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

They might have a point

[Ohreally_factor]

About the only compelling thing in these new formats for me is data storage and back up, and I'm still not sure that they will be more cost effective than cheap raids or even external HDs.

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? :-)

Re:They might have a point

[rmerry72]

High density plastic discs will never compete against external hard drives for serious backups. They are a proven, reliable media with the advantages of constantly being able to rewrite and reuse them as needs change.

I backup all my DVDs onto external hard drives and throw the shiny discs into the closest. The flimsy plastic is really only good for a couple of uses before scratching, fingerprints or other marks degraded them.

HD DVDs would be useful as a transient storage container for transporting data between locations, because its eay to transport and after copying the data to its real location it can be thrown away. But not as a backup. Same as DVDs today.

Re:They might have a point

[ScottLindner]

The problem is that magnetic media has a significantly shorter data integrity than what optical media *can* provide. The cheap media most people buy is about as reliable a hard drive.

Re:They might have a point

[rmerry72]

The problem is that magnetic media has a significantly shorter data integrity than what optical media *can* provide.

Under what conditions? Sealed in an air-tight, moisture-proof box? Handled with gloves like any fragile document from the 13th Century? The cheap media most people buy is about as reliable a hard drive.

Crap. No other word for it.

I've been backing up on hard drives for over four years now - in fact, I now have 8 hard drives purely for dedicated backups (well, I have a 1.5TB media library). Every now and then I need to restore a file that has been accidentally deleted or corrupted and I have yet to go to one of my drives and find it unusable.

Granted its only been four years, and yes, hard drives are not archive grade storage mediums. If I wanted archive quality I'd go back to backing up on tape drives - that is the only proven archive media in the industry today. I've gone back to DVDs and CDs that I haven't used on twelve months and find they are unreadable - let alone four years. I'm sure there are people on /. that have had working hard drives for 7, 8, hell 10 years+.

Even audio CDs don't last more than a couple of years, particularly if you do something ridiculous, such as actually use them. Who here as a pile of audio CDs they bought in the 90s that are degraded beyond use?

Re:They might have a point

[fmoliveira]

My personal experience in all these years using these crappy disks confirms his experiences. And everybody else I known. These plastic disks are crap for backup, I have it as a fact, and have enough damaged disks to not get bored researching to confirm that.

Re:They might have a point

[rmerry72]

I've had two hard drives die in my home PC within six months, and a couple weeks ago, two identical drives died at work on the very same day. (All four of them were Maxtors.)

I don't think I have been completely clear. My backup hard drives are offline. I only hook them up in order to do more backups or to restore. Otherwise they sit on a shelf.

I would never consider online drives to be suitable long term backups - maybe interim nightly or weekly backups, but nothing long term.

Re:They might have a point

[Anonymous Coward]

I tell you what: fill up a modern drive for backup purposes, and while you're at it, write that same backup to a bunch of DVDs... Put all of the above it in a regular old fire-proof safe and keep it in your basement.

It's 100% fact that your drives will start to suffer the effects of the little ones and zeroes blending together the second you're not actively using it... The fields that define bits on modern drives are so small that technology is approacing the useful limits of the signal to noise ratio that the magnetic media can provide. Drives combat this in part through some error correction, and the firmware is directed to actually read and write data to the drive in a transparent manner, in order to prevent the magnetic fields becoming too weak for the heads to read. This is especially true of modern drives precisely because they have become so dense.

Your DVD-Rs, on the other hand, decay at a much slower rate. In a safe spot they aught to work for at least 5 years. I have 9 year old CDRs that I put away ages ago, and they still work, and if you use a program to analyze the data quality, it's still sound.

Re:They might have a point

[plover]

Who here as a pile of audio CDs they bought in the 90s that are degraded beyond use?

Not me, unless you count "two" as a pile. And those two failed because I let them bang around in my truck and get scratched to hell, not because they were played or otherwise magically rotted.

Given much less care than LPs or cassette tapes, virtually all of them play as well now as they did when I bought them. ExactAudioCopy does occasionally report an error or two when I'm ripping them. I'd estimate that 90% of my discs are error free, and the rest are mostly 99% or better (EAC figures.) And while I don't deliberately manhandle them, I'm far from a paranoid audiophile with alcohol swabs and white gloves.

And as far as burn-'em-yourself discs, I've not had any data discs degrade on me (that I'm aware of.) Those, I definitely treat better than audio discs, with limited handling and their lives spent inside clean CaseLogic CD folders.

As for hard drives, I certainly haven't had the good luck you seem to be having. If I have an older drive that is powered down for a couple of years, the chances of it spinning up seem to be far from 100%. And that's not just cheap Maxtors I'm talking about (although Maxtor is no proof against failure), I've had it happen with a number of server-class SCSI drives, too. While it's certainly not a 50% fail rate, I'd guess that long-term stored hard drives seem to have only about a 90-95% chance of spinning up again.

No medium is perfect. And there's another point I've not mentioned yet, and that's the availability of readers / interface electronics. If I had backed up all my valuables on an old Winchester drive, what are the chances I'd be able to read it today? First, I'd have to find a working machine with an ISA bus, video card, possibly a monitor, a keyboard, and some kind of boot drive. I'd need to scrounge a copy of DOS, although pirating an ancient one off the Internet seems pretty doable (but creating a bootable disk is less simple.) Then, I'd have to find a WD503 ISA card for it, and cables. I'd probably have to come up with a network card, too, so I could get the data off the machine.

Of course, these same arguments will hold true for CDs and DVDs at some point in the not-too-distant future, as well as any current hard drive communications bus. Maybe it won't be BluRay or HD-DVD that spells doom for the CD/DVD/hard-drive backup plan, but it will be something.

Re:They might have a point

[StikyPad]

That's why I laser etch all of my important data into diamond. Sure, it's expensive, but once it's done I can just toss the gems into a bag and I have nothing to worry about. After all, the only thing that will scratch diamond is another.. oh crap!

Re:They might have a point

[dbIII]

I'm sure there are people on /. that have had working hard drives for 7, 8, hell 10 years+.

Really good hard drives seem to fail at the age of five years and one week - just out of warranty.

As for tapes - there's some on the desk near me from 1983. People read tapes that age all the time with care (I think a lubricant is used to stop flaking) and tape technology has improved a lot since then. A SDLT320 (160GB) is not even a big tape anymore, and you can throw a lot of tapes in a big plastic tub with a lid and keep it in an air conditioned office and trust them later.

Re:They might have a point

[rmerry72]

That catalogging program sounds interesting. What OS is it under? Interested in sharing?

Its written in Java so (in theory) most platforms. I'm running the server on Windows 2000 Server, though I have other Windows clients and a Puppy Linux client attached.

It's free and available from http://blade.dnsalias.net/ or as a torrent.

The Blade Multimedia Catalog has some volume and archive management built in. This gives me a snapshot of my mounted volumes showing me capacities and free space that I have available, including the archive drives, plus indexes all my videos, music and photos and tracks which have been copied to the archive drives. Next version also integrates with BitTorrent clients such as Azureus.

Email address on the site if you have a prob :-)

Re:They might have a point

[lgw]

Plastic media + fireproof safe = bad idea.

If you want a decent backup cheap, either optical or cheap hard drives are fine for a few years - just store them in a different building than your PC.

If you want to backup something important, put a tape in a safety deposit box. Just verify your backups when you make them, as cheap tape drives will go bad without any indication that they're no longer making usable tapes. (Good tape drives read after writing, to avoid the problem.)

And always remember: RAID is not backup. Neither is anything you can accidentally delete, or have trashed by a virus, or whatnot. A hard drive isn't a backup until it's disconnected.

Re:They might have a point

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Diamonds are worthless for long term data storage. They decay back into graphite over the course of hardly one time the lifetime of the universe. They even are flameble. The moment some one heats them up to 800C they're gone.
Now how could you possibly trust *that*?

My methode of datastorage is much more secure. I have all my data written on the hand of God. I did had to erase a lot of names of it first, so some of you might experience some difficulties when trying to enter heaven. But I'm sure you'd enjoy hell too. They seem to have great barbeques. And it's for a good cause. I can't be expected to let my Simcity save games go to waste when the universe ends, can I?

Re:They might have a point

[Bombula]

I think you hit the main point this article missed: it's all about the data.

With on-demand and TIVO and cheap storage (750GB drives are under $250 - that's 100+ DVDs), DVDs and other plastic discs are going to become relics just like CDs are quickly giving way to files you download and store on an iPod or equivalent device.

It took the huge success of iPod and iTunes together to finally push .mp3 players out of the doldrums and into the mass market because of all the RIAA bullsh*t, but now the horse is out of the barn. The market is finally starting to realize that it isn't the record or tape or disc that really has value (despite all the fancy packaging), it's really just about the music. And that's just data.

The disconnect between content and storage media has finally gathered momentum, and by the time HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have their kinks worked out that disconnect will be complete. That's the main reason I don't see 100 million consumers adopting one or the other of the HD formats. As the iPod clearly shows us, having thousands of plastic discs around just doesn't make much sense anymore given the patently superior storage technologies now available to us.

Re:They might have a point

[Ginger Unicorn]

The most sensible solution to all these problems is to copy all you backups onto new media every year or two. That way you dont have to worry about media degradation, and also it gives your data every opportunity to migrate from potentially obsolete media to more current stuff.

Re:They might have a point

[ScottLindner]

Let's not mince words. I very carefully said archival quality discs.. not discs. There is a huge differene between these products.

You should do some reading on archival of digital media unless you don't care that much about the data you believe is protected so well. Magnetic media has always been terrible and the increasing densities on the platters is only going to make the problem worse. People don't know it.

You can roll the dice if you want. It's your data. But I do encourage you to research archiving digital data before putting too much faith in your current approach.

Re:They might have a point

[stonecypher]

My methode of datastorage is much more secure. I have all my data written on the hand of God.

And that'll fail the second the next Neitsczhe comes around.

I have the only truly permanent backup mechanism: make your data into a Slashdot joke. It will be archived on roughly 1/4 of all blogs for the next eight years, and will be repeated ad nauseam in Slashdot for the rest of time.

Of course, you need some sort of steganography which is resistant to hot grits noise in your signal. Even with Russian prodigy hacker groups watching the machine, the high signal/noise ratio would cause capacitance effects in large metal grids, bringing the information in over powerlines and exposing people in homes to and large volumes of the evil bit. Since those go the last mile to the home, they get near our kids. Won't somebody please think of the hacker children? (Though, as established previously, in Soviet Russia, the hacker children think of you.)

And even then it might be vulnerable to some ^H^H^H^H^H^H, leading to media-delivered data FUD even if you're running the sampler on a Beowulf Cluster on all your base (in Japan!,) even though by then it's likely to be on Aibo, the family dog (in Japan!,) which is popular pretty much everywhere but Nebraska (and no, I didn't forget Poland.) If we get to wifi power distribution this might be handlable, which seems likely since only old people in Korea use power lines, and when I was your age we didn't need power besides - we made our own candles from tallow and abacus rods, and we liked it. The hardware requirements unfortunately would be huge; sooner or later, it wouldn't be a beowulf cluster - it'd be a space station.

[[ SIG Out of jokes. ... Buffering ... ]]

On a tangent: You kids and your powered light; we had to wear special glasses to see in the dark, because it built character (not Angband characters.) Now, you kids in your bright rooms don't even wear the goggles, because they do nothing. If the power grid ever gets terroristed, you'll be in the dark ages, unable to see, tripping over furniture, and I only hope and pray that no-one gets hurt by flying chairs. Also, it's going to fucking kill Google, and since Google leads to Wikipedia Syndrome, the source of all stupid, we're looking at a possible takeover by Grammar Nazis. If they take power, the only legitimate answer to "how many Libraries of Congress is that?" will be "none." (This is offensive to anyone who knows that the appropriate answer is 42.) Indeed, the Library of Congress will be book-burned down to zero: no wireless, less space than a nomad; lame.

[[ SIG Out of jokes. Buffering more offtopic nonsense. ]]

But, if everyone tries to use this backup, since we're all so afraid of losing our facebook in this post 9/11 world, it might crack under the strain, and by then, of course, the dog is on fire - except in Nebraska - and even if you think you need to control shift kill it (I find your lack of faith disturbing,) since it's a robot dog, it's not vulnerable to normal anti-FIDO-net technologies, you insensitive clod. And poisoning won't work, because you didn't offer chocolate for it (therefore you can take your chocolate bar and shove it up your ass; I'm watching TiVo, not FiDo AiBo.) In fact, you'll need some powered exoskeletons just to take it down. This would mean to preserve your data would need 1) excursion for great justice into the Korean Demilitarized Zone, 2) ???, 3) Exoskeleton!. (I urge you from Zimbabwe to prepare for this eventuality; please fill in you credit card number, social security number, date of birth, mother's maiden name and your password to all you most important information below.) The attack would mean eliminating about 1/4 of the blogosphere, at which a great disturbance would be felt in the Emo, as if a million blogtards cried out and then were silenced at once. Talk about NO CARRIER.

[[ SIG (You keep saying that word, Sig. I do not think it means what you think it m

The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This War

[Real World Stuff]

See what Gizmodo said in 2004.

They left one out

[Nybble's Byte]

Vinyl sounds better.

Re:They left one out

[timster]

When I'm in my car my iPod playing lossy music through a $15 tape adapter sounds way better than vinyl does. Actually in my Honda Civic the vinyl sounds mostly like a room full of cats regardless of the source material. I haven't figured that out yet but I assume it's just that the awesome bandwidth of the vinyl sound is just overloading my system.

Re:They left one out

[Tumbleweed]

Actually in my Honda Civic the vinyl sounds mostly like a room full of cats regardless of the source material.

Yeah, but that's probably the Civic you're hearing, not the vinyl. :)

Re:They left one out

[Jugalator]

Record vinyl from any external audio source.

Or, if you're lazy and don't want your mp3's as vinyls, just use a Winamp plugin? :-)

Re:They left one out

[pherthyl]

Coke. Outmynose.

Thanks for that.

Re:They left one out

[Odin's Raven]

Actually in my Honda Civic the vinyl sounds mostly like a room full of cats regardless of the source material. I haven't figured that out yet but I assume it's just that the awesome bandwidth of the vinyl sound is just overloading my system.

Hey, like I had like the same problem, but then I upgraded the factory radio to a 'Type R' radio (incredible deal from this guy - he's like into the import/upgrade business, and sneaks out a couple of Type R radios each month and sells them from the back of his car - they're like over $1000 if you could even get one, which you can't cuz you need like this special license so don't even try, but that import dude will part with his "extras" for $200 which is just so schweet cuz he can like write them off on his insurance or something). And then I got these like special audio spoilers that clip onto the speakers (the dude I got them from - no, not like the import/upgrade dude, this dude is like a different dude - hangs out with that other guy, yeah, the one with the weird hair), and he said they keep the higher-velocity notes from producing delaminated/nonlabial/nonlaminar/whatever-the-hell airflow - I guess that's like 95% of the distortion once you upgrade the radio. So like the sound now is just so freaking incredible, and like everyone I meet is like all "hey Raven dude, we can't believe you actually have a Type R radio and speaker spoilers" and like roll their eyes cuz they're so jealous ROFLMAO.

Re:They left one out

[afidel]

At only $10k I'm suprised some of the recording houses haven't picked them up. I was looking into custom dub plates for my brother and the only way to get them done affordably for small runs was to send the files to a place in Jamaica where the reggae scene has kept some dub houses alive. They press to a non-vinyl material that has about 80% of the life of vinyl at like 2% of the cost of having a vinyl master made. For only $10k the recording houses could offer small runs of DJ's music for a much more reasonable cost then actually pressing a master.

4. Studios are Conservative

[smittyoneeach]

I guess, in the sense of risk-averse.

Relative to the Southern Baptist Convention, though...

Another reason for failure

[ezratrumpet]

Another reason that HD-DVD might fail is that the general public doesn't realize that there's a difference between "DVD player" and "HD-DVD player." The medium of content delivery didn't make a visual change such as the change from vinyl to CD, from 8-track to cassette, or even when comparing VHS and Beta.

Re:Another reason for failure

[Jugalator]

HD floppies didn't fail. ;-)

Heck, the bastards stick around to this day.

Floppy disks are the media format parallel to Paris Hilton.

They simply refuse to get impopular despite how crappy they are.

Re:Another reason for failure

[staeiou]

Another reason that HD-DVD might fail is that the general public doesn't realize that there's a difference between "DVD player" and "HD-DVD player." The medium of content delivery didn't make a visual change such as the change from vinyl to CD, from 8-track to cassette, or even when comparing VHS and Beta.

The change from vinal to CD or 8-track to cassette was radically different in magnitude than the DVD to HD-DVD or BlueRay. Not only are the disks the exact same size and shape, but there are many opportunities for backwards and forwards compatibility. You can't stick a CD on your record player, nor could you stick an 8-track in your cassette deck. You can stick a DVD into your HD-DVD player.

Re:Another reason for failure

[Ahnteis]

Floppies: Cheap, convenient, and sufficient for most people.
Zip files, 120MB floppy (whatever it was called): Expensive, more reliable, more storage, more features, etc., FAILURE.

DVD: Cheap, convenient, and sufficient for most people.
HD-DVD: Expensive, higher res, more storage, etc. FAILURE?

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:Another reason for failure

[Jugalator]

HD-DVD: Expensive, higher res, more storage, etc. FAILURE?

Why is so many assuming they will stay very expensive?

Anyone remember what CD's and DVD's cost in the beginning?

Not to mention their respective recorders.

Well, duh. I could have told you that

[Achra]

There's a simple rule to follow:
Is this all that much better to Joe Sixpack than what he had before?

Cassettes were better than LP's. Not in fidelity. But in portability, durability, and most importantly - the cost of a 'decent' player - Cassettes were hands down better.
CD's were better than Cassettes. They sound GREAT. You can skip tracks just like you could on an LP. They are supposed to last forever! (unlike those cassettes that by now you know simply don't)..
SACD... Does anyone have an SACD player? No! (Except niche enthusiasts). Because, to Joe Sixpack, it's simply not worth the money for an immeasurable (to his ears) difference in quality.

Same goes for video. DVD was a great upgrade from VHS. It combined the cheap player aspects of VHS with the hi-def of Laserdisc. Suddenly, everyone could have a GREAT copy of their favorite movie (as long as it wasn't starwars - a whole other topic entirely), for the output cost of about $50 for a cheap player. What part of Hi-def DVD is going to be any different than SACD or DVDAudio? Anyone?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

> SACD... Does anyone have an SACD player?

Actually, if you have a halfway-decent CD player, you probably do. The question is, how many SACD's do you see actually getting pressed?

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

[Animaether]

Your argument Audio CD vs SACD is valid for the most part, imho. The same would go for Audio CD vs DVD-AUDIO. The quality increase is indeed not perceptible by most - certainly not on their gear.

On the other hand, they can both easily store surround sound. An Audio CD could as well, of course, but then it's not really a red book (is that the one?) Audio CD anymore. I know a lot of people did get basic 5.1 speakersets for the audio that comes with DVD movies because it -is- perceptible better.. it's a whole different experience.

HD-DVD (or BlueRay) over DVD might not be as particular a jump. It does have higher resolution, of course, but it doesn't specify anything with regards to possible higher framerates or even better encoding (yes, DVD has better quality than most video - it certainly lasts longer. That said, I absolutely HATE the mpeg block artifacts you get on DVD and sometimes very much prefer the S-VHS copy.
If it does specify encodings that pretty much get rid of those blocky artifacts, I'll take one as soon as they become more readily affordable (the higher resolution is an added perk, but I don't mind watching some stuff on my PDA screen - so whatever). If instead the publishers just decided to compress the video more in order to store more trailers / fringe features / whatever like what has happened with DVD.. no thanks.

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

[Ohreally_factor]

Plus, DVD was playable on existing technology. You didn't need to go buy a $2000+ monitor to enjoy watching a DVD or appreciate the advance in quality and new features.

Maybe there will be a demand for HD DVD and Blu Ray when HD sets are a lot more common, but not until then.

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

[AuMatar]

Yup- for the third time now.

The actual uptake rates for HDTV are anemic. THats likely to continue for the rest of the decade. People are replacing dead TVs with HDs, but not running out to buy HDs (and not always replacing with HD, since there's still a huge price difference). Until the price difference drops dramaticly, and we give it most of a decade for the old sets to break, we won't see a significant market penetration.

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

[AuMatar]

I know my CD player doesn't play SACDs (I picked up a free one somewhere, popped it in just to see). Nor does my car's. Or any of my computer drives. I really doubt most do- there's no demand, so why incur the extra cost? Maybe high end stereos do, so they can put it on the box as a feature point. But the majority of people don't have high end stereos.

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

[Yaztromo]

On the other hand, they can both easily store surround sound. An Audio CD could as well, of course, but then it's not really a red book (is that the one?) Audio CD anymore.

That isn't strictly true, although it does depend no what you consider "surround sound". While currently unused, Red Book does permit four channel audio formats. As well, Dolby Pro Logic can be encoded into the standard two channel Red Book format without violating the specification.

So if you're referring to discrete 5.1 surround, you are correct -- however, there are different types of surround sound, at least two of which can be encoded on to Red Book CDs.

HD-DVD (or BlueRay) over DVD might not be as particular a jump. It does have higher resolution, of course, but it doesn't specify anything with regards to possible higher framerates or even better encoding

Actually, both standards can handle H.264 video, which is a signficantly better encoding standard than MPEG-2. Depending on what profile is used for the encoding, it is possible to specify much higher colour fidelity.

This isn't to say I disagree with your overall argument, however. I'm not so sure that the quality differences are going to be sufficiently significant to the average viewer (which would include myself) to matter. As I've stated in other articules on this subject, I'm personally more interested in these formats (BlueRay in particular) for data storage than for video.

Yaz.

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

[baxissimo]

Suddenly, everyone could have a GREAT copy of their favorite movie ... for the output cost of about $50 for a cheap player.

While I agree with most of your comment, the bit about $50 DVD players is revisionist history. I seem to recall they were more like in the neighborhood of $1000 when the DVD format first launched. Sure you can get a $50 player now but not at the beginning. Cheap players had little to do with the initial success of DVD. I think it was just the improved quality and the nice form factor. Maybe they were a little cheaper than LaserDisc players too, but it wasn't $50. I don't even think VHS players were going for as low as $50 back then.

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

[Ahnteis]

No. Only DIGITAL BROADCAST is a legal certainty. That's NOT the same as hi-def. In fact, a lot of the new digital broadcast is going to be 480p so that broadcasters can broadcast more channels rather then better quality channels.

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:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[vux984]

The fact that HDTV is slated to replace NTSC come hell or high water. And those high-dev DVD's really do look nicer on HDTVs.

Almost. Those high def DVD's really do look nicer on ***BIG*** HDTVs. On smaller ("regular size") tvs dvds and hddvds look pretty much the same at normal viewing distances.

Admittedly 'big TVs' are in right now, but its going to be a *long* time before everyone has one. (If ever; some people are perfectly happy with a 20", 25" or 30" set.) Plus, for someone to be won over by an HD media format, he's going to be looking at his other playback devices -- his laptop/portable dvd player, the one mounted into the back of the seats in his SUV, the one in his bedroom, the one at the summer cabin...

Even if he has a big screen in his living room, the fact that the disc won't play anywhere else will be an issue. Tapes lingered on for years beside cds partly because they were recordable while cds took ages to get there, and partly because all our 'walkmans', 'car stereos', 'ghetto blasters' and other devices still used them. We could buy the CD, and make a tape to use in our other players until the rest of our world caught up.

Can we easily do that *that* with our HD purchases? Nevermind perserving the "HD" Can we even easily hook up a CD burner or SVHS VCR to our HD player to make copies? Can we rip them to our PSPs, and iPod videos?

The whole HD format just isn't looking to be very user friendly. That's going to hurt it. I think there's a very decent chance it will be repeat of the "LaserDisc".

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

[henryhbk]

My DVD player (a higher end Sony) has SACD as well (of course not DVD-Audio also, why converge?). I was going to try it out, back when I bought it, until I discovered that due to copy concerns the SACD only worked over 6 ANALOG CABLES!!! So let me get this straight, my video DVD's will come through on the digital link to my receiver, but if I shove a SACD in, I have to switch inputs (even though it's the same device with essentially the same media [yes I know, just making a point]) but it won't play the same way... And I have a large bundle of cables now, instead of one elegant fiber-optic cable. I know some of the newer players can do it all over digital, but it's too little too late...

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.

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

[ender-]

...so that broadcasters can broadcast more channels rather then better quality channels.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole problem with today's entertainment industry!

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

[Megane]

In fact, a lot of the new digital broadcast is going to be 480p so that broadcasters can broadcast more channels rather then better quality channels.

In fact, I only get two channels (not counting weather radars) that are in SD. That's the local Spanish-language station, and one of the two PBS subchannels. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB, PBS HD, all broadcast HD all the time, even when they're upconverting NTSC 480i shows to HD. For someone who knows "in fact", I don't think you know all that much fact after all.

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

[aaronl]

What in the world horrid CRT do you own? Color clarity is markedly inferior on LCD! The color accuracy of a LCD will probably never be as good as on a CRT, simply because of how the display works.

As an anecdotal response, I know of no person with a HDTV. Not my family, not my friends, not my coworkers. I know a few people who have travel LCDs; everyone else has SDTV CRTs. A lot of people have LCDs for their computer displays (that's what things come with now), and most of the people I know that upgraded specifically to a LCD run dual-head with a CRT for graphics work.

HDTV is really just another example of the industry killing it's upgrade path with stupidity. It's a noticable, but not incredible, increase in quality. They screwed the early adopters, it's still too expensive, and the entire product landscape is crippled by DRM. Who wants to spend three times more money to get a slightly better looking picture, but that they can't use to do what they can already do with their older equipment?

Also, the AV Science Forum isn't exactly unbiased, either. ;-) The main page has stuff about outdoor TVs, why HDMI is already a pain to deal with, and lots of talk about which format is winning. Average people won't care about any of that.

Reason number 10 the most likely reason

[Anonymous Coward]

If people have the physical disc, then they would be able to copy or watch/listen to the content almost as many times as they want. That is something the XXAA doesn't want. They would make more money from on demand rather than someone actually owning the disc. Eventually, everything will be in a Pay-Per-Use format. The way to prevent it, stay away from the XXAA.

Re:Reason number 10 the most likely reason

[s4m7]

I feel like I'm the only one who sees the elephant in the room. The MEMBERS of the MPAA, such as, oh I don't know, Sony for starters, are the ones pushing this "technology upgrade" not because they think it will benefit people in terms of a "better viewing experience" but because it creates a new and as-yet-uncracked DRM format and larger file sizes so complete rips will be more difficult to trade online.

The MPAA members and other studios will start in a few years to release their blockbuster movies HD-ONLY and THEN we will see "joe sixpack" switching to the formats in droves... they'll have to upgrade to get "matrix 4" or whatever.

Not to mention the writing controls which will make it more difficult to use these sweet new large-formats for archival purposes, and the discs will probably be even cheaper (in quality) than dvd's are, meaning they'll last about six months if that.

no my friend, the "**AA" want you to get in on this more than anything... their business model depends on it.

#3 is the killer

[Have Blue]

Advantages of switching from VHS to DVD:

• Much higher quality video and audio
• Random access
• Don't have to rewind them
• Switchable audio tracks
• Subtitles that are optional
• Extras
• Nifty menus

Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:

• Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV.
• ...and that's about it.

Re:#3 is the killer

[king-manic]

Advantages of switching from VHS to DVD:
Much higher quality video and audio
Random access
Don't have to rewind them
Switchable audio tracks
Subtitles that are optional
Extras
Nifty menus
Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:
Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV. ...and that's about it.

Also multi disc movies can now be on 1 disc and the menus can have more neat things int hem liek small java games ect.. Also the major studios have decided thats the way they want to go and if they do it right you won't have much of an option just as it's very hard to find vinyl copies of yoru favorite top 40 hits it'll be very difficult to find DVD's of your favorite movies eventually.

Re:#3 is the killer

[KiloByte]

Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:

• Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV.
• ...and that's about it.

"about it"? There is only one reason for HD/BR: DRM Nothing else.

Re:#3 is the killer

[nobodyman]

Ah you left out one:
  - more robust forms of DRM

In my mind, this is the real motivation behind the HD-DVD / BD camps -- they aren't trying to sell consumers on HD quality, they're trying to convince Hollywood to adopt the format based on how well you can lock it down. Then, just kill of DVD's. Why entice consumers when you can *force* them, right?

Of course this scheme will fail -- you can't convince Hollywood to embrace a new technology (for any reason) because they are scared of change and hate risks. You have to drag them kicking and screaming into new technology.

Re:#3 is the killer

[kannibal_klown]

HD is not significantly better than standard TV. _Fact_. Sit from a decent viewing distance from both and... guess what... they both look about the same. HD is slightly clearer, but it's not a significant enough improvement to justify the increased cost.

Actually no, that's _Opinion_

I notice the difference quite a bit even on a 42" HDTV which has close to the same "height" as my 27" regular TV. Even my parents with their glasses can tell the difference. Of course, I'm talking about broadcast which has a lot variables, one of which is if the show was actually being shown as HD, or if it was up-converted by the network (like That 70's Show or Smallville reruns).

You are correct to say viewing distance comes into play. If you're way-way back relative to the screen size then you won't notice as much but it's still there.

However this does not invalidate your argument about HD discs vs regular DVDs. While I can tell the "difference," it isn't great enough for me to rush-out and buy an expensive unit. DVD's 480p is decent enough for me. I'll probably get a HD DVD (or BluRay) player down the line but not for a WHILE.

Troll article

[Kohath]

The article is a troll. Don't feed the trolls.

Re:Troll article

[Tumbleweed]

The article is a troll. Don't feed the trolls.

But what about the troll children? Won't anyone think of the troll CHILDREN?!

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 ...

Wrong paradigm!

[Nigel_Powers]

Who in their right mind would go out and spend big bucks on a crappy hi-tech hi-def dvd player, when most titles aren't available to rent, and the ones for purchase are $30 a pop? Yeah right! And monkeys are flying out of my butt!

Progressive scan dvd players are dirt cheap, rentals are plentiful and cheap, and movies for purchase are nearly as cheap.

Back to the drawing board, fellas.

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?

No, no, no!

[RemovableBait]

High definition is headed for a niche market at best, not an industry takeover.

I fundamentally disagree with this statement. Most people now have at least heard of HDTV; there have been plenty of adverts for high-def digital cable and satellite services here in the UK, especially in the run-up to the World Cup (which can be viewed in HD with the required equipment).

I'm also pretty sure that people buying larger TVs today are buying HDTVs. The big thing about it is the 'Wow' factor of these sets. With a good HD source, the massive screens are pretty amazing. Now, people bought enough DVDs of old VHS tapes for a huge back catalog of old (and oftentimes, shite) films to be released on DVD. What is to say it won't happen again?

Personally, I believe it is far to early to tell what will happen. But, no matter what Audioholics says, High definition IS the future and it WILL take over eventually.

Re:No, no, no!

[Jugalator]

It's kind of funny. A sport where most parts of the field is just green grass and people shooting a ball is pushed to for HD quality and attempts to sell sets that way. Are they ridiculing human intelligence or just stupid? :-) What exactly do I wish to see in HD quality? The sweat on mens foreheads? Hairy legs? Seriously, movies with special effects would make much more sense and I'd be more interested if more channels started advertising their movies in HD here. Some dedicated pay-per-view movie channels do, but that's not a good way to reach the masses IMHO.

Re:No, no, no!

[Skreems]

You can walk out of a Best Buy with a 50 inch DLP HD television for only $1300, on sale. That's pretty damn cheap. On the other hand, you can walk out of K-Mart with a very high-quality (for CRT) 32" flat-screen for about $300. Which do you honestly think mainstream consumers are going to buy?

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:No, no, no!

[Sycraft-fu]

And while $1300 may sound cheap to the young geek, making deceant bucks at a tech job without a family, it's not cheap to the parents working blue collar jobs with their 2.5 kids to take care of. That $1000 difference is a lot of other things they probably need more.

For that matter my parents, who do not work blue collar jobs and do make more than me, still don't own a large HDTV and I'm not sure they ever will unless I get them one as a present. It is simply in the "too expensive" category. In their world, TVs are meant to cost a couple hundred bucks, and they don't care about the pretty picture. They've been to my house, they've seen Discovery HD on a nice TV with nice sound, it's just not a priority. So it *IS* expensive in terms of being "more than most peopel want to pay for it". Something is cheap when people feel like the price you are asking is less than it should cost. No matter what the absolute price, if they see it as not worth what you are asking, it's expensive.

opinions are like a-holes...

[disturbedite]

i agree, this article is a bit of a troll. .."this pending format release/war is simply the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a long time." while he makes some reasonable points, it seems the motivation that sparked this was frustration. just because its the "most ridiculous thing" hes seen in a long time (in his opinion) doesn't necessarily mean squat. look at all the other format wars such as beta/vhs and laserdisc/dvd...

10 really good reasons plus a new one

[WillAffleckUW]

I thought that the article was fairly concise, and accurately described 10 reasons why the format wars have already failed.

But they forgot another one - most Americans don't have, and don't want to buy, an HDTV set that would even need either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, nor do most consumers see any reason to pay twice as much for the same product they can use today.

Is this true in a few years? Perhaps not. But it's true today.

Which leads us to the conclusion that both Sony and our other player decided to fight this battle early, after what happened to them when Beta and VHS fought - the stakes are so high they're trying to front-end the decision, but both sides ended up trying to steal a march on their competition, resulting in two formats way too early for consumers to be interested in either.

Re:10 really good reasons plus a new one

[realmolo]

Yes, I agree.

I think that the various companies pushing "HD" movie formats are *radically* overestimating how many HDTV sets are actually out there. Most people I know don't own an HDTV. Most people in the U.S. don't own an HDTV. Most people in the U.S. don't *have* the disposable income to buy an expensive set. And as the article said, if you don't have HD channels, then the picture is worse.

HDTVs won't be everywhere until *most* of the content on regualar broadcast TV/cable is in HD, and the sets are under $400 or so, and HD DVD players drop to under $100. And that's a long ways away.

Plus, many people just bought new TVs in the last few years, since the price of 32" CRTs dropped through the floor. They're not about to upgrade.

Re:10 really good reasons plus a new one

[drsquare]

They're planning for the future, and in 3 years a *lot* of people will own HDTVs. I'd say at least half of all the TVs being sold today are some variant of HiDef. And DLP sets are rather cheap. As for not having the income - it's amazing how people on welfare can scrounge money for rims, for instance. Anyone who wants one bad enough can scrounge $1K for a decent sized DLP.

No-one wants a TV bad enough to spend a grand on it. Projection will never be anything more than a niche, you need a giant room with no windows. Most people have their TVs in the corner of a small room, how the hell do you project into a corner?

Most people are not buying TVs at all, let alone HDTVs. Especially when a similarly sized CRT is four times cheaper, and HDTV is only beneficial at huge sizes (less than 10% of the market).

HDTV will gradually increase in market share as there is *now* enough benefit to pull in a lot of consumers, and already have a high penetration among younger professionals.

Yuppies are also a very small part of the market.

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:)

Re:Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again

[Ifni]

Online is likely the distribution format of the future, but aside from that, I am guessing that some solid state technology will prevail - high capacity (10+ Gig) media cards or holographic storage cubes or something like that. The technology is almost already here (2G MMC cards are commercially available, and various technology reports make it sound like 5G-10G cards within a year or two aren't unrealistic. A PC card (Type I) sized format should be able to hold 20+ Gig easily, making it denser and more durable than a DVD, though obviously tremendously more expensive. I don't know how much mass production can bring the price down, but making it a distribution media should have a significant effect.

Re:Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again

[MBCook]

It already exists. It's called "the internet".

I remember reading this somewhere, and I totally agree with it. By the time this is settled it will be like the battle between Floppy cameras and Smart Media cameras: both lost and were obsolete.

There are those rumors about a Netflix set-top box, or that they will finally integrate into TiVo. That's what is going to happen. It's clear as a bell. After all, once the pipes get big enough, why should I bother to pay $20 to buy a disc I'll watch once or twice when I can pay $2 to watch it each time I want, when I want. That's what PPV is, but instead of having 100 movies to choose from, I'll have Netflix's whole inventory. ANY movie. Like those old Quest commercials: "We have every move ever made in every format in every langauge starting any time" (or something like that).

The only DVDs I watch I get from Netflix because I don't like buying them. Why should I pay $20 for a movie I'll watch once, or $50+ for a single season of a TV show? If Netflix released a set top box (or makes my TiVo do it) so that whatever is in my queue is automatically downloaded on to the drive during the night or whatever, I'll be happy. Watch what I want, when I want. And because hard drive space is cheap (DVDs are only 9 gigs tops, uncompressed) they can pre-load more than the 3 movies that I would currently be allowed to watch (based on the plan I pay for).

Let the early adopters and studios sort it out. My way is more convenient. It's cheaper (you can P2P the popular movies between boxes) and there is no distribution. My way has no postage, no delivery, no "I'll go to the store and buy the movie tomorrow". No broken discs, no scratched discs, no lost discs.

When there is a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war, I hope they enjoy it. They'll have a year TOPS before the average consumer passes them by for set top boxes and the iTheater store. The only chance they have is with high-def content, and bandwidth and the ability download films 24/7 will nix that advantage pretty soon.

Re:Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again

[evilviper]

After all, once the pipes get big enough, why should I bother to pay $20 to buy a disc I'll watch once or twice when I can pay $2 to watch it each time I want, when I want.

First off, the pipes won't be big enough for HDTV in reasonable download time for well-over a decade. Just calculate how many days it would take to download a 50GB movie on your connection.

The consider you'll need to buy a second line, or upgrade your speed, since your connection will be effective unavailable as you are downloading each movie, for DAYS at a time. Internet access isn't free.

Then consider how much money it's going to cost companies to pay for their own pipes to let you download 50GBs from them, and try to figure out how that will turn into a $2/movie business model.

My way is more convenient.

How is maxing out your connection (which you pay for) for several days more convenient than NOT wasting your connection, and getting the disc in 1-2 days as Netflix currently does?

It's cheaper (you can P2P the popular movies between boxes)

Bullshit. Bandwidth is massively expensive. There is too much variety in movies to expect several people to have them available when someone else wants to watch. ISPs will rake Netflix over tho coals for having their customers uploading 50GB files. Far too many users are behind firewalls and NAT routers for this to work. Nobody is going to max-out their upstream, all day, every day, making their connections useless. Asyncronous connections mean you need 10+ people who have the movie, and are willing to share, for every 1 person that wants to download it. Nobody is going to want to pay for Netflix, pay again with all their downstream bandwidth, pay again with all their upstream bandwidth, wait several days, etc. It's complete nonsense, until bandwidth is orders of magnitude cheaper, everyone has connections that is orders of magnitude faster, etc.

My way has no postage, no delivery,

Bandwidth is FAR more expensive than postage, and you'll have pretty much all the same delivery problems.

no "I'll go to the store and buy the movie tomorrow".

Yes, and far worse than now.

In other words: Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. And, Bullshit.

They'll have a year TOPS before the average consumer passes them by for set top boxes and the iTheater store.

What strange, magical, mystical world do you live in?

Re:Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again

[NeMon'ess]

First off, the pipes won't be big enough for HDTV in reasonable download time for well-over a decade. Just calculate how many days it would take to download a 50GB movie on your connection.

In my comment above yours, I did the math for 20GB, although HD-DVDs coming in between about 22-25GB. Unless my math is wrong, a 6Mbps Comcast cable connection could download a movie in about 6 hours, which means about 4 hours of waiting if it's a 2 hour-long film. That's 10 hours of waiting over my 3Mbps AT&T DSL.

Additionally, since the majority of HDTVs only have pixels to actually display 720p, the file size for those users can be only 11-12GB, meaning just one hour of buffering/waiting for the 6Mbps connection.

The consider you'll need to buy a second line, or upgrade your speed, since your connection will be effective unavailable as you are downloading each movie, for DAYS at a time. Internet access isn't free.

But how much bandwidth does the average user use while surfing? Next to nothing. The box downloading the movie just needs to find out the maximum available bandwidth and then scale back a bit so there's 128kbps available, or if it plays nice, have it adjust as needed. Even if the average user has P2P-using children, that could be limited to 50kBps.

Then just like Netflix has users select movies they want to watch soon, this box should come with a 300 or 500GB hard drive that downloads movies before the users get around to watching them.

Then consider how much money it's going to cost companies to pay for their own pipes to let you download 50GBs from them, and try to figure out how that will turn into a $2/movie business model.

So how much is the market rate for large customers for 12GB or 24GB? I agree that $2 isn't going to happen. My video rental store charges $3.50. How about that?

Re:Right...

[misleb]

The author was specifically referring to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as mediums for delivery... not HD in general. Obviously, if people don't have to do anything or buy anything extra to use HD content there won't be a problem getting them to buy it.

-matthew

Ignoringthe format - is HiDef a furfy anyway?

[rmerry72]

I watch most of my videos as XVid AVIs with DVD resolution or less on a projector giving me a screen of over 100 inches (ie 2.5m down here). My projector is only 854x480. Most movies are encoded at 720x304 or there abouts.

And yet, even at 100 inches, it looks fine. Yes, I don't disagree that tripling the resolution to 1080i *should* make it better to watch, but how much. At that size, sitting about 3-4m away my eyes are constantly shifting focus from one side of the screen to the other, and we really can't sit much closer or we'd get a very sore next and miss a hell of a lot.

When designing PAL the designers settled on 480 vertical lines because when sitting at the recommended distance (3 times the width of the screen) the human eye can only see 480 vertical lines. 1080 lines seems like overkill.

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.

Re:HDTV and Lack of Content

[hugg]

I will say that the quality of a fully-HD show is enough to make me watch it live, even the commercials. Some of the rebroadcast movies (Sound of Music, Pixar flicks, Rudolph) are really worth seeing. But it's just sad when you realize how much potential is lost in the average HD broadcast. Very few content is shot in 16:9, even fewer in anything higher than 480p (PBS is the exception, but seems to go out when a truck passes by my house.)

What bugs me the most is when a show/commercial/movie preview is a letterboxed 4:3 format -- you end up with a small rectangle inside of the $2000 rectangle that is your HD-capable TV. I also don't realize why so few advertisers take advantage of the format. Do the broadcasters charge by the MB? I'll watch *any* well-shot HD commercial.

This is why I think HD-DVD will fail -- if consumers don't even demand hi-fi TV, why would they demand hi-fi DVDs?

Similar to DVD...

[wframe9109]

I'm guessing the launch of HD media will be similar to that of DVD... It was very slow to get off the ground, people were reluctant to uprade until prices came down and releases were abundant enough. Eventually it will become more widespread (after the PS3, after computer companies start installing them on basic computers, after HDTV is more widespread) I'm guessing it will be a good 2 years before this starts happening give or take... Arguing that it will stay a niche is naive, unless you expect some higher capacity/better media to emerge, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Re:Similar to DVD...

[misleb]

But DVD is/was a singular format. Its uptake was just a matter of time. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are competing. Nobody knows which one to invest in. That combined with the small leap in technology and absolutely no added convenience for consumers... well, the whole thing just stalls. Probably until someone comes out with a format that is actually more convenient than DVD. Like something that doesn't scratch, for example.

-matthew

Mass confusion.

[Rdickinson]

the market place is totaly confusing, not to techheads like us, but to the general public.

Thats whats going to kill these formats.

You have HD dvd players (upscaling) that dont play HD-dvd's, Tv's are HD ready, HD compatable, what HD, 720p, 1080i/p? Component, DVi, HDMI, HDCP, region codes or not... Can I play my CD in my HD-DVD, my blu ray in my car..?

Your avererage consumer, ne average sales guy doesnt know the answers, it its new expensive and confusing it wont sell.

Re:Mass confusion.

[UnknowingFool]

And compounding all this is that the HD-DVD and Bluray are exactly the same size as DVDs. Some older people are still confused about the difference between CDs and DVDs with them being the same size. Imagine the confusion of your average consumer between Bluray, HD-DVD, DVDs, and SA-CDs.

Re:Mass confusion.

[Churla]

This man gets a cookie, if I had mod points today he would have.. oh wait.. it's already at 5.

The problem is that the vast majority of average users, and even a very healthy percentage of people who consider themselves technorati get brain haze when they have to look at all the combinations and standards the HD movement has cranked out there.

The studios are more interested in preventing you from copying a disc than getting you to be able to use the player. (See the whole downsampling, HDMI-whatever interface requirements and all that)

Want to see a smash hit HD format for discs? Come out with one that:

a) Doesn't care what kind of connector is between the player and the TV, so it will work with more sets.
b) Will easily show an improvement over DVD even on SD TV's. (tricky there...)
c) Costs about twice what you can get a decent DVD player for (In the $250-$500 range)

For reasons the article mentioned very concisely those three things will never meet in a player.

And for the studios, if you think whichever media format you endorse won't be cracked you are smoking something that is in all likelihood only legal for medicinal purposes where you live.

Re:Congress will ensure at least one format succee

[Bassman59]

What the author of this fairly dry article has failed to mention, is that congress and the FCC are mandating a change to HDTV.

NO ... what's being mandated is a change to digital TV broadcast. Digital TV != HDTV.

I expect HD DVD will make inroads

[Julian Morrison]

...as a read-writable computer medium. Nobody's going to complain about being able to burn more data to a disk.

It will make no significant inroads as a ROM medium in any flavour. It may even damage PS3, as if they had picked Betamax.

Talk about your mountains out of molehills

[Talez]

Geez. It's not launching a whole new format. It's an evolution to an existing one. DVD and HD can happily co-exist. DVD will be phased out over the next 10 years just like VHS and pretty soon we'll all be buying HD movies simply because its the only thing out there. Anyone who doesn't want to buy them can keep using DVD but it will be like using a VHS now.

Get a fucking grip people.

Re:Talk about your mountains out of molehills

[AReilly]

No, supply chains hate double inventory, let alone tripple. That's one of the reasons that DVD-A and SACD floundered: most retailers wouldn't stock even the pitiful range of titles that *were* available, because they percieved no demand, and the extra range took up shelf, display and warehouse space (all costs to the distribution chain). There has to be consumer demand. That was easy with both CD and DVD. There's nothing in HD/Blu DVD to induce that.

Two formats, too much DRM and RCs kills anything

[Nice2Cats]

There is no way in hell I am going to invest in a technology when there is a 50-50 chance that it will go the way of the Betamax. A brief and informal survey among my friends -- some of whom actually bought laserdisks and such -- shows the same thing. Also, the thing is so riddled with control mechanisms that I get the impression I would never really own a movie again: It seems that they could just decide to switch off my copy when everything they plan to do is finished and done. Oh, and then there is the region code thing again. That has to go before I will even consider it. In short, no way either way. Try listening to the customers and getting your act together next time, and we'll see.

480 lines ought to be enough for anybody

[rifftide]

The format wars - hey, nice going guys - will ensure that sales get off to a slow start. But 2-3 years down the road, there will be action and science fiction movies with special effects that will knock people's socks off. And when that happens, many will want to own a copy, and they'll buy if the price of these players is right. It's a matter of when, not if.

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:They're already screwing up.

[MP3Chuck]

"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."

http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html

It's a LOTR DVD/HD-DVD comparison. The page I linked to containes DVD captures compared with downsampled HD-DVD captures. You can click on each one to see an upsampled DVD capture compared with a 'native' HD-DVD capture.

Not quite the same as having FMV side-by-side, but it's the next best thing.

Re:They're already screwing up.

[aaronl]

As others have mentioned, while the stills looks wonderful, it ends up not mattering when it goes FMV. You might remember a few years ago, ATI was tauting that they could do motion blur on their GPU. Having very highly detailed images that have discrete steps doesn't look right. People wanted to blur their high resolution renders when things were moving around, because it looks more correct to the eye.

In those comparisons, you notice that the up close visuals of people are nearly identical, but the backgrounds, where people aren't really looking, look much sharper. This could very likely be an artifact of the video compression on the DVD vs. the newer compression on the HD stream. The color space is noticably better on the HD version too, but that could be for the same reason.

Reason 11 - no one cares

[RatBastard]

They forgot reason 11: No one gives a wet fart about high-def DVD. No one. A few videophiles and the usual "gotta have the next bestest toy" nerds love the idea of high-def DVD, but Joe Sixpack (and Sally Sobstory and just about everyone else) does not care at all.

Great. I can see the zipper on the back of Darth Vader's uniform, or the edges of Spock's ears. Big flipping deal. DV-Audio died for the same reason quadrophonic music died: who listens to music in that chair set up just so? Outside of audiophiles, no one.

This is technology without a need or a demand.

Divx is much lower quality

[benwaggoner]

Well, the Divx HD profile is 1280x720 and only 5.1 audio at best. Both advanced formats are 1920x1080, and support up to lossless 7.1 96KHz 24-bit audio. And I've never seen a Divx HD disc without palpable artifacts, while the standard for VC-1 encoded HD DVD is transparency to the D5 HD master.

HD DVD is at least as much of a jump from Divx HD as Divx HD was from DVD.

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.

OK, I'll bite

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Hmm, so you don't mind the audio compression performed when recording to vinyl?

Nope. What's done to CD releases these days is worse. See below.

You don't mind that the audio range is less than the spec for CD?

Nope. Both formats exceed real-world dynamic range requirements for music, even highly dynamic classical music.

You don't actually think the average(or above) needle on a record player can actually produce anything higher than 22Khz do you?

My Shure cartridge can easily hit that ... but after 3-4 plays, the vinyl isn't going to have anything up there anyway. I don't really care since as a late thirtysomething male, I couldn't hear it anyway. What I do know is that the top end I can hear sounds a lot better on my $250 analog rig than on my semi-audiophool CD player. My thrift store copy of Dark Side of the Moon kicks the hell out of my CD version, for instance. The fact that I paid $0.50 for the LP and $8.00 for a used CD makes me like the whole LP thing even more.

Now, if you want to complain about the lack of production quality on music CDs these days, be my guest.

OK, thanks!

Mastering houses, under pressure from the record labels to make their releases louder than the other guys', are shitting all over the idea of dynamic range. Louder! LOUDER! LOUDER!. Pretty soon everything is going to be mastered as a modulated square wave.

I'll take Ye Olde Tech any day.

wrong

[Punto]

7. People Want Technology thats 15 Minutes Ahead of Its Time

Wrong, and this is why this whole article is useless. Remember the first time you used a modem, how you thought "this is how all information should be transmitted", and when you tried to go out and tell everybody about it, their response was basically "leave me alone kid, I'm reading the newspaper here"? 10 years later, and people are starting to realize that "OMFG, newspapers might become obsolete!!!!?" Pleople like their technology at least 5 years behind of its time.

I'm not really defending the new formats (and I won't buy into them until they sell me a drive that can play both formats for = $100), but a bunch of guys saying "we don't need some new fancy format, we're fine with good old DVDs" sounds familiar.. Lets talk again in 5 years.

Re:wrong

[bnenning]

Modems were fundamentally different from newspapers, and to a lesser extent DVDs were fundamentally different from VHS. HD-DVD and BluRay aren't; the only advantage is more pixels, and you pay for it both in dollars and DRM straightjackets. To abuse the analogy further, it would be like AOL coming out with a 96k modem that could only dial to them, and expecting everyone to "upgrade" from 56k.

My Oracle says...

[Kaenneth]

The next big format will take a different physical form, we went from audio/video on spools (loose tape, film) to cassettes to discs to...

solid state

SD, Compact Flash, etc. why not a movie on a chip in a credit card sized package? easy enough to make a secure ROM card, and each one can have it's own custom DRM hardware, or not.

Just slap it into the slot, pull it out when you are done, no moving parts, no optical surfaces to get scratched, worst case use some contact clearer like old NES cartridges.

Carry your favorite movie in your wallet, to enjoy at home or on the go (players built into public transportation seat-backs)

Even if the technology dosn't allow a whole HD movie on a card, the card could be the license key for on-demand download of the high quality version, with the portable version built in.

Re:My Oracle says...

[cuantar]

I like your idea, but I'm a linux user, so DRM = unplayable until someone cracks it. I'd been hoping to see solid state media become more popular for a long time, but after a bad experience with a SD card mp3 player and mandatory DRM that wasn't mentioned on the box, I'm not too eager to see familiar old CDs and DVDs go away any time soon.

Netcraft confirms it: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, come on - these two formats have been out for weeks and people are already calling them failures. I say: give it some time.

Look at the current players. The Toshiba HD-DVD player is a subsidized Pentium 4 that sells for 500$, with Toshiba losing about 200$ on each unit. The 1000$ Sony Blu-Ray player is a similar hack, built not with custom chips but with a general purpose CPU that's way more complex and expensive than is required for Blu-Ray playback.

Think about the next generation of players, or even the generation after that. For starters, those players will use custom electronics that are less expensive and less complex than first-generation players. They will be smaller, draw less power, and will be built in far greater quantities. Those second and third-generation HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players will be far cheaper; I predict a 200$ HD-DVD player by the end of next 2007, and a 100$ player by the end of 2008.

Now, Blu-Ray will get a boost from the PlayStation 3 - which, by the way, will not remain at 500$ for very long. Just consider the PlayStation 2, which originally sold for 300$ and now sells for 130$. I predict that by the end of 2007, the PlayStation 3 will cost no more than 350$.

DVD took a few years to get established, and so will these formats. But the prices will start dropping, and more people will start using them. HD really looks great. And regardless of the trolls who claim that you need a 5000$ TV to enjoy HD, 720p TVs (which do offer a significant quality improvement over standard DVD resolution) are pretty cheap nowadays.

Let's also consider the other big factor that will drive HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray adoption: computers. Optical drives for computers are usually cheaper than stand-alone units. Soon, software players will be available, and computer manufacturers will start installing HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray drives in their machines.

Right now, Blu-Ray RW is incredibly overpriced, but when the drives can be bought for 300$ and the discs 3-4$ each, you can bet that people will start buying them in droves. Optical media does have some advantages over hard drives; people will not stop using discs and replace them with portable hard drives.

Will those new formats replace DVD? Of course not. DVD will keep on living for a long time. But the two HD formats will become quite popular: after all, HD does look awesome. Once you've seen HD content, going back to a normal DVD kind of hurts.

Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W

[macdaddy357]

The markets? They did a bang-up job choosing which quadraphonic record format would win, which AM stereo would win, DAT or DCC. SACD or DVD Audio. Unless one side is clearly the Beta, the markets can never make up their minds. They will buy neither to avoid getting stuck with what may be the next Beta. Drives that do DVD-R and DVD+R were the thing that kept DVD burners from being DOA, not the markets. Drives that do both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray won't be allowed unless current licensing agreements change.

One over the top claim

[plasmacutter]

"If the recording industry had presented a plan to phase out CDs and the "format war" had been avoided (simply by the industry picking one format over the other) we would all be using DVD-Audio players and illegal downloadable music would be mostly confined to analogue rips or older music"

This is so full of it.

If they had pushed out CD's to replace them with DVD-A standard then the DVD-A DRM would have been cracked..

As it is now most people dont use it so there has not been a huge impetus to crack it.. yet it has already been effectively circumvented through that windvd crack.

this guy is a starry eyed idiot if he actually believes that drek he spews.

Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W

[OECD]

They will buy neither to avoid getting stuck with what may be the next Beta.

I don't quite follow this. Beta got trounced by VHS largely because the consumers found the image quality acceptable, given the longer recording times. It's the consumers that made Beta, well, Beta.

If consumers don't find that the new formats offer enough, compared to what they have, then they both will become the next Beta.

That's the alpha and omega of it. (sorry, sorry everybody.)

What is the porn industry doing?

[olddoc]

Who made the VCR a success?
The porn industry!
I understand porn is a big percentage of DVD sales too.
While I agree with most of the points of the article I would like to hear
what the big producers in the porn industry have to say.
When the price hits $100 I'll buy one for my computer for backup.

Re:What is the porn industry doing?

[Steve B]

While I agree with most of the points of the article I would like to hear what the big producers in the porn industry have to say.

"Geez -- our customers really don't want to see every pimple on her butt or the incision lines from her boob job."

Re:What is the porn industry doing?

[greg1104]

I'm not so sure the porn industry needs high-definition.

My first encounter with higher quality porn came from my days of working on high-end hotel entertainment systems a few years ago. We'd gotten in some samples of DVDs where the manufacturer was touting the high video production quality of the product, all the way to using a higher than average bit-rate when encoding; none of this soft focus stuff. My boss wanted to know whether there was a big enough difference there that it would make for a good demo (the real money in hotel video on demand is all in the porn). As a single guy who had a 65" HD-capable Toshiba rear-projection CRT setup at home, I was the obvious flunky to check that out. I watched for a bit that night and brought the DVDs back the next morning, frown on my face. When asked "what's the problem?", I said "two words: razor bumps. I don't need to see that much detail."

Fast forward to last year. My sister had a nice HD LCD TV, so she jumped at the chance to get her cable upgraded with Comcast's HD box ("The Sopranos" in HD was the big draw). Late one night I stopped by, wired up the component video, sorted out the surround sound issues, and went browsing around the channels for good HD content to show the result off. After going through a few channels of "HD" that was obviously just upsampled junk, I found an unexpected source for some great quality video obviously shot in real high-def: HBO's "Cathouse", a documentary series about the goings on at a Vegas brothel. This was just amusing for a bit, and then I saw her eyes get big and she moved closer to the TV. She works in cosmetic surgery, and her first comment about the picture was "my God, I can tell you what they did wrong when they stitched her boobs back together".

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.

Woohoo!

[east coast]

CLV LaserDisc is the winner! Yahoo!

Oh... sorry... wrong thread... and decade....

Balderdash! Also horsefeathers!

[dpbsmith]

Where would we be if a bunch of naysayers had gone around knocking Polavision, quadraphonic sound, or the IBM 4 inch diskette?

Getting the compression right is hard

[Animats]

There are some big problems with Blu-Ray. Getting the compression right is hard. I was watching a Blu-Ray demo at the Sony Style store at the Metreon in San Francisco. Now this is Sony gear in a Sony retail store set up by Sony employees playing a Sony demo disk in an environment intended to show the technology at its best. And I'm seeing blocky areas of bright light jumping in the background in a concert video. It looks like the compression algorithm has trouble with camera rotation.

Some of the content looks great; some looks terrible. It's painfully clear that you can't just dump the content into the compressor and expect good results; it's going to become another labor-intensive step in post production, at least for a while.

Key Points

[pete-classic]

I couldn't get through TFA, but I think this guy misses some key points.

1. A lot of people have spent good money on HDTVs, and they're starving for content.
2. Both formats are mechanically compatible with each other and with DVD. This is a huge difference from the VHS/Beta situation.
3. The transition is cheap compared to VHS to DVD. New players play the old media, and they are much less expensive than the first generation of DVD players.

It is my opinion that the transition to HD will be pretty painless. Three years from now you'll be able to get a player that plays DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray for $100, and we will have forgotten what all the fuss was about. Oh, and one of the formats will be relegated to leverage the studios use against the owners of the other format.

-Peter

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.

I have to say...

[Belial6]

I have to say that if your pressed, honest to goodness purchased CDs are only lasting a couple of years, you need to look at the environment you are living in, because it must be extreamly harsh. I have only seen a couple of pressed CDs fail that have not been massively abused.

I also wouldn't count too heavily on tapes as being "proven archive media". Have you ever heard of people having to "bake the tapes"? That is because a lot of tapes that are only a couple of decades old have started to seriously degrade. Also, you can't just throw tapes into a non-climate controlled environment any more than you can a CD. About the only area that a tape has greater reliablity than a CD is when they are tossed in a pile on a desk without being put in a case. And that is only because the tapes have a built in case.

For the most part I agree

[Critical_]

I am an avid home theater fanatic with a massive front projection screen and a high-end audio system to go with it. (Here's a bad picture of the system. For scale, each one of the front black speaker is 6 feet tall.)

For someone with a similar large format setup, this technology is a worthwhile leap in quality because I can see the lack of resolution and compression artifacts inherent in many DVD transfers. Having a large display surface area makes noticing such issues much easier even for novices. However, those people who are content with their Sony and Hitachi consumer level television regardless of the display technology involved (tube, LCD, and Plasma) probably won't see the difference nor will they care.

I'll go through the points quickly...

1. Nobody likes false starts
I agree that the Toshiba HD-DVD player is lacking in terms of usability and quality, but it is a Toshiba and a first generation product so bugs are expected. It would be rather unfair for me to compare to my US$10k+ Meridian 800 series DVD player that has gone through a number of revisions for refinement to a first generation DVD player from many years ago. Even if they were both new and unused, products and implementations improve with time. However, even the Toshiba HD-DVD "budget" player with its superior resolution still makes my combination of Meridian 800 with line quadrupler look soft in comparison.

This technology cannot simply be written off even though I am disappointed 1080p isn't available. For a majority of consumers, the difference between 1080i and 1080p will be even less noticable than the jump from 480i/p to 1080i. Even for an enthusiast this isn't a problem until the new 3-chip DLP solutions capable of playing 1080p are widely available from Marantz and Runco. I also find the lack of HDMI is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we can't run 1080p and multichannel audio over one cable but the amount of copy protection possible on that interface makes me cringe. The fact that movie houses have a right to protect their content isn't in dispute, but the very notion that with the flip of a switch any component can be rendered useless through key revocation makes purchasing expensive and esoteric a much larger risk than it should be. If nothing else, I expect the esoteric ultra-high end companies will produce (and they have in the past) a better interconnect format but that won't make a difference with Joe Public.

2. Format Wars Don't Sell Players
Agreed. This curse hit SACD and DVD-Audio as few years ago. The initial bickering and lack of material made buying into either format a liability. Furthermore, there were artists on both formats that I liked which weren't available universally across formats so I bought machines that played each format. Other technical problems such as no individual channel volume and delay adjustments and the lack of a single digital output made hooking up the player difficult for consumers. Meridian and others made a proprietary single interconnect but this wasn't available in any budget machines.

Arguably, the general public doesn't care about multi-channel audio because CDs are good enough. Besides fanatics such as myself, who here has both an SACD player and a DVD-Audio player? Not many. Penetration of these formats into the market has been very slow and nearly non-existant. Interestingly my car has a DVD-Audio system from the factory but the manufacturer probably did research and realized that their target demographic probably has the disposable income to play with such formats.

3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
From the article: "Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players..." (emphasis mine). The general public doesn't care. Many times I see my friend's te

I'll wait for the war to end

[WCD_Thor]

I wont be, and nethier will my parents, be buying ether of these formats anytime soon. I don't want to start buying blu-ray tech only to find out a few months down the line that blu-ray lost the war and HD-DVD won, or vice versa. If I had to pick one though I'd go with blu-ray because 1) the name sounds so much cooler, and 2) it has more storage capacity. Believe me, I want beter video quality than DVD offers, but not if its going to cost me so god damned much money. Also, in a few years, holo-disks are going to start coming out with a predicted 100-300 gigabyte storage capacity initialy, with a thearetical storage capacity of more than a tarabbyte. (Yes I know I can't spell, so live with it).

An amusing look back...

[Will_Malverson]

From 1996:

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

Another problem: component vs hdmi

[markdj]

Another problem is that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players only output high definition video through an HDMI port which most HDTVs don't have. Those early adopters of HDTV bought TVs before HDMI. Their best output is from component video. Later adopters like myself have TVs with only one HDMI port and that is already used by the cable box. HDMI switch boxes are very expensive (~$300). The studios have said that they don't want to output component HDTV signals because they aren't encrypted and could be stolen (the so-called "analog hole"). So that leaves those buying new HDTVs as the market for high definition DVDs - a chicken and the egg problem if there ever was one.

Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W

[mcrbids]

I don't quite follow this. Beta got trounced by VHS largely because the consumers found the image quality acceptable, given the longer recording times. It's the consumers that made Beta, well, Beta.

In the case of VHS vs Beta, consumers didn't have a reasonable other choice. If they wanted to videotape Star Trek episodes, they had to pick one or the other. So the decision wasn't whether to buy, it was what to buy. And VHS killed Beta because of the extended recording times.

However, there's already a choice that's a clear market winner - DVD. Players are cheap, (I can now get a DVD with stereo audio and DVI for $30) media is cheap (movies cost ~ $10-$20) and it's widely supported.

So the choice consumers make is not "Which HD-DVD to buy?" but rather "DVD or one of them expensive, risky HD thingies". If they go DVD, they get all their movies and titles, decent video/sound quality, and don't pay too much. If they go HD-whatever, they get marginally better video, no noticable difference in sound, and a limited, high-priced movie selection.

Which would YOU buy? I don't know about you, but I'm in NO HURRY to adopt HD-DVD - I might end up buying an LCD TV in about a year to replace my aging 19" CRT...

On a side note, I've gotten to where I just don't like DVDs anymore. I have 5 kids and a busy career. When we rent DVDs, we end up paying late fees a good percentage of the time. When we buy them, they often get scratched or lost. I don't have time to be a "DVD cop". But a Dish Network Pay-Per-View is easily recorded on the DVR and played over and over, with no media to lose, no trips to the local video store, and no stupid envelopes to mail back. (a la NetFlix)

When we want a movie, we buy it on PPV. The selection still isn't fantastic yet, but it's just so much less hassle! IPTV is definitely where I'm going to go, as soon as it's available for my DVR!

My vote for the next media format: IPTV on-demand, with a DVR or iTunes. The real question is simply: does Apple have the gonads to actually penetrate the living room, or are they content to just be a cool fad?

Upconvert DVDs Look Good on HD

[rirugrat]

A regular DVD upconverted to 1080i or 720p on an HDTV looks really good to me, and it doesn't cost as much as you think since these special DVD players have come down in price. Plus you get to keep your DVD collection.

Chris

Actually it's not just copy concerns

[Sycraft-fu]

It's the the S/PDIF format can't handle the bandwidth for 6 channel uncompressed audio. It was designed for 2-channel audio. When you play back something like a DTS or DD track, what it's actually doing is sending a compressed signal via S/PDIF. If you hook it in to a non-DD/DTS aware DAC you'll get invervals of static and silence.

Without a new spec, they can't do uncompressed DVD-A transfer. It is my understanding that HDMI will support it.

SACD is a whole different ball of wax. It doesn't work like CD or DVD audio. They are PCM, meaning they take level snapshots a certian number of times per second. CD takes 16-bit readings, 44,100 times per second. SACD is PWM and works like variable speed electric motors. It takes only 1-bit samples, but does so at a rate of 2.8MHz. There's a whole line of reasoning as to why that you can look up if you want, but suffice to say normal DACs can't handle it.

The deadline is not for HDTV but for digital TV

[Optic7]

Just wanted to clear this up. The deadline that you're referring to for OTA TV transmissions isn't for them to convert to HDTV, but just to convert from analog broadcasts to digital ones. They are allocated a part of the digital spectrum, but can either broadcast one HDTV channel, or I believe 4 or more standard definition digital channels, which appears to be the route most smaller broadcasters are taking (hey, 4x the commercials!).

All that would be required would be a new receiver box. I've heard that they are even considering subsidizing these receivers for everyone, since the sooner they can complete this conversion, the sooner they can auction off the current analog TV spectrum for billions upon billions of dollars.

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[Compuser]

When is the launch date? Any idea on pricing?

Reasons 11 and 12.

[Zalbik]

11. There's crap-all to watch. Who really give's a hairy hoot if you can see "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" in 1080i, 480p, or 1b (1 bit). Hell, if forced to watch in one of these formats, give me the blinking white dot anytime.

12. It'll be obsolete technololgy. By the times the tech companies are done bickering over the best format, and there's buy-in from the major studios, and a significant number of titles have been published, and the desired price-point has been reached, and HDTV has made a significant in-road into consumer's houses, the "next big thing" will be available.

HDV (Holographic Versatile Disc) offers nearly 4TB of storage on a single disc. It's currently beyond the price-point of any sane consumer, but could easily hit a rational consumer price before Blu-Ray or HD-DVD seriously take off.

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[afidel]

Shouldn't CDRW be archival? The phase change material is non-organic and I can't think of a reason for the polycarbonite to fail, so the only possible weak link is the glue. So use a non-organic glue and you should be good for 50+ years no problem. I know that the manufacturers said CDRW might have a shorter shelf life initially but I never saw a reasoning for that claim and their ideas about CDR longevity have long ago been disproven.

Re:wrong on so many fronts...

[aaronl]

If I go to the store, I see lots of CRTs, and about as many LCDs. I can go to Target and buy a 32" SDTV CRT with component inputs for around $330. I can buy a 30" SDTV LCD for $800. More than twice the price for a smaller screen with the same resolution and worse color. I'm up to around $900 for higher than 480p. That sucks.

Most people don't want to spend four digits amounts for a TV set. They go to the store, they see a $300 TV that's the size they want, and they buy it. Maybe they really want a LCD for some reason, so they buy the $450 20" LCD. Most people see the prices as 2x - 3x more than a CRT, and say forget it.

Extremely few people are willing to spend the $1800+ to have a 1080p TV. That's just an absurd price to pay for television. It's especially absurd when you realize that $1800 buys you the low end.

Also, direct view *MEANS* CRT.

Here is a page from May of this year: http://www.cnet.com/4520-7874_1-5108443-1.html

The basic sentiment from that page, and most others, is that LCD is getting cheap because it's the worst on tech on the market. My own experience confirms this, even. CRT looks better and is cheaper. DLP looks almost as good as CRT, and is comparably priced and sized to LCD.

Basically, people *don't* care about HDTV, and the early adopters *did* get screwed. All of that HD tech the big money spenders bought won't work right because it lacks the industry DRM infections. They industry then went and confused the hell out of the market with all different versions of HDMI, confusing terminology left and right, and different vendors abusing what *had* been established terms.

Re:wrong on so many fronts...

[Black Cardinal]

I work in the industry, designing technology that goes into high-def RPTV sets. My own opinion largely matches yours, that the majority of people won't really be that interested in either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, at least for several years. I totally agree that the jump in image quality from VHS to DVD was much more significant than it is from DVD to either the 720p or 1080i HD formats. Recent large 1080p HD sets have excellent scalers that can make a 480p DVD look pretty good, although the level of detail will be a little lacking. Videophiles will want true HD sources now, but the more typical consumer will be content to wait.

Regarding LCD color, LCDs now have enough color depth and fast enough response time to match the color performance of CRTs. A CRT has a logarithmic color response to input voltage, which matches the human eye very well. An LCD has a linear color response, so electronics in the display have to mimic CRT behavior by applying a gamma curve function to the input signal. Nicer LCDs do this quite well (take a look at Apple's Cinema Display), and can match the best CRTs in color. The vast majority of LCDs do not do this very well, however, and so a cheap CRT will always have better color than a cheap LCD.

Also, direct view *MEANS* CRT.

Actually, no, direct view means anything that doesn't involve projection, but instead the image generation device is viewed directly. CRTs, LCD flat panels, and plasma flat panels are all classified as direct view. Non-direct view means RPTV (CRT-based, LCD microdisplay, LCoS/SXRD, or DLP) or front projection (typically either LCD microdisplay or DLP).

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, to qualify as real archive quality, it has to hold up to a host of environmental conditions, and few home burned cdrws will meet 50 years - as pointed out in this thread, some wont read in 3-4 years.

From what I've heard, the first generation of holographic drives are aimed at users with huge storage needs and libraries (Think $$), kinda enterprise class stuff, with consumer drives to follow.

i somewhat agree...

[AxemRed]

The point that really got me is #2: Format Wars Don't Sell Players.

I know that when I had to choose between DVD+R and DVD-R, I initially refused to go with either. I finally ended up getting a recorder that could do both, although what I was really waiting for was for nearly all new DVD readers and players to support both.

I, for one, can definitely tell the difference between 480p and 1080i. I would love to get my hands on a "better" format. However, I don't plan on buying either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray until one format comes out as the clear winner or both formats are almost fully supported on all new readers.

Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit upon the biggest fear of the movie and hardware companies: as technology progresses, IPTV and similar things will become much more common and perhaps eventually the normal way of acquiring movies and TV. Not there yet. Maybe another 5 or 10 years.

What will that mean for media providers and suppliers who have a gigantic established -and VERY profitable- industry devoted to putting actual discs and packages in stores? It means the end of the line, that's what. No more disc pressing plants, no more packaging, no more shipping boxes and warehousing, all of which have huge markups, all of which the media companies use to make tons of money.

HD-DVD and Blue Ray represent the LAST whole generation of physical media consumers are likely to buy. From the media company's perspective, this is their last shot to rake in obscene amounts of cash for movies in plastic boxes and they know it. Desperate companies do desperate things, stupidly. These weren't the smartest of companies to start with. They are much too rooted in their old ways of doing things that they won't even be able to comprehend when they've been obsoleted by IPTV or etc.

The same threat faces broadcast TV suppliers: networks, syndicators, even local TV, all of which exist mainly to distribute content over their analog RF network and collect ad revenue. But what happens when their RF network is simply obsolete? No advertisers will buy when nobody's watching. All hell is going to break loose and quick.

The only hope the networks have to survive is to embrace digital downloads even if it means alienating the local stations. At some point, the production companies that supply the networks will figure out that THEY too can offer direct sales and bypass the entire system while pocketing the money directly without regard to whether the network picks up the show or whether it has perfect ratings or an open airtime slot on X day and time.

IPTV can make all this happen.

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.

Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W

[Alioth]

Saying 'gonads' and 'penetrate' in the same sentence is a bit of a double entendre - especially since Apple will fuck everyone with DRM!

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[Mario21]

How can these discs have 50y guaranteed archival life when they haven't been around for 50 years to prove that?

Is this vapourware or can we really expect them to deliver?

Re:10 reasons they won't win, 1 reason they will

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Have they stopped selling VHS?

Once a format is out there, it is hard to let it go, and if consumers don't buy HD-DVD or BR-DVD, then stopping selling DVD's means stopping your sales. DVD was the fastest growth media format ever, faster then Tape, CD, VHS. With DVD Players costing as little as $39, they are about to saturate EVERY home that has a television set or two. Stopping DVD sales won't prompt someone to replace their $39 DVD player with one for $999 that plays only half of the movie releases out there, especially when most of the "new" releases are poorly dubbed older movies nobody cares about.

Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W

[mangaskahn]

Two words: Laser Disc!

There's a format that largely claimed the same thing over VHS as HD/BRD does over DVD. It also had many of the same problems by comparison:Rashella827
  limited selection, high priced media and players. It could deliver on its promises as can HD/BRD, but not at a price that a vast majority will be willing to pay. Even at the beginning, DVD was fairly inexpensive to get started, $500 or so for a player and about $30 for movies.

I don't really see HD/BRD taking off unless licensing agreements change to allow multi-format discs. That will future-proof the $1000 players and allow a much wider sellection of movies on the same hardware.

Exactly - I don't even have a HD TV yet!

[maillemaker]

>Which would YOU buy? I don't know about you, but I'm in NO HURRY to adopt HD-DVD -
>I might end up buying an LCD TV in about a year to replace my aging 19" CRT...

I'm in the same boat. We have an old (circa 1998) 27" TV. It's the only TV in the house. I dont' think it's HD capable.

Even if I wanted an HD-DVD player, I don't have anything to play it on! I guess I could hook it up to my 17" computer monitor, but since it is also old and doesn't support HDCP, it may end up being a waste of time. Besides I want to watch movies in the living room.

So before I will go HD-DVD, I'm going to need to buy a new TV. The next time I'm going to buy a new TV, it's going to be one of those big flat-panel $2000 jobbies I see at Sam's club all the time.

The thing is, I can't imagine the next time I'd have a disposable $2000 available to spend on anything, let alone a _TV_. So unless the old TV breaks, it's going to be YEARS before we buy a new one. Which means anything better than regular old DVDs are lost on me.

Steve

As an "avid consumer"

[netsavior]

Look, I have a 5.1 Surround sound, butt shaker enabled, pop-corn machine, Blacked out windows, 7 foot projection display, stadium seating, 300 square foot movie theater in my house. This is just not a "Media Room."

I don't think there is anyone who cares LESS about HDDVD/Blueray.

I can't tell much of a difference between Progressive Scan and HDDVD as demonstrated in the store (except the usual here is a CRT bubble with a DVD playing, and a $9,000 HD Plasma with a HD-DVD playing, see how much better?)...

I have a 2000 lumen 1024x576/1024x768 projector (yeah I know it is not 1080p, but it is still higher quality than I need) and HD HBO/Starz/Network channels with an HD-DVR (which is the only DVR my cable company offers otherwise I would have a much better Standard Resolution Tivo), so I have seen a lot of movies that way and I just could care less about the barely perceptable differences between these and DVDs, and I am definatly not an average consumer.

Hell I have a decent VCR (most VCRs are crap) and it is connected in with SVideo, and I can tell you that some of the old VHS tapes don't look that different from DVDs.

I guess I am just not "in" to quality that can only be measured by reading the specs on the box.

Confusion in format is a killer

[Slovenian6474]

I work in an electronics retail store and have notice many people still are confused with the differences between CDs and DVDs....or maybe it's just the part of Ohio that live in :)

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[ScottLindner]

BluRay may not have archival quality media *yet* which is precisely why I noted when it's available.

It took a long time until they produced archival quality DVD-Rs, but they now exist. The same is true for archival quality CD-Rs. I have used about 1200 archival quality CD-Rs for my image archive. I'd like to move this to significantly fewer of something else that is reliable.

By the way.. what's up with this holographic SPAM on every forum on the planet whenever a new media product has been announced? Your web page hasn't changed in over five years. Are you still trying to IPO or something?