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Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD Not Over Yet
samkass writes "Here is a good summary of the latest technical wheeling-and-dealing between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Among things that were new to me: the addition of a "red" 9GB HD format to Blu-Ray that would make initial Blu-Ray content (that fits) even cheaper than HD-DVD. Also, more discussion about managed copy (AACS, BD Plus, and ROM Mark) and iHD (HD-DVD) vs BD-J/Java (Blu-Ray)."
Isn't Blu-Ray Sony's technology? Does it come with a free rootkit?
Sounds like a good text-based game..
"You won't eat our meat, but you'll glue with our feet.." --Some cow
Can we at least not put such trivial errors in the SUbject line?
Or am I ASking too much?
I'll be damned it I buy with my own money a device that decides where, how and in what way I watch the media I buy with my other money. Get me a DRM-Free device and I'll rush to buy it.
What would porn choose?
I don't get it.
From TFA: Some analysts who have been following the saga have already predicted a winner. Ted Schadler, vice president at Forrester Research, released a report that proclaimed, "Blu-ray Will Win a Pyrrhic Victory Over HD-DVD." Schadler says he's long believed that Blu-ray held the edge due to its superior capacity and the fact that Sony's PlayStation 3 will play Blu-ray movie discs. Oh really, and MS support via the 360 for HD-DVD won't have a cancelling effect on this? Oh and Warner will release content on both formats? Well, there's a surprise! Did anyone expect them to pick a side and alienate a potential market? Hmm, slightly cynical today methinks!!
"The resulting disc will be encoded with a high-definition video codec, and though it will be a red-laser disc (not a blue-laser disc as used by the other formats within the Blu-ray Disc specifications), it will only play back in Blu-ray Disc players and recorders. Even though vendors will be able to manufacture the disc on existing DVD production lines, it is clearly not the same as an HD-DVD. (One of HD-DVD's strengths is its purported ability to be produced at a low cost on existing, albeit modified, DVD production lines)."
If it's existing DVD production, is it readable by *existing* DVD players like those in a computer. In other words can I get a codec and play it in a PC, (even if I need to update the DVD firmware to do it)?
Sure the codec means it won't immediately be playable on the DivX/MPEG4/DVD boxes, but can it play on a PC?
If they can do that, that would be a HD-DVD killer.
Every article about HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray makes arguments about content.. This one even quotes:
"Assuming equal pricing and availability of hardware"
The thing is, I don't forsee it being equal availability of hardware.. I don't know how many PS2s have been sold, or were sold within three months of release, but I'm sure it was a lot larger number than the number of early adoptors that would run out and buy a brand new HD-DVD player.
I guess my point is, if there are for sure going to be millions of Blu-ray players in houses all over the US, and there's no such assurance about HD-DVD players, I can't see places stocking shelves full of HD-DVDs.
The contest is over. Precisely because it won't *really* matter. While all these corporations squabble endlessly over proprietary formats, hardware specs, marketing schemes, and temporary alliances, the fact is that the true future of digital content distribution WILL be online. So all this cacophony is for a temporary technology. A few people will buy some discs and fewer hardware players during a very short period. Then, it will be looked back upon as having been over before it began.
And once that pan flashes, a few people in management are going to be revealed as dumbasses for misjudging technology.
Anything that supports Sony's Blu-Ray will not be supported by me personally, or grudgingly from my company. When you can't trust your supplier's scruples, you can't sell their products to the end user.
So, personally, anything using Blu-Ray will not be purchased by me.
Company wise, Blu-Ray will only be used at the express request from the customer.
I don't care! I don't care if BluRay is technologically superior to HD-DVD. I don't care if I can fit a whole extra GB on one type of disk, or if the other uses a slightly higher laser frequency, or if one can be be-rewritten 2billion times instead of "only" 1.7billion. Don't give a shit, thanks anyway!
Just agree on a fucking format and stick with it. I won't be buying anything; either BluRay or HD-DVD, until one format is clearly ahead. That means you; every single one of you petty little bastards, will lose out. Just like you all lost on on DVD writer format wars. Do I care what the difference is between DVD-R & DVD+R? Have I ever even seen a DVD-RAM disc? Fuck no, I just want to write a DVD that can be read in other drives. How much R&D did you all waste? How much additonal design is required to acomodate all these different standards? How many sales oppurtunities have been wasted because you've confused the market?
Same thing here. Now get on with it.
Don't really know what else to say. Except Blu-Ray has a failure of a name, and people will naturally migrate to HD-DVD because they already know the acronym "DVD." (People don't like to learn new things!)
At 9GB the short answer is no. Most likly the laser spacings will be tighter, this adjustment can be done easily on the production lines, but much more difficult to do on the average player.
Given Sony's track record, I wonder if we'll find, for example, LAME binaries in the firmware of their Blu-Ray drives.
One irony, though, is that the DMCA would prevent software authors from accessing the firmware to make the determination as to whether their own copyrights were being violated.
All this has happened before and will happen again.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS#VHS_vs._Betamax
..And the people bowed and prayed, To the neon gods they made.
You can't polish a turd, no matter how big and blue it is.
it's the porn industry that will decide anyway. not m$ or *cough* sony.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I'll take the standard with less capacity as it'll be easier to download, store and mount in D-Tools.
Holy passive sentences, Batman!
Isn't it just a 2 layer DVD (or even a double side single layer DVD!)?
They say it can be made in standard plants, so it must be damn similar to a standard format presumably?
Oh really, and MS support via the 360 for HD-DVD won't have a cancelling effect on this?
This keeps getting stated on here, and it is entirely untrue. People are confused because Microsoft tepidly put their backing behind HD-DVD, yet the Xbox360 actually uses neither - it is standard old school 9GB DVD.
Am I missing something in your question or did you completely ignore the section you quoted when it says: "it will only play back in Blu-ray Disc players and recorders"?
"The number of people that enjoy watching DVDs on their computer is only slightly larger than the number of people with HTPCs"
If its basically a DVD compatible thing that PCs can play with a codec/firmware tweak, then it is only a matter of time before the dirt cheap $50 DIVX/MPEG4/DVD players add support as a firmware change.
That market is huge, just look in an electrical store and they stack those buggers on pallets for volume sale.
That's what I'm thinking there, that this disk could become the volume market item, playing on computers and slightly more modern DVD(+mpeg4+divx) players together with PCs, and if you then go out and buy a HD TV, you get the high definition version too without upgrading your DVD's which would be another plus.
What I don't want is any nudging toward a technology by the government. It's bad enough that we all sort of settle on one technlogy or format for years, and since eventually everyone has that capability, switching to something dramatically superior very rarely happens. On the other hand, the existing technlogy in this instance is good enough at least for existing applications (who needs 10.1 channels of sound?) so there is a small enough motive in the masses to pay up for what may prove to be improvements beyond the price of diminishing returns, in which case a little nudging from the government would from where I'm sitting be a good thing. I guess part of my problem is that I apparently don't have a solid opinion on government interference in markets. Perhaps said interference could be identified as a product of the free market and therefore avoiding it is anti-Adam Smith somehow. Jesus this post wasn't even funny. Starting out I thought I could make it smell insightful. On my B-game today.
More like Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD Hasn't Started Yet. I have yet to see a single Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player for sale. How can a format war be over before it starts?
For me what matters is disk capacity. The more the better. I do not want all the DRM balast. What I need is an alternative to tapes for mass data storage. Harddisks are fine, but not when you have to deal with hundreds of Terabytes or more, because then just the heat from harddisks is literally killing everything. The folks in Hollywood and at Sony may think that their interests are the only things that matter. Quite frankly, they can put their stupid movies where no sun shines. The industry has promissed us large permanent media for so many years and all they could produce is HD-DVD and Blue Ray. A factor of 5 per layer capacity increase with currently no more than 2 layers as a result shows that the storage market gets screwed by bullies of the media industry. There are more important things in the world than movies.
If they can do that, that would be a HD-DVD killer.
Maybe so, but we'd all be losers if such a crippled format wins. You can bet that if it does, we'll have these "red ray" discs (aka DVDs) for a long time to come, since upgrading to blu-ray production will always be "too expensive" compared to spending $0 to change anything.
The data structure will be different - different encryption (CSS is so thoroughly cracked that they won't use it any more) and possibly even a different track layout. It will use the red laser that the Blu-Ray drive uses to read old DVDs, that's just about the only thing that it has in common with DVDs.
""it will only play back in Blu-ray Disc players and recorders"?"
They say it's encoded in a modern codec, so that doesn't mean it *can't* play back in PCs, it may simply mean the DVD firmware needs tweaked or this 'modern codec' may be the hurdle to overcome.
The same thing will probably happen as it did with DVD-r and DVR+R, both format will stay around long enough that the hardware will start supporting both disc, and be backwards compatible. Unlike VHS and Betamax, the physical media is the same size. Someone will invent the laser that can do both such as cd-r and DVD-R. Like now no one cares if it's DVD-R and DVD+R
Freedom of Speech only include discussion that are approved by the RIAA, MPAA and DMCA.
Update 8-track technology and make some fab tape cartridges for video playback... terabytes of spoolable striped data...
What's so great about random access, anyhow?
I knew these fancy optical storage formats were just a flash in the pan...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
http://www.realmeme.com/Main/dailymeme/2005/Aug/bl urayvshddvdDejanews.png
I ran this comparison a couple of months ago.
It sure looks like there's still a controversy going on.
To me it sounds more like what happend to DAT: Digital Audio Tape
Before it was to be used for backups, it was supposed to come out also as the digital replacement for cassette tapes. The copy protection took so long to be agreed upon that when it came out, so did CDs and CDs were better to boot.
I think that by the time this format war is over, everybody else will be using the internet to get movies. Physical formats won't matter except for data backup.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
1. A deathmatch between the two parties. The last one standing wins.
2. Give both formats to porn producers. Whichever one they choose wins.
Simple isn't it?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
If red blu ray can only hold 9GB (I'll assume for the whole disc) then there's not much difference in it's capacity compared to the current dvd format. Switching the color of the laser makes for higher density of data stored. So if that's the case why not stick with current dvd formats adjusted for using a blue laser. Or perhaps they think were all going to jump up and replace our entire DVD library's and equipment just for a better picture.
If Sony's new tech patent that allows discs to "lock in" to the first device they play on makes it into Bluray, you can bet your ass I'll be buying HD-DVD. While one could argue "but PS3 is going to be bluray!" I'll argue back that PS3 isn't looking all that hot these days. Personally, I'll be buying the format whose copy-protection is most flawed. I intend to keep my movies for longer than 5 years, and I don't think the solution to bit-rot is to buy the damn discs again in 10 years.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Is anbody else's head spinning in this kludge of alphabet soup?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Not that I like Sony or anything. Basically, I despise them. But, quite frankly, I despise MS a lot more. At least Sony has to actually compete, whereas MS just throws its 800 lbs around to get its way. Every single new product they put out, they burn billions of dollars in an attempt to corner the market. Year after year, they just burn cash by the billions, not even looking ahead to profitability, just intent on cornering the entire market. Office and Windows just subsidise everything.
I'd love to say that I'll never support either company again. But I'll be honest, I'm a fucking media-whore. I love video games and movies and music.
Interestingly, ok, and offtopic :), in the case of music, if I can't copy it somehow, it's entirely worthless to me. So, they can only go so far before I *do* stop supporting them. I'm not going to buy something I can't even *use*.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This is where I stand on Blu-Ray too, pretty much. I'm not unwilling to forgive Sony, so maybe I'll use their products again at some point, but until they show a grasp on the idea that backstabbing their customers is a bad idea, I'm having as little to do with them as possible.
The sad thing is that Sony supported BlueRay uses Java, where as HD-DVD uses Microsoft's special DRM software. (Thus most of the fighting.) I hope China / Taiwan (or anyone else) comes out with a format that is just data... that is something I would buy.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
I for one welcome our new DRMed smurf colored overlords :)
You take the blue laser and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red laser and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the data pits go.
The bottom line is which format holds more data, is cheaper and is consumer-friendly, IMHO.
From http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#1.5 and http://www.hddvdprg.com/hddvd/hddvd_3.html
---How much data can you fit on a Blu-ray disc?
A single-layer disc can fit 23.3GB, 25GB or 27GB.
A dual-layer disc can fit 46.6GB, 50GB or 54GB.
HD-DVD can hold 15, 30, 32GB
---How much video can you record on a Blu-ray disc?
Over 2 hours of high-definition television (HDTV) on a 25GB disc. About 13 hours of standard-definition television (SDTV) on a 25GB disc.
HD-DVD can hold 4hrs HDTV on 15GB disc, 8hrs HDTV on 30GB disc
---How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?
According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps.
HD-DVD speed is 36.55Mbps
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The next generation of home movie watching is not going to be disc based. It will be streamed through the internet or by your tv provider. The advantages are clear (if you want me to list more I will, just let me know), and the Content Makers prefer this method. For the end-user, its easier, faster, and they don't have to worry about movies getting scratched, lost, stolen, whatever.
These new discs only "use" at the end of the day will be for computer storage, but flash drives are about to hit 100gig, so even for that use the new generation discs will be irrelevant.
Just remember you heard it here first. These discs won't gain the type of saturation that DVD and VHS have had. These both will have market share more like beta. The true winners will be companies like Verizon and SBC who are brining fiber to everyone's door. Comcast also has a pretty sweet strategy for delivering content on demand.
I still think you are reading too much into some of their words and making assumptions that aren't backed up by any facts in the article. You seem to be seeing the words "red laser" and "exisiting production lines" and then assuming that it will just take a few teaks and a firmware flash to make existing players work. I'm not saying that is impossible, but nothing in the article even hints at it and the section you quoted flat out says it won't happen.
End of story.
Enough about DRM, Rootkits and bad "netizenships". Sony has got to go if this how the "play ball"
HD-DVD all the way!
Especially if the confuse Blu-Ray with Ray-Ban and decide that the Blu-Rays are bad for their eyesight
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
The only reason that I can see for upgrading (not that we will have the choice) would be if either standard better consumer value:
No more £60 box-sets (you'd never pay that for one disc - I reckon publishers will use the excuse of high definition etc to continue using multiple discs to cover TV series)
Use some of the spare capacity on the discs to back-up the data in other areas (hopefully making them more durable / resistant to scratches - no more skipping discs!)
I'm not against Blu-Ray or HD-DVD per se, as far as I'm concerned technology progression is a great thing, I just can't help thinking that either format will fail to benefit consumers as fully as it might. Also, will either standard be available (soon) in an R/W format?
How is putting more formatting stuff on it making it less expensive?
Hi,
we here at WB figured it would be in our best interest to produce DVD materials for you, the consumer at poor quality. We sat down, read over the specs for what HD quality MPEG-2 should be, and decided to aim low. Like bottom of the barrel.
So, no fear from us, you'll get the same first gen crap from us that you did with DVD. We feel that it's important here at WB to "test" the waters with low quality media. Better us to make you, the paying consumer, the guinea pig than produce something correctly the first time. If you bite, we save a ton of money. We're talking easily a good dime per DVD produced. What will this mean at the register to you? Nothing! We wouldn't want to charge you more. No, we'd rather save that dime per in the factory and pass the crap along to you, then repackage it and "try" to justify the extra release. Double dip? More like Double Awesome! For you! Good job buying DVD's. You make us proud!
Now get back out there, you good consumer you, and go see WB's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" on Friday. We've got sequels to make.
For me what matters is disk capacity. The more the better.
While this is usually the main desire for most people, I'd personally be just as interested in a slightly more durable material. I try to take good care of my DVDs, but invariably one will get a nick or a scratch on it, and then it's a hit-or-miss game of trying to repair it.
If you could store 100TB on a disc, only to have one scratch render half of it unreadable... that would suck.
Sort of like MS-DOS floppies and Amiga floppies - essentially the same thing, but with enough difference to prevent use of one on the other without special hardware.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
And physical medias as distribution method are on their way out. As such, the whole 'war' pretty much becomes irrelevant; whoever will be able to offer the best price/GB and the lowest drive price will win.
Sounds like something 3D is afoot.
The fact that there will be no HD-DVD player in the XBOX 360 means XBOX sales will not drive HD-DVD sales further illustrating your point. Though it will be interesting to see how fast they get HD-DVD capable XBOXs on the market and how much HD-DVD sales may be lost to the early adopters not having an HD-DVD player built-in.
The most ludicris part is how many games will come out on HD-DVD when 90% of the XBOX market does not have an HD-DVD player in their system already? How many people will be willing to upgrade after the initially disappointing performance of the single threaded, next-gen console games, when stacked next to games like Doom 3 on a new PC?
Sony has a huge advantage by making its initial release with Blu-Ray already included. The console market will decide this format war, because by the time the major studios have upgraded to delivering HD Content, the rest of the unwashed masses wont be voting with their dollars, and Microsoft has already surrendered while looking to boost marketshare for their system by beating Sony off the starting block.
What I'd like to see is a minature HD-DVD/BluRay/whatever medium that comes in a tiny case. Something that's maybe 1in X 1in or so, enough to hold audio (video?) but be protected from being scratched.
Now I know people bitch about how a case would be "too clunky" and "I can't use a spindel!" But I'd much rather have the media protected...I always thought it was stupid to have the sensitive part out in the air like that.
But given Sony's EULA, this will never happen.
While all these corporations squabble endlessly over proprietary formats, hardware specs, marketing schemes, and temporary alliances, the fact is that the true future of digital content distribution WILL be online.
Not likely. Perhaps when FIOS becomes commonplace and available to every person on the face of the planet, but there is no chance that the mainstream user will accept on-line access as the only way to gain video in the near future.
A two-hour movie in really good, MPEG-2 quality takes up approximately 7-8 GB, depending on audio options. Even with a 6 Gb cable connection, that takes roughly three hours to download. (For those who hadn't noticed, that means that it would take longer to download than to watch, so streaming at full quality is not an option.)
Now, bring in HD. About 75 minutes of HD-quality material takes roughly the same amount of space. Expand that to a 2-hour movie and you're looking at anywhere between 12-14 GB of data. That same 6 Gb cable connection would take about six hours to download that movie. In the same amount of time, I could have run to the nearest BR/HD-DVD rental store, watched the movie -- possibly twice -- and returned it. This of course assumes that your "unlimited use" ISP doesn't then knock your ass down for using up "too much" of your "unlimited use" bandwidth after downloading three or four HD movies. And don't even THINK about doing streaming HD unless you've got some enormous network pipe to your house!
Even discounting the fact that every house will NOT be connected via FIOS (or even broadband) in the coming years, thus requiring a physical medium in order to watch the video content, people want a physical medium without restrictive DRM. That has been proven time and time again. The recent Sony debacle should be proof enough of that. People are obviously buying physical discs even though the music is available on-line.
Video games are also sold on-line by a lot of different vendors for a discounted price, yet boxed media are still preferred. Why? Because there is a comfort factor in having the disc in your hands, not worrying about if your computer is connected to the Internet in order to install and play it. There's also no concern about downloading it again or having to authenticate it again (for the most part), and so on.
Ah, so then comes the argument about backing the movies or games off to another medium in the event of a recovery or for backup purposes. Oh, wait. We can't use that argument because there is no need for physical media if everything is distributed on-line! You said so yourself.
On-line definitely has its place. The success of iTunes and the recent announcements by major networks to have their shows distributed electronically is definitely a step toawrds on-line distribution. But unless you plan on every house in the world having a dedicated DS3 connection, the notion that all material - particiularly HD - will be distributed exclusively through digital means is preposterous at best and will likely not come in any of our lifetimes. I guess that you also expect people to have multi-terrabyte storage for each system as well. After all, all of that content has to be stored somewhere when it's downloaded. Or did you actually expect people to be on-line for every movie that they want to watch? Well, I guess that makes a market for automotive broadband on the newest Winnebago line, doesn't it?
Oh, and by the way -- ALL technology is "temporary" because new technology is always evolving from old technology. So, your statement about "temporary technology" alone is fallacious.
In the meantime, please let us know what it is that you have been smoking because it seems like it's some really good shit. The fact that you've been modded as "Insightful" is staggering - or else it's indicative that mod points shouldn't be handed out as much as they are.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the statement, but I remember formatting my old Deluxepaint III disk to use for storage on a PC :)
... dead horses now, aren't we.
As consumer, not so hard to realize that those are technical stillbirths. Anything like a 'data cemetary' (and the media control seem just like that) ends up being a 'money cemetary'. Sure, the 'media writer/reader' industry 'should show' the world that they 'can' build some 'data cemetaries' using some of the money they made 'building machines for illegal copying'. Doesn't mean these new formats necessarily will sell well, doesn't even mean they are meant to sell well.
Riding dead horses for other reasons than profit, this is.
For me digital content distributed any other way then through a network is a thing of the past. My standard dsl connection is perfectly capable of streaming HD video content. A single consumer grade harddisk is capable of storing hundreds of hours of HD video. But why store stuff clientside at all? Just stream the content to my tv when I want to watch it.
Jilles
show me an ISP that can feasibly deliver 30-50gb of data in less than 2-3 days to EVERY one of its clients at ANY time, and your argument will have merit.
The truth is that the world can't support online distribution yet, and it will only be around when the whole HD/BluRay has been decided, and they're looking at the next gen format.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Maybe someone will do for movies what itunes and MP3s have done for music.
From an efficiency point of view it doesn't seem to make sense to keep hauling stuff around on funny plastic discs. Perhaps in a few years from now both Blu-ray and HD-DVD will be irrelevant.
True, I forgot it was down to the formatting, so it's not such a good example.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
AKA a standard DVD with h.264 to allow HD content?
Is this really anything new? I mean, Microsoft has been putting HD content onto standard DVDs for a while now, using MPEG-4 instead of h.264.
This is no longer a question of which technology is superior, but a question of which technology is not backed by Sony. Sony hates their customers privacy, property and rights, so if Sony is backing Blueray then HD-DVD must be the better choice.
I favor the boycott approach to both formats for now.
e ature_id=01&tree=&itempath=&model_id=MDL101546
There are several formats that can be used to create HD content on existing DVD disks.
Windows HiDef Media
Divx
Quicktime (via h.264/mpeg4)
H.264 (mpeg4)
H.264 is the future of HD broadcast and you can fit an entire 2 hour HD (720p or 1080i/p) movie on existing DVD disks with room to spare
JVC already has a player out that plays all these formats including m2t files (HDV in mpeg2 format)using existing DVD writable formats.
We should simply bypass Sony and Toshiba and finally use our PCs and home theater servers the way we want to.
And it would all be legal.
Funny thing is, for once, MS is on our side, even if it's for the wrong reasons.
here is the link to the jvc SRDVD-100U
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?f
Has built in ethernet and streaming capabilities (movies, audio...). Pretty cool, but may be to expensive to some.
Your movies are still going to have crappy artifacting as long as they have some lazy intern clicking his mouse on some button that says "ENCODE!" And they're still going to look crappy on low-res, interlaced TVs. So what could possibly take up all the extra space on these new discs? Another useless director's commentary?
You get all this and more for the price of DRM.
All estimates are that it will be about 10 years before there's any broadband availability in my area. So what you're saying is: why would I buy a lousy old-technology disc when I could watch any movie I wanted simply by clicking "download" and waiting 3 weeks?
I was about to comment on the immense bandwidth requirements to pull off such a distribution methodology, but it looks like the previous replies beat me to it. So, instead I'll just bring attention to the fact that you clearly have no fscking clue as to what you're talking about and hope that you get modded down accordingly while all of the others get modded up.
I read somewhere about a rumor that PS3 games can only be played on a single PS3. This is a part of their anti-piracy thing. So when you have 10 PS3 BlueRay Games and all of the sudden your PS3 died, so does your 10 PS3 games. If this is true, then what is there to prevent them from moving the same technology to BlueRay Player. Imagine that if you have 50 BlueRay DVDs and all of the sudden your BlueRay Player died, you are out of 50 DVDs movies. Add this with CD Rootkit problem, will certainly doom Sony. Companies, like Sony, now a day just think about protecting their profits and their properties but do not realize who give them the profits - the consumers and their confidence.
All I saw was "HD-DVD 9GB HD HD-DVD AACS, BD Plus, and ROM Mark iHD (HD-DVD) vs BD-J/Java (Blu-Ray)"
My acronym cup runneth over...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Amiga could read a PC floppy just fine. Except for HD ones, the HD amiga floppy never made it out of the lab but I have a friend who swears he saw one in such a place. Didn't it come down to the disk controller, too? The amiga controller eliminated some inter-track spacing to save space, maybe some other things. (Yes I just read up on that :) Amigas could, PCs didn't. Shame really. Though you can allegedly get a catweasel controller and read them that way.
Is that rootkit "free as in speech", "free as in beer", or both? ;-)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Microsoft and Intel think that media centre type devices are big money. They want consumers copying media around to different devices because they want to be the ones providing the devices and software. Nothing would make them happier than for you to have a media centre PC in each room and a server in the closet.
Also they have no vested intrest in DRM past making the media companies happy. Microsoft owns no record labels or studios I'm aware of. They make software, not media. So it's in their intrests to make the consumers as happy as possible, while still appeasing the media companies. Happy consumers buy more Microsoft toys. Sony's intrest is in screwing consumers so they make the most money on their media.
VHS, by a resounding, total victory. This despite the fact that neraly all broadcast material was produced on the professional Betacam format. So why'd +- both survive where there was only one video format? Compatibility. It is trivial to build drives that can write both + and - disks, in fact I can't find one that won't write both any more. Also, both read in almost all drives. There are some that have problems with one or the other, but it's pretty rare. So, that being the case, consumers don't give a shit. They'll just buy whatever is cheap and/or convenient.
Not the case with HD-DVD and Blu-ray. They aren't compatible and it looks like no plans to make it so. So you need one player for one, a different one for the other. History has shown that shit won't fly. People will buy one format, not two. So there's very likely to be a winner and a loser in this format war unless dual HD-DVD/Blu-ray players come out.
HD-DVD: You wanna make it right? Then when you go to DRM Nationals... bring it. Don't slack off because you feel sorry for us. That way, when we beat you, we'll know it's because we're better
Blu-Ray: Oh, I'll bring it. Don't worry
HD-DVD: I never do.
Didn't you read the article? Blu-Ray ALSO supports managed copying. It also has an extra layer (BD-ROM+) that they said would not prevent this.
However all of you that are such staunch supporters of managed copy don't really understand what is at work there. With managed copy you need to focus on the "Managed" part, because it WILL be managed. You will need a network connection from your player to let it copy something. You will need an approved device on both ends. Managed copy had nothing to do with Fair Use and everything to do with Microsoft Media Center edition being able to send video from one box to another. MythV? Not so much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what is the attraction of high-density video disks? HD content, of course... But where has HD content gone so far? Basically nowhere... Why? Competing standards, conflicting hardware, confusing specs... All for content that's better than conventional content, but not to the degree to really capture any significant market. So why is this?
It's all about TV, right? I don't know about you, but for me, I'm watching less TV, not more. HD quality doesn't really make the material any better. Why would I care if a crappy program looks better?
My prediction? Both formats will fall on disinterested comsumers, simply because they really don't care that much about HD. When the industry shakes out to the point that HD gear is as easy to use as conventional, then maybe this stuff will get a foothold. Until then, most consumers don't want to go through the hassle of HD, even if it means that their movies look better.
Can't imagine why I think this? Consider the DVD-Audio market and you'll see the same issue. CD's are "good enough". Why mess with DVD-Audio? (Fold in some DRM nonsense, and it looks even bleaker for HD...)
I would like to point out that while Microsoft is an 800 pound gorilla it is not so in the entertainment industry. Microsoft if a huge company, as such it has many faces. The OS face is pretty evil, the research face is pretty good. Sony on the other hand has demonstrated the same tendencies across all of its divisions (movies, games, CDs, and electronics). Seeing as Microsofts goals in DRM include being able to stream media to differant areas of the house, and seem to be more in line with the consumer then Sony (who as a movie producer and record label is more in line with the **AA views). So while I may be boycotting Microsoft software for a long time yet, I still find myself supporting Microsoft's hardware (I think it would be cool to see them switch from a software to hardware company, their mice, keyboards, joysticks, and game systems have been pretty rocking).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
I'm wondering if BluBlocker Technology is going to protect us from the rootkits???
This post is utterly wrong. iHD is an interactivity engine that uses jscript. this is not "microsoft's" DRM software.
The DRM you so dread is AACS, which is an industry consortium founded by IBM, intel, microsoft, panasonic, sony, toshiba, walt disney, and warner brothers.
AACS is used by both HD-DVD and bluray. So uh, there is no fight for "who gets to provide the DRM" - that's a meaningless statement. What IS interesting to me though is that after the rootkit debacle, Sony's attempts to add further copy protection to bluray look more suspicious.
Actually it is associated with some nasty DRM. But the alternative, HD-DVD, is the one Microsoft REALLY wants to use instead. I'd almost take Sony's offering based on that alone. Luckily, Blu-Ray is also technically superior.
A lot of the article is about how HP is pushing for Blu-Ray to drop the Java based menu system and go with iHD (Microsoft's menu format), in addition to making sure Blu-Ray supports managed copy (which someone later in the article claims it does already and extra layers will not prevent that from working).
While it's not much of a surprise to see HP licking Microsofts boots and demanding people use the MS menu standard, I am surprised that anyone in the Blu-Ray consortium would take them very seriously. In terms of support for the format the people that really matter are the studios as they are the ones that will be providing content compelling enough to make or break the system.
Now Warner Brothers arguing for support of the BD-9 disc - that I could see happening, and would probably help the format gain a little adoption in the short term. I think though in the long term it will slow adoption because too many studios will be tempted to put out overly-compressed releases on BD-9 and not a higher quality feed that needs the storage capacity of the larger BD-25 discs. People will not buy into HD-DVD or Blu-Ray if the benefits are perceived as marginal.
Blu-Ray still has a giant ace in the hole with the PS3 supporting the format, millions of people suddenly having Blu-Ray players will not hurt much at all! And since HD-DVD has pretty much decided to sit out this Christmas season I just can't see HD-DVD player sales ramping up fast ebough to get even close to the volume of PS3 launch day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"No amount of firmware will upgrade an old Sigma or MediaTek chip to decode HD H.264. "
Fair point but...
1. Those decoders can decode DIVX, so even if they can't handle HD resolutions whats to stop them setting aside 800k of that 9GB for a regular resolution DIVX version. Maybe not Sony, but if Sony can specify such a disk then the Chinese can also do it and if the market wants it, they will do it.
2. My understanding (limited) of these formats is they are progressive, you don't need to decode down to the nth term if you're only going to throw away the resolution. (Is this correct?), so they wouldn't need to decode full 264 they only need to decode a lower quality extract from it.
"A licensed Blu-ray player must play every Blu-ray disc, even the blue-laser ones."
If there is a market, and its possible, then either Sony will license or we'll end up with an SVCD style spec. Where the Chinese spotted the gap and filled it.
...or a psychology major, for that matter.
No, you are the one who is underestimating the consumer, particularly in the U.S. For whatever reason there are hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people who jump on new technology for one (or more) of three reasons: (A) they believe in the technology and do have an immediate use for it; (B) they've bought the hype of the companies that are involved in the product; (C) they just can't stand not to be the first one on the block to have bragging rights. For those three reason alone HD will be big well before 2010.
Just about all large-screen TVs that have been sold for the past few years are HD-ready with the ability for 1080i resolution. How many hundreds of thousands if not millions of them have been sold in North America, let alone the rest of the world, with thousands more being sold every day? That right there sets a user base for millions of potential HD customers as soon as the products hit the shelf.
Now let's look at upgrades. Let's say that HD doesn't take off as much as would be expected. You know very well that ALL HD players will be backwards-compatible with existing DVDs and the sales of big screen TVs is not going to decline. They're getting cheaper and cheaper every day. You can expect to see a hell of a lot of HD TV and playe combinations in the retail stores, touting marketing phrases like "Watch HDTV in all of its glory in our new HDTV/[Blu-Ray|HD-DVD] package for only $..." or "Why use your TV for regular DVD when you can use it for high definiting by adding on an HD player!"
Additionally, people are always going to be looking for new DVD players either to replace old/defective players or "because it's time for an upgrade." Execpt for the extrememly frugal, most people will go with HD because "they might as well" as long as HD players are not prohibitively expensive.
Also, you know very well that the studios will be releasing big-budget epics in HD as well as new movies that have already been filmed in HD. And people will buy them. If there is one thing that the studios have proven, people will continually double-dip for DVDs as long as they feel that they're getting value from the "new version". Between the higher resolution and the extra storage space for lots of extra material, the studios won't have to do much to make BR/HD-DVD appear to be a better value.
So, as more and more movies come out on HD, as more and more TVs are sold that are HD-ready, as more and more players come out thus dropping the prices, you can expect BR/HD-DVD to surge.
Yes, a whole bunch of people have TVs that don't support s-video. They're not HD's target market; they're not being taken into account anyway, so your argument about that is relatively moot.
Then again, I don't know why I'm bothering to respond. If you don't have the balls to use a non-AC account, then your argument doesn't have much credibility to begin with as far as I'm concerned.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Look, I've been pushing the following idea on Zdnet comments a few times. The idea is that its not necessary to create a new disk format to go to HDTV because the compression is 5x better now, the pixel count is 5x more, you only need to change the compression format. So you could, for example put a regular DVD on one side and a hi-compress DVD on the other without requiring a new production line and it work work on PC's.
I still believe the above paragraph is true. So even if Sony don't do it, that they are making a 9GB DVD disk on a standard production line, and that it is cheaper, confirms pretty much, my assumptions in paragraph one.
Whether this is it doesn't really matter because if it's possible and cheaper then SOMEONE will do it. Look at VCD's & the Chinese, VCDs were huge in the Asian market.
...are doomed to repeat it.
Do the execs behind the whole "DRM on the player/disc" have no long-term memory left?
Sherman, set the WayBack machine for around Christmas, 1998.....A wonderful idea was nationally rolled out, promising great profits and convenience. It was called "DivX". Players were being sold (at higher prices than most comparable DVD players) and it was touted to "end the rental blues", ie, you didn't have to bring the discs BACK to the store. They would only play a few times, then the player would 'lock out' the disc, and you just threw it away. The discs were being sold cheaply (~$5), since they were just CDs with a revolutionary new compression method that could put a near DVD quality movie onto a single CD.
In only 6 months, someone figured out how to circumvent the firmware in the player, and all the profits from 'reselling the same DivX disc' vanished. The whole concept collapsed, and the "DivX player" vanished from the scene in less than a year.
Now, DivX is a compression method used by PC users to encode similarly for archival purposes.
WayBack machine off....
People don't like being told how they can use something they've already paid for. If I buy a automobile, I can paint it pink, plant daisies in it, and park it on my lawn as a decoration IF I want to. I can pull out the engine and replace it with a 6L Supercharged V8 that will snap the driveshaft like a twig IF I want to.
If I buy a CD, and I want to make a copy so I can keep one in the car (so I don't have to keep dragging it between the car and the living room stereo), I have that right. If one gets scratched, I can always make another copy. I paid for it.
DRM says that "Well, you paid for a LICENSE, where we retain all rights and ownership" so that if they want to, the owner of the rights can (without regard to the transfer of goods for money, i.e. purchase) tell you that you can't make any more copies, listen to it, or wear it on your head as a hat.
What the companies that are all rabid about putting DRM in place have forgotten is that the whole REASON that most piracy occurs is NOT because people WANT to pirate. It is not because they want to make a profit at the company's expense. They do it because the companies are charging too much for too little. They are making huge profits, giving themselves huge salaries, and charging the consumer out-of-proportion costs for the media and content. (and don't even get me started about the huge salaries and contracts for star actors and hit musicians...)
DRM is just another way to try to extort more money from the consumers. Just like DivX was, not so long ago.....
DRM, in whatever form they use in HD-DVD or BluRay, WILL BE CIRCUMVENTED. You cannot invent a lock that cannot be picked. Will it be worthwhile to try? Irrelevant, since many will simply look at it as a challenge. And once it is cracked? The whole cycle will simply start over again.....
It would be nice if they could just recognize the real problem, swallow their pride and greed, and just drop the whole DRM thing. It really isn't going to stop anything for long.....if at all. Until the DRM is cracked, people will rip directly off the outputs using HD video capture cards, and then re-encode to non-DRM'd format. And then share it on the networks.
Put simply, it's just another way they can try to keep the outmoded channels of content delivery churning out huge profits for as long as possible before they collapse completely.
That's what I was thinking of, catweasel. It's been a while, obviously. ;)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Sony has been really screwing up with the PS3 launch it seems. The X-box 360 is not only final hardware, it's in production and will be released to consumers one week from today. The PS3? Well nobody is sure, Sony isn't saying but is hinting at a launch NEXT Christmas. Well, as we all know, a lot happens in technology in a year. Ya, right now there's no HD-DVD and the 360 is still just a "real soon now" toy. However same time in 2006 pretty much everyone that wants one will own a 360 and HD-DVD may well have been selling for a number of months.
Well, that's a problem. If people already have a next gen console, they may be more reluctant to pick up a PS3. It is possible that the PS3 will be significantly more powerful than the 360 and leapfrong it, but that seems unlikely. More likely it'll be on par with it. Well, that means you are trying to convince consumers to buy something they already have. Now with some it'll work, some people own all the consoles, but with many it won't. They'll be content with what they have and not want to buy yours unless it's a lot better.
This, of course, doesn't mean that the PS3 or Blu-ray is doomed. There could be an earlier launch, the 360 could flop, HD-DVD could never materalize, etc. However with the current PS3 launch looking like next year, it seems foolish to count on it to drive Blu-ray. By the time it finally gets out, it might not really matter anymore.
People are happy with DVD, and will be for a while yet. I think that this storm will blow over before people become unhappy with DVD. Many do not even realise that their DVDs that they are watching on their HD TVs aren't HD, because they are better than analogue SD.
That said, I will consider HD-DVD or Blu-Ray only when it appears that there is a clear winner, and it is compatible with my TV. Compatible means that it either puts out a 1080i analogue signal on component jacks, or that I am ready to replace my TV for some other reason.
On another front, I noticed that there is now a HD version of Divx ;-). It is capable of storing an HD movie in DVD-sized files.
www.wavefront-av.com
The 9Gb BluRay format a great idea. Think about it.
It is obviously cheaper than making BluRay Discs.
It opens the possibility of using DVD-/+R and RW discs for media.
It holds about 15-30 minutes of HD format data (extrpolating from BluRay HDF moview length:storage ratios)
What posibilities does this size give:
*Short films, Promotonal vides, trailers etc. that are less than 30 minutes can be produced cheaply.
*Perhaps single episodes of TV shows could be fit on the 9Gb size.
What possibilities does the use of exisiting DVD burners writting to this format give:
*End user / consumer making and burning their own HD home movies from their HD camcorders.
Consumer HD camcorders coudl be made blueRay comaptible but use cheaper DVD type burners and cheap 9Gb media limtied to 30minute 9Gb recording.
*Media types can subsitute long video files with short "thumbs" and quickly trial new/advanced interactive content and menu structures without costly Bluray burners.
Yeah, I read it and know they say it won't be a problem. I guess the question is do you trust them?
I don't trust them at all. Why do you trust the HD-DVD people that managed copy is what they say?
I trust the Blu-Ray people only insofar as that they will have some version of Managed Copy, which is just as crippled as the HD-DVD version. In fact there does not even have to be trust involved because you can imagine Sony (who, remember has consumer electronics divisions as well as a computer division) will also want to be able to send video between players (or the PS3) and laptops. It's pretty easy to trust someone when what they want to do is in thier own best interests.
As to the HD-DVD support - did you know that Apple (one of the few tech companies to make a stand for some consumer rights) is behing Blu-Ray? It's not true at all that more tech companies are behind HD-DVD - mostly Microsoft and a few other people. When you look into it you'll find the list of Blu-Ray supporters looks way better than HD-DVD. But really it's irrelevant since both sides are using the same protective measures, Blu-Ray just includes a few options on toip of what is there.
And frankly as a home computer user I don't care which format wins in terms of movie support, I will have a Blu-Ray burner because I need the extra space to back up very large hard drives.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Read the article, Blu-Ray allows just as much freedom in copying media (which is to say a vrey protected version of same).
Consider that Apple and Sony and HP and Dell are all in the Blu-Ray consortium, whereas over on the HD-DVD side there's Microsoft and... I'm not sure who else but not many other major tech companies. Which format do you think is going to be more able to allow copying between many different devices from different manufacturers (again all protected of course) instead of just between different Microsoft products?
If your idea of freedom is being able to buy whatever form of Microsoft box you like to play media - count me out!
I'm sure neither of course will let you play media on Linux, so to say you prefer one over the other is to proclaim allegence to only one particular brand of salt to the exclusion of all others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anything that supports Sony's Blu-Ray will not be supported by me personally, or grudgingly from my company.
Sorry, I don't intend on being mean, but your company seems pretty irrelevent. I guess your "company" is an ISP that sells notebooks and PCs on the side from a poorly designed website?
Companies like HP, Dell, and Apple already support Blu-ray; and I don't think your name is Micheal Dell or Steve Jobs. . .
This should be no shock since you're posting AC but you're completely missing the point. The GP's statement (assuming that you're not the AC who posted the GP) is that all transmissions will be done digitally under a very, very arrogant aassumption that physical media will no longer be used. Until every, single home in the world gets a broadband connection directly to their home that can handle that kind of bandwidth, physical media will be required.
Whether or not FIOS/FTTH can handle the transmission is inconsequential. The issue is the elimation of physical media so that all customers can get all of their entertainment on-line. The GP is also conveniently ignoring the fact that the entertainment companies would need to have an incredibly massive infrastructure to make every piece of conceivable entertainment available to their customers on-demand. THAT is not going to happen any time soon, and it will certainly not happen in any of our lifetimes unless a bandwith, storage, and tranmission breakthrough occurs and become cost-effective.
Downloading with non-draconian DRM could certainly help, but it still won't matter until every square inch of the planet has a reliable connection that is faster than current speeds. This includes oceans as well since people do sail for days or weeks at a time. If they can't instantly get access to whatever movie they're in the mood for while they're at sea, then the GPs statement about physical media being eliminated out of obsolescense is nonsense.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Hey brainiac, Sony makes consumer devices AS WELL AS movies. Don't you think they'd have just as much an interest in making conumers happy from that end, so they would actually buy Sony equipment?
Did you not even know that the Blu-Ray consortium includes Apple, Dell, and HP? I don't recall any of them making media either. Would not your same arguments apply equally to them?
Lastly remember that Microsofts interests are not making the conumer happy, they are in forcing the consumer to buy Microsoft gear. The Managed Copy model fits that pretty well since you'd most likley only be able to copy media between Microsoft devices.
Lastly, to the meat of the matter - Microsoft is behind HD-DVD because they would get royalties from the various Microsoft-specific technologies in the standard (like the iHD menuing language). They don't get that from Blu-Ray which is the real issue at work here. Why would Microsoft give up on all that free money to be had from every player making tithing to Microsoft?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I could care less about this crap, do something useful with your time!
Where's my damn HoloDeck!#@!
HD-DVD making close-ups look bad? Simple, move to a more orgy-driven business model. When you have twenty people in the scene they look just as good as they did at TV res with only two.
Red-Blue Ray....WTF is that? Where is my green-orange-purple-blue-ray? Lame I am definately going to wait and see where this BS goes before buying. Sony and blue-ray can eat my nuts.
Some people just don't bother to make an account, because we don't care about karma or whatever.
It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with "balls," nor with the discussion at hand.
I believe that the Amiga floppy drive had a variable speed motor to it that helped it squeeze more data into the inner tracks by spinning slower.
:)
And there were HD Floppy drives for Amiga but I think they were all 3rd party. In fact, I owned an external one. It would read any HD floppy but to write to it, you had to run a special patch. Also, with the right drivers, you could read any PC floppy or Mac floppy with it as well.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Blu-Ray has mandatory MPEG-4 support. Note that MPEG-2 is also supported - for the playback of HD-DVD recordings, which do in fact use HD-DVD (they come that way over the air or on cable). But movie studios can use whatever codec they like for movies.
Now does anyone think it a plus that you HAVE to transcode HD-DVD to MPEG4 to store on an HD-DVD? Is it really better to have a compressed version of an already compresed video file, or just store the first generation compressed version? I would almost think that HD-DVD would have to support MPEG-2 as well, and they are just quoting figures for MPEG-4 compression. I agree they are probably playing loose with bitrates though. If Blu-Ray holds twice as much data and supports the same codecs, then it can hold twice as much video - end of story.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
iHD and Java are strictly for the interactive menus. Both HDDVD and BluRay use AACS for DRM. If you read the acticle, you would have known this. If you really want to make this Microsoft vs Sony, only Sony has installed a rootkit as part of their DRM in the past.
HD-DVD Jon -or- Blu-Ray Jon
Whichever name pops up first, I am siding with that format.
Most people can't hear any difference between CD audio and DVD-A or SACD. You need good speakers and good ears and some idea about what to listen for. Most people can indeed tell the difference between DVD video and HDTV, easily. With a DVD you are basically getting the NTSC standard, which is quite old and limited. It's markedly inferior to the visual quality of movies shot on film as far back as the 1930s. The difference in resolution may not be as apparent on a small screen, but when you put NTSC video up on a bigger screen the fuzziness becomes quite noticeable and annoying. With HD you get something that looks pretty close to the original film. Not identical, but Close Enough.
As for most stuff on TV being garbage. . . Yeah, that's true. But the great thing about Blu-Ray is that -- presumably -- we'll be able to collect movies from the back catalog of the last 70+ years. There's got to be some good stuff in there somewhere.
And the other great thing is that it's the end of the upgrade path. Like CDs. . . They aren't going to be replaced any time soon because they really are "good enough" for most of our music and most of our ears. HDTV is good enough for most of our movies (setting aside IMAX). If you bought movies on VHS, and then bought movies on LaserDisc, and then bought movies on DVD. . . You probably got pretty tired of changing formats, and it's especially rough if you bought the same movie in more than one format. But HDTV should be the Very Last Format for movies. Past that, you'll be into the area of diminishing returns, which is exactly why SACD and DVD-A aren't having widespread success.
You wrote: "DVD was a big step up from VHS - clarity, features, accessibilty. . ."
Actually, Super VHS and LaserDisc were big steps up from VHS. DVD was a big step sideways from LaserDisc. It's still something of a mystery to me why LaserDisc never caught on big-time, but so many years later DVD did, when they provided almost the same performance, features, etc.
The failure of Super VHS is an even bigger mystery. Because you know, the video quality of standard VHS was absolutely dreadful. Then came Super VHS to fix that glaring problem, and it was met with a big yawn. I bought a series of S-VHS machines, they worked well for me. But at Circuit City they usually had a table full of returned S-VHS machines on sale for cheap -- people returned those because they couldn't see any difference from standard VHS. I can only guess, but I'd assume those people had their S-VHS machines plugged into poorly adjusted 10 year old TV sets through the RF input. Then again, maybe they expected some dramatic improvement to leap out that them. . . S-VHS was indeed better, but it was still NTSC.
Getting back to the subject of NTSC versus ATSC HD video. . . You certainly won't need a 60-inch screen or an A-B test to see the difference. It's not subtle at all, it's dramatic. It does depend somewhat on the source material, since some programs are softer looking than others. Film transfers to HD look softer and somewhat different from footage shot with a HD camera. (To me, film transfers to NTSC video look like NTSC video. Film transfers to HD video look like film. Pure HD video has it's own distinctive look.)
A 250gb (210 usable) drive in an HDtivo will store 30-50 hours of HD programming depending on bitrate. At the high end for both Directv and OTA, you're looking at 8gb/hour. At the low side, maybe 4. So with today's drives, it's fair to say you could store 100 hours. Don't know how much of a reduction mpeg4 would garner.
ATSC tops out at 19.2Mbit, btw. Given how few cable/DSL people are at 6, with some at 4 and the bulk at 1.5, it seems like a good while before people will be streaming HD.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sucks and want to control you. Dont buy anyone of them. And absolutely dont rush to the store and buy one. It will take a very long time before any of them break through if they ever do.
Keep use your DVD and region-free DVD, it has good enough quality. Then in a couple of years, maybe you can buy a player from China which supports both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and DVD all in one.
DVD is good! Dont support this new crap technologies.
As for the members, Apple has exactly as good a record at allowing interoperability of proprietary formats as Microsoft does, and Dell and HP are probably more concerned about PC media than movie content discs.
Well, Apple does let you rip to MP3 in iTunes - Windows Media Player insists on WMA.
Also, it's only Microsoft talking up the whole HDCP DVI protected video paths for computers (to come in Vista). Apple has not made any moves in that direction, nothing announced or in development. I still think Apple computers will be able to play Blu-Ray discs on the monitors we have today.
You have a good point though that generally they both seem to be in a race to uslessness. The only good thing is that I think I read (but still am not sure) that region coding is gone from both new formats. That would be great news if true.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The number of people that enjoy watching DVDs on their computer is only slightly larger than the number of people with HTPCs... The bump received from this minorty will not be enough to kill off any competition
Have you ever considered college students who might not want to own both a PC and a DVD player? For them, especially when space in a dorm room is at a premium, this is a very big deal.
Well, my customers say otherwise. Considering last year I sold about $28k worth of Sony products alone...my little dinky store with a crappy website did sell product.
Sure I'm no Micheal Dell or Steve Jobs, and after the HUGE amounts of problems I see from Dell PC's or the lack of good software/hardware for the Mac I wouldn't want to be. We pride ourselves in providing solid products that you don't have to worry about when they will break. We have only had 1 hardware failure in 3 years after it went to the customer and that's over 5000 machines. That's not to say we don't have our fair share of hardware problems, but we catch them before they leave our shop.
Sure the site looks a bit old, that's because it's 5 years old and in the process of being rebuilt. It's also the 4th site my company has had which shows that there's obviously something about our products and services. If you weren't intending on being mean as you put it, then that statement would have been better left unsaid.
Video games are also sold on-line by a lot of different vendors for a discounted price, yet boxed media are still preferred. Why?
Because the current generation video game consoles don't support buying and downloading games to the system's internal hard drive. Microsoft's Xbox 360 full version and Nintendo's Revolution, on the other hand, will allow owners to buy downloadable minigames to be stored on the hard drive (for Xbox 360) or SD memory card (for Revolution).
PS3 - Blu-Ray at launch. Xbox 360 - HD-DVD someday. Maybe. We have a winner.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
Microsoft has to make a bunch of noise about any hardware standard because thousands of companies need to be ready for any particular new OS feature.
The only companies that need to be ready are a few monitor makers. Microsoft needs to find people willing to make these monitors. Apple would need also to work with these same displays but they've made no noise in that direction, and they would need to be making overtures now - or at least want to be involved in the spec. As a Blu-Ray supporter Apple will most likely be shipping with Blu-Ray drives in all models early next year, if they plan to be able to play media they need to have those kinds of things settled on now.
Depends on the MPAA more than on Apple or Microsoft.
Actually it depends on the Blu-Ray consortium and the Blu-Ray standard. Odd that only HD-DVD as a standard seems to be talking about locking computers into a protected display path.
MS doesn't add a bunch of crap to Windows for the hell of it - they do it because there's a perceived need by software developers (in this case, the MPAA)
Yes, Microsoft does work to do what the MPAA would like to do - whereas so far Apple has done the opposite, in that they dragged the music industry toward a solution Apple thought was better and the music industry hated. Even now the music companies chafe at the low (ha!) cost of ITMS songs and wish you could not burn CD's.
If any company is going to be able to play hi-def video through a normal monitor, it's going to be Apple because they will at least argue for it. Whereas Microsoft is gleefully eager to lock down the video path and make consumers buy new monitors, and new versions of Windows to play the new media.
It sounds a lot like Apple advocacy I know, but I am only extrapolating from historical trends.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your website looks like ass with Firefox.
I call BS. No matter how well you make your machines, the hard drives of ANY manufacturer are going to fail every once in a while; it's inevitable. And they will fail months after they leave your factory. The sign a good company is one who can identify the problem and solve it quickly when it happens. It sounds like what you are really saying is that you have only provided service to one customer... I guess the rest must have gotten busy-signals, as 5000 machines will not work flawlessly for years NO MATTER WHAT.
Joe Public isn't demanding better picture quality from his next-gen DVD player -- Joe Public isn't even that enthusiastic about HDTV, for that matter: Unless Hollywood stops focusing on DRM and starts producing content that sucks less, high-def DVD will be dead on arrival. The average buyer isn't going to shell out money to watch Herbie: Fully Loaded in high-def, and the videophiles aren't motivated to throw out their DVD collections and buy the same content again in newer packaging.
And don't even get me started on data: This is the industry that couldn't even come together on a standard for this generation's DVD data disc. I can't wait for HD-RW, Blu-Ray+RW and HBlue*RW to hit the market.
New forum covers alot of information on all 3.
http://holoforum.com/
If you have a WSJ sub, you can find an interview with Jobs ranting about what a mistake DVD was and how next-gen media needs to be "uncopyable".
That seems unlikley since it is impossible and Jobs is generally a little more technically astute. If you can provide a link I can read it.
Absent any affirmative statement either way from Apple, it's all specualtion about what they will or won't do. But, MS needs to make public statements about this stuff and Apple doesn't,
Again, there is no reason why Apple would not have to make public noise about this for the exact same reason Microsoft does. Apple would at least have to test with monitors being developed. There would have to appear at some point parts in the kernel in development builds whcih I imagine we'd hear about rather quickly. For a launch date that is approaching so rapidly there would be more noise by now.
(A) Probably 80% of Macs sold have integrated display
And all of them include a VGA or DVI port out.
(B) It's safe assumption that there will be no official Bluray upgrade for the installed base.
Why would that be a safe assumption? That would be idiotic and hamper the adoption of BluRay. What about external players, are you honestly saying Apple will not support them going forward for older computers?
(C) Apple has proven they will gladly fuck with the connector plug to spur monitor upgrades
No beef there, though thier heart was in the right place for what they tried to do (sort of an HDMI actually). They did at least revert to a standard plug eventually.
(D) For all you & I know, the current Apple displays might meet the copyprotection spec.
Actually I do know that even the 30" does not support HDCP, which is what is being used by both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD for protected video streams. This bolters my theory as if they were really being quiet they would at least have made monitors comply some time ago...
At question is if an Apple Blu-Ray media player will work on older monitors - I still maintain that it would be very advantageous for both Blu-Ray and Apple if it is so. Apple will thus try to push for it from that angle and may well succeed.
We'll see next year when players arrive...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually the public has shown a remarkably flexible capacity to keep re-buying material they already have, in a shiny new format. Perhaps the greatest coup of this sort is the current incarnation of the online music store, which will sell you music in a compressed, lossy format, at a cost similar to what you would pay for a higher-quality digital rendering on CD at a regular music store (admittedly, selling song-by-song affords the consumer more choice).
....what? DVD-VISTA vs PENGUINSRULE-DVD? It's idiotic. Information technology infrastrucure needs to be treated like a public utility. Nationalize Microsoft, enforce federal data-compatibility laws, get rational. Undermines the free market, you say? SUCK IT UP.
No doubt online music vendors will start releasing higher quality, less lossy tracks (for $1.49 or $1.99 per) when they figure that enough of their potential buyers are hooked up to broadband. Or when broadband improves. Or both.
I can't wait until they come out with UH-DED (Ultra-High-density Digital Everything Disc), which will compete with maybe MISTAHKURTZHE-DED (Expand as desired), only to be followed by
At the risk of getting modded redundant, the PS3 will only ship with a blu-ray drive. Movie manufacturers don't have much incentive producing HD-DVDs when most of the players on the market are either dual format, or blu-ray only.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
I need no meds, but you might need glasses - did I ever say Blu-Ray would be DRM free? Nope, I said it would be AS free as HD-DVD - which isn't much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please tell me why the presence of Intel in a forum about next-gen media players means jack squat. Microsoft and Apple and HP and Dell - these are people that sell systems that make use of the media (though not to the extent taht people like Sony or Toshiba will). Intel has a remote relationship indeed to the final product, and really has no weight in descion making as I see it. At least not for the political choices, which are really the only interesting ones under debate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They just introduced PCIe with no vendor outreach, so nope. Besides, they can let MS and Intel carry the water as per usual.
That however is an already widley understood standard, that Apple is adhering to - rather than having to work with players on a non-standard protected path for datastreams out. Apple only has to make compliant hardware and device makers following the spec will have devices that work with it. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray need driver makers to support the special OS features to ensure the data is protected.
The point is that the % of users affected by this would be very low.
There are a lot more users that connect Powerbooks to monitors than you might think. And again it would affect a huge number of older computers with new drives, killing the market for drive makers to sell standalone drives to consumers.
Because they never sold DVD upgrade kits.
Apple not selling an upgrade kit is *very* different than not being able to buy them. Apple doesn't do "upgrade kits", plenty of people however bought external or internal drives and plugged them in.
While external DVD drives would not work with iDVD, they would work just fine with the movie player. There's nothing to stop Apple supporting players on older computers that can handle the drive; and in fact it's more technically difficult to say "this driver will only work on this MB with this drive" instead of just having the driver. If you are pointing to DVD drives for precident then what it shows is Apple being open to third party drives (in terms of OS driver support; for even those drives that would not work with iDVD worked just fine with DVD Studio Pro).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So thats only 50% larger than DVD4.5 10mbs
Average movie = 5-7gig, add 50%, and its 7 to 10.5Gig
Add in better mulitpass compression, and VBR, you can fit HD movies today on 9gig DVDroms in mpeg2, although
todays $30 dvd players cant play em, china could easily make hybrid smart dvd players for $30 more than could
decode/play larger res MPEG2 video in VOB format with DVI/YUV outputs just as digital-tv-STB.
Theres not much a leap to HD, when $150 STBs can play digitalhd-tv, so why not just add a dvdrom to those
and away you go. First one to market that from china will kick ass - china has the #s in terms of consumers willing
to buy china brands, and not 900% markup japan/uas goods.
Content is the missing link, though im sure pirates can easily slowly build their own out of date hd library from
digital-tv/cablehd sources.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If Warner is only intending on using 9GB for their movies on Blu-Ray, so they can use cheaper red-laser compatible manufacturing, won't the quality levels be just the same a dual-layer DVD? This just sounds like a scheme to make me buy Casablanca again, but with no improvement in quality. It sounds just like DVD but with hardend encryption. If Warner is saying that DVD quality is good enough and consumers won't notice that they are not getting a better product, then why should we buy into this technology? I hope consumers just say "No" to both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I like my DVDs fine just they way they are.