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High-Def Format Wars - Battle of the Freebies
An anonymous reader writes "It's come to this: eager to introduce the masses to the virtues of the next-gen DVD formats, the studios and manufacturers backing HD DVD and Blu-ray have begun giving discs away. It all started last month when Microsoft pacted with Universal to give away copies of 'King Kong' on HD DVD to consumers buying the XBox 360 HD DVD add on. Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S.. Now today, HD DVD backer Toshiba has announced that it will give away *three* free HD DVD discs with every player sold for four months beginning on November 1st. With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them."
for the high power blue laser diode.
These movies will look great on my 12 B/W set!
where do connect these players to a 1970's tv?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
HD-DVD Jon will save us... maybe it will take a ten line perl program this time.
for the price of these new systems they will have paid for the free discs many times over.
I remember when I paid $199 for my Toshiba DVD player way back when, there was a free movie signup as well.
Lost in Space, Stargate, and Six Days Seven Nights were included.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
First the rootkit, then the PS3, and now giving away "Talladega Nights"... why does Sony hate us so?
Reminds me of the time I bought a Pentium computer in the mid 1990s that came with a foot-high stack of CD-ROMs. It was a nice attempt at an intro to the possibilities of the new format, but there were only so many different versions of "Virtual Rock Gardening," "Compton's Interactive Encephalopathy," "Mavis Beacon Teachs Self-Neutering," and "The Adventures of Poorly-Rendered Cutscene Man" I could really get any use out of.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
With all these free discs floating around, I'm reminded of the AOL days. AOL supplied a generation of bored youngsters with hours of microwaving, shattering and throwing AOL media. Someday kids will remember the "good old days" when Billy knocked out Timmy's tooth with a Blu-ray and when mom made them scrub out the microwave to get all the HD goo off the sides.
I hate the term 'Sig'.
I doubt if it makes too much of a difference to their bottom lines, they can either give those movies away or let them sit on store shelves unsold.
Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S..
...and here I thought corporations only focused on the short-term.
Given their production rates, I expect that promotion to last through 2007...
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
only time will tell which set of fanboys will be right. Me, I'll just sit back and wait this battle out. yepp~
Since Talledega Nights is a much better movie then King Kong, I think we all know who will win.
Saw KK, bored me to death. Didn't see TN because racing films (even with comic actors) bore me to death.
In all seriousness though, I think both formats suck because of all of the DRM.
I think both formats have a LONG hill to climb considering how well entrenched DVDs are.
500,000 copies of a film? How many people honestly have a set they can watch something like that in all its glory on?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So sony is shipping 400,000 ps3's but the first 500,000 get a movie when the next 100,000 show up next year? I'm getting a wii and I can use the left over money to purchase a dvd if I please :)
Aside from a couple titles on the Toshiba list, there isn't one film being given away that I would waste my time watching.
I was actually wondering if I could pay more and have them keep their DVDs. Ugh. Why not just throw a copy of Episode One and... oh I dunno... Maybe that last Star Trek movie that Shatner directed... what was that one again? The Undiscovered Country? Yeah... that'll sell some DVD players!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Is a bad choice? It's not really an HD movie.. King Kong at least hard large screen appeal especially with the CG. But Talledaga night? Not to meantion Will Farrell.... I think they just chose a movie that no one would buy in HD normally, just to get an easy freebie.
Sony really needs to pick up the slack. The PS3 would have ended the format war easily, but Sony has completely screwed that pooch. Perhaps it's Sony's fate. they did get CD and DVD, but this is sounding more like Betamax. It's true it'll be better in the long run to adopt Blu-ray, but god if it's not starting out like a lame duck.
On the other hand HD-DVD isn't exactly shining either. Both format really needs to show why "you need this now". My parents have a 50 inch CRT, and still watch VHS on it, it gives a great picture (Better then broadcast tv), DVDs also look great, they have no need to go to a new format, to rebuy all the dvds and tapes on it. That simple fact makes me wonder if it's worth it. Hell they even got the extended editions of Lord of the rings on single DVDs. Perhaps it's just not necessary yet, and won't be until we go beyond 1080p. Of course if your so anal you must have the perfect resolution go ahead, but I'll stick with my DVDs for a while (Still don't like tapes, but that's me, my parents can't get their movies on DVDs still, and for some don't feel the need.)
Well, since the discs come with the expensive players (XBox 360-HDDVD and PS3), there will be nobody returning the discs because they can't play them. Although there will probably be a few why try to play them in the old player. It won't really help persuade anyone who doesn't already have a player.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I think you do not understand the strategy.
The freebie disks come *with* the purchase of a HD-DVD/BlueRay player. This isn't like the AOL cd bullshit at all.
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...then when a dual media player comes out, I'll happily take all the freebies they want to give away... I refuse to buy hardware that's limited to one or the other though.
...but I'm more likely to be swayed by the first company to offer me a break on a display that can even view this high-def content ...
...
:-)
As far as I can tell in a cursory glance over the net, the cheapest "TV-sized" display that will do 1080P with HDMI is the Westinghouse for $1100 shipped, and the cheapest panel is $800 for some 24" display
That means I'm spending around $1500 for this "experience" they're peddling, all told. Sell me the display for $400 and we can talk.
--
Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
This would be funny, but unfortunately you did not read the summary, just the title. They are not giving away movies randomly in your mailbox like an aol trial, they are giving them away WITH THE PLAYER. When you buy a blue-ray player or an HD-DVD player (consoles included) you will also get a free movie to get you started. This is the same concept as your computer coming with a bunch of demo software or a console coming with a free game.
/.?
P.S. Anyone else have a blue-ray banner at the top of your page? WEIRD!...or not
P.P.S. Anyone else experiencing weird login issues on
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I won't be impressed until he does it in 10 lines of VB.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Simple reasoning would tell us that you're an idiot. Just because the technology is similiar does not mean the units should have the same price. Further more I do remember when DVD players were 500 dollars a pop. It was nearly ten years ago when the technology was new. It's only now that they're 25 dollars. I wouldn't be suprised if in 2015 we're buying HD or BluRay drives for $50.
I still watch TV on 27" JVC TV I purchased in 1995. I think it looks great. The picture was awesome the day I bought it, and the picture is still great today.
I watch TV on Bell ExpressVu (Canadian Dish Network), rent the odd DVD, and watch the occasional torrent movie or TV show I missed.
You know what? I think it looks great. Of course, I sit six or eight feet back from the TV.
I am really missing anything? The new TVs in the stores look fine, but every time I visit a friend who has an enormous screen, I can't help but think "Man, those guys look all blocky and stretched" when Hockey Night in Canada is on.
I mean, WTF?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Simple reasoning? I guess this is the excuss you give when you have no facts to back what you say. When DVD players cost $500 there build cost was still much higher than $25-50 prices come down when volumes go up, also when the chinese start making knock off units which dont have to recover the R&D costs. Consumers all want new technology at build cost and then complain about outsourcing to india and that it broke after 3 movies. Forget your reasoning and learn some facts.
Talledaga Nights!?!?! I'm so there, d00d.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
1)Buy Blu-ray burner 2)Download some Blu-ray movies 3)??? 4)Profit!
No, the razors are costing a fortune right now. They're trying to give you a free blade or two so you'll go buy the razor. Of course, given the offerings, it's a bit more like passing out rusty, nicked blades - 'cause only the true masochists are going to really enjoy watching either of these films, much less in HD.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm just wondering why they think Talladega Nights is a good showpiece for Blu-Ray technology. King Kong makes sense as the visuals are a big part of the movie. But a comedy? I'm not getting the logic.
The enemies of Democracy are
"These people are creating their own illegal market for movies by distribtuing free products. It's really not sensible for them to both distribute free copies of movies, and say that for regular people, distributing free copies of movies is bad."
Before I blast your post to little bits. Why don't you explain the logic you used to arrive at your conclusion, keeping in mind we're talking about the copyright holder here.
Given that the article states that Sony Corps. profit has fallen so dramatically I'm surprised that they can give away anything.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Maybe that last Star Trek movie that Shatner directed... what was that one again? The Undiscovered Country? Yeah... that'll sell some DVD players!
Blasphemy!! How dare you confuse such a thing!!
Shatner did NOT direct The Undiscovered Country (ST VI), which was a great movie. He directed The Final Frontier (ST V), which was so horrifically bad that many ST fans consider it to not have happened.
Maybe they hope you'll be laughing so hard you won't realize how much money you just wasted?
Since these are all being bundled with the matching player, I don't really see this plan working out so well.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
The funny thing is the question of, "Who pays for this?" I wouldn't think that it's much of a dent to either corporation, but it does mean less off-the-shelf copies of each movie will be bought. This means that a lot of the cost of distributing things for 'free' comes out of the pockets of the people basing their income on the royalties. So, by association, you shouldn't buy a PS3 for the free movie because you're helping terrorists and starving out stuntmen.
My little site.
DVD works for me. Besides. Hollywierd will maybe put out 1 movie a year worth buying anyways. Everything else worth buying has been out for years.
Strangely enough, it seems that most of my TV/DVD-watching time is now spent watching TV show discs, instead of movies: Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Firefly, 4400, etc. There's a lot of great stuff coming out on TV while the latest movies aren't that great. We may even get to the point where TV shows just get released straight-to-DVD since TV execs are so incredibly stupid that they sometimes cancel the best shows (Firefly) in their first season.
I had a look at some large "HD ready" plasma and LCD screens the other day. The picture quality is shite . I mean really really bad. You can see pixelation, step changes in what should be smooth colour and jagged pictures during high speed sports events. I wouldn't touch any of them with a barge pole and anyone who has bought one is a muppet.
Deleted
This is like dumping, but cheaper because the DVDs cost very little to produce, and no one's going to buy them unless they have the player anyways...
The processing power on these systems is/was pretty high when they are first introduced. I had a pretty spiffy new computer when DVDs were still new-ish, and it was unable to play them reliably without a MPEG2 decoder on the video card. Today, you need a pretty decent computer to do full HiDef H.264. The hardware cost for a HD-DVD player is probably pretty darn high right now, but it will obviously come down as custom chips enter the market and come down in price.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Aah and now the circle of Slashdot postings is complete and we are right back where we started, but one level up. Feel that? It's balance.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Did you really just call him an idiot for his reasoning, then completely agree with his reasoning? His point was, I beileve that obviously these players do not really cost $1000 to produce, and are being marked up, and he used DVD players as an example. They also cost tons of money to start but are now being sold very cheaply. So what happened, are all these companies taking massive hits to sell DVD players? Doubtful, even taking into account the razer-blade model of marketing. So yes, over time the players will be cheaper, which would show that no, they don't really cost a grand. Also a lot of people saying how entrenched DVDs are seem to have forgotten the early 90s and the "struggle" DVDs had in getting off the ground, what with the heavily entrenched VHS to compete against.
I agree with you. I'm quite happy with my 24" flat screen TV and non-progressive scan DVD player. By the same token, XP works great for my needs. Why should I spend lots of $$$ for an HD TV set, or for Vista hardware and OS, for just incremental gains? The change from VCR to DVD and from Win98 to XP was an order-of-magnitude change and well worth it.
If us silly Americans will *pay* for crap like that, what could possibly give you the idea that it being free isn't an incentive to buy something even more expensive? I know that the people with vaguely decent taste are the "pirates" (ie, the ones not going to theatres to see the shit they produce), but most people will happily lap up the load of crap produced and pay for it.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Battle of the Frisbees?
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
Lines are overrated.
A C program will work the same if it is all in the same line...
how long until
What will they be giving away next? A remastered copy of Ishtar?
*shudder*
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I'm guessing you didn't see the movie.
It's got plenty of action/racing scenes that will show off the high resolution, framerate, and 7.1 sound capabilities. It doesn't have loads of CG eye-candy special effects, but what are there will probably make for a damn good display of the capabilities of the format.
To me anyway, that the formats are not doing that well. I watched a movie in blu-ray on a HD 60ish in screen. (I dont know all of the specifics, sorry) The room had surround sound too but i didnt notice a huge difference. I really dont think that DVD to HD DVD/Blu-ray are as big a step as VHS to DVD. Like i said. I dont think either format has a chance and this is just the start of the formats begging ANYONE to buy.
Comic book guy is that you?
In order for us to watch HD DVD or Blu-ray discs I'd have to throw out and replace all of our entertainment system but the speakers. This ain't gonna frackin' happen - I'm not going spend five figures doing this. Until the industry groks this we bit of reality, they are going to bang their MBA educated noggins against a wall trying to sell something that people don't have to have.
Just like every video format before it, the eventual winner here will take off when there is a decent selection of porn to be had.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
It's called a "loss leader." You give something away in order to get people to spend more money on something else.
If you're unfamiliar, walk down to the corner and talk to your friendly local crack rock dealer, he can fill you in on the basics.
Whoever can get the most consumers 'hooked' on their format stands to make a whole lot of money...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Acting like a calm, dumb job average consumer
Some apparently find this easier than others.
In fact, it would appear some need not act.
Ditto. What does HD have to offer that is worth the price? While I don't go to theaters much, I do when I want to see the great HD content. That would be about twice a year. Gee, $600 VS $50. No contest here. Every other movie I watch looks great on my Wega with a standard DVD.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Offtopic -
Do appear to be some issues logging in, although the problem seems to be fairly short (2-4 minutes) and infrequent (for me anyway) I've seen it maybe 5 times in the last 3 days (503 System error is the response I am getting trying to get to the login page). Anyway you are not alone.
Ontopic
Since when does anyone read the article!?
But more to the point I wonder if giving away say 5 decent DVD's (Older Blockbusters may be a good place to start (Die hard / Top Gun / Terminator etc..) without needing to buy a player would boost uptake, after all 5 DVD's would be 'worth' £100 or so. I guess it depends on if the movie producers want this format (with all the DRM goodness they get from it, or whether its a push by the device manufacturers. After all no one is saying who is paying for these 'free' DVD's.
Of course giving them away free would probably just mean that a hell of a lot of HDDVD's would appear on ebay.
I probably should modify that.
VHS LOOKS better then old tv shows and some normal broadcast tv over cable.
This is more like trying to watch a 90s sitcom on a non-hd channel.
I am almost afraid to try Nick At Nite, or TV land just because I've seen what 10 years has given us.
Your mind probably automatically took defensive measures to block out your memories of ST:V, in order to preserve your sanity.
ST:VI is actually considered one of the better ST movies. It's not as great as The Wrath of Khan of course, but it's probably #3 according to most people, after The Voyage Home, or maybe #4 after the Borg one.
The first one million units sold shall have DRM disabled.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Manufacturing costs drop with time, as improvements are made to the process and as competition for manufacturing the underlying parts drives prices lower. What your parent seemed to be saying was that DVD players were expensive to manufacture, and commanded a high price. With time, they became cheaper to manufacture, and the savings were passed on to consumers. (Of course, mark-up probably also dropped with time, but the major reason for the price drop was likely cost reduction further up in the chain, which needed to be passed on to consumers, or else some competitor would pass their savings along.)
Til they start giving away the players free. Then I'll get one... maybe.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Free BetaMax tapes with purchase of BetaMax Player!!
I'm not biting.
Once either one of them offers Battlefield Earth in HD, then we'll talk.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Doesn't this cover about 70% of the movies available on BR or HD?
Couldn't you just bang on your helmet and lick the window?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, for me it didn't happen. It sucked so badly that it sucked open a wormhole to an parallel universe where it never was made. Just before the collapse, I fell through.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them
That's because there will be very little content on most shelves for people to buy. Remember LaserDisc? The BlockBusters and BestBuys of the world don't care about low volume, competing formats. They only care to stock material that moves fast. None of these formats will take off until one starts getting a definite advantage on the market, and then the network effect will take over to doom the rest. The stores don't want to be left holding a lot of stock that nobody wants, so they'll wait and see...and by extension...so will the rest of us.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Somebody "pacted"?? Gah! They've shited the language!
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
They should just re-re-re-remaster Top Gun for the N-teenth time so that a whole new generation of vidiots can have their stomach contents rearranged by the subwoofers at the ol' circuit shitty. Gotta love those afterburners.
Besides, who wouldn't want to buy a TV displaying the only movie gayer than priscilla queen of the desert? You can be my wingman any time!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I just know that if i get a HD player it will go blue ray and if I get blue ray it'll go HD. This is so stupid they should have a standards board that sets an international standard. And to become a standard a format should have to be open and not owned by Sony or Microsoft. And why the heck do HD and blue ray discs cost twice as much as DVD? Sometimes I think this is all an excuse to raise the price on movies.
Why don't they freebie an hdcp converter too? My memory span isn't short!
Wow, deja-vu.
I remember these promotions when DVD was starting as a format, back in the late 90s...
"Buy X DVD player and get 6 movies free!"
Of course, it wasn't your choice of movies... But it's neat to see them doing this again...
Too bad there's two freaking formats competing.. this is going to do nothing but hurt the adoption of HD disc players until multi-format players come out.
-Z
I wont' be impressed until he does it in 10 lines of cocaine.
When a company offers to replace my entire DVD collection with its HD counterparts, then we can talk.
Of course, I'll still say no, because of the DRM. "Free" just isn't worth it.
Well if Mikya did do that, then simple reasoning would show us Mikya is an idiot.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Dvd is fine.
The slower these are adopted, the longer product comes out on DVD and is super cheap.
I've no interest in rebuying my 400 dvd's in hd-dvd or blue ray.
PLUS hd-dvd and blu-ray have so much capacity that they should really be including a lot *more* content. I mean- you could probably put every mainstring song every recorded on a blu-ray disk at 192 bitrate.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You've just described why many are referring to the HD-DVD and BR as the "new laserdisk". IMO they're totally right. The quality increase over DVD is barely there for most that have seen it in action. And if you've got a 720 HD set with an upscaling DVD player, you are REALLY going to be hard-pressed to see an improvement over the 1080p+BR/HD. The only tried and tested benefit to Blueray is that its the better format of the two for data storage (as on the PC).
Aside from data storage, I suggest consumers bypass HD-DVD & Blueray completely and simply stick with their DVDs and 720 HDTV. They're far, far cheaper than the 1080p solution and looks virtually the same. And that's not to mention the limited usage of 1080p in the world by broadcasters. Hell, 1080i is hard enough to find so why waste the money if you don't have to?
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Well, but, there is a difference now between entrenched DVD's and the new HD versions. First, the DVD was such a HUGE step above the VHS...it didn't wear out (a big seller), you could skip around on it quite easily, and the quality in pictures and sound was leaps above the old video tape....even on the same tv equipment.
And while the DVD took awhile to become the new 'entrenched' format...it did take off faster than any other A/V tech in history.....and now, you're getting to the point where the majority of homes have at least one, and they've replaced their old, and fading copies of movies on tape.
However, the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD's....well, people are pretty happy with the normal DVD...hell, some of them have only had them for 2-4 years even now. And you don't see the benefits of the new formats UNLESS you also shell out a ton of $$'s for HDTV sets...and in Joe Sixpacks home, they really aren't in a huge rush to do this....hell, I'm a techie gizmo fanatic, and I've not rushed out to get a huge plasma set....if it wasn't for Katrina and losing a lot of stuff, and temporarily in a small apt...I'd have not gotten the projector I currently have. It runs at HD resolutions. But, even with that...I'm just now starting to experiment with building a MythTV box with a HD tuner card for OTA HD content...
I'm certainly in no rush for anything like the new HD format dvd's...
For most people out there...with normal tv's and salaries...the current DVD's are "just good enough". I don't see that really changing anytime soon....IMHO
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's my opinion that only true videophiles will be buying either one of these systems until
A) the prices of the HDTV's come down and I'm not talking about the "ready" ones. Thats a shitty advertising gimmick. You still need some sort of transformer for the TV. I don't know too many people who will shell out $2k for a TV when their 27" looks fine to them. Not to mention reciever's that usually run a couple hundred for a half decent one.
B) The format war settles down so that there is only one. (Laserdisc what???)
C) They give out some movies that would blow your socks off. Talledega Nights? Please. How about X-Men 3? Or hell, Click which has better effects than TN. Some thing where you can see the indivdual hairs on Storm's head as she becomes the whirlwind.
D) The HDTV "ENABLED" TV's are your every day TV. Right now it's not a convenient change over. This isn't something like DVD which out-sold VHS's ten year sales in the span of two. There's too much new equipment thats needed. With the DVD player all you had to do was plug into your TV (or VCR if your TV was really old). Can't do it with HD-DVD / blu-ray and see the true beauty of the system. See point A
Thats my 4 cents.
Hee Hee The drinking bird does all the work!
I bought a Westinghouse 42" LCD 1080p last month for $1600. It rocks! Google for the reviews.
History tells us that the best way to tell which format will win the format war will be to visit your local porn store and see which HD format is available.
Porn has driven visual media technologies for quite some time now.
I think that a lot of the driving forces that helped advance dvd adoption are gone with this generation. Going from VHS to DVD had several key advantages: 1: cheaper to manufacture (but not cheaper for the consumer, so you might not include this) 2: You don't have to rewind a DVD, pause, rewind, and fast forward are easier to do on DVDs 3: DVDs take up less space. You can store 200 DVDs in a binder the size of maybe 8 VHS tapes? 4: DVDs use progressive scan (480p) as opposed to VHS interlaced (480i) which in itself is a very large improvement in picture quality (a lot of people thing the difference between VHS and DVD is greater than between DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-ray 5: Better sound quality (at least a MUCH bigger leap than HD-DVD/Blu-ray offer to the average consumer) 6: DVDs are as readily, or commonly "eaten" by the player, requiring significant time repairing the tape and rewinding it by hand. 7: Special features 8: Easier to rip Some of these are key reasons for compelling reasons to upgrade such as playback in more areas than just home theaters, by way of portable players and laptops. Who doesn't want to buy the version of the movie they can watch at home and on the plane, or anywhere for that matter, using their laptop? HD-DVD and Blu-ray are more of a DVD on steroids type thing than the complete rethink of the home video buisness that DVDs were. Perhaps this will end up being like DVD audio.
I dont know, Talledaga nights had a lot of racing scenes. Those could look pretty good in HD.
because my monitor runs at 1680x1050. if im watching a movie on a screen 2x (or more) the size of my monitor, it had better have a resolution at least as good my 20" LCD, which requires at least 1080i, or 1080p to match the refresh rate.
01001010
Why give them for free? I own the movies already. So when are they giving the players away?
Blue-Ray Coasters and HD DVD coasters, they'll join my collection of AOL coasters !
Right. When DVDs were new, every single graphics card advertised that it could do motion compensation (which reduced CPU usage by 5-20%) and the best ones for video also did iDCT in hardware (giving up to a 50% load reduction). It took about a 400-500MHz CPU to do DVD decoding purely in software, and these weren't available until 2-3 years after DVDs were released.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If I can't make myself a backup copy, I won't buy it. Period.
This sig intentionally left blank.
...but HD is simply not worth it.
After recently buying a 720p display (for the picture quality, not resolution), and watching HD broadcasts, I've decided that it is simply a waste of money. I have great trouble telling the difference between upscaled DVD and HD broadcasts. I suspect that many of the broadcasts are upscaled anyway.
One channel here (in Australia) is called SC10, and they have an HD channel that is entirely devoted to HD content. i.e. they constantly show HD demonstrations at 1080i, unless they are showing a natively HD program (which is very rare). I saw one such program, and I noticed that the HD looked very visibly worse than the SD broadcast. You could see the visual noise very clearly, whereas the SD broadcast had scaled it out. The scaled down then scaled up version looked better. Trust me, HD is not worth it.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What would you rather watch? Talladega nights or King Kong? First betamax, then memory stick, and after making all those proprietary formats cost twice as much and have 1/10th the users, Sony has created the world's first proprietary audience.
HD-DVD has been out for almost a year. BD has been out for a few months. No breaches of encryption. Millions of 128 bit keys on each disk. No software players being sold. No interest from users in watching movies on their PC. These formats probably won't be cracked.
If they offered one to one replacement for my large DVD collection, I'd think about upgrading but we all know that's not going to happen.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Digital TV will certainly change that. Broadcast signals will go further in most situations, and the picture will be absolutely bit- PERFECT right up until the edge of the signal coverage area.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray are both backwards compatible. Anyone saying "I don't want to rebuy everything" is a complete idiot. You keep your DVD collection, and simply buy NEW movies in highdef formats.
There was a reason to rebuy VHS tapes on DVD (not a GOOD one, but still). There will be almost no good reasons to rebuy your DVDs in highdef formats.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"eager to introduce the masses to the virtues of the next-gen DVD formats, the studios and manufacturers backing HD DVD and Blu-ray have begun giving discs away."
Isn't this basically the same strategy employed by drug dealers?
-MJ
Simple reasoning would tell us that you're an idiot.
Good to see you using those social skills. People like you are why Linux has no market share. Can't you disagree without being obnoxious?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"However, the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD's....well, people are pretty happy with the normal DVD...hell, some of them have only had them for 2-4 years even now."
/G
Even less. I only bought one about 18 months ago - and only because they now come with (crappy?) surround-sound thingies and all in one small package.
Yes, I'm a techie, but I do not get the obsession with having every movie on DVD, when there are cinemas and digital movie-channels... I just do not get it.
How dare you compare those two? The Final Frontier (ST V) is the biggest piece of crap ever committed to film, whereas The Undiscovered Country (ST VI) is the best Star Trek film ever. It has everything: ice planets, prison worlds, mystery, conspiracy, intrigue, the prospect of either a bright future or a devastating war, and even some nuuggets of wisdom. I'm not generally a Star Trek fanatic, but this is absolutely the best work of art that the Star Trek franchise has ever produced.
Bottom Line, I am not risking $500-$900 to buy a doorstop with 50-50 odds. Want to sell HD disk media ? Marry it to an HD DVR, for export of programs. Heck, even make it a "copy once" block. Oh, I forgot, we are NOT selling HD DVR in the USA......unless you $pend a fortune with your Cable or Sat Monopoly.
Except why pay for something twice, than just keep the good format that you have now. If you're force to pay full price for an incremental improvement would you? You don't pay 60 bucks for an expansion normally? You wouldn't expect to pay 30 bucks for a patch that allows your game to have hi res models? Why are we allowing it here?
In addition Digital TV will change that, except the cable company is squeezing digital TV as hard as they can to make everyone pay every little cent more to get it. All these companies should tell cable to start making this available for lower costs. I'm not paying more money per channel I want in HD. I thought every channel was going to be digital five years ago, three years ago and last year. The only reason they arn't is because cable companies want to charge more for it and no one is going to agree to that if there's no other option.
HD formats might be better, but there's no reason to run out and get them, especially when everyone seems to think they need a premium. If I could buy HD movies for 10-20 bucks I might think about it, but currently they are more, and currently they can come with less features then DVDs. For shame. I'll just keep buying DVDs, because they are cheaper, and better. If they started putting TV shows on blu-ray I'd be thrilled. Imagine a whole season of a show on one disc? I'm down with that.
Eeek everyone who buys HD-DVD or Blue Ray is an idiot, sorry to say that, but beneath the shiny HD content, there is an awful layer of DRM which is even as evil as that the content providers can disable your shiny device via a key on the disk if your HDCP key was stolen or was/is in one of the stolen keys lists! DVD was not copyable either until CSS was cracked, but this thing is inherently evil, it basically scrambles all the signals up to the tv, the lifetime of your device can be nullified by the content providers, you wont get full resolution unless you adhere all the so called security standards, still region codes in that dreck, and a lot of other nasty things. Also expect a price hike once the format has killed off dvd, since there is no copying anymore, hence the cheap "vendor" next door is closed. (It always was a myth that piracy raises prices in fact usually prices are raised where there is a monopoly situation)
I just bought the new Panasonic Blu-Ray player and it came with a free "Eight Below" and an offer for another two by mail "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "The Great Raid". I received the mail movies in less than a week. I also purchased "Stargate," "Sky Captain," and the first two Terminators. My only complaint is that the compression sucks on all these discs. There is a "color banding" or "posterization" effect on scenes with sunsets and is seen at it's worst on the "Sky Captain" BD where Sky Captain's plane plows into the ocean. This "effect" only happens occasionally, but when it does it's really, really distracting and annoying.
Granted all these discs are single layer BD discs. I was really expecting to see them releasing dual layer discs with a whole lot less compression. I am viewing these discs at 1080p over an HDMI cable on a Mitsubishi WD-57831 and I have used the THX video tests on the discs to adjust the display to where I can barely see macroblocking in the sky scenes in "Eight Below".
Well, DVD started out with the same kind of incorrectly compressed releases and it took time for "Superbit" discs to arrive. Properly mastered DVDs look fantastic on this player when upconverted to 1080p.
If someone gives me that much to spend on a video-watching system, I'm buying a computer that plays DVDs.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
A) You don't have to. If you like low-res analog TV, keep it.
B) DTV/HDTV is a HUGE improvement in many more ways than just the 6X resolution that is most often hyped.
You don't have to pay anything per month for HDTV channels. Point your antenna in the right direction, and you'll get a perfect-quality HD picture, better quality than cable or satellite providers offer.
You could have said the same thing about DVDs just a few years ago. New formats always cost more for a while. The cycle will continue.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That makes it equally as bad as DVDs.
Remember, DVD-CSS has multiple keys too, it just happened that they were ALL cracked at almost exactly the same time.
As opposed to Macrovision...
Completely baseless.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The main difference between the DVD and the newer systems is, that both the blue ray and the hd-dvd units can be bricked at will by the content providers, by a blacklist of keys which can be distributed with every new movie. Have much fun having a 600 dollars player and then having it bricked by the latest movie you just bought!
Prove it.
Lots of idiots have been ranting on it, but it's almost certainly based upon one rather mundane sentence in a Reuters article, which is being widely speculated about, and probably completely misinterperated.
Their own docs and specifications make no mention of any such feature: http://www.aacsla.com/specifications/
etc.
If you want to make crazy claims, get at least some proof to back them up.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant