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Blu-Ray The Flavour of The Moment
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?"
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!"
The name is way cooler.
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.
Considering that the 360 uses a standard DVD drive out of the gate it would seem pretty obvious that if Blue-Ray gains traction and the disks and drives are in bulk production at a reasonable rate that Microsoft's "decision" will be about as long term as the decision to not include a next gen drive at all.
I guess it is *possible* that Microsoft has drank the coolaid to such an extent that they would prefer to hobble themselves than use a competitor's product (the Java requirement of Blue-Ray must be killing them). Even if so, it will simply mean they have a drive that is only really useful for gaming. I sometimes wonder if part (and only a small part to be sure) of the Game Cube's lackluster sales was the fact that is played "games only", removing the "but we can play CDs/DVDs on it" excuse. However, that is much less of an issue every day as DVD players are nearly available as toy surprises in cereal boxes.
Blue-Ray drives and disks have been available since the July in Japan as opposed to the HD-DVD which is still vaporware (just this month the first sample drives have shipped). I have to give Blue-Ray some credit for being available, some more for having a pretty important backers (Sony's commitment to it in the PS3 has a lot more credibility than "Xbox will have HD-DVD, maybe, someday"). The movie industry has made it clear they don't plan to *ignore* Blue-Ray (which was the earlier stance of some). HD-DVD looks forward to a more and more uphill battle if they can't pull more important backing than Microsoft out of their hat.
Sig under construction since 1998.
News from all over seems to indicate that Blue-Ray has been accepted by entertainment media groups.
Read: Pr0n industry.
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I suppose I'd be less hesitant if Forrester wasn't so often financed by the people they report on.
Warner has not made any statements that they are dropping HD-DVD, they will most likely release in both formats like Paramount plans.i ng_article.cfm?article_id=8150
http://www.homemediaretailing.com/news/html/break
I like the fact that the war is won even before either format is officially in use. Honestly, we're not going to truly know the winner until the PS3/XBox/HD-DVD/Blu-ray players hit the shelves. Unless 90% of all distributors declare going on way or the other (and who's to say they won't change with the tide if they can do so without too steep a manufacturing loss), we really aren't going to know the winning standard until they're in full use. It's the good ole Betamax/VHS battle. Personally, I hope Blu-ray wins...and I hope we get Bur-Ray writable drives. That would be so bad ass!
What impact might this have on Microsoft's decision to use HD-DVD on the Xbox 360?
/. article linked in the summary is erroneous, it was based on a Bill Gates quote that pre-dated it by three months, and all he said was that MS might put a next-gen optical drive in the Xbox 360 after the format war had been settled, if the demand was there.
Microsoft has NOT decided on anything with regards to HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray on Xbox 360. The
Microsoft has not said they are adopting HD-DVD for the 360, everyone is just speculating. They HAVE said they are considering the addition of support for a new DVD format for the 360 in the future, but again, that's not even confirmed. They are only considering it.
What's more, Gates has been quoted saying he thinks the whole format war is pointless anyway and that digital delivery will be whats really important (i.e. downloading movies you buy). In fact the XBox 360 will be able to play a movie that is streaming from your PC over your home network. This is also kind of why they support HD-DVD as opposed to Blu-ray, apparently the Blu-Ray copy protection prevents streaming video like this.
Thank you!
Someone who understands that the media's name is Blu-Ray, which is a (some may say) clever moniker because it uses "Blue Rays" when reading the disc.</rant>
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
..."to include features important to PC makers and users." I'd say the no1 feature of import is that the format isn't battling with some other similar but incompatible format. Stick to one format, guys, that's what will satisfy the consumer most. Do they REALLY want a rerun of VHS v Beta, Cassette v DCC, CD v Minidisc? These chaps are thick in the head.
XBox DOESN'T use HD-DVD, so no impact at all.
Blu-Ray, for all it's "industry support" is going to cost 10x more to implement for the industry than HD-DVD to retool all the DVD production lines in the world to make the new format. HD-DVD works, it's cheap to produce, there really IS no major advantage to the higher capacity of Blu-Ray that any consumer would notice, and the crazy content protection devices have no fair-use workarounds on Blu-Ray to compare to HD-DVD's right to "at least one managed copy".
It's just this way because the companies involved are too scared to slap their dicks on the table and get a tape measure, right? Because the cheaper, Just-Works, proven-technology evolutionary thing really should be the way to go, and not the expensive, convoluted, confusing, "OMG MORE GIGABYTESSSS!!!" still-improving-antiscratch-coating format?
Neko
HD-DVD is led by Toshiba, not Microsoft. MS is providing codecs for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray (more prominently in HD-DVD) and has lent its public support to HD-DVD.
It's actually Blu-Ray, which is even cooler than Blue-Ray, because of the hip omitted letter. Everyone knows that to be cool in today's society you have to omit letters, add extra ones and/or substitute S with Z. Infact, the HD-DVD consortium would have been better off calling it H-Deez DVD from the start in order to appeal to the predominantly young market.
Just think, our grandads died shooting Germans in a freezing forest for this...
>...declared the Sony-led next generation Blu-Ray format the winner over HD-DVD, led by Microsoft...
C'mon get the facts right...
Why not come up with something like "H-Fizzle to DV-doubleDizzle". That'll make it waaaaaaaaay cooler!
But what do fishermen have to do with DVD formats?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
is how much DRM each technology uses.
Blu-ray lost my vote when they decided to build in functionality to allow the movie industry to actually physically disable your player if they chose. To restore your disabled player you would have to send it in for 'repair'.
Think for a second about how managed copy has to work. It HAS TO require a network connection back to some server to allow or deny siad copy. And that means it's like not having the feature at all.
Apple's "Fair Use" rules require no server interaction whatsoever. This is not the same as FairPlay - as far as I'm concerned Blu-Ray has as much fair use from the gate as HD-DVD, which is to say exactly none.
As for retooling, that's a one-time cost so in the long run completely meaningless. If a lot of plants have to re-tool anyway to make PS3 games, then why would they not also spit out movies?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Well, not quite. "Managed Copy", which allows streaming, ripping to hard drives, and limited duplication, is a part of both HD-DVD and BluRay specs. However, in HD-DVD, "Managed Copy" is a mandatory feature of every disk, while in BluRay it is (as of right now) merely optional. MS & Intel claim their support for HD-DVD is primarily because of this feature.
Hopefully, BluRay will make Managed Copy mandatory as well -- and there seems to be some movement in that direction.
multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
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?
Does no one remember history?
Betamax is way better than VHS (still is)
Mini Discs are way better than tapes or CDs (they still are)
Sony's MP3 Walkman was to kill the IPod, but they made you convert from MP3 to their own music format. (stupid)
The only success they have had with this type of move is their split with Nintendo to make the playstation. Aside from that, their track record shows they will lose this battle.
Funny, I thought it was Toshiba who was leading the HD-DVD format. Also, Warner has not dropped HD-DVD. Like most studios, they are now backing both formats. This now means that the winner of the HD format war will be the first group to get widespread hardware saturation into homes and win shelf space on retailer shelves. Those two go hand in hand with each other. At this time, that's most likely going to be Blu-Ray. With the PS3 launch somewhere on the horizon, and the ensuring massive sales that have been a art of the PS1 and PS2, it is only a matter of time before Blu-Ray delivers a knockout blow to HD-DVD.
But that doesn't mean HD-DVD couldn't stage a serious coup by getting standalone HD-DVD hardware players out the door, but the price of the PS3 will be easier to swallow than shelling out $400-500 for a first generation standalone HD-DVD player for consumers used to spending less than $100 for a DVD player and serious money on a gaming console. The XBOX 360 launching before an HD-DVD drive is available is certainly not helping the HD-DVD format.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
The 360 does not ship with HD-DVD, and therefore will be providing no mass for HD-DVD whatsoever.
Now you can see whay HD-DVD is really screwed. While the 360 fragments its own market on launch with the HD models, the PS3 comes out next year and you isntanted have millions of Blu-Ray players in the US. At that same point in time Microsoft releases the upgraded 360 with HD-DVD also, and pisses off all the early adoptors that are the ones who would have used HD-DVD anyway but now do not want to buy another 360 just six months later.
I kind of think though Microsoft will be forced by market pressures to go with Blu-Ray for the 360 though.
I thought it kind of interesting that your analysis did not quite make it to pointing out the PS2 had a DVD drive, which was kind of in the same train of thought - some people justifies the purchase of a PS2 because it could also play DVD's. It was my only DVD player for quite some time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This will hurt MS. Unlike Sony who has design engineers, patents, and manufacturing facilities and experience, Microsoft has none of these. They're known mostly in hardware for the MSMouse and the XBox.
Sony can make their own new format (e.g. UMD) including the drives, media, and pressing plants. Microsoft can't. If HD-DVD was to only appear in the XBox with a run of a few ten's of millions over the next 7 years the price would be so high that XBox would really become non-competative.
The only reason Microsoft wants HD-DVD for the XBox is because they clearly need an HD drive of some sort, and HD-DVD is the only game in town that isn't Sony.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My #1 feature request, for either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD: No non-skippable support. I want to be able to go straight to the menu/movie, enough with the non-skippable ads, logos, FBI warnings, etc.
So the one time cost to produce these is going to be higher? And I should care because?
Unless you own stock in a company that has to invest in new equipment for this, this is a non argument for consumers. And yes, I doubt that at the end the price for consumers is going to be that much different between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD movies.
Yes, as a consumer what I care about is higher capacity, and Blu-Ray has it and it will scale better than HD-DVD. If we're going to go through the pain of moving from the DVD format, the only logical thing is to chose the format that has the most capacity at a reasonable or comparable price.
If you don't care about storage capacity why should we bother to move on from DVD in the first place?
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You know... I'd be willing to make a wager that one of the main reasons Blue-Ray is getting it's support, is because it's got a cool name.
HD-DVD doesn't sound like anything new. Personally, every time i hear the term, I get an image of a matte black player with shiny gold accents (think early 90's CD players).
Everyone knows that if it's got a blue light on it, then it goes faster anyway!
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.
i res-a-jvm-microsoft-dont-do-jvms/)
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-requ
UMD will be another format that will die and it from sony
I know playing most games with a remote would probably suck.
However, if you could use java and a Blu-Ray burner to make your own Blu-Ray player/PS3 compatible games, that would seriously rock!
If this works, I could easily see Blu-Ray player manufacturers making gamepad style remotes or maybe even gamepad ports for their players for playing java games on them.
This could open up a whole new market for the small developer.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Gates: Well, the key issue here is that the protection scheme under Blu-ray is very anti-consumer and there's not much visibility of that. The inconvenience is that the [movie] studios got too much protection at the expense consumers [sic] and it won't work well on PCs. You won't be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way.
And there it is. As simple as it can be. Microsoft wants the PC to be the center of everything. All your movies, email, music... the motherbrain of entertainment. But the only way to get HD content to the PC is through the XBox 360, because HD-content drives won't be available for the PC for quite awhile, and 'downloadable' just isn't an option for Hollywood (not to mention bandwidth constraints). So in Bill's mind, the Xbox 360 is just a content delivery service to keep the PC in power.
Sony, meanwhile, has no real interest in the PC. In fact, there's absolutely no reason why the PS3 can't be leveraged to take care of the main PC services. Miyamoto has already announced that Linux will ship pre-installed on every PS3 hard drive, just attach a USB keyboard and mouse. IBM is already on board with the Cell, so you see the triumverate forming... with the PC in the corner gathering dust.
I'm not saying that's the future, I'm just pointing out the battle lines. If Microsoft can't guarantee that content will find its way on to the PC, its plans are very much in disarray.
Blu-Ray the Flavour of The Moment
Does it taste like burning?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Warner has switched from backing HD-DVD to Blu-Ray
Though I understand why the submitter said this---because the article is unclear on this point---but Warner has only agreed to "nonexclusive" support for Blu-ray, meaning it could theoretically produce films in both formats, though it will initially produce movies for Blue-Ray. Not as ringing an endorsement as Walt Disney and Fox, both of whom have exclusive support agreements with the Blue-Ray tech consortium.
I know it's splitting hairs, but in this case, those are important hairs to split.
-Tom
When Warner switches sides, which is what this sounds like, or even supports dual compatibility, that means it is feeling a need to support Blue-Ray for some odd reason.
When even Dell who has notoriously bowed to pressure (and incentives) from the all powerful Intel/MS conglomerate chooses Blue-Ray and is standing firm in direct opposition to MS and Intel both... something about Blue-Ray must be pretty good.
I am not intending to start a discussion regarding the merits of one console over another here, so I will only mention that the x360 will NOT have HD-DVD out of the box, it will be an add-on later... maybe. That means the HD-DVD camp will miss out on some valuable install base numbers, whereas PS3 will have Blue-Ray out of the box due to the fact that an install base within the gamer demographic will allow for early adopters and casual users both to get used to the idea of Blue-Ray which will gave a push (however small or large you might choose to believe) to Blue-Ray.
While HD-DVD is trumpeting their "first" release as being before Blue-Ray, it will be in the spring (granted, with $500 + price tags)... interestingly PS3 with Blue-Ray (and an unknown but no doubt expensive price tag as well) will also launch in the Spring, even if it only ships in Japan (unknown at this time). Thus the first-to market advantage is effectively answered, if not negated.
Membership & Support:
When you go to their "members" pages, you will find, in general more, larger, powerful companies (outside of MS) on the side of Blue-Ray. Let me give you an example:
Retail Computer Market:
Blue-Ray has Apple, Dell, HP, and Sun Microsystems
HD-DVD has... Acer?
(this is noted with the caveat that Windows will be loaded on the majority of systems, but that does not preclude the PC companies themselves loading Blue-Ray drives and drivers before shipping)
Movie Companies:
Blue-Ray has Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Sony/Tristar/Colimbia, Warner Home Video
HD-DVD has Universal Pictures
Here is the HD_DVD Association Member Page:
www.hddvdprg.com/about/member.html
Compare their list with the Blue-Ray Assc. Member List here:
www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-13469/Index.html
Blue Ray has stronger support across the board from stronger "better" companies.
In all the above points and especially the member lists lead me to believe that the Blue-Ray will win.
Well, first of all the XBOX 360 at launch is manufactured with a standard DVD drive. In truth, it makes no difference which format Microsoft ultimately choses, since they will have to manufacture new units using the new drive. Furthermore, the XBOX 360 does not have HDMI/DVI output, so it will be impossible to play high definition video to begin with (since the proposed HD disc formats all use HDCP). The impact will be minor, since the consumer will have to pay a premium for an HDMI/DVI compatible unit with the appropriate drive and who knows when that'll happen. People interested in the XBOX 360 for HD playback will just have to wait, while gamers will likely buy the launch unit and never buy a new unit just because it supports HD video playback.
Ah, but a HD DVD line can switch between HD DVD and normal DVD, so it's already got a huge market already. And you don't need to build a new line - you upgrade your DVD line to HD DVD, and keep on making DVDs. Blu-ray just does Blu-ray. So it's much riskier, as well as being much more expensive.
As for player? There are 0 Blu-ray movie players in the world now, Japan included. They have storage devices using the optical format, but the actual bitstream for the discs hasn't been fully defined yet.
As for "increasing stream of Blu-ray revenue" do you have a citation? For mass-produced media? Nothing plays them yet!
My video compression blog
Blu-ray lost my vote when they decided to build in functionality to allow the movie industry to actually physically disable your player if they chose.
They both support key revocation. Back to square one.
Really both are equal DRM wise. But it's stupid to ignore the format because of that; as long as you can burn your own content use the one that is more technically appealing and simply ignore DRM media. If you feel strongly enough about it download DIVX from torrents and transcode them to next-gen media.
I still support blu-ray almost entirely because of the larger supported storage sizes; I plan to use it as secondary offsite backup.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, there are RW Blu-ray devices in Japan, but not many of them, and NONE OF THEM ARE MOVIE PLAYERS. They use the RW flavor of BR optical media, but that's it.
No mass-produced ROM titles.
No movie titles.
No players with movie playback capacity.
My video compression blog