Why HD-DVD and Blu-ray Are DOA

mikesd81 writes "Slate has up an article on why both new DVD formats are effectively dead on arrival. Article author Sean Cooper cites internet movie and cable on demand services, the price of new hardware, and the inexpensive cost of newer hard drives as the reasons behind his argument. The article goes on to say buying movies online isn't there yet. Titles in standard-def are few, in hi-def fewer still. With five times the visual information of a standard-def flick, an HD download of The Matrix, were it even available, could take all day over the average broadband connection. But consumers are demanding change, and change will happen fast." From the article: "On iTunes an album costs about 10 bucks--as much as $8 less than some CD retailers charge, partially because of the reduced cost of getting music to buyers online. Look for the same savings when it comes to downloading movies. And then there's the fact that hard-disk storage capacities are pushing ever upward while size and price drop. In a few years, you'll buy every episode of The West Wing on a drive the size of a deck of cards rather than on 45 DVDs in a box the size of your microwave oven." Phil Harrison is already saying the PlayStation 4 won't use discs.

Comments

His prediction is 5 years too early

[Salvance]

I don't see his logic. Americans might demand faster connections and more storage space, but they're not going to get it before the Blu Ray and HD DVD player become mainstream. It's a matter of timing - there's no way the cable and phone companies are going to upgrade everyone from 1.5Mbps (an average connection speed now) to 100Mbps (the minimum required to download a 10-15GB Hi Def movie in under an hour) before the HD players become popular.

No matter how much people might ask for it, there's no way it could possibly happen fast enough. If he was arguing that this next generation of video players will be the last to use physical media, he would have a decent argument, but it will easily take at least 5 years to upgrade our telecommunications infrastructure to the point needed to quickly deliver HD content.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[Qzukk]

there's no way the cable and phone companies are going to upgrade everyone from 1.5Mbps (an average connection speed now) to 100Mbps (the minimum required to download a 10-15GB Hi Def movie in under an hour) before the HD players become popular.

And they're certainly not going to do it unless they're allowed to charge both the user and Apple's store for the same bandwidth. And the movie producer and director. And the lead actors and actresses. And I hear they even want to charge the janitors as well, ever since the janitors started making movies about how they get paid from movie sales.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[falcon5768]

YEs but you also have the fact that people are also not willing to upgrade their TVs, DVD collections, and anything else they need to either.

People tried to upgrade CDs (remember audio DVDs and Minidisk) The market said screw you and jumped to MP3 around 10 years later. I suspect the same will happen

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[Splab]

Yeah, the only way to succeed is to make something that seems better than DVD's - the reason I dropped my VHS collection for DVD's was the storage space. The reason people drop CD's for mp3's isn't quality, but ease of use. Blu-ray and HD-DVD has afaik nothing that gives the user any advantage - either in terms of usage or storage. They are doomed...

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't see his logic. Americans might demand faster connections and more storage space, but they're not going to get it before the Blu Ray and HD DVD player become mainstream.

Look at ti this way. HD-DVD and Blu-ray provide more space for higher definition video and a few other features. Internet download movies currently provide convenience of acquisition and storage and potentially lower prices. The market is demanding the latter more than the former. Faster connections are becoming much more common, more in other countries than the US, but the trend is clear. I think this will lead to movies via download gaining more acceptance than movies via new disk formats. Really, not that many people are willing to invest so much for such a minor improvement in video quality, but they are wiling to invest in not having to go anywhere or swap out disks.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[Skye16]

Slowest around here is 320kbps. Midrange is 3.0mbps/320kbps. Max is 5.0mbps/768kbps. Max is about 70$ a month. Midrange: 40$. Slowest: 30$.

Maybe in urban or suburban areas you're right, but most of the country (area) isn't urban or suburban. Population wise, you'd probably have a majority in those areas, but my guess is you'd still have a sizeable percent who aren't in those areas and don't have those options. DSL is pretty much the same around here, with lowest being 768kbps and highest being 5.0mbps max, but they don't reach that for anywhere except maybe the house directly next door to the switching station. Wi-Max isn't available, and as the area is beset by mountains and valleys, I'm not sure how well it would work to put in any towers. Not having any cell phone service depending on which hill you're on or dell you're in doesn't help.

I wouldn't find it to be much of a stretch that 1.5mbps is the average. Not everyone thinks they need the super fast speeds. Some just check email or sit on IM. I know so many families with the 320kbps/320kbps connection and it truly boggles my mind. But not everyone is willing to spend 70$ on internet on top of the rest of the TV costs and phone costs.

So, that turned out to be exceedingly tangential. My bad.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[CastrTroy]

You're right on this. I currently use high-speed light. Which is cable internet that has a speed cap on it. You pay less per month this way, and still get pretty fast internet as long as you're not trying to download movies (meaning divx/dvd, you can still stream apple trailers). It kind of sucks when I want to download a new Linux Distro, but other than that the speed is tollerable. I don't want to pay $50 a month for internet, so this is next best option to dial-up. I know a lot of people who use this.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[pudro]

That would be awesome, but it doesn't change the fact that most people (outside of /.) will still prefer discs to whatever horribly DRMed form of downloadable content that the movie industry decides to use. As long as they can take that BD into the next room or to a friends, thats what they will want to do. If they can't do that, then they would rather just have DVDs. Most people don't want their computer right by their TV, or to have to run cables between rooms from one to the other. And by the way, decent (though maybe not "average") connections of 3-4 Mb/s are good enough for most "rental" scenarios. You just have to decide what to watch the day before and download it overnight. The only problem is with same day decisions to download a movie.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[kefler]

I disagree. I thought the same thing when I saw MP3's for the first time in 1995, using a player on my Pentium 90. I assumed that the whole record industry would shift to that overnight, but of course we all know how that went.. Even 4-5 years after Mp3 was generally available we had Napster come out and make MP3's accessible to all. The industry killed that and it took nearly ANOTHER 5 years for digital music distribution to gain traction.. Overnight? no way.. This prediction is totally wrong about on demand movies, precisely because the industry WON'T change overnight.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[bizard]

Right now I have a 6Mbit connection. I have purchased a few movies from the iTunes store and begun watching them about 1 minute after pressing the buy button. The files are betweeen 1 and 1.5 GB. So yes, rental scenarious are good enough right now _and_ you don't have to decide what to watch the night before, you can watch as it downloads.

That being said, I believe that it has been taking roughly 45-50 minutes to download the entire movie. I could essentially handle double the file size and still watch immediately but 10 times the file size would mean waiting.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[Achra]

Unfortunately, most of the USA doesn't have broadband. Once you get out of a city (any city - be it a city in the seattle metro area, or a city in TN) DSL becomes a non-option. Cable also becomes a non-option. What does this leave? Effectively: ISDN, Satellite, & Dial-up. ISDN is a non-option in most states, because of its prohibitively high price for what amounts to 15kb/s of total datarate. Satellite is even more inferior, for issues that have been discussed elsewhere - but can boil down to: Horrificly slow upload speads, downstream caps, & high latency. For joe sixpack in most places in this country, dial-up is still his only real option.

Btw, on a personal note, I lived in TN for 5 years recently and I was on ISDN. I recommend it to anyone that can not receive cable or DSL.. It's really not that bad. :) Of course, in TN, there was a class-action suit, and ISDN is affordable there, but I digress.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[jZnat]

We in the urban and suburban areas pay out the ass for a shit connection as well, apparently to subsidise the costs for giving the rural areas even crappier connections. I'm speaking as a person from Chicago, but I can't imagine it's any better in LA, NYC, or any of the smaller major cities in the US.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[smaddox]

It doesn't really matter how fast internet connections are. They will never scale as fast as the storage medium, because without a storage medium large/fast enough the fast internet connection is useless. Physical movement of a physical storage medium will be faster and cheaper than transfer over the internet (assuming decently large quantities) for many many many years.

I would also be willing to bet that optical (or in the future, holographic) will be used for movies/etc for many many years, because they are cheap and have a high capacity. If you think we will not need more capacity, you need to review some computer history. There will always be a need for more and more capacity.

Re:His prediction is 5 years too early

[Achra]

The operative part of your message is that you live _in_ this town. Ask your neighbors that live 5 miles outside town if they have broadband availability.

Look at previous trends...

[linuxg0d]

I think this is rubbish.

Personally, I used to work in a video store when DVD hit the shelves. What did my bosses say, "Who is going to move to this? VHS is where it's at."

Were they wrong? I would definately re-affirm that yes, they were oh-so-wrong.

Anyone who believes that new formats aren't going to fly are crazy being as they haven't studied previous market trends, have they? I mean, everyone jumps on everything, DOA or not. It's more of a relevance issue. Will they be DOA? Maybe, will they sell and sell and sell? Yes.

How many people here believed the PSP movies wouldn't fly? Funny, now every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to be buying in.

We're not talking Laser Disc here... we're talking mainstream media here people.

Picture Tube -> LCD -> Plasma...

Man, that said, and HD TV's becoming crazily affordable, why would an HD format be considered DOA?

Uninformed opinion, in my uninformed opinion.

consumers are demanding change?

[night_flyer]

which customers? Most people I know are still watching a 30" (or less), 5 year old TV.
We are just now looking into an HDTV because the prices are coming down to a reasonable range...

I don't see anybody "demanding" faster connections

[CyberLord Seven]

The phone and cable companies have been dragging their feet with regard to internet service which makes sense. They don't want phat pipes before they are allowed to charge both sides of the pipe. See their arguments against net neutrality for more.

Is there any consumer backlash?

No. Think back to when Coca-Cola changed the formula for Coke. People took to the streets and it hit ALL of the major news media in the US.

People don't care. I think they don't care because what they have is fast enough. It's the same with DVD and Hi-Def. I already have movies in DVD format. I have seen one of my favorites, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in Hi-Def this summer and compared it, on the same television, to my DVD copy. Net result, I LOVED the Hi-Def image but I'm not going to buy the movie again in Hi-Def for the simple reason that there is no compelling reason to buy it in a lesser format.

What I mean by lesser format is DRM.

Re:Micro-microwave ovens?

[Lumpy]

How about the fact that I can deliver you the same full set of DVD's on a laptop hard drive SMALLER than a deck of cards right now and have room left over for a few other feature movies

Mpeg4/Xvid/Divx can do it now. You cant buy it legitimate because those formats don't have 600 pounds of DRM encryption on them but the technology is here right now and better than what he "envisions" maybe he should get out and actually look at what people are doing right now.

Cripes I have well over 300 movies in DVD quality and 10 full TV series on my Media portal box right now (Yes series the size of Babylon5 and the Simpsons) and still have room for way more.

His tommorow was here yesterday... it's the idiots at the movie companies and record companies that are keeping out of the hands of joe sixpack.

The original poster has a point, a good one

[zappepcs]

While it may be difficult to figure out where the money will come from, or how the DRM will work, the average joe bloggs and jane bloggs is already using digital on demand products, some via cable, some via the Internet (youtube etc.) and they are getting used to it. This is a critical factor in how visual data will be and is being used. Remember VHS vs. Betamax? The fact that GooTube is soon to be up and running will ensure that _EVERYONE_ knows about video via the Internet. The next logical step to take, even for naive grandparents, is "how do I watch all my favorite episodes of program x on the Internet?" or how do I get television on my computer?

By the time they start asking those questions, all the arguing will be nearly done. When there is a proven market for a product or service, every large corp. worth anything will trip all over themselves to sell it to the public, and will do so no matter what DRM hurdles are in the way.

In the same way that YouTube and MySpace made headlines and garnered public attention, digital on-line on-demand video services will do the same.

Re:2 1/2 hours

[toleraen]

You can get 3 movies at a time with netflix, so that's 22.5 hours with basic, 7.5 hours with premium service. Still faster, but keep in mind you have to tie up your Internet connection for that long. Then you need 45 gigs free on a hdd. Then you need to connect the computer to the TV with an hdcp approved connection. If you don't have that, you need to burn it to an HDDVD. Then you need to log into netflix and reenable your account after you realize how much hassle it is to download and play HD content!

I personally think Blu-Ray will win, though.

[MtViewGuy]

I can cite the following reasons:

1) It has far more movie studio support than HD-DVD. Particularly important is Disney's support, since Disney DVD's have always been very strong sellers to start with anyway. Can you imagine a Pixar movie released on Blu-Ray format? (big thumbs up)

2) The storage capacity is larger (50 GB versus 30 GB), which means you can put more extra features on a single Blu-Ray disc than an HD-DVD disc.

3) The arrival of Sony's PlayStation 3 means immediately the arrival of a large user base that can play Blu-Ray discs.

4) We're still a long way from offering HD-quality video downloads over the Internet. It would require huge increases in download speeds, maybe as high as 50 megabits per second at bare minimum (the number of broadband Internet home users with anything over 10 mbps download speeds is still very small even in Europe and Asia).

Yes, prices are high now, but I expect prices to drop rapidly during the course of 2007. Good quality standalone Blu-Ray players will probably cost around US$450 by the end of 2007, in my humble opinion.

3-5 years before either format catches on

[Nutsquasher]

Both Blue Ray and HD-DVD have a lot going against them. Both formats are brand new to the consumer market. In quick summary, most people are going to wait 3-5 years before adopting either of these formats, if they take off. Buying one today means either you've got a lot of money to burn (paypal@dave-gallagher.net please), or you're easily influenced by marketing.

Let's look at the history of DVD's:

• DVD's were first starting to be sold in early 1997.
• By 1999, DVD players were around $300 each. DVD sales were tiny compared to VHS.
• DVD's and players increased on popularity by 2001, aided by the PlayStation 2 having a DVD-player built into it (at the time, a PS2 wasn't much more money than a sole DVD player). The format was being adopted rapidly by this point.
• By 2002-2003, DVD's finally had surpassed VHS sales, 5-6 years after they first came out.
• Now, in late 2006, it's tough to find a home that doesn't own a DVD player. Also:
  • You can buy DVD movies everywhere.
  • You can rent DVD movies everywhere (Netflix, BlockBuster, etc)
  • There are tens of thousands of titles available for DVD, including a vast array of Movies (previously available on VHS), and TV shows (many never available before on VHS).
  • DVD players can be bought for $50 or less. Almost all computers have one built in.
  • DVD movies can be had for $2 - $20. Some series and combo's cost more, obviously.

Other notable mentions during this time period:

• VHS degraded over time. DVD's don't (when stored right).
• VHS has a much worse picture quality than DVD did.
• Nearly everyone already owned a TV which would benefit from upgrading from VHS to DVD.
• DVD's sounded much better. Some people bought high-end stereo systems, but most still use the speakers in their TV.

This took from 1997 to 2006 to accomplish. It's almost a ten-year old format. To say either Blue Ray or HD-DVD will take off in a short period of time (1-2 years) is blasphemy. It'll take at least 3, but probably around 5 years, before either format becomes mainstream. IF either format survives, that is.

Things going against Blue Ray & HD-DVD:

• Extremely limited selection of titles. Think hundreds of them (if not only a hundred), vs. tens of thousands for DVD.
• No rental outlets carry them yet.
• Movie Players cost much more money than DVD players. $500+ if you buy a PS3, or Xbox 360 Core w/HD-DVD add-on.
• These movies are priced more. The cheapest I've seen are around $25 each.
• Most people don't own a TV that will benefit from the higher resolution of these types of media.
  • ...unlike upgrading from VHS to DVD, where everyone experienced an increase in picture quality.
• High-end audio equipment is needed for many to take advantage of the new features to these discs. Again, most people don't have this.
• Everyone just through out their VHS tapes and replaced them with DVD's. They may buy new movies on HD-DVD/Blue Ray, but good luck convincing them to re-buy Terminator 2 for the 3rd time.

By the time it takes for Blue Ray/HD-DVD to catch on (3-5 years), if they catch on, there will be:

• Xbox 1080
• PlayStation 4
• On-Demand HD Movies, over the net, delivered to your TiVo, Xbox 360, Apple iTV, whatever.
• On-Demand HD Movies, through your TV provider.

Neither format is proven (asides from looking and sounding good, with the right equipment), and the VAST majority of consumers won't see a benefit from either of them today. What has to happen for consumers to benefit is:

• 1920x1080 P HDTV's have to come down in price, to the $200 Wal-Mart special range.
• The players have to be had for $100 or less.
• There needs to

The real reason for HD-DVD and BluRay

[pctech3]

What you must remember, the only reason that we are even talking about these new formats is because the MPAA wanted "enforceable" DRM built into the video media. The DVD format, while it can support HD video of 720p, the MPAA will not allow it, because of the lack of enforceable DRM.
The only reason they developed the new formats to support the HD video was to convince the users they needed to have the new DRM enabled systems.
A few notes:
The early computer BluRay drives will not play the BluRay movies.
Both formats may "disable" your player if it "thinks" the disk may not be "original".
The player firmware can be automatically upgraded whenever you insert a disk.(this could cause some severe issues with compatibility).
With the increased data density on the media, it will be more prone to physical damage.
The apparent increase in picture quality is not worth the increase in costs of player or media.
If HD was really that much of an improvement, release the restrictions on the original DVD format, and spread the movie across multiple disks!

***Sig Block***

It's only gamers who would justify $600 for a video game system...

******

I didn't steal your sig, I just borrowed it. You can have it back now.

Thank You.

Re:I call bullshit

[TheRaven64]

but if you have a decent stereo system, the difference is obvious.

No it's not. If you sit and listen carefully, and there is little or no ambient noise then it's noticeable. But how often do you listen to your music like this? For most people, music is something that's on in the background, not something they focus their entire attention on, and in this situation it's very difficult to tell the difference between professionally encoded 128Kb/s AAC and CDDA.

Oh, and 128Kb/s AAC actually sounds better than CDDA played back on an old CD player. I have a CD player from the late '80s, and the DAC is bad enough that it is often noticeably worse than my iPod plugged into the same amplifier, or a more recent CD player even when I am not really listening to the music.

Re:I call bullshit

[noewun]

but if you have a decent stereo system, the difference is obvious

Not really: see above in that most people don't care enough about the difference in quality to worry about it. Joe and Jane Average consumer are just fine with MP3s and AACs, as can be seen from the success of downloading, both legal and illegal, and from the success so far of the iTMS videos and movies I think that most people won't care enough about the quality to worry about, either.

There seems to be a threshold of quality in audio and video above which the vast majority of people are satisfied. I think the only people who worry after that are the equipment-obsessed.