUNTERPOINT, CLICK HERE]

Veteran tech journalist Corey Greenberg is the creator of Shaveblog.