Slashdot Mirror

Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop

Against the MS behemoth supporting HDDVD? Why exactly?

And mow for something completely different, who pays this site's bills?

I, for one, like having a DVD-burner simply because of the amount of storage. What used to take around 20 CD's to back up now takes about 5 DVD's.

At any rate, different companies certainly have their own vested interests in various formats. Differnt format availablilities in one way could mean more choices available, and you can choose depending upon your needs and applications. A lot of us, though, would simply like the convenience of one hardware standard to suit any purpose as it arises. http://www.dvdsite.org/

I'd say go ahead and pick up a DVD burner. Speaking for myself, they've made backing up information more efficient. One thing to note, however, is that I use my DVD's for archiving data and not multimedia files.

I will wait for the HD-DVD format to come about. There are just too many people arguing over the next standard, and until it becomes a standard, I will wait. This is my standard response.

Keep on pushing your support for Single format DVD because we won the war in the beginning and shouldn't give up now!

You should also stand up and watch out for DVI/HDCP and SDI inputs. Make sure you retain rights to the media and don't let publishers enforce encryption on everything or else 99% of the sets sold today compatible of HDTV will become useless.

With this DVD format becoming "standard" don't let them throw us off with some off the wall copyprotection and drm stuff!!!

You can find my info at:
DVDsite.org
as well as my sig below

In fact... while MPEG4 may result in smaller file sizes than MPEG2, there are probably going to be some people who don't like it, anyways. Dolby Digital has better compression than DTS, but... audiophiles insist that they can hear a difference. In fact, enough people prefer DTS to Dolby Digital that many movies are released with both DTS and Dolby Digital tracks! And also, let's not forget SuperBit DVD's... DVD's which sacrifice the special features to give the video a higher bitrate. If these didn't sell well, the company wouldn't *still* be releasing SuberBit DVD's, but they are. So... even if the compression *did* manage to shrink the video down to managable amounts, it still might not be enough to give VOD a "nudge", so to speak.

Further, any VOD system will be riddled with DRM. Some people will no doubt complain that they can actually see this DRM manefist itself in the movies they download, and still others will no doubt have problems with the playback.

I believe the future lies in the HD-DVD. There are a number of proposals for this, including one that uses MPEG2 on a Blu-Ray disc (~50gb, if dual layered) and another that uses MPEG4 on a DVD (~9gb, if dual layered). you can read about them here:

http://www.dvdsite.org/

There are already 4 standards out trying to become the next DVD standard. One format is to use standard DVD discs and MPEG-4. The other is to use Blu-Ray discs to deliver HD-DVD using less compression for a better image.

Most people of course are in support of the new Blu-Ray discs but just like Beta\VHS and DVD-A\SACD there are competing formats that may delay the technology.

Click here to support ONE HD-DVD FORMAT

If the TV makers had their way they'd be marketing "high definition" sets that couldn't sync any of the high resolution formats. In fact I think one or two sets made it out the door that way before the folks responsible for HDTV standards put a stop to it.

Even so, you cannot buy any LCD or DLP projector today that has 1920x1080 resolution, unless perhaps you have $100K to spend and can supply a couple kilowatts of power. Various conspiracy theories suggest that this is fully intentional on the part of the projector makers (mainly TI and JVC in this case), and that they are only going to supply full resolution projectors for large-venue theaters.

Sony recently announced that they will have a consumer 1920x1080 projector (based on their implementation of LCOS) out within the year. Some folks at avsforum claim to have already seen working prototypes. Given a $3K price point, they could pretty much own the home theater projector market by this time next year. Unfortunately the expected price is more like $8K-$12K.

More likely the Hollywood folks will drag their heels for as long as possible on providing HD DVDs of any sort, and when they do come out they'll be extremely compressed with the lowest quality they can get away with. See the One Format Only campaign.