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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.
With the relatively low level of HDTVs out there, neither new format is going to catch on. People will just continue buying DVDs.
I like competition. Maybe one of them won't be DRM'd up the ass.
Wishfull thinking, I know...
I bet that within two years we'll have drives that can read/write both HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
Great now we get a second formar war on out hands. The first with DVD +/- R was bad enough, but it only appllied to people with burners. Having to entirely seperate formats to the next generations of DVD's is going to piss people off to no end.
Who cares, the ps3 all but makes it a moot argument. The adoption rate of that particular player makes HD-DVD a foregone conclusion.
I often feel that it's better to have a mediocre standard than no standard at all. No one is going to buy until one format is dominant...
If they had just done some kind of binding arbitration or even picked one format randomly, they'd be rolling in dough. Consumers would be "forced" to upgrade (yet again) to a new standard format.
Instead, no one upgrades, and the companies miss out on potential profit.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I pick..... neither!
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
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.
This issue is strinkingly similar to the Hi-Def Audio industry where you have two competing standards which are incompatible with each other.
Everyone loses, esp. the consumers who backed either format. For everyone else, CD's are still good enough and market penetration for either of the new audio standards is VERY low. Same exact thing will happen here, DVD will be good enough for just about everyone, and only the Videophiles will be jumping on HD-DVD or Blu-ray.
How sad when companies fail to understand history will repeat itself with the HD video market.
Sales of his Star Wars saga will be put on sale in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats. Han will shoot first on one format while Greedo is quicker to the draw on the other. No word on which format will have it right, i.e. Han shooting first.
Right, because a unified standard upon which every company could stand, and one which would allow a customer to buy a DVD and have it play in whatever DVD player they had, is a bad thing.
Consumers can simply keep buying DVDs and ignore the new formats, thus sending a no-confidence vote. Now we have some time, because most people can't watch HD-DVDs or Blu-Ray discs because of their analog TVs. The picture looks exactly like that of a DVD (or maybe a Superbit DVD). So most people have no reason to buy one of those formats yet. This is the time to get the message out there about how crippled they are (remind people about the no fast-forwarding on DVDs as an example, no one likes that and EVERYONE has seen it).
One the formats start to get real sales from normal people, the battle will be lost (except through the courts, which will probably be a no starter thanks to congress's "Lifetime + 30,000 years" copyright policy).
For all the geek interest we have in the new formats, as a DVD replacement they are as significant as DVDs were in 1997/8: none.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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?
Kang: "Go ahead, throw your vote away! Muahahahahah!"
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
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.
As the parent poster so eloquently points out, format wars are inherently bad. One technology analyst on NPR said he estimates that format wars can reduce a potential market by "as much as 90%" - that is, the two formats combined sell up to 9 times fewer DVDs than if you only had one format.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
If there were a unified format, there would be nothing to stop the new DRM from taking a foothold. Remember the "self-destruct" feature to be implemented on all new players ? Strangely enough, this format war is good for consumers.
With sales of HDTV's skyrocketing ( > 25% of all new TVs) the opportunity for HD fromat DVD is knocking.
But what did we get? A mess. Many consumers will take one look at this and throw up their hands. The smarter consumers will even take it a step further and back off from buying regular format DVDs because they would rather wait for that new title in the higher definition format.
This is a total foot-shot.
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 hate wars like this blu-ray vs HD-DVD, I hate them a LOT.
While both have their pros and cons, ultimately we the consumer are going to be the ones shafted until they get their shit together. (I don't even need to go into why we'll be shafted if there's 2 formats, readers of this comment will know already)
Problem is, even when they DO get their shit together and decide on a single format, we will STILL get shafted!
If it's not DRM for the files on the disc itself, it's these new rumours of no component HD support, since it can't effectively enforce DRM.
In other words go and replace your "old" HDTV which is missing those plugs. (sorry guys buy my Toshiba 36" is 6 months old and I'm not upgrading)
While you're at it, go replace that component receiver too, it doesn't have HDMI or DVI inputs....
The manufactuers also seem to be thinking the uptake on blu-ray and HD-DVD is going to be quick, they are very very wrong.
DVD took off well because it did SO MANY things better than VHS - on a huge huge level.
The disc is (theoretically) stronger.
You can fast fwd through 60 minutes instantly - no need to re-wind.
They put cute little menu's and extra's on the disc.
You can drop a second audio or third or fourth audio channel - giving you commentary or language options (easier for manufacturers convienience then too)
Quality improvements in audio and video.
Overall DVD, besides the convienience of easy recording is better than VHS in many many ways.
The new HD formats however, they are not so simple, these suckers might have a better picture but the disc size / shape convienience is the same, the fast forward / rewind is the same, menu's will likely be similar or the same.
Ultimately all they will do is either offer MORE content or better quality, which isn't a bad thing but it's no gargantuan leap like DVD to VHS
So I've thought a lot about this and I've come to the decision of being a bit of a neathanderal and sticking with the "old" format so I'm sticking with DVD.
DVD still offers a picture we've all been completely happy with for the past what 5? 8 years and a high definition, fine pitch set isn't going to do bad things for your DVD's.
DVD still offers DDigital audio and DTS audio, both of which are quite damn good with decent quality speakers and HT gear.
DVD is easily backed up, my neighbours have kids and trust me those disney dvd's DO get used a heck of a lot, sure you should teach your kids to look after stuff but saving your ass 20 or 30$ on a disney DVD from scratches = smart (and fair use as far as I'm concerned)
DVD is fairly easy to author your own discs.
DVD is small enough to backup a couple of movies on the laptop for that holiday, so you don't lose the discs AND save battery power only having the HDD working while playing them
Infact the list goes on and on, but ultimately - I'm pretty darn happy with the quality of my movies on my TV from DVD's - and the majority of the ones I watch are DVD-shrunk'd so to speak, let alone originals making use of the full 8.5gb for better quality.
Finally, although it might be just a placebo effect but running my DVD's through my modified Xbox in 1280x720 it kind of upsamples them and makes the old content look even better.
Why on earth would I buy in to this DRM rubbish - I look forward to it sinking, I hope Sony, MS, Toshiba and the whole damn industry end up learning an expensive lesson.
considering that most of these companies have come out strongly in favor of DRM and a bunch of useless crap like Java based menus... yes. this *is* good, precisely because it will increase the chances that *both* formats will fail -- particularly now that a significant number of customers have converted their collections over to DVD, and these discs would offer practically nothing except to a small percentage of high-resolution big-screen types.
Read this fine article. It has six sections, I enjoyed it a lot. Well written, unbiased, and to the point.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Better to have two standards technically uncompromised by a need to play with the other side and let the market decide which they want, than one designed by committee. No one gets hurt except the early adopters, and they have far too much money anyway.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
"Which candidate will we choose? The one with restrictive DRM or the other one with restrictive DRM?"
What do you expect from a Digital Restrictions Management system?
"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.
We also all know that BluRay will win.
You may be right that BluRay will win. I certainly can't predict the future. However, history seems to have taught us one thing:
When it comes to format wars, always bet against Sony.
This just means I need to wait a bit to decide which format I will use to backup my torren^H^H^H^Hbuy my movies on.
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\\ slashies are fun on Fark, doing them here
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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...
that's ok, the pr0n industry will pick the winner anyway.
Hopefully it could be more like the DVD+R / DVD-R wars. Now both are implemented into everything.
Now accepting PayPal donations!
"Screw early adopters, and late adopters will not come."
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
whichever one gets the support of the Porn industry.
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
"Makes one almost wish for the days when regular CD-roms could hold several times the magnitude than the hard drives of the computers they resided in. Or maybe wish to have that ratio back:)"
Trade me your very large hard drive for my 2.5 GB drive, backup on DVD, and there you have it.
(I have to warn you that my drive is 5.25" quarter-height.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.