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DVD Truce Between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD?
An anonymous reader writes " Reuters is reporting that Toshiba and Sony are in talks about reconciling the two next-generation DVD formats. Ideas floated in the article include a unified DVD arch which could use "Blu-ray's disc structure and HD DVD software technology" (Sony's idea) or "HD DVD disc structure and employing Sony's multi-layer data-recording technology" (Toshiba's idea)"
I didn't realize the hard drive had to be made to be compatible. I guess speed could somehow come into play, but no, never mind, they don't know what they are talking about.
"It could take both camps some time to develop products based on a new standard, which leaves the risk of development delays for Sony's next-generation game console," Goldman Sachs analyst Yuji Fujimori wrote in a note to clients.
Does this really matter? Couldn't Sony still release their next PlayStation with BlueRay discs as their format? I mean, they did use UMD for the PSP, and they isn't a common format. If you know more about this let me know, but this to me would mean it could prevent more illegal copying of game discs.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
well, it looks like they got smart all of a sudden, because, unlike dvd+ and dvd- R and RW...bluray and HDdvd are so far apart you practically need 2 drives for total support..
not to mention the COST of bluray media...yeouch.
Without standards, there's no volume.
Finally these guys have decided to put their egos aside and work on a compromise. If they had thought about this in the first place, imagine how much money these corporation would save on wasted R&D.
You got your chocolate in my peanutbutter.
You got your peanutbutter on my chocolate.
So they've got to:
Sort out the details
Get out a new spec
Prototypes
Verification
etc. etc.
All before the impending releases of if nothing else the PS3 and XBox2, never mind the PC & TV players?
Why do I get the feeling that this is a token gesture never intended to resolve the disputes, but instead to allow them to look back later and say "well we TRIED to get a common format but everyone else was in too much of a hurry!" If they were really serious about a common format, they would have done it long before now.
Deceipt at it's best!
See villagers...
See Torches...
See lightning flash and hear thunder roll...
See the monster fill a small screen near you
Scream in terror as you re-purchase all your DVD collection, while in a dark sinister lab, the next format is considered...
RATED: R
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I clearly do not fully understand how anti-monopoly laws work, but aren't competing companies prohibited from doing exactly this? Instead of each company selling it's product and letting the market decide which is better, they're working together to restrain the industry and keeping products that might benefit the consumer off the market. Isn't that collusion? Isn't it illegal?
Someone please explain why it's not, I really would appreciate it (not kidding here, genuinely cuious).
--
RumorsDaily
why not just use Blu-Ray technolgy and HD-DVD name (silid's idea)
Lets have one technology and an agreed royalty share - an effective buy-out. At least this way it will save millions in marketing in a format war, and both groups get a degree of guarenteed success.
and more importantly will allow me to enjoy the format sooner as i won't have to wait for winner.
Even if they end up using a hybrid of the two, the R&D isn't wasted. Along the way, both companies have learned a lot, including finding out a lot of things that *didn't* work.
A lot of R&D is failing and figuring out why.
It's not like we're talking about Xerox PARC, where Corporate wasted the opporunity to commercialize the wonderful things which were developed. A compromise on the new DVD format will still bring both companies/consortia licensing revenue.
Which, of course, begs the obvious question -- if they're both contributing IP, will they both be charging royalties and price the technology too high?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Let's have representatives from each side to fight it out to the death! I haven't seen a good death match in a very long time.
Perhaps not immediately, but within a few years a system will exist which will allow the streaming of any movie ever made via broadband instantly. Why would you want to bother keeping an anachronistic collection of shiny discs, when you could have anything you want, instantly.
These format wars will all look quaint in a few years when the bandwidth for home delivery of such a system is widely available.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Vizzini: Inconceivable!
-- Scientist: You aren't going to leave me here, are you? Boagh! Thump...
In order to download a movie "instantly", you need a lot of bandwidth. To download a 1Gb movie in 1 second requires an 8Gbps connection. This is not going to be available affordably to the average person within the next 10 years, at least. As is, it costs maybe $20 a month to get an 8 megabit per second connection, and everyone knows it takes a very very long time to overhaul data transmission infrastructure.
Collusion is illegal when companies are working together to keep another company's product off the market by predatory pricing, for example. But when two companies (or consortiums) work together to choose a common standard, that is just plain good sense. The companies are wisely (I hope) seeing that the market will not welcome competing standards, and that the market (and thus their pocketbooks) are bettered by there being exactly one new DVD standard. There is no illegal activity here because no-one is being prevented from doing anything and they are not controlling prices by choosing to implement a common standard. There is no anti-competitive behavior.
Now, if the companies fixed the pricing of this standard and refused to allow anyone to undercut the pricing and used their size in the marketplace to control the availability and cost of the new DVD players, that could be collusion. If they were somehow working together (like a cartel) to prevent another company from competing in the marketspace, that might be collusion. (Depending on the tactics, etc.) However, just agreeing on a common standard does not collusion make.
They're each talking about keeping their own core hardware and layering the other's controllers and software on top of them. But of course it's the hardware that's the key piece. If they use the same core technology it doesn't matter much what the rest is: they could easily produce a dual-format drive with the rest of the differences fudged in firmware.
So it sounds like they're both saying "Be reasonable, do it my way".
This can only mean one thing.. They've decided to join forces against their common enemy -- the consumer..
Prices are not even remotely linked to media costs/capacity! DVDs cost LESS to make yet sell for MORE than VHS. CDs cost LESS to make yet sold for MORE than audio tape.
If they want to charge you a lot for it, they still will. You erally think the scum will say "oh, since it all fits on one disc now instead of 4 saving us $0.40, we'll only charge you $20 instead of $100?"
HAHAHAHAHA! Not likely. Saddam becoming the next Pope was a much safer bet than that. Reality is that what you'll hear from their mouths is "BluHDRayDVD is 100x better, so we'll charge you 2x as much. You win by a factor of 50, aren't we kind?"
I'm not sure if you just haven't seen high resolution video or if you truly don't care, but I've seen it and I care. The fact that HD TV signal over the air is higher resolution (better quality compression) than what is on DVD bothers me.
I want to watch my movies with more definition and I realize that's not 100% reliant on the media but they will release higher def video on this new media.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
When you get your content, or your applications, online, you are then at the mercy of:
:)
1) He who controls where the content or apps are stored, controls YOU.
2) Your connetion (being up or down, or slow, or high latency)
3) Security issues
But, if you like all that, feel free to check out the Phantom gaming system; you'd probably like it.
Sorry, just to clarify... was that R+ or R-?
Blockwars: Multiplayer Tetris like game
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Wrong. It uses a blue laser, and is 15 GB for a single-sided disc and 30 for dual-sided. I agree that Blu-Ray is better, but try and get the facts straight.
Actually, HD-DVD uses the a 405nm blue laser, as Blu-Ray does, and stores 15GB (single-layer) or 30GB (dual-layer) per disc. The discs themselves have significantly different configurations, which is why the storage capabilies are different. Regards...
While I could care less what "data format" is used, the Blu-Ray disc itself is far superior in capacity and data rate, and I'm glad it won.
With a paltry 15mbit per second, HD-DVD's disc would not have a high enough data rate to encode 1080p video in MPEG4 (or any other codec) at any reasonable quality, essentially crippling HD until the next generation. (For comparison, the highest bitrate allowed in DVD video is 10mbit. D-VHS allows 30 mbit, Blu-Ray allows over 50mbit (section 3, bottom of page 5))
Of course, more space per disc is always nice. Whether you're just trying to cram the Janitor's Commentary track into the extras, or providing Star Trek with a Klingon subtitle track, every little bit helps. More space also allows for movies to use that 50mbps data rate for longer periods of time. Fans of superbit DVDs would drool all over the promise of superbit Blu-Ray discs.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Have you ever tried to cram those little green cubes on a spindle before?
I'm still not convinced that we even need a next-generation format. HDTV is insanely scarce outside of the US [and most "HDTV" units already in the US are 480P EDTV anyway and most of the ones that actually are HD are rear projection units sitting in sunny rooms with the factory settings intact] and DVD is the most successful format in history. Obviously Hollywood wouldn't mind due to what I'm sure is much stronger DRM on new formats but we currently have two superior formats to CD and for consumers the convenience of lower-quality sound from digital files is winning out. Only a tiny percentage of audio nerds [and it's even a fraction of them because many audiophiles are terrified of any digital equipment] have bought into the new formats and they're people who ahve no problems with rebuying their favorite music over and over. The same may happen with movies.
Look at Laserdisc - far better picture and sound than VHS, no rewinding and pretty good studio support for a while but the cost, convenience and durability advantages of tapes won out in the end.
Could Sony be doing this to delay the XBox360 release? Microsoft has been gaining a ton of momentum with software developers of late, something it never had with the current xbox.
Microsoft will most definately hold off releaseing the next xbox if the new DVD standard's release is impending. That'll give Sony a nice window to get caught up.
It's a bold move, but I think it could help Sony immensely if the timing is right.
Fuck the drives - I want one of these blue lasers.
Until a true 1080p TV costs less then a car, and the next generation media is under a dollar... why should I care exactly?
99% of the 10% of humans that even have a computer, don't care about any of this until it's AFFORDABLE. By which time, the margins will be so low that none of this battle will matter. And I'd bet backups to IDE will still be cheaper TCO-wise.
Also, a system with 10x the storage will be out in a year.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/