Chris Lanier on Xbox 360 and Blu-Ray
Submitted by Midnight on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 6:00pm.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2008/02/21/1521136.aspx
Chris Lanier is a Microsoft MVP and guru of all things Media Center. When it comes to Media Center his word is gold. However, he is adamant that MS will not support Blu-Ray on the Xbox 360 and not give native Blu-Ray support to Media Center. The above linked article is just one of many he's written on the topic.
FWIW, I think Chris is wrong on this one. I think there is great incentive for MS to keep offering Xbox 360 users a HD optical drive solution in the Blu-Ray era. MS has said they would consider offering BD devices if BD won the format war. I think that, for some reason, Mr. Lanier has experienced a very anti-BD culture at MS and is applying that too far up the chain. What say you?
I was just about to post about this. Interesting article and I believe 95% of anything he says.
I buy what he says about BD and the 360.
If MS wanted to roll out BD player today, it might be until the end of the year before they could get the software written and hardware made. And I would call that a rush job. It could very well be early '09. By then, the XBOX 360 would be getting pretty old. Also, the BD drive would still be expensive.
I think if MS wants to offer HD content to their users, they'll do it through XBOX Live and partnerships with the studios and VoD providers.
After talking with someone at work and reading this article, I'd rather have a BD drive for my PC at $150 than a stand-alone player.
BTW: I think the successor to the XBOX 360 will be called XBOX 1080. It's a play on the number '360' and alludes to 1080p, the resolution of tomorrow.
Rap, I could even buy that. But he claims that MS may not even want to offer BD disc support to future versions of Media Center. Isn't that a stretch? As you said, I believe what he says 95% of the time, but he has refused to ever consider that MS would embrace Blu-Ray if it won the war. He acknowledged all of these things for HD-DVD when it was in the game, but since BD won he takes them off the table as an impossibility.
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