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Blu-Ray The Flavour of The Moment

Posted by Zonk on from the like-sweet-candy dept.

News from all over seems to indicate that Blu-Ray has been accepted by entertainment media groups. wingman358 writes "The technology research group 'Forrester Research' has declared the Sony-led next generation Blu-Ray format the winner over HD-DVD, led by Microsoft. Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler says, 'After a long and tedious run up to launch, it is now clear to Forrester that the Sony-led Blu-Ray format will win.'" Meanwhile, the format continues to improve. mimio writes "Hewlett-Packard Co. on Wednesday raised the stakes in a battle between high-definition DVD formats by urging a group led by Sony Corp. to include features important to PC makers and users." Finally, Tibor the Hun writes "Apparently Warner has switched from backing HD-DVD to Blu-Ray. What impact might this have on Microsoft's decision to use HD-DVD on the Xbox 360?"

4 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. A God Has Fallen? by geomon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What impact might this have on Microsoft's decision to use HD-DVD on the Xbox 360?"

    I'd say that the impact will be to let people in the industry know that you can buck Microsoft and not suffer immediate penalty. If everyone else is in the Bluy-Ray camp and Microsoft isn't, then Microsoft will not look like it is leading the industry - an image they have been cultivating for nearly two decades.

    This is an image impact for Microsoft. They will have to make HD-DVD work as a standard or accept defeat and use Blue-Ray in their next iteration of XBox.

    --
    "Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
  2. I think this will HELP Microsoft by TheGuano · · Score: 4, Interesting
    vis a vis Xbox360. After all, one of their #1 concerns with the console is to prevent piracy. If HD-DVD flopped generally, then there would naturally be fewer people with players, and specifically burners. I'm sure that would put some kind of dent in "casual" piracy of HD-DVD content.

    And it's not like it really matters that much for a console - MS probably wouldn't mind if it was absolutely proprietary (like DC's GD-ROM was *supposed* to be), as long as they can play standard DVDs. Maybe when production costs go down, they'd even support both Blue-ray and HD-DVD.

  3. Sounds like Dreamcast by randomErr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What impact might this have on Microsoft's decision to use HD-DVD on the Xbox 360?

    Anyone played a Dreamcast? It was Sega's last from gaming system. It has awesome graphics, sound, and a native modem with an optional network card. One of its main failing was the media. Sega bet on a GD-Drive. GD drives was a modified CD-ROM that could fit nearly a gig of data on a special CD format. GD-Drives had the advantage of being cheap to make (only a few pennies more then coventional CD-ROM's) and similar storage compacity to DVD's system.

    So why do I bring this all up? The Dreamcast didn't fail because of the hardware. It failed because it didn't have a good library of title at the US launch. It Japan the Dreamcast sold great for years; and I believe a few RPG's and budget games are still being made for the Dreamcast.

    If Microsoft truley wants to thier HD format they have to have critical mas to do it with. Microsoft needs at least 4 solid games the day of the launch and 20 games by Christmas*. Without that volume Xbox 360 will almost certainly fail.

    * The reason for the footnote is that Sega Saturn had 4 poorly designed games at launch and 10 titles before Christmas and failed.
    Sony Playstation has 4 good (for the time) games at launch and within 30 days had 20 games. About 5 to 10 games kept coming a week for a very long time after the original thirty day period.

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
  4. Blu-ray requires a JVM, Microsoft don't do JVMs by mroshea · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To support Blu-ray, Microsoft's player would have to use Java to render the Blu-ray disks user interface - interactive menus etc (current DVDs use pre-rendered MPEG menu elements with very simple control interfaces). Does Microsoft want to depend on a Java Virtual Machine for anything? Like hell they do.

    HP's current "appeal" to the Blu-Ray Assoc also includes a request for Blu-Ray to support iHD, the XML based menuing definition language used by HD-DVD. The Blu-Ray Assoc (including HP!) did a side-by-side eval of iHD vs BDJ (Blue Ray Java) and they heavily favoured the BDJ solution. If iHD was adapted as an alternative (or replacement for BDJ) MS wouldn't have to use/license Java. Then they might consider supporting Blue-Ray (even though it would still hurt like hell). HP are doing Microsoft's bidding on this one, no doubt.

    I imagine Sun have been on the blower to Sony & company on more than one occasion since HPs 'appeal' yesterday.

    (blogged about this earlier -
    http://www.xlml.com/aehso/2005/10/21/blu-ray-requi res-a-jvm-microsoft-dont-do-jvms/)