Didn't they just release a 2TB Micro SD card? So that'd be 40 Blu-ray (dual layer) discs stored on a device which can fit through the hole in the middle of one of said discs.

As for compatibility: Yes it's a compatibility issue, but when the issue is introduced because of changing copy protection schemes, I'd still dub it a kind of DRM issue.

Can I just say this? (well, of course I can... who is gonna stop me?)

Blu-Ray is an absolutely awesome technology!

But, it is also an absolutely shitty technology.

Awesome because... well, look at it. And that's it. That is the end of the awesome train. Sure, it holds a lot of data, but from the practical point of view, it simply offers a far better picture (other than actual film) than anything else you can view in your home.

But it is shitty... because it is a solution in search of a problem. We didn't NEED an amazing new form factor. The industry did. But whatever... a good form factor is a good form factor... except for this... rather than locking down a standard, like DVD did, the Blu-Ray standard continues to evolve, partially from feature creep and partially from updated DRM.

This makes for an appliance in your home in constant need of firmware updates. Fine, if you have a PS3 or an Internet enabled Blu-Ray player (usually). But if you have an older Blu-Ray (like mine that I got "free" as part of the deal when I bought my 55" TV), you have to download the firmware update on your PC, transfer it to a thumb drive, get behind your rack and find the USB port, plug it in and do some sort of rain dance.

Not an issue for me. I'm pretty technically competent. This is a big issue for my parents. This is a big issue for the majority of non-geek humans. A PS3 is the best possible Blu Ray player now, but that isn't gonna drive the sale to the non-gamer who just wants to upgrade their home theater.

Blu Ray should be what DVD is. A disc that you insert into a player, which provides a menu that allows you access the content. It should not be an interactive Internet experience. It should not allow you to update your Facebook status during the movie. It should not create a complex web of barely watchable extras. It should not offer a chat client so you and your friends can all text each other on screen during Inception. It should just be a DVD with more data and better picture and sound, with a spec that is locked down at launch.

Imagine if your toaster was like Blu-Ray. You get up and discover it is no longer able to make toast because you bought English Muffins instead of wheat bread and now you have to update your firmware to eat breakfast.

And the majority of consumers want to put a Blu Ray disc (or DVD) into the device, and watch the movie. They don't all have wireless networks, thumb drives, always on Internet connections, and in many cases, the desire to stumble through all the new types of extra features. Lock that spec down and call it Blu-Ray... If they had simply developed a better DVD, I'd be exactly as happy as I am now. I have never thought, "hey, I want to email my thoughts on this movie to my friend in Seattle using my Blu Ray player and a remote control."

Well crap, your blu ray player must suck then. I just use a PS3 for blu ray and it works perfectly, and there is a substantial difference in quality and storage space between blu ray and DVDs. Higher quality picture, more room for special features, and no having to buy a 3-4 disc collection to get all the special features you want for just one movie.

My tv is a 55" Samsung LED HDTV and the picture looks great with practically anything on blu ray, especially compared to DVDs. And one thing about DVDs is you will have to adjust the picture on your HDTV for the aspect ratio to fit the screen better (which will result in slightly less quality/stretched picture just for that), since blu ray discs are formatted to fit the entire screen of an HDTV while DVDs are not.

Some DVDs though for older movies that aren't on blu ray, or TV or anime shows that will never make it to blu ray still look great too, depending on how well the DVD release was compressed in terms of quality on the disc.

All of that said, I just hope Lucasfilms doesn't fuck around with us, I just want to either see the original theatrical versions with this release, or both the original cuts and the special edition versions so we can choose which one we'd rather watch. Otherwise I won't be buying/cancelling my pre-order.

Star Wars however, will look absolutely awesome on blu ray, no doubt about that.

While you are indeed correct the popular usage is "Han shot first"; it even has a Wikipedia article. :)

As much as I love Star Wars, the radio drama spoiled if for me. It covers quite a bit of extra story, and I recommend getting a copy of it if you ever get the chance (Or if they still even sell it).

I heard a rumor that the Blu-Ray version was adding the scenes with Luke witnessing the battle on Tatooine, speaking to his friends, Biggs, etc, but it doesn't come close to what the radio version did.

I'm nor. I'm more interested in the extended Lord of the Rings and Superman blu-ray sets coming out.

My PS3 takes quite a while to load Blu-Rays... not 3 minutes mind you, but compare to a DVD and it's rather slow.

Funny though, most of the Blu-Rays I've gotten these days are 3-disc packages anyway (well, one of them usually is the DVD version). Inception was one of them that had a separate Blu-Ray just for special features.

I love the radio drama version! I have it on my ipod and listened to it on the bus ride home from school the last break. It does a have a lot of really interesting extra scenes which I also now conflate with what is in the actual movie.

Lucasfilm just pulled a Valve-wannabe on this one (without the cool ARG and extra free content, mind):

http://maythe4th.starwars.com/?CO=nx-en

Yup, a countdown to May 4th which lead to another countdown where you need to share the news on social networks, so you gradually get to know more about what the upcoming bluray collections will contain. I'll pass, not because I'm not interested, but because I frankly don't do social networks. And I'll probably buy the collections anyway. Eventually.

That all depends on the bit-rate and length of the movie. Take the epic Avatar. No bonus features and it taes 44GB of space for a 28mbps bit-rate and 4400kbps lossless audio. It's not so much that there's extra room for special features, it's extra room to release as high a quality disc aq and pq wise as possible. DVD video bit-rates top out at 9.8mps. The audio bit-rate is 640kbps or lower. At those rates, tons of special features would fit on the blu-ray disc.

I'll just wait for this exclusive information to be leaked.

Since the DRM in my BLU-RAY firmware doesn't allow output of an image above 480p through component due to DRM I'm not buying another disc until A: I can output through HDMI or B: The morons come to their senses!

I have a PS3, sitting in a box. I only use it to hack together fun projects since you can load anything on them now. BluRay sucks for all the reasons I mentioned, which is basically crap tacked onto it that doesn't help you. It's funny, your PS3 still loads BluRay slower than DVD, sure it's way faster than a normal player, but you're basically using a freaking full computer to bootstrap that DRM wrapped in additional DRM (I'm not even shitting you here, read the spec sometime). After which you'll be treated to even more unskippable ads than come on the same DVD version and a bunch of other shit you probably don't want. It's a bit cost prohibitive to make a real backup of a BluRay movie, but backing up a DVD movie is cheap, I can even strip off the shit I hate while doing so.

As for picture quality of DVD, you may have a proper upscaling DVD player and have it running properly up to your TV (or your receiver), I do find that most people who complain about how bad DVD looks on their HDTVs do not, though. So that's the first thing I suggest people fix before they make a comparison. Again, you may have this and still not think it's good enough, but most people do. Also, my XBox 360 streams Netflix via HDMI right to my HDTV, so that 720p gets upscaled by some nice and beefy hardware and looks pretty damned good, so damned good that I'm not tempted to pay 15 dollars per release to get a 1080p version of the same movie and put up with all the bullshit I've previously mentioned.

I get that some people really like BluRay, fair enough, what I don't get is why people who do seem to unable to fathom that some of us just don't think it's worth it, yes, even some of us that like really huge monitors:)
It won't allow it over DVI either, so far as I know. Yeah, that sucks too.

Stupid, stupid marketing countdowns... their executives must have loved that. I know I will buy it; I just hope it doesn't happen like with LotR which has now 2 Blu-ray collections, and a third will be released after the two The Hobbit movies.

Anyways, instead of going to the hotsite, just go to these links:
http://www.starwars.com/movies/saga/bluraymay4/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjSEMjl_PZ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kmSuHVX20

http://www.facebook.com/StarWars

For me, I'm really disappointed with spec. features of this collection, so I'm hesitant. However, the original Star Wars trilogy is probably my 3 all time favorite movies so I think I'll probably buy it despite the $99 that their charging. It wouldn't be right to not have one's favourite movies in its best possible form. And Lucas knows that the money grubbing bugger.