Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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
"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!
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).
These days everyone knows what HD means. These days most people have DVD players.
Blu-Ray? What's that?
"the market will decide the winner"
Just another way of saying, "We're okay if 49.9% of the consumers
get screwed. We'll screw the surviving 50.1% later."
Because people like shiny, tangible things. They call them possessions. It's why e-books have not, and will not replace books.
HD-DVD Blu Ray
As you can see the difference is quite a bit.
With all the DRM and other crippling measures, nothing would please me more than to see both formats die and rot in hell.
What?
Given the choice between two incompatible standards for AM Stereo, the market chose niether.
Ditto ditto quadraphonic records, ditto.
Ditto ditto DAT vs DCC, ditto.
I strongly suspect that HD-DVD and Blu-ray will be another ditto.
How ya like dat?
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.
That's okay, both sides know they can just blame any of their failures on piracy.
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
NO!
The same consumer base had no problem eating up Dolby Pro Logic in the early 90s. DPL required 5 speakers and a sub! Now, one could argue that people purchased DPL systems exclusively for the home theater, but I don't think this is the case. I'd say that the majority of people that adoptered DPL at the peak of its success were mostly enticed by it's ability to matrix stereo music into a surround format, thus gaining a 3d soundfield without need for a format change.
I think the lesson to learn with quadraphonic 8-tracks/cassettes/vinyl, SACD, DVD-Audio, DCC, etc, is the following; People don't readily adopt expensive format quality upgrades that physically look the same and provide the same functionality as their predecessor.
In consumer electronics, there are two factors that generally direct which format becomes standard: time-to-market and licensing.
The first-to-market standards proposal has a good shot at winning, because by the time other competing proposals get to market, the first one has so much market penetration that nobody wants the second for fear of incompatibility.
Licensing models that are less restrictive and more open also tend to find favor among consumers. The less cost and hassle the consumer experiences wins product loyalty in the marketplace.
Consider a few examples:
VHS vs. Betamax: Sony was first-to-market with Betamax in 1975, followed in 1976 by JVC with the VHS format. Based on time, Betamax should have become the standard for magnetic recording of video. However, Sony made a mistake with licensing: only Sony would produce Betamax tapes and devices. JVC opened up their technology to licensed manufacturers, allowing for competition in the marketplace which drove the prices of VHS far enough below that of Betamax (and increased the features) to influence the marketplace to invest in VHS technology. Because at the time Betamax devices were still expensive, there was little market penetration for JVC to overcome. In summary, the open standard won.
DVD vs. Divx (not the codec): Does anyone remember this debate? Those who do, remember that these two competing CD-like digital video distribution technologies were in a little war for the consumer's pocketbook. Both technologies came out about the same time, so time-to-market wasn't an issue. The issue was Divx pay-per-view licensing model: instead of buying a video once and wathing it an infinite number of times (as with DVD), the consumer would buy the Divx video fairly cheaply but then pay something every time it is watched. Needless to say, this went over like a fart in church. DVD won based on its superior licensing model.
AM Stereo: I'm not up on the licensing models or time frame of the competing AM stereo technologies, but they were both late-to-market in relation to standard AM radio. There was already HUGE market penetration of standard AM broadcast equipment and receivers; few people saw benefit in replacing that equipment. Had there been just one proposal for AM Stereo, and had it been completely open, it is still doubtful it would have ever caught on.
Microsoft vs. Linux (Gates vs. Torvalds):consumer but it poses problems for developers who, for economic reasons, wish to maintain security over their intellectual property. It is for this reason that many hardware manufacturers do not support Linux: their legal departments cannot confidently say that their intellectual property will be protected if they provide Linux drivers for their products. In this regard, Microsoft's licensing model is superior to Linux's for the developer.
So in the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD debate, who will win? Which proposed standard will be first-to-market? Which will have the less-restrictive licensing model? What about the third factor, technical superiority? What about the fourth factor -- does the public even want it (think DAT or video phones)?
~Jon
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.