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If DVD Is Dead, What's Next?
uglysad writes "The Age has a piece discussing the fact that, from the home entertainment industry's standpoint, the DVD is dead. So what is next? From the article 'It will come as a shock to film fans who have spent their Christmases stocking up on their movie collections, but the technology industry is in agreement: the DVD is dead. Consumer electronics companies have begun to show off what they believe will be the next generation of home video technologies. But despite the common belief that the DVD is history, the industry is split over what the next step should be.'"
Seems a little hasty to make such a claim. VHS isnt dead yet. The only media I can think of that is dead is the 8-Track and 70 RPM.
the submitters nick is a fitting description of his summary.
Could have fooled me
DVD is dead just like we're being forced into HDTV in... oh wait, it's smoke. How many people do you know that just got a DVD player? It's hardly dead.
If HD-DVD 'wins' the battle then current DVD isn't at all dead... HD-DVD is backwards compatible thus allowing companies to continue to produce old style DVDs on the cheap while also supplying higher quality content or longer (in video length) disks.
Thanks!
Your options are
- Blu-Ray
- HD-DVD
Nobody wants a format war.There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
But oh, wait! we *know* its dead, but we just don't quite know what killed it yet..
http://efil.blogspot.com/
who gets just a little squeemish at the thought of high def porn?
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
Though you can still buy players and people have a ton of tapes. I see this more as wishful thinking on the part of consumer electronics mfgs (who'd love for you to have to buy yet another player format) more than anything else
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The technology is now obsolete but DVD has roots that run too deep in the general consumer population for it to disappear. It will stay around for a good 5 or 10 years, as more and more people gradually start to get frustrated that the news looks better than their movies.
If DVD is dead, then I'm an Arcturian megadodo.
Since DVDs look absolutely fantastic on my 110" projection screen I don't see how they're going to make much improvement. DVD quality is head and shoulders above broadcast quality analog TV that HDTV is replacing so I'm not sure where the market is for HD-DVD since it's only a minor bump in quality.
There is only one thing the next generation has going for it; Capacity. In everything else, DVD has a distinct advantage. It's cheaper, it's entrenched and it's easier to work with.
Personally, I think the "industry" is in for quite a shocker this year, as bluray and hddvd barely make a blip on the radar. Same with next year.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
>> the DVD is dead. So what is next? how can something in the technology world be dead if there is nothing replacing it? seriously, you can't just declare something "dead" just because, and then ask what should replace it. It makes my head hurt reading that statement. Things die because there is something to replace it, and obviously due to the two sentences above being right next to each other, there isnt anything. sure blu-ray and its competition or whatever will eventually replace dvd, but there are still format wars and no one really knows which will win. the fact one has to ask "whats next?" means that the format isnt really dead. anyway, its not like people go out and buy dvds still or anything, that would be crazy.
Welcome to hell, have a beer.
Here's my solution to the (apparently) dead DVD and upcoming race...er..I mean format war.
Double sided discs. Blu Ray on one side and HDDVD on the other. Eh? Anyone?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Just came from the TV room and the DVD as the VHS are working fine
you scare me
The industry wants to kill DVDs since it is so easy for people to rent and copy them now days. Maybe they think they'll make more money with (Uncrackable)DRM'd replacements.
if the entertainment industry says DVD is dead I won't buy any more.
what? you don't have the replacement out yet? well, you guys just fucked yourselves then didn't you.
The issue that is far, far bigger than HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray and yet the industry doesn't seem to understand is that a standard DVD is more than good enough for most people. As with the CD before it, the DVD hits a sweet spot where aficionados might want improvements but the average user just doesn't care enough (if he is even able to discern them). The industry is being lulled into a false sense that the masses want HD DVDs because of the success of HDTVs, but I believe that has more to do with people wanting larger screens that take up less real estate (LCD, Plasma), than it really does with the higher resolution (for the masses, not for everyone). Also, people expect to buy new TVs on a cyclical basis and it is much easier to get them to run through one purchase upgrade than to upgrade their entire old media collection.
Someday HD DVDs (of one format or the other) will be the norm, but I'm quite sure this is going to be a much slower process (far slower than VHS->DVD IMO) than the studios seem to realize and will be driven more via a trickle of sales as people replace old TVs and DVDs with new models (which support old and new formats). In the meantime, they better keep cranking out those Plain Old DVDs.
It doesn't matter what the fucking tech pundits or even tech companies say. As long as there is a demand for regular old DVDs (And there IS, and there will be for quite some time), somebody will step up to the plate and deliver.
Consumers will rebel hard against movie studios trying to force them into HD-DVD and Blu-ray, content to stick with their "good enough" and cheap current solution.
I will go so far as to update my DVD collection to whatever format for HD TV wins (the format wars), but, only those movies I really like and I WILL NOT get my movies that I like by any form of downloads where I do not have a personal copy (disk. holographic cube, whatever), but it must be a physical media, not this download and it self-destructs after 2 viewings garbage. One other thing, the movie producers may want to put in all those extras (on the HD-DVD's because they will be so large in storage size), put in all the edited out material from the theater versions so we can tell the DVD player to re-assemble the original 3 to 40 hour movie without all the annoying editing that the studio bosses (who don't know anything about making movies) so the studio bosses can get stuffed!
Exaggerating death throes isn't meant to end sales, gods no. If that suddenly happened Bush would probably have to slash taxes and then tell everyone to take that $300 out and buy a stack of DVDs (except anything he finds morally repugnant, such as gay cowboys). The MPAA would have to suddenly circle the wagons, up-end the Bucket 'O Lawyers and proclaim the fall-off is the result of rampant piracy.
Nope, nothing like that.
What they mean to do is push the new HD-DVD or Blu Ray technology, even if it's not on the store shelves just yet. What's desired is to whip up a frenzy -- to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
Anyone remember (the late) Richard Pryor as the Wiz, changing the colours? Red is dead, wouldn't be seen in green, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They only want us to think it's dead for two reasons, first, content cannot be securely protected (like they hoped). Second, you can now get a player for twenty bucks (same as in town), so there's little profit left.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm in the technology industry, and I don't think the DVD is dead. Hell, we just got a new DVD player with our surround sound kit. Does anyone see Blockbuster renting out something more than DVD?
This guy is making stupid generalizations to draw attention.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
According to a blurb in the Feb issue of CPU magazine, a 300 GB (with 20Mbps transfer) drive/disc should be available later this year. Probably overkill for a DVD killer, but could work for large collections (LotR, Star Wars, Alien and Star Trek - all in HD 7.1 multi-language audio track with all special bonus features - $1,999.99).
If DVD is dead, whatever the porn industry supports next will be it.
The last time I walked into my neighborhood video store, I noticed that 90% of the movies are in DVD format. (The other 10% are VHS.)
I can safely ignore all this nonsense until the day I notice that the percentage of DVD (or compatible) discs has dropped below 80%. Then I'll start paying attention to what's replacing it.
I am sure that as time goes on DVD will be replaced by something better. BUT consumers will profoundly ignore anything that is engaged in a format war!
It took many years for DVD catalogs to reach their current levels, and there are a number of titles that are still not available in DVD format. Plus a good DVD player looks pretty decent on a HDTV. So there isn't a huge incentive for customers to buy any new HD format. With all this there is little or no incentive for consumers to buy into a new technology - especially if it comes with a price premium.
There is a good chance that a format war will delay the acceptance of HD resolution disks for years. It might even fatally wound the the new formats - like it did with SACD and DVD-AUDIO.
In the meantime people like me are using Netfix instead of buying DVD's - why own something that will eventually become obsolete anyway.
So this is their strategy now (IMO):
1. Run articles saying DVD (and Blu-Ray) are dead.
2. Force people to buy an HD-DVD for their Xbox.
3. Sell new games in HD-DVD format only.
4. Profit.
Blu-Ray is struggling to keep up despite backing from Hollywood studios and a wider support base among electronics firms. Companies including Philips and Panasonic announced new players at the electronics show, but they are not due in shops until at least the second half of this year and are likely to be expensive.
Another blow came when Microsoft chairman Bill Gates confirmed his company would be making a plug-in HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 games console.
But it won't work: someone (soon, hopefully!) will produce a combo drive that can read HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Hurry up, please!
i dont get it.. did this have a point, am I missing something? did nader claim to invent the DVD like gore claimed to invent bush's internets? or was it just random spam I'm looking into too deeply :P
If you mean 78 RPM, it is very much alive, if gasping for air. I have an old wind-up Victrola and about 250 78s of old blues and jazz that I still crank up from time to time. The sound is crap for an audiophile of course but it has its own rickety charm. The best thing is you don't have to plug a damn thing in. Came in handy when there was a blackout - I'm also into candles; half the neighborhood showed up at my place with booze because it was the only place on the block with light and music. When the power came back on, we continued to party, but I admit we did switch back to 33.3 RPM for the music :)
of this article.
The HD-DVD standard will offer compatibility with the discs you already own, and TV addicts will need to splash out on expensive high-definition TV sets before the difference is noticeable.
Well, actually "TV addicts" will have to splash out on a HDMI-compliant HD TV if they want to play any HD-DVDs (not just to get the resolution improvements) because the players only offer HDMI output. I don't think people will be buying a new TV for a small picture quality improvement - look at all the fuss over people having to buy new TVs or Digital->Analogue coverters when analogue TV signals get shut down. Besides, they'll have to make room for the behemoth somewhere.
It's worked for thousands of years, no formatting problems, the technology is always around to read it, and it's hard to erase, hard to copy, it just isn't very portable.
When people stop buying DVDs in signficant numbers, then and only then will DVD be dead.
Just because they want us to buy more, newer, less reliable, more expensive shit doesn't mean we will.
Question everything
I can see the reason why the hardware industry want DVD to die as it's got to the point where it's a commodity product. There are so many cheap machines on the market that it's impossible to make a reasonable profit on the devices. There is a very, very small market for high-end players for those with lots of money, but the mid-range has disappeared, where most of the profit could be made. The only solution is to generate a new market with a new product, for which they can get a large margin, at least initially.
Now, the extertainment industry are probably not that bothered either way. OK, if there's a new format for which they can sell yet another version of their product to the same customers then they're for that, but even if there isn't, they can still sell the new products very profitably, thank-you very much.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
I think for purposes of this argument, we can fairly say that if it's not given at least an aisle at Best Buy, it's dead. LP's are dead as a doornail. VHS tapes will be soon. But I can't imagine the DVD section at Best Buy going away within the next three years. Keep in mind it's in the interests of the electronics industry to have DVD die off as soon as possible. And despite the fact that the MPEG-2 encryption was a rush job and has long since been blown away by newer codecs, DVD's remain an outstanding technology.
Whatever the next standard is, it won't have the clear advantages over DVD that DVD had over VHS. The several hundred million consumers who already own DVD players and stacks of DVDs have no urgent reason to jump to the next standard -- not until most of these people own high-def Televisions. DVD will be with us for some time.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
So why is there any debate as to which format will win? If a vast majority of the content producers are on board with Sony, why would anyone in their right mind purchase a HD-DVD player? Toshiba and MS don't have a leg to stand on here. As for DVD being dead, I think the statement is a few years premature.
What about LD or BETA? I own several LDs not sure what I'll do when that player breaks. But at least they can be copied to video tapes. Should be possible to scan them into a divx file as well, if I had a video capture card..
The problem is that we are all investing in media which we will most likely not be able to view in a view years. I had to buy a new DVD player this year because several of my new DVDs would not play on my older player. Presumably because of slight changes in the software.
DVDs for the most part can be hacked and backed up. But what about new technologies. Will this be possible with DVD-HD or will all of the media purchaced turn into an expensive and ineffective paper weight in 10 years when our players break and the tech is outmoded?
Has Netcraft confirmed it?
"The Last Temptation of the DVD" followed by the surprisingly successful, "The Resurrection of DVD" (aka "I Was Only Mostly Dead").
I mean, come on, this whole story is a troll!
You should really go and check out the quality on an HD set. I thought my 51" was great until I saw a 57" with HD feed. Now I can't wait for BD-/HD-DVD players and media to hit the shelves.
HD is a small mountain in quality from SD DVD and a large mountain from SD TV.
At some point you have to stop worrying so much about storage capacity and start worrying about how robust your storage medium is.
Of course, the guys who sell DVD's for a living may like the idea that people find themselves having to buy new copies of the stuff they already bought (because it is encrypted and they can't make backup copies).
Seastead this.
If the resolution is high enough, you might as well quit messing with the fake stuff and go after something real?
The technology industry agrees that DVD is dead? Alrighty then...
How many companies have stopped producing DVD players?
How many stores have stopped selling DVDs?
How many DVD pressing factories have shut down?
Where can I buy a next-gen media player (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, whatever)?
WTF do they mean when they say DVD is dead?
DVD and CD are two very, very unreliable mediums for storing data. And for some people storing data is an important part of their lives. Besides that, most people treat DVDs and CDs very clamsy. You don't even know which scratch is going to be "the lethal one". On the other hand I would appreciate the fact if some people would bother creating reliable hard drives that do not die unexpectedly. At least to have a way to warn the user before they die. It is awful to live with the fear that one day, you don't know which, your HD will die. And S.M.A.R.T. is not always reliable.
Does this make any sense to anyone? The VHS cassette was introduced in late 1976 and survived until the DVD came into the market in November 1996. That's a 20 year difference. It's been about 10 years and they already want to replace the DVD. There is a clear quality difference between VHS cassettes and DVDs, but will I REALLY see that big of a difference between DVDs and the next generation discs and players? My house is only so big, and my TV will have size limits, so it's not like I'll see a difference. So why will I have to pay more for "better" quality when I won't see a difference?
It just sounds like I'm being bullied into paying more for "better" quality by the industry. That or the article is complete bull...
Despite what the industry says, I'm betting on at least 4 years before I really have to worry about my precious DVD's being truly obsolete.
Not quite. Wasnt there a record amount of DVDs sold this holiday season? Hell I know I bought more than I ever have before; and there are many people that I know that will agree. Someone saying 'DVD is dead' sounds like someone that just wants to be the first one to say something; so they say truly outlandish things that never come true. (but just in case they do, lets say it anyway!)
:D
I want to get the Wedding Crashers special edition on DVD
I really need to improve my library
Technology doesn't just die like these sensationalistic articles tend to believe. It slowly loses momentum over several years. VHS is still widely used for Christ sake. DVD is still in it's prime. Players are cheap and people are buying disks like crazy. It seems way early to start shoving a new standard down consumers throats. Another thing is that consumers get comfortable with a technology and tend to stick with it for as long as possible. For Christmas I bought my dad a new DVD player. I set it up and showed him how to use it the best I could. He calls me up the next day completely confused and jokingly says "You might as well have brought me a fucking space ship". So I guess the moral of the story is that it is not time to give the average Joe another fucking space ship to figure out.
"DVD is dead."
This reminds me of a line I heard once... "Every person in this room is now dumber because you said that.
I don't either. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will fail for the same reason SACD failed.
DVD had a distinct advantage over VHS: No degredation in quality after multiple viewings. Basically, all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray offer are higher resolution movies, and I don't think that's enough to convince people to pay probably double the price per disc, and 500 - 1000 bucks for the player. Especially since most movies not made in the past 5 years will see almost no quality improvement when switching over to the new formats.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Don't think: Bones with a tricorder in hand saying "he's dead, Jim". Do think: Al Capone gritting his teeth and snarling "That no-good punk is dead. Dead, ya hear me?".
The movie industry hates DVD for the same reason it hates unadulterated CD: the pirates have cracked it so thoroughly that the studios might as well post the disk images on mininova themselves.
DVD is only dead to the greedy who aren't happy with the deflation in profit margins, due to the huge array of competition from everywhere, including scads of historical movies and TV programs and imported foreign content. They prefer to think it's not due to the competition but to piracy, but they're wrong. When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy. Sure, there may be some bootleggers out there who are showing up with counterfits at flea markets, and a few downloaders who will D/L a movie to watch just because they can, not because it's convenient. But not enough to explain the hit big media is taking in the pocketbook, despite their claims.
Big media figures if they start up something newer and better they can get us all to transition to it and spend more $$$. However, while I think it could mean a short term windfall, I'm not convinced that HD gives you enough additional value to make it worth the transition-- most of what I like to watch already exists and isn't in HD format, I have no interest in spending extra $$$ just to see the modern crap that's mostly written by ad executives.
The DVD is not just going to go away, there's a huge amount of content out there that, even if the disks and the players start dying out, we'll be able to back them up on new storage mediums and still preserve them. And, much of the content remains worth watching, in fact, mostly more so than what's targeted for HD.
But let them pull out all the stops. And maybe there'll be suckers who will buy into it, but if I ever do I'll be about the last to do so, after the cost has dropped to about what DVDs are going for now...
They only wish it was dead because while it's alive it's a low-cost content rich alternative to the high-cost content poor HD market...
They should pick a format that can last centuries. This may sound ridiculous at first, but consider what the ideal shape is regardless of technology. It would be something like a thin pen-drive. If you only store something small or compression improves, then it can be a short pen. If you want to store 50 movies, then it may be a longer pen.
If it is like a pen-drive, then the technology inside does not matter such that it can change. Only the interface has to stay the same.
A disk, especially a 5 inch disk is too bulky. Plus, it is too easy to scratch the surface and the technology determines the interface. You cannot increase the number of groves (or whatever they call them now) without needing a new interface. A pen-drive-like interface does not care how many groves or how much RAM is inside. Only the "plug" and outer body has to remain the same. Inside it can use bacteria, pizza, or gerbal poop to store info. It ain't matter.
However, I must say that USB is a little awkward to insert. But, I have not seen something significantly better to replace it as an interface. So a pen-drive shape it is in the right direction.
Table-ized A.I.
640 bits should be enough for everyone...
Nothing is uncrackable.
"I'm not quite dead!"
Long live DVDs!!
They're very much alive, especially in the electronica scene.
Of course they would say that, both sides have invested significant money in the newer formats competing with DVDs. You might as well ask Shell and BP if consumers are ready for all-electric cars...
Current DVDs are, in-fact, large enough to support HD content... just look at Terminator 2, any IMAX DVDs, or other WMVHD DVDs. The Chinese EVD standard could have had HD content on DVDs 6 years ago (in VP6 format) if it hadn't completely stalled. HP even insisted that the Blu-ray standard include support for HD content on current dual-layer DVDs, which should look just fine if encoded in H.264.
That's not to say I'm against a new format. It's just that, if the public resists Blu-ray and HD-DVD because of DRM that is too restrictive (like only having HDMI outputs, not being able to make backup copies, etc), high prices on content or players, or uncertainty over competing formats, you can bet that current DVDs will be able to pick up the slack, and become a high-def format.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"who gets just a little squeemish at the thought of high def porn?"
You want your porn to be high-definition so you can read the labels.
I think DVD is alive and well, and will continue to be for a few more years at least.
Even with HD-DVD or Blu-ray looming around the corner, the bottom line is that DVD media will be supported on these newer devices.
If your talking about the end of using physical media for distributing movies, then I think your are a long way off. Hollywood is not really embracing online digital media, whether its for music or movies. Too many competing standards are vying to be the dominant online media format, Apple's quicktime, Microsoft's WMV, DIVX, XVID, etc, etc, etc. None of these players are going to want to give up their proprietary format to create a single industry standard, at least not with regards to Microsoft and Apple. Having too many file formats being distributed over the net will just be annoying. Having to buy or install multiple products to get a chance to watch a Hollywood movie will cause consumers to protest.
Also, I have yet to see a truely decent mergin of the PC in the living room. Most are still klunky hacks that try and force a PC into a home theater component, complete with boxy case, noisy fans, and cumbersome operation. DVD's are popular because of the easy of use, slip a disk in a try and hit play. Until computers match that in terms of simplicity, using a PC to playback movies won't become popular.
So what are these people talking about, other then making some grandiose statement to attract attention? Physical distribution of movies may change, but its still digital media, whether its in the form of a DVD, or someone comes up with a square holographic cube, any new digital player will support the previous generation of media, there is no reason for DVD to die to become obsolete.
DVD will be dead when Hollywood stops fighting online distribution of copyrighted content, Apple and Microsoft embrace the same file format, and someone finds a way of turning the computer into a dirt simple consumer electronics component. As you can see, it ain't going to happen anytime soon.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Uhh, pretty much everyone I know still buys DVDs all the time. DVD is far from dead. I'd say it's more that tech. companies *want* DVD to be "dead" so they can bring in their DRM-mangled disc formats...
Everytime the "next big thing" hits the market everybody says the same old crap. It's usually "But my Product X works just fine! I'm not going to be upgrading!" Two months from now the very same people will be trying to sell a kidney to get their hands on it.
I'm happy with DVD because of the space it saves, and that's about it. I don't need 450,000 hours of extra footage, or some guy paraphrasing every scene while I watch it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Blu Ray is more resistant to damage. Content creators want you to muck up your disk so you have to buy and re-buy and re-buy the same disc over and over. More money for them.
It's always about the $$$, so HD-DVD it is!
Stewie: "Does anyone smell Astroglide?"
(From episode "Brian Does Hollywood")
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Will DVD Jon need to change his name?
Will he be Blue-Ray Jon or HD-DVD Jon?
Go my mofos here yo! and here ma mofos!
That's not the real reason for lack of DVD-A and SACD adoption. The real reason is that CD is good enough. ESpically now that people are going for compressed music on portables, there's just no compelling reason to upgrade. There IS an improvement, if you have good enough equipment, and many offerings are in surround, but given how most peopel listen to music, there's just no reason for them to spend money on an upgrade.
The same may end up being true for the HD formats. HD is cool and all, I love it, and on a good TV it is noticable better than DVD, but it's not a night and day thing like VHS to DVD. For many people, DVD is just fine. This goes double given that many will not be able to get HD rez (since it requires HDMI and only the newest sets have it) or will wire it up wrong and thus not see any improvement.
DVD isn't dead, the movie industry is just desperatly trying to convince people of that so they'll spend more money on new technology.
as a fellow moderator I think you guys really missed this one, how the hell could I get modded all offtopic? You know the point I was trying to make was that despite everyone saying bsd is dead it's not! And despite what the media industry's PR departments are frollicking around the web with these days, DVD is not dead either. See the connection? not offtopic! maybe it's not funny maybe it's a really stupid connection but for GOD SAKES MAN ITS NOT OFFTOPIC...jeez....
This is just like the +/-/ram format wars.
whats gonna happen is one of the companies will make a indi drive, which will support both HD-DVD and Bluray.
It's pining for the fjords!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
personaly i would liken this more to a comparison of cd to sacd/dvd audio than to vhs. are cds still alive and kicken even though consumers can get a "better experience" from sacd/dvd audio? i think so. when 100 million or so bluray/hddvd players are sold you might be able to consider the dvd dead, though likely all those players will play dvd as well so...
Region codes and other stupid schemes, hype, obligatory threatening messages about what Interpol does to pirates, and high resolution special features including documentaries where surrepeticious clips from the movie interspersed with the actors rehashing the basic points of the plot in a way a retard can understand and directors/FX people marvelling over how talented they since they can do yet another remake of the typical action flick/formulaic thriller/chick flick/special effects laden sci fi flick, etc. What next? More of the same, but up to ten times as many pixels.
Oh, there are quality differences.
It just takes a trained eye to see them. It is much like the ability to hear the encoding artifacts in someone's 128 kbps song off iTunes. Once you have heard enough, and done the research, you are forever tainted with the headache that comes with listening to badly encoded music. I find that I am able to pick out the lower quality songs where others cannot.
It is the same situation here. You want to see the encoding artifacts inherent in the MPEG-2 encoding used on DVDs? Load up a copy of your favorite high quality DVD with some strong color casts or large skylines. (I find the sky is often the easiest place to see the effects.) I like to use House of Flying Daggers, with its beautiful expanses of color artfully placed. (Get the movie anyway, it is great.)
Watch the sky or background. You can see the artifacts. Where there should be a clean black or a clean color gradient you can see blocks and patches of color, somewhat like a much shrunken gif or jpeg. HD-DVD or Blu-ray, with its more powerful and accurate H.264 or VC-1 codec eliminates these problems to a large extent.
Once you are used to watching movies with a discerning eye, you will begin to pine for the better encoding and higher resolution offered by next-gen formats. However, if you do not see the problems, then go right ahead and use your DVDs for another 10 years to come.
If you really cannot see them, try encoding and burning a VCD or SVCD and see if you can see the problems there. They should be more prominent.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams
nor is VHS. Even BetaMax still is alive and kicking and in use in some places.
Remember that Laserdisc system and how VHS and video tapes were dead? Laserdisc is the superior product with a superior quality picture and sound than VHS had.
Guess which format people supported and used the most?
The DVD is not dead, do I need to invoke Monty Python here "I'm not dead yet!"
HDTV formats are way too expensive for the average person to use and own. Ever tried to price HDTV cable and satellite boxes lately as well as the monthly fees for them? Ever priced an HDTV TV set lately? Wonder why those TV sets under 35 inches do not support HDTV? Only the wealthy can afford them.
I know a lot of people who don't even own a DVD player and still use VHS players and recorders. Most of them have older TV sets that cannot take the DVD digital input and need an adapter just to use one. Now try to convince them to spend thousands of dollars on an HDTV system to play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks instead of their 20 Inch Analog TV set with the VHS video tape device? The most they can spend is like $50 to $100 for new equipment if they go without certain things for a while and cut their budgets.
DVD Players sell for as low as $35 each with $15 for the Analog to Digital adapter to use them on that 20 inch Analog TV set. A $50 minimum investment just to upgrade to a DVD playing system. $100 for a good one that won't shoot craps in the next few years or so.
The way I see it, as far as HDTV DVDs go, Blu Ray is BetaMax and HD-DVD is VHS as far as formats and pricing and marketing goes. My money is on HD-DVD, because it seems only handful of suppliers will support Blu Ray like Sony (who invented it). This is the BetaMax vs. VHS wars all over again.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Not to mention that the DVD is still a huge part of the personal computer. And the personal computer is now intergrating with the home media center. I'd say the movie industry is losing money mostly to rentals made easier by players like Netflix. Why spend $10 for a movie ticket today when you can rent for about $2 in two months? Plus this year's movies were 80% crap.
...but did netcraft confirm it?
I have 2 VCRs with 6 hrs of recording scheduled for each, every week. Its a lot cheaper than DVR or TIVO and the quality is good enough.
Maybe we all need to start reading slashdot. If you are going to aprove an article that is probably the 10th one covering Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, you might at least pick a better informed one.
I have not read up on this, but from the little I do know, Blu-Ray has higher capacity but is more DRM friendly and requires royalties. HD-DVD supports making a "fair use" copy, and Blu-Ray does not. DVD's really can't support movies in Hi-Def so there is a need to move up to a higher capacity standard, but either format will hold several hours of Hi-Def vid. I would guess since HD-DVD is an extention of DVD there is a greater chance of seeing writers in the hands of consumers earlier/cheaper. Also on cost, I think I read that MS stated HD-DVD support in windows would be free, and Blu-Ray royalties would cost them an additional $30. If that is true, what would it mean for OSS and Linux?
I sort of get the impression that one of the goals of Blu-Ray is to lock sonsumers out of fair use, and since MS dreams the PC will be the hub of the digital home they would rather see the HD-DVD format win. Sony is pushing Blu-Ray because it is in bed with the movie industry and MS is actually backing what would probably be the "peoples choice" to include the Linux community.
Again, I am not really informed on this, so feel free to make corrections to my assumptions.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
...of course, it will be pay-per-download torrents!
I suspect both HD-DVD and BD-DVD will be comercial failures just like SACD and DVD-A for similar reasons. HD-DVD and BD-DVD are the last gasps of locked to physical disk formats.
.mov .avi and codecs. You deliver on whatever storage medium you want. Downloads, Hard disks, HVD (holgraphic), whatever.
After this I think the time has past for disk based formats. I think Bill Gates (and I am no fan) was right on this one.
All we need are container classes for video like
when netcraft confirms it.
Took long enough for someone to say it, didn't it?
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Apple is also dead. Kinda reminds me of the oil companies telling me that gas prices are going to rise, preceding the actual rise, then the commodities traders hear the rumor and drive up the price. Tech companies are trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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According the article. Therefore, even if they don't make some individual player, they will get royalties. No thanks. Fork 'em ... forever.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Why a battle royale between new media formats that scratch and need to be played on mechanics that inevitably wear out...
http://www.sdcard.org/
Putting hard copy liner notes with those little cards might be a royal pain, tho.
Yeah right like the DVD is dead.
Production-wise DVDs maybe dead since there's a huge surplus of hardware, but the technology will be around for awhile.
I'm tried of the marketing blitz strategies by companies and industry groups nowadays, especially since CES started, it's hype-overload and false and sickining.
I think it's pretty safe to say that clay tablets are dead, too.
Way I see it, I'm not going to buy all my existin DVD's soon in HDTV quality. And who is going to move all of them to HDTV quality anyway? I'm sure movie studios would like to everybody to do that, but buying 50-100 new DVD's is not sanctioned by my checkbook any near future.
Most of world, and I suspect US either, doesn't have HDTV lot of ready home yet as there aren't broadcasters on every corner. Not only I'd need new player/recorder, I'd need television set - and lot of program that would be made in HDTV. Old shows won't be, and they're rerunning them all a time. And look bloody awful on over 32" wide screen.
Don't get me wrong, I think HDTV and new DVD formats are a good thing. I just don't see where the sudden momentum to move from current DVD would come from. It can't go very fast and very far. It's inpractical right now.
The viewer side is also a big mess, with LCD's and Plasma monitors. Plus inside them allkinds of diffrent definitions of HDTV format.
Get me one standard to everything and good idea why I'd need to do do everything again. If not, I'm not jumping to wagon that I'm not sure where it's going to stop!
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Easy-to-Copy DVDs will be phased out. It'll be cake to do in a few years once all those el'cheapo dvd players break and people buy shinny new hd-dvd/blueray players. They'll be no resistence since you're not giving up your dvd collection you're gaining Hi-Def.
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http://www.8trackheaven.com/index2.html
but the technology industry is in agreement: the DVD is dead.
oh boy, yeah, i really do care what the "technology industry" is in agreement about. the dvd is even far from reaching it's zenith. it just became a standard that is not only widely accepted, but also widely deployed. it's convenient, nearly everyone's got a player (here in europe you can get one [without region codes and shit] for 30), every pc can play them, and you can make your own, be it a copy or your selfmade movie. uh, sorry, i lost your point here, but why should the dvd be dead? care for any real reasons?
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
The people selling the films cant make as much money off them anymore. DVD writers have become too cheap, a DVD writer can be had for $25 these days and DVD-R/+R discs are cheaper than ever. A new medium for distributing media is attractive to the larger companies because there is no (mass market, lit:cheap)way of copying the discs at the moment (yes I know they could be down sized onto a regular DVD at a lower resolution, but isn't that kind of missing the point)
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
its progressive scan, and upsamples to 720p or 1080i, and let me tell you, it looks pretty freaking good. Nearly as good as other quality HD content with a quality DVD. If they want to jerk me around with a format war and telling me how I can use my media, they'll lose. The quality of what I have now makes it difficult to abandon without a compelling reason.
Ever seen the back of a receiver? Take a long look at those analog RCA jacks because that was the last time the industry ever got everyone on the same page at the same time. When was that? 1970 something. Since then, Sony and Toshiba fought it out over Toslink and SPDIF and the CD format. Dolby and DTS fought it over the new surround sound ... both of which were obsolete a few years later with 6.1 and 7.1 coming fast and furious. Component barely started to become a standard before it was supplanted by DVI, which lasted on a year or so before HDMI came along to replace it. Every day I deal with pissed off and frustrated consumers who can't get their DVDs, cable terminals, satellite receivers and TVs all working together because of incompatible technologies.
My computer is my entertainment center for a reason.
I'll tolerate anything except intolerance.
Who else has interest to shoot down the DVD format for replacing it with formats ( HD-DVD or BlueRay, who cares...) which are not, or at best marginally better (in terms of quality) for the consumer.
If HD-DVD or BlueRay wins over the DVD format, guess who'll be the big winners...
And do you think that all the movies will be re-released with a much better resolution under these formats ?
Movie studios and record companies want to use DRM to lock down their "IP" with an iron fist.
DVDs will be around for a LONG time. Until the Walmart crowd buys into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, nothing will change - just like VHS hung in until DVD Players hit $30 and less, and became mass-market, almost disposable items. DVD-R will become the common man's VCR, as prices settle into ~$75 for a recorder.
Until Digital TV gets a mass market tuner, it, too, will continue to languish as a toy of those rich enough to enjoy copious amounts of disposable income.
"Nietzche is dead." - God
Same thing here, the consumers determine the viability of a format, not the industry.
I believe HD-DVD and Blu-ray are the Laserdiscs of this day and will both be DOA. I'm hoping for HVD.....
DVD - Alive and well.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - Dead on arrival.
I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in ANY medium until the DRM is cracked, and if it's really as strong as they say it is in those, I'm never going to be interested.
Off the top of my head, here's the improvements over VHS:
1) Vastly superior picture and sound quality, even on normal TVs.
2) No degredation with repeated playing.
3) Surround sound like in the theatre (same exact mix, in fact).
4) Bonus content beyond just the movie.
5) Smaller physical size.
6) The ability to instantly seek to anywhere in the movie.
7) No need to rewind.
So, what's HD DVD (or Blu-ray) offer over that?
1) Superior picture quality on new HD sets with digital inputs (late 2004 or newer).
2) More storage for potentially more features on a disc.
That's it initally. They also offer a theoritical sound improvement, however at this point the mix you hear in the theatre is usually AC-3, sometimes DTS. They aren't using any of the high quality formats yet (SDDS isn't that much better, and isn't being brought to HD).
So, if you don't have a new HD set, there is no advantage, at all, for you. I mean I suppose they could load them with tons of new features, but doubt it. The HD video will use up all that increase in storage. All you will really be getting is a better pitcure, and only if you have a new TV to back it.
That's just not going to cut it for most people. HAlf the reason peopel loved CD and DVD over tape so much is the instant random access and the lack of degradation. The quality improvement was cool, but the real draw was the better format. HD formats don't offer that, they just offer a better picture, and they can't even offer that save for the very latest TV sets. Well hell, DVD looked better than VHS on the 1979 vintage TV I had. Wasn't as much of an improvement as I see on my 43" HDTV, but still, even with old technology backing it, DVD had a clear advantage.
Dude.. why the hell can't they get rid of the stupid "cigarette burns" (thanks fight club) that tell you theres gonna be a camera transition
i dont see that shit on any dvd's
why can't they clean that crap out before they pop a movie in the theatres
its not so bad if youre watching a movie thats like, enthralling n shit
but for most movies i see that crap and burn up in rage.. my experience is ruined
i paid ten bucks for this shite?
I'm sure sellers of DVDs are happy with their profits currently. I just saw something on the elevator today saying tha DVD sales are up ~10% year over year.
Holographic will be the first new technology to present a worthy enough upgrade to prompt mass migration. Even 50GB is simply not enough, although it does at least become feasible for me to start doing backups again.
I think the industry made a terrible mistake. In the day of 5 1/4" floppies 3.5" floppies gave a nice incentive for continuing the upgrade path. Smaller dics were much nicer to handle for their dimunitive size. They had an opportunity to repeat this again with the higher capacity blue laser discs but they have squandering it. They're only selling point is 5 times capacity, but at 5 times the cost who cares? 3 times capacity for 3 times the cost would be much more palatable and I for one would have been happier justfor the reduced size.
:T:R:A:N:S:
DVD is more than acceptable quality for 99.9999% of the population, and as a PC storage medium, it's fine.
For audio, it's fine.
The only problem I can see is that the built in copyprotection was cracked, and certain people aren't happy about that :)
Perhaps they mean that the dvd-player market is saturated, and they need something else to sell?
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I'm sticking with DVD until Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is cracked and can be played on Linux using fully open-source code. Until then, F*** you MPAA.
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I agree: DVD and VHS were very different "new" things, and DVD is hardly in need of replacement.
VHS wasn't commonly in homes until the mid 80s. Being tape, it required long winding time to find content, and had an inherently limited lifespan. Being analog, it could not be copied or duplicated more than a generation or two. Videotape in general was introduced with less than broadcast audio and video quality, and as better technology came out, VHS slowly progressed toward being near broadcast.
DVD was introduced with CD quality sound and digital video significantly better than standard broadcast. DVD's are more convenient, durable and smaller than VHS tapes. DVD also offers perfect copies across generations.
DVD was also quickly integrated into computers; playing DVD's from a PC or laptop using VGA or DVI to a computer display offers a very high quality video, competitive with HDTV. Since common DVDs are better than commonly broadcast video quality, and since little HD content available, and since HD displays are not commonplace, there's hardly demand for a new HD media.
Satellite providers have had the capacity to deliver HD for some time now, and have instead chosen to deliver more content at standard resolution. If, as that suggests, there is scant market for HD video, why do we need an HD media disc to suddenly replace DVDs?
The only real benefit HD-DVD and BlueRay offer over DVD is in data storage capacity and in DRM, and consumers don't look particularly needy for either. They already have hard drive storage in excess of HD-DVD's (recall than when CD-ROM arrived, it offered FAR more storage than hard disks of the day).
CD's certainly didn't disapear for SACD, and in fact most consumers have never seen or heard of SACD. And remember when Phillips (and others) were presenting the "future of audio cassette," which was suposed to replace audio tapes the way that CD had replaced records? Those products bombed.
If anything, I think there is more growth potential in HardDrive based DVRs to replace and expand upon the functions of VCRs, a job that DVD isn't very well equiped to perform given its slow and finicky write technology.
New iterations of the iPod, as a DVR, have the potential to serve new markets better than bigger DVDs. And as broadband becomes more commonplace, and faster bandwidth arrives, larger discs may not be that necessary after all.
I can already:
-get iPod sized movies on demand (via iTMS)
-get DVD quality movies on demand (via NetFlix)
-get TV style episodes and shorts on demand (via Tivo)
I can see those services migrate toward HD slowly without any need for HD discs along the way. Think of NetFlix using downloads and hard disks instead of discs and postage, and its hard to imagine what problem a HD-DVD standard would solve.
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Dark Star, am I right?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
DVD dead? I guess that means CDs are so far gone they're just a figment of my imagination. Anyway, I was under the impression that both blu-ray and hd-dvd players would support their older counterparts. VHS may be in its death throes, I sure as hell can't slip a video cassette into my DVD player, but as long as newer optical drives read older media I think it's safe to say that DVDs/CDs definitely have some life left in them.
i still have a working betamax with a ton of tapes, several VHS machines with more tons of tapes, a nice cassette deck that once served to keep my vehicles' tape players fed, a first gen x-box with an assortment of games, a coupla ancient pentium boxes (90 and 166 Mhz) still in use, three analog NTSC tvs (one tv is an "almost too big for the room" rear projection set), a turntable and vinyl records, and a five disk DVD player with an increasing number of discs. i still use the first stereo i ever bought from the early 70s (marantz 1030 amp and 105 tuner) for my desktop's sound. THE NEXT THING deally cycle is getting way out of hand. i'll run out of money or a place to put it if this shit keeps up...
Serenity now, insanity later.
...because that's the only way they can make their DRM a reality. The studios don't want you to own anything. They want you to license the rights to view a performance over and over again.
The problem is that DVD is a "good enough" technology that there's not a compelling reason (for most people) to want anything different. The same with CDs. They tried to kill the CD format by trying SACD and other variations, but they don't understand that to 99.9% of the listening public, the CD is a "good enough" format for their music. Sadly, MP3 is also a "good enough" format for a vast majority of people, even at a low bitrate with a crummy encoder. Let's face it, when I'm in my car, the noise floor is so loud that MP3 is just fine.
So, they're doing the best to stay "on message" and try to convince us that it's dead because that's the only way they're going to get any more money out of the people who already are happy with the status quo.
Wolfenstien 3D and Doom were technically compelling content to make a lot of people buy new computers. I've yet to see a movie that made me want to upgrade my home theater.
For my part, DVD is just fine to watch the mediocre movies that they put out. Especially on a TV set, or (gosh forbid) a portable media player.
I agree that Hollywood is losing money because what they create is junk, and that watching the old stuff will keep most of us happy for a long time to come. Besides, your comments are just a little off, Hollywood is not seing a decline in DVD sales, they are seing a decline in Box Office sales. DVD sales are more than twice that of the Box Office.
You seem to imply that they want to push HD so that we will stop copying DVDs and start buying their cr@p, that is just not the case. In fact, Hollywood has seriously mixed feelings about HD. Why? Because they are afraid that it will make you and I stop going to the theatres. It probably will, but I do not think it will have a hugely negative impact on Hollywoods bottom line, they will just have to do business slightly differently.
Which brings us to:
most of what I like to watch already exists and isn't in HD format
Most of what you watch already exists, and in formats that are vastly superior to HD. It has been downconverted to DVD, but DVD is a pretty cr@ppy format for viewing on a big screen, try a DVD on a 50" screen, it actually looks pretty bad. Compare that to HD.
As HD is adopted, all your old stuff will also be released in HD, and believe me, you are not going to want to own a cr@ppy DVD once the HD version is out if it has been down converted well. Why do you think Sony bought the movie studio with the largest video library in the US? So that they can release all that old stuff on HD.
HD is coming, and once your TV size goes to 42", you are going to want to have it.
The personal computer is not going to be a huge part of your entertainment system, a lot of what you currently use your computer for will be taken over by console type applications such as Playstation 3, and lo-and-behold, the PS3 will incorporate HD.
There is a simple reason for this, the PS3 will be significantly cheaper, and a lot easier to fit into your stereo system than your PC.
Since when is the DVD dead? I can tell BY FAR its not dead. As mentioned above, not even VHS is dead... why the rush to kill it? More profiteering?
I know alot of folks who have purchased LCDs Plasmas, etc, thinking the picture they are now seeing (with the same cable they had, same DVD player hooked up with RCA's or S-Vid tops) is the HD picture, and that it's so much clearer.... ??
As usual with entertainment technologies, it's time we looked to the porn industry to tell us what will be the next big thing!
I believe a look at the history of portable media will reveal something. First were those 5 1/4 inch discs, 760kb if I recall correctly. They lasted a while, but 3 1/2 beat them. The "new" floppies had more capacity (about 2 times) and didn't break as easly. At the time, the capacity difference was quite big.
? Section=pressreleases&department=maxellusa_pr&Line =datapr&Open=datapr41 and http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2041 ) say they will be able to carry around 1.5 Teras. More than 2000 times that of a CD or about 170 times that of a DVD. 1.5T ought to be enough to be able to make HD backups! Moreover, holographic tech is said to have way faster access times. That is surely greatly convenient!
:)
Years later, there comes the CD. The CD is almost 500 times bigger than a floppy, allows you to have music, and so-so quality movies. HD backups were now again a possibility (HD capacities had grown beyond any floppy's capacity).
Now we have the DVD, which, I believe, has a big merit: Being able to bring high-quality movies into digital format. But nothing else. DVDs are too small (9gb) for making backups (HDs being 40gb to 500gb). Since they were the first to make digital movies a hit, I'm guessing they will be around for long.
"Next gen" DVDs will have a capacity around 50gb (or so I read from the net). That doesn't seem enough for being practical. Sure, some people will love the quality difference, but mainstream will not care. Those huge Dvds (HD DVD or blu-ray) won't be practical for backups either. These new Dvds are only 70 times as big a CD is.
My guess is that holographic technology will be the next big thing. We are, no doubt, still far from it (a couple of years, at least). Articles (http://www.maxell-usa.com/Content/Pages/Page.asp
Just my thoughts, thanks for reading
One of the pundits who wrote in Popular Electronics (back in the day) had one ironclad rule for Media adoption: Consumers will adopt the most convienient media. CD's beat out viynl and tape due to its digital format, handy form factor, and relative indestrutabilty. Further attempts to get consumers to "move up" died horribly due to complicated setups (DVD-Audio) and horrific DRM (DAT and MiniDisk). In the same fashion, DVD has a great form factor relative to VHS, and has relative indescructabilty. The industry wants to replace it with battling formats which feature complicated setups and horrific DRM. I'm betting DVD stays around for a bit.
The other big factor in adoption is a symbiotic relationship with the PC. Most early adoption of DVDs occured because of DVD ROM drives on PC's which were far more prevalent and cheaper than cheap players. In the same fashion, I never listen to CD's directly anymore, I buy them, rip them, and store the disks as a backup. It's getting to be the same way with DVD's. Half of the titles I watch get ripped to MP4 and watched on my PSP or Play yan equipped GameBoy (so much for HD). As a result I, and I suspect most of the Slashdot crowd will avoid media that won't play well with PC's.
What will drive people to change over their collections will be something much smaller and multiresolution than DVD/CD. I watch 25% of my video on a 25" TV, 35% on a 100" projection screen, and 40% on 2-4" LCDs, and there is no way I'm splitting my video purchases across 3 formats. What I want is to be able to buy media at a airport kiosk, use it immediately, but re-watch it on the very big screen later on. And I want to own it outright. Then I'll shift to the new media.
I think Sony and Toshiba are going to spend so much time fighting the battles that they will lose the war. People will refuse to move away from DVD to a multi-hundred dollar player while the battle rages. But they WILL be willing to download a piece of software that lets them buy movies online. I think Sony and Toshiba will postpone the next disk winner for so long that people will go strait to direct download, (which I see as being the eventual next step).
I do security
The DVD revolution has quite a ways still to go. The great advantage of DVDs is their small lightweight size. The great disadvantage to the medium is the idiot film studios and nitwit film distributors who have insisted on such stupid things as region coding.
The whole purpose of the DVD is not just to get Hollywood product into the homes of the unwashed masses. VHS did that quite well. DVD's full potential is reached when all the movies that are uneconomical to distrubute the old way get into people's homes. I'm talking about all the independent movies shown at Sundance and the regional film festivals. And of course all the hundreds of quality films made each year in other countries that never reach the USA because it is too expensive to strike prints or dub VHS cassettes for limited audiences.
The films at Sundance rarely get seen outside of the festival or maybe one weekend at an 'art theatre' in a major metro area. And even then the admission charge is at a premium. DVD (and Netflix, should they ever get their act together) is the way to inexpensively distribute and display 'small' films to large audiences in a manner that is impossible with the photographic-film-stock in-a-can or bulky, hard-to-manufacture VHS formats. There are millions of people who would pay a dollar to watch a high-quality well-made romance from France or Italy (with subtitles of course) on DVD, but won't spend $10 to see the same film in a theater. Until DVD there has been no way to get this audience and these films together.
It still doesn't happen because Netflix doesn't seem to be aware of this huge potential audience (and has a difficult enough time posting Hollywood product), and because European filmmakers and distributors are dim-bulbs about the vast potential audience for their works that exists outside of the traditional movie theater. Le DVD? C'est OK, mais il n'est pas le cinema! Je tourne le film pour le cinema, le vrai cinema, et seul pour le cinema! Vive le cinema! With a dumb-ass attitude like that it's no wonder that le director's latest masterpiece will only get seen by a few hundred people in Paris. Which is a shame.
DVD distribution is probably the only way that Bollywood productions from Mumbai will ever become known in the USA in a big way. What's causing them to delay DVD distribution of all these films? Just business inertia and prejudice against being thought of as a director who goes 'direct to DVD'.
It's the cinema that's dying, not DVD. The numbers prove this.
Um, ok, How is the DVD dead when the next technology is just essentially a backwards-compatible, high density version?
Boy, those high density floppies really killed floppies... wtf? And if I recall high density 3.5" media lived alot longer than the low density 3.5", granted ED disks didn't catch on but that's because better alternatives were available RIGHT THEN. (zip disk, cd-rom)
The DVD will last a very long time, at least another 10 years before something not backwards compatible replaces it.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
You buy a MythTV box for around $500, and you have a player capable of playing 10x the quality of HD-DVD and Blueray with far superior capacity. Why dont they just have a contract where you pick a resolution and bandwidth and download anything you want for, I donno, a flat rate of $50 per month or $5 per movie (-/+ 30% for different resolutions).
Who the hell wants the media, new TV, new player? -- My monitor is capable of displaying 1600x1200 and is using DVI. All this shit makes no sense. I get BETTER quality on this cheap monitor than I get if I spend $10k and for what? - What improvement do I get?
Fucking makes me mad, I'll carry on pirating the HD content popping up all over the web...
http://free-dvd.org.lu/css-chain-of-events.txt
I think for purposes of this argument, we can fairly say that if it's not given at least an aisle at Best Buy, it's dead.
I walked into a Best Buy while I was doing my holiday shopping: between CDs, DVDs and the prominent displays of Sony products, I quickly realized that there was nothing there I was willing to pay for.
Whatever replaces DVDs and CDs will get prominent space in the Best Buys of the world and will continue to sell very well for official accounting and copyright levy purposes. Where will actual people get their entertainment? Now that is a much more interesting question. My bet is that, whatever it is, it'll be a done deal before the **AA's even realize that it is happening and that today's Best Buys are tomorrow's Bricks.
nope,
Definitly off topic!
I'm tired of all the people who say "use a regular DVD for high definition". Yes, compression has evolved. But compression alone doesn't make for a factor of 4+ without significant artifacting. Maybe some people don't see the difference, but to others, artifacting is painful.
It's perfectly reasonable to argue that HD DVD and Blu-ray won't catch on because the majority of people don't care, but that doesn't mean there's no difference.
Interesting how the mighty DeCSS, once hailed as the victory of hackers over the corporate suits, is now dead. Not only is DeCSS dead, but no source code capable of defeating media encryption has been produced since 1999 and consumers have now been convinced they don't even want copies of media when they can get video on demand for a monthly fee.
$1500 will get you a 720p front projector, and a screen. You have to supply your own sound system, but that's already true for anybody who actually wants to watch movies in Stereo, or higher. And don't give me crap about how 720p isn't HD. It's a much bigger jump from 480i to 720p than it is from 720p to 1080i or 1080p. (1080p equipment admittedly being very expensive still)
My iBook and Mac mini fit fine into my entertainment system. Without additional hardware or software I can view a DVD played on the computer on the TV. With EyeTV products, my Mac mini is a DVR.
I am currently watching TV and recording on my Mac mini right now!
If DVD is dead, THIS is what's next. And we should be afraid. Very, very afraid.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Seriously? Not everyone can afford to have a flying car, irrelavant of how marvelous they may be.
Unless you're completely bankrupt everyone has a DVD player, and unless new DVD players are going to be backwards compatible with current gen DVD copies, I don't feel like going out and purchasing all my box-sets again. Face it, DVDs, for the most part, are here to stay for at least the next 10 - 15 years until everyone can afford to own a HD TV and an HD - DVD player.
This is marketing scum encouraging everyone to "BUY BUY BUY!".
I am surprised that nobody's mentioned the obvious: the format that will win out is the one the porn industry picks.
As porn drives the Internet, so it drives the rental industry.
(And in terms of backwards compatibility, you'd be surprised what matters. Our VCR died, so we can't watch DVDs... because our TV is old enough to lack the proper ports. So to watch DVDs we either have to get a new TV or a new VCR. Or we can just not worry about it for a while and watch DVDs on our computers.)
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
Funny, the next article answered the question..
for great justice
I dont get how people keep saying that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have nothing over dvd people can notice. There is alot of things that both formats have over DVD. The obvious one is size, no more boxsets, you'll only need a single disk for a dual-layer blu-ray to fit several television seasons on. Not to mention the added extra's that can be included on a single disk. Hell, blu-ray is pretty much indestructible scratch wise. You can take a screwdriver to it and you can still play it. Not to mention that the quality of video blows dvd out of the water, and anyone with a High Definition television can tell the difference. Dvd's do not look that good on HD-tv's, you can clearly tell the quality limitations of the format. Considering High Def is the future, dvd's are not.
Demonstration available here: http://labs.divx.com/archives/000072.html
If they say a SEASON of TV is $14.99 because it is on one disk, then HD/Blu ray might advance.
I can back up my DVD.
But if they say a SEASON of TV is $45.00, it will lose.
I can't back up my HD/Blu ray and I could easily lose my investment to a scratch.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I agree that Hollywood is losing money because what they create is junk
Excuse me? Just because they call making less money than they though they would, and making less money than some other year "losing" money doesn't mean you have to help spread the lie.
HD is coming, and once your TV size goes to 42", you are going to want to have it.
My TV is going to grow? Amazing. Especially considering that it's just the right size for the spot it's in. I wonder how it will fit... Seriously though, we're a minimum of 5 years away from widespread HD adoption. It will probably be longer, since most people replace their TV after 10 years on average, but not everybody buying new TVs today are buying HD sets. Actually not even a majority are buying HD sets. 32" SD is the norm. The only reason the masses will buy HD media in that time frame is if it's the only media available. It won't be though, because all the HD players will be DVD compatable, and all the non-cartel members will keep publishing on DVD to maximize the potential market. The early push to HD media with extra DRM is going to open the door for "independant" creators and publishers, and the *IAA member companies are going to see their market share decrease more and more.
"But let them pull out all the stops. And maybe there'll be suckers who will buy into it, but if I ever do I'll be about the last to do so, after the cost has dropped to about what DVDs are going for now..."
That's what I said about DVD, and I got my first player/burner in 2005. I was mad because of the lack of support for linux, DRM, high costs, etc etc. I don't regret it. I got a cheap burner and stacks of cheap media, and then a netflix account. That seemed to be money well spent. Before that I knew plenty of other suckers who had bought in already and I would just go visit them.
I think the bigger problem now is we are flooded/bombarded with information/media/data. It's everywhere. You don't have to spend money to be occupied/entertained any more. You can waste all day reading stuff on the web. Lots of free video sites on the net where you watch funny clips. Streaming radio, old formats, etc etc.
Part of the competition is for attention. You only have so much time in your waking day to focus on any given number of things. When you're so busy and information/content/etc is so pervasive, they really need to raise the bar to make it worth your while to buy in to it. I haven't been to the movie theatre in over a year now. I haven't really missed it. I listen to coast2coast on the radio, I read books and articles on the net, busy with work, I haven't watched hardly any television either (excepting holidays with the family).
This is probably a good thing for people, and a bad thing for the monopoly cartels. If I can watch Joe's funny home movie clips for free on the web, vs pay a few bucks to rent the latest hollywood blockbuster craptacular extrordinaire? Well, I don't have to get off my ass and go somewhere to click the link, get instant gratification, and drool and laugh, and etc.... longwinded sorry...
Back in 2002 or so, I bought a very nice system for surround sound movies. 52" rear projection HDTV, a Dolby/DTS receiver, a new DVD player, etc. etc. I think that TV cost me about $2300 at the time.
It's still working. In fact it works great, and the picture is a lot better than most of the newer plasma sets out on the market today. Although not as good as the DLP or LCD rear projection... sniff
But the new HD DVD standards don't work with my system. Oh, sure it's more than capable of displaying high quality, but it only has component video input and you need HDMI inputs. And guess what? I'm not buying a new television. Sorry charlie, just ain't gonna happen. I might buy a new computer, but I'll be damned if I buy a new TV.
So good luck selling me something to replace my existing system.
Maybe in 5 years, perhaps 10. When this thing is old and outdated and doesn't work. But not today. Cause the way I figure it, any decent improvement is giong to involve a new TV, a new receiver, and a new DVD player. We're talking about $4k there, and that's not chump change.
Yes but sales are up because folks know that DVD is dead and they need to HURRY to get the DVD's they want before they are out of stock and never available... AGAIN!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I've stll have a bunch of VHS tapes that have not made it to DVD, and from the looks of things, those never will legally.
As I said in a previous thread until they can think of something TRULY better then DVD (and Quality isn't it, talk to the Laserdisc guys about that one) I think an expensive new touy is really going to be a hard sell.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Surely the next media format will be a long-lasting, broadly compatible mechanism. The kind of thing that holds a movie nicely, but does not waste space with advertising, "bonus" features, or DRM ... and that will remain useful while outliving my great grandchildren. Kind of like, a book. Right?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Its funny how as soon as the public hardware catches up to the 'industrial' hardware, all of a sudden its dead. I think its more accurate to say that this 'industry' can no longer sustain unethical behaviours with the current medium so they are moving to the next. Just when any individual can lawfully make backups from their DVD's and watch them instead of scratching the real copy, the thirst for power and control leads them to not only change the standard yet again, but also split into many different standards. Hmmm... Just food for thought...
Beta Sucks
Many people, myself included, vowed not to embrace DVDs until we could copy movies as easily as we could copy VCR tapes. The reason another poster wrote, "How many people do you know who only now for the first time have bought a DVD player" is because most of those people were working to figure out how they could easily copy DVDs before they embraced the new technology. Yes, DVDs caught on "quickly" relative to some other tecnologies, but they never really fully took off until cracking the DRM was made feasible.
Only the stupidest of the content industry want unbreakable encryption. They want HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and any other successors crackable, too, because that incentivizes people to buy into the new formats.
No, they won't make it easy for people - they will still go ahead and sue the dudes who sell their DRM-cracking products over the counter at Best Buy -- but they WANT the cracking to be possible, but difficult:
-- The more the cracking is POSSIBLE, the more the FULL consumer market is likely to buy into the format (and not just the early adopters and content-slavering fanboys who overlook DRM or have more money than the rest of us).
-- But the more the cracking is DIFFICULT, then the more they profit. They get money not only from the people who just buy the content and don't care about copying, but also on the hardware side by the people who want the copying and will spend money for more hardware to enable their copying (eg "I just gotta have a [2003 - DVD writer] [2006 - HD-DVD writer] {2008 - Super-Blu-Ray writer] !")
The content industry and the consumer electronics indutry are in cahoots trying to squeeze as much money out of us as they can. They WANT the DVD Jons of the world to exist -- controlled, yes, getting away with just a little at a time, yes, but enough so they get FULL consumer buy-in to their latest and greatest.
Actually, early shellac recording speeds varied from about 70 RPM to about 90 RPM, depending on record label, year, mastering engineer and the movements of the stars. Likewise, if it's an electronic recording you won't know exactly (unless the label had a standard) what sort of pre-emphasis was used, it was standardised only in 1956 or so.
So, to play back those things right you should have a turntable with adjustable speed (and suitable stylus for wide groove mono, of course) and a phono preamp that would allow different EQ curves to be applied.
All of this talk of 'format wars' made me think a lot about what the hardware software industry heads do to make us all rush out and spend money on worthless recorders that won't work next week if we put them too close to an amplifier or if they change the encoding schemes on their propriatory formats.
And so I thought about it a lot as you can imagine. And after all of that heavy thinking, remembering how I didn't buy into the DVD format until I could record my own on a Linux box (it never worked for me in that other operating system, strange?).
And so I will buy a 50 Gig DVD next whatever it is when I read a review here or in Linux Journal or somewhere in the open source world that the drivers work with the current kernal and I can burn and ISO image of my own choosing onto this new drive.
It is a simple test for a storage format that it ought to be work in many worlds. Otherwise it is a playback device and not useful for computing at all but only for playing back the owned content of someone else.
It seems to me that the harddrive is the only real large format storage that the masses can still have an used in a way that is just for our own purposes and not for the purposes of the great hordes of money mongering consumer baiting corporate trolls out there at their trade shows and telling the world how they invented video, audio, the word urge, what ever.
Anyone who cares what the corporate money launderers for the venture money whores thinks is wasting their time. Bill Gates, you can kiss my ass.
When I was a kid, I found a box of about 50 78rpms in the basement. At the time, me and my friends were fooling around with tape recording a lot. Those 78s sound just like breaking glass when you shatter them.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
How do you manage to have the Mac Mini keep the TV output resolution you set? Or do you just use the default?
I've tried one, and it would reset to 800x600 on every boot. Dammit, that was the only fault... well, that and the fact that it doesn't output RGB. But having a true widescreen resolution like 1024x576 on TV-out is really really sweet.
HD-DVD fits three times more information on a disc than DVD techniques - but because the manufacturing process is similar to existing ones, the new discs will be inexpensive and quick to produce.
So what the studios will do is put a movie on, fill up the rest of the data space with low-budget crap and advertising, then charge $40 for an HD-DVD.
"But --" [rubbing hands evilly] "look at all the additional content you're getting!"
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
There is a niche for anything you can think of. From a mass-market perspective, they're dead.
Easy. BitTorrent.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
As usual with entertainment technologies, it's time we looked to the porn industry to tell us what will be the next big thing!
Tits.
Then I'm Abe Vigoda!
Actually, contrary to what the "experts" may believe is the case, it's the consumer that makes this decision.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
"They only wish it was dead because while it's alive it's a low-cost content rich alternative to the high-cost content poor HD market..."
I want every slashdotter to bookmark this post (I know I will). Not because it's insightful, but because you're going to be seeing more of it, every time someone complains about either the cost, or the quality of the content on DVD's. Now all we need is for one of the editors to dupe an MPAA story.
The industry shouts: DVD is dead, long live BR/HD DVD
Consumers reply: BR/HD DVD is dead before arrival, long live DVD
Isn't that really the direction we're headed in? I mean of course there will always be the need for physical media. But in the past the media was pretty much the same as the content. The seperation started when we could copy our own music. Now the schism is almost complete. As a result it's not going to really matter. I don't think it's necessary to have HDDVD or Blu Ray win out. We'll be storing movies on hard drives, external hard drives, and accessing them via the net or on-demand service so much that the physical media is going to be increasingly irrelevent.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
......When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy. ..
Especially true if you can find movies you like for $5-$6 in the Walmart bargain bins. DVDs are actually quite a bargain compared to music CDs. At times you can buy the whole movie for less than the soundtrack CD thereof.
All theory is gray
You guys don't get it, it's not about price. Sure price will keep dvd mainstream for a while. The true reason dvd's will live for 20+ years is because every new techology will be backwords compatible with it. For 20 years, I bet we will see every new storage medium be some kind of 5" optical disc. All the blueray and HD_DVD players will play dvds and the industry is going to charge twice as much for the High Def discs. I know most people could careless about paying $40 for every movie they own. Just their favorites.
whatever the next trend is they better be backward compatible with todays DVD's. If those mooks think I'm buying my whole video library again in a new format they've got another thing coming.
I did it from VHS to DVD which was fairly understandable since most of my video tapes showed their age and DVD did bring a whole new experience with 5.1 sound, interactive content, etc. but I have a HD TV and while I welcome HD content it's not compelling enough for me to want to replace many of the DVD's I own now.
Hell, VHS still is not dead, so there is no way DVD is "dead." Even with the introduction of HD-DVD and BluRay, non-HD content will continue to be released on less expensive, more compatible, MPEG2 DVD discs. It would be folly for a company such as ADV, whose content base is almost exclusively standard definition Anime to start releasing HD-DVD or BluRay discs simply because DVD is no longer the latest and greatest. HD-DVD / BluRay will come at a premium initially (and honestly, that premium may eventually become the standard price point :-\); consumers will not pay that premium unless they have something tangible to show for their investment. Only movies and recent seasons of more popular television shows are available in HD. Granted, a season of the average NTSC television show rarely fits on one or two DVDs, but that is not reason enough to insist on moving to HD-DVD or BluRay. Most people who buy television shows on DVD are content to swap discs, and those that are not are always welcome to do as I have and buy a 400 DVD Mega changer. On a side note, It is frustrating when studios think they have a clever solution to the problem and release double-sided DVDs (i.e. Quantum Leap) - because even with a DVD changer, you have to flip the disc manually. :)
... about merging HD-DVD and BluRay, but the consumer is the one who ultimately pays when two very similar but very incompatible formats are allowed to linger.
I own two HDTV sets and I am not fanatical about the transition to HD-DVD / BluRay. It is going to happen eventually, but considering the crap that has graced the big screen in the past 5 years I would rather just wait until a movie is on Showtime HD, HBO HD, INHD, etc... than pay $5+ extra for a movie that was not even worth seeing in the theatre. Movie studios will not begin to reauthor the good, but older, movies until there is a sufficient player base and there will not be a sufficient player base until there is content worth investing in a new player / TV (for some) to watch.
That said, there are a couple of people who actually buy UMDs and actually I know one of them. Despite the lackluster demand, movie studios continue to publish UMD videos. Which leads me to believe that HD-DVD and BluRay will be a similar boat, it will take studios years to figure out which format the consumer actually prefers. In that time, I am sure we will see hybrid HD-DVD / BluRay players enter the market to fill the gap that SONY and Toshiba could have easily filled before costing the consumer. BluRay discs may be more expensive to produce for the publisher, which is partly why Toshiba was such a
....My iBook and Mac mini fit fine into my entertainment system....
An old TI Powerbook connected to a DLP projector makes for great "movie nights" for family and friends. The sound is transmitted wirelessly to the stereo system. The projector and 72" screen was a lot cheaper than any TV that big. When not in use, the screen just rolls up and is out of the way. A simple 25" TV is fine for news and soaps.
All theory is gray
Whattsa matta Zonk? 2 dead articles in a row. I can see one about BSD coming next.
Nothing like a 'Oh btw Commodore is dead' type article to kick up a dead news day.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Add to that the fact that consumers just don't care that much about quality. They want convinence. The MP3 boom shows that. At the same time the Media Barons are trying to convince us to buy SACDs, the people are ripping their CDs to the lower quality MP3. Why because people want convinence. This is what DRM takes away. Heck, I would go back to VHS quality video in a second if they could make it even more convenient than my ReplayTV.
......HD is coming, and once your TV size goes to 42".......
Watching movies DVD from our DLP projector on a 72" screen is plenty fun for our family and friends. None of them has ever complained about the quality. The news and soaps and other TV drivel is fine on the old 20" TV.
All theory is gray
if they do this, I will have to pay for content for the first time ever (they call me Rob the Ripper), a calamity of epic proportions... on second thought, I will just borrow it from friends, actually reaching into my wallet to pay for content is a humiliation that cannot be borne!
I have yet to see a HD upconverted picture from a DVD and was wondering if it really is worth the $150 to buy a new DVD player that has this feature.
Very true, the Mac Mini is a very interesting device, and I have a feeling we will see another step in the direction of TV/Tivo/MediaCenter for the Mini next week. The Mini is going to be the main competitor to PlayStation3 and similar. Regular PCs on the other hand...
DVD will only be dead when something new comes out...
BOMB #20: And I said, "Let there be light..."
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
Movies, video and audio can be effectivly distributed using a 4 GByte rom chip in a small plastic case about the same size as a flash card.
Download on deman will only work and be viable if the costs come down to
$1.50 a movie,
$0.20 a tv show episode (maybe $0.10 when bought in bulk (e.g., 100 episodes)),
$0.25 a song for popular songs
$0.05 for old back catalog songs
The custom CD package would work well by letting buyers create customer CDs which then could be archived and sold as a popular custom mix CD.
Substantially, the first major copyright holder (e.g., Warner Brothers) to break ranks and provide cheap, mostly restriction-less, DRM-free content for an incremental cost will beat the others to market, make more money, and be able to set the standards by which download on deman really works.
Make the cost low enough and the quality high enough so that searching for a p2p version is not worth the time.
Absolutely. I knew DVD was going to catch on as soon as all the movie companies got behind it. That was when I got a player. VHS was dead from that moment.
DVD won't die and be replaced by HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. They were predicting that CD would die and be replaced with SACD or DVD-Audio, and that didn't happen.
Even though my DVD player supports DVD-Audio, I don't have a single DVD-Audio disc. I don't even have the player hooked up to support it. Why not? Because the DRM is so cripplingly inconvenient, it's not worth it. With a CD I can listen on my iPod, stream over my home network and listen at any computer, listen on my PDA, play the CD in the car, make mix CDs for the car, and so on. With DVD-Audio, they won't even allow digital feed from the player to the amp, so I'd need to buy a set of extra analog cables, I'd get lower quality (my amp has much better D to A than my player), and I wouldn't be able to rip the audio conveniently. And though some 'goldenears' folks will disagree, CD is basically good enough.
Similarly, DVD is good enough for the vast majority of people. I actually have an HDTV, and with a well-encoded DVD and a player with a good upconverter, the limiting factor on the image quality is either the source material or my eyesight. When I can see the fingerprints on the glass pane used for the 'floating pen' effect in "2001"--and that's a famously poorly encoded DVD--I know that there's really no great need for finer resolution. I can see the film grain on "Lawrence of Arabia" already, I don't need to see it any better. I can read the paperwork on Sam Lowry's desk in "Brazil". The resolution is just fine. Now, let's have more good movies...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's because on slashdot one gets e-cred for ripping their whole music library to either FLAC or OGG, and then moderated insightful for bitching that the industry doesn't support their superior format choices.
I think it's just spam, from someone pissed RE: the state of the US today.
kids, but on DVD, the medium doesn't wear out.
It's also a lot easier for kids to mishandle DVD than for kids of the same age to mishandle VHS. If the DVD were in a caddy, on the other hand...
even if they don't make some individual player, [Sony and Philips] will get royalties.
Same was true of Compact Disc Digital Audio and CD-ROM while the patents subsisted.
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This format is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the drive 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the spindle! 'E's kicked the bit-bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-FORMAT!!
Eponymous Mallard
"If it quacks like a duck, it's probably th'Eponymous Mallard"
But also people didn't have to buy a new TV to see the difference.
Yes they did. A lot of TVs only had RF inputs, and DVD players only had composite, S-video, or component outputs. In order to translate a composite signal into an RF signal, you need an RF modulator. Most VCRs didn't work because of Macrovision issues. During the early years of DVD Video, the only widely available stand-alone RF modulators were designed exclusively for use with game consoles' proprietary connectors, not the standard RCA type connectors. So until the PlayStation 2 came out, there wasn't an easy way to get a DVD player to work with an RF-only TV.
DVD is dead... /Agree... What's next?
/shrug (haven't bought a movie in a longgg longgg time, did buy some tv-series tho)
High quality XVID-encoded downloads from the internet...(probably from your favorite bit-torrent site)...
Anyone have a way to get HD content? OH THAT'S RIGHT!!! Hd-dvd and blu-ray aren't available yet, you can't. DiVX/XVID/whatever variation you use, IS HERE NOW and you can get the content. It might be a civil infraction but what the hell... Why don't the studios offer some divx encoded movies for download for a comparable price to going to blockbuster and renting it, or something?
Yeah, yeah, you could keep the file forever OH NOES!!!11eleven. Someone could go to blockbuster and rent somethign and rip it, keeping it forever. Yet most people don't. Even if they did, I doubt it would make people slow down in their spending, only speed up! Sigh
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Netflix is getting ready to offer direct downloads.
Seems funny to my, that by the time I can watch DVD on my linux machines, have unlockable DVD players being sold of store shelves. That I finally get interested in buying DVDs that it dies. How long will it take the next medium to be this open?
LP sales are growing in fact. And there's a large movement amongst 20-somethings towards playing vinyl, not just grumpy old men. The better quality turntable manufacturers can't keep up with production. Also, one of the most expensive audio items on the market today is a turntable. You can buy a certain phono preamp for $30,000 if you like, but the waiting list is rather long. In addition to all the great software from past decades, you can find most recent top-40 releases on vinyl, if you look. And people do look. So no, the LP isn't dead. But no, it will never be a "mainstream" format either. But at least it won't put any funky DRM on my 1975-vintage cassette deck when I try to make a backup of them ;-)
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
...long live Betamax!
This is a postmodern sig.
You speak of how DVD is miles ahead of VHS. By the same argument, LaserDisc was way ahead of VHS (no rewinding, digital 5.1 audio) and yet LD didn't take off.
You recognize DVD was helped by a picture advantage.
"DVD was introduced with CD quality sound and digital video significantly better than standard broadcast."
You then make a pretty big error when saying:
"Since common DVDs are better than commonly broadcast video quality, and since little HD content available, and since HD displays are not commonplace, there's hardly demand for a new HD media."
There's the rub: DVDs are VASTLY worse quality than the stuff I see on TV. DVD looks like crap next to HDTV. Why would I watch CSI in HDTV and then buy the DVD in a vastly inferior format? Answer, I wouldn't. Thus people with HDTV are far less inclinced to buy TV shows on DVD (which is a big market for DVDs right now).
Additionally, I may not have a lot of HDTV channels (only about 10, two of which are HBO and Showtime), I do have the opportunity to see virtually every movie in HD at some point. Many TV shows may not be shot in HD, but virtually all movies are at least HD resolution. If I choose not to see a movie in the theater, there's almost zero chance I'll buy it on DVD, because why would I want to own forever a movie in a quality that I'm already not happy with?
I'm not going to rent the DVD either, if I just wait a little longer I can set my HDTiVo and record it off HBO or Showtime in HD and see it in great quality.
As to your satellite TV comments, you are mistaken. Satellite TV providers do not have nearly enough bandwidth at hand to show a lot of channels in HD. DTV does have a new bird up and about ready to go, but without new antenna setups and receivers, it's unclear how this bandwidth will be delivered in the amount required. In order to deliver local HD channels, it appears DVT is rolling out MPEG-4 format channels (and thus new receivers). This will take time.
Really, that's going to be necessary, since Ku-band satellites can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth per satellite slot. Thus, even with optimal frequency allocation, DTV can only increase the bandwidth available to 3-satellite dish users about 50%. And if they don't switch away from MPEG-2, an HDTV channel will take up 8x as much bandwidth as a regular channel.
And even with new satellites people will likely need new antennas, and unless they start stacking frequencies or intermediate tuning at the antenna, more complex setups (anyone with a multiswitch) may have to rewire their entire setup including wiring in the walls!
So don't go thinking DTV and Dish just have to flip a switch to get lots of HDTV channels and just haven't done so because of some perceived lack of demand.
And I would also recommend that you don't go thinking that just because you don't demand HD prerecorded content that others don't want it either.
I do have to say I'm concerned about the DRM that will be on BluRay and HD-DVD, but I am all behind the concept of an HD disc format. And 25GB of writeable storage on my computer would be nice too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Please mod up!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Enjoy your $30 and $40 Blue Ray movies, though.
Well let's see, there are going to be a multitude of factories set up to output PS3 Blu-Ray discs. Don't you think that might reduce the production costs a bit?
Furthermore, when have DVD/CD costs EVER been about the cost of the disc itself? I'll be enjoying my $30-$40 Blu-Ray discs just fine because the HD-DVD discs will cost exactly the same - the studios simply will enjoy a slightly better margin for a few months until the Blu-Ray production gets fully spun up.
What I'm also going to enjoy is watching the return rate of HD-DVD's by people who thought they were the same as "Normal" DVD's. For that reason alone the naming is stupid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Won't someone please think of DVD Jon?!?
I don't care what Netcraft has to say about it.
One of the best movies ever.
If you can rent it in your system you may have a point.
If not, well, you are just boasting about your paltry, limited, boring, corporate feed, cable suscription.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
if you're talking old vinyl. Yup. I'm old.
Thankyou and goodnight. I'll be here all week
It is upto consumers to decide, the tech industry can only wish, and the entertainment industry can just stick it up their ass if they believe they can get consumers to rebuy their media every couple of years.
I recently bought a 32" screen 1280 * 720 LCD TV. The HDMI output from the standard DVD player I bought with it supplies a 1280 * 720 digital picture.
When I play DVDs the image looks perfect to me. It's sharp; it's clear; it's not pixellated; every detail I need to see (and more) are clearly visible. I really fail to see how this could be made to look better to the naked eye.
This is emphasised when I go back to TV from DVD: there's a huge drop in image quality. Just for comparison, a local channel was broadcasting the second Harry Potter film, which I just happen to have on DVD. So I started the DVD up and flipped between the two to compare. Even though the TV image was relatively good on this occasion, it was still miles behind the image quality from the DVD.
So I'm having a really hard time seeing how companies are going to convince people to buy into anything "better". Unless of course they deliberately break compatibility or manage to hoodwink people into thinking the current average quality is the fault of the DVD rather than the TV set. But of course they wouldn't do that, would they?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
DVD is not dead, nor even ailing. There is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to pushing new technologies. The average consumer is only willing to take their technology as far as it meets their needs. Hell, I still use an 8-year old computer with Windows 98. I've never had the urge to "upgrade" -- why? Because what I have meets my needs.
I live in a mobile home, caretaking my elderly mother. I spend most of my existence in a 10x12 room, watching a 13" TV. When I watch TV or a movie, what I see is "good enough" for me. If I watch a football game, I just need to be able to make out the numbers on the uniforms and follow the ball -- I don't need to see "every blade of grass and every drop of sweat" as the hype for ESPN-HD goes. When I watch the news, I'm interested in the content, not being able to clearly see every pore on Brian Williams' face. When I watch a movie, I'm not going to laugh, gasp, or cry more just because the image is bigger and sharper.
For any average consumer, there reaches a point at which the technology they have is good enough. And the average consumer is more than satisfied with their DVD players and analog sets. There is no compulsion to upgrade and invest more money in yet another new format. Look at broadcast digital/HDTV. The process of transition has been going on for a decade now, and how many folks are capable of viewing these signals in their full quality? Damn few, percentage-wise -- most people don't want or need HDTV. Digital TV has been described by some as "the solution to a problem that didn't exist." Hell, by the original timetable all brodcast TV should be digital NOW. And the full switchover will only take place in 2009 because Congress and the interests who REALLY want DTV (NOT the consumers) are forcing it down our throats.
I see much the same with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Most folks simply don't care. The ONLY reason for the agressive push by the makers and marketers of these formats is the additional level of DRM. And that will backfire someday -- no DRM scheme in the world will not be broken -- there are two many smart geeks out there who will sonner or later crack it. It will also backfire when average people can't share/trade discs with others.
The only people who will latch onto these expensive technologies early are (1)technophiles and (2)those who have the money and just want to impress their friends by always having the latest/greatest/biggest/coolest stuff in their living room. My own prediction is that it will be 10 years before these formats even BEGIN to make a significant dent in the market, and 20 or more before they are dominant. Long before that, the DRM schemes will be cracked, HD releases will be on the P2P nets, and the powers that be will have already tried to foist the newest generation of toys upon us.
When people can walk into Wal-Mart and buy an HD-DVD player on sale for 29 or 39 bucks, pick up a fully capable HDTV set for 139 smackers, and purchase HD movies for 15 or 20 bucks, THEN MAYBE the format will be a success. Technology cannot be successfully marketed until the price points come down into the budgets of most Americans. When computers cost $2000, the average Joe didn't have one -- now that you can get a Dell for $299 on special, everyone has one.
DVD is dead and yet most people still have a VHS machine, I knew DVD wouldn't last, and neither will the next thing if it follows the same pattern. The standard will be hard-drive or network based players, that's whats still going to be around in 10/20 years. Sure hard drives might change and become something else but the idea will stay the same. You will have your movies on this box (which will also be a PVR and just about everything else. It doesn't matter how your movies get on there they will just be on there, sometimes you will stream films off a network service, sometimes you will burn them to DVD or whatever and take them to someone else. The box will be able to rip your existing DVD and maybe even VHS collection just like you PC rips your CD collection. When better systems come out you can just copy all your existing data over. Movie studios will accept this because they will produce these units and put in all sorts of DRM, we will accept this because it will be cracked within months, and all users will accept this because having to fit places to put cases, looking for the wrong disk in a load of boxes and dealing with scratched disks etc is something we should have given up already.
DVD was crap from the start, an unrecordable, region encoded, over-priced pile of shit and im amazed it caught on. I guess the only good thing about it was the brilliant marketing.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Dream on, DVD's are here to stay for good, unless content producers are willing to flog the new stuff at real LOWER price points. 'Whats in it for me' sells - selling 'What's in it for us' will be impossible.
With $20 DVD players at every corner store, and $2 DVD dive bins, Joe Schmuck will NOT be rushing to buy $200 newfangled players, loaded with restrictions.
The first fully functional DVD recorders are just starting to show up, and if the home brew Chinese made HD players make it in, it will become dominant force, unless internet d/l becomes cheaper and easier.
hmmmmmmmm..... maybe holographic movies stored on a crystal?
According to prophecy
I think long before a higher quality video standard appears that requires a new storage medium for movies (HD will be good enough for a long time), the standard way of renting a movie will be via on-demand services. Bandwidth is the only remaining bottleneck, and that is nothing more than a capacity issue.
Absolutely. I knew DVD was going to catch on as soon as all the movie companies got behind it. That was when I got a player. VHS was dead from that moment.
I agree with most of what you say - I just think that VHS as a medium for buying movies on died a long time ago, but in many UK homes still use them. In fact there seem to be a fair number of movies still available in shops here. Why?
In the UK Tivo never really take off (well they stopped selling new ones) and what kept VHS players alive here was that they were the only mass-market item (partly due to the fact people already had them and had just figured out how to record with them) with the ability to record TV programs of the box.
We are only now just getting DVD recorders at the sub 100 pound mark. So to make permanent recordings of broadcast programs whilst shelling out less that 100 pounds most people are either going to stick with a DVD recorder (or get the Sky+ box I think that has that capability). Its cost and ease for the non-techy consumer.
I am tempted to try and skip the format war and see what new formats are being suggested in another five years. I base this on the assumption that for any movie *not* to be released on DVD format over the next few years would be commercial suicide for the studio. I know I'm going to have a DVD player over the next 5 years otherwise thats a hundred or so films I already own that I won't be able to watch. I also know that the DVD disc version of a movie will be cheaper to buy than a new format version. Unless someone wants to give me a lot of money I'm unlikely to have a HDTV or a PS3 over that period. As you say, a good quality interpolation algorithm in the box makes something good enough to watch.
I guess there also needs to be the must-have content (like Matrix was for the DVD and Brothers In Arms was for the CD). If the LOTR trilogy was coming out *now* that would have been ideal for the high-quality camps.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
You got it right, any evolutionary improvement with cripple-ware DRM will not fly. You need to look at features list of any technology, when half of this list is crossed off by pointless DRM its no longer better than predecessor.
I don't own a TV set you insensitive clod!
os trabalhos e os dias: http://zmoreira.net
in the 70s, there was a 4 track system called quad, that had an even briefer life then 8 tracks..and I still use 3.5 inchfloppys once or twice a year.
but there are a lot of dead media...wax cylinders, 45s, 8mm home movies, instamatic film (is minox still alive ?)
and i'll bet there are a lot of prop dictation and transcription media from the 60s that noone has heard of..surely there must be a wiki on dead media
There was no mention of Sony's UMD format which is used
in the Sony PSP. I'd love to see the UMD toughened up and ruggedized (ala MiniDisc) and shrink down the shelving requirements in stores so there is more room in the
isles during the next Christmas season.
If possible we should aim for higher density, smaller space, not higher density same space requirements.
Here's what I mean. My old CD players won't play DVDs. My old DVD players won't play DVD-Rs or MP3s. But guess what will play everything? My computer. I finally got around to hooking up my computer to my home theater projector to watch a TV episode I recorded (don't worry, I always buy the box sets when they come out). Now I am seriously considering ripping my entire DVD collection so that it is instantly available. No more farting around loading discs, wading through slow menus, and all that crap. As companies like MS and Google push hardware and software that are designed to support every media format, pushing yet another new format on people could encourage them to do what I do but in an illegitimate way: pirate movies and TV and just play them off your computer. If you think of DVD Audio or Super Audio CDs, you have a prior example as an illustration. I don't own any DVD Audio or SACDs, but I've pulled stuff down from the web just to test it out. I didn't hear any difference because I'm not an audiophile, but if all of a sudden there was a shift away from traditional CDs to DVDA or SACDs that made my old ones stop working, I would simply rip everything onto my computer and run it all through my iPod. I can see a lot of this analogy holding for HD-DVD or whatever replaces DVD.
DRM is obviously going to play a critical role in all this. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
A-Bomb
What happens when those hundreds or thousands or millions of ROM chips (and handy plastic packaging) become "last week's movie"? You would need a major recycling & remanufacturing operation to prevent landfill. We already have a plastic recycling industry, but can chips be ground up & recycled? There's a lot of energy and resources that go into distilling a bucket of sand down to an integrated circuit, and it would be a shame to not recover some of that....
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Selling video on portable media has always been rather a necessity than a convenience -- in contrast to newspapers or books. So the next obvious step is to use the internet and online storage, which is also much better for backup purposes as the backups can be checked on a regular basis and does not need user interaction.
Everything they are holding up to "replace" DVDs are nothing more than increased storage/better video quality, but that is only benificial to people who do have HD TVs (which isn't many).
However, SD TV is about to go away as well. Before Christmas I saw rows of HD TVs--with digital tuners--at WalMart starting at $500. Combined with the fact that in many areas, you can hook one up to your old roof antenna--or even a set-top antenna--and get all of the network channels as clear as from cable without paying another cent, and the fact that analog over-the-air broadcasts will soon be going away, it hardly makes sense to buy SD. I think that within a couple of years HD will be as ubiquitous as DVD players are today.
Of course, DVD isn't going away--they're just being enhanced. Most consumers will hardly notice the transition, any more than they've noticed that virtually all DVD players on the shelves are now capable of at least ED output. Initially, the HD DVD formats will be pitched to the early adopters with the giant screen TVs. In two or three years, it will be a standard feature of all players (and they'll probably play both formats unless one drops out in the meantime).
people think DVD is alive, it's alive and well. i'll tell you what the people think is dead and rotten, it's audio cd's.
tell me why they would want to continue their audio battle but they already gave up on the dvd piracy? who are these people who decide on this stuff and how do they get so out of thouch with their customers?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I'll wait until DVD Jon has had time to work on the "next generation" of copy protected movies before I move away from the DVD.
Besides, if these MPAA bozos think I'm going to devote a 24/7 internet connection to my home theater system, they have another think coming. The next thing you know, they'll want us to use some version of Windows in our media centers,too.
Oh, wait...
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Erase and reuse the eeprom chips inside the card.
Retailers will want some sort of physical merchandise to have.
My real question now, is "If I buy an e-book, can I resell it as long as I delete the original?"
DVD is a pretty cr@ppy format for viewing on a big screen, try a DVD on a 50" screen, it actually looks pretty bad. Compare that to HD.
This has not the been the case in my experience.
DVD resolution is fine screens much larger than 50". Are you watching the screen from a foot away?
format switches are bad for consumers --
for us, the VCR is still the primary viewing device.
and the DVD has barely got started.
i bought my parents their FIRST DVD player the year before last.
they have about 70-80 videotapes which took them since 1985
to accumulate. since they've got the DVD player they've
accumulated 7-10 DVDs.
so now they have TWO boxes sitting in the living room (DVD & VCR),
and are UNABLE to get rid of the VCR because many of those 70-80
videotapes will never be released on DVD.
we're not throwing out the DVD player yet -- we're far from even
being able to throw out the VHS tapes. to transfer all the VHS videotapes
to digital would take WEEKS. my parents are unwilling to sacrifice that
much of their life in order to have one less box (the VCR) sitting in
their living room.
2cents
j
Obviously none of us think the DVD is dead, as we happily buy DVD players and DVDs and give them to our familes for Christmas. You can't call something dead when there is nothing to replace it. Does the MPAA want us to completely stop buying movies just because the DVD is dead and they can't figure out how to best screw over consumers by going through yet another format change.
I am starting to feel that when you buy a movie or music, it should come with a license to get a free upgrade every time the media it is on becomes obsolete...
Andy
Obviously the next big thing will be based on punch card techology!
Fast forward two or three years, and buy a new Chinese-made ${optical media} player from Wal-Mart.
It supports all 4 optical standards: CD(-ROM), DVD(-ROM), HD(-ROM), and BD(-ROM).
It supports every meaningful video and audio codec associated with those optical-disc standards:
It supports MPEG-1.
It supports MPEG-2 -- both MP@ML (the original "DVD" resolutions) *and* MP@HL (high-def extensions).
It supports MPEG-4, including the subset commonly known as "DivX".
It supports WMV/HD.
It also supports just about every reasonable permutation of the above codecs and their related technologies, including MP3 audio.
To the entire (non-Chinese) industry's chagrin, it doesn't just support the "officially-blessed" combos... throw it a BD-ROM authored like a "DVD", and it's perfectly happy to treat it like a 10-hour long DVD. Shove in a DVD9 authored with the "HD-DVD" filesystem, and it's perfectly content to treat it like a 30-minute long HD-DVD. Or, potentially bypassing some royalty payments at the disc end (if royalties get charged to disc manufacturers, as opposed to player manufacturers), a normal 9-gig DVD-ROM encoded like a "normal" DVD, but using the MP@HL format at 720p24 or 480p60 to encode an hour or two of HD-quality video onto an old-fashioned 9-gig dual layer red-laser DVD and save a ton of manufacturing costs and royalty payments.
See, unlike American and Japanese companies (increasingly, the dinosaurs of the electronics industry who live in a DRM-laden universe where everyone is perpetually afraid of getting sued by Hollywood for allowing consumers to do something Not Authorized), the Chinese companies see no reason NOT to just treat everything like a "bucket" of capabilities, and let the player's firmware sort out any reasonable permutation.
But wait! How can something become a "standard" if it's not officially blessed by some official body, like the DVD Forum or Sony? Well, look at it this way... if every $79 optical video player sold at Wal-Mart can play some disc, but a $129 Sony from Best Buy can't, word will quickly get around, and people will just buy the cheaper player from Wal-Mart instead because it "just works". Sony can grouse and bitch about "illegitimate formats" until it's bankrupt. Consumers won't care. They'll buy the cheaper drives that play everything painlessly.
If you're American, ask yourself... "can my DVD player handle discs encoded with mp3-encoded audio?" In all likelihood, unless it's an ultra high-end player made by Sony or Denon... "Yes, it can." Officially, American DVD players don't have to support it (only AC3 and PWM)... but every last cheap Chinese-made player at Wal-Mart and Best Buy does, and for all intents and purposes, it IS a de-facto standard that any player sold in America had BETTER support unless its manufacturer wants to see a staggering number of "defective" players returned by consumers who discovered that it couldn't play some movie encoded with MP3 audio instead of AC3 or PWM. If some capability becomes nearly ubiquitous by virtue of being universally supported by "low-end" players, high-end players eventually WILL have to support it, too, regardless of whether anyone has ever formally blessed it as "official".
Unless, of course, the American and Japanese manufacturers and media conglomerates convince Congress to pass some nazi-ish law, like, "The Home Media Player Standards-Compatibility Improvement Act" that purports to weed out "incompatible" players, but really acts to forbid extensions as well as deficient implementations...
I realize this is way off topic, but...
Voting for Nader in a state that was sure to go to Kerry could be seen as a show of support for your preferred candidate. I voted for Nader in New York, and the state went to Kerry by a large margin. No harm done, and my preferred candidate got one more vote in his column.
As being said, in our household we've been pretty happy with a VHS recorder for occasional recording of TV series and such and CD-R/RW for the data. (We do not purchase any VHS/DVD content anyway) And now somebody decides that technology we've not yet seen a need for is obsolete. Suddenly I feel ancient.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
The mere fact that a multitidue of factories will be set up to outpout PS3 discs is the reason the production cost will be INCRASED. How can you claim expenses going into construction and infastructure will bring down costs?
First of all, it's called retooling - they are going to mostly adjust factories to print the new discs. Much cheaper.
Then of course every disc made thereafter has a profit used to eventually pay off the cost of this retooling, so they need not actually charge the full price of the retooling with the first disc. That's why the first disc from the factory does not cost a billion dollars, they slowly recapture the cost of retooling and new factories. The more discs they push through the faster the recapture, and because the PS3 has a good name behind in (investmnet-wise) they are ging to get favorable loans which will mean the prices they have to charge to recapture costs will not be all that high.
Just remember that HD-DVD plants have to retool as well, and on both sides that is a one-time cost for a factory that can literally be pumping through a billion discs. Just as constant time costs do not matter as much in algorithms, so in the real world are constant costs absorbed.
Secondly, the HD-DVD probably WILL cost about the same... which is exactly why, as I said, I will be sticking to DVDs and SDTVs for MANY years to come, and the biggest reason for this is the cost of entry into this new technology. Before you even start investing into stupendously overpriced players for these new discs (hundreds of dollars versus $30 for a DVD player!), you need to pay as much as a thousand dollars just for a TV!
The standalone players are going to be overpriced as you say - I certainly would not be getting one. But there are a whole lot of people that will be getting one - it's called the PS3. That's not Sony fanboyism. it's just an acknowledgement of the fact that lots of people bought the PS2 and unless PS3's start burning down people's houses or drinking all thier milk, lots of people are probably also going to be buying a PS3.
Wide-screen HDTV ready TV's have been selling for some time, so there is a substantial market of people (in the millions, easy) who will benefit from the newer discs - and on top of that even people with normal TV's will benefit from the extra space with more features and better audio (though a don't think hardly anyone really has a setup capabile of really getting the benefit of the better audio).
The discs will be more but I will be buying some when I can, because it is frankly worthwhile. The HD broadcasts of Battlestar are noticable nicer than the DVD's. HD really is clearer and sharper in a very noticable way, and for a movie I truly enjoy I will appreciate the extra quality. I don't buy a lot of discs which is why I like the ones I do buy to be as good as they can be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously though, we're a minimum of 5 years away from widespread HD adoption.
Actually, we're a maximum of three years, one month, and 10 days from widespread HD adoption.
You're confusing digital broadcasting with HDTV.
That deadline is irrelevant or several reasons, but those reasons include that people with cable or sattelite are unaffected, that new SD sets will support digital boradcasts, and old SD sets will work just fine receiving digital broadcasts through a converter box.
Digital broadcasts will not force people to go HD.
mark twain is though...
I remember. It's an old lesson in consumerism. Consumerism is "fashion-ability" based. But "dead" is just a fashion term. Tight western shirts were declared "dead" and now they are making a comeback for the moment in youth fashion (whatever).
The item never fully goes away as "dead" implies. It just is going into disfavor. The writer is stating that it's peaked and going on a downslide. VHS is on a downslide. Technically 8-track is at the end of the downslide.
Hmmm, I wonder if 8-tracks are coming back? Unique analog sound like 33 1/3 phonographs are in their own way!
HD-DVD is a recording format change from the standard DVD video recording format. I think DVD's format may need some updating. And the capacity also needs to be increased but the new 'DVD' format drives & players should be backwards compatible playing the standard DVD's. We'll see. I'm not on any of those 'standards' committees yet!
"Oh! Lets try this concept in the new format..." :-)
I'll think of a really good SIG just before I die.
Now that many people have bought, or are about to buy, relatively big lcd or plasma screens or projectors with a resolution that is not necessarily 1920x1080 or higher, but still definitely above x576 or, even worse in the us, x480, they will more and more find it nasty to watch, say THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY or 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY or whetever material that could be used to create meaningful digital 4k (4096x2160) or at least 2k (2048x1080) data, well, to watch it with an effective resolution of 640x480.
/hddvd, I would certainly be willing to pay for it again. In case, of course, I own a projector or hires flat tv, wich I certainly will soon, because it all has become quite affordable by now and will further go down during 2006...
On a screen that SHOWS one the difference. Same thing was true for VHS. On a late 90s 25" CRT, it is VERY obvious how much cleaner stuff looks on dvd compared to VHS. And THAT was what killed the older format.
Honestly, if I could exchange all of my Kubrick films for 2k material, that is, 1920x1080 (1080p hdtv) in the case of bluray
--~~~~ (oops, didn't work)
and a nice day to all of yers.
Now that many people have bought, or are about to buy, relatively big lcd or plasma screens or projectors with a resolution that is not necessarily 1920x1080 or higher, but still definitely above x576 or, even worse in the us, x480, they will more and more find it nasty to watch, say THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY or 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY or whetever material that could be used to create meaningful digital 4k (4096x2160) or at least 2k (2048x1080) data, well, to watch it with an effective resolution of 640x480.
/hddvd, I would certainly be willing to pay for it again. In case, of course, I own a projector or hires flat tv, wich I certainly will soon, because it all has become quite affordable by now and will further go down during 2006...
On a screen that SHOWS one the difference. Same thing was true for VHS. On a late 90s 25" CRT, it is VERY obvious how much cleaner stuff looks on dvd compared to VHS. And THAT was what killed the older format.
Honestly, if I could exchange all of my Kubrick films for 2k material, that is, 1920x1080 (1080p hdtv) in the case of bluray
--~~~~ (oops, didn't work)
and a nice day to all of yers.
Electronics companies are pushing new technologies because they need to keep selling us stuff. Entertainment companies (e.g. MPAA), in their delusional desperation, believe that new "DRM" schemes will protect existing revenue streams. The problems is that entertainment and electronic companies need new DRM schemes and HD; consumers do not. Consumers are already starting to download DVD movies legally (see http://www.eztakes.com/)
Whatever standard Sony picks, I always bet on one of the other leading contenders. Sony may develop great technology but they have a poor record when it comes to being able to pick the standard that will dominate the market. Matthew
AIUI, BluRay has decided to NOT use new codecs (h.264) for BluRay and instead is going to use MPEG-2 combined with the larger capacity to do HD. -goro-
What the hell is your use of the "at" symbol instead of an "a" all about? Who is cr, and why is he/she/it at ppy?
... and then they built the supercollider.