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HD DVD Demo a Disappointment
triso writes to tell us that the recent unveiling of the new Toshiba HD DVD production model met with a few difficulties. From the article: "It was supposed to be the grand unveiling of a new generation in home entertainment when Kevin Collins of Microsoft Corp. popped an HD DVD disc into a Toshiba production model and hit 'play.' Nothing happened. The failed product demo at this week's International Consumer Electronics Show was hardly an auspicious start for the HD DVD camp in what's promising to be a nasty format war similar to the Betamax/VHS video tape battle."
I'll do what I did with DVD, DVD-A, SACD, HDCD. I won't buy anything until one player can play all of them. This was an impossible situation with Beta/VHS. I expect it will happen quickly with the hardware this time. The formats will confuse the hell out of people who just want a DVD though, sort of like back when Apple had a 100 models of macs that were all pretty much the same.
On a disk or per dollar?
Dual-layer DVD+-R disks hold twice as much as the single-layer version, yet cost more than twice as much and haven't really taken off.
On the other hand, if all you really cared about was high capacity, why not buy a Hard Drive? For just 100 dollars you too could hold 260,000 MB in your hands.
HD-DVD's are lower capacity, but cheaper. Blu-Ray has a somewhat higher capacity, but is more expensive.
Either way we're not talking about Blu-Ray-RW yet, so how does capacity help?
The ______ Agenda
Here's an interesting story for you. Back in the days when live TV was more common, Timex was going to run a live advertisement that showcased the durability of their watches. They strapped the watch to a boat's propellor, spun it around a bit, then showed how it "takes a lick'n, and keeps on tick'n!"
...and it stopped ticking.
Timex ran the test a dozen or so times before they were supposed to go live. That watch did fine in every test. Then the golden moment came, and they were on the air. The watch took a lick'n as it was supposed to...
All those tests they had done, and the watch had finally failed for the real deal. So you can't always predict these things. Now it's always funniest when it happens to Microsoft, but if you give Murphy an inch, he'll make sure to make a fool of you every time.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
At the end it quotes:
"The (video) games industry since the early 90s has had two or three incompatible formats and it hasn't slowed the adoption of game platforms,"
when i think about it, this seems like a great analogy to say 'hey, look 2 different types of disc isnt really that crazy or impractical' but i think they're missing a big point. can anybody imagine what it would be like to have a single console per generation? something within me is screaming 'that would suck, less innovation, less choice, less everything'. instinctivly i know that with video games having different consoles is definitly a good thing, i just cant seem to qualify it in writing appropiately, im sure some of you will agree.
with data storage/movies/whatever though i find it hard to accept having two potential 'standards'. we're not talking zip disks or anything here, were you know that your probably not going to be able to use it on 'every' computer you come across. yes, development of more than one type of _potential_ storage media is a good thing but for something that is so important from a cost/ease of use point of view there is, IMHO, room for -1- standard only in the end. unfortunatly some people are going to get burned when that eventual standard emerges.
jaymz
>What will you do with the ripped bytes?
encode them and put them on my iPod with video.
and fuck you for implying people wanting to rip their own disks are planning to break for law. some of us happen to live in countries where businesses don't own the government so much that format shifting is illegal.
I've learned the hard way that switching to DVDs for backup was a *BIG* mistake. While I could clean my 700MB CDs with sandpaper and they worked fine after that, the slightest mishandling of DVD caused jittery picture/sound or file curruption. Even if HD-DVD and Blueray are not as fragile as DVDs (yeah, right), the thought of losing 28GB of data this time round is, well, why take the risk.
I cant imagine anyone will use this crap for data storage so the capacity is a moot point. I built a nice 4tb array on raid5 that cost me around $800 (20 cents per GB which is CHEAPER than blueray/hd-dvd), or yes, a couple of 400GB drives on raid1 and your data is quite safe and you dont need >10 disks for same capacity.
Furthermore, with consumer ADSL having 2mb these days (granted asymetrical), you can afford to back up to a popular p2p network, best backup method possible and thats how I backup my legally purchased music/movies and other non private media.
I won't support Sony because they are the antethis of Google. All they do is evil. From their fake movie reviewers, to their silly proprietary technology to their DRM rootkit fiasco. I don't trust them and they can put a white person at the top and it doesn't matter. They do not learn from their lessons, they have an arrogance about them that reminds me of Nintendo from the 80's, which is why i'm happy to see the South Koreans kicking their asses now.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I think both formats are going to die or stay in the second lane until the next best thing comes out.
Not everybody 'gets' the whole HD movement.
-Why should average shopper buy a BD or HD title if they already have it on DVD?
-How many consumers already think that DVD IS Hi Def?
-With all the Hi Def ready displays out there, how many actually show HD content?
-How many times do you go into a bar or sports restaurant where they DO have an HD display with Satellite hookup and HD content STILL SHOW Standard Def channels on the screen?
-How many times do you see in a public place the aspect ratio screwed up on one of those plasma displays?
The ONLY way BD/HD will surpass DVD is when the cost of a BD/HD title is less than a standard DVD and we don't see that happening at all, ever.
Video distributors will NOT stop making DVD's if they're selling and Hollywood will not issue an order to stop producing content for it for DRM sake.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
At last year's macworld the mac that steve was using locked up (or at least the app he was using locked up, can't remember clearly) - he calmly noted that 'this is why we have backup systems for demos', pressed a button, and started that portion of the demo over on a different machine. He was demoing something in tiger and did note that it was not 'done' yet.