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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."
Gizmodo probably has it right, with respect to Blu-Ray, but their article is so incredibly biased that it is difficult to lend it any credibility. It's not an objective article at all. They follow a high-school writing class "compare and contrast" format. However, for each feature that they discuss, they trash it for HD-DVD and then argue valiantly and gushingly for Blu-Ray. I would rather read an article written by a dispassionate science writer. They should stick to regurgitating press releases rather than trying to take on serious analysis. I like Gizmodo as a great place to make one stop to learn about new gadgets but I don't go there for any sort of analysis or good editorial content.
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I like having my optical media encased in some sort of protective barrier. it saves me from myself.
As an American Slob(tm), I have a really slack attitude towards my optical media. Mostly due to how I can get away with it with everything else.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The masses will ultimately decicde who wins But then again, the masses could easily be persuaded and influenced. Most of the time, there will be a winner by default, not necessarily by it's own merrit or quality, etc. I can only hope that the better system wins. Be it Blu-Ray or HD-DVD Then again, I'm leaning against any camps that blindly adopts technology, such as Microsft's. notice the word "blindly" didn't see it? well blindness might be a factor.
Might I suggest that those with modpoints read the second paragraph of the "technical" section in the parent post?
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
It seems that the more data that you throw onto a 5" disc the less resilience to scratches there are. I understand that a lot of these discs will use redundancy to counteract the increased sensitivity to scratches. I would assume that would cut into the amount of data that can be stored on the disc. Am I wrong in assuming that being that the discs are 72x the capacity of a CD ROM that the information density is 72X more. If the discs have 72x the amount of information in a given area, wouldn't the disc be 72x more susceptible to scratches. I've noticed this when comparing CD to DVD's.
So why dump the cartridges?
Seriously, isn't there a bit of a credibility gap? I love Gizmodo and all, but are they really the end-all-be-all of format reviewers? Let's see Tom's or Anandtech's opinions.
Will it be the new h.264 or something else?
And does anyone with a preview release of Tiger have any information on how fast it codecs a file?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Ok, I know this sounds naive, but get this: If we all decide right now that Blu-Ray is the winner, and we cling to that idea in spite of any future arguments then it will be the winner. The masses have spoken. We don't have to go through another period of format instability. It's a wonder of the Internet, a snap decision by millions.
The only people who won't like this are the people who are supporting the other standard, you know DVD-whats_its_name, you know- the losers.
...just a random thought, but I would suspect that the one whose copy protection is the easiest to break may end up "winning" as that is the one many people would find to have the most "freedom" to use how they wish without all the tacked on restrictions (warranted or otherwise).
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
A lot! From a marketing standpoint (as if there were any other when dealing with manufacturers) the last thing they want is to have their brand name associated with discs which are rendered useless as soon as you get a fingerprint on them. (Not saying that Blu-ray is this sensitive, just making a point).
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
This multiple format business is a mess. Look at the problems with SACD and DVD-A. Nobody is buying them (and if the music industry stopped suing people and promoted those formats that are so much better than downloaded music they would actually make more money because there is new value there.)
But back to the topic at hand: The industry would benefit more from having ONE SINGLE TRUE UNIFIED STANDARD as opposed to a couple of standards, which would confuse people. The public at large (Joe Sixpack) gets all confused with this 2-format thing. They want to buy a movie and play it, not worry about if this disc will play on their type of player. When we have one unified standard, confusion is reduced, people cam just buy buy buy and made the industry happy. The the industry focus can be put on actually releasing content and worthwhile stuff, as opposed to teaching consumers that they need a different player for their Fox releases versus some other studio and then wondering why people don't buy any of these confusing and conflicting products.
Dear next-gen disc industry: ONE STANDARD PLEASE!
Obviosuly either side is going to make discs that won't die when you sneeze.
But in fact a funny point sis that durability could be a major strike AGAINST HD-DVD. Did you read the part about Blu-Ray discs printed on paper? That could mean a lot more opportunity for throw-away discs in magazines or cerial boxes or wheverer. That is a huge draw to media types, to be able to push media through more channels.
So again, I would say the duribility of the format has nothing to do with sucess. Ease of use, yes - to some extent (which is why they aren't giving any cart-based players to the masses). The primary factor will be the one with a majority of media companies getting behind it and making things people want to buy. If there were a split between some media supporting one format, and some another, then there might be more of a fight - but it looks to be an absolute domination the part of Blu-Ray, as they said from any standpoint you care to look that would indicate future sales potential.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think whichever standard the porn industry decides to use will be the winner.
50GB of Jenna Jameson...WOW!!
Fortunately the wonderful thing about DVDs being a fully digital and cracked medium is that it will be very easy to copy them over to BluDisc-R whenever that becomes a commodity product.
Agreed. Media damage is about the only thing I don't like about current DVDs. I have about 200 Music CDs (and my wife has about as many) and can't really recall any problems with playback. Where as I have an episode of Sex and the City on DVD that I didn't even get to watch because of the smallest scracth that I can barely see. I've also checked out DVDs from the library that were unwatchable. My personal experience leads me to believe that we need media that can handle media damage better.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Hate to say that it won't be decided on technical merit, but businesses have a history of choosing an inferior standard if it benefits their bottom line. (Think VHS vs. Beta.)
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
What makes you think the movie industry will see logic? They haven't been too hot on it before...
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I bet someone here can answer this question for me. Why are all these optical discs (aside from the venerable Laserdisc) manufactured with the same dimensions as the Compact Disc?
Soon we'll have three or four 120mm discs. Why not make the Blu-Rays a little wider, so there's no chance of them being inserted into a non-Blu-Ray device? (and the side benefit of a few more tracks == more space) Backward compatibility would be maintained, of course.
Is it just because it's cheaper to reuse some of the manufacturing equipment from the CD assembly lines?
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
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.
MD was pretty much DOA due to Sony licensing and pricing for licensing. Not to mention that Sony is it's own worst enemy and kept the MD as "audio only" (there was no way to get digital content on/off the drive).
Just like we saw with the "floppy killer" drives that were all 40-250MB in size. Nobody was willing to step up and publish an open standard, so none of the half a dozen formats every took off.
So here we are, 10 years later, and we're still using floppy discs as the easiest way to move a 50k document from machine A to machine B. (USB keys are getting close... but still an order of magnitude too expensive, and unplugging a drive can be problematic.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
The movie industry beleives people won't buy their discs if "DVD" isn't in the name. That's why. Quality is irrelevant in this case.. ;)
Talking about Blu-Ray & HD-DVD, didn't Steve Jobs say that Tiger (OS 10.4) is going to have QT with H.264 which is compatible with HD-DVD and how you can resize the window without any loss of resolution and other cool features. Now I donot know much about H.264 but if they can do that and cannot do with Blu-Ray than Blu-Ray has a disadvantage there.
And another thing, nice to see another fight between MS & Apple with BR & HD-DVD.