Blu-ray Addon for 360 Confirmed- now confirmed not true

[Cermage]

Gizmodo has an exclusive interview with Microsoft CEO's Steve Ballmer going up in full this Friday. Until then, they're releasing little clips from the interview and the one they have up right now sees the CEO talking about Natal, and more importantly, a Blu-ray add-on accessory for the Xbox 360.

Gizmodo asked Steve Ballmer on whether we'll see any Xbox 360s with a Blu-ray drive to which Ballmer replied by stating that "you'll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories." No time frame is given for when we'll see this Blu-ray accessory and Xbox spokespeople avoided answering the question when Gizmodo pressed for further information.

So after all this time, a Blu-ray accessory is coming to the Xbox 360. Neato? I don't know about you, but I'm just going to sit back and watch as the entire Internet collapses from the fanboy war that's about to unfold.

source: Destructoid | Geoff Keighley Twitter

ms... seriously?

 

[luke_c]

Bring on the console war...

 

[FAST6191]

Yawn, hopefully it will make some more people see through the scam that is blu ray though.

 

[Thoob]

Yawn, hopefully it will make some more people see through the scam that is blu ray though.

Hopefully it will make some more people see through the scam that is the Xbox 360 and get a PS3 instead.
Sorry for starting the fanboy war... I couldn't resist!

T...

 

[luke_c]

Yawn, hopefully it will make some more people see through the scam that is blu ray though.

Hopefully it will make some more people see through the scam that is the Xbox 360 and get a PS3 instead.
Sorry for starting the fanboy war... I couldn't resist!

T...

Told ya...

 

[raulpica]

Yawn, hopefully it will make some more people see through the scam that is blu ray though.

Sure it is, but since I've started viewing anime in 720p (let's not even talk about 1080p

), I don't think I can go back to 480p so easily

Still, I was a HD-DVD supporter, and Bluray pretty much killed it, so I won't EVER say that I'm a Bluray fan.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I never really got Bluray. It'll still look like crap unless you have the super-expensive, 50 inch flat screen TV. I buy a DVD player and some HD cables and the picture looks amazing. Bluray is just a snobs way of watching movies.

 

[FAST6191]

@raulpica it has been a while since I have been anime shopping in Italy but I guess nothing has changed/the situation compares to the rest of Europe so I am assuming the rest does not need to be said.

In that case there is a whole world of difference between a dodgy xvid (or worse real) encode that may have started out as 480 but did not survive conversion/downscaling/deinterlacing/fixing pulldown issues and a proper as broadcast H264 encode at a proportionally higher bitrate to resolution ratio in addition to the benefits of a good H264 implementation.

This being said I could probably apply the same method to myself with the amount of stupidly high end filters I have running.

 

[luke_c]

No? How is Bluray a "snobs" way of watching movies? Please elaborate.

 

[Cablephish]

No? How is Bluray a "snobs" way of watching movies? Please elaborate.

Clearly he doesn't know that blu ray isn't really a deal with movies as it is with games, that's the reason why they're bothering with blu ray on the 360. They're tired of their crappy dual layer discs which are so crap compared to blu ray.

I guess they've waited long enough.

 

[triassic911]

I SERIOUSLY DOUBT that they will start making 360 games on bluray discs. This would mean obligatory purchase of this bluray add on.

 

[MaHe]

Excuse me, but Ballmer never confirmed the BD drive. I think Gizmodo misunderstood him.

 

[Cermage]

Excuse me, but Ballmer never confirmed the BD drive. I think Gizmodo misunderstood him.

so ballmer saying "you'll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories." isnt enough confirmation for you?

 

[Vater Unser]

I never really got Bluray. It'll still look like crap unless you have the super-expensive, 50 inch flat screen TV. I buy a DVD player and some HD cables and the picture looks amazing. Bluray is just a snobs way of watching movies.

Bullshit. I can even easily tell the difference between Blu-Ray and a standard DVD on my tiny-ass 13" laptop screen.

That aside, there is NO, I repeat, NO way they're going to release games on Blu-Ray now.

And to contribute to the HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray discussion, I've always been a supporter of Blu-Ray. Sure, the whole encrypted signal stuff sucks, and it may have been a lot more expensive than HD DVD back then, but why would anyone pick a 30GB medium over a 50GB medium? You wanna buy another new, expensive disc drive/player again in 5 years max?

 

[MaHe]

Excuse me, but Ballmer never confirmed the BD drive. I think Gizmodo misunderstood him.

so ballmer saying "you'll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories." isnt enough confirmation for you?

Not with Ballmer it isn't. He didn't specifically say Xbox accessories, just accessories. For all I know, this could mean buying a completely separate player. Besides he's known to make very ambiguous statements sometimes.

I'll take this news with a grain of salt until some kind of an official press release.

 

[thieves like us]

seriously, people need to do a little research before spouting lies, rumours and falsehoods as well as get a basic understanding of the technology.

the biggest problem with blu-ray in general is how it reads data. the 2x speed (which most blu-ray drives [including the ps3] are rated at) is just fine for movies (which are read linearly), however for random access like games and even data back-ups, blu-ray is nothing short of extremely slow (hence the reason why many ps3 titles require a mandatory 3-5GB install to reduce load times).

microsoft supported hd-dvd because it was in direct opposition to the sony owned format, there is no way that they are going to bring out an accessory that forces them to pay royalties to sony. in addition, the cost for the add-on would probably be so close to the cost of a blu-ray player, there's no logical reason to do so from a consumer point of view.

 

[DSGamer64]

I never really got Bluray. It'll still look like crap unless you have the super-expensive, 50 inch flat screen TV. I buy a DVD player and some HD cables and the picture looks amazing. Bluray is just a snobs way of watching movies.

It looks like crap if a film wasn't made in HD in the first place, which I have seen more then a few Blu Ray films encoded up to 720p but it's grainy as fuck, the only difference is the 7.1 surround sound HD audio being played. It is easier to make a film in 1080p and encode it to 480p then it is to convert up because you don't lose video quality when down scaling.

Blu Ray is great if you have proper HD films, it sucks on videos that were not recorded in HD.

 

[DSGamer64]

No? How is Bluray a "snobs" way of watching movies? Please elaborate.

Clearly he doesn't know that blu ray isn't really a deal with movies as it is with games, that's the reason why they're bothering with blu ray on the 360. They're tired of their crappy dual layer discs which are so crap compared to blu ray.

I guess they've waited long enough.

I hope you are aware that a Blu Ray drive for the 360 would be extremely slow right? If it's external it would be slow as shit and pointless because there would be asinine load times.

 

[Jamstruth]

No? How is Bluray a "snobs" way of watching movies? Please elaborate.

Clearly he doesn't know that blu ray isn't really a deal with movies as it is with games, that's the reason why they're bothering with blu ray on the 360. They're tired of their crappy dual layer discs which are so crap compared to blu ray.

I guess they've waited long enough.

I hope you are aware that a Blu Ray drive for the 360 would be extremely slow right? If it's external it would be slow as shit and pointless because there would be asinine load times.

Since Blu Ray only reads at 2x speed it would probably be just like the PS3 drive, USB isn't THAT slow.
Not bothered about a blu-ray add on too much, have never watched an HD movie on my 720p screen and compared it to the same movie in SD so I can't really comment on the usage of it. Microsoft could produce it but since its Sony owned as others said they might try and avoid having to pay the royalties to a competitor, plus it would be expensive. Out of curiosity can you still find HD-DVD movies and the HD-DVD add ons (obv. not new in stores)? I'd imagine the add-ons are quite cheap now and I might see if there are any decent movies on the dead format...

 

[nIxx]

The HD-Addon and the movies were really cheap back in the days dunno how it is today.
Anyway i think nobody really needs BluRay or HD-DVD or whatever it looks really nice (for some movies) but is it really needed to buy a movie again just for some pixels more on the screen.