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HD VMD Shows Up Late For the Format War
Fishead writes "As the fight heats up between HD DVD and Blu-ray, and as consumers seem to care less and less, a new contender has entered the fray. Next month, New Medium Enterprises will be selling a 1080p player through Amazon and stores such as Radio Shack and Costco for around $150 — half what the cheapest HD DVD player costs, and a quarter the cost of a low-end Blu-ray. The difference this new HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format brings is that the discs are created with the same (cheap) red laser as DVDs. From the article: 'HD VMD discs, which hold up to 30GB on a single side, are encoded with a maximum bit rate of 40 megabits per second... between HD DVD's 36 Mpbs and Blu-ray's 48 Mbps. The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future.'"
Fourth contender.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
...but I do want a cheap burner I can throw 30GB at. Sell THAT to me at $150 and I'll buy.
...but how many giant media corporations are behind it? None? Bummer.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Sony just pissed themselves.
$487.99 for Blue-ray Vs. $150... wonder who will win that aspect to the format war?
The only thing that may limit this format is whether the movie companies will pick it up, and more importantly the porn industry.
...how bad is its DRM? That's really the only thing I care about. Whichever format will give me - a paying customer - the freedom to do what I want with my movies will get my money. If none do, I'm sticking with regular DVDs.
No studios are going to support the format, and I doubt many rippers will either. I could see the potential of a DVD player that could play H264 HD content from a DVD. But yet another HD physical format? The field is already crowded.
Videos of Mass Destruction!?
Since the field is obviously WIDE open... I, Anonymous Coward, have entered the fray with HD 8-Track... yes, that's right: High Definition 8-Track tape. As a big disco fan, I have accumulated lots of Bee Gees, and Donna Sommers 8-Track tapes over the years (for some reason, people kept throwing out these gold)... and I've managed to record video onto the tape. At first I had a lousy 100x348 resolution, but after months and months of work in my parent's basement, I have UPGRADED the resolution and so I am calling it High Definition. Yes, that's right, I have achieved 320x240 pixel resolution in 16-colour glory! And to make sure, this format catches on like wildfire, I am licensing the technology for $1 per tape.
I'm gonna be a millionaire! I love capitalism.
TDz.
That's the core question. Will there be any content for this player? Will the studios release content for it?
The only other chance, if the studios don't jump onto it, is to squeeze out a writer for it quickly and make this the next big thing in computer storage and HD content copying. If it can hold a full HD movie, people who don't care too much about DRM or buying content will be very interested in it. Then, and only then, you can get a standard into the market without the support of the content providers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Be it BlueRay, be it HD-DVD, or HD VMD, or chinese EVD.
We don't give a fuck about who battling against who on the market.
We already know who won the battle :
- the unknown noname chinese hardware maker who'll market a cheap plastic reader, that'll read anything you'll put in it and that'll cost only a few dozens of .
Seriously.
No, the only thing that will matter is if the cheap hardware maker will pick it up.
Last time, the whole DVD "plus" RW vs. DVD "minus" RW vs. DVD-RAM debate was made pointless once asian makers started to push multi format burners.
Before thatm the DVD (the hidef format) vs. SuperVCD (the cheaper with older hardware) vs. DivX (the internet alternative) was made obsolete now that you can pick-up a DVD/MP3/MPEG-4 reader for less than 50$ at your local store.
The exact same story will repeat it self the next few years with the HD format war. While marketoid will go at great lenght arguing which is better between BlueRay and HD-DVD and while you should pick *their* technology because most of the studio are backing *that one*, the public will quietly stand back, enjoy the fight, and wait patiently until cheap multi-format reader appear.
LG and Samsung have such movie players and media burners coming to their products line-up and others companies are to follow. The cheap brandless aren't far away.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
http://www.youporn.com/
http://www.pornotube.com/
http://www.shareaza.com/
Um yeah, why are people still buying discs ???!? I agree with the above poster, there is no way porno is even going to effect this format war. The internet has taken over that industry and distribution completely.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Once these recording devices make it into the hands of legislators and judges, nothing can stop them. Think about how RIM survived the injunction order. There were so many congress people and senators using crackberry, that nothing could shut them down. And if someone were to create better home recorders with the new "old" technology, no amount of lobbying, donating or influencing will force them out... now if we could just get this technology into the hands of legislators fast enough...
But should one go for the cheap HD VMD today or support BDs more expensive route (which surely will be cheaper tomorrow)?
It will take much larger numbers to be produced for BD to even get close to HDDVD/HDVMD in manufacturing cost. HDDVD/VMDs can be produced using existing equipment with small modifications. Manufacturing BD requires new equipment and is a much more complex process.
BD Players also cost about 10 times as much to manufacture as a HDVMD player does.
There is also the issue of media longevity. The recording surface in a BD disc is very close to the underside of the disc. This will increase the likelihood that scratches will cause errors and also increase the chances of warping. The HD format discs are manufactured the same way as DVD and are much more resistant to scratches & warping.
The only advantage that BD really has over HDDVD is the amount of data storage. Dont forget that both BD & HDDVD are still only generally using 1 or 2 layers. HDVMD uses 4 layers to reach 20Gb.
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My current DVD player will play high definition Divx files from DVD or from a flash drive or hard drive plugged into its USB port. The compression rate is plenty good enough to shoe-horn a full-length HD movie onto a dual-layer DVD. Lots of existing devices and pretty much every PC on the planet made in the last five years should be able to play that.
Coming late to the game, they need to establish a 'home ground', a niche that they can dominate and then grow out from. India could be that home ground.
A fine feature would be if it were possible to play the new HD VMD disks at DVD resolution on standard DVD players. Given they use the same lasers, it might be that DVD players will see one particular layer, on which the DVD data could be stored. This again would help greatly to break into the market.
However, they don't mention such a feature, and I'd hope they'd have thought about it, so probably it is technically infeasible.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I am of the impression that uninformed consumers do not concern themselves with technical details, and are far more motivated by cost. I believe this is why VHS won out over Beta, and why HD VMD will destroy both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats.
While movie studios will want DRM on their disks, ultimately they desire sales, and will go with whatever format dominates the marketplace, no matter how much or little DRM is in place. However, as the article mentions that the $150 player comes with HDMI, I suspect they have comparable DRM to the other HD competitors.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
I'll move to a high-def format as soon Criterion Collection moves to a high-def format. As it stands now, I couldn't care less about watching cars explode in 1080p.
As someone that just purchased a PS3 for $350 (after $150 rebate) with free shipping and 8 free movies I'm not too worried about this development. In fact I rather welcome it as HD-DVD and VDM will battle to the death for the low end and most likely neither will survive.
If worst comes to worse I still have a great game machine and a Linux computer.
I must confess one bit of annoyance with Toshiba and the HD-DVD camp; I bought my PS3 primarily as an HD movie player, but the HD-DVD camp screams day and night that only standalone players count (except when they want to include the XBox 360 addon). Blu-Ray may not win, but it certainly has the largest installed base at 6 million plus; it is much less likely to just stumble and fail completely as HD-DVD was in danger of doing until the Paramount defection (strange doings that).
It will be a delicious irony to hear HD-DVD proponents now claiming low-price is not the biggest determining factor in who wins.
Letter To Iran
Finally we have the hardware that grand parents will buy for the kids that wanted an HD player.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
As far as I'm concerned, this new DVD format is nothing but vaporware until it's actually released. And even then, it could still go the way of the DIVX format. It seems like the Phantom of DVD players to me: cheap, using off-the-shelf technology, but able to do tons of really neat stuff. Remember, folks, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Four layers? Cheap to manufacture? Are you on crack?
:-(
Sure, the players might be relatively cheap to manufacture. But the big studios avoid pressing even two layer discs whenever possible, because the manufacturing cost of creating two layers, gluing them together with a semi-transparent layer in the middle, and throwing out the rejects is still a lot higher than a single layer, where you stamp it out, cover it with silver, and glue a non-critical bit of plastic to bring it up to 12mm.
Crank that up to 4+ layers, and we're talking about a pretty insane manufacturing process here. And you'll likely never get that sort of density in recordable technology--recordable dual layer discs today still carry a hefty premium over single layer discs, because now you need to add a recordable layer that you can also shoot the same recording laser through to record the other layer. You can't even get re-recordable dual layer DVDs; the technology simply does not commercially exist.
Blu-ray is the best hope for future computer interchange needs, because the 25 GB single layer recordable and re-recordable discs are going to be dirt cheap compared to anything else. It'd be awfully nice if it turned out to be the HD video disc format as well, since it'd mean fewer components. While I'm sure plenty of people would just argue for dual format players, long term I think that's a horrible solution.
And no, HD-DVDs are not necessarily superior to Blu-ray in terms of durability. The hard coating process on BD has done a lot to address any scratching issues (HD-DVD could also benefit from hard coating, of course, but it's not mandatory, and thus usually skipped--making HD-DVD actually more susceptible to scratching issues), and keeping the data layer closer to the surface actually has a lot of positive benefits in terms of readability, improving robustness. In fact, it's the main reason Blu-ray can achieve higher densities than HD-DVD to begin with. Keep in mind that with a relatively thick disc, any warping in the transparent medium is going to affect the ability of the laser pickup to track, especially at the laser frequencies used by HD-DVD and Blu-ray. With a thin optical layer, it almost doesn't matter.
Which is why the BD standard absolutely mandates scratch-proof coatings on the surface of the discs, instantly making them the most durable (bare) disc format anyone has ever seen. HD-DVD, OTOH, is the most dense disc format, and without such a scratch resistant layer, the most easily susceptible to damage anyone has seen.
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Why are we still buying discs? I, for one, will not get sucked into yet another "hard" media format. All the time and energy wasted on developing these dead-end formats should be put into making the content available online quickly and easily.
Karma Schmarma