I agree with almost all the points that Rick Clancy makes as he places his bet that Blu-ray discs will be around for far greater than five years. That said, I actually think few in the industry would disagree with that. The question I’ve been asked more often is how long will Blu-ray grow, especially compared to the decade or so of growth that DVD saw, and how deep will its penetration reach, at least in the U.S..
Compared to the near monopoly that DVD had as a format for selling movies, Blu-ray will face more competition, including stronger legacy competition in the DVD. However, barring any breakthroughs such as DECE changing the nature of downloads, Blu-ray will continue to offer a superior convenience factor for movie buying.. (As for rentals, digital distribution may make inroads there more quickly.) Therefore, I think that Blu-ray will grow for more than the next five years, and see it starting to peter out in about seven or eight years.
But are discs of any standard the right media for the future?
Samsung Electro Mechanics (SEM) have developed a wafer which is 0,08mm thick which they are selling to other makers of DRAM and Flash memories since october 2007.
This wafer can be stacked in 20 layers in a single component.Am.Tessera have developed a similar tech bot not for 20 layers.Besang have developed a 3D chip tech.
Some more companies have developed similar technologies.
So make a thought of even today a USB-memory could in some years have a larger memory than a Blu-ray.
2009 comes both Samsung and Toshiba with a 64GB NAND Flash memory take that in 20 layers and you have maybe an USB-Stick memory with over 1TB.
It’s ridiculous to think that Blu-ray will be completely gone in the next 5 to 10 years. Streaming HD content is just not in the position to upsurp Blu-ray, not to mention flash storage is still too expensive to match the price of BD’s. Also, Blu-ray is scalable in a way that DVD’s weren’t, so their capacity can grow with market demands as well. I’ve actually been working with Warner Home Video on some projects and they don’t expect blu-ray to go anywhere.