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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)."
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.
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.
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!)
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.
it's the porn industry that will decide anyway. not m$ or *cough* sony.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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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?
"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.
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?
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.
I don't understand why people are given moderation points who don't know how to use it. As of this moment, 50% of moderators think that the parent comment is overrated. I say the moderators are in over their head. With all the recent controversy with Sony I don't see why is it overrated to question their future technology? Heck if they can botch your system for a stupid country music, think what they'll do for Matrix or LOTR etc etc. They are caught with their pants down now; what it means is that they learnt their lessons and will force a bill or something that makes it legal for them to install rootkits (it is not far fetched at all).
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
Am I the only person who absolutely does not care about high def DVDs? Regular DVDs have more than enough quality for me. It's not like I am going to marry and spend the rest of my life with the disc. I just want to watch a movie every know and then. I have ZERO desire or incentive to buy movies on this new medium. I don't need them for storage either. Maybe I am just dumb but I don't understand it.
The main reasons I switched from VHS to DVD were:
1) The ability to jump chapters
2) Never have to rewind
3) Easier to store
Better picture quality just came "free" with all the benefits, IMHO.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, we don't have format wars online at all!
Oh wait, ogg and mp3, avi and mpeg, gif and png, doc and pdf, need I go on?
And I think people will prefer tangible, transferable property in the form of discs instead of one fat harddrive.
If what you said was true, no one would have CD's or cassettes, we'd just use radio.
C17H21NO4
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.
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.
Actually, it will just piggyback off the built-in rootkit in Vista.
No kidding. I got marked a troll the other day because I made a funny about Microsoft Windows - which is obviously a mortal sin on a site filled with fanboys of both extremes. Funny thing is I know who did it because that nice user marked me as a foe. *shrug*
Here's a hint to moderators-of-the-day: if a post can be taken one of two ways (trolling or funny) assume that you have no sense of humor, learn to chuckle, and move on past. Everyone but you got the joke and laughed. Or, do n00bs require a disclaimer like "This is a funny, not a troll" with every tongue-in-cheek or otherwise-satirical (e.g., sarcastic) post?
back on topicANYWAY, on Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD: With Tivo suddenly deciding to delete recorded television shows, or refusing to record certain broadcasts, and with the explosion of PDAs, smartphones, and now the Video iPod, even Joe-Sixpack consumers are becoming more sophisticated, and while they may not know about Fair Use is, they'll understand that they're getting ripped off when HD:DVD refuses to play in Hi-Def on their component or DVI plasma-screen HDTVs they just spent $4,500 on, or when they can't convert their DVDs they legally purchased for use on mobile devices - then Microsoft, et. al will get plagued with complaints and eventually class-action lawsuits and boycotts (it'll be worse than Divx was) and the media producers will be forced to fight fires, put spin on the situation and eventually give up and relent and allow for fair use.
Meanwhile, professional pirates in downtown New York and China will not be hindered in the least and will still be raking in the dough.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
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.
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...)
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