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DVD Forum Approves HD-DVD Standard
An anonymous reader writes "Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. said Friday that the DVD Forum, an international association of electronics makers and movie studios, has approved the two Japanese companies' standard for next-generation DVDs. It has
always annoyed me that DVDs are not the same top resolutions as High Definition TV. Maybe this will fix it." Well, better get to work rebuying your entire video collection, again.
Is anyone thinking that it would just be cheaper to go to block buster every time you want to watch a moive, instead of buying DVDs? This way you won't have to buy the extended version, the super extended version and the director's ultra extended version as each comes out. As if that wasn't enough, they obsolete each format within seven or so years? Bah. I'm going back to renting!
Now that all things dvds (players, rom drives, and even burners) are affordable priced we have to go through the process all over again. Looks like i'll have to wait another few years for an affordable dvd burner that does this new format.
Hmmm... Pie...
i sure hope they eliminate the "click" you see when the damn thing switches layer in this new format. easily the Single Most Annoying Bug
Maybe I'm getting too cynical, but I fully expect these new formats to have some nefarious DRM scheme. The article in question didn't have any information on it, but I'm sure some slashdotters out there know: What's the DRM like on these new formats?
Suddenly the DVD industry would have to deal with people stealing movies, like stealing cable. Then all the movie companies would die off, like cable companies have, and the DVD would be as extinct as cable!
Ironically, if they make the standards open, they can export powerful enough crypto to prevent cracking.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Well I think a number of the movies I have therw wouldn't even be a point to buying a high-rez version because the source video isn't that good quality, especially some of the older stuff, so as long as the new players can play the 'old' DVDs should be much of a problem.
And this include Star Wars and practically every other movie that was made before the mid 90s. I look at a number of my DVDs and I can see the film grain on them because of the transfer from the source material, putting these in higher rez isn't going to change that.
Well, better get to work rebuying your entire video collection, again.
Even of there is full backward compatibility this is still something to worry about with most formats.
I have several hundred 12 inch LaserDiscs that still deliver a fine image - but if my player ever breaks they become useless. Many of the releases have never been re-released on DVD, and likely never will.
==
Tomas
Indeed!
:-) I don't have stairstep problems or jaggies in the films themselves; I can't remember the last time I saw that.
I have a projector with a native 800x600 resolution; at its distance from the screen, I've got a 16:9 (ie, widescreen) picture that's got a 52" diagonal.
At that size, DVD resolution (720x480) seems entirely adequate. I get some jaggies on poorly-done title screens, but I use those to help me focus the projector.
No, wait, I can: it was when I had the DVD player do letterboxing with the projector set in 4:3 mode. Apparently the DVD player does a better job with that than my expensive Philips SACD/DVD player.
I can't imagine repurchasing films that I own in a new format; I'd likely get a player that was backwards-compatible, and just make new purchases in the new format. Of course, exception for films where the transfer is substantially better --- I bought the original Kubrick box set, when it first came out, back before they remastered them. But I've been considering rebuying that regardless, since the transfers are so awful.
Really, the best thing I could do to improve my picture would be to get a brighter projector; that has far more impact on my movie-watching experience than resolution does. I don't have room in my apartment to have a larger picture, and without that, upping the resolution would be not pointless but not a huge deal either.
On the one hand, current DVDs really don't quite have the quality of some of the original film material, on the other hand, the technology to create HD-DVDs cost effectively simply wasn't there when DVDs first came out. So, this upgrade is quite justifiable, IMO. And an HD movie is still too large to be downloaded conveniently.
Take a look at your DVDs, though, and freeze some frames: for a lot of movies, it probably doesn't make much sense to get HD-DVDs because the quality of the original isn't all that high to begin with. You can already see plenty of film grain, fuzziness, and other film-related artifacts even with regular DVD resolutions and compression. Motion picture film just isn't all that great.
Attempts to create new audio disc formats, on the other hand, don't make much sense for the user: audio CDs really capture audio better than most stereos can reproduce it and most people can perceive it. Furthermore, the next "format" for audio is likely going to be the Internet. So, new audio formats are just an attempt at making lots of money with no real benefit to the customer.
I have The Matrix in HD (from Dish Networks via the Dish 5000, the 8VSB modulator and the Panasonic tuner/D-VHS combo)...and I assure you that I'm not closely inspecting Keanu's nose. On the other hand, I am familiar with every crease in Trinity's leather catsuit.
The only problem with watching movies in HD is that you cannot watch a DVD immediately afterwards. Doing so will make your eyes hurt from the strain. The difference is not subtle - my wife and I watched a movie in HD, then I showed her a bit of one of her favorite DVDs and she asked "What happened to the screen?" Nothing happened at all - it was just the difference between 480 x 720 and 1080 x 1920. Even the very best DVD will look sick compared to DVD.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
If I remember right DVD's hold much higher resolution than you see. The standard was written to force the players to downgrade the resolution to video quality. There was a /. article about someone who was using a loophole that did not restrict the resolution for plasma display interfaces. I am not sure what happened to that effort, but the DVD industry was up in arms because if people knew that fact they would revolt and it you could get movied theater like resolution at home, the theaters would suffer.
Why oh why did they chose HD-DVD over Blu-Ray? Cost is one thing. But thinking ahead is another.
The thing I like about Blu-Ray when compared to HD-DVD is that it houses more capable space. It also uses blue-lasers. A writing format is also included so that if you want to archive your p0rn of the 'net you can do that without worrying about multi-archival discs.
Information will continue to expand and grow. This applies to video as well. When DVD first came out, it can house a lot of film content. But then, things start to get tricky. Movie companies are placing an entire movie on one disc and all their extras on a separate discs. Not only does this provide more room for the movie but it also preserves more quality to the film itself. And with the talk of high-definition movies going around, you're going to need much more space than before. What then? That old DVD will not contain your 1080p 2 hour film on a single-side dual-layered DVD, unless you want to compromise video quality which none of us wants.
HD-DVD may remedy this but what then? Blu-Ray can still house more space. That means for the hardcore geeks and nerds, it may be possible to fit all 3 extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy into a single disc and have the film in 1080p with no compromise in film quality. And you may also be able to fit all the extras into that same disc. As movies get larger in resolution for distribution, the more space the disc will need to fit with little to no compromise in quality. Blu-Ray would simply benefit in the future run of movies.
While I do not know of the technical limitation of Blu-Ray such as compatibility in playing today's DVDs, are companies that stingy on cost that they do not want to handle Blu-Ray discs? It may be expensive now. But at least one doesn't have to worry about a different format for a long while. HD-DVD, with its smaller capacity, would have a shorter technicalogical lifespan than Blu-Ray would. How much information you can pact into a single disc matters a lot when you consider that digital video is the most consuming piece of information than any other medium. The more space available, the better film studios and viewers will be when they, in some unknown future, view the movie in insane high resolution with hardly any loss in video quality.
HD-DVD may be the next-gen standard now. But I wonder how many would still back Blu-Ray because of the possibilities and the fact that it houses more information than HD-DVD. Cost-effective? Yeah. But you're only delaying the inevitable. Technology moves fast. I doubt it'll slow down for HD-DVD.
~ Old Warriors Society
Personally, I jumped on the DVD bandwagon because we finally had a popular digital video format, so I could do and control everything from my computer... I can use software to modify the playback anyway I like, I can have it output to anything I like. For the first time, I was no longer dependant on electronics manufacturers, who want to decide what features they will and will not allow the public to have.
DVD gave me that video format, and gives me a picture better than that of a TV signal. Sure, the future format may bring higher resolutions, but I would have been perfectly happy with VHS had it been digital, radom access, etc., so quality really isn't that huge of a deal. Even in DVD format, it's not easy to find very good movies that I want to see in the first place, and a higher resolution will only nominally improve the experience.
I say, screw 'em. I'm not upgrading, and I'd be willing to bet that it is MUCH too soon for most other people to consider that either. DVDs are STILL an over-priced format, so what kind of prices are they going to put on this next format??? $50 for a brand-new movie? $20, if you're lucky, after it's a few years old? People have paid extra to get DVDs, but I don't think they're going to pay twice as much for something that won't even look any better to 99% of the viewing public, who are still happy with their standard-res TVs.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If you've seen a prototype blu-ray player you'd know that's not true--they're not simple optical disks, so unless there are two drives (like a dual DVD-VCR player, which costs considerably more than a solo player), then the OP's assumptions were correct.
Blue ray disks come in a built in protective plastic case, like 3 1/2 inch floppies. This is because the very small track widths make error correction so much more difficult. Even with DVDs there have been a lot of consumer complaints over how easily they scratch, and hi-def disks (in any format, unless someone comes out with one on a laser-disc size platter) are going to be that much more fragile, so this change is not as boneheaded as it sounds.
I've avoided Netflix after having read horror stories about all the good titles being on Very Long Wait status.
They're not going to let it happen again.
There isn't a damn thing they can do to prevent it if some student takes one of the players into a well sticked college lab, strips the chip, and reads the encryption codes out with a microscope.
That's the difference between encryption and DRM. With proper encryption is is essentially impossible for third parties to ever crack it and get at your data. But with DRM you aren't trying to protect the data from a third party, you are trying to secure the data against against the person you are GIVING the data to. One way or another that person already has the decryption key.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.