Blu-ray/HD DVD Disc Sales Numbers Revealed

An anonymous reader writes "The High-Def format wars finally have a yardstick against which to measure who's winning with the first public release of VideoScan sales figures for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. The first two weeks' worth of data seem to back up what many predicted — that the Blu-ray-enabled PS3 is helping Sony quickly close the gap with HD DVD, with almost three Blu-ray discs sold for every one HD DVD during the first week of January. HD DVD still leads in overall discs sold since inception, but that lead looks to be quickly dwindling. While they do show a trend, the results from VideoScan are still fairly vague. Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?"

Comments

Haven't we been here before?

[alshithead]

This hurts the consumer on way too many levels. You might as well release music in several formats...Oh, wait a minute...where's my 8 track player? Ooh! I just found my Betamax VCR. Screw this DVD shit, it won't last out the year's end.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[Professor_UNIX]

History has shown time and time again over the past 25 years that consumers generally do not adopt Sony's proprietary formats: Betamax, Minidiscs, MemoryStick, SACD, UMD, and now Blu-Ray. Things that they develop in conjunction with other companies like CDs and eventually DVDs gained widespread adoption. I won't buy into Blu-Ray simply because it's a stupid name. "Buy this new movie on VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc". "Blu-Ray Disc" sounds retarded compared to "DVD" which rolls off the tongue.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[harks]

It might not be the best name, but it's a lot easier to say "Blu-Ray" than "HD-DVD"

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[GNious]

You should hear the latter name in French .. Got a perty good idea why I do not see HDDVD adverticed anywhere around me ;)

/G

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[Dev59]

The "failure" of the last three doesn't really have anything to do with Sony.

Their memory stick is just another memory format.

SACD is superior to DVD-Audio and while SACD has failed... so has DVD-Audio. There's just not enough of a market for better than stereo music.

UMD is only for the PSP and it's still all over the place for games. The only reason it has failed as a movie format is because the movie studios ignored Sony and tried to price them at the same level (or sometimes even higher!) as DVDs.

None of these really constitute failure on Sony's part.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-Ray isn't a Sony proprietary format, hence it will succeed.
In fact over 170 companies belong to the Blu-Ray disc association.

The name ain't great, but no-one ever agreed what the V in DVD stood for either. HDDVD is just a mouthful of consonants.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[Xymor]

You're right. And blu-ray was developed in conjunction by all the companies in the BDA.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[HeroreV]

History has shown time and time again over the past 25 years that consumers generally do not adopt Sony's proprietary formats

You mean like 3.5" floppy disks and CDs? Yeah, those formats never took off.

Things that they develop in conjunction with other companies like CDs and eventually DVDs gained widespread adoption.

The CD was backed by Sony and Philips while Blu-Ray is backed by hundreds. If Blu-Ray fails, it won't be due to being a Sony proprietary format.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[shut_up_man]

True, but HD-DVD is quite self explanatory. It's a DVD, but Hi-Definition. Blu-Ray sounds like the creature that killed Steve Irwin.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[be-fan]

Don't let the "DVD" in HD-DVD fool you into thinking that it's an open format and Blu-Ray isn't. Both are proprietary but openly-licensable formats. In this regard, they're equivalent to each other, and to DVD and CD, not to mention SD, CompactFlash, MicroSD, etc. Incidentally, neither MemoryStick, SA-CD, MiniDisc, or UMD are Sony-proprietary formats. All of these are openly-licensable formats, just like DVD or CD. The only difference is in how many companies are backing the standard. Interestingly enough, more (and bigger) companies are backing Blu-Ray than HD-DVD. It is different from MemoryStick, MiniDisc, or UMD in this regard.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[rtb61]

The important thing with DVDs is size, with all those DVD TV series, the best way to watch them, is to rip them to a disk to create and effective media juke box (movies as well of course.

As it is there are a lot of DVDs that are not much better than VHS quality.

How many Blu-Ray DVDs will end up with exactly the same quality as DVD or just masqueraded superbit versions, those very very rare full quality dvds, just who is kidding who.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[donaldm]

The actual name is "Digital Versatile Disc" but it abbreviates to DVD. Now if we abbreviate "Blu-Ray Disk" we actually get BD which is also used (see some of the fine print on some Blue-Ray capable devices) which is one letter less so it really depends on what abbreviation you like to roll off your tongue. In reality the Blue-Ray format is supported by many other consortium's (Sony just being one). In just about all industries abbreviations are used and the one with the least number of letters or at least a catchy set of letters is best remembered.

As for Sony's Memory-Stick many devices do support it as they do SD (normally the cheapest), CF, MMC and XD. Now SACD I suggest you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SACD.

UMD is a Sony proprietary disk which is quite successful for PSP games. This disk (not the format) is actually a spin off from the mini-disk which is still sold today and is relatively cheap and robust (due to it's protective sleeve) when compared against other media.

As for the Betamax, VHS war well I suggest reading about it since the one with the greatest initial capacity won even though the looser was actually the better format.

Re:Haven't we been here before?

[Mordaximus]

History has shown time and time again over the past 25 years that consumers generally do not adopt Sony's proprietary formats: Betamax, Minidiscs, MemoryStick, SACD, UMD, and now Blu-Ray.

You have Blu-Ray in the wrong group. It's was a joint venture between Philips and Sony. And it's a little early to consign it to history, no?

Things that they develop in conjunction with other companies like CDs and eventually DVDs gained widespread adoption.

They didn't develop DVD. They worked with Philips on MultiMedia Compact Disc, while other companies worked on what became DVD. After arbitration (attempting to avoid another format war,) Sony and Philips dropped their efforts, and essentially got screwed in the process.

won't buy into Blu-Ray simply because it's a stupid name.

Stupid names don't stop people from buying products. Just ask the 5 million Wii owners.

"Buy this new movie on VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc". "Blu-Ray Disc" sounds retarded compared to "DVD" which rolls off the tongue.

Compare apples to applies. Between Vertical Helical Scan Cassettes, Digital Versatile Discs, High Definition Digital Versatile Discs and Blu-Ray Discs, you think the latter is the most stupid sounding? BD is the acronym for Blu-Ray Disc, Blu-Ray just sounds better.

Surprised

[dublinclontarf]

I really thought that Sony would lose this format war, boy was I wrong!

Re:Surprised

[gfxguy]

Ha! It's not over yet, and there hasn't been a format war that Sony has won, so I wouldn't count that chicken before it's hatched.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

'I really thought that Sony would lose this format war, boy was I wrong!"

This is a long distance race. You cannot accurately judge the winner after you hear the sound of the starting gun.

Re:Surprised

[qortra]

That comment is insane for so many reasons. Not the least of which being that Blu-Ray could "beat" HD-DVD and still lose. If they 5 times as many Blu-Ray media as HD-DVD, but only sell 10,000 units per year, then they fail. From TFA:

you won't find any hard sales figures here

In other words, we have no idea how either format is doing on an absolute scale.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The usual reply to your comment on Slashdot would ne "You forgot about audio CD?" or "What about 3.5" floppies?" but I'll add another format to the list: 8mm tapes. They were quite dominant before the spread of MiniDV.

Re:Surprised

[AKAImBatman]

FWIW, Bluray is superior to HD-DVD in many ways. So it has had (and still has) a good chance of "winning" against the competing HD-DVD format. The real problem with such a "win" is that it's not much of a "win" if you claim victory in the battle, but lose the war. Allow me to explain.

Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions. As it would seem, the vast majority of consumers are happy enough with their TVs as they are today. The real consumer push has been a much different one than quality.

Consumers today are looking for convenience first and quality second. They want to be able to sit in their living room and chose what they want to watch (or play!), when they want to watch it. Nothing makes this more apparent than the popularity of the TIVO and other DVR players.

These players timeshift shows from their regular schedules to a time that is more convenient for the viewer. Thanks to thier ties with online TV schedules, a user can setup his DVR to record dozens of shows. When he feels in the mood to watch something, he can then chose from the options at his disposal.

However, this process does have its drawbacks. The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.

The second drawback is that these devices have limited capacity. Once they are full, you must remove some material in order to make room for more material. This biases the devices against consumers who watch television on few, rare occasions, but enjoy a wide variety of entertainment.

The solution on the horizon is not digital transmissions over the airwaves, by digital cable, or even by plastic frisbees. The solution is to stream the video directly to the consumer over a broadband internet line. This allows the consumer to access a wide variety of quality material, but without the same storage drawbacks that limit DVR devices.

So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.

Re:Surprised

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

All the people that bought a PS3 for christmas ran out to buy a blu ray to play on it. It's a temporary bump in sales.

Re:Surprised

[Orange Crush]

The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.

Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it does not usually get transcoded. It's much easier for the box to record the bits directly. Video quality and ease of use are vastly superior to VHS.

Re:Surprised

[king-manic]

So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.

Perhaps next generation. But for this revision of video delivery, there still a monolithic population of technology impaired with too much money and too few techno savy people. There is a lack of easy to use downloaded data to TV appliances. Easy to use being the key word. Your Ipod could do. But they are still not DVD player easy to use yet. VCRs and DVD players still partly confound the median consumer. perhaps in 25 years when the last inept boomer dies we may see itunes overtake disc media, but our geek fantasies of seeing everyone download their TV will be some time away.

Re:Surprised

[DrXym]

I really thought that Sony would lose this format war, boy was I wrong!

They still could lose it (this is Sony we're talking about here). But at the end of the day they're dumping 100,000 PS3s into the market per week so pragmatism alone suggests they'd need to have a monstrous screw-up to lose at this point.

Re:Surprised

[itlurksbeneath]

I dunno. Sony is doing pretty good on getting products out in a timely manner. There's been a blu-ray burner shipping since about August of '06 (BR burners are already under $700) and as far as I can tell, there's still not a HD-DVD burner shipping. Toshiba is supposed to start shipping one in volume next month and NEC was supposed to start shipping one mid last year, then August, then Christmas time, I can't find anywhere on the web where they are actually SELLING them.

Re:Surprised

[AKAImBatman]

There is a lack of easy to use downloaded data to TV appliances.

What, like an XBox 360 or an AppleTV? Not to mention those awefully convenient DVI ports on modern TVs and computers. I think you'll find that as the market expands, there will be even more compatible devices showing up on the market.

Besides, I don't think you give consumers enough credit. They'll spend the time to figure something out (or get the kid next door to set it up for them) if they REALLY want it. It's only when they don't care about something that the technology goes unused. (e.g. The infamous VCR clock blinking 12:00.) If the popularity of iTunes television shows is any indicator, consumers care about this technology.

Re:Surprised

[Andy Dodd]

"Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it does not usually get transcoded."

I'd like to amend that a bit - in consumer DVRs, high-def content NEVER gets transcoded. It is always simply dumped to disc without decoding and/or reencoding. The transport stream is only decoded for playback.

Realtime high definition encoders simply do not exist, at least not at the price points needed to be put into a consumer device. The closest thing is the Slingbox PRO, but that downscales to SD before compression.

Re:Surprised

[VGPowerlord]

or they could win it.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

CD was mainly Philips technology.

Re:Surprised

[Abcd1234]

What the hell are you talking about? For one, there is *NO* HD-DVR out there that encodes the material it's storing. None. Zero. Nada. There's simply too much video to make that realistic. Every one of these machines simply demodulates the QAM, pulls out the MPEG stream, and saves it to disk. That's it. No quality loss whatsoever.

Second, storage is a solved problem. Harddisks get bigger every single day. It's simply not an issue. Granted, existing DVRs are a little lean on storage, but that will change with time (my Myth box at home has 250GB, and there are many with 1TB+ setups).

Third, the very idea of Internet distribution of HD, which can be upwards of 7 *gigabytes per hour*, is simply laughable. There's no way in hell that would get popular enough to sway the HD-DVD/Blu-ray battle in any way whatsoever.

Re:Surprised

[metamatic]

FWIW, Bluray is superior to HD-DVD in many ways.

Except that it's crippled with region coding, which kills my interest in it... at least until someone releases a region-free Bluray player.

Re:Surprised

[active1x0]

"Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions." Yes you're completely correct - this Christmas season didn't see an exponential increase in sales of HDTV's, and TimeWarner has not sold out every last one of its Hi-Def DVR units, have they? Wait.

Re:Surprised

[DrXym]

Like I said, I reckon pragmatism alone suggests they'll win. Personally I couldn't give a crap about the formats since they're almost identicial, however since I intend to get a PS3 I would prefer if it was Blu-Ray for obvious reasons. My other remark was alluding to Sony's uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Re:Surprised

[Junta]

Realtime high definition encoders A further amendment. Though what you say is probably true about commercially provided DVR, and for anything in the ballpark of price for live tv watching, for recordings transcoding after the fact is not necessarily a real-time task.

My myth box, for example, transcodes the OTA MPEG-2 stream to save space after the recording is done. 90% of the time, when I watch a program it has happened to have completed transcoding.

Re:Surprised

[goatpunch]

"Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it [never] get transcoded."

I'd agree with that, the recorded HD/SD content from my HD PVR looks just as crappy as the live content.

If it didn't hitting 'pause' on a live stream and then 'play' several hours later would cause a noticable drop in quality.

Re:Surprised

[DrXym]

The thing is, there are 100,000 PS3s selling in the US alone per week, plus maybe 5000 other BD players. The market for Blu-Ray is just increasing enormously and the HD-DVD market isn't. And Japan is almost entirely Blu-Ray. And Europe is neither (you'll be lucky to see BD or HD-DVDs outside of flagship stores, or airports) but will become instantly Blu-Ray when the PS3 launches.

It is really hard to see how HD-DVD could possibly win in those circumstances.

Re:Surprised

[AKAImBatman]

What the hell are you talking about?

About upgrading from Standard Definition. What the hell are you talking about?

Re:Surprised

[Abcd1234]

Actually, according to your post, your thesis is that "the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter". Are you changing your mind now?

Re:Surprised

[AKAImBatman]

No. I'm talking about convenience > quality. Quality is not a driving factor at the moment, save for the early adopters. Consumers would much rather have convenience with acceptable quality rather than high quality with no noticeable increase in convenience. (If anything, the high def stuff is a mild decrease.)

Thus a minor quality upgrade (e.g. iTunes is 480p) coupled with a major increase in convenience is going to win the day; not the High Def frisbees. In addition, consumers will soon be able to have their cake and eat it too. Microsoft is already showing that Hi Def downloads that take advantage of more modern compression methods are possible on the higher end of the consumer bandwidth scale. The quality isn't quite as good as a $30 frisbee, but that's not going to swap most consumers. They can get the movie or TV show they want, when they want it, and for the price they want it.

Re:Surprised

[damiangerous]

Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it does not usually get transcoded. It's much easier for the box to record the bits directly.

Great, but unless the DVR is supplied by your cable/satellite company the signal is not coming in digitally so bits will always get transcoded. Without CableCard support the DVR has no knowledge of how to decode the digital signal, the cable box decodes it and outputs analog which the DVR just reencodes. Cable company supplised boxes generally suck, so until TiVo gets CableCard support the majority of people will still be reencoding the digital stream.

Re:Surprised

[qortra]

You completely misunderstood my post. The point is not that HD-DVD is "gonna win": the point is simply that Sony could beat HD-DVD and still fail to make a profitable product. As long as the media is pricey and not backwards compatible with pervasive existing equipment, it's going to be a tough sell. Let's remember that 5,000,000 PS3 units sold in the US (reasonable for year or so of sales) translates into about 4.5% market saturation (assuming about 110 million households in the US). That's pretty puny compared to 82% market saturation for DVD, a product that by and large, consumers are very happy with. Heck, with 15 million PSPs out in the wild, Sony couldn't make UMD stick.

Re:Surprised

[Jherek Carnelian]

Microsoft is already showing that Hi Def downloads that take advantage of more modern compression methods are possible on the higher end of the consumer bandwidth scale. The quality isn't quite as good as a $30 frisbee, but that's not going to swap most consumers. They can get the movie or TV show they want, when they want it, and for the price they want it.

Half-right. The MS xbox on-demand stuff uses the same compression as HD and BD - VC-1, there is no substantial difference in algorithm.

The difference is mainly in the resolution - HD and BD are both 1920x1080, while the xbox stuff is only 1280x720 which is roughly half the pixels. Sacrifice a little quality that most people won't readily notice anyway and you've got that 15GB 1080p movie down to a pretty decent looking 5GB 720p version. The pirates have been doing the same thing for years now - taking full 1080p hi-def "caps" (usually in mpeg2) and transcoding them to 720p (usually in h264) that fit on one 4.5GB DVD. They tend to look pretty good, significantly better than the DVD version of the same film.

Re:Surprised

[Abcd1234]

Great, but unless the DVR is supplied by your cable/satellite company the signal is not coming in digitally so bits will always get transcoded. Without CableCard support the DVR has no knowledge of how to decode the digital signal, the cable box decodes it and outputs analog which the DVR just reencodes. Cable company supplised boxes generally suck, so until TiVo gets CableCard support the majority of people will still be reencoding the digital stream.

Not for HD, it does not. There does not exist consumer-level gear that can perform analog capture and real-time encoding of HD material. None.

Re:Surprised

[fluffman86]

My father-in-law bought his wife an HP computer for Christmas that came with an HD-DVD burner.

Re:Surprised

[damiangerous]

Not for HD, it does not. There does not exist consumer-level gear that can perform analog capture and real-time encoding of HD material. None.

I never claimed there was. All I said was that you need either CableCard or a company supplied box to do direct digital recording.

Re:Surprised

[AKAImBatman]

I was under the impression that the current generation of High Def discs haven't made use of the VC-1 technology yet? Last I heard, it was in the spec, but the discs were deployed with MPEG-2 compression streams. Not that it really affects my point.

Thanks for the info. :)

Re:Surprised

[king-manic]

Besides, I don't think you give consumers enough credit.

I work in customer service and tech support. I am aware of exactly how much credit I need to give them. Which is slightly more then my dog.

Re:Surprised

[Jherek Carnelian]

Yep, plenty of HD-DVDs use VC-1. Sony's initial BD mastering software only supported MPEG2, but HD-DVD did VC-1 from the start. IIRC, Serenity, one of the first released HD-DVD's was encoded with VC-1.

Re:Surprised

[AudioEfex]

The thing is, there are 100,000 PS3s selling in the US alone per week, plus maybe 5000 other BD players. The market for Blu-Ray is just increasing enormously and the HD-DVD market isn't. And Japan is almost entirely Blu-Ray. And Europe is neither (you'll be lucky to see BD or HD-DVDs outside of flagship stores, or airports) but will become instantly Blu-Ray when the PS3 launches.

The problem with that argument is that the PS3 is not a Blu-Ray movie player, first and foremost : it is a gaming system.

The fact of the matter is that, yes, there are more Blu-Ray capable machines at the moment. But what is of question is how many of those machines is being used largely for watching films. By contrast, every single XBOX 360 add-on is exclusively for watching films, as MS has explicitly stated that no games will come out this generation that utilize the add-on. When you keep that in mind, the supposed install base numbers look much closer. Beyond that, it must be recognized how tiny the numbers we are talking about anyway - neither of them are signifigant at all at this point in terms of mass consumers.

The truth is, the format war is far from over. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are both going to remain niche formats for quite some time. Just because Sony shoe-horned a Blu-Ray player into the PS3 that most of their target audience would have bought anyway, does not a format war win. Especially since PS3's are rotting on the shelves (my local BB has signs up all over saying, "WE HAVE THEM!" and the signs are actually getting dusty they've been up for so long...), their impact over the life of the formats just may not be that signifigant.

Remember the race between the turtle and the hare?

AE

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Quality is not a driving factor at the moment, save for the early adopters.

And they already got screwed, because until a relatively short time ago, HDCP wasn't included as standard on a lot of HDTVs...

I think you're absolutely right about convenience vs. quality, though. People like to have great picture and sound quality, but once you're into a good film, it doesn't really matter that much. On the other hand, making people wait through several minutes of trailers and irrelevant foreign copyright notices before they get to the film, or making them wait months for the local release with the right region code to play on their player, those piss people off.

Re:Surprised

[itlurksbeneath]

I think that was a HD-DVD ROM drive. I looked over HP's offerings and they don't have a HD-DVD burner listed on their site at all, not even on the high end workstations (nice that they offer Linux versions , though..)

Re:Surprised

[The-Bus]

Blu-Ray used single-layer BD discs (25GB) with MPEG-2 until about September or so. That's why their initial reviews were so horrid. HD DVD has been using VC1 since day one, IIRC. A new version of the VC1 encoder was developed recently, so improvements are still coming.

Note that Good Night and Good Luck fit on a single-layer (15GB) HD DVD and looked pretty good.

Now they're both using VC1 and/or Sony is using dual-layer discs (50GB) so the differences have disappeared.

Then there's MPEG-4/AVC/H.264. That's also being used in the occasional title (by Blu-Ray IIRC).

Re:Surprised

[be-fan]

Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions.


This is really inaccurate. In the United States, HD market penetration has gone from almost nothing five years ago to pushing 20-20% now. Last year, HDTVs accounted for something like 40% of TV sales, and the majority of sales by revenue. That's "major push" if you ask me.

Re:Surprised

[be-fan]

The online TV revolution is still a ways away, while HDTV will be pushing major market share (over 1/3) in only the next few years. The number of people who are set up to take advantage of video-download services is minscule. Only a fraction of people have TVs near their internet connection, and virtually nobody is set up with a media-center PC. Not to mention the fact that although broadband penetration is up to 74% now, only a tiny fraction of that is fast enough to reasonably use TV download services. I've got an 8mbit connection, for which I pay Comcast a dear $70/month. For me, TV or movie download is acceptably fast (5-15 minutes), but far from video-on-demand. For most of the internet-using population, who are using connections that are a couple of megabits at most, the wait times of up to an hour for a single show are unacceptably long. And of course, unless you're using Usenet or Bittorrent, there is almost no content. iTunes' TV selection is feeble (and the quality isn't that great either).

No, over the lifecycle of Blu-Ray anyway, getting an HDTV to watch the "big game" in high-res is going to be much more popular than dealing with the trails and travails of online video.

Re:Surprised

[RulerOf]

FWIW, Bluray is superior to HD-DVD in many ways.
When it comes down to it, I would rather pick a Blu-Ray disk over an HD-DVD disk, if the disk was the ONLY factor in the choice. Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD, yes. MPEG-2 is NOT superior to VC-1. End of story. To top it off, HD-DVD is cheaper to manufacture, as it's pressed with existing pressing hardware. HD-DVD is superior in its creation (win for the publisher) and its quality (win for the consumer) and its price (win for the consumer). Blu-Ray has more space.

To say that Blu-Ray trumps HD-DVD in a bunch of ways is simply ignorant. It doesn't add up.

However, when you say this:

The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.
You're absolutely right. The next Rupert Murdoch will be the man to create this service, and offer it at a reasonable price. The real question is that, knowing this, is that person going to be Steve Jobs? Will it be Bill gates? Could it be Google? Hell, it might even be Rupert Murdoch.

Will it be me? Will it be you?

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Realtime high definition encoders simply do not exist, at least not at the price points needed to be put into a consumer device.

I'll have to disagree with you at least part of the way.

There are HDTV capture cards in Japan with realtime hardware MPEG-2 encoders capable of taking in a 1080i signal, though they only encode it at 1440x1080 (reducing the horizontal resolution from 1920 to 1440). The aspect ratio flags are of course set up so that it gets blown back up to 16:9 at playback. One example is the PV3 which was released well over a year ago and costs under US$300.

Of course it's much better if one can store the incoming 1920x1080i signal without re-encoding, but most (all?) HDTV channels in Japan employ the copy-once flag and thus storing it as such is impossible (without some tricks, heheh ;-).

Re:Surprised

[donaldm]

If you get a BD or HD-DVD player you can still play standard DVD's and CD's on them. These new media players are aimed at High definition displays and while the market for HD is still small at the moment it is rapidly increasing due to falling prices of LCD and plasma screens and this means that people who purchase HDTV's will want HD players and recorders as well. Typical supply and demand although there will be a great deal of market push.

15 million PSP's is not bad when you consider that the Gamecube and the Xbox were about 20 million over their life which was relatively short compared to the PS2 and while Microsoft lost about $5 billion, Nintendo made a nice profit. So far the PSP is making a profit.

As far as being happy with DVD's well you can easily put a 2 hour SD movie on a single sided disk but try and backup a 300GB disk drive and you start getting to the same problem people had with floppies. I will admit even a 50GB Blueray disk is not satisfactory but at the moment super DLT tapes or even HVD's are not cheap and that does not count the recorder. This is going to be a huge problem especially if you want to future proof your backups (ie. off-site backups), but this is a topic for a future debate.

Re:Surprised

[DrXym]

The problem with that argument is that the PS3 is not a Blu-Ray movie player, first and foremost : it is a gaming system.

I don't think you truly understand what Sony has in mind for the PS3. It plays games sure, but it is also a very capable Blu-Ray / DVD / CD / SACD / MP3 / H264 / AAC / ATRAC player, and doubtless soon enough will do downloadable movies & IPTV. You might buy it for games (though some people obviously bought it as a cheap BD player), but Sony very much intend the thing to be a multimedia & entertainment center. They are also very much using the thing as a vector to increase their markets for HD TVs, Blu-Ray movies, downloadable content as much as they are for games. This is why it's a bit strange when people single it out for games. It means profits in all sorts of other ways for Sony.

The fact of the matter is that, yes, there are more Blu-Ray capable machines at the moment. But what is of question is how many of those machines is being used largely for watching films. By contrast, every single XBOX 360 add-on is exclusively for watching films, as MS has explicitly stated that no games will come out this generation that utilize the add-on. When you keep that in mind, the supposed install base numbers look much closer. Beyond that, it must be recognized how tiny the numbers we are talking about anyway - neither of them are signifigant at all at this point in terms of mass consumers.

Incorrect. The very fact that Blu-Ray sales are triple HD-DVD has very much to do with the fact that the PS3 contains a player built-in. It has very much to do with the fact that even some people bought the PS3 as a cheap Blu-Ray player and not just a console. Clearly the attach rate is higher for Blu-Ray or sales wouldn't have shot up so high. That people are not required to buy some monstrous strap on for their 360 to do it which in itself would put a lot of people off the idea.

The truth is, the format war is far from over. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are both going to remain niche formats for quite some time. Just because Sony shoe-horned a Blu-Ray player into the PS3 that most of their target audience would have bought anyway, does not a format war win. Especially since PS3's are rotting on the shelves (my local BB has signs up all over saying, "WE HAVE THEM!" and the signs are actually getting dusty they've been up for so long...), their impact over the life of the formats just may not be that signifigant.

Blu-Ray has uses outside of movies for consoles. For starters it makes games harder to pirate and distribute. Secondly it means games can contain more content, or more locales, or be more optimal for better gameplay. And by using Blu-Ray for games Sony lowers production and distribution costs for Blu-Ray movies since they are made on the same kit. Sure, the PS3 may have been able to scratch by without a Blu-Ray drive but next gen consoles really need the extra space anyway. 360 apologists might claim different but all those high def textures, polys, FMV have to fit somewhere. Either it goes on the disc(s), or you download it (i.e. screw you 360 Core owners), or you download it and pay for it (screw you all). Microsoft's own Blue Dragon game comes on 3 DVDs if you can imagine that. So while Sony obviously pushed for their own format, consoles really need it anyway.

The truth is, the format war is far from over. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are both going to remain niche formats for quite some time. Just because Sony shoe-horned a Blu-Ray player into the PS3 that most of their target audience would have bought anyway, does not a format war win. Especially since PS3's are rotting on the shelves (my local BB has signs up all over saying, "WE HAVE THEM!" and the signs are actually getting dusty they've been up for so long...), their impact over the life of the formats just may not be that signifigant.

People complain when Sony can't provide enough consoles. People complain when they can. You can't have it both ways. Besides I don't walk into a superm

Re:Surprised

[remmelt]

> save for the early adopters

This is interesting. So far, every major upgrade in audio or video quality/convenience has been picked up by pretty much every end user. Records -> tapes -> CD, VHS -> DVD. There is a vast difference between the quality of audio systems, from the cheapest Korean knock off tinny speakered all in one to hi-end audiophile discrete components. In TVs, the difference is far less. There are good TVs and bad ones, but a more expensive TV will not give you a much better picture than a reasonably priced one. It's usually better designed, has more features, but the image is the image is the image.

My point is that with BR/HDDVD and HD in general, the end users may not all move to this new system because they don't care, it's less convenient, too expensive, etc, resulting in more quality spread over the end users. Some will have a small TV with a couple of iTunes shows, some will have a large 7.1 surround with HD LCD setup in their basements, just like it is with audio systems now.

Re:Surprised

[Dan100]

A couple of points.

I have two PVRs, one a couple of years old and a second bought just before Christmas. Neither produce a noticeable drop in quality compared to OTA viewing. Furthermore, the older one has a 40 hour capacity and the newer one over 100 - seeing as I use these boxes for timeshifting *not* archiving (I have a DVD-R for that), capacity is not a limitation.

On the matter of direct broadband streaming - maybe one day. It's been a dream for years - I have a New Scientist article discussing a trial of VoD from nearly ten years ago. The simple fact is that to stream HD-quality material in real-time to every house where people are watching TV at the same time would demand servers and bandwidth with many, many times the capacity available today. But who knows, maybe that's what Google will use its new data centres and dark fibre for...

Re:Surprised

[AudioEfex]

I don't think you truly understand what Sony has in mind for the PS3...This is why it's a bit strange when people single it out for games. It means profits in all sorts of other ways for Sony.

LOL, I understand exactly "what Sony has in mind", but I just don't think that translates well into reality. You didn't need to go over the marketing PR with me - we all know it. The question is - do people care, and or want it?

It's not strange for a game machine to be called one. The system comes with a game controller, all accessories are for playing games...Sony may want to make it a "media hub", but until it can replace a TiVo I don't think the mass majority of the public gives a rats ass. The essential, main function of a PS3 is to play games, no matter what Sony has promised you in the future. The point is, yes, Sony wants to make it more, but the question posed was, how many of those gamers are big Blu-ray software buyers, and how many bought it for the gaming features. Sony's online is a joke right now, so all that pie-in-the-sky stuff you are talking about is just that - Sony's dreams that have yet to materialize.

So yeah, PS3 is just a gaming machine right now that also plays Blu-Ray movie discs. People make this big deal about more of them than HD-DVD players, and my reason for posting was to point out that EVERY SINGLE HD-DVD player sold has been for watching movies (the XBOX 360 add-on or stand-alone player). The same CANNOT be said for the PS3. That's why I don't think it's fair to say, "Blu-Ray is winning because there are more Blu-Ray capable players." The answer is - we just don't know.

The very fact that Blu-Ray sales are triple HD-DVD has very much to do with the fact that the PS3 contains a player built-in. It has very much to do with the fact that even some people bought the PS3 as a cheap Blu-Ray player and not just a console. Clearly the attach rate is higher for Blu-Ray or sales wouldn't have shot up so high. That people are not required to buy some monstrous strap on for their 360 to do it which in itself would put a lot of people off the idea.

I don't think that logic follows. A minute number of stand-alone Blu-Ray players has sold (25K was the last number I heard), and I just don't see PS3 sales as de-facto evidence that Blu-Ray is winning. Of course Blu-Ray sales jumped after Christmas, because I'm sure some new PS3 users were out buying software. But will it continue? Or were they just looking for something to use the PS3 for in between decent games coming out? There were very few Blu-Ray players before a Christmas, and so of course the software will see a jump from initial adopters. It's not hard to be impressive when you start with essentially zero. There was a surge in software, but what remains to be seen is if it lasts or if it was just people buying between games.

Blu-Ray has uses outside of movies for consoles. For starters it makes games harder to pirate and distribute. Secondly it means games can contain more content, or more locales, or be more optimal for better gameplay. And by using Blu-Ray for games Sony lowers production and distribution costs for Blu-Ray movies since they are made on the same kit.

LOL, Sony has really sold you, haven't they? It's clear I'm having a discussion with a fan - for the record, I own neither an XBOX 360 nor a PS3. It's clear you understand the company line that Sony wants people to believe; problem is, just because they cross their fingers and wish real hard doesn't mean it's going to come true. You really believe all the hype, huh?

You lost me with your "more secure and less easy to pirate" comment. Yeah, I hear consumers say all the time, "Gee, this format is more advantageous because it cannot be backed up, copied, or pirated!" The only people who are happy if it's "more secure" are the people making money off of it - it's certainly not a selling point fo

Re:Surprised

[LKM]

On the other hand, the people who end up calling tech support are quite often not the most adept when it comes to technology. So your sample is hardly representatory.

Re:Surprised

[Om]

(my local BB has signs up all over saying, "WE HAVE THEM!" and the signs are actually getting dusty they've been up for so long...)

Give me a break. It ain't easy opening the store at 8AM after an all-nighter consisting of water bongs and Chee-tos while pondering the futility of life with my friends. That sign just ain't a priority, man.

++Om

Re:Surprised

[king-manic]

On the third hand I mostly handle sales of phone products and that is a more accurate cross section. :)

Re:Surprised

[DayBoyUSA]

As fios rolls out, this will quickly become an option. For $90 a month, I can get 50Mbps down.

50Mbps * 3600 (s/hr) = 180,000 Mbps = 18 giga bytes per hour... Thats twice what you proposed for a reasonable price.

Currently I have the cheapest fios option, $35 per month for 10Mbps down. They also have $45 per month for 20Mbps down. The box on the side of my house is capable of providing 1,000Mbps down & up, though they do not offer any packages that would use this at the moment.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

What difference has a drop in quality made for mp3 players? TiVo is the same way: while I'd like better quality, the huge improvement in convenience is far more important.

Re:Surprised

[DrXym]

LOL, I understand exactly "what Sony has in mind", but I just don't think that translates well into reality. You didn't need to go over the marketing PR with me - we all know it. The question is - do people care, and or want it? It's not strange for a game machine to be called one. The system comes with a game controller, all accessories are for playing games...Sony may want to make it a "media hub", but until it can replace a TiVo I don't think the mass majority of the public gives a rats ass. The essential, main function of a PS3 is to play games, no matter what Sony has promised you in the future. The point is, yes, Sony wants to make it more, but the question posed was, how many of those gamers are big Blu-ray software buyers, and how many bought it for the gaming features. Sony's online is a joke right now, so all that pie-in-the-sky stuff you are talking about is just that - Sony's dreams that have yet to materialize. So yeah, PS3 is just a gaming machine right now that also plays Blu-Ray movie discs. People make this big deal about more of them than HD-DVD players, and my reason for posting was to point out that EVERY SINGLE HD-DVD player sold has been for watching movies (the XBOX 360 add-on or stand-alone player). The same CANNOT be said for the PS3. That's why I don't think it's fair to say, "Blu-Ray is winning because there are more Blu-Ray capable players." The

But it's not just a gaming machine. It plays games, but people have bought it for playing Blu-Ray movies too. In fact videophile sites such as this rave about it. Whatever way you dice it, it is selling Blu-Ray discs and lots of them. As for TIVO, you're right it doesn't have a video input and it annoys me. I griped that the 360 didn't have an input and I griped that the PS3 doesn't either. But you can run Linux and MythTV and you can plug a USB TV adapter if you wish. So in fact you can use it as a PVR if you desire. It stinks that it doesn't do it out of the box, but it is doable.

You may correctly claim this is irrelevant to the mass majority but so what? If we're going to make comparisons to the TIVO, bear in mind that a TIVO series 3 costs MORE than a PS3. Is it entirely feasible that Sony could produce a USB dongle or a rev 2 that did include a PVR and still be cheaper than a TIVO with a machine that does so much more.

Absolutely, positively, INCORRECT. Sony did not SELL 1.8m PS3's...they SHIPPED 1.8 million PS3's. Many of them are sitting in stores, right next to the ones that were returned by many eBayers unopened because they eBay sales tanked. THEY ARE NOT SELLING. Period. End of story. Sitting there collecting dust. They are not coming in and going right out and then being restocked - they are just sitting there. You honestly are the first person I've seen with the balls to argue otherwise, because arguing anything but is like saying New Coke wasn't so bad.

Bollocks. Clearly they were sold and clearly Sony have manufactured and sold many thousands more since. Besides, MS claimed 10 million sold too, but guess what - they meant shipped as well and went through all kinds of verbal gymnastics to explain why sold meant shipped. Either way that's the only metric these companies have the ability to actually say with certainty. Just accept it and move on.

LOL, Sony has really sold you, haven't they? It's clear I'm having a discussion with a fan - for the record, I own neither an XBOX 360 nor a PS3. It's clear you understand the company line that Sony wants people to believe; problem is, just because they cross their fingers and wish real hard doesn't mean it's going to come true. You really believe all the hype, huh?

I don't own a PS3 or XBox 360 either so what's your point? I'm certainly interested in the PS3 but that's because I can see the potential for the system in all sorts of ways. It doesn't mean I'm going to queue up at midnight to get one though. Better to wait and see.

Re:Surprised

[Weedlekin]

This is precisely what I was thinking. If I'd bought a PS/3 over XMas (or received one as a gift from a wealthy and generous friend), I'd be curious enough about Blu-Ray media to shell out for one or two disks just to see what all the fuss was about, especially considering the dearth of worthwhile games for it at the moment. However, unless the experience was so mind-blowingly amazing that watching anything else was worse than having my eyeballs injected with shit, I'd be unlikely to buy any more for quite a while afterwards (if at all) because they're rather expensive, and to be honest, I doubt that the majority of movies would gain enough from being in HD to justify paying extra for it.

IMO therefore, a lot of commotion is being made over what is after all only _two weeks_ of sales data that concerns a period just after XMas, when a lot of people got PS3s, and will naturally want to see what they can do with them.

Re:Surprised

[AudioEfex]

Absolutely, positively, INCORRECT. Sony did not SELL 1.8m PS3's...they SHIPPED 1.8 million PS3's. Many of them are sitting in stores, right next to the ones that were returned by many eBayers unopened because they eBay sales tanked. THEY ARE NOT SELLING. Period. End of story. Sitting there collecting dust. They are not coming in and going right out and then being restocked - they are just sitting there. You honestly are the first person I've seen with the balls to argue otherwise, because arguing anything but is like saying New Coke wasn't so bad.

Bollocks. Clearly they were sold and clearly Sony have manufactured and sold many thousands more since. Besides, MS claimed 10 million sold too, but guess what - they meant shipped as well and went through all kinds of verbal gymnastics to explain why sold meant shipped. Either way that's the only metric these companies have the ability to actually say with certainty. Just accept it and move on.

Dude, I'm sorry, but I guess we just can't finish the conversation, because you are simply talkin' crazy and now you are bringing up whole other topics when your basic knowledge seems to be extremely adverse to reality. You obviously do not follow the industry, because the facts at the base of your reasoning are simply WRONG. There is no other word for it. I mean, you must not even read /. regularly. That's fine and all - not everyone needs to stay on top of such things, but if you are going to tell someone they are "completely incorrect" or that their simple facts are "bollucks", you really should know what the hell you are talking about.

Sony announced after Christmas that it had SHIPPED 1.8 million units. Go to their website - look at the press release. The wording was very exact. They did not SELL 1.8 million units. This is fact reported by every gaming site and many mainstream publications.

There have been dozens of articles about how poorly all this has been going for the PS3. Either you are blind or you do not read.

Here is an article about retailers having PS3's sitting on their shelves for a week or more (70% in this case!).

Here is an article (with nifty graphs and everything!) that explains how the PS3 on eBay market CRASHED...before CHRISTMAS! It was so bad that scalpers were returning them to the stores because they weren't worth the bother to ship because they were all over retail stores and, again, no one was buying them (nor are they now).

Here is an article that confirms that Sony shipped 1m units to the US, and less than 2/3 of them sold. You will also note that this article is also about analysts cutting predictions for the PS3 based on it's bad sales - there are again dozens on the topic if you search.

Finally, here's yet another article detailing just how slow demand is. Stores are stocked - people don't want 'em.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a PS3 sucks debate, but man, you are just so ill informed about this topic one can't communicate with you on the others. My only point, from the beginning, is that PS3 sales are not going to win this format war. You have gone on and on like a friggin' press release about all this peripheral bullshit regarding the PS3, and how I don't understand "what Sony intends the PS3 to be" - we can't have that discussion while you are so ill informed about how the PS3 is really faring in the marketplace.

You'll also notice that those articles are from a selection of times - one before XMAS, one right after, one in early Jan, one last week. Before you start saying that "X-site is wrong, blah blah" I encourage you to seek out the other news stories out there abou

Re:Surprised

[Abcd1234]

Hah, wow, you're quite the optimist. :) Basic broadband is available to, what, ~40% of American households? And FIOS is a mere fraction of this. Further, there are many cable companies who aren't even bothering with FIOS, instead betting on switched digital to solve their bandwidth problems.

In short, there is no way FIOS will have any significant effect on HD or the overall content distribution industry. The penetration is simply too low, and there's no way it'll grow fast enough to have any sizeable near-term effect.

Re:Surprised

[tricorn]

I guess we just wait a month. If another million ship, it ought to be apparent that the previous million sold. My local Best Buy has two PS3 (60GB), one PS2, and about 20 Xbox360 boxes inside the locked cage. The first time I saw them with PS3 in stock, they had about 5 of them, and as I stood there, one of them sold and two others were being seriously considered. This was about 2 weeks into January. I'm sure it's different elsewhere, but I just don't see the "piles of PS3 boxes sitting on shelves gathering dust for weeks at a time". What is quite clear to me is that any store that does have piles of PS3 boxes sitting on shelves gathering dust aren't going to have any more shipped to them, so any units that ship in February quite clearly will represent units sold in January. So just wait a month. There will be new Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD sales figures out by then too, so the argument can continue without threat of any real resolution.

Why are consumers being denied access to this data

[mknewman]

It's pretty obvious to me, the data is proprietary, so it's easier to keep it hidden than to start the "I'm selling more than you are" war.

Blue ray?

[alexandreracine]

Is this the same Blue Ray Of Death that I heard about?

Re:Blue ray?

[FinchWorld]

Steve Irwin called, he wants his prefered method of death back.

Yes, I'm a bad bad man.

Re:Blue ray?

[wheany]

Wow, that was really edgy.

being denied information

[TopSpin]

Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!

You know, the Blu-ray/HD DVD squabble is not actually important. You rights aren't being trampled on. Most people couldn't care less about it; they're happy with their DVDs and don't mind letting you *philes hash it out with your disposable income.

Get a grip.

Re:being denied information

[kfg]

. . .they're happy with their DVDs. . .

And what would make them even happier is not a new format, but a DVD "Redbook."

KFG

Re:being denied information

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly you have a bunch of grunts around here giving their opinion on a huge market when they are not even the target audience.

Lets say this all together Slashdot
"we are a minority and therefore our opinions may be really biased"

Re:being denied information

[MikeBabcock]

I wasn't happy with DVD when it came out. The only things I like about DVD are no artifacting and degradation with time and easy navigation of the disc (no rewinding).

DVD doesn't look great, its essentially the same quality as broadcast TV. Now if you believe broadcast TV looks great, then sorry, but we can do a lot better. I don't pay to go to the cinema to stand on sticky floors, put up with belching behind me or for the overpriced condiments, its for the higher quality sound and picture.

For the price of attending the theatre regularly with my wife over a couple years, I can easily purchase a high definition TV, Dolby Digital and/or dts receiver with speakers and cables and be able to pause. What's missing? The quality of video.

35mm film looks much better than DVD. 70mm film looks immensely better than DVD. I want high definition movies in my living room so I can avoid ever paying to go to the theatre again. Friends? Social life? Invite them over of course. I dirt cheap (free to guests) popcorn myself thank-you very much, and the floor usually isn't sticky.

Re:being denied information

[Dretep]

and the floor usually isn't sticky. You're obviously watching the wrong genre of movies - you really do need HD-DVD!

Re:being denied information

[Anonymous Coward]

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Re:being denied information

[ranton]

35mm film looks much better than DVD. 70mm film looks immensely better than DVD

I doubt that anyone thinks 70mm film looks immenselybetter than DVDs. My DVDs already look just fine as far as im concerned, and I could probably only tell the difference between film and DVD if they were side by side. While 70mm is definetly better, I wouldnt say it is much better.

It is like saying $255 million is immensely more than $254 million. $1 million dollars is ALOT of money to me, but if I already had $254 million I doubt that I would in awe of someone who had $255 million.

Maybe it is just me, but if I never went to a movie theatre again I doubt I would ever miss the better quality video. I am just too damn impatient to wait for the DVD release.
--

Re:being denied information

[king-manic]

I doubt that anyone thinks 70mm film looks immenselybetter than DVDs. My DVDs already look just fine as far as im concerned, and I could probably only tell the difference between film and DVD if they were side by side. While 70mm is definetly better, I wouldnt say it is much better.

ummmm.. have you been to a theatre ever? how about seen a big screen? Imax? Just as any quality of mp3 is fine when the volume is low the difference appears when the volume is turned up. 11hz mp3s sound terrible at high volumes compared to 44hz bit just as 480p signals look terrible on a 50" TV compared to 790p or 1080p. On a large enough screen, the difference between 35mm and 70mm is obvious and huge.

Re:being denied information

[Wdomburg]

DVD doesn't look great, its essentially the same quality as broadcast TV.

You should probably get your eyes checked or maybe buy better equipment. DVD's horizontal resolution about 720. Broadcast "quality" is 330 and VHS is 240. Even without a progressive scan display it's pretty far from "essentially the same quality".

Re:being denied information

[JFMulder]

Yeah, right. Broadcast monitors are 720x486 pixels. That's interlaced, of course. PAL is 576 lines IIRC. Interlaced too.

The reason why you are not getting an image as clear on your TV is simply signal degradation and broadcasters trimming the quality so they can fit more channel in the analog space, exactly like they do with some HD streams that get downsamples to something like 1400x1080.

But I assure you, NTSC is 720x486, not 320 lines of resolution. Anyone who told you otherwise is a liar.

Re:being denied information

[jackbird]

NTSC has 525 horizontal scanlines, but each scanline is a trace of an analog signal and doesn't really have pixels until you get computers involved. "Lines of resolution" in analog monitor land means how many vertical lines the unit/technology can display before they're no longer intelligible as separate lines. 720 is, I believe, the theoretical maximum horizontal resolution of the standard, but I don't think anything can actually display that. So the GP is correct in referring to VHS as having 240 lines of resolution.

Oh, and NTSC can be 640x480 (low-end/old gear), 720x480 (DVD), and 720x486 (D1); again because it doesn't actually have horizontal pixels and you really want to have the image a little smeared vertically across those 525 lines to avoid interlace strobing of fine horizontal detail.

Oh, and when broadcasters degrade the signal, you see more MPEG artifacting, not lower resolution, BTW.

Re:being denied information

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what the TV monitor can HANDLE. No standard TV broadcast signal will ever get over the 330 limit, because it's a physical limit of the signal format.

Re:being denied information

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD's horizontal resolution about 720. Broadcast "quality" is 330 and VHS is 240.

Note that you're comparing DVD's horizontal resolution in pixels to broadcast resolution in TVL lines, which on a 4:3 screen is 3/4 that of it in pixels. Therefore broadcast is 440 pixels horizontally and VHS is 320. Laserdisc can do 420 TVL lines = 560 pixels across.

Granted, it's still a huge difference.

Re:being denied information

[nwbvt]

The average person cannot tell the difference (unless they are looking at the pictures side by side), and if they claim otherwise, they only think the HD version is better because they have been told its better, not because they see anything different.

Case in point, a couple of years ago I was back home for Christmas, and we were planning on getting a movie to watch on my parent's new plasma TV. I suggested we save the time from going to the video store by just watching something from the cable companies movies on demand service. My dad would hear nothing of it, claiming that those movies are not broadcast in HD and would look bad on their new expensive TV. I didn't have the heart to tell him what we rented from Blockbuster wasn't HD either.

Most people out there are still comparing their DVD's quality with that of their old VHS tapes. They see nothing wrong with it. If you do (or if you think you do), you are in the minority by a long shot. And if you really need (or think you need) HD movies in your movie collection, well I guess you will have to purchase expensive new equipment without a set standard.

Re:being denied information

[yodleboy]

WOW, you really should get out more. If you can't tell the difference between a regular DVD and HDDVD/Blue-Ray when shown on an HD tv, i would recommend an eye exam. I was not convinced until i saw it in person. do all movies benefit? well, not the same amount. but the ones that do really showcase the technology.
i have yet to make the HD dvd jump, but even my mom is wowed by my new 65" 1080p DLP when showing HD content from my cable box (only 1080i unfortunately). and believe me, she was satisfied with her 27" standard def tv.

Re:being denied information

[Anonymous Coward]

DVDs do show artifacting. Check out some fast scrolling text some time, particularly in slow motion or freeze frame. Fast pans/zooms can also look bad too, although people making video tend to avoid moving the camera too quickly anyway.

Re:being denied information

[MikeBabcock]

Oh trust me, that gives me headaches already. Horizontal panning looks terrible on DVDs, especially in action sequences, since objects that are moving at speeds different from the camera appear to 'jump' between locations. 24fps just isn't good enough for high speed panning. Period. The MPEG-2 compressors also can't fit that much motion data into their limited bandwidth (to make the movie fit on a DVD and also to allow the DVD to be processed). Watching the bandwidth meter on my Oppo DVD player is entertaining during those moments; it often hits 100%.

Re:being denied information

[MikeBabcock]

No offense, but you need your eyes checked if you can't see the difference (or your TVs too small / too far away for it to matter).

There is a massive resolution difference between 1080i broadcast HDTV and 480i/p DVDs. Now the TV you spoke of was most likely a 720p set, and I have a 1080i CRT at home myself, so we're comparing different brands of apples here, but the premise is true nonetheless.

I've had many many people over since buying my new TV and I almost never tell them its in HD until they ask. I always leave a PBS nature show running in 1080i as background visuals (its like a moving painting) as people come in, and they often stop, stare and say "Wow, that's really bright and crisp! I love your new TV. That looks incredible." That's from almost 15 feet away, double my normal viewing distance. When they get closer, they get more impressed, since the closer you get to any TV, the worse it looks. On my 30" 1080i set, you can barely make out the pixel resolution from a few feet away.

There's only one person who says she doesn't care about the quality change, or doesn't notice, and that's my wife. That's what she said when we got it at least. A year later, she asks why some shows look so grainy and I explain that they're on the regular definition channels. "That looks really bad" she says. "That's how they always looked" I reply.

If you can't see the difference, good for you, you'll save some money. But you honestly need new eye wear or your TVs too small for it to matter (under about 27" at nominal viewing distances).

Re:being denied information

[MikeBabcock]

Oh, its pretty immense. Go watch an IMAX movie sometime. From the Wikipedia article:

The intent of IMAX is to dramatically increase the resolution of the image by using much larger film stock at a resolution of about 10000 x 7000 pixels. To do this, 70 mm film stock is run "sideways" through the cameras. While traditional 70 mm film has an image area that is 48.5 mm wide and 22.1 mm tall (for Todd-AO), in IMAX the image is 69.6 mm wide and 48.5 mm tall. In order to expose at standard film speed of 24 frames per second, three times as much film needs to move through the camera each second.

Yeah, you read that right. 10k by 7k pixels. Even high definition TV at approximately 2k by 1k pixels falls dramatically short. Even when shot normally, 70mm film is very impressive compared to regular film on a large enough screen and with a steady enough camera in the field.

Re:being denied information

[Wdomburg]

I was refering to broadcast (and cable) transmission, not broadcast production, since that's what is of concern to the consumer in terms of quality.

NTSC is not 720x486. Only vertical scan lines are fixed; horizontal is variable.

Re:being denied information

[Snowmit]

Please note. You are exactly one of the *philes that the grandparent talks about.

While you complain that you don't have a 70mm projectors in your living room, the rest of us are having friends over to watch movins on our tiny TVs with RCA connections to the DVD player.

Re:being denied information

[nwbvt]

"I was not convinced until i saw it in person. "

In other words, you were unable to tell anything wrong until you compared it directly to an HD version? Well, that was my point. For the average consumer (most of whom do not have 65 inch TVs), DVD quality is perfectly fine.

Re:being denied information

[Weedlekin]

"11hz mp3s sound terrible at high volumes compared to 44hz"

I fully agree. 11hz is after all below the threshold of human hearing (if of course any reasonable speaker system could produce it, and one lived in a place large enough for more than a tiny fraction of the wave to fit in a room), so you wouldn't get any apparent sound at all, whereas a 44Hz MP3 would at least be able to produce some dull thuds.

Re:being denied information

[nwbvt]

My eyes are fine, but yours might need some work. Again, I didn't say everyone cannot tell the difference, only the average consumer. And the average consumer doesn't have a 1080i TV, nor do they watch movies really close up, nor do they buy DVDs containing PBS nature shows that they leave on as background visuals. For the average consumer, DVD quality (which is better than the standard def broadcast TV which your wife thought looked grainy) is perfectly fine for their movies.

Yes, if you buy a high quality TV and watch something that has an unusually large amount of detail (nature shows are one, football is another, though neither are that popular in the DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray market), you can tell the difference. But thats rarely going to be the case.

Re:being denied information

[king-manic]

I fully agree. 11hz is after all below the threshold of human hearing (if of course any reasonable speaker system could produce it, and one lived in a place large enough for more than a tiny fraction of the wave to fit in a room), so you wouldn't get any apparent sound at all, whereas a 44Hz MP3 would at least be able to produce some dull thuds.

wooops. But then again, I meant sample rate. 11hz would be a hardly telligible mess.

Re:being denied information

[MikeBabcock]

Let me help you out, yes Nascar, sports in general and group sports with wide angle shots in particular also all benefit greatly from HD (since you can actually recognize players' faces from the distance shots for the first time, instead of being 5 or 6 blurred pixels).

However, more in the realm of standard DVD purchasing and movie watching, CSI (all three), House, Numb3rs, The Unit, Grey's Anatomy, Prison Break, Ghost Whisperer, Las Vegas and a few others I can't think of right now all look incredible in HD. Most of the above rival PBS nature shows, my point was a specific one since leaving an actual TV show on the TV detracts from the whole guest thing.

High definition movies benefit the same way as HD TV shows. Its not that DVDs look bad enough for anyone to complain its that HD visuals look real. Sure, many movies are shot so poorly that you'd never notice if they were in HD. Some actors will probably look worse in HD because blemishes show so much clearer in closeups. By and large, everyone who has seen HD content on my TV has thought it looked stunning and the only reason they don't have the same experience in their homes is that I'm willing to pay for it, and they'd rather wait for it to be cheap.

Its like a nice car or any other initially luxury feature in your life. Its not necessary, but you can't say its not appreciated by most people, because my experience differs. Just like most people who get into a Cadillac for the first time think its great but still wouldn't pay for it, most people who sit in my livingroom feel the same way about HD TV viewing. I didn't say everyone should rush out and buy an HD set because they're missing out, I just said they'll appreciate it when they get it as opposed to supposedly not noticing.

Re:being denied information

[nwbvt]

"High definition movies benefit the same way as HD TV shows. "

Again, there is a much bigger difference in quality between standard broadcast TV and HD than in DVD and HD. If you thought they look the same (as that comment indicates), then you are just proving my point. Most people cannot on their own detect the better resolution unless it is very pronounced, on a huge TV, or if what they are watching has a lot more detail than a standard movie. They think they can, but its much more of a response to being told that one is better than the other. Its the brain that notices the quality difference, not the eyes. Sure, the brain is a powerful thing so they may well appreciate the difference. But that doesn't mean their eyes can tell them apart (without watching them both next to each other or one right after the other).

Re:being denied information

[MikeBabcock]

Allow me to say this one last time. Digital broadcast television (which I have by satellite) is basically the same resolution as a DVD unless the DVD is anamorphic widescreen and you play it back on a widescreen television. For most people watching DVDs who don't believe the HD market matters however, those movies are actually at a lower resolution (especially letterboxed) since the horizontal pixels are squashed to fit on their TVs to basically standard NTSC (or PAL) width and they lose the pixels in height for the letterboxing. If they watch them full-screen, they have slightly more pixels in width, but their vertical resolution is again the same.

According to Wikipedia, DVDs are typically 720×480 (NTSC) or 720×576 (PAL). Again according to Wikipedia, NTSC broadcast television consists of 484 lines of video resolution (out of 525 possible; the rest are used for sync, etc.) at 29.97 frames per second, 59.94 interlaced fields per second.

Feel free to take a look at the graph on the NTSC page hosted by Wikipedia for more information. Also remember that horizontal pixels in broadcast NTSC don't really exist and are a side-effect of newer digital production and storage methods as well as the TV sets, but that defining a horizontal resolution of an analog NTSC signal is difficult at best although SDTV is basically defined as 704x480 (compare to DVDs at 720x480). Tell me again how DVDs are so much better than broadcast TV as you realize for a moment that DVDs are based on the NTSC standard for broadcast television.

And PS, DVDs due to better production and storage methods do look better on my 30 inch TV than most broadcast television at non-HD resolutions. That's just 30 inches. However, well-produced digitally broadcast television in regular definition looks very comparable within its "box" (as it is not wide-screen) to DVDs.

Re:being denied information

[nwbvt]

"Digital broadcast television (which I have by satellite) is basically the same resolution as a DVD unless the DVD is anamorphic widescreen and you play it back on a widescreen television."

Several issues here...

• First, most people do not get digital broadcast television.
• Second, just because what you are receiving supports digital broadcast does not mean that whatever you were watching was created and sent in digital.
• Third, if they don't have a widescreen TV, they most likely don't have HD, making the whole point moot.

So yes, if you compare broadcast in its best case scenario with DVD in its worst case scenario, they are fairly comparable. But that is hardly the point. Just because someone notices a difference between a regular broadcast TV show and the HD version does not mean they will be able to notice the difference (without help) between a DVD and an HD-DVD. The evidence of this is the many people I have known who thought DVD was already in HD, and who were outright surprised when they heard of the new formats to introduce HD to DVDs.

Re:being denied information

[tricorn]

NTSC is what is sent over a composite cable or over the air. "Broadcast quality" is what you get out of a composite cable. You can't get S-Video resolution out of a composite connection, since it gets filtered out so as not to interfere with the color sub-carrier. S-Video or component is not NTSC, they are both higher resolution. DVD is significantly higher horizontal resolution than "broadcast quality" NTSC (or PAL, for that matter, which uses a similar color encoding scheme, a higher number of scan lines, but lower refresh rate which normally ends up making 24-fps movies play at the wrong speed, which drives people with perfect pitch absolutely crazy).

Re:being denied information

[tricorn]

Broadcast analog NTSC television is limited to a bandwidth of 4.2MHz for the video signal, but if it has color it has to be below 3.5MHz (the color subcarrier is at (approximately) 3.58MHz). With 525 scan lines 30 times a second, the MAXIMUM number of lines of resolution across the screen would be 444, but some of that is taken up by the horizontal retrace. Given overscan (part of the picture isn't normally visible), you can normally only get about 300 "lines of resolution" out of a composite color signal.

Consider: one scan line is 63.5 microseconds, 5 of which are horizontal retrace, and really only about 42 of which are useable. In 42 microseconds, a 3.5MHz signal will cycle 147 times, which is 294 "lines" (half black, half white). Actually, I think the bandwidth limit on the luminance signal is more like 3MHz, which drops it even lower. When people talk about an NTSC signal having 440 lines of resolution or whatever, that's referencing a monochrome signal only, with no colorburst to signal that there's a color subcarrier, hence the resolution can be somewhat higher, plus they're ignoring overscan. Taking overscan into account, and allowing a full 4.2MHz bandwidth, you get about 350 "vertical lines of resolution".

Of course, with a monochrome signal, and directly connected instead of being broadcast, there's no real bandwidth limitation, so you'd only be limited by the equipment and quality of the cable. Once you add color to the picture, so to speak, you are quite definitely limited, broadcast or not. The only way to get higher resolution is to separate the luminance from the chroma signal, which is what S-Video does, or completely eliminate using a phase-modulated chroma signal and use a component video connection instead.

The graph you linked to, regarding "SDTV", is not NTSC; SDTV is a digital standard, not an analog standard. When referring to "broadcast NTSC", you are talking about analog broadcasts.

LG will win with dual format players

[llZENll]

Dual format players will win this war. As soon as this sells below $500, all other makers will follow. Right now it sells for $1200.

"Well this is more like it. After waiting forever between the initial announcement and first retail availability of the first wave of HD disc devices, LG's BH100 really rocketed to the shelves, and has just participated in its first unboxing (that we've heard of) mere weeks after the announcement at CES. We're a little disconcerted by that big front-and-center dent on the box, but the unit itself looks just dandy, and gadgetaholic promises a full review in the coming days. But that's not what you're here for, you just wanted to see this little guy ripped from his Styrofoam cocoon and flap his little Red and Blue wings, so hit the read link for the whole event. Fly, BH100, fly."

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/22/lgs-bh100-super -multi-player-unboxed/

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[MBCook]

I have mod points and I figured this would be a good discussion, but I'll reply to you instead.

First, dual format players CAN'T WIN the war. They are not a format. Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format. Dual format PLAYERS may win the PLAYER WAR, but the disc format war has no real hybrids right now.

Second, these discussions constantly suppose that someone will win. I've seen one comment so far that I agree with: by the time these things reach something akin to a critical mass or become big successes, I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close. These things may just be failed. Too early for cheap prices and large HDTV adoption, too late to enjoy a long advantage over internet distribution.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[twistedsymphony]

Dual format player might just win the war... just like dual format burners won the war between DVD-R and DVD+R. I do agree that there's a higher probability of Internet distribution taking precedence over either format... that's more of a DVD-A vs. SACD. vs MP3 model. The big differences being that movies don't benefit from portability the same way music does.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[tallguywithglasseson]

I think that's a good point, and not just internet distribution - cable/satellite video on demand as well. People are going to start realizing they don't need to buy/carry around/mail(netflix) these shiny discs at all.

As far as the dual format players, they may make the "format war" irrelevant to consumers. I don't care if the new Fred Ward vehicle "Remo Williams: The Return" is on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, I just know it's in HD and will look great. This might actually prolong the war.
But since the big "war" is fought through content (movie) distribution anyway, if physical media falls out of favor for this purpose, it'll just be techies using them to save data - that is, if flash drives don't underprice them (probably won't). Then I think whoever can sell me a stack of 500 for 35 cents will win.

But then, that'd be at least 7 Terabytes. That's a lot of midget pr0n.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[dank zappingly]

Right now for the price of the LG dual format player I can buy a premium Xbox 360, HD-DVD drive add-on, and a premium 60gb PS3. Think about how much more functionality I would get. I think that in general, a combo player should be much cheaper than buying two separate devices and right now it isn't. Maybe some people with HDTV's from 10 years ago that have only one HD input would really value something like this, but I think for most people it just isn't practical. I think that player also has some problems with higher level HD-DVD functions, but I'm not certain. Anyway, I think that there is a very good chance that the format war will be over by the time this overpriced piece of garbage gets a 700 dollar price cut. Also it is probable that by the time they're selling it for the "acceptable" price of 500 bucks the price of standalone players will also have decreased.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[drinkypoo]

by the time these things reach something akin to a critical mass or become big successes, I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close

That is utterly impossible in a world in which no broadband provider will let you download more than about 90GB per month on a regular basis; That's what, a couple of Blu-Ray discs? Even at the rates we go through netflix, I would use that up just downloading DVD ISOs, let alone HD video.

We are going to have to see a broadband revolution in this country, with download allotments increased by an order of magnitude and speeds improved by at least a factor of three or four before HD-on-demand-over-the-internet is going to be a viable solution to video distribution.

I think it's very likely that one of these formats will have died long before that happens for us here in the USA.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[Malc]

LG's player isn't a true dual format player. It doesn't qualify for HD DVD logo-ing. I believe it doesn't handle any HDi, so it plays HD DVD advanced content titles (all Hollywood discs are adv. content, not standard content) in some manner it makes up. Take your chances.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[Abcd1234]

I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close

Sorry dude, but that's just ridiculous. Internet distribution will be (heck, already is) certainly interesting for SD material, but for HD, there is no damned way Internet distribution will make any inroads. Or did you really want to download 25GB of data?

And this is ignoring the fact that broadband penetration in the US is still relatively dismal.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[DrXym]

Dual format players will win this war. As soon as this sells below $500, all other makers will follow. Right now it sells for $1200.

I doubt it. Dual format players are just a way to cash-in on hesitant early adopters. Once Blu-Ray or HD-DVD wins there will be absolutely no point in perpetuating the life of the other format. As Blu-Ray looks increasingly likely to win, why waste money on a dual format player, especially when they are considerably more expensive?

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[Anubis350]

AFAIK, my speakeasy dsl line has no such bandwidth restriction on it... (and I'm pretty sure there where months where my family has passed 100GB d/led with room to spare). That said, it's not the typical consumer line. You're right in that most providers don't let you do that, because they tend to oversell their bandwidth

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[PRMan]

Let's get some things straight:

• Sony will never release videos on HD-DVD until 2 years after Blu-Ray's actual demise, regardless of what the other studios (Fox, Disney, etc.) do.
• Warner Bros. does have a hybrid disc format called Total HD
• If the rumors about how much Universal execs hate Sony is true, this could be a very long format war, with the winners being Total HD and players like the LG.

Think about it. If every movie came with both formats and every player played both formats, would anybody really care anymore? Nobody does with DVD+-R.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[GNious]

Hint: You != Average Person

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[Chuck Chunder]

First, dual format players CAN'T WIN the war

Perhaps "the only winning move ... is not to play"

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format.

Well, that's certainly not true for DVDs.

The two DVD formats (DVD+R and DVD-R) are still selling at about equal volumes.

At this point in time, the two DVD formats are interchangeable in most consumer's minds (thanks to dual-format players), so consumers are basically choosing their format at random. This random selection is what will keep the sales volumes perpetually equal for both formats.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[shut_up_man]

It's even worse in countries like Australia, where a 20GB monthly download limit is at the upper limit of most plans. HD video streaming just doesn't work here, unless it's through an ISP's local content streaming system, which is usually quite limited and lame.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[slumberer]

Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format. Actually I would have thought that if they know that consumers can play their discs regardless of format then they would just continue making them using whatever format they were before. In this case you would expect neither format to really win or loose. Blue-ray would have an advantage in that it can hold more data but then HD-DVD would have an advantage as it is cheaper to make.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[mgblst]

The internet can still win, by not providing as high quality, but making it easy to buy and use. The question is, do people really care about high quality?

And broadband speeds and limits will increase, as they have every day.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[m0tion]

"Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow," Pardon me? FOR FREE FROM THE GOVERNMENT? Are you familiar with this acronym? TANSTAAFL! There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch! Unfortunately many people seem to think about government funded projects the same way that you do: IT'S FREE MONEY! That is incorrect, it's YOUR money.

Re:LG will win with dual format players

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format.

Well, it certainly didn't work that way for DVD.

Both DVD+RW and DVR-RW media are selling in about equal numbers.

Consumers know little about the difference between these formats, because it doesn't matter -- most DVD recorders/players accept both now.

Consumers are basically picking +R or -R at random now, which is why neither will win out in the end.

From TFA

[Jonny_eh]

"According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin."

Why does the summary make Blu-Ray sound better by saying it outsold HD DVD by 3:1 in 1 week? Do I detect a bias?

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the summary make Blu-Ray sound better by saying it outsold HD DVD by 3:1 in 1 week? Do I detect a bias? The summary said "almost 3:1" in the first week, which is not correct. It was "almost 3:1" for the first two weeks. In the article, look at the "YTD" part of the right diagram, and you'll see that the ratios are %100 bluray and %38 hddvd. %38 is "almost" %33 (and, has more truthiness to it than saying "more than 2:1", in my opinion).

Re:From TFA

[drinkypoo]

Why does the summary make Blu-Ray sound better by saying it outsold HD DVD by 3:1 in 1 week? Do I detect a bias?

YES! But that's not precisely why. Here's what the FS says:

almost three Blu-ray discs sold for every one HD DVD during the first week of January

Now, here is what the FA says:

According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin. It should be noted that the two weeks in question saw only two new high-def disc releases -- both from Blu-ray ('The Covenant' on Jan 2, and 'Crank' on Jan 9).

In other words, this is a momentary blip on the chart, and nothing to be excited about itself, unless it continues, in which case you can call it a trend. Right now though, it's not a big deal.

I sincerely hope that these people are not paid astroturfers, but if they are, it would explain why Sony has to charge so much for the PS3. I've had more people misinterpret my posts and tell outright lies in order to discredit them in the last couple days than I ever have before, and most of those comments are responses to things I've said about the PS3 or Sony.

Re:From TFA

[tbannist]

Except it's going to continue. You see there are more content owners supporting Blu-Ray than there are HD-DVD which means for the foreseeable future (ie, the list of announced releases for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), there will be consistently more Blu-Ray releases than HD-DVD releases.

If new releases are what drives sales, and there are more Blu-Ray players out there, and there are more new releases coming out for Blu-Ray, Sony's holding all the cards in the Next-Gen DVD battle. The only thing left to determine is whether they can turn their victory into market success, or whether Next Gen DVD will end up like laser disk, forgotten.

It is our duty and our right to pirate movies

[Anonymous Coward]

movies are binary encoded information and
information wants to be free

why is this even an issue to some of you people?

Re:It is our duty and our right to pirate movies

[toolie]

movies are binary encoded information and information wants to be free

Information isn't sentient and as such, can't want anything. It doesn't want to be free, it doesn't care either way.

The only people who want it to be free are the cheap bastards who never produced anything that other people would want to spend money on. Basically, the only people that believe information wants to be free are parasites who use that as justification for stealing stuff they have no right to, such as pirating movies.

Re:It is our duty and our right to pirate movies

[Knuckles]

Information isn't sentient and as such, can't want anything. It doesn't want to be free, it doesn't care either way.

What, there are still people around who don't get the saying? Information wants to be free in the same way as water wants to leak.

Save yourself some time

[dracocat]

Save yourself some time, no need to read any more comments. Here is a summary of all replies about to follow this article, in no particular order.

• Sony has never won a format war, haven't they learned their lesson? Just look at Beta and MD.
• Sony has had great sucess with their formats, can you say CD?
• There is no reason for anybody to even upgrade past DVD. There is simply no big difference between any new formats and DVD
• I simply will not buy anything from Sony after the whole DRM fiasco
• HD will win out because there will be more HD players on the market because of the cheap HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360
• There will be more Blue Ray players on the market because every PS3 comes with a Blue Ray drive
• Nobody will buy the HD DVD drive addon for the Xbox 360 because it is too expensive
• Nobody will buy the PS3 because it is too expensive
• Blue Ray disks hold more information than HD DVD disks and so Blue Ray will win
• HD DVD disks hold more information than Blue Ray disks so HD DVD will win
• What are you guys talking about? Its all about Nintendo
• Neither format will win because people will be downloading movies from here on our
• The name HD DVD just sounds better than Blue Ray
• The name Blue Ray just sounds better than HD DVD
• Movies these days are worthless I havent watched a movie in 25 years

Hopes this helps shed some light on which format is better.

Re:Save yourself some time

[aardvarkjoe]

You forgot one:

• How did you manage to misspell Blu-ray seven times in a single post when it's in the story title?

Re:Save yourself some time

[Crazy Man on Fire]

I wish I had some mod points for you

Re:Save yourself some time

[chord.wav]

You missed this one: HD-DVD appears to be more willing to accept porn than Blu-ray (according to some old /. article).

Re:Save yourself some time

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Am i missing something? Phillips brought the CD to market, and the format is not proprietary.

Re:Save yourself some time

[DesertBlade]

You forgot the UMD format for PSP.

A major video rental place actual spent a ton of money and time thinking this format was the next greatest thing, only to realize it was over priced and you could only watch it on the PSP.

Re:Save yourself some time

[interiot]

Yeah, well, I've got mod points, but the post is at 5 already. The post should be bumped up to a 6.

Re:Save yourself some time

[Penguin's Advocate]

The CD was developed by a partnership between phillips and sony (just like Blu-Ray!)

Re:Save yourself some time

[feepness]

How do I mod you Insightful, Informative, Flamebait, and Troll all at the same time?

Re:Save yourself some time

[tepples]

Phillips brought the CD to market

Nit: Phillips makes screws. Philips (one L) invented CD along with Sony.

and the format is not proprietary.

Compact Disc was proprietary for its first twenty years.

Re:Save yourself some time

[elrous0]

• HD-DVD will win because Sony won't license Blu-ray for porn.

No exactly true, but oft-cited nonetheless.

-Eric

Re:Save yourself some time

[Jesterboy]

Sony has never won a format war, haven't they learned their lesson? Just look at Beta and MD. Not really... Both of these formats gained traction in Japan, just not the US/Europe/most of the world. MD players basically trumped regular CD players in Japan since their inception, and only started going away now with the addition of MP3 players and phones that can hold audio. Beta also survived in Japan, and became a standard for video cameras at least.

I imagine Sony considered these "wins".

Re:Save yourself some time

[Anonymous Coward]

1: HD will win out because there will be more HD players on the market because of the cheap HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360
2: Nobody will buy the HD DVD drive addon for the Xbox 360 because it is too expensive

1: There will be more Blue Ray players on the market because every PS3 comes with a Blue Ray drive
2: Nobody will buy the PS3 because it is too expensive

1: Blue Ray disks hold more information than HD DVD disks and so Blue Ray will win
2: HD DVD disks hold more information than Blue Ray disks so HD DVD will win

1: The name HD DVD just sounds better than Blue Ray
2: The name Blue Ray just sounds better than HD DVD

I will not buy this hovercraft, it is full of eels.
I will buy this hovercraft, it is full of eels.

Jack is better than Jane.
Jane is better than Jack.

Re:Save yourself some time

[Johnny5000]

* HD-DVD will win because Sony won't license Blu-ray for porn.
No exactly true, but oft-cited nonetheless.

as a side-note, I just read an article about how high definition video for porn isn't necessarily a good thing, since it reveals more imperfections (zits, hair, wrinkles, stretch marks, etc.)

Re:Save yourself some time

[lonechicken]

How do I mod you Insightful, Informative, Flamebait, and Troll all at the same time? "Exhaustive" would be a great mod option in this situation. Or maybe "Thread Killer."

Re:Save yourself some time

[StikyPad]

Easy, just mod it +0.

Oh, I see you figured it out already.

Re:Save yourself some time

[Binestar]

Please cite who this "Major video rental place" is.

Thank you

Re:Save yourself some time

[master811]

"HD will win out because there will be more HD players on the market because of the cheap HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360"

I wouldn't say it is partly or necessarily because of this at all, especially as with the additional cost of the HDDVD player it will make the total cost of (XBOX 360 + external driver = about the same as a PS3 premium) and definitely more than a PS3 basic.

Re:Save yourself some time

[Anonymous Coward]

Link please? I'd like to read that.

Re:Save yourself some time

[fury88]

"Nobody will buy the HD DVD drive addon for the Xbox 360 because it is too expensive"

Too expensive? I wouldn't call $200 too expensive. I've purchased it already. I needed a new DVD player anyway and I don't like to use the primary XBOX drive for movies. So far, $200 is worth it. I belong to Blockbuster Total Access and they rent HD DVDs through the mail so I am able to take advantage of it. Not to mention the upconvert really does make standard DVDs look better.

Re:Save yourself some time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony has never won a format war, haven't they learned their lesson? Just look at Beta and MD. I always found that funny when I ask, what we use in the broadcast world and what musicians record to give to studio in the asian market.

Excuse me while I plug a vcr deck into my avid...oh wait that's just a beta deck.

Re:Save yourself some time

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because the name "Blu-ray" sucks. The name HD-DVD sounds way better than Blu-ray.

Re:Save yourself some time

[91degrees]

How did you manage to misspell Blu-ray seven times in a single post when it's in the story title?

By adding an 'e'

"Why are consumers being denied

[wiredog]

the information they need to make a considered choice?"

They aren't. I considered both, and decided neither was worth it.

Misleading?

[Sciros]

So, how many of these Blu-ray hardware sales actually *movies*? You know, the stuff that HD-DVD is a direct competitor for? If the format becomes something that's only economically viable to be used as game media for the PS3 then it becomes as relevant as SNES cartridges in the long run.

Re:Misleading?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of them. These are statistics for hi-def movie sales.

Re:Misleading?

[Lehk228]

including the PS3 PAck-in movie? the one put in there specifically to jack up Blu-Ray sales?

Re:Misleading?

[GodBlessTexas]

All of those sales figures are for movies, as it does not count game content on BD, nor hardware sales. BD movies are on average equal to or $5 more for native discs, with HD-DVD/DVD combo discs being $5-10 more than a similar native HD-DVD or BD. And Sony has all the major content providers on their side except for Universal, but it's debatable on whether they're a major provider with their poor performance at the box office.

Re:Misleading?

[spwolfx]

no, that promotion ended in december with first 500,000 PS3 sold in the USA.
In week of Jan 14th, BD had almost 3:1 lead over HD-DVD.

Re:Can I just say

[ThePsion5]

You must not be familiar with Verizon.

Why do the summaries ask such stupid questions?

[SeaFox]

Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?"

I suppose that is supposed to read informed choice? DUH. Why would a company want consumers to make a buying decision based on such metrics as popularity and facts? They would much rather have the entire process controlled by their marketing departments.

Pricing?

[WndrBr3d]

The one thought that keeps swirling through my mind when I browse through the HD movie section at my local Best Buy is, Who the HECK figures out the pricing for these things?!

How can Little Man cost $29 but the Fifth Element is only $19!?

I've owned the HD-DVD drive for the XBox360 now since it's launch and the only HD disc I currently own is the free copy of King Kong that came with it.

I'm floored that new titles aren't being released in both DVD and in their respective HD format at the same time. The studios seem too busy trying to 'catch up', releasing titles already available on DVD. I know they're doing this in hopes that people purchase both the DVD version and HD version when it's released later, in an effort to double their money.

Makes me want to vomit.

Re:Pricing?

[danpsmith]

I'm floored that new titles aren't being released in both DVD and in their respective HD format at the same time. The studios seem too busy trying to 'catch up', releasing titles already available on DVD. I know they're doing this in hopes that people purchase both the DVD version and HD version when it's released later, in an effort to double their money.

What's to say that people will buy the HD version when it's released? Look, I own an HD TV, and let me tell you, DVD is pretty good for those too. I doubt many people will re-buy the HD version of Golden Girls, season 2 even if they were dumb enough to buy the original DVD version.

People seem to forget that these drives are backwards compatible and play DVDs, most people won't bother buying both even if they have the HD player in a few years when you can buy them two for $50 at walmart. VHS and DVD were kind of incompatible formats and DVD offered a lot of actual convenience benefits. HD-DVDs are just DVDs with better quality, nobody is gonna re-buy their whole collection, especially when they can still watch the old discs with the new player. I understand the technical differences and I wouldn't do this.

Re:Pricing?

[drinkypoo]

How can Little Man cost $29 but the Fifth Element is only $19!?

Because Little Man is a relatively new movie, but most people who would buy The Fifth Element already have it on DVD. I'm no videophile or anything, so I don't really know how good of a transfer is, but the movie looks gorgeous on DVD. Why would I care about buying it in HD? Frankly it doesn't have any truly amazing special effects, aside from some cheesy spaceship stuff (like spaceships moving as if they were in atmosphere - how amazing) it's nothing you wouldn't see in a Lethal Weapon movie, except they'd probably do a better job. Lots of gunfire and explosions.

If you have any more stupid questions you want answered, I'm your man.</self_deprecating_humor>

Re:Pricing?

[westlake]

The studios seem too busy trying to 'catch up', releasing titles already available on DVD.

They are also re-releasing titles that had limited HD release on S-VHS cassette.

Re:Pricing?

[davebo357]

Then why is Speed $35? I'll admit to buying two blu-rays because best buy had a buy one get one free sale on select titles.

Re:Pricing?

[iainl]

"I'm no videophile or anything, so I don't really know how good of a transfer is, but the movie looks gorgeous on DVD."

Shit. Really, REALLY shit. The current Blu-Ray release is so badly encoded that the studio is already talking about re-releasing it with a better transfer. It was pretty much the first disc they ever made, and they did a terrible job.

Blu-Ray is a perfectly reasonable standard now, but in order to catch up HD-DVD they launched it a good six months too soon; don't go near any of the early discs, as most are pretty rubbish in comparison to new ones.

Re:Pricing?

[Mark Maughan]

The Amazon reviews say that The Fifth Element 2006 release was a terrible transfer and looks horrible... and that there will be a new release this year. Also, I find that BestBuy's prices are about $5 more than Amazon.

Re:Pricing?

[malf-uk]

because if it drops to $34.99 or below it will explode

Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[asc99c]

Just for a moment, forget the consumer (everyone else is doing it...)

Whatever your feelings re PS3, you know it's going to sell 10 million units plus in a short time. In the meantime, only relatively small numbers of consumers are actually buying either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players. DVD is good enough for most. Although the PS3 isn't primarily a Blu-Ray player, it does have that feature.

So when you're a movie studio or retailer and looking at the current / expected install base of HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray capable players over the next year or so, Blu-Ray is the only way to go. The PS3 is putting high definition playback into homes ahead of the mainstream demand. I read last week (Ars Technica I think) that total sales of Blu-Ray plus HD-DVD standalone players were around 700,000 in the US so far. PS3 alone is probably past that by now.

Standalone players are likely to sell more discs per unit than PS3s, but I'd guess many people with $600 to spend on a console will also grab a few Blu-Ray discs to try out.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[vertinox]

Whatever your feelings re PS3, you know it's going to sell 10 million units plus in a short time.

That might in 10 years after the price is below $200, but in the meantime PS3 sales are looking rather poor compared to Xbox360 and Wii. I believe we might even see a Dreamcast/Saturn-esque situation if situation does not improve.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[ivan256]

From the perspective of the average consumer with no knowledge of DRM, or even which company owns which format you've got to ask... If that person has a 1080p HD television (and that will shortly be the majority of people with HD televisions since LCD TVs are getting cheap, 1080 is the buzz, and there is no such thing as a 1080i LCD), why would they buy a format that doesn't support the full resolution of your television?

HD-DVD needs to cut over to 1080p (both the players *and* the movies. ASAP, or the format is doomed.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Firehed]

AFAIK, every HD-DVD disc released so far has 1080p content. Though I completely agree about the players.

Of course, whether it makes a visible difference is well beyond me. I'm quite content with DVD, even after watching a few HD-DVDs. It seems a tiny bit better, but I wouldn't have noticed it if I wasn't very familiar with the original DVD version, and I wasn't viewing it on the same TV either. I'd bet most people would be hard pressed to notice a real difference except in a side-by-side comparison, and that rather defeats the purpose of upgrading if you can't immediately notice an improvement.

What actually matters here is what's spewing out of Best Buy salespeople. My heard information from them that's anywhere from biased to flatly wrong, but that doesn't matter since Joe Consumer knows no better.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Pojut]

Forget your own point for just a moment, everyone is doing it...

Just because someone owns a PS3 does not mean they own a television that will benefit from the enhanced resolution over DVD...you forget, MANY MANY people still have standard def 480i tv's with NO hdtv's in their lives.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Knara]

there is no such thing as a 1080i LCD

*looks up at his 32" LCD running 1080i ATSC programming*

*goes to check his antischizophrenic drugs again*

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[asc99c]

I was actually going to mention something along these lines but decided to keep my post short. This is what I meant by getting a high def player into homes ahead of demand. As these people buy a new TV, they'll look into it enough to know that they've now got a high def TV (can't really buy a 'low' def TV anymore), and hey, they've already got a nice new high def player to go with it. No reason to even look at HD-DVD - before they spend that money they'll ask what extra they get compared to Blu-Ray and the answer just won't be compelling enough to try it.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Pojut]

Assuming they buy a stand-alone player, one could argue they would have a few extra hundred dollars to buy a nicer TV...

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[iainl]

The Toshiba X-A2 and X-E1 (they're basically the same player, but for US and European markets respectively) have 1080p output, as does the 360's add-on drive if you use VGA. 1st-gen Toshibas only did 1080i, as do the A2 and E1, because they have cheaper video chips. As others have noted, the discs themselves are all 1080p at 24fps.

But it's a meaningless bullet-point for film-based material anyway; most TVs do a perfectly good job of 3-2 pulldown. There isn't such a thing as a 1080i LCD display, but there are loads of TVs (the vast majority, in fact) that will only take a 1080i input, rather than 1080p.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[ivan256]

There is a difference between being able to display 1080i and having a 1080i native resolution. LCDs have a physical number of rows of pixels, and aren't scanned like CRTs are. 760p and 1080p LCDs can display 1080i, but they're either 780 lines or 1080 lines. They're not interlaced.

Did you do any research before you bought that thing?

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your LCD TV is most likely 720p native. It's scaling the 1080i broadcast down. Any recent HDTV will do this.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Mark Maughan]

Just because someone owns a PS3 does not mean they own a television that will benefit from the enhanced resolution over DVD...you forget, MANY MANY people still have standard def 480i tv's with NO hdtv's in their lives.

Sony polled their PS2 owners to find out how many already owned HDTV's and how many planned on purchasing an HDTV in the next couple of years. The total percentage was very large, around 70%. If you don't own an HDTV and you don't plan on purchasing one, chances are good that you don't own a PS2 and aren't in the market for a PS3 anyhow. Your argument about the general public doesn't really hold for PS3 purchaser demographic.

Re:Impossible for HD-DVD to win?

[Anonymous Coward]

"you know it's going to sell 10 million units plus in a short time. I"
Exactly, and it's just like UMD. There are already over 10 million PSPs and that's why UMD movie support is so universal. Oh wait...

More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war

[heroine]

It's more like the Digg vs. Slashdot war, with most Digg stories reporting dismal PS3 sales and most slashdot stories reporting good BD sales.

One thing is certain. Only one device can play 30Mbit H.264 HD files from a network and it's a BD player.

Re:More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war

[alshithead]

Screw teh Digg! Ise been slashdorking 4evar! I was always an anonymouse coward unktil lest year but nowse I got's edumacatioins sow's I got a intarnet handle wif slashdork...

Okay, just having some fun. But, I much prefer Slashdot over Digg. There are an awful lot of Slashdot folks who have been around a long time and actually give enough of a fuck to post intelligent thoughts.

Woo hoo!!! Off to my Pr0n collection now!!!

Re:More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm that there are other devices other than a Blue Ray player that can play HD mpeg-4/mpeg-2/WMV/Whatever over a network.
  My 1080p AT3705-MGW happily streams 1080p content over my network everyday.

Re:More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing is certain. Only one device can play 30Mbit H.264 HD files from a network and it's a BD player.

...Your sure about that... It couldn't be a BD player and any remotely modern PC perhaps?

Re:More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

One thing is certain. Only one device can play 30Mbit H.264 HD files from a network and it's a BD player.

I'm pretty certain about something else: only a tiny fraction of the consumer market even knows that means, and it is therefore about as relevant to end user sales as the technical details of Linux security models vs. Vista's.

Re:More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war

[lindseyp]

>One thing is certain. Only one device can play 30Mbit H.264 HD files from a network and it's a BD player.

What? The PS3? I wasn't aware of that feature, but it's a pretty important one to me, since my latest home movies are all AVCHD files from Sony's HD-SR1 HD cam.

Yet another 'compelling reason' to 'need' a PS3, right honey? *rubs hands together gleefully*

Misrepresentation of the facts

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect from the media? Considering Blu-Ray has RELEASED more titles over that period for VideoScan then I would certainly hope that they would have more. In fact the title should be "Blu-Ray comes in below expectations according to VideoScan Numbers". Blu-Ray had MUCH more than a 2:1 ratio on the amount of titles released during this period. If anything these are disappointing number for BD/Sony camp.

why, indeed...

[Connie_Lingus]

Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?

Because we are viewed as irreverent by the large multinational corporations that stuff gadgets down our throats. In reality, they want us to buy both formats, and, of course, the content (at least) twice, also.

Re:why, indeed...

[edbob]

Because we are viewed as irreverent by the large multinational corporations that stuff gadgets down our throats. I guess that I am just one of the irreverent because I don't worship at the altar of the large multinational corporations. I have been known to mock their foolishness in these pointless format wars. I think you meant irrelevant.

The sales charts

[egr]

The sales charts are confusing

Say what?

[eebra82]

Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?

Why would most people even care? All they need to know is, the two formats are successors to the DVD format. Why would my father bother about capacity and other technicalities? I doubt that it is up to the consumers on which format will win the war. Instead, it is up to the supporters of the DVD successors to agree on a standard, or keep on fighting until a HDDVD/BR successor appears.

I'd draw the opposite conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu ray only outsold them 2:1 in a period when the only new releases were on Blu-ray? That's just pathetic.

Re:I'd draw the opposite conclusion

[ThePhilips]

My favorite source of statistics - Amazon.com

Blu-ray - 257 hits.

HD DVD - 342 hits.

DVD - 170749 hits.

My point is that both HD formats have long road ahead. Regardless of "last month sales figures" of RTFA. I think it would take about 2 years to really find who would be a winner. Probably both - with demoed combo-discs. Probably technically superior BD. Probably cheaper HD DVD. (My bet would be later. I know myself and if I can get something cheaper I would do precisely that.)

Recent statistics will be flawed

[the computer guy nex]

Vouchers were given inside Playstation 3 boxes for free Blu-Ray discs. Everyone who bought a PS3 simply for gaming went out and used these vouchers up.

The more interesting comparison would be the number of HDDVD's sold against the number of Blu-Ray discs sold - vouchers used.

Re:Recent statistics will be flawed

[fistfullast33l]

Did you read the vouchers? I don't have mine on me but I think you had to buy 2 other BR discs to get one free, and it was a mail in offer. So basically, you still had to buy in order to take advantage of it.

Re:Recent statistics will be flawed

[entmike]

I'm sitting here looking at the BD promo voucher that came with my launch PS3. They are all just $10 mail-in rebated on $24.99 (on average) movies. Nothing is free in the promo. (At least not mine)

Where are the good movies?

[maynard]

This whole Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD clusterfuck won't be resolved for me until Criterion decides to support on or the other formats. The current movie selection on both formats is pathetic. Just like with quality games driving console adoption, it's the quality movies that matter. What, I'm going to spend ~$500 so I can watch crap like _Underworld Evolution_ in High Definition? Christ, I don't want to watch that SD! (Perhaps when Kate Beckinsale rips her clothes off on camera I'll watch another one of those shitty vampire crap fests)

Re:Where are the good movies?

[rehtonAesoohC]

Um... Kate Beckinsale did rip her clothes off on camera... didn't you see it?

Oh well, you missed out.

Re:Where are the good movies?

[maynard]

Really? It was on HBO-HD a few weeks ago, but the movie was so bad I couldn't pay attention and wound up getting distracted by a book. Oh well. She's hot, but not hot enough for me to care about that piece of shit flick.

Re:Where are the good movies?

[Abcd1234]

Wow, lighten up a little. It's trash entertainment, to be sure. But it's only that. Entertainment. And even Shakespeare new that good entertainment didn't necessarily imply high-brow.

Re:Where are the good movies?

[maynard]

The problem is, it didn't entertain me. *shrug*

Re:Where are the good movies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Over 150'sh movies are available on both formats, if you cant find a handful of them that you like, then ....

Re:Can I just say

[snarfbot]

flame mode on!

im jk i thought your comment was funny.

How many discs sold is not relevant... yet.

[Poopypuppy]

Given that the total sales are so small compared to the reigning king DVD, this metric is not relevant. I would think that the more relevant metric is how many individual titles are available in each format and what studios are signed on to provide content going forward. This is what I care about as an early adopter.

Format War hurts consumers Helps MPAA

[acomj]

I've been thinking about this. Why are consumer electronics companies so eager to stick DRM on products (typically they dislike it, it ads to cost and slows consumer adoption).

Because the content companies (Motion Picture folks) have to buy in. If there was just one format the consumer electronic companies could say, high def disk, take it or leave it. However since there are two formats the Studios can choose the format the offers the most protection. In a way because of the format war the studios got to say "Add DRM" or we'll go with the competeing HD format here.

It doesn't help that sony owns electronics and content, and the content part is clearly running the company.

Re:Format War hurts consumers Helps MPAA

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> Why are consumer electronics companies so eager to stick DRM on products

Because Sony (the consumer electronics company) also is Sony (the movie company). Take a look at the holdings of Sony Pictures Entertainment. They own Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, MGM, and a slew of other motion picture companies. They'll be happy to sell you a new DRM'ed copy of Singin' In The Rain on BluRay.

Re:Format War hurts consumers Helps MPAA

[Kjella]

If there was just one format the consumer electronic companies could say, high def disk, take it or leave it. However since there are two formats the Studios can choose the format the offers the most protection. In a way because of the format war the studios got to say "Add DRM" or we'll go with the competeing HD format here.

Well, it also gives consumers the power to say "screw this", at least they did with the DivX format (which the DivX ;-) codec was a pun on). I'm pretty sure some HDTV format will win out (if you think otherwise, see an optician), and if there was just the one they could ram as much DRM in there as they want (which they did anyway) and tell the consumer, take it or leave it. Personally I think faster, cheaper Internet will win.

But rentals may tell a different story?

[AHumbleOpinion]

My local Blockbuster carries both HDDVD and BlueRay. A couple of weeks ago I asked the guys behind the counter what customers were more interested in, they agreed that it was about 3:1 in favor of HD. Personally I think it is too early to declare a winner. PS/3's "recent" introduction may cause a spike in demand. HDDVD folks may be buying more slowly now that the novelty has worn off, and this will happen with the BlueRay "newcomers" too.

Re:But rentals may tell a different story?

[Penguin's Advocate]

Ever consider the possibility that they guys behind the counter were just like slashdotters (i.e. telling you what they wish was the truth whether it is or not)?

Re:But rentals may tell a different story?

[Penguin's Advocate]

...and by "they guys" I meant "the guys". Why can't I ever bring myself to take the extra step and use that preview button?!

Re:But rentals may tell a different story?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

A couple of weeks ago I asked the guys behind the counter what customers were more interested in, they agreed that it was about 3:1 in favor of HD.

Sure: they hired out six HD-DVD disks that week, and only a couple of Blu-Ray ones. In other news, DVD rentals remained at their previous rate of 100/hour, as 99.7% of the market didn't give a **** about HD because of the lack of good films available in either format, the overpriced hardware, and the bad PR one format or the other seems to get for a new reason each week...

MOD PARENT UP

[Luscious868]

You raise a very insightful point about quality and convenience. Think of the tape to CD and VHS to DVD leaps. Both new technologies had quality improvements over their predecessors but I'd argue neither would have taken off as quickly as they did (or at all) without the massive improvements in convenience. No more having to fast forward or rewind a tape or VHS movie to get to your favorite track or part of the movie, with the new format you could get where you wanted to go in a second. That was a huge factor when I moved to from tapes to CD's and it also came into play with DVD's. Rewinding a movie before you watched it or before returning it to the video store was a massive pain in the butt. You no longer had to worry about a bad player shredding the DVD or CD which was also a huge plus with both moves. Quality was more of a factor to convince me to move from VHS to DVD but you better believe that if that quality improvement didn't also include the improvements in convenience (e.g. it was still tape based or a single movie had to be split onto multiple discs) then I don't think the format would have caught on.

PS2 won this round

[tepples]

It's not over yet, and there hasn't been a format war that Sony has won

Anonymous Coward mentioned Compact Disc Digital Audio, Microfloppy (the ubiquitous-until-recently 3.5" disk that beat Mitsumi's QuickDisk), and Video8 (beat VHS-C). In addition, how about the large-screen video game format war? In the console generation that included the PlayStation 2, Sony's format has beaten those of GameCube, Xbox, set-top Lenovo-compatible PCs, and set-top Macintosh computers in terms of number of discs sold.

25 years?

[antdude]

Wow: "Movies these days are worthless I havent watched a movie in 25 years" ... That's hard unless this guy doesn't watch any movies on DVDs, in theater, TV, etc. In fact, does he even watch TV shows? ;)

correct

[Anonymous Coward]

....but does it run Linux?

Re:Can I just say

[kfg]

Those graphs are dumb.

So are people. They don't even know that they're dumb.

KFG

Subconscious copying

[tepples]

Basically, the only people that believe information wants to be free are parasites who use that as justification for stealing stuff they have no right to, such as pirating movies.

What about the people who created something, found that someone had already created the same thing a decade ago, and had to cease and desist or (worse) pay damages? It happened to George Harrison (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music), it happened to Michael Bolton (Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton), and it happened to Ross Williams (whose LZRW family algorithms were later found to have patent problems).

Re:Subconscious copying

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Harlan Ellison, who once wrote a story which turned out to be a near copy of another author's story he'd read decades before. It was easily caught, though, since the editor he submitted it to was the same guy who wrote the original story.
  Of course, Ellison was also the victim of conscious copying, with The Terminator.. Whole different ball of wax there..
  But the GP is a troll -- 'information wants to be free' has nothing to do with "stealing stuff they have no right to, such as pirating movies." (and copyright infringement is a civil tort, not a crime like stealing, natch) 'Information wants to be free' is an axiom, like 'water flows downhill.' It's possible to erect structures to prevent water flowing downhill, but it will cost time and money and labor, and you should assess the costs against the benefits before trying to do so. Information is even harder to keep bottled up, and the costs of doing so are far greater to an ostensibly free (ha!) society.
  - mantar

930 freaking $$$

[VMaN]

Why are we getting shafted in Denmark? $930.... ?

what are those 441$ paying for?

Re:930 freaking $$$

[SomeRandomWag]

Well, from my time in Copenhagen I would say that you're getting shafted by the overall costs of goods more than anything else. When you compare it against the price of staple goods, does it come out more even? For example, when I lived in Denmark a pint of beer cost me (on average) more than twice as it does for me now in Canada. By that metric your price of $930 might even be ahead!

Seriously, they probably do factor in cost of living when determining their prices. XX% of the average target demographic's monthly pay or some such...

/srw

Re:930 freaking $$$

[ThePhilips]

Europe is just on average is most taxed place: we have taxes on imported good of all kinds, we have taxes on any kind of sales and we have thick layer of customer protection (unconditionally - whether customer wants that or not). You cannot do a thing here - and not pay a tax. Worst: you most likely cannot do a thing - unless some bureaucrat(s) give(s) you a nod.

From some calculations I have seen, even simple logistic can drive good prices as much as 10-20% up, since fuel highly taxed here: about 1,00-1,10€ per liter - google calculator says $4.16 per gallon.

Then add here that Europeans enjoy extended warranties: in Germany all goods are covered by mandatory 2 year warranty and I can bring back to shop anything what broke within the 2 years and they have to give me my money back.

Then add highest in the world business taxes - ranging from 25% to 40%.

And do not forget that Europe on average has most expensive real estate, what adds into more or less every single cost here. (Think: offices, warehouses, logistic centers, retail space and so on).

Is that not enough to explain the hiked European prices?

For business to earn in Europe the same it earns in Asia/N.America, it has to make twice/thrice more deals. Since the market is very saturated/inertial/stagnant and most consumers are of age 40+, rate of acceptance of new things here is relatively low. End result, is that easier to make a buck in US and then save another buck by NOT making business in Europe. :(

Re:930 freaking $$$

[PopeOptimusPrime]

You've clearly never bought an automobile in Denmark.

Re:Can I just say

[TacNuke]

When I first saw those graphs I thought they were advertisements and ignored them......

Keyboard Error

[fistfullast33l]

Yes, it's definitely a bias as 2 and 3 never appear next to each other on a keyboard.

Re:Keyboard Error

[cowscows]

I know if I was an editor of a website read by a few hundred thousand people each day, I wouldn't bother proof-reading a whole five sentences when I posted an article either.

Re:Keyboard Error

[Jugalator]

I'm not sure if that was sarcastic, but the Slashdot editors don't, and neither do the submitters.

Are pornos included?

[topical_surfactant]

If not, then the sales numbers analyzed are absolutely meaningless. Revisit once the adult industry has ramped up to full production.

Re:Are pornos included?

[sakti]

Bingo. Sony really screwed themselves by telling the porn industry to bugger off. No matter what the numbers are now, HD-DVD is destined to win as the porn industry has standardized on it. See links in previous post [1] for links to stories.

[1] http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216742&c id=17594830

Re:Are pornos included?

[clonmult]

Boy, are you wrong, or are you wrong?

Porn has already decided on its format, and thats on-line. Much easier/more flexible medium for the great (and not so great) porn barons of our time to control on-line distribution of media.

Re:Are pornos included?

[westlake]

If not, then the sales numbers analyzed are absolutely meaningless. Revisit once the adult industry has ramped up to full production

Forget porn. This is the Geek obsession. Not why a household spends thousands of dollars on home theater video and sound. The sales numbers you need to see are from Disney and Time-Warmer.

Re:Are pornos included?

[topical_surfactant]

Cite something, and maybe I'll cite something too.

Or not.

And Microsoft

[paranode]

They should fear Apple iTunes.

As well as Microsoft and the Xbox 360. The console is designed to also act as media access system where all you have to do is go into a menu and click on an available movie and it will start streaming it down to your TV at standard or even high definition for a few bucks. I don't know whether the PS3 does this but the 360 definitely makes it very simple.

Why are consumers being denied the information the

[scott hettrick]

The lack of detailed sales data is nothing new from Nielsen and not a conspiracy by the big corporate entertainment companies. Nielsen is independent from any entertainment company (it's parent company owns The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard magazines and the Nielsen TV ratings, among other entities). The reason it doesn't provide specific and detailed numbers is simple business. Nielsen makes its money by selling its data, in this case mostly to the studios and entertainment companies. If it made specific sales figures widely available to news outlets for free, it wouldn't be able to sell that same data to its many clients who could pick it up for free on the Net.

From the Article

[HappySqurriel]

According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin. It should be noted that the two weeks in question saw only two new high-def disc releases -- both from Blu-ray ('The Covenant' on Jan 2, and 'Crank' on Jan 9).

Even though both movies were awful, and I secretly hope people were buying the discs to smash them in order that no one will ever be forced to watch that crap again, you tend to see a massive spike in movie/book/music sales when a product is released followed by slower sales for the rest of its life. This is (to a certain extent) like comparing the sales of XBox 360 software to PS3 software in Japan over the past 2 weeks when the XBox 360 had The Idolmaster and Gears of War releases and the PS3 had no new software.

Re:From the Article

[Dev59]

I really enjoyed Crank... for what it is.

Of course they outsell HD-DVD

[melted]

I bought PS3 specifically for Blu Ray. There aren't any games for it that I'd want to play yet, so I bought it because it was a relatively cheap, high quality DVD/Blu Ray player with HDMI output (Xbox is component only, so disks that require HDCP won't play in it). Now wait until it actually gets some games that will make it worth purchasing by gamers. Once that happens, you will see another spike in sales. It's a double whammy of sorts. Currently a lot of folks are buying it for Blu Ray. These folks will buy games later on because thing also plays games. OTOH folks who will buy it for games will buy Blu Ray disks as well because what the heck, if it plays them - why not?

It also helps that Blu Ray has greater studio and industry support. The only studio that's HD-DVD exclusive is Universal. There are quite a few studios (including those owned by Sony) that are exclusive to Blu Ray. And lastly, Apple and Dell are Blu-Ray only. Need I say more.

Re:Of course they outsell HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

The only studio that's HD-DVD exclusive is Universal

Hey they did the same thing with Divx. It is funny the battle lines are almost Divx/DVD again. The *ONLY* difference here is warner, who wants HD-DVD.

I am not too concerned about computers yet. As that will be a small fraction of 'movie' sales.

Once the ps3 hits the 200-300 range you will see quite a large spike in purchase of BluRay.

Also it may be just me but the DVD quality playback on the PS3 is MUCH better than the XBOX.

Anonymous Schmonymous

[Angst Badger]

An anonymous reader writes:

Yeah, an anonymous reader who just happens to work for Sony.

Re:Can I just say

[drinkypoo]

I see stupid people... all the time... they walk around like everyone else... they don't even know they're stupid.

In other words

[LordEd]

it's not much of a "win" if you claim victory in the battle, but lose the war.

In other words, "mission accomplished".

PREEMPTIVE CORRECTION

[drinkypoo]

That is utterly impossible in a world in which

Of course I meant to say country. Of course, as such it applies to both the US and the UK, and most other places on the planet besides. About the only people who could pull it off right now are Japanese who live in major metropolitan areas.

Re:PREEMPTIVE CORRECTION

[Knara]

And South Koreans. [this sentence typed because apparently 7 seconds is too short a time to add any useful information to a conversation, thanks slashdot!]

Yep...and...

[msauve]

As to the question "Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?," I answer: I have all the information I need. With the DRM constraints, I don't intend to buy discs of either format.

Re:Yep...and...

[alshithead]

Serious question...

What if there is a movie you really want a copy of...what will you do?

Re:Yep...and...

[alshithead]

"Download a bootleg (and consequently DRM-Free) copy off the internet. Duh!!!"

I'll take the "Duh!!!" in regards to everyday folks. But, what if you are in a position with a security clearance? The powers that be take a dim view of any legal violations, civil, state, or federal. Would you risk YOUR job and/or retirement over a movie? The option you suggest doesn't work for everybody...

Re:Yep...and...

[lukas84]

If you're in such a position, you probably earn enough money so that DRM doesn't matter.

Re:Yep...and...

[alshithead]

"If you're in such a position, you probably earn enough money so that DRM doesn't matter."

Sorry...you're wrong. There are plenty of folks out there with security clearances who earn little enough that is does matter. Think about the bottom rung...can you say rent-a-cop?

Re:Yep...and...

[Eskarel]

If you're a rent-a-cop, no one really cares. If you get caught, you'll probably get fired, but no one is going to be specifically looking for you, you've got as much chance of getting caught as anyone else. Your salary sucks so you can always go get a different job, and I don't know a whole lot of folks who are in the age ranges where they've got two tenths of stuff all in their retirement accounts who frequently bittorrent.

If you're running around with top secret or better, you might want to be careful, but companies won't usually go through the 18 months or so it's been taking for those clearances unless they're going to pay you enough money to keep you around. So you go out and buy DVD's(or rent them, it's not like it's all that expensive, especially in the US).

Re:Yep...and...

[westlake]

If you're in such a position, you probably earn enough money so that DRM doesn't matter.

You do know that a criminal record can affect your eligibility for food stamps, medicaid, and other social services?

Re:Yep...and...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.opm.gov/oca/06tables/html/dcb.asp

Many people start at 7-1 or below, in B/W area that is 36671...that isn't much when you're average house is ~250-300K and rising

Base pase scale 7-1 is 31209. So if you are making that, but living in Kansas or somewhere vs making 36671 in DC, well, in Kansas you have a house, in DC you have a cardboard box! lol

Re:Yep...and...

[jZnat]

Get the DRM-free version on Usenet or a torrent site.

Re:Yep...and...

[KDR_11k]

Don't tell me you can't control yourself enough to not buy some media?

Re:Yep...and...

[StupidKatz]

The number of people with security clearances pales in comparison to those who do NOT have security clearances and is therefore a completely moot point.

Re:Yep...and...

[alshithead]

"The number of people with security clearances pales in comparison to those who do NOT have security clearances and is therefore a completely moot point."

So you're going to moot out tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people? That's pretty harsh. There's a lot of folks out there with security clearances...federal government, state government, military, contractors...others... Would you moot blacks, Hispanics, and Asians because they are minorities in the US? Hey! Let's bring back slavery, put those chinks to doing laundry, and get those wetbacks to landscaping and doing the dishes. Who the fuck are you to determine a whole segment of society, granted a minority, is moot?

Re:Yep...and...

[acidrain]

what if you are in a position with a security clearance?

Then you accept your role as cooperate bitch and use your fat pay cheque to buy what they are telling you to.

Re:Yep...and...

[skoaldipper]

The person who originally coined and *misused* the term moot (in today's context) is most likely dead, which in some small irony, makes every discussion using his interpretation ever since equally "irrelevant" and "pointless". However, moot has Old English origins in the German word "motan" or "mot" (which means meeting or meet). Back then, a moot point was something *very* relevant and discussed about in meetings. So, as a point of order, I hereby declare this entire discussion moot, and my attempts at grammatical correctness as an equally grand mootailure at best.

Re:Yep...and...

[alshithead]

That is ironic. Having previously worked for a law firm I used it in what I understand to be the modern and legal context. I will accede to your point of order and gladly receive your attempt at grammatical correctness. However, perhaps the actual grammatical correctness is held in the modern context due to the original context having gone by the wayside? I say that with smiles...it is very much appreciated that your reply had humor and education as its base. I unfortunately tend to be less than nice when posting grammar Nazi comments. Some probably very intelligent folks on Slashdot unfortunately come off as illiterate fucks due to their spelling, grammar, and usage.

Format, not platform

[Ahnteis]

Other points aside, PS2 is a platform, not a format.

Blu-Ray is superior

[malkir]

And it doesn't cost an extra $150. I'll take it over HD-DVD any day.

Re:Blu-Ray is superior

[ShadowsHawk]

Actually, it'll cost many of us an additional $600-1000. I'll take neither and wait it out.

Parent doing drugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The HD DVD format supports a wide variety of resolutions, from low-resolution CIF and SDTV, all video resolutions supported by the DVD-Video standard, and up to HDTV formats such as 720p, 1080i and 1080p.[6] All movie titles released so far have had the feature encoded in 1080p, with supplements in 480i or 480p." -- Wikipedia.

The next batch of player hardware will output 1080p. Seems like a total non-issue unless you're a beta te... early adopter

Re:Parent doing drugs?

[ivan256]

So, The players can't do 1080p yet... In other words, you've said that I'm completely correct, but used bold to imply that I'm not.

Thanks.

Re:Parent doing drugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

HD-DVD needs to cut over to 1080p (both the players *and* the movies.

I have bolded the part of your OP the previous AC sought to correct.

Ivan... the wrong?

You're welcome.

Re:Parent doing drugs?

[ivan256]

Somebody needs some lessons in boolean arithmetic.

Almost one post

[StikyPad]

the Blu-ray enabled PS3 is helping Sony quickly close the gap with HD DVD, with almost three Blu-ray discs sold

What, like 2.4 discs sold? Somebody just dropped a Hamilton and took off with a BR?

What's that? The rest of the sentence? Oh, I just assumed...

Tempting to go HD but not with current movies

[Is0m0rph]

I could go out and buy the 360 HD DVD drive whenever I felt like it. I have a 50" DLP and HD video is a huge difference from the upconverting DVD player I already have. I was looking at my Netflix que last night and noticed out of 50 movies in my que only 4 of them had the option of having them send me a HD DVD instead of the regular one. Not enough movies at this point to make me even think of going to HD DVD. Blu-Ray is out, I don't support Sony and would not buy their format ever.

the numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

just so you know where to look,
http://nexgenwars.com/

Here's some data right in the open

[SuperKendall]

An interesting site to keep track of a few battles like this is eProductwars.com. In particular, they have a section that tracks various Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD stats - mostly based on Amazon data it would seem. It seems to track with what the original article is saying.

It's really not at all surprising Blu-Ray would be pulling substantially ahead and growing, with every PS3 sold being another Blu-Ray player in a consumers home. I know two people at work that have bought PS3's and they moth make extensive use of the Blu-Ray feature. Standalone players are a tougher sell at the moment with still not that much in the way of selection, and console add-ons (like the 360 HD-DVD player) never sell to a very significant percentage of the user base of any system - and that's when they can be used to play games!

You know who really has the pulse of this fight though? Netflix. And that data, as far as I know, cannot be found in the open anywhere. They are the first place people would go for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies I think, as people turn to Netflix to check it out first if they have a PS3 and are curious, and would also go there to defray costs and find out which discs were worth buying.

Well, about Sony's format success

[SmallFurryCreature]

You mention it yourselve, the CD. What not everyone knows that the CD owns a lot to philips. The minidisk was a direct competitor to a Philips product, so was betamax.

Blu-Ray? Another Philips-Sony partnership. Mmmm, so by some extremely wide logic Blu-Ray must be a winner based on past performance.

That doesn't matter

[SuperKendall]

Just because someone owns a PS3 does not mean they own a television that will benefit from the enhanced resolution over DVD...you forget, MANY MANY people still have standard def 480i tv's with NO hdtv's in their lives.

I would argue that most of the PS3 user base has TV's that support 720P or greater.

But remove that, and people are still able to play Blu-Ray discs even on a 480i device. To you or I there might not seem like much of a point, but remember if these people are thinking to buy an HD-TV later they may well already be buying Blu-Ray media. I know someone who bought a few Blu-Ray movies in the anticipation of getting a PS3 in a month or two!

Really though, why does it not make sense that anoyone able to spend $500 for a PS3 would also have spent a fair amount on a TV set? There are tens of millions of HD-TV sets in people's homes today.

Re:That doesn't matter

[Pojut]

Really though, why does it not make sense that anoyone able to spend $500 for a PS3 would also have spent a fair amount on a TV set?

For the same reason someone can spend $1500 a month on a car payment and not be able to buy anything without a credit card.

A New Beginning...

[norman619]

The next format challenger will be the Holographic Disc. 1.6 TB on a single disc....

Simple...

[msauve]

I'll be patient, and TiVo it when it's on cable.

Not for this discussion

[SuperKendall]

We aren't talking about console sales. We are talking about Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD sales.

For the fight you mentioned, there is a better place to look for that as well. One interesting thing to note there is that demand for the PS3 is artificially suppressed on that graph by Amazon not having stock ready to buy all the time.

Irellevant

[SuperKendall]

That might in 10 years after the price is below $200, but in the meantime PS3 sales are looking rather poor compared to Xbox360 and Wii.

That's actually not exactly true, it's still hard to find PS3's everywhere (note that Amazon still does not have them "in stock", only through third party sellers with a $100 markup).

However the point is irrelevant to this discussion, because it doesn't matter for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray fight what the 360 or Wii sales are like - they do not play HD-DVD movies (at least not directly). What matters is the total number of Blu-Ray players on the market (the PS3 plus all standalone players) vs. the number of standalone HD-DVD players (the 360 add-on included). The original point stands that the PS3 is far outselling all other standalone players, and that means pretty much inevitable growth in that format as the year progresses and Sony is able to iron out production issues. Even with spotty production ongoing, 6 million PS3's in people's hands by the end of the year (which is a low figure that assumes production continues to flounder) would far outstrip the number of standalone HD-DVD players sold.

Difference, not distinction?

[tepples]

What is the difference between a platform and a format?

Re:Difference, not distinction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though a platform and a format can both relate to, for example 'a stage made out of wood', the 'platform' refers to the physical properties (ability to raise objects to a higher footing), the 'format' describes its function or appearance without specifically referring to physical details (ability to make objects better visible to a large public).

A stage is a platform and a format, but that does not mean that platform and format mean the same thing in that sentence.

My Camera Can

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're talking about electronic gear in general and not just DVR's, I'm sorry to say you are wrong. My HDV camera can and it is described as a consummer camcorder.

HD-DVD is still going to win

[Tz-Auber]

Due to the fact that HD-DVD has been endorsed by the adult entertainment industry... the ones famous for killing BetaMax

http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/11/ces2007_hddvd_bl u_ray/

Re:HD-DVD is still going to win

[PikachuMolester2007]

When was the last time you actually bought porn on a disc? The "porn will decide the format war" line makes a good story, but it's not terribly relevant anymore. Why bother going to a store now that you have the nearly unlimited, constantly updated, always available, endlessly variable, blissfully anonymous porn-delivery system we fondly call "the internets".

Still don't understand

[tepples]

I am having trouble drawing an analogy from your stage example to video game consoles. But with the interactive capabilities of DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc, doesn't this make them more of a platform than a simple video format such as ye olde LaserDisc?

Yeah, I often mean to type "over two"...

[Namarrgon]

and end up typing "almost three" instead. Happens all the time.

People actually buying this DRM infested shite?

[liftphreaker]

I pity those poor deluded fools who're buying this DRM infested shite. Till the day HD/BR is totally crax0red like DVD's, they won't get a penny from me. If they want to dictate what I can and cannot do with stuff I buy with my hard earned money, RIAA/MPAA can keep your HD/BR.

Get your facts checked

[Nazmun]

DVD is 480p at best. You'll get about 852x480 resolution. If your watching it from a 26inch sdtv from ten feet away you might not notice a difference but with a 60 inch or larger in the same distance you will notice a different between that resolution and 1920x1080.

Plus a "widescreen" HDTV and a blu-ray/hd-dvd simply translate the lines better. With a DVD you often lose usable picture real estate for dvd's not formatted to your sdtv screen. The 4x3 formatted dvd's lose information on the sides an you lose the original view of the movie.

Re:Get your facts checked

[gkhan1]

Why doesn't anyone bother to check the facts before posting things like this? It would literally take two seconds to look up exactly what format a DVD is in. If it is in NTSC, it's 720 × 480, if it is in PAL it's 720 × 576.

See? Now wasn't that easy.

Re:Get your facts checked

[StarWreck]

720p DVD players have been available for a long, long time. Years. But I don't actually know if they look better than 480p DVD players. I'm using a 480p DVD player and the quality is comparable to anything on 1080i "high-definition" cable TV. Even older 480i DVD players are a massive improvement over analog broadcast TV. And why are you even talking about 4x3 formatted DVD's... buy the 16x9 formatted DVD's... genius

Personally I think both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will fail just like both formats to replace CD's failed. DVD-Audio would have had a chance if they made it compatible with... DVD players! And, coincidentally, I've noticed quite a few CD's (Queen's re-release of "A Night at the Opera" and Weird Al Yankovic's latest album) being put out that include an extra DVD will all the music encoded in 192KHz, 5.1 surround sound and playable on a standard DVD player. Sounds really awesome through my DVD player hooked up by optical audio to my 5.1 Kenwood surround sound system with the TV turned off. Plus more and more cars are being built with DVD video players included, so it should be possible to play just the audio from a DVD and have the video turned off while you drive.

Thats right, not only do I think that standard video DVD's will win the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war but I think they'll win the next generation Audio-CD war. Don't you call me crazy...

Re:Get your facts checked

[MikeBabcock]

I own an upscaling DVD player already. It outputs 720p or 1080i and does a very good job of making up data from the original source. That said, the original source still doesn't have 720 progressive lines of resolution, its still 480. The original data source is what matters here, a lot more than what the DVD player does to it. Would you rather have your DVD player invent lines that it thinks should be there, or get a transfer from the original film that has the real lines that actually existed? In the case of a forest of trees, the leaves will look correct instead of blurred. In the case of a face, pores, shavings and the wetness of the eye become apparent (in HD resolutions).

Upscaling DVD players are not an alternative to HD movie transfers, they're just a nice way to make your existing low resolution DVDs look better on your new high resolution TV.

Re:Get your facts checked

[CommandNotFound]

I think the poster was referring to the FINAL resolution of a widescreen anamorphic DVD as it is displayed on a non-CRT screen. The 720 pixels on the DVD are not square pixels, but slightly wider than they are tall. Most (all?) LCD/DLP projectors or monitors have square pixels, so they do a quick scale to map those rectangular 720 pixels to the equivalent width of square pixels, which is 854.

You are correct in your statement, but that is where the 854x480 comes from.

Re:Get your facts checked

[Wdomburg]

That 480 is refering to vertical scanlines, not horizontal resolution. The horizonal resolution for SD DVD is, as I stated, 720.

Get your facts checked, too

[dfghjk]

You are both wrong. DVD is 720x480. The original poster's claim that broadcast is 330 and VHS 240 are "lines od resolution", not pixel counts.

"Plus a "widescreen" HDTV and a blu-ray/hd-dvd simply translate the lines better."

Careful with your terminology. Lines and pixels are not the same thing.

Hail DVD Decrypter and movies under 10gb.

[MMInterface]

I'm happy with DVDs. They look fine to me. HD is ripoff. At around 25gb a disc the gains are not worth the extra disc space. With other formats you had other benifits such as size, form factor and less moving parts. HD and Blue Ray discs don't offer any physical benefits that DVD did over VHS. A better picture for 5 times the storage space supported by an array of DRM infested hardware and software. I'll take the lower quality that I am used to for a more versatile, efficient and cost effective format that I can make backups of.

Re:Hail DVD Decrypter and movies under 10gb.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a video consumer the storage space of these discs is irrelevant. You insert a shiny disc in the expensive player and it plays, end of story.

Re:Hail DVD Decrypter and movies under 10gb.

[cyclomedia]

This leads me nicely into my question: A 1080p HD movie won't fit onto a DVD in H.264 without an unreasonably low data rate but how large would it be if you picked an ideal compromise between quality and rate? Then compare that to the sizes of Blu-Ray vs HDDVD ... AFAIK a lot of the argument over which format is best is in terms of the two-layer capacity, but if the aforementioned H.264 movie fits onto both with plenty room to spare wouldnt it make the argument moot?*

*at least for movies, i suspect the Special Features will still come on another disc and wont be full max hardcore HD anyway. Also TV series will still probably be spread across as many discs as possible in an attempt by the studios to convince you it's worth forking over an arm,a leg and your wife for the complete X-files.

The comparison isn't obvious

[thewils]

I was looking forward to a nice barchart or so, but the scale thingys are a bit confusing really. Some people (like me) don't give a crap about the words, we're just looking for numbers...woulda thought a bar graph was the perfect comparison tool myself.

That didn't make sense

[SuperKendall]

For the same reason someone can spend $1500 a month on a car payment and not be able to buy anything without a credit card.

Which they used to purchase the HD-TV...

People who are outspending thier income have the whole package - HDTV, HD Cable, flashy car, etc. etc. The PS3 comes at the end of that run, not the start. Why would it stop them to "use a credit card" when they probably have eight ot ten?

TVs are fuzzy

[Nicolay77]

If you watch them in a normal TV, then yes.

I watch both TV and DVDs in a 19" CRT display, and the DVDs look much better. You can also buy one of those expensive HD TVs.

When I see a normal TV all I can think is "that screen looks way too fuzzy/blurred".

ah divx

[acomj]

Wasn't that a circut city dvd that you had to attach to your phone to authorize....

I'd forgetten.....

The problem to some extent is that consumers still want this stuff. When I get a HDTV, I'll be torn. I'd like High Def, but I'd also like to take my videos with me on my computer (DVD rips).

Hopefully blu-ray will include a mini version on the disk, or those hd-dvd /regular dvd disk will be popular.

-Aram

Blu-Ray Meme vs HD-DVD Meme

[broward]

My (admittedly dicey) prediction from eight months ago, that Blu-Ray would become the clear standard within one year, based on keyword analysis Dejanews.com -

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entr y=blu_ray_vs_hd_dvd

Figures - Truth and Lies

[Karem Lore]

These figures are warped. I bet you anything that this does not include the porn industries sales. Even if they have not made any yet, when they hit the market, they will far outsell anything BlueRay can chuck out.

Oh, not to mention the HD-DVD is coming down in price really really quickly while BlueRay is still a milking cow.

Karem

New PS3 Owner effect

[iainl]

What remains to be seen with this, and we won't know until Summer at least, is what effect PS3 owners are really having on these figures.

Right now, a fair number of people are buying PS3s. Sure, the numbers are pretty bad when your competition are 360 and Wii, and terrible in comparison to the number of people who are still buying new PS2s because that's perfectly good enough for them. But something like 95% of the entire Blu-Ray player market, regardless.

But it's a fairly multipurpose device; who knows why people are buying them? It could be a repeat of the UMD fiasco; i.e. with so few games worth playing on the machine right now, people might be buying movies just so they don't feel like they've completely wasted $600. Conversely, others are buying them deliberately as movie players (it's the cheapest Blu-Ray player by a huge margin, and even has better image quality than the Samsung standalone), and don't particularly care about games.

So this may be a permanent lead. It equally might drop right off as soon as there are some games to play other than Resistance and the Gran Turismo demo.

Re:New PS3 Owner effect

[Mark Maughan]

But if the rate at which an individual PS3 owner purchases Blu-ray movies doesn't go down as fast as the total number of PS3 owners goes up, there could be this effect you speak of and still Blu-ray purchases increase even more.

Re:New PS3 Owner effect

[iainl]

That depends. Certainly, I think there will be some continued sales as more new PS3 owners buy a movie or two to try things out. But right now, without many actual games to play on their machine, some people are buying movies just to give their $600 investment something to do. Whether new owners six months from now, when there will hopefully be more games worth playing around this continues, is my question.

Exactly: I want a set-top IPTV Net Box Thingy

[cyclomedia]

Seriously, looks and smells just like a smallish digital reciever (as used in the UK at least) but instead of sucking TV through the aerial it'd just have an RJ45 jack at the back. All that's left to the user is to plug that into their modem/router/etc. This box would then operate like the Venice Project's GUI probably but the killer would the taking out of the loop the PC. I have no desire to run cables around my house so i can play movies and tv shows on my PC upstairs and shuffle them over to my TV and i dont think the Wife will be too savvy at finding, downloading and codec-hunting just to get the darned things to play. i want the box to do the lot, even allow you to pick 8 shows to "buffer" overnight to be viewed tomorrow instantly as well as stream what you want to watch now. And being networked up it too could act as a P2P client for the rest of the network. All seamless and only requiring me to plug in three cables: power, network, SCART.

Tivo and Sky+ are great steps towards this but they still rely on someone else's decision on how to use the available bandwidth (i.e. linear tv scheduling)

I'm sorry but....

[blankoboy]

Who in their right mind is going to shell out the kind of money required for a new HDTV + HDDVD/BluRay player + media when 95% or more of what's out there isn't even worth watching for free. The technology is coming along but Hollywood needs to get it's game on or else there will be no content worth watching what so ever.

Perhaps less time chasing pirates and instead concentrating on content is the way to go...ya think?

/throws his arms up in the air.

MS WILL release xbox+hddvd in one 100%

[cheekyboy]

I know they deny it, but denying it is the plan to SHOCK Sony!

I bet they already are making 10000/week to fill the oil tankers!

The group of companies behind HDDVD should be damn scared of the ps3, and they should be willing to pay MS $250m to get
hddvd out there to compete. Im sure they can subsidise MS down to dvd prices and get it out there pronto together with
the hdmi + 60gig HD.

Seriously, how much can a HDDVD cost with the casing/cables and just bare bones internal.

I said over a year ago MS will make an itunes style store to sell music/videos on xbox live and they have. If MS wastes millions on a crappy
zune player, they cannot let hddvd just sit there not being 'standard' in the xbox.

They are already in the black on making the xbox360s, they can either drop the price or increase features.

This format war is BIG and long term... It might as well be the 'last format war' since theres no need for anything past this except tiny star trek crystals.

except when you loose your collection

[cheekyboy]

If you have a house fire or a tornado or a horroricane, or theft, or damage...

what will you replace it with.... DVD or HDVD? insurance company pays... choose hd.

RAW PCM audio helps too, no more compressed dolby/thx.

Bullshit

[Rogerborg]

There's no way that there's as many as 3 Blu-ray discs sold per week.

The important question

[Guppy06]

Has either format yet reached the market penetration of the laserdisc format? Because that's pretty much the only segment of the population that will be interested in either for the forseeable future: audiophiles.

the information they need

[mmmmbeer]

There's a simple answer: HD-DVD has porn. HD-DVD cannot lose. The odds are this will play out much like DVD+R/DVD-R rather than betamax/vhs, and both formats will end up playing in all the players. But if that doesn't happen, then the outcome is predetermined. In short, they could tie, but HD-DVD will not lose.

nana

[https3.bitefight.bac]

http://s3.bitefight.ba/c.php?uid=25977

Would be nice..

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if you could just burn the disc (DVD/HD-DVD/BLURAY) right at the store. Pick the movie you want, pick the format you want.. etc.. Of course that would be too easy and wouldn't have enough red tape.

lineslines

[benwaggoner]

Broadcast "lines" are measure differently than in resolution - essentialy, it's the number of times you can tell black and white switching from each other. Due to Nyquist, that number is going to be half th resolution at best. So your "330" broadcast lines would require at least 660 pixels wide of resolution.

Here's what I want to see on Blu-Ray...

[ulatekh]

The current movie selection on both formats is pathetic.

You're damn right it is! Here's what I want to see on Blu-Ray, posthaste:

• Woodstock
  
• Monterey Pop Festival
  
• Blue Man Group: Complex Rock Tour
  
• James Brown: Live at the House Of Blues, 2002 (shot in HD!)
  
• Rush: Replay x 3
  
• Rammstein: Live Aus Berlin
  
• Rammstein: Volkerball
    (hmmm...do you get the idea I want some freaking concerts? :-)
  
• Jurassic Park
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Koyaanisqatsi
  

I can only watch the Blu-Ray of Blazing Saddles so many times...though the desert scenes are drop-dead gorgeous...

Re:Here's what I want to see on Blu-Ray...

[maynard]

I'm soooo tired!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=I8B3pf3mOh0

No good games?

[ulatekh]

with so few games worth playing on the machine right now

Maybe I'm a dementoid or something, but I'm totally addicted to Dark Kingdom right now...