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Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Talks End
Last minute talks to unify the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats have failed. Matsushita, owner of the Panasonic brand, has stated 'the market will decide the winner.' From the article: "The two sides held talks last year in the hopes of avoiding a prolonged format battle similar to the one between Betamax and VHS videotapes in the 1980s, knowing that it could discourage consumers from shifting to the advanced discs and stifle the industry's growth. But the talks soon fizzled out, with each side reluctant to establish a format based on the other's disc structure. At stake is the $24 billion home video market and a slice of the personal computer market as PCs will be equipped with Blu-ray or HD DVD optical drives."
The two standards are too different to unify. The disc is different, the data layout is different, the means for handling interactivity are different, the codec is different... EVERYTHING is different. My only regret is that there are so many variables that we may not really learn anything about which is the best product based on who succeeds and who sucks seed... we may only learn who had better marketing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's right that the 'market' will decide the 'winner'.
It's just unfortunate that the market powers are the producers rather than the consumers. History repeating itself again. And again.
The subject pretty much sums it up.
there is no movies section...
First determine the one with the all round better technical specifications.
Then bet on the other.
Its not a unknown fact that for many people, the PS2 was their first DVD player.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Regular DVD!
Hell, my HDTV is always in HD anyway, why would I need HD or ray's blue DVD's? That's just stupid!*
*This comment is a joke, but it is widely believed to be true in the consumer world.
-Buddy of DoQ
I will pick the cheaper for sure... and I think a lot of people will do the same.
Probably because the likely winner is whomever's console wins the next round of the console wars. That'll be the largest installed base of players for a while: consoles that can play movies.
Forget technical merit of the disks. This is going to be decided based on XBox and PlayStation sales.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Wish they'd talk about it from the beginning instead of trying to beat each other to the punch and then act as if they were going to unify the standard.
This is just extremely unfortunate for consumers--I'm personally not touching either of the formats until this issue is resolved.
These new disc formats are all dead in the long run.
Perhaps not immediately, but within a few years a system will exist which will allow the streaming of any movie ever made via broadband instantly. Why would you want to bother keeping an anachronistic collection of shiny discs, when you could have anything you want, instantly.
These format wars will all look quaint in a few years when the bandwidth for home delivery of such a system is widely available.
Remember DIVX? Not the codec of today. No? Good. Lets do a repeat.
"It's now a test of physical strength," Tsuga said.
Matsushita plans to launch DVD players later this year with a price tag likely to top $1,000.
Customers will need to workout just so they can lift their wallet up to the counter to pay for it!
The format wars have FAILED.
Samsung long ago announced that if the two high density blue laser DVD camps couldn't make up and get along, that they were just going to go ahead and start building drives capable of playing both hd dvd and bluray. That is to say, if the two camps cannot unify, then Samsung will unify them whether they want it or not. At least one other manufacturer whose name I forget has announced similar plans. I cannot help but wonder how popular this approach will become.
I also cannot help but wonder, faced with two contradictory and low-uptake standards, how many stores will actually want to stock hddvd or bluray discs? It seems to me that the only chance either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray has of actually getting widely stocked is by making dual-capability DVDs that can be played on either a next-gen dvd player, or a current gen dvd player (both next-gen formats support this; it's done by burning a disc with one layer of DVD and one layer of hddvd-or-bluray).
I'll just wait until there's a drive out there capable of playing both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs (as well as DVDs, CDs, MP3s etc..) Then I won't care what disc I pick up at the store (as long as it doesn't say PSP). If one of the formats wins, well, it'll just become a useless feature on those hybrid drives.
Unless the manufacturers sign a deal which states otherwise, there will be dual format players with 18 months of Blu-rays debut. After that it simply won't matter what format your media comes on letting media houses pick the disc that suits their economics, with one exception, the PS3 which will still only play Blu-ray, which lets face it, is better than either the 360 or the Revolution.
Unlike Betamax verses VHS, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray are essentially the same form factor and technology. The initial concerns about Blu-rays new process being expensive will be blown out of the water by PS3 media sales, increased capacity and no pesky legal copying, which will interest film houses, HD-DVD has friendlier copyright and already has fabs producing cheap media. We could see a genuine 50/50 split in the market, healthy competition and low prices for consumers!
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
These days everyone knows what HD means. These days most people have DVD players.
Blu-Ray? What's that?
Differences that might have been significent back in the VHS/Beta days. But technology has advanced a great deal and "differences" can be overcomed. The only issue is an economic one.
why not just use Blu-Ray technolgy and HD-DVD name? Lets have one technology and an agreed royalty share - an effective buy-out. At least this way it will save millions in marketing in a format war, and both groups get a degree of guarenteed success. and more importantly will allow me to enjoy the format sooner as i won't have to wait for winner.
Therefore, I will choose neither. It's a shame, too, because I would have liked having 50GB per disk.
C'est la vie.
Porn aficionados will have to buy BOTH types of players in order to ensure they can enjoy the 31 different angles in HD for the money shot. Or wait a while to let the loser die out in the marketplace.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It's an even lesser known fact that when the PS2 first launched in Japan that despite it selling out, few people were buying any games... The PS2 was the least expensive DVD player available in Japan at the time (much like the PS3 will be the least expensive high def disc player worldwide) and the games at the launch of the PS2 were lackluster (many suffering from anti-aliasing and other problems). People bought the systems just as a DVD player during the first few months--although I'm sure that most (if not all) of them bought at least one game after the first 3 months of the Japanese launch (when better games started coming out/programming issues were fixed).
Read my blog posts on usability.
pack rats.
How many figurines do you have sitting on your desk at home? at work? in your car? along your virgin bed's headboard, across your dresser and on your bookshelves? Yeah... pack rat.
Same mentality, but directed at movie freaks who must own every version of their favorite movies ever made and argue in their chatgroups which is better. I had a roommate in college who had more movies than there were days in a year, and he watched them all the damn time. He watched 2 or 3 a day, and bought several a month. He was also an alcoholic and a bit of a shut in, but still, dude had a ton of friggin movies. He works at Target now.
$5 says Lite-on comes out and poops on the whole battle and hacks together a drive that reads both formats just like the DVDr formats. Then, this whole stupid fight will be a moot point since every manufacturer will copy and we can get back to arguing the real battles.. namely ATI and NVIDIA.. and AMD and INTEL.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
The difference here is that an hd-dvd player will still be less then what it costs to buy a ps3.
HD-DVD Blu Ray
As you can see the difference is quite a bit.
I always thought "home video" meant amateur video (which basically equates to illegal these days whether or not it involves piracy).
I know most of this information has been seen on here before, but I'd really like to see a succinct side-by-side comparison of the two formats as far as capacity (on material that's actually going to be released soon, not 'possibly later' capacities), access speed, price and DRM schema.
...HD-DVD has friendlier copyright and already has fabs producing cheap media...
I wish people would stop propogating the myth that HD-DVD has "better" copyright abilities. Both formats use the exact same DRM scheme. Both allow managed copy (HOWEVER please read up on what managed copy really means, it's not like a REAL copy ability).
Heck, Blu-Ray discs from Sony (at least at first) will let you have full res video over analog connections, have any HD-DVD studios followed suit? That would seem to tilt the copyright niceness a little towards Blu-Ray, though not much... both are pretty laden with protections.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They're both larger-capacity discs than DVD. Blu-Ray just happens to have a higher capacity.
The capacity of Blu-ray is 25GB per layer, whereas HD-DVD is 15 (or 20GB?) per layer.
Hands in my pocket
what i'm wondering is, which technology will cost the least to the consumer, in both media production and consumer-grade hardware seems it's never the superior format that wins, it's the cheapest technology that's 'good enough for most people'. i don't know enough about either technology to make an estimate, but i assume it must be pretty obvious at this point, which one will be cheaper to roll out onto the market?
Um the "market powers" aren't the one's with the "coverted" dollars that'll make the decision.
Your choices are.
Don't buy either one and stick with DVD.
Buy Blue-Ray, and not the other.
Buy HD-DVD and not the other.
Buy both and make someone very happy.
Wait for a unified drive.
In ALL cases you have the power of a monetary vote. Now, if you choose to NOT exercise it, and just persist in whining on slashdot about "market powers". You will get what you deserve, and no one should feel sympathetic towards your plight.
What can I say that hasn't been said a million times before. This is yet another example of how closed door meetings determine the course of our society and how the rich and powerful control the interests of the entire earth.
This is something that rests uneasy in me, because I don't want to adopt a standard that fades. I don't want one of my favorite movies to be ONLY HD DVD and not Blu-Ray.
And the worst part is,
Here we go with another round of re-mastering and reselling. Just like the record industry and archiving their vinyl library to CD, or the previous migration from VHS to DVD, here is ANOTHER round of $20-$50 gotta haves to line the pockets of the man.
And the future will hold?
They will blame US again, when the reissues stop selling, they will blame internet traffic for the lack of sales, the industry is stabbing the same medium they MUST adopt to if they are to survive!
So what can YOU do?
Force them to make a decision, instead of making all of us gamble on their indecisiveness! Don't be an early adopting sucker, even if pride and envy tug at your wallethand.
This is like going to war based on manufactured intelligence & opinion poll results.
Don't call this insightful when it's just simply wrong.
/. crowd not recognize this?
How can the
However, this time around, it won't be as big a deal since anyone could buy a PS2 and a DVD and see a big improvement over their VCR. With the nextgen discs, if you don't have a HDTV, you won't see any real improvement. So (I would think) a smaller # of people will buy a PS3 to act as a budget DVD player. Some will, but it's not like the VHS-to-DVD transition...
I was among the first people to buy a DVD player (had one years before the PS2 came out), and I will not be on the cusp of HD/BR disc because I don't have an HDTV and don't feel like upgrading yet... gonna wait for prices to fall a bit more/the winner of the disc war to be decided.
Looks like HD-DVD is 15GB per layer. Some websites with bad information are saying 20GB.
Hands in my pocket
Actually they had aliasing problems. Anti-aliasing would have fixed it. :)
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
why is my security word "cocaine"?
"Last minute talks to unify the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats have failed. Matsushita, owner of the Panasonic brand, has stated 'the market will decide the winner."
should read:
Last minute talks to unify the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats have failed. Matsushita, owner of the Panasonic brand, has stated 'the consumer will have to pay for our greed and inability to compromise'.
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
These days everyone knows what HD means. These days most people have DVD players.
Blu-Ray? What's that?
Yes, so people will "know" they have an HD TV, and "know" they have a DVD player - and so will not purchase HD-DVD players, just the discs - which they will then return in droves (or alternatley they will be buying dual format discs, which will lead them to wonder what the big deal is since those discs look just like DVDs - again leading many to not purchase HD-DVD players).
Meanwhile amidst the consumer confusion of HD-DVD the shiny new blue discs obviously need a different player, and hey look! I was going to buy a PS3 anyway. And it even works with my old HD TV without HDMI connections (Sony announced all movies they release on Blu-Ray will allow full resolution even on older analog connections).
After a few million PS3's are sold there will literally be an order of magnitude more Blu-Ray players around than HD-DVD units, and it's game over at that point as Blu-Ray wins through sheer economy of scale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Personally, I don't think either format will win. My personal belief is that they're creating a solution to a "problem" that doesn't exist yet. They are building a product that would be useful to less than 10% of the worldwide market (those who actually have HDTVs). I see these new formats as a way of pushing more restrictive DRM and with the "format war" I see it very likely that they'll just bleed each other to death.
Read my blog posts on usability.
With all the DRM and other crippling measures, nothing would please me more than to see both formats die and rot in hell.
What?
The difference here is that an hd-dvd player will still be less then what it costs to buy a ps3.
Yes, but the PS3 will be of much greater value since you'll be able to use it for games, not just new PS3 games but also PS2 games as well. That's a box with a huge amount of value compared to an HD-DVD system where you'll be able to choose from perhaps 100 titles (that you might already own or not even be interested in watching anyway!) by the time the PS3 launches.
You are thinking of it in raw cost of boxes, but think of it this way - you're deciding to buy one of the next gen hi-def video players, where on the Blu-Ray side you get a whole gaming system for just $100 more (or whatever the difference is).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"The Fifth Element"; on Blu-Ray. I know what system I'm getting.
I'll buy/support the format that Sony doesn't have any influence over.
And as a side note... I believe it's just a matter of time until a manufacturer from a piracy happy nation releases a non-DRM HD DVD recorder/player.
Yes they have on discs already released such as Serenity....
Thanks, I had not heard HD-DVD studios were doing the same thing - good to know. So that really means in terms of protections they are identical.
Even though studios could make that more restrictive in the future I really don't think they will reach a point where they actually do that, as it will still put off a lot of users of the format and I think they would get a lot of complaints. Any studio that dares to do so for the next several years at least would face a huge consumer backlash.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Two formats vying for a very small piece of the pie. HD-DVD is only worth it if you have a 50"+ screen, and most people out there just ain't got it. There will be no format war winners. They will both go the way of the laser disc.
Why not an open source/architecture DRM Free alternative to both of them... That is the one I would buy.
The format war will be won or lost based on the fortunes of Sonys next console, which will incorporate their Blu-ray tech. If the PS3 has anything like the market penetration that the PS2 has, then Blu-ray will be the winner.
I just created my own standard and nobody can use it except me. If you want to buy one of my drives you can only get it from me and It'll cost you $1,000,000,000.
But a good marketing exec doesnt need things to be at a point to make it happen, they just need YOU to think its at that point. See CDs and computers, or even DVDs and computers.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
When I say,"HD-DVD is only worth it if you have a 50"+ screen", I mean that there's very little noticeable difference between HD-DVD and DVDs at smaller screen sizes. That was still the last word, I was just clarifying the next DA to come along and not understand what I meant.
That the format that is accepted and gets bought up is whatever Blockbuster and Walmart stock.
Inevitably the two arguing companies will fight tooth & nail to be the one to land an exclusivity agreement with Walmart, Blockbuster, and whatever other large retailers/renters are out there for media.
I think that, unfortunately, will decide the outcome of this battle.
Microsoft with HD-DVD is really pushing the DVD menu language they have created, kind of like Javascript.
Blu-Ray is going with Java.
I have to wonder if part of the dealbreaker was Microsoft insisting that use of thier own spec was mandatory for any merger of the formats.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The one *I* don't buy in to.
Let's check my track record, shall we....?
BetaMax
X2
PS/2
MemoryStick
FreeBSD and OS/2
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Let the market decide by choosing DVD for your movie format. HD is probably really nice, but it's not worth risking having to buy your favorite movie 2 more times if you pick the wrong format.
My other sig is extremely clever...
You must have had bad luck - most of the early DVDs I had were identical LaserDisc transfers. (And I remember when there were only 20-30 DVDs out.) Which is cool, I liked DVD at the time because it was the same quality as my friends' LaserDiscs, but without having to flip the laserdisc or change between two different discs for a movie. And much smaller on the shelf.
They can't agree on merging one... so the obvious answer is just to drop one format. There is already very little incentive to buy this very expensive next generation format... failing to pick a univeral standard will probably just kill the whole thing.
Anyway, right now the high def dvds are looking a lot like lazerdisk, in the sense that it will be too expensive for anyone to buy it, and by the time it becomes cheap there will be a better standard out. There's just too much competition in the storage space for this dumbass strategy to work. Just because DVD was a success doesn't mean that the successor to DVD will be.
My bet is that what we will end up doing for hi def movies, is using the existing DVD media, but changing the format from mpeg-2, to something that compresses better like mpeg-4 or windows media. Extra processing power to do decompression may get a lot cheaper a lot faster than these lazers are.
You have to consider that at this point, PVRs already have the power to do streaming video decompression, and compression of video. It's not hard to imagine increasing the processing power there and adding additional functionality like a divx dvd player, and some basic video games (roms anyone?). You could probably do something equivalent with a modded first gen xbox.
DVDs were essentially high tech VCRs, which made sense at the time, but these days if people are going to spend more than $50 on some piece of electronics, they expect it to do a lot more than just play videos on their tv.
I can see them becoming a little bit more successful on the PCs and on consoles. PCs need a way to back up more and more massive data, and consoles need lots of space for more content. That's the primary reason that I'm pretty optimistic about the PS3. Video games are becoming enourmous in terms of space. These disks are on the order of 50 GB, which not that long ago was the size of an entire harddrive. Can game makers fill up all that space with artwork and video? Probably not yet, but I suspect we will start to see some extremely high resolution textures on the 2nd generation PS3 games. Maybe there's just not that much need to expand in that direction... but I suspect that game makers will find some interesting way to make use of the extra space. The main problem I see is lack of exclusive titles these days, game makers need to make their games generic so they can port them from system to system. Thus, the limitations of the xbox 360 will probably keep game makers from taking too much advantage of special things the PS3 can do that can't be ported.
You're confusing HD-DVD with HD DVD-9 (admittedly an easy thing to do.) HD DVD-9, which uses MPEG4 based encoding on standard DVD, is pretty much moot. HD-DVD is an actual physical media format that uses a blue laser and can hold more physical bits.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
It would serve them right to both lose. Then we might get some format everyone agreed on from the beginning.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If a Slashdot reader can think that BluRay is the size of HD-DVD, and HD-DVD is the size of regular DVD, then what hope has the average consumer?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's okay, both sides know they can just blame any of their failures on piracy.
What I dont understand is if HD-DVD is just a format, and blu-ray a new kind of disk, why can you not put the HD-DVD format on a blu-ray disk? Are the opposing companies really that greedy?
I agree with the statment that it wont be long until there are drives that read both disks/formats, and it will be a mute point (except for the ps3), like DVD+/-R. Although, it would probably be more comperable to a cd/dvd comparison as there are storage size differences.
a little off topic, when is the music industry going to catch up? I want music in 5.1/7.1 surround, esp. if it is techno. the only way to do that is to find a dvd (or blu-ray) music standard that supports surround sound, and the players be backwards compatible with cds. It would be sweet if you could use the dual-layer techinque both new disks are using to where the disks could play in stereo in a normal cd player. dont think that is possible w/ cds though (heck, make a quad-layer disk w/ blu-ray, HD-DVD, standard DVD, and CD to make a movie compatible on any system and comes w/ a playable sound track. holy crap, i should copyright that, haha)
01001010
So since people seem to be confused about what managed copy really means, here is a great primer on the state of managed copy as of March 2006.
Summary:
* Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use the same AACS standard for copy protection (and thus managed copy protection)
* Players out now cannot do managed copy because the standard is not done - it's hoped the ability can be added later in a firmware update.
* Managed copies will likley require an internet connection so it can "ask" to make a copy, and possibly also involve payment for the right to copy.
Some good technical details there on how the system might end up working.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"I might vote with my currency, but that doesn't stop two other 'monetary voters' placing their vote based on advertising and other uninformed or poorly evaluated decision cancelling, thus my vote out.
Hence, the market power is with the producer - they who advertise and generally sell their product better wins! Regardless of other factors. Money matters, like you said."
*sigh*
Why do I even waste my time explaining things to you folks? Hard heads to a man, and the good ones have left for Kiroshin.
Since they don't seem to be capable of making a decision and hammering out a standard do you think it's within the realm of the possible for a grassroots consumer movement to influence this? That is if enough consumers got together and voted their choice with the understanding that whoever won, we'd throw our weight behind the one that won? I figure as soon as there's a presumptive winner people could save their money and lower their risk and it would become a self fullfilling action?
In the end one of them has to be the dominant format, why not decide now and save us the risk of investing in another dead format?
"There's just isn't enough difference, other than bragging rights, for most people to shell out for an HD-DVD player."
Take a quality $200 upconverting DVD player on a 1080p HDTV.
Take any random show from DiscoveryHD Theater (filmied in 1080i/p) on the same TV.
You are absolutely nuts to think there isn't enough difference. The quality of a full 1080p video on a full 1080p television is amazing. Wait until Best Buys start hooking up the Sony SXRD to the new HD-DVD players and watch how many crowd around to see.
The format that releases The Lord Of the Rings first.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You deserve to be modded down to -1 for the goat.cx link in your sig.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why don't studios just release 2 sided discs (like they already do with full/widescreen dvd's and now with hd-dvd's/dvd's)?
According to wikipedia, a blu-ray layer is 0.1mm thick, which would be a miniscule addition to the 0.6mm thickness of a HD-DVD.
Funny how 35 years after LP's, we're back to flipping discs over...
why hasnt this been modded down yet? 4-7 gigs per disk on a HD-DVD? Hell regular DVD's can hold more then that, what has this guy been smoking?
In the broadcast TV/advertising business, the advertisers who pay $$ to place commercials on television are the customers, because they are the ones who are providing a source of income for the networks and they are the ones to whom the programming is catered; that is, a show makes it to television because it was successfully sold to enough advertisers who were convinced that it was a viable money-maker. The viewers at home who watch the shows and (as the marketers hope) the advertisements that go with them are the consumers. They provide eyeballs so that the networks can sell advertisements, but they themselves do not make payments towards the broadcast and thus are not customers but merely tools to be used as a selling point by the networks. As such, as long as they tune in, no one in control of the network gives a damn what they do or what they think of the product. This is why controversy sells and often, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
However, if I want to have a Blu-ray drive or a HD-DVD drive (or whatever new format may emerge), I am making a purchasing decision and am giving $$ to the company in exchange for a product. If I do not like the product, the company, their business practices, their marketing tactics, their use of DRM, or the pricing, I may choose not to make this purchase and as a result, the company does not receive my money. I am voting with my feet, I have some control over the transaction, and I do not simply accept whatever is handed to me which is what a consumer does. Customers must be satisfied; consumers must simply be enticed.
I cannot help but think that when, overnight, everyone started calling those who vote with their feet "consumers" that this is nothing more than marketing Newspeak designed to de-emphasize the fact that our wants and desires matter.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
...Now we can have a technical debate settled in the best way possible... with marketing!
After all, it worked with VHS vs. Beta. Marketing talked about the merits of both and "the market" picked the best standard.
[/sarcasm]
Who did what now?
Well last I heard, Xbox is going to have an HD-DVD add-on and not blu-ray.
How many other console add-ons like this have been successful? It will add only marginally to the HD-DVD install base, unless some really popular games require it (I still think the next version of Halo may do so in a last move by Microsoft to drive adoption of the format).
I'ts no surprise Microsoft is not adding on a Blu-Ray player since Microsoft is one of the main players in the HD-DVD consortium. However in the end it is what consumers buy in standalone players, not PC's that will determine the winner of the format war. Even in the PC land where you'd think Microsoft would dominate more people will be included to get Blu-Ray burners since they hold more data (which is why Apple is backing Blu-Ray). If Vista had been out sooner (which will support HD-DVD from the start but probably not Blu-Ray) it could have helped drive Blu-Ray from that end (whcih I'm sure was intented) but they couldn't even get that done in time to help.
Meanwhile the PS3 should be out before Christmas releasing millions of players into the market, and on the PC side Apple should have Powermacs (desktops) out in Q3-Q4, at the high end probably including Blu-Ray burners as well. And since they dual boot now...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In favor of DRM?
Prove it.
The PS2 can play DVDs but precious few people use that feature that I know. PS2 using DVDs really doesn't affect the rest of the world except to mean that PS2 games will be DVD... True that DVD has no competition and was established well before PS2 came along, but it illustrates the point that people aren't too big on unified devices.
PSP is out and for a short while there was a fair amout of success around UMD movies. Novelty wore off quick and again, no one cares and the significance of UMD is not that movie studios care to support UMD, but PSP games are done on UMD. This is without an affordable similar alternative (video iPod is the only other thing reasonably in the market, and even then it isn't quite the same).
PS3 will use BD-ROM. That means games for PS3 will be Blue Ray. Depending on the cost and library available for Blue Ray and HD-DVD at the time of PS3 launch, the feature will probably be a moot point. If there is even a modest library of titles for HD-DVD and a player could be had for ~100 bucks, the BlueRay aspect of PS3 will be a moot point one way or the other. It *could* have an impact if all HD-DVD players and Blue Ray players on market are still around 500 dollars or more, or if the library of both were negligible. In essence, entering a market without reasonable competition before any market penetration has occured, since PS3 would be cheaper than buying a console *and* a movie player. If a separate player is under $100 bucks few will care about the movie playing feature of PS3.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The difference between this and VHS v. Betamax is that the discs here are the same physical size, so you quickly knock off one of the big problems with making a player that does both. The rest is just electronics, and open markets will realize pretty quickly that consumers would rather pay $300 for one box that plays either format than $200 each for boxes that only do one.
I think the issue here is closer to the debate between DVD-R and DVD+R, which as we all know resulted in everything being "DVD-/+R."
whoever brings out Star Wars: The Ultimate 6 Disk Super High Def Extended Reach-around Edition to their format is going to win. cuz you know it's gonna happen. and a heck of a lot of us are going to buy it (again).
The winner will be the one that the porn industry adopts... just like every other media form in human history.
Timing is everything
To me.
Just because you don't find it worth the money doesn't mean that everyone else agrees with you.
I seen some bittorrent releases in HD formats and the difference is huge. Granted the largest actually have to be scaled down to fit on my screen but you can't deny the difference. It is the difference between an actors face being a blur with darkspots for eyes and mouth and being able to see wether they had a good nights sleep the day before.
Does it matter?
If it didn't we would still be using 8mm film. Black & White.
Everytime a new format comes along you get the same old argument about it being to costly for a minor increase. Yet that never stopped anyone before.
We will see one of these being the winner in a few years time. The early players will be sold out in no time and take up will be a lot faster then you think and then when the next-gen format war starts you will be spouting the same nonsense.
TV is a lot more important to people then you think. A 1000 dollars to have the next best thing is nothing to a lot of people.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Wikipedia page for HD-DVD says that Toshiba is working on a triple layer disc that'll hold 45GB to compete with Blu-Ray's 50GB dual layer disc.
And apparently JVC is making a triple layer Blu-Ray disc. It'll have one Blu-Ray layer (25 GB) and two DVD layers (8.5 GB).
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
There should be a national drawing. Two capsules in the glass bowl, one labeled BluRay, the other HD-DVD. The President goes on during a commercial break in Prime-Time, draws one and announces the winner. Every consumer then buys that format exclusively, which ensures that all media will be produced for it. End of problem, and certainly much better than what's going to happen otherwise.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
BD-ROM drives logically have everything physically needed to do both formats. Ergo, BD players probably will feature cross-compatibility at some point (it already will have two lasers for legacy discs anyway). Maybe they'll have a unified laser device that changes the requirement for two lasers for new and legacy support.
HD-DVD only drives will be significantly easier to produce, using the same wavelengths as today. HD-DVD drives therefore can probably go lower in price.
So you'll end up with a market of HD-DVD only players, and players that will blay both HD-DVD and BD-ROM.
So studios logically pick HD-DVD because everyone can play it. Just ask OS/2 how supporting the competing standard as well as your own works when your competition does not return the favor..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"Han shot first"
Parent makes a good point. In addition to availability, what about the content of the media itself, even if it is still available?
If we move completely over to a download on demand format, what's to keep studios from changing the content on a whim? People are already complaining about that, what with the 'remastered' versions of Star Wars (IV-VI) being the only ones available on DVD. What if they were originally released only through live streaming?
Yeah, I have a webcomic...
Thats so wrong I dont know where to start.
Normal DVD's: 4.7GB (9GB dual layer)
Blu-ray disc capacity: 25GB (50GB dual-layer)
HD-DVD disc capacity: 15GB (30GB dual layer)
Because I don't want to pay each time I watch a movie, and what you describe is the MPAA wet-dream of PPV. I'd rather be able to watch it when, and as often, as I wish having paid only once upfront.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Ultimately, Walmart chooses the winner.
Whichever of the formats Walmart chooses to put on it's shelves, is going to be the winner of this battle. It's no different than the "Videogames are created for Walmart" situation.
Lose Walmart as your sales point, and you've lost a lot.
How is this going to stifle the industry's growth unless you're talking about the industry of DISCs... b/c I see this just fueling the industry of "send it to me over broadband and screw that stupid disc crap."
From the HD material I have seen, true HD content and displays are indeed worth a few hundred dollars more to achieve. There really is a very noticable difference in quality even over DVD's.
A great example is Battlestar Galactica, where the HD feeds you can download really do look better than the DVD's. I buy the DVD's anyway to support the series but I would greatly prefer to buy HD versions instead, and am hoping I can do that with Blu-Ray discs of the seasons sooner rather than later.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unfortunately, these kind of drives will be a lot more expensive to produce since they will have to support both laser wavelengths.
Blu-ray uses a 405 nm laser wavelength.
HD-DVD uses a 405 nm laser wavelength.
There is no difference between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray lasers besides their numerical aperture characteristics, which is less of a problem.
In the meantime, both blu-ray and hd-dvd drives will already have to supply multiple wavelengths, because CDs, DVDs, and hddvdbluray all three use different wavelengths-- and next-gen DVD drives support all three. Is the difference between three lasers and four that enormous?
The massive amount of marketing which has served to outline the so-called "differences" between these two formats has made it very easy to obscure the plain fact that these two formats are almost entirely indistinguishable from an engineer's perspective.
Very few people care in the first place, and unification was their only hope of taking on the masses. A very small percentage of people are interested as it is, and the prospect of slightly better picture quality is not going to be enough for the average person to want to invest thousands of bucks into this technology and new discs for a long time to come.
I'm a mid-early adopter; that means I don't buy new tech day-and-date when it comes out, but usually 3-9 months later when the market begins to stabalize and the initial kinks are worked out. With this HD/Blu-Ray stuff I can tell you, it will be years before even I invest in it.
There is this core group of home theater junkies that have been programmed to believe that they are somehow ruining their lives by not watching HD-native content, that somehow they have been missing out on watching the same movies with slightly clearer picture and it's just like the stone-age. If you listen to them, we've been watching hand-puppets through a white sheet lit by candles.
The truth is, almost no one gives a crap about either format. The reasons the general public caught on to DVD were diverse yet simple : durability, availability, price (remember, most VHS tapes were not sell-through at release and cost $100 if you wanted to legally purchase them), and, probably least important to those people, quality. The leap from VHS to DVD was absolutely staggering, and at the same time brought widescreen home entertainment to the masses.
DVD to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? Not so much. Yes, the picture is a bit clearer. So? That's the big advantage that people are going to invest thousands of dollars for?
It's just not going to happen any time soon. Most people have their DVD players hooked up with composite cables or S-Video at best, on SD displays. A properly callibrated DVD player, using component inputs, 16x9 mode, and an anamaphoric enhanced DVD (virtually all theatrical films released in the last 6-7 years) on an HD-TV monitor is gorgeous. Will an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version be even better? Sure, but not enough to convince even someone like me to buy it - so good luck with the Wal-Mart crowd.
The simple truth is VHS was good enough for most customers - and there will be a new format (holographic media, etc.) before the majority of customers even care. The HD-DVD/Blu-Ray fight (they lost in the begining by not joining forces) is going to be for a tiny percentage of consumers, and everyone else is just going to watch our beautiful SD DVD's and continue to enjoy them as we have.
Just because a company tells you that you "need" the next best thing, doesn't mean you do; the transparent reasons for the studios to push this unwanted format on us are clear (DRM, increasing file size to decrease sharing, the box they put themselves in with DVD sell-through pricing [DVD was never meant to be this cheap, it was an accident]), and the only people that give a shit are those that only enjoy their movies if they have a piece of paper telling them it's got a higher resolution and is "better". If you are sitting there watching "The Godfather" and spend your time distracted by the background details because of the higher resolution, you are missing the entire point.
AEfx
Yes, but if you so much as get a hairline scratch on your blu-ray disc it's forever useless.
Please note that this is only temporary . After the first few months of movies, they will start putting the resolution limit on newer discs.
This is only a lawsuit-preventative measure; they're not doing it to be nice or to be charitable, or because they actually care about anyone but themselves, they're doing it to prevent themselves from getting sued by everyone who bought a non-HDMI TV.
Your theory only - and incorrect. The real reason is that all the studios suddenly got cold feet at REALLY making the new formats with millions of installed sets - the answer, as always, is simple - follow the money.
That is why they will not impose limits on playback for many, many years to come - because it limits the market they can sell into. As much as they fear piracy, they love money far more and since they have realized how many people would not be buying systems if the lockdown excluded existing displays, they have for the moment chosen a path that happens also to be friendlier for the consumer.
Consumer dollars have spoken by purchasing HD equipment before all the copy protection was really hammered out. If all the sets sold today had HDMI built in I'm sure we'd not be seeing this level of openess in output support.
The real question is if we'll see all consumer equipment phase out analog signals en masse over the next decade, or if there will still be a lot of cheaper HD equipment always using analog inputs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The way I see, Blue-Ray is a better technology storing vastly more information than HD-DVD, but also a little bit more expensive.
So I see this ending like the VHS/Beta race in the past. Although Beta was vastly superior to VHS it died. Hopefully since Sony is backing Blue-Ray and the PS3 will be a low cost (lower than other hq blue ray players) blue ray player it'll help keep Blue-Ray in the lead. I personally think its the better technology and with its 3M coating on the reflective surface that makes it virtually unscratchable it will have much longer shelf life being thrown around by me when I'm drunk.
Go Blue Ray.
I have an HDTV, and I have to say, HD fails to knock my socks off. It's nice and a definite improvement, but it's not earth shattering. A 1080i discovery show does look better than a 480p DVD, but not a ton. DVDs look pretty good. Good enough it's not annoying or anything.
On any non-HD set, of course, there's no beneift at all.
It's nothing like the VHS-DVD jump. The benefits on ANY set are immense. The picture is better on all but the lowest quality sets and doesn't degrade over time. The sound as leaps and bounds over VHS, as good as the theatres if you've the hardware. There are all kinds of special features on most discs. Best of all: no rewinding, no fast forwarding, just seek to wherever you like.
So I understand why everyone made the DVD leap, and even that took a while. I am skeptical people will make the HD leap. HD sets are still rare and, really, HD isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's better, no question, but not earth shattering.
And of course one has to wonder how many will be shitty upsamples, not full remasters. I have HBO HD and they show movies all the time in HD... Or rather I should say it's an HD signal to the DVR. The actual source is not HD. It's DVD rez that's been upsampled. It looks just about identicle to the results from my DVD player. I wonder how many "HD-DVDs" will actually end up being poor upsamples jobs that really don't give much mroe effective rez than DVD.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_Ray#Hard-coating
/. is good for you.
There will be a problem when standard def tv's are no longer sold, which is what i've been hearing for what, the last 10 years or so? :)
Buy the Beatles' White Album again.
K was right.
The difference from all the examples you list:
* Not just passive consumption. All the formats you listed are for consumption only - but Blu-Ray and HD-DVD burners will be out for PC's soon, and are badly needed to back up huge hard drives (DVD's are not cutting it for 400GB hard drives anymore).
* Trojan horse. Every PS3 will ship with a Blu-Ray drive. People wil not be buying the PS3 because it has a blu-ray drive - but they may well buy Blu-Ray media because they had a player. The original PS2 and XBox really helped drive DVD adoption.
* Quality. In all the formats you list, for most consumers there was not really a noticable difference in quality. People needed exotic equipment to be able to tell it was better, or really good ears which most people have not developed. Look at the success of iTunes! People are however very visually oriented and HD media really does look better than DVD's on a good display, by a fair margin.
That is why this war will not result in yet another ditto.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So don't scratch it.
Let's rejoice. The more they bicker and fight, the higher the chance that customers won't decide and sit it out 'til they know which format is going to win, and the longer they wait, the higher the chance that those DRM-boxes rot in stores.
Could well be that the customer is the winner of the format war. By not choosing either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Managed copies will likley require an internet connection so it can "ask" to make a copy, and possibly also involve payment for the right to copy."
As ubiquitous as internet access seems to be, this is never going to work.
I woudl agree, but in fairness near the end of the article was a bit I had not read before I posted the link - explaining that the end standard would not require internet connections for consumer players, thus making it less likley (potentially) that studios would require internet access to proceed with the copy.
The studios already have backed down on the whole "no true HD over an analog connection" thing. But I think it's a little less likley many of them will allow managed copying without direct authorization or payment, as it's one less sale they might make (still keeping the dream alive of selling the same movie in multiple formats rather than lettting the consumer do any downsampling to other devices).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For all the well articulated reasons though, I sure hope that folks of the /. ilk do their part to kill this thing.
Here's an idea... we all have relatives & acquaintances who love forwarding alarmist & dramatic tin-foil-hat emails, right? How 'bout a little informal "Best alarmist subject line" contest right here for HD-DVD & BluRay's furtherance of HDCP, DRM & Trusted Computing? "New DVD format will let Bill Gates lock you out of your computer!" "Hidden codes on new DVD format lets Sony secretly make new DVD players 'expire' & stop working!" "New media won't play on old monitors or TVs!" (I'm still trying to decide if the fingers of innuendo should point towards the Trilateral Commission, the Free Masons, Scientology, the Skulls, or the Catholic church. I'm leaning towards the Skulls, but open to other opinions...)
Pi Ran Out
Wish I had a +1 Funny. First LOL I've had in a while on /.
Look, something broke down talks - and it's known HP split away from exclusive Blu-Ray support until Blu-Ray included the Microsoft menuing format (search on Slashdot or elsewhere for the stories). Is it so hard to believe Microsoft might have been the player that forced HD-DVD to stay apart rather than loose a whole menuing format, for which they have already developed the authoring tools?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
However, this time around, it won't be as big a deal since anyone could buy a PS2 and a DVD and see a big improvement over their VCR. With the nextgen discs, if you don't have a HDTV, you won't see any real improvement. So (I would think) a smaller # of people will buy a PS3 to act as a budget DVD player. Some will, but it's not like the VHS-to-DVD transition...
The latest figures I could find indicate many millions of HD-TV's in homes today. So while you might not see a difference in video quality, there are many millions who can - do the cross section of those people that will also buy a PS3 and you have at least a million homes that will notice a difference in quality. From that standpoint I still think it will drive adoption of the format much like the PS2 did for DVDs.
When other people see how good HD stuff looks (visiting a friend who has a set), they have a lot of motivation to upgrade - and further motivation not to visit a theater.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I feel just bizarre saying Blu-Ray all the time.
And I stand very much corrected on the laser wavelength issue. For some reason I keep seeing that posted as a HD-DVD advantage.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm sure with all the amazing things they are doing with video compression codecs lately like apples H.264 and all the different incarnations of mpeg4/divx that they could fit a 2 hour movie in full HD on one 8.7 gig DVD. Why hasn't anyone taken this route? All you would have to do is make DVD players with a little more processing power and you could use the same discs and drives. I know that this only addresses movies not the increased data storage on the new formats, but it would be so much more affordable. It would be a good way to tie things over until prices come down on HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
People complaining about the DRM in Blu-Ray need to realize that HD DVD uses the *same* DRM: AACS.
Personally I hope Blu-Ray wins because the discs are higher capacity, and they are coated with a polymer that makes them almost scratch-proof.
I wont be buying into either format until they support component output.
And yeah, I know players will be released with "backdoor" codes that will allow me to do this, but that defeats the point.
I bought into this, now I want the content.
The result is the same, downloadable music and movies will quickly be realized to potentially devastated in a common system's configuration, and either back up or just buying each disc will still be popular, either way optical media is here to stay.
a) only happens once before they realize the clickety sound of drive head skipping across disk platter is frequently unfixable (or not reasonably fixable)
b) Not a scalable strategy in terms of money. I.e. 4 dvd discs are under a buck if part of a spool, 20 GB of disk drive is still about 20-30 bucks (hard drives only get so cheap). But this was part of my point, DVD's are too small for high-def backups, and *if* people have strategies similar to the grandparent post in terms of download only video instead of purchasing media direct, whatever media is more available for cheap burnable configurations will have a particular advantage.
I am of the opinion that disc purchasing isn't going anywhere due to streaming, unlike other people who think streaming obsoletes everything. Blockbuster and Netflix can worry about streaming and IPTV, pay per view, but places like Suncoast, Best Buy, Wal Mart have little to worry about yet. MP3s are popular in general because they are relatively short and audio only, hence very small and manageable on a few GB of storage for extraordinarily large storage. A single DVD can hold most people's entire movie collection. Let's assume a movie collection would be 4 GB per movie and 1 movie per 3 album. 3 albums would be about 180 MB. If that rough guesstimate held, storage would have to be about 120 GB before I would think saveable streams should worry movie publishers.
It's probably will happen, but it's a ways off before 120GB storage flash parts, mini hard drives, or single disc optical media capable of that will be out.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
God damnit! I require a penny from each and every reader who sees this! You are misusing my valuable trademark!
Bot Assisted Blogging
C'mon people, all that matters is the capacity of the disc... all other diferences are just in the software.
If it's down to the market to decide who wins, then unless Blu-ray can somehow be linked to terrorism, it'll be Blu-ray that wins.
I mean, to the layman, the two formats are the same, except the names:
1. "Blu-ray has a blue ray. It may sound a little too sci-fi, but I bet it looks cool (even though I can't see it). HD-DVD... sounds like an upgrade of DVD which isn't groundbreakingly new."
2. "HD-DVD is a mouthful. 5 Syllables that you can only pronounce quickly if you don't mind mumbling? or 2 Syllables that fit together nicely?"
Which will layman choose?
Just make a unified player that has both drives.. one device for both types of media.. the end.
Too many people are happy with their existing DVD players (and DVD/VCR combos), and with the price point dropping on both the players, and the recorders, most won't purchase anything else for a while. Most people have a regular television, and those that have HD are pretty happy with DVD using fiber audio, and component video. This will only affect a niche market, just like the laserdisc did.
With the economy in such a state as it is, the average USA consumer is more concerned with putting food on the table, and gasoline in the cars (SUVs).
How long did the VHS standard stay in use? Why can't this apply to DVD? With the shitty movies out there these days, why upgrade anyway. As I said, the economy will not support this. Maybe it will in 10 years; who knows.
Remember, it's not all about "which one is better". For Joe 6pack, if it puts out a real HD picture, that's enough, and both will. The reason this is horrible is because HD comes with HDMI, and HDMI comes with HDCP. The HDCP group has proposed that all HD compatible gear, your TV, your computer, and any other gadget, be subject to the HDCP rules. Among them are loss of all analog inputs by 2013. Once that goes, then you have to use the standards given by the INDUSTRY (content, not hardware) What if you don't want to play nice with the HDCP folks...you won't have a choice. RIAA/MPAA will own your TV set...they will control the inputs. We cannot allow this to happen. Any temporary allowance of HD signals over component is just a sop to the early adopters.... Buying either HD DVD or Blu Ray is giving your home entertainment equipment to the RIAA, lock stock and barrel. We need another format, and it has to output over component.
I didn't have to spend a few grand just to enjoy DVD's. The difference in quality between DVD and HD DVD / Blue Ray isn't as big as the difference in quality between VHS and DVD. To make matters worse, HD DVD / Blue Ray is now a crap shoot. One or both will fail and I as the consumer would have to fit the bill if I were to buy into any of this in the first place.
Even if they fail at the 8 layer bd disks, 4 layered blu-ray disks would hold a massive amount of data.
Hmmm... Pie...
So in order to fix this two-standard mess content producers need to distribute their media on double sided discs. One side HD-DVD, the other Blue-Ray. This way, no matter which player you buy, you can watch it on either. This allows content producers to rerelease old films and make insane profits. Win-win for everybody. Yaaaaaaay.
My guess is that anyone who knows the difference between Blu-Ray and HDD also knows that two competing HD formats is a complete disaster for the consumer. Even if they do not now, they will when sales begin. I am completely flabbergasted that after the VHS/Betamax fiasco we are experiencing this again. I am not going to lay down $1000, let alone the evetual $100, for a Betamax. If I ever had any illusions rational self-interest could trump greed, I am now "cured." A pox on both their houses. There has to be a book in this and a measure of fault other than everyone involved. PS: What I mean by the solution is obvious is that if literally millions of consumers can see it as plain as the nose in front of their face what the heck is going on with the main players involved.
I'm just wondering if the market is large enough and sophisticated enough that two formats can coexist. Arguably, the video market today is quite different than when Betamax and VHS were trying to define what home video recording could be. Now people have very fixed expectations and home video has a way higher penetration rate into American society (and the rest of the world ;) IS the general market mature enough and the technological advances obvious enough for consumers to support two standards?
I realize that having a single standard makes it easier to gain a critical mass of titles and drive down costs. Also, the death of PSP videos shows how studios will ditch a losing format. There are any number of factors that could doom one of the formats. I think, though, that consumer confusion or relunctance might not the critical one.
And by the way, think about how you'll work around the problem of two standards with different properties. Probably the same way you deal with computer problems or video games, you buy both. A PS3 and computer with HD-DVD, both game systems, a tower with two drives or two cheap, made in China players in the rack. How many people would just by both?
If Toshiba wants HD-DVD to win the battle they would be well advised to get some high def pornos available as soon as possible. Porn is one of the main reasons VHS beat out Betamax and has been the driving force behind many other technological innovations.
A standards war would appear to have some upsides for the MPAA, but consumers will likely choose "none of the above."
First, the more easily cracked format will be able to be face-savingly abandoned, whichever that turns out to be. If there had been DVD and DVD-2 formats, (don't bring up the original DiVX, I mean functionally equivalent formats), as soon as DVD had been breached, you'd have seen the studios latch on to DVD-2. Now we all know that any copy protection is defeatable, but the MPAA is merely concerned with stalling the inevitable.
Second, owners of the losing format will be counted on to repurchase their media at some point. Imagine if you'd purchased a library of Betamax movies back in the day. Chances are, at some point, you'd have considered buying some of them again in VHS, (pre-DVD of course.) The MPAA profit structure is all about reselling you the same old crap every time they up the resolution; of course they'd love to resell you the same movie twice simply because the high-def horse you picked never made it around the track.
In the end, the winning format will be an unencumbered format, namely the hard drive or whatever general purpose storage medium is around in three years. Think about it... these high-def movies will look just great compressed down with a modern codec, and will take up very little of tomorrow's multi-terrabyte drives. Why the hell would consumers want to handle stacks of plastic disks when they can have a jukebox?
The MPAA will give the consumers what they don't want: a standards war, copy protection, and high prices. The consumers will respond with piracy. In the end, you can't sell someone something they don't want to buy.
...Because the name makes instant sense to the average consumer, and "Blu-Ray" is jargon that doesn't communicate anything. (Unless "Blu-Ray" is appreciably cheaper than HD-DVD, in which case it might win after all.)
I'm serious -- regardless of the inherent qualities of each standard, this is Marketing 101. "HD-DVD" tells you exactly what it is, and wary and/or ignorant consumers will probably buy it on that basis alone.
Don't laugh -- products often succeed or fail from unbelievably simple -- but not immediately obvious -- reasons.
just like it happened in case of SACD vs DVD-A. Both offer some improvements (albeit often just marginal) over the olde Red Book CD, yet having two competing formats and a hefty dose of encryption so no copying is possible led to to marginalization of both SACD and DVD-A. For all practical purposes, the war between SACD and DVD-A ended with the regular Red Book CD as a winner. Will the history repeat itself? I think so. Just consider the following factors:
(i) Two competing incompatible formats (consumer gets confused).
(ii) Offers some improvements but requires the high-end, high-res equipment to fully appreciate those improvements. (1080p, anyone?)
(iii) Encryption/copy protection taken to the max.
Spot on. Actually, I also meant to complain about concept manufacturers "throwing-in" a software part to differentiate their products, when they're really the same thing. We should keep things as simple as possible, where the media is the media whether it's a stamped aluminum sheet covered in resin, bumps on a vinyl platter, or scratches in stone tablets. Another poster referred to ext3, reiserfs, and NTFS, which are definately different ways of presenting the data, it is true. But you wouldn't buy a ext3-only hard disk or a NTFS-only hard disk. You would expect your hdd to be filesystem agnostic. These new disks should be block devices that don't care how they're formatted, or what country they're in.
I can see now, looking back, how using only the word "gobbledigook" fails to adequately express those sentiments.
--disclaimer: I do not understand enough about the drives in question to know whether they are similar enough to be exactly the same except for software, but it does seem they are headed that way from other posts on similar topics.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Is going to be those no-name Chineses manufacturers who will come up with a machine capable of playing both. And not only both, why not throw in original DVD playback functionality, along with .mp3 and codec playback from discs.
The reason is that I believe customers will think it ridiculous to have to purchase two different players: One for movies from a certain alliance, the other needed for movies in the other camp.
Unlike the conversion from tapes to CD's, DVD to HD/Blu-Ray retains the basic fundamental properties for reading the data. Thus in the long-term the development of these players is a real possibility.
Ultimately in the long run I see no need to side with one company or the other! Can't beat em, join em (literally)!
The Chinese EVD is essentially the DVD format with better compression and higher resolution.
It seems to escape the DRM information restrictions and patent trolls, we need to look to China. (for freedom ??)
A DVD player with DVI out and EVD support should be enough. 20/40gig discs are not really needed if better than mpeg2 is used. Though support for the blue discs would be a good EVD thing too.
"Did you convert to mp3pro? Oh, me neither. Did you convert to the record sized laser discs? No? Me neither. Troll another issue, please."
*raises hand*
I did, and that's why I can see the Star Wars trilogy in it's original glory instead of either going..going...gone VHS, or Lucas's basterized DVD version.
50GB?
Me too. End of story, Blu-Ray will be around. And while it's around, why not put movies on it anyway?
Blu-Ray supports higher-end compression schemes than just MPEG-2.
There's no reason we can't have more storage and better compression.
As to lasers getting cheap, it won't take long to make those Blu-Ray pickups cheap. It simply won't be a problem by 2007.
LaserDisc never got cheap, mostly because it wasn't intended to. Even when DVD came on the scene, everyone know DVD would kill LD. But LDs remained $40-$50 ($70 for special editions!) even when DVDs started at $35 and rapidly plunged to $25. I don't think LD could be considered a failure. It did what it was supposed to do, which was offer a high-priced, high-quality format for those who wanted to pay for it. DVD is of course an enormous success, and largely because (as you say) it was a different time, and the potential market for a high-quality format had broadened significantly.
I don't agree DVDs were high tech VCRs. For starters, they couldn't record. And they were at least as successful in the beginning as a data format for PCs and a carrier of 5.1 sound (which VCRs never could do) than as a medium with higher quality pictures. Universal sell-through pricing (which VHS never enjoyed during its peak years) helped a lot too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If you mean how many flac rips I download vs MP3 then the answer is any chance I can get.
Oh and I went from tape based walkman to cd and then mini-disc at the earliest opportunity.
My MP3 players also get replaced once a year to keep up.
Call me a slave to consumerism.
Granted sometimes a format fails, it happens. In video land I think the most recent one was laserdisc.
This time it is different. You got a new generation of TV's that are getting HD feeds from your cable supplier yet when people pay 20 bucks for a DVD they are getting a inferior version.
So I don't have DVD-audio disks. In the same way I don't have Betamax tapes (actually I do but that is work related) because the other format (online music) won in that format war.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"The market will decide the winner", eh?
More like "We're going to torture the world with a war between proprietary standards because we think we can make more money that way. Bwahaha! Lettem burrrrn!"
No next-gen optical media for me, and that's that!
This is a manufacturer / content-provider solution for a problem, a market need that does not exist! The only benefit this product offers consumers is increased resolution on HDTVs. Can anyone really tell the difference on the billions of crap televisions out there? And what's the market penetration of HDTV sets? I wonder ... People really seem happy with the great res of current DVDs and certainly love the 5.1 surround sound. Until there's a critical mass of HD display devices, who really cares about "better" pictures?
I'd love higher video resolutions on physical media, but it seems to me that both of these product offerings are really only about getting DRM into the marketplace - and NOTHING MORE. Blech. I'll pass for now, thanks.
You make a good point that its what's in the stores to purchase that matters. WalMart, with its ubiquitous stores and enormous pull, will probably only carry one format. That format will win.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I predict the winner of the format war will be the format that has its DRM cracked first.
What better incentive does someone need other than; "If you buy this one you can get free stuff".
--- I'm sure using a computer was fun back in the 80's. *sigh*
A couple of uncles of mine run an AM station in the small town I grew up in. In the early 90's, they had to replace their transmitter, and from a price standpoint, a stereo transmitter was only marginally more expensive than a monaural transmitter, so chose a stereo transmitter (Motorola C-QUAM I think). They don't regret it, but the only people that got any benefit out of it were people who had GM vehicles with Delco sound systems back in the early 90's. Most of those radios had AM stereo support. A few years ago, they had transmitter trouble and had to get it repaired, they didn't repair the stereo section. It was going to cost extra to repair a part of the transmitter with no real benefit to any of the their listeners. They blame the FCC for not enacting forced adoption, as with UHF and FM. On an offtopic sidenote, digital terrestrial radio is the next big potential gain for AM. Investors all over the country are buying small AM radio stations with the hopes that digital radio will bring the AM spectrum back into prominence. Early indications seem to be promising, with a digital AM signal being greater than FM quality, and there is only a single standard, but only time will tell how strong adoption is.
That link says there were 7 million HDTVs by the end of 2004. So even if you say that # is 20 million now, that is probably less than 5% of all TVs.
DVD was an upgrade anyone could enjoy with only a new player. HDTV is an upgrade 5% can enjoy.
The rate of adoption will be much lower. Sorry, but that's just a fact. DVD was the fastest adobpted home elctronic device ever. I really doubt BD or HD will even approach the rate of adoption... especially with the "format war".
This isn't to say those people who have HDTVs already won't buy. But people like myself just aren't going to drop $400+ for a player, then at least that much again for a TV, all at once. It's going to be far more incremental than that.
Also note that when I said that DVD was a big improvement over VHS, I wasn't just talking picture - I was talking the fact that DVDs don't wear out or get eaten by your player thus making you owe $60-100 to blockbuster (happened to me THREE TIMES during the VHS era), the fact that you can play them in your computer, skippable chapters, special features, commentary, no putting in the second tape for long movies, smaller size, multi-use (PS2 played DVDs, CDs AND games)... The only thing BD/HD has over DVD is image quality, which most people can't appreciate anyway without upgrading their TVs. (For data it also has much more storage, but for movies that doesn't really matter much)
Bottom line is that the upgrade to DVD from VHS bought you ALOT for not too much money (just the player). The upgrade to BR/HD from DVD doesn't get you as much, even if you have a HDTV, and if you don't, it's more $$$.
HD or BR will undoubtedly be very successful and probably replace DVD (either that or downloads). But it will not happen as fast as DVD overtaking VHS. There are simply more barriers than there were in that format change.
I agree with pretty much all your points about it offering much less that DVD did over VHS. I am ot saying these new formats will grow as quickly as DVD, just that they will grow at all which some seem in doubt of.
Sure HDTV penetration over the whole populace is low at the moment but it has been going pretty strong, and with a mandate to move to all HDTV signals in a little while many people will be going for TV upgrades. So that will help - on a few years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley