Blue Blu-ray

TopSpin writes "Early this year the meme circulated that Blu-ray might be going the way of Betamax, and for the exact same reason: Sony's unfriendliness to the porn industry. But at Japan's recent euphemistically named Adult Treasure Expo 2007, adult filmmakers said Sony has begun offering technical support, and this was later confirmed by Sony PR. The company stated that Sony would offer support to any filmmaker working on the format, no matter their industry. Apparently, Blu-ray is now the preferred medium for Japanese adult films."

Comments

Any consensus?

[MontyApollo]

Is there any consensus in the geek community about which format is liked best?

Re:Any consensus?

[AuMatar]

Normal DVD- cracked DRM, and most people still don't have HD.

Re:Any consensus?

[hav0x]

whichever the japanese adult filmmakers choose is fine by me.

Re:Any consensus?

[stabiesoft]

I think the consensus is that video is about the same and blu-ray has the edge on audio (if the studio uses the extra capabilities) I think too soon to tell who will win, although I just got a BD player and am crossing my fingers.

Re:Any consensus?

[HTH NE1]

The biggest barrier I can see for the geek community in adopting one format or the other is the lack of consumer-market HD-DVD burners.

But then, Sony's Blu-Ray burner is also still too damn expensive.

Re:Any consensus?

[TheRealMindChild]

Meh. To me, it comes down to:

• How much a burner costs
• How much the media costs
• How many commercial players will support burned movies of format x

Re:Any consensus?

[mmarlett]

The preferred format for the geek community is "teen girl". It will never quite completely erase the "big breast" format, though.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, I prefer the uncensored male on female Japanese porn. Asian porn is OK, but I prefer Japanese out of that genre; I find the Japanese actresses to be much more attractive. Not so much into the Japanese lesbian porn, not sure why. Definitely not into the scat or bukkake porn.

So there you have it. YMMV

Re:Any consensus?

[C0rinthian]

Yeah, because Sony treats their consumers MUCH better than MS does, right?

Re:Any consensus?

[rsmoody]

Which for mat is liked best? Well, for me it's the one I can afford! Hell $2000 on my 50" Plasma and all I could afford was the Toshiba HD-A2, on sale for $240, plus 5 free movies by mail. The closest Blu-Ray is $400 for the older 20GB PS3 and I don't want some noisy player like that, the lowest standalone is about $500. With my HD, the quality is awesome (yes I know the HD-A2 only goes 1080i, but that the best my TV does also, works out that way), I love how the menus work, up-conversion is wonderful. My only complaint is how long it takes to boot up. But, my older Onkyo 6 disc changer takes almost that long. Very few glitches with it so far. Put in Apollo 13 and the sound was all distorted. Popped in Firefly and it was fine, put Apollo 13 back in and it was ok. Just after the firmware update, movie looked like it was playing in 4:3 mode, stopped it, checked settings, restarted, back to 16:9. If/when the Blu-ray players drop, I will get one, I don't mind buying another player for around $250 if the titles are there. So far, there are only a few on Blu-ray that I want. Most are HD, the pushing point for me was Heroes on HD which also means BSG on HD since they are the same parent network (crosses fingers). About the only titles I would see wanting Blu-ray for are *some* Disney titles, mostly the Pixar stuff. Perhaps by that time, Disney will go format neutral, HD will win, or Blu-ray will be affordable.

Re:Any consensus?

[Jartan]

Is there any consensus in the geek community about which format is liked best?

h264 HD w/o DRM

Re:Any consensus?

[cerelib]

If those are your only criteria, then regular DVD wins.

Re:Any consensus?

[BlueParrot]

As I mainly use my optical drives for data transfer and installing an operating system, my main concern is Linux support. Any device that doesn't work with Linux is dead to me ( literally speaking ).

Re:Any consensus?

[Fallen Kell]

Yes to an extent. Now that the full BluRay specs are being followed (the gen 1 systems did not have the ability for overlay video which removed a LOT of the interactive content such as interviews/alternate shots/bloopers/etc. from running in a smaller picture in a corner while the movie is played). HD-DVD seems to have a better picture quality right now on the movies that have been release dual format. However, this may be player based and seems to be at this point, as there have been mixed consensus on this over the last month (as that was first dual format release, previous movies were either available on BluRay OR HD-DVD, not BOTH). There also appears to be differences directly related to the encoding itself with the studio's having more expertise with one format or the other (kind of like a bad game port to a different console, yeah it works and is the game, but it just isn't smooth or the graphics are slightly off because some feature they used when they developed it for the original isn't in the new one, etc., etc., etc...)

There is consensus that BluRay is technically more advanced then HD-DVD. But then, so was Betamax more technically advanced then VHS, and we all know that the less technically advanced format won that war.

Re:Any consensus?

[MBCook]

I'd say Blu-Ray. It's holds more, it uses Java (instead of that thing MS developed for HD-DVD), it has a larger installed base at this point, has a cooler name, is backed by Apple, etc.

Me? I use DVD. I'm not going to replace my nice 5 disc DVD player with a 1 disc player for one of the HD formats while paying $600+ for the privilege. I'm waiting for prices to drop.

Re:Any consensus?

[nebosuke]

Yes? Scary, I know.

Re:Any consensus?

[MontyApollo]

HD format and capacity was kind of implied.

Re:Any consensus?

[kryten_nl]

They both installed shit on their users computers, without their consent, which made the system less secure. Now, which company apologized for doing that?

Re:Any consensus?

[camperslo]

whichever the japanese adult filmmakers choose is fine by me.

Something tells me that if it is the adult video industry that is going to drive a global HD format choice, it probably won't be those from Japan that do it.
I feel a little sorry for a customer buying Japanese HD adult content not knowing that in Japan all genitalia must be covered with mosaic.

How much would you pay to see HD mosaic???

Re:Any consensus?

[Cadallin]

Actually, that's a really good format. x264 with ogg audio in mkv, full support for multiple subtitle tracks. Quite found of that one. 'Cept its a touch leading edge and its taken awhile for the players to nail down their support for the containers. I wish the fansub community could decide the format wars, they often come up with stuff that's very user friendly.

Re:Any consensus?

[veganboyjosh]

How many commercial players will support burned movies of format x

This article is about format xxx, you insensitive clod!

Re:Any consensus?

[nuzak]

blu-ray and HD-DVD supposedly use exactly the same codecs, and I don't see why they would recode with different codecs if they didn't have to, so I should imagine that differences in video quality are indeed based on the player.

Both of 'em still look damn nice. And BTW, Betamax lacked one critical advancement VHS had: longer record time. VHS soon made up the quality difference.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to use paragraphs. Until then, most people won't even bother reading those huge blobs that you write.

Thank you.

Re:Any consensus?

[treeves]

Looks like that's changing (the first part, I almost modded informative) not the trollish second part. See this.

Re:Any consensus?

[xhrit]

To me it comes down to whatever microsoft supports.

I choose the exact opposite.

Re:Any consensus?

[huckamania]

The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. The OSS/Free movements need to move beyond this blind hatred and knee-jerk rejections of everything MS. It gives them too much power.

I almost feel sorry for someone who makes a choice based on the actions of a single corporation. I suppose you missed the story about the MS open source license. Don't read it, or you'll end up in a cave wearing ash cloth.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you side with Sony, another evil company.

Re:Any consensus?

[trolltalk.com]

Who wants H.D. pr0n? Do you really want to see cellulite, open pores, wrinkles, etc. all in high-def? You'll end up wishing porn really did make you go blind.

Hi-def makes it much harder to fulfill people's fantasies with real-life actors. Even the producers are complaining about it.

Re:Any consensus?

[Virak]

How much would you pay to see HD mosaic???

The exact same amount I pay to see SD mosaic.

Seriously, who the fuck buys porn?

Re:Any consensus?

[fbjon]

Who wants H.D. pr0n? Do you really want to see cellulite, open pores, wrinkles, etc. all in high-def? You'll end up wishing porn really did make you go blind. Hi-def makes it much harder to fulfill people's fantasies with real-life actors. Even the producers are complaining about it. I demand a sample to assess the veracity of this claim.

Re:Any consensus?

[HTH NE1]

Normal DVD- cracked DRM, Hasn't HD-DVD and Blu-Ray already been cracked repeatedly, with BD+ protection as yet untested in the market?

and most people still don't have HD. You can get VGA monitors with better than HD resolution. My 21" screen is driven at 2048x1536 (QXGA), more than enough for 1920x1080p, and at less than half the price of most dual-link DVI displays (WQXGA: 2560×1600).

Still being compatible with my KVM switch and the legacy machines on it is a plus.

Re:Any consensus?

[LordSnooty]

Was there also something in the notion that it was cheaper for the media manufacturers to settle on one mechanical format? Today that is not an issue with the discs.

Re:Any consensus?

[HTH NE1]

And BTW, Betamax lacked one critical advancement VHS had: longer record time. VHS soon made up the quality difference. Those who choose recording capacity over quality deserve neither capacity nor quality... or maybe it's the other way 'round?

Except in digital formats without differing bitrate caps, capacity and quality trend together... where something else would have to... decide the....

Um, how tolerable is the layer change in the two formats, and how often?

Re:Any consensus?

[cerelib]

It is not implied. The OP made no mention of capacity being a deciding factor. You could package HD content on DVD, but to get a full length movie it would probably have to span multiple discs. Given the logic of the poster, the price of burners, price of media, and device support, DVD still wins even if you consider using it for HD content.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far your ONLY choice is HDDVD. it supports home movies on standard DVD media in a HD-DVD format out of the box. Blu-Ray is "iffy" about support as they are playing the "all consumers are evil" song right now and do not want to open up the ability for you evil person to put Violently stolen material on a disc and play it.

Get HD-DVD. the players will all be hybrid in a year anyways, and I'd rather use HDDVD over the crappy bluray anyways.

Re:Any consensus?

[dosius]

We have a dual standard: xvid/mp3 avi and x264/m4a mp4.

MP4 is far more standard than MKV will ever be. I don't like either format, though, give me good ol' xvid/mp3 avi and call it a day!

-uso.

Re:Any consensus?

[Pig Hogger]

Well, Japanese pr0n has the annoying habit of blurring-out pubic areas, which is a shame because japanese pr0n has been quite good at addressing my spandex+orientals fetishes...

Re:Any consensus?

[Architect_sasyr]

The lovely people who rip it into nice manageable .torrent files for the rest of us?

Re:Any consensus?

[AmberBlackCat]

I'm incredibly surprised there were no replies to that comment, concerning one entity that supports both formats.

Re:Any consensus?

[tepples]

So you side with Sony, another evil company. Microsoft? Sony? No, Nintendo! I choose whatever I can transcode for MoonShell on my Nintendo DS Lite Homebrew Edition ($169.95).

Re:Any consensus?

[HeroreV]

BMEVideo.com in HD would be awesome.

Re:Any consensus?

[Kamokazi]

I'm waiting on the American adult film makers....Japanese porn is censored :-(

Re:Any consensus?

[Citizen of Earth]

Hi-def makes it much harder to fulfill people's fantasies with real-life actors.

I think the producers who use 18-year-old girls will do just fine with this medium. The producers who use 40-year-old women with fake tits—and plots—should go out of business anyway.

Re:Any consensus?

[Trogre]

Well, yes.

Next question?

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a dual standard: xvid/mp3 avi and x264/m4a mp4. I assume you mean "releases" by mentioning xvid/mp3. x264/ac3 mkv is by far more popular in that scene than mp4 with aac/m4a. In fact, I've seen over 50 HD reencodes now and all were mkv. None were mp4. Though I prefer the original TS, EVO, etc files, I'll take the best I can get.

XviD's only redeeming quality for HD is the low processor requirement. I'd prefer if everyone would just get up to speed so we can drop that HR HDTV XviD crap.

Re:Any consensus?

[glitch23]

Who wants H.D. pr0n? Do you really want to see cellulite, open pores, wrinkles, etc. all in high-def? You'll end up wishing porn really did make you go blind.

Not to mention that Japanese porn will have HD blurring out of portions of the video. Awesome!

Re:Any consensus?

[juniorbird]

These are all perfectly reasonable criteria for you to have. However, since you clearly want the least expensive product -- and probably the one on which the manufacturer makes the least profit -- and have no interest in buying any of the content produced for the format, you should not be surprised if no company is rushing to make products that meet your needs until costs go *way* down, probably a matter of years.

The upside is that, by the time products that meet your needs come out, the format wars will be over and you won't have to worry about spending your money on the wrong format. The downside is that, by the time products that meet your needs come out, the format wars will be over and, just maybe, a standard that makes it maximally annoying to burn movies and view burned movies will have won out.

Re:Any consensus?

[Gabest]

Just use cgi to render our perfect pr0n, it's the 21th century.

Re:Any consensus?

[westlake]

most people still don't have HD.

That is changing very rapidly.

30% of American households have HDTV.
44% of these households receive HD programming.
The "home theater" movie and gaming experience can be more important to buyers than HD programming

>it's easy to forget that this will often be a buyer's first experience with large screen, wide screen, projection, flat panel displays,etc.
>which is good news in the long run for Sony and Blu-Ray.

2/3 get their HD programming by cable TV. 1/4-1/3 by satellite.

30% of U.S. Households Have an HDTV: CEA

Re:Any consensus?

[CastrTroy]

Almost 1/3 have HDTV? Really? I live in Canada, and it isn't that different from the USA up here, and I cannot believe that for a second. I would say that maybe 10% of the people I know own an HDTV. And I know some people with a lot of money. Most people I know just don't see the need for it. Granted most people will probably buy HDTV when it's time to upgrade, since it's hard to find a decent SDTV, but people aren't just running out and buying these things.

Re:Any consensus?

[ShawnMcCool42]

Who cares if most people have whatever? The point is that there's plenty of us that do (it's not that expensive, at all) and there's a market for it.

Re:Any consensus?

[mh1997]

Is there any consensus in the geek community about which format is liked best?

I think girl/girl format is preferred by the majority of geeks, but I am still partial to girl/girl/guy.

Re:Any consensus?

[CastrTroy]

Which brings up a good question. Back in the 80s?? when the VHS-Betamax war was raging, there wasn't many ways to get porn. You could either buy magazines, which were just pictures, or you could buy video cassettes. Now we have the internet. With all the pay-for and free porn on the internet, I think that buying porn in a brick and mortar store will disappear pretty fast. I don't think that porn availability will be the deciding factor in which format wins this time around, because most of the people who are up-and-up on technology, who will be buying the new HD disc players are on the internet, and getting their porn from there.

Re:Any consensus?

[That's Unpossible!]

Let me know when you've got a 50-70" widescreen TV.

It has nothing to do with extreme detail, it has to do with making giant TVs look just as sharp as your 20" TV... stretching a picture made for a small TV (SD) onto a large TV (HD) looks like shit.

Re:Any consensus?

[dindi]

That is what came to my mind immediately!

You forgot

1. pimples

2. inflamed red dots caused by fresh shaving of the ... uhhmmm .... legs ?

Re:Any consensus?

[Maniac-X]

I believe it, at least in the states. I got a little 20" for gaming once we got our Xbox360, just because it looked like crap on my 27" SDTV.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta have plots. Some people still believe the 'I watch them for the storylines' arguement!

Re:Any consensus?

[billcopc]

It's very simple:

Sony backs Blu-Ray. Sony is evil; therefore Blu-Ray is evil.

Year after year, they churn out various forms of lock-in built into their numerous underwhelming products, yet they charge a premium for the brand name. At least the other cheap asian names like Acer, Hicon and Konka don't waste our time and money with trademarked superlatives and coked-up sales reps. I lump Sony in with those crap brands because the only halfway-decent thing they've sold in 30 years is the Playstation line. It has its flaws, but that product line is the one thing that doesn't automatically blow up or become obsolete every other year.

Sony built their reputation in the 70's and early 80's, and has spend every waking moment thereafter, milking that reputation for every penny on the backs of their customers.

Re:Any consensus?

[loafula]

i think its gonna boil down to storage capacity in the end. an HDDVD can hold 30 gb of data; a blu-ray disc can hold 50 gb of data. that's 40% more. the mediums are similar enough where producion cost is gonna be comparable as both formats become more popular; and in the end, people will choose the medium with the greatest capacity.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to buy a Playstation 2. Now try to buy an original XBox. Which one do you have to go to eBay for?

Next, buy a Playstation 3. Buy an Xbox 360. Try to install Linux on both.

Sign up for the online component. Note who charges and who doesn't.

Re:Any consensus?

[Enderandrew]

And the XBox 360 add-on player is getting even cheaper. However the cheapest player is actually a big waste of money. Let's say you invest $240 on your player and start buying movies. You're into the format for $500 by the end of the year, and the format dies. Well, that was $500 you put straight into the trash.

Blockbuster has officially stated they won't carry HD-DVD and they consider the format dead. Major retailers across the country like Wal-Mart and Best Buy have been canceling HD-DVD orders and just sitting on what they have. Target has officially declared HD-DVD dead as well, and said they will no carry it all.

Who really wants to jump in on a dying format? I'm still likely holding off until Christmas when I hope there will be a slightly cheaper PS3 model, but I'm more than likely going BluRay, not only because it is the superior format for storage, but because the movie studios are behind it.

Re:Any consensus?

[Belacgod]

Who buys porn anyhow?

*hums*

back in the not so distant past when I would need a quick repast or a temporary break from my agenda off to the bedroom I would head pull out the playboy beneath the bed and sneak a peek at all the pictures of pudenda

my alternatives were slim if I tried to find another source for sin I'd have to hang out with the losers in the back room of my local video store but last month I finally made the call I got a brand new cable modem installed and I opened up the floodgates on a whole new universe of internet porn

--"Internet Porn," by Da Vinci's Notebook

Re:Any consensus?

[Belacgod]

If I watch one more stupid repairman story, I -will- plotz, that's for sure!

Re:Any consensus?

[Belacgod]

What about girl on girl on girl on girl on girl on guy on sheep? (not a link to any pictures)

Re:Any consensus?

[king-manic]

Almost 1/3 have HDTV? Really? I live in Canada, and it isn't that different from the USA up here, and I cannot believe that for a second. I would say that maybe 10% of the people I know own an HDTV. And I know some people with a lot of money. Most people I know just don't see the need for it. Granted most people will probably buy HDTV when it's time to upgrade, since it's hard to find a decent SDTV, but people aren't just running out and buying these things.

Happen to live on th far east coast where ma and pa have only a quarter and nickel to rub together? Over here in Alberta almost every house hold in my family and friends has one. Of course the housing boom in my city has made everyone more flamboyant with their spending but it's very common here. In my family of close cousins all of them have one in their house/condo. In my circle of friend all of them except the "suffering for my art" ones have one too. Anecdotal certainly. but so is your evidence.

Re:Any consensus?

[yourmomisfasterthana]

No, I'm pretty sure those are the people that work at the stores that sell pr0nz to the people who buy it...

Re:Any consensus?

[C0rinthian]

Try to buy a Playstation 2. Now try to buy an original XBox. Which one do you have to go to eBay for? Already own both. At least my xbox can still read DVD's.

Next, buy a Playstation 3. Buy an Xbox 360. Try to install Linux on both. Because of course, the ultimate concern for anyone buying a GAME CONSOLE is if it runs linux. Personally, I bought neither.

Sign up for the online component. Note who charges and who doesn't. Also note which one sucks and which one doesn't.

Re:Any consensus?

[rsmoody]

I was under the impression that Blockbuster has not officially stated they won't carry HD-DVD, they said that most stores will carry Blu-ray only, some will have both, could be wrong. Where did you see that stores are canceling HD orders? Best Buy has a ton of both, had 300 today. Basically, it looks like Best Buy and etc are getting bribes to push Blu-ray to me, as I was asked no less than 3 times about getting Blu-ray instead of HD, and I used to work there. However, of the "normal" people I know, most have HD and not Blu-ray because they have a 360 and have added the HD drive. Very few people I know have a PS3, of those that do, they care less about Blu-ray movies. Most, if not all, are still buying DVD because they still do not have a capable TV. This is not research, just personal experience here. What of the rumor that Wal-mart had orders for thousands of HD players? Target said they will only sell Blu-ray players, nothing I saw about the content, this could be a counter to the Wal-mart rumor. Also, it seems that this exclusive thing is also not accurate, Sony bought an end cap to demo the thing, HD didn't. Nothing about not selling HD. One of the best things about HD over Blu-ray is the total lack of region coding. Meaning that I can buy T2 from France and play it. If HD dies, it dies, I am not willing to bury it yet. Also, capacity does not mean superiority. Either is sufficient, either looks great, either sounds great. Hell, if a Blu-ray player drops to $250, I am there! I will still be buying HD as my choice however due to the lack of regioning, perhaps I am a fool. Not the first or last time. What matters most to me is that I get to see great looking movies on my 50" Plasma. How I do it, is of little concern. There is honestly room for both formats.

Re:Any consensus?

[boarsai]

Three words: Camera lense filters... that and they could put makeup on more then just a face? Now I'm thinking about this too much, TYVM... where's the tissues?

Re:Any consensus?

[quanticle]

Great, as if hentai tentacle rape wasn't detailed enough...

Re:Any consensus?

[Enderandrew]

The article was here on Slashdot, as well as many other places. Some stores were already test-beds for HD-DVD and some were test-beds for BluRay. Stores that already have HD-DVD titles aren't throwing them out, so they will continue to carry those for a time.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/ 18/1340222&from=rss

As far as retailers canceling HD-DVD orders, I'm not seeing it on a Slashdot search, but I read so many damned tech blogs I'm not sure where I saw it, but have seen a couple articles on the matter. I just saw one yesterday on Target officially declaring HD-DVD dead, but I thought even Slashdot had follow ups to the original Blockbuster just days later where retailers were then canceling HD-DVD shipments because of it.

As far as how many people have each drive, last I saw, BluRay was killing HD-DVD and it wasn't even close. Every PS3 owner has a BluRay, where as very few 360 owners have HD-DVD. Even though HD-DVD has been out longer, BluRay titles have considerably outsold HD-DVD titles as well. Some people said the last straw was a few months back when Pirates and Pirates 2 were released for BluRay the same weekend that there was a big release of all the Matrix DVDs on HD-DVD. The Pirates BluRay discs sold like mad, and no one bought the Matrix re-releases, which was one of the last trump cards the HD-DVD crowd had.

Even last year, when there were fewer than 400,000 PS3's sold, Blu-Ray titles were outselling HD-DVD titles. Given that Sony was selling close to 200,000 PS3's per month around launch and close to 100,000 per month these days, there are quite a few Blu-Ray players out there. Last month Microsoft only sold 40,000 HD-DVD players, and that was at the new cheap price with 5 free movies.

Re:Any consensus?

[Enderandrew]

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/index.cfm

This shows actual movie sales are fairly close on the two platforms, despite the disparity in the number of players out there, but BluRay is still consistently in the lead, and remember they had to come from behind since they launched later (and at a higher price point).

Again, with every major movie studio save for one backing BluRay, sales numbers, and the Blockbuster, Target and Best Buy decisions, it is apparent a winner has emerged. HD-DVD will continue on life support for a while, but again, why buy into a losing format?

Re:Any consensus?

[Daedone]

you do realize that article is 16 months old?

Re:Any consensus?

[bigstrat2003]

Sign up for the online component. Note who charges and who doesn't. Also note which one sucks and which one doesn't. That's kind of a matter of opinion, but... I don't think the PS3's online service is bad. I don't think it's good either, it's just there. Besides, it'd have to suck incredibly badly before I'd pay for Xbox Live. Never. Not as long as I live. Not that I'm going to change Microsoft's approach, of course.

Re:Any consensus?

[dosius]

I've never been in "The Scene", and I don't really want to be.

My TV rips are all plain xvid/mp3 avis. I still know several people with sub-gigahertz cpu computers, after all.

As for "we", I meant my fansub group, sorry I didn't make it clearer. Of course it's not a group you'd know, I doubt there's too many Pokemon fans here...

-uso.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will find that pimples was, in fact, mentioned.

Re:Any consensus?

[Hadlock]

People tend to buy new electronic/home entertainment shit when they buy/move in to a 'new' house for themselves. Peak in any middle class home in an established neighborhood and you'll find plenty of SDTVs bought in the last decade serving proudly.

Re:Any consensus?

[dunkelfalke]

i have watched a couple of hd porns. i actually like it. it is not only sharper, the colour resolution is also better.

Re:Any consensus?

[Carewolf]

There are better algorithms that stretching. There is no reason a SD 50" TV shouldn't look good. Unfortunately people buy shitty DVD-players. I start grinding the axe everytime I see de-interlace artifacts, or boxy pixels on a big screen.

Re:Any consensus?

[Dorceon]

For a moment I thought you were demanding sample asses. Actually, I guess you were.

Re:Any consensus?

[Chrisje]

I'm not sure if I agree. To be honest, I prefer the "horny MILF" format, but it would not surprise me if most of /. ultimately will choose the "AsianTeenSluts" for their money, which means Sony is making inroads.

Re:Any consensus?

[Calinous]

Yeah, looking forward to hear simulated moans in all their BluRay audio glory

Re:Any consensus?

[91degrees]

I don't see why they would recode with different codecs if they didn't have to

Not sure, but they certainly did. EarlyBlu-ray releases used MPEG2 and you could tell.

This is a guess, but I get the impression that the Blu-Ray consortium provided a set of tools that does the whole process of creating a Blu-ray DVD from source and the HD-DVD consortium provided their own set of tools. The tools do the compression and the early version of the Blu-Ray tools didn't offer all the codecs.

Re:Any consensus?

[ceeam]

1. BR is bigger (25 vs 15 gig per layer, dual layer 50 gig BR discs are already available and unlike DL DVDs the prices is _not_ over 2x).

2. You can already buy 5" PC BR recordable drive (at around $500 though). HD - I doubt.

3. BR is supposedly more scratch-resistant.

So - BR, at least as PC media - and I don't care much about other uses, wins hands down for me.

Re:Any consensus?

[jimshatt]

How is a 70" picture that's just as sharp as your 20" TV not 'extreme detail'? It's just that the detail is displayed on a bigger area. Pixels per inch is lower, but the same information is conveyed. I mean, you'd still see all the whores and prinkles.

Re:Any consensus?

[Eivind]

Longer record time is a very definite plus. Having to swap media during the recording of a single movie is hopeless, bad enough that you'll basically never want to do it. Often when you record something it's precisely because you're *not* there to watch it.

Having to swap when you're watching is _sligthly_ less horrible, but nevertheless a significant drawback. Getting from 1 to 3 hours is a major win.

The win continues with larger collections too, especially with media that are random access, as most are these days. Fitting one entire film on one physical disc is nice. Being able to fit *all* your media on a single media is even better. A major comfort-thig with mp3s over CDs is the fact that these days you get your entire collection at fingertip/remote-control access, not only a single CD.

Re:Any consensus?

[stranger_to_himself]

You can apply that argument to all media.

Re:Any consensus?

[Rick17JJ]

I have a 13 inch television which I watch from a chair 12 feet away on the other side of the room. I doubt that I could see any benefit from using Blu-Ray instead of an ordinary DVD on the 13 inch TV from that distance.

The only larger screen that I have is the 20 inch LCD flatscreen on my computer (not a wide screen). I use larger screen on the computer, because, as I became middle-aged, I found that I needed reading glasses to see close up and the larger monitor helped greatly. However, watching TV on a 13 inch TV 12 feet away is still absolutely no problem and I am satisfied with that setup.

By the way, one advantage to becoming middle aged is that I can no longer hear that loud, annoying, high-pitched noise that I had to put up with for decades, coming from TVs and computer monitors in the 1960s through the 1980s or so. Most people could not hear the high-pitched frequency. I am not sure if new TVs still make the annoying high-pitched noise or not, since I can't here it anymore. Television manufacturers must not have cared about an annoying high-pitched noise that only a small percentage of their customers could here.

I get 6 channels from the electronically amplified rabbit ears antenna on my 13 inch TV. There are still no over-the-air HDTV channels being broadcast where I live and that will soon be a problem when they turn off the over-the-air analog broadcasts here is the U.S. in another year or two. I will then need to see if it is possible to get cable where I live, or if not, perhaps I will get a satellite dish or maybe just rent DVDs of movies and my favorite TV shows instead. I do not suppose you would describe me as an early adopter of new types of television and video technologies.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least one studio is starting to work around this stupid law by flying the pornstars to the US and filming there on fake Japanese sets. The videos are then offered for import back into Japan; I'm not sure how legal that is, but they seem to have got away with it so far. Hopefully this idea will spread ...

Re:Any consensus?

[tehcyder]

Is there any consensus in the geek community about which format is liked best?

Yes. Next!

Re:Any consensus?

[JurgenThor]

I know that high pitched sound all too well. I'm 27, and I hear it often. Though I think it's becoming a bit less common.
LCD monitors DO still have it, I think it comes from the fluorescent back light. Oh, and my old HP laptop used to do it whenever the intel wireless was enabled.
So few people hear it, most just think I'm crazy when I point it out. There's a really bad source at London's Liverpool Street Station, nearly floors me when I walk past it.

Re:Any consensus?

[mrand]

Most people could not hear the high-pitched frequency. I am not sure if new TVs still make the annoying high-pitched noise or not, since I can't here it anymore. Television manufacturers must not have cared about an annoying high-pitched noise that only a small percentage of their customers could here. My Philips 27" flat-screen CRT that I bought 4.5 years ago has a horrible high-pitch until it gets warmed up (or maybe it's that your brain finally tunes it out after several minutes - although I don't think so, because I've heard it shift to a higher frequency a time or two). Over the years, the length and intensity of the high-pitch screeching is slowly going away.

To keep me from being completely mod'ed off-topic: While HDTV prices are rapidly dropping, I'm not sure the adoption rate has been increasing at the same pace. I think it will take certain key sizes to cross magical thresholds before the adoption rate starts "changing rapidly" (words of the GP post).

Slightly related: weren't we reading just last week that 60-something percent of the households in the US didn't know that analog t.v. is going away in two years?

      Marc

Re:Any consensus?

[utnapistim]

30% of American households have HDTV.
44% of these households receive HD programming.
30% of U.S. Households Have an HDTV: CEA [blogspot.com]

UINTW (USA Is Not The World)

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was implied. You knew what he meant, which is probably why you internally thought your reply was all witty and funny. This is a discussion about HD content not an exercise in rhetoric. Stop being a dipshit.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing "Japanese HD adult content" with "adult content sold in Japan".

There are a lot of uncensored Japanese porn available. Only the porn that goes for sale in local Japanese market is censored.

Re:Any consensus?

[Dal Platinum]

At least I wasn't the only one who could hear that. I could tell if the TV was on in my bedroom from the other side of the house.

As for the rest of the topic..

My mother got an HDTV before I did. Then my brother, then I finally got one myself. Most of my friends still don't though, and if I look around the office, only about 4 people out of 30 have one. This is in the UK though. We don't have much in the way of broadcast HDTV yet. They are mostly being bought by people with a 360 or PS3, as far as I can tell.

Re:Any consensus?

[FunkSoulBrother]

I would argue that porn is different, though, as it can be an embarrassing purchase. Thus, internet distribution is much more attractive, and much more likely to kill the brick+mortar shop than distribution of the latest pop CD via iTunes.

Re:Any consensus?

[Chuffpole]

You see all that in real life and it doesn't seem to put anyone off. You can squint if you like!

SquiNt, I said.

Re:Any consensus?

[Mark Gillespie]

Blu all the way. It's by far the techically superior format. Much higher storage capacity, much higher bitrate/bandwidth, much better industry support, much more durable media.

Re:Any consensus?

[Dal Platinum]

PS3, noisy? I can barely tell mine is running.

You might be thinking of the 360. Mine has a drive in it that will scare the crows out of your cornfield.

Re:Any consensus?

[angus_rg]

Come on, there's nothing hotter then a butt pimple......

Re:Any consensus?

[El Mariachi 94]

When you go to a movie theater, and watch 35mm film projected onto the screen, you are effectively seeing at least 1 million more pixels than what a frame of 1080i/p has. Essentially, a theater shows higher than HD resolution. Filmmakers have had to deal with this issue for years. It's TV people who have been getting the free ride of low resolution which allows them to get away with shabby lighting and makeup.

Re:Any consensus?

[catxk]

I believe porn has been available in hi-res picture format for quite some time. I don't see the difference as far as detail level is concerned.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does Apple. They also have lock-in. I mean, they still use iPod dock connectors when the rest of the world uses mini-USB. You need to buy overpriced hardware to run their (admittedly) cheap desktop software.

However, Microsoft are backing HD-DVD, and they're fucking angelic, and treat their customers like royalty.

Oh wait...

Anti-Sony is soooooo 2005. And your ignorance is legion.

Re:Any consensus?

[MBGMorden]

Yeah, not like those things actually occur in real life or anything. Newsflash, if a Slashdotter ever DOES get a girlfriend, they come with all the aforementioned flaws, and it really ain't all that bad.

Re:Any consensus?

[rsmoody]

hmm, that's good to know about the noise level, thanks. I am curious, does the PS3 support Dolby TrueHD or whatever it's called? What about HDMI 1.3, BDj1.1 or what ever the new one is? (just answered my questions on the HDMI, yes 1.3, Dolby TrueHD, yes, still don't know about the BDj stuff) Sort of bums me out that I may have picked the looser in this battle, but oh well. I won't have a massive library of HD stuff, I will get the 5 free ones, find some used ones here and there, and of course the exclusives that I like such as Heroes and all. Here is what gets me, of all the catalog of titles, 90% of what I want and like are HD and a lot are HD only. Smallville, Star Trek, BSG, Heroes, John Wayne, 2001 and a few others. Then, there is the decision later this year of Blade Runner. I mean, I want that bad! It will be on both formats, but should I just get the HD or wait all together until I get a BR player? ARG! I just cannot afford a BR player right now, they are just too expensive! What really irritates me is the perceived arrogance of the BR camp at the prices of the players. The HD camp has realized that a lower cost player can and will entice people to take the plunge as I did. At the moment, I don't even know if I would have chosen BR over HD if the players had been the same price. Why? One word...Heroes.

Re:Any consensus?

[cerelib]

"HD content" can be put on any media that will hold a byte. One of the biggest reasons we have these new formats is that nobody wants to have to swap out/turn over discs multiple times just to watch a single movie. One of the biggest debates in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is over capacity. Some people want Blu-Ray because it is demonstrating higher capacity and potential for capacity. The OP made no mention of capacity, only that he wants a cheap and ubiquitous format. If those are your criteria, then DVD wins. Like it or not, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray still have to compete with DVD. Until they can compete on price and ubiquitousness, DVD can beat them in some markets. Don't just assume we should all just give up on DVD because some corporations said so. I personally hope both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray go the way of the Laser Disc and we get a third, better and more open, format. The spread of upscaling DVD players may just give the market enough time to come up with something new, but only time will tell. So I am not trying to be witty or funny, I just think that people should make the choice that is best for them and their needs without feeling forced to choose between two corporate coalitions trying to force feed "the future" to us.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the post that was an hour and a half older than yours?

Re:Any consensus?

[angus_rg]

That question is like asking what is better to have, herpes or syphillis. The answer depends solely on your point of view. You can argue one way or the other which is better. Both are more then capable of holding 4+ hours of HD movies. You can start debating 1080i vs 1080p(they both show the same amount of information, just one does it in 2 passes, and most current 1080p TVs do a wonderful job Deinterlacing, and both models now support 1080p), and you can even argue that HD-DVD looks better because it uses VC-1 and BR uses MPEG-2. Yes, it is true that VC-1 looks better(I've seen a 1080i TVs with HD-DVD playing the same movie as a BR 1080p TV setup at CompUSA, and the 1080i blew it away), however, Sony came to the realization that they had to swallow their pride(doesn't happen often) and has started using VC-1, so it is a moot point. You can complain about BR lack of standardization and half their players will be obsolete, which is true, but it won't affect the PS3s, nor any player made after october. Bottomline, both are in their infancy, neither is winning, so wait as long as you can. If you can't wait, pick the format that has the most movies you want to, or find the cheapest player you can, invest in it, and use netflix or BB to rent the movies you want to see. Then, you will only have hardware interest, and not have a worthless movie collection(which always costs more then the hardware). I went with the Xbox add on at the begining of the year, but prices on both are coming more inline, so that option may not be good at this point in time. Refurbs are good options, especially if you aren't sold on a side winning.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was |--| this far away from getting the HD drive for my 360, mainly for Heroes and The Matrix. Sadly, it won't pull 1080p on my TV (1080p only via HDMI). So I started getting BR films.

if BDj is the Java system they're working on, it will support whatever the current standard is through firmware updates. I believe most HD players (BR and HD-DVD) will support firmware upgrading.

If you're buying a standalone, there's nothing between them visually (player depending). BR *can* do uncompressed 5.1 audio though, if that's the sort of thing you'd notice. Interface-wise, HD-DVD is better than BR at this time. But the java side of BR has awesome potential, we just need to wait for them to finish it.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

They need all that extra capacity to fit the massive amount of bush.

Re:Any consensus?

[AK Marc]

most people still don't have HD.

That is changing very rapidly.
30% of American households have HDTV.
44% of these households receive HD programming.

You quote only current penetration stats, not the rate of change. By your numbers, less than 15% of households receive any usable HD programming (and that's not related to the percentage of HD watched, if any). 15% penetration is pretty small, and the reason it is growing so fast is that TVs of moderate size and larger are all HD. I don't think there is a store left carrying anything 42" or higher that isn't HD. And, for $80 more I could get a $10 antenna for the over-the-air HD content. So, buy any medium or larger TV and a cheap add-on antenna and you are counted in those 15%. That's because the government has mandated digitial TV, not because customers are flocking to it because of the improvements.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy p0rn? Are you kidding? Since there is so much of it available for free on the internets, is there anyone who still pays for it?

Re:Any consensus?

[Chosen Reject]

Which is very true. However, the USA consumes more entertainment than anywhere else, though I won't go so far as to say per capita, because I'm not sure. For example, take a look at VGChartz. Japan has purchased slightly more consoles as the rest of the world, but the USA has Japan beat by 5.5 million units. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours of a 93-country release, 8.3 million of which were in the USA alone. Looking at worldwide movie grosses you'll see that in nearly every case the USA accounts for nearly 1/3 to 1/2 of a movies box office success.

Because of all this you would expect the USA to have a higher adoption rate than anywhere else, and because of that, the HD format of choice will most likely be won in the USA. So pointing to what US adoption rates of a form of entertainment is a valid argument even if it doesn't represent the rest of the world.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well hell, I got myself a horny MILF that is a teen with big breasts. She's 19 and still breastfeeding, so they are large and firm. But she's not asian.

Re:Any consensus?

[Chosen Reject]

It is not implied. The OP made no mention of capacity being a deciding factor.

I'm not going to try to tell you what the OP was implying or not implying, however, if anything was implied he didn't have to mention it.

Re:Any consensus?

[C0rinthian]

Never. Not as long as I live. And this is why your opinion doesn't matter. It's irrational. Your reason for not using one service over the other is either a) It's Microsoft or b) it costs money. There is no thought for what the product actually is, what it does provide, (or does not) or what value that product carries. And if there is any thought to these things, you don't provide it.

Personally, I think they're both shit companies, so they both get equal consideration from me. (with heavy modifiers from past performance)

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we have the internet. With all the pay-for and free porn on the internet, I think that buying porn in a brick and mortar store will disappear pretty fast.

Hold up there a sec, chief. People still pay for pr0n?

Re:Any consensus?

[Fezmid]

It may be changing, but it's still safe to say that most people do not have HD...

Using your numbers, let's say there's 75,000,000 households in the US (there's roughly 300,000,000 people in the US, so this seems like a reasonable number of households). 30% have HDTV, or 22,500,000 households. Of those, only 44% have HD content (crazy!), or 9.9 million households. That's it. That's a very tiny number.

(I still find it crazy that the majority of people with HDTV don't actually have HD content... But that's another story).

As for the "consensus" part of the thread -- I prefer HD DVD (and have a player) for a few reasons. First, there's less DRM than Blu-Ray. Second, there's no region coding on HD DVD so I can buy a movie wherever I want in the world and play it here. Third, I don't like how Sony rushed out a defective product just to keep people from adopting HD DVD (the Blu-Ray spec isn't even finalized yet -- all the current BD players, with the possible exception of the PS3, will not be able to play any of the new features that disks will begin to have at the end of the year. On the other hand, HD DVD has had these interactive features since day 1 - it's mandatory in the spec.

Oh, and Sony pissed me off with that whole rootkit thing. ;)

Re:Any consensus?

[cerelib]

That is a good catch. My point was that capacity is usually what is brought up as the biggest difference between the two formats. Since the OP did not seem to care about capacity, but only price and availability it should not be implied that it is really that important to him. There are many people who see capacity as the most important difference between the two. Omitting it as a deciding factor seems to imply the exact opposite, that is, the OP does not care about capacity. There are many markets out there that do not need the extra capacity and will continue to choose DVD until it is completely phased out.

Re:Any consensus?

[Fezmid]

Then you're in trouble, because MS is sorta supporting both, by way of their VC-1 codec...

Re:Any consensus?

[ivan256]

Your reason for not using one service over the other is either a) It's Microsoft or b) it costs money. There is no thought for what the product actually is, what it does provide, (or does not) or what value that product carries. And if there is any thought to these things, you don't provide it.

You could turn that around you know... Your reason for using a particular service is based solely in what it provides, and now who provides it, how, or how much it costs. Why isn't it important to consider the who, and what they'll do with the money in making a purchasing decision. It's the same crap the "rootkit" whiners do. Not liking a company's behavior is a perfectly valid reason not to solicit the services of a company, and it's completely rational, not irrational.

Re:Any consensus?

[treeves]

Actually 14 months. And I didn't notice it when I linked to it. I don't really follow this stuff that closely, so maybe you can tell me, since the article is over a year old, what was the outcome? Did the DVD Forum change their minds or fail to reach agreement and so no region codes for HD-DVD, or did it end up that they have it, or still will have it, in which case the article is still relevant?

Re:Any consensus?

[angus_rg]

Who want's to watch porn on a 70+ inch TV. No need to make the average man feel even more inferior. I already get enough erectile disfunction spam as is.

Re:Any consensus?

[GlynnSmith]

With Blockbusters selection of Blue Ray, it would seem HD-DVD would be in trouble: http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/17/blockbuster-cho oses-blu-ray-is-the-war-over/

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll likely never have a TV bigger than the 30" one I have now.

It works fine, looks fine, and I don't need anything more than it, so why would I waste that kind of money?

Re:Any consensus?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

It actually wouldn't, most 720p h264 movies i've seen end up at just about 4 gigabytes.

I imagine dual layer dvd would be more than enough, although then we're shrinking the second criteria a lot (how many stand alone players support burned media x)

Re:Any consensus?

[bigstrat2003]

My opinion is quite rational, thank you very much. There is exactly one feature I care about. That is to play games against other people (or with them, depending on the game). Sony, Nintendo, and the PC all offer this functionality for FREE (MMOs excepted, and I'm ok with that, because they're running a persistent world, so I get some extra value for my dollar). Until all platforms charge for online play, I will never pay Microsoft to play online.

That's not irrational at all, that's a simple comparison of Microsoft's cost to the costs of all their competitors.

Re:Any consensus?

[Daedone]

AFAIK, they are still region free

Re:Any consensus?

[colagor]

your just whipped man, porn's way better than real girls, not just becuase of the afforementioned ass pimples, its just that it has functions like; pause, rewind and most importantly mute.

Re:Any consensus?

[Anonymous Coward]

you forget, this is slashdot. porn is the closest he's likely to get to real sex.

Blu-kake

[Dude McDude]

Those crazy Japanese!!!

Re:Blu-kake

[HTH NE1]

Yet Sony still won't let them press porn disks in Japan; they have to press them in Taiwan and import them.

Re:Blu-kake

[Zantetsuken]

And yet it's still probably cheaper for the porn companies to do it that way. If it really is cheaper to do so, why the hell not?

Re:Blu-kake

[nuzak]

Japan has some seriously restrictive porn laws (all that hentai porn is something of a loophole concerning animation). Perhaps Sony would be taxed higher or incur the possibility of contributory liability if they pressed porn discs?

Re:Blu-kake

[king-manic]

Japan has some seriously restrictive porn laws (all that hentai porn is something of a loophole concerning animation). Perhaps Sony would be taxed higher or incur the possibility of contributory liability if they pressed porn discs?

Really? Well.. Thats news to me. Have you even seen any Japaneses porn?

The Swing Content

[HTH NE1]

The porn industry is perfectly capable of going both ways... and a few others besides.

Blu-Ray Job

[TheWizardTim]

Watch out for job postings looking for "Blu-Ray Job" experience.

Re:Blu-Ray Job

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt a great disturbance in the force. As if thousands of resumes had been simultaneously updated.

Za eentaenetto eesu foru porun

[lohphat]

Avenue Q FTW!

Re:Za eentaenetto eesu foru porun

[Anonymous Coward]

> Za eentaenetto eesu foru porun

Za eentaenetto eesu foru porun! Cthulu's tentacles rapee me horn! J-porn, porn, porn!

Difference?

[lymond01]

Without looking at the tubes, I've been curious (not too) about the end user functional difference between blu-ray and HD-DVD (aside from one having fewer syllables). Is it like buying a red porsche cayenne or a blue porsche cayenne? I'm not sure how two devices can compete with each other if they are essentially the same. Will their market lifetime boil down to non-technical reasons, as stated in the article? Is there some nifty upgrade path that one allows over the other?

Re:Difference?

[harryk]

without getting to the nitty gritty details. It's something like your example.

think more like the porsche and the toureg. Both essentially luxury class suvs, one costs more than the other, but essentially still just a sporty suv.

The difference really is space. compare say ... the sporty suv to an escalade or something. Both still luxury, but one can physically fit more inside.

I believe hd-dvd is on the order of 15-20gb, where a blu-ray disc is 50-60gb. So the blu-ray disc can hold the same length movie, with less compression, and as a result ( theortically ) a better image.

there are a number of technical differences, but the end user I think is more concerned with the physical aspects of data storage, wether for audio/video or data, which is why I think (opinion only) Blu-ray is the better format.

cheers,
harryk

Re:Difference?

[harrkev]

We had the same sort of thing when DVD-R and DVD+R we duking it out. Now, we just buy a $35 burner that can handle both and use the cheapest media that we can find. Life goes on.

Re:Difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture if you had to build a garage, type A only fits car A type B only fits car B - you have to make a choice. Either choose A to buy all your cars from Sony in the future, or B have the choice of every other company in the world.

Re:Difference?

[Datasage]

Its 30GB for HD-DVD and 50GB for Blue Ray.

But realistically, you can compress a full length 720p HD movie to about 5 GB without much compression artifacts, with the right codec. So either format is enough for HD.

Re:Difference?

[omeomi]

We had the same sort of thing when DVD-R and DVD+R we duking it out.

The difference is that nobody has any idea what the difference is between DVD-R and DVD+R. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD, however allow for differing amounts of data storage.

Re:Difference?

[GreatDrok]

"I believe hd-dvd is on the order of 15-20gb, where a blu-ray disc is 50-60gb. So the blu-ray disc can hold the same length movie, with less compression, and as a result ( theortically ) a better image."

HD DVD is 15GB (I have no idea what a gb is) per layer. Blu-Ray is 25GB per layer. Both can come in dual layer formats and so HD DVD can have up to 30GB and Blu-Ray 50GB. Both support exactly the same video and audio codecs and also AACS DRM although Blu-Ray has an additional layer of encryption which HD DVD lacks although it hasn't be used yet. Blu-Ray is also region encoded whereas HD DVD isn't so you can buy your discs from anywhere in the world if you buy them on HD DVD but you can only buy them within your own region if you buy Blu-Ray.

Picture quality wise there is nothing in it. In all the tests so far, HD DVD has been equal or better where the film is available on both formats. Truth is, a 1080p HD signal can easily fit into 30GB using VC-1. A number of Blu-Ray discs are still using MPEG2 which is less efficient and is why they don't look as good as the HD DVD VC-1 equivalent.

In the end, the technical differences are small enough not to make the slightest difference. Physically, the discs are the same dimensions and a combi drive is practical so there is no reason to believe that a cheap multiformat player won't exist. Samsung is supposed to be releasing their DVD/HD DVD/Blu-Ray combi player in europe for 400 shortly and it will support all formats fully.

Personally, I bought an HD DVD drive for my Xbox 360 so I would have some HD material for my HD TV and HD projector. For the money I would have been daft not to and there were enough films on the format to get me started. Even today, there is little to choose between HD DVD and Blu-Ray when it comes to choice of films. Compared with DVD, HD DVD is definitely clearer and has richer colours and deeper blacks. I have an upscaling HDMI DVD player which helps make DVD look very good, but HD DVD is definitely better. When the combi player becomes available I will buy one and use that instead of my Xbox 360 and also have the option of Blu-Ray.

Re:Difference?

[masdog]

Um...in case you haven't been to a consumer electronics store in the last six months, there are more 3rd party Blu-Ray players than there are HD-DVD players total. Unlike Betamax, this isn't a Sony-only product.

Re:Difference?

[Stormwatch]

The difference is that nobody has any idea what the difference is between DVD-R and DVD+R.

The difference is very clear, when you think about it. See, one is negative, the other is positive. So you use DVD-R to store emo songs, drama movies, professional images, and war-themed 3D shooters; and use DVD+R to store pop-rock songs, comedies, funny cat pics, and 2D platformers.

Re:Difference?

[Night Goat]

Personally, I bought an HD DVD drive for my Xbox 360 so I would have some HD material for my HD TV and HD projector.

You should definitely look into getting an antenna hooked up to pull down some over-the-air HD programming. I thought I'd need some mega-huge antenna to get a signal because I live in a rural area, but I was able to use a powered rabbit ear antenna and I can get the five or six stations that broadcast near me. It looks really good, too. Saturday baseball on Fox is a highlight of the week for me now, because of the increased clarity and the wide screen view. You can see a lot more of the action. You might already know about OTA reception, but I'm surprised how many of my friends bought really nice HDTVs and are just using analog cable or analog broadcast TV.

Re:Difference?

[HTH NE1]

(I have no idea what a gb is) It's a gram-bit, the mass equivalent to an eV (electron-Volt).

Re:Difference?

[nevali]

That very much depends on where in the world the poster might live--in the UK, OTA HD is still very much in its infancy.

Re:Difference?

[Kjella]

Picture quality wise there is nothing in it. In all the tests so far, HD DVD has been equal or better where the film is available on both formats.

Just a note: That is because most that release on both formats use *exactly* the same video encoding on both, the difference if any is in the audio so you're comparing someone that's arbitrarily restricted themselves to be the same. There are only a few blu-ray releases that both use a good codec and use the full 50GB. But as you say, with a good codec 30GB has been plenty, usually it's the source material that has been the limiting factor.

Re:Difference?

[G-funk]

I'd say the Cayenne vs the Touareg is a perfect example. They're the same car (mpeg-4 or x264 or whatever), only dressed up differently (more / less storage, java / whatever hd-dvd has, different studios supporing them, etc).

Re:Difference?

[GreatDrok]

"You should definitely look into getting an antenna hooked up to pull down some over-the-air HD programming"

Given that I am in New Zealand now and the nearest HDTV broadcasts are in Australia which is about 1200Km away I would need one hell of an antenna to pull those in :-)

Seriously though, it doesn't look like NZ is going to be getting OTA HD any time soon so HD DVD or Blu-Ray is the only way to enjoy the readily available HDTVs which people are buying like mad. We don't even get OTA DTT SDTV broadcasts yet although that is supposed to start in 2008. For the moment, the only way to get digital TV is via Sky which is very limited compared with what I used to get in the UK.

Re:Difference?

[dfghjk]

"I believe hd-dvd is on the order of 15-20gb, where a blu-ray disc is 50-60gb."

Thanks for your rigorous research. It would have been so tough to confirm the right answer.

"...which is why I think (opinion only) Blu-ray is the better format."

an opinion based on little understanding of the two formats.

"think before you write, it'll save me moderator points."

So much attitude for someone who can't be bothered to check the facts.

Re:Difference?

[bakura121]

I threw my full support behind HD DVD with the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. I have been extremely pleased with the quality, although the menus can be slow to open at times.

That said, I am starting to have my doubts. As much as I hate to think this, it looks like Blu-ray may be winning the race. They are getting more exclusive deals with stores and they have more exclusive studio support than HD DVD.

Personally, I think that Sony should not have been allowed to make their movies exlusive to Blu-ray. I think that created an unfair advantage that HD DVD will not have unless Blu-ray goes belly up. I'm surprised that someone hasn't filed a lawsuit about it. In the end, I think that leverage and unwillingness to provide their movies on HD DVD is what is going to cause Blu-ray to win. It is a lot more likely that Universal and other HD DVD exlusive studios will want to expand to the Blu-ray market than it is for Sony to make their movies available to HD DVD. Sony is relying heavily on Blu-ray to be successful.

Re:Difference?

[GreatDrok]

"I threw my full support behind HD DVD with the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. I have been extremely pleased with the quality, although the menus can be slow to open at times. "

Although I bought HD DVD for my 360 I didn't consider this throwing my whole weight behind it. Sure, I have bought a bunch of HD DVDs because, well, the picture is amazing. I would have bought Blu-Ray if I could have got a player for the same money though, its just that a PS3 was a much more expensive proposition. However, I wouldn't buy a Blu-Ray only player even if I didn't already have an HD DVD drive and some films. I would cover my bases and buy a combi player just as I did when DVD first appeared and I had a large LD collection. My LD/DVD combi player is still going strong and made all the difference in the world to me as I could still buy and play LDs as well as buying DVDs. There are decent priced combi DVD/HD DVD/Blu Ray players coming so in the end whether you buy HD DVD or Blu Ray is simply down to the movie and what platform you choose to buy. Buying a Blu Ray only machine is just silly.

Re:Difference?

[cyphercell]

So when I have a terabyte disk on my PC in five years, do I want to do my backups with 34 HD disks or 20 Blu-Ray disks? Do I want the whole collection of star wars on one disk or two. Honestly I think the storage space will make a difference more than anything.

Re:Difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

(I have no idea what a gb is) This is Slashdot! How can you NOT know what a GB is !!1111!!1eleventy!! GB == GigaByte, 1 billion bytes of data.

Re:Difference?

[White Flame]

Yeah, as I said in another thread, I've seen store displays with HD-DVD and BluRay next to each other, both to 1080p displays running the same movie. HD-DVD is always a bit better looking, though that's just to my pixelophile eyes. I'm not sure if the average consumer would notice, but the types of people buying these things read articles from people who do notice, run tests, and report in magazines. Both formats still appear to be a blocky, compressed mess to me.

Re:Difference?

[GreatDrok]

"Both formats still appear to be a blocky, compressed mess to me."

Interesting. I suspect what you are seeing there is poorly set up displays. I run HD DVD on a 120" DLP front projection system and it has none of the blocking that is typical of DVD. In fact, I haven't seen any artefacts whatsoever on HD DVD and that is certainly not true for regular DVD where banding and blocking is very common unless you are talking high bit rate transfers. On displays in shops though it is common for them to have sharpness and contrast settings which are wildly high and this can make even the cleanest of sources look poor. Trust me, on my big screen HD DVD is the closest to a high quality cinematic presentation you are going to see without resorting to 35mm film. In some respects it is actually much better than a real cinema and that is certainly not something I could say about DVD on the same screen.

Re:Difference?

[Ginger Unicorn]

it will make a difference to the writeable data media market, where it seems a no-brainer that BluRay will win. It's bigger; Game over. But that doesn't impact the home video market where other factors will matter, so that question is more complex. I think its very difficult to predict what will happen there.

Re:Difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

:yuck: You store emo songs?

Re:Difference?

[Mark Gillespie]

You forget the important one. Bandwidth (which directly translates into bitrate).

HD-DVD 30Mbit/sec
Blu-Ray 54Mbit/sec

That alone means Blu-Ray is technically capable of looking and sounding better. The extra 25GB helps with the larger encodes.

At the moment, many studios are releasing on both, and thus encoding at a bitrate that suits HD DVD. Once that is out the way, they can encode higher, and get even better looking Blu Movies.

Re:Difference?

[cyphercell]

I think it does, the other night I got to play on a PS3 for the first time. I played a game where you could find tvs laying around and just watch hours and hours of old programing. Things like star trek could be bundled Movies, TV series, soundtracks and even video games all in one relatively small package. 50GB is a lot to dedicate to a single movie, but, the media markets can be consolidated through the use of Blu-ray much better than they can under HDDVD.

Re:Difference?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Sure, ok, as long as you're not comparing them to porsches. I had the image of a 911 vs touraeg - definitely not the same thing.

Re:Difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using your analogy, The blue Porsche Cayenne would come with a few extra layers of paint and/or clear coat(durabris), a higher horsepower turbo-engine(higher bandwidth), and a larger gas tank(more disc space).

Both will come with run-flat tires(AACS) but the blue Cayenne comes with a spare tire(Extra DRM). Both have DVD navigation systems but the blue Cayenne's DVD navigation system is still being installed(HDi vs BD-J) which may not work in older blue Cayennes.

Obviously the Blue Cayenne cost more to purchase, but they both cost about the same to run. However you can only fill up the Red Cayenne at Sunoco gas stations and two other major gas retailers, while the Blue Cayenne can be filled up anywhere but Sunoco(Movie Studio support).

Re:Difference?

[Ginger Unicorn]

yeah i didnt mean that the large storage space had no impact on the video market, just that other factors come into play so it isnt so cut and dried.

Re:Difference?

[ahoehn]

HD DVD is 15GB (I have no idea what a gb is) You sir, are inspiration to us all.

Not only did you notice that harryk had improperly capitalized the abbreviation for Gigabyte, you went above and beyond the call of duty and snidely used hyperbole to assure that the rest of the Slashdot community recognized both your brilliance and harryk's error.

[real men of genius music] We salute you Mr. needlessly belittling others for their insignificant mistakes man. [/real men of genius music]

*Note: By nastily pointing out GreatDrok's belittling, did I just become a Meta-Nerd-Belittler? Interesting.

Re:Difference?

[GreatDrok]

"capitalized the abbreviation for Gigabyte"

Don't you mean GigaByte? :-P

Annoys me no end when people talk about Gb when they mean GB.

Re:Difference?

[Ben Hutchings]

DVD+R discs have more precise positioning information which allows a burner to continue burning after a buffer under-run and still make a valid disc. They can also be marked as DVD-ROM. These both help to improve compatibility. Still, I agree the capacity difference here is more obvious and significant.

Re:Difference?

[Night Goat]

That's too bad. I am surprised though, it seems like lately the USA's been getting left in the dust on technology. I guess our lawmakers here in the US don't want to get between their constituents and their daily dose of TV!

Re:Difference?

[G-funk]

Sorry to burst your bubble dude, but the Porsche and the VW are literally the same car. Just some different engines and trim (internal and headlights / taillights etc).

Re:Difference?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Hello - 911s are certainly different cars from a VW. The Cayenne doesn't count :)

Who cares

[Knara]

Until there's an affordable HDDVD/BluRay hybrid player, I couldn't care less what format has what movies (or what kind of movies, for that matter).

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately, that's what people will be using... the "format war" between the two will be inconsequential and on-going. All the best players will play "both formats" and consumers will buy those and not care which format they buy.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true. It's the reason we still have DVD+R and DVD-R. Kind of a waste really. I prefer one over the other for technical reasons. That being DVD+R of course with the DVD-ROM bitsetting. Are there any reasons to prefer DVD-R?

Re:Who cares

[masdog]

I don't know about that. It seems like Blu-Ray is gaining the advantage right now. According to the wikipedia article, Blockbuster has decided to offer blu-ray in most of its stores. Target is giving Blu-ray prominence over HD-DVD. Three of the five major movie studios release on Blu-ray exclusively, with a fourth that releases on both. I think the format war has been settled.

The bigger war is still coming - Blu-ray vs. DVD. Most people won't need, or want, Blu-Ray for a couple of years, especially since the price of a good upconvert DVD player is at least 1/4th of the price of a blu-ray player.

Re:Who cares

[cybrthng]

Toshiba HD-DVD players are 238 on Amazon.com. I've seen them go onsale to 199.00. The Xbox Addon is 149.00 at blockbuster and 179.00 elsehwere and all HD-DVD players have 5 free HD-DVD movies. The 360 addon also packs in KingKong.

Am I the only one who just doesn't care about HD?

[bigtangringo]

I really don't care for the HD craze, I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

All hail

[earnest murderer]

our pixelated vagina overlords!

Re:All hail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, Blue Ray!
Built-in support for pixelating naughty bits!
(And tentacle rape too!)

Re:All hail

[Kesch]

Yes, but now they Hi-def pixelated. I'm still trying to work out what that phrase means.

Re:All hail

[_Mustang]

The first thing your comment brought to mind was more along the lines of a VERY naughty Skype video conference with your girlfriend/wife...

But of course as the joke goes, this is slashdot - what's a girlfriend/wife??!

Re:All hail

[Dragonslicer]

Yes, but now they Hi-def pixelated. I'm still trying to work out what that phrase means. It's a pixelated image that's so crystal clear that you can see every detail on the... oh, wait, never mind.

Can someone please explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

...why "blue" is a euphemism for porn?

Thanks.

Re:Can someone please explain...

[HTH NE1]

It's an extension of "blue" comedy which contains more profanity.

Why bother

[NaCh0]

Now you can see the blurred out parts in HD.

Re:Why bother

[Anonymous Coward]

If you buy blurred-out porn, you're an idiot. Even if you live in Japan, it's my understanding that it is still possible to find non-blurred porn.

I, for one,

[snoyberg]

welcome our new Blu-Ray Japanese porn overlords

Licensing killed Betamax

[nurb432]

Or rather the lack of.

If sony had been a bit more receptive to licensing to 3rd parties like JVC did, BetaMax would have survied as it was the better technology at the time.

Re:Licensing killed Betamax

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony of Betamax is it went on to dominate the broadcast market via the Betacam professional format. Betamax itself morphed into the video 8mm and Hi8 consumer formats. Most people simply do not see the professional market that Sony dominates, instead focusing too much on their consumer products. Sony's Beta is over 30 years old and still going string with its digital products. The same way 8-tracks lasted 30 years because it continued to be used in radio broadcasting.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[ucla74]

Nope; you're just not bleeding-edge. Welcome to the club the rest of us belong to.

The resolution upgrade is incredible!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can really see the increased detail of the pixelization of the sex organs much more.

Porn is irrelevant

[DrXym]

Porn is not going to decide HD formats. I don't know why this idiotic meme keeps springing up. Sure it may have had an impact on beta vs VHS where porn-friendly VHS offered an alternative to going to some sleazy porno theatre. But those days have past. Porn is readily and discretely available from thousands of internet sites, satellite, and conventional formats. The impact of some format supporting or not supporting porn is fairly low. Besides, there are Blu Ray porn titles if you really want your razor rash in HD so the whole argument is moot.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[Kesch]

[Citation needed]

(Links please!)

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

You're under the mistaken impression everyone uses the internet. They don't.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[HappyEngineer]

It's not the porn, it's the control. If Sony is willing to effectively censor porn then they've proven they're willing to use their power to censor. Who wants to take a chance on a format controlled by someone who has demonstrated their willingness to censor?

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[misleb]

and conventional formats. The impact of some format supporting or not supporting porn is fairly low. Besides, there are Blu Ray porn titles if you really want your razor rash in HD so the whole argument is moot.

Razor rash? That is so amateur. I'm pretty sure porn stars use wax. :)

-matthew

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[LoverOfJoy]

Do you really think the number of people who:
1. are considering an HD player
2. are porn consumers
3. don't use the internet
is a sizeable enough number to determine which HD format will succeed?

Sure, the number of people in category 1 will rise over time but the number of people in group 3 will likely decline just as fast if not faster.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[reddburn]

I don't know why this idiotic meme keeps springing up. This is not a meme. I don't blame you for your confusion, because of this:

Early this year the meme circulated . . . This is idle speculation, rumormongering, but it is not a meme. A meme is a concept, a unit of cultural information that is propagated throughout a population, variants of which are eventually normed into a common unit: the pop tunes of one era become classics in another, catch-phrases become old sayings, political justifications for racism (slavery) become culturally embedded into legal practice (segregation).

Besides, formats are no longer relevant when it comes to porn. We have the internet and hard drives.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[dreamlax]

Of course porn is on the internet, but face it, the quality has always been behind hard-copies. Now internet video streams (such as YouTube) aren't so uncommon, but blow that up on a big screen and you'd probably rather watch a VHS. I'm sure many people would rather have higher quality at a cost, than settle for the free alternative. There's an dirt-cheap ugly hooker on one side, but a beautiful escort on the other.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[DrXym]

As I said if you want HD porn, Blu Ray offers it. The whole argument is based on the premise that it doesn't, or that in not supporting porn it would somehow lose. It won't. Besides porn can be obtained for download at DVD and HD quality - there are numerous video on demand services that you can discover with a quick search.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone on /. keeps misunderstanding this meme, which is why is seems idiotic. Porn will determine the winner if they settle on one format, but not because of the number of disks they sell. As has been pointed out previously, they don't actually sell that many copies, and most people get their porn from other sources. However, it is the huge number of titles that will cause this effect. The porn industry kicks out an order of magnitude more titles than the all the rest of the video entertainment industry (hollywood, independents, heck even add in international). Every time they produce a title, they push for faster service from the supplier doing the pressing. They push for lower prices, faster delivery. They harrass the makers of DVD mastering software for more features, better quality, faster production. They force all aspects of the format to improve, faster than the format they are not using. Everyone else who uses this format benefits. When hollywood finds they can create the final DVD in half the time/half the cost on one format VS another, they would be fools not to prefer that route.

Re:Porn is irrelevant

[pjp6259]

heh heh - came in here to say basically the same thing - 'Good porn stars use wax'.

Yes. Broadband

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Why bother with physical media when you can get much more diverse pr0n over the internet.

Why spend up on players etc that might go obsolete?

Re:Yes. Broadband

[HTH NE1]

Why bother with physical media when you can get much more diverse pr0n over the internet. Do you mean, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Internet stuff tends to be formatted to prevent personal retention unlike physical media which only prevents extraction.

However, all three include a network connection to report back what you're watching.

Re:Yes. Broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

www.puretna.com, good sir. Sounds like you assume people will be paying for it.

Re:Yes. Broadband

[king-manic]

Why bother with physical media when you can get much more diverse pr0n over the internet.

Why spend up on players etc that might go obsolete?

Some people have money but no credit thus have limited options to pay. Some people have credit but fear letting the CC numbers out. Others still can't wait the umm.. 5-15 (30-2j for HD content) minutes it takes to download or the possibility of Trojans and various other computer nastiness.

Re:Yes. Broadband

[tv_dinners]

Why bother with physical media when you can get much more diverse pr0n over the internet.

Do you mean, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Why go out for milk when you already have a cow at home?

Urban legends

[Anonymous Coward]

The original meme was wrong in the first place. Some people took an article that said that Sony would not press porn blu-ray disks, got confused, and announced that Sony wasn't going to allow porn on blu-ray. This was never the case. They never said they wouldn't license it for other people to press porn on blu-ray.

This was all said at the time, of course, but people were more interested in being clever and announcing blu-ray's demise than actually researching the matter.

Re:Urban legends

[m0nkyman]

[i]This was all said at the time, of course, but [b]people were more interested in being clever[/b] and announcing blu-ray's demise [b]than actually researching the matter.[/b][/i]
You're new to slashdot or something? That's always true. Even in this post. :P

Re:Urban legends

[TopSpin]

The original meme was wrong in the first place. That may be the case. Just FYI; as submitted my story had no reference to the previous /. story. The assertion the Betamax failed due to lack of porn is (possibly well informed) opinion at best, and myth at worst. It's plausible I suppose. I may even believe it. However, I made no such allusions in the story I submitted. The fact that Sony has managed to weasel past Japanese law (by outsourcing Blu-ray porn replication to Taiwan) and set aside the (hypothesized) concerns of their own corporate governance to insure a channel for porn on Blu-ray is interesting, in and of itself.

Re:Urban legends

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you new?

Because Slashdot has never used bbcode, which you seem so intent on using. Hint, try the preview button next time, newbie.

Re:Urban legends

[sdsichero]

Huh? Was it said or was it not said? The phrasing is confusing. I dunno if I would want it in HD anyways. Might be... scary. More capacity would be good though.

Re:Urban legends

[LarsG]

Ah, the comedy of an AC asking a 4 digit UID if he's new here.

(And the puzzled befuddlement of seeing a 4 digit UID attempt to use bbcode on /.)

Re:Urban legends

[m0nkyman]

Nope. I'm an old hand at making mistakes like that. :)

I want storage, not HD.

[khasim]

I don't care a bit about the video capabilities.

I just want the gigabytes of storage. Inexpensive burners + inexpensive disks and I'll be happier.

Re:I want storage, not HD.

[White Flame]

500GB drives are $100 nowadays. Why bother with slow, scratchable media? External drives FTW.

Re:I want storage, not HD.

[dillee1]

Also media long term stability. DVDR is disappointing in compare with CDR in this aspect. Having 50GB worth of data gone with 1 aged BR disc is 10x worse.

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't care less +1, proper English

the rest of us download

[acidrain]

I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

Yeah, the rest of us download our movies.

Re:the rest of us download

[HTH NE1]

Yeah, the rest of us download our movies. To HDD-VDs? (Hard Disk Drive-Video Drive)

I actually have an old cheap DVD player whose drive died that I've been thinking about installing a swappable HDD bay and formatting a drive as if it were a very high capacity DVD, for example containing the complete run of The X-Files on one drive.

Except, I heard that the ATAPI signal for Eject is the same as the ATA signal for Low-Level Reformat, and I wonder if I need an abstraction layer in hardware between the drive and interface to protect the data.

I, for one

[Anonymous Coward]

... welcome our Hi-Def tentacle overlords !!!

Macs

[BibelBiber]

As long as there is no drive of either make in a Mac preinstalled there is no real market for it. Apple is fo me an indicator of new techs going live. Most of the time this worked, maybe not with Firewire but at least with the SuperDrive.

Re:Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the time this worked, maybe not with Firewire but at least with the SuperDrive.

Yeah, it's a shame that so few video cameras have firewire ports on them...
And are you seriously saying that Apple had a major say in whether DVD burners were going to take off? I'm a pretty big Apple fan, but come on...

Re:Macs

[Ang31us]

Never even heard of the "Super Drive," before you mentioned it. I looked it up and it's just a 3.5" high-density floppy or a CD-DVD combo burner. I don't see anything "super" about either technology.

While you could use Macs to gauge when a new technology has "made it", Apple actually inflates the price of the hardware they sell and has a history of price-fixing. More customizable computer platforms with lots of driver support have probably had a bigger impact on sales of new technology than Apple. Features and cost dictate when a technology has arrived...and the Wii is a prime example of that. I have an HDTV in my living room, but no HD-DVD or Blu-Ray (and now I want to download HD porn...thanks, Slashdot). I'm waiting on the $200 PS3 closeout sale after Christmas ;-).

Re:Macs

[HTH NE1]

Apple originally sided with DVD-RAM.

Re:Macs

[rbgaynor]

While you could use Macs to gauge when a new technology has "made it", Apple actually inflates the price of the hardware they sell and has a history of price-fixing.

So you're saying Apple conspired with itself to not undercut itself on price?

Re:Macs

[Aetuneo]

No, Apple just controls all of the places that sell their products, preventing the free market from taking over and moving the price down (or up) to what the market wants. In other words, all of their stores are conspiring not to undercut each other on price.

Re:Macs

[rbgaynor]

Well Apple does influence the the sell price, but through a technique known as Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) - which is legal, as opposed to price-fixing, which is not legal.

Re:Macs

[Ang31us]

I call bullshit on this one...the "Apple Pricing" policy sets a floor on the lowest price that a retailer can SELL one of their products. This is an artificially inflated price that Apple chooses, which is significantly more than you would pay if you bought exactly the same item manufactured by the same company, without the Apple brand on it (or Apple's assurances that it will work, even though it will). RAM upgrades for the Mac are a perfect example of this.

It's all in the name

[Alioth]

Blu-Ray won't fail because of porn, it'll fail because of its name.

Now what will Joe Sixpack think? He'll think WTF is Blu-Ray? I'll buy HD-DVD. I know what DVD is, and HD-DVD must be better DVD. So Joe Sixpack will buy the HD-DVD system because he knows what a DVD is but hasn't the faintest clue what Blu-Ray is.

Re:It's all in the name

[Anonymous Coward]

The same Joe Sixpack that buys a widescreen HD TV to watch regular, distorted cable?

Re:It's all in the name

[noamsml]

Advertising, advertising, advertising. Do you think the DVD brand sprang out of nothing?

Re:It's all in the name

[Heftklammerdosierer!]

Or Mr. Sixpack will think HD-DVD is just an incremental upgrade to regular DVD, while Blu-Ray is something new and better.

Re:It's all in the name

[morari]

Yeah, and goes out of his way to buy fullscreen films because he doesn't want the "sides chopped off" like widescreen does.

Re:It's all in the name

[HTH NE1]

The same Joe Sixpack that buys a widescreen HD TV to watch regular, distorted cable? It makes him feel better about his own obesity.

Re:It's all in the name

[blhack]

Now what will Joe Sixpack think? He will have the oppurtunity to explain to the rest of the frat that blu-ray is better because it uses a blu laser, instead of a green one like cassette tapes use.

the name blu-ray sounds futuristic...unlike hd-dvd.

Re:It's all in the name

[Kelz]

Its still a $500 (give or take) peice of hardware. And those that can afford it (and the accompanying HDTV) are far more likely to do their research.

Re:It's all in the name

[TeknoHog]

Moreover, Blu-Ray is much easier to remember and pronounce than something like httpd, or whatever it was.

Re:It's all in the name

[Anonymous Coward]

Joe Sixpack will buy whatever is on sale at Wal-mart. At $298 vs $698, it looks like a win for HD-DVD.

http://www.walmart.com/search/browse-ng.do?ic=20_0 &ref=125875.331064&catNavId=62055

Re:It's all in the name

[evilviper]

He'll think WTF is Blu-Ray? I'll buy HD-DVD.

Would that be the same reason the CD failed ("WTF is a Compact Disk?") and everyone now stores their music on Digital Audio Tape (DAT)?

Re:It's all in the name

[Alioth]

CD was the only game in town for digital music. However, customers now have a choice: HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. They remember Betamax and other failed formats, and the association of HD-DVD with regular DVD by name will bias them towards HD-DVD and away from Blu-Ray, since they will probably want to buy something they feel confident is a "dead cert".

Re:It's all in the name

[Gulthek]

Exactly the opposite. Most Joes think that HD-DVD and DVD are one and the same. Now Blu-Ray...that's futuretastic!

It sucks because I went with HD-DVD.

Re:It's all in the name

[saibot834]

development, development, development!

*ducks from thrown chair*

Mod Parent Insightful

[Zantetsuken]

Mod the parent insightful - even if it totally fails as a video format or for games, it would still be useful for things like data backups (if it got cheap enough), maybe even to the point that it would be worth it for the average Joe Sixpack to perform bi-annual backups of his desktop or laptop (or for the bit-torrent people, all of the Battle Star Galactica episodes they've downloaded for example).

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

Nah, even now 50GB is probably not sufficient for a full backup for a lot of people. By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[LoverOfJoy]

The real problem is the speed of the burners. If the person has to sit around for any length of time to burn it, the typical user is going to start surfing or playing solitaire or something else. This will likely mess up the burn as they are probably using a measly 512MB on their memory hog vista. If the burners were to start showing up on computers in Best Buy and burn at a reasonable speed then you might start seeing SOME of the Joe SixPacks occasionally backing up their whole computer or at least all that really mattered to them.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[ucblockhead]

When I first got a digital camera, I could back up all the pictures onto one CD. Eventually, it was two. Then, higher resolution camera, and it was three, then four. About the time it got up to six, I got a DVD burner and could back up to one DVD.

Then, of course, more pictures, a higher resolution camera and I'm now up to six CDs per backup. Probably in a year, I'll get a blu-ray or hd-dvd burner and be back down to one disk.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[Ivan Todoroski]

Who modded this as insightful? So what if you can't fit everything on a single 50GB disc, there's still a hell of a difference between your backup taking 10 blu-ray discs or 100+ DVD-Rs.

An order of magnitude jump in optical media capacity is always welcome.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

I was going to ask who in their right mind would even think about spanning a backup across 100 DVD's, but then I remembered my dad's box full of floppy disks he used for backup in teh early 90's. It sucked. OPtical isn't much better.

I've always considered optical media to be a terrible backup method... especially if it means spanning disks. Maybe archives, such as music or photos or movies.. stuff that never changes, but for backup? No way. Just get a 750GB external HD. My dad uses Ghost to keep a backup on external drive and it works great.

-matthew

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[Ivan Todoroski]

I'm with you 100% on using external hard drives for near term backups, I also pretty much gave up on optical storage. But your assertion that 50GB media is somehow worthless because you can't fit everything on a single disc is still ludicrous.

You would need 160 DVDs to archive everything on that 750GB drive which is clearly ridiculous, but if you used these hypothetical 50GB blu-rays it would only take 15 discs, which is already in the realm of the practical. So there is a big difference, where you claim none.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

I'm with you 100% on using external hard drives for near term backups, I also pretty much gave up on optical storage. But your assertion that 50GB media is somehow worthless because you can't fit everything on a single disc is still ludicrous.

What is ludicrous is your suggestion that I said that 50GB media is "worthless." I said no such thing. Your making shit up just to create an argument even though you seem to agree with me 100%. Strange.

You would need 160 DVDs to archive everything on that 750GB drive which is clearly ridiculous,

Actually, it would only be about 83 if you had dual layer DVD burner. Which is what you should be comparing to the 50GB blu-ray option. Still not attractive, but whatever.

but if you used these hypothetical 50GB blu-rays it would only take 15 discs, which is already in the realm of the practical. So there is a big difference, where you claim none.

Only 15 disks? Gee, you make it sound like such an attractive option. That's a lot of disk swapping. Not to mention that one or two of them may end up being coasters.

Also, keep in mind that the 50GB assumes you have a dual layer burner (and potentially very expensive media)... which is probably even further away for most people than just a plain ol' BD burner. Even today, most people don't even have dual layer DVD burners.

-matthew

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[Ivan Todoroski]

What is ludicrous is your suggestion that I said that 50GB media is "worthless." I said no such thing. Your making shit up just to create an argument even though you seem to agree with me 100%. Strange.

Um, your own words: "By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing." Or maybe on your planet nothing != worthless?

Actually, it would only be about 83 if you had dual layer DVD burner.

Dual layer DVD-Rs are still much more expensive than 2 single-layer discs (at least around here), so this is not really a viable option.

Only 15 disks? Gee, you make it sound like such an attractive option. That's a lot of disk swapping. Not to mention that one or two of them may end up being coasters.

I only said it's much more attractive than 160 discs. Are you seriously unable to think in relative terms? Or do you deny the difference between 15 and 160? I have no idea what's your point here.

Also, keep in mind that the 50GB assumes you have a dual layer burner (and potentially very expensive media)... which is probably even further away for most people than just a plain ol' BD burner. Even today, most people don't even have dual layer DVD burners.

I would think it's obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that it's not practical right now. There is hardly any 50GB blu-ray media around outside of a few prototypes, and I don't think there's an actual PC burner available for dual layer blu-rays.

We were discussing the eventual situation if 50GB discs and burners become affordable and widespread as plain DVD-Rs are now. You were saying that by the time writers become common it would make no difference, which is patently wrong.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

Um, your own words: "By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing." Or maybe on your planet nothing != worthless?

OH my god, I can't believe your going to quibble over this. Fine, it is worth 50GB. Not worthless. Happy?

Dual layer DVD-Rs are still much more expensive than 2 single-layer discs (at least around here), so this is not really a viable option.

Well neither is dual layer Blu-Ray, idiot. Clearly we're not talking about what is viable or even practical. Or else you woudl have simply agreed that Blu-Ray backups probably won't be any more practical than DVD backups are today.

I only said it's much more attractive than 160 discs. Are you seriously unable to think in relative terms? Or do you deny the difference between 15 and 160? I have no idea what's your point here.

Again, you hve to compare dual layer to dual layer. So it is only a difference between 83 and 15. Or compare single layer, 160 vs. 30.

We were discussing the eventual situation if 50GB discs and burners become affordable and widespread as plain DVD-Rs are now. You were saying that by the time writers become common it would make no difference, which is patently wrong.

It is not wrong if you assume that storage requirements will grow significantly before Blu-Ray burners become widely avaiable. Relatively speaking, they probably won't be any more valuable than DVDs are *today* for general purpose backup.

Fucking trolls.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[Ivan Todoroski]

So it is only a difference between 83 and 15. Or compare single layer, 160 vs. 30.

Join us next week, when misleb proves how negligible the difference between 30 and 160 is, by laying 30kg and 160kg weights on his chest and trying to breathe under them.

Well neither is dual layer Blu-Ray, idiot.

Ah yes, the trusty old personal insult. When all your arguments fail, it's the next best thing. Truly the reprieve of the weak minded.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

Ah yes, the trusty old personal insult. When all your arguments fail, it's the next best thing. Truly the reprieve of the weak minded.

Just giving you you seem to be trolling for. I mean, you didn't actually expect me to defend claims that I never made, did you?

And just in case you aren't just trolling, let me give you a little friendly advice. Next time someone seems to be making a claim (in this case multiple claims) that is obviously false to the point of being silly, try giving them the the benefit of the doubt before jumping on them like a mutt in heat.

HTH

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[Ivan Todoroski]

Yeah right... Dude, you were pulling blanket statements out of your ass, and when you were called on them you got all defensive to the point of insults. If it makes you feel better to delude yourself that I was somehow "trolling for it", fine, you just keep on saying that to yourself.

Thanks for dragging what was supposed to be a civil technical debate down to this level.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

Thanks for dragging what was supposed to be a civil technical debate down to this level.

What's the problem? You won, troll. You should be happy. Or are you new at this and don't know this goes down? See, what happens is you keep replying to me trying to get me to be even more personal (like now). And basically it goes on and on until you get bored and move on to the next unsuspecting victim. When you get good at it, you can even get multiple trolls going simutaneously. And you can even try to get multiple victims in on one thread. But no matter what happens or what is said, you win... as long you keep getting people to reply to you. Isn't it beautiful?

Here's my suggestion, if you will allow me. What you should do next is continue claiming that all you wanted was a "technical" discussion. Maybe try to revive the discussion by going back and quoting something I said. Preferably it should be out of context. But really, it doesn't matter. As long as you get under my skin.

Oh, but watch out for karma! You'll probably want to get your Slashdot karma bonus up to +1 before you start any serious trolling. That way your posts are more likely to be read. One easy way to do this is find a popular opinion on a subject and repost it the next time the subject comes up again (happens a lot here on Slashdot). Eventually you'll get a +1 karma bonus for every post and you will get more eyeballs right off the bat... without having to say anything intelligent. Nifty, huh?

I've never had the stomach for trolling, personally. But I've seen it a lot and know a lot of the tactics. I *have*, however, honed my sense of sarcasm. Do you like it? Of course you do! The more verbiage the better, right? You had me at "ridiculous."

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[Ivan Todoroski]

What's the problem? You won, troll.

There you go again. Even a cursory glance at my posting history would show you I'm not a troll. Once a notion gets into your head you will not let it go, no matter how irrational. It's the theme of this whole thread, sadly.

The rest of your post was too long, didn't read it, sorry. No point in continuing this, so I'll just stop here.

Re:Mod Parent Insightful

[misleb]

There you go again. Even a cursory glance at my posting history would show you I'm not a troll.

Doesn't mean anything. You dont' have much of a posting history for such a low slashdot ID. This could the account you use when you're not trolling, only you slipped up. Or maybe you're just not a regular troll.

The rest of your post was too long, didn't read it, sorry.

I am fairly certain that you didn't read most of what I wrote before that either. Don't worry about it. As far as I can tell, trolls often don't read half of what they're responding to. It isn't important. In fact, not reading what you're responding to can make the troll even more effective.

Not really

[bjdevil66]

Call me when:

1. Decent, large wide-screen HDTVs (LCDs, Plasmas, etc.) cost about $300-$400.
2. The HD-DVD or Blu-Ray debate is settled so I'm not buying the wrong tech.
3. Shopping for above parts or components is simplified or culled down a bit (I don't have to read a dozen articles to understand every bit of the technology - 720p, 1080i, compatibility issues, etc. - I just want it to work)
4. Hooking it all up is easy enough to where I'm not reading manuals or HOWTOs (i.e. done in less than 15 minutes - why waste the time?)

Until then, my nice,

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

No gives a shit what kind of TV or movie format you own.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for:

1. Decent large (32") CRTs costing $300-$400 (not Walmart specials... thanks you)
2. I can watch European PAL Region 2 DVDs on a DVD player that I buy in the US.
3. I don't need to understand the difference between coax and svideo and composite.
4. The system knows exactly what I want setup by reading my mind.

I'm still waiting. That's why I have kept my black and white tv. At least it works. No fancy satellite dish. No fancy remote controls. And as you people with fancy remote controls? Are you that lazy? And I don't have Tivo either... I watch TV live... the way God meant it to be watched.

Re:Not really

[megaditto]

Why don't you get an LCD computer monitor and a pair of glasses instead of your HDTV?

Re:Not really

[Vegeta99]

I bought a 30" Sanyo HT30746 HDTV for $450. It upconverts all inputs to 1080i, and accepts any input from NTSC on up. In order to hook up my cable box, I plugged an HDMI cable into one end of the cable box, the other into the television, and then ran an optical cable from the AUDIO OUT on the television to my surround amp. The cable box transmits the picture ratio too, so all I do is turn the television on and turn the input to HDMI. I don't need to say widescreen/normal pillarbox/stretched or any of that.

It is, however, a CRT: The geometry is not perfect, and if you adjust it to perfect, something moves the earth's magnetic belts or something and throws it back out (2mm trapezoid from top left to tom right). It's also kinda huge, but not really any bigger than a DLP.

Re:Not really

[feepness]

If you mean what you say you'll be buying a TV in the fall.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Olevia

Nice cheap good quality.

Re:Not really

[guruevi]

Well, I don't know what the big deal is with >50" TV's these days, CRT's didn't go much larger than 20" or maybe 30". 20" screens you can pick up anywhere for $150-200, I just picked up a 37" LCD HDTV (1080i, 1600:1) for less than $600 from TigerDirect and it is really nice (although I pick up HD from the Air and not Cable), sure not a known brand, but the actual panel is identical to the Akai ones you find at RadioShack. It's got VGA, composite, HDMI, antenna/cable and component, ...

I bought myself an upconverting DVD player, HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray is too expensive so I agree although cheaper players come out every day. Again, most studios use DVD as the guide to the highest "RECORDING" format, so they're not investing in 1080p cameras so HD-whatever is way overblown. The upscaling works nice but is only slightly noticeable. Also, your computer most likely doesn't output in 1080p, so who is using it?

Well, I take the time to investigate whatever I buy. Especially >$100 purchases are not something I go over lightly. You should too, especially "going" shopping, electronics salesmen don't know either but will hit you with lingo to sound smart, it's like buying a car.

Quite honestly, hooking up anything isn't too bad. The DVD->TV has a HDMI cable which carries sound and picture (1 cable). I do have a receiver so I connect the digital out of the DVD to the digital in of my receiver (or use optical if you want that) and I am ready to recieve DTS/Dolby 5.1 surround sound.

Re:Not really

[hackstraw]

Call me when:

      1. Decent, large wide-screen HDTVs (LCDs, Plasmas, etc.) cost about $300-$400.
      2. The HD-DVD or Blu-Ray debate is settled so I'm not buying the wrong tech.
      3. Shopping for above parts or components is simplified or culled down a bit (I don't have to read a dozen articles to understand every bit of the technology - 720p, 1080i, compatibility issues, etc. - I just want it to work)
      4. Hooking it all up is easy enough to where I'm not reading manuals or HOWTOs (i.e. done in less than 15 minutes - why waste the time?)

Until then, my nice,


WTF?

Its hard to find more data quickly, but I did find this from wikipedia:

The cheapest of the pre-World War II factory-made American sets, a 1938 image-only model with a 3-inch (8 cm) screen, cost US$125, the equivalent of US$1,732 in 2005. The cheapest model with a 12-inch (30 cm) screen was $445 ($6,256).

If I remember correctly, color TVs in the 19-27" range were $300-700 range or more in the early 80s in early 80s dollar terms.

Today, I think large widescreen HDTVs are practically free when you think about it. I mean an 80gig video iPod is over $300 and many telephones are over $300. And the parent poster wants what?

What I want is for the more important stuff to come back down in price like cars and houses. Electronics always seem got get better and cheaper over time, cars and houses seem to get slightly better, but the prices keep going up.

Two comments come to mind.

[LWATCDR]

PS3 the console for the lonely man.
and
Do we really want high def porn?

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[dontthink]

Plain old DVDs serve my purpose perfectly well too. I've got a 42" 1080p LCD, and upscaled to 720p/1080i old-school DVDs look fantastic. I just use an $80 used Xbox softmodded with XBMC installed as a media center box - from what I've read, the software upscaling is as good if not better than standalone upsampling DVD players. I also use the TV as a monitor for my PC (HL2, Oblivion, and Civ 4 in 1080p are well worth the investment), so I don't feel like the extra resolution over 720p is wasted at this point. I'm going to wait until the dust settles on the HD player front before investing in one, although considering the ease with which you can install Linux on a PS3, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone creates an app similar to/ports XBMC - This fact alone makes me lean towards PS3/Blu-ray, but I definitely don't feel the need to make the jump anytime soon.

High-def porn? No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, do you want to see all the pimples on his or her ass in their full 1080p glory? Do you need to see the C-section or episiotemy scar?

Some things are better left a little blurry, like most porn stars.

Re:Bitter Tears Of Microsoft Fanboys

[HTH NE1]

Can anyone imagine what it must be like to be sitting at home with: I actually wouldn't mind having a hybrid DiVX/DVD player. It would be something obscure to hack.

I also wish I had a Laserdisc player, and that I could get my old Videodisc player working (bought-from-eBay Christmas gift from my brother, suspect dead motor).

Right now I have more HD-DVD disks than Blu-Ray, but that'll equalize once I send in my rebate. In future releases, I've only spotted one title I want that's only on one HD format: Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD.

And I have the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive, but no XBOX 360. I've ordered the ReadDVD! UDF 2.5 drivers for Mac OS X Tiger to determine if Apple DVD Player really can play HD-DVD disks or only HD-DVD content recorded on DVD disks.

Now the pixelated censorship box in the films...

[MeditationSensation]

...will be even higher resolution! ;-)

Blue Laws of the Colony of Connecticut

[spun]

I thought it came from the term blue law, which is any law designed to enforce a moral standard. I believe that term derives from the original Blue Laws of the Colony of Connecticut.

Re:Blue Laws of the Colony of Connecticut

[HTH NE1]

You're probably right; they both likely derive from "blue law", directly or in an etymological chain.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[garcia]

I really don't care for the HD craze, I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

No, you aren't but the industry definitely wants you to believe that you are. See the most recent commercial w/the dude from the Sopranos talking about his HD-DVD player and how it makes his regular DVDs look even better...

They know that consumers are unlikely to upgrade so soon after their full conversion from VHS.

---

My feeling as to why Sony is now playing with the Porn Industry is b/c Blu-Ray has yet to be cracked and they are hoping that with HD-DVD being toast that they will get to be the winner. With the porn industry a little annoyed by the pirating of their DVDs (but not taking the steps the MPAA is), they are hoping that they will be able to be better protected with the new format.

Re:Difference?.....

[Fallen Kell]

If I was a mod I would mark flamebait. BluRay has more studio's releasing video to it then HD-DVD at this point (only 1... yes, one (1), uno, ichi, une, unus, men, ein... studio is not releasing BluRay films). Everyone else has committed to the format. However there are 4 major studio's that have not committed to releasing video's to HD-DVD.

So take your analogy and reverse it and swap Microsoft for Sony, because it is HD-DVD that has less studio's releasing for it, not Sony.

No preferred media for me.

[Chonine]

I am not looking to continue buying movies on plastic discs. Having movies sent through the mail or having to drive to a store should be unnecessary now. There are already a few internet on demand services for movies, and plenty of cable/satellite on demand services. Ownership services ala iTunes is probably around the corner. DRM-free would be ideal, so really whichever gets around to that first wins in my opinion. Not happening any time soon, but really not an issue in the debate. HD, Blueray, and iTunes all have it. With regards to pornography, I expect the industry will continue moving into the online direction. I suspect they will continue to be pioneers in the area actually.

8 years ago I purged floppies from my life, ripping them out of every device I had, and saving all of that data to newer disc. Around 2 years ago I pretty much purged CD/DVD from everything, sans a single portable USB DVD-RW drive I can use for anything. Magnetic and optical medium had its time. Flash drives/cards, solid state disk drives, and networks should be everything. Of course, the transition is slow, but that's why I took a stand. I don't buy software, I install new OS' from the network or an existing partition. The DVDRW drive is a read once and rip solution for music CDs, and periodic DVD backup aside from rsync. Movies I use cable on demand services, DVR, and theaters.

About the only reason why I would care for any next-generation disc medium would be for a viable backup solution. Not many available, nor cost effective at the moment. This is a pretty geeky view of everything, but I think that the general consumer trend will follow it. Most likely, both BlueRay and HD-DVD will slowly replace DVDs, but only when the cost is comparable for both the movies and for combination devices. The *real* next-generation media is when there is no media at all.

Re:No preferred media for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

sans
I don't think that word means what you think it means

Re:No preferred media for me.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Last I heard, the Internet is not there yet. Seriously. I heard an analysis on the Digital Production Buzz that distribution of a top selling movies like Cars or Shrek is not possible with the current backbones that's available, where the amount of data on plastic & aluminum discs of the sales of just ONE movie in the first week of sales exceeded the aggregate backbone capacity several fold for the same period on the Internet. And lots of new movies are released every week.

A better codec will shrink that down, but you aren't going to cut it down by more than half without losing picture quality. I really love how HD movies look, 1080p movies on a 1080p large projected screen is exceedingly nice. I'm not going to like anything that's bitrate starved to save on bandwidth. Disney's Pirates of the Carribean regularly exceeded 20Mbps, and that was with H.264 AVC.

The *real* next-generation media is when there is no media at all.

I think "next" generation kind of falls apart here, it really applies to both HD discs and internet downloads, though I Internet movies to be the final victor in the long run. I expect that there will be DVD, HD disc and internet streaming & downloads (with several formats within that) to coexist for some time.

Re:No preferred media for me.

[king-manic]

A better codec will shrink that down, but you aren't going to cut it down by more than half without losing picture quality. I really love how HD movies look, 1080p movies on a 1080p large projected screen is exceedingly nice. I'm not going to like anything that's bitrate starved to save on bandwidth. Disney's Pirates of the Carribean regularly exceeded 20Mbps, and that was with H.264 AVC.

You do know compression isn't auto-magical and there is theoretical limits to how hard you can squeeze a data stream and have it look okay at the other end eh?

Sure current codecs are much better then mpeg1 but I think the law of diminishing returns has kicked in in the formats since mpeg2.

Re:No preferred media for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you quantify these "theoretical limits", or are you just talking out your ass? It seems self-evident that novel ways of encoding video data can still be developed.

Re:No preferred media for me.

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Sure current codecs are much better then mpeg1 but I think the law of diminishing returns has kicked in in the formats since mpeg2.

H.264 is about 2x as efficient as MPEG-2, and it's only going to get better as the encoders improve. But, yeah, we're going to run out of steam eventually.

Re:No preferred media for me.

[stewbacca]

Thank you for confirming that my wife and I aren't crazy. All our family and friends rely on stupid cds and we haven't touched the stupid things in years (rare movie rental excluded). I can't believe cds are still so prevalent. I consider their longevity to be one of the biggest frauds of my lifetime (right up their with 95% Microsoft OS market share, Wal-Mart, and American cars).

Re:No preferred media for me.

[stewbacca]

Last I heard, the Internet is not there yet.

And it will never get there as long as customers keep settling for 1980s technology.

Hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Suit yourself. I'll get myself the "Teen Girl" / "Big Breast" hybrid model.

It may cost a bit more, I don't have to worry about choosing the wrong format.

Missing link

[TallGuyRacer]

The post is missing the most important link (the one that most Shashdot readers would be most interested in): adultexpo.jp/english/main.html (Probably NSFW)

Re:High-def porn? No thanks.

[Sassinak]

I seem to recall some article mentioning something about that, about how a number of porn actresses are complaining about high-def porn because all their imperfections are being shown now. (pimples, scars, etc...)

So hopefully people will lay off porn for once since the unabashed truth will certainly set a number of people off.

WHich is why Blu-Ray is winning

[SuperKendall]

Toshiba is the ONLY hardware maker for HD-DVD drives.

On the Blu-Ray side, you have players from Sony and Panasonic and Samsung and others (soon to be Funai players as well, the producer of the dirt-cheap DVD players for WalMart).

Sony learned well the lessons of betamax (also including have the format with more storage, and more studio backing). It's a shame the HD-DVD backers didn't bother to examine history to see where they were headed.

Re:WHich is why Blu-Ray is winning

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-Ray is winning because the Playstation 3, despite not selling well as a console, got far more Blu-ray players into people's homes that HD-DVD could hope for.

DVD family

[^_^x]

It's kind of sad... I have two dual-layer DVD+/-RW burners but I've never gone out and bought one, they're just basic PC gear now. So I got a spool of 50 dual-layer discs to cover all the dual-layers I'll ever need to burn. By the time I get to the end of the spool, my drives will probably have been replaced with something newer. ...sure would have been nice to have this cheap abundant tech leapfrogging earlier on in the life cycle rather than a bunch of little hops just before launching into a new age of conflicting unaffordable formats. I guess that's the way it tends to go, but it just feels WRONG having a container of media last as long as the drive itself. Even LS-120 had a (slightly) better run than that...

Just ranting...

Blu-ray for blue movies.

[serviscope_minor]

Kind of makes sense if you think about it.

Re:Blu-ray for blue movies.

[DragonHawk]

Kind of makes sense if you think about it.

You didn't read the headline, did you? ;-)

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[natd]

I have a PS3 and started buying BR discs until I investigated that while nicely detailed, they were juddery as hell to the point I couldn't keep my mind on the movie (and these were *not* the type of movie the thread's about!).

Seems my TV doesn't do 24fps which is needed more than ever on the HD formats as they aren't tweaked the way DVD is to approximate the 25/30fps we normally see at home.

That means I remain a DVD buyer despite having a decent (12 month old) TV and HD player.

Porn never mattered in this war

[SuperKendall]

For DVD and VHS, porn was a huge deal because it was difficult to obtain discreetly otherwise.

But nowadays any kind of porn you can imagine, and many kinds you would rather not, are all online. Porn media sales are nothing now compared with total video sales. So even though Blu-Ray is getting more and more backing from adult studios, it will not really have any effect.

On a side note though Japan and the US are in the same region with Blu-Ray, so Anime or other titles (such as this adult studio stuff) can all be imported directly. I'm just hoping most anime comes with English subtitles even just for Japanese release...

Re:Porn never mattered in this war

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just hoping most anime comes with English subtitles even just for Japanese release... Hate to break it to you, but the number of anime DVD releases in Japan that have any subtitles, regardless of language, is next to none.

Better start brushing up on your japanese skills (if you have any that is), or wait for it to be licensed in an english speaking country where the DVD will be released (6-12 months after the series is ended in Japan, hurray).

Re:Porn never mattered in this war

[TeknoHog]

For digital media like DVD, porn was a huge deal because it was difficult to obtain discretely otherwise.

Re:Porn never mattered in this war

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think there are enough Japanese DVDs with subtitles to make an American fan broke, but that's not saying much given that movies can cost as much as $150. But the selection isn't huge. There is one minor US distributor that's actually a subsidiary of a major distributor that is selling the same disc to both markets.

Re:Difference?.....

[xhrit]

I think i have come up with a new game. I will call it 'out the shrill'. The object is to find what slashdot accounts are operated by payed microsoft employees...

Re:Bitter Tears Of Microsoft Fanboys

[dreddnott]

You have a CED VideoDisc player? Is it a Zenith? What movies do you have?

Re:High-def porn? No thanks.

[desertfool]

Or it will make them realize that the inflated breast, bleach blonde actress isn't better then normal women. It may be a *good* thing for society.

Let me fix that for you.

[Rachel Lucid]

It's easy to find LEGAL porn online. I imagine for the real freaks of choice, plastic disc format still matters.

And let's not forget, there's an awful lot of the world (even in 'civilized' nations) that doesn't use the internet as much as you think they do, and these people are still looking for the plastic fix.

This week will tell.

[Cyno01]

Whos ahead at this point. 300 was released today on both formats, and 300 is exactly the kind of movie your average person with a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player is going to buy. Me, i bought the DVD and have an upscaling DVD player.

Re:This week will tell.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the same note, I found it interesting that the Blu-Ray version of 300 sold for $29.99 (CAD) while the HD-DVD was $32.99 at HMV (one of the largest Canadian retailers of digital media). I guess that Blu-Ray is already losing its market share...

Re:This week will tell.

[Kazzahdrane]

I believe that might be because the HD-DVD version has extra content not featured on the Blu-Ray release.

Same about the PS3.

[beswicks]

Sony removing the vibrators from the PS3 controllers has clearly robbed the world of new and interesting uses and pushed back the development of Teledildonics, the bastards.

Oh well maybe these blue blu-rays are comparable with Bluedildonics? At least the PS3 has bluetooth.

(Yes I know that things other than PS3's can play the blu-ray).

Re:Same about the PS3.

[hmccabe]

I hope the word "teledildonics" gets added to the SCIGEN database. I know I just added it to my system's dictionary.

Apple is Blu-Ray?

[HTH NE1]

I'd say Blu-Ray. It's holds more, it uses Java (instead of that thing MS developed for HD-DVD), it has a larger installed base at this point, has a cooler name, is backed by Apple, etc. I haven't upgraded to Final Cut Studio 2 yet, but in the previous version, it only supported HD-DVD, not Blu-Ray.

AO Games

[Ender77]

Now, if we can get sony to let AO games (manhunt 2) to be made on PS3 then they will most likely win the format war.

Re:AO Games

[Saurian_Overlord]

The controversy over AO games isn't that console manufacturers won't allow them, it's that retail chains won't allow them, therefore they don't sell. That's why developers stay away from them in most cases.

Re:AO Games

[Ender77]

Actually, Sony,Microsoft,Nintendo has said that they will not allow AO titles on their systems. If it was distributors they could simply sell it on the companies website.

Re:AO Games

[mlk]

It is both. A fair number (if not all) of the big stores will not stock them, and all three of the current consoles will not license AO content.

Advertising, Advertising, BEES!

[HTH NE1]

Frankly, I haven't seen any ads promoting HD-DVD or Blu-Ray apart from ads for movies coming out on one or the other or both formats in addition to DVD. Where's the evangelizing to the public on TV of one format over the other directly? How about ads from the player manufacturers?

I do however see HD ads for HD programming on DirecTV (using rescripted scenes from movies not out yet on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, like Back to the Future and Aliens!).

But that hasn't swayed me to DirecTV either. I can record broadcast HD off cable to my computer and edit it, but I doubt any DirecTV hardware would permit that.

Betamax how?

[Trogre]

Does this guy really think that porn was the deciding factor in the demise of Betamax?

Looking at my video collection, and considering every VHS or Beta tape I have ever rented, exactly 0% has been of a pornographic nature. Counting all my family and friends I would estimate about 1% of all rentals might be pornographic.

If what this guy's saying is true, where do all these filthy perverts come from, and why do they seem to have so much money?

Re:Betamax how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, ya gotta remember. We hardly ever leave the house so we save a LOT of money that way...

Behind the times

[thanksforthecrabs]

Porn has been available in the U.S. on HD DVD for some time.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[Trogre]

I really don't care for the HD craze, I still buy plain old DVDs. Am I really in the minority?

I really don't care for the DVD craze. What with UOPs, regionalisation and CSS I still buy plain old VHS. Am I really in the minority?

HDCP

[jamie(really)]

I have a "first-gen" 1080P TV, and it only does 1080P over VGA, not HDMI. For some reason the HDMI can only handle 1080i. HD-DVD seems to be happy to pump HD content over non-HDCP channels, while Blu-Ray players (certainly the PS3) insists on a HDCP protected channel or it downscales. So I can get either 1080i blu-ray or 1080p HD-DVD. A lot of people have HD-TVs with no HDMI at all. Ouch.

Of course, since I have one of those awful Vista computers that you guys complain so much about, there's a way around this, and I can watch both in 1080P.

Personally, if a movie is available in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray I buy the HD-DVD version, because studios have had a habit of encoding Blu-Ray discs using MPEG2 so that they look like shite. I got my Blu-Ray for $300 when CompUSA closed. If you have the choice between a $170 HD drive or a $600 Blu-Ray, the choice seems obvious to me if you can't wait. As has been said, even the 30Gb capacity of HD-DVD is more than double the amount you need for a ultra-high-quality movie recording. Otherwise, wait and get a combo player and you're safe whichever way it goes.

Re:HDCP

[Doctor_Jest]

Just wait until the HD-DVD studios decide that HDCP is indeed necessary (mercifully, the 360 has been spared this tripe so HD-DVD looks great on good ol' VGA.. otherwise you'd have to have an Elite to watch 1080p movies)... the format wars are making it possible to "get by" while they duke it out, but if one wins... on goes HDCP, and off goes all the 1080p.. unless you've got an "approved" HDMI cable and player. (doesn't really matter to me, because my TV's only 720p... heh)

In my estimation, we all lose... regardless of format... but we trudge on, nonetheless.

The key here is that I don't think the format war isn't going to provide a clear "winner", where Wal Mart, Joe Sixpack and his sister can buy movies and not be concerned if their player can "play 'em". I think we'll settle in to combo-players from most manufacturers, and the first $100 "next gen" player will be a combo player from China, imported to Wal Mart and sold with their cheap, chinese LCDs... And then, it won't matter if the box is blue, or red... whatever movie format a particular studio decides on (Blu Ray for X, HD for Y) Joe Sixpack will have no trouble playing them.

Now, when he tries to use his Vista-based HD player on his blu-ray movie... then we'll hear gnashing of teeth. ;) Increasingly, as technology progresses, the quest for the "one true format" is becoming less and less and the (forgive the term) "balkanization" of things becomes the norm. Sure, some things have a dominant format, but that is not stopping alternatives from staking out a claim on the technology landscape. It's not for lack of trying, but cementing a format these days is becoming a huge undertaking that most companies (i.e. not Microsoft) have abandoned for "flexibility"... This is not true in all areas, of course, but unless rivals buy each other out, we have two (or more) choices... rather than the "one true" choice. I think most who insist on "one" format for anything are blaming the internet for their inability to make a single format work in all situations. Choice is good... and I hope neither format "wins."

Then again, I could be just talking out of my ass and hoping for the best when I know the MPAA's got something up their dress to screw us all.

I think at 720p, I can't tell the difference between HD and Blu Ray... (having only one movie tested on it so far... The Road Warrior.) I'd probably notice the difference if I owned a 1080p TV though.

Re:HDCP

[nonos]

I don't understant, on a movie shot at 24 frames per seconds, what is the difference if the hddvd/blueray player outputs it at 1080i at 48 fps or 1080p at 24 fps, the same amount of data will be received by the tv at the same rate ?

Re:HDCP

[jamie(really)]

Because the TVs don't do 1080i at 48fps. They do it at 59.97Hz: half the image (one field) then the other half 16.67ms later. Note that 59.97 is not terribly divisible by 24. As a result, the players have to figure out when they should swap the field from the previous 24fps frame to the next. So for fast moving things it looks like ass. Thats if you've got a true 1080i TV.

If, like me, you've got a true 1080P TV, then it tries to recombine the 1080i signal (which was originally a 1080p 24fps signal) into a 59.97 1080P signal. Hopefully its going to identify that the original signal is actually from a 24fps 1080P source. Hopefully. Its input was designed for 1080i ATSC TV, which is fields at 59.97Hz, each one being a genuine half-image 16.7ms apart. Unfortunately, the image from the Blu-Ray is two fields, each 0ms apart in terms of "when they were taken" but delivered 16.7ms apart. Then another two for a new frame, but again delivered 16.7ms apart.

There's basically a load of crap going on by the player and then the TV to do something with a 1080P 24fps signal.

But then, like I said, theres a huge number of older HD-TVs that can do 1080i, but don't have an HDMI input at all, so they can't watch HD blu-ray at all.

Re:HDCP

[jamie(really)]

Now, when he tries to use his Vista-based HD player on his blu-ray movie... then we'll hear gnashing of teeth. ;)

I think as you say for players, there will be combo-HD drives too (blu-ray and HD-DVD). Or you can buy both. The software players play them both for the same price...

I'd probably notice the difference if I owned a 1080p TV though.

Only if the studio screwed up the transfer like they did on some of the launch titles. Other than that they are identical.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[G-funk]

I didn't either, until I spent some time with HD content. My TV is small by US penis-measuring standards, it's only 32" and it's only 720p, but there's a HUGE difference between SD and HD content in some programming. CSI:Miami looks fantastic, as does Saturday night AFL, I think sport is definitely a place you can expect to see a lot of growth in HD in the near future, and where it really pays off.

HD Tentacles!

[Dopeskills]

I've always wanted to see tentacles in high definition...

ps3 or amiga porn ?

[voraistos]

Doesnt surprise me. After all, those who need porn are likely to have no life, or no one in their bed. (or perhaps a fat, old wife ?). As a man who likes his keyboard, first thing i do i some meaningless programming in such a case - doesnt really happen since a beauty lies in my bed, right now, call that after sex slashdotting - However, the random japanese dude doesnt have such a hobby -the meaningless programming-, and goes buy a ps3 instead. Then he realises that the vibrating controls are not enough, so he goes buy whatever it is he finds to "enhance" his ps3: BLU-RAY porn. EOS about the blu ray hddvd war stuff, honestly, i buy what is compatible with waht i have and what other people have, and none of those two are. However i wonder if compressing a video in theora/vorbis to aprox 4 or 7 gigs would be better than compressing the same video to mpg2/ac3 for the same size ? we had porn on the amiga we could store on a less-than-a-meg floppies. Probably a codec thing.

Re:ps3 or amiga porn ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It Does this Geek proud to hear a geek talk about their Real Doll that way. Are you going to tell us about "All the Beers you pounded last night too"?

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[aslate]

I agree with the quality difference, and when i move out i'll probably get me a HDTV instead of a standard one.

I recently went through the BBC Planet Earth site and downloaded all the HD clips they have. I believe they're only 720p as well (just checked, they are) and so i've been playing them on my 19" PC monitor which does 1440x900. People forget that standard PC displays can often play HD content! The video is just amazing, the details on some of the footage such as the Angel Falls. Any UK resident (or someone with a UK proxy at hand) i would highly recommend Planet Earth HD.

Put them on the HDTVs at work too, the number of people that stop and watch the telly we've got set up (compared to the shitty demo before) is startling.

low level format

[tepples]

Except, I heard that the ATAPI signal for Eject is the same as the ATA signal for Low-Level Reformat Citation needed. As far as I can tell, ATAPI optical drives use the SCSI start/stop command to eject media. Besides, ATA hard drives don't really support a "low level format", as a true low level format writes embedded servo information, which requires more precision than the drive's own mechanism can provide and is done only at the factory. The "low level format" that you usually see in PC based utilities really just writes a constant value (often a block of 0x00 bytes) to each sector of the drive.

Re:low level format

[HTH NE1]

Except, I heard that the ATAPI signal for Eject is the same as the ATA signal for Low-Level Reformat

Citation needed.

Unfortunately I don't have one. I may have it confused with something else, and it was so long ago that the source may have even ceased to be correct.

Ah well, I'll be keeping a backup just in case anyway.

Re:Bitter Tears Of Microsoft Fanboys

[HTH NE1]

You have a CED VideoDisc player? Is it a Zenith? What movies do you have? It's a Montgomery Ward unit, model GEN 10301, manufactured October 1981 F. The movies I got with it are King Kong, The War of the Worlds, and whatever unlabeled disk was still in it without a caddy (don't know as it won't play). Apparently there was a cabled remote, but it didn't arrive with it. Mono and composite RCA out, RF out, ANT in, and an unfamiliar Stereo jack with four pins above the 8-pin remote jack.

Where are the 72 Hz TVs?

[tepples]

Seems my TV doesn't do 24fps which is needed more than ever on the HD formats as they aren't tweaked the way DVD is to approximate the 25/30fps we normally see at home. But why is it so hard for a display to run at 72 Hz, so that each frame of video information covers three fields?

Re:Where are the 72 Hz TVs?

[natd]

You're talking refresh rates, not discrete frames per second. Naturally any TV which supports 24 fps actually runs it at a higher multiple - if it didn't it would be flickery. Cinemas are the same, showing the same frame multiple times at a fast rate so that the blank spots in between each frame are shorter.

Re:Where are the 72 Hz TVs?

[tepples]

Naturally any TV which supports 24 fps actually runs it at a higher multiple - if it didn't it would be flickery. So the question remains: Why don't TVs show 24 fps video at an integer multiple instead of showing it at 60 fps, which introduces 3:2 pulldown artifacts?

Re:Where are the 72 Hz TVs?

[natd]

Some do, but it's been uncommon in LCD/Plasmas so far. Why don't they all support it? Same reason any TV is missing a feature...because it wasn't included ;)

Rock and a hard place

[crovira]

If Sony tried that "We don't fart and we don't fuck on Blue-Ray" their share-holders would carve them up and eat them raw on vinagered rice patties.

They REMEMBER the VHS-BetaMax debacle.

That is not likely to happen again.

Like Vespasian said, holding up the sesterces collected from the public toilets: "Money has no odor..."

Re:Rock and a hard place

[dgcurtis]

Ah yes but porn is not going to determine the winner in the current format wars.

Back the in VHS/BetaMAX days, the Internet wasn't available to every joe lunchbox with a $300 Nascar computer from Wal-Mart. There is so much free porn out there that people don't need to rent/buy it.

Blu-ray has all the major studios except Universal and HD-DVD has less than that.

Not that I really care. They'll both be cheap enough very soon that you'll be able to buy both formats.

Re:Rock and a hard place

[Bobartig]

There was a rather larger issue to betamax which limited its adoption. From wikipedia (but cited in a bunch of places prior to wikipedia):

Betamax held an early lead in the format war, offering some technical advantages. By 1980, VHS was gaining marketshare due to its longer tape time (3 hours maximum, compared to just 1 hour for Betamax in USA) and JVC's less strict licensing program. The longer tape time is sometimes cited as the defining factor in the format war, allowing consumers to record entire programs unattended

Re:Rock and a hard place

[SyncNine]

I disagree. The porn industry is still doing very well. You can see the numbers here. (Yes, I know the _TITLE_ of the article is 'Internet Pornography Statistics', but if you read the f'ing thing, you'll see the VHS/DVD sales at the bottom. STILL RELEVANT.) While 2006 showed a metered drop in revenue of about $500m USD, the number of units still increased -- meaning that they're selling more porn, cheaper. Sounds like a competitive market to me.

You wouldn't have as much free porn on the internet if these sites / production companies weren't making some kind of money providing it. By your logic, there shouldn't even be porn DVDs now, since it's all free on the internet anyway. We all know that's not the case!

Bloo Bloo-ray

[flickwipe]

I don't care what it looks like as long as it still has the bowm-chickah-chickah-wah-wah-chickah-chickah-wah-w ah-boowwmm background muzak

BS revisionist history

[FredThompson]

Betamax failed because Sony wouldn't license the tech to other manufacturers at an affordable rate.

The common belief is that porn made the VCR desired in households. The porn producers were smart enough to set a low price point.

Those are 2 very different things.

Some people still live in Buttsex, Egypt

[tepples]

I am not looking to continue buying movies on plastic discs. Good for you. Other people who prefer to spend money on things other than high-speed Internet access will still buy plastic discs.

There are already a few internet on demand services for movies, and plenty of cable/satellite on demand services. There are still plenty of rural areas not served by cable and DSL, especially in North America. Satellite "video on demand" is just a DVR that waits until the movie loops around again, like the old Sega Channel.

Re:Difference?.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a new game for you to play first. It's called "Learn How To Spell."

Re:I've gone with Blu-Ray

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I've switched to Blu-Ray mainly because of the PS3. It is definatly worth it. The PS3 appears to be picking up some steam (although still quite dead in the game department as of this month) PS3 is a great buy due to its Blue disc support and game support. The games will be coming...

Heavenly Sword looks to be a killer game.

So far i own 4 Blu-ray movies but.. its definatly the format i'll base my collection on. The porn industry does matter, and it is about time Sony woke up to it. Nice to see they did.

Well, this would be keeping

[jhylkema]

with Sony's near-perfect record of failure in the format wars. From the Betamax to a dozen or so idiotic, proprietary audio formats for their cheap-but-expensive MP3 players, Sony needs about a dozen strokes with a clue-by-four.

This is what happens, of course, when one of your subsidiaries is RIAA-member Sony Music.

Re:Well, this would be keeping

[king-manic]

with Sony's near-perfect record of failure in the format wars. From the Betamax to a dozen or so idiotic, proprietary audio formats for their cheap-but-expensive MP3 players, Sony needs about a dozen strokes with a clue-by-four.

This is what happens, of course, when one of your subsidiaries is RIAA-member Sony Music.

IT's really about 1 fails:1 successes.

Remember 3.5" were them. So were CD's and DVD's. MD's were a raging success in asia. Failures include MD's in the US, UMD, Betamax. pretty close to 1:1.

Where it started

[king-manic]

You all do know that the assertion that Bluray won't support porn was spread by a single person at a convention because he though sony was ignoring him right?

Someone makes a claim

Turns out he was trolling

Apparently he was backing the other format and just wanted to grab some PR and slag the compitition. I doubt there ever was a "ban" or even a "we wont' do this but try one of our FRIENDS" policy at Sony.

porn for japanese = ...

[alexandreracine]

manga

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[king-manic]

CSI:Miami looks fantastic, as does Saturday night AFL

For a second I thought you said Saturday Night Live.... nothing on earth can make that look good.

They say..

[CaptainStacks]

They say the porn industry decides which format goes and which stays. It's all up to them.

Re:High-def porn? No thanks.

[Soporific]

So hopefully people will lay off porn for once since the unabashed truth will certainly set a number of people off.

WTF is wrong with porn?

~S

At least they try

[_merlin]

Yeah, you've got to give it to Sony for actually trying new things. It's easier to be a follower than a leader. They tried a lot of new things - CD, MD, SACD, Walkman, S/P-DIF, BetaMax, U-Matic, BluRay, the list goes on. Some of them have been raging successes, and some have been monumental flops. But if they didn't try, they'd miss out of the successes.

Better codecs

[ascendant]

Jeff DeMaagd wrote:

where the amount of data on plastic & aluminum discs of the sales of just ONE movie in the first week of sales exceeded the aggregate backbone capacity several fold for the same period on the Internet.

I'm sure the data calculation of the discs was easy enough, but how was the Internet backbone limit calculated? I doubt this.

A better codec will shrink that down, but you aren't going to cut it down by more than half without losing picture quality.

LOL. H.264 and Vorbis/MP3 can easily drop 4.7GB of MPEG-2 and AC3 (or whatever's on DVDs) to the size of a CD with relatively little loss in quality, and to 1GB with probably none at all. Yes, I know that a lot of movie DVDs there are DVD-9 (double-layer), but it makes little difference.

----------- Lameness filter -------
king-manic wrote:

Sure current codecs are much better then mpeg1 but I think the law of diminishing returns has kicked in in the formats since mpeg2.

The "Law of Diminishing Returns" is for economics, not lossy/data compression. Since MPEG-2, XviD has halved the size of output files with even an increase in quality, and h.264 has halved it again. I would agree that H.264 may be reaching the limit of video compression, but your law certainly did not kick in at MPEG-2, which is what you meant by mpeg1 I'm sure.

So my statement stands

[SuperKendall]

I hardly think hardcore fetish purchases are enough of a market to decide the format war over the consumers purchasing the latest Disney movie.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[My name is Bucket]

Google.com: Results 1 - 10 of about 2,120,000 for Am I the only one who just doesn't care about HD?. (0.32 seconds)

You're probably not even the first person TODAY to mention why he feels HD is unnecessary. Forget Google-- you'll probably find a "blah blah blah don't care about HD?" thread in every message board you visit regularly.

Not to marginalize your opinion, but I think whether or not "the world really needs HD" is a moot argument. It's the next step. Eventually, it'll be the standard. You'll get over it.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[Don_dumb]

Any UK resident (or someone with a UK proxy at hand) i would highly recommend Planet Earth HD Here in the UK the difference between standard PAL widescreen and the 720p isn't that amazing and the take up of HD doesn't seem to have been dramatic. I haven't seen that much reason to go out and get an HDTV yet but when the beeb make a choice of HD format I would kill to see Planet Earth in HD, AFAIK the beeb films HD in full 1080. Most programming just doesn't really need the extra resolution (Seinfeld wouldn't be any funnyer) but natural history really does need every pixel it can get (and perhaps Cricket)

HD-DVD or blue-ray over component video?

[voss]

Millions of us bought HDtvs with component video ports before HDMI came out.
I have 1080i but neither blue-ray nor hd-dvd will give me a signal higher than 480p.

The truth is most people with PS3's dont even have hdtvs since many ps3s were bought
without either hdmi or component video cables.

When I can get a blue-ray or hd-dvd that plays 1080i over component video for under
$200 thats the standard Ill buy.

Re:HD-DVD or blue-ray over component video?

[kyrre]

Not under $200, but the Playstation 3 play blu-ray in 1080i just fine. I also think the xbox 360 add on does the same as the xbox does not even come with hdmi.

Re:HD-DVD or blue-ray over component video?

[JoeInnes]

Well, to be frank, tough. HDMI is the best quality connection you can get. Feel free to pipe your signal through component, but don't bitch about it being lower quality.

Re:HD-DVD or blue-ray over component video?

[TRex1993]

This is incorrect. You CAN get 1080i over component video, for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The studios, in a RARE move to not hose early adopters, decided not to use Image Constraint Tokens (which forces a down-grading to 960x540 resolution) until at least 2012. I am not aware, however, of a player that will push 1080p over component, nor have I heard of a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player that will upscale standard DVDs over component either (only a few upscaling-over-component DVD players were ever released, with questionable results).

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[ceeam]

I own a shitload of self-recorded DVDs (and CDs) around this house so I do care. Damn - one could write the whole Ubuntu repository to a single DL BR disc! Ain't it cool?

Also - you can store all Bleach fansub episodes so far on a single-layer BR disc. Etc.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[pinkfloydhomer]

Well, if you own a large display (like a front projector and a 77" screen as I do, many own 100" or more), DVD picture quality is simply disappointing. MPEG artifacts everywhere and low resolution in general. Now, my projector isn't even a 1920x1080 projector, only 1280x720. Still, for a 77" screen, DVD quality is too low. The jump from 720x480 (or 720x576 in the PAL case) to 1920x1080 and then downscaled to 1280x720 is considerable and important in this case. But at least equally important is the fact that there are much less compression artifacts with VC-1 HD content using 30-50GB of space than with MPEG2 using 9GB of space. In short: With larger displays, DVD is totally insufficient, we need something better. I vote for BluRay because it has more space. Someone wrote in the thread that a HD movie (VC-1 encoded) easily fits in 30GB. Hmm. More space always means less compression. If you compare 30GB VC1-1 with uncompressed HD video (where would you get that...), I am sure you would find differences. And also, more space is always good. For storage, for the future. /David

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[pinkfloydhomer]

Well, if you own a large display (like a front projector and a 77" screen as I do, many own 100" or more), DVD picture quality is simply disappointing. MPEG artifacts everywhere and low resolution in general.

Now, my projector isn't even a 1920x1080 projector, only 1280x720. Still, for a 77" screen, DVD quality is too low. The jump from 720x480 (or 720x576 in the PAL case) to 1920x1080 and then downscaled to 1280x720 is considerable and important in this case. But at least equally important is the fact that there are much less compression artifacts with VC-1 HD content using 30-50GB of space than with MPEG2 using 9GB of space.

In short: With larger displays, DVD is totally insufficient, we need something better. I vote for BluRay because it has more space. Someone wrote in the thread that a HD movie (VC-1 encoded) easily fits in 30GB. Hmm. More space always means less compression. If you compare 30GB VC1-1 with uncompressed HD video (where would you get that...), I am sure you would find differences. And also, more space is always good. For storage, for the future. /David

Something missing

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read through this whole long thread and there hasn't been even one link to Japanese Blue Ray Porn - a total waste of time, Slashdot is not what it used to be.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[Anonymous Coward]

Cricket requires maybe two pixels.

Porn didn't play a major role in VHS vs. Betamax

[Anonymous Coward]

The role of porn in VHS vs. Betamax is a myth. Porn was not the reason why Betamax lost.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war# Market_share

For the $200 I spent in 1982...

[Overzeetop]

With most TVs, you just take your player, plug a single (HDMI) cable from your player to the TV. At this point, you're pretty far past the bleeding edge of the tech curve, and any new device is pretty likely to work. Since 40-50" televisions of any kind have never been under $400, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Me? I just dropped $1850 to put together a 7 speaker home theater system with a 125" 16:9 motorized screen, Onkyo 630W (90x7) HDMI upconverting and 2:1 switching amplifier, and an Epson 720p front projector. If you disregard the speaker wire, there's an HDMI cable from my player to my amp, and an HDMI from my amp to my projector. Oh...I'm lazy, so there's a headphone cable from the projector to the screen - that way with the PJ turns on, the screen drops automagically, and goes up when I power down. Hardly rocket science. It's going to take a movie a week to "make back" that money compared to taking the family to see a movie in the theater, but - honestly - my popcorn is better anyway.

It could be done for less - probably $900-$1000 with an HD projector, 100" fixed or manual screen, and a home-theater-in-a-box package. Is a 100" screen worth 2.5x as much to you as a $400 40" LCD?

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[HalAtWork]

Yeah. I felt that way too. But I put Pirates of the Caribbean on in HD and flipped between that and an upscaled DVD, and you can tell the difference right away. Even besides the fact that it's over 6x the pixel definition of DVD, the colors are more defined, it's like it preserves much more of the spectrum over DVD. DVDs look like common internet JPGs compared to HD videos. HD formats are a lot less blocky than DVDs as well, and although it's still noticable in extreme cases (where every single frame is different), it's not nearly as prevalant on DVDs. When you're watching a DVD, you know it because you can see artifacting everywhere, almost in every scene. On HD formats it's really not noticable.

Taking all that into consideration, and when you can see some blu-ray discs on the shelves for $9 and $19 already, then why are you paying the same amount for the DVD? I saw "Happy Feet" for ~ $25 at some stores but I got it on blu-ray for $14. I won't be re-buying a whole lot of my collection, but I will for my favorites and just trade in the DVD versions for some other DVDs at the local video store I want to see. For new movies, if I see a blu-ray version I'll definitely pick them up.

For me it's a no-brainer.

Re:Difference?.....

[Anonymous Coward]

MS are interested in both formats failing.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 26216

Finally...

[p4rri11iz3r]

It's been so long since Slashdot had news "that mattered."

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[james_orr]

Not at all. I have a 32" SD TV which I am perfectly happy with and have no intentions of upgrading anytime soon.

That's good for HD DVD

[benwaggoner]

Based on your list, you should be supporting HD DVD then. All flavored of burned Blu-ray fails to play in at least one player, but both HD DVD-R and HD on DVD-R media both work fine with all HD DVD players.

Another downside for Blu-ray is replicated media requires AACS DRM, which is another $2500/title hit on top of already higher mastering and replication costs. For small runs like Adult often uses, that $2500 can be a big hit per disc.

AACS is optional on HD DVD

I like Blu-ray

[Walter Carver]

...because the disc can hold more data.

Oblig, since its japanese porn...

[nih]

Hi-Def porn censorship ftw!

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[bigtangringo]

Talk about casting a wide net...

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "Am I the only one who just doesn't care about HD?". (0.19 seconds)
Slashdot | Blue Blu-ray
Am I the only one who just doesn't care about HD? (Score:3, Interesting). by bigtangringo (800328) on Tuesday July 31, @05:34PM (#20063407) ...
hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/31/1924 233&threshold=-1 - 36k - 18 hours ago - Alas, that's an equally narrow net.

Anyway, it will probably, eventually, become the new standard. Only if the greater public buys into it. To me, HD is much like Vista, but better. The previous version is plenty good, the new version is suppose to be better, but you won't be able to tell unless you have new and expensive hardware. I, and many people like me, will go out and spend thousands of dollars just to get the latest and greatest when what I have works quite well.

I suppose my disinclination to "upgrade" to HD is about like others disinclination to "upgrade" to Vista.

Normal Problem

[jellomizer]

There was a simular problem back when movies begain to add voices to it. A lot of the Silent Movie Actors had horible voices thus lost popularity for these actors so they needed to raise the bar they needed actors who have good voices and appearence.

we've known this since march

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sequel to the Adult Classic Makes Adult Movie History by Being First Available in Both Formats"

http://www.newsenvoy.com/11615/vivid-to-release-de bbie-does-dallas-again.htm

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[deets]

I got an Oppo upconverting DVD player for my HD TV and it works great. Because of this I am going to stick with DVD's for a while.

And...

[hummassa]

you would be equally wrong.
But to stay in the topic (of porn) in the small towns of my (once _very_ conservative) state of Minas Gerais, sex shops are flourishing, because people (especially the ladies) go there in packs to buy sex toys... and porn.

Write times

[phorm]

My question would also be, how quick can one write 50GB on an HD disk. At the very least, I'd expect the early burners (and some are out already, I just haven't tested one) to take a looooong time to burn a disk, not to mention the CPU power and space that would be required to master content if one were maing video.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[Anonymous Coward]

All those problems were, of course, solved years ago.

And they're much easier to clean up than macrovision on vhs.

The drd (digital rights destruction) on hd-dvd and blu-ray hasn't been fully solved yet, so for now regular dvd is an infinitely better choice.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[DarkVader]

Football can. Of course, football can make anything but golf look good.

Football could make the international nose-picking championship appear to be an intellectual and challenging sport in comparison.

So, yes, football certainly makes SNL look good.

Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H

[Trogre]

Umm they were only 'solved' if you play your DVDs through a computer. For the 95% of people who play DVDs with set-top DVD players the UOP problem has utterly failed to be solved.