November 18th, 2009

Disks: why size means performance

Posted by Robin Harris @ 8:41 am

Categories: Disk drives, Solid State Disk

Tags: Hard Drive, Disk, Performance, Solid State Disk, Robin Harris

Big=fast
Most people keep less than 80 GB of data, including the operating system and their applications, on their hard drive. So why should they buy a 500 GB, 1 or even 2 TB hard drive?

One simple reason: speed. That big hard drive will give you this snappiest performance this side of a solid-state disk.

For many applications, even faster than a costly SSD. For a lot less money.

Why?

Big circles, little circles
Data is laid on disks in blocks called sectors. The sectors are laid down in circular tracks.

Disk engineers saw a long time ago that they could put more sectors on the outside of a disk than on the inside. As the head gets closer to the center of the disk, there are fewer sectors - and your data rate slows down.

How much? The innermost track will commonly have only ~45% of the speed of the outermost track.

But that’s not all
Bigger hard drives have another advantage: higher bit density. So for the same RPM, more bits come out.

The difference is substantial. A 3.5″ 500 GB drive might max out at 80 MB/sec, while a 1 TB drive will reach 100 MB/sec. The new 2 TB drives can reach 140 MB/sec.

1 more thing
Not only do big drives deliver more bandwidth, they also deliver more I/Os per second (IOPS). On a half full drive the head will never have to move across the entire platter to access data, cutting seek times - all else being equal - in half.

Big million dollar enterprise RAID arrays stuffed with 15k drives frequently short stroke their already-fast drives to make them even faster. It works on home systems too.

What about SSDs?
Flash-based solid state disks (SSD) excel at random reads - which is why they boot up a system so much faster than a hard drive. But due to the housekeeping needed to make an SSD look like a hard drive their write performance isn’t nearly as stellar.

A state-of-the-consumer-art SSD, the 80 GB Intel X25-M G2, is spec’d (pdf) at 70 MB/sec for sustained sequential writes.

A 500 GB Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm notebook drive will average almost 80 MB/sec while offering 6x the capacity for a much lower cost.

If you work with large files - photography, music, video - you’ll notice the difference over an SSD.

The Storage Bits take
Installing a big hard drive is, after more RAM, the easiest performance upgrade most of us can make. Even if you don’t need the capacity you’ll appreciate a friskier computer.

Another benefit: after initial break-in, new hard drives tend to be much more reliable than a 3 year old drive. Faster, more reliable and cheaper than an SSD, a hard drive upgrade may be all you need to keep your system happy.

Courteous comments welcome, of course. For more on this topic see Hard disks do get slower with use.

November 5th, 2009

A 4 SSD array: Apricorn pt 2

Posted by Robin Harris @ 9:28 pm

Categories: Disk drives, RAID, Solid State Disk

Tags: Card, Apricorn, Intel Corp., Performance Management, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Robin Harris

In part I of this review I measured the bandwidth of a hard drive version of the Apricorn hard card. That’s a PCI express card with 4 2.5″ hard drives mounted on it.

But a good solid state drive (SSD) is faster than a disk - so how fast is the Apricorn card with 4 Intel X25-M drives? I won’t keep you in suspense: darn fast.

Fast enough to handle full 12-bit RGB 4:4:4 at film’s 24 frames-per-second rate. I striped the 4 SSDs with the Mac’s Disk Utility software RAID 0 with the default 32KB block size, which is about the fastest. I used the Blackmagic Designs Disk Speed Test - which is close to X-bench results.

The X25-M uses the slower multi-level cell (MLC) flash, while the X25-E uses faster - and more expensive - single-level cell NAND flash. While both have impressive 260 MB/sec read speeds, M version writes - 70 MB/sec - are slower than an empty 2 TB Seagate hard drive at 117 MB/sec. Of course, the hard drive will slow down as it fills up and the flash drive shouldn’t.

Apricorn tested the card with 4 X25-E drives and reported over 675 MB/sec writes speeds. I didn’t have that config to test, but their other numbers have been similar to my test results.

For Macs Apricorn offers a new version of the driver that they’ve tested with Snow Leopard. I didn’t try it as I’m in the middle of a couple of jobs but I believe them.

The Storage Bits take
I’m currently testing a couple of external arrays, and while they have their advantages, internal system storage is less cluttered with fewer connectors to cause problems as well as much faster read performance - and writes, with the X25-E.

The nearest competitor is Fusion-io’s ioXtreme card. At 80 GB for $895 it offers comparable read performance and faster write performance - at least on Windows and Linux machines - no Mac driver is available.

The Apricorn supports 4 80 GB X25-M drives to achieve similar performance. At roughly $250 each, a fully configured Apricorn costs $1200 for 320 GB. You do the math. For uncompressed video the extra capacity will be helpful.

Comments welcome, of course. I’ll ship the gear Apricorn loaned me back this week. It was fun while it lasted! I’ve also done work for Fusion-io, but have they sent me review copies of anything? No.

October 11th, 2009

Optical storage: RIP

Posted by Robin Harris @ 9:51 pm

Categories: Disk drives, Infrastructure

Tags: Hard Drive, Disk, Capacity, Storage, Blu-ray, BD, TDK, Robin Harris

TDK recently demo’d an impressive technical achievement: a 10 layer 320 GB optical disk - using standard Blu-ray (BD) drive technology.

Too bad it will never be a commercial success. Optical is at the end of the line.

Why do formats die?
When their reliability, capacity, performance, density and cost aren’t competitive. Which is where optical is now - even 320 GB optical.

You probably don’t remember punched paper tape - all the rage in the 60s and early 70s - but it was popular on 16 bit minicomputers back when 4k of RAM was respectable and 64k unaffordable. It was limited to a few dozen KB of capacity and not reliable in long-term use, so when 240KB 8” floppies arrived in 1973 paper tape was toast.

But floppies couldn’t keep up with the growth of applications and data sets. The 100 MB Zip drive was insanely popular when introduced in 1994, but by 1999 the format was on the way out thanks to cheaper and more capacious CD-R drives.

Despite heroic efforts to increase removable magnetic disk capacities - culminating in 2001 with the 5.7 GB Orb drive - today removable magnetic disk media is dead, killed by cheaper optical and more convenient flash media. Just like magnetic killed paper.

Removable: backup and transfer
Removable media is good for 2 things: data backup and data transfer. Tape dominates removable media backup today with capacities rivaling the largest disks.

Thumb drives long ago replaced floppies for smaller file transfers - “sneakernet” - with external hard drives handling large capacities. With 1 TB 2.5” hard drives, even a writeable 50 GB Blu-ray (BD-R) can’t compete with a small hard drive in transfer speed or capacity.

TDK’s problem
Which gets us to the 10x Blu-ray problem: even if they started selling it there’s no market. Why?

• Capacity. Successful optical media capacities have been competitive with current disks - CD-ROM in the early 90s; DVD-R in the early 2000s. Multi-layer Blu-ray will never be more than a small fraction of hard drive capacities.
• Performance. 24x Blu-ray transfer rates are half that of today’s disks. And as capacities increase, disks get faster. Not so with Blu-ray: 48x, if it happens, will be the outer limit.
• Reliability. Early adopters report that BD burner disks often don’t play on commercial players. That will get fixed, but multi-layer DB-R will have to solve it again.
• Density. Managing a single piece of media is much simpler than managing 6 or 10. Hard drive density makes them much more convenient.
• Cost. BD-playing DVD drives haven’t been popular on PCs, and BD burners are way more expensive, as is the media. A FireWire or USB hard drive can be had for less than $100, has much faster access times, higher capacity and faster data transfer. With volume BD-R prices will come down - but where will the volume come from?

Multi-layer BD-R has advantages, especially if current BD players can be updated to use it. But there is no commercial justification for distributing content on 320 GB optical disks and there isn’t likely to be one.

Hollywood has a real chance to make 3D work, but 3D HD movies will fit fine on BD. Put a 3D “Band of Brothers” on a single disk? OK, but really, getting up every 50 minutes to change disks isn’t so hard, is it?

The Storage Bits take
New optical formats will get introduced - like 750 MB Zip drives and 5.7 GB Orb drives did - but they’ll stumble around the fringes of consumer acceptance before a quiet death. Many of the same forces that are killing BD - downloading, upconverting, cost - are closing in on optical media in general.

DVDs will be around for years - even as CD-Rs still are - but the focus is shifting to online storage and local disks. The industry has yet to crack the code on massive home disk storage, but that day is coming.

You’ll buy HD 3D content online, download it, store it in your digital library, and watch it when and where you want. If your house floods your content suppliers will let you download again. Who needs the hassle to burn disks?

The one remaining piece is for hard drive vendors to get serious about building archive-quality hard disks. I love their technology, but they aren’t the most forward looking group.

Courteous comments welcome, of course. Anyone want to buy a vintage USB Zip drive?

September 21st, 2009

What does 6 Gbit SATA mean to you?

Posted by Robin Harris @ 10:45 am

Categories: Disk drives

Tags: Disk, Performance, I/O, Serial ATA, Performance Management, Storage, Hardware, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Robin Harris

Seagate announced hot new disk today: a 6 Gbit SATA interface; 64 MB of cache; and 2 TB of capacity. Time to replace your old disk drives?

No rush
Each of these features is a good thing. But only the capacity is usable today.

The faster SATA interface is available on just a couple of high-end PC motherboards. The good news is that the interface is backwards compatible with the 1.5 and 3 Gbit versions. While you don’t gain any performance from the faster interface today, you don’t lose anything either.

History suggests that the new interface will be fairly common in 12 to 18 months. Since disks have a 3 year useful life you could get 2 years of higher performance if you bought the new drive today — and buy a new PC in 12-18 months.

Where’s the performance?
Where and when you actually see improved performance from the higher speed interface is the real question. A sequential read from a 7200 RPM drive can’t saturate a 3 Gbit link let alone 6 Gbit.

That is where the 64 MB cache comes in. If the data the operating system is requesting is in the cache, the cache can saturate a 6 Gbit link.

Let’s run some numbers.
Any 6 Gbit interface is capable of roughly 600 MB/sec of user data after accounting for protocol and encoding overhead (I’m assuming the drivers are well tuned - which may not be true for some time). Delivering 64 MB from cache will take 100 ms, while a sequential read from the desk could take 600 ms.

6X speed up sounds good. But how likely are you to see it?

If you’re doing small block or random I/O the answer is “not very.” Disk firmware predicts future data requests using the concept of “locality of reference.” The idea is that a request for a block of data will be followed by another request near that block. The disk reads ahead and loads the cache with data it expects the operating system to request.

It is a great concept, but with small requests the data transfer time is dwarfed by the I/O system overhead. And if your I/O is really random, locality of reference isn’t very helpful either.

What about sequential I/O? Even a 100 MB video file will overwhelm a 64 MB cache. Many disks don’t use the cache in sequential I/O because of cache latency. It’s faster to skip the cache and go direct from the read head to the SATA interface.

OK, where DOES it help?
Seagate tells me there are 2 cases where the larger cache offers noticeably higher performance. The first is in non linear editing (NLE), where multimegabyte video clips are flipping around.

The second is a Media Center PC. There large sequential I/O’s are coupled with relatively low audio or video data output rates. The disk can get ahead of the system demand and fill the cache with data that’s ready to go.

Luckily for 6gig SATA chip vendors these are high-growth apps.

The Storage Bits take
What will really drive demand for the new 6 Gbit interface is the new super speed USB 3 due next year. Capable of 300-500 MB/sec USB 3 will enable a new generation of high bandwidth peripherals.

Seagate’s new 6 Gbit interface and larger caches will also become more important as disk drive areal density grows, increasing R/W speeds. Today the disk’s higher performance is only important as part of an end-to-end system design capable of processing and delivering higher bandwidth on a sustained basis.

Comments welcome, of course. Update: Commenters have questioned the 3 year useful life, even suggesting I’m a shill for drive vendors. Hardly. I’m a data driven guy. You can review the data from Google and Carnegie-Mellon’s Parallel Data Lab in posts I wrote 2.5 years ago: Everything you know about disks is wrong and Google’s disk failure experience. Note 1: Annual Failure Rates spike in year 3. Note 2: massive skepticism of drive vendor claims. Note 3: great comments on both posts.

But the term “useful life” means more than “works.” It is a combination of reliability, capacity, expense and performance. A Model T Ford might “work” but it is past its useful life, at least in the US. Likewise, a 10 year old 4 GB drive may still work, but the 60kWh you spend each year to run it would buy you a new USB thumb drive that is more reliable with almost no operating expense.

But the biggest issue is that disk drives are mechanical devices and they wear out. Sure, I back up my data 3 ways, but I also replace my disks every 3 years. What is your data worth to you? End update.

September 10th, 2009

Will flash DIMMs replace disks or DRAM?

Posted by Robin Harris @ 9:52 am

Categories: Disk drives, RAM, Solid State Disk

Tags: DRAM, Disk, Sun Microsystems Inc., SO-DIMM, Notebooks, Storage, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Robin Harris

Flash memory is opening a second front in its war on entrenched storage technologies. An unannounced Sun product is going to use 80 48 GB flash SO-DIMMs to create a 4 TB cache appliance.

Isn’t “enhance” a nicer word than “replace?”
Others are already looking at taking these large flash is SO-DIMMs and adding them to notebook computers. The flash DIMMs are accessed as disk drives through a thin driver, which makes them fast. As a disk look-alike they aren’t a direct replacement for random access memory.

The other big difference is capacity. 4 GB notebook SO-DIMMs have just come to market priced at over $100 per gigabyte. How the flash SO-DIMMs will be priced is still a mystery, but since the memory chips typically are over 90% of the cost of a DIMM, a 48 GB SO-DIMM should be less than $200.

Expensive compared to a disk drive, cheap compared to DRAM.

Peaceful coexistence?
Many notebooks offer 2 SO-DIMM slots. Most casual notebook users — reading e-mail and surfing the web — are fine with 2 GB of RAM, leaving the second slot open for a 48 GB flash DIMM.

If the flash DIMM is configured as the boot device users will get most of the advantages of a more expensive SSD in a smaller and cheaper package. For many users 48 GB is all the capacity they need, making a disk optional.

The Storage Bits take
None of the players are standing still. In 12 to 18 months that 48 GB flash DIMM will be 96 GB or more. The current high price for the 4 GB SO-DIMM will drop to reasonable levels. And drive vendors will be offering 1.5 TB 2.5 inch drives.

In 2 years notebook vendors could be offering a scaled-down version of the traditional enterprise tiered storage architecture: high-speed DRAM; fast SO-DIMM for booting, application and scratch storage; and a large capacity hard drive for bulk storage. Faster performance, more capacity, lower power consumption and cooler notebooks. It could be good.

However, as the bootable SD card slot in the new MacBooks shows, there is more than one way to get flash into a system. Some of us would like to be able to easily swap out boot drives on as the cards, but most of us will prefer to have our boot drive inside the notebook where it won’t can’t get lost. SB cards will also continue to have a significant cost advantage over flash SO-DIMMs due to high volume.

Of course, we don’t know how well the new flash DIMMs will perform. Much depends on the quality of their embedded flash controllers, which often isn’t too good in first-generation designs.

Flash DIMMs will take a piece out of both the DRAM and disk markets, but how much of each remains to be seen. What is clear is that we the consumers all benefit by more competition for our storage dollars. And designers have a better set of options for future system designs.

Comments welcome, of course. I worked in Sun’s storage group for 3 years in the mid-90s.

September 1st, 2009

Build a RAID 6 array for $100/TB

Posted by Robin Harris @ 10:36 am

Categories: Disk drives, Infrastructure, RAID, Software

Tags: RAID, Storage, Hardware, Robin Harris

Imagine storage that didn’t cost much more than bare drives. High density storage with RAID 6 - double-fault - protection, reasonable bandwidth and web-friendly HTTPS access.

And really, really cheap.

Not your enterprise’s RAID array
Raw disk cost is only 5-10% of an enterprise RAID system’s cost. The rest goes for corporate jets, sales commissions, tradeshows, sheetmetal, 2 Intel x86 mobos, obscene profits and some pale and blinking engineers in a windowless lab who make it work.

But what if you don’t want 4-color brochures or the barely-clad booth babes. What if you just want cheap economical and reliable storage?

You aren’t running the global financial system - what’s left of it anyway - or a 500 person call center. But you want enough redundancy so it will stay up until morning.

Meet the Storage Pod
You aren’t the only one. Backblaze, a new online backup provider, designed the Storage Pod for their own use and are sharing it with everyone. They aren’t selling it - that’s where the build comes from - so they aren’t trying to get rich off you.

Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s an exploded diagram with a simplified BOM:

And then there’s the (free) software. 64-bit Debian Linux, IBM’s open source JFS file system and HTTPS access. Simply stated each file gets a URL. Put a web server in front of it and serve the world - or just your home.

The Storage Bits take
Many applications just need a big bucket that doesn’t cost $5,000/TB. This is it.

You can build it yourself, but it is probably more complex than a high-end gamer system. Download the 3D SolidWorks files and have Protocase build you 1 or 500 of the boxes.

But the density is good, the performance is reasonable, the availability is decent and the price is right. This is a DC-3, not a 747. It is all you need for the right application.

And at $100/TB you can mirror all your data 2 or 3 or 4 times if you need more availability - and still be way less than half the cost of name brand arrays. Get the details from the Backblaze blog.

Comments welcome, of course. BTW, I’m trying out their free trial Mac online backup - at least one of the founders worked at Apple - and I’ll let you know how it goes. I don’t have a business relationship with them either, in case you’re wondering.

August 30th, 2009

Snow Leopard fixes disk capacity bug

Posted by Robin Harris @ 2:12 pm

Categories: Disk drives, Software

Tags: Disk, Capacity, Storage, Hardware, Robin Harris

When will Microsoft follow?
It is a common question: why does my computer say a 1,000 GB drive is only 932 GB? What happened to the other 68 GB I paid for?

Actually, you have every byte you bought. But because operating systems report storage capacity in base 2 rather than the official base 10 the numbers look short.

And as drives get bigger, the “shortage” gets bigger:

Table from Your capacity will vary

Main memory is measured in base 2 as well - 1 KB of RAM is actually 1024 bytes - because most processors access memory in base 2 chunks - 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits - and it simplifies the internal math to use the same base 2 that the processor uses.

But disks are just a box of bytes that can be formatted many different ways. For example, a vendor can choose to store data in 20-bit chunks - 16 for data and 4 for extra ECC - which reduces the available capacity but not the raw capacity that disk vendor shipped.

The Apple fix
In Snow Leopard MacOS 10.6 storage capacity is now reported the way storage vendors specify it: in base 10. Snow Leopard will report the same capacity that the drive vendor shipped.

Of course, some capacity is used for formatting and other capacity may be used for files that are normally kept invisible. But at least the capacity the operating system reports and the capacity you thought you were buying will now match.

The Storage Bits take
Over the last 25 years, ever since hard drives started becoming common on PCs, curious users have been confused by the capacity reporting anomaly. Apple’s simple fix is one small but important step towards making data storage user friendly.

Some may argue that this wasn’t a bug, that the reporting was correct and the people wrong. But that isn’t the way it works in a consumer-driven world: if it isn’t right for the people using the system, it isn’t right. Get over it.

Update: Many commenters are arguing that mega, giga, tera etc. are base 2 metrics. Sorry for shouting but YOU ARE WRONG!

SI, IEC and IEEE have all specified, some starting over 10 years ago, that mega, giga, tera etc. are base 10 metrics. If you want base 2 you need to specify it with prefixes like kibi.

So man up, flush your stale cache and join the 21st century. I’ll ignore the slurs on my credibility for now, but don’t let it happen again. End update.

Comments welcome, of course. That’s right, officially MB is base 10, while MiB is base 2. Read the official Apple knowledge base article here.

August 3rd, 2009

HD DVD returns and kicks Blu-ray to the gutter

Posted by Robin Harris @ 3:13 pm

Categories: Disk drives, Marketing

Tags: HD-DVD, Blu-ray, China Blue Hi-definition Disk, Government, Hd Dvd, DVD, Consumer Electronics, Vertical Industries, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment

Just when Blu-ray thought it had clear sailing, a tempest has risen in the East: China Blue Hi-definition Disk (CBHD). Toshiba has licensed its HD DVD to them and it will be the unit world leader in HD optical technology in just 12 months.

Why? The Times Online reports that the CBHD players are outselling Blu-ray in China by 3-1 and the CBHD disks cost a quarter of Blu-ray.

Blu-ray, we hardly knew ye
What happened to Blu-ray’s dominance? Blu-ray’s dominance.

Conceived by Sony at a time when few thought upscaling would succeed, the idea was that HDTVs would require HD content on optical media. Reliving the glory days of DVD adoption they forecast tens of billions in revenue from players and disks, enormous licensing fees and consumer-proof DRM.

Watching the CD business crater, studio thought that HD would drive their business to new heights while eliminating piracy. It was an optical gold rush - that has turned into a mirage.

The fundamental problem is that the slightly sharper HD picture isn’t worth the extra dollars. 10%-15% max.

Enter the dragon
China has good reasons to support a home-grown HD format. First, the exorbitant Blu-ray royalties hurts Chinese manufacturers ability to compete on price.

An equally important, but unspoken, issue is the econoclypse. The Chinese government has made a deal with the Chinese people: leave us in control and we’ll deliver rising living standards. The current slow down has hit China hard: millions have been laid off and economic growth is anemic.

CBHD is a double win for the Chinese government: billions saved in royalties; and a much cheaper, locally manufactured, luxury item for the restless masses. Blu-ray is simply collateral damage.

Studio knuckle-draggers no doubt are salivating at a tough new form of Region encoding: incompatible formats for the West and Asia. But will that really work?

English is the #2 language in Asia, so English-language CBHDs will be popular. Shanghai vendors will happily sell CBHD players and disks on Ebay. The economics are irresistible and, other than the studios, who will turn down HD content at DVD prices?

The Storage Bits take
Toshiba’s gambit is brilliant. Instead of taking a total loss on their billion-dollar HD DVD investment, they’ll get incremental revenue and, no doubt, valuable future consideration from the Chinese government.

It is a nice win for the Chinese government and manufacturers. Blu-ray’s high cost has slowed its acceptance to a crawl, so Chinese CBHD players will rapidly climb down the cost curve to prices lower than DVD-only players since they aren’t paying DVD royalties either.

The studios get a couple of years to make some money on Chinese CBHD releases, but will piracy disappear? Not anytime soon.

The big loser is the Blu-ray camp. Boo-hoo. They’ve consistently misjudged the market and Blu-ray’s appeal. Guys, I’m sorry you made a bad business decision, but it’s time to man up and take your write-offs.

CBHD vendors should not ignore the writable CBHD market. Many consumers would like something larger than DVDs for backup and much cheaper - and more compatible - than Blu-ray.

Here’s hoping the CBHD storage market is running wild by this time next year. CBHD will be the world’s #1 format in unit volume by next year.

Comments welcome, of course. Who vetted that name? China Blue was Kathleen Turner’s alter-ego in Ken Russell’s outrageous Crimes of Passion. A prostitute by night, hard-charging professional woman by day and a constant temptation to Tony Perkins’ street preacher, she is certainly not a character the prudish Chinese government would endorse.

June 26th, 2009

Blu-ray's Blo-tards bite back

Posted by Robin Harris @ 7:30 pm

Categories: Disk drives, Marketing

Tags: Robin Harris

Someone hired the PR/lobbying firm Corporate Advocates to bite back at Storage Bits. Their message: the Harris Poll on Blu-ray was wrong about the number of homes with Blu-ray players.

A fact, it so happens, I never mentioned. But blow enough Blu-smoke and people will forget what they see with their own eyes?

I don’t think so.

Free speech isn’t free
Good thing our corporate overlords can afford the drivel that CorpAds is shoveling:

. . . the dramatic increase in Blu-ray Disc hardware and software sales clearly indicate that the format has in fact reached critical mass (surpassing even DVD penetration at the same point in DVD’s lifespan). . . .

[emphasis mine]

If today’s Blu-ray is what “critical mass” looks like, please don’t show me failure. That would be too scary.

The CorpAds point is that the Harris Poll numbers don’t square with manufacturer numbers. But Storage Bits never mentioned those numbers because they aren’t important.

Update: I’ve published the full text of the CorpAds email so you can read it for yourself. End update.

Update 2: The “evidence” that Blu-ray adoption beats DVD is based on the combined sales of BD players and PS3 consoles. Really, how many people buy PS3’s to play BD disks? Even if it is 20% - a high number - that puts Blu-ray well behind DVD. And ignores the fact that follow-ons usually do better: TV over radio; DVD over VHS; Google over Yahoo etc. End update 2.

So what is important?
Intentions. Harris asked people what they intended to do - and by a wide margin, people don’t much care about Blu-ray: player buying intentions are down; disk buying is lukewarm.

How could that be?

Because you don’t need Blu-ray to get high-def content. HD channels on cable; HD downloads from Netflix, Apple and others; and really good upscaling from Oppo Digital are all good substitutes for Blu-ray.

Price is the issue
All things being equal, consumers would rather have Blu-ray’s slightly better picture. But not if they have to pay a big premium for it.

People will shell out an extra $50 for Blu-ray capability. But Hollywood’s money is in the disks.

In the Harris poll, fully 68% of Blu-ray player or PS3 owners disagreed with the statement “I purchase movies on Blu-ray format regardless of price.” 68%!!!

These are the folks - like me - who own a Blu-ray player and some disks.

If the early adopters aren’t sold why will John Q. Public jump on this? He won’t. Like me he’ll get a few BD disks, think they look nice, and then go back to DVDs.

The Storage Bits take
Most new media fail. Historically, less than ¼ of new media achieve broad acceptance.

Blu-ray can still succeed with consumers, but vendors need to reduce prices. Of course, then Blu-ray may not be an economic success for vendors.

Oh well. Welcome to the free market. Say hi to your friends on Wall Street.

Update 3: I want to see Blu-ray succeed, mostly because I want to see a convenient 50 GB removable disk succeed. I’m not anti-Blu-ray, I’m anti-dumb. End update 3.

Comments welcome, of course. For historical perspective on new media, the curious might enjoy my wonkish review of an MIT Press book New Media, 1740-1915.

June 23rd, 2009

Blu-ray buzzkill: the death-spiral

Posted by Robin Harris @ 8:28 pm

Categories: Disk drives, Marketing

Tags: Time Warner Inc., Blu-ray, Harris Poll Number, DVD, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Robin Harris

Will consumers upgrade to Blu-ray? The CEO & co-founder of fast growing Netflix believes mailed DVDs shall be replaced by web-sent movies. And a recent Harris [no relation, darn it] Poll finds that people today are less likely to buy a Blu-ray player than they were last year.

Now would be a good time to panic
Forget the ever-optimistic “market research” reports blowing smoke up the BDA’s hind end. And the “hold the course” counsel from Blu-ray marketers.

The Harris Poll numbers are damning. Purchase intentions dropped over 20% - from 9% in ‘08 to 7% in ‘09 - while the percentage of “not at all likely” prospects rose to 75% in ‘09 from 65% in ‘08.

Buzzkill: the lukewarm Blu-ray base
But surely the early adopters who’ve experienced the joys of Blu-ray - superb picture quality, uncompressed audio and many new features - the people who - like me - have giant HD screens, surround sound systems and large movie collections, surely we love Blu-ray. Right?

Nope. Even the 16% of the polled who have a PS3 or a Blu-ray player aren’t fired up.

51% won’t wait for Blu-ray if the DVD comes out first. Fully 59% don’t buy the most movies on Blu-ray. 65% won’t replace their DVDs with Blu-ray.

In short, even the people who own Blu-ray are underwhelmed. Yes, it is better, and the people who like it buy more movies than average, but there isn’t the “Wow!” factor that drove widespread adoption of CDs and DVDs.

The Storage Bits take
The decline in buying intentions owes something to the worldwide depression recession, but the apathy of BD owners is ominous. If the players get cheap enough more people will buy them, but even that won’t drive BD disk sales.

Unless drastic action is taken before this Christmas season, Blu-ray will join all the other failed consumer media formats like SACD, Laser Disk, DVD-Audio and the PSP’s UMD. Most new formats fail - Blu-ray’s claim to fame is that it will be, without a doubt, the costliest such failure in history.

What can the BDA and the vendors do to turn it around? How about:

Recognition that Blu-ray is a feature tweak and price accordingly.

Accept that Blu-ray will never earn back the investment.

Consumers will pay $50 more for a Blu-ray player that is competitive with the average up-sampling DVD player.

Disk price margins can’t be higher than DVDs and probably should be less. The question the studios need to ask is: do we want to be selling disks in 5 years? No? Turn distribution over to your very good friends at Comcast, Apple and Time Warner. Ask Procter & Gamble about paying Safeway to stock products.

Fire all the market research firms telling you how great it is going to be. They are playing you. Your #1 goal: market share. High volume is your only chance to earn your way out of this mess and keep some control of your distribution.

Time is short. Timid incrementalism will kill you.

Comments welcome, of course.