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Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD
Michael S writes
sent in a good story which sumarizes the current status of the
battle between Blu-Ray & HD-DVD. There still isn't really a clear victor... or is there? I for one can't wait for this crap to get settled out so we can just enjoy having huge discs.
oh wait
and their aint shit no one can do about it!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
That sounds like some spam I just got.
Oh. Huge discs! Nevermind.
From the article:
And, as peculiar it may sound, both competitors are holding their breath to see what the pornographic industry will decide.
That pretty much sums up the whole situation, now doesn't it?
for a second there, i thought that slashdot had been taken over by spammers.
I already enjoy having a huge disc.
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
What's your e-mail address? Let me forward this to you...
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Blu-Ray just sounds more futuristic.
I am totally going for the format thatg
has the better sounding name
Huge discs are all fine and good... but wont they get scratched/ruined easily? I wait for someone to come out with an innovative new CD/DVD case design, perhaps something like combining a booklet and cases. (if that exists already, then its certainly not sold in any store ive been to)
i honestly cant see either side giving ground. its going to be vcr vs betamax, or dvd-r vs dvd+r all over again.
corporations rarely care about " whats best " , rather " what will make them the most money ".
One side giving up for the common good, loses them money and so they wont do it.
kinda like how DVD+ and DVD- got 'settled'?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
HD-Blu-Ray-DVD. Years ahead of its time.
Can't we all be along? It's much more profitable that way.
DVD burners took so long to catch on because of all the + - RAM type confusion. The whole industry needs a single strong standards to keeping everything working. Joe Sixpack doesn't burn DVDs right now because of this silliness.
Just like flash cards, how they have the 7 in 1 readers, they probally will come out with the hddvd/bluray. Execpt hddvd uses red so that could casuse a problem.
To quote the American public, "ooh! Shiny!"
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Although, on the other hand, the better standard lost last time around, so maybe it's better to choose the same as you think everybody else will?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Aren't they supposed to wait until we all buy players and our favorite movies on one of these, invest in furniture that's perfectly fitted only to the specific cases, and generally find ourselves wondering what we ever did before them before they release the next one?
and I'm not just saying that because my dad worls on making everyone like it. :)
But seriously, sadly this battle isn't nearly over. Until one side or the other actually concedes we won't really have a winner.
the toothpaste is frozen
"Although at the beginning of the decade, the DVD seemed like a major discovery..."
we discovered the dvd? where?
atlantis? europa? the city of the dead?
and all this time i thought we invented it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so we can just enjoy having huge discs.
I remember thinking the same thing when burnable DVDs were introducted. What a scam that was!
Now I have to buy DVD-R and DVD+R disks. One of formats these actually plays on my DVD player and the other plays on my friend's. And at only 4.7 gigs, what good are these things?!
I am hopeful that this will not be the same fate for future optical standards.
...that noticed the typo in the subject line?
Um...
Oops, sorry, MPAA won't release that information. I guess we'll never know...
Have you read my blog lately?
...therefore Blu-Ray must be the right choice.
Apple only supports the technically-best standards.
Steve wouldn't let them support it unless it was insanely great.
deliver me from swedish furniture!
deliver me from clever art!
So it's probably this, but on the other hand it's most likely something else? My faith in anything the article might say was lost.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"But the main problem remains the poor security. DeCSS and DivX came as major surprises."
All I can say is, what were they thinking?
Edgar Allen Poe got it right in 1863. In _The Gold-Bug_, the narrator says: "Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve."
The movie industry can look forward to many more such "surprises."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
but wont they get scratched/ruined easily? ... as reported previously on slashdot
It takes an idiot to do cool things - that's why it's cool!
Whatever happens, I think it's important for companies that are adapting to this new technology to make the units read both Blu-ray/HD and DVD.
That way mom and dad won't have another heart attack when they have to update their video collection again.
I wouldn't underestimate the influence of the PS3 on the format wars. The fact Sony is (obviously) using their own Blu-Ray format for their next generation console could mean an early victory for their format.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Think I'm gonna wait for my BluRay HD-DVD+-RW CDRW drive
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
It's just sad, really.
Spec-wise, Blu-Ray wins. Blu-Ray also has the support of Sony (and therefore will be in the PS3), has Apple supporting it (and therefore will be in future Macs by default...and Macs are used in the media content industry), and it supports all the codecs and specs that HD-DVD supports. In addition, it has larger storage space. Even Dell and Disney are supporting it.
HD-DVD's only benefit is that there won't be a need to alter today's manufacturing processes as much as Blu-Ray will require.
I predict (and hope) Blu-Ray will win. I know people love to cite Betamax in these articles, but just because Betamax died out doesn't mean the better format will die out in this case either. There's a lot of important backing for Blu-Ray.
Apple officially is part of the Blu-Ray spec. That means the PC Manufacturers will support HD-DVD. Just like the DVD-R DVD+R wars.
I'm really in no rush for all of this to shake out. The longer it takes the better. The fact that DVD got blown wide open with DeCSS was a good thing. The main driving force behind the new standard is not better resolution or more storage - it's just to get a second chance to re-DRM the crap out of the new standard and kill off DVD.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
All the advantages can be found on this site http://kkurbs.vze.com/
I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it-- Voltaire
What was wrong with betamax?
or else!
Well, next to the tablet I'm typing this in on, I have a Mac SE that I'm setting up for my school's PreK. It's sitting on top of it's external CD-Drive, which is of course caddy-based. Everybody thought it was so much more convenient to not need caddys, but we still have cases. Why not just make cases that function AS caddy(s).
Just a thought.
"didn't express its support to neither format."
Ats rite, cause I ain't done got no reason to decide now whachur tatties get burned to anywise!
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
Oh, hell... "The protecting layer for CDs and DVDs (cover layer) is 0.6 mm. in thickness, while Blu-Ray's cover layer is only 0.1 mm. thick, which, roughly, means a better access to the recording area."
And better access to scratches, ball point pens, ink chemistry, label adhesive chemistry.
And the infuriating nuisance of buying marking supplies specifically labelled for use with the media and vice versa, and finding out three years later that everybody who used them is experiencing data loss.
So much for using these things for backup.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The degree to which you enjoy having "truly huge discs" will depend on which standard gets adopted. The formats aren't equivalent and have substantial differences in price and excellence. This is nothing like the DVD+/DVD- R/RW wars; the formats are too dissimilar.
The preference of one format over the other could have ramifications similar to those of Betamax/VHS. Personally, I'm not excited bout HD-DVD's 2.5 hour limit on high-def video. Blu-ray has a 4.5 hour limit? Now we're talking. Even LOTR:ROTK will fit on that.
I'm sick of standards that just *barely* satisfy the need for new formats. HD-DVD is an evolutionary upgrade of DVDs to allow a majority of films to fit in high-def. Blu-ray is a revolutionary change which may cost more initially, but provides much more headroom and has plans for even larger disc capacity. It also will provide an immediate benefit for long films or extensive data storage over HD-DVD.
I can't wait for this crap to get settled...in favor of Blu-ray. I'm sure not going to be excited about it when I am sticking in the second HD-DVD for a > 2.5 hour hdef film because "HD-DVD" sounds more like "DVD" than "Blu-ray". So, world, take your time if you must; just choose the right format it the end.
Bottom line: if you have to do a major upgrade of media and players, do it right! Don't upgrade the minimum amount required, but plan for the future.
I'll be almost as happy if dual-format drives take over like DVD+/-, but it would still probably mean most movies came out on HD-DVD.
-Dan
Comment removed based on user account deletion
On second thought, I don't think I want to know.
just buy yourself a laserdisc player. Easy!
Blue is higher frequency, which means *shorter* wavelength.
This illustrates it nicely.
Well, considering that Sony, Apple & the Porn Industry are all behind Blu-Ray, I'd say we have a pretty good idea of who is going to win this one...
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
I think not.
bettamax and VHS? nah! I think these will be going the way of Minidisks, 8Tracks and Zip drives.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I see TFA are being outsourced too now.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
More bandwith to the masses! Then we could just download our movies. I seriously see a hard drive based movie device with built in wimax, a fancy remote, and an onscreen moviestore as a much better alternative to new media every for or five years. That way we don't have to have a war! We have all the technology we need to do it already. (besides wimax)
by a factor of 2.5:
* blu-ray : 2
* hd-dvd : 5
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
will be if Sony officially decides to make the PS3 use the format. With the market penetration of consoles, especially the PlayStation consoles, well, you do the math. I know plenty of people that were excited that their PS2s played DVDs, because then they didn't have to buy a standalone player. So, I have a feeling that the same will happen if they use a Blu-Ray drive in their next console.
ART on dA
Its how you use it...
Does anyone know if either of these new formats will be compatible with existing DVDs? I think that will be a huge factor for many consumers as many have huge DVD libraries and I doubt they'd be impressed in having to replace their entire collection.
I'm waiting for that HoloDisk (HVD), 1TB on the same 12cm and 1 GB/sec xfer rates!!
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
discworld of course, heh heh
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Flash cards? I thought this thread was to discuss my tralala, my ding ding dong.
BDR Gear
Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
Check out http://www.bluraydiscdrives.com/ for more information.
Interesting, both the American voter and the electronics industry both just throw their hands up in the air and let a bunch of dicks make their decisions for them.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Come on, let's not get bogged down by simplistic logic. My point wasn't that it was because Sony was behind the format, it's that it is the format of the Playstation 3. The products you mentioned were not nearly as successful as the Playstation 2. It's fully expected by many that Sony will probably get a huge share of the console market in the next generation of consoles also. By extention, these people will automatically own Blu-Ray disc players. It's an immediate and huge market penetration.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Michael S writes sent in a good story
Ouch.
Inphase in January introduced their prototype.
Where is the news on this ?
I've already got a huge disc
This can only be good for us, the consumers. I also expect that disc player manufacturers will figure out how to have dual format players (and if you count in current gen tech, 3..8 formats).
antipaucity
Am I the only one infuriated by the shitty writing in this article? I love lines like:
"The future of DVD is still unclear, but what is certain is that a replacement is already needed and looked upon."
"Although at the beginning of the decade, the DVD seemed like a major discovery, it shortly proved itself unable to solve some of the most important problems that lead to its very creation."
"In brief, the movies offered on such a support...."
"The big award for the winning format has so many zeros as even the companies used to astronomic figures would get dizzy with the taste of unlimited success."
It's off just enough to annoy, and as you get through a few paragraphs, the annoyance builds and builds until you want to forcibly lead the author back to a book on English usage. I feel like I'm reading the back of a Japanese shampoo bottle.
"Mr Sparkle is very disrespectful to dirt"
reburning all of it so it takes up less space is going to take a looooong time for me....
Can someone tell me which format Microsoft is backing and which one Apple is backing.
I need to know before I can form my own opinion.
Oh and if Google is backing one let me know.
Thanks
Oh. but i have to wait for blu-ray to get that?
Nuts.
Awesome. Reminds me of the scratchiti-proof windows in the new subway cars here (NYC).
Why force a hardware standard to place redundant data, when the same effect could be achieved in software?
Basically treat the disk as if it had multiple partitions, each physically scattered across its surface. Then do simple redundant copying or a RAID-style redundant striping scheme.
No need for that to be a hardware standard; just software. If done right, such a scheme might even be transparent to normal reading software. Software that didn't know about the redundant data simply wouldn't even see it, or it might appear in separate subfolders.
How?
Looking around, DVD-R costs $9 for 25, DVD+R costs $20 for 50, and there are many different multiple-format burners out there. How exactly does that mean settled?
If anything, this proves that we will see healthy adoption of both formats, with an initial ruse for the cheaper format, followed by the release of dual format drives, and then finally both media hitting similar price-points.
So Apple wins, because it will be first out of the gate with a new format, and consumers win because the first one out will invariably be cheaper for some time, then newer drives will come out to let more competition into the media market, and finally we'll just have multiple media for multiple uses; 5 GB DVD, 20GB DVD-HD, and 30GB BlueRay
GPL Deconstructed
I have an 8 inch floppy. Imagine the hard one!
Infuriate left and right
I was actually really surprised when the New York Times article about DivX enabled high definition capability wasn't slashdotten long ago when the New York Times touted a third possible competitor in the High Definition consumer electronic device market for High Definition viability. You can find the article here.
(sorry, this does require a free subscription)
IO-Data offers their DivX HD Certified AvelLinkplayer2 for around US $250.00 and is quite capable and you can get it NOW. There should be more players on the way - from my understanding, Sigma Designs EM8620L Chips are more than capable of DivX High Definition. I also believe KiSS has showed off a similar DivX High Definition Video-On-Demand player at CeBIT. (scroll down, you'll see it).
in a tiiiiiiiny living space!
But seriously, with the specs that Blu-Ray has for the physical aspects of the disc this format would force drive makers to reinstitute the disc-caddy system to keep your fragile Blu-Ray discs from getting scratched or otherwise hosed up by the environment. Just imagie what hell it is going to be to rent Blu-Ray's if there are no caddys!
No matter how much error correction you put in at the block layer on a disc of this level of info density stuff like a ball-point pen or medium to fair sized scratches are going to present a HUGE problem for maintaining media readability and reliability! Not to mention old tricks like polishing scratches out with Turtle Wax just aren't going to work when the protective layer of the Blu-Ray disc is 1/6th as thick as a DVDs!
Plus, why does everyone here think that Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is a wanted thing?
I already own a sizeable collection of movies in DVD format and some older ones in Laserdisc format. I'm not about to buy the same movie again in Blu-Ray just because its higher resolution. Especially since I don't own a HDTV set and I still fail to see the compelling reason to shell out the extra cash for a set. HDTV still costs too much and is still too confusing for the average consumer not to mention you can hardly get dick-all worth watching on it unless your in a major metropoloitan area or have a cable provider that has dedicated a significant amount of their coax bandwidth to delviering premium HDTV channels.
For starters the fact that people think there is this huge pent up demand for 1080i res movies is flat out ricockulous! Hello people, didn't anyone here see that VOOM just went tits up? You want to know how many subscribers they had?
46,000!
If you assume the VOOM subscribes are the same customers with sufficent money and HDTV equipment at home to want HDTV res movies on some format then I think its safe to say what format will win is moot at this point because there is hardly a sustainable market for this format for the movie industry at the current rate of HDTV adoption.
Sure it would be nice to have a higher capacity format but I for one am sick and tired of formats that get mired up in Hollywood dick-swinging.
Why can't the computer industry come up with their own format for optical data storage that is intended for JUST data and as such wont get hijacked by a bunch of egotistical profit grubbing movie studios who will just want to fsck with it to make it "Secure" for their precious movies.
Picture quality of today's DVDs is just fine, IMHO..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
...if you really want a "huge disc" that can store video data, why not just pick up a LaserDisc - the "hugest" video disc if ever I saw one...
They both suck ass compared to the floresent disks. I cannot wait for 1 TB per disk.
n als/edition6/downloads/dt6_15_22.pdf
http://www.semiconductorfabtech.com/datatech/jour
First, claims about HVD revolutionizing the industry came have been around for years. The tech isn't ready for commercialization and won't be for a while. There isn't demand in the video industry for 1TB anyway. Studios would much rather sell 2 discs than 1 disc with twice as much storage capacity since consumers feel that they are getting more with a second disc. The HD formats will face the same problem and TV studios will be the worst off. Right now whole seasons are sold in multidisc sets at $15-20 a disc. With the HD formats a whole season can fit on one disc and studios won't be able to charge old prices because $60-80 discs seem overpriced to the public. Its the same reason why in the cassette days you would see double albums rather than 90 minute tapes.
I agree, we need a format that keeps us safe from new versions of Star Wars... stop Lucas now, before he strikes again!
--Mike--
For the purpose of archiving Audio CD's, many hobbyists have been making losslessly compressed backups and using the space saved over the original CD for extra error correction information, usually with PAR2 or somesuch.
http://parchive.sourceforge.net/
Will I need to buy the "White Album" again?
But Poe did write nice stories.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
HVD allows 1TB of storage with dual lasers... Dual lasers means more expensive manufacturing costs, I doubt it will be as mainstream as single laser Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
*Dons tin foil hat*.
emt 377 emt 4
That said, Holographic methods of storage probably will probably be on the desktop soon. Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will probably still be the distribution method of choice until we get to UDVT (QWUGA 3840x2160). Even then the visual bump up isn't near as obvious as HD was over DVD which itself wasn't as apparent as DVD over VHS. In other words we've finally reached the point of diminishing returns. I have a 10' (yes foot) diagonal screen, and a good HDTV signal is better than most theater going experiences.
I digress. The point is your HD Movies will probably come on one Blu-Ray or HD-DVD because they get the job done for one movie.
If you want to make money, invent some way to securely backup your purchased HD content (however obtained) to Holo or Disc, but not be able to share, so I can have my collection online all the time. Don't get me wrong, I hate DMR, and think business models should go to something else, but know full well they wont.
Letter To Iran
I thought this was offered in Viagra spam already... wait...
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
In fact, you're right that the content creators aren't in any rush for DVD burning to become common. But with the exception of Sony (who doesn't let it bother them), there's minimal overlap between content creators and hardware makers. Sorry -- I know you believe there are only four "megacorporations" running the whole world...
As soon as the article said ...
"But the main problem remains the poor security" i closed the browser.
Security is the last concern i have in mind about storage media. Longevity and reliablity are first, so this was a worthless article.
Sony backs it and the PS3 is a major influencer of such. I heard somewhere that the gaming industry is bigger than the movie industry. Hmmm...
Apple backs it. The same people that dump money into R&D. The same people that pretty much made Ethernet, USB, and FireWire standard issue on all computers nowadays. The same people that got WiFi to the masses (instead of just us geeks) with AirPort.
Dell backs it. C'mon, they're the big player in the PC industry.
HP (they're innovators now, trying to find a new face to the company that was once a PC company), Hitachi, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Samsung are behind it. This, along with Sony, pretty much covers the consumer market.
Now we move onto the financial aspects. That's a lot of money in R&D pushing it, plus Blu-Ray (having $450 billion vs HD-DVD's meager $221 billion) has a little more "oomph".
I'd say the war is over unless some huge unexpected upheavel happens.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Right, because nobody wants to make a profit selling a product to the customer that is easy-to-use and in high demand.
The reason this isn't settled is because the supporters of the opposing technologies have huge money invested in their baby and don't want to see the other guy succeed. If Blu-Ray wins out, the HD guys are way behind the curve with little hope of catching up.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
If you don't own or haven't yet experienced HD, then your comment would seem to make sense. However, having taken the plunge, I can assure you that normal DVD quality, while a huge improvement over VHS,etc. is a step backward in picture quality from HD. It's not just an issue of increased storage capacity. Hard drives are cheap enough that isn't really an issue to me. But it's not ALL about PC's. The future of the home entertainment, electronics and entertainment industry rests on the quick adoption of a HD capable DVD. Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
Wasn't LCassette theirs? The MiniDisc of the 80's.
The transfer rate for blu-ray is, accoriding to their FAQ, 36 Mb/s, not 36MB/s. Which means that 1x blu-ray (4.5MB/s) is considerably slower than today's 16x DVD drives, which are ~21MB/s.
"What actually is happening is that I'm waiting for lightning to strike my kite. Me, Ben Franklin, the Inventor of Electricity!"
"Shouldn't you say, 'The discoverer of electricity?'"
"You think the ultimate power in the Universe is just under some rock, waiting to be discovered? Ha! I, Ben Franklin, am going to summon power from the heavens by sheer force of genius!"
From the above linked article:
So your objection would seem to be overruled.
It's because of this coating that Blu-Ray will not require a caddy.
It's also worth noting that this same coating can be used on regular DVDs, and, one presumes, on HD-DVDs as well. Plenty more info can be found by googling DURABIS.
I remember when people laughed at my RCA VCR because it wasn't Beta, it was VHS.
Beta is more technologically advanced they said. Beta is supported by more industry leaders they said. Beta is cheaper they said.
VHS won.
Personally, I've learned never to underestimate that people buy stuff because it works for them. If Blu-Ray is easily smudged or doesn't have pretty pictures on the disk, that could be what kills it in the marketplace.
I'll wait a couple of years until the victor appears, thanks.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I strongly doubt the DVD will die any time soon. HD and BluRy(!?) will not be hugely popular until enough people have the display hardware (HDTV large screen) to truly apprecciate them. We already see HD broadcast limp in the starting gate...
Then there's cost - an ok 26" TV and DVD player cost what? $300? What are the odds any 1080p and BR player will cost even 10x that any time soon?
Or the perceived value - if BR or HVD can hold an entire TV show - all 6 seasons (at 480p) do you really think they will either define that format or sell it? Where's the 9GB DVDA holding 15 hours of audio? "All the Beatles on one DVDA!" The marketers knew people wouldn't pay $200 for one disk - it's easier to sell 10 disks one at a time... I can buy a DVD used from Hollywood Video for $6.99 - how long before the same can be said of BR?
There's the "more than good enough" factor. For example, CD hasn't been replaced by DVDA (except for people who need a life) because, how much better can it get? Do you need "American Pie 2" on 1080p? Are they going to do new 1080i transfer of Gilligan's Island Season 1 from the original 35mm film?
Like the conversion from vinyl to CD, most collectors have built their DVD collections on the assumption this is another 20-year technology. They aren't going to toss their 200+ DVDs and switch to Blu any time soon. I predict extra-smart up-converting or line-doubler DVD players will be more popular before BR or HD.
Add in the format war, and the extreme prices most new tech charges, and most people will sit on the sidelines for quite a while. I suspect consumers will dither until HVD is out.
My rule of thumb for new tech - it has to be an order of magnitude better, cheaper, or more convenient. The HD definitely isn't, the Blu-Ray is almost close.
From the last story posted on the Blu-Ray vs. HDDVD battle, a step up was that laser assemlies that would enable blu-ray players to play both old DVD's as well as new HD DVD's was no more expensive than HD-DVD assemblies.
In other words, any Blu-Ray player is going to be able to play old DVD's. Just not HD-DVD's.
Personally I think Blu-Ray will win out, between the backing of Apple on the computer front and Sony/Disney on the media front. People will want greater storage densities for backing up hard drives (as it stands even Blu-Ray is not really sufficient) and as they noted you can hardly have good quality HD vido on an HDDVD and still have room for extras - that people have shown they really like and most movies provide.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you had read the article, you would have seen it state near the bottom:
... because both formats, so debated since the beginning of 2004, may find themselves outrun by the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD).
While Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use the same laser, other producers thought of combining the two lasers (red and blue), in a single ray and thanks to Optware, on a disc the size of a CD or DVD, 1 TB of data could be stored (20 times more than on a Blu-Ray disc), with a transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s.
The war is futile
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
I predict two players, a standard HD-DVD player. This will win the marketing wars, but in every geeks house will be a PS3 so that they can play Blu-Ray discs.
But the problem (for HD-DVD) is why would you spend money on an HD-DVD player when you are already having to get a PS3? There's a good reason to get the PS3 (games) and by the time much content comes out there will be a huge number of players. For all of those media companies on the fence, that have not signed exclusive deals with either format - which one do you think they will publish to?
For once it seems the better format will win (better in terms of more space which is what us computer users need).
It will be interesting to see if overbearing copy protection tanks either format, though really it's done little to hinder DVD adoption and so I think it won't really hurt the new formats much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We wants teh blu-ray!!!
Both are backwards compatible.
Blu-ray holds more data (plus will expand to > 100GB soon)
and the #1 reason:
Blu-ray has a scratch resistant coating!!!!
Yes that's right! With the amount of data stored on these things you could ruin half the library of congress with one good scratch. You think a skip is bad on a 650MB CD, just wait till you scratch your HD-DVD chumps!
When Beta and VHS started out, they were essentially on equal footing as far as consumer adoption and industry support. The capacity issue when people began recording TV was what swayed the whole thing to one side.
Video 2000? Never heard of them. I submit they lost before they even got started. There's a certain window to get in on the format wars, and I think Video 2000 landed outside of that somehow.
So to as people seek to start archiving TV shows and huge numbers of digital pictures will Blu-Ray seem much more appealing to people.
An interesting question - where is Microsoft in all this? Also on the fence? You would think they would absolutley back the format with the largest amount of storage possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember a while back about such things being close to being available.
I just hope that format doesn't get picked up by the **AAs so that
we can actually get to use the technology before the 2TB discs come out!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
It would be so nice if for one day a month /. filtered any posting or comment that used the goddamn worn out and meaningless "i, for one" construction.
Someone pointed out an interesting series of relationships in a previous article on the whole Blu-Ray/HD-DVD brouhaha. I don't have a link to it, but I'll summarize"
Apple has now put their weight behind the Blu-Ray standard. That means Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro will support Blu-Ray authoring.
The porn industry uses FCP extensively. If they're anything like print houses (many of whom still use Quark 4.x), they will do anything to avoid changing their workflows. This means sticking with FCP and supporting Blu-Ray in a de facto sort of way.
Blu-Ray is backed by the porn industry.
Blu-Ray wins.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
As reported elsewhere in the thread, Blu-Ray discs are made a material far more resistant to scratches than most DVD's today. So in fact they should be better off as far as renting goes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At least, if you don't believe it was faked or something.
Side note: It alarms me how "natural" racism was back then. (Just read items 23 and 24 the bottom.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Apple told me to like Blu-Ray. So I do.
*looks shamefully down*
no, really.
Just like HDDVD does not hold as much as Blu-Ray.
Do not be confused by company names into thinking this is the same battle with the same players on the same sides.
Instead, Sony has learned from history and gone over.
Other media companies apparently yearn for the experience of being burned by a bad format choice. Perhaps they also skipped the chance to offer DiVX movies in the Circuit City fiasco and this is thier big opportunity for a "Character-Building" company move.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
China settled on EVD (Enhanced Video Disk) for it's national High Definition standard. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/25/china_choo ses_evd/
I understand that product is available now since the product has been in development since 1999.
HD-DVD just seems like a more logical winner.. the form factor, the production cost.. I mean, do we really want a fat piece of plastic that looks like an old 8 track? Blue ray .. humpfff.. I understand its capacity is somewhat higher, but to justify such an 8-track style box that will take up too much space if you stack them, could only be justified if it can store as much as a harddrive.. it almost looks like one.
I'm still waiting on DVD-RAM/DVD-R/DVD+R to be sorted.
Yep. I still love my old Plextor 32X SCSI CD-ROM drive. Caddies for me please. But yeah, I cut my teeth on caddy 1X's back in the day. Still think it's a superior system (although more expensive if you buy caddies for all your discs.
Sony doesn't let it bother them? The whole reason MiniDisc has been a wholesale failure is because of Sony's PITA licensing restrictions. I thought of adopting it years ago but the price (both figurative and literal) was just too high. the simple fact that Sony DOES have content makes them more protective. I can guarantee Blu-Ray will have more evil copy-protection stuff in it than HD-DVD. The article said they were trying to roll their own.
Then again, the track record of encryption technologies that were never submitted for public review is pretty bad so maybe we should root for Blu-Ray?
Allsop released a CD case many years ago that is darned near indestructible in normal use (and then some). I bought some for some of my favorite CDs and they're still completely intact. You can pound on these things and they don't so much as crack. If I recall correctly, the marketing info for them showed cars running over them and not causing them to crack. They were not very sucessful in the marketplace, though. Here's a link:
Allsop Strongbox
Minidisc beat cd-r? I could've sworn that minidiscs were a pretty large failure.
I don't mind what gets chosen.
But if I want to watch the Japanese or French version of the movie, that's darned well what I want to watch, with German subtitling if that's what I like.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The article doesnt mention the fact that you can buy Blu-Ray players, recorders, and discs, from multiple manufacturers, in Japan, today, and for quite a while now actually.
More tech details, etc: Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD
Yes they are different because significant advances have been made in material science in exactly this area. Possibly the next pair of glasses you get will enjoy the same benefits.
Here is a pretty good article on the material with some more technical details, and also mentions how it has kept blu-ray from having to use caddies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They already solved that problem, and it seems like they made a pretty good job of it, too.
1997 isn't just "a few years". I go through spindles of DVD+R's, but one spindle of CD's has lasted me for the past year. I use Fedora, just because I knew it had a DVD
When people (read: gamers) go down to the store, and there's a DVD-edition and the "normal" cd edition, people buy the DVD. These days, it's the poor bastards that are stuck with the cd version that are getting shafted. People have figured out how to make a DVD installer from the Unreal Tournament 2004 cd's. Same thing with Doom 3.
Sorry, buddy. CD's are still useful, but the DVD market has long since passed you by. You'd better just go get your 8-track player, and listen to some Kenny Rogers.
Actually, everybody wants to make a profit. But the fact is, these days they prefer to do it by selling as little as possible. "Easy to use" and "in high demand" are all well and good, but think about it: copy protection makes things harder to use, and frankly there's *no* demand for it on the consumer end. But for some reason they just keep using it.
Probably because they do want to make a profit, and are scared that their profit might be hurt if they "let Joe Sixpack roll his own" as grandparent post puts it. MP3 was high demand and easy to use, but Sony only adopted it in the last six months. I think that counters your sarcasm nicely.
wow, very nicely written!
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Yeah, I don't have HD either. A 34" tube (comparable to the 32" analog that I have) is about $900 and I'd need a new entertainment center to hold it and then Digital HD cable is $55-100 per month (instead of the $9 I pay for basic.) BUT most of the people under 30 that I know have HD. The 46,000 number is totally irrelavent. What we need to know is the total number of subscribers to all the cable- companies' HD programs AND the Dish companies' HD subscribers. Most of these people will watch anything that is in HD. And I can say with certainty that all the people that have paid all that money for HD systems are disappointed that their DVD movies are not in HD. Those people represent pent-up demand, because as soon as a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player is available for
There is a unfufilled demand for HD video.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
we will pick the wrong format.
ie:
NTSC
VHS
Hell we still measure things in feet!!!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Reference for the pure.
HD-DVD will win as it's an easier migration process.
For who? Not for you or me.
I can tell you right now which of the new players I'm buying first - a PS3. I already know I'm getting one. From the looks of things, movies as far as Blu-Ray or HD-DVD formats will still be sparse at that point so ther'd be scant reason to get a standalone player otherwise (for all but the most wealthy or dedicated gadget-freaks).
Now comes the magic. Remember how PS3 is supposed to be backwards compatible? As in plays old PS2 discs? As in DVD discs?
I know what you were trying to say, but it is flat-out wrong. It has already been reported that Blu-Ray players will be able to play DVD's we have today. They just include the standard red lasers alongside the blue. But even if that were not true, the only player to have huge adption initially will be playing both formats.
So the only advantage as far of migration is to the studios (actualy, not even to the studios but to the fabrication plants spitting out the DVD's). But once again, there are a few million players already destined to be sold here early 2006 and they ain't HD-DVD compatible.
I don't even think the death of HD-DVD will be all that lingering, once media companies see how many PS3's sell and are trying to decide which new format to produce for. Would you rather sell a few million copies, or (to be generous) 100K copies to suck... er, that is, early adoptors of HD-DVD?
I might think there was more of a fight if the next XBox were using HD-DVD. If that's so, then I'll say there's a real fight. But so far as I know that has not happened (not that I rule it out).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Quite frankly who cares which is the best ? I for one will simply wait to see which wins out in the end. DVDR works quite well for my forseeable humble backup purposes and if necessary I'll stockpile both the blanks and a couple of spare recorders. You can get an excellent DVDR for about £ 40 (uk) now so it'll be worth it (plus no onboard DRM !)
On this note I speak as someone who once bought a Phillips Video 2000 VCR because it was the best unit available at the time (check the specs - it was better than both betamax and VHS) so I'm not getting burned again. I learned my lesson then "wait 'til the idiots have decided" or you'll end up with a load of unusable stuff.
Remember kids just say no to format wars.
Here's why:
HD-DVD sounds more like "VHS"
Blu-Ray sounds more like "Betamax"
Therefore, consumers will choose HD-DVD.
Logic, you see, although most people can't do logic.
I fail to see the problem. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be sporting multiple lasers as well, for support of DVDs and CDs.
That said, I don't know enough about the systems (any of them) to explain why HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, DVD and CD support can't be in the same drive. Same goes for HVD.
The question no one is asking is which sounds better:
HD-DVD Jon
or
Blu-Ray Jon
Personally I look forward to Blue-Ray Jon providing many more "surprises".
People seem to forget that Sony has had a hand in many of the most prevalent formats around;
The first being the 3.5" Floppy Disk. Sony invented the "micro" floppy disk drive, releasing its first commercially available model called the OA-D30V in 1981 for Apple.
One of the reasons that 3.5 inch Floppy Disks did so well was that they fit inside military uniform pockets as well as the short and long-sleeve shirt pockets of most engineers and techs, and thus were encouraged in natural selection.
The second reason was that the hard-shell casing stopped people from shoving them thru the slots between drive bays and reduced damage from paper clips and small magnets. As well as reducing dirt and mud damage.
We bulk ordered them in mass quantities which drove the market acceptance.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yea, I just love the way DVD-R crushed DVD+R because of Apple's early backing of the format. And Sony's Betamax and MemoryStick formats totally dominate industry!
Well, I just love how you totally ignored the two-pronged nature of the reasons I outlined! Yes if it were Apple alone it would be nothing. But in case you had not heard of freaking DISNEY, they are kind of a large media company. And Sony is not exactly a slouch either. I reccomend you try Google to find more about them.
And in case you haven't noticed, there is still a pretty good flucutation going on between DVD-R and DVD+R. Without Apple's backing DVD-R would be utterly dead by now.
Not to mention that for computer users, there is hardly a compelling reason to use either DVD-R or DVD+R. Not really any storage difference, and even burning movies mostly works with DVD+R.
But with Blu-Ray there is a very real storage advantage that people currently buying 200GB+ drives and 5-8MP cameras will happily embrace.
As for the battle being over who can read the others format - you are totally misunderstanding the nature of the battle at hand. With DVD+/-R, it was about that because the primary use intially was for storage, and either could be played on most DVD players (and the DVD players came along in greater numbers earlier than the computer units)
But this time around you have two formats, which are very different and not amenible to one player reading the other. So the format will go to whoever sells more players to consumers - whcih currently looks like Sony. Game Over. The war is more like DiVX the Circuit City Format Vs. DVD, and look who won that.
Perhaps later we might have a Blu-Ray-R and Blu-Ray+R issue to work out again. But that's a whole different ballgame.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I sorta agree with the article. While I do like Blu-Ray, one cannot help but wonder if HD Optical discs are kinda dead end, with newer tech like flash and holographic data coming up the pipe. Optical Discs are almost 30 years old, and if you look at magnetic tape for example, there was the early stuff, then reel-to-reel, then cassettes and 8-track, floppies and finally DAT and its ilk. Optical may have niche uses still, but its possible that HD Optical may go the way of 8-track.
If the computer industry goes with one standard and the movie industry goes with another, we won't have to pay those extra taxes on the discs will we?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Like see-dee and dee-vee-dee. Much ee-zee-er to say than haitch-dee-dee-vee-dee.
The problem with DVDs is they are already totally cramped. Turns out a lot of the "extras" weren't so extra after all. That's why you have brits buying American region 1 disks, because the EU region 2 disks skimped on the quality so they could include a dozen different language tracks.
A disk should allow for the regular HD-content, all the bonus materials, every language and dubbing tracks, previews, etc., all with room to spare. Alternatively, it should also allow for at least seven hours of normal-quality content. That way you can get a whole TV season on only 1-4 disks. Because there's a lot of non-HD content out there.
Here's what I hope they change with the next format, besides the obvious:
1) No regions. The ones they have never made any sense anyway - why on earth are Japan and Europe in the same group but Australia by itself? Language regions I could have understood. I understand the economics behind regions, but really. One world, one price.
2) Sophisticated sprite, text, and video control options. Did you know that DVD subtitles are limited to four colors to save space? Talk about a bad solution. And there's no way to control the sequence in video. There should be total control over what goes on screen, equivalent to what you could do with burnt-in material, but not burnt in. The ability to overlay sprites or auxilliary video to overlay signs or add censorship bars. Bleeping or replacing bad words. Skipping naughty bits. Or rehashing what you have into a director's cut. Actual text subtitles with PDF-style rendering to allow embedded fonts, and standard UTF options.
3) Built in, fully functional scripting language - python or perhaps a real-time language. Would allow for far greater interactivity. Also games, interactive data browsing, simple programs, and so forth. Also, if used intelligently would make controlling the many options much easier. For instance, to switch between english dub and native language+english subtitles, I wouldn't have to navigate menus to select the correct audio and subtitle options, guessing which was which because they only say "english 1" and so forth - I would press a button to toggle through the logical options.
4) The ability for outside files to wrap and modify DVD content. Particularly with the enhancements above, this would allow anyone to enhance a DVD for others. Specifically, by subtitling it in a language no one bothered to translate it into. Or editing it to suit parent's demands for kid-friendliness. Or, most attractively to the distributors, the ability to go back and fix errors AFTER the disks have shipped. A sane directory structure and system on the disk would make this a lot easier. As would a secondary region for writing in extra or per-disk data after they've been pressed.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
that's not funny
So my home entertainment system needs
VHS
AM/FM Tuner
Satalite Radio Tuner
DVD Player
Photograph Player
Cassette tape Player
DAT player
Videodisk player
HD-DVD player
mixer
Surround AMP (5.1 ? , 7.1 ? )
oh and a TV of some sort
I need a bigger house !
a unit that can do CD and DVD and (new round plastic format) all is one IS a good thing
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
2x LED, 1 Blue, 1 Red ...
both pointing at oposite sides of a prysm
same lens
not very expensive maybe
??????????????
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
OMG, this article was singularly the WORSE I've read about the BD/HD-DVD format war yet!
Start with this: "Although it will take a while till they become largely accessible - probably towards the end of 2005, but most likely in 2006..."
HD-DVD will launch in Septmeber 2005 with 80 movies, incuding the Matrix Trilogy and Star Trek First Contact as launch titles!
"As far as entertainment is concerned, the maximum video resolution DVD could provide, 720x480, was shortly overcome by the technological progress pace and technical features of new TVs, multimedia projectors or other image display devices. But the main problem remains the poor security. DeCSS and DivX came as major surprises, and lessened the DVD enthusiasm."
The BEST SELLING FORMAT in the Electronics Industry HISTORY! And enthusiasm was lessened????? Sheesh.
"The future of DVD is still unclear, but what is certain is that a replacement is already needed and looked upon."
With a
"Blu-Ray - winner before the race is over?"
Blu-WHAT??? Besides technophiles, BD is laregely unknown! HD-DVD, OTOH, has name recognition and will beat BD to market by at least 4 months. Doesn't matter which format is better, it's all about marketing... and the name "HD-DVD" immediately communicates "better than DVD" even to those who have no idea what it really is.
I'm saying all this as one who preferes (via specs and codecs) BD. But HD-DVD has a clear advantage, and I honestly expect it to win.
Regardless, this article had so much misinformation, it was a total crock.
-Pie
I think you are on to something :-)
:)
When you think about it, floppy discs had protective cases, so do zip discs, harddrives are concealed in armour to protect their sensitive platters.
They are talking about discs coming that hold almost as much as a basic harddrive today coming in the starkers. Are they nuts?
How much does a little bit of protective padding and a well designed plastic molding the size of a current cd case cost? Not much I bet..
I think people are just scared of using something that looks the size of a 5 1/4" disc.
I wish they would scrap the cruddy platter idea and bring on cheap solidstate.
Really, it's sad when stuff like this is presented as 'news'. With lines like those already quoted, and others like "One of the data broadly available on the Internet is the maximum supported resolution: an amazing 1920x1080 pixel." WHAT? That made no sense!
Geeze, you'd think that the slashdot editors could do a LITTLE checking for the quality of what's posted.
By the time PS3 is released the format war will be over. HD-DVD players are set to hit the store shelves along with dual format HD-DVDs that will be backwards compatable in normal DVD players sometime in June/July. No one knows when the first Blu-Ray players will be available, or the movies. HD-DVD plans to open up with over 250 titles right off the bat. IN A FEW MONTHS. People with HDTV's are DYING FOR CONTENT right now since cable companies are too busy bickering over who gets paid to broadcast what with HDTV channels. When HD-DVD is released first in a few months, you can bet nearly every single HDTV owner is going to snatch these suckers up.
Same place as all the other news about vaporware.
I wish them luck, and hope they can come up with an impressive product in a short time, but there have been many, many times that we've heard about a new optical disc storage system that would be leaps and bounds better, and they NEVER materialize past the prototype stage (or they are massively expensive, or have other critical drawbacks).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
...create two competing formats, have customers wait for a victory, see dual-format players win the day. Happened with DVD+/-R. Except the discs don't seem to be identical enough, oh well. Personally, I think whichever players have the best support for playing stuff downloaded from the Internet. The primary format is DivX/XviD, yet hardly anyone has a XviD player. And those are usually plain .avi with no menus or nothing.
If they create a player which can play a rip with menus/subtitles etc., just like a HD/BD-DVD with lesser qualithy, they have a killer selling point, unless they both do it. Of course, that's definately unheard of to speak about.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1) Agreed, but it's not going to happen. Too much money they can earn by doing it.
2) Not going to happen. Remember all the fuss about a company creating "modified" versions? I think it'll be a nasty legal mess to ship many "derivate" versions on a disc. Decent subtitle support should be in though.
3) Not going to happen. They want something integratable on a chip, not a general purpose CPU. Expect a set profile of what you can and can not do.
4) Not going to happen. By any logic, the discs will be encrypted, read-only and your only reading device (the player) will be busy). There's no way of updating them that'd be useful to the average person.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...the HDTV stream over air is ~20Mb/s. DVDs can't handle HDTV because at 1x they have only around 21*8/16 = ~10Mb/s. 36Mb/s + improved compression means Blu-Ray has more than enough bandwidth. I'm sure computer players could go higher.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Going with an open codec like Dirac or Theora instead would have made either one cheaper to use and royalty-free which would benefit producers and manufacturers of the content, the discs, and the manufacturers and users of the hardware / peripherals.
The only major differences between Blu-ray and HD-DVD are the storage capacity and the manufacturing process. Blu-ray has much more capacity, ~50GB vs ~30GB. HD-DVD can be produced without retooling the current DVD manufacturing.
Why not scrap them both and go with BD-ROM with MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and Dirac instead? I mean satellite TV has chosen MPEG-4 AVC and doesn't want anything to do with VC-1. Why should anybody else? VC-1 means not only royalty payments on hardware and software players, but MS DRM in your living room.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
So, where did the throw the diameter?
Get that HDTV 32" sanyo at Walmart for $650 - you can get a widescreen Sanyo HDTV for $599
HDTV price is comming down