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Gizmodo Declares Blu-Ray Winner
13.7BillionYears writes "Gizmodo has a special feature covering the many details of the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle based on the technical, financial, and commercial merits of the two contenders. They conclude that Blu-Ray is the clear winner on all three fronts. Hopefully the movie industry and electronics manufacturers will see the same logic and avert a format war."
Article Text Trolls. It's in the Wikipedia.
e nomena#Article_text_alteration_trolls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_ph
article on H.264e /
http://www.guidetohometheater.com/news/062804appl
According to a few articles, Microsoft is endorsing HD-DVD for the adoption of WMV9 codec
here
here
here
here
then again, Paul Thurrot is to Microsoft as Rush Limbaugh to The Republicans
YIKES!!!!
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The reason VHS won against Beta Max is that VHS had much more storage capacity, and people didn't want to switch tapes in the middle of a movie... even if the video and sound quality was better.
Blu-Ray has more storage capacity than HD-DVD. So the relation of Blu-Ray = Beta Max and HD-DVD = VHS doesn't quite gell with me.
I wouldn't mind whatever format comes out to be enclosed, though. I have always thought it strange that Mini-Disks didn't beat out CD's. You can't scratch them! Although I guess while the media is safer, the electronics accessing the media will be a bit more prone to dust and other particulates entering the cartridge bay. Not many people would check to see if the casing was clean before putting it in like they do the bottom of a CD/DVD.
That would be because BetaCAM and BetaMAX are not the same thing in the slightest.
And resistant to consumer damage - What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING? It comes down to hardware/media price and avialiablity.
Resistant to damage is a legitimate consumer concern and should be taken into account when evaluating a media system.
Certainly hardware, media pricing, and availability are key items in determining *economic* success, but just because something is widespread and inexpensive doesn't make it "better" than something else, just likely to be adopted by cheapskates.
Not only are BetaMax and BetaCam different, but BetaCam itself has undergone several changes since the late '70s when it was introduced. (Yes, there was an Alpha system as well, but AFAIK, it never left the R&D stage).
However, BetaCam has now run its useful life and almost nobody purchases new BetaCam systems anymore, preferring to go with either a digital tape-based system, or, increasingly, solid-state or disk-based systems.
The basic problem for media formats is that Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) are like Microsoft and, well, Microsoft. Beta tapes only work in Beta players and in Beta cameras; DVCPro tapes only work in DVCPro players and DVCPro cameras; and so on. One of the main reasons for the explosion in homemade movies over the last decade or so has been the development of DV, a standards-based media recording format that isn't proprietary.
The fear with Blu-Ray is that it is a Sony product, and Sony will do what it always does (Beta, MiniDisc, IMX) and require the purchase of Sony equipment and/or charge massive licensing fees to use the technology. There is much speculation that the reason Blu-Ray didn't come out four or five years ago -- when, according to rumor, it was technologically feasible to do so -- was because Sony didn't have the support of anyone else in the industry, and management knew that to bring a Sony-proprietary video media storage format to market that no one else supported was a lost cause from the beginning.
Note, too, that the vast majority of the names associated with the Blu-Ray consortium are equipment manufacturers. That's pretty meaningless if you don't have the manufacturers of the actual media themselves on board. Guess what NEC and especially Toshiba are known for.
As for Matsushita, don't let the marketing fool you -- they're competing *bitterly* with Blu-Ray. Oh, they may make some players that will accept the format for consumer use, but there's no way they're letting Sony take over the broadcast market, which is vastly profitable. Sony's trying to push Blu-Ray as the next gen of tapeless recording, but Panasonic's hard-disk system actually beat them to market (Sony's hasn't been released yet, and Panasonic's came out last year.)
In this circumstance, it would be the wrong way. Unfortunately, only three hardware companies are behind HD-DVD, and they are Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo. I think there are like 12 to 15 hardware companies commited to Blu-Ray, inlcuding Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Mitsui, Hitachi, Philips, Panasonic, LG, nVidia, Canon, Sigma Designs, Lite-ON, Kenwood, Sharp, Thompson (RCA), etc.
Not that bandwagon means it will necessarily win, but I think it is a strong indicator. Add to that the fact that three major studios have commited to it, Columbia Tri-Star, Fox, and MGM, I think those three companies have the majority of the existing DVD catalogue.
Here is a good intro: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/blu-ray.htm/
Blu Ray doesn't have backwards compatability, but thats a feature not a weakness!
Actually, this is a myth. The players are backward compatible, but the standard doesn't require it. Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players will play DVDs, the optics are available to take both the blue and red lasers in the same head assembly. Existing Blu-Ray players already play DVDs.
Battle Over Next DVD Format
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
By KEN BELSON
Published: December 29, 2003
TOKYO, Dec. 28 - When Hisashi Yamada pulls back his bow, he thinks of only one thing: Hitting the bull's-eye 92 feet away.
"When I concentrate on the target," said Mr. Yamada, a champion archer who demonstrates his skill dressed in the traditional blue-and-white hakama, "I forget about everything else."
In his regular job, Mr. Yamada, a 60-year-old electrical engineer, is putting that same single-minded focus to work for the Toshiba Corporation, which is battling like a Japanese samurai warrior of old in a fight to the finish over whose format will be used in the next generation of DVD's.
The discs, which have been under development for several years, will hold four to five times more digital video and audio data than those now on the market. They are needed because broadcasters and movie studios are planning to take advantage of the spread of high-definition television screens to produce more digital programming with multitrack sound and much better resolution.
The new discs and their players will not be widely available until at least 2005, but already the world's largest electronics, computer and entertainment companies are embroiled in a multibillion-dollar fight over whose technology will become an industry standard.
The arguments are in many ways reminiscent of the Betamax-VHS showdown in the 1970's and the clashes over digital audiotape, compact discs and the original digital videodiscs released in 1997. As in those battles, technology is just the starting point for debates filled with emotion and industry politics.
Beyond the technical details like tracking speed and tilt is a serious tussle over how to divide - and protect - the billions of dollars in royalties from the licensing of this technology and the content sold on the discs. Also at stake is an effort by electronics makers to prevent emerging Chinese rivals and well-established Silicon Valley computer makers from making significant inroads into the home entertainment business.
"This is a very intense conflict over intellectual property," said Warren N. Lieberfarb, a driving force behind the development of the original DVD format. It has the added overlay, he said, "of the Japanese, Korean and European consumer electronics industries fearing China's aggressively emerging consumer electronics industry as well as the PC industry."
At the technological level, the combatants are divided roughly into two camps. Under Mr. Yamada's leadership, NEC and Toshiba have formed a group that has developed the HD (high definition) DVD, a disc that is 0.6 millimeter thick and made with machinery similar to that used for today's DVD's. On the other side is the 10-company Blu-ray Group, led by Sony and Matsushita, whose best-known brands are Panasonic and JVC. That group has developed a disc only 0.1 millimeter thick that can hold more data but needs additional investment to be produced. Information on the discs can be overwritten after it is recorded, something that is not possible with the HD DVD's now.
At 12 centimeters in diameter, both discs are similar to today's offerings, though Sony's discs are protected from fingerprints, dust and scratches by square plastic cartridges when not in use. The HD DVD group has developed a single lens that emits red and blue rays to read both current and next-generation discs. The Blu-ray machines require two separate lenses.
While the discs are still at least a year away from mass production, both sides are expected to be out in full body armor trying to win new allies at the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 8 through 11, where they are planning to show prototypes of their devices.
There are many battles left to fight, though, before these new DVD's hit the shelves, and it is entirely possible that the camps will never reach a consensus, forcing consumers, retailers, movie studios and others to adapt, at least ini
AM hardware manufactures attempted to squeeze more life out of their equipment by making a stereo signal over an AM frequency. FM radio is superior in many respects (not just that it can carry stereo data) and eventually won over AM (even with Stereo) these days you will find more FM only radios than FM/AM radios but AM broadcasting hardware is not dead, just dying (we will still live with it though for many years, because it falls in that wonderful tech category called "good enough", sometimes I think today's engineers forget that "good enough" is a reasonable option and instead try to created things that are "over kill") The unfortunate thing was every one who invested in AM stereo hardware lost their investment completely (as there are no AM stereo stations, that I am aware off at least) the same thing could be said for consumer Beta max players, RCA disc players (which I own) 3DO video game consoles (which I also own, damn I got to get better at buying stuff).
Today, however we live in a time where many standards can awkwardly coexist without suffocating each other. Sure life would be MUCH easier if there was one format for recordable DVD but no one is kicking themselves for settling on one format yet (except maybe those DVD-RAM people, but even they are finding support in modern DVD players). Hardware innovations are much cheaper today then they have ever been, in fact there are $50 DVD players that can play every conceivable format of DVD and even CDRs crammed with modern media files, so there may very well be 2 HD standards for a while. It's actually in the best interests of these member companies to keep things divided. Think about it this way, do you think DirectTV is upset that Comcast cable boxes can't read their satellite TV signals? No, because they know that by keeping their technology separate they can potentially lock customers into their own products and make it harder for them to leave. You could look at the cell phone market the same way, sure it would be great for us to have one phone technology and be able to move around to what ever provider meets our needs best, but it's not what cell phone companies want so there is little (if any) unity in that market.
-Jason
1) Because it's cheaper to reuse manuf equipment that can move / stack / sort 120mm discs.
2) Stores have acres and acres of shelf space dedicated to storing and displaying 120mm sized packaging.
3) Consumers have hundreds of millions of cases and other storage furniture dedicated to storing and displaying 120mm packaging.
(Anyone remember what a PITA it was when the new DVD packaging came out because they made it larger then CD jewel cases?)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I just spent a few minutes trawling unsuccessfully on the Wal-Mart site to locate them, but they do exist. Basically, a stretchy piece of clear plastic sized to fit snugly on a CD and remain in place until removed. (My searches are coming up blank on the site kk.org/cooltools, too, and I'm sure I saw a review there. If not, maybe I'll buy some today and write one ;).
However, I swear they're real, I just can't swear that they work (because I've only seen them). A set of 5 costs $5, I think -- which sounds like a fair amount, since blanks are quite cheap, but if it's a disk you'd rather hang onto, a buck isn't that much.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Both formats have announced mandatory player support for:
MPEG-2
MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
VC-1 (aka Windows Media Video Advanced Profile)
So, a content creator can make a disc in either, and all players will support all three. Not a win for either format here.
As for encoder speed, one implementation, especially one in alpha, doesn't mean much. Since an encoder simply needs to make a legal bitstream, different encoders can vary hugely in speed. I certainly have MPEG-2 encoders that are more than 20x faster than other ones, or 10x faster than themselves when comparing slow, high quality mode and fast draft mode.
The really important thing is how fast it can decode the worst-case legal bitstream, since that determines how fast a computer or DSP is required for reliable playback.
My video compression blog
They already are broadcasting in HDTV. From what I understand, DVD pretty clearly doesn't look as good as an HD-TV broadcast.