Fate of High-Def DVD up to Microsoft?

BlackMesaResearchFac writes "EE Times is reporting that Microsoft may have chosen a side in the ongoing optical disk war. From the article: 'several industry sources last week told EE Times that Microsoft is muscling into the optical-disk fray by leveraging its operating-system clout to bundle HD-DVD within Vista, the company's next-generation OS. There is also talk that the software giant may be planning to offer cash incentives -- in the form "coupons" -- to system vendors or retailers if they agree to support HD-DVD. Such coupons would provide "credits" or "memos" for each PC that is sold with HD-DVD inside.'"

Comments

Sony Not Toothless

[ackthpt]

It effectively attempts to curb Sony's console dominance by making Blu-Ray next to worthless. This is the sole reason they are doing it and by leveraging their weight against PC makers, etc to attempt to harm their competition in a completely different market is the worst of it all.

Sony certainly isn't toothless. As with the tiny dvd's for the PSP evidenced, they do have a large catalog of music and movie content they can release on their prefered media standard.

The question is, particularly after MS-NBC split, is the door now conveniently open for Microsoft to buy into Time/Warner or Disney/ABC to play the same leverage game? They've got the money.

Re:Sony Not Toothless

[Golias]

The question is, particularly after MS-NBC split, is the door now conveniently open for Microsoft to buy into Time/Warner or Disney/ABC to play the same leverage game? They've got the money.

Considering the recent Google deal with AOL Time/Warner, and the very cozy relationship between Disney/ABC and Apple, I think it will take more than a just few suitcases full of money to get the job done this time. Microsoft will have to offer a long-term business case for why partnering makes sense with a company which has royally shafted pretty much every last partner they ever had.

Re:Who's behind the curtain?

[garcia]

Now, granted, I don't know much about how standards like these are developed, but shouldn't this sort of far-reaching decision with industry-wide implications not be left up to one entity? Especially one with such a vested interest in its outcome, such as Microsoft?

It isn't up to Microsoft. They are just "making an offer you can't refuse." By using their dominance in the PC market as leverage they are going to attempt to cut Sony out of the "next-gen" console market before they even come out of the gate.

Microsoft fucked up severely by not putting foo-format HD DVD in their console BEFORE its release like Sony apparently wants to do. So, to recover from that folly, they are trying to dominate the market BEFORE Sony can because they know that the 360 will not be able to compete if the PS3 has multiples of storage capacity built in.

Ultimately it will be up to the market but Microsoft will do whatever they can to make sure they have every unfair advantage they can.

Sony will still be first to market

[RouterSlayer]

However, Sony will still be first to market with Blu-Ray,
included in the PS3, several months before Microsofts crap goes to market, and probably before all the DRM crap gets settled too...

So, imagine this - Sony ships the PS3 with Blu-Ray. A drive that doesn't have the ratified DRM bullshit.

All this content and stuff comes out for PS3, all on Blu-Ray.
Sony starts (or already) on movies shipping on Blu-Ray disks too.

And of course Sun is behind them too, and I can imagine AMD being part of this group. So all the AMD backers, and Sun supporters and Sony supports all start supporting and shipping Blu-Ray content.

And.... any computer techie worth his salt will be getting a blu-ray drive for their machines, and media. All 3rd party PS3 developers doing work on Blu-ray as well...

All MONTHS before M$ and their ilk get to market, and likely before the DRM crap is settled. So it means that M$'s bolstering really amounts to squat.

Vista only supports HD? Who cares! Run something else. PS3 is Linux. get with the program. Users can stick with XP Pro, or whatever, and probably have no problems with blu-ray at all.

First to market = First to rule! Sony will win, they'll be out there, established, and it'll be far far too late for M$ to do anything.

M$ is just trying to pre-empt the launch, but too bad, so sad. It wont help.

Watch as it unfolds, blu-ray will be everywhere.

Re:So much momentum. Wonder if DIVX can happen aga

[forkazoo]

When DIVX was crushed it felt like a giant victory. But DIVX only had one company behind it. This time the draconian DRM will have the entire tech industry behind it. And people won't be buying self-destructing media.

I think we're fucked.

If people actually stick with their DVD drives and let HD-DVD and BluRay both die on the vine, maybe some tech companies will do the right thing. But it's an extremely long shot.

I think that with the emerging trend of online distribution, media formats may start to become fairly uninteresting. My only interest in Blu Ray will be as a backup drive. I'll just have a PC plugged into my TV to play content, so I won't need a High-Def set top box media player of any sort. In a few years, we'll all have an iPodHD, or some equivalent to carry around our video.

Re:It's all about the Java

[Anonymous Monkey]

This puts an interesting spin on the issue. Who is more evil? On the one hand we have Sony and it's DRM CD's, and a Java environment that just might be a tool of DRM and spyware. On the other hand we have Microsoft (aka The Borg), traditionally against anything OSS, a company that might use the new DVD standard to shove around the OSS community...Again, just two maybes, and just speculation, but it could be very bad for us(slashdoters) either way.

Re:Anti Competitive

[drinkypoo]

It will be supported the same way that optical drives are supported now. The software will come with the drive. They are not preventing Blu-Ray from working in Windows, they are simply trying to encourage vendors to include HD-DVD drives in their systems.

This is not the way optical drives are supported now, and it hasn't been since DOS and Windows 3.x. All the current optical drives are supported by an ATAPI driver. They don't come with a driver, because they implement a standard.

Or that much harder to crack?

[ImaLamer]

It effectively attempts to curb Sony's console dominance by making Blu-Ray next to worthless.

It seems to me that if Sony goes with Blu-Ray and all the PC's out in the wild won't have it, it will be harder to copy their games. Mod chips always come out, encryption is cracked, but not being able to produce discs with the proper format/standard will halt copying efforts.

Of course it isn't the end all solution to piracy. Every SEGA Dreamcast game out has been copied and distributed, but you had to download the game (1+ Gigabyte) through a serial cable first. Using a proprietary technology kept people from renting games just to copy them. Assuming that the PS3 doesn't allow you to rip a game and upload it through the controller/USB/Firewire ports and that you can't fit a PS3 game on a DVD-R then they have got a winner.

Just imagine it another way: Protocol dead zones.

I had to create an network for a school that kept teacher's workstation and servers separate from the rest of the network. No student was allowed to even attempt a log in. The easiest way to do this was to use Novell Netware 6 (eDirectory) and IPX/SPX for all teacher/back-end communications. No student workstations were supplied with the drivers to use IPX (no student could install drivers, software, etc). Even if they had a rouge Linux install with IPX ready to go, let's say, the switch had IPX/SPX routing disabled for those ports. The only switch ports that would transmit IPX were the ones we told it to (of course all switches are kept in locked cabinets and so forth).

Same theory here for Blu-Ray. If the only place it is ever seen is the PS3 then Microsoft helped the PS3 become more "pirate-proof". (Of course, it could be argued that no PS3 game piracy may hurt Sony and so forth...)

Besides, who is the consumer electronics giant here, Sony or Microsoft?

Re:Or that much harder to crack?

[squiggleslash]

Every SEGA Dreamcast game out has been copied and distributed, but you had to download the game (1+ Gigabyte) through a serial cable first.

Conversely though, the proprietary route does seem to be working on the GameCube which has seen little (if any) piracy.

The major issue with the Dreamcast, I guess, is that it was semi-open, still supporting a number of backdoors, including the ability to read from regular CDs in hardware.

How long before players doing Blu-ray/HD-DVD?

[drasfr]

I mean, yes, how long before we see players that can do both?

After all... when DVD-Rs came out, and DVD+R. No one was doing both, suddently (I don't remember the history in detail, who), but someone came out (sony?) with a player that was doing both...

and now, what? Well, don't they all do both? or all? DVD-R/+R/-RW/+RW? It's been a while since I have seen a player/recorder that do only one format...

Why can't the same thing happen for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD?

Sure it is a license thing... like it was for DVDs... You pay? You got the right to do it. Is there anything in the agreements they have that will prevent both format to co-exist in the same device? I doubt...

Combo HR-DVD/Blu-ray. Sure it might be expensive at first. The technology seems to be quite different for both format. But we have seen more difficult things happen

Any bet on this? When?

Don't forget the Disney factor

[hanshotfirst]

If what you say is true (unverified by /me), then you have mentioned the differentiating factor that will give the battle to HD-DVD/MS/etc.... Disney.

Consumers ultimately don't care what the format is or which Evil Corporation's pockets they fill. What they do care about is whether Timmy can play the new Winnie-the-Pooh game or Susie can print her Disney Princesses coloring pages. If these new titles and the re-re-re-release of Sleeping Beauty is only on HD-DVD then people will make sure they have the player that fills their children's demands for More of the Mouse.

Disney and MS agreeing on one format will make it difficult for any competing standard-candidate to last in the long run.

Re:Someone please break it down for me

[7Prime]

Everyone forgets the BIGGEST reason why BetaMax failed: STORAGE CAPACITY. It's simple: VHS has the ability to hold well over 2 hours of video, BetaMax can hold 90mins MAXIMUM: one medium is more than a feature length film, one is less. Don't get me wrong, for quality, BetaMax is far superior, the TV station where I work, uses BetaCAM exclusively, I don't think they even own a VHS recorder. But when it came time for the film industry to decide whether to put E.T. on one tape or two, it's pretty obvious why they chose to get behind VHS instead.

Here are some other obvious media wins:

CD vs. Minidisc - MiniDisc comes out quite a bit after CDs are already beginning to be entrenched, they hold less data (bad for use as computer media), use shoddy (at the time) audio compression, and their ingrained ability to be re-written worries the recording industry.

MP3 vs. Ogg - MP3s come out well before Ogg, become a household name (thanks to Metallica and a bunch of silly, high profile lawsuits), and require MUCH less processing power (ie: don't sap battery life on portable media players). Ogg Vorbis, though sounding better, has one of the dumbest sounding names on the face of the planet (a name can make or break a product). Let's think about this: "ogg", for me, conjures up thoughts of cavement beating their chests and yelling "Ooog, Ogg, Bunga!". "Vorbis" is the name of an evil, sadistic cleric from a Terry Prachet novel. In the end, strangely enough, it's AAC that wins the day.

In this case, it's reversed. Blu-Ray is quite a bit higher capacity, and is at least capable of being superior in EVERY way (that is, unless Microsoft is successful in sabotaging it's usability) to HD-DVD.

I know some people are going to laugh, but Blu-Ray has one other thing going for it: a catchy name. This WILL make a huge difference, and may be even big enough to be a deciding factor. "HD-DVD" is clunky to say, and will sound, to most consumers, like a new media based on old technology (think "Double Density 3.5" disks). If people are going to spend their money on upgrading their media, they're going to want to feel like they're actually really getting something new out of it. Blu-Ray is a sexy name, it's not inherently "techy", and will fit right in to the mainstream, it's the kind of name people will WANT to use in day-to-day conversation, because it just sounds cool. Word of mouth is extremely important. When I hear the worlds "Blue Ray" I think of some futuristic sci-fi laser that, like, kills people, or at the very least, will read my mind.

I seriously think the name alone could have a huge impact.

Re:OT - Holy schneikies

[MikeFM]

I'm an addict! ;) Seriously I would like to own a legal copy of every movie ever made. I have a thing for books too. I used to buy hundreds of books a year and read about one per day. Now I buy maybe a book every week as I spend to much time working and need up-to-date info so I read online rather than buying tech books.

I watch a couple movies a day usually. I can watch movies while working so it's good. Usually I get new movies in a burst of 4 or 5 at once every few days.

It really makes me mad though when I can't backup or change around what is mine. I like removing menus, ads, etc from my movies. Why should they be able to stop me?

Re:Sony Not Toothless or "Bluetoothless"

[gerf]

Remember when Windows XP came out, oh so many years ago? They decided to support Bluetooth at that time as their default wireless network, rather than 802.11b? While I realize that there are people who use Bluetooth, I'm not thinking that it's a very large number, at least compared to 802.11

Personally, I'd like to see people offering video in Theora format. Online, or in cheap promo packages... whatever. I realize it won't be a new HD/DVD format, but it'd sure be nice to see more of.