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Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray
bonch writes "A poll shows Blu-ray as the preferred choice, as conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. Customers were given a side-by-side comparison of HD-DVD and Blu-ray. The results were that 58 percent of the 1,200 polled chose Blu-ray, and 26 percent were undecided. Generally speaking, HD-DVD is preferred by those seeking to reduce manufacturing costs while Blu-ray is preferred by those more interested in features and data storage." Sony's PS3 is to use the Blu-Ray format.
How much of this customer preference is just the name? "Blu-Ray" is easy to remember, and does not sound like much anything else. "HD-DVD" sounds like just more tech alphabet soup, or part of a features list string for a Dell desktop ad.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Blu Ray discs hold more data. Anyone hearing a run down comparison is going to go with blu ray. Personally, I'm still a bit scared about potentially loosing data because the layer of protection is so small. Of course, I'm sure the comparison didn't say "the protection layer is almost non-existant in blu ray discs".
It might be an unfounded fear, but I won't know that for at least a year after I get blu ray stuff.
I liken this to more how TV resellers adjust the color and contrast settings on televisions so customers think one has a better picture compared to one next to it.
On the software side, they encompass the same codecs. It'd be nice if the BBC or some consortium of similar institutions could get the proprietary codec off the Blu-Ray spec and put an open standard on there instead. Dirac or Theora could do for video what the web (HTML+HTTP) did for the net.
Last I heard, the audio codec was not selected. That would be a prime use for Vorbis.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I think the economics argument is a red herring though. AFAIK the big argument against BluRay is that duplicators would need to purchase all-new equipment to produce BluRay discs. HD-DVD's claim to fame is that you can retrofit production onto existing DVD duplication hardware.
:P
The thing is, the hardware purchase is a single expense. AFAIK the media/materials used cost the same. Once you start manufacturing hundreds of thousands or millions of discs, the cost per disc of the all-new hardware quickly approaches zero.
Left with that reality, it comes down to which is technologically superior and offers the most bang for the buck, and the answer to that is BluRay.
I don't think Sony is about to repeat their Beta experience.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Sigh... not again...
...the early adopters who back the wrong horse will be punished and will learn a life lesson that will make them reluctant to embrace new technology...
...the general public will sit back waiting for the dust to settle...
...it will take five years before you can walk into a video store and see which format is the "normal" one, and see a choice of models at low prices stacked up in the local K-Mart or Costco...
...and just as I buy one, they announce the next pair of competing, incompatible (or compatible-in-"many"-but-not-mine) standards.
As Theotocopulos says in the H. G. Wells movie Things to Come: "Stop this 'progress!' Stop it, I say!"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The porn industry prefers SD over HD so you can't see the boob job scars, unclean skin and that the "20yos" are actually 30 and a thick layer of make-up. That is the norm. I'm sure a few high-enders like Playboy and such will come out with solid HDTV releases, but most of the industry don't want to. It screws up both the "cheap equipment" and "cheap actors" bit, the price of the DVD platter isn't the real issue.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The capacity of HD-DVD is not enough to hold movies and extras at 1080i.
So it seems to me if studios favor HD-DVD its because they want to sell us all the movies on HD-DVD, and sell us the movies again on HD-DVD mkII which will have more capacity.
From my narrow perspective, Blu-Ray would make a good medium for backup now that 300-500G hard drives are increasingly common.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Remember the C3D company? They invented a CD which could hold a nearly infinite number of layers because each of them is completely transparent, but if the laser is focused on a layer and shining on it, the layer is self-illuminating.h ronicle/archive/1999/11/29/BU19966.DTL
C3D presented this technology back in 1999 or even earlier, they even had working prototypes.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
These discs could hold as much as 140 gigabytes of data!
Compared to this, blu-ray looks kind of outdated.
But the company went banckrupt (I think), and now in 2005 we are presented a technology IMHO less advanced than C3D.
Lest face it, this time next year there will be a few thousand HD-DVD players sold to early adopters and a few million Blu-Ray players sold disguised as PS3's.
There will also be hell of a lot more people who won't what to upgrade from the DVD players they brought last year.
Over here in the UK we might have actually have PS3's by then and possible be in four figures for the number of people watching HDTV.
Apparently the market LOVES bad spelling. If you check out http://www.blu-ray.com/ you can actually find a spot where they spell "Blu-ray" as "Blue-ray" (check under the headline titled "Jan 18, 2005 - Sonopress Joins Blu-ray Disc Association"). I think they're undecided on the name...
Using deafult settings is the problem (at least here in EU, Poland, specifically). They're all...well, colours are waaays too saturated (it just doesn't look like real world dammit), contrast also way too high. But people buy this trick ("oh, look how nice, intensive colours, this TV must be good), and the funniest thing is when they see my TV on (rare sight...but still), and say something like "is it broken?" or "why do the colours aren't as nice as on mine" when THE COLOURS ARE SET TO MIMICK REALITY.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Though it doesn't change your point, Joe Sixpack buys a $5000 TV and $200 home theater in a box from my experience. I sell TVs at a major electronics/appliance retailer and nobody realizes that theres better audio out there than the garbage we sell. We do have some awesome TVs though, and people do buy them.
Reports show that majority of the customers prefer macdonalds. The same reports show that majority of the customers prefer not to be fat as well as not to excersize. Another reports show that clock is still blinking on most VCRs. The bottom line is that majority of the customers ether does not know what they want or want something for completely the wrong reason.
The market for those that have equipment that can show the resolution difference of HD content is pretty small. DVD offered something for everyone, HD offers something for a tiny percentage.
Infintesimally small percentage when you factor in the ultra DRM on these machines that require DRM connections everywhere in the chain or drops back to standard DVD resolution by downsampling.
I would be a prime candidate for next generation disk, I have been completely turned off by DRM overkill. So while at first I was drooling over the possability of HD LOTR goodness, I have completely given up caring as I won't be buying in for the DRM from hell setup.
And you can bet the vast majority of people like my Mom and Grandmother who only have DVD because I bought them one will NEVER swith.
I think it is toast just like the DRMd Super Audio CDs...
It's more expensive, more restrictive, more complicated, but hey you get better quality if you have all the right gear and the planets align.
Folks,
.dmg file of it. The only player I've tested this with is DVD Studio Pro 4.6 on a Mac G5, but I think there is a beta Moonlight player that could do this as well. I'd be curious to hear about anyone not on a G5 Mac that can get this to play.
m g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90
I also posted this as a reply, but I figured some non-nested browsers might want to see this as well.
If I could break with Slashdot tradition and post an actual example instead of half-understood innuendo, here's an actual HD-DVD for your edification
I made a HD-DVD a few weeks ago with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. Here's a torrent to a
It's nothing fancy, but I say a big advantage of HD DVD is that I CAN ALREADY MAKE THEM!
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d
My video compression blog
You lost me here. Why you're trying to persuade people on the next-gen uber HDTV movie format when your attitude is that lossless is a waste and that VC1/H.264 at low bitrates is "quality" is beyond me. What's your interest here? If you don't give a shit how it looks or sounds, you can stick with SD DVD and leave the rest of us to BluRay/HD-DVD.
As far as LOTR:ROTK:EE is concerned, that's a 251 minute long movie according to iMDB. That works out to 15,060 seconds. Assuming HD-DVD ships this fall with 2 layer discs being available (I don't think 3+ layer HD-DVD or BD is realistic just yet for mass production), that's 30 GB of space. 30 GB = 30,720 MB = 245,760 Mb. That works out to 16.32 Mbit/sec of bandwidth for the full movie. With VC1/H.264 at 1920x1080 you're going to want 15-19 Mbit/sec for maximal video quality.
I trust you see the problem with HD-DVD. No room left for audio let alone extras. With BluRay's 50 GB capacity we get the following numbers: 50 GB = 51,200 MB = 409,600 Mb. That works out to 27.2 Mbit/sec of bandwidth for the full movie. More than enough for the whole 251 minute movie plus some high quality multichannel audio tracks (maybe even lossless). Extras are still iffy, but you're still a lot better off than you were with HD-DVD.
In so far as HD-DVD being cheaper, that's a red herring. Economies of scale will make any cost associated with BluRay disappear in short order. AFAIK the materials involved cost the same for both formats, the only cost for BluRay that's beyond HD-DVD is the cost of the duplicator hardware itself (HD-DVD can be retrofitted onto existing DVD hardware IIRC). But when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands or tens of millions of units per movie, the cost of those duplicators quickly disappear.
I think HD-DVD is going to lose out here, I just hope this format war ends quickly so people can be saved the pain of having to rebuy movies in whichever format succeeds...
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.