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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..
Oh great, another standards war. That always works well for us users.
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
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
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?
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!
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.
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
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.
Now I have to buy the White album again!
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.
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.
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.
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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!
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?
...you'll come home, realize it doesn't play DVD-RAM, and go to have it replaced, right?
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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.
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.
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.
No way. Do a back to back comparison some time. I can easily tell the different on a 19 inch tv.
but I highly doubt that Joe Sixpack (who finally got a DVD player for Christmas) with a 25" screen will care.
Huh? Do you live in an old folks home? Over 50 million households now own a DVD player. 50 million! Joe sixpack bought his two years ago.
What's holding people back? The shipping costs on a $44 DVD player?
Best Buy is selling HD-ready TV's for $500. They're selling 50" widescreens for just over $1000.
Like it or not, this stuff is totally mainstream at this point. People aren't throwing their current TV's into the trash, but the emphasis has clearly shifted to DVDs and all the stores are trying to sell HDTV stuff.
Go to a Best Buy and look at how many rear projection TV's the sell that AREN'T widescreen. Last time I was there it was about 2... two models for the entire store.
I don't mean to be rude, but I think you should RTFA. HD-DVD disks hold 30 GB on one side (dual layer). Let's look at th numbers, shall we?
A 1080i HDTV broadcast requires the largest bandwidth of all the HDTV standards. A standard 1080i broadcast is 18.8 Mbps (here is one source). This equates to 2.35 MB/s or 0.00235 GB/s (roughly).
An HD-DVD disc holds 30 GB. That means that an HD-DVD disc can hold (30 / 0.00325) seconds of 1080i video.
That turns out to be about 212 minutes. Skim off some overhead for menus and stuff and we're still talking about over 3 hours. Most movies will easily fit on an HD-DVD, and that's at the highest possible datarate. If they are stored on the disc as 720p (which would make sense since movies are progressive), then you get almost 4 hours. (720p is 16.9 Mbps)
...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.
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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.
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I will only need 20 HD-DVD-R's to back up my 300 gig HD.. Oh joy..
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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.
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