Portability. You can't really pop a hard disc in an envelope and send it to Aunty Gladys
No reason why you can't do both. A full quality file on a hard disc is easy to produce as part of the AVCHD/Blu-ray/DVD production process anyway.
Is the media player you linked to Level 4.2 compliant ? Most aren't so won't work with 1080p50/60 content.
In my case, 'Aunty Gladys' is my daughter and nephew
.. so either upload to Dropbox for them to download and play on their players, or, for bigger files, simply pop it onto an SD card or USB stick and post that (smaller envelope!
)
No, I don't think that player uses one of the new '50p' compliant chips ...I think that's still only the Popcorn Hour A400 at the moment...
Again, I don't use any 1080/50p footage, so not a problem for me.
What I do think is that my 720/50p footage, derived form 1080i, gives me all the 'smoothness' of a 50 'image' stream - that you get from either 50 fields, or 50 frames - and the advantage of progressive, so no interlacing artifacts.
OK, so not as impressive as 1080/50p of course - especailly on very big screens - but still
way better than downconverting AVCHD to DVD quality!
Blu-ray?...hmmm....OK for pressed commercial copies of Hollywood blockbusters I guess, but still too expensive and 'finicky' for home videos, IMHO.
And the reason that Blu-ray burners and blanks are still quite dear, even after all this time, is because quite a lot of folk have decided to give discs a miss second time round for home videos.
With more home video from phone cameras-- and You Tube -- and downloading -- and media players....
Add to that Sony's obsession with Blu-ray licencing, keeping up the costs, and the format never really stood a chance in that particular market place.
As always, all only IMHO of course!