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v1.0 of HD-DVD Physical Specs Approved

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the the-race-is-on dept.

Repran writes "The DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0, a specification that will compete with Blu-Ray which is not yet approved for the future of the DVD disc format. This effectively gives manufacturers a green light to begin producing devices. In related news Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included in the official HD-DVD specs."

2 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. Format wars by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. It's time for another format war. Consumers don't want this -- especially when regular DVD is "good enough" for most of them, and from their perspective, DVD is only a few years old. VHS got a couple decades of use before DVD showed up on the market, and when it did, the improvement in picture and sound quality (not to mention taking up less space) was enough to get consumers to adopt the format.

    Now they expect consumers to shift again? No. It's too soon. And the fact that there's a format war on top of all that, will make both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray about as successful as SACD and DVD-A have been in replacing the good old audio CD -- i.e. not successful at all except for a handful of high-end enthusiasts.

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  2. But you aren't paying for just the improvements by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful
    NOBODY and I mean NOBODY is telling you that you have to upgrade your whole collection. Sure you might have to buy a HD-DVD player to buy the latest releases, but that won't cost much (cheap DVD players are less that $60 now) and there are improvements in the standard.

    I think what upsets people is that someone upgrading from a VHS to a DVD to an HD-DVD copy of a movie pays just as much as someone who's buying the HD-DVD version as his first copy. That is, you aren't just paying for the improvement in the standard. You're paying for the improvements + any intellectual rights to view the movie. If you own the VHS and DVD versions as well, you've paid for those intellectual rights multiple times.

    This flies in the face of the MPAA/RIAA's argument that filesharing is bad because when you buy a DVD/CD, you are purchasing intellectual rights to view/listen. If it's wrong for me to view/listen to the DVD/CD without buying a license, it's wrong for them to sell the same license to me multiple times in different formats. The software industry figured out this contradiction long ago and offers discounts for upgrade versions.