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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."
Tthis is not a failed demo. Even the Toshiba executives cant get around their new DRM technology.
Sure... I mean, look at the glitch MS had when demoing Windows 95; we all know that was in no way representative of the final product.
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?
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.
It was Win 98 actually. & parent should be modded Funny, not Insightful.
But you know, I'm still not going to buy anything from Sony. I may not buy from Toshiba either, I haven't decided yet, buy Sony is going to need to work HARD before I'll ever buy anything with their name on it again. And not only work hard, do so over an extended period of time. So far they appear to be denying that they even did anything improper, and I'll NEVER trust them until long after they get beyond that.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
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.
I built a nice 4tb array on raid5 that cost me around $800
Now this would make an interesting article to read. Instead we get another cheap and easy shot at Microsoft and a new technology that won't be accepted as main stream ever.
So how about writing a story about how you built a 4TB raid array for $800 and list all the parts and trade offs. I for one would really be interested. Seriously.
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.