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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
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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?
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...
And of course, I'm blind you insensitive clod!
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 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.
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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.
...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?
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?
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.
What if they held a format war, and no one bought anything?
--- Ban humanity.
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.
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.
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