Slashdot Mirror
Sony and Toshiba Give Up On Unified DVD Format
HoTiCE_ is one of several to let us know, Reuters is reporting Sony and Toshiba have apparently given up efforts to develop a unified format for next-generation DVDs. The two companies had opened up negotiations but they fell through due to time constraints on new products from both groups.
So I'm hoping someone will have the bright idea of making a "dual format" player, much like the DVD-R/DVD+R burners. Of course, we never had a dual format VCR (beta/vhs)...but then, at least the Blu-ray and HD DVD's will be the same physical size.
I'm an so called early adopter, had dvd player before they became common, had hdtv before the stations even started broadcasting. There's no way, i'm throwing out a $3000 tv to be able to watch hi def video disks. Thats absurb. Right now I can watch all my hdtv movies either on HD HBO or HD OnDemand all going threw component outs on my cable reciever. Thats good enough for me. I higly doubt my cable company is going to require HDMI or HDCP DVI anytime soon.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
And what are you going to display them on?
You'll have one dual-format HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player. It'll have two outputs. One will pipe HDMI video to your Toshiba HDTV. The other will pipe HDMI video to your Sony HDTV.
Why the second HDTV? Well, how else did you think you were going to watch any movies made by Sony Pictures? :)
And why does Sony Pictures have the right to make sure that Sony's movies are only released on Sony-formatted DVDs that will decode correctly only on Sony HDMI screens? Well, they asked for the Betamax precedent to be overtu~`~~~
Petard-hoisting error -- industry dumped
And I predict that, much like all technology nowadays, the market leader will be the one that is not technologically superior (*cough* Mac v. Windows, Betamax v. VHS, etc. *cough*) but the one that one's neighbor has.
When these mega-corps decide to release multiple formats, we as consumers must unite to inform them that they have erred, and that they must go back, throw out all their in-compatible CRAP, and come up with a SINGLE unified format, period.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am tired of the mess these companies have made of the entire media industry.
DLT, SDLT, LTO, SLTO, 3480, 3490, 3590, QIC (and it's miriad of formats), VHS, VHS-C, 4mm, 8mm, DVC, CD-R, CD+R, CD-RW, CD+RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, dual layer, single layer, half inch, on and on, ad nauseum.
Let's see them come up with a single multi-purpose format, sans DRM and then get it into production.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
For a couple of years at least.
Very few consumers are clamoring for it - there's low demand. Early adopters are already gonna be shafted because both new formats will require HDMI - and the HD sets sold before this summer didn't have that - and A/V receivers still don't have that. (yes except for 3 $3K and up models I'm aware of)
HDCP and it's variants (and competitors) still aren't final, there's no guarantee anything HD purchased this year will interoperate, or play media from next year.
The great American consumer is going to have major issues with their very expensive new toys not working - even if us geeks are OK with a couple of firmware upgrades on our consumer electronics per year, there's gonna be a lot of helpdesk calls...
I even know a well-off kid with HDTV and all of the latest computer "toys" who still buys VHS movies for some stupid reason. Besides price I see no difference.
Then wouldn't the stupid reason be the price? I still buy VHS because the movies are always cheaper, and with a good VCR there is little difference in quality.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Have no fear, bro, technology is here
What I still can't understand is why they will expect somebody to buy the Hi-Def version instead living with the DVD version of any movie that hasn't been made in the last couple of years. Up until that point, no movies were even made with a resolution higher than DVD. So unless there is someway to magically make pixels appear, how will the picture be any better than already released DVDs?
Don't you hate pants?
While it is a tad more complex than this, I hope another option is that players will read both standards like DVD writers do now. I mean, the difference between plus and dash weren't that huge, with benefits tilting slightly toward plus. This time, I think the benefits tilt a bit more strongly toward Blu-Ray, though as a recording format, it seems the HD-DVD group is fine with hobbling capacity to save a few cents per disc in replication costs.
Anyway, on the similarity, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both use the same laser wavelength, and I think with a little jiggering, the same optical heads could read both. The both more or less use the same set of audio standards, both support three different video codecs, and both use the same basic encryption standards. I'm not sure about HD-DVD, but Blu-Ray supports overlaying video streams onto the main video, which could be nifty.
we DO have a 3rd choice: DVD
Not only that, we have a 3-1/2th choice: DVD+divx/mp4
Next gen mp4 players will certainly be able to render in pseudo hi-def, which will be "good enough" for the large percentage of people who don't have HD sets compatible with the latest DRM. And since they'll be mass-produced in China for a fraction of the cost of Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, there's a chance those latter two formats will go the way of SACD/DVDA.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
"if your working television sits on top of your non-working television you might be a redneck" -Jeff Foxworthy
Now picture this: "if your working HD-DVD player sits on top of your other working, but less used, Blue-Ray DVD player which sits on top of your other working standard DVD player you might be a pissed off consumer."
Having too many formats is just going to result in unhappy consumers and I'm going to get calls from the people who know I make things work because they bought a HD-DVD player but a movie on a BlueRay disk and BestBuy won't take it back because it's opened and since it's a DVD it can only be exchanged to exactly the same thing, not a different disk format.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Out of all the coverage that has gone on about the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle something that has been seriously overlooked is the what this fight is really about. Toshiba and Time Warner makes an incredible amount of money from DVD 6C and other Toshiba/Sanyo/Warner ownened patents, they get a kick back from every DVD and DVD player that hits the market becaue they are the main beneficiaries of the 6C patents. And they are trying to keep these patents in place for the next-generation of high-definition media.
Blu-ray is an effort to get around the 6C patents and Toshiba owned patents. When Sony and co. approached Toshiba/NEC/Warner in forming a unified format, one of the conditions that was put in place was to keep the 6C patents in place, and merely keep the software aspect of Blu-ray. This of course is why an agreement cannot be reached. Neither side has any reverance for the consumer.
Better yet, who needs discs? Just as CDs don't need a succesor (DVD Audio? feh!), DVD's successor may be internet distributed content. This is where the xbox 360 or other set-top boxes come in handy, they can stream content from your computer to your TV. The 360 can even do HD content! Droool...
On the other hand, as a self-professed media junkie, I could care less at this point whether or not there's a next-generation-DVD war. A DVD played on a progressive-scan DVD player with component-out is pretty damn good, and I can record all I want on my VCR. I don't need to buy next generation DVD hardware to watch a movie at home.
There were two significant reasons to jump from VHS to DVD - quality and convenience. The quality difference between a $50 VCR and a $50 DVD player is astounding. I also don't have to rewind my DVDs, and they won't wear out after I play one fifteen times. Several Baby Einstein DVDs can attest to this fact, having been played hundreds of times each.
And I *like* buying the next and greatest shiny thing. Folks like my parents, who still watch VHS tapes along with their formidable DVD collection, see no reason why they should upgrade to a better format. If it so happens that they stop making DVDs and switch over to HD or Blu, well, there's a reason for you, but otherwise, they simply don't care, and I suspect that there's more folks out there like my parents than there are like me.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
It's mainly an inventory problem. Let's say you predict 50% of the public will buy Blu-Ray, and 50% will buy HD-DVD, then you stamp 50 million of each. Now let's say the market goes Blu-Ray, and the split is more like 90/10. Great, now you're short 40 million Blu-Ray discs and just lost those sales until you can stamp more, while you've got 40 million HD-DVD discs nobody wants to buy. Even with the tiny cost to stamp each disc, the cost isn't trivial. And while the videos will be encoded using the same codecs for each format (thank goodness, or it could be even worse), the on disc structures aren't identical, require separate authoring processes.
Hopefully it could be more like the DVD+R / DVD-R wars. Now both are implemented into everything.
Now accepting PayPal donations!
You know what irks me?
The fact that even $50 DVD players have digital 5.1 audio out, yet can't play a bloody DVD Audio disc. It's only a matter of piping the bloody digital data from the disc to the outputs.
Why? I bet it is licensing. DVD Audio would have been the outright winner by now if it had been included in standard DVD players. But no, I'm sure the audio market got all scared and said 'No' to that, so they could continue to sell their expensive dedicated players. Sadly, because of the format war, like someone else pointed out above, 90% of the market disappeared, so they made less money in the end. I also expect there is some DRM reason, if the audio was available in DRM-removed format on a 5.1 digital output, then it can easily be stolen!
Maybe Sony or Toshiba should look at that and think how bad this is for their business. But no, they won't, it doesn't apply to them, they're too big for that, they're too proud to admit it. I'm hoping that because it happened once already, it will happen again. DVDs are good enough, except for the minor percentage of people that have 60"+ HDTVs that will notice the encoding blockiness.
In the meantime, my local superstore is selling new DVDs from 97p each. Sure, the 97p DVDs aren't blockbuster films, but you can't go wrong with over an hour of classic cartoons and so on for that price.
I bet that within two years we'll have drives that can read/write both HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
I say earlier than that! Given how fast optical drive technology has advanced in the last few years a combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray reader drive that uses either ATA-100 or Serial ATA interfaces could be out as early as late 2006, with recorder drives coming out soon afterwards.
Why so early? Mostly because both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs can use the same drive tray system used by CD recorders and DVD+R/DVD-R recorders. It's only a matter of incorporating the right electronics and proper laser unit for the whole scheme to work.
I consider five or fewer discs to be practical for some uses, like twice yearly backups to be moved offsite. While current blu-ray discs are I think about 50GB which is not quite what I would like (but far from 25 discs for 400GB) Sony is developing a 200GB storage model (8 layers) which I imagine we'll see as drive sizes hit about 800GB to a Terrabyte, good enough for me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley