Will we see Blu-ray for PC anytime soon?

[Anprionsa]

Anyone heard anything on this subject as of late?

We see it for PS3, but no PC? Guess PC was slower to adopt then other mediums. What say you?

[medtech]

Not really a requirement, Just like previous media formats, PC's have the ability to take in multiple storage files from multiple storage mediums. I remember back when all we had were 1.44meg floppy disks, Falcon 3.0 and Wing Commander IV required over 25 floppies wasn't until a year later that you could get the came on 1 CD, then it became multiple CD's before DVD came along. now you have dual layer DVD's and even triple layer soon to be released. Since most games are DX9 still and slim on the SP side where all the extra data and sound files would be. As well PC games get loaded onto a HD, it used to be that games on CD used to utilize the CD as an active storage system, they've gone away from that now with the PC due to faster systems and data access. The PS3 needs the blu ray as an active data storage centre accessible at high speeds due to very small amounts of RAM and HD space. As well it was a selling feature, back when the PS3 came out, BR players were in the $350 range and there were almost no add in BR drives for a PC.

[DaFox]

As long as they are targeting the 360 we will have DVD's.

[GenericBeing]

I believe it's not feasible to have BR yet. The cost of a BR-drive is still too much for many. Add the need to support 2 different media for the same platform (DVD and BR), as you would still need DVD to reach the mass population. Also, how many games need more than two dual layer DVDs? Age of Conan or SW - The Force Unleashed (?), I have these on Steam and it doesn't do data compression I guess, so retail might be 2 DVDs.

The only use as I see it would be (leaving out movies of course), say, get a collection of high data games in a single box with a premium price.

[Delphium]

Guess PC was slower to adopt then other mediums. What say you?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sony-bd-5300s-0b-super-fast-bluray-writer-x12-bd-r-x8-dvddl-x16-dvdr-x8-dvdrw-writer-oem

Blu-Ray writer for pc, no slow addoption really, the tech is there, just most folks tend to rather watch movies in the living room and not on a pc, and of cause to be fair there is only a handfull of folks that use a pc as a media center compared to most home setups.

[Skid]

[quote]Guess PC was slower to adopt then other mediums. What say you?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sony-bd-5300s-0b-super-fast-bluray-writer-x12-bd-r-x8-dvddl-x16-dvdr-x8-dvdrw-writer-oem

Blu-Ray writer for pc, no slow addoption really, the tech is there, just most folks tend to rather watch movies in the living room and not on a pc, and of cause to be fair there is only a handfull of folks that use a pc as a media center compared to most home setups.

Unless of course your like me and your PC is in your living room, and is hooked up to your TV ^^ *Upgraded to a Blue-Ray drive a couple of weeks ago because my new motherboard didn't come with any IDE ports*

[Paradigm Shifter]

I've had no reason to get a Blu-ray drive on my PC. My PS3 reads 'em, and the two laptops that I've had (one replaced the other) that had Blu-ray drives have never actually had a Blu-ray in them... so that part of the functionality was wasted completely.

That and the fact that currently Blu-ray requires software to decode it that doesn't work on linux, and my media rigs are linux+XBMC based.

[DaFox]

Blu-Ray writer for pc, no slow addoption really, the tech is there, just most folks tend to rather watch movies in the living room and not on a pc, and of cause to be fair there is only a handfull of folks that use a pc as a media center compared to most home setups.

I've had no reason to get a Blu-ray drive on my PC.

I think hes talking specifically about shipping games on Blu-Ray disks opposed to DVD's guys. ;)

It takes time though. The first console to use DVD's was the PS2 in 2000, in 2004 we were just barely starting to see the first DVD releases, Far Cry 5 CD's , Doom 3 was 3. World of Warcraft launched then as well. The game was 4 CD's, but the collectors edition contained a DVD as well.

Now look at that compared to where we are today. Was Crysis 2 a single DVD? Portal 2? The current gen consoles are holding us back. The 360 still uses DVD's so they have to aim for the lowest common denominator. It's far easier to design your content to run on all platforms than to develop content for each platform independently. The few games that have actually used multiple DVD's are almost all PC only (e.g. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)

[Paradigm Shifter]

The number of XBox 360 games I've got that come on multiple DVDs puts the lie to that; but then they're all JRPG monster-games that take hours and hours and hours to get anywhere in.

Far Cry was DVD only in the UK AFAIK, Doom 3 came on 3 CDs, true. UT2003 came on CD (three of 'em) but UT2004 came on 1 DVD or 6 CDs! (I saw the CD version in HMV...)

...

You're right, though - the 360 is holding back the adoption of Blu-ray as a disc format for games.

Having said that, because PC games install everything to the HDD, and rely on the DVD as merely a disc check mechanism (if that, now) PC games can run some serious compression mechanisms on the install discs. You couldn't do the same on the 360 or PS3 as they'd spend too much time decompressing files to do anything else. The latency involved with a HDD is nothing compared to the latency involved in an optical disc. ;)

[DaFox]

Having said that, because PC games install everything to the HDD, and rely on the DVD as merely a disc check mechanism (if that, now) PC games can run some serious compression mechanisms on the install discs. You couldn't do the same on the 360 or PS3 as they'd spend too much time decompressing files to do anything else.

Indeed, I was saving that point! ;)

Compression algorithms have gotten really really good. I mean Portal 2 is some 12 GB installed for example and it's certainly not pushing the envelope.

Also Yeah I guess there was two copies of Far Cry, the 5 CD version and a single DVD version.
http://www.gameskb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/pc-games-action/3254/Far-Cry-how-many-install-CDs-5

The problem with basically every single game released on multiple DVD's on the 360 is that none of them are on the PC I don't believe.

//===========================================

To jump back to Blu-ray Drives (not game disks!) not picking up steam in computers, That's another problem. It's a chicken and egg thing. There isn't much of a reason to ship a game on Blu-Ray if less than what? 25%? 15%? 10%? 5%? of people have a Blu-Ray reader in their PC.

The fact that most of people don't is a separate problem stemming from a few problems. CD's and DVD's were often used to store Data, how many people do you know that store data on Blu-Ray disks? A 16 or 32GB thumb drive and free falling hard disk drive prices have eliminated the need for burning Optical Media. The other big problem that PS mentioned is that support for Blu-Ray is really piss poor. Can you even play Blu-Ray movies on OSX yet? Playing on linux is non trivial. et cetera

[Anprionsa]

So what's the time frame then? It's estimated that the next Xbox/Playstation will hit the shelves in 2013-2014, with the major possibility that the Xbox will finally move to blu-ray, will that be enough to see the adoption on the PC? Also will the Wii 2 do this? And if so, would that speed up the process?

[medtech]

They haven't begunto hire to a new system design team yet, that's usually how allot of websites estimate a release date. SONY and MS both want to extend the life of this unit for 10 year total run. so another 4-5 years min before you see a new unit, that is unless Wii-2 comes out and starts to annihilate the 360/PS3, then it would be sooner. By that time of course the PC market will be so far advanced beyond the 360/PS3 that I doubt any port would be purchased for more then the cost of a DLC addon. If right now the disparity is so great thatmost people shudder at the though of a console port, imagine in 3 years time when cards like the 6990 are worthless and my own 1090T x6 core is something found in a $299 blow out special on Tiger Direct..

There is going to come a point where the console game designers just give up any PC ports due to the flak they will take and the LOW sales.

[Armenius]

I believe it's not feasible to have BR yet. The cost of a BR-drive is still too much for many. Add the need to support 2 different media for the same platform (DVD and BR), as you would still need DVD to reach the mass population. Also, how many games need more than two dual layer DVDs? Age of Conan or SW - The Force Unleashed (?), I have these on Steam and it doesn't do data compression I guess, so retail might be 2 DVDs.

The only use as I see it would be (leaving out movies of course), say, get a collection of high data games in a single box with a premium price.

The price is not expensive at all. I purchased a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo rewritable drive that literally supports all 3.5" optical data discs for $40.00 three years ago. I'm also pretty sure the price of a single disc in now down around $1.25-$1.50. The issue is most people don't see a need for the format yet. Look how long it took for games to come out on DVD for PC. I still have my 5-CD copy of Far Cry and 4-CD copy of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and I would say that DVD was pretty mainstream by that time. It takes like a whole hour for Far Cry to install, too, and you have to babysit the installation to change to the next disc. The issue of game consoles, particularly the Xbox 360, I'm sure has a lot to do with it. Developers have to design their games within the space constraints of DVD and therefore there is no demand for a medium that can hold more space on a single disc.

Concerning movies, one of the biggest issues on PC is there are no freely available media players that support Blu-ray, meaning you have to spend an extra $100 for a commercial player on top of the drive. Sure drives come with a player, but they are usually neutered versions of the commercial product. Take the version of PowerDVD that came with my Blu-ray drive: no surround sound or support for the latest Blu-rays. There is actually a decent freeware Blu-ray player for PC out there right now: Digiarty DAPlayer. It has been able to play every Blu-ray I've thrown at it so far, even with great performance on my four-year old PC.

[medtech]

A top of the line Samsung BR/DVD drive is less then $90 now.

Media player classic with the K-lite codex pak will play br/dvd as well GOM player will play them native. both free of course.

[DaFox]

with the major possibility that the Xbox will finally move to blu-ray, will that be enough to see the adoption on the PC? Also will the Wii 2 do this? And if so, would that speed up the process?

I am really interested in seeing what happens with the Wii 2. There's a few problems though. First most wii games do not fill up even a single layered DVD. There are only a handful that come on a Dual layered DVD any I don't believe that any of them even come close to filling it up. (I'm completely making this last part up so someone please correct me if you know different!)
So they really probably could get away with DVD's again unfortunately.
The other problem is that Wii games rarely get ported over to anything else because of its unique controls. The Wii 2 is rumored to come with an LCD in the controller which could make game elements non trivial to port or cross develop with the Wii 2.

They haven't begunto hire to a new system design team yet, that's usually how allot of websites estimate a release date.

All 3 companies have been working on their next generation platform before they even launched their last ones. You can be sure that if needed they could have something to launch at the end of this year, of course they would prefer to wait. The Platstation series has always launched 6 years apart (94, 00, 06) I wouldn't be surprised if they were aiming for 6 years once again.

Really though we are less than a month away from seeing what happens with the Wii 2 at E3 this year so fingers crossed that it brings us the Next Generation!
If it doesn't then... uhoh Nintendo could be in trouble. The concept of 'Exclusive' games is going to go away soon in my opinion. It's just not feasible to spend all of this money on 1/5 of the market. The Wii had a metric crap ton of exclusives simply because it was not feasible to cross develop for it due to its graphical capabilities. The number of Wii titles that actually made good money is rather slim once you exclude Nintendo published games and I'm not sure that the publishers are willing to go down that route again. Cross developing is extremely attractive though.

[Anprionsa]

Yeah, there are many sites claiming Rockstar will go to the Wii 2 and lots of other things. Some Nintendo fan sites report that the company is once again searching for it's core audience. With the move to Blu-Ray already complete on Sony's end, I can potentially see Nintendo adopt the format as it has now become the new medium.

[medtech]

from the specs i've read about it's going to be almost a mirror image of the 360: 3 core IBM CPU / 512 meg DDR combined and a ATI HD 4000 series GPU.. Blu ray.. I really hope that this is wrong and they add in at least a 2gig of DDR2 and a HD5000 series card for dx11 support. this alone would shoot the console well past the level of the PS3 and 360 without any challenge from the other two. not being cutting edge product like the ps3/30 stuff sort of was, the cost per unit should come in where the original Wii price point was.

[suiken_2mieu]

from the specs i've read about it's going to be almost a mirror image of the 360: 3 core IBM CPU / 512 meg DDR combined and a ATI HD 4000 series GPU.. Blu ray.. I really hope that this is wrong and they add in at least a 2gig of DDR2 and a HD5000 series card for dx11 support. this alone would shoot the console well past the level of the PS3 and 360 without any challenge from the other two. not being cutting edge product like the ps3/30 stuff sort of was, the cost per unit should come in where the original Wii price point was.

Well from what I've seen nintendo do in the past, they tend to stay with "well tested" technologies. That being said, it kinda of make since for them to go with a 4000 series architecture. They are probably going to use a die-shrinked version to dispel heat and other annoying things like that. I'm really hoping that the GPU the pick has a lot of grunt to it though. If it was a 4870 I think that would be good. But consoles need more ram if they ever want to have bigger textures. Another thing I'd like to put out there is the difference in making a game for PC and making a game for a console. On a console they rarely use an API (like DirectX). They normally do lots of low level programing which pull more performance of the system hardware then say PC games using an API. API translates all the high level programing into things that the hardware can understand. On PC you really need that cushion layer because we as a user base have really diverse hardware. Long story short, They are going to see more performance out of that architecture then we ever did. On top of that 1080p really isn't that large of a resolution anyway.

[Armenius]

A top of the line Samsung BR/DVD drive is less then $90 now.

Media player classic with the K-lite codex pak will play br/dvd as well GOM player will play them native. both free of course.

I've read a lot about getting MPC to play Blu-ray movies, but I could never get it to work for myself. The most common thing is to make an image of the disc and play it from your hard drive, but to me that defeats the whole point and the fact that you'll have a 25 or 50 GB file sitting on your computer. I haven't heard of GOM player.

[Paradigm Shifter]

The GPU in the 360 is, what, a unified shader version of the X1800?

Even a 4000 series GPU (presuming die-shrink to keep it cooler) will utterly obliterate the 360 or PS3 GPUs.