Blu-ray Coming Out On Top?

wh0pper writes "Some interesting information came out at at the latest Blu-ray Disc Association meeting at Twentieth Century Fox Studios. Apparently, 90 percent of the CE industry and seven movie studios now back Blu-ray Disc. And most of the IT industry (except Microsoft) also supports Blu-ray Disc. This has prompted Mr. Parsons, Senior VP of Advanced Products Development for Pioneer Electronics, to say "There's no format war looming because it's not Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. It's simply Blu-ray versus standard definition DVD... Currently, DVD has 50,000 titles presently available, and both formats will co-exist for several years to come with new BD players supporting both formats. BD players make the perfect complement to new HDTVs that are being purchased by consumers." Mr. Parsons then announced that the upcoming CES would be used to launch Blu-ray Disc."

Comments

My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[ReformedExCon]

It used to read DVD-RAM discs just fine. Now, it says that the disc is unreadable.

I'm another victim of the DVD format wars.

I'm glad that the industry is standardizing the next generation media now when there are very few (any?) players on the market. It's good to have a standard, even if it is a de facto standard rather than a de jure standard.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Docmach]

I agree. Even though I am on the Blu-Ray side I'll just be happy to have one standard. It does seem that there are many technical reasons to use Blu-Ray, though.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Craig Davison]

I thought it was just one technical reason: the capacity of the disc. That's really all there was to it, right?
The point HD-DVD had going for it was that the discs and players would have been cheaper to make.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Jason1729]

There's plenty of technical reasons to use blu-ray.

There is very invasive DRM measures in blu-ray that make divx look like it would make Richard Stallman proud. You need to get permission every time you play a disc, and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

The studios love it but the consumers will be totally screwed over by it.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

>There is very invasive DRM measures in blu-ray that make divx look like it would make Richard Stallman proud. You need to get permission every time you play a disc, and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

What discs??? I certainly won't be buying any such disks.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[sniepre]

I don't understand how this is a reason to use Blu-ray.. ? I don't personally want any DRM that comes close to that and I don't think it would last in the market more than a week before someone says "Why is my disc broken?"

I'm assuming the invasive DRM you refer to is not included in those technical reasons to use Blu-ray or something.?? *shrugs*

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[16K Ram Pack]

The content industry is going to see a serious backlash if they try this.

They tried region coding, and people over here in the UK just got players chipped and hacked. Everyone I know has a multiregion player so that they can watch unavailable US movies or cheaper far east versions.

Start telling people that they can't lend a movie to a mate, and they'll either boycott, or work out a way around.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[mrchaotica]

Maybe this will help you figure it out.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[moro_666]

what a waste of time.

if i have the discplayer, it obviously has output channels to a tv and to a sound system.

so obviously i can rip it off from these same outputs. they can have all the drm they want, a bit divx encoding in there which loses their mighty "identification" spots that have been under discussion here somewhere, and the movies will again be out on the torrent sites. sure it will lose some quality, but i don't really think that downloaders will mind the drop of quality in such tiny amounts. (now camrips and ts's are loss of quality, a clean cablerip is as good as it can be on your tv). if you have a tv/video card with tv-in port, you're the man and the drm people are wasted.

if you really think that drm works, show me a drm that can't be just cableripped or that hasn't been cracked by software already (oh that dvd region joke never expires i guess...).

any measure they make with 3 years will be hacked with 3 months. any big secret about drm that you trust into taiwan hardware makers (hdtv producers for example) will be out soon enough & counter measured to make the whole investment in drm a total waste. and the saddest thing is that taiwan&china produce massive amount of everyday electronics already and the advanced countries can't afford to cut these out of the production system.

don't the movie/soundmakers really understand that the only bloody way to fight piracy is to lower the prices and make the content affordable ? this is the only thing that will ever decrease the piracy.

fight the bloody problem and not the results it creates.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Scarblac]

Well, current DVDs already have invasive DRM. Mandatory ads, hard to copy, etc. I guess you refuse to watch them?

Whatever the new standard will be, they're all DRMed out the wazoo. That's just not a choice, seen from the industry.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[RoLi]

(now camrips and ts's are loss of quality, a clean cablerip is as good as it can be on your tv).

Actually when done professionally, a camrip off your TFT-TV can be just as good as transferring it by cable. When using a good test-pattern, you can get 1:1 pixel alignment. A good engineer might also be able to rip off the electronics of a digital TV.

I'm pretty sure professional pirates (in Asia) are willing to do this, so whatever DRM the industry may try won't change a thing.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Stripe7]

They are encoding signals into the HDTV signal and DRM chips into the camcorders so that it scrambles the picture if is sees the do not record signal.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[whogben]

Downloading fiscally just isn't a big deal. Out here in the real-world, not that many people download, and those who do definitely wouldn't consider buying the movie. Movie rentals are barely impacted by downloading - as a movie rental is a choice of convenience rather than pure economic consideration. It doesn't matter to the big manufacturers that their DRM will be broken by super geeks and the disgruntled tech savvy will download their movies. The actual number of paying customers that choose to download instead is fairly small. DRM just needs to make it inconvenient for the average, perhaps even below average user. How many of our parents would download and burn a copy of a movie to watch it on the downstairs TV - instead of just renting it. DRM is not an all or nothing battle. Its not whether it can be hacked, but how comfortable the hacking process is for the majority of *paying* customers. That said, if it ties down to one player when you put it in, people will rebel! I don't believe that the discs will do that - afterall - video rental would be over. The infrastructure isnt quite in place for all digital delivery yet.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[el americano]

Theoretical capacity or capacity-in-a-laboratory is completely irrelevant and is comparable to this press release that claims Blu-ray is what consumers want, even though you can't buy any movies in either format yet. The fact remains that HD movies only require twice the space that a regular movie does, so the first cheap player for cheap discs @ 20GB should be the winner.

Hmmm, let's see... Panasonic's Blu-ray player costs $2780 with $69 for the mythical 50GB disc or $32 for the real-world 25GB disc. Nope, not there yet. Not there in 2006 at all, I think.

Personally, I think consumers are going to be hard to push from good-enough DVDs to over-hyped hi-def anyway. Add to that a ridiculous DRM that requires new TVs and monitors and prohibits copies of media that's likely to be less durable than DVD (especially Blu-ray), then I know I'm going to save a fortune by not buying any of it. Non-DRM dual-layer DVD will be my solution of choice until they offer me something truly better.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Kjella]

They are encoding signals into the HDTV signal and DRM chips into the camcorders so that it scrambles the picture if is sees the do not record signal.

Record the upper half, lower half, left half, right half, turn the camera 90 degrees, 180 degrees, do some kind of stillframe-photo with automatic page step, take your pick... Maybe they can stop consumer camcorders pointed at a cinema screen, but in an environment outside their control it's just not going to happen.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[simcop2387]

I'd like to see some information about this, i'm curious as to how it could possibly be implemented.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Pieroxy]

The question really is: Who cares which format will prevail? I for one, don't. Very soon, most - if not all - players will play all formats available. So well, who gives a damn if it's going to be a HDDVD or a BRDVD?

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[sniepre]

Fair enough, but, I do still suspsect that the line is drawing near where people just won't understand what they are even buying. A license to watch under very limited circumstances and only in one location, I would think, would be the end of a product.

People understand "If you buy it, and you break it, you lose it." They don't understand "If you buy it, and dont use it just how we say, you lose it."

I can't see something with over-restrictive DRM suceeding in the mainstream, unless there are equal means available to law-obiding citizens to turn them into law-breakers by using "cracks."

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[wernercd]

invasive DRM?

www.slysoft.com AnyDVD.

Bye Bye DRM/ads/etc.

and the real questions is: can u trust DRM by Sony? I know I won't.

I'll wait for slysoft (or the like) to make a good bypass software like they have for DVDs.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[sniepre]

Point taken, forgive a long day.

Also, I felt compelled to respond, but I love your signature.

DRM 'manages access' in the same way that jail 'manages freedom.'

I'm going to use that sometime, I am sure you don't mind :)

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[nutshell42]

You need to get permission every time you play a disc

This would require a mandatory, permanent Internet connection for your BD player and I doubt we'll see stuff like that in consumer electronics in the next 10 years.

and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

I assume you refer to Sony's patent for such a mechanism. That patent was issued in 1999. They didn't put it in the PS2, they didn't put it in the PSP, now a few months ago it resurfaced and suddenly everyone assumes they'll use it for the PS3. IMHO Sony's too afraid of losing to MS to try something harebrained like that

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[nmosfet]

This is actually the "problem" hdmi is suppose to solve. Using this interface, data sent between the disk player and the tv screen/monitor is actually encrypted. Sure people may eventually create decoders to overcome this protection but it's still another issue to deal with not to mention increased costs.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[maxwell demon]

I'm unlikely to buy a BluRay or HD-DVD player anytime soon, even if they get cheap. Therefore I personally don't really care how many Movies I'll get on which format. I highly doubt I'd see much of a different on my (non-HDTV) TV anyway (and I'm not going to buy a new TV either). I might, however, buy a burner as soon as they are reasonably cheap. Not for burning movies, but for storing data. And for that, there are basically three benchmarks:

• How much data can I store on it?
• How much data per Euro can I store on it?
• How reliable/durable is my data on them?

In a nutshell, I'd like to have large, cheap and reasonably reliable storage.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Fred_A]

I don't know what the situation is elsewhere but here in France, you'd probably be hard pressed nowadays finding a player that only plays zone 2.
Granted there's always some kind of chicken dance you have to do to switch regions (like 7 7 Enter 7 on the remote on my model) but that's acceptable for the occasional disk.

However those tricks are always undocumented (in the supplied manual). You always have to refer to the manufacturers support area on their website. Because of this a number of users seem to be unaware of the capabilities of their hardware (but then they are the same who probably don't really know what the hell zones are to begin with).

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[DrXym]

You need to get permission every time you play a disc, and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

This is absurd. Discs can't be mated to a player unless they are rewritable. The fact is that a Blu-Ray disc will play on any player.

Anyway, any regional / disc encryption they may employ is a waste of time. The image quality from these discs will be so good that you could rip and reencode from the video out and it would be virtually indistinguishable from the original.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[nmg196]

> You need to get permission every time you play a disc,

No you just made that up. Permission from who? Will the players have a cell phone built in and call up?

> your discs are permanently mated to your player.

Err, no! Obviously not. Otherwise when you upgrade your player, your entire collection would be written off.

> if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection

*Obviously* not or they would never sell a single player. Please stop saying whatever stupid little thing pops into your head.

Someone please mod the parent's propaganda post below zero before it confuses anymore gullable people.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Dion]

Yes, yes it can.

It works like this:
1) You buy the disk.
2) You pop the disk in the player.
3) The player contacts the mothership to be able to get a decryption key for this disk.
4) The player stores the decryption key so it's able to play the disk another time.

5) If you take the disk to another player the player will be unable to get a decryption key as the disk with this serial number has already been tied to the first player.

Anything is possible with bluray.

HDDVD only specifies the AACS, but bluray has the extra B+ layer which is pr-disk code that can do anything the disk manufacturer wants to prevent/grant access to the disk.

The programability means that every single new bluray disk can become more and more draconian.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Kjella]

Well, current DVDs already have invasive DRM. Mandatory ads, hard to copy, etc. I guess you refuse to watch them?

While you may argue that technically and legally it is not relevant, in practise that question greatly depends on whether or not that DRM may be removed or not. I consider Blu-Ray's policy to be illegal around here, since I don't sign any contract when I buy neither player nor disc and thus I fully own both (but not the immaterial copyright).

"291. For skadeverk straffes den som rettstridig ødelegger, skader, gjør ubrukelig eller forspiller en gjenstand som helt eller delvis tilhører en annen. Straffen for skadeverk er bøter eller fengsel inntil 1 år."

Quick translation: "291. For vandalism will be punished whoever illegally destroys, damages, makes unusable or consumes an object which fully or partially belongs to someone else. The penalty for vandalism is fines or prison for up to one year."

If they don't want to play nice I don't see why I should either. I'd love to see another DVD-Jon case come up here, it would really highlight how bad the consumers are getting shafted. We might even score a win, even with the EUCD in place. The courts here are remarkably unwaivering under corporate and political pressure.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[wheany]

Everybody is clever enough to create an encryption that they are not able to crack themselves. Besides, they are trying to protect their content from the same people that they are showing it to.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[el americano]

People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only (Thanks FCC. I had some money saved up, and I was feeling guilty about it.) - but I don't see people buying the players until they're easily affordable with comparably priced media.

As for archival storage, why anticipate investing in an upgrade unless it's an order of magnitude greater than what you have now? I haven't bought every storage option that came down the pike (e.g. I never owned a Zip drive). 30-50GB is a rather pitiful increase for the next generation. Think about it. A 9GB DVD is more than 10 CDs. A CD is more than 200 floppies! These new discs are 3-5 DVDs? Wake me when, and if, Blu-ray hits 200GB - and it better be fast, because holographic storage is likely to have 1.6TB discs by the end of next year.

Make no mistake. Blu-ray/HD-DVD is about entertainment media, not computer storage.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[yabos]

The FCC isn't forcing broadcasters to transmit in HD only(yet). They're forcing them to transimit in digital only which is very different.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Kadin2048]

I'm sure a suitably knowledgable and motivated person could also just open up the DVD player or TV and poke around with a good scope or analyzer while playing some sort of test pattern and figure out a place where you can get the unencrypted digital bitstream. Especially if it's something like a LCD television (or a CRT television, obviously you can get an analog output from the signals being fed to the guns) there has to be the signal there someplace. Sure the manufacturers can pot the boards in epoxy and try to make it difficult (and expensive as hell for the rest of us, thanks guys) but DRM is inherently flawed.

There are quite a few electrical engineers in other countries who I'm sure would have more than enough economic incentive to spend a few weeks tinkering with a digital TV to figure out how to break the system, so that the big Asian pirated-movie producers can keep stamping out bootlegs.

Of course in a situation like this it's us -- the first-world consumers -- who lose out. Because we get stuck with the costs for "securing" the televisions and DVD players, plus we have the onerous DRM on movies we buy, plus we probably spend millions of taxpayer dollars trying to enforce import restrictions on the resulting Asian bootlegs. Who wins? The Chinese, mostly, since they're the ones who will probably be making the DVD players to begin with, and cracking them and making the bootlegs, and in a few years selling the mod chips that people here in the States and in Europe will be selling on shady websites.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

current DVDs already have invasive DRM. Mandatory ads, hard to copy,

Now I've been copying dvds since the the PS2 was launched, and frankly it's easier than copying VHS tapes. VHS tapes you needed a good top notch demacrovision box, or some obscure 1980's vhs player that didn't have a macrovision chip. DVDs? all you needed was DeCSS ;) once you have the raw mpeg2 streams you can post process it with whichever video post processor you prefer, to make it fit on consumer blank dvds, or to make divx/Xvid etc.

I do admit, that for the typical PC illiterate it's been shell out the $50 for a commercial DVD rip software package, for most of that time, but then DVDshrink came out, and main stream dvd Burners got affordable, and know almost everyone knows someone who knows a guy who has a CD printable inkjet, and is selling movies on the street corners complete with the disc label. usually of movies they downloaded before they were in theaters, just using the poster art for the disc label, just to make it look like it's worth paying $5 for. but yeah, for commercially released DVDs anyone with half a brain and a few hours can learn how to use a scanner and a inkjet printer to make a 'copy' that at first glance looks like it was bought at wal-mart.

DVDs are easy to copy, blu-ray might pose a slightly bigger challenge, but i'm confidant it will be cracked, some how. afterall the video has to be playable in some way, which means at some point the data becomes vulnerable to being copied, it's not like the player is going to create a SSH encrypted tunnel to your DRM enabled HDTV to pipe the signals in a secure encrypted environment.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[CodeHog]

People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only (Thanks FCC. I had some money saved up, and I was feeling guilty about it.)
That's a definite possiblity, but I've been having some interesting conversations about the whole 'forced conversion' to digital. It will be nearly impossible to make millions of people go out and purchase a new TV overnight just because the FCC says everything has to be digital. I know I'll go without TV if that's the case. And maybe millions of other people will too. Hey that sounds like a good thing. Oh wait, we'll all just go to watching stuff on our cell phones, computers, ipods, etc. etc. etc... sigh.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[maxwell demon]

As for archival storage, why anticipate investing in an upgrade unless it's an order of magnitude greater than what you have now?

I bought my DVD burner before dual layer burners came out, therefore I'm limited to 4.7GB (and doubling the capacity indeed isn't enough to upgrade). Therefore 50GB are indeed an order of magnitude more than what I have now.
Of course, if at that time an even larger capacity will be available at reasonable cost (or can be expected to get to that cost range qute soon), then I'll of course buy/wait for that. But then, future decisions have always their share of uncertainty (after all, maybe by that time all optical disk media are obsoleted by vastly improved USB sticks).

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

It si actualy quite easy and has been discussed here I think (search plug the analog hole).
It they have their way, They will have numerous way to do this. You will need a new TV (Hdtv) and disc reader (that will be mandatory) to have access to the new tech. These will be backed by several technologies:
*A broadcast flag that your tv and setup box/bd player will need to recognize to be able to play.
*A mandatory broadband or modem connection, so they can manage how you watch your movie and determine if any other peripherial is connected to your system.
*An analogue signal scrambler (think evolved Macrovision)
*Video watermarking so any unlicence copy wont be readable in any player and/or tv

They are trying to gain controls on all signal front, be it analogue or digital and are lobying to have laws passed to enable this.

Sure you could choose not to use these new technologies, but time will see you wrong cause eventually, you will have no choice. The unkowing masses will just swallow the blue pill and live hapily their new DRM lives.

Piracy will still exist but not as widespead or easily accessible as it is now.

These a just possibilities, but i can tell you they are working hard to make them happen...

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Phroggy]

afterall the video has to be playable in some way, which means at some point the data becomes vulnerable to being copied, it's not like the player is going to create a SSH encrypted tunnel to your DRM enabled HDTV to pipe the signals in a secure encrypted environment.

if Microsoft has their way... what do you think Trusted Computing is all about? It won't be SSH exactly, of course, but an encrypted connection, absolutely. They've got a ways to go yet, but this is exactly what they're working toward.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[BigCheese]

It took a special kind of stupid to believe that region coding would stop anything. Even without the chipped players region coding depended on the price of DVD players staying so high that most people would not be able to afford a second one.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[amliebsch]

if you really think that drm works, show me a drm that can't be just cableripped or that hasn't been cracked by software already (oh that dvd region joke never expires i guess...)

Okay, since you asked for it: HDCP: High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection. It is a protocol for encrypting the transmission in the cable between your DVD player, etc. and your television set. This capability will be included in the upcoming version of Windows. I have no doubt that disc manufacturers will require this soon enough. Maybe it will start out only requiring it for high-definition content, but eventually anyone without a trusted display path will be locked out.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Tony Hoyle]

They're not 'working towards it' it's already there in the standards. It's mandatory HDCP. Blu-Ray will *not* output HDTV over anything else. Bought an HTTV with component? Throw it in the trash because blu-ray will only send it SD.

This uses PKI with revokable keys - the movie studios can just keep revoking keys that are hacked.

Of course that'll work until the the first popular TV model gets hacked, and they kill the TVs belonging to half a million users. That'll be one hell of a lawsuit.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Tony Hoyle]

The output channels to the TV are HDCP encrypted digital *only*. You cannot rip them.

The component outputs are standard def. This is more than 'a little bit' of loss of quality.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[IdleTime]

There are those among us who don't have a problem paying $2k for a player if we want one. I personally have a screening room setup that cost close to $70000. Adding a BD player to that is no a big deal, but something I will do once it's available for shipping. Why? Simply because it's my main interest, just as computers is yours and that is where your money goes. I prefer multimedia on a grander scale than on a PC, so I go for the real deal.

Expensive? To you maybe...

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Tony Hoyle]

Err, no! Obviously not. Otherwise when you upgrade your player, your entire collection would be written off.

Congratulations! You just worked out why DRM is bad.

This is *exactly* how BluRay works. It is tied to a single player.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[16K Ram Pack]

I suppose my main point is that of all content restriction that has been tried, region coding is probably the biggest out there, and failed. People don't like being told what they can do (many/most accept reasonable copyright protection that doesn't get in their way).

When I first bought a DVD player, multi-region wasn't a big thing, but now, I don't know anyone with an R2 only machine (and that includes plenty of non-geeks like a plumber).

For all the complaints about DVD and it's restrictions (like the DVD-Jon case), it serves the public reasonably well. Very few people care about being able to have open access to their DVD. They put it in, it plays a movie. They can play it on their PC, on a standalone player. They can sell it on Ebay and lend it to their friends.

But the public will not swallow certain restrictions. If there really is to be calling home and machine-based restrictions, it won't take off. A few people might buy it just because they've got so much money that they can live without lending it to friends, trading it on Ebay, and are happy to have a DVD version for the car. Most people won't be.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Pdj79]

The switch from analog to digital does not mean you have to go out and buy a new TV. What it does mean is that, like satellite service, you'll have to have a digital converter box for every TV set. And considering most cable companies charge ~$8-$12/box, that'll add up real quick...unless they go the route of satellite and offer you up to 4 boxes with a yearly contract. My cable company is talking about going all digital this spring and we've already started receiving information on what will happen. Its not all bad...but its not all good either. Sure, now all the channels will look good on my HD set...but do I really need that sharp, crisp display on my daughters' 13-inch set in their bedroom?

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Xyde]

Pick any two.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[computechnica]

The whole switch over means the handheld TV you know own that can only recieve local analog broadcast will become a paper-weight. Maybe some one will develope a cheap pocket tuner-converter. All the other old TVs will still work as long as they are hooked up to a Sat/Cable box.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[simcop2387]

watermarking and macrovision type things i understand, what i don't get is how they plan on making such a thing that all digital video cameras detect and turn off when they see it, as the ggp described.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[TheSync]

People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only

You will be glad to know that:

1) broadcasters will be forced to transmit in digital only, it is up to your local broadcaster how to split up their 19 Mbps between SD and HD resolution streams and

2) bills before congress right now have the government providing you a $40 coupon for a set-top-box which will receive digital broadcast signals, and probably also downconvert HD DTV streams to SD composite analog out for you.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[orderb13]

RTFA. It said that NO disk would require a connection to the internet. That is part of the standard, so how are they going to lock you playing it to one player? The (stated) reason that MS went with HD-DVD over Blu-ray is that Blu-ray doesn't have a spec for managed copy access. That was also one of the things they addressed in the article, but I guess it would be too much bother for you to read it.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[poot_rootbeer]

Just because the Blu-Ray spec allows discs to be DRM'ed out the ass doesn't mean that every disc released is going to use those features.

I doubt that the content industry has forgotten about the failure of DIVX already -- they lost money on that, right along with Circuit City, for every movie on DIVX disc that sold for $2 on clearance after the product bombed.

Expect the full set of restrictions to be enabled only for Oscar screeners and things of that nature.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Botia]

I am very excited about having HD DVD's of some sort. However, I don't see the market there for at least two years.

With two formats it won't happen. I believe HD-DVD is a better format for movies but I'd rather have one format than two. If blu-ray wins, so be it. With that said, if blu-ray does win, my guess is it will fail when it comes to movies. The discs cost more than people want to pay. They will become unusable much easier than current DVD's (unless a special coating is put on that will make the discs even more expensive). The DRM surrounding blu-ray is outrageous, requiring an Internet connection, locking the disc to the player, and disabling the player. I'm not going to buy a blu-ray player. Not a chance in a million.

On the PC side the story is a bit different. Blu-ray looks like the better way to go. It will be available and will probably store more data. I can see it being a success there while the other format steps up and takes the movie portion of the market, fixing the problems with blu-ray (expensive, DRM, etc.). This leads us back to having two different formats, one for PC's and one for watching movies.

Yes, I think it will be a while before I buy.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called "bragging" and it's classless. Did you earn that kind of money by working for it, or did it come from a fortunate relative's demise?

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[PriceIke]

> Err, no! Obviously not. Otherwise when you upgrade your player, your entire collection would be written off.

Obviously? And this is obviously bad for the movie industry why?

Check out how Napster works sometime and tell me why the movie industry wouldn't jump to operate on the same system if they could.

The fact that the movie industry supports Blu-Ray is reason enough for me to be sure never to use it. After Sony's shenanigans with XCP and MediaMax, I sure as hell am not going to trust them getting their fingers into my movies too.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Jeff DeMaagd]

people here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only

No one will have to buy an entire new TV when analog broadcasts end. There have been digital tuner boxes that can output 480i for maybe five years now, and their prices continue to go down. They can rescale HD, ED and SD to any currently used TV resolution from 480i to 1080i and everything between. And in my experience, the picture will generally be better. The stations I couldn't get had very a snowy picture anyway.

In the end, all they will need is a new TV tuner and their existing TV should be fine.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[IdleTime]

My parents were poor and the only thing i inherited of some value was an old iron used to iron clothes that was from the early 1800's. Probably worth around $100 or so, so no.

I'm older than the average /. reader I guess and I have worked all my life since I graduated from one of the top 100 universities (It was ranked in the 60's last year at least).

What different people spend money on has nothing to do with bragging, but with what interests you have. How much have you in your short life spent of money on crap and on computers? My interest is in multimedia and that leads to aquiring equipment that is quality and quality costs. It also cost money to build a media room so that the building construction is not ruining the experience. Plus a decent surround sound system which actually can enhance your experience is expensive. I'm not talking about your average hone theater system found at best buy.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Have like they do for computer cases, intrusion detection, scramble the decoding key when its opened.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[mattcoz]

First cheap player will be the PS3, so Blu-ray wins.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[elrous0]

I guess it would be too much bother for you to read it.

Sir, are you aware this is /. you're posting to?

-Eric

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[kimvette]

In which case, I'll stick to standard DVD, thanks, and if/when DVDs are discontinued, there will be downloads from P2P networks and .ru sites.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, current DVDs already have invasive DRM. Mandatory ads, hard to copy, etc. I guess you refuse to watch them?

Ever single one of these was defeated before I purchased my first DVD. Seriously.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[orderb13]

Damnit. I knew there was some part of this I was forgetting. In that case...

Don't read the article and continue in ignorance all.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[javaxman]

The FCC isn't forcing broadcasters to transmit in HD only(yet). They're forcing them to transimit in digital only which is very different.

If you have to buy either a decoder or a new TV to view that digital channel, it's not really very different to the consumer. It's especially not different when the fact is that the vast majority of stations will transmit at least one HD channel, and the set-top boxes will receive those.

If you want off-the-air broadcasts, you'll have to get a tuner. If you get a tuner, you'll have a tuner capable of outputting HD content that your TV doesn't display properly. In this scenario, anyone who can afford to will want to buy an HD display, so despite the fact that you are technically correct, the parent's point that a whole lot of people will upgrade their TV is also true.

Then again, who do you know that gets their TV over-the-air? I suppose the vast majority use cable or satellite, and actually won't have a lot of incentive to upgrade as a result. Hmmm.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

that still wouldn't do anything for recording externally with a video camera

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[shamino0]

There is very invasive DRM measures in blu-ray that make divx look like it would make Richard Stallman proud. You need to get permission every time you play a disc, and your discs are permanently mated to your player...

If it is that restrictive, then people won't buy it.

DivX died a much-deserved death because people were unwilling to buy pay-per-view discs. If BD (or anything else) ends up being similarly restrictive, the public will choose to not buy into the format.

People don't care much about DVD's restrictions because most people aren't interested in making copies of their discs. And in those markets where people really want foreign discs (most places outside the US), region-free players are fairly easy to buy. But I guarantee you that if a new standard comes with restrictions that gets in consumers' way (like tying the disc to only one player), they'll very quickly stop buying. At which point, either the studios will rethink their decision or the format will die.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Stinky Fartface]

Dude, I'm not going to sit here and defend any DRM scheme, but your comment is a bunch of FUD. There is very little truth in your statement. I sincerely doubt Sony, as stupid as they seem to have gotten letely, would implement any of this, even if they could.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[AmPz]

At some point the raw video data must be made available and decrypted. The reason for this is that our eyes and brains do not come equipped with DRM software (yet..). If there is no external unencrypted signal available, then just open up the TV and pick up the video signal directly from the circuitboard. Granted, it is not for everyone, but it only takes _one_ person. Because if one person in the entire world can make a unencrypted copy of the disc, then all the DRM crap is for nothing. All it will do is annoy law-obiding customers. It will do nothing to prevent piracy. The engineers at the moviemakers of course know this, but the decision is not up to them. And the decisionmakers do not seem to understand the world very well.. Blu-ray is an awful format. Even Microsoft understands that it is rendered completely useless by all the DRM crap. I agree with Tony... If this thing is ever launched, then it will be very interesting to see what happens when a top-of-the-line model from one of the major blu-ray backing corporations gets hacked.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[kesuki]

just to help the lazy, HDCP works over any DVI port, so any hdtv with a DVI port Will work with blu-ray video players. just because it has component inputs doesn't mean you're screwed, as long as it also has dvi. most of the better hd ready sets have dvi ports, as a mtter of fact i was weighing the pros and cons of getting an LCD HDTV vs buying a LCD monitor + HDTV tuner card.

Also a side note is that HDCP is not implemented by blu-ray drives themselves, but rather by the players software, so PC based blu-ray drives will not be incapable of processing the video data from a blu-ray discs, it's just that in order to recieve the signal from a blu-ray player one will need a DVI input that can negotiate HDCP in order to aquire a digital signal.

If the ps3 is still supposedly using blu-ray, then all one will need to make the ps3 output HD over component video from a blu-ray movie is a simple ModChip. Since PS3's will have a slew of modchips developed for it, at least one of them will support removing the HD playback restrictions to do what the hardware is capable of and the movie studios are afraid of. unprotected analog high definition video. unlike other aftermarket players there Will be huge demand for ps3 modchips, so it is likely people are already working on what kind of modchip design they might need to build based on the rumours and any leaked information on the ps3.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Jason1729]

Ending the video rental market is a perk for the content industry, it's not a problem for them.

We can only hope people will rebel like they did with divx, but the industry is going to do its best to cram it down our throats. Players will be expensive at first (like DVD players and VCRs were). It will probably be years before an average person has two, they might note even notice the restriction until they have a fair collection of media.

On top of that, you have articles like the one linked here trying to convince consumers blu-ray is the way to go, there's not even a format war.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Jason1729]

This would require a mandatory, permanent Internet connection for your BD player and I doubt we'll see stuff like that in consumer electronics in the next 10 years. It will require a mandatory, permanent internet (or phone) connection.

I guess by your reckoning, TiVo will not hit the market for another 10 years.

It's not "mandatory" on my satellite receiver, but it is if I want to be able to buy PPV content.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Jason1729]

No you just made that up. Permission from who? Will the players have a cell phone built in and call up?

It will need a permantent phone/internet connection.

Err, no! Obviously not. Otherwise when you upgrade your player, your entire collection would be written off.

To the movie industry, that's a feature.

*Obviously* not or they would never sell a single player. Please stop saying whatever stupid little thing pops into your head.

TiVo "lifetime" subscriptions are for the life of the player. People buy TiVos.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[Jason1729]

Circuit City lost about $100 million on DivX.

Do you really think that's the end of the industry's interest in such a scheme? Have you heard of Vialta's ViDVD format? It was quite similar to DivX but worse, and it was a few years AFTER DivX. It flopped even faster than DivX.

The industry has not forgotten about DivX, that was their wet dream, and they're going to try again, and again, and again until their dream comes true.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[StikyPad]

Oh wait, we'll all just go to watching stuff on our cell phones, computers, ipods, etc. etc. etc... sigh.

And, uh.. cable and satellite.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[4phun]

You listed the very reason I would not encourage anyone of my friends or family to buy into Blu Ray. If they do they had been warned that the potential for a great lost when the player/recorder fails.

This similar to downloading software to your mobile phone only to lose it all when the phone is replaced for after a problem or an upgrade. You have to buy it all over again.

I think not, I will not buy into in the first place.

Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore

[nmg196]

> It will need a permantent phone/internet connection.

From the Blu-ray FAQ:

"Will Blu-ray require an Internet connection?
  No, you will not need an Internet connection for playback of Blu-ray movies."

People can make up statistics to prove anything...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forty percent of people know that.

Technology driver

[MyIS]

As usual, the pron industry will decide which format wins.

Re:Technology driver

[AwaxSlashdot]

Funny ?! Mod parent interesting/relevant.

Re:Technology driver

[ChadN]

I have discovered that DVD has easily more than enough picture clarity for my pron watching needs, and I'm not sure I am really looking forward to HD porn... Maybe I just got used to grainy porn, but the high color fidelity, high contrast, and glisteningly realistic porn of DVD (rather than old school film transfer) is already more than a bit off-putting for me, sometimes.

As for dual angles: I wish they'd pick one angle and stick to it (hey, no pun intended), rather than have a movie edited to constantly switch cameras on me. Whenever it switches to bung-hole cam, I hit the alternate angle button, and by the time it actually switches (a few seconds), the movie cuts back to brown-eye-vision. If they really want to advance the technology, they should build a "hairy, bobbing man-ass" pixelizer right into the DVDs, for us more reserved porn enthusiasts.

Re:Technology driver

[NotAnotherReboot]

Oh, come now. This comment is repeatedly echoed in every article about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. It's almost becoming groupthink of a sort, if so many people keep saying it, I might as well say it too!

Do you really think if the porn industry decided to go for HD-DVD while 9/10 of the major movie studios went for Bluray that HD-DVD would win out? And here's another hint: the porn industry is concerned with making money; they will go to either format that wins out.

The only reason this keeps coming up is because years ago, Sony didn't want porn on Betamax and it often cited as one of the reasons for its downfall (hint: it wasn't the only one).

Re:Technology driver

[Kjella]

In that case, DVD will win. Seriously, only a few top producers like Hustler, Playboy and such appriciate HDTV, because they got the means to hire real beauties. Your average porn actress does *not* look more attractive in HDTV. The porn industry jumped all over DVD primarily because of random access. No more rewind/forward, easy looping, play at quarter/half speed and so on. Porn does not need to be watched in a linear, start-to-end fashion. What does HDTV bring to porn producers? Honestly, only much higher demands on them. But with HDTV cams at $1600 (Sony HDR-HC1) and dropping, perhaps it'll happen anyway. But I don't think the porn industry will lead it.

Re:Technology driver

[Drakonite]

Porn has a history of adapting to new technology a lot faster than the major movie studios. They end up as essentially the first group to pick up a format, which then gives that format a big lead in terms of acceptance and units sold. The extra lead snowballs into the format dominating over the other.

Admit it, which ever group is the most expiremental and fastest to move and use a new media the most tends to get to choose which direction it goes, and I don't think anyone would argue against the porn industry being the fastest moving and most experimental.

Re:Technology driver

[this great guy]

As usual, the pr0n industry will decide which format wins.

Yep. This time they choosed the brunette over the blonde.

Re:Technology driver

[Ztream]

Yeah, but does anyone actually buy porn on a disc anymore? It would seem to me that the porn industry is already way beyond that, having offered downloadable and streaming content for years.

Re:Technology driver

[woolio]

If they really want to advance the technology, they should build a "hairy, bobbing man-ass" pixelizer right into the DVDs, for us more reserved porn enthusiasts.

Can you imagine someone explaining that one to their PhD committee?

Re:Technology driver

[DrEldarion]

Actually, in this case, I believe it's going to be the PS3 which decides the winner. There are going to be millions of these in homes, and there's no way HD-DVD will be able to keep up.

Re:Technology driver

[Fred_A]

I too think that like porn theatres, hardware porn (on disks or tape) is past its prime.
It's likely being phased out by the computer networks.

Re:Technology driver

[Fred_A]

There is no such thing as "real beauties".
Unless you factor in the time spent with photoshop.

None of the girls you see in the magazines are real. They might as well be rendered for all the retouching that has taken place prior to publication.

If they dump their models on HD TV, you might be sorely disapointed.

Re:Technology driver

[chris_eineke]

big lead... snowballs... dominating... fastest to move... which direction it goes... fastest moving and most experimental...

I see a couple hundred approaches to a joke in your post! First come, first serve. :p

Re:Technology driver

[Drakonite]

You say that like that wording was unintentional! What fun is it to comment about the porn industry unless you include a half dozen or more ways to twist the words into being something perverted? None I say!

Re:Technology driver

[Kadin2048]

"Well, I was going to work on a cryptographic key recovery system, but that violated the DMCA and the University got threatened with a lawsuit. So in order to find something else that we could do with our thousands of dollars of test equipment and samples, I built this dynamically adapting 'Hairy Man Ass Filter.' It was supported by a grant from Concerned Parents of America. I hope this meets the qualifications for the PhD review committee."

Re:Technology driver

[Theaetetus]

Yeah, but does anyone actually buy porn on a disc anymore?

No, but they rent. My GF and I rented one the other day that was actually high-budget (for pr0n) - had CGI, green screen stuff, etc., and came with three discs... one main, one "special features", and one HDDVD. So, they are embracing new tech.

Re:Technology driver

[Jim Hall]

The porn industry jumped all over DVD primarily because of random access. No more rewind/forward, easy looping, play at quarter/half speed and so on. Porn does not need to be watched in a linear, start-to-end fashion.

But if you skip all around the disc with that random access, don't you miss out on the great plot?

Re:Technology driver

[Perky_Goth]

while i kind of agree with you, "real" beauties aren't, after a point it's just a question of makeup and image editing. if you catch some unedited pictures on the internet you can see it.
i think i even zapped through an Operah show saying the same thing.

Re:Technology driver

[MtViewGuy]

Yeah, but does anyone actually buy porn on a disc anymore?

The answer is a surprising yes. Why? Because a lot of the more famous adult movies from the 1970's and 1980's are being remastered (thanks to dramatic reduction in computers used to "clean up" old film stock) and are coming out on DVD format. I do know that the first three Taboo movies were released on DVD with much-cleaned up video and audio in recent years.

Nowadays, with most porno movies being shot using "prosumer" versions of MiniDV camcorders with their resonably high resolution, they can easily transfer the footage via IEEE-1394 or USB 2.0 cable to a high-end desktop computer to do things like editing, cleaning up the video, adding the soundtrack, and even creating the menu system all at the same time, and then "burn" a master on a dual-layer recordable DVD disc that will be used by the disc pressing company to create copies.

Re:Technology driver

[Eccles]

One wonders at what point CG will start to dominate that industry. What I've seen so far hasn't been impressive, but once the technique is down, will virtual actors be good enough for arousal purposes?

Re:Technology driver

[mfrank]

You know that Playboy makes plenty of DVDs, right? They are a lot better looking than almost any pr0n star. And, yes, HDTV will accentuate flaws. It's already making mainstream actresses stress out and is driving major improvements in the entertainment industry makeup field (and probably lighting, too).

Re:Technology driver

[Ztream]

Special Features? :)
Did it have audio commentary by the director too? :)
"Oh, hah, here we have that threesome scene , that was hilarious.. we had to shoot it four times because the topmost guy kept falling off..."

Re:Technology driver

[ejp1082]

Well, people still buy porn on DVD, but you have a good point. I'll point out that I've never seen porn that came crippled by DRM either.

In a completely rational world, I'd say that buying media on disks is getting to be an antequated concept - just as the mp3 was the successor to the CD, digital files should be the successor to DVD's. Bandwith and storage place will both get to the point where it's viable before either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD can get adopted by the market.

But we don't live in a rational world, media companies just can't get their head around it, and DRM any potential implementations of a digital distribution system into oblivion.

I, for one, welcome our SONY & DRM overlords..

[Hitto]

Or maybe not, maybe I'll keep on pirating my movies and music instead of giving another cent to the majors.
Screw them. I prefer indie stuff anyways.

A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Siguy]

From the bottom of the article: But the bottom-line is that this is an exciting time to be developing next-generation high definition digital TV products that will take us well into the third millennium. ...Right. It's not like we all read news reports last week saying that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD would be replaced with HVDs within 10 years.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[thorshammer42]

Of course HDTV will be phased out in 15 years and replaced by HrDTV (Higher Def TV). Anything so the TV companies can keep us buying for years to come...

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[wanax]

Saying we are in the 3rd millenium (2001-3000) is the same thing as saying we're in the 21st century (2001-2100), or that you're in your 25th year.... it simply implies that we're no longer in the 2nd millenium (1001-2000) or 20th century (1901-2000).

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Preeminence]

Millenium 1: 0-999
Millenium 2: 1000-1999
Millenium 3: 2000-2999

It doesn't have to last a thousand years... it only has to last 10-15 for us to be "well into the 3rd millenium"

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Siguy]

I don't see how 10 years can be considered "well into" a thousand years.

If I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close, am I?
Sigh, not very close at all.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Eric Smith]

Actually, they are 1-1000, 1001-2000, and 2001-3000. The year 1 C.E. was the first year of the common era, so the year 1000 was the last year of the first millenium. It's like counting pennies. Your 100th penny is part of your first dollar, not your second dollar.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Colm Buckley]

Millenium 1: 0-999
Millenium 2: 1000-1999
Millenium 3: 2000-2999

Someone's got to say it... nope, there was no year 0

Millenium 1: 1-1000
Millenium 2: 1001-2000
Millenium 3: 2001-3000

It appears that the guys who devised the Common Era calendar were a bit hazy about the concept of "zero".

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close, am I? Sigh, not very close at all.

You'll be glad to know that after the terrible mistake that is Aeon Flux, that Charlize will soon be on the market for more affordable prices.

So keep saving good sir. Get to a thousand and you may be in with a chance!

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[PhilHibbs]

No, ISO 8601:2000 stipulates that the year before year 1 is referred to as the year 0, and the year before that is the year -1. Therefore according to the international standard for dates, centuries are from 2000-2099, 2100-2199, etc.

Technically, everyone that refused to celebrate the new millennium on 1 Jan 2000 and held out for 1 Jan 2001 missed out because the ISO declared those that had already celebrated it to have been retroactively correct. Serves 'em right, I say, I celebrated both and got 2 parties out of it.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

If I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close, am I?
Sigh, not very close at all.

10 / 1000 = .01
100 / 10^6 = .00001

Your analogy sucks - it's 10,000 out of a million, not 100.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Kjella]

You mean the way they have been phasing out CDs? Oh wait, they haven't. HDTV @ 1080p is perfect from around 3x-3.5x the screen size away (for NTSC it's more like 8x-9x). What does that mean? It means that if you have a 42" TV and you sit further away than 42"*3,5 = 147" ~= 12feet ~= 3,6m away, it can't possibly get better. Even if you sit closer you have to have excellent vision and notice a very subtle lack of detail. So either video walls / projectors will have to become really cheap, or people will have to sit really close to the TV. Personally I think the "base cost" just isn't going to drop so far to make that realistic. Both the TV and movie studios have realized this is their very last chance to restrict content.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so pessimistic. A marketing professional would say you're "well into Charlize Theron"!

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Petersson]

Maybe they'll just increase fps.

I wonder that HDTV's 24 fps in hi-res will really suck in action scenes, just as it sucks in cinema. Even NTSC 30p/60i fps makes noticable difference compared to PAL 25p/50i fps.

150 Hz progressive scan could bring much more reality into scenes like Kung Fu combat or spaceship wars.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[ken kenobi]

No! No! No!

In the wikipedea article you link to it clearly refutes your statement...

Year 0001 corresponds to AD 1. The year before that is 0000, which corresponds to 1 BC

It further links to an article on the 20th Century where it states...

The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begun in the year 1.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[PhilHibbs]

I think it is only reasonable to conclude that the answer is still unclear. After all, according to ISO 8601:2000 we are currently in Century 20, and I don't think we are quite ready to start numbering centuries starting at zero, despite what the C programmer in me might like.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[CaptnMArk]

I'm not sure what HDTV fps is... ?

But if 720p has anything other than 60FPS (or 50 at least), than it's a complete non-starter.

I'd rather take 720x480 (PAL) resolution at 60FPS than 1920x1080 at 24FPS

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[nmg196]

I think you're missing his point. I'd hardly call 10 years or so "well into" the third millennium. A millennium is 1000 years. "Well into" would be 100 or 200 years out of that (ie 10 or 20%). Not 10 years.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Braxton_the_Covenant]

Well actually, there was no year 0. It went directly from 1 BC to 1 AD, passing over year zero entirely. So your year blocks are actually one year off from the generally accepted view of the first, second, and third millennium. Hence:

First Millennium: 1-1000 AD
Second Millennium: 1001-2000 AD
Third Millennium: 2001-3000 AD

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[mangu]

I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close

Don't despair. Given enough time, as your savings go up, her price goes down. I've heard that you can get a dinner with Raquel Welch for quite acceptable prices these days.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[AK Marc]

The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begun in the year 1.

Since all dates are necessarily arbitrary, why would it be unreasonable to arbitrarily declare the first century AD to be 99 years? Sure, it isn't technically correct, but the record keeping isn't that good back then, and it is all arbitrary anyway. That will get the centuries to chance with the digit rollover. And we all know that the digit rollover is the important thing.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[madprof]

Isn't PAL 720x576?

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[Eric Smith]

If you actually read the standard, or at least the Wikipedia article, you would know that the ISO standard uses 0000 for the year 1 B.C.E. This has been common practice with astronomers for many years, but has NOTHING to do with when a historical century begins or ends.

Thus the year 1 BCE is still immediately followed by 1 CE, even though the former is represented in ISO 8601 as 0000.

The first century BCE was the years 100 BCE through 1 BCE, inclusive. The ISO standard represents them as -0099 through 0000.

The first century CE was the years 1 CE through 100 CE, inclusive, which the ISE standard represents as 0001 through 0100.

Re:A reich that will last a thousand years!

[PhilHibbs]

The standard says nothing about centuries, other than that the first two digits of a year can be used on their own to represent the century, for example the "century" component of 2005-12-15 is '20'. The ISO 8601 concept of a century is different to the vernacular, where we are in the 21st Century.

More info....

[Cherita Chen]

Everything you ever wanted to know about Blue Ray... http://www.blu-ray.com/

Re:More info....

[cablepokerface]

The wikipedia community also has a descent explanation

Oh, and donnie is here.

Re:More info....

[Anonymous Coward]

Or even better here.

Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to skip Blu-Ray (54GB max. storage on dual layer) and go straight to 300GB holographic discs instead. And I'll avoid the crappy DRM Blu-Ray is saddled with.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to skip Holographic discs (300gb max. storage on single layer) and go straight for *insert the bigger disc format here* instead. And I'll avoid the crappy DRM Holographic discs are saddled with.

if you honestly belive the holographic discs will get released to the public without some sort of DRM protection you can just continue dreaming. Unless you own a multi-billion dollar company you won't be able to afford the burner and the discs alone are $100 a pop (granted that is sometimes less then a 300gb hdd) so unless you got tons of money and don't know what to do with it you won't be using holo discs (if they even release them to the public) anytime soon.

untill the day comes where more then a few internet people understand what DRM is and how bad it is you won't be seeing anything without DRM for a good long while...naturally by then it will be to late since there will be laws past outlawing anti-DRM measurse passed everywheres in the world...maybe if the anti-everything people could colonize the moon and setup servers and everything there then it would work but were going down the toilet right now and all the wrong people are in control.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Tekoneiric]

I think this is going to be the view of a lot of people including myself. I just don't know how successful a new movie disk format will be given the time for general adoption by the masses vs speed of Internet connections. About the time it hits it's stride in the mass market, faster Internet connections and better on-demand video services will be available.
It took DVDs years to be accepted by the market. They'll have to offer much more with the movies to get the public to want to buy new copies of what they have. With DVD, it was all the extras and the supposedly non-degrading format. Since the consumer already has that with DVD, Blu-ray can't push that so they'll have to push the higher resolution but the general public doesn't really understand that much so it's something really abstract to them. Are they going to sell their soul (DRM) and empty their pocket book to replace their current movies? I doubt it.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

I agree. I think we're looking at many more years before HDTV is ubiquitious, and several years more after that before a dvd replacement really hits big (and I don't believe it will be Blu-ray).

For most of us, dvd quality is all we need.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Tekoneiric]

I like the higher res but it's not enough to prompt me to replace my hundreds of TV & movies DVDs. Plus that awful DRM is a huge negitive. Basically +1 for high-res, -1000 for soul stealing DRM.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Jugalator]

Yeah, because when holodiscs have arrived, no one will think of using DRM anymore?
You know both that DRM will be a problem on all BD-ROM discs and it won't be on holodiscs... how?

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[16K Ram Pack]

When DVD came out, you could see an improvement with your existing equipment.

With HD you need a new TV to watch HDTV. I'm sure that over time we'll all end up with it, but I'm not going to spend £3000 to replace my TV to watch movies at a slightly higher resolution. I'd rather spend £3000 on cinema tickets than that.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

they'll have to push the higher resolution but the general public doesn't really understand that much so it's something really abstract to them.

Oh the general public understands HD very well alright. They really just don't care, and at current prices, honestly counldn't be bothered with it.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Jugalator]

But why won't you think the same when 300GB discs are introduced.

Tech is always moving at a rather extreme speed.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[maxwell demon]

Well, he probably hopes that by the time HVDs are in production, there will have been enough Sony-like incidents that DRMed media are simply not sellable at all any more.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Tekoneiric]

You sound very optimistic about the intelligence of the general population. I work in tech support and talk to the general population. Experience has taught me to be a cynic. Most people only see the bigger, thinner screens and bright colors.


"Their 12:00 flashers because their VCRs are always flashing 12:00" - Dead Trolls Help Desk video.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Anonymous Coward]

About the time it hits it's stride in the mass market, faster Internet connections and better on-demand video services will be available.
Are you sure? Here in Germany, mass consumer average bandwidth has been near-stagnant for five years. Sure internet access has become cheaper and more varied (via cable, via WLAN etc.), but the actual download seems to be throttled much in the same way ADSL artificially throttles upload.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[esme]

True enough. But there is a small number of people with HDTV who will see a difference right now. I'm guessing that these people are also the ones who buy a disproportionally large number of movies, spend the most on their sound setups, etc. So catering to them would make good sense.

So maybe instead of offering a pan-n-scan and a widescreen version, they offer a pan-n-scan dvd and a widescreen bluray. Or maybe it comes out on bluray a few weeks before the regular DVD (and maybe those few weeks are right before xmas...).

I think there are a lot of things like this that will drive bluray (or whatever) adoption. And once a significant number of people adopt it, the player prices will come down. Ditto for HDTV. And adoption of one will drive adoption of the other. Until now, there has been very little reason to get a HDTV, since there's so little content that really benefits from it. But once there's real content, a lot of people will upgrade, pushing the prices down further. And when the prices get into the reasonable consumer electronics range, the sales will probably take off just like they did for DVD players when they got cheap.

-Esme

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[Anonymous Coward]

It took DVDs years to be accepted by the market.

Sure it took "years"... a whopping 2 of them. The public embraced DVD way faster than VHS or even music CDs. Player sales increased exponentially year after year and are still going strong. I too doubt that Blu-Ray will really take off. I imaging that the same asshats that bought LDs will buy these turds, but that's about it.

Re:Skip Blu-Ray - Go To 300GB Holographic Discs

[SQLz]

I don't think its a lack of intelligence rather than having more important shit to do than mess with electronics. I bet you help doctors, lawyers (ok bad example), rocket scientists, teachers, etc. I'm sure they are intelligent, but just not knowledgeable of electronics

HD-DVD will win

[skyman8081]

I think that HD-DVD will win the end, simply because it is the inferior format. Which is usually is the one that wins in the end.

But Greedo shooting first must be nice at 1080p, either way.

Re:HD-DVD will win

[Cryptnotic]

I heard that Lucas is going to change it back for the Star Wars "Special Jedi Edition" box set.

No, really.

Re:HD-DVD will win

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh... I have the VHS box set of the remastered original eps. That's it. George Lucas isn't getting another penny from me by releasing 200 slight iterations of every Star Wars movie. In fact, that kind of fan abuse has taken any credibility he had left away. He's shamelessly milking his few actual successes. ._.;

Re:HD-DVD will win

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that Lucas is going to change it back for the Star Wars "Special Jedi Edition" box set.

No, really.

Link! It's not fair for you to toy with the hearts of geeks like that!

(If true... I suspect we'd see it as a /. article at least a half-a-dozen times leading up to the release of the box set.)

Re:HD-DVD will win

[bigpat]

I think that HD-DVD will win the end, simply because it is the inferior format. Which is usually is the one that wins in the end.

Funny, but not neccessarily a bad thing. If HD-DVD is truly inferior, then it might get discounted first which might lead to greater market adoption or find a use for which it wasn't intended.

The quality and attributes of a technology are meaningless unless people can afford it.

Re:HD-DVD will win

[Wesley Felter]

In the new new version, Jar-Jar shoots first.

Re:HD-DVD will win

[Belgand]

While I wish this were true I really have trouble believing it. Lucas has shown quite apparently that he doesn't give a thin, watery shit about what consumers or fans want. Yes, Episode II had obvious fan-service (e.g. Yoda duel, Boba/Jango Fett, Portman midriff, almost no Jar-Jar) but it was also bad fan-service (the Boba/Jango Fett scenes actually made him less cool, Yoda acting like a Yorkie on meth). He took forever to release a Star Wars set that involves even further changes that piss off fans who were already bitching about changes from the originals.

Want to give us a good set? Add in only the minor bits that actually help. Cleaning up the visuals a bit, the enhanced Wampa sequence, the X-wing approach to the Death Star, the celebration sequences at the end of Jedi. None of these detracted from the film, but they added just a little bit extra and were (suprisingly) actually in the spirit of the originals.

Re:HD-DVD will win

[AK Marc]

Want to give us a good set? Add in only the minor bits that actually help. Cleaning up the visuals a bit, the enhanced Wampa sequence, the X-wing approach to the Death Star, the celebration sequences at the end of Jedi. None of these detracted from the film, but they added just a little bit extra and were (suprisingly) actually in the spirit of the originals.

The "alternate cut" versions can be on the same disk. Most of it is the same, but you pick in the menu whether you want the "original" or "enhanced" version, and one has Han shoot first, the other Greedo shoots first. In one, Jaba is a badass. In the other, he's a whiny bitch in Han's hangar. That way I can pick and choose based off my mood, and it just switches out the scenes with differences.

Not decided if Blu-ray will have component video?

[mjrmjr]

That seems kind of odd. What would it have instead... S-Video and HMDI?

Birds of a Feather

[Nom du Keyboard]

...and seven movie studios

Birds of a feather, or in this case movie studios in this chummy chummy business, flock together. Since Sony is one of theirs, well you get the picture [pun alert].

In short, this is hardly surprising. Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3. Might have been different if XBox 360 was shipping with HD-DVD, but that's clearly not the case.

Re:Birds of a Feather

[thebdj]

Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3.

Well this is of course assuming that the PS3 does not have the compatability issues with DVD and Blu-Ray discs that the PS2 has had with DVDs. And so long as the technology doesn't change much I guess it won't matter either. Early edition PS2's could not support Progressive Scan.

Although, it will only really help so long as BD players come out priced at or above the price of the PS3. Afterall, the fact the PS2 came around the same price that many DVD players were at made it a bit more attractive.

Re:Birds of a Feather

[FatherOfONe]

You hit the nail right on the head.

It appears that most people here on slashdot hate Blue-Ray. I understand, but look at the alternative. A Microsoft backed system that will also have the copy protection crap in it.

So for once it looks like a technology that Microsoft hates it going to be the "standard".

It isn't like we have a totally open spec on one side and a DRM closed solution on the other. We the consumers (people that will actually buy a device), have a choice of one evil player or the other. It appears that the better technical solution will win. Also, it appears that a JVM will now become even more widely available, and thus piss off Microsoft even more. Let's be honest now, the ONLY reason Microsoft hates blue-ray is because it contains a JVM. They realize they will not control the living room and thus hate it. They have to be kicking themselves for not waiting a little bit on the new Xbox and shipping a HD-DVD in it.

Again for people that will actually spend money on a new High Definition DVD player, the choices are between one evil empire and the other. One is Microsoft and the other is Sony. Who would you pick?

Re:Birds of a Feather

[Danse]

Again for people that will actually spend money on a new High Definition DVD player, the choices are between one evil empire and the other. One is Microsoft and the other is Sony. Who would you pick?

Personally, I'd prefer to go with the one that is most likely to screw it up. I think Microsoft has the better track record in that department. If enough people get pissed off at DRM problems, then maybe we'll end up with something less restrictive in the end.

Re:Birds of a Feather

[FatherOfONe]

You do know what Sony just did with the root kit?

Microsoft wants to control the living room and then the content. Sony wants to keep people from stealing their content and thus keep prices unreasonably high. You decide which one is worse.

In the end the PS3 will make blue-ray the defacto standard.

BD? HD-DVD? Does it really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

My concern isn't really with which one will win out, we've seen DVD+R and DVD-R co-exist side by side for the last few years without too many problems, even DVD-RAM still gets a look in on many drives.

So, however this pans out, will it really matter to the consumer?

Re:BD? HD-DVD? Does it really matter?

[melstav]

As long as drives are released that are capable of reading both formats, not really....

It'd be better still if consumer DVD players were capable of reading both formats.

And better still when computer drives are releaseed to support WRITING both formats.

This is great

[Depris]

I love it when major corporations fight large battles against each other instead of the consumer. ...Oh wait.

Re:People can make up statistics to prove anything

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelt forfty.

See:Homer: People can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.

Re:Not decided if Blu-ray will have component vide

[Anonymous Coward]

blu-ray will only support hdmi as my memory recalls it.. this is due to hdcp compliance issues and the want to control that..

One question I have

[Hao Wu]

The pits on HD are 6-times the length of those on Blu-ray. So shouldn't there be less degradation, meaning a longer lifespan for the disk? (One would think that marks only 1/6 the size would deteriorate faster, no?)

Re:One question I have

[jZnat]

I guess you didn't notice, but the point behind Sony's tactics here is to provide an extremely fragile media so that you'll both not be able to back up your videos due to draconian DRM and you'll end up rebuying your videos every time they fuck up.

Re:One question I have

[gbobeck]

Theorhetically, yes. But according to Murphy's law, something else will cause disks to fail at the same rate, either new formats or the companies finding a way to sabotage the disks.

Re:One question I have

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this makes me ignorant, but I was unaware that discs had a quantifiable physical shelf life. Where might one corroborate on that claim? It's just that my oldest DVDs play just as well as my newest ones.

Re:One question I have

[nutshell42]

Stupid question but if the pits are 6 times on HD the length why doesn't Blu-ray offer 6 times the capacity? Are they longer but thinner? Does Blu-ray waste three quarters of the disc for something else?

Do you have any link about that?

Re:One question I have

[WuphonsReach]

Single-layer DVDs are 4.3GB. Single-layer Blue-Ray is something near 25GB. Which is about 6x.

(I'm 90% sure that single-layer Blue-Ray is ~25GB, with additional layers adding another ~25GB.)

Re:One question I have

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the holes that wear out, it's the dye they are etched into and the substrate material the dye resides on. It doesn't matter how big the holes are, it matters how resistant to UV, thermal, and other physical damage through regular use the disc is. It also matters how good quality control is during the manufacturing process. My guess is, that a good percentage of the first discs made will fail in the first five years simply because of manufacturing defects in the media. That's in the recordable media. The pressed commercial products will obviously be different as they are made of pressed mylar and substrate laminates instead of dye on substrate.

Re:One question I have

[Patik]

Stupid question but if the pits are 6 times on HD the length why doesn't Blu-ray offer 6 times the capacity? Are they longer but thinner? Does Blu-ray waste three quarters of the disc for something else?

No, they waste five-sixths of the disc for something else.

Re:One question I have

[nutshell42]

HD-DVD: 15GB per layer
Blu-Ray: 25GB per layer
(25/15)/6=0.28

That leaves about three-quarters for whatever they're using to waste said space.

What about HD-DVD?

[Nermal6693]

OK, so 90 percent support Blu-Ray, but what percentage support HD-DVD? It won't be 10 % because some companies (eg. Apple) support both formats, and others probably don't support either of them.

Re:What about HD-DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

..well.. seeing that Apple is on the board of Directors of the Blu-Ray group, I doubt they'll back HD-DVD that much.

Re:What about HD-DVD?

[chomprock]

as you're implying, it's a marketing trick. "90% support blu-ray" implies "blu-ray leads HD-DVD 9 to 1", but says nothing about companies supporting both. i wouldn't be surprised if HD-DVD had 70% of the market to blu-ray's 90%

Yet no mention of the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Its intresting how the Blue Ray go to such great lenghts to hide the imbedded DRM all player and disks will have.

For me until I heard about the Massive amounts of DRM being stuffed into Blue Ray I was in the Blue Ray camp, after I got a look at Blue Ray's DRM I changed my mind very quickly.
Its the consumer that will ultimitly decied.

Re:Yet no mention of the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Good lord man. Go back to 8th grade english class.
It's Blu-Ray, too. Not Blue.

Re:Yet no mention of the DRM

[Adriax]

Yes, the consumers will ultimatly decide.
And the decision will be "Awesome, the new season Lost/Desperate Housewives/, all on one disk! But it's only on this new format, no DVD... Ah well, time to get a new player!"

Welcome to the world of sheep. Sheep may not like to be sheered, but you can either force them into the corral by siccing the dogs on them (lawsuits and court rulings, bribed FCC officials), or you can tempt them in with some hay (see above).

I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at the Blu-ray camp and I thought it was pretty cool until the counsellors hogtied me and gave me an atomic wedgie. I knew it had happened to another kid earlier that summer, but I didn't expect that I would fall victim to those bastards.

I pissed in the potato salad and called my mom to pick me up. I haven't ever wanted to go back to that camp.

Re:Blu Ray is lame technology

[wo1verin3]

>> instead of some incremental advance on blu-ray that gives us 100 GB or something lame like that.

* wolv looks at spindle of 100 DVD-R
* wolv looks at 5-pack of 100GB discs

Yes... damn them and they better not give us those lame 100 GB discs.

sounds cool.... footage?

[topper24hours]

The descriptions of the interactive menus sound great anybody got some footage?

Re:sounds cool.... footage?

[doktoromni]

I think that fluffy menus are a feature *against* Blue Ray adoption by consumers at large. My personal experience is that most of my friends hate those fluffy DVD menus were you have to watch animations and hear sounds; plain objective menus were you can quickly get what you want are preferred.

Apparently...

[xiangpeng]

Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu won most of the industry over.

Both will fail

[ad0gg]

Older HDTVs and almost all computer monitors do not support HDCP. People have little incentive to pick bluray or HDDVD when they can't take advantage of the HD content without being forced to upgrade their monitors or tvs. Company that wins will be the first one to remove the HDCP requirement for video out but I have feeling both will not and they'll end up as the same fate DVD audio. Consumers will just ignore the technology.

Re:Both will fail

[mrchaotica]

I sure as hell hope you're right!

Re:Both will fail

[MrBandersnatch]

Heh many of the CURRENT cheaper flat panels and plasmas with HD resolutions dont support HDCP. There are going to be a lot of ***** off consumers when they find out their 1 or 2 year old panels will only display degraded video. In fact given the litigous state of the US, I strongly expect to hear of numerous class action lawsuits against retail chains and electronics manufacturers (Weeeelll the sales man toooooooll me it waaas a ach-dee tee-vee!).

This is going to be messy. VERY messy!

Personall though Im looking forward to a strong second hand market in high-res non-HDCP panels. I sure as hell can find content to play on those :)

Re:Both will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Chinese open / uncrippled standard will win.

They just gotta give it raw read/write access, including the normally inaccessable portions, and open firmware so people can zap in different personalities, and programmable pit lengths. Then people can cut their own 'blanks' and dups.

At the end of the day, being cheaper, and not tied to overpriced blanks will win the day. CNHDDVD is the future.

Re:Both will fail

[ivan256]

Every night I pray for the day that a few senators and congrespeople realize that their HDTV doesn't support HDCP. Only then will the shit fly.

Re:Both will fail

[Rucker]

Well there already are devices that strip HDCP... but there's a problem... revocation lists. If a company's devices don't support HDCP the way the media producers like, they can revoke the company's key (that your device uses to decrypt the content).

From http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000727051424/ --

This is where key-revocation lists come into play. The third aspect of HDCP security is "device renewability." This is the ability for media, streaming content, or even other devices to invalidate keys known to be a problem.

Re:Both will fail

[glindsey]

Silly commenter! The senators and congresspeople will get free HDTVs with HDMI inputs from the lobbyists, disguised thinly so it doesn't look like a bribery attempt.

But yeah, early adopters buying HDTVs now had better be sure they have HDMI interfaces or they may as well be buying $500 paperweights. The whole point of HDCP is that there is never an unencrypted signal accessible along the signal path. There will never be a (legal) set-top box that decodes an HDCP signal, because this is precisely what the standard was designed to avoid.

At least that's the theory. I give it three months before some company in a country that doesn't care less about so-called "intellectual property rights" to create a pirate HDMI-to-component video device, in which case you'd better believe the MPAA will be lobbying for insanely excessive sentences for people convicted of possessing one.

Re:Both will fail

[ivan256]

There is already such a device. It takes an HDCP signal, and outputs unencrypted DVI and component. It has almost all of the electronics from inside an HDTV in it though, and costs over $350.

The PS3

[wyldeone]

It has seemed pretty clear to me that Blue-ray will win, because thanks to the PS3, it defeats the chicken-and-egg problem of any new media, which is that no one will spend hundreds of dollars on a player for a new format when there are no movies, and no studio will produce movies if no players exist. Because the PS3 will put millions of blueray players in homes, compared with the meagre amount of early-adopters who will have hddvd players, studios will by neccessity go with blueray.

Re:The PS3

[Idimmu Xul]

er doesnt the xbox 360 come with an HD-DVD player?

by the time the PS3 is out, there will hardly be a 'meagre' ammount of HDDVD players in peoples homes..

Re:The PS3

[TyrionEagle]

er doesnt the xbox 360 come with an HD-DVD player?

Er, no it doesn't. Standard DVD drive only in the 360.

A Sony format winning in the marketplace...

[DCheesi]

...Law of Averages? Or sign of the Apocalypse??

Re:A Sony format winning in the marketplace...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also curious as to if UMD movie sales are doing any good, because i see the UMD movies everywhere, but i've yet to see anyone pick one out (not that i stand there creepily waiting to see poeple do that...)
but the other sign of the appocolypse was the 2006 new generation portable sales figures.. Sony's PSP successfully penetrated every market they entered, except the UK. a portable video game console competing against nintendo and not being instantly crushed? I know why wonder swan survived in asia (they had all the rpg developers who hated nintendo's policies.) and it's looking like the vast majority of them are on board for the psp, but that still doesn't mean the psp has any really decent games (imo, yet)

so truly the end is neigh nintedo has gone to the nintendawgs... and sony has actually won something

Re:A Sony format winning in the marketplace...

[Xarius]

It's odd, but I'm starting to see a lot of UMD movies in stores like GAME, or even Morrisons (a supermarket chain in the UK)...

yep. HDMI

[YesIAmAScript]

Sending the video out over analog (component) or unencrypted digital is forbidden.

The DVD CCA won't even let you send out uprezzed DVDs over analog or unencrypted digital (if the Macrovision flag is set).

It's completely ridiculous.

DVI w/HDCP is electrically identical to HDMI I guess, so that's probably permissible.

Re:yep. HDMI

[hug_the_penguin]

The question i see with it, is how does it tie in with the plans microsoft had for the HDMI style encryption to monitors? Perhaps this is one area where the two groups agree and can standardise?

All the same, the invasive DRM is a big turnoff, it won't be coming near my house until it's been cracked by someone with a publicly available crack (That's not illegal over here in britain, no DMCA, and even in america, linux users will be able to get around this due to the operability reason, which is the main reason).

What i notice is that they still haven't cottoned on that they aren't doing any good with all of this. Any system they have will be cracked, any cracked system is instantly useless, suing your fans doesn't work and people will do what they want to do, whether or not your technology enables them to do it.

I know, movies are expensive to make, but when was the last time anyone cared they spent millions on CGI effects etc. that don't really add to the movie? Frankly I personally could live without them, and given the infrequency with which I watch movies, I'm prepared to miss out on their crappy movies based on the DRM. It's about time the DMCA was lifted, it's unconstitutional.

(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[green pizza]

From what I gather, neither BluRay nor HDDVD will suport full HD resolution via component video, instead consumers will have to use HDMI for its HDCP copy protection.

Well, this is fine if I had a new TV... but instead I have a beautiful 3 year old rear projection HDTV that uses analog component inputs. This is currently connected to a HD DirecTV reciever and my DVD player. The DVD player is of course 480p but I do get as high as 1080i with some of the DirecTV channels.

So now what am I going to do when BluRay or HDDVD comes out and I want to view the full resolution siginal? What are the odds Sony will sell me new electronics to add HDCP digital to my TV? Will I have to use an illegal device to convert the digital stream to component for my TV?

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[Kris_J]

Will I have to use an illegal device to convert the digital stream to component for my TV?

Most likely. I bought a Sony PS2 as a DVD player because of Datel's DVD Region X. Most big companies simply have no idea how much of their sales are due to grey-market (or even black-market) products. Heck, the original Sony Playstation was so popular because you could so easily get cheap copies of the games.

Now, however, Sony is dead to me. I was already moving away from big brands like that anyway. In fact, my new Zensonic DVD player should be arriving soon.

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it, ohh, six months and the Chinese electronics companies will be producing HDMI->Component boxes that will decode the signal for you.

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[Ankou]

Yes but which version of HDMI there are currently 1.0 (released Dec 2002) and 1.1 (released May 2004). Second of all I was of the understanding you couldn't get true 1080i with component inputs. HDMI is "supposed" to be backward compliant with DVI at least those using the CEA-861 profile for DTVs. I suppose all you need, if you have a DVI input which I immagine you would if its a 3 year old rear projection HDTV, is a HDMI to DVI cable. Correct me if I am wrong, you could spend all day reading specifications and instructions and still not know what the hell is going on. I can only immagine how pissed regular consumers will be when they find their 3 grand tv doesn't play movies.

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[green pizza]

Yes but which version of HDMI there are currently 1.0 (released Dec 2002) and 1.1 (released May 2004). Second of all I was of the understanding you couldn't get true 1080i with component inputs. HDMI is "supposed" to be backward compliant with DVI at least those using the CEA-861 profile for DTVs. I suppose all you need, if you have a DVI input which I immagine you would if its a 3 year old rear projection HDTV, is a HDMI to DVI cable. Correct me if I am wrong, you could spend all day reading specifications and instructions and still not know what the hell is going on. I can only immagine how pissed regular consumers will be when they find their 3 grand tv doesn't play movies.

HDMI and DVI are essentially the same when it comes to normal computer-style digital video, you can easily buy cheap HDMI DVI adapters. But HDMI generally adds HDCP encyrption/copy protection (there's also DVI+DHCP which is essentially the same as HDMI+HDCP), which is what will be needed for 720p and 1080i in digital form from BluRay and HDDVD.

My TV has a DVI input as well as four sets of component inputs. The DVI input does not support HDCP. Supposedly if I were to connect a BluRay or HDDVD player to my TV's DVI via a HDMI adapter the TV would not understand the encrypted HD signal and the player would have to revert to a non-encrypted standard def 480p signal instead. These HD players will have component, but only for standard def (current DVD style) 480p.

Component does indeed support 1080i, in fact that's the only way to currently view 1080i with the new XBOX 360 as there currently is no DVI or HDMI cable for it... just composite, svideo, and component. I have seen from experience that 1080i over component does require three good matched cables to get a crisp picture. I'm guessing the bandwidth for that analog signal is pushing the limits of RCA cables.

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[poot_rootbeer]

neither BluRay nor HDDVD will suport full HD resolution via component video, instead consumers will have to use HDMI

These are physical media formats we're talking about here. What business do they have telling us what types of I/O connections a device capable of reading such media may or may not have?

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[Zed2K]

This might not be the case still. They ARE looking at changing this stance since so many folks will be left out and won't buy the devices because they don't have hdmi on their tvs.

Nothing is set until the devices start hitting the stores, until then there is still hope.

Re:(Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI??

[Gleenie]

I second that. I have an 18 month old 42" plasma TV. It's HD capable - but only has analog component inputs. The naysayers will cry 'But digital is better!' - well, in this case, it just means you get the same picture quality with a cheaper cable than you'll need for analog, so I didn't really care. (None of my other components had HDMI/DVI out anyway).

Until I read about HD-DVD & BluRay. My first reaction was 'doh!' and my second was, f*ck 'em if they can't take a joke: I'm NOT paying 10 times the price for a player that gets me less functionality than the one I currently have.

A victory for Java, too !

[Anonymous Coward]

And we all know why micro$oft hates BluRay so much : Java is embedded in every BluRay unit !

Re:A victory for Java, too !

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good reason for *anyone* to hate Blu-Ray, aside from it's horrid DRM.

Re:People can make up statistics to prove anything

[MikeyVB]

Forty percent of people know that.

Yes, but seventy-three percent of statistics are made up!

Dubious Victory...

[aws910]

This was the paragraph that caught my eye:

Apparently, 90 percent of the CE industry and seven movie studios now back Blu-ray Disc. And most of the IT industry (except Microsoft) also supports Blu-ray Disc.

In a PR-War such as this, I think any combatant would be quick to proclaim victory first. It doesn't take Sun Tzu to figure that one out. I mean, who exactly ARE all these "backers" anyway? Without a credible list of backers and non-backers(on both sides), how are we to determine the true victor at this time?

Oh, and about the DRM thing - I wouldn't worry about that. Any system created by man can be defeated by man. Think DeCSS. I think we will see similar hacks with BD, HD-DVD, HVD, etc. The MPAA will get all red-eyed, but there won't be anything they can do about it at the end of the day.

What DRM *is* in there?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Advanced Access Content System" where a permanent internet connection must be present at all times sounds like the worst of the worst to me. But is that merely rumor, or will it be a requirement for all BD players, INCLUDING the PS3? If that's the case, then they're yachting for a boycotting, as my mother used to say.

you're right...

[the_greywolf]

and i agree with you in principle.

however, i see Blu-ray as an excellt technological achievement. not all Blu-ray discs will have DRM. this is especially the case when single-layer Blu-ray writer drives hit the market in force. who doesn't want to store 25+GiB on a single disc?

i'm behind this format because it's technically very good. i'm against the DRM it mandates for movies, but there is little we can do about that short of a boycott.

my plan: buy a Blu-ray writer when they become affordable and hold out on movies until pirated stuff becomes common fare - because by then, DRM issues are moot.

Re:you're right...

[Timberwolf0122]

The DRM will get sorted in time, even if it is a dirty hack, say shoving the HDTV-OUT in to a HD-Capture card and re-encoding on another pc, or as I suspect someone will crack it just as john cracked CSS.

I think the best way to avod piracy is to embrace in an I-Tunes making the cost of a legal copy of a track/movie so cheap as to make illegal downloads not worth it (what with the quality issue and occasion accidental pron download).

On the subject of pirated movies howlong befor DVD rips will include a DTS/Dolby Digital Sound Track, it pisses me off when downloading a movie (that I already own.... yes that should cover me) that my lovely 7.1 THX system only has 2 channels to play with. grr.

Re:People can make up statistics to prove anything

[jedZ]

but then forty nine percent of people have a below-average IQ

at at

[commrade]

I thought there was something wrong with my MergedFB (dual monitor) setup, but I moved the window and it really does say "at at". I should have expected that on ./ this late at night I, eh?

Hi definition porn

[barefootgenius]

And think of the make up bills. Instead of just covering some unfortunate news anchors face you would have to paint brush the whole porn star so every zit, shaving mark or ingrown hair didn't leap onto the screen. And botox isn't gonna work either (although with some of them you wonder if they have already made that leap).

Years are Ordinal Numbers

[Derling Whirvish]

It appears that the guys who devised the Common Era calendar were a bit hazy about the concept of "zero".

It appears that you are a bit hazy about the concept of ordinal number versus cardinal number and the concept of a point versus a period of elapsed time. Years are ordinal numbers describing a period of time equal to 12 months. The "First Year" is the "First Year of the Common Era" or AD 1. It describes the whole 12 months, not the single point in time at the beginning of the year and the point separating the last year before the common era (1 BCE) from the first year of common era (AD 1). Zeroes on a number line describe points not elapsed time. This is the end of the 2,005th year of the common era. Next month we will start the 2006th year. Adding a zeroth year between 1 BCE and AD 1 would be extraordinarily stupid and mathematically innumerate.

Re:Years are Ordinal Numbers

[PhilHibbs]

Adding a zeroth year between 1 BCE and AD 1 would be extraordinarily stupid and mathematically innumerate.

Too late. Astronomers have been using this convention for some time already, though.

Re:Years are Ordinal Numbers

[ken kenobi]

No, I'm afraid you are wrong. Please see my reply to your earlier post.

The wikipedia article you are quoting contradicts your argument.

Re:Years are Ordinal Numbers

[Derling Whirvish]

Do you feel the need to have a zeroth day of the month to precede the first day of December? Days of the month are ordinal numbers like Gregorian years are. Today is the 13th day of December. December 13th. Dec 13. 13 December. It is also the 2005th year of the common era. The last day of November is the last day before December. It is the first day that precedes December. There is no zeroth day. There is no zeroth year. The astronomy date scheme you cite is simply to be friendly to lazy math.

Re:Years are Ordinal Numbers

[PhilHibbs]

I don't really care, personally. I'm quite happy to use whatever convention is most convenient, I don't have a reason to be dogmatic about any one calendar system and what it calls a year that happened a hundred generations ago.

DVD will win

[Aceticon]

In that case, DVD will win. Seriously, only a few top producers like Hustler, Playboy and such appriciate HDTV, because they got the means to hire real beauties. Your average porn actress does *not* look more attractive in HDTV. The porn industry jumped all over DVD primarily because of random access. No more rewind/forward, easy looping, play at quarter/half speed and so on. Porn does not need to be watched in a linear, start-to-end fashion. What does HDTV bring to porn producers? Honestly, only much higher demands on them. But with HDTV cams at $1600 (Sony HDR-HC1) and dropping, perhaps it'll happen anyway. But I don't think the porn industry will lead it

I have to agree on this one.

Furthermore, as i see it, the only possible benefict that moving to a new format can give to the porn industry is "high definition content". This might be a real benefict for the part of the industry that concentrates on showing naked physically perfect women - aka softcore - (or maybe not if they rely on the technology to disguise the imperfections) but what value does it add to the part of the industry that concentrates on the action - aka hardcore. After all, most hardcore movies are hardly known for the grandeur of the scenarios (or the depth of the stories, or the quality of the acting of their casting)

If you think back to the change from videotapes to DVDs, you can see clear beneficts to the industry:

• A DVD (in a standaard DVD box) will use 1/2 the space of a videotape. This means you can store and transport twice the number of DVDs than videotapes.
• Manufacturing of DVDs is cheaper and more reliable. It can be easilly outsourced and also scales up more easilly (pay another 200$, get 1000 DVDs more)
• DVDs (as long as packed in DVD boxes) are less likelly to get damaged on transport, especially due to external factors such as strong magnetic fields
• Lets also not forget that resistance to damage on transport and size (and weight) are also relevant for mail delivery

As i see it, none of these new technologies seems to bring any comparable beneficts for a business model such as the one from the porn industry.

Obvious beneficts for the traditional film industry, such as getting their customers to (again) buy their personal film library in another format, are hardly applicable to the porn industry - there is hardly a hot market for a new edition of "Debbie Does Dalas"

Re:DVD will win

[orpheus_okt]

It can be easilly outsourced

I really love that typo. Hm. Or may there be some sarcasm involved? I really would understand that...

Re:DVD will win

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that there were hundreds of DVD production lines to manufacture new DVDs. In the beginning, manufacturing DVDs was a costly business and there was limited production capacity. There was just as much anxiety switching to DVD as there is now for Blu-ray/HD-DVD.

When DVD first came out...

[el_womble]

I was really excited. VHS was a dumb format. Expensive, low quality, quality reduced with time and it needed rewinding. It was so dumb, that people didn't even mind loosing the ability to record TV when they moved over. In addition to that DVDs usually contained more than just the show, they also had extras, another great incentive. What has blu-ray got? Higher resolution... but only when you've bought a new TV.

Now don't get me wrong, I'll buy one... but then I'm finding it increasingly more difficult to listen to compressed AACs and I can't watch DVDs on my iMac because of pixelation (DVD on high res screens look awful) - I'm not your average consumer, however I can see very few reasons for the more sane members of my family and friends to buy one. Even if I buy the box, I'm unlikely to rebuild my DVD collection (like I did with my VHS and tape collections) because I'm finding that I buy DVDs a lot less than I used to. It's too cheap and easy to rent from the likes of Amazon and Netflix, TV-on-demand is looking better with Telewest's Teleport and I'll soon have a 10MB data pipe to get HD films when iTMS finally gets its act together with the studios.

I will be very suprised if Blu-ray does half as well as DVD. People were happy with VHS, in much the same way as they're happy with DivX now, video quality is much less of a concern than the studios would like you to think.

Re:When DVD first came out...

[spacefight]

Hey, you should still rewind your DVDs to avoid those rewindig fees! ;)

Re:When DVD first came out...

[metamatic]

Actually, DVD on a high resolution screen can look pretty damn stunning. The limiting factor is the quality of the source material and the bit rate used on the disc. Apple's DVD player is very simple-minded; you should try a player with (say) a Faroudja DCDi chipset that interpolates up to 720p or 1080p. Suddenly you can see film grain, fingerprints on glasses, that kind of thing.

irrellevant

[BoneMarrow]

soon after release you will be able to buy a blu-ray burner all you have to do is rip the protection and 'roll your own' just like we do with dvd today. copy protection is doomed to fail because the scheme is fixed you only have to break it once and anything using that scheme is also unlocked.

UMD II

[^_^x]

For those of you who think the big game consoles dictate the next video format:

C'mon! Didn't you see what Sony did with UMD? It was brilliant. A non-controversial proprietary format of their own, that if it failed, they still had games at least. But if it succeeded... and it seems to be doing way better than I expected, it would set a precedent for Sony setting the video format, making PS3 + Blu-Ray video a natural winner.

After all, Sony got the studios to invest in UMD (Already a totally Sony format) releases, and they're turning a decent profit on it, how hard would it be to tip them from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray? Even if Sony was the ONLY one to adopt it, they could probably make a decent profit selling Blu-Ray discs just for PS3 owners.

They very purposefully made Blu-Ray the obvious choice, even regardless of its technical capabilities.

Consumers will return them

[tekrat]

Think about it. Joe Consumer sees the Blu_ray at "The Wiz" or "Best Buy", and drools "Wow, what a sharp picture!!!". He buys the unit, takes it home, pops in a standard DVD on his standard TV set, and then wonders where all the extra resolution is.

You think I'm kidding but I'm not. I deal with people who hook their DVD into the VHS machine and then wonder why they can't see the DVD's play -- because the VHS machine is still set to "tuner", when it needs to be changed to "Aux" or "line in".

Believe me. People will return these things like mad when they don't get the same quality of image they saw in the store. They are not being told that they have to buy new DVDs and New TVs as well as the new player. It's like saying "This new stereo requires that you throw away your old speakers and buy new speakers too, plus, you can't play your old CD's in it either!"

I predict phantom warehouses of returned merchandise to keep it off the books so the stocks don't tumble.

Trust me on this. People are stupid.

Re:Consumers will return them

[^_^x]

People will never buy this new "DVD" format. They'll get it home, then realize it can't record their favorite shows! It'll never replace VHS!

And just wait until they find out they're not getting the full experience on their home stereo unless they get a new tuner, and 4 more speakers! These things are going to be returned in droves!

I predict a few computer geeks starting a collection of these before the whole thing flops.

Trust me on this. People are stupid.

Re:Consumers will return them

[TheoB]

The reason they can't watch DVDs when the player is hooked through the VCR is likely because the DVD player has Macrovision protection standard and the VCR, reading the protection signal, scrambles the input. Changing to AUX/Line In won't circumvent the issue unless their VCR is more than a decade old or has been modded, in which case they almost certainly don't need to go back to the store for technical advice.

Just sayin'.

Re:Consumers will return them

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent down. I've watched many DVDS through a VCR with no problems. All of them normal movie-studio macrovision+css dvds.

Re:Consumers will return them

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost like the XBox 360 displays. I was in EB the other day, playing amped, and some guy came over, and he was like "Wow, the graphics are so beautiful!", and didn't believe me when I said it was the $6000 TV it was hooked up to. I thought about it for a few seconds, and then pointed to the TV right next to me for comparison. Real life looked less sharp, naturally.

Re:Consumers will return them

[Zakabog]

Think about it. Joe Consumer sees the Blu_ray at "The Wiz" or "Best Buy", and drools "Wow, what a sharp picture!!!". He buys the unit, takes it home, pops in a standard DVD on his standard TV set, and then wonders where all the extra resolution is.

No, he'll say "Wow I can't believe how amazing this looks" and he'll tell his family he got some brand new blu ray player for $500 and show them and they'll say "Wow it looks great!" and then he'll show a real videophile and they'll say "What the hell is wrong with you, you don't even have an HDTV..." or they'll just smile and say nothing knowing the guy is a moron. People will convince themselves what they're experiencing is the best image ever after they spend a ton of money on a blu ray player, and anyone who is aware that the image quality didn't change, will also be aware of the fact that they need a TV that supports the higher resolutions.

Re:Consumers will return them

[chris_eineke]

Trust me on this. People are stupid.

If people are stupid, what makes you think that they'll return the stuff? If they planned on upgrading anyways, why don't they upgrade the whole crappy 300$ stereo system they had before?

"Well, you need new speakers and receivers."
"Aww shucks, t'was time to upgrade anyways."
*plonks down cc or cash*

Re:Consumers will return them

[msdschris]

It doesn't completely ruin the picture, it is watchable. Many people will just attribute it to crappy tv, player, disc, etc... From memory the picture just varies brightness constantly. Also as of a few years ago there were quite a few movies that had no protection at all and would play just fine.

Re:Consumers will return them

[sgarringer]

Most people just assume this is because their TV is crap. One of my ex-gf's family when I first met her did this all the time. They also thought that some DVDs were broken because they cut off the top and bottom of the picture... Consumers will put up with a lot of shit, so I doubt they'd return Bluray players... -Shawn

Re:Consumers will return them

[elrous0]

People will never buy this new "DVD" format. They'll get it home, then realize it can't record their favorite shows! It'll never replace VHS!

Not to mention that these things are *way* too fragile to rent. How is Blockbuster going to rent a "DVD" that holds 4.7 GB of information on a 5" disc? One tiny scratch and it's worthless!

-Eric

Re:Consumers will return them

[mfrank]

Yes, because it looks just like a CD, which has been around for, oh, 15 years, it's bloody obvious they should be able to *record* on it. And, uh, how many people buy a VHS movie in the store, take it home, and record over it (intentionally)? And when they ask "What's 5.1 sound?", it's immediately obvious from the answer that they will have to have five speakers and a subwoofer to do 5.1 sound, and their old stereo isn't going to cut it.

There really wasn't anything surprising about DVDs. What made them so popular was you could buy a 2-hour movie for less than a 45 minute album. Now, something that installs a rootkit, that's surprising.

Always knew Blu-Ray would win

[Bertie]

And I don't know very much about the relative technological merits of either product. It's just got a cooler, more memorable name.

no wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

C'T had an article some weeks ago with specificts about the different HD-formats. I have to say ICK.

If you ever tried to do something usefull with a DVD (as in writing a requantizizer) you learn to hate the format. A huge amount of doublicated data, packed into packages splitted up to a sector size.
Some of them have a full header, some only a short one. You have a lot of different blocks, formats, things to handle.
Some parts seem to be from SVCD and all the rest is just glued to the top.

In addition you have the DVD information structure that is so complicate that you need around twenty pages to define it in C.

And because that is not enough you have a programming language that allows you to do a lot of things, but this seems to be designed to implement Dragons Lair with as few commands as possible.

I don't even want to start with the subtitle streams that have also some strange commands embedded. Just to save space...

And now look at BlueRay.
There you will get even more of this stuff.
I bet that this is the end of the line for open SW. Without specifications no-one will be able to implement this. At least not completely.

So who needs DRM. Let's just specify this whole think for some years.

Re:People can make up statistics to prove anything

[wernercd]

yes... but 60 percent of the time they are acurate EVERY time... so0 its all good

You don't watch a lot of pr0n, do you?

[hummassa]

After all, most hardcore movies are hardly known for the grandeur of the scenarios (or the depth of the stories, or the quality of the acting of their casting)
I dunno, maybe I'm accostumed with Private, but it seems to me that its movies fit the bill for:
* hardcore action
* grandeur of scenarios
* production values (including /some/ stories and acting)

Re:You don't watch a lot of pr0n, do you?

[Aceticon]

Yes i do watch porn.

Indeed Private came to mind as one of the few porn companies that actually does (some) hardcore movies which actually have a storyline and decent scenarios. (this type of "quality" porn is targeted at the couples market, there is at least another company - Adam & Eve i believe - specialized in this kind of porn)

Two questions arise though:
- What is more important for selling Private movies - beautifull women in hardcore action or great storylines and good scenarios. Putting things another way, if Private had less good looking women, less or no hardcore action but beter scenarios, beter storylines and maybe even HD resolution would they sell more or sell less?
- How big a part of the industry is Private in term of sales?

Answers being:
- Probably less, even if they kept the beautiful women and just reduced the quality of the action, eventually they would come into competetion with the softcore part of the industry such as Playboy, and further downstream even Hollywood. Even if they keep the "quality" of the action and the women, beter storylines, beter scenarios and filming and releasing HD quality products all costs more money. Would it really be worth it in increased sales? Doubt it, especially in an early adopter scenario where the proportion of your customers that can use your products is a small percentage of the total porn digital media market.
- In 2004 Private made £24.4m in revenue out of an industry total of £33bn (source http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,3 9020484,39237409-3,00.htm). In other words, they're less than 0.1% of the industry. Enough said.

In a fragmented industry such as porn, Private is hardly an important player, a "crest of the wave" early adopter or a trend setter.

Actually ...

[hummassa]

I thought BRDVD and HDDVD were physically incompatible (like zip disks and old diskettes)

Re:Actually ...

[maxwell demon]

They are incompatible, but in a different way than zip disks and floppy disks. They are incompatible the way LS120 and 3.5" floppy disks were. The physical format is the same (you can put both disks in the same drive), but the reading units are different (if a drive wants to support both, it has to have two different reading units; although since for BRD/HD-DVD the laser wavelength is actually the same, maybe it's also possible to have an optic which can be switched between the two e.g. by moving some lens, I don't know the details of the formats to know if that could be possible). Indeed, one selling point of LS120 was that the drive could read/write both normal and LS120 disks, despite the fact that the method of reading/writing was completely different.

Obligitory /. comment

[StaticFish]

1. Invent a new, mostly unneeded format 2. DRM it to hell 3. ??? 4. Profit!

Re:People can make up statistics to prove anything

[tschweg]

This joke is 100% unfunny everytime it's told.

Totally missing the point

[droopycom]

You are totally missing the point.

The point of Blu-Ray is High Definition. So your analog video and audio outputs are not going to get you HD. You are not going to plug your HDTV to your DVD player using analog if you want HiDef.

The purpose of the DRM in Blu Ray is to block you from ripping the decrypted, compressed bitsream. If all you can do with BluRay is capture the analog, then we can already do better with regular DVD, so it would be a huge success for BluRay DRMs.

And if you know about what kind of DRM they are talking about, you would realize that its not going to be simple to permanently hack, even a software implementation.

Even if you are able to get the uncompressed HD image by hijacking your display device, watermark detection will make sure that your BluRay player keys will be revoked and wont be able to play new content.

The design of BluRay's DRMs has really been though out, and covers a lot of scenarios. Off course the implementations will have problems, bugs and exploits, but what it really comes down to is how well BluRay will keep track of compromised players, and how bad they are willing to perform key revocation.

Each player is supposed to have an unique ID, but I can see it from here: some manufacturer (cheap chinese for example) will mess up and produce 1000s of player with the same ID. When one of this player his compromised, 1000s of players will stop working with new releases if the studios revoke this key. 1000s of people will complain.

In the best case the manufacturer (contractually at fault for producing clones) will change the players.
In the worst case there will be lawsuits flying around between Studios, BluRay authorities, OEM, silicon vendors and consumers.

The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced. The huge liabilities that the OEM will face if they screw up will be enough to give Pioneer, Sony etc.. time to make a buck on BluRay.

Re:Totally missing the point

[HD Webdev]

The point of Blu-Ray is High Definition. So your analog video and audio outputs are not going to get you HD. You are not going to plug your HDTV to your DVD player using analog if you want HiDef.

Since Blu-Ray will allow digital transfers of the movies across a network and copies to be made, that won't be an issue.

Without allowing that they would have lost some big players and ended up competing head-to-head with another format.

Re:Totally missing the point

[moro_666]

The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced.


  What is the name of your planet ?

  There is more than enough money to get that hdtv secrets out, no secret can be kept forever. Everyone that has been around a day or few on this planet knows it and understands it. Iran and North Korea people were never supposed to figure out how to build an nuclear weapon, but look at that Bush face now (it has "we're in deep shit now" written all over it).

  Take these pink glasses of and take a good look around mate. HD is just a temporary solution, once it's out, it's useless and will be ripped from every angle on every corner by any geek that can afford a 50$ ripping toy.

  Ignoring ID's - not going to work if the hd decoder will be transformed into a pc application (and we all (even you) know that this is going to happen sooner or later).

  Sometimes i really feel like there's dozen of people on slashdot who have not been around on this planet longer than 10 minutes.

  And it makes absolutely no damn difference if the cable is a analog one or the digital one. All that can be shown, can be ripped. If it comes down to that, people will just buy the cheapest hdtv's that are out there, rip em open and use the chip in them. Not every Joe can do it, but there's certainly a nice bunch of people out there who have the education and the skill to make it work. And it will pay off zillion times to rip off one blue-ray disc, because you can make "all-public-unprotected" copies from it and sell them for greater value in total than the 1 hdtv costed you.

  You must be an ignorant fool to think that any hardware based encoding can last long on this damned planet.

Re:Totally missing the point

[Kjella]

The purpose of the DRM in Blu Ray is to block you from ripping the decrypted, compressed bitsream. If all you can do with BluRay is capture the analog, then we can already do better with regular DVD, so it would be a huge success for BluRay DRMs.

You think a 1920x1080p transcode will look worse than a 720x480 original encode? Hint: It won't. Try looking at some of the HDTV -> Xvid/WMV rips out there. Since they are still sticking with MPEG2, reencodes would be the norm rather than the exception anyway. Certainly, getting the originally compressed file would be superior to that again, but it is not a huge loss to quality, only to ease of ripping.

And if you know about what kind of DRM they are talking about, you would realize that its not going to be simple to permanently hack, even a software implementation. Even if you are able to get the uncompressed HD image by hijacking your display device, watermark detection will make sure that your BluRay player keys will be revoked and wont be able to play new content.

Hint: Take two displays. Or three, or five. Compare them. This is SDMI all over again, which died on the drawing board because it doesn't work!

The design of BluRay's DRMs has really been though out, and covers a lot of scenarios. Off course the implementations will have problems, bugs and exploits, but what it really comes down to is how well BluRay will keep track of compromised players, and how bad they are willing to perform key revocation.

More likely, if they are able to. Besides, there's little problem for pirates to keep a player away from all newer releases until they've ripped all the old ones. If you can rip the entire back catalog every time a player is broken, your DRM is still pretty screwed. Once you have decrypted the symmetric key, you can use this and share it with others. That makes everyone able to rip discs that have been broken once.

I think those who will really profit from this is not movie, tv or music producers, I think it is software companies. As long as the whole value of your product is essentially recordable, you have no chance to win. Screenshots of Windows/MS Office are rather useless though. Those are the ones that will cash in big from reduced piracy, and I think Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank when they think about it.

Re:Totally missing the point

[NeMon'ess]

Isn't component video analog? It supports HD. Or are you saying BD players won't have component video outputs?

Re:Totally missing the point

[Kadin2048]

The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high.

This is what I don't believe. U.S. investors will be falling over themselves to be the first to build a production line to turn these things out wherever labor is cheapest. Hell, that's pretty much all we ever do now -- outsource it to China; and not just shoddy molded-plastic stuff.

The manufacturers will want to maximize profits at a given price point, and that means driving down production costs as low as possible. Maybe the initial 'early adopter' and 'videophile' units will be made in Japan, but when it comes time to try and capture the mass market with a model that you can sell at Wal-Mart, it will be made in China. And it will probably be made there in a factory paid for by Japanese and American corporate investment, regardless of the perceived "security" concerns.

The electronics manufacturers will only go so far in order to protect the studio's DRM. Something that impacts their bottom line so significantly as not being able to outsource the production is not going to happen.

Re:Totally missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

It the other way around hdtv support 480p max component signal. You need hdmi for true Hdtv content

Re:Totally missing the point

[Tony Hoyle]

No, just that they won't transmit HD over it.

This is in the specs. All analogue outputs will be SD only.

Re:Totally missing the point

[MysteriousPreacher]

Is there some kind of history between you and the parent? No-one responds so angrilly to just one comment in this way without a prior history or a serious fucking mental imbalance.

Re:Totally missing the point

[SpiceWare]

The point of Blu-Ray is High Definition. So your analog video and audio outputs are not going to get you HD. You are not going to plug your HDTV to your DVD player using analog if you want HiDef.

I use analog component video cables to hook up my HD cable box. I'm getting a Hi Def picture.

If Blu-Ray is going to be "HDMI only" for Hi Def then they are artificially limiting the ability to play hi def content and will end up pissing off early adopters like myself because HDMI connections where not even an option. (by "early adopter" I mean anybody who bought a HDTV before 2003 - HDMI spec 1.0 wasn't out until December 2002. Even then, a lot of HDTVs from 2003 and 2004 did not include the HDMI connector.)

I will not buy a Blu-Ray player if it only plays back DVD quality on my HDTV, and I will not replace my HDTV just to buy Blu-Ray.

Re:Totally missing the point

[bigpat]

The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced. The huge liabilities that the OEM will face if they screw up will be enough to give Pioneer, Sony etc.. time to make a buck on BluRay.

So, there will never be cheap BluRay players like there are cheap DVD players. That should help market penetration. I only bought a DVD player when it dropped under a $100. And I don't expect to spend more for bluray, because of all this DRM crap that cripples functionality.

Re:Totally missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you are going to be SOL. There will be no Analog HDTV. Hold on to that set top box and prey, because the new ones switching to mpeg 4 will not have it either.

Re:Totally missing the point

[smoker2]

I think those who will really profit from this is not movie, tv or music producers, I think it is software companies.........

........Those are the ones that will cash in big from reduced piracy, and I think Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank when they think about it.

Do you really believe that there are that many companies / individuals out there, that would be forced to buy a genuine copy of said software ?

If not, then that angle is a waste of time for the likes of MS, and their investment in all this DRM development is lost too.

Still, maybe the media will get the hint that piracy actually isn't costing these firms billions in lost revenue at all...

Re:Totally missing the point

[The Master Control P]

Fine - make it 'impossible' for me to copy the disks. Make me buy a new HD-DRM monitor. Unfortunately for you, the analog hole CANNOT be closed because my eyes are analog, and nothing you can do can possibly stop me from single-stepping the entire disk and taking pictures of every frame with a digital camera, then re-assembling the frames into a movie. Cameras DRMed too? Fine, I'll buy a used high-speed camera and record the movie on film, then scan the frames. Oh, heck - I'll rootkit my own computer and read directly from memory!

My point is: Movie studios, get a fracking clue. You will never, NEVER stop someone who is determined to copy a movie. And once one person copies it and uploads it, you lose!

Re:Totally missing the point

[Frenchy_2001]

The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced. The huge liabilities that the OEM will face if they screw up will be enough to give Pioneer, Sony etc.. time to make a buck on BluRay.

The problem in making it hard for China and Taiwan to produce or even make a buck on those players is that it will make the available players expensive (japanese electronics is far from cheap in price, if not in quality).

Add to that the licensing issue. The chinese are already complaining about the $3 that they have to pay on each DVD player, just to pay for the codecs and security schemes. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are way more patent encumbered, so those royalties will be even more expensive.

Now, think about the fact that China is developping its own HD format to suplant DVD and fight the next gen. they WILL produce those and distribute those in China first (it will be forced by law) and their studios will have to release on it. Those will be WAY cheaper. Think that could tempt consummers? Especially with weaker DRM?

The next gen battle has not started and yet, no one really cares. Like the battle of SACD and DVD-Audio. The public has voted that mp3 was enough and the multi channel standards are dying. Will it be the same for video?

Re:Totally missing the point

[NeMon'ess]

Then how does the xbox 360 support 720p without using HDMI?

Re:Totally missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you are able to get the uncompressed HD image by hijacking your display device, watermark detection will make sure that your BluRay player keys will be revoked and wont be able to play new content.

------------

By "hijacking my display device"!?

It's my display device; I'll do whatever the hell I want with it. Who would buy a product that cripples their other possessions!

BluRay not really 54gb

[derrickh]

Not at first anyway. Sony dropped a bombshell on it's partners when they stated that the 50gb discs wont be available at launch, and probably not for a while. So content producers will have to make do with the 25gb discs. Sony also said that they're sticking with Mpeg2 to encode. This isn't good, because using Mpeg2 at a high bitrate most of the disc is taken up by the movie and it doesn't leave much space for the extras. And all that extra space was a big reason companies choose BluRay over HD-DVD and most already planned on filling up the discs. Looks like Sony pulled a bait and switch on a lot of big companies.

HD-DVD will use VC1 or Mpeg4 which will give the same quality picture and using a lot less space. So even though on paper, BluRay has better specs, in real life HD-DVD will allow more stuff on a disc.

D

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[Anonymous Coward]

Most HDTV movies encoded in the MPEG-2 format, either already being shopped around on DVHS or sent out via satellite are no more than 10-14GB in space. From movies anywhere to an hour and a half, to two and a half hours. That gives the first companies to take advantage of the technology anywhere from 11-15GB of free space for their extras. Plenty of room.

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[gromitcode]

no not plenty of room at all, that leaves 2 hours worth of HD content. Meaning movie studios and end users will still get stuck with getting stacks of discs for TV series or trilogies such as lord of the rings. One of the big selling points for many of these companies originally was the cost saving of being able to ship ONE disc. basically this format leaves them in the exact same shitty position they were in with current DVD format

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[News for nerds]

Sony dropped a bombshell on it's partners when they stated that the 50gb discs wont be available at launch

WTF are you smoking?

http://www.tdk-europe.presscentre.com/corp/Release s/release.asp?ReleaseID=2355&NID=Press%20Releases

13 December 2005
TDK Starts Shipping "Bare" Type Mass-Production Blu-ray Disc Samples

TDK's Blu-ray Discs achieve a high capacity of 25GB on a single-layer and 50GB on a dual-layer at 2x recording speed and are protected by TDK's DURABIS 2 hard coating technology

TDK today announces that is has commenced shipping mass-production samples of its bare-type (cartridge-less) BD-R (write-once type) and BD-RE (rewritable type) Blu-ray Discs. The four new products include:

  BD-R25 (write once, single-side, single-layer, 25GB)
BD-R50 (write once, single-side, dual-layer, 50GB)
  BD-RE25 (rewritable, single-side, single-layer, 25GB)
BD-RE50 (rewritable, single-side, dual-layer, 50GB)

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[derrickh]

One company announce shipping of sample isnt the same as being available in decent quantities.

http://videobusiness.com/article/CA6288668.html

D

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[derrickh]

15gb for extras isn't a lot of room at all, especially when a lot of 'special editions' have hours of extras. If the extras are in HD, then they'll be limited to an hour or so. Otherwise, you're talking about having multiple disc sets. And what about when HD TV shows hit the market? 2-3 episodes of Lost per disc plus a few featurettes and it could come out to a 7-8 discs. Kinda like we have now.

D

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[TheSync]

VC-1 and H.264 implementations for HD are just not there yet. Trust me, I have looked at a lot of them, and they can't beat MPEG-2 yet. VC-1 and H.264 are great for low-bitrate SD streams (4 Mbps, for example). I think Sony made the best call for today, MPEG-2 to provide deliverable HD quality today.

Re:BluRay not really 54gb

[evilviper]

What are you, a Toshiba employee?

Sony dropped a bombshell on it's partners when they stated that the 50gb discs wont be available at launch, and probably not for a while.

Dual-layer Blu-Ray discs are going to be available at launch. Just try to find Sony's press release that says otherwise.

Sony also said that they're sticking with Mpeg2 to encode. This isn't good, because using Mpeg2 at a high bitrate most of the disc is taken up by the movie and it doesn't leave much space for the extras.

Doesn't matter at all. Sony can use whatever they want, and it doesn't force other studios to do the same. The players will still support H.264, even though Sony has decided not to use it in their initial Blu-Ray discs.

HD-DVD will use VC1 or Mpeg4 which will give the same quality picture and using a lot less space.

Blu-Ray players will ship capable of playing the same codecs as HD-DVD. So this "advantage" of yours is just pure bullshit. HD-DVDs can be made with MPEG-2 if you wish to do so, and Blu-Ray discs can be made with H.264 or VC-1 if you wish to do so. It's up to each of the studios.

So even though on paper, BluRay has better specs, in real life HD-DVD will allow more stuff on a disc.

Not at all.

The 'hackers will find a way' argument debunked

[MunchMunch]

"The content industry is going to see a serious backlash if they try this. They tried region coding, and people over here in the UK just got players chipped and hacked." The 'hackers will always find a way' argument is often made to make one's self feel better, but regardless of whether it has merit if people choose to believe it it will always diminish any possibility of a real victory. This is because it takes people and attention away from real arguments about the *principle* of giving consumers certain rights at the source irregardless of practical workarounds--a principle that, if accepted, can remain in effect no matter what technological means to cripple content exist and will not require faith in unknown hackers hacking unknown technology. So...If a modding 'backlash' is the equivalent of conceding the war to win the skirmish, I guess they can expect a backlash alright.

Re:The 'hackers will find a way' argument debunked

[bogado]

I agree in 100%, i would just like to add yes it is true that hackers will make it possible to watch your high def movie where you want, and yes they will be seling highdef rips with funny home made covers in the streets. But this will not solve wny problem, the industry will keep whining about unreal "lost sales" due to piracy, and will choose a random joe, now and them to sue until his life is ruined with debts, and maybe even their sons and grandsons will still be in debt, just to make people afraid.

Re:The 'hackers will find a way' argument debunked

[StikyPad]

the *principle* of giving consumers certain rights at the source irregardless of practical workarounds

Irregardless? Is that like esquivalience?

Re:The 'hackers will find a way' argument debunked

[MunchMunch]

You've got me! I'm hit, I'm hit! I'm going down!!

[Sploosh]

[Glub glub]

Re:I, for one, welcome our SONY & DRM overlord

[Anonymous Coward]

Xvid. Dual-layer DVD-R. 22 episode seasons of a 42 minute show, at a very decent bitrate, on one disc. Problem solved.

uhh...yeah

[akhomerun]

And most of the IT industry (except Microsoft) also supports Blu-ray Disc.

Isn't that kind of a large omission?

Re:uhh...yeah

[awkScooby]

Why should it matter if Microsoft "supports" it? Microsoft won't be the ones writing the device drivers.

Microsoft has a vested interest in HD-DVD, as their codec was chosen. Microsoft stands to make a lot of money off of licensing their codec if HD-DVD is the winner, plus they can refuse to let their codec be used on Linux. Is it any wonder that Microsoft doesn't support Blue-ray?

Sure, Microsoft could use their monopoly position to sabotage Blue-ray, but it would be stupid for them to do so given their current anti-trust problems. So, lack of support in this case really just means that they'll make a lot of noise about the issue.

reasons why blu-ray COULD fail

[akhomerun]

reasons why blu-ray COULD fail
#1 not backed by microsoft
#2 people are already satisfied with the quality of the DVD. many people don't even realize that DVDs aren't HD (a recent /. article noted that about 50% of hdtv owners are on SDTV content, and about 30% THINK they are using HDTV content)
#3 The PS3 doesn't guarantee the success of the Blu-Ray disc. The Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution are offering the stiffest competition yet, and those following the next-gen consoles are much more skeptical of the bulky, expensive, and not-so-impressive PS3.
#4 HD-DVD is coming out first
#5 horrible DRM may just kill the format for consumers.
#6 HD-DVD comes out first for lower cost.
#7 People may ignore the format war and just stick with DVDs (they are only 10 years old) or they may put a low value on a next-gen DVD format (because DVDs are already satisfactory) and pick whatever is cheapest (HD-DVD)
#8 When buying a movie, people may not care at all which format it's on, and can't tell the difference which one has more data and will pick the cheaper format. Or, if they have Blu-Ray, they'll be like "why am I paying $30 for this movie when it's on HD-DVD for $20?)
#9 Betamax
#10 If HD-DVD burners are availible first for a lower cost, people will choose HD-DVD. I highly doubt Blu-Ray burners will even be availible in 2006 at all.

Re:reasons why blu-ray COULD fail

[Anonymous Coward]

and those following the next-gen consoles are much more skeptical of the bulky, expensive, and not-so-impressive Xbox 360
just a typo...

Re:reasons why blu-ray COULD fail

[Anonymous Coward]

#2: as more and more shows are broadcast in HD, and as more people "discover" it, it will be pretty tough to not have something out there that you buy that looks crappier than your broadcast TV shows. #3: Where do you get that the PS3 is bulky and not-so-impressive? There are many a people who are waiting for the PS3 because of games. We all know that in the games world, its not about how pretty the picture is, but how fun the games are (and how many fun games there are.) Sony definitely has this going for, and always has. The other thing going for the PS3 is complete backwards compatibility. However, the whole ps3/xbox 360/revolution song has been sung many times..no need to do here. #5: just because there are many DRM features doesnt mean they are going to be using all of them on the average consumer. #6: HD-DVD is not out yet. I haven't seen any press announcements about HD-DVD launching before CES, have you? #7: see #2 #8: You are right, people wont care about the format. People buying blu-ray/hd-dvd will only care about seeing High Definition DVD on the packaging, just like how many look for Wide Screen. #9: Betamax did not fail because it didnt come out before VHS, etc. The reason it failed is completely different than what's going on here with Blu-ray vs HD-DVD #10: DVD-RAM burners came out first, but you dont see it dominating the recordable CD market do you?

My prediction

[Kortec]

I'm going to have to weigh in on the side of HD-DVD on this particular front, for one simple reason: the pornography industry has already started to release movies in HD-DVD format. I don't want to link it and get kicked off Slashdot, but the movie "Pirates" comes as two DVDs and an HD-DVD. Historically, i.e. in BetaMax vs. VHS, the technology first supported by the adult entertainment fellows has been the one to survive in the long run, so despite its technological merits, BluRay probaly isn't going to last.

Re:My prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get kicked off of slashdot? for PR0N! no way...

Really?

[hummassa]

Do you have any hard references for that? Because I remember clearly seeing two very incompatible-looking cases for them (much like the zip and ls120 were different on the outside packaging -- BR being "round", zip-like, and HD being "square", ls120/floppy-like) but *I* don't have any hard refs now.

Re:Really?

[maxwell demon]

Well, if you consider Wikipedia as hard enough, look here and here.

The square thing you've seen was probably a BRD in a caddie. Of course it's also possible that HD-DVD versions with caddie exist(ed).

Error Correction

[Foerstner]

I'm oversimplifying and I know it, but in that case you could store six times as much error-correcting information in the same physical space. (Or the ultimate form of error correction...six copies of every bit, arranged in different regions around the disk.)

Re:Error Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Having pits that are six times as long is error correction in the first place.

Re:Error Correction

[JesseMcDonald]

However, putting all of the error-correction information in one place isn't all that reliable should that part of the disc become damaged. With smaller pits, you have the ability to scatter the error-correction information over a greater area.

What's in it for me?

[bhima]

So what's so great about Blu-Ray? Let's review the "Features"...

Somewhat higher capacity but not as much as initially promised
New and Improved Onerous DRM
Ancient encoding schema
Macrovision
Region encoding
Prohibited user operations
Language & subtitle choices which are limited to region

Can someone remind me why we want this?

Re:What's in it for me?

[Xarius]

The fact that a sub-$500 player will be available long before any other next generation format, in the form of the PS3?

Re:What's in it for me?

[bhima]

Does me little good with all of the artifical restrictions placed on Movie media! I can't rent an orginal Chinese (or Thai, French, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, &tc) movie with either dubbing or subtitles in my native language at the local videothek... but I can drive a few hours north, to another region, and do so or I can just use BitTorrent. Frankly I'm inclined not give them any money and get most of my films off the net.
    Besides I'm rather pleased with H.264 and transcode all my video anyway.

Re:What's in it for me?

[evilviper]

Somewhat higher capacity but not as much as initially promised

It's not "somewhat higher capacity", it's at least 2.7X the capacity as dual-layer DVDs, likely being double that very soon after launch.

New and Improved Onerous DRM

Compared to DVDs, or compared to HD-DVD? HD-DVD certainly isn't any better in this department. I would certainly suggest everyone hold-off on buying high-def discs of any kind until the DRM is cracked wide-open.

Ancient encoding schema

Yeah, I never understood why Sony included "chiseled clay tablet encoding" into the Blu-Ray standard. Seriously though, WTF?

Macrovision
Region encoding
Prohibited user operations

Same things you get with standard DVDs, HD-DVDs, or Blu-Ray. No advantage, no disadvantage. Par for the course.

Re:What's in it for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ancient encoding schema

Actually - it will support MPEG4 and WM formats in addition to the ancient MPEG2. MPEG2 is just going to me more used initially because studios have already experience with it...

> Can someone remind me why we want this?

HDTV-quality-picture

microsoft-a-go-go

[freaker_TuC]

in layman terms Microsoft has to drop the soap ;)

And I'm feeling blue

[Anonymous Coward]

>Blu-ray Coming Out On Top?

Yes. It is called Cherenkov Radiation. You are advised NOT to jump into or swim in any pool where blue ray is coming out on the top!

See:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68 /TrigaReactorCore.jpeg

Ultimately

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

The one that comes out on top is the one where you go to a Best Buy or Circuit City and buy or go to Blockbuster and rent a movie, and don't care what media its on. It will also be the one that costs $15 per movie, not sold for some $40 premium price tag.

It will also be the first player to hit the sub $100 range. Anyone releasing a next-gen DVD player for more then $500 will fail to capture the market. Why should next-gen DVD players, with mostly the same components as a $50 DVD player cost 10 times more?

In any regard, I will wait a few years before rushing out and getting any next-gen DVD player, perhaps by then they will open up Digital Cable standards and build HDTV tuners into every television (rotflol!).

A better idea

[dbucowboy]

Personally I think blue-tape cassettes are a better idea. Why waste all of that recycled plastic when you could create billions of miles of blue-tape on small Volkswagen sized cartridges. :)

This "Format war" thing is no news to me...

[dalmiroy2k]

I bought my first DVD player back in 1998 and it was a Creative Labs DXR2 multi-zone with S-video out. It was an awesome and affordable option back then, allowing me to be an early adopter of DVD tech. In all this years I remember the folowwing "Format wars": Circuit city's DIVX vs DVD Remember that one? Disney and Universal fully backed DIVX, that it required you to log on using a dial up modem to watch the movie in a 48hs term, then the movie expired. A lot of lazy joe's liked the format because it didn't required a ride back to the store to return the movie or pay late fees, but hardcore DVD fans hated it, and so it collapsed. DD vs DTS Back in the early days people actually discused which audio format was better, they posted comparisons and discussed which one will be the survivor in the format wars. Now (almost) every dvd player and HT supports both formats and still most people can't tell or won't care about the difference between them. DVD-R VS DVD+R More of the same, only 3 years away. the problem was solved offering dvd players that could read both formats. Most people don't give a damn about it and they buy the cheapest DVD recordable bulk they see @ Wal-mart or Compusa. Blu-Ray VS HD-DVD It will be more of the same. Corporations like Samsung said that they will offer a player that will play both formats if there is enought demand, and most cheap chinesse manufacters like X-view/JWIN/Admiral/Apex/you name it will sure follow this path. Don't bring me the "It's not posible to combine both techonogies because...", They said same thing about Divx/MPEG4 and now they are present in most decent players. Also DVD-AUDIO. Granted, price may be high at first, but remember that dvd-players cost $1k back in the late ninety's. Sony, on the other hand, will stick to "blu-ray" only players just like they do with Memory stick and other shit, so you will have a player that only plays half the HD content in the market, so will the PS3. Conclusion: Wait one or two years, buy a dual format player and that's it.

Re:People can make up statistics to prove anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but seventy-three percent of statistics are made up!

oh, oh, oh... don't forget about the decimal point.

That's it: you're right

[hummassa]

The versions I have seen were the caddies for BR and HD. It's a pity that the new discs will be caddyless -- the caddies really would help protect the discs from damage.

Pr0n leads the way

[patricksevenlee]

Whichever format the pornographers adopt will win.

The war ended when Sony put Blue-ray in the PS3

[Luscious868]

I think Blue-ray was the winner the minute Sony announced it would be used in the PS3. As we know from previous format wars, the winner isn't the one with the best technology, it's the one that consumers embrace the fastest. When the PS3 hits the shelves, you're going to have a gaint influx of customers who suddenly have a Blue-ray player. Must of my game playing buddies don't have a clue about what HD-DVD or Blue-ray are and couldn't care less about the latest and greatest high definiation movie format (because they don't have HD-TV's). However, throw a PS3 into their hands that is capable of playing Blue-ray discs and they will probably go that route provided the Blue-ray versions of movies aren't too much more than their DVD counterparts. Why not buy the latest and greatest format if it only costs a few bucks more, you've already got the player, and you know you'll have an HD-TV at some point.

Not for long it don't

[lilmouse]

if i have the discplayer, it obviously has output channels to a tv and to a sound system.

Once your are forced to switch to a TV that blocks analogue signals unless they are DRM'd, then what do you do?

There's already legislation in the US mandating this.

And who's gonna circumvent the DRM if it results in jail time?

Sux to be a consumer in the US...

--LWM

I'm afraid...

[Anonymous Coward]

that it may install a rootkit on my tv.

You don't have to buy a new TV

[John Harrison]

You are confusing the montior with the receiver. This is probably because your TV has both built-in. You will simply buy a digital receiver and hook it up to your old TV. These are expensive for what they do ($200) right now but will fall in price when production rises so that everyone that is not on cable or sat has to go out and buy one.

Goodbye to Netflix and Blockbuster?

[jasonhamilton]

> your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play
> your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house,
> and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that video rentals will no longer be possible with Blu-ray?

Re:Goodbye to Netflix and Blockbuster?

[Jason1729]

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that video rentals will no longer be possible with Blu-ray?

That's right, and rentals are something in movie industry would very much like to kill.

Hard to copy?

[PurPaBOO]

ha ha ha

Just Size??

[aonaran]

I thought it was just one technical reason: the capacity of the disc. That's really all there was to it, right?
The point HD-DVD had going for it was that the discs and players would have been cheaper to make.

That's true if you are just looking at it as a storage medium like CD-R/CD-RW on a PC.

As a video/media format Blue-ray offers a much more dynamic and useful menu system.
Right now DVD menus are not much more than a short looping (and usually poorly looped) MPEG 2 stream. Blu-ray's specs included a default configuration for set top players that included Java support which would really push the flexibility well beyond what we can accomplish with plain old DVD menus.

Have you ever tried to play the little games on the kids DVDs?? now imagine if they had had an actual programming language to work with rather than just 'if button x is pressed jump to 5:35 in the video stream'.

Basically DVD menuing (and HD-DVD menuing) amounts to

10 play video
20 check for button press
30 goto 10

Re:Just Size??

[sheddd]

As a video/media format Blue-ray offers a much more dynamic and useful menu system.

Drat!

Basically DVD menuing (and HD-DVD menuing) amounts to

10 play video
20 check for button press
30 goto 10

More like:

10 force user to watch dolby logo
20 force user to watch commercial
30 force user to watch fbi warning
40 Display nonstandard menu

I'd much rather have dvd's autoplay, and let me pull up a simple text based menu for extras... the menu system (as implemented with the players I've tried) is too easily abused by the content creators... I prefer to reencode movies (and the occasion 'extras') and watch them how I like, not how the menu creator preferrs.

More complexity/flexibility will lead to a poorer product IMO.

Re:Just Size??

[aonaran]

The menu as you describe would be dead easy in Java. not so in the current DVD-Video menu format.

Re:Just Size??

[sheddd]

Point taken... but I think there's a current market for DVD players which will give you control over your media; I imagine they aren't made because they're forced to do some things to get a CSS license... like enforce region encoding, and not allow the user to bypass enforced content.

Hopefully that'll change with Blu-Ray.

Re:DVDs aren't invasive

[vertinox]

Well, current DVDs already have invasive DRM.

I can take my DVD and basically expect to play it in any DVD player in the US. My friends, the dvd on the TV in the living room, the dvd on my computer. I put it in and it works. I don't really bother with copies because the blank DVD-Rs are almost exspensive as buying it in the stores and chances are I'd download the torrent before I'd hit up google to download a free dvd copy utility.

If I can't do this with Blu-ray as far as taking the disc with me and playing it on any device then I'd say that is invasive.

Chances are is that someone will release a "region free" Blu-ray player just like the region free dvd players now to get around this though.

Region coding about politics for profit?

[swb]

I've always suspected that the region coding had at least as much to do with politics as with profits, or politics for profit.

Why is China it's own region and not part of Region 3? Why are Russia and Eastern Europe not in the European region 2? Why is *Japan* in Region 2 and not 3? South Africa and Egypt in region 2 and not with the rest of African in 5?

Admittedly not all of the region alignments make political ssense -- Africa shares region 5 with the former USSR and Eastern Europe. But considering the DVD region coding "map" was developed at the tail end of the cold war, it strikes me that the region mapping had as much to do with keeping "unwanted" content out, thus enabling studios to sell sanitized versions of movies in markets that might not otherwise accept them.

Obviously there's a pure profit angle as well, keeping US and EU/JP content out of each other's markets, but too much of the rest of it looks like a map based on political boundaries and not based on regional trade patterns.

Re:Region coding about politics for profit?

[Ben Hutchings]

Think of the regions as potential price bands, and it'll make more sense.

Holographic Storage will " Rule the Day "

[fedrive]

Already companies are declaring victory, is this another Pearl Harbor ?

I think the winner should be based on technology specifications for really
advancing the storage industry and quite frankly Blu-Ray just doesn't do it.

Holographic storage companies will be introducing their products in 2006 and
2007 and I feel the future will be with this technology.

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD vs Contender3

[4of12]

I'm unlikely to buy a BluRay or HD-DVD player anytime soon, even if they get cheap.

• How much data can I store on it?
• How much data per Euro can I store on it?
• How reliable/durable is my data on them?

Looks to me like just another careful consumer figuring out that neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD meets their needs as well as a RAID-5 array of SATA drives and a broadband connection.

Fat chance - FUD spewer

[MooseTick]

Its true that most people are technically illiterate. Nonetheless, they do know about portability. While it may be possible to create such a device, no one would buy it. Many people have several DVD players in their house and would like the ability to watch the content on both or all of them.

Many people don't have internet connections throughout their house and will not be bothered to hook a DVD player up to it. How else is your player going to get permission?

People also know that those players die and aren't going to accept losing their entire media collection because a laser died. At the least there would be ways around it since that would drive Blockbuster out of business.

Re:Fat chance - FUD spewer

[Jason1729]

Nonetheless, they do know about portability. While it may be possible to create such a device, no one would buy it. Many people have several DVD players in their house and would like the ability to watch the content on both or all of them.

That's what the market will decide. People accept windows XP product activation forcing them to buy a copy for each computer they own. New hardware is also very expensive when it first comes out. People have multiple DVD players now but they didn't when DVD players first came out. By the time multiply blu-rays in one home can become an issue, it will already be the standard or have flopped.

Many people don't have internet connections throughout their house and will not be bothered to hook a DVD player up to it. How else is your player going to get permission?

Uh...a phone line? :)

People also know that those players die and aren't going to accept losing their entire media collection because a laser died. At the least there would be ways around it since that would drive Blockbuster out of business.

The movie industry wants to drive blockbuster out of business. Most people don't think about the futrue. They're not going to consider the possibilty of their player dying in a few years, they only think about seeing the hot new movie today.

Re:Fat chance - FUD spewer

[MooseTick]

"People accept windows XP product activation forcing them to buy a copy for each computer they own."

That's nothing new. You were supposed to buy a copy of DOS, Win95, 98, 2000, and milinium for every computer you placed it on also. XP just attempts to enforce that via product activation.

"Uh...a phone line? :)"

Again, many people don't have phone lines in every room in their house. There is also a large and growing segment of people who don't even have landlines. They have only cell phones. Are you supposed to have a $50'/month phone bill just to be able to watch a movie?

"The movie industry wants to drive blockbuster out of business."

Blockbuster is owned by Viacom who also owns Paramount. They use each other to make money. Video rentals is big business and the movie industry does not want it to go away.

"Most people don't think about the futrue. They're not going to consider the possibilty of their player dying in a few years, they only think about seeing the hot new movie today."

You grossly underestimate people. Early adoptors will especially consider the possibilty of their player dying in a few years if they are paying big bucks for the player and planning on building a large library of movies. Does DIVX sound familiar?

"Forced" to buy a new TV

[TFloore]

People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only (Thanks FCC. I had some money saved up, and I was feeling guilty about it.)

That's a definite possiblity, but I've been having some interesting conversations about the whole 'forced conversion' to digital. It will be nearly impossible to make millions of people go out and purchase a new TV overnight just because the FCC says everything has to be digital.

Why would you need to buy a new TV? The only people that will need to buy a new TV are those people that get their TV from over-the-air broadcasts.

If you have cable TV, you don't need to buy a new TV.
If you have satellite TV service (Dish, DirecTV, etc), you don't need to buy a new TV.

Yes, there are a lot of people that only watch TV from over-the-air broadcasts... but it's not everyone. Interestingly, it is mostly those people that don't have disposable income that will be most affected by this. Ain't it always the way?

But even there, you will be able to, instead, buy a converter box that will convert the digital (HD or SD) over-the-air signal into standard-def analog signal. And use your old TV.

Cable TV penetration is about 70% of US households.

Re:"Forced" to buy a new TV

[True Grit]

buy a converter box that will convert the digital (HD or SD) over-the-air signal into standard-def analog signal. And use your old TV.

Unless TV starts producing something worth watching, then I'll just convert my old TV into a footrest for when I'm sitting at the computer. I won't spend a dime upgrading my TV if all it gets me is more asinine commercials just in a higher resolution. To hell with that, I'll fire up nethack instead.

Re:"Forced" to buy a new TV

[AK Marc]

The only people that will need to buy a new TV are those people that get their TV from over-the-air broadcasts.

They won't need to buy one either. They'll need to buy a receiver, though. It will be like a cable box that receives the over-the-air broadcasts, rather than over the cable network.

Depends if Sony can walk and chew gum

[alexhmit01]

If Sony gets movies out in Blu-Ray quickly, then Blu-Ray will take off. Enough PS3/HDTV owners will buy a few discs, which will give them an "investment" in the platform, and avoid HD-DVD unless multi-format players happen...

Microsoft's support would mean something... if they shipped the XBO 360 with the devices, but they didn't... Microsoft's support is meaningless, because they don't ship hardware. Short of them making their software refuse to play Blu-Ray, which seams unlikely with the EU/US DOJ still keeping an eye on them.

Apple however, is ironically a player in this space... because they ship Hardware AND Software. Apple support means that future machines from them will play the discs, because they will make the software work.

The biggest player in making this happen will be Sony, followed by Apple...

However, if Sony doesn't get Blue-Ray DVDs out there, then forget it, it'll die like Laserdisc... honestly, I LOVE my HDTV, and watching DVDs is often painful compared to a beautiful HDTV signal, but at the same time, I look at this as Laserdisc... not enough of a step up to get customers to replace old DVDs, which is ALL the studio cares for, and not enough of a step up to get a large chunk of the market to buy them instead.

If BR DVDs cost the same (or slightly more) than DVDs, sure, it would uptake, but what incentive do the studios have to master both sets in that case...

It'll be like DVD-Audio, SA CD, and Laserdisc... improvements that the market ignores because they aren't a MAJOR step up.

VHS was MUCH better than nothing. DVD was MUCH more convenient than VHS... BR... well, I think it will die on the vine... it will only succeed if there isn't a significant price differential, which will cause the studios to lose interest...

It's a shame, too.

That said, Sony putting out BR DVDs @ $19.99 from day one and "free" players in the PS3 and you have a market.

Alex

Re:Depends if Sony can walk and chew gum

[Belgand]

Well, one of the smarter tricks they can try (providing the bitrate is there) would be to make it backwards compatible to a degree. SACD hybrid discs and some DVD-A titles (DVD compatible, but hey... that's actually better in many cases) along with the stunningly bad idea of DVD-A DualDisc are slightly helping to bring the formats out to market. The main problem is reluctance to move forward with it.

If a company decided that their new CDs were going to be SACD hybrid discs then they would quickly achieve penetration, bolster the sale of SACD-compatible players and the market would adopt them over time with the CD layer becoming little more than a legacy format for use in your old discman, CD-ROM, or car stereo.

A similar method could work with Blue-Ray. Start releasing films that are Blu-Ray and DVD compatible and only release those. The acceptance problem is only really going to be a major issue when consumers have to decide between a new, incompatible technology. They don't have a player and thus studios worry about releasing software that nobody will buy. Consumers, in turn, don't buy players because there isn't any software for them.

SACD/DVD-A isn't really the best model to use though. There are numerous problems ranging from a lack of software, a lack of consumer interest in higher quality (often citing how readily people will listen to badly encoded mp3s without regard for the poor sound quality), and a poor retail presence.

I definitely think that the PS3 stands of the best chances of really spurring Blu-Ray acceptance, but it's going to be up to the studios to actually release sufficient software for them. Given the way the massive push into UMD software though I doubt this will be a significant problem.

The problem of a major change in quality is going to be tough, even with the PS3 driving potential acceptance, but HD TV has been selling quite well and I doubt that all of those sales are the result of 16:9 aspect ratios and thin plasma and LCD displays (admittedly much like the iPod HD TV has become a trendy status symbol so that's probably driving a disturbing number of sales). If Blu-Ray has a sufficient high-definition picture that shows as much of an improvement as 1080i HD TV shows over 480i standard definition then maybe the quality improvement will be enough to sell people on it. Here's hoping.

A Question for the More Knowledgeable

[VickiM]

So, will the DRM be on all BlueRay discs, or just on movies? There was an article (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/10 /1913258&tid=187&tid=10) that mentioned how publishers are frustrated with second-hand sales. Do you think they'll try making game discs for the PS3 that cannot be played on any other PS3? If so, I might have to change my plans for which next generation console to get...

Re:Birds of a Feather - Tough Choices

[Nom du Keyboard]

the choices are between one evil empire and the other. One is Microsoft and the other is Sony. Who would you pick?

Okay, the people who screwed up my PC with their Rootkit, verses the people who made it so easy to screw up in the first place. Tough choice.

similar, dunno about same

[YesIAmAScript]

That's "PanelLink". It's the same thing I believe. Although HDCP/PanelLink only encrypts from the video card to the monitor. Also part of MS' DRM strategy is making sure the data is encrypted from the mobo to the video card, the system to the mobo/video card and the app to the system.

MS system is very comprehensive and very annoying. Oh, and it won't stop internet distribution of movies. But it will prevent all existing computers from being able to play BluRay or HD-DVD movies (or WMV-HD). Any computer that has a video cable right now cannot be made to play these movies (in full res). So laptops could, if they had the right drive in them. Other machines? No.

Just bought a 30" monitor with a $600 video card to run it? Throw them out. You can't play movies on it. The monitor doesn't do HDCP and the video card doesn't either.

This drives me up a wall, personally I think that both HD-DVD and BluRay will be hurt by them trying to put in so much DRM. They're already throwing money away by waiting to release them while they "prefect" the DRM. I went from buying 5 DVDs a month (and before that 5 LaserDiscs) to buying about 1 every other month. Because I see stuff in HD and I don't want to pay for a DVD anymore. The "you'll have it forever" thing goes from a positive to a negative when you know before you even buy it that the picture quality is low enough that you think about how you'll be having an inferior picture version forever.

I mean, really, am I going to watch CSI in 1920x1080 and then "buy it forever" in 720x480? No.

These companies have no respect for their customers. And they wonder why their sales are suffering. They're very poor businessmen.

FCC broadcast transition vs. cable and satellite

[HTH NE1]

People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only

Note the word "broadcasters". I expect there will be lots of NTSC content on cable and satellite channels for years after that.

And the rule is that they transmit in digital only and do so in the new digital spectrum so that the government can retake and reallocate the UHF and VHF bands. Digital isn't necessarily HD.

I wonder what new illegal-to-monitor services will be on those frequencies that I'll be able to pick up on my old analog TV. I've already been able to pick up cellular voice pagers on it around channel 20. Especially when using a tuner which supports manual tuning.

HD Porn

[sevinkey]

No it is very not cool. In a past life, I ran across these at work, and being curious of course I went to check them out. You can see every little hair and pimple on these people's asses, and the makeup covering up the models' imperfections.

Ever heard someone talk about meeting a celebrity in person and being disappointed by how they looked? Well this would be like hanging out in the bedroom while they're doing the nasty. Kinda loses some of the fantasy elements.

Sigh

[blaksaga]

I still think that by the time this technology is cheap enough to mass produce (if ever), we will be using things like usb sticks and other digital media to watch movies. I can see the movie industry going the way of the music industry. We are seeing people more and more abandon buying physical CDs and just buying the music on iTunes and then hauling it around on iPods or USB sticks. I can see the same thing happening with movies (hey, we already have the video iPod) within the next 10-20 years. And considering the amount of time that it will take blu-ray to get out of the starting gate, not to mention the lack of acceptance by consumers who feel that dvd is good enough or can't afford newer technology, I can't see blu-ray working.

DVDs and CDs are like floppy disks. They are really starting to become things of the past now that we can transfer our media on digital devices like usb sticks or simply transfer our content from one peripheral to another via wireless or broadband wire connections.

I am now announcing Blue-ray as the next format!

[kalirion]

This is sounding more and more like the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000.

Nope, people will love it

[Wesley Felter]

I read an article just the other day saying that a lot of people think they are watching HD today, but they aren't. But these people like their "HD". So I suspect these people will buy Blu-ray players, attach them to their HDTVs (or even better, EDTVs) with analog component cables, and marvel at the wonderful quality. Never underestimate the placebo effect.

Re: Seriously, given WB's QC...

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear, I have to return every other DVD set I buy and close to 90% of those published by Warner because of defects on the discs. How fucking hard is it to press these things and put them securely in their box? You would not believe the number of disc rotted, steel wool scratched, loosely floating coasters I've gotten from these assholes.

And they want me to buy a denser format with worse DRM that breaks the error correction for more money and less options? The MPAA and company really need to get a fucking clue, even if Washington has to scrape by with one less bribe to pay for it.

Rootkit

[trigonalmayhem]

So will BluRay come with its own rootkit?

Re:Woot

[Snowspinner]

And also, at this point, considerably shorter than the sum-total of the anonymous bitching replies.

Just in time for the demise of physical media!

[birge]

A new physical media! Great! Maybe they'll finally get affordable HD video on a disc just in time to see us all get broadband optical to the home so that we can download any movie we want on demand.

Here's my prediction: the HD format that will finallly take it will be streaming movies and video over IP. The reason is that with streaming video, commercials can be forced on the consumer, allowing for cheap or free, but high quality content. Nobody will care about DRM for a "free" signal.

Everybody knows the days of getting a movie from the USPS on a piece of plastic is numbered. Even Netflix knows that. Why doesn't Pioneer? DVD will be the last disc format that is successful.

Why Bother? Holographic discs are out in 2006 too

[nixkuroi]

I keep hearing all of this noise about Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD but it appears that Holographic discs are coming out next year with a capacity that far outsteps either of the competing formats. If you're going to wait...Might as well wait for the best.

Not just about capacity

[xswl0931]

Lots of misinformation regarding BluRay vs HD-DVD BluRay has larger single layer capacity, but HD-DVD supposedly will have dual layer on launch day, giving them the capacity edge. BluRay uses Java for the interactivity while HD-DVD uses an xml based approach (I think it's called iHD) BluRay is more expensive to manufacture while HD-DVD can adapt current DVD manufacturering equipment to produce HD-DVD discs BluRay allows the content owner to decide on managed copy, HD-DVD requires managed copy (meaning you can copy it to your computer) BluRay has must more industry support, HD-DVD has less

Re:It would be quite easy to do.

[vertinox]

This would require a mandatory, permanent Internet connection for your BD player and I doubt we'll see stuff like that in consumer electronics in the next 10 years.

Actually, you'd just need a single part on the disc that would be CDR or CDRW like (possibly on the inner or outer rim seperate from the Blu-Ray media) in which the Blu-ray drive burns in serial number code on to that part with a seperate type of laser. If you put the disc in another blu-ray drive it would check for this number to see if it matches and if not it doesn't play.

The cheapness of CDR components would make this trivial to get this working in a player.

I hope I didn't just give MPAA any ideas, but perhaps this could be defeated with a sharpee ;)

Capacities

[shamino0]

Theoretical capacity or capacity-in-a-laboratory is completely irrelevant and is comparable to this press release that claims Blu-ray is what consumers want, even though you can't buy any movies in either format yet. The fact remains that HD movies only require twice the space that a regular movie does, so the first cheap player for cheap discs @ 20GB should be the winner.

I won't presume to know what "consumers" want, but I know what I want.

I couldn't care less about movies. I want a rewriteable disc ("Blu-Ray RW?") with sufficient capacity for system backups.

A 2-layer BD-RW will hold about 50G, which is significantly more than the 33G VXA-1 tape drive I use now. A 4-layer disc (prototypes have been made, I don't know when commercial units will ship) will hold 100G on a disc, which is enough for me to perform a full system backup on a single disc. (Right now, my backups consume about 40G for my music collection and about 22G for everything else.)

When the price comes down to the level I paid for my tape system ($800 for an external FireWire drive, about $50 each for blank media), I will be very interested in switching over to it. Especially given reports that BD drives will be faster than VXA-1 tape (which I've clocked at about 2.5MB/s.)

While HD-DVD may be perfectly fine for movies (at 15G per layer), it is not perfectly fine as a backup device. The maximum theoretical capacity for HD-DVD is currently 45G (3-layer discs). This is less than half of the maximum capacity for BD (100G on 4 layers, and the possibility of 200G/8-layer discs in the future.)

Manufacturers should support all standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they limit their potential customers by not supporting competing standards? I don't really care either way as it's only a matter of time before holographic takes over. To me, HD-DVD v. Blu-Ray is a non-issue for all except those licensing the content.

sony = failures

[akhomerun]

sony formats that failed to gain mainstream acceptance:

1. betamax
2. DAT
3. minidisc
4. MicroMV
5. Atrac/Atrac3
6. Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (lost vs. dolby 5.1 and DTS)
7. HiFD (zip disc competitor)

sony formats that survive only in Sony equipment:
1. Digital8 tapes
2. Memory Stick

Both formats will get pushed to the fringes

[Stinky Fartface]

After getting an upsampling DVD player for my Hi def set, I would have to say that I would be very hesitant to spend any significant sums to get a better image. Sure, true HD is better, but not *that* much better. A nicely upsampled DVD delivered over HDMI looks pretty damned good, and I won't have to replace my library or get in the middle of an expensive format war.

The history of technology has demonstrated time and time again that the cheaper, not better, product will dominate. Everyone has been pitting this as Blu Ray against HD-DVD, but standard DVD is the 800 pound gorilla here and it doesn't look particularly bad. I don't think the image quality of Hi-def is such a vast improvement to intice people to migrate, which will push both formats to the fringe groups who fixate on extreme quality.

I think a lot of people are going to feel this way. Sony's strategy to sneak the technology into people's houses via PS3 is not a bad move, but even that won't guarantee success. Sony has an uneven history of promoting new formats and having a user base doesn't mean diddly if there is no driving consumer demand (think Atrac and Betamax).

Nothing changes

[hug_the_penguin]

I've said it before, i'll say it again. They can make new DRM til they're blue in the face and it will be cracked. Security through obscurity is poor security unless you do more to protect it on top of that. And I hardly think that hardware encoding a decryption key into a player or drive is going to be of much use. And fetching keys off the internet? They can be dumped to file easily enough, the file decrypted and everyone is happy.

Even without having the decryption key for a company leaked by an employee, a few hours on a beowulf cluster will be able to turn out the movie for sure. Isn't DRM effective? All the while they're pissing off legitimate customers. It's come to the point where you're getting something better through piracy than you are through purchase, so is it any wonder people pirate?

Oh and it's the end of me buying movies, I won't buy into DRM

As regards the monitors and encryption, they're still forgetting that it has to be decrypted in the end and so by modifying a monitor you will be able to dump the signals and convert them into a readable file. It's like connecting wires to the connections to a speaker, you can always tap into it and get the signal. Unless of course you figure out a way to make noise without the use of analogue (By defying physics). it's an old business model and DRM won't prop it up, they need to move on.

Except Microsoft?

[captainjy]

WTF? HP, Warner, Universal, Toshiba, Paramount, and HBO support HD-DVD too. Get yer facts straight!