With all this talk about the death of physical media, if Sony wanted to continue offering physical media for PS6, might they use something other than Blu-Ray?
I don't know if Blu-Ray can move beyond the current 100GB limit, but the slowness of the media is definitely holding things back, with no games running directly from the disk anymore.
I think NAND SSD tech in a cartridge format could be a great alternative and prices are becoming very low. Obviously orders of magnitude over pressing an optical disk, but I think the cost could be covered by another price increase.
Nothing's coming after Blu-Ray. 4K BluRay discs are now just bought by collectors because the mainstream public just stream.
There's been no Blu-Ray players released for several years now
he Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is an optical disc technology that was expected to store up to several terabytes of data on an optical disc 10 cm or 12 cm in diameter. Its development commenced in April 2004, but it never arrived due to lack of funding. The company responsible for HVD went bankrupt in 2010.[2]
IMO it might be technically feasible to make HVD or some other high capacity optical media but at this point, it seems very far fetched that anybody will put in the R&D to make it a reality. Doesn’t exactly seem like the market is clamoring for such a technology.
they can just sell you some form of game cards eventually, like nintendo does. They probably can work something out to lower prices if the demand is there for physical media.
On the movie side? Probably something like Kaleidescape.
I think UHD disks are definitely the last physical format for movies, the future is going to be more premium digital alternatives that are less compressed and have lossless audio when compared to the everyman's Netflix.
Either digital or solid state media. The need for data to be transferred at higher rates of speed can not be done with movable disc media. Believe it or not, a cartridge (looks like Nintendo knew all along) would be the most plausible form of media as far as cost and data transfer rates. This is assuming we stick to actual physical media and not truly digital to SSD storage on your console like we have today with the Series is and PS5D
EDIT: Had a complete brain fart and thought I clicked on this in the off-topic, assuming it was to do with video as opposed to games and just posted away. So, sorry if this whole wall o' text and more is totally off-topic, but I spent to much time rambling to delete it, lol...
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I'm a dreamer and a physical media guy who prioritises quality/faithful presentations, so this isn't going to happen:
But, I'd like to see an "Archival Disc" (not the same as the defunct format of the same name) powered by Blu-ray which is a 6x BD-XL-128GB disc utilising VVC/X266 encoding with HDR10+ as a base-layer and an upgraded Dolby Vision FEL premium-layer that reconstructs to 12-Bit 4:4:4 (both mandatory) before handing off to the TV processor. It'd be a niche format reserved for the highest quality presentations and be like twice the cost of a UHD BD. It would also support all framerates between 23.976 & 120.000; hooking into VRR. I'd also like to see provisions for 3D (I know everyone shits on it, but I'm just talking provisions in case of autostereoscopic displays, VR or some unicorn passive display). There'd also be some sort of really high quality, tough, super-archival packaging.
UHD Blu-ray currently provides HEVC/X265 on BD-66GB/BD-100GB with HDR10/HDR10+ as a base layer (10-Bit, 4:2:0, static/dynamic tone mapping respectively); and an optional Dolby Vision MEL layer which provides dynamic HDR only or a Dolby Vision FEL layer which if correctly authored provides both dynamic HDR tone mapping and can reconstruct to 12-Bit 4:2:2.
While it should be in the standard, 8K wouldn't be a focus. 4K with ultra high bitrate VVC video, full chroma resolution, full bit-depth, good HDR.
It'd have a real push towards faithful presentations (still seeing too much revisionism and major cockups in releases), with proper colour timing, little-to-no DNR/EE, original aspect ratios, all relevant audio tracks (form new mixes to old). Subs of every type and language would be included. Full tech specs, info about restorations, sources used etc. would be included. Original artwork too (if not on the case; or in the case of multiple posters, then in high quality art card/s included).
Again, it'd have to be a sustainable niche product and would come at a considerable premium. But even if I was totally broke I'd think it's great that these high quality, faithful masters were out there and potentially available; and for the sake of mass-archival, preservation, physical ownership, censorship-resistance etc. Seems tragic to me that so many beautiful pieces of art sit on film reels in vaults and a lot of what is actually available to people is dated, clunky masters on early Blu-rays, sometimes even DVD. And now we have 4K UHD Blu-ray and many movies are seeing what may be their final physical release; and while most are great, some are still being messed up whether it be technical issues, revisionist changes or just an all round lack of care and investment. The Exorcist for eg. just released on 4K and not only has the revisionist colour timing been used in and around the exorcism scene in the Original Theatrical Version disc, but the scene has been smeared and mucked around with to the point that it looks like an absolute travesty. Sadly, that's probably what it's going to look like for home video forever now..
Streaming is great as a convenient option, but it's begun to undermine all these things and even the shine is coming off that for the mainstream with a lot of content losing appeal, too many services, content disappearing/censorship. People are un-subbing and major studios are losing cashflow from them. Even Disney whose 4K UHD Blu-ray support has been dire til recently have suddenly started releasing quite a few titles including Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian & Andor on 4K UHD Blu-ray; after recent statements that they "might need to look at physical media again".
Another great thing is boutique authoring houses such as Arrow, Criterion, Shout, Kino etc. all gaining more ground and often doing a far better job than the majors in releasing content properly. And, a lot of those majors are starting to license a lot more content to them. I wouldn't be surprised to see a considerable expansion in these boutique houses and them taking the reigns on the physical releases of a lot of properties.
I really hope that there's some sort of renaissance in the physical media space for movies, tv etc. and it's looking at least a little more likely as of late.
I do a lot of mockups for stuff I'd like to see when I have free time; for eg. and...
(click thumbnails for larger pics)
..I was working on a mockup for this idea with a few titles some time back, just some rough & rudimentary logo/layout stuff at the mo, but will post it when I've done a lot more:
The important question is how loud will those disk drives be. To read that much data in a reasonable amount of time then the disks are going to have to spin very fast and be even louder than the current disk drives.
The important question is how loud will those disk drives be. To read that much data in a reasonable amount of time then the disks are going to have to spin very fast and be even louder than the current disk drives.
Funny how price point for these was expected to drop once they stopped producing them...and it hasn't one bit.
To OPs point, it's digital or what DeepEnigma
suggested. If they're going to stick with a physical ROM, it'd be for the purpose of greater memory than blu-ray. The tough sell on that though would be the fact that movie distributors are licensing less and less blu-rays per year. You'd have to release TV shows, movie and such to build rapport around the new ROM before it'd be fit for the next gen. I'd like to see that happen. It'll likely still be blu-ray if physical can hold out one last gen.
I had loads of films blu ray with ultra violet digital codes it was available on one company they went to shit it moved to another then now they are on YouTube. So I wouldn't want to invest in anything that could go plop.
Blu-ray has already evolved past the initial specs, the 4k Blu-rays now are upto 4x the size of the original standard, it will depend on how much they can push it before they move on to something else.
If you are serious about movies and have a proper home theatre setup, you would know that Blu-Ray media is the only way to get uncompressed lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio. It makes a huge difference to the quality and experience in high end systems. I have a mate who invested over $30K into a home theatre setup and it is way better than going to the cinema. He has every movie ever released on physical disc media apart from some obscure foreign films. He has a room that looks like an old DVD store. It's literally his life.
