Slashdot Mirror
Studios Face Off in Next-Gen DVD Format War
WaZiX writes "After yesterday's HD-DVD strike, the Blu-Ray Disc format received support from Disney (and its Buena Vista Home Entertainment unit) as reported by ZDNET. As predicted, the format war has only just begun."
As before, there will be a short 'format war', maybe even shorter this time, say 6 months - and low and behold every product will sudenly start supporting every format - just like they did when DVD burners became popular.
:D
Time to comoditisation of products get's shorter every month
My Portfolio
Blu-ray Discs can store up to 50GB of data on a dual-sided disc. That's significantly higher than the 4.7GB capacity of the DVD format Blu-ray is looking to succeed.
Yippee! Even more room to store lengthy commercials for other "limited edition gold/platinum" DVDs of re-released animated movies from 40+ years ago. There's nothing I enjoy more than paying money to rent a movie and sitting through 15 minutes of advertisements because the DVD won't allow the player to skip forward through that crap.
Disney said its plans to release movies on the Blu-ray format are nonexclusive, meaning it could publish movies on other formats as well.
If other formats can hold more and can lock out the DVD player even better than they wouldn't want to eliminate the possibilities of moving to that format now would they?
"The studios will come around to the superior format," Peterson said. "Capacity and picture quality are directly related."
The studios will come around to whatever is cheaper for them to produce/distribute their materials while still being competitive/profitable and staying within their business model (whether that is adding 15+ minutes of commercials to all their DVDs and not allowing DVD players to fast-forward through them or not).
Also, the larger the capacity the greater the troubles in ripping/modifying/burning the discs. If the discs hold 50GB you need a 100+GB HD to do any modifications to the movie before reburning it. By changing the formats you are less likely to have the hardware to burn that format and thereby lose the ability to do what you did with regular DVDs once the burner prices dropped well under $100.
I'm sure they figure it will be several more years before blu-ray DVD writers and extremely large HDs will become common enough for everyone to make their DVD viewing experiences on DVDs they purchased acceptable.
The DVD technology has become the most successful consumer technology ever because of the re-release of older movies on the new format for what consumers have deemed reasonable prices. Are all these movies going to be again released on Blu-ray/DVD-HD for the same prices?
I see a good possibility that most people won't give a shit one way or the other and will likely keep buying the media that is even more inexpensive. It all depends on your willingness to accept/adapt new technologies and your need for a better movie watching experience. Obviously DVD is far superior to VHS. Will Blu-ray and DVD-HD have a similar quality increase?
And cassete tapes. I still have all these and 3 DVD players. I don't need another format!
Let's settle the war Slashdot style! Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD
'Cause when you're a Blu-Ray, you're a Blu-Ray for life!
Heh, you beat me to it. That was my first thought too. Disney is amazing in its ability to force-feed cross-marketing material at their consumers. I have a couple of young nieces who watch Disney full time, and when I'm over at their house (and thus seeing what's on the Disney channel), I'm always amazed that they exist in a closed universe of Disney material.
The Disney TV show is interrupted by a commercial advertising another upcoming Disney TV show, followed by a "behind the scenes" look at the filming of the latest Disney movie, interrupted with an "insider's access pass" to the music from the latest Disney DVD, along with ads for Disney theme parks, Radio Disney, and now back to our Disney TV show, but first let's meet the backup singers from the new Disney movie.
After that I just want to retch in technicolor...
I remember the days of betamax and VHS. I heard that VHS won because the porn industry started using VHS tapes. Was this an urban myth?
;-P
So, lets just wait for the porno people to cum up with the winner!
I want to meet the guy who invented beer and see whats he's up to now.
I'm laughing at you, Gizmodo, because just a couple of months ago you told us that Blu-ray has already won. Disney must agree with you, but four other big studios don't. Care to hedge your bet?
I'm just gonna buy my "CD-RW, DVD+/-R/RW, HD-DVD, Blu-ray" drive in 2 years for $70, while reading and complaining about the impending SuperHD-DVD vs ReallyBlu-Ray format war on /.
:-P
NEEEEEXT...
As predicted, the format war has only just begun.
How exactly does one claim success here?
Download my free songs!
As I recall, Disney was a big supporter of the dead-on-arrival Divx format. We know how well that went. Disney may be able to throw its weight around, but if the format doesn't have consumer acceptance, even Mickey's clout won't help.
t ml
h tml
A couple of quick Google results:
+5, Informative: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/editorial/bz21998.h
+5, Funny: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/divxpress.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
While the format wars are bad for the cutting-edge people that have to purchase something new, they end up being better for the consumer in the long run. Look at Beta VS VHS. The formats competed, and consumers decided which format they liked better. The format that could record a full film onto one cassette won, despite the fact that it was not 'technically superior.' If all of the studios had settled upon Beta from the very beginning, we'd all have to record in LP or EP just to fit a movie on one tape.
Huh? What's wrong with the DVDs I have now? Will the picture be so sharp and crystal clear and picture-perfect that I simply must upgrade? Will the sound on these things really be so good that if I close my eyes I really will think that Will Smith or Keanu Reeves or Sigourney Weaver or whoever massacred an entire clan of godless communist bug eyed alien monsters on my living room carpet? Is it really possible for these things to be as much of an improvement over DVD as DVD was over VHS? Doesn't the law of diminishing returns have something to say about this?
Oh yeah, I forgot. Someone worked a way round the bogus encryption and region coding and DVD-player vendor lockout last time round, so we've all got to dump our perfectly good DVDs and our DVD players and throw more money at film studio execs and consumer hardware manufacturers. Silly me.
Okay, so the last 'format war' with betamax / VHS
We had a superior product backed by sony (betamax, blue-ray)
We have an inferior product that's baked by a few major studios, and gaining momentum..
Will this turn out the same as the betamax debauchle? Only time will tell!
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I know this technology is still a ways off before it hits the shelves en masse, but I just can't see it getting a great response.
In the end, it probably won't even matter which format which companies support. Just like Betamax, Laserdisc, and Minidisc, if the consumer doesn't support it (no matter what the quality increase is) it will fall by the wayside.
I may be completely wrong, but thankfully, I'm sure you'll tell me if that's true.
and I don't mean the codec, but the ill-conceived "pay to watch a disc you also purchase on a player you purchase too" concept that didn't last 9 months. If there's a format war, I'm not exactly sure what the Disney company's clout will buy.
...begun the format war has!
Simply for it's increased storage. 25 GB (Blu-Ray) vs. 15 GB (HD-DVD). The disparity is far too great, and people buy DVD's by the truck load simply for the larger storage space.
HD-DVD might win out for players. But I'm betting Blu-Ray dominates the personal computer market.
Which is larger?
I personally like the blu-ray discs because of the amount on info it holds. People not supporting it are like people preferring floppy over cd's. I mean who isnt gonna want more space to put files? 50gigs gives you alot of flexibility ... especially if they create the technology to select more than 1 movie from a disc. Menu screen and all ... this technology is the reason I havent purchased a DVD Recorder yet. I just dont know how much longer I am willing to wait.
You understand you are responding to one of the ongoing trolls on slashdot, right?
It's just the same old troll, regurgitated with a slightly different name.
Slate.com covered this a couple of days ago, ultimately giving the Blu-Ray the nod over HD-DVD. The article also links to this useful comparison chart.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Don't mention the war... I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
Slate just posted an interesting analysis of the differences between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The article indicates that Blu-Ray is a far superior standard, and the only reason that some studios are lining up behind HD-DVD is to spare the expense of buying new production equipment. HD-DVD disks can be made using existing production machinery, whereas Blu-Ray requires all-new equipment to manufacture.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
It's just the same old troll, regurgitated with a slightly different name. But this time based on actual facts where a famous and well respected musician actually was shot and killed by some fuckwit.
As someone who watched the SACD v. DVD-Audio format war with a keen interest (I'm sold on high-def multichannel music) I eventually invested in a player that supported both formats, thinking I couldn't lose. But - to my amazement - I did end up losing, not because consumers perferred one format over the other, but becuase most consumers had no interest in the new formats. The result? A dearth of SACD and DVD-Audio reissues and releases. High def audio seems to be dead.
The problem was that remixing old music in multichannel is expensive, so many discs we're simply released in stereo. For most consumers, the audible difference (due to the higher sampling rate) didn't seem quite worth the price (for a new player, for a new disc).
And now here we see a new format war for a high def video. You might think video is different because high def allows for massive content (at DVD quality). But does anyone really believe the studios are going to do this? It's hard to get a consumer to pay a lot of money for just one disc.
If the studios instead focus on delivering HDTV quality movies, then the superiority of the format (over DVD) will only be apparent to those who own HDTVs...a scenario which mirrors the problems with high def audio.
I guess my point (and worry) is: just like high def audio, there will be players that support both formats. And just like high def audio, nobody will care except for videophiles and gadget freaks. So in the end, the "format war" doesn't matter.
IMHO, high def DVD will more likely make its mark as a huge storage medium for PCs and game consoles.
Unlike HD DVD, Blu-ray has "a reduction in the cover layer from 0.6 mm for DVD to 0.1 mm." Of course Disney would approve, as a reduction in the cover layer makes it easier for a scratch to do real damage and makes it harder for scratch repair products such as Skip Dr to work properly, forcing parents to re-buy copies of animated movies that the kids scratched up.
What if they held a format war, and no one bought anything?
--- Ban humanity.
As that is what the playstation 3 will have.
If the ps3 follows the same trend as the ps1 and the ps2, it will be safe to say that the ps3 will be the driving force in the disk market. It will be a sort of "back door" into many homes.
Heck, DVDs didnt take off in Japan until the ps2 came out.
no
Hybrid player
Most likely, 3rd party hybrid players will appear on the market just as soon as either or both formats start being released. Then, the likes of SONY and Toshiba will start to make hybrid players also.
From an end user perspective, this makes sense. Then, it won't really matter what format your Disney or MGM title is, as it will just play on your player.
That's the way:
- multiregion players have gone;
- DVD writers have gone (I have a DVD+/-R(W) drive, for example).
To be honest, the end user doesn't really care about which format wins, or which is better, so long as they can watch the movie, or play the game, or listen to the music.
T.
Don't forget Cooper's first law:
. . etc..
The technology that the mass market makes most popular is always the one that is technically infererior to its competitor(s).
VHS/Betamax
Windows/Linux
HD-DVD/Blu-ray
etc
Geeze, the HD TV in the US suffered from this problem, and now HD DVD formats wars are going to cost the consumer.
I say go with Blue-Ray because of the cool scratch resistant coating.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I kinda agree with you, except your basic axiom is wrong.
Sony and the PS3 are Blu-Ray.
The HiDef DVD market is at first going to be dominated by videophiles and collectors. Here I think Blue-Ray has the quality edge. As it approaches "prosumer" levels with HDTV owners, HD-DVD has the price edge. What can Blue-Ray do in that time window?
Because seriously, I've watched DVDs, and I've watched some HDTV samples (no, hdtv-lol is not HDTV, that's downscaled rips from a HDTV source) and the difference isn't *that* big. It is certainly superior, but VHS->DVD was like Tape->CD, while this is more like CD->SACD.
Personally, I suspect the players (and thus format) with best support for playing CD/DVDs with similarly compressed video will win. You can make a helluva impressive *cough*legal home*cough* video with 4.7/8.5 GB of MPEG4-video (4.3/8.0 GiB).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This isn't a war it's a evil plan to force consumers to buy 2 netgen players so they can make more money... They won't initally offer dual format players so will have no choice since eahc side will get support fomr one half the industry...
When you have three times as much shelf space in video rental stores as the competition, you have succeeded. Rental discs are prone to scratching, and HD DVD's thicker layer between the surface and the data may be able to resist scratches better than Blu-ray's.
Competition is a good thing for the consumer. Consumers make the final decision and they aren't stupid. They'll go for the best format out of the 2. And best doesn't only cover best picture quality. It also convers flexibility and limited restrictions.
The studios love to prevent us from doing what we want to do (fast forward through copyright warnings and region coding being the worst of these). Hopefully the format with least restrictions will be the most tempting for the consumer.
ABC and ESPN, two TV networks controlled by The Walt Disney Company, are anything but closed.
50 GB is a lot of space. The current DVD format is large enough for normal movies. Naturally this larger format could be used for one disk collections of some famous director.
The other use would be high definition video, this of course what the developers have in mind.
The problem with this is that people in general doesn't have any display units that handle that quality, and it will take a long time for that to get common.
A 50GB writable DVD would be great for backups though.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
You purchased a product that functions a certain way. If you don't like how it functions, either return it
Most stores will exchange DVDs only for the same title. Does the "rinse and repeat" tactic of taking each replacement disc home and marking each one as defective actually work?
or don't buy it in the first place.
How again were these labeled? I didn't see a prominent label about locking UOPs in excess of 60 seconds.
Every time I go into an electronics store, I make a point to check out the HD sets. And every time I am very underwhelmed, seeing a not especially clear picture. I ask the clerk, "Is this really HD with an HD feed" They always say, "Yup, it is." And I think to myself that it's not that impressive.
So what's going on? Why doesn't it seem that much better? Are the clerks just clueless?
I think it was the -R camp but I can't tell since media can still be had for both formats.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I usually play DVDs by "mplayer dvd://1" and never see that junk.
What do house guests think of the big ugly computer case sitting next to the TV? And what about people who don't have more than $100 to spend on a set-top DVD player?
someone cracks the new formats' encoding schemes? I mean, it *will* happen. Do they honestly think it won't? I know there is talk of meta-encoding that updates firmware to removes cracks over time, but seriously...that can and will be cracked, too. Then what?
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
Why re-tool?
Seems braindead from my perspective to abandon everythig we work from.
Everyone thought AMD was stupid for 64bit X86, but its worked, and so well that Intel is following soot. No code retooling necessary unless you want specific new features - allowing a smooth migration path and a cost-effective solution.
Quadrupling? For one thing, 1080i is only roughly double the resolution of NTSC S-video in each direction, so a 40" HDTV will look as good as the 19" in the bedroom. Not everybody has space for a huge-screen TV, and when the FCC kills analog TV broadcasts in the U.S. in two years, this may become a problem.
It wasn't a straight choice between VHS or betamax, is was a three way split between VHS / Betamax / Video2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000
Thing is, everyone goes one about how betamax was superior quality to vhs in every area except max tape play time where vhs won, what people forget is v2000 beat them BOTH hands down in every single area.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Here's what I want to know:
Which format is more likely to get cracked and stay cracked first? Because if one's more secure, then it's damn skippy that I want the other.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
You see, Disney has this habit of withholding their products from the public. They're a little like an old rattlesnake, which will conserve it's precious venom for when it will be most useful: it will withhold it's venom until it wants to kill something.
Before Blockbuster Video squashed all the independent video rental shops, I was a clerk in one of those petite shops. Lots of VHS Disney titles were missing from the store, listed on the computer (a brand-new 486) as rented, and never returned. This was because Disney would only offer its titles (like "The Little Mermaid") for short periods of time, and after that time the only way a person could get that title would be to steal it in one way or another.
I won't pretend to have comprehensive knowledge of Disney's marketing voodoo, but it seems to me that Disney would like nothing better than a new video format, even though there may not be a good technical reason for it. They just want you to buy yet another copy of "The Little Mermaid" on yet another format. Blech.
therefore it will win out.
Think about it, hddvd makes you sound like you're stuttering about an std.
I get DVDs from Netflix and copy them with wild abandon. Wild, I tell you!
--- Ban humanity.
That won't stop anything. I've seen bootleg DVDs with the FBI warning, and "official" looking holograms on the packaging.
Does this mean that my Laser Disk player is obsolete?
What made Betamax superior ?
When VHS was introduced, it had 2x the recording capacity. I just read a link (posted in this article's comments) talking about the beta vs vhs debacle. Apparently the quantititative difference between vhs and beta equipment from a pq and audio standpoint was not detectable on normal equipment, and generally, the variance from one machine to another of a given type was more than the difference between the two types of machines.
I don't see at all what makes Blu-Ray superior. Sony and Disney, two of the most wretchedly evil litigious tail-wagging-the-dog IP companies ever are soundly behind one format. That should be a warning sign to you.
If you read the links, HD-DVD can re-use much of the existing productino equipment, whereas blu-ray needs new everything. The capacity argument is the only one in blu-ray's favor, and its not even clear that that is the case since HD-DVD can have multi-layer, multi-side discs, which ought to mean 60GB for a DL/DS disc. (Not sure if Blu-Ray can go dual layer)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
My point was the submitter said that "as predicted, the format war has only just begun." Which implies that the submiter knows how the format war ends.
My original post was mostly me being anal about imprecise language. Which I use as a form of work avoidance.
Download my free songs!
I had the first post to this story, coincidentally with the same theme as the one who failed it.
This is not a troll, it really happened. He was shot by some looney at Alrosa Villa in Columbus, OH. I live in Columbus, and woke up and heard it on the radio. I thought I was imagining it.
Pretty fucked up. At least the gunman is dead -- a cop came in and blew him away. Unfortunately no one will ever know the motivation.
I have a 120" front projection system, and let me tell you the difference between HDTV and DVD isn't just minor but HUGE. A good HDTV source (and the quality on this front varies greatly depending on production) is better seen on my system than any Cineplex movie I've seen in the last 5 years (granted our local Cineplexes are crap).
Not many consumers today have 120" screens with high-end data grade projectors (I'm homebrew), but the quality of consumer TV Gear is improving at a phenomenal rate. 100"+ systems under $1000 will be the norm in 2 or 3 years time. Given how crappy (or expensive for passable) HDTV offerings were 5 years ago (with no channels to watch anyway) this is a bit of a surprise.
True 1920x1080 is finally a true movie going experience. When you see stuff shot in True 1080i with a good HDTV camera directly your jaw drops. Most stuff is still shot on 35mm and scanned in. This is superior to DVD, but not the huge improvement of direct to digital. There is something about the grain of most 35mm film that makes HDTV transfer kind of muddy and muted (granted scanning technologies will improve).
Instead of more pixels we now need higher scan rates (something I've brought up in other discussions). Instead of shooting movies in 24fps they should be shot in 60fps. 1080p at 60fps would be awesome and Blu-Ray has the capacity to pull it off. If you have ever noticed the choppiness of a fast sideways scroll of Text or Action at a Movie, you know what I'm talking about. Regular 35mm at 60fps could be marketed as IMAX35 or something to indicate a bump up in quality (though not true 70mm IMAX).
When you have the equipment to show the true difference (which I repeat is HUGE) you will notice and you will care.
Letter To Iran
Most of the time, when I read these "FOUND DEAD" posts, I do a google news search just in case,
haha, that's usually what I do too. I almost fell for the "Mary-Kate Olsen died of anorexia" one a few months back. Google: is there anything it can't do?
Trolling is a art,
I think the exact same thing is going to happen to HD-DVD and Blue-Ray. A perfect example of what will happen happened to me when I was in Best Buy. Another customer asked me about the Hi-Def music I was buying. I told them the formats sound incredible and I would recommend them highly. They picked up 2 titles and I had to caution them that one was a SACD one was DVD-A and each one required either a Universal player or a player that supported either one. They asked if the DVD-A would play in their DVD player and I said yes but it wouldn't play the High Resolution track unless their players said it supported the DVD-A format. The person said, this is too complicated and they would just stick with CDs.
DVDs were only successful because:
I don't believe any new video or audio format will be successful unless all of the above requirements are fulfilled.
Disney backed DivX (disposable DVD format), Sony continues to create formats that no one uses: Beta, MiniDisk, MemoryStick, Atrac3.
:( which is too bad because it seemed like the better of the two.
with these two on board, Blu-Ray is almost certainly doomed
They work just fine. However, I would personally _prefer_ to have an entire season of Stargate SG-1 on a single Blu-Ray DVD, rather than 5 normal DVDs. I would _prefer_ to archive all of my MP3s on one Blu-Ray, rather than a set of DVDs. You get the gist of it.......
This is what I found funny, in a sad sort of way:
"The studios will come around to the superior format," Peterson said. "Capacity and picture quality are directly related."
It's been a long time since I was naive enough to imagine the studios care about picture quality. If they care at all, it's because they see high quality as a minor disadvantage: something that encourages piracy.
And to be fair. . . They have to look at consumer response. Consumers mostly rejected S-VHS because most of them "couldn't see any difference" from regular VHS. Consumers mostly rejected Laserdisc because they couldn't record on it, despite the superior picture quality. History shows the majority of people don't give a flying flip about picture quality -- which is a source of endless frustration for the minority who do.
Also funny. . . People complaining because people aren't ready to replace their DVDs, since it's still a new format. And worse, asking whether BlueRay will offer any significant improvement over DVD.
DVD is a new-ish format, but it basically offers the same audio and video performance as Laserdisc, which was introduced in . . . 1978, if I recall right. Both of them will output basically what NTSC can display.
As for some form of high-def videodisc, I don't think it's too soon -- I think it's way overdue! Seriously, I believe this is the main thing holding back adoption of HDTV. You can buy HD sets, you can buy HD satellite receivers, and even Tivo-like recorders that will handle HD. The element that's missing is any HD videodisc. HDTV fans have been waiting and waiting and *waiting* for this, and the companies just keep dragging it out.
Sonys PS3 will use Blu Ray and not HD-DVD.
This is sad. It was the first thing that popped into my head... :P
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Yes, there are differences - however both disks should be withing the DVDROM specification after they have been finalised.
Where 'should' is in the same basket as 'should support the MMC specification properly'
Not to put too fine a point on it, but why in the hell is [the price of a PC based DVD player] my problem?
Because nobody likes a braggart. You're bragging that you can afford such a DVD player, implying that only the rich get to skip DVD commercials.
and for instructions for modchipping players to get around all of the bullshit artificial limitations they now impose.
Right now, one can fit approximately two "close-enough" DVD quality DVDs on one DVD using software like AutoGordianKnot to go to XviD and TMPGenc and other assorted programs to go back to DVD. I should know, I've got DVDs with up to 3 full movies on them, all with a nice little menu I made so I can select what I want to see.
CAM quality videos make up the ones with 3 movies on them, which explains why I have a DVD with National Treasure, Saw, and The Incredibles in the menu selection.
With this new format, someone is basically saying I can have upwards of 40 cam quality movies on one Bluray or HD-DVD. Or, maybe 16-18 DVD quality movies.
That's just overkill. I don't see enough of a reason for this from my standpoint. I suppose if I actually paid for DVDs there *might* be a reason, but generally speaking, I know this is going to be overpriced from the start.
Although, this *may* justify having a lower price on seasonal DVDs of shows like Roswell, Buffy, Enterprise, Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, etc. If I could get an entire season on one DVD, it might just be worth it.
That war isn't over.
The current scores are:
In Asia: RAM followed by plus.
In europe: Plus followed by minus - RAM nowhere.
In America: Minus followed by plus, with RAM still having some following.
It's a bit different if you split out AV and data seperately - minus and RAM have a greater hold on the AV market.
Who's more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?
I know that I'm preaching to the choir, but you would think that the entertainment industry would have learned from its past mistakes...
The only thing that has been done right in this is preserving compatability for the existing DVD standard.
I really see no reason to upgrade to anything above DVD for my home video system at this point in time (and can't foresee a need to do it - ever - other than lack of new titles on DVD), anymore than I see the need to upgrade to anything above CD for my home audio. They've done such a great job of muddling the standard for high-end audio (DVD-Audio, SACD, etc.) that I'm sure that the enthusiast will have to get two units if they really want to upgrade and enjoy everyone's product.
It's worth mentioning that in the years leading up to the introduction of DVD, there were in fact, at least two competing formats. As I remember it there was a camp mainly occupied by Hollywood and another mainly occupied by the Japanese consumer electronic companies and they did manage to get together and come up with one single standard - the DVD that we have today.
Wide Screen HD-Ready sets are at the $500 price point. Toshiba 26HF84 26" TheaterWide® HDTV-ready That is low enough to drive standard definition sets off the market. I think the migration to high definition DVDs will begin much sooner and move much faster than Slashdot expects.
I predict the winner will be : DVD
I seriously doubt the public will go for rebuying movies that they have already repurchased from VHS to DVD. SACD/DVD-Audio showed that they won't fall for the old vinyl-cd trick again. Factor in the additional cost of a new tv for the HD picture and these formats are commercially dead in the water.
Right now, you can pick up a divx/xvid compatible video player in the uk for £40, £50 in the high street. That lets you put an entire series, all 22 episodes, on a single (dual layer) dvd, and it looks "just as good" as regular dvd. I know there's a lot of videophiles out there who will argue the quality of it, but those kind of people still have laserdisc players in their setup.
The only thing stopping DVD-MPG4 from taking off is a universal menu system for these discs & players (the divx player I have just shows a directory browser - it's awfull).
Of course, if anyone knows a popular standard for media disc menu systems, please let me know!
from the DVD-Audio vs. SACD debacle? Not having a single clear upgrade path, not being able to play them on a PC (okay, there is finally limited PC support), not being able to play them in the car, and not being allowed to have a digital connection to a receiver and being forced to connect 6 cables made both formats non-starters. Let's hope these new formats are not similarly crippled.
An extended fight over optical formats will only:
-prevent market adoption for several years
-cost the content producers money in lost sales
-cost the hardware manufacturers money in lost sales
-keep the product off the market for several years
The whole dvd-r/dvd+r/dvd-ram fight delayed low cost dvd burners for 3 years and home entertainment room dvd recorders for 3 years.
All lost time and lost money in this process.
Sony, Phillips, etc. should just pick a format and set licensing fees at some low value like $0.01 per unit.
Based on Sony's stance with SACD vs. DVD-Audio, I doubt we'll see any hybrid players from Sony. Sony doesn't produce any DVD-A players (to my knowledge). Only when their high end digital cameras started getting some semi-professional usage did they include a CF slot. And only on their high end cameras.
Sony likes their (propietary) formats.
Oh, and I'm not buying one until I have a television system supporting hi-def also.
Am I the only one who feels this way?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's not anorexia, it's crack.
I think people are forgetting that both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD uses more or less the same physical type of disc. That makes it possible for drive manufacturers to make player drives and recorder drives to incorporate all the necessary parts to record and playback both formats.
Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised that by 2007 dual-format console players/recorders and dual-format computer drives are on sale that support both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats.
The source material for these is still 24 frame per second movie reels. HD DVD is capable of 60 Frames per second. There isnt one movie out there that was filmed at 60fps. When they start filming movies at 60 frames per second, that's when we should get exited about HD DVD's. In the meantime- who cares?
Toshiba's already guaranteed its victory--hybrid DVD/HD-DVDs.
I won't buy any of those formats anyway...
Ever wonder that the reason people DL movies and Tv shows is because they are tired of spending thousands of dollars on a medium that will be obsolete in 5 years?
Think about it.
Guy: "Hey d00d, can you get me a copy of SomeNewFilm?"
d00d: "No problem, it will have been divxed to make it smaller, $2?"
Guy: "Sweet! Screw the quality, it will be good enough to watch. Thanks, d00d."
Marketing Man In Suit: "Hey there consumers, how would you like a nice new higher definition video-disk format that we will prevent you from copying?"
MP3 and divx show the market will happily sacrifice the existing quality standards for convenience. Higher quality at a higher price and less convenience will be a difficult sale.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Agreed. To add, I would define the 'most desired format' for consumers as: a format that is 'good enough' to show off the highest quality equipment that they have access to. Above that, a better quality source format does little to improve the experience.
That's why MP3, and CD-quality audio is still the norm rather than high-definition audio. To appreciate the difference, you need quality listening equipment that most consumers don't have.
Why would they upgrade then? Well, simple: when they buy that high-definition, 50" TV set. And with these format wars going on, consumers will be smart enough to postpone replacement of their DVD collection, until that new TV set is up and running.
That links the popularity of new formats to the popularity of available replay equipment. You may have that, but somehow I doubt that quality, 120" front projection systems will be commonplace any time soon (or ever will be).
You two have illustrated an important point; only the affluent/technologically savvy enjoy the benefits of circumventing copy protection technology.
The DAT spec for music had a copy protection scheme, but it was ignored in all professional level gear. You had to shell out extra dollars to buy gear that didn't have copy protection.
DVDs are rippable, but you need a computer and a certain minimum level of knowledge. It is possible to build a consumer level device to do this, but no one has (in the US; I suspect you can get a standalone DVD ripper in Asia).
The same holds for region-free DVD viewing. You can pay extra money for a modified consumer level player, or you can do the research and hack the DVD drive in your computer.
"The studios will come around to the superior format," Peterson said. "Capacity and picture quality are directly related."
Blu-Ray can go up to 50gb while HD-DVD can go upto 30gb, if I understand correctly. But Blu-Ray is going to be more expensive. Honestly, though, if Blu-Ray is the only format, I'm sure the price will fall like a rock.
If they don't work this out, everyone is going to consider the new formats analogous to Laserdisc when they all had VHS. In other words, a format for crazy videophiles that's too expensive for the common man.
Truly a pedophilic icon.
Not to be confused with "Dimebag Darl" who is unlikely to die any time soon.
The DVD chroma bandwidth is lower than broadcast NTSC. Certainly lower than Betacam, which is maybe close to 3-to-1 subsampling. Almost every consumer digital format---including ATSC, DV, DVD, VCD, SVCD, and every file format you can imagine (MPEG4 flavors, etc) subsample color 4-to-1 based on this false and naive assumption that you can't see more than that.
That means every time you transcode between digital formats your color gets munged again and again. Intergenerational loss comes back to bite us again after all!
And let us not forget the insistence on 8-bit samples. It doesn't take a good TV to notice the banding on subtle gradients.
I, for one, would love to start fresh with a format that strives for quality first. There is an extension to H.264, at least, that allows full color resolution and 12-bit samples, or 10-bit samples and half resolution color. However, it is probably too late to get that into the HD-DVD spec as it was just approved this summer.
Crack them both, then keep the cracks secret and decide which format is the crappiest and release its crack, the corporations will team up to make the other format win and then you can release that crack too...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think the main thing that will push Blu-Ray into market dominance is the fact that the Playstation 3 wiil be able to play them out of the box. Look at the effect that the PS2 had on the DVD market in Japan. With the PS3 being able to play Blu-Ray disks, realtivley cheap, at an early point in the formats adoption, I don't see how HD-DVD is going to compete.
Most people can't tell the difference between a good MP3 and CD. It will pretty hard to convince greater than 0.01 % of the population that there is a need for a better than CD quality audio standard. SACD were for the crowd that buy monster cables and put "tweak" on their connections. The "Golden ear" set.
When mp3 hit the scene, I noticed that most of my friend found nothing at all wrong with 128k mp3s while sound like crap to me.
I am into audio and have always tried to keep a decent stereo. Denon Rx, Paradigm speakers type thing. I did some ABX testing and discovered that by 160K mp3, I pretty much couldn't pick out the MP3 from the CD. So I definitely don't need a better format.
Video is another story Anyone with a big screen HDTV can readily spot the HiDef difference, moreso on a projector.
That being said. I agree overall. Adoption will be slow. There is no reason to upgrade unless you have a display device that delivers the missing quailty.
Though unlike SACD, I don't think next gen DVD will die. Big screens are growing all the time and I already think they are much more prevalent than golden ears.
I like idea of BluRay, 55Gb on single disk would be good for archivial of data.
Agreed. For me, DVDs beat VHS because the rendered field is distortion free, static free, and has no color dropouts, even over time. That matters to me.
By contrast, more pixels do not matter to me. People who want higher resolution will always be able to build a case for it by talking about huge screens, but when it comes right down to it you have to step back from a huge screen enough to allow your field of vision to encompass the whole thing. How many steradians (2D-degrees) of a visual field can a person pay attention to at once?
And even if the number is much higher than I think it is, I'm not the kind of person for whom more pixels would equal better storytelling. Which is what watching videos is to me: a medium for storytelling. Not "immersion", not losing myself, not thinking I'm "really there"... just having a story passed onto me. Ever want to really lose yourself? For the price of an HDTV, you could buy a lot of tabs of acid, and believe me you'll go farther and it'll be much more real.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Sony - ATRAC, Betamax, Minidisc.
Which ones are popular?
Exactly.
It looks like HD-DVD will win the format war.
You are just used to the 24 (film) and 30 (ntsc) fps standard. There is noticable ugliness in action scenes, or any other time an object moves quickly across the frame. Watch for it next time there's a fast pan.
Good directors, of course, know how much they can get away with in terms of camera motion. A change to 72 fps for film would give directors and cinematographers a great deal more flexibility.
My imagined future display standard would support three different frame rates: 60, 72, and 75. These are all multiples of existing frame rates, so by either doubling or tripling existing source, we can be backward-compatible with film / ntsc / pal.
This is really desperation on the part of the hardware companies, backed up by sheer greed from the studios, because they've been *too* successful with DVD. Almost everyone who wants a player has one already, and those few who haven't got one yet can pick one up for 30 quid at the local supermarket. Region-free, at that.
So the hardware companies want a new format in order to expand their market rather than simply support the 'my old player's died, time to get a new one' tail, and the studios want to sell us films we already own all over again - only this time with 'unbreakable' DRM and 'uncrackable' region coding, backed up by newly-purchased laws so they can retain more control!
You know what? Fuck 'em. I can't imagine that I'll ever be in a position to have a dedicated home cinema room with a 130" widescreen projection TV, so it's highly unlikely that I'll ever notice (or care about) the difference in picture quality between a regular DVD and the new super-duper Blu-Ray-So-La-Tee-DVDoh format. I just don't have the room for a massive TV, nor, any more, the desire to shovel a large percentage of my disposable income into the pockets of the fucksticks at the Hollywood studios. I've seen maybe twelve movies at the cinema this year, and of those, I'd consider actually buying the DVD of two of them at most.
So let HD-DVD and Blu-Ray fight it out until one dies. Hell, there still isn't even a winner in the DVD-RAM/+RW/-RW recordable 'war', and that's been ongoing for two years now. Maybe this should give the corps a clue - nobody *wants* new formats right now, because they're perfectly happy with what they've got. In the meantime, while the hardcos fight and the studios try to work out new and exciting ways to take people's money and limit their rights, I'll just sit back and watch my favourite movies of all time (a list which gets addended very infrequently) on my 'outdated' DVD player...
You must think in Russian.
Apparently we're going to need some new algorithms to make the videos 10 times their current size.
Either there will be a whole lot of filler, or the movie is going to have about 1000 times more resolution than my TV can display anyway. I'll just lossy compress them down to standard DVD size and play them on my normal console DVD player without the ADs.
As a side note, I don't see why we need a higher capacity format for video anyways, I just barely bought a DVD player 4 years ago and I have no intention of purchasing a new console for another xx years.
Can someone hurry up and mod this down? -10 Disinformation?
The FCC is forcing HDTV down everyone's throats, so the number of people owning HDTVs (at least in the USA) will increase because of this. So, I don't think it wil be too hard to get them to buy into this crap.
Well thanks to wikipedia I've just done a little research on all this.
I'd have to say this line from the article couldn't be more right.
"As predicted, the format war has only just begun."
I had no idea that HD-DVD was authorised by the DVD Forum, this is a real kick in the butt to blu-ray.
The differences in the 2 formats are quite distinct though, both clearly having advantages, however as a PC enthusiast I feel blu-ray would be better as it's got the extra space, has recently ditched the caddies and isn't so heavily backed by Microsoft (IIRC)
Where'as of course HD-DVD uses a better compression method, easier to make the disc's cost wise and the drives to read them - also more compatible with old school DVD, but 15gb of total space just seems so small, from 9gb to 15gb is such a crappy little jump.
All my opinion of course but I'm really not impressed by this whole situation.
To whomever wrote this sad reply, Dimebag was a very influential guitarist.
Dimebag refers to the street term for a "dimebag" of weed. But now we can see who has never really lived life outside his parents basement. It's sad, pathetic losers like you that make the world suck as bad as it does. The guy who shot him was probably some narrow-minded fuck-face like you. There are maybe 5 guitarists in the world that could measure up to his style.
It is possible to find someone dead, even with "250"(bad guess by the way) witnesses. He was thought to be alive until his pulse was checked. Thus "Found to be dead"
He will be missed. His drop-d approach and killer riffs will be missed and never duplicated to the exact sound for eons to come.
The Season 9 X-Files set has a 10-second FBI warning , unskippable and unfastfowardable on most systems. It then displays the episode menu; then another FBI warning before each episode!
According to a secion of a technical paper for the Blu-ray disc format found here the encryption used to protect contents will involve:
"DES (Data Encryption Standard) with a key length of 56 bits has been adopted, and Triple DES with a key length of 112 bits has been adopted for the key generating process. In addition, for the exclusion of illegal devices (System Renewability) and for the prevention of illegal copying, RKB (Renewal Key Block) information and a Disc ID unique to the disc are written in ROM area of the disc. Each recorder (player) has a device key, which differs depending on the manufacturer or the machine. An encryption key is generated by combining the device key and RKB. Therefore, illegal devices can be excluded by updating the RKB information. Furthermore, illegal copying is also prevented by using a disc ID unique to the disc to generate the encryption key, because even a bit-by-bit copy cannot generate the encryption key."
Sound similar to the DVD encryption ideas, but now with longer keys.