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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."
So what? A failed demo is nothing to laugh at. I mean they probably has a slight bug, that shouldn't be a sign that the format is totally screwed. Give them a break!
Or did Kevin Collins of Microsoft Corp. not have a first born child to offer up to the IP gods?
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
Tthis is not a failed demo. Even the Toshiba executives cant get around their new DRM technology.
First point, HD-DVD had a bad demo and Cnet has one of the Blue Ray players on their "Best Of" list. Sounds like things are going to be interesting.
Second point, another famous demo failure I will point out is the infamous "Windows 98 Blue Screen of Death" that Microsoft had back in the day trying to show it off. And after that, only a few hundred million people used the OS. What a failure.
If you're showing off a new product in CES, don't you make absolute positively sure that the product actually works?
I mean this was a production model, so either all their prodution models are broken, or they got REALLY unlucky and got a bad one..
If it were me though and I was going to showcase a new product, I would make sure that it acutally worked..
Quality Control is your friend..
I will not buy either until safely assured the DRM is broken and I can rip as I want.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Just as an FYI. Format wars don't tend to get out of controll in a free market, it's only controlled market where people try to fence off "intellectual property" (which isn't a real free market property at all) that it becomes a problem.
HD DVD has drm too. So did DVD. Read up.
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.
In my mind, who ever can fit the most bits on a disc wins. I don't give a flying carp about video quality or format wars... I want to cram the most data on a disc and that's all.
This is not a Betamax/VHS battle from the consumer's point of view. I mean, maybe the content providers and equipment manufacturers may view it this way, but there's a fundamental difference from the standpoint of the consumer.
With Betamax/VHS, there were pretty significant mechanical differences between the formats -- having a single unit that could play both types of media was essentially impossible without having two completely separate (expensive and futzy) transports. In the case of DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, they are all 12cm spinning optical discs with exactly the same physical characteristics from the transport point of view. Yes, there is a difference from the logical data formatting and laser point of view, but there is no reason that I can see (other than licensing from the respective consortiums) that a single player couldn't play CD, VCD, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
So fine, as a consumer, I don't give a shit. Frankly, I'm going to be buying DVDs as long as they make them, and I'm perfectly happy with that. Unless the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD consortium prevents manufacturers from making a unit that can play both types, I'm going to buy a new player that handles all of the formats, and they can jerk off as long as they want figuring out who's a winner, and I can buy pretty much whatever comes out and be able to play it.
seems to be the name HD-DVD: imagine when we get recordable ones.. HD-DVD-RW. The abbriviation needs an abbriviation. At least blu-ray sounds futuristic
-AlexC
I find myself feeling like WWII era Ukraine. Squished between Hitler and Stalin. Destined to be punished by whoever wins. I, for one, can't wait to be liberated by either blu-ray or HD-DVD.
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
That's because people who use Linux realize there's a better fix for most things than "reinstall the OS". This seems to be the standard way of fixing things in windows when things start going wrong. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen someone recommending "reinstalling the OS" for Linux as a general solution to everything.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
That's like saying a 4 MegaPixel digital cameras suck because you can't print out pictures that are 100x80 inches. I never plan to print out pictures this big. On the same note, I never plan to have a 50+ inch TV. Really, my 27 inch seems like all I'll ever need. Maybe someday i'll get at 36 inch. But seriously, I never forsee in my life having the need for a 50+ inch television. So DVD is just fine for me.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Exactly :). The system detected that more than five people were in the room, necessitating an upgrade of the license from "Family Viewing" to "Public Performance".
I'm getting sick and tired of people saying things like:
"DVDs are great, why do we need anything better?"
When LaserDisc was introduced in 1978, they were GREAT. They were amazing. They could push right up against the limits of the NTSC standard. LD was really over-designed because very few people had TV sets good enough to show them off properly. DVD video is basically the same thing, it's designed to hit the NTSC standard. TV sets today are many times better than those of 1978, it's the signal standard that needs to catch up now.
So. . . 27 years after the introduction of LD format, how much longer should we wait for an improvement? 50 years? 100 years? Should we just give up on the idea of progress completely, and settle for watching blurry NTSC-quality images from now on?
No. We need a pre-recorded format for ATSC -- we've needed it badly for several years, in fact. This is the one huge element that has been missing from the HDTV transition.
Now we're on the verge of a video format that can show movies in a reasonably close approximation to how they appeared in theaters. VHS can't do that, LD can't do that, DVD can't do that. HD discs will. Nobody should underestimate the importance of this, because the back catalog of movies that can benefit from this presentation goes back many decades, there are literally thousands of them. There are movies from the 1930s or possibly even earlier that will look better on HD discs than they can on DVDs.
That won't happen again. If somebody 10 years from now tries to come up with some new format to replace Blu-Ray, or replace HD-DVD, they're going to run into a big obstacle. It's because most movies in the back catalog don't contain a lot more information than ATSC can present. Most movies weren't shot in 3D, they weren't shot in IMAX. There's nothing to be gained by presenting them in a format more advanced than ATSC-HD.
We can already see a preview of that, because there have been quite a few TV series shot, or produced, on NTSC videotape, which means they won't benefit from being put on HD discs. This is why I think HD format has a lot to offer, but anything that comes after it will probably falter in much the same way that SACD and DVD-A are faltering.
When will these idiots learn? You fake demos! At worst you have 2 or 3 computers/devices running simultaneously so you can switch to another when the first doesn't work.
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.
Keep in mind that ripping any CSS protected DVDs is likely to be illegal in your country.
Point. But more a point towards "wow, these laws are sortof stupid" than any real sort of warning. Unless one seriously expects companies to start looking at the contents of peoples' computers and then sueing them for it. Welllll, okay, nevermind, that's actually not that far off. But they really should not be allowed to get away with things like that, and I think it's better to hasten the day when that issue inevitiably comes up in a big way than to wait as public opinion adapts more and more to the currently strong zeitgeist of "if you aren't doing anything wrong...."
I mean, not to bring up politics, but yaknow . . .
But hey. Weren't there legal decisions in the favour of being able to make backups with older techs? But each new technology the fight is fought again, and each time the consumer side loses a bit more. Of course there are legal justifications for it (it being illegal to break encryption, etc etc) but there are enough random laws that these cases could in theory be justified many different ways for many different results.
Honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm relatively unlikely to buy DVDs (and much less likely to buy either of the new formats). Why in the world should I pay money for something that I'm not even allowed to use how I want, simply because the companies involved are greedy in an unrealistic way (ie. the actions motivated by their greed do not actually get the results they intend anyways)? And then it pays for things like the industry lobbying for the kind of laws that make it illegal to do things like making (what really should be perfectly legitimate backups, honestly, try to argue against it from a logical point of view knowing that the guy is using them for personal viewing, just making a bit simpler what he paid to be able to do anyway). Sorry, no thanks.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!