Slashdot Mirror
HD DVD Coverage at CES 2004
Anonymous Coward writes "It appears manufacturers such as Toshiba will soon be rolling out HD DVD players. The HD DVD format, as opposed to the Blu-Ray standard, involves minimal changes to the manufacturing plants that currently produce DVDs. This should allow for a smoother transition for consumers to adopt this new format. This article DVD vs HD-DVD summarizes the differences of the two formats and benefits of the latter."
The challenge for both the HD-DVD and the Blu-Ray efforts is getting studio support. For PVRs (such as the first Blu-Ray devices), this isn't a big deal. If you want a pristine 1080i/720p movie, however, it'll have to come on prepackaged media. The main challenges that neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD solves: -- Security. Hollywood is much more concerned about HD-quality content because it's the best they've got. The traditional "trust us" or "magic encryption fairy dust" proposals won't cut it here. Like it or not, neither format can succeed without effective, renewable anti-piracy features. -- Replication costs are a challenge. This is one place where HD-DVD may have a small edge, though that's debatable. -- User interactivity & network support. DVD's menus are awfully limited -- something much more flexible is needed, but there isn't yet any agreement what this will be. Cost isn't such a big deal yet (anybody willing to spend $10K for a plasma screen will shell out another $1K for a player to take advantage of it), but eventually this has to be price-competitive with DVD.
- is that is mostly an excuse to introduce a new CSS system since the old one is cracked..
HD DVD Coverage. What is it all about... is it good, or is it whack?
Oh great, another standards war. That always works well for us users.
does it play OGG?
Dammit, I saw "HD DVD" and immediately thought "a Howard Dean DVD? Awesome!"
Attention Moderators: READ PARENT CLOSELY. It is a TROLL! See end of paragraph under heading 'Toshiba HD DVD Technology':
To us, this means that the major movie production
houses will more easily adapt to the new format and generate the much
needed gay bondage & fisting pornography favoured by choad-smokers
such as slashdot editor Michael Sims.
PAY ATTENTION!
Oh, great! Just as dual-layer burners are finally coming out soon, there's going to be another format change.
Why didn't he post as ANON? Cause he's a karma whore! Mod down as overrated so you don't get burned in meta mod, thanks!
Is that a misprint? Surely the manufactured disks cannot be smaller than the rewritable disks - otherwise what is the point in using the read-only version at all?
K
In the article it says "rewritable" has a capacities of 32gb and 20gb (single and dual layer). This obviously isn't the same as RW (cd burning), is it? What is this, and why is it more than read only?
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
I know genious isn't it? Ha-Ha if only I could see posts like that when I have mod points :)
Just what we need, another excuse for studios to release basic, deluxe, megadeluxe, megaultradeluxe, megaultrasuperdeluxe, collectors, deluxe collectors, megadeluxe collectors, megaultradeluxe collectors, megaultrasuperdeluxe collectors, special basic, special deluxe...etc editions of the same movie, adding more and more worthless crap ("Tour the gallery of the director's ashtray!") to fill up the space.
HD DVD? You must be referring to the chat-room shorthand for the pending endoreement of the Howard Dean campaign by Dick Van Dyke.
"Chim chiminee chim chiminee, chim chim charee..."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Blu-Ray
and it seems that HP and Dell support Blu-Ray for what its worth
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Keep on pushing your support for Single format DVD because we won the war in the beginning and shouldn't give up now!
You should also stand up and watch out for DVI/HDCP and SDI inputs. Make sure you retain rights to the media and don't let publishers enforce encryption on everything or else 99% of the sets sold today compatible of HDTV will become useless.
With this DVD format becoming "standard" don't let them throw us off with some off the wall copyprotection and drm stuff!!!
You can find my info at:
DVDsite.org
as well as my sig below
Parent's a troll. Stop modding it up! Read that fucking post carefully! I think we need some IQ rules for mod points...
You know, if the media industry wants us to take their copyright claims seriously, then they need to start giving us some sort of discount as they re-release the same material on new formats. If I've got a license to view/hear it, then that should carry over, and I should only have to pay a small fee to upgrade.
These format wars always turn out to be pissing matches between rival companies and never benefits the end user. All it does is hassle consumers by having to purchase compatible equipment.. again!
Hmmm.
No where in the article does it say anything about the video quality, only how much data can be stored on the disks. Is this really going to be HDTV resolution (1080i or 720p or ...?) or something else? Will it look better on standard TVs too, or must one have an HDTV to see a benefit?
--- What?
OK, unless I'm missing something, this won't really matter until the filming crews starting mastering in HD.
Whats the purpose of getting an HD player without getting HD signal on disc. The movies can only look as good as its master. I'll be a late adopter.
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
I can't wait for this technology to appear in computers. HD DVD-RW will be great for backing up large IDE disks. The only thing that sucks is the 36.55 Mbps data rate. I guess I'll have to wait for 2X or 4X versions of the drive.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
For who? Why do I care what happens at the factory. What it *does* mean is that the product can be scaled up for large production quicker, which should hopefully mean lower prices sooner. However, it means *nothing* as far as my transition... I won't know what the next generation DVD is like to transition to until I see how well companies handle backwards compatibility. If it fails to run *any* DVD collection, I will consider it a failure, because all the factory efficiency in the world won't make me toss my existing DVD collections.
Sig under construction since 1998.
What's interesting to me is thatboth the standards being talked about here seem to use blue lasers to pack more data onto the disc. Not too long ago, the competition vs. the Blu-ray group seemed to focus on sticking with traditional red lasers and just using more aggressive compression (e.g. MPEG-4). I'm glad to see that idea is going away. I still have a lot of early-generation DVDs where the compression artifacts are very noticeable. I'd hate to see that go back to being the norm.
Breakfast served all day!
I don't get it? What does this new format offer that we don't currently have?
Even if HD DVD is "official", it will have to compete with WMV HD (coming in July) and maybe Blu-ray.
Next time i go to buy a burner il be asking for a CD-ROM,CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+R DVD+RW DVD-R DVD-RW HDDVD-ROM, HDDVD-R, HDDVD-RW, BluRay-ROM, BluRay-R, BluRay-RW Drive....
i guess that would be a 52x52x24x16x8x4x8x4x1x1x1x1 Drve...
... I'll now have 3 different versions of LOTR.
Thanks for that. I couldn't find a mirror on goooooogle.
Trolling is a art,
Im not really sure how to look at DVD in general. I have one, and dont get me wrong, the concept of ever renting another VHS tape sends chills down my back. Ditto for at work... MSDN on DVD is about 5 times nicer then on CD, there is no doubt that it is such a marked improvement over CD.
Thing is, with every new format, you need to have a certain element of buy in. DVD is just now getting there, IMHO... if you go to rent a new release at blockbuster there will most likely be more DVD's then VHS tapes. Ditto for if you go to buy a new computer... i would say 90% of all new systems ship with a DVD player standard... half of those most likely are burners.
But I wonder, with new developments, such as HD DVD on the horizon, how many people are going to hold of purchasing a DVD or DVD burner now... when something is going to obsolete it a short while into the future. Is technology on the horizon bad for the technology that exists today?
DVD adoption still isnt as complete as it should be... for instance
How much software do you buy on DVD's these days? I wish it was alot more, but CD's still rule the day in shrinkwraped software, especially games. With games like Neverwinter nights spanning multiple CD's, your either stuck dedicating a wack of your HD to playing it... or your back in the Apple ii days of disk swapping.
What about audio dvd's? A recent trip to HMV showed that there was perhaps a hundred available for purchase at retail... not to mention that cars dont have dvd players... you arent seeing portable dvd discmen...
I guess all Im wondering is... Are these companies sorta shooting themselves in the foot by constantly bringing out new versions? Should storage media follow a more console like approach to release schedules to acheive better market penetration. I mean, how many people would have bought a DVD player ( or plasma tv, or flat panel monitor ) etc... if it didnt constantly feel like there was something better around the corner... and in the case of dvd's, that your investment could almost instantly become obsoleted?
As an asside... I think DVD's have already done a pretty big mess of things. Ive recently shopped for a DVD burner to replace my CD player, and I was aghast to find out how many formats already exists... DVDR DVD +R DVD+RW DVD-R DVD-RW?!??! Wow...
Same is going to be said about BR-DVD here soon...
HD-DVD = Backwards compatable with current DVD's
BR-DVD = NOT backwards compatable with ANYTHING! (now that Sony's made money getting a DVD player in almost every home in the world, now they go with ANOTHER format that you'll need to go out and buy a NEW DVD Player that reads BR-DVD)
You may remember this topic from a while back.
YMMV
This should allow for a smoother transition for consumers to adopt this new format.
I fail to see how them wanting us to buy yet another box can equal a 'smoother transition'.
For an alternate view of the format war, checkout the coverage on The Digital Bits.
-- Brooks
-- Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
Baby Jesus on a stick! Show some respect!
There is no reason for us to go back to tape. Tape has so many inherent problems I am glad to see it go.
While it's going to be a real pain to repurchase our catalogs in Hi-def now, at least there's a chance it will be backwards compatible with our current libraries. I know I won't replace all my DVD's, but I will replace those special films (Citizen Kane, Brazil, etc.)
I'll be honest, when there is a new movie released, if it is something I want to see, I'll usually grab a divx copy out of the newsgroups, simply because if I can't by a HDDVD version of the movie, I don't want to buy it. Rather than push hard to get their movies on a higher quality format, the movie industry has pushed hard to get us to buy the current generations of DVD, so that they can sell us the exact same movie 2 years from now in HDDVD format. I know people who have purchased the same album on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and off of i-tunes.
Now we are going to have people with the same movie on VHS, Laserdisk, DVD, and HDDVD.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Film is entirely adequate to produce an HDTV transfer. What are you talking about?
Now I have to buy the White album again!
Still needs new high compression scheme. It is 15GB vs 25GB per layer for blu-ray.
"While the DVD Forum's technical working groups have already completed round-robin verification tests and approved the HD-DVD spec, it still awaits final approval from the steering committee. The spec that is up for vote this week includes four high-efficiency codecs-H.264, Windows Media9, MPEG-2 or a hybrid of MPEG-2 and H.264. It also specifies a blue-laser diode technology."
what the article doesn't say: ... which one?
format? - 1080i, 720 p
outputs? component video? firewire? DVI?
disc life? backwards compatibility? approximate price? when will hd dvd discs be sold, and what studios will re-release?
I can't wait to have my entire collection of DVDs in HD
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
For made-for-TV movies, you're probably right, unless they've been made in the last few years.
But for real movies, you're completely off. Movies are generally filmed on film. They make DVDs by scanning the film. They make HDTV versions of the movies (for HBO, HD-DVDs, or whatever) by the same process, only they scan at a higher resolution.
HDTV is still lower resolution than normal movie film. (It's higher resolution than some of the digital projectors being used in theaters, though, which is why you'll notice compression artifacts in digital theaters.)
So a properly-made HD-DVD of any movie that was shown in the theaters should be vastly superior to the traditional DVD.
The only question is how. You obviously think these engineers are morons.
Uhm, you have it backwards. The new DVD player would be capable of supporting your current DVD collection and supporting the Hi-def format to boot.
It would be a waiste of space to try and achieve both on a single disk as you would be taking away from the much needed storage capacity for hi bit rate audio and video formats that HDTV signals are.
You won't loose rights or functionality of your current collection.
Heck, Samsung and V Inc Bravo DVD players can already output 720p video of current dvd's so just think of what these new systems could be capable of doing to your "old" stuff and the new stuff.
Believe me.. once you go HD all the way your current dvd collection will seem like your VHS collection.. collecting dust.
They lost my vote when they screwed up the DVD-R format.
Isn't that obvious? There is currently no standard for delivering HDTV content on disc.
The article states "Total compatibility with present DVD (same disc structure: back-to-back bonding of two 0.6mm substrates)".
Does this mean we'll be able to play HD-DVDs in current (non-HD) DVD players? That's how I would interpret "Total compatibility," but I don't think it would work that way. Obviously HD-DVD players will be able to play non-HD DVDs, but IMO that's not Total compatibility.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
A lot of people using "average" televisions in the 20-to-27-inch range can't tell the difference between VCRs and DVDs when it comes to quality. I don't doubt that people with $8,000 plasma HDTV's will be creaming their pants over this new format, but I highly doubt that Joe Sixpack (who finally got a DVD player for Christmas) with a 25" screen will care. HD-DVD's will have to offer more than video quality compared to DVD's in order to make most consumers care.
And don't tell me that the picture quality of DVDs has room for improvement. I know- I can see the compression artifacts on a lot of occaisions. The color depth often seems to leave something to be desired compared to say, a movie theater. I'm saying that most consumers don't notice or care about that stuff, though, and think DVDs are "good enough".
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
...why? Better compression tech. Bought disc are one thing - but they're likely to play off either player. But from what I've understood Blue-Ray is still MPEG2 = same as DVD.
But with HD-DVD, combined with your own DVD burner, you can burn HQ vids (SVCD is ok, but not great compared to other formats) to play on your mainstream players. There are a few DivX player, but they're overpriced and not standard.
Standard player, works with every encoding (no more of the funny only DivX version X, no GMC, not too high bitrate yadda yadda.) If they want to introduce Blue-Ray they should go MPEG4 AVC as well. Imagine that, 25gb of MPEG4. Nothing would beat that quality.
Now, if we could match that with the 1920x1080p 45" LCD I saw here the other day.... whoah!
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We are now seeing evidence of technological development moving so fast that there is not time for a standard to naturally evolve.
What does this mean for the market? - it means consumers are going to have to commit to an unproven technology. Consumers are naturally unwilling to do this so they will stick with older technologies, waiting for a standard to evolve. Go back to first statement.
A vicious circle.
As i highly doubt the next DVD standard will allow anything less than copy protected DVI (or any digital cable) with HDCP.
The big push isn't just quality, its DRM and protection.
With any luck the movie industry will not allow this technology to be licensed for PC's that don't support internal bus copy protection as well. (getting the infamous macrovision garbly goup on your screen).
Get HDCP or your new digital set will be useless in the very near future!
Sony has their technology available for computers now.
http://www.rorke.com/all/bluelaser.cfm
The HD DVD format, as opposed to the Blu-Ray standard, involves minimal changes to the manufacturing plants that currently produce DVDs. This should allow for a smoother transition for consumers to adopt this new format.
I don't see how making it easier for manufacturers to change their product will make it easier for consumers to switch over?
Is that another one of those 1 + ? = profit jokes?
Google cache of article
...you'll come home, realize it doesn't play DVD-RAM, and go to have it replaced, right?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When doing DVD transfers, pretty much all the studios have been doing the film transfer to digital at HD resolution, then downsampling to DVD resolution (720x480) afterwards for the DVD release.
By doing this, they already have the HD transfer in the bag; when it comes time to release the movie in HD they just grab those bits, compress them into whatever whiz-bang format HD-DVD will use, and there you have it, millions of dollars made with almost no additional investment.
Frankly, any studio doing a film transfer today that doesn't do it at HD resolution is definitely not thinking ahead.
The problem is we likely won't see HD releases of our favorite films for a long time. Look how long it's taking to get the Star Wars trilogy (due end of this year), and how long it took for various Disney animated features to come out. Fans of those movies will probably have to wait another 10 years to own HD-DVD versions.
I don't like the sound of key revocation. Sounds like you don't buy movies you lease them. http://www.dvdinfoworld.com/modules.php?op=modload &name=News&file=article&sid=594
Unlike current DVD technology, the BD-ROM format uses a much stronger encryption algorithm based on 128-bit AES. It features system renewability for key revocation, and incorporates a physical technology for preventing so-called ?bit-by-bit? copying to recordable media. Under this scheme, content providers will physically insert a so-called ?ROM mark? onto a prerecorded disk during the mastering process. ?Our goal is to prevent not only casual copying, but also professional copying, as much as possible,? said Fidler.
now I can fit more episodes of Star Trek
on 1 disk!
Seriously though, I personally love DVDs as I've
had some terrible experiences with VHS tapes
CONSTANTLY getting eaten by the VCR...
involves minimal changes to the manufacturing plants that currently produce DVDs. This should allow for a smoother transition for consumers to adopt this new format.
wouldn't that be smoother transition for manufacturers?
That's the theory anyway. However, since DVD menus on some of my early DVDs are glitchy on current *regular* DVD player, I worry about these new players. Not being a video/audiophile, I don't really care what the new format will allow so much as that it will be software compatible with my existing DVDs. My VHS collection doesn't collect that much dust (my boy still likes Godzilla movies, and how much resolution do you really need to watch Tokyo gets leveled again?), but you have already seen the major stores pull VHS or put it back in some dark corner.
I'm used to the upgrade cycle on my PC. As a programmer/designer, I can understand that the abstraction layers we have built by burning cycles has made software easier to build. What I don't want is another purchase round with the same content I already have, for a marginal increase in quality (which I won't really appreciate, having a 36" CRT instead of a HD TV). [And I'm not buying HD until the wars around it stop either.]
Sig under construction since 1998.
Google's cache:
Sorry, HD as a moniker is already taken.
Just because Blu-Ray is going to require two different lenses, you all are throwing a hissy fit. Grow up. The FACT is HD-DVD will NOT hold enough, for a good movie, unless you want to keep swapping disks, which I don't. I like one DVD for wide screen and one for full screen, but not two for each of them. Look, a standard DVD holds two hours of video. These are 3 times that capacity. The problem is that isn't enough for the higher resolutions. 1280*1024 is 4.26 times as much as 640*480. Check the math, it will not work. The only thing it has going for it is a catchy name and that it will be cheaper to upgrade.
Nuff said. It's unfair to go and pay $25-45 for a movie and then have them under the assumption I will want it encrypted for any particular reason.
Any scheme which goes into place will either have to be documented or hacked in order to get play on Linux, and as with every other scheme, eventually this does happen.
Also I hope they demolish region locking for good with this new standard. Our government has already declared it anti-competitive so let's just hope we don't have to deal with it. :-/
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
True, you never really have no purpose to stop watching what you already have, but part of the spec would be to support your existing dvd collection and the new stuff.
:)
New dvd players are already scaling, processing and upconvering DVD to 720p or similar displays and they're getting pretty common in the market. (and only 200 bucks to boot).
Just like with any technology as soon as you buy it, its obsolete in some respects
You are correct: nobody was really screaming for a new television standard. This is being imposed by the government much more as a matter of managing over-the-air bandwidth than because somebody thought that Survivor 3 just didn't look sharp enough. The higher resolution is just the carrot.
I think that the first thing they'll notice is with widescreen movies. On a standard television you're looking at perhaps 250 scan lines. They actually look pretty terrible, even on a 27" TV screen; there just aren't enough pixels. I often watch movies in pan & scan (blasphemy!) not because I'm dumb enough to worry that they're wasting my glass, but because I'd rather see details in the center of the image than the frequently unimportant stuff off at the side.
For that reason, and for the widescreen format, I've been looking forward to being able afford (and justify the expense) of an HDTV. For the most part people do not care, but I think that once they've seen the new formats, they won't want to go back.
and just using more aggressive compression (e.g. MPEG-4). I'm glad to see that idea is going away.
If you just upgrade the video compression to MPEG-4, considering the 4/9GB DVD size will not shrink, you'll end with better quality than nowadays DVD.
But... Okay, if you're going to promote a new standard (thus making people to switch to newer DVD players) it's better to add other extras, including bigger storage size.
Good or bad? That's like questioning if Twinkies are good or evil?
The most promising thing to me is the data rate. 36.55 Mbps is about twice what the broadcast HDTV standard MAX is. (Most local stations won't run at full bandwidth at that) It's good to know that you could have a really high quality image on there.
I personally would be happy if they could just make a dvd that was more durable. I have had more problems with dvds than I ever did with VHS. I've had skips, freezes, audio and video getting out of sync, etc... I would prefer a system that was the current resolution, but included redundant data and good error correcting and maybe a permanent protective case. Something that would survive a small child would be ideal. VHSs are far superior to DVDs when it comes to durability.
Sorry, try again. Wes Clark's testimony was extensive, and the particular bit that Drudge excerpted came at the end of several paragraphs describing escalating sanctions, continuing inspections, a further UN resolution, and so on. If those things failed, he was in favor of going to war.
I used to think that liberals, with their deconstructionism and other trendy academic elitist nonesense were the masters of taking stuff out of context, but the right has now taken that mantle.
"Our goal is to prevent not only casual copying, but also professional copying, as much as possible," said Fidler."
That is an anti-consumer goal. I'm certainly not interested in any format which won't let me make copies. Making copies is part of my enjoyment of the medium, is part of the whole experience I am purchasing.
Here's another comparison of the next-gen DVD formats. I find it rather balanced.
Uh oh what is Apple going to call the new writables... can't be super drive anymore...
Super Duper Drive...
ABBA Flash back.... arghhh what a sick joke... sorry...
Superdrive Extreme, obviously.
Great. I'm sure the environmentalists are going to love the idea of a disk which stops working after a week. That should make them happy in their pants.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Display resolution cannot cause compression artifacts.
They will call it SuperDrive again. The current use of the name is their second - previously it was used for 1.44MB "HD" floppy drives (e.g. on Mac SE).
sulli
RTFJ.
Cassette tape > CD > SACD
Video tape > DVD > HD-DVD
History tends to show that trying to replace a 'good enough' technology with one that has no significant advantages is prone to remaindered stock. Sure, one day I'm sure 3G might take off - but it will be very slow and very patchy. The initial switch to digital delivers benefits. Better resolution is not enough to make the second generation digital technologies grab the public interest.
Now, if they attempt to reimplement region coding, CSS, and other DRM technologies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, as we can expect them to, its reasonable to assume that it will NEVER take off, resolution or not. The advantage in moving is just too small.
Skip this next generation, wait for the one after with solid state players and really rich content options.
ABBA Flash back.... arghhh what a sick joke... sorry...
Super Duper drives are gonna write it
that ray won't be blue
like I thought it would
coz someone's gonna slashdot you.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Good point. Display resolution can cause noticable pixelation. There were a few scenes when we saw Star Wars episode 2 in a digital theater where you would notice it. It was also quite apparent in the credits.
There are actually (at least) two different digital theater systems. We saw Star Wars episode 1 in a different digital theater, and the picture was amazing. Apparently that system didn't catch on due to cost.
Price DOES matter. I own a DVD player and lots of DVDs, but don't feel like buying a plasma screen in the near future. And I dont't perceive DVD as a luxury technology. It's just a better VCR offering me the quality VHS never did (this is why I do not own a VCR). And since my appartment is not that big, DVD is largely enough, even when projected onto my largest wall.
I hope I will not be forced to change it for at least another 10 years.
That pretty much agrees with what I've personally seen.
CD - I have no idea what they're going to manage to replace this with... it's in everything (cars, boomboxes, PCs, etc.). The audio quality is "good enough" for 99% of the public, the interface is simple, it's compatible with everything (except for the recent attempts at DRM). That makes for a darn high hurdle that any new format would have to compete against. Possibly, if they could replace it with something recordable (cassettes vs LPs, DRM will kill it), smaller form-factor (whoops, there goes compatibility), higher audio quality (tough sell, CD is good enough). Which is pretty much a match for the Sony MD disc. Pity that the Sony MD disc gets killed on both proprietary and DRM fronts, it could've replaced cassette tapes.
DVD was a great upgrade to VHS. Pretty much a no-brainer other then the recording issue (which is finally going mainstream). A high-def version of DVD might take off (would be significant upgrade), if they don't kill it with DRM and it can be used for digital archiving on PCs. 25Gb/layer would make for a very nice archival size (it would have to be at *least* 20Gb, 30Gb/layer would sell faster). Much like DVD-R has replaced CD-R as an archival medium. A format war will also kill it off (or lead to *very slow* adoption rates).
An interesting format to me would be a cartridge about the size of a 3.5" floppy disk (or a touch smaller 2.5" x 3.0"), with hard shell, that can be used for music / video / data storage. Re-writeable would be necessary, write-once would be interesting. Top capacity would need to be around 15-20Gb per side with twice the error-correction of today's DVDs. Make them small enough and reliable enough to use in digital cameras. A unified format that is consumer-friendly, less prone to damage, might be enough to move us off of the CD/DVD physical size treadmill.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Is that not fraud since sets with only component video inputs are not HDCP compliant?
...but the digital bits acutally reported on this and seemed to imply that Blu-Ray has at this point more momentum behind it, and possibly may be the better format. From what I've read of the two formats blu-ray does look a little better.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
There is nobody pure of principle in this world. I doubt it even of Mother Theresa, and I've heard even Ghandi corresponded with Hitler on at least one occasion.
The measure of a person is not their words but their actions. The coverups and lies of the Bush administration far outweigh the current primary maneuverings of the Democratic candidates. Even respectable Republicans have begun to question Pres. Bush. I don't see how any respectable conservative can side with massive deficits and deceit of the Bush neoconservatives. Even libertarians, with their penchant for reason-bending, are not defending his policies.
And the centrists of this great nation wake up and push their representatives to reform elections so other parties have a chance, unfortunately that means that Democrats are the only option for those who want to get rid of Bush. And Dean is the only one with a proven record of leadership and problem solving as the Gov. of Vermont, and the only one currently speaking to the source of our nation's ills: corporations writing our laws and running our media.
what you're talking about. Please don't post on this, or any related subjects, ever again. Thanks.
Hell yeah! If the automotive industry wants me to respect their business model, then they should give us discounts as they rerelease "transportation from point A to B, via wheels" in new forms such as hybrids. I have a license to drive a vehicle therefore my costs to upgrade should be small.
"These format wars always turn out to be pissing matches between rival companies and never benefits the end user."
Love-hate relationship. Competition makes the choice possible. Competition means the consumer has to decide which one.
I would have hoped by now that we had moved past the obsession with "oooh shiny disk" and come to realize that even though a caddy adds bulk, protecting the disk is damn important. As data density goes up, scratches become more and more detrimental
With CDs, It was understandable. The tech was new, and caddies were an additional cost on top of that newness. Plus, the "shiny disk" was a novelty. -Scratches were not that much of a problem, the music would hiccup, but rarely skip badly unless the scratch was bad.
We should have learned our lesson with DVDs. "shiny disks" were no longer so novel, and a minor scratch can send the movie wildly skipping. This is made worse by the fact that movies are singular entities, not broken up in to songs like on a CD, so restarting where you left of is more annoying. Renting DVDs is hell because one goober can fuxxor the disk.
- We ship/sell DVDs in cases anyhow, why the hell didn't we make the case the caddy?
Now we want to up the density even more, and still leave the data surface exposed?? Now will a fingerprint cause a skip? Will a scratch render a whole min. or more unviewable by obscuring the data? This is un-freaking acceptable. I treat all my disks with extreem care, but It seems these would need clean rooms and machine loading to avoid any scratches.
Screw HD-DVD, Blu-Ray has a caddy (IIRC) to protect my investment in a HD movie. I'll go with it, even if it costs more, because loosing a $25 movie to one scratch is more expensive in the long run by far, and not having to treat the disk like a fabrege(sp?) egg to keep it playing well is worth the extra cost.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
Now, if they attempt to reimplement region coding, CSS, and other DRM technologies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, as we can expect them to, its reasonable to assume that it will NEVER take off, resolution or not. The advantage in moving is just too small.
Most people don't give a rat's hind-quarters about whether or not a DVD has copy protection, and the same will be true for HD-DVD. As long as the average person can go to a store, rent or buy a movie, bring it home, stick it in the appropriate player and watch, all that tech talk is irrelevant to their experience. Even HDCP requiring DVI connections will be irrelevant for most people since most people haven't yet bought into HDTV and all but a few new HDTV-ready sets have DVI inputs anyway.
Poll a thousand (or five-thousand) random DVD-player owners asking them what CSS/DeCSS means and you'll get 99% responding with "I don't know what you're talking about."
It would be a waiste of space to try and achieve both on a single disk as you would be taking away from the much needed storage capacity for hi bit rate audio and video formats that HDTV signals are.
Well, if you re-read the parent, I think you'll see that that was exactly what he said ("If it fails to run *any* DVD collection, I will consider it a failure, because all the factory efficiency in the world won't make me toss my existing DVD collections.").
However, the flip side should also be true. I should be able to buy an HD DVD and play it in a standard DVD player (of course not in HD mode). A new standard that is not backwards compatible is bad for everyone involved. It's bad for studios because they have to release & maintain two versions of every new DVD released. It's bad for retailers since they will have to stock two versions of each title. It's bad for the tech companies since the lack of compatibility will hinder market acceptance. And it's bad for consumers since they won't be able to buy HD titles until they've upgraded to HD players (of course there is some benefit here to the studios & tech companies since it encourages upgrades & repeat purchases, but I suspect that the bad outweighs the good for all involved).
One easy solution that would not require any complicated engineering would simply be to put the HD on one side & the standard on the other. That seems to me to be the best compromise between compatibility & engineering, while still allowing for the extra space required for the occasional huge title (both sides could be HD when needed).
Flamebait, that's funny - nothing flamebait about speaking the facts.
and some time later? when will be ready new hd-hd-hd-dvd standard? with banging 4000x3000? this happens right now - for example some anime from 80's was stored by studios on tapes. and now converted to dvd's they look awful. many studios just too lazy to transfer again directly from film. and new resolutions and compressions wont help here...
I will only need 20 HD-DVD-R's to back up my 300 gig HD.. Oh joy..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Putting HD content on todays DVDs means that the masterings will go lower bandwidth or have to break the movies onto two discs.
Going with a format which can store more is preferable in every possible way. And since DVD players are cheap as hell today, a new machine shouldn't be much of a problem either.
So quickly people forget. When DVD movies came out one DVD would fill my entire hard drive. Now I could fit 100. These new HD-DVDs aren't even out yet and I could already fit 10. I have a feeling when we do see these drives we'll all have hard drives that easily fit 50 HD-DVDs, and a few years later, 100+.
Course that's if we even see HD-DVD movies. DVD drives have just now been widely accepted now that players are down to $30. I highly doubt the average consumer's going to be happy being told "Hey we know you just bought a DVD player, but guess what, you have to buy this new $300 player now if you want to watch new DVDs!"
So I predict one of two things happening:
1) HD-DVD players won't be out for many years, when the market is ready for a new format, ~10 yrs.
2) HD-DVD drives will come out for your PC, but there won't be any movies, since they'll still be in DVD format.
I'm guessing 2, but we shall see. I still don't know why we need 25-50gig movies, I mean damn, most people don't have a TV that really takes advantage of the high resolution of DVDs, much less HD-DVD.
"2) Most people AREN'T on college campuses"
You're right, but I don't know anyone that transfers 5gig DVDs anyway. Everything's DivX or XviD last time I checked, so that's a non-issue.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
This article gives good details on the differences other than media...
Seems that HD-DVD/AOD makes it cheaper for the manufacturer to screw us as they don't have update production lines... but make us buy new decoding chips... and new software players/libraries,etc.
while Blu-Ray makes us buy scaled up chips on new media... i can see how computer makers would like this over HD-DVD as the software already scales up easily...
DVD players use key revocation. No DVD you can buy today will work on the player that got cracked for DeCSS.
DivX and XviD at 1080i aren't going to be small either. Going from 640x480 standard def. to 1900x1080 is more than quadruple the size. Also keep in mind that HD-DVD is not going to be using MPEG-2. They can't fit a decent sized movie in MPEG-2 on a measly 15GB. They'll be using MPEG-4 or Windows Media. In which case, you're not getting any size reduction whatsoever. It's already as compressed as you can get it. You need to transfer the whole damn 15 GB. The BluRay people are the ones still promoting MPEG-2. BluRay has quite a bit more capacity than HD-DVD so they can pull it off.
Cheap?
If his record is so great, why won't he release his records?
While what you say is definately true but think about the future...
HD-DVD - 15 gigs in single layer mode
BlueRay - 27 gigs in single layer mode
A dual layer Blue Ray disc should be able to achieve up to 50 gigs per disk! Also home recorders have a higher chance of being single layer (dual layered burners haven't even come out for regular dvds) in which the size difference of 15 and 27 gigs make a huge difference.
5 Years from now which tech would you rather have become mainstream? Another factor is durability... BD-DVD's are encased like floppy discs and aren't nearly as susceptible to damage as current cds and dvds.
Hmmm... Pie...
>An interesting format to me would be a cartridge about the size of a 3.5" floppy disk (or a touch smaller 2.5" x 3.0"), with hard shell, that can be used for music / video / data storage.
It's called SuperDisk, ZIP/JAZ drive, and many other names. But none of them have common interface, and they quickly grow obsolete. Maybe you should just get USB key drive, which does everything mentioned above, has no size restriction built into the spec, and faster ports can still work with slower keys.
you make an excellent point, ive also thought this. i have an idea what they're thinking though. cost. i bet that caddy would cost more to make than the dvd. suppose the disc cost 2p to make (i don't know, i'm making these numbers up) and the caddy, with its many sides and some mechanical opening part, cost 10p, the bean counters multiply that out and find they will "lose" millions by having it, & that most consumers don't think ahead enough to care, hence costs not recuperated. this is total speculation but i'd bet somewhere close to reality... now if only you could add caddies yourself (i.e. after you bought the disc, and still stick it in the player), we could both be happy?
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Read this article at thedigitalbits and then tell me you still think HD-DVD could ever possibly defeat Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray by the way is supported by Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Royal Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Thompson and, of course, Sony. HD-DVD is supported by Toshiba and NEC. Hmmmm. Which has more support?
e po rt.html
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/wces04/r
Oh, by the way, according to the article, BD-ROM does NOT have a sleeve while BD-R and BD-RE (going with RE and not RW) do, BUT it is hoped they will not need sleeves either.