Video Games and the Hi-Def Format Wars

Pika the Mad writes "Reuters has a concise but interesting article up about how video games will help decide the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD. According to industry analysts "What Sony and Microsoft decide to announce publicly or to dealers at E3 next week will be key." So this year's E3 could very well be a deciding factor in how you view your movie library for years to come."

Comments

I still watch Beta

[nurb432]

So i doubt it will have much of an impact on me.

Though i might upgrade to one of them fancy color tvs i keep hearing about sometime this summer.

Re:I still watch Beta

[Detritus]

It took a long time for color TV to become commonplace. The first RCA color TV sets were sold in 1954. It wasn't until 1972 that color TV reached 50% market penetration in the USA.

Real determiners of HD format wars

[Anonymous Coward]

The real determiners of the HD format wars will be the adult DVD producers. They put out over 12000 titles a year and this is the single biggest market of content repackagers / producers.

Re:Real determiners of HD format wars

[dnoyeb]

Very unlikely. pr0n industry values quantity over quality. A HD DVD is sort of a luxury version. Not much 'elite' porn out there as it is. The majority of stores and websites sell pure garbage. So-and-so #124. Why do they bother?

And what they do sell as elite porn... Well what can you expect from the pr0n industry after all?

Re:Real determiners of HD format wars

[The Warlock]

The thing is, it's pretty clear that the future of pr0n is Internet distribution, not a new kind of disc.

(Incidentally, I also think that this is the direction that movie distribution will take.)

Re:Real determiners of HD format wars

[westlake]

The real determiners of the HD format wars will be the adult DVD producers

You want to pick the winner? Look at the market for family entertainment.

How much do you think the Harry Potter franchise is worth to Time-Warner? To Walmart? It has made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen.

Interesting, but untrue

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but there's really no relation. The games we play will have no relation. This is just wishful thinking on the movie industrys part. I think they are statring to realize that people just are that interested in the HD format enough to spend the additional dollars to upgrade equipment. And, as more and more people start making noise about all the DRM garbage associated, they are just going to steer away for quite a long time.

Re:Interesting, but untrue

[shidarin'ou]

The point is that the next gen consoles (360 when it gets an HD-DVD drive and PS3 with Blu-Ray) will be bringing an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player into every home that has a next gen console- therefore every console sold is ALSO a player sold. To make the numbers smaller, if 100,000 PS3 sell, 20,000 360s, 2000 Blu-Ray Players and 10,000 HD-DVD players, it might LOOK like HD-DVD has won the war, but when you add in consoles, it's actually 102k vs 30k- Blu-Ray wins because of the game consoles.

Industry analysts are predicting that because of the expense of the standalone players this is EXACTLY how thw "winner" is going to be decided- therefore what Sony and MS say at E3 _is_ going to have a big impact- but everyone knows what they're going to say anyway.

Re:Interesting, but untrue

[westlake]

as more and more people start making noise about all the DRM garbage associated, they are just going to steer away for quite a long time.

I doubt it.

If the novie plays that will be the end of it for just about everyone.

If one click in Vista or OSX saves HD to your hard drive or low-res to a portable player, so much the better.

But only a Geek to give a damn about codecs, cables and connectors, or the fine points of managed copy. Everyone else will just buy the standard color-coded MCE bundles from Dell or HP and be up and running in under an hour.

To be completely honest

[goldcd]

I'm quite happy with DVD for now - and I'll be damned if I'm going to buy either standard for the foreseeable future.
I mean I'd like Hi-def, but the amount it's going to cost me to upgrade and all the hassles with the competing standards, the retarded prices they'll be charging, the 'oh this can't play on your PC as we don't like the connector you're using' blah blah
I just can't be bothered. DVD'll do me fine for a few more years - and after that I'll be sticking to media-less content.

Re:To be completely honest

[swansontec]

My thoughts exactly. Why buy either when both will be replaced by direct download? Until then, the DVD is good enough. In fact, DVD will probably be around much longer than that, just as the floppy is still around today.

People keep comparing the BluRay vs HD-DVD war to the VHS vs Betamax war, but I think the comparison is flawed. This is more like the Zip-disk vs LS120 "war." Remember that? People wanted to know which format would replace the floppy disk, but both are now irrelevant. The difference is simple - VHS and Betamax both competed in a market where there was no existing alternative, while the Zip-disk and LS120 competed in a market with a well-entrenched but less-capable alternative. In the end, better technologies like flash drives, email, and networks destroyed the market for the high-capacity floppy replacements. Meanwhile, the floppy itself still lives on for the few things it can still do well, like system recovery. For the same reason, the DVD wil still be with us years after the HD-DVD and BluRay are forgotten. How else will we watch our massive collections of "old DVDs?"

Re:To be completely honest

[analog_line]

I concur.

Frankly, HD-DVD and BluRay displays at such a high resolution, I can't imagine that half the people that buy HDTV sets can even see any actual quality difference between an HDTV version of a movie and a standard DVD version without buy a television so large that few if any can afford it. My eyes aren't that good. Hell, my TV isn't that good, and I don't want to and am not going to buy one until this one gets broken beyond repair (and there's a very good TV repair place near here, so that's not very likely).

Also, there's little actual advantage that I can see in the HD-DVD/BluRay over the DVD format, aside from a reduction in the number of discs needed for big movie sets (like the LotR special editions, TV series, etc) but that kind of economy isn't going to last very long. The content size will expand to fit the media. Video games used to be dwarfed by the capacity of CDs, now they're pushing the limits of multiple DVDs, multiple HD-DVD/BluRay will soon follow so that doesn't really solve the multiple disc problem permanently. DVD had very clear advantages over VHS. HD-DVD's advantages are not so clear.

Re:To be completely honest

[westlake]

I can't imagine that half the people that buy HDTV sets can even see any actual quality difference between an HDTV version of a movie and a standard DVD version without buy a television so large that few if any can afford it.

RCA 52" Widescreen Projection HDTV, HD52W59 $ 894 USD

Re:To be completely honest

[tverbeek]

Granted, there's a market out there of people who'll spend nearly a grand on a TV. Not all of us are that stupid and/or rich.

Re:To be completely honest

[ThomHamilton]

Perhaps you can try again. The listed TV actually DOES include the DVI-HDTV input.

For those who don't know the nomenclature, DVI-HDTV is the proper name for a DVI input with HDCP support included. It is fully compatible with HDMI via use of a simple adapter cable from HDMI sources, or can accept direct DVI sources, both with HDCP 'protection'.

Re:To be completely honest

[Buran]

I'm quite happy with DVD for now - and I'll be damned if I'm going to buy either standard for the foreseeable future.

Exactly. Why bother? It's so much less expensive to use standard DVD, I already have the equipment, there are lots of movies available, my TV upsamples to get close to HD resolution (it can't resolve small stuff that was never resolvable in the first place -- not like those magical photoshop plugins CSI has --, but it makes the picture look much better).

And then look at the prices. $300 and up for a player? That doesn't work with just any TV? (It will work with mine but that's beside the point). I got my player for $50, a couple of years ago. The most recent DVD acquisition cost me $10. Why should I spend hundreds for a player and then 3-5 times what I pay now for movies?

No thanks. They've hit the point of diminishing returns. And then there's the fact that I can play back the disks I have now on just about anything, extract content from them (I have a few tracks from a live concert disc in MP3 format in my music library, so I can listen to it at work or in the car). And then there's the fact that it's just too much hassle to switch.

The only thing I am interested in HD-DVD and Blu-ray for? Data storage at work. Once I figure out which one is going to catch on I will buy blanks and a burner and make sure that all the computers in the lab can read the media, and start dumping data to those discs. We have thousands of disks right now and I'm rapidly running out of storage space, and the idea of disks that can hold 20-25 GB of data, not just 4.3 or 8.6, is something that has me waiting to see where this goes.

Re:To be completely honest

[7Prime]

Folks, anyone else out there realize that $900 is extremely expensive for the average joe to spend on a TV? Let's see, the majority of TVs are bought by late teens and 20-somethings, heading out into the world, or college bound to fit in their tiny apartments or basement flats. As they have famillies, SOME will become wealthy enough to spend $500 on a 30" TV, most will be happy with a 20" (as my familly has been for years), an elite few will be purchasing $800 widescreen, rear projection systems with surround sound equipment. The /. community is a VERY BAD sample of mainstream society. Most (not all) /.ers are middle class to to upper class citizens, as they had the fortune of being able to be introduced to high techology at an early age (I know there's a few of you here and there that are exceptions, but you are a minority). Also, we LOVE gadgets and technology, and various forms of entertainment. And still, from what I'm seeing, the majority of people even HERE wouldn't even benefit from HD.

Take off your rosie colored glasses and realize:

1. the average familly has a 20"-30" TV
2. the average individual living on their own has a 15"-20" TV
3. even though it has become a common catch phrase in our culture, very few people have "Home Entertainment Systems" this was a term circulated by TV manufacturers as a sort of "Everybody's doing it!" tactic.

I haven't done a direct comparison, but going to take a guess that HD will only be of real significantly noticable difference on 40"+ TVs. That's an extremely tiny part of the market. Most everyone else is fat and happy, and would rather spend their time trying to figure out a way of paying less at the pump.

Funny, I consider myself a film buff, I even work as a video editor and producer at a TV station, my life litterally revolves around the tube, yet I have zero interest in any of this HD stuff. When I see a movie, I don't care if it has the nth degree of resolution. My favorite movie of the year was "Good Night & Good Luck", how is HD going to help that? Even if "King Kong" was the hit movie of the year, I really don't see how HD is going to "increase my viewing pleasure", the graphics were neat enough as it was. This is 100% hype driven by video equipment manufacturers. Hollywood doesn't care (in fact, they'll be the big losers of this, because it might make more people stay home then go to the theatre), the mainstream public doesn't care, NOONE CARES! When The NES begot the SNES, the entire gaming community was ready for a change in quality, when VHS begot DVD, most people were ready for a media distrobution change to match their music media (notice I didn't say "quality", DVD adoption wasn't about quality, it was about convenience). People would still be using VHS if it weren't for the added convenience of DVDs, HD doesn't add any convenience. I seriously think that the HD revolution is going to die even before it gets off the ground. When 95% of the population goes to the store, see sa DVD version of a movie and an HD version of the same movie for twice the price, and buys the DVD version, suddenly the HD manufacturers are going to look a bit green around the gills.

The immediate future of movie distorbution is in cheap, simple, low-bandwidth internet distrobution. The population won't care if quality takes a hit, just as audio quality took a hit with the iPod. The TV manufacturers know this, so they're desperate to get a new media off the ground before traditional media distrobution becomes a thing of the past. Even if HD gets off the ground, they're only buying a little time, maybe a year or two. I bet you anything that even if everyone switches over to HD, the average citizen will be willing to fall back to non-HD if renting a movie becomes as simple as iTMS.

Re:To be completely honest

[Dare nMc]

>Folks, anyone else out there realize that $900 is extremely expensive for the average joe to spend on a TV?

well, movie theaters costs $20-45 per person. Large screen TV's were not a replacement for the Movie theater in quality. $900 HDTV seams like it would be.

so that TV costs equivalent 20 persons visits to the theater, or 10 date visits, or 5 family visits.

my 42" TV, and Netflix subscription has so far (1 year) eliminated the thought of a Movie theater from my house. But the regular DVD wouldn't eliminate the draw if we had a quality movie theater close. (closest theater often has sound issues, next closest is at the mall, and is over-run with annoyances.)

Re:To be completely honest

[Dhalka226]

Where do you live that it costs $20-45 per person to go to a movie theater? Are you spending $12 on popcorn? Er--since you used the $45 mark in your calculations, it must be closer to $35 in popcorn and drinks. Maybe if you cut back a bit you'd save money AND lose weight!

Sony's strange plans, two-many-formats wars

[Elementalor]

If Sony releases the PS3 way cheaper than any Blu-Ray player... How would the other Blu-Ray players react to this? Who would want to buy another Blu-Ray player if the PS3 is the cheapest one and it is also a next-gen console, allegedly the most powerful of all?

I just don't get Sony's plans...

DVD-video was a success because it is the only digital format and all studios support it. From now on, it's a three-head race with Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and the good-enough-for-most-of-consumers ol' DVD.

I'm happy with what I can rip and view as I like ^_^

Re:Sony's strange plans, two-many-formats wars

[saboola]

The PS2 was cheaper than most DVD players when it came out. DVD players in turn dropped prices to compete with the PS2. Now, you can get a DVD player with a happy meal. Heck, one of the big reasons the PS2 beat out the dreamcast in Japan was not because of games, but the DVD capability. When the PS2 came out in Japan the most popular title sold along with the PS2 was not a game at all, it was the Matrix on DVD.

Re:Sony's strange plans, two-many-formats wars

[Traiklin]

How would the other Blu-Ray players react to this? Who would want to buy another Blu-Ray player if the PS3 is the cheapest one and it is also a next-gen console, allegedly the most powerful of all?

How did the industry react when the PS2 was released? they were still selling $500 DVD players that did just about the same amount (just they could play VCD's) as the PS2, the only problem I ever had with the PS2 DVD Player (which was my first) was the audio on the launch models were extremely low, I remember having to turn the volume up to 20 half the time just to hear people talking at a normal volume.

once I got the remote and it updated the firmware though I never had a problem with it after that, But DVD players were $50 at the time so I just got a stand alone one that did 10x as much as the PS2.

What will help with Blu-Ray is since every game on the PS3 will be on a BR Disc the BRDA can say "We have sold 30,000,000 Blu-Ray discs world wide" when in actuality it's more like 10mill for movies with the rest being games world wide, That way it makes BR look better in sales cause they can also count the PS3 as a BR Player so you can chalk up 1mill Blu-Ray players sold in America! when it's more like 750,000 PS3 and 250,000 stand alone BR Players.

I don't really see how the 360 fits into this equation, the 360 doesn't come standard with a HD-DVD player, it doesn't play HD-DVD games, it's just a game console that plays DVD's, sure around the end of the year they will sell an HD-DVD add on but from past experiences, Add-ons don't exactly sell well (atleast not enough for them to consider it a success).

Are they still planning to release yet another level of the 360 with the HD-DVD player pre-installed or did they drop that idea? I tried to look at TFA but apperantly it's been slashdotted as has the CC link.

Formats are Irrelevant

[Random Q. Hacker]

The only format war being waged now is whether to burn to single-layer DVD, dual-layer DVD, or just keep your torrented movies on 300 gig hard drives. New media formats are *so* irrelevant they're Jack Valenti.

Re:Formats are Irrelevant

[Nazmun]

Dual Layered discs are irrelevant due to price... Torrented movies are irrelevant as it's done by a small pct of people and they don't provide any income to the movie producers.

25-100 gig BR discs showing content in hd will appeal to home theater afficiondo's first and as prices go down it will whittle down to the general masses.

Have you seen the difference?

[rootofevil]

Upconverted dvd playback vs HD playback? I can barely tell the difference. Dont believe me? Go checkout a demo at your local bigbox retailer. Just dont pay attention to the "HDDVD vs Standard DVD" demo. Try to check it out next to a 720p upconverted player.

Re:Have you seen the difference?

[rootofevil]

Right, I understand that. Now step back 12 feet and tell me if you can identify which is which. I cant.

I will vote "no comment"...

[Megane]

By buying a Nintendo Wii-volution.

I don't care about SACD or DVD-A, and don't care about the two HD movie formats either. I just want a bigger write-once media format to store my own stuff.

Re:I will vote "no comment"...

[kfg]

By buying a Nintendo Wii-volution.

Be vewy, vewy qwiet, we'ah hunting video fawmats. Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh!

KFG

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray - does either offer more?

[ofcourseyouare]

Has anyone seen any estimates of how many 360 owners actually plan to buy the HD-DVD add-on? If HD-DVD's big hope is an optional extra to the 360, looks like they'll lose...

Meanwhile, it certainly looks like Sony are going to be able to use the PS3 to drive through a huge installed base of Blu-Ray machines.

From an experience point of view, why should we care? Well, I was at a conference in London where the dreaded Bill Gates spoke, but he did say something I found interesting: he said that "soon, the difference between TV/Movies and games won't be black and white, as it is now; there will be a spectrum of shades of grey in between".

I believe that Blu-Ray will enable some "playability" in movies - customisation, simple interactivity, etc. This could produce dreadful rubbish, or just be ignored, but it might produce some interesting new hybrids in a medium which is getting pretty stale. Not as a replacement for games, but as an enhancement for movies. Now I know what you're thinking - "Dragon's Lair" - but hey, it might be better this time round, mightn't it? Or not...

Anyway, I believe HD-DVD offers no such flexibility - so it's odd that Bill backs the format that doesn't do what he thinks will start happening to movies sometime soon...

I don't care about high def in games

[Centurix]

I can't see it improving Jet Set Willy on my spectrum emulator, unless it makes the chunky pixels sharper...

Re:Blu-Ray will win

[creepynut]

You say that, but I can't think of one single person, aside from reading on the internet, who has said the PS2's DVD player sucks. No

I know that it is certainly not top of the line, but I've never had any issues with it myself and it has been my only DVD player for nearly 2 years.

If it plays it, it works. Real people don't care about 1080p and other "jibberish" to them, they just want to play their movies. I might know what the technical details mean, but I don't care, I just want to sit down on the couch and watch the damn movie.

The 360 is Not a Factor Here

[Apple Acolyte]

How could the 360 be a factor in determining the outcome of this format battle? The 360 is a standard definition DVD unit, and very few people are going to buy this vaporous external HD-DVD add-on. They have already paid more than they're accustomed to for the 360, and unless the HD player can add some key enhancement to the gaming experience it will be perceived as superfluous. No, the only way a new format can be helped by a game console is if it's standard equipment, as the PS2's DVD player was and as the PS3's BD player will be (as long as they finally commit to releasing it sometime this decade).

What is the trend according to the past ?

[alexandrecc]

Music industry promoted the classic black disc

Music industry promoted the tape

Music industry promoted the CD

Video/Movie industry promoted VHS/Beta

Video/Movie industry promoted DVD

Console games initially used cartridges then moved to CD then to DVD. They always had to adapt to the market directed by the music and the video industry. Actually the music industry is pretty much overwhelmed by the MP3/Internet "media". So I really think the video industry (and of course the consumers of that industry) will decide the new standard. The video game industry should adapt to that standard. Also the industry that is using a media optimally (meaning almost 100% of its capacity) will effectively promote that standard. I don't think video games will need to use 25 GB or 50 GB of data until at least 2-3 years. The video industry *actually* need that capacity.

"NEITHER"

[BenJeremy]

Honestly, I think somebody is paying all these analysts to hype the "next generation" DVD format because for now, at least, BOTH formats are too expensive, require too much investment in new equipment, and offer too little benefit to be worthwhile for at least a few more years.

Perhaps if digital television had taken off a few years earlier, pushing higher-def TVs and better home theater sound into a majority of households, this might be a winning proposition... but for now, most people are quite happy with the DVD experience.

Unlike the transition between video tape and DVD, the improvements moving to HD are far more elusive, and when finally observable, are not really all that great over the "old" DVD format. Early reviews state that a clear difference is only discernable at very high screen sizes; and at the prices those extra-large format, hi-def TVs run, only the most affluent will be able to afford to see what the hype is all about.

In the end, there's no point declaring anybody a winner in "next gen" DVD until the Walmart crowd gets behind it, and "old" DVDs fade into oblivion. ....I'll tell you a little secret, though.... the hype isn't about what's best for consumers. It's about pushing new DRM onto the market to supercede the broken DRM (CSS) of DVD; that's it. The big movie companies could care less about the consumer or their experience, but if Sony and their fellow companies can sell you a new pricey $$$$$ kit along the way, why they'll do that too. In that respect, Hi-def DVD formats deserve nothing but scorn.

Games deciding DVD Format?

[coop535]

I call shenanigans!

This was the first month I bought a game on DVD format instead of the 6 CD package. For the past year they've been charging a *premium* for the DVD packaging.

Who REALLY CARES what format the consoles select? It's a closed system most certainly DRM'd to the nuts. It'll be at least five years (after they make up their minds) before I see any games in a hi-def DVD packaging.

And the Winner Is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The premise of the article is right - the game consoles are going to decide the winner in the "hi-def" wars.

But the article totally misses the dark horse candidate which I, with my great knowledge and keen insight of the market, predict will be the real winner.

The losers will be both BLU-RAY and HD-DVD. The winner will be downloaded content.

All of the game systems are network centric. In order to get much benefit out of any of the systems you practically have no choice but to connect them to the internet and that is typically going to be a broad-band connection too.

Combine that ubiquitous high-speed internet connectivity with the high-powered processing built into these systems and you have the ideal platform for media distribution using new highly efficient codecs like h.264.

An hour of 720p encoded with h.264 to just 1GB looks pretty good. In most cases it looks a lot better than a DVD. A low-end 1.5Mbps (DSL) connection can transfer that 1GB in under 2 hours. A mid-range 8mbps (comcast cable) connection can transfer it in less than 20 minutes, and high-end 20mbps (Verizon FIOS fibre) will do it in under 10 minutes with plenty of bandwidth to spare.

This combination of processing and network throughput will make it feasible to sell direct downloaded hi-def video to anyone with one of these game consoles.

I believe that just as MP3's portability convenience trounced the non-portable high-def audio products like SACD and DVD-Audio, so too will downloaded (possibly, but not necessarily) pay-per-view hi-def tv and movies.

Of course the quality of 1080p at 8G/hr with h.264 will be significantly better than just 720p at 1G/hr - but for many people the lower quality will be still be more than good enough, and for the videophile, waiting a little bit longer for the download of a top-notch 1080p encoding won't be a terrible inconvenience.

what about the porn industry

[routerguy666]

If I remember correctly the porn industry is the biggest commercial consumer of DVD media. Is Forbes being polite in ignoring their impact or has their influenced waned? The game industry might be large, but I don't think it's as big as the skinflick industry...

Is there a market for HD porn?

[tepples]

The real determiners of the HD format wars will be the adult DVD producers.

Conventional wisdom is that adult DVD doesn't want high definition, as the 480-line output of standard definition production hides the imperfections in erotic actors' skin.

Re:Blu-Ray will win

[Richthofen80]

Within a year more then 1million consumers will have a PS3 and therefor will generate demand for blu-ray movies.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. PSP had its own proprietary movie format, and there are probably 1 million PSP sales to date (actually, according to Wikipedia, 10 million units as of oct 2005), yet UMD is struggling/floundering/dying. People do not yet buy video game consoles and let that drive their movie purchases. You're right, no one will buy a $300 add-on. People will just buy a $300 HD-DVD standalone unit and have both.

Kids will probably play Blu-Ray movies on their PS3. But adults still don't understand technology convergence that well. They'll want a standalone player. Don't underestimate the weirdness of the market.

Heck, the real turning point (past %50 penetration) of DVD was the DVD/VCR combo box. People were so deathgrip on the old technology that they bought both in one box.

HD-DVD managed copy

[tepples]

What the media is sold on I dont give a crap about except insofar as the format has to allow easy transfer to the mediaserver. And it appears neither of these obsolete-before-they-hit-the-shelves formats are going to deliver.

HD-DVD allows the owner of an authentic disc to make a so-called "managed copy" on a conforming (proprietary) media server.

Frisbees? I them in the mail...

[not-admin]

You'll have to see which side AOL is on.

Michael Pachter

[DaveCBio]

People have to stop going to this guy for prognostication on videogames. He doesn't have a freaking clue. Seriously, the only reason he stands out in my mind is because he keeps being referenced by mainstream media in these articles and he always turns out to be so wrong he almost wraps around to being right.

Will there even be time for a format war?

[AC-x]

Will there even be time for a format war? The rate things have been going these days I'll be buying a 24x BluRay-RW/HDDVD-RW/DL DVD+-RW/CDRW compatible burner for £30 in a few years, with low-end dual format players going for about £20.

The only technical difficulty will be how they'll fit all the logos on the tray door

Up to WHO?

[SeaFox]

So this year's E3 could very well be a deciding factor in how you view your movie library for years to come.

Who says I have to buy into whatever HD format they choose? Last time I checked it was still the consumer who's in charge. If nobody buys the format, it will just turn into the next LaserDisc-drops-while-VHS-puffs-on story. If I don't have an HD TV (which I don't) is there any reason for me to upgrade to a differnet format, other than lots more DRM headache?

I don't see why...

[cosmotron]

I don't see why people are thinking that Blue Ray will surge over HD DVD. Just because the PlayStaion 3 will use them? I personally think (and you don't need to agree with me) that HD DVD will succeed because 1) it has a logo similar to that of the existing DVD's, and 2) it has the initialism DVD in it. The general public, the ones that buy DVDs will see a familiar logo along with a familiar name and buy it.

But, I could be wrong.

Why?

[sweez]

HD-DVD? Blu-ray? Games?

Games nowadays barely fill up a single DVD (and a large percentage still comes on 1-2 CDs), what are we talking about here?

DVDs suck

[ikekrull]

Put DVD disc in drive... wait... sit through copyright warning.. wait.. watch stupid asinine 'pirating dvds is an evil thought crime' mini-feature....wait... watch previews of upcoming releases... wait...studio credits scroll...wait... wait while stupid pointless menu displays... wait.. finally start feature (what you wanted to happen when disc was inserted).. wait while the same stupid studio credits scroll.. wait... try to fast forward and your player tells you the 'operation is prohibited'?? wtf? its *my* player, and its *my* disc.

The DVD experience is just so bad, and its guaranteed to only get worse with HD formats since all the stupid, cheesy ideas the studios have to 'add value' by ramming advertising, previews and propaganda down your throat as well as 'rich media' navigation screens will simply mean it takes even longer to just watch the f**king movie you wanted to.

Since I have experienced the simplicity and ease of just choosing video files to play off a Freevo menu, I dont think i'll ever buy any kind of video disc player again, unless it comes bundled with a computer which I can use to extract the content that I actually find relevant or desirable, and archive for convenient viewing.

If the MPAA/RIAA dont like the idea that I will choose to spend my time watching only content I find relevant or desirable (for which I am happy to pay for), they can go f**k themselves.