DVD Format War Already Over?

An anonymous reader writes "'Nobody likes false starts' - claims the assertive and risky article "10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed" published by Audioholics which outlines their take on why the new Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will attain nothing more than niche status in a marketplace that is brimming with hyperbole. Even though the two formats have technically just hit the streets, the 'Ten reasons' article takes a walk down memory lane and outline why the new DVD tech has a lot to overcome."

Comments

Re:They might have a point

[ScottLindner]

That's what I'm in it for too. I have over 100GB I'd like to keep a good incremental backups of. I just hope they can start spinning off archival quality media at a reasonable price by the time the drives hit around $100/each. Am I asking too much? :-)

In part because they're useless

[DarthBobo]

Both of my DVD players (including the one built into the 32" LCD I just bought) play MPEG4/DivX. In other words, they can already handle a full HD movie -- its just that none are available legally on standard DVDs. The only thing the new formats offer for the purpose of watching video is DRM -- hardly a good reason to upgrade for consumers.

I'll be amused if we start seeing DivX encoded pirated DVDs start to appear in the states that offer HD on a standard DVD. The studios response should prove interesting ...

And divx? Fine, thanks :-/

[Spy der Mann]

When Div-X came out, I felt like the companies had to update to use the format ASAP. It allowed more content, and more definition at the same time. Five years later, we're still stuck to MPEG-2 DVD's. Guess Who's at fault?

Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again

[bobcat7677]

Yes, most of us remember laserdisks. They were expensive when they came out and never really went down the price. the players got cheaper but they were always something that only the elite home theatre people had/used. And eventually they went away because a newer technology that made more sense came along to knock them out. I predict a new packaging that makes more sense (maybe something less scratch prone and smaller) will come along in a year or two and both HD-DVD and Bluray will find their way to garage sale bargain bins everywhere. Just like Laserdisk, 8 track tapes, and lawn dart games.

not sure how lawn darts relate exactly but it sounded good:)

HDTV and Lack of Content

[SydShamino]

The other side of the coin is the lack of HD content available on TV - and this is a biggie. While Billy Bob is impressed by his DVD player, he is dumbfounded by his cable TV - which actually looks worse than it did on his old set (mostly because it's bigger). You see, nobody told Billy Bob that he'd have to get an antenna or subscribe to HD service from his cable/satellite provider. He was also not told that most of his favorite shows (Billy likes sitcoms and the Sci-Fi Channel) aren't yet available in HD, regardless of technology or service provider. As a result, many Americans are underwhelmed or feel like they got burned by HDTV. The last thing they're going to do is rush out and buy the next greatest thing.

I too have an HDTV but no HDTV service. (In my case, I knew regular TV would look "worse" and picked plasma over LCD/DLP because IMO plasmas look better when playing non-HD content.) DVDs do look significantly better - but the high price of HDTV service (extra $20+ a month, plus money to Dish Network for a new receiver, plus loss of ability to archive shows like I can with my old pre-encryption DVR) together with the lack of content (football, Lost, and Law and Order are about it right now for me) makes it far, far too much to pay.

I'm not certain off hand if my TV has the correct plugs (HDMI, whatever) to work with the highest resolution HD-DVD/Blue-Ray players. Be assured, if it doesn't, there is no reason that I would ever consider buying either type of player for many, many years to come. (P$3 is already off the list, so no sneaking one in that way either, Sony.) Even if my TV was supported, I'm not sure yet if entire-seasons-of-TV-shows-on-one-disk is better than ability-to-backup-and-play-from-server, if I were to want to do that. I doubt it.

They're already screwing up.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in Best Buy yesterday, and a couple techs were running a Blu-Ray player on a large projection TV. They were showing the sequel to some gothic/futuristic movie I'd never seen and don't rememebr the name of. I couldn't see any difference in picture quality though over DVD, and I'm a graphic artist. A customer there said "oh yeah it's much more detailed, you can see the gilm grain". Well yeah, I could see the film grain all right. It was like noise all over the screen. If the film is that low res that I can see the grain even at HDTV resolution, then how much better could the picture quality really be? When I scan a photo, if I can see the film grain, I've reached the limits of the resolution, and I've got the picture scaled too big. So if HDTV is showing the film grain, they need better cameras cause the picture could be much sharper than what I'm seeing with a proper camera.

Undettered though, I looked at another display they had which was showing HD movies on a smaller screen which was not rear projection. The picture quality was better, but I still couldn't tell, even looking at CG like Chicken Little, if I was seeing a better picture than I would get on a DVD. Or rather, I couldn't tell how much better the picture was. I couldn't tell if it was just a small improvement or a big one.

All these idiots had to do was make their demo disc show the movies side by side with the DVD version and it would make the difference clear. But they didn't. Instead the consumer is left to guess about the difference in quality between the two formats. Also, they only had a display for the Blu-Ray and I asked them if HD DVD had come out yet, and they said yes, and they pointed me to a small display in a corner with no video being shown. I'm looking at this, and I'm saying to my self, how the hell do they expect this thing to sell at all if they've got it stuck in a corner and they're not even showing video of it?

Oh and another thing. Instead of being in slick black DVD cases like all the rest of the DVD's, the HD DVD's were in these blue cases I think. Or maybe that was the blu-ray discs and the HD ones were in white cases. I think they were slimline too. Anyway the packaging struck me as really cheap and flimsy looking, and the discs were $10 more than new release DVD's, and these were OLD titles! Haha! Hollywood thinks they can get people to pay $30 for a movie which is selling for $15 on DVD at Wal Mart because it's been out for 12 months? DREAM ON!

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[ximenes]

Yes, they allow H.264, but they do not dictate that the disks use it. So what will happen is the same thing that happened with regular DVDs: some of them use the proper encoding methods and a reasonable bitrate, and others are packed with way too much crap or otherwise done poorly and there is no easy way to know other than DVDBeaver or your intuition.

How will I know (just by looking at the package) that a HD-DVD title is done in H.264? And even if it has that information on the back, thats meaningless to the average consumer.

I would be happier if one of the specifications dictated H.264 (or at least did not permit MPEG2 to be used on HD-DVD/BDs). At least that would remove one variable, you know that they're at least using the best codec permitted.

Re:No, no, no!

[drewmca]

I think far more compelling to average people is the TV set format. The picture is nice and people really enjoy it when they see it. But I think what really gets people about HDTVs is that they're usually in a format (plasma, lcd, etc.) that has significant advantages over CRTs, including widescreen (though CRT can do that), lightweight, thin, larger screens with much less associated bulk, etc. If anything will drive HD adoption, it will be when these more convenient TV types become more affordable. You don't see a lot of people buying CRT monitors these days, do you? So I think the real driver in HD adoption won't be the picture quality so much as the convenience of HD format monitors.

Regardless of what that does for HDTV, though, it doesn't really mean much to BR or HDDVD. The better picture is nice, but it's still hard to justify a whole new player and library when there aren't any convenience benefits, like portability or ease of use. If DVD had exactly the same picture and sound as VHS, it still would have replaced it. THe primary reason for its adoption was the convenience of the format. Until there's a new format that's easier to use than laser-read discs, DVD is here to stay and I think the HD formats are dead in the water.

Let's not even get into the fact that the new formats actually make things less convenient with their DRM "features". Or the fact that someone's going to tell me that my $3200 plasma TV won't work with the formats because it doesn't have an HDMI input.

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD / HDDVD - Blue-Ray are not archival quality - None can even come close... Most writable consumer media starts degrading in 7 years.

Instead, try this:

www.inphase-tech.com

Guaranteed 50 year media life, first generation will be 300 GIG per disc, going to 1.6TB per disk. Drives going out to OEM's right now.

Re:Another reason for failure

[Kenshin]

For me, the ultimate replacement for the floppy was the pocket USB flash drive. (Whatever you want to call it.)

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[AuMatar]

First off- not everyone buying new TVs today goes for HD. THe vast majority don't. So its at least 15. And if it takes 10 years, HD-DVD and BluRay will both be dead. The studios won't continue to release for a platform that isn't giving them profits. And you're assuming people will upgrade their DVD players at all- with the install base of DVDs, very few people will want to buy a whole new movie collection.

LCD prices are barely dropping (and not everyone wants an LCD- horrible picture quality compared to a tube IMO). Sales of HDTV are basicly flat. And the OTA drop dead date has been pushed back twice already- its going to be pushed back again.

Basicly, the vast majority of people don't give a shit about HDTV. The product has failed in the marketplace so badly even Congress had to admit to it and push back adoption dates twice. On top of that the format changed so even early adopters are scared of reinvesting. HD is a no go, write it off.

An amusing look back...

[Will_Malverson]

From 1996:

http://www.robertsdvd.com/failure.html

Re:Key Points

[JFMulder]

A lot of people have spent good money on HDTVs, and they're starving for content.
As someone who watched Prison Break, 24, House, Lost, Alias, Invasion, Bones, American Idol and Tout le monde en parle last season, totalling 10 hours of HDTV shows a week, and considering I don't watch Desperate Housewife, Boston Legal, West Wing, most HBO shows, ABC/NBC/CBS sitcoms, CSI (all three versions), Las Vegas and just about any other american TV show right now, I wouldn't say that people are starving for content. Sure, we might not have news in HD, but most entertainment shows are (even Jay Leno and Saturday Night Live are in HD!).

Now, wether this content is actually GOOD or NOT is another debate.

Re:Divx is much lower quality

[TheNetAvenger]

Well, the Divx HD profile is 1280x720 and only 5.1 audio at best

Ok, not everything is Divx (The bastard offspring of the Microsoft MPEG4 codec from 1998.)

VC-1 has been doing full 1080p and fitting on a standard DVD for years now, including support for 7.1 surround without artifacts (Even when viewed on a native 1080p rear DLP projector with a 20' screen size.)

The problem is that studios had initially planned on using this format for the next generation DVD content, but the DRM promises of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray made them wait for the new medium.

There have been a few movies released in the VC-1 format in HD on standard DVDs, but not many. Go buy T2 Extreme at Walmart for an example of a movie in this format that is 3 years old now. (You can also download sample movies and clips in this format from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musi candvideo/hdvideo/hdvideo.aspx

Just an FYI to everyone, VC-1 is one of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray codecs, but it is also known formally as Windows Media 9 Format (WMV9), VC-1 is the name adopted after it was approved as a standard format.

Incomplete

[tm2b]

Any discussion of video technology adoption that ignores the impact of pornography is incomplete.

So the question should be, will pornography on the new formats be better in any substantial way? More interactive, more content, more arousing? Will they be making films of a longer duration, will they be providing more extras?

Wait and see what the adult industry does with this format - if they yawn and put out 60-120 minute, linear 480p movies with no more extras than a DVD, then the format is not going to have a rapid adoption rate. If they get more creative with the new format, well, then there's a shot.