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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.
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.
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.
To quote the American public, "ooh! Shiny!"
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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!
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.
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
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
Funny.. Seriously though I'd be happy if some of this new space went to more redundancy if it meant the discs would be more reliable than DVD/CD media is. I'd sacrifice some space for better chances to read it later. If part of whatever standard wins allowed for the data to be stored twice on the media, readers could check the other track if one was damaged.
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...
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Doing that will not encourage any manufacturers to stick with one type (DVD + or - all over again). We should go with the Blue ray stadard because it holds more meaning blue ray disks you buy in the future will become outdated after HD-dvd because they are larger (meaning updating the video colletion less). The only donwside to the new standards is that they are not using lossless audio.
I don't see how that tech is any better than solid-state? There are solid state memories out there that have comparable physical and data sizes to that tech. They are also marketing their stuff as being secure from piracy; but their reasons are totally laughable: Their main idea is that pirates wouldn't have access to their holographic media-writing methods. Anybody who was going to pirate info from them would just copy it onto a hard disk, or other non-difficult-to-write media. That's like saying DVDs were pirate-proof before DVD-writers were available... It's just retarded to think that way. More power to them if they get the big bucks hocking their shoddy wares onto big corporations.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
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.
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"
I'll tell you which one they will adopt.
the one that is the cheapest or has no royalties required.
If one of them want's to insure their standard will be chosen, make it the cheapest to use and royalty free.
unheard of in corperate world, and borderline heresy, but truth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Are you being sarcastic? The pr0n industry has been at the forefront (no pun inteneded) of home video tech since the VCR. As much as this counrty tries to present itself as Puritanical downhome homebodies; money talks & bs walks. The guy that sits across from me at work, & a good friend (they both used to work for the clearinghouse companies) have told me that the #1 state for pr0n video on demand rentals is good ole puritanical Utah. Basically, pr0n users will lead the way, & the asses, literally will follow.* So the choice of format by the pr0n industry is very important to both camps. *My apologies to Mr. Brown & EnVogue.
You mean someone might seriously be proposing a new DVD spec which can't still play older disks????
I can guarantee you, and new format player which can't play existing disks is going to utterly tank. People have invested money in their media and will be royally annoyed if their old disks can't play on a new player.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
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
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
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
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
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! --
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.
I can guarantee you, and new format player which can't play existing disks is going to utterly tank. People have invested money in their media and will be royally annoyed if their old disks can't play on a new player.
People had lots of money invested in VHS movies too, but one can't (believably) claim that any perceived failure of the DVD is due to people being unwilling to switch.
There are many factors at stake here, and not all are technical. IIRC, lots of movies were released only on DVD, or were out on DVD months earlier than they were on VHS, and that was to encourage people to get DVD players. Despite the fatalistic tone of the article, I think it's safe to say it worked.
Backward compatibility is only one issue at hand. It's an important issue, yes, but it's shortsighted to claim that it will be the one and only deciding factor in this supposed "standards war".
SIG: 11
Cool link. They would almost have to try to do this.
DVD is too new, and remarkably well-penetrated into the home-market, for people to be willing to accept an upgrade. Likewise future players will pretty much have to be able to play old DVDs.
If they can't they're going to end up with a huge albatross of a product as people decide they don't want yet-another media format so soon. I was shocked when my parents actually bought a DVD player - but when Radio Shack is selling 'em for less than $100CDN, why not?
A completely parallel format to DVD will be dead on arrival -- I've got a whack-load of (legitimate) DVDs, and I'm not abandoning them. I'm also not looking to upgrade to HDTV or a HD-DVD anytime soon either. But orphaning DVD would be a huge mistake.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
DVD is too new, and remarkably well-penetrated into the home-market, for people to be willing to accept an upgrade. Likewise future players will pretty much have to be able to play old DVDs.
All sides agree that the new players will read old DVDs. On the other hand, the advantage of the new, high-resolution DVD disks also having a second, lower-quality copy of the movie that can be read by standard DVD players is less clear. I suppose that it might help sell the new, presumably more expensive DVDs to people who don't yet have the hardware to play them in HD, but are anticipating buying it in the future. But DVDs are so cheap that manufacturers could just bundle a standard DVD into the package. Once the new players start to get cheap, the interest in backwards-compatible disks will fall off rapidly.
Apple also supported DVD-RAM, and look where that is now.