Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
As usual, the pron industry will decide which format wins.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
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.
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.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Blue Ray... http://www.blu-ray.com/
I'm not fat, just big boned...
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.
Two Roommates and a Boyfriend, updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
That seems kind of odd. What would it have instead... S-Video and HMDI?
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I love it when major corporations fight large battles against each other instead of the consumer. ...Oh wait.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
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?)
I suggest you read Slashdot
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.
>> 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.
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.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu won most of the industry over.
You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.
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.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
...Law of Averages? Or sign of the Apocalypse??
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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?
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:
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"
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.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Hey, you should still rewind your DVDs to avoid those rewindig fees! ;)
1. Invent a new, mostly unneeded format 2. DRM it to hell 3. ??? 4. Profit!
- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
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.
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
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
"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.
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?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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!).
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
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.
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.