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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason - Thomas Paine
Notebook makers rethinking Blu-ray
BLU-RAY DRIVES, introduced by many notebook manufacturers as a high-end feature in top-of-the-range notebooks, are being selectively sidelined as manufacturers rethink strategies and adjust sales targets to the worrisome economic climate.
According to a report on Dodgytimes, Asus has cancelled the feature on an upcoming notebook, even though it plans on releasing BD-enabled kit in upcoming 18- and 19-inch desktop replacements. This strategy might have something to do with the fact that the absence of Blu-ray isn’t a dealbreaker when getting round to buying a laptop, or because only the most wealthy of punters can afford all the icing on the cake.
The article also points out Acer, another notebook heavyweight, has no plans of introducing the hi-def drives to their line-up at all, even though they have their high-end DTR 9000-series and Ferrari lappies.
Data like this here, posted on Engadget, is shorely not a stimulus for the notebook guys to get their act together on BD. Home entertainment looks like it’s going through a slump right now, Blu-ray sales dropped 13.39 per cent compared to the previous week, while DVD sales clung on with a very shy 0.15 per cent growth. Save for notable exceptions (major launches), this has been the trend.
Then again, notebook makers might be afraid that Arnie is making a comeback and are just doing the world a favour.
What with Eraser nudging into the Top 20 BD sales chart in the second week of September… µ
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size, weight & battery life are more important than BD or even DVD.

That's especially true on a small screen.
Got a new laptop a while back -- not a premium one, just a generic HP, and it came with a BluRay combo drive. Its an unimportant extra. The reason's obvious -- the computer's a computer, not a TV. Yes, its useful to watch movies on it but its got a 17" screen so standard DVDs look just fine. I've never really looked to see if its a recordable BluRay, either. It probably isn't, but even if it was it would be unnecessary -- the media's expensive and nobody in their right mind puts that much information on a single disk, its just too risky (even DVDs can be a bit iffy).
Side rant:
I would definitely rethink adding Blu-Ray drives to a laptop with its required DRM as well since it is well known that if you ever load a piece of software (mostly games) with SecuROM or Starforce that the software DRM seems to break the HDCP DRM of the Blu-Ray drive.

Who needs all this CPU overhead on something that is supposed to use as little power as it possibly can for battery life conservation.

What doesn't DRM break?
Pirates! yar-mi-hearties!
Its interesting you say Acer does not have plans or doesnt have blu Ray drives in they're laptops ...

Hell even the local Source Store here has Acer laptops with built in Blu Ray Drives......
Blue ray was stillborn long before it even came to market.

Honestly Blue ray sucks! I have watched a few blue ray demos in the video store on a big expensive flat screen: It sucked BIG TIME. It was some sort of Discovery channel stuff with vast mountain panoramas - all nice and highres and all. But the moment the camera moved it got choppy, it started looking less nice smear HORRIBLE!

Then the ridiculous amount of 25Gb on a piece of plastic with a whopping 12cm? I just bought a couple of 16Gb SDHC cards. Soooo small so nice and they can store a HD-film or two.

High res video is expensive (screen etc!) so the little price premium SDHC has today isn't adding a lot to the bill.
Sorry Sony, no deal here.
M.





Why don't they (vendors) think about feature invesment? If normal people use notebook, it would be few years before they upgrade or change new. In a few years it is a + (plus) to have few years old notebook that can play Blu Ray.
*yawn* history dictates that price is what stimulates a new technology to become widespread. why pay massively more money for hardware and discs for a frationally better end product? stop being so greedy and bring the price in line with the marginal gain.

p.s. drm comes at the expense of the consumer - there is no consumer benefit. it only protects the manufacturer. their biggest problem is consumer acceptance of drm - haha unlucky...
Blu-Ray in my experience seems to look sharper at the cost of framerate or smooth motion in video. It seemed noticeably choppy on PS3s, laptops, and standalone players.

Oh yeah, and being urinated on by the DRM isn't selling it to me either.
Read a few posts about poor Blu-Ray quality.

I have a used a few different systems, and can say that if you have a good standalone player you get nice crisp images without any blur or loss of quality in fast moving scenes. The playstation 3 on the other hand is really really poor in comparison, and has a tendency to stutter, although not everyone seems to notice this effect.
Also a high capacity memory card slot or two.
Bluetooth.
3G/Mobile hardware with a sim slot, or connection to my mobile to use it's contract web access.

And TV. I would rather have good TV than a movie drive.

Valve/Steam for movies and TV would also be great. If they teamed up with SKY then that would be cool.