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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.
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!
So, will I be able to buy a Total HD Player that plays both Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs?
No, its the other way round. They are claiming that these Total-HD disks will play in both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players flawlessly. If the manufacturing costs of these disks is comparable to HD-DVD/Blu-ray disks, it might just click.
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.
Or look at it this way:
People don't know which way the market will swing. Some manufacturers are trying to win either way with a disc that can be played in both players. However, once the market is decided, nobody will buy them, what'd be the point? If the market never gets decided, consumers will just get bored, buy an HD/Blueray drive and still ignore Total HD.
Whatever happens, I reckon a year from now Total HD will be all but forgotten.
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.
If the manufacturing costs of these disks is comparable to HD-DVD/Blu-ray disks, it might just click.
I doubt it. Both formats' relative failure up until this point has nothing to do with the "format war". I use quotes because there really isn't any war to speak of; nobody cares. Look throughout recent history, and you'll see that nobody cares about incremental quality improvements in media format. If the media's physical shape or size changes, that's something else, but there aren't any physical changes here. Even broadcast quality upgrades have been ill-received, and have only come about because the FCC has mandated it. In this case, I don't believe a regulatory agency even exists to mandate media format upgrades.
So, dual mode discs or dual mode players or even a total end to any disagreement between content producers will change nothing; HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will each go the way of DVD-Audio (do most of you even know what that is?).
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.
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.
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.
Indeed they are!
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Disc-based media needs to be retired.
Yea, because all those people that don't have access to broadband are not worth selling to. All those people who are too poor to pay for internet connection consistently every single month (or Cable TV with digital and pay-per-view fees, or plain old standard telephone line even) , but who could afford a DVD or two now and then are also not worth selling to. You'd be suprised how many people that don't have any phone, TV cable, and other basic services have quite nice stereos, TVs, game consoles, DVD players, etc. They just choose what to save up for and what to not keep paying for again and again and again. Do neither of those two groups of people deserve to watch movies?
Sorry, but we're not quite to a point where your everything from the internet and nowhere else market works.
An interesting side note on formats...
Most of my friends who have the new wide screen HD TVs don't have HD service. Furthermore, they stretch standard TV to fill their wide screen which makes everyone look fat. They end up with a low quality distorted picture but they are really impressed with their new "media experience". This is the real HD experience. I doubt there is any real demand for true HD.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
What does the RIAA have to do with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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?
Total HD doesn't play regular DVD's. People don't want more machines cluttering up the living room. I'll wait.
Are you sure you have the facts straight? Are you sure you mean the RIAA? Even if you meant the MPAA I don't think they are really involved in this one either, this is between two competing formats. Did you RTFA, did you RTFS? Are you ok? Did you have too much coffee today?
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
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.
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 is changing now that the major cable companies will give you HD service for little/no money.
I love HD. I find that people that bitch about HD generally are being stubborn.
It really is different. It really does look vastly better. Watch a PBS show or Discovery show in 1080i/p, and you'll see the difference too, as long as the set is setup correctly.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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 don't think it will be long in coming, but for the time being, I still consider the next gen DRM to be unbroken.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Most of my friends who have the new wide screen HD TVs don't have HD service. Furthermore, they stretch standard TV to fill their wide screen which makes everyone look fat. They end up with a low quality distorted picture but they are really impressed with their new "media experience". This is the real HD experience. I doubt there is any real demand for true HD.
I would submit that your friends are ninnies, and that you draw your conclusions from too little data.My brother has an HD TV and an HD service, which he is always keen to show off. It's a source of endless amusement to keep asking him if we're watching an HD broadcast, and making him check on the guide. The best part is when he blames his 1 year old top end Sony HD TV for not being able to display the HD content properly. He's just convinced that there must be a better experience to be had, somehow, some way, if he can just get the cabling right.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
I disagree that nobody cares about HD content. Sure, for DVD's it is going to take a while for people to switch over because they already have collections of normal DVD's (plus normal DVD's do look damn good on an HDTV already), but for regular TV I can't name very many people I know who "don't care" about it because the difference between SD broadcast and HD is a much bigger jump than between HD DVDs and regular DVDs.
My favorite thing to watch in HD is sports, there is a HUGE difference between watching a game in HD vs SD. Everyone who comes over and watches me flip between the regular broadcast and the HD broadcast of games can't believe how big of a difference it is. Your friends who stretch the standard TV to fill their widescreens probably just don't know how to properly setup their systems or don't realize they need to subscribe to the HD channels. I see no other reason they would not get HD service because it is not that expensive, in my experience it has only been 5-10 dollars more per month.
I also wanted to mention that everyone I know who has gone out to purchase a new TV was very interested in the HD capabilities. Many of the people I know who have gotten new TV's even did so just to get an HDTV and enjoy the benefits it provides. These are a range of people from my own peers ~25 years old, to my parents and their friends ~45-60 years old (many of whom purchased their HDTV's a few years ago), to my 91 year old grandma.
Basically you are flat out wrong that there is no demand for true HD. The sets are pretty cheap and getting cheaper and the cost to subscribe to HD channels is already very low. For HD DVD's it will take much, much longer because the cost of the players is still high and people are not going to want to rebuy their whole collection of movies but for regular TV HD service is desired by many people and the demand is growing higher.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I have seen statments that are quite the oposite. That HDDVD is just a bunch of letters and Blu-Ray sounds cool, so they will go for that format.
I don't know whats its like in the US, but here in Austria its hard to find a standard TV. Its all HDTV's. My guess is that they get a nice big slice of the 1000+ euro price tag. Mybee the same will happen with the Players. How many 100 euro DVD players do you need to sell to match the profit from a single HDDVD/Blu sale?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I have an HDTV and stretch the hell out of SD to make it fit. I "know better", but much of my content is still in SD only. Right now all I watch in HD are sporting events, with an $20 OTA antenna. I know that I could subscribe to HD programming, but I'm waiting for DirecTV or Comcrap (It's Craptastic!) to put out an HD-DVR that isn't a total POS (or for TiVo to ship one that doesn't cost $800).
At least in my household there is demand for HD (even my wife, who doesn't know dink about TV can tell the difference), but not at the current pricepoint and quality level. DVDs and stretched SD (my Sharp has a pretty good "smart stretch") look just fine, and my trusty SD TiVo is very.. trusty.
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).
I disagree. I think that when the price comes down on next gen DVD (players and disks), then people will want them. It took a while for DVD to become popular. And I also think that the format war isn't helping.
There is a compelling reason to want higher capacity disks for computer data. This will also help drive adoption of next gen drives and disks.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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.
Your brother, evidently, is either an idiot with poor eyesight _or_ correct about his TV sucking wastewater -- here's why:
Standard Television signal is approximately 480 lines of resolution, meaning there are 480 different pixels in every vertical line on the television, and the signal is interlaced, meaning that the TV displays 1/2 of the lines in the first scan (1st, 3rd, 5th, so on) and then the second half of the lines in the second scan (2nd, 4th, 6th, so on). This means that at any given time, only 240 of the lines of video on your TV are being updated, meaning that you're not getting all 480 lines of solid resolution. They are _there_ but they are not being displayed at the exact same time.
HD Television is either 720 lines of resolution in non-interlaced format or 1080 lines of resolution in interlaced or non-interlaced format. Even with 1080i, you're still getting 540 lines of resolution per scan -- more than double that of standard television. The actual resolution is almost 3 times as high as standard definition television. With 720p, you're getting more than 3 times the detail per frame than on 480i! You'll note if you research that there is a strong following of videophiles who claim that 720p is actually a more detailed picture than 1080i/p, but personally, I like my 1080i just fine.
The moral of the story is that if your brother can't tell the difference between an HD source and a 480i source, he needs a new set of eyeballs or to clean the 3 feet of dust off the television.
I have a Hitachi 51s715 51" HDTV and the difference between standard definition content and HD content is more than apparent, it is _obvious_. Anyone that isn't truly blind can see the amazing difference in clarity, color depth, black reproduction, etc.
I'm not sure if you're making your story up, your brother is a blind moron, or his TV sucks wastewater, but one of the three is true -- an HD signal cannot be mistaken for an SD signal by anyone with eyesight!
Lastly, regarding programming, Comcast offers free HD with any PVR system, DirecTV has a solid lineup of HD channels, Charter offers a good selection for no additional cost (you just have to call for the receiver), Dish Network has a poor selection but also has HD... Anyone saying it's hard or difficult to get HD service in their area must not be in an area serviced by any of those four major providers.
(ps, I'm not a video scholar, and my description of TV resolution is probably far from 100% accurate, but does cover the basics. Correct me on it if you want to, but I'm not claiming to have pioneered the NTSC standard or anything.)
To the darkened skies once more, and ever onward.
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?"
I don't believe Blu-Ray will die due to that particularly quickly.
What I do see, however, is the standalone player manufacturers taking it in the backside from the PS3. The Samsung is generally regarded as not even doing as good a job at playing movies as the PS3, and yet costs twice as much. Most of the people I know with PS3s bought them as movie players for just this reason.
Blu-Ray may well take off, but if it does, it will be regarded as a PS3 Movie Disc, in the same way that they tried to do with UMD Movie Discs for the PSP.
"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.
In this case, I don't believe a regulatory agency even exists to mandate media format upgrades.
Please, PLEASE don't give the MPAA ideas like that!!!
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981
Yea, because all those people that don't have access to broadband are not worth selling to. All those people who are too poor to pay for internet connection consistently every single month (or Cable TV with digital and pay-per-view fees, or plain old standard telephone line even) , but who could afford a DVD or two now and then are also not worth selling to. You'd be suprised how many people that don't have any phone, TV cable, and other basic services have quite nice stereos, TVs, game consoles, DVD players, etc. They just choose what to save up for and what to not keep paying for again and again and again. Do neither of those two groups of people deserve to watch movies?
Sorry, but we're not quite to a point where your everything from the internet and nowhere else market works. I have to call bullshit on this one. I don't believe there are people who don't have cable OR internet OR a phone who buy significant amounts of DVDs. I also disagree with the idea that disk media should be retired, but I just can't go along with your claim without some evidence to back it up.
And it isn't about whether someone "deserves" to watch a movie. It is about whether it makes economic sense to offer a particular product. I think there is a lot of life left in standard def DVDs. I think that some kind of next generation DVD format will succeed - and I think it will be HD-DVD. I think it will take longer than most people think for HD-DVD (assuming it wins) to surpass standard def DVDs. My guess is that it won't happen until 2012.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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
Motorola HD cable boxes default to 480i. If he has one, power off the cable box, hit menu, then switch the to HD 1080i and override SD to 480p. Hit menu again and power it back on. You might have to be switched to an SD channel for the menu to come up.
Many cable guys don't set the box up properly when they come to your house.
HD-DVD will win and Blu-ray will go the way of Betamax.
Oh really? PS3 sales figures show that there are hundreds of thousands sold. That's hundreds of thousands of blu-ray players in the homes of people, and millions more on their way. Once there's more than ONLY ONE good PS3 game out, too, sales will pick up.
It's hard to predict blu-ray a loser when THAT many players will be in the hands of people. How many HD-DVD players are in homes nowadays?
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?
Not 100% true. It depends, upon your TV set. If you have an older HD set, you know, one of those before DVI/HDMI came on the scene to offer us much better digital connectivity, you just might have a TV where the only difference is clarity. (These TV's came with high-end upscalers and comb filters, processing everything to 1080i, thus making a good NTSC and a poor ATSC signal appear very similar. I also noticed that as HD cameras came online, that NTSC broadcasts actually started getting better picture quality, perhaps because they were produced from the higher quality HD source? I know that the picture certainly improved.
There's also more to the story than what you have there. The maximum resolution of a standard NTSC (480i) picture is 240 lines of vertical resolution at any one time. There's also horizontal information in that signal. The 240 lines may really be 200 lines, like VHS, or even less (160 or so is pretty common on VHS tapes)
On digital signals, while you may have 480i with 240 vertical lines, you may have 50% horizontal resolution (DISH and probably DirecTV and cable companies do this) sending out signals with pictures of 352X480 resolution instead of 704X480 or 720 X 480 or a WS 840 X 480 or even the DBS 540X480 (all these are corresponding ATSC standards, with the exception of the DBS resolution, which appears to be a quasi standard and the 352X480 which isn't one at all from what I've found). The 352X480 is used (by Dish at least) for Comedy Central, USA, Sci-fi, and a couple of other minor channels, which is why they are obviously worse (blotchy or blocky, generally blurry) when viewed on even smaller 4:3 screens.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.
yeah but you have to take into account that there are even MORE xbox 360's in people's households and they now offer a $200 hd-dvd player add on. you can't ignore that.
Well, I dunno. Yes, the sets ARE getting cheaper, trouble is, the majority of people out there are NOT in a rush to replace their televisons. Most people get a set, and keep it till it conks out. An HDTV set that is of any decent size..is well over $1K...so, for most lay people, they're not in a hurry. Heck, just recently it was announced that DVD players have just now overtaken VCR's in the US households...this after now many years of DVD's out there? Not to mention, that DVD's have been adopted faster than any other format/tech out there...CD's took MUCH longer than DVD's to catch on..and DVD infiltration was nearly a decade.
Me? I love A/V toys...and I'm not in a rush for HD. I recently got a projector that is HD capable...and am working to get a pchdtv card working in a MythTV box to play OTA stuff on it, but, you were mentioning that it is only $5+ a month more...that is true if you have digital tv and want a settop box. I personally don't want to pay extra for a settop box..I prefer to have my tivo or mythbox connected directly to cable and antenna and do the switching through those. I'm not interested in HD from satellite or cable due to the requirements that you use and RENT their settop boxes that do not fit in with my needs. There are a LOT of people out there that do not use or want a set top box, due to extra rental costs or other reasons.
I agree HD is catching on...it is a buzzword that is starting to become more well known in the general public, but, do remember, John Q. Sixpack, catchs on VERY slowly to new tech, he does not eat and breathe new tech...it usually has to be out there in front of him for nearly a decade before he even notices it. And he very rarely is in a hurry to invest in it.
Yes, the youngsters catch on quickly, but, there is a LOT of the people born pre-Internet boom that are busy with life and families, and don't really keep up on the 'new' stuff.
It will catch up...the FCC mandates for OTA stuff will push it a bit faster, but, really...I don't see the cable companies turning off analog all that quickly...and many, many people with SD tv's hooked directly to cable with no box...aren't gonna notice the need to upgrade anytime soon.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You've completely ruined my off-the-cuff flippant remark with logic.
Shame on you.
You're the idiot. There are no vertical lines in TV, there are no pixels in television, and you don't know what "lines of resolution" means.
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.
It might be he just doesn't like the RIAA and wants them to pay for everything.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
I agree no one really cares but I still think we will be seeing HD content of one type or another in a couple of years. The problem is that the media companies have built it up to be some great thing and invested millions probably even billions into the whole HD idea. They will force it though whether people want it or not. Combine that with the fact that all HD formats have a ton of DRM and the media companies have a reason to upgrade. What won't happen (and what the media companies would like) is people rushing out to replace their DVDs with HD versions of the same film. I've got a decent sized DVD collection and the quality of the content suits me fine. If HD content was a similar price (both drives and films) I would buy new films on it but the increase in quality really leaves me cold.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
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
"I'm not sure if you're making your story up, your brother is a blind moron, or his TV sucks wastewater, but one of the three is true -- an HD signal cannot be mistaken for an SD signal by anyone with eyesight! "
Wrong. It depends on the size of the TV screen and the distance you are viewing it from. With a small TV from far enough away you won't be able to tell the difference unless you have binoculars and that distance isn't as great as you might think. Also with a 40" screen it's near impossible to tell the difference between 720p and 1080P if you sit more than 6-7 feet away.
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
Trust me...I do. I know people that had tv's and dvd's, didn't have internet (except the occasional free trial offers over dial up)....and quite often, they let the cable and/or phone bills get behind and those were cut off. The ONLY form of entertainment, was OTA tv, and dvd's. Hell, I had friends like that that I gave my old dvd players to so they could have something to entertain themselves and the kids.
I didn't use to believe it either, but, there are TONS of working poor people out there like this. Hell, in NOLA, you could drive by the projects, and see inside units with the doors and windows open...they had tv on, but, you know they didn't have internet connectivity or much else for that matter.
In the old days, you'd see poor people, that barely had a roof over their heads, but, had a big, fancy car in the driveway. While you do see that today, you will often see a very poor family with nothing but a tv and often VHS or dvd's. They can't afford much, but, today, they will save/steal and get this at least to keep them entertained at home.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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
Well, you were right on one point, you don't know anything about ntsc.
:-)
1: sdtv is 480 lines. But those lines are measured as fine vertical lines. Or dots per horizontal scan line.
But, the fact that ntsc is also interlaced is also in this context, irrevelant. That only becomes revelant when talking about how many scan lines there are horizontally. Thats in the next kettle of fish.
2: There are 525 of those scan lines in ntsc, but only the odd lines are refreshed, then the even ones, in any two vertical scans. In ntsc we lose about 22 lines for vertical synch and hidden data, like closed captioning yadda yadda.
3: By the time the video is filtered well enough to keep it in its assigned ntsc channel, we have only about 330 dots per scan line left, nothing higher gets through else the Friendly Candy Company comes calling with a citation in hand for adjacent channel interference. Done well, this is still subjectively sharper than your old vhs vcr could ever do, which was in the 240 line range.
4: So sdtv winds up being about 480x400, interlaced. This ain't hdtv by any means, but because theres no analog noise, and no analog ringing artifacts or color 'dot crawl' it does look better to the unwashed. ntsc, the best we can put on your scren, is about 330 vertical lines by about 500 horizontal scan lines, which, with the 3 line comb filters we use to enhance the sharpness of horizontal lines in the image, loks subjectively sharper but is in fact the equ of about 200 real horizontal lines. Those filters are why you occasionally see some very slight slanted line in the pix literally snap from one line to the next on your screen. This of course requires matching filters in the viewers set, which only the top of the line stuffs have.
5: 1080i, which I've seen quite a bit of, is much sharper. But I can recall, long before we had an ATSC stds body to codify this stuff, seeing a Zenith demo at the N.A.B. show, a demo tape playing from a specially modified type C 1" machine with the tape moveing at about 30 ips and the drum whining similar to the old 2" quadruplex machines, of about 10 minutes of Stars on Ice, with Red Buttons, all that 1 hour tape could hold.
The stars all had their names embroidered on their tee shirts, and with the camera at max wide angle to show the whole floor, Red stopped and took a bow from center ice. You could read his t-shirt when he straightened back up. On a projection screen 4 foot high and 8 feet wide he was maybe 6" tall in that image. That was a 2x1 aspect ratio pix and I'd estimate the real, working resolution of that setup was at least 10,000x5000.
The image compression wasn't quite as good as mpeg2 (it was still under development itself) then and was done in hardware both ways. The data rate from that modified type C was in the 500 megbytes/second area. In other words, that single picture would have occupied more than all the bandwidth available in a 120 channel cable system. Not terribly practical in the real world.
As an exersize in what could be done, I've seen it, so even 1080i today is just a wannabe to me. OTOH, it (1080i) is far far better than anything I've seen in my 40+ years as a broadcast engineer watching our own on the air ntsc signals through a $5,600 fcc standard receiver. We haven't nick-named it Never Twice Same Color without reason.
--
Cheers, Gene
Speaking of anecdotal evidence...
I think that is true only of people who really haven't seen HD. Even my mom, who watches approximately no TV on average, is stunned by HD quality and will sit in my brother's room watching something like Discovery HD for 60-90 minutes. That's pretty much unheard of for her in most cases.
She wants an HD TV. She just can't justify the cost right now because, in her words, "there's nothing wrong with our TV." When either the costs come down a bit more or something goes flaky with the TV, she's going to be in the HD world. And she's probably going to beat me there!
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
Your friends aren't too bright then. They should be using something like an upconverting DVD recorder to upconvert their cable/sat signal. You don't get stretched screens or distorted pictures that way. Once you actually watch a movie in HD that is the real HD experience. Or even the ota HD broadcasts that are free. Watch sports in HD and then try it in SD. There's no comparison.
Almost-Retired: Thanks for the clarification! As I said and you acknowledged, I have a somewhat limited grasp of the NTSC standard in general. I appreciate your taking the time to correct my misconceptions and any misinformation I posted above. Sounds like you've got significant experience in the field! OTOH, while I may have been incorrect with the details, the brunt of my post (that HD is fairly well distinguishable from SD) still remains accurate.
:)
In response to the AC (flame) above regarding my use of the word 'pixel', my apologies for using an (inaccurate for the subject) word that most people (non NTSC video studied folk) could understand to make it less difficult to grasp. Most people can't get the concept of lines of resolution, color burst, sync pulses, multiple guns firing toward a screen, the difference between direct-view and rear-projection, how many dots per inch, etc. Good to see you cleared it up with your informative post. Thanks for taking the time.
To the darkened skies once more, and ever onward.
Exactly. Plus when you can buy something like the RCA DVD Recorder that upconverts DVDs and SD signals to 720p or 1080i it really makes SD DVDs shine on a HDTV. Plus you can play DIVX, XVID, MPEGS, etc on the unit. Burn all your DIVX movies to a DVD and play them off the player upconverted. That thing is only $130 and includes the HDMI cable. Buying a $200 HD DVD player for my Xbox 360 is tempting but there's not enough content out for me to spend the money yet.
Err....
Why not just ship two discs in each case?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm not saying these people don't exist, but I doubt they are a very large group and I dought they actually BUY very many DVDs. If they are buying DVDs, it is probably used or bargain bin.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
My Comcast box was default to 1080i, which worked nicely on the HD content but the scaling on SD content looked horrible. I found that same menu you did and made the 4:3 override always scale to 480p and I see huge difference in the quality of SD TV. Since HD TV seems always to be broadcast in 16:9 this seems to work well.
I buy a ton of DVD's. And get this. I don't have a landline phone (I do have a cell but have you ever hooked up a cell to a modem and dialed into the internet *shudders*). I live in the country. No cable TV providers or DSL providers reach this far. And due to the fact that I also live in a wooded area satellite TV is not possible. So I watch a ton of DVD's on a SD TV. So there are people that are relatively unconnected to the net at home that still buy a boat load of DVD's, computer games, music, and console games (I love my Wii).
Granted there probably isn't a huge market but it is a market non the less.
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"
Seeing as how the last time I moved and had cable installed, the installer didn't even know what s-video was...
Cybrhippy - "It all makes sense... Well, To me anyway." The Maxx
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
One word: eBay.
A better solution would be have Blue Ray on one side, HD on the other.
As long as we're basing everything on anecdotal evidence....
I don't think the average person is at all completely clueless about HD. Even my least tech-savvy of friends and family know that HD provides a much superior picture, and want HDTV setups. My mom, who usually is pretty complacent when it comes to purchasing TVs (in the past, she and my dad would just buy one when theirs broke, and never got anything fancy) now really wants an HDTV (preferably flat panel). Joe Sixpack may be clueless when it comes to the differences LCD, Plasma, 1080i, 720p, etc, but I think just about everyone knows that generally HDTVs==better picture quality. Everyone I know can easily recognize the difference between SD and HD, and readily recognize when something is in HD (without having even to show the SD feed first)
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
> 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.
The thing is that blu-ray is in EVERY PS3 that will EVER be bought. How many people will buy the 360 add-on, especially when it offers nothing to games? Not a very large percentage.
Standard Television signal is approximately 480 lines of resolution, meaning there are 480 different pixels in every vertical line on the television, and the signal is interlaced, meaning that the TV displays 1/2 of the lines in the first scan (1st, 3rd, 5th, so on) and then the second half of the lines in the second scan (2nd, 4th, 6th, so on). This means that at any given time, only 240 of the lines of video on your TV are being updated, meaning that you're not getting all 480 lines of solid resolution. technically speaking yes, but thought an interlaced picture only displays half the frames per second at yoru standard 30 frames a minute. given a.) visual persistence, and b.) your eye seeing 24 frames a sec. you really actually see all 480 frames. Interlacing the image was just a smart way to minimize teh data stream without losing any 'visable' difference.
see visual persistence
http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn/nts
It has everything to do with the fact that HD technology is still new.
RCA introduced color television in 1954.
It took ten years to become mass-market. It took five years for digital TV to become mass market.
SACD sells. DVD-A sells. Vinyl sells. In their niche markets. HDTV is not a niche market. "Ill-received?" Give me a break. But do you think DVD players were available at Walmart for $30 in their first six months of release?
when was the last time you purchased a monitor that couldn't display games or video at HD resolutions? when was the last time you saw a laptop advertised with a 4:3 screen?
However, I don't know that many people are rushing out to buy HD equipment. They are buying flat screen TVs (but a lot of these aren't HD) as a new bigger, brighter TV set. They aren't buying HD DVD players, though.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
It's not that people don't think HD is better. Most people just don't consider it worth the money. Standard definition is good enough for most things. TV's last a long time, and most people don't replace them until they start having problems. An HD TV also costs several times more than an SD TV. On top of that, you usually need to upgrade to digital cable, which is an additional monthly fee, plus requires a $5/month rental fee on a cable box for each TV in your home.
Remember, once quality reaches the level of good enough, people care more about cost and convienence than additional quality. Look at people's willingness to buy 128kb music from iTunes when CDs are available.
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!
If the manufacturing costs of these disks is comparable to HD-DVD/Blu-ray disks, it might just click.
There is one significant difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. With Blu-Ray, Sony went for the best technology possible. Doing so ended up meaning that manufacturing Blu-Ray discs required replacing all the equipment at the factories. The HD-DVD camp said that was unacceptable, and designed a format that only required a small amount of equipment changes at the existing DVD factories. The tradeoff to doing this was a lot less storage space.
Sure, the formats have differences in menus formats and the like, but those differences are trivial and can be dealt with in software. The significant things like video codecs are the same between the formats anyway.
So, back to Total HD. You've now made sacrifices to your storage capacity, and you need all new equipment to manufacture the discs. Movie studios only win here if they're neutral in the format war. The format war wouldn't have existed if most studios were neutral, so this isn't a big deal. Consumers only win if they buy a player in the format that ends up losing the war, then decide to get rid of the player they already have.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/07/08/ricoh-laser-
http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/09/new-lasers-fro
standard 30 frames a minute
Wow! You definitely need a new TV then if you're only gettin a frame every 2 seconds.
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
or by the regular HD/Blueray (delete as appropriate)
Do we not remember the word "or"? Would have saved you 21 keystrokes...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Hell, people still refer to any digital music player as an MP3 player, whether it actually plays MP3s or not! To quote my wife: I hate people.
I, for one, am floored every time I go into the cable company to pay my bill and see the HD programming (what company has HD tv, but doesn't have online bill payments!!?? Oh yeah, mine.) The only problem is, as far as I can tell, Discover and ESPN are the only channels in the line-up. As soon as more channels have HD than not, I think I'll sign up.
Anyone who claims to see no difference in HD programming and standard tv, ESPECIALLY when they are displayed side-by-side in nearly every electronics store, is smoking something.
What's next, are you going to go on a personal crusade to save dial-up internet access for the poor? I don't know, call me a snob, but I am thoroughly disappointed by how slow our society is to adopt progress.
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 ][
Anyway, I think it's just peachy-keen that you "your-stereo-is-only-as-good-as-your-stylus" audiophiles now have a whole new technology to deceive yourself over. Gold plated cables, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
How about playing hoops in the park? Or reading a book? Or playing Monopoly? Or poker? Or even just getting drunk or stoned?
I've lived in a real ghetto, and belive you me, there's plenty of entertainment there that doesn't come from a TV, movie, or recording studio. Heck, watching the street on a Saturday night was more entertaining than the best episode of COPS.
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 ][
I respectfully disagree. It has appeared to me that the market really wants HD TVs. The problem is that they're expensive and since they already have a TV at the moment the purchase is often delayed.
The fact that many of these same people often stretch SD TV, poorly calibrate the image, and do all sorts of other things to their displays that show that they have little regard for quality still bothers me, but they do want them and are willing to buy them.
I'd agree that simple image quality upgrades are not compelling a lot of consumers to throw out existing sets, but you're overlooking the fact that FORM FACTOR is a big selling point. A lot of people (women especially) are falling all over themselves to replace the huge, unsightly, difficult to move 36 inch with a slimmer model that can be hung on a wall.
"decent size" varies by consumer. there is such a thing as "too big for the room" and 32 inches and up can be had for $700 or less now. I saw an advertisement for a 36 inch flat panel for $500 over the holidays, but that was almost certainly an off brand.
DVD players have been OUTSELLING VCR's for the past 4 or 5 years now. It's just now that the installed base has overtaken VCRs, and considering VCR's have been on the market for 25 years or so now, the fact that DVD has done it in maybe a third of the time is a big deal.
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.
Well yes, the image is better with HD, but the actual content is just the same.
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
What are you disagreeing with? You seem to be saying the same thing I did.
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.
TotalHD is a disc format rather than a player; as someone else already pointed out this requires that the publisher put the movie in both formats (Bluray and HD-DVD) and then publish in the TotalHD format. TFA *does* talk about a new player by LG that will cost more (nothing on how much more) but will play both formats.
Warner claims that their format is a better solution than a new player that plays both formats. I have to disagree there at least with respec to what's better for the consumer. Were publishers to actually adopt this format en masse it would seem good because it would mean people with either system could see the results. But the cost would be passed on and considering what the markup is already it would probably mean some pretty expensive movies. The main nail in the coffin for this is the fact it requires publishers to go for that model. Even if they do it would probably only be for those movies they deemed most profitable. Meanwhile they already have been publishing in the current formats which our intrepid consumer cannot play because he only has the one player.
But in the second scenario you get a dual format player from LG. That choice puts initiative and control back where it belongs; with the customer. Sure you had to drink the kool-aid and buy the new expensive device to do it, but don't you feel like you're in control now? In any case at least that way you get to see all the movies. That makes more sense that wishing and hoping that an industry that is known for its sheisterism, shenanigans, and drooling, stupid, heavy-handed, mafia-style greed will suddenly become enlightened and either a) learn to get along like nice people, or b) be kind enough to bridge the gap and open their arms with a new dual format that just screams love and happiness and joy -- Peace, Love, Total HD, and all that rot.
Since the Blu-Ray players cost something like $1000 to $1500 and HD-DVD players are about $500, I can only imagine what the LG player will cost. It could be $3000 or whatever they want at this point. And there's where I am.
I refused to buy VCRs at $1000 but when they got down to $100 I was willing to live with it (some people waited for $50 or free) then we went through the same progression *exactly* in price for CDRs, DVDRs, DVD players, etc. And honestly we all know early adopters get screwed many many ways. Quite apart from the price there is the question of choice, availability of support, supplies, media, etc, and the level of community. Not to mention the steepness of learning curve and how much data will be available for you to overcome it.
My first CDR drive was complete shit, tempermental, and the software, drivers, and firmware were just nasty. If it wasn't locking up the system it was spitting out coasters, and the software left invisible turds all over the system whenever you installed it or did anything with it. It didn't like you messing with them either, because it became paranoid that this time you were going to wipe it out and never put it back on again. That drive cost me like $150 or something. $20 drives lasted a lot longer, performed better, and the free software I used was the best for burning (in fact the best and most user-friendly burn environment by far IMHO is Linux + xcdroast). It was the same with my DVDRW. I broke down and got one for like $150 and it didn't last at all. It worked ok at least. But the ones I use now cost like $20 and are made by Sony instead of the off-brand the other one was.
I