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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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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I suppose I'd be less hesitant if Forrester wasn't so often financed by the people they report on.
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.
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'.
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?
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."
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