Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft, Intel back HD DVD over Blu-ray
raitchison writes "Reuters is reporting that after months of sitting on the fence in the battle over what will replace the venerable DVD that Microsoft and Intel have thrown their weight behind Toshiba's
HD DVD over the Sony's Blu-ray.
Better compatibility with existing DVD technology as well as lower cost were cited as reasons to back HD DVD.
While this is undoubtedly a significant blow for Sony in their efforts to establish Blu-ray as the next standard it's not likely to be the end of Blu-ray."
I was Mr. Sony in the 90s (mini dis , vaio, etc) because I loved their technology. Now, slashdot:Microsoft::dada21:Sony.
Sony has to learn that single party closed standards won't exist for long. We won't see an open standard, but at least a consortium of different markets offers multiple profit-oriented groups some debate.
When members of a consortium debate one another, the debate is "how can I make more money?" But to make money they need not just a cost benefit, but a happy customer in the long run.
Sony alone only sees one customer base, never a good sample of need. Toshiba has two other hard hitters now, offering a larger and more varied customer base to figure out.
One scary thing: software + processor + media format giants can make the worst DRM imaginable. What if Sony pandered to Linux or OS X or just the PS3 market? Plus Sony has clout with the media distributers, whereas MS and Intel bite them in the ass because most "pirates" use MS and Intel products.
From TFA: They said the HD DVD format would make it easier for consumers to copy high-definition movies to computer hard drives. Suuuure.
TFA mentions commitments from media houses, but until I see it, I'm not believing it. If we'll have two formats, my parents will be the deciding factor, not me.
Would HD DVD be a miss just like SACD and DVDA for audio? I don't think many people will find it appealing enough to invest in this technology for some more pixels on their screens. For data storage it is still interesting ofcourse.
jouwnieuws!
The lowest cost and most compatible format would be to stay with existing DVD technology!
If you are creating a new technology that will require new hardware and new investments in manufacturing, why make it an incremental step? There are so many players in this format war I can't keep up, but I know that Blu-Ray is supposed to be higher capacity and will prevent HD movies from requiring a media change (no one liked that with Laser Disc flipping half way through a movie).
I say if the industry is going to expect the public to pay for a format change, we get a complete change, not some semi-compatible almost change that will require yet another change for additional capacity far sooner than the alternative that exists today.
Plus, I read that HD DVD is hitting timing issues that mean it won't be out until Blu-Ray anyway.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
XBox 360 ships with a standard-def DVD drive. Is this Microsoft's idea of "support"?
This is not an analogue to VHS vs Betamax: the discs were different size and shape, and thus a dual-format system was not possible.
Not so for next-gen DVDs. In a year, all drives will be dual-format. Wait until then. Problem solved.
Either that or the PS3 sales will have made the issue moot.
Which will just make the PS3 all that much better
The XBox360 has a normal DVD player in it (not an HD-DVD, or a Blu-ray).
What Microsoft may be doing is some pre-launch neutralization of Sony's Blu-ray advantage with their PS3 - e.g. if no one is going to go to Blu-ray, then who cares if the PS3 has it? It'll become an irrelevant difference, and it will help overcome that potential hang-up users (and reviewers) might have when comparing the two consoles. I wish this wasn't the case, but I can entirely see Microsoft making this "choice" based upon such a short term gain.
Sony will support Blue Ray by shipping it with their PS3. Meanwhile, Microsoft is supporting HD DVD by _not_ including it in their XBox 360. Hmmm... I wonder what kind of support Intel is going to offer for HD DVD... Pentium 5: now with HD DVD support! Nevermind, I still put my money on Blue Ray.
Dual format is a possibility. Given that they'll use similar technology for tracking the disc, similar compression algorithms, and even the same frequency laser, and the basic mechanics are going to be the same - most likely including the physical disc dimensions, it shoudn't be too hard to develop a drive that works with both formats.
Bah! The whole "lesson" you should have learned behind VHS vs. Betamax wasn't about waiting for anything. It's that the better technologies don't always win out. Betamax had better audio and video fidelity, and by almost all accounts was the better technology. Why then do you have all your favorite episodes of the Simpsons taped on a VHS?
It's because your parents were horny. Everyone who wanted to put a movie on a Betamax tape had to go through Sony, and Sony didn't want their big corporate name associated with porn. Sony chose not to allow porn, a multibillion dollar industry even before the internet, on the Betamax. People who couldn't resist the allure of VHS porn made the choice and lo and behold VHS came out on top... please forgive the pun.
Concrete proof that Sex Sells. The first format to sign deals with Vivid, not Intel or Microsoft is going to determine who will win in the end.
DVD Dual-layer media is still expensive and rare after ~2 years. How common and cheap will next generation media be? The cheaper, more available media could be the deciding factor.
A lot of articles quote 'cost-saving' as a factor in HD-DVD over Blu-ray. Where exactly are those cost savings? In media or player production? Factory retooling? R&D?
In our PCs, yes, but the consumer DVD recorder market is still very much splintered. Consumers are either confused about the difference or are concerned enough not to buy a set top DVDR yet.
Ironically, Sony are one of the few big names whose set top DVD recorders ARE dual format.
Stuart
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
SONY lost the betamax vs VHS wars because the pr0n industry went with VHS. I think they learnt their lesson. One of the biggest sellers in the UMX format for the PSP is, pr0n! So I am pretty sure that SONY is going after the pr0n industry pretty heavilly for Blu-Ray as well.
Betamax had better audio and video fidelity, and by almost all accounts was the better technology ... apart from the fact that Beta tapes only came in 1 hour lengths (for quite a long time) and the video quality difference was not huge (the audio quality was actually worse on Betamax). Not to mention that Beta tapes were always much shorter than VHS tapes, and tape rewinding was much slower and put more wear on the machine. I really doubt that porn had much to do with it -- you don't need anyone's permission to record porn on a videotape.
Just for comparision, here is a list of SOME of the main members HD DVD promotion group:
Canon Co.
Fuji Photo Film Co.
Hitachi Maxell Ltd.
Imation Co.
Intel Co.
InterVideo Inc.
Kenwood Co.
Konica Minolta Opto Inc.
Microsoft Co.
Mitsubishi / Verbatim
NEC Electronics Co.
ONKYO Co.
Paramount Home Entertainment
Ricoh Co.
Ritek Co.
Teac Co.
Toshiba Co.
Universal Pictures
Warner Home Video Inc.
(yeah, some companies are in both sides and yeah, many of the DVD media producers are in this list).
:P
It looks like Mitsubishi and Hitachi swing both ways.
But the big difference between the two lists is that the BluRay consortum is full of companies which can actually push a standard throught he marketplace. The second list is full of followers, not innovators.
FanFictionRecs.net
All of this is a moot point. Consumers will not be buying the next-gen DVD discs for the following simple reasons:
1) DVD has not even been in the market for ten years. It came out basically in 1997. People are *just now* buying more DVDs than VHS. I think people know the industry is just trying to put out a new format to get them to buy the same movies all over again.
2) The HD-DVD does not offer enough benefits over DVD. The transition from VHS to DVD was easy (better picture clarity, form factor, don't have to rewind), but the advantage of HD-DVD over DVD is just better resolution. Most idiots look at a DVD playing on a plasma and say "wow, HD!".
--- witty signature
On cost, I would note that media costs are independant of sale prices. That's why CD's are still so expensive.
On manufacturing costs, that is a good point but with millions of PS3 players being around and sold at cut-rate prices that negates the advanatge there.
On speed, true HD-DVD will be in first but in smaller quantities - and since the PC market will really be backing both players (no reason why a consumer can't buy either one and have it work with a computer) I think a lot of people would opt for the formayt with substantially more storage - Blu-Ray. I see no reason to get an HD-DVD burner when Blu-Ray burners are so close. I'd rather have higher storage capacity even if the media costs a bit more. In fact even if the media were twice as much to store 1.4x the amount of data I'd still prefer it as I really want to lower the number of discs required for backup of large HD's.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not to mention memory stick, SD card, XD card, Compact Flash ... um ... mini disk ... and being burned haivng bought an HDTV early that doesn't have that encrypted bullshit connector.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
but the reason WHY the pr0n industry went with VHS is because Sony made it proprietary. Noone other than Sony (or a $$$licensee$$$) could make a Betamax player.
Betamax on Wiki
How about dropping the licensing costs. If HD-DVD gets picked, then sony not only fail to get any money, but also they will have to pay their competition for using their standard.
Count the money as lost, and spike their competitors' wheel while helping consumers. Drop the licensing costs.
Blu-Ray DVD players will ship with a Java VM. The interactive menus on Blu-Ray titles will be written in Java. I don't think MS is going to back a standard that puts a Java VM in everyone's living room.
It may come down to how committed the studios are to supporting a particular format. If Disney, Sony Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox only release their movies in Blu-ray (and standard DVD of course), then HD-DVD is going to have a hard time. Sony Pictures is particularly interesting since they have a vested interest in which format wins.
Studios like Warner Brothers don't really have a vested interest. What do they care which format wins, they will probably produce movies in both formats if they have to. Microsoft is clearly only taking a position on HD-DVD to neutralize the PS3 advantage.
If the PS3 sells well, it's going to be really hard for the studios to ignore Bluray, since 90% of PS3 buyers are going to be average-joe's that aren't likely to go to the trouble of upgrading to either format if it didn't come for free with the PS3. Let's face it, for the first couple years, only super-geeks are going to buy HD-DVD players (yeah, the same crown that bought laser-disc players at one time...a small minority). But, Blu-Ray is going to be in millions of average-joe homes on top of geek-homes that will buy stand-alone players.
Okay, so let's compare consortiums (consortii?). Among those that don't support both (smart move for them, by the way): HD-DVD has big electronics companies, mostly. Powerful, debatably, but transparent to the average consumer. Blu-Ray has companies who may not really be as good, but look at their marketing departments: Apple, Dell, Samsung, Sony, HP, Fox, Disney. Dude, you're gettin' a Blu-Ray(R). But hey, that's just my prediction. Life is random(R), right?
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
I don't suppose you've taken apart a cheap DVD player, have you? Inside, you will find a commodity IDE DVD drive, a commodity MPEG-2 chip, a commodity AC-3 and maybe DTS chip, an RF modulator (usually), a few analogue circuits, a blob of flash, and a few other miscellaneous things. Since HD-DVD use the same video and audio CODECs, it seems highly unlikely that there won't be a Taiwanese manufacturer using generic dual-format drives to produce their player, and once one does it everyone else will have to as well in order to compete.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's ultimately the Chinese, not the Japanese who decide at what price point a product will enter the markets. It's also remarkably hard to find a Chinese firm who will settle a deal with the Japanese more readily than they will with Americans, or anyone else for that fact.
Also the vast majority of the companies you listed are Japanese electronics firms who charge high prices for basic components, and who are all having substantial trouble competing with industrialized China. Individually each of them makes up negligable shares of their respective markets. Who gives a flying fuck what Dell thinks anyway? They will simply ship whatever is used, and have no firm stake in either camp winning, nor anything to loose from it. They just wait for product to be available and start shipping it, it doesn't even seem like an argument they have a right to be involved in.
If the best the Blu-Ray consortium and bring is a computer vendor like Apple who have sub 5% of the PC market (Which itself is only a fraction of the overall dvd player market), and a handful of struggling Japanese electronics dinosaurs, they won't be going far. Microsoft will ship at least five or six million HD-DVD equipped Xbox 360 units before the first Blu-Ray units even hit the market, if they ever make it to market.
At the end of the day, the deciding factor is when it's ready. You could build a HD-DVD player from the specs this very day, while Blu-Ray is still up there with Cell in terms of of mythical market penetration.
-SteveG
Most peeps here look at the single companies involved and miss the main two issues in the Entertainment technology world:
1. Who can license and who can manufacture the technology
2. IT vs. CE philosophy
The traditional CE manufacturers are all in the BD camp and they fear two enemies:
Chinese manufacturers that can manufacture and sell for far less and who have destroyed the traditional CE business (think CD players for $500 in the 90s and $49 DVD players in the 00s).
They also fear Intel and Microsoft for bringing media technology to the PC. Their vision is to have a harddisk recorder with a BD slot and a 100Gig disk sell for $1000. In the PC world all this is manageable for $300.
So the CE camp prefer closed style platforms, signed Java code on encrypted engines, etc.... Something that should run on designated hardware, but not in software and protected, so the hardware cannot be done in low-cost countries such as China.
So... the morale of this is: Intel and MS will always follow what can be done in a CPU and where the rest of the hardware apart from a CPU and OS can be low-cost....
The CE camp wants higher hardware prices to protect their own manufacturing power (similar to any Western country)....
All the new drives that come out have a pretty slow read speed at first. CDs were 1x for years, DVD were 1x,2x, for a long time.
If the PS3 blu-ray is slow (1x or 2x), then it doesn't matter how much data it stores, it will provide irritating game play. I believe the Xbox 360's dvd drive can handle dual layer at 16x... its tiny compared to blu-ray, but could be much faster.
Does anyone know what the speed of the ps3 blu-ray drive will be? I think that could have an impact on people's impression of the technology, and potentially slow adoption.
Mythical? Unless Sony completely screws up they'll have 100+ million Blu-Ray units around the world in PS3s within 3.5 years of launch.
72.5% of all Japanese console owners surveyed said they would buy a PS3 compared to 5% who said they would buy an XBox 360... so unless the giant media conglomerates want to sell in seperate formats in the two largest media markets, they'll be selling in the most cross-compatable format across the Pacific, and that will undeniably be Blu-Ray.
FanFictionRecs.net