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End of the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD Format War?
Next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas should shake up the format war. The NYTimes reports that Warner Brothers will announce the Total HD disc that can store both Blu-ray and HD-DVD content. The article also mentions that LG (along with "possibly other gadget makers") is expected to announce a player that can play both formats. According to Yahoo, LG has not announced pricing, but the Times notes that such dual-format devices are bound to cost more than existing players. And the Times outlines the many considerations that would come into play before studios decide to release their content in both formats on a single disc.
So, will I be able to buy a Total HD Player that plays both Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs? I'd like one of those.
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
This will end the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD war much in the same way that DVD±R drives ended the DVD+R / DVD-R war.
And to a lesser extent the Betamax / VHS war.
Summation 2
In my opinion, I think this is the format's only hope of ever becoming popularized. It'll need to get its bugs worked out, get into production and drive the price down some... then maybe, just maybe... people in general will be interested in buying content of this nature. This is the first step though, and to be honest... I didn't expect it to get this far. I hope they continue to surprise me!
Um, HD-DVD uses the blue-violet 405nm laser too.
I'm keeping out of this arguement though, I really don't care which is better until one of them fails. Too much DRM, too many faults and cost is just too much.
Monkeyboi
Last I saw was that Sony (and possibly Toshiba with HDDVD) was refusing to license any player that could play both formats?
or has some one (LG?) gotten around this some how?
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
superior just based on the fact that it can hold more data
Brilliant. A single criterion for superiority.
Betamax was better, too. I'll stick with the HD-DVD bandwagon.
As the title says, for not the media providers benefit, as they can provide disks in whichever format has the lower licencing fees (HD-DVD, I would assume). Consumers will need to wait for a price drop to see any benefit, but this is a start.
"Blu-Ray is an always has been superior just based on the fact that it can hold more data"
Yeah. I have some backup tapes that can hold more than my hard drive but I still use my hard drive as my primary source of data storage. Why? Because storage capacity isn't everything. I'm not saying BluRay is or isn't superior but I'd wager data throughput will be a much bigger factor. The cost of the reader and writer will also be significant, especially if the only difference is indeed storage capacity.
Blu-Ray is an always has been superior just based on the fact that it can hold more data (and it uses that cool blue laser).
Both HD-DVD and blu-ray use blue-lasers, so that is a non-issue. Blue-Ray has more capacity per layer (25GB/layer) as opposed to HD-DVD (15GB/layer), but a dual-layer HD-DVD has more than enough space to hold a movie and all the crappy extra feature, especially when using h264 or VC1 codec. So extra space for blu-ray is also irrelevant. Extra space may be needed for games, and IMHO thats where Blu-ray will shine. But for movies HD-DVD is a better deal because in the end you get same audio/video quality as blu-ray at half the price. Blu-ray might just end up being a gaming-format for ps3 and nothing more.
Price should be a consideration in 'superior format' as well ...
HD-DVD is currently much less expensive for consumers, and manufacturers of both discs and hardware. This may not be the case forever, but (hypothetically) if it is cheaper to produce 2 or 3 HD-DVD discs then to produce 1 Blu-Ray disc the storage capacity advantage is not really important.
As has been noted in an earlier post, Blu-Ray disks hold more data. Those behind Blu-Ray would not be happy to see their disks reduced to computer archives rather than media as Warner Bros. sells content to happy consumers. This could be a considerable loss for Blu-Ray as empty disks sell for much less than disks with media.
Something that is not mentioned in the article is why consumers would want either format anyway.
I have a 1080i television and a seXbox-360, but I don't want either format because of the DRM and the lack of features. Maybe in the future when they can offer something substantive, as DVD did when it displaced video tape, I'll consider Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, or Total DVD. Right now, DVD looks just fine to me.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
The ability to make a player that plays both formats has been around for a while now (nearly as long as the formats infact), however Sony (and the rest that hold the patents on Blu-Ray) were refusing to sell a license for any device that would play both formats. Now LG is announcing that they will be sellign one.
so either they are ignoring the Patents (and will get sued horribly for it) or have gotten a License (or found a work around).
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Last I heard Blu-Ray players could not actually read the second layer of the disks yet meaning the 50 GB is just hypothetical at this point. Thus making HD-DVD's 30 GB (15 per layer) more than Sony's 25 GB on the first layer.
Unfortunately, it all boils to content, which must be licensed. Just because you "can" make a universal format doesn't mean studios will make licenses available.
While I think this is great news, I don;t see a happy marriage in HD-DVD/Blu-Ray's future, just as we didn't see comb DVD/DIVX devices. Once went on to be wildly popular, while the other went tits up. The same can basically be said about VHS/Beta.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
The new Warner Bros. "Total HD" hybrid disc and LG Electronics (re-announced) combo HD DVD/Blu-Ray drive are solutions for a problem we didn't ask for: studios being idiotic and only releasing movies in one format.
WB and Paramount get free passes for being the only studios to support both formats. Everyone else gets Fs.
The HD market is a tiny swab of moist air in the filled water bucket of DVD revenue. I think sales are still under 1%. I can guarantee you that they would be at 5% or more if this stupid format war never came around. That's the main issue.
I don't understand why Universal (and to some extent WB) continue to make these HD DVD/DVD combo discs. For the uninitiated, these are dual-sided discs, with the DVD on one side and the HD DVD on the other. Dual-sided discs are always more complicated and expensive to manufacture and they're really not a value-add to consumers. Most big releases on DVD go with multiple discs rather than multiple sides. So, it makes it a crappier product and on top of that, they charge a premium, anywhere from $10 to $20 (MSRP) for our "benefit"! Note: expect this to play out in this new/twin/hybrid Blu-Ray and HD DVD format. Why pay $25 for one movie when you can pay $40 for both, one of which is unnecessary?
And here LG joins the fray, offering a dual-format player for $800-$1300. Nevermind that at that price range a savvy shopper would be already able to buy both players. HDTV owners aren't buying the new formats because they don't want to pick the losing side. Why don't they want to pick the losing side? Because they don't want to buy a new player for the winning format years down the road. Mind you, in 2009 or 2010 HD players are going to be $199. So these people are holding off because they don't want to spend $199 in another year. And a new $1000 player is supposed to calm these fears?
I can't put it any clearer than this: they fucked up. Everyone did. And now to make up for their mistakes, we should pay extra. And we won't.
The best part? The statements we'll hear in 2008 that the HD market isn't catching on. And who's to blame? Why, not the studios, but pirates! Pirates took our profits.
This whole ordeal is being played out by giant billion-dollar corporations that are basically repeatedly hitting themselves and each other in the groin with a hammer. When we ask them to stop and re-think what they're doing, they just ask us for money to cover the medical expenses. And then they use that money to buy more fucking hammers.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The "Total HD" isn't so total. It doesn't support regular DVD.
So here's what you're going to see in the stores:
1) The plain old-DVD that has standard TV content
2) The HD-DVD that has HD-DVD content and standard TV content
3) The Blu-Ray DVD that has Blu-Ray and standard TV content
4) The Total HD that has Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content, but no standard TV content
4 formats, and not one that covers everything.
The war is far from over.
China's proposed EVD.
This new disk format is a neat idea, but til probably only be used by those who already release their films in both Blueray and HDDVD formats. Will Sony choose to use these disks, or will it continue releasing their movies only in Blueray? That's the difference between the disk and the player. If I had a blueray player, I don't need to care what politics at the movie studios are doing, I can play any disk format. With the new dual-format TotalHD disk, the politics at the studios still have plenty of opportunity to cause me grief.
Nope. Until there's a player that does both, you can count me out. I've got a nice 108" 720P projector image that I enjoy low-def DVDs on. I bet that by the time I don't have to worry about studio politics and all-format players are at an acceptable price, that I'll be able to afford a 1080P projector to replace it.
I think none of these will fly at any premium until display technology is sufficiently cheap.
The format war is not between blu-ray/hd-dvd, it's between DVD and whatever comes after. The new formats will need universal reading, cheap burners and players, cheap pressed media, and cheap blank media. The vast DVD back libraries will have to be built. The HDCP outputs will have to be matched to actual output devices available in the market, and the copy protection will have to be completely broken like with CSS.
This sounds like a good first step, but the "war" is far from won. Perhaps by Christmas.
Disc-based media needs to be retired. These companies should all have pursued the creation of direct download services where they compete to acquire the rights from movie studios to offer their films to consumers for download to universal players with built-in hard drives.
Let me guess what's holding that up... copy protection?
For archival purposes, the more expensive disc with slightly higher capacity can still be a better idea, because it will be easier and hopefully quicker to manage. I would keep using DVD-Rs (at about $.30 to $.40/disc) even if CD-Rs were free, since I like fitting 20-30 TV episodes instead of 4 on a disc.
When one of these damned High Deff players goes under a $100 let me know... Till then whooptidy fucking doo...
Indeed they are!
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Seriously, turnabout is fairplay. If these fucking nimnertz can't decide which of our pockets to pick and chose to pick both of them then the GODDAMNED RIAA should foot part of the bill for this. Until then we should just boycott both formats and then they can all fucking sue me for NOT watching their crap.
You think that Blu-Ray is expensive, you just wait until a 3rd party not only has to develop and manufacture an optic that will read both HD-DVD AND Blu-Ray while also paying royalties on BOTH technologies.
I suspect that this mystical wonder player will cost somewhere around $1,300. I base this price on absolutely nothing.
The current "big thing" with TV programs is to package them in seasons for sale on DVDs (sometimes along with Extras).
If this idea makes the jump to HD media (which is a reasonable assumption), then the extra space means less discs in the set, or the same number of discs with more space for extras.
Just because the extra space doesn't seem relevant for one application (storing a movie with some extras) doesn't mean it couldn't be used for some other parallel application that might need it.
Thats like saying "people will never need more than X amount of HardDrive space in their machines, since all you need is X to install WindowsXP and a word processor". Some people do things like Video or Audio editing which might need more space. Others need to run large Databases for businesses.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
They try and try so hard to win us over with one or the other, that neither wins. And the next generation technology (past Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) that isn't as stigmatizing to consumers is the one we take home.
I think that most of us can deal with progressive scan DVDs for quite some time, especially since 1080p televisions are more than 10 years away from being the norm. Hell, most people, believe it or not... don't have HDTV sets in their home yet. And that technology has been out a LONG time.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
There won't be a war people. And it's a total waste of time and money to make 'Total HD'. I think corporations are trying to scam the consumer on something they don't need. I'll tell you how this so-called war will end.
HD-DVD will win and Blu-ray will go the way of Betamax. Sony will feel the pinch financially when both Blu-ray and PS3 both flop.
Why will HD-DVD win over Blu-ray? Consumer are idiots. When a average consumer sees Blu-ray? All they see is a new disc format. The name does not say I am High Definition. Today, when a consumer sees HDTV, they immediately know the tv is High Definition. When they see a dvd player that says HD-DVD, they will immediately recognize that this player will play High Definition movies to go with they HD-TV.
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Or they see in the video game aisle that they can build their own own dual-format player. Taking the example of the United States, I can buy an Xbox 360 with HD-DVD accessory for $600, a PS3 premium for $600, and get two free game consoles (PS3 and 360) and a free Linux PC (PS3 Open Platform). There's your $1200 dual-format player.
(Before you go complaining about European PS3 launch delays, HappySqurriel wrote $, and $ != €.)
By "produce" do you mean "replicate" or "author"?
This makes my head hurt.
On the one hand we've got discs that have both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and on the other players that play both formats.
Somebody slap somebody!
Where "the cheaper format to produce" == standard-definition DVD, right?
I'm curious where you got that impression from, since HD and BD can use the same codecs (MPEG 4, MPEG 2 and VC-1). The only real core difference is space and so far that hasn't been an advantage for either side yet.
Comparisons at this time are mostly inconclusive as well.
Well, the storage capacity was the reason that VHS cassettes won out over BetaMax, even though Beta was a better technology. A small irony was that VHS-C (the little camcorder tapes) had to be developed later because of the bulkiness of VHS cassettes (which were essentially bigger to hold more tape than beta).
The end of the "format war" comes, when the DRM of one these is effectively nullified.
Otherwise, who are the early adopters? The Betamax and Minidisc crowds?
But then again, it was also probably the tendency of Sony not to want license out its technology. Though, I think by now, they've begun to learn their lesson.
There's also ease of manufacture, but that's a major, major win for HD-DVD, instead. It's essentially free for a DVD pressing plant, and the yields are almost as good as normal DVD. Meanwhile, everything I hear suggests that BD-50s are pretty much still test pressings at the Sony lab, with roughly 10% yields.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The naysayers can only try to hide the truth. AACS is bulletproof. This is a milestone in consumer electronics.
Regarding hybrids. It is cheaper to have single packaging that to produce and distribute two different disks (HD-DVD and DVD). So why not put both in the same packaging you ask? Because we all know you'd buy it and give the unused DVD (HD-DVD) off to your friend. Creating a hybrid solves both of these problems leaving only the BluRay issue. Frankly I care less about the home entertainment value of either HD-DVD or BluRay. I'm not bleeding edge enough to care anymore. Let them fight, I let NetFlix buy my discs for me anyway these days.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981
This would sound like a really good point unless you've ever actually purchased or rented one of these DVD sets, and wondered why there's only two episodes on a disc. The reason for this is that you can charge more for a 5-disc set than you can for a 2-disc set. Even though the content is the same, the customer feels like they're getting more if they have a big box full of DVDs. Just take a look at the back of any TV series disc, and observe how much of the burned area is used. Usually it's only about 30% of the total disc area.
If they can already fit more content on these discs, there's no reason to believe they'll add additional content in the space Blu-Ray provides. If anything, they'll just throw more crap extras on there that nobody wants (like trivia games, previews, and links to their website, since the interesting stuff like interviews and behind the scenes footage costs money to create).
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
"I think the fastest way to end the format^w Iraq war is through decisiveness and strength," said Bob Chapek ^w^w George W. Bush, the president of Buena Vista Worldwide Entertainment ^w^w^w^w The US,
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Every sale of a Total-HD disc or Dual-Format drive prevents the industry as a whole from choosing one format as their standard.
You're conveniently overlooking the fact that the industry failed choose either DVD-R or DVD+R, yet somehow we have managed to survive into 2007 without civilization collapsing and with both formats still available. Forgive the hyperbole, but my point is so what if both formats survive?
My experience (for the few Series I've seen), have been a season on 3-4 disks, with ~ 6 episodes a Disc. That certainly doesn't sound wasteful to me.
I don't deny that there are companies that want to gouge you (I think each season of "24" comes on 6 or 7 disks), but that doesn't mean all companies have to (or do).
These were also all SD broadcasts. What's going to happen with HD broadcast series?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
This is also another example of industry-leading companies supporting antiquated delivery methods. We won't be renting / buying movies on a disk much longer, as in-demand and other on-line systems for watching movies from our TV set become main stream. Oh, and they'll be in HD. By the time the HD DVD format "war" is over, we'll all be downloading movies at home. On the other hand, we can't get any HD content now, so I'm probably wildly optimistic.
I've found that cable TV series, like HBO or Showtime, often put only two or three episodes on a disc. They have shorter seasons (often 12 episodes compared to the 22-24 of a broadcast TV series). I suspect they want to charge as much for those as for a regular TV series without looking cheap (at least until you open the box).
No skin off my nose; I get 'em via Netflix anyway.
You are right, there really is no war - you only got the conclusion wrong.
Blu-Ray will obviously win because they have these things going for them:
1) The studio that makes content that looks most impressive in HD (Disney with Pixar, which can re-render at true HD resolutions with no grain or noise in the image).
2) Star Wars
3) The number of PS3's in homes now and in the future mean there are already an order of magnitude more Blu-Ray players in consumers hands than HD-DVD, and that gap will only grow wider.
4) The support for Apple and Dell in burning home HD movies to Blu-Ray (Dell ship s aBlu-Ray burner already and HD camcorders are already in the prosumer range).
By the end of this year, all will be clear.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You lay the fiber to my curb, then I'll agree to back getting rid of discs.
Currently I can get a Netflix movie (which includes Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs) quicker than I can download a 5GB file over a torrent or direct from a loaded server. And I have a cable modem with upgraded service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...when they stop making DVDs that play in my five year old DVD player. This is like Beta v. VHS, but nobody cares.
The current price advantage of HD is temporary. Once PS3 is widely available you will have HD game machine and BR player for the price of stand alone HD player and standalone players will fall in price as time passes, converging at some point. So the price advantage is temporary at best.
The greater capacity of BR is something that will remain and since everything else is essentially the same (codecs,resolution,DRM) I would likewise choose BR for the greater capacity, especially when I think that someday this will become a new optical disk writer for my computer as well.
I also think these dual everything (disks and players) don't end the format war; they prolong it.
Brilliant. A single criterion for superiority. (holds more data)
So since the two formats are otherwise the same physical size, support the same codecs, and support the same protection system - do you need any other form of superiority to declare it better, especially as someone who may potentially look to be storing or moving large amounts of data on these discs? What is it you are looking for?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually I remember reading that Sony execs admitted that when asked, most game developers said that space on the disk between the two formats wasn't even a consideration for them. (or some words to that effect).. Basically games haven't become nearly bloated enough to fill up an entire Blu-Ray disk (unless they used a ton of High Def, Full Motion Video in the game)
HD-DVD is currently much less expensive for consumers, and manufacturers of both discs and hardware.
You are buying into the lie that Blu-Ray costs a huge amount more because you have to retool the factory to a greater degree and so on and so forth.
Yet those are fixed costs. There are already a lot of Blu-Ray discs being pressed - because PS3 games all come on Blu-Ray, meaning the volume is such that retooling is a non-issue as the cost is spread out over a lot of discs (the same plants pressing games can press movies too).
Furthermore, consider that your first statement alone (HD_DVD is cheaper for consumers) is simply wrong based on evidence right before our eyes - the cost of discs in stores. Taken as a whole the body of Blu-Rqay discs have a slightly lower average price than HD-DVD discs, and currently on Amazon they are pretty much selling for the same price. At least one standalone Blu-Ray player is currently selling for $499 - equal to the cheapest HD-DVD standalone player. So it seems the whole theory about expense is going right out the window, and again volume is party what is addressing this - you simply cannot takea small initial fixed constant cost and declare that will make a format more expensive for all time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I WILL NOT defend the DTV initiative that created 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p and all of them at 24 frames, 30 frames, and 60 frames. However, there are some technical reasons, we watch different content. And, for extra fun, to manage legacy stuff, the 480i/p formats support BOTH a 4:3 and 16:9 version...
Film content/transfers, which has more information than the HD video (which is why you could release the film, transfer to VHS, transfer to DVD, transfer to HD for D-VHS and broastcast (in both 1080i and 720p), and transfer again for the HD formats with a 1080p version), and all look good. However, film is shot in 24 frames/second. To make DVD players cheaper, the content is converted to 480i/60 (one film frame for 2 DVD frames, one film frame for 3 DVD frames). Then, we started to get HD Ready sets that supported either 720p or 1080i, and if you are analog (and therefore 1080i), you can also do 540p, so once you support that, might as well support a 480p signal, analog is cool that way, just update the electronics and show a different image, digital sets like Plasma/LCD/DLP need to scale to their digital output), so we got progressive scan DVD players. Reading notes on the DVD (normally, or comparing and guessing), we convert those 2:3 frames with a reverse pull down, to get back to 24 frames that we show progressively... this matters because if you just show the lines you get:
Frame 1: film frame 1
Frame 2: film frame 1
Frame 3: film frame 2, but half the lines are still from film frame 1
Frame 4: film frame 2
Frame 5: film frame 2
Frame 6: film frame 3, but half the lines are still from frame 2
So you can't just add in half the lines and show it progressively, you have to figure out when the frame changes.
So, for film, IDEALLY you want to sent 24 frames/second, and let the set adapt accordingly (whether showing one frame twice, and the next three times, or even better, be able to process the image at 24 frames/second and show them each once for longer).
However, given the allocation of bandwidth for HDTV, and the realities of MPEG-2 encoding, we essentially got 4 "useful' formats, and a bunch of stupid ones, 480i/60 4:3 (for simply digitizing existing legacy content is useful), 480p/60 (kind of useful for game systems) in both 4:3 and 16x9, this was pointless, a 480p 16x9 format was sufficient to handle digitally sending DVD quality images, and 720p/60 and 1080i/60. 720p/60 is the most resolution you could get in the stream at 60 frames per second, progressively, and 1080i/60 was the most resolution you could get at 60 frames/second interlaced.
Now, should we have both progressive and interlaces, I would say maybe...
If you are shooting something fast moving like sports, you want the 60 frames/second, so 720p/60 was the ideal format for broadcasting sports events. If you are shooting something slow moving, like a nature show (which was a lot of early HD programming, and it looks great, but not sure the purpose), you don't care about as many frames, and interlaced vs. progressive matters less, but getting 1080 lines was useful, making 1080i/60 a useful format for these. However, for film transfers, which will be a large portion of HD footage for a while, 1080p/24 made a lot of sense, you are only sending 24 frames/second, so why not get the extra resolution.
Remember, the TV stations had a dream, promise HDTV, and deliver it maybe to the cable/satellite operators over a line, but not OTA. Only 10% of people got their programming OTA, so TV stations largely existed because of government decisions to keep them (as opposed to the network simply selling content to cable/satellite directly), so their idea: either broadcast 6 480i signals, requiring no new equipment other than digitizing, and all of a sudden, you have 6 channels to sell ads on. A local market with 7 stations would conceivably have 42 channels available without paying a monthly fee, that's kinda cool, and all the networks have a bunch of digital stations that the created fo
I think I have found something that has been somewhat overlooked. I found a thread on AVS forum (which has now been removed, imagine that (and EVEN REMOVED FROM GOOGLE'S CACHE!!!)) which stated that on "The Hulk" HD DVD, or at least some of them, there is a text file, in the clear, on the root of the disk that contains the title and volume keys in the clear. User "Borbus" there even posted part of this file.
Also, in THIS thread at hardforums, on page 3, user "w1retap" states that:
"bwhahaha.. found encryption keys, volume keys, and the MCM managed copy V-ISAN ID. Now I'm just working on hashing the whole HD-DVD.. its taking a while.. lol. After that, I'll try the ripping program for playback off the hard drive. Then, if that works, its off to HDbits."
He also provides a SCREENSHOT which show that there is, in fact a text file there.
After this, the hardforums were down for a full day, and in "w1retap"'s next posts, he states:
"1) I'm not going to speak of title keys on a public forum."
Now I do not have an X-Box HD DVD drive to test, but I bet if someone did, and had "The Hulk" HD DVD that they would find in that text file the very key needed to decrypt that disk. And with that test could verify if the Muslix64 program DOES work. And, if it does, knowing a valid key would make it MUCH easier to find that key in the memory of PowerDVD or WinDVD. I SURE WISH someone out there would test this, all of the evidence is there, even some evidence of a cover-up. The post with the key from avsforum was available yesterday, now it is NOT there or even in Google's cache, as I have said....
This is fantastic, since the Chinese companies will start to mass produce the dual player within the next couple years. This is the right direction, and will help BluRay a lot. HD DVD already has a large base of users and content, so now everyone should be happy. Not as sure about the TrueHD packaging, some studios will never do both, but the dual player is THE answer.
>the HD-DVD format because they really had nothing to say that could trump Blu-Ray.
Except for the ability to play red-laser discs authored with HD-DVD content. If you have a 480p60 camcorder, this is a VERY big deal, because it means you can copy the video to your desktop PC, edit it, author your own HD-DVD disc, and as long as the total storage requirements are 8.7 gigs or less, you can burn it to a recordable DVD, take it to the house of a friend with HD-DVD player, and watch it there.
With HD-DVD, the larger-capacity new disc format is an OPTION, but the player itself is just a multiformat optical drive with bucket of codecs it can draw upon. In fact, I'm willing to bet a HUGE amount of money that by next Christmas, the cheap progressive-scan DVD players currently selling at Wal-Mart & Circuit City for $50-100 will be replaced by equally cheap "DVD+HD" players that still have a red laser optical drive (2.4X or faster, though), but can ALSO play red-laser discs authored as HD-DVDs. It's just a bucket of codecs and capabilities, remember?
Wait, keep reading. There's one particular segment of the media industry that's DROOLING for a low-cost "Higher-Def" optical format that can play on cheap drives and use cheap DVD5 and DVD9 media, but play 480p60, 720p24, and (maybe) overcompressed 720p60 (with low-bitrate audio). That's right, the porn industry. It could care less about 1080p60, because it'll be at least a decade before they'll be in any position to use it. HOWEVER, they have tons of 480p60 content right now (they switched to 480p60 a year or two ago for production, because it makes it easier to put content online as streaming video and increases the odds that they'll be able to shovel their old porn onto terrabyte compilation discs and earn a few more bucks off of it 5-10 years from now). If they make a point of distributing HD porn on DVD9 media (that will play just fine on HD-DVD players, remember), it'll take about 6 months for Joe Sixpack to figure out that he can buy one of those $49 Wal-Mart "DVD+HD" players and start enjoying HD porn *right now* instead of blowing $300 or more on a "proper" HD-DVD player.
What? It's not true HD? Joe doesn't care. Joe's TV can't come anywhere close to 1080p60 anyway, and he couldn't tell the difference between 224 kBit lossy audio and 192-bit 8-channel 32-bit PCM if you put a gun to his head. He'll be delighted to get HD that's roughly about as HD as his own TV, for less than the cost of a single high-end new porn disc....
Can we say $$$$, this so called hybrid is going to be expensive. Even early adopters Like myself have to ask them self is it really worth paying 2x the price for a combo unit. Granted the quality is nice but until there are more major releases I don't foresee spending any really money anytime soon.
"Better to be an open sinner than a false saint"
Notice from the VC-1 Wikipedia entry
Ahhhh... so 15 companies holding patents on it should lessen my worries about it being a "Microsoft Product". Sounds like a patent mine-field.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
> Furthermore, they stretch standard TV to fill their wide screen which makes everyone look fat.
/. can figure out the maze of settings on the settop box/DVDgame console and the TV to get things correct but joe average user can't get it right and wants that widescreen filled damnit.
Yes, I HATE seeing a widescreen TV because I know 90% of the time it will be displaying a distorted picture. It is the industry's fault to a great extent because they didn't think things through and make it all automatic and NON USER SWITCHABLE. Sure those of us reading
Try it yourself. Walk into a few stores selling widescreen. Check your non-tech friends. Bet you get that same 90% failure rate. Although with stores they usually aren't all hosed, some sets will be right and others wrong, with it varying as the content changes on different visits.
There are simply too many ways to get it wrong, and since equipment has no way of communicating capabilities (DDC anyone?) default to 4:3. So each user is expected to reprogram each piece of equipment if they own a wide tv. Of course this doesn't occur so you see double letterboxed movies zoomed to fill the screen, normal broadcast TV stretched all to hell and back, etc. It is horrid and isn't likely to get better anytime soon.
Democrat delenda est
DVD is still too new a technology. It's JUST NOW gaining wide adoption (the point where pretty much everyone has a DVD player). The old format is JUST NOW being completely eliminated (hell, there are some stores that still have new VHS tapes for sale, but they're finally fading).
And worse, even on HD televisions, DVDs look *just fine*. The average consumer doesn't give a shit about some fancy new format that doesn't look that much different than standard DVDs. Why would they even consider a new format when their DVD players plus DVD libraries can last them many, many years?
Answer: they won't. The technogeeks will buy into the horribly expensive Blu-Ray/HDDVD formats, and everyone else (the masses) will continue to use plain DVDs for a long, long time. These new formats being pushed onto people won't last, and standard DVDs will rule for quite some time now.
I know the companies supporting this are doing it for two reasons: content control (which they have pretty much lost on DVDs) and greed (we want people to buy their movies AGAIN, on a NEW FORMAT!). It won't happen.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Why do you think Blu-ray will shine at games - because it supports Java? Only on the PS3 or on a computer. Everybody else buying a set top box is getting a poor deal. The BD spec and performance guidelines specify processing power of a 200 MHz RISC CPU. That's diddly-squat processing power. There are also severe memory limitations (~45MB).
Warner Brothers will announce the Total HD disc that can store both Blu-ray and HD-DVD content.
NAW. Could it be that the only difference between the formats is the amount of storage and the technique with which it's stored? A disc is a disc. The content on the disc is not dependent upon anything but the amount of space available.
So what IS this, anyway? Does this mean it's analogous to the DVD+/-R 'combo' burners of old that we now take for granted? Or is it an entirely new format that'll make even MORE consumer heads spin? If the latter is the case, then this fails.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/07/08/ricoh-laser-
http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/09/new-lasers-fro
Blue-Ray won. About three weeks ago.
Not because I want it to, not because I like it more, and in fact nothing to do with me or my nerd friends.
Blue-Ray won because, roughly three or four weeks ago, my friend asked about it. She doesn't read Slashdot, she didn't have any idea what HD-DVD was, and she liked the way the Blue-Ray packages looked in the stores. She is always up with the latest bands and fashions.
Still, I think it will have a slow start. She was not happy that it required a new player.
A guy friend who also doesn't read Slashdot also asked about Blue-Ray a week ago. And my parents and my sister's in-laws asked about it during Christmas.
No one I know who doesn't read Slashdot or have a desire to own an XBox 360 knows what HD-DVD is.
VHS and BetaMax didn't drag out for years and people seem to forget about DVD vs DIVX. DIVX discs were supposed to be the answer to cheap movie rentals that self destructed so that they couldn't be copied. I remember looking at DVD and DIVX players side by side in 1997 thinking they were way too much for me then (about $400). Give it about one year and the market will choose the victor despite any hype. I would put my money on which ever format the adult movie industry sways to. Supposedly they are responsible for the death of betamax since they couldn't get licensing rights for adult movies. The adult entertainment industry is always at the cutting edge of every new medium. The first people using their credit cards on the internet for sales were used on adult sites.
seriously people, lets just do this the old fashioned way: North vs. South, winner takes all.
o yea, north gets blu, south gets HD. if you don't like it, move to Canada and buy your silly total-HD players and discs.
What's with the "720p only" thing?
Interlaced video sucks and needs to die, I'd much rather have 720p than 10800i.
Have you ever seen a video shot in 1080i on an lcd screen?
It looks like ass that has been though a wood chipper, because the two fields of interlacery belong to different times.
A movie image that has been converted to 1080i can be reconstructed into 1080p with half the frame rate and that's fine, but why not just dispense with the interlaced crap then?
Wouldn't it be much nicer to broardcast 1080p at 24 fps like real film and then have the screen frame double or triple the framerate if it needs to?
An LCD screen will have no problem being updated at 24fps, only a CRT screen will need to do some frame doubling.
I hate that the content providers feel that they need to change their content to fit the screen that I have, because they will almost always get it wrong (DLP, LCD and CRT are not the same) and force the player and screen to do crazy shit like deinterlacing and cropping (to get rid of letterboxing).
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Well ... the Sex and the City boxed sets had about 6 episodes per disk (each episode about half an hour minus commercials), which adds up to ~2 hours of programming. ... the 24 boxed sets seem to have about 4 episodes per disk (each episode about an hour minus commercials), which adds up to ~3 hours of programming.
I'm not sure what the maximum Standard-Definition video you can store on a DVD, but it certainly sounds like they might be pushing it a bit, and that this might be a function of the space available on the disk. If that is the case then a larger media will come in handy (especially if you're now dealing with a higher resolution video such as 480p, 720p or 1080i/p).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
DIVEX was a circuit city project many many years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX
The DivX;) codec is a derivative of mpeg4 which came out not too long ago, it was named after the DIVX to mock the original, failed, product:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DivX#Name
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
But you don't use back up tapes because they are slow to both read and write data.
Blu-ray and HD DVD are both optical mediums that use the same wavelength of laser and everything- the only difference between the two formats is the distance of the data layer from the bottom of the disc.
Blu-ray's data layer is closer to the bottom, meaning it has more capacity to hold data.
Unfortunatley, the data layer for Blu-ray is also more susceptable to scratches.
HD DVD has less capacity to store data, but it has its data layer closer to the middle of the disc, and therefore HD DVD has a faster read and write speed and less of a chance of getting its data layer scratched.
HD TVs cost too damn much anyways (HD monitors are so much more cheap and useful), and there are less than 150 titles that have been released in either Blu-ray or HD DVD.
'Course, if some company would just avoid all of that optical nonsense and deliver high quality video the way itunes delivers video (just not awful looking the way itunes does it), we wouldn't have to deal with the lameness of changing physical storage mediums year after year (well, we would, but hard drives are better about that sort of thing)
Besides, it is so much more convenient to write to a hard drive or a flash drive than it is to lug out the disc burning software and hardware.
Oh well, both television and optical will die within the next decade as everyone and everything in the universe gets a big fat internet tube to pump data through.
You already have an answer on the Blu-Ray backing (I should have provided that link in reference, sorry).
However I had to comment on the porn thing. A lot of people feel like porn will drive HD media sales just as it once pushed VHS to the fore. But I don't see that happening this time - too many people get porn via the internet now and not as many by means of whole discs. The movie industry as a whole today is much, much larger than the porn industry (sorry, I don't have a link to back that up but I read something to that effect recently).
What really is going to drive who wins the HD Media battle is which format has the greater amount of CGI Porn. That is pretty much Pixar, and of course the universally beloved Star Wars, well unless they update those damn ring explosions. Watching any animated movie such as Pixar makes really shows off what HD can do (I say this mostly based on viewings of Ice Age 2, not even a Pixar film - but I've also seen some Pixar movies on a digital projector).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some actually get it right. I just got disc 1 of The West Wing last night, and it had eight episodes on it. Being an hour long show with commercials, that's about 6 hours of content, not including commentary tracks. This tells me that any series putting less than 6 hours on a disc is ripping me off and creating unnecessary waste.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay