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Sony Announces Date for Blu-Ray Roll Out
yermoungder writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Sony Pictures on Tuesday said it aims to deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to U.S. stores on May 23 to coincide with the entry of compatible disc players, a new step in an industry war for control of home movie viewing.'"
But I'm not buying either format if they can't put out a player for $300 or less. If PS3 is that "$300 Bluray player" then so be it, I'll get a PS3.
Reuters is reporting that 'slashdot poster Vertinox on Tuesday said he aims to deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to his home on day that coincides with Sony prying his old DVD player from his dead cold hands.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Given Sony's history with its proprietary formats (e.g. Beta and AIT) I would not invest in Blue-Ray until it is well established.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Well, the difference between a DVD at 480p and a HD source at 720p or 1080i is substantial, provided you have quality equipment. If not... blu-ray offers you nothing.
Wish I could remember that site which had the mouseover comparisons of the two formats.
So, what exactly is the reason for customer to upgrade to either HD-DVD or BluRay?
I only see one fundamental benefit between $NEW_DVD_FORMAT and DVD:
1) larger capacity - whether this mean more content or higher resolution.
I see many drawbacks between $NEW_DVD_FORMAT and DVD:
1) more expensive media and released product -- why is a consumer going to pay more for a BluRay movie than a DVD? I bet the movie studios will say "because that will be their only choice"... As to resolution, how many people are willing to pay more *PER MOVIE* for better than current DVD resolution. There has been such a long and successful marketing campaign for DVDs that convinced people that DVD resolution is *GREAT!*. Now someone's going to have to convince people that DVDs suck. Yeah, right...
2) DRM - nobody wants to *PAY EXTRA* for less control. If you want BluRay to succeed, give the players away for $25 - (meaning cheaper than a standalone DVD-ROM drive current cost).
3) format war uncertainties. Nobody wants to make the wrong choice and be stuck with worthless electronics junk.
4) lack of a problem - from a consumer standpoint, what exactly is wrong with DVDs? Seems like everyone loves them. What problem does BluRay solve? Oh, my freedom problem... yeah right
5) the next dvd jon - it's just a matter of time until any protection in these new formats is broken. Consumers will not stand for constant changes in fundamental technology formats as a primary strategy to enforce DRM.
I have a 46" HD DLP TV. Standard DVD's look pretty good on that and I'm happy with them. HDTV looks really good, but a good DVD is pretty good.
I also have a projector that shoots onto about a 96" screen. Here the DVD resultion is lacking and I am pretty excited about HD DVD's. Though I'm not as excited about having to run a new cable through my ceiling due to the stupid HDMI requirement. If HDMI is the only sticking point I'll probably bow and give in. If they have stupid DRM crap that only lets you use one player then that is a different story.
If I just had my TV, I would be slow to upgrade to HD DVD's. With the projector it's a different story.
Isn't there already talk about releasing a player that supports both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray? Doesn't that end the whole format war, much like the DVD+-RW drives ended the writeable DVD format war?
if I have only one digital port, it's going to the Direct-TV HD box. and all the rest of these guys can just go whistle.
it may be YOUR intellectual property, but it's MY credit card.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I follow this standards battle with the same eager enthusiasm that I think many people reserve for reality TV, soap operas and sporting events. It really involves two titans that I can't help to both love and hate (gaming systems = great!, monopoly / drm = not great!) and a ton of significant other players (Toshiba, HP, Apple, Dell, Intel). This is great stuff, people! We'll be talking about this for years.
Specifically to this post, I'm just amazed over the last six months to what extent (in my own head and probably others), I've gone from thinking Sony was invincible to feeling it's really 50 / 50 with the HD DVD camp. I'm not sure what the merits are of releasing Blu-Ray movies next to a $1000 Blu-ray player given an imminent Playstation 3 delay. Especially knowing that one stand over are cheaper HD DVD movies and a $499 player. Poor sales goes on for six months or so and that's a huge psychological advantage for HD DVD.
I have to wonder if maybe I really assumed Blu-ray would win because of the Playsation 3 and not because of any merits compared to HD DVD on its own. And then I have to ask myself how would Blu-ray do without the Playstation 3? How would the Playstation 3 do without Blu-ray? (I can argue "better" -- out faster, cheaper. I can argue "worse" -- no tech advantage over XBox 360.) They are so fundamentally linked to each other that it really does feel like a double-or-nothing for Sony.
Can't wait for the next Slashdot tidbit regarding any of this.
the fact that blu-ray's overboard drm scheme supposedly requires me to connect to the internet to watch a video
That is not correct.
and will reject home-made disks which lack the "digital imprimature".
Nope, that's also wrong. Several companies have announced "consumer" Blu-ray authoring software.
yep, this is it. pay us more $$$ feature is the only 'real' thing that most people will see.
:) high five sony, you're just on the roll right now :D
i wear glasses, and as they don't make it with 0.0001 accuracy, they make it with 0.25 accuracy. therefor my picture is always a bit fuzzy. i can't see one damn thing wrong with any of the current dvd-s that i use, and i certainly wont see the extra pixels that bluray ads.
and every monkey in the sony office knows that bluray discs in some kind of ripped format will be out sooner than you can say "you can't pirate this".
if the movie can be seen and heard by the consumer, it can also be ripped. it doesn't solve the problem, it just adds one more way to do it. a new and incredibly expensive way.
ofcourse sony can say that the pirated versions that are some kind of cheap non-high-digital rips, are crap in quality compared to their supreme bluray picture, but they will still be good enough for most people to watch. and that's what they'll have on bittorrent and buy on cheap made-in-paiwan dvd's.
they should make producing movie dvd-s etc. so cheap for themselves that there would no need for piracy, but instead they drive the prices up with a new incompatible format and hope for profit
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
The only disc that will be made available for the new player is Gigli
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
, provided you have quality equipment
More acurately: provided you have large screen equipment or sit rather unusually close to your tv.
Wish I could remember that site which had the mouseover comparisons of the two formats.
Precisely the sort of nonsense that I refer to by people sitting unusually close to their TVs. Mousing over the difference sitting under 36 inches away from the screen is meaningless. Have someone ELSE do the mouseover while you sit in a chair 8 feet away. Then decide if its worth a $1000 player, and re-purchasing all your movies again.
On a big projection system it can be a big difference at normal viewing distances, but on a regular size "hdtv" its almost irrelevant, unless you're in the habit of watching your TV from 3 feet away.
Frankly, I'm going to just sit back and watch others get ripped off while the format wars start. I have not seen one compelling movie in the last 3 or 4 years so why would I want to see the same bad content only at a higher resolution for a significantly higher cost? Or maybe, its just that I like music more then movies. I'll buy a $2000 stereo system but not $2000 on a TV + disc player.
Heck, at the prices they're offered now, I might buy a few DVD players in case they decide to discontinue them for something with extra copy protection crap I never asked for. At least I'll be able to play plain-old music CDs, MP3 CDs and DVDs and the DVD movies I bought.
Oh yeah... sign my up for that! Well... two out of four ain't bad but Sony needs the console version of the "killer game" like XBox's Halo. Something everyone's been waiting for in HD. And "50 First Dates" ain't even close.
A common misconception on Slashdot is that Joe Consumer understands the issues with DRM and even more importantly, cares.
And a very simple way to make the point and make Joe Consumer care is simply to say to him, "Don't you hate having to sit through all that junk at the beginning of the DVD before you can watch the movie?" That usually gets them thinking. Then drop a hint about how things like the broadcast flag can prevent them from fast-forwarding through commercials, if they're allowed to even record a show to begin with. And Congress keeps passing more laws that give "the suits" more control over what we're allowed to do in our own living room.
That gets their attention. DRM isn't about previnting piracy, its about exerting control after the sale. You won't be able to do it even if it is legal.
I see all these posts about, "I don't see the benefit of upgrading, other than some more capacity on the disk".
/. so I assume everyone here is aware that DVD's only output 480p, which is only marginally better than a television broadcast.
I'm not following that line of thinking... This is
The obvious reason to upgrade is to get substantially more pixels, 1080i, 720p, and I would assume 1080p at some point in the future. It seems like this would be pretty clear, I'm not sure why people keep asking why the new formats would be better.
Of course if you do not own a high-definition television of a reasonably good size then you probably don't need to upgrade, atleast not for a while until these type of discs become the norm. But if you are the owner of a standard-def television you should be aware of the resolution limitation and not have to ask why other people are interested in higher resolutions.
Those of us using DLP/Plasma/LCD television that are capable of 1080i/720p/1080p and that are of reasonably large size fully understand the need for a higher quality format to become standard. For us, the DVD looks awful in comparison to what we see on our HD television channels and our Xbox360's, or the output from our PC's. And we are clearly interested in being able to purchase a movie with twice as much data in it, to more accurately represent what you would see from film at the theater.
I will be curious to see how many of the hi-def dvds that are released are actually resampled from the film or original source as is required. Obviously sony is doing this for their initial releases, but I'm sure many movies will be converted to the new format in their 480p form.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
"should be almost no artifacting introduced (sorry, the BMP files were too large to use)."
jpg isn't really losless. How can you compare images being processed and compressed?
Added to that, two different players? (I used WinDVD 6 to capture files from the DVD, and Elecard Mpeg2 player to capture from the HD stream)
There will be more detail with the HD stream, but I think his cute mouseovers don't say much accurate in that way.
Here's the link.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1