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No Ceasefire in DVD Format Battle
haja writes "The BBC reports that the high definition DVD format war will continue until a winner is declared. There is no sign of the two camps working on a unified format. Some believe the industry at large is being damaged by the war due to consumer confusion. From the article: 'Backers of Blu-ray are bullish and are predicting victory. Blu-ray has more backing from film studios and more makers of the players, but HD-DVD has sold equally well in the first year of release. But the Blu-ray camp believes a library of exclusive titles and the power of PlayStation 3 - which has an in-built Blu-ray player - will see the format pull ahead in the next 12 months. Mike Dunn, president of worldwide home entertainment for 20th Century Fox, said: "I really believe the format war is in its final phase."'"
Consumers really don't care at this point.
Seagate announces Hard Drives will be at 300TB in a few years, what do we even need these formats for? DRM? yaaaaay!
MABASPLOOM!
Blu-Ray, from what I see, has a few problems (or HD-DVD several advantages).
1. Lots of people already have an Xbox 360, so the cost of the HD-DVD addon really doesn't seem so bad, compared to the $600 or $1000+ Blu-Ray players.
2. I can't think of many Blu-ray movies that I just can't live without. There are loads of HD-DVD movies I would love to own.
3. The Xbox 360 is a more capable media center device. Since the HD-DVD box is part of the 360, that creates a nice little package.
4. The name. "What the hell is a 'blue...ray'?" When you say HD-DVD they at the very least have a good idea that it's some type of movie disc.
I just can't see how Blu-ray hopes to make significant inroads into the HD movie market. Maybe this won't even matter. Maybe we'll all have fiber to the curb in 3 years and will stream HD content from Netflix or something.
-William Brendel
An HD TV set, with a PVR, and digital cable is serving me just fine. On Demand movies in HD 5.1 gets it done for me.
The only counter argument that nags in the back of my mind is that I borrowed the LOST first and second season DVDs from a friend, and truly enjoyed watching the series on DVD. No Commercials, and three episodes a night really move the plot along. I find it very difficult to stay interested in the show now that I am watching it on a weekly basis, when they happen to bless us with an episode. Too long between important events, and the hook is gone... So the DVDs of Complete seasons may be a better way to enjoy quality TV shows.
But, I suspect that it won't be long before the LOST series shows up on the On Demand service, just like the fine HBO content... and I can again enjoy three episodes in a sitting.
www.jmagar.com
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Alternatively "the beatings will continue until morale improves".
There needn't be a winner in a format war. Remember MiniDisc v Digital Cassette? The winner then was MP3. Remember SACD v DVD-Audio? The winner in that war was, well, nobody really as neither format sells in large quantities.
Serious question: how well does the PS3 play Blu-Ray movies?
I'm still waiting a while to get a good HDTV, much less a HD player (waiting to see how things play out a little more).
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
I'm wondering if a movie can be compressed into Divx in full HD and fit on a standard DVD? If this could be done couldn't HD players be made much more cheaply? I just had to purchase a new dvd player. I almost bought a Phillips which supports Divx playback via USB hard drive. I do not know if an HD Divx file will be displayed in full HD though.
Instead I bought a Sony player which upconverts the signal first. It also conditions the signal so that virtually no pixelization can be seen on the TV. The picture on a 46" 720P set is astounding. Really, it looks close to an HD signal and I'm starting to think there isn't very much added value in the hi-def discs.
DRM is a major factor in my disinterest in buying HD-related products, from sets to players to disks. And it's not that I'm generally a scofflaw: I willing pay licensing fees for my music and movies. The reason I avoid DRM-infected products and content is that they don't let me fully exercise my fair-use freedoms (backup, time-shifting, etc.)
So I'm thrilled that the studios and hardware people are having a rough time of this. I doubt that they'll ever say, "DRM is preventing an resolution to the format wars", but at this point I pretty much just want DRM pushers to suffer.
By that logic the N64 should have trounced the PS, and thus the NGC should have crounced the PS2, Xbox, and DC.
This time the price and the avaliablity are making people sit back, wait, and evaluate. The reason the PS2 is horribly popular is a few things, however the driving force once all the systems were up and running was the presence of exlusive titles.
I don't think that any of the 3 systems will tank, however I don't think it is a forgone conclussion this time around.
1) PS3 Price and avaliablity is cutting into early adopters. The lack of major titles, and a number of companies saying they will nolonger be making PS exclusives. All of this might (can't say 100%) to a lack of games, or a lack of exclusive games.
2) The 360 already has a decent toehold in the USA (it is still tanking in Japan, however I honestly can't specuilate on the japanese market and how it will effect the systems as I am not familiar enough with it, from here on in, I am reffering to the USA). A number of PS2 owners have already picked up 360s because they want the next gen, but are not willing to wait for the PS3, or pay the price for it. This also gives the 360 a nice room for picking up exclusives (hey, look, our player base is 10X that of the PS3).
3) Wii. Who farken knows? I think that it will be decently common to see people havign a Wii as well as one of the other 2, plus those poeple that are straped for $$ will be either going for a Wii or a PS2.
I tihnk that in the USA the 360 will likely trounce the PS3, and the Wii either being a close second, or leading. In Japan, the PS3 will out do the 360, however I think that the Wii will easily outdo the PS3.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
"But the Blu-ray camp believes a library of exclusive titles and the power of PlayStation 3 - which has an in-built Blu-ray player - will see the format pull ahead in the next 12 months."
I keep saying that there are no Free markets when it comes to "goods" protected by copyrights and / or patents.
This is a good example of people with monopolies in one area trying to leverage that to win in another market.
"exclusive titles" = copyright monopolies.
other market = media format / players.
Yes? No?
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you...
BUT
You forget that a LARGE percentage of the population (At least in the U.S.) has children and small disposable incomes. Yes, there are plenty in the correct income range that have the disposable incomes to blow on HD equipment, but there are plenty more that don't, and don't want to have to blow the money.
My kids also watch TONS of DVDs. So many so, that we just had to replace the DVD player AGAIN because the old one wore out with use. (Autistic kids like the familiarity of DVDs, so we watch alot of them) What kind of DVD player did I buy? I bought a $120.00 DVD-VCR combo unit as our VCR was also wearing out. No HD-DVD, no Blu-Ray, just plain old DVD. I go through about one DVD player every 2 years or less because we play so many DVDs.
I actually use DVD shrink and duplicate all of our DVDs because if I didn't we would be re-buying all of our DVDs each year too because the kids are so rough with them. If you think I'm upset about the cost of the HD players, how do you think I feel about the cost of the HD Burners and the DRM contained on the Discs?
This whole HD format war debacle has me furious because it's just so damned obvious that the players involved don't give a damn about what the customers want, they just want to line thier pockets at our expense. At some point I'm just going to have to invest in 15 to 20 DVD players and about 300 DVD-R's because the format will go out of style and I won't be able to afford the new equipment anymore.
I'm just praying that the DVD Shrink people will figure a way around the DRM inherent on the new HD stuff because I need to be able to continue to duplicate my DVDs, as I can't afford to replace 30-40 HD-DVD's or BR-DVD's each year.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Television shows are OK to watch in Hi-Def. I watch Smallville and (god, I hate to admit it) Enterprise on HD-Net every Monday night but I wouldn't buy either series in DVD format. That means you can forget about me spending extra money for it in either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, or Total Movie.
As for movies; movies STINK lately. This is where they could grab me, but they have failed miserably!
I have a Hi-Def, surround sound set up at home and I like nothing better than to sit on my comfortable couch with a two-liter Dr. Pepper and a bag of microwave popcorn and watch a good movie. I can pause the show when my wife and I want to argue about some plot point, or even return to a previous point in the show to show her just how wrong she is. :)
Just give me SOMETHING to watch!
Last year I wanted to see Mission: Impossible and Superman Returns, but having been burned in years past I procrastinated and missed them in the theaters. I rented then on DVD. Boy was I happy I had not wasted time and money trying to see these shows in an expensive theatre setting. And I'll clue you in on something that came to mind while I have been watching movies lately: Hi-Definition does NOT make the shows any better.
In summary, it doesn't matter which format "wins" if there is nothing to watch.
There was a good article in the December 10, 2006 New York Times by Richard Siklos entitled "The Hat Trick That Didn't Happen" in which it suggests that interest in Hi-Definition formats is actually declining among the population.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
For the last decade Sony's content divisions have been essentially destroying their hardware division from the inside. People once regarded Sony as the default brand to buy when purchasing consumer electronics. Now, anyone who is remotely informed avoids their products like the plague. Sony's insistence on making their hardware and content divisions cooperate has insured that nearly every product they release is crippled right out of the gate with DRM and proprietary formats doomed to obscurity.
What I don't understand is how an orginization the size of Sony behaves like a psychotic genious?
Yes, Sony is on my shitlist as well, mostly due to their usability, DRM and other psychosis ridden behaviors, but from a technical POV their proprietary stuff is actually technically sound, but they simply don't seem to want people to use it.
SDDS is at least as good as DTS for multi-channel sound. Both are better than DD. But Sony doesn't seem to want people to be able to use it, so who cares?
Although the minidisc may of had its issues, ATRAC, especially ATRAC3 is a good lossy encoder. But who cares? My car stereo has a licensed Sony technology where I can record onto a Sony memory stick via ATRAC3 compression. Its been a while since I read the manual, but all I remember was that the rules and regulations for even testing the recording capabilities of the deck just made it not worth the investment in a memory stick or my time to even test it.
SACD. Technically the best audio format one can get in their home. Sony doesn't want you to use it though. I had a SACD capable DVD/CD player and a Sony digital receiver. So, to play audio CDs or DVDs I can just put the disk into the player and use the digital out and the receiver will properly decode the signal and enjoy! Well, to enjoy a SACD from a Sony player on a Sony receiver I have to hook up 6 analog cables and hit a special button on the receiver to select the analog cables over the digital ones to play a SACD. Keep in mind that this is a multi-disk player, so when the player switches to or from a SACD disk everything is different although it is coming from the same player. WTF? So, I erroniously bought a SACD at the same time that I bought the SACD player, and haven't even listened to it all the way though. Try explaining to your wife, friend, babysitter, or whever, that the silver disk that looks just like every other CD or DVD but its "better" has to be played a special way from the same player and receiver even though they are all made by the same people.
WTF?
It simply does not matter how technologically good or even sufficient something is. If it can't be used or at least used the same way as everything else it simply won't be used. SDDS, ATRAC, SACD are basically worthless technology simply because Sony doesn't want people to use the stuff. The most sucessful is SDDS because they allow some movie theaters/producers to use the format, but Sony simply does not want to play nice with the rest of the 5 billion people on this planet.