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Tech Titans Prepare to Battle Over Next DVD Format
securitas writes "The New York Times Technology has an excellent feature by Ken Belson about the coming battle over the next-generation DVD format that consumer electronics and technology giants are already preparing for. The article covers the (high-definition) HD DVD group, led by Toshiba and NEC, and the Blu-ray Group, led by Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic/JVC). Mass production is expected to begin in 2005, but both sides are expected to show prototypes and aggresively pursue partners at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next week. Add to the mix a nine-company Chinese faction that says it will develop its own DVD format because - fearing their technology could be used by Chinese rivals - the Japanese manufacturers haven't shared much information, even within the DVD Forum. Finally, Disney, Microsoft, IBM and Intel have yet to weigh in. The worst thing that could happen would be another Betamax/VHS-type war. In that case, 'Everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer,' says Warren N. Lieberfarb, developer of the original DVD format."
... it will be in the best finacial interests of the companies, and the worst interests of the viewers. So either way, does it really make a difference whether it is this format or that?
It costs next to nothing to stamp out a DVD. If they remove region encoding from these formats, there's actually less different dvd's to press.
I hope in the end this leads to a standardized format.
I must admit I'm rooting for the Chinese faction. I want a digital standard that's NOT written by the content owners. If they can make a next-gen DVD that's cheap and recordable, and it gets into enough homes, then maybe it will be to the studios' advantage to release content for it, even if they can't have complete control over it.
Behold the riant ape! Beware, his crooked thumbs!
I hear the Blu-Ray group is appearing at the Bellagio next year!
In that case, 'Everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer. Umm, so ... Everyone is a loser. Particularly...everyone. This guy must run the department of redundancy department.
"Everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer"
If "the consumer" is really the most important, why are they mentioned last?
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
I still think they should go back to Beta, myself...
If the new DVD formats being recommended aren't as 'open', and do not present a sizeable improvement over the current resolution of existing DVDs, I don't think that one conglomerate will be able to 'force' the market place into accepting a new tech.
Lucas and Speilberg weren't able to make their DVD alternative fly, and given their back catalogue of movies held in reserve, they had strong leverage over the marketplace.
Given that DVDs have an indefinite shelf life (okay, greater than 20 years) and better than broadcast resolution , I don't think people will see a compelling reason to upgrade. Maybe when HDTV becomes ubiquitous, but even then a really good DVD rig comes close to the HD broadcasts I've seen.
Let the industry duke it out...I won't need to worry for ~ 10 years.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Whatever format I buy, it will turn out to be the betamax format.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
For those unfamiliar with the techs, the spec set forth by Toshiba/Nec is backward compatible with the now current tech. The blu-ray is not backwards compatible.
I would like see the next-gen players be able to play both disks, I have ALOT! I also happen to favor Toshiba they make one of the better players out there for picture/sound.
Instead of choosing a format for the discs, we all agree on a common method of storing the data instead of the medium so I can plug my XYZ Toilet Paper Tube Reader into my computer and read off the 10 gigs of data it holds with the same codec as I use for that latest game release on the 'Finger in the Nose' reader?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Sheesh, by the time I finish reading all the linked stories this article will have been archived...
They are arguing over the next-gen DVD format when they can't even settle on the recordable/re-writable format for the current generation.
As long as it fits the extended trilogy of LOTR on one disc I don't really mind.
--
Hey does anyone know if there's a bounty on this guy in a red suit? I saw him breaking into the other houses on my street before he tried mine
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Isn't this why organizations with a commercial interest shouldn't be involved in deciding upon standards? Because they will obviously want to get what they want, and there's usually more than one will involved. It isn't a constructive battle for a format either, and the best format isn't necessarily victorious.
:-P
I wonder what the purpose of the DVD Forum was again?
1. To establish a single format for each DVD application product, including revisions, improvements and enhancements for the benefit of consumers and users
2. To promote broad acceptance of DVD products on a worldwide basis, including the entertainment, consumer electronics and IT industries as well as the general public.
Ooh, I see...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'd heard about Fluorescent Multilayer Discs years ago, but what's happened to them since? They were supposed to hold almost 20 times as much data as a 4.7GB DVD. So, where are they?
Not that I really want a new format or anything. I just think FMDs are cool. DVDs are a-ok for me, and I just bought a DVD burner (which supports all the damned various formats), so why are they making something new, again. Can we just have some media technology that lasts for more than 10 years?
Gabriel Ricard
"Your[e] OLD player will still work." [Flames deleted]
My first thought was similar to this, but I quickly thought better of it.
1) Maybe he could sell his old player on ebay and reduce his investment if only the new player is compatible.
2) Not everyone has the room to keep two players in service.
3) The old player will crap out at some point. The point is that he will have to maintain two players in service.
I think we're already in a Betamax/VHS type war with DVD-R and DVD+R, adding another playback format with HD-DVD is just asking for trouble, especially now that DVD has pretty much supplanted VHS.
:)
Personally I think it's foolish of these companies to try to create their own proprietory formats to make more money as it's usually always the case that the cheapest most open format wins. e.g. VHS, x86 etc. And you have consumers upset that their purchase has become obsolete who won't necessarily have the cash to buy the "victorious" format.
And what about people who have 50+ DVDs in their collection? Are they supposed to replace all their Lord of the Rings DVDs with HD-DVDs? I remember people bitching about replacing all their VHS with DVDs, I don't think having to do it again so soon will help the introduction of a new format.
I reckon whatever method ends up being used should have a) smaller discs and b) protective casing.
Although there good in the way they hold lots and lots of quite quick to access information, I think CD's and DVD's are some of the crappiest pieces of technology about. There clunky, just to big to hold easily in your hand (escpecially if your female) and get scratched so, so easy its pathetic. What percentage of your games/music CD's from say 6 years ago isn't scratched?
The best format for holding such data I have seen was on that Sylvester Stallone movie "Demolition Man", at some point on that you see Sandra Bullock use something which is like 4 minidisc's stacked on top of each other.
What's the point for movies? We can watch all but the most weirdly long movies without changing DVDs. Is it supposed to be better quality? Many movies on just one disc? Or only good for, say, distributing software and what not?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Ultimately the consumers will make the choice. The problem being that consumers don't always make the best choices (VHS, Windoz, etc...).
I would expect that the winning format is fully compatible with all HDTV formats (1080i) and that players are backwards compatible with DVD.
Anything else would not be worth the upgrade.
Strater
For some reason, I find myself not really caring too much to upgrade my DVD player. Regular old DVD, and a decent quality (34" toshiba from costco) TV is plenty good enough for me for now.
That said, if i do upgrade, I really hope that this chinese standard wins out. China has a shitload of consumers, granted not all of them can afford things like DVD etc, but in the upcoming years alot more will be able too...
Thing about the chinese standard is i bet there wont be any stupid regional controls, and I hope they have enough sense nto to make something like macrovision (which just screws up ma and pa trying to route thigns through the vcr, trussst me gah the headaches) mandatory.
If there ends up being two or three competing standards, I'd just nab the chinese one anyway. I'm sure it'll be backwards compatible with existing dvds, and they aren't going away anytime soon. If the local blockbuster or whatever wont stock the dvd's in the format I care for, I'm pretty sure netflix or whatever will step up and stock them, and the local renting places would lose my business, and if they dont sell them, I can get them cheaper on ebay anyway...so no matter what i'm gonna win.
ALSO ALSO ALSO (you KNOW THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN, and i for one can't wait)...All of us nerds are gonna be able to get whatever comes out as a drive in the computer. People are going to be ripping these movies in their high quality form and encoding them into DIVX and stick them on regular DVD's!
la~
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Whats good here is that they are fighting over two very good formats instead of fighting over a good format and one that enslaves the consumer...
why should a good suggestion be considered a troll? If there is one thing I also would like to see come out of htis also it would be everyone using one standardised media distrobution format. I Suppose the poster should have known Slashdot isnt the place to place constructive comments though
How does the consumer become a loser in this situation?
If someone decides to buy a product that isn't standardized and becomes obsolete within a year or two, then it's their own fault. The average consumer won't purchase the technology until it has been proven in the market and can readily be found and purchased at a reasonable price.
If big corporations keep fighting over the new media format, I only see THEM as the losers... spending so much time/money/effort for something that the average consumer will NOT purchase.
Karma: NaN
Will we see that kind of cooperation again? Probably not. There's too much incentive to play dirty, after the massive success of DVD.
FWIW the book also contains far, far more tech background on the DVD format, MPEG-4, visual theory, etc. than anybody except Slashdotters will ever want to absorb.
Everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer,
The consumer has already lost when he's called a consumer instead of a citizen. This mindset speaks volumes.
The compatibility mostly works into the pressing plant's advantage. Players can have an extra reader laser, which I suppose would cost a bit more.
I really don't buy the compatibility argument. VCD isn't necessarily compatible with DVD, but most players have it. CD-R/RW isn't compatible with DVD lasers, but most DVD players can read them now because the makers put in an extra laser of the right wavelength. I highly doubt any next-generation hardware player would drop DVD.
The difference is that all content is released in the same format; ie, there's no question right now what format a purchased DVD is in or if it will be released for your player. The only dispute is over recordable formats.
On the PC side, the battle over formats is essentially moot due to the availability of multiformat recorders capable of doing all formats. There were no multiformat VCRs during Beta/VHS.
The only place where there is "conflict" is in the market for set-top DVD recorders. In this arena, it's not clear what format will or if there will be a winner. Panasonic and Pioneer are leaders in this area, and they both favor -R. The cheaper players tend to favor +R, and Sony does +R, -R/-RW but not +RW.
If the DVD blank section at the store is any indication, I'm kind of inclined to think that -R is winning, mainly due to the speed at which -R blanks disappear when there's a sale. +R seems to be always in stock, leading me to believe there's less demand for it, which may be driven by the slightly higher compatibility offered by -R media in random set-top players. Many new ones will play +R, but I've found older ones won't when they do play -R media.
Overall, it's a different competition and one that seems as if it will end a "tie" as new, higher capacity formats become available before a "victor" is declared.
I'm hoping for pay per view version of this where I never have to return the disc, and yet, I don't have own it! Perhaps modem in my player will periodically dial into HQ and submitting my viewing details and I will be billed accordingly.
They're doing this at the wrong time. If this is meant to compliment DVD, fair enough, but if its a replacement, then this is stupid. The public is only now embracing DVD big time, buying a DVD player for every TV and replacing their Video collection with DVDs, and now the major companies are going to dump a new format on us? How about backward compatability? I thought the DVD standard was pretty good as was, and I'm pretty fussy about these things.
They have players that read CD, DVD, MP3 etc... Won't they be able to develop players that can read multiple formats as well?
I can see how Microsoft goes with those hardware giants, but Disney? What's Disney's expected contribution to next generation consumer video equipment standards, and how other movie production companies are supposedly different?
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Its actually good style to put the things you want well remembered at the end because people remember the beginnings and ends of things they read / hear best.
That said, the writing style (as pointed out by another poster) left something to be desired.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
if technology is moving too fast, you're too old
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I know there's more to DVDs than movies, but face it, the #1 use of DVDs are for movies.
First of all, make DTS-ES a standard. The only reason why movies that include DTS soundtracks also include Dolby Digital sountrack is because DTS is not standard. DTS is better than DD, so let's make it standard and forget about DD for movies. (audio commentaries should still be in DD though)
Second, make sure there's a lot of storage, cause every movie has to be encoded at least in 1080P (no, not 1080i) and mpeg4. Make sure the standard has room to grow and accept higher-resolution, while making sure players can keep up with every resolutions. The stream also has to include 4:3 fullscreen cropping coordinates so we can stop having fullscreen editions DVDs for folks that watch their DVDs on 4:3 telivisions.
Lastly, forget about the Internet-enabled DVDs and players. I want my content ON THE DISC, not on some remote server.
Kudos to you. You're speaking the truth. Too sad that some people here think they have to safe Hollywood from comments like yours.
Hollywood is pushing both technical groups to come up with new security measures to protect their movies. Neither group has developed a prototype that satisfies the movie industry - a major impediment to a commercial launch.
*sigh* Here we go again, for another round of macrovision, region coding and suchlike rubbish. I confidently predict(1) that the new measures will not make any difference to large-scale pirates or warez d00ds, but will make everyone else's life difficult.
1): What do I know about it? not much.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Screw you, hippie. I do not wish to be remembered as a "citizen", that is, a part of a greater whole working collectively for a better universe. I wish to be remembered as a "consumer", that is, one who spent a limited amount of time on this planet and used, digested, destroyed, or otherwise ruined as much material as possible during my stay. How much we consume in our lifetime is the measure of our worth. Consuming more than our neighbors is good, but consuming more than we can metabolize in our bodies or store in our homes is what we must all strive to do. I am a consumer. No matter what they produce, I win.
Hahahahaha... Slashdot... hahaha... new DVD format!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA....
Ahh.. that was good.
I know, whatever they'll think of, it will suck (for the customer) BUT(!) it will also be rippable (by the customer).
Gawd, yes. It pisses me off no end that I have to wait 30-60 seconds after loading a DVD just to get to the main menu - which is usually also locked so I have to watch a stupid video sequence before I can finally select 'Play'.
Is it so unreasonable to want to load a DVD and watch the damn movie? Seriously, if there was a DVD player out there that advertised on the box "No function lockouts", I'd pay an extra $50 just for that.
Whichever one support HD 16:9 sets it the one I'll go for. I just spent a ton of money on my new set and all DVD's still play with black bars across the top and bottom. Maybe its just my settings or something, but it sucks having the bars on wide screen movies when I have a wide screen set!
I'll bet a lot of the current generation does not remember when CDs used to come in protective cases. They were hinged so that you could remove the CD but most of the people that I knew kept their CDs in carrier (case).
I am trying to recall the reason they stopped shipping them in carriers. It seems that cost was one of the reasons. I don't recall any technical problems with them.
...a new format that doesn't force the customer to rip it from the medium in order to watch/listen to the content without problems?
I didn't bother with the +R/-R DVD war, I just bought a writer to do both formats. The only catch is for the players to support both. I suspect about 3 years after release, 70% of players will be happy with either format and most (not all) players will accept the consumer grade recordable media (just like today with DVD). Considering how many times the industry shoot themselves in the foot, I think they enjoy this process. History may not repeat itself, but this part sounds like a broken record.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
One of the best things the MPAA and these groups arguing over the next gen DVD specs can do is agree that DVD copying needs to be stopped. To that end if I were involved in this planning I would recommmend a media size change. Make the disc size just large enough so that the drive would not be able to be fit into a standard 5 1/4" computer case drive slot. Take this another step and block any development & production of any play/burner with a computer interface. No computer players, no computer burners, no simple copying.
A lot of people I know have all their movies in some combination of VHS and DVD, so this what their collection consists of. The TV has a VCR and DVD player attached. What next, another device for playing the new format?
.02.
Physical media allow you to store things, such as movies and data, and move them around, let a friend borrow them, etc. But the major use of DVDs is for movies.
I say let them duke it out in a format war, because to me the obvious way to go is to use broadband to deliver movies. Watching movies should be device and format agnostic.
And the service shouldn't be pay per view, either. You should be able to buy "viewing rights" for a movie, which are stored in a remote database. This way you could cache your movies in local storage (a hard drive), but if the drive goes down or you want to upgrade, you still have viewing rights for the movies and could re-download them.
Instead of draconian digital rights management, make it an open process to verify what media someone is entitled to view/listen. Companies can pull up one's credit record, and I think something similar should be possible for movies/music.
Just my
The worst thing that could happen would be another Betamax/VHS-type war. In that case, 'Everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer,' says Warren N. Lieberfarb, developer of the original DVD format."
Is he saying competition is bad? Only in a socialist government is this true. Competition is always better. Why? Because in the case of VHS/Betamax, the cheaper solution reigned supreme. Why not have both solutions (or all 3 or 4 or whatever) exist and let consumers decide which they want. Complaining about your overpriced CDs and DVDs? Maybe that's because there is no competition to drive the prices down. Think of that? Nah...
they are able to fit much much more information on a DVD. That means no popping in a secon disc to see special features, no switching discs on long movies (like Once Upon A Time In America, which has an actualy intermission in the movie, but it's not where the movie cuts off from one disc to the next). Just think, if Peter Jackson approves it, there could be a nine or 12 hour continuous lord of the rings movie with no breaks between sections, and no need to switch discs.
Maybe his skills are elsewhere? Go troll another website.
In this case I do not think that a war in a good old VHS vs. Betamax fashion is a bad thing. Perhaps competition will lead to a better standard and we (consumers) will not have to put up with macrovision and region coding crap that has polluted the DVD format. If the entire standard is at stake perhaps the competing corporations will focus more on what is good for the consumers than what is good for the content deliverers.
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
If your use of those media are storage only, it's allright with Chinese makers, but you will never see LOTR come out on such media without cooperation with copyright owners, and media player manufacturers can't sell their hardware with no software around (as you see in game consoles).
One of the advantages of a blue laser. The HD DVD group instead gets by with better compression.
But again, if you want big you gotta go blue, which means you're nowhere near open since there aren't a lot of venders selling blue semiconductor lasers.
It's actually a good example of why governments should do research, to avoid technology stand-offs that hurt consumers.
I think HD's real test might come next christmas, when Intel's low-cost tech starts entering the market maybe causing something of a price war. If 42" HD plasmas start hitting $1500, I don't think it would be too long before HD had it's critical mass.
Please somebody tell me that there are DVD players with the ability to just play the movie without menus?!? I was a relative newcomer to DVD, and I thought it would be as convenient as a CD player. You know, load the disk, click the play button, and instantly start the movie. I takes longer to get a movie started on my DVD player (JVC) than it took on my VHS player, because you have to watch the FBI warnings and commentary disclaimers. Newer DVDs have annoying intro animations for every single menu (Simpsons Season 3 is a Worst Offender there).
As the parent poster said, I would glady pay extra for a player with instant-play capabilities. Otherwise, it is a flawed technology, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't personally care what format it is, but it better be able to work in standard DVD players or consumers aren't gonna be buying 'em!
The last thing people wanna do is go out and buy a new player.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
1) High capacity
2) Reliability
3) Backward compatibility (at least for reading)
4) Low cost, but this comes with time regardless
I bet 2 and 3 are possible for all formats, which would make the decision obvious. Only a political agenda or "IP" concerns could be slowing this down.
that is not as stupid as Divix, and sticks to it, then everything will be OK.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I think this was my favourite method of rendering a CD useless (from the Roxio article)...
From: Anonymous
Camouflage technique: Make your own AOL label and affix it to the top of your CD. No one bothers to look at it twice.....
On my POS mintek player, you can hit the "1" button on the remote control. That'll get you to the first chapter and you can then press the menu button to go to either the main menu or chapter selection screen.
A pr0n I was bought had one of those ads telling you how small your wiener was everytime you started it up. Nothing like questioning the size of your manhood everytime had it in hand.
'Everyone is a loser, particularly Hollywood studios, the retailer community and, most importantly, the consumer,' says Warren N. Lieberfarb, developer of the original DVD format.'
;-)
Yes... with the original DVD format, only the consumer is the loser....
Crabby holidays everyone!
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Nope, sorry, that's not the way it works. I've been hearing the whining from the open source community for YEARS that if I want software to do something, I should just write it myself. It's ever so easy to do, even the most user of users could write their own version of Word or Excel if they didn't like the others. After all, there's so much code available to look at now, how could he NOT have the skillz to do it.
Not a troll, just tired of the hypocrisy.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
In future DVD media (whatever name it ends up having) I sincerely hope that creating menus and such is vastly simpler than it is with the DVD format we have today. Honestly, it should be as simple as HTML with some minor scripting thrown into the mix to navigate the actual movies placed onto the disc. It's dumb that you have to have this convoluted and unnecessary IFO commands. Would the resultant menu be a mess of files (.html, .png, .jpg, etc) ala an HTML webpage? No. It could be compiled into a single binary/flat file (think something along the lines of Microsoft's HTML Help format (those .CHM files)), and to make composition for the author easier, it could even include sub-directories inside the flat file to make representing different parts of the disc easier (e.g. - index.html points to /chapters/index.html and /extras/index.html, and so on and so forth).
But seriously, I hope authoring is something they improve substantially. It's a shame that the method used now is so arcane that only a few ever master it enough to do anything reasonable. (Especially when HTML existed back when DVD was originally being created-- why create a new wheel when the existing one works so well)?
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Because the "method of storing the data" is the medium? That's like asking, "Why couldn't they have made it so that I can stick my 5.25" floppy into my CD-ROM drive?" Because the CD-ROM drive doesn't use magnetic heads, chief.
Unless by "codec" you mean "filesystem," in which case you can indeed use the same filesystem on both. Your post is so fucking incoherent it's hard to find a point to refute.
I want the best looking movies I can get. I see tons of banding and compression artifacts on DVDs. Consumers want this.
Blar.
raw video
Get a computer. Even an old, super-slow one will do.
GeForce4 MX cards were $40 with TV-out when I bought mine, and I'm sure less now. They have hardware MPEG1/2 acceleration, and mplayer just recently gt support for it (interlacing is an issue, but I hope someone will work that out soon).
Before anyone complains... You certainly *can* have a computer that is silent, and with picture quality better than any DVD player I've seen, and that runs just as cool as a normal DVD player.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The thing(s) it the middle of a list are demphisised, if you watched the news last night, you are more likely to remember the first and final segment but the middle ones are less likely to be recalled. Try it next time there are several news segments before a commercial break, the first one and the last one are easy to recall, the middle ones might get forgotten.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I guess you're looking for a hardware player, but mplayer will just play the movie without forcing you to go through menus, legal warnings, etc.
Because companies spend much time and effort towards something that has no place in the market with no ROI. These costs will have to be offset by their other products. Higher prices for you and me.
Of course, you could always argue that you simply won't support those companies, but sometimes that's not always feasible.
And actually, most of us think your correct, but we don't really have a say in the matter do we! My own idea would be to use firewire for everything...it's got SCSI like features,and a standard data format as well as device-to-device, device-controls-device formats...Then you could put many different types of devices out there and have them talk uniformly...but you still have to have a common media to play on your drive...or you'd have to resell a lot of different drives!
would be a repeat of the "Quadraphonic" debacle of the '70s. Not only did every format lose, it took another 20 years before another format (5.1) became popular. Unfortunately, "Surround Sound" didn't even bother reinventing the more versatile format (Ambisonic) but instead went with a version less suitable for music and more sensitive to speaker placement. Now we are busy going 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, whatever.1 and trying to accomplish by brute force what could be achieved by revisiting an earlier technology.
It's like SACD, I' sure you can tell the differnce if you really try (on better speakers than most people have), but the advantge is so negligable that it's not worth buying for the 80%+ of people who aren't shopping on the uber high end area.
Makes me miss Laserdisc; it had near DVD quality, there was no menu/preview crap on most of them, no copyguard/region code/player restriction crap.DVD is good quality, but we've lost so much control due to the "unprecidented (sp?) co-operation" between the studios and the engineers.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Will be something like this:
- A more technologically advanced format (and more expensive). I deem this to be Blu-Ray since the discs need casing and it needs a dual head assembly for compatability.
Versus
- A less technologically advanced standard (but less expensive). This would probably be HD-DVD.
You've seen this movie before haven't you? I know I have. Guess who usually wins? I would bet on HD-DVD at this point. Blu-Ray might find a niche in data backups and the like however.
At any rate, you Slashdotters out there, for one reason or another, will probably champion one of these formats. It's kind of like that +R/-R DVD argument (tastes great/less filling), except that there are far less differences between those formats than these new HD DVDs.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Lucas and Spielburg are a couple of motherfuckers, aren't they? God damn. With each one creating a franchise that shaped my childhood, you'd think they'd have so much good karma that I could never hate them. But they fucking SUCK.
This Zenith from Circuit City is what I have, and it has an "Autoplay" option, which will automatically start the main movie when the disc is put in, skipping menus and such. Quite handy.
Not to threadjack, but has anyone seen those little Tiger/Hasbro VideoNow players that play little 3-inch "Personal Video Discs" with 25 minutes of (say) SpongeBob or the Fairly OddParents, or the like? My sister was in search of one for her kids yesterday and I'd never even heard of the thing before. The player sells for about $30, but since we couldn't find one, I have no idea what quality the video on these things enjoys. Anyone seen or heard of these elsewhere?
Like VCRs you mean.
Or audio recorders.
Honestly, do you live on this planet or just were born yesterday?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'd prefer a smaller disk size, like 8cm (~3"). Blu-ray holds 27GB, so moving to 8cm would still hold 12 GB or so. Using MPEG4 or something similiar, I'd imagine that you'd still be able to get 1080p, pan & scan coordinates (so you don't have 2 version to make/buy) and still have room for special features (which could be lower resolution). Combine that with a protective cartridge, and you'd have something I would buy.
I doubt I'd buy a new format just for higher resolution alone, but I might if they combine several improvements -- better quality (higher resolution), better reliability (protective cartridge), and more convienient (smaller size & widescreen+panscan on one disk).
Why is no one talking about the DRM issue? The content people will be RABID about getting control over THIS new format - and re-writables? And burning? I becha no way!
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Why should commercial companies should refer to their costumers as citizens?
Plase, next Xmas ensure tha the turkey is not poisonous and do not use those allucinogen fungii again for the filling.
Jeeez.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
because there isn't anything to refute. Makes perfect sense to me. The studios' IP interests prevent this from happening though.
...when you've made the choice, so we can all pick the other one. That way, we can avoid making the same mistake as you.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Technology isn't moving too fast for old people. It's being driven by old people. Young people are just too full of themselves to realize it.
Why o why there are still people advocatin this?
In the US at least (in many other countries as well) you have the right to make a backup copy of your media. Any impediment is against your rights (if not in a legal sense, since the companies are not legally obliged to help you out, in a moral way, since they sideline the spirit of the laws). That is your strike one.
Strike two: have you heard about external devices? Your idea about the media size is so dumb that I will not elaborate any further.
How are companies going to block development of software? If this is a read-only medium (like CDs, or vinyl LPs) then somebody will rip the player apart adn connect it to a computer, release the instructions to do this with the required software. Strike three.
You are out.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They should be using H.264. Nothing less would make sense.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I trust you havent yet watched a movie on a display using component input? Its far clearer than s-video, and is standard on most dvd players and dvd related devices (game consoles), yet its not seen on any PC video cards. Many of the 'cheaper' dvd players have no function restrictions, letting you play straight to the movie, through trailers and menu sequences, apex being one of the best to cover all the bases (including disc compatibility).
DVDs were designed to be generic RO media for storing various data, not just for use in set-top video players. Thus the choice for what IS an entirely PC-friendly format. (UDF layout, MPEG2 video, ATAPI-friendly data rates)
Something has to do the decoding. Cost-wise, it makes sense for the PC's hardware to do that work. No one would buy $200 worth of extra equipment to use a PC monitor to watch a movie. They want to use the fancy hardware they already bought.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You know, it used to be that I eagerly awaited every new technology and gadget. Things just got cooler and cooler, as technology enabled more and more new and exciting things.
Nowadays, I seem to be filled with fear and uncertainty every time I hear a story about some new format or digital media thingamee.
Why? well, it's pretty obvious isn't it? We've gotten to the point where every advancement in media technology is just looked at by the content producers as a way to "correct" for "past mistakes" (like consumers having the ability to record stuff to time shift or GOD FORBID, share a show with a friend who missed it, etc...)
Newer Replay TVs have a really neat "detect and skip commercials" option that the networks HATE. Their business model is threatened if everyone does that. Since they really don't have a leg to stand on if they fight that directly, they will certainly be thinking about DMCA applications when the content goes digital. The new DVD format will offer better picture quality, but most likely at the cost of more draconian copy/share protections and menu lockouts. (How long before TV series shart inserting commercials? and dvds locking you out of skipping them?)
Facts is facts... people will skip commercials, don't want to sit through 5 minutes of nifty DVD opening sequences, share stuff with friends, and copy their content to every new type of device they buy.... but the likes of the RIAA, MPAA, and Television networks are much happier with using the force of law and of cripling potentially ground breaking technological advances to keep their tried-and-true business models.
So, I'm worried that we'll get some nice picture improvement, but there will be more and more strings attached. I hate that something new comes out and I get worried about how they'll cripple it.
The Digital Sorceress
We can only hope that the Hollywood studios will be losers (would any of the possible configurations happen).
we discovered a new way to think.
Going from VHS to DVD is one thing, you gain a lot of benefits (random access jumps, quality, etc), and all you have to buy is a player which costs about 50$ now, 100$ a couple of years ago, or 400$ the very day the DVD format came out.
HDTVs are about $2,000 for a cheap one. Consumers aren't going to buy a new kind of HDTV every 5-10 years. 480i lasted us 70 years, HDTV should at least go for 50 years -- there's no point buying an HDTV overwise, because you can save your money for another 5 years and just by $N+1. The only people buying would be the stupidly rich, of which there aren't enough to generate the volume that TV makers want.
The real HD TV resolutions are 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Those are fine for a lot of things, especially when you're making a high quality display that is 57" across (instead of a pithy 19", like your monitor) because higher resolutions cost exponentially more to make at that size.
Studios aren't shooting in 1080p -- they're shooting using film, which has no resolution. They can be transfered at practically any resolution you have space for and the imaging resolution to read at.
Before you start spouting off about what should and shouldn't be, develop an understanding of what you're trying to talk about on Slashdot. That way you won't seem like some nerd whose only movie experience is playing DVDs on his computer in his basement.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It's not the resolution that's the problem with DVDs. It's the obvious pixelation that can be seen when playing them on a monitor, Plasma, or LCD screen. Plasma being the worst I've seen. CRT televisions blend it all together so you can't see the compression artifacts.
I was at a Best Buy and they were "showing off" a very expensive plasma display with a DVD. It looked terrible. That's not motivating me to spend several thousand on a TV. I'd rather spend $1200 on an LCD projector and every time I want to upgrade I just move it back a foot or two.
It's not bad enough to warrent me upgrading my collection of DVDs. I even have VHS tapes that I'm not about to upgrade except by digitizing and putting them on DVD myself.
I don't care about more scanlines. I'd rather have less compression. Resolution is secondary to that.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Seriously, if there was a DVD player out there that advertised on the box "No function lockouts", I'd pay an extra $50 just for that.
My fiancee has one. I think it is a panasonic, not 100% sure. I can check later if you want. But it lets you skip over anything... FBI warning, previews... now if only it didn't do this region nonsense.
Can someone tell me why competition for formats is a bad thing?
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Beta vs. VHS was bad, but over time the amount of money lost by those who bought into Beta is miniscule, while the competition between the two brought the VHS format into peoples' homes much faster than it would have were there no competitor in the first place.
The same thing happened with DVD: when DivX was introduced, that lit a fire under the pants of the DVD manufacturers to lower prices and market the hell out of their product. I imagine we would not yet have $30 DVD players at WalMart were DivX not to have existed back in 1998.
I for one welcome our new overl...er, a format war. Only the early adopters of the loser formats will lose any money---and by definition, early adopters have money to throw around on uncertainty---while the wider public will benefit. Bring it on.
[ home ]
How about instead of fighting over ways to deliver more crappy promo documentaries and trailers as extra features, they just find a way to let me download the movies alone? I don't need extra crap, I don't need a disc, and I don't need packaging that just wastes space and resources. Physical media is crap!
I don't doubt that the new format machines will read existing DVD's - just as current DVD players read CD's and CDRW. But...
Now you're in the vicious cycle - if the HDVD reads regular DVD, where's the incentive to upgrade? The longer manfacturers dither and brawl, the longer before there's a de facto standard. By then, everyone will have their DVD player and see no great reason to switch. HDVD discs will then be a specialty item, significantly more expensive - like records vs. CD's were - and few people will buy them.
What's the market share of DVD already? 33%? 50%? What will it be by 2006 when those new players are finally $200 or less? To be successful, a format must show an order of magnitude improvement (2x or more). At a certain point, who cares? I can tell the difference between vinvl and CD - but the new audio formats like DVD-whatever(?) haven't taken off. Who cares?? Who can tell? DOA! (Heck, I can't tell MP3's from CD, and I'm told it's noticeable.)
I spent a fortune replacing my records with CD's, because the improvement was noticeable even to me. I can see the DVD's improvement over VHS. (Who can't?) Will the average viewer care about the difference between 480i (upconverted by your smart TV) and 1080p? Will they feel ripped off if the HDVD version has only 720p?
Will the box sets of TV series be upgraded, or is the source material only available at 480i? (What's the point of computerized enhancement?)
I RTFA, and I got the distinct impression that the format creators are paying attention to one application - movies. I hope that it's just the author's bias, and that the standards bodies aren't being myopic and ignoring computer applications.
If they want to jump-start the early adopters, they need to produce a writable format Superty-Duper-DVD that holds 4x to 10x what current DVD+R or DVD-RW drives do. Companies easily justify the expense of a $3000 SDDVD drive for backing up the corporate database in one swoop (as opposed to segmenting is across multiple media; and don't get me started about mag tape.) Coprpoations are better early-adopters than the consumer audio/videophile buttheads. I don't see a lot of my peers doing anything with recordable DVD discs, but I do see many companies working with them as the preferred backup medium over CDRs.
I've been personally involved with telecom standards generation, and it completely irks me when the folks creating the standard ignore the implementation and market-acceptance issues.
When the discussion is about laws or government, referring to affected people as citizens (or perhaps residents) is correct. When the discussion is about technical specifications, referring to the affected people as consumers (or perhaps customers) is correct.
Referring to people by same qualifier every time hinders communication.
The only format that will work is one that will allow manufacturers to build the players cheaply with backwards compatibility. Everyone already has lots of DVDs. These people are going to be mad when they have to buy new players to play new DVDs. They are going to be even madder if they find out that their new DVD players won't play their older DVDs. So the new players will have to support both the new format and the current format. Things like Blu-Ray that aren't backwards compatible are going to cause manufactures a lot of trouble in building backwards compatable players and that trouble will be passed along to the consumer. That won't fly.
Whatever they do, it better work with my current DVDs or I'll just start downloding everything.
As a consumer I don't really give a crap which formats are out as long as I can make use of the HDTV that I wasted $thousands on. After more than a year I still have not seen a HDTV signal displayed on it!
Stop screwing around and gimmie my movies in HDTV!
A good chunk of Hollywood HATED the limited viewing and phonehome features of DIVX, and especially didn't like the fact that it controlled by a retailer outside of the Hollywood clique.
HOWEVER, their in-house geeks informed them that the encryption on DVDs was absolute crap and would be broken quickly. Which it was.
So, they backed DIVX simply because it had better content protection.
The consumers didn't lose out in the Betamax/VHS wars. They didn't lose out in the DVD/Divx wars. They didn't lose out in the DVD +/- wars. And they won't lose out in the new DVD format wars.
Betamax sold some 30,000 units total. Today, DVD player sales easily exceed that number per month. Did the consumer lose in the DVD/Divx wars? Not at all. Have they lost in the +/- wars? Nope. Why? Simple. By the time the *average* consumer gets around to buying the product, market forces have already decided a winner.
In the case of Divx vs DVD, half the "prosumers", the early adopters, lost out when they chose Divx. The other half made what turned out to be the right decision. For the average consumer, the bulk of the market, the decision need not be made, it's already been decided for them.
Ditto with the DVD +/- market. The prosumers jumped on the first available DVD writers, and half of them may end up with useless writers. The vast majority of consumers will start buying DVD writers sometime this year (if ever), when technology has made the arguement moot with dual format writers.
It happens in almost every market, with every technology. Yes, the prosumers sometimes lose, but that's the price they pay for buying into the cutting edge of technology. The average consumers don't lose, by the time they're ready to accept the technology it's all been sorted out for them.
So new DVD format wars won't make any difference to consumers. If the format that wins the prosumer market isn't backwards compatible, by the time it reaches the consumer market, manufacturers will produce multi-format devices that are.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
One format, two disc types (or actually three).
:p). Mpeg4 (AVC?) codec.
1. HD-DVD (9gb): Sufficient for all shorter stuff (TV eps, Futurama/Simpsons/Family Guy/pr0n (yeah yeah, anyway they're usually a bit over an hour, no comparison otherwise
Pros:
Cheap to produce, mature technology.
Available presses - can deploy quickly.
Cons:
Small.
2. One of the "big discs" with 20gb give or take. Used for full-length movies, Gladiator, LotR etc. Also in mpeg4.
Pros:
Best quality, high capacity *and* high-quality codec.
Cons:
Takes time to roll out.
(3. Capability of playing mpeg4 VCD.) Suitable for home video and other smaller stuff where size is a greater factor, or video/audio quality simply don't justify spending more space on it. Not that relevant for pressed discs anyway.
Since the players are *very* likely to carry the proper lasers for backwards compatibility anyway, why not make the most of it? One format, two disc types. Whatever CSS-a-like system they're going to put it (just face it), make it work for both of them. That would be the far most efficient solution.
And with DVD-9 as a stopgap, I think they should go right for the Blue-Ray physical format, since it has the bigger capacity (23-27 gb, depending on the specs you read). Triple capacity isn't really all that much, if you've already taken out the bonus of mpeg4 vs mpeg2.
Of course, that would require an outbreak of sanity all around. Blue-ray is mpeg2, not mpeg4. Everybody seems to agree HD-DVD9 is too small, and want to ditch it over their proprietary format. Particularly the smaller HD disc, which is only 15-20gb or so. And while the Chinese may go on a solo run with VP6 (you could replace mpeg4 with VP6 all over in the above post), it doesn't seem to get any Western support.
I think they should do it proper. Make a format now, that *can* support 25gb of mpeg4 content, 1920x1080p image (best for compatibility with both 1080i and 720p sets) and equal quality audio. Then ship most on HD-DVD 9 until they can get Blue-Ray production up and running, in the same way the first DVDs were typically single layer. Nobody seemed to complain about that. That way, they could sell HD-DVDs "on the cheap", while still quoting the big specs. Somewhat deceptive, but it would provide us with an excellent format that could last us many many years longer than the DVD format.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
VBR works on computers that can handle 2 - 50x the avg bitrate....
DVD players and things like them are designed for a spec, they are just barely able to run everything to keep the prices low enough.
If VBR encoding was used then the hardware would have to be powerful enough for the highest possible bitrate even though it would rarely be used.
Sure there are a lot of sets around now that support HDTV resolutions - but how many are really running 1080i at native resolutions? I've seen a lot of even very large screens that downsample still.
If a lot of people have HDTV sets that downsample, then even a 1080i signal will look as good as a 720p source from a current DVD player. Then how will they be able to get large market penetration with the new format?
Also, even if these sets do support 1080i, I'm not sure most people would be able to see the difference on a 27" or 32" set - I think you need a pretty large screen to appreciate the distinction, and I'm not sure really large screens will ever gain a major foothold (though flatscreens certainly help that since you don't need to give up a lot of space).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think it is time that disks be phased out. The surface is too exposed, and thus gets scratched, ruining entire disks. The future should be some kind of covered chip somewhat like a PC card, and has female or flat connectors so that they don't stick out and get bent. Flat connectors may make it easier for the machine to automatically hook up to it. My toddler, Aka "Disk Biter" will gladly help test the new format. (Better hurry up, he is exiting toddler-dom rapidly.)
Table-ized A.I.
Buy the movie again, return the box with your unplayable DVD inside. They may make you exchange it for another, if so then just take the brand new one and sell it on eBay for a small loss. I haven't had this problem in any DVD's (that I know of, some I've not watched for some time) but that was my plan of action.
The real worry is limited edition stuff that I can't replace by buying new, I should probably try and back that up before it's too late!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I first started buying DVDs I noticed that you were often limited to "waiting until it's done" trailers and menu options.
Another "feature" was that you got to see the same trailer every time you watched the disk, weither or not you wanted to.
This reminded me so much of early 1990's Interactive Multimeda development that I wondered if the authors of DVDs had actually learnt from that experience.
It seems that the larger production houses have not and that the studios are no better.
I always said that Multimedia development is a skill. The deliverable is almost immaterial, CD ROM, web-site, DVD menu, whatever.
Seems we are yet again doomed to repeat history...
|>>?
Blu-ray has all the good stuff, more storage (50GB+), RW capability, etc.
But it is still a new tech and is very fragile. Leaving it in a hot car will destroy it. Bending it will destroy it. It is tough to manufacture.
Blu-ray needs several more years to work out the kinks and bring the costs down. The consumer electronics companies want a DVD replacement NOW. With US$30 DVD players in the stor enow, they aren't making money on them.
The media companies see more years of milking the DVD libraries of profit before they need to convince the public to buy new hi-def versions.
Whose greed will win out? CE or the media companies?
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
You said it. Next DVD format? What about how terrible the current format is?
... loaded dice, and they are not in your favor. After a few scratches by the general public, they become essentially unusable. I've had so many problems with unplayable and skipping DVDs that I'd decided almost 2 years ago that VHS was here to stay since it was a more reliable format. I obtain 10 tapes for every disk, and have yet to purchase a DVD player (having repaired my VHS player twice now, we're still going strong).
DVDs I get from the library are like rolling the dice
I'm not the only one noticing this. About half of the people I know with DVD players have mentioned how badly that DVDs play.
I'm going to laugh off any format that doesn't mandate a case-sealed disk. But I'm sure the same ol' simple disk will prevail, since people are so cheap. My concern is how long is the road we must travel like this, before the companies respond to consumer backlash from the sheer volume of unplayable disks. (Of course, I would've expected more of an uproar over the iPod battery issue, but too many yuppies with disposable income bought into those.)
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Hmm, why not get a decent sized monitor and watch the DVD on the computer? The quality on a good computer monitor is going to be better than any TV.
I can absolutely agree that DVDs are far superior to VHS, and certainly superior to Laserdiscs as well (our movie library was heavily based on the LD format in the past before DVD), and yeah, I know that its already been argued that it's a bunch of crap to force consumers to convert their entire movie collections yet again... but my complaint lies with our current format of DVD and how disappointed I have been with it. Here's my list...
(1) Why do we still have so many different display-formatted DVDs out there (full-screen and wide-screen)? How difficult would it have been to simply make every DVD the same, and to supply a set of panning instructions to the DVD player itself to specify what visual portion of the movie will be displayed in full-screen mode?
(2) Going off the same idea as #1, why couldn't these DVDs have been set up to be HDTV compatible in the first place? I realize that HDTV has a higher resolution and whatnot, but... how hard would it have been to force DVDs to meet the HDTV standard and simply resize the visuals for non-HDTV televisions? Hell, it might even encourage people to go and buy a HDTV if they knew they could further increase the visual quality of their current (and already paid for) collection...
(3) You think this new format of DVD is going to be a pain in the ass to consumers, forcing them to switch over yet again to adopt the newest of the new? DVDs have made this jump once already... when dual-layer discs hit the market. No, the single-layer DVDs I had weren't worthless at all, but let me tell you... I wasn't too happy to know that I'd have to go buy a brand-new $300 player just to play dual-layer DVDs.
(4) Also, why aren't all DVDs compatible with all the different DVD players out there? If DVD is a standardized format and all, why am I still finding a movie every once in a while that works in one player but not the other? I never had disc compatibility issues back with my VHS and LD players.
(5) Now... this last one is just kinda nit-picky, but... regarding at least half of the DVDs I own, I absolutely hate their menus. Half the time I can't even tell what I'm selecting on the screen, or even know what all my options are. I know being unique is good and all, but why should a DVD that I purchased with my own money feel so alienated to me? Why must I solve puzzles to go through everything contained on my DVD?
As far as I'm concerned, the DVD was something that had very great potential but didn't quite live up to what I wanted. Will this new HDTV DVD do well, or like the format before it will it end up wastefully in a landfill along the side of "useless" cell phones and computers?
Here is a petition with regard to consumer expectations for HD-DVD:
h tm l
http://www.petitiononline.com/cehddvd/petition.
Everyone should give it a look and sign if they agree.
Hopefully whoever wins the upcoming standards battle is aware of this petition and takes it into consideration.
Price maybe? You can buy a 27" or larger tv for under $200 but good luck getting anything more than a 21" cheap-o monitor for near that price, and a 31" or 35" tv is within reason put a monitor of that size will be well over $1000. PCs are the way to go for control of video, it just stinks that noone has a reasonable quality RGB to component converter or similarly capable video card. But, that's where the playstation2 or xbox comes in. While basically a PC at heart, with some off the shelf parts and software you can convert it to a compact multimedia center with much more functionality than both a regular PC and a regular DVD player.
If the disk size is consistent players could be developed to a dual standard. Either two heads/lasers or if close enough a common head and software. Dual headed optical drives are not new technology, so no big deal.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
the Sony range of DVD players can be modified to disable "user operand restrictions", "access restrictions", "macrovision" and the "region lockout" ...
it works on the 3xx, 4xx, 7xx and 9xx series of DVD / SACD players. here in Norway it costs 600 NOK extra to fit such a mod when buying a new player (600 NOK ~= $80).
http://www.tronika.no/dvd/dvd.html
You appear to be unaware of the ATI line of video cards. You can buy a component dongle for them, priced under $50 or build one yourself for around $10. The card generates the component signals directly, the dongle is just for cable conversion and software config convenience.
PS good s-video 480i vs component 480i is bare discernable to the uneducated eye, even with a high-quality display device - much less the average tv.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I thought Toshiba and NEC were responsible for the blu-ray technology, and sony and company were doing the enhanced red-laser stuff. This suggests otherwise, and its the first to do so.
Doesn't affect me, all of my movies come in DivX format ^_^
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
This format change is not enough to warrant the replacement of the format we have now. The last few years of existing DVD have been a huge success. Players are easily found for $30, most new release titles are $20 (less than a family trip to the theatre BTW), and most back catalog stuff can be had for less.
People are building libraries and have players where they want them. Turning all that over is going to take a *long* time; namely, years --many of them. People will get players that read both formats of course, but it's too late really to even make a significant dent in the existing player base already out there now.
The whole problem I have with this is linked to my enjoyment of the current formats compared to the new ones. Existing DVD played on high-end equipment is a very good experience. Existing DVD played on most equipment in use today is an excellent experience. The new format will do little to enhance the latter (maybe longer movies on one disc, but who really cares?), and does improve the former, but not to a high enough degree.
Simply: It is not a big enough deal to make a difference.
This whole thing will get news because people can smell the money surrounding DVD and those amounts of money talk.
From a geek perspective, the existing DVD formats are essentially open. I can do anything I want to the DVD media I own. Players today are getting a lot better for playing backups or home authored content. Later this year I plan to build a myth box for a home video on demand service to make things easier. All of this stuff will happen at low price points and with tech easily understood and well supported on Linux.
I have nearly 300 titles on existing DVD. I made that investment because the current format and display technology delivers an experience that is quite good for the home. Will I replace those titles? For 95 percent of them, the answer is a clear "NO." Better question: Will I be forced out of them? Not a chance really, because the format is open enough to prevent that from actually happening.
So the money thing is a red herring in my mind. The numbers just are not there once everything is taken into account. Why the news then?
Control. The studios essentially lost it with the current formats. Sure, most folks endure the restrictions because most players honor them. Anybody that wants a decent ad free experience can get players and or software that will do the trick nicely. (That is what the myth box will be for. Encode the movies only, leave the crap and keep the discs safe from the kids.)
These guys are stupid really. Even though the existing formats are essentially open, most people find the price worth the experience and will likely continue to do so. A decent balance has been struck by accident that really makes the current system as a whole workable for everyone in general, but...
the greedy bastards are itching for a second chance to get it right this time...
I believe folks are used to how things work now. The only thing that pisses of the masses are the simple restrictions in place now. The media moguls can't help but add in the controls they think they need and the public will hear all about them to the demise of any format other than the one they have now.
Nice tech, but clearly niche tech for some time to come...
Blogging because I can...
Region encoding is used to protect the distributors. Typically you will have different distrbutors for the same movie in different regions.
17 USC 1201: Write a DVD player, go to jail.
Also, the DRM issue will probably make it take longer to move the new disc format (if its *physically* new) into use as a general open storage medium.
I am wholeheartedly rooting for the chinese format as it won't have copy protection, and if it does, it will be nominal. But otoh I think it's the same physical disc as dvd, just with more modern compression to enable higer resolution but the same playing time.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
"Hi",
Just a lowly ex-AC being a "pedant", "but" putting "words" in quotes doesn't change their "meaning".
Sorry, it's been a "shit" "christmas".
Thanks for listening.
xx
1) You can treat them like a DAT tape and write sequential files to them without issue (using "dvbackup" for OSX or linux)
2) DV video files are trivially encoded and decoded.
So buying a DV camera with firewire is like getting a generic tape drive (for backups to tape or whatever) for free, in a round-about fashion. This is why there is no market for a generic DV tape drive.
(Not to mention that Sony's 8mm version of DV specifically designed for these purposes, called AIT, has better seek times, density, and cost per GB)
No digital video format of modern times has any particular reason to not be PC compatible, especially for the consideration the writers of firmware for OEM devices. With PCs, the ability to use these media formats as well will become easier with time.
Only the media producers themselves want to dumb down the full realization of new technologies. This is an abomination. Let the techies do what they will! The rest of the public will still buy the new media formats in droves at WalMart.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...over standards. It is all so disappointing, such wasted energy. Imagine if we were to finally grow up and work together what could be accomplished! But everyone has the "I don't follow standards, I make them!" mentality. Sad.
Ummm, because that wasn't his question. For the love of god, when will people quit answering a specific question with answers to an un-asked more general question. Your answer is the equivalent to "why not just read a book, they are better anyway".
Better double check the facts to make sure they're not lying again.
...at least not the way you're describing it. Its intended to control distribution channels in various regions. It has nothing to do with your ability to copy the DVD.
In fact, there's nothing on a DVD that prohibits you from copying it; all of "anti-piracy" measures are about controlling legitimate distribution channels, not stopping piracy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
As an owner of a HDTV set with a HD digital cable box, I can say that once you go to watching HDTV, you never want to go back to anything less.
If the new HD players were backwards compatible with current DVDs, I would be happy to go out and buy a new player. The HD experience really is worth the upgrade. The only concern I'd have is if studios would have to do a standard DVD and also a HD DVD for new releases. Maybe there would be a way to compromise to save money.
Progressive-scan DVDs look good, but I think that once people see what they're missing with the new format, they'd be willing to upgrade.
"I bought perfectly legitimately before moving from the UK to the US that now gather dust unless I watch them from the PC."
So go buy yourself a perfectly legitimate DVD+/-R recorder, a perfectly legitimate copy of Nero burning ROM and download a perfectly legitmate copy of DVDShrink.
Then you'll have a perfectly legitimate way of watching it on your living room "telly".
The *ideal* compromise would be if "all" tray-loading DVD players were to have trays like the ones used by Panasonic in their DVD-RAM/DVD-R video recorders that can handle both the cartridge used by DVD-RAM and bare disks.
The DVD-RAM cartridge itself (at least the blank TDK ones I've bought) permit the disk inside to be removed and re-inserted as desired. Hollywood studios -- assholes that they are -- could continue selling bare disks with the expectation that they'll get trashed in short order, while consumers could handily give them the finger and put their newly-purchased disks into aftermarket empty cartridges for playback and safekeeping.
And what would drive consumers to go out and buy yet another DVD player? Blockbuster.
How's this for a scenario: Blockbuster hires some company to design aftermarket caddies that indicate (in some tamper-resistant way) whether the disk was removed by the renter. Disks that remain in the caddies go for the normal price, disks found to have been removed from their caddies are subject to an excess wear surcharge. To make things more palatable for consumers, they could set up the scheme so that surcharged rental costs were the same as normal DVD rentals are now, with a new (lower) rental fee for protected disks (after all, the disks will last a lot longer).
I guarantee that caddy-friendly DVD players would become dominant overnight... especially if Blockbuster's competitors (NetFlix comes to mind as an obvious candidate) followed suit with the "surcharge-if-you-remove-the-disk" scheme.
The best part, of course, is perfect backwards compatibility. Cartridged disks that need to be played on legacy players can be removed, and legacy disks can be put in empty cartridges at any point in the future. And Hollywood could bitch, moan, stomp their feet, and threaten to file as many lawsuits as they want... the sheer beauty of the whole scheme is that end users could take matters completely into their own hands and put their disks in cartridges themselves.
Not true. ATI introduced an adapter for their Radeon 8500, and is available for any newer versions (eg 9xxx) also.
Besides that, component isn't that great... Think DVI!
You think you're going to get great quality out of "'cheaper' dvd players" ???
Besides, I think you'll find that newer DVDs will still force ads, even if you can normally skip them. The same is true for Macrovision. Companies are introducing new methods to protect DVDs, defeating the old overrides. Besides, a computer gives you many many more advantages over a simple DVD-player, and computers aren't all that much more expensive than decent DVD players right now.
I have an Apex AD-1225 (same as the KLH 1200) and you most certainly cannot skip over ads with it. There's no hacks for the player known, and it doesn't appear to even be firmware upgradable. The DVD player market seems to be changing, for the worse.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"Betamax was the better format. "
In what way? In picture quality? Oh young man, how can you miss the important of VHS or Beta. There's an important lesson there that you're missing.
Don't fret, most geeks do.
Most people think "the consumer" wants a better picture. Oh dear me no. If they did, the government wouldn't have to mandate HDTV, people would *demand* HDTV.
And yet that hasn't happened.
The stupid/geeky thing to say is "people are just stupid. They don't know best". Young man, if a billion people pick a thing and you pick the opposite, its a good bet that you're missing the boat, not the billion people.
So, you are asking, how can you even imply that VHS was better than Beta?
To which I reply, not only was it better, it was significantly better. Here's two things most people miss, because they're too young to remember the height of the VHS/Beta wars:
1) When Beta was released, you couldn't record a 2 hour movie on a tape! Fantastic, but true. This was a major issue for most people.
2) When JVC introduced VHS, it could record 2 hours. Picture quality was poorer, but honestly, none of them had great picture quality. VHS had a clear win
3) When the recording times ramped up, Sony was stuck with multiples of "not 2 hours". VHS, by contrast had 2-4-6, meaning that you could fit 3 movies on 1 tape. Picture quality wasn't great. But even bringing this up betrays an ignorance of what the market place wanted.
4) Tapes used to be expensive, that's what point 3 mattered at the time. Blanks were routinely $8-12 dollars.
5) Here's the real key though... JVC moved to aggressively get licensees to the VHS format. Sony made them all themselves (I think Sanyo might've joined at one point). Why does this matter? The price was pushed *down* for VHS while Beta stayed the same.
6) By having so many licensees, the consumer got the feeling that many companies were supporting VHS and only one was supporting Beta. Remember, these decks costs $1000-1500 at the time, so you didn't want to get stuck with the "obsolete" format.
So add it up:
VHS:
Better recording times
Cheaper
Apparently better support
Beta:
Better picture
So which wins. That's not even close! VHS won in a landslide, and they should have! It was the *better* format.
This will piss off the geeky videophiles, but its true. Sony didn't have a clue, and JVC crushed them. End of story.
" Speilberg and Lucas were big supporters of DIVX, a closed proprietary alternative to DVDs."
Well of course. If you get a few thousand people to not pay these guys for star wars or indiana jones, pretty soon, they'll only be Billionaires.
That wouldn't be fair!
Is it so unreasonable to want to load a DVD and watch the damn movie? Seriously, if there was a DVD player out there that advertised on the box "No function lockouts", I'd pay an extra $50 just for that.
Hell yeah! And I'd pay yet another $75 for a 'record' feature.
What ticks me off more than hollywood movies disabling FF and such is when kid's DVDs have controls like that. They force the kid to watch the FBI warning, and often don't let you skip past their intro movie. This is ridiculous as the parent has to stick by the television for a minute just waiting for the delay they've seen 1,000 times before to be over with so they can hit 'Play' and get back to making dinner or whatever.
You go girl!
The "cost of exit" still remains virtually nil. It costs very little to maintain your generic player.
But needs will be met.
Consider
An executive who has found a company willing to pay him a million dollars a year plus perks in exchange for his leadership skills. He specifies yet another format and has it accepted. His needs were met. His salary is paid. His guidance is followed.
A consumer who wants a copy of some movie he liked. He sees this weird format thing on the shelves, but it won't play in his player. He leaves it on the shelf, and eventually one of his friends offer him a DIVX copy. The seeker now has his movie and his needs are met.
People will see stuff they can't play in their machine, so they leave it on the shelf and look around for the generic bootleg which anything can play. This really encourages the production of bootlegs. Think you can control it with lawyers?
Review "prohibition" in the US when they tried to outlaw whiskey. It ruined a lot of otherwise productive citizens, and made a lot of gangsters rich. Just as our marijuana laws do now.
Geez, didn't they learn their lesson with this "region" fiasco? People have money but cannot legally buy what they want, but the bootleg is free for the taking!
People generally want to be honest, but geez, what are these MBA's thinking these days?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Motivated by video, industry stalemate resulting in compromise to a generic LCD. I see this happening more and more.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I doubt very much that anything will replace DVD any time soon. It is too new, has a lot of momentum and people aren't prepared to cash out again.
Look at CD and the multitude of formats that have tried to replace it - minidisc, HDCD, DVD-Audio, DTS Audio CD...
The fact is people needed something better than tape and they've got it. Sure you might get the film buffs - previously collectors of LaserDisc titles - but if they are expecting DVD-like sales they're going to be sadly disappointed.
[)amien
Seeing as a damn near DVD quality XviD file fits nicely onto a CD-R they should find a way to use XviD for the next standard possibly having an option for FLAC audio so that studios can release movies with super HQ sound if needed (also would be good for videos of concerts and music videos)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
But sometimes you'll have to hit the Audio and Subtitle buttons a few times because the default DVD settings sometimes suck.
Hurry up with the damn formats. I am looking at companies like Plextor who ordinarily release a couple models a year, even they are riding the slow train in 2003 cause of the damn formats.
It's a conspiracy I swear, they want you to buy DVD+R, DVD+-, DVD+-x%, DVD-XXX. They are going to change formats every two years so you have to buy new drives again and again.
"My blade is smarter than you, so is the industry" - Grim Reaper
media player manufacturers can't sell their hardware
The vast majority of DVD devices are made in China now. Perhaps Apex includes CN-HD-DVD (or whatever it's called) in the next version at some very low additional cost - maybe $20 more than the $20 it will cost for a basic one (think of $29 DVD players at Wal-Mart this year). Even if it sells first in China, it will eventually make its way here - in the same way that all DVD players play VCDs even though they are not standard here. Then once they have tons of players already installed, Hollywood will have no choice but to release movies this way or be beaten by the pirates.
Go China! Down with the DVD cartel!
sulli
RTFJ.
Except that VHS could hold 2 hours of programming and Betamax was limited to 90 minutes at high quality. The ability to put a 2 hour movie on 1 tape was the "killer app" for VHS.
First as to the politics of the DVD forum; the DVD forum can give the new formar legitimacy. The BD group recognize that the forum has been split but will not just give up the DVD forum title to the AOD group. The BD group wants a level playing field in the battle for the next DVD format with never group taking the title as the DVD forum.
I must say that I'm a techie and favor the full data desity of the blue ray laser over the compromise data desity of AOD. I'm am comfident that if this technology is a part of the winning formar it will last 25 years before a new format becomes available.
If the AOD faction wins they will only have a temporary victory which might last five years or so before a new blue laser format is finally proposed and accepted. The computer enthusiasts will quickly adopt blue laser recordable technology, movie copying will absolutely explode due to the discs lager capasity over AOD. Hence hollywood will stop producing AOD movies and adopt a new blue ray format.
One of the things I like about the BD group is they plan to bring back caddys, i.e. enclose the disc. Their mistake is not adopting all the new codecs of the AOD faction as well as others to provide even better resolution, and advanced mutichannel audio features which would be a selling point to future proof the format.
Internet connectivity is nice though for downloading aux data such as subtitles but I doubt people would voluntarily l bother to hook it up as it will no dbout be used to spy on people for marketing and copy protection issues. But unfortunetly it might be manditory. The main purpose of this though is so decryption keys and methods can be updated regularly. The reason for this that the movie industry has learned that keys can be discovered and used. With current DVD they can't upgrade current players so they can't change keys or protection methods on newly produced discs. Having an internet connection built in changes this and when a key is discovered they will invalidate it with new content depending on the type of encryption. They can also change their scheme altogether provided the copy protection hardware is powerful and flexable enough. I can even imagine a situation where every time you buy a new movie you have to register it and then the player has to connect with a server to validate you every time you watch it. The lack of broadband wouldn't stop them as they could easily sell modems to ethernet adaptors. Of course this won't stop us technically gifted from fair use but it will the general public and add a whole bunch of inconvience to everyone's lives. While you will still have to set through the FBI notice and watch trailers at least the box will download new trailers for you but you'll still be forced to watch them. The marketing people will love it.
We might also start to see free movie givaways where the dics are programmed to upload user information so that they can track you and download commercials marketed at you which you can't skip. Say goodbye to privacy.
1.Rent whatever dvd just messed up for you.
2. Take a sharp knife and peal off the protective sticker (becareful not to cut it up- in one piece is best).
3. Return DVD THAT DAY and complain that it doesn't work. Not only will you get off scott free but you will also get a refund or another rental.
In all honesty I mostly only do this with video games which cost so much and damage so easily that they are worth it. The way a playstion seems to kill a game just by playing it a lot makes blockbuster a great asset.
Open Source Sushi
I've noticed that the Disney "widescreen" offerings are all 16:9 exactly. I personally wonder if this was indeed the theatre aspect ratio, or if they pan and scanning into 16:9 (as opposed to 4:3).
Yep, I noticed that as well, with Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo. IMDB has the DVD details for those. It shows Nemo as 1.78:1 but Monsters as 1.85:1. But they both fill my 16:9 screen perfectly. It would seem odd for Disney to chop off a tiny bit from even the widescreen presentation. IMDB also has the technical specs for the movies, presumably the theatrical release, and they correspond.
Do theaters hold a fixed height and just pull in the curtains to different widths depending on a 2.35, 1.85, or 1.77 aspect ratio? During the last movie I saw (LOTR:ROTK) I tried to imagine what it would look like if you had to chop off 76% of the width to fit it to a 4:3 TV. You lose a ridiculous amount of screen area.
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Jim Witte
http://www.bloomington.in.us/~jswitte
"Spam! Bah - just get Jaguar!"
SONY is doing this? They run a film division. One that's (suppposedly) concerned about piracy (and price protection via regions) Gawd! Can anyone say, "left not does not know what right hand is doing?"
Jim Witte
jswitte@bloomington.in.us
http://www.bloomington.in.us/~jswitte
I wouldn't feel too guilty about doing this because consumers don't have any option for damaged or defective DVD's, but I'm sure Blockbuster does as a Really Big Company.
Hmm, for some reason I could have sworn most DVD progressive scan outputs were 720p - but it seems you were right, my current DVD player is only 480p.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I already know an HDTV signal looks better than a DVD, the Discovery HDTV channel is obviously better than a DVD even on my projector (Infocus X1) which only reaches 800x600.
I still am not sure the difference is enough for most people to care though, unless shown side-by-side... and even then. At the moment I still know of people using composite cables to hook DVD players up to Plasma sets!! I have learned the Star Trek policy of non-interference is mostly best (though sometimes, like Kirk, I find a situation so intolerable I am forced to make a few suggestions).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is a Philips DVD 724.
It is pretty nice. I don't know if it follows the region bullshit or not (never tried a foreign dvd).
I can't believe you took the time to post that reply to the parent's post... you must have, like, a ton of spare time on your hands.
hmmm...
DVD is in for the very long haul for sure. Never thought about new tech, but I believe you are right.
Video on demand delivered one show pay-per-view at a time ain't gonna be it!
Blogging because I can...
Just Google for multi-region players. Some of the people selling players patched to play all regions, also patch them to disable function lockout.
l timod.ht ml
e.g.
http://www.techtronics.com/uk/shop/510-mu
My current DVD player is a Pioneer I patched myself with a soldering iron, but I still have to set the region manually and watch the FBI ads. I'm planning to upgrade to a DVD recorder with support for progressive scan, and I'll make sure I get one with region auto-select and function lockout disabled...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I just played my first DVD on the iBook (2001 or 2002 800Mhz combo drive dual USB) the other day (yeah, I'm behind the curve I know), and I'm now wondering if there's a region-locking hack for the firmware - of course it would void the drive warrenty..
"Also lurking nearby are giants like Microsoft, I.B.M. and Intel, .... American computer makers, adept at producing hardware on thin margins by building sophisticated global supply chains, could also develop competing products, turning television into just another function of the home computer."
"Microsoft can dominate in ways that Sony or Toshiba can't."
What American computer company can make today's PC? None! Today's biggest growth segment, notebooks, are all designed and manufactured outside the USA. All disk drives are designed and manufactured outside the USA. All flat panel displays are designed and manufactured outside the USA.
The only value add by American companies is market research leading to product requirements that are given to Asian companies so that the Asian companies can design and manufacture electronics with an American brand name.
Compaq and DELL products are as American as GE and RCA consumer products, products that have no relationship to any American company.
Microsoft has failed against Sony, and if it weren't for the dwindling $50B in cash that Microsoft has, Microsoft, the game box maker, would be less valuable than Pets.com
From the content industry's point of view, those arguments should be compelling.
...just like Disney DVDs. They started out mimicing the VHS presentation: 20 minutes of trailers and cross-product merchandising, which, of course, you could not easily skip past.
For awhile, they were doing good ("Mulan"), and now have gone back to the old way ("Piglet's Big Movie").
FTM.
Fortunately, the 16:9 crop isn't as bad as a 4:3 chop. Still I would prefer if Disney just left the film as it presented in the theatre.
Yo, Steve Jobs. Since Disney is cropping all the Pixar films, please produce everything in 16:9.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Your display may be overscanning anyway, so even if there are thin bars on the edges of the screen you might not see them. You'd have to check the raw MPEG frames to be sure.
Feh. I cannot conceive of anything being too odd for Disney to attempt. Recall they are one of the big ones that resisted DVD in the first place; they have a notorious release/retract cycle on certain films; I think they were the first ones to put unskippable advertisements at the front of DVDs; they were the first ones to try to rig a DVD to detect a region-free player; their handling of DVD releases of Ghibli films in both Japan and the US has had several issues; the list goes on and on.
Now in this particular case it's computer animation. So the real aspect ratio is whatever they rendered at. It's possible that they actually produced at 1.78:1 and matted it to 1.85:1 for theatrical release. Certainly many non-animated films are at least party shot at lower ratios and matted for theaters (that's been the case for decades).
Depends on the projection equipment/lenses, I think. I'm pretty sure I've seen it done both ways. Most films are probably projected at either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 regardless of their production ratio.
IMDB claims ROTK was shot in Super35, which I think typically means that it's physically filmed at 4:3 and masked for theatrical presentation. So the full-frame transfer can actually open up the frame vertically and reveal more picture information to reduce the amount of pan/scan. Now IMDB also claims that they used some ARRI 2.35 research lens, and I see that ARRI has a 3-perf Super35 conversion (to save film) that changes the native ratio to 16:9 instead of 4:3. So they might have done something like that. Or maybe that research lens is actually some anamorphic lens that results in an even higher native ratio. All that being said, the effects shots are probably rendered at no less than 16:9, so in those parts of the film the full screen transfer almost certainly requires quite a bit of pan and scan.
... the winner of this format war. As the article says, retailers don't want to stock two formats. Walmart, being the largest retailer in the world, will decide the winner by choosing the format that they stock.