v1.0 of HD-DVD Physical Specs Approved

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."

Comments

Not that it will do much good...

[aminorex]

I can't imagine that a green light will be much help
in making Blu-Ray disks.

Microsoft creating open standards?

[AC-x]

By the sounds of the article Microsoft has submitted their VC-9 codec as an open standard, does that actually mean that OS encoders/decoders can be developed free from MS lawer related hassle, or are there still strings attached?

Re:How soon...

[Errtu76]

and how soon was it before somebody said the P-word when another mass-storage article hit slashdot? 3 seconds? four?

For those not aware

[Tuvai]

HD-DVD format uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology, in contrast to the 650nm-wavelength red laser technology used in traditional DVD formats. The rewritable Blu-ray disc, with a data transfer rate of 36Mbps, can hold up to 27GB of data on a single-sided single layer disc (compared to the traditional DVD's 4.7GB capacity), which amounts to about 12 hours of standard video or more than 2 hours of high-definition video.
AOD is pretty much the same, except it has a storage capacity of 20GB on a single-layer disc

Format wars

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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.

Re:Compatibility

[anakin357]

Backwards compatiblity is the driving factor for any new purchase in my mind. From the article: The only Blu-ray recorder currently available in Japan is the Sony BDZ-S77 Google for "Sony BDZ-S77" and hitting I'm feeling Lucky takes you to here: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/blu-ray/ And within that article (Decent review by the way) is this: The drive can record only blu-ray media, but it supports reading of blue-ray, DVD-Video, DVD-RW, DVD-R, CD, CD-R and CD-RW discs. So to answer your question, yes they are backwards compatible.

But you aren't paying for just the improvements

[Solandri]

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.