Slashdot Mirror
Sony Calls Current Blu-ray/HD DVD Format War a 'Stalemate
unger814 writes "Sony CEO Howard Stringer says that Blu-ray and HD DVD are currently in a 'stalemate' and is 'playing down the importance of the battle.' Stringer addressed a crowd at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y cultural center Thursday, where he said that 'it was a matter of prestige' which format wins. Stringer pointed to the switch by Paramount from producing movies in both formats to only HD DVD as a turning point. 'We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides,' Stringer said."
I agree, ultimately, I think that HD-DVD is probably going to be the winner, but really only because the equipment is less expensive, and seems less prone to manufacturing problems.
I think from the consumer perspective that the formats aren't really different enough to justify two of them. Perhaps if blue ray could offer something compelling that wasn't available in HD-DVD, then they'd have something, but all you get is a bit of extra run time that'll rarely be used and more encryption. Most consumers don't even use all the functionality that regular DVDs provide. Few use the surround sound capabilities that most DVDs have.
I haven't really seen anything which makes me think that one is really better than the other in a significant way.
In chess, if you know you're going to win (which is often the case, sometimes several moves before it happens), it's customary to offer a draw out of courtesy, rather than to drag out the inevitable. While Sony may be trying to use this analogy, from popular opinion it seems more like admitting defeat.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
This is very simplistic thinking. The fact is that Toshiba paid Paramount a lot of money to drop Blu-Ray support. Toshiba could pay everyone else to drop Blu-Ray support as well. So maybe you could explain how sticking to being "honest", and relying on the merits of the format would help win here? What an idiotic thing to say.
It is clear how this is heading, just as Sony and Microsoft fight over exclusives for their consoles, Sony and Toshiba are going to fight over exclusives for their HD formats. Sony may have a superior format in some ways, size of data on the disc, but that wont win them the war.
Of course, the other problem is that the difference between DVD and HDDVD/Bluray is not clear enough.
When I first went to buy an HDTV, I was very excited. I got to the store, looked at everything... And then realized: I couldn't tell the difference between the HDTV and regular TV... Both were CRT at the time. I went away very disheartened.
It wasn't until a couple years later that I finally bought an LCD HDTV for gaming, instead of TV, and I was very happy. To this day, I still can't see much difference between HD and regular TV on my 50" LCD. And while I can tell the difference between Bluray and DVD, the difference isn't big enough for me to justify spending twice as much on the discs.
So, if I can hardly tell the difference and I'm fully invested in the system... What about normal people? All they have is the hype... There's no proof.
I must say one thing has impressed me, though: Over the Air HD broadcasts. The same channel that is a mess of colored fuzz with sound in regular broadcasts is a perfectly clear channel in HD. (I admit, that could be my crappy antenna, though.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Oh, I think I can predict who the winner is. I think the pain threshold is around "put it on when you go to sleep, done when you get home from school/work" which comes out to 30GB/16hrs = 4Mbit sustained. Now we're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. For several years now our main telco has been lying fiber to all new housing, so even if it doesn't happen overnight more and more buildings will be directly linked with fiber. At that point it's really just a question of how much you're willing to pay...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
- Toshiba seems to be the only company making HD-DVD players ( Official HD-DVD site)
And just from my own observations at a few retailers in NY I see more Blu-ray movies than HD-DVDs on the shelves. I'm not buying a player until there's a clear winner, but if I had to buy soon (i.e. my DVD player dies) I'd pick a Blu-ray player.That way you will enjoy the biggest library of HD content available and if Blu-Ray goes titsup, you still have a console you can play. If HD-DVD goes titsup, though, standalone players will be worthless.
I hear you there. I had a shit load of sony before the rootkit shit, plus they fucked me over on my plampilot. A laptop, HD TV, camera, PS2, 400 DVD changer, home theater surround sound system, HD directv reciever, and the fore mentioned TH-55. I won't mention all the other odds and ends like blank sony dvd's and dvd writers.
Sony fucked me on the th-55 first. I died. I sent it in for repairs the fuckers at the repair shop fuck it up. They say its not their fault and refused to honor the warranty. How the fuck can it not be covered? It died, i put it in a box and that is all I did. Some tech at the repair shop fucked it and covered his ass. That's what happened.
That day I ebayed the camera, what was left of the palm (got a 100 bucks for it, go figure), and the laptop. I have a dell now. The TV croaked so I replaced it with a walmart knock off till LCD comes down and gets better. The HD reciever got replaced with a free H20 from directv. The DVD changer and home theater are still going strong but their days are numbered.
The only the only thing that I think I'll have trouble to dump will be the ps2. Not going to own a ps3 anytime soon so I'll keep the ps2 till it croaks. I have my eyes set on a xbox360 anyway.
I figure by this time next year I'll be sony free. Except for all the sony movies I download or copy. I have to make up the cost of that pda some how.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Weird. I have a 46" 1080p HD-TV that I just bought, and the difference between HD channels and regular channels is STUNNING to me. So dramatic, in fact, that I hate going back to 'standard def' TV for those channels I don't have in HD (which, alas, is most of them).
... and my existing DVD collection looks tons better than it ever did on my old TV with my old player.
I am not about to pick a horse in this format war just yet (especially not at these prices), so I just replaced my existing DVD player with a cheap "Up-converting" DVD player-Recorder ($100! AND it plays and copies VHS tapes to DVD!)
Now, I can't see much difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, video quality-wise, but the video quality difference between the HD channels and the standard def channels is dramatic, and I could never go back.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Just as VHS beat out Beta, HD DVD has figured out the best way to win. If your product has lower prices on the player/hardware, then that is the one the mass public will buy. Just last week Best Buy and Walmart had HD DVD players on sell for $99.99 and I believe the cheapest Blu-ray is still around $250.00 or more. Quality will never win over ease of use and lower price.
If Sony really wants Blu-Ray to win, it will "bite the bullet" and sell players for $100 and recorders for $200 during the 2007 Christmas holiday shopping season and make up the loss in future volume. Since products have already shipped to stores, they will need to do a rebate. To avoid annoying potential customers, it will need to be an "in store instant rebate". Otherwise most people (these are the people that don't give a damn about technical issues) will buy what is cheapest, and that is now HD-DVD.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Well, I fully expected BR to win because of Sony's PS3 strategy. Sell lots of PS3s, which just happen to be BR players, and you instantly have a huge BR user base. And it worked to some extent, as since PS3 started shipping, BR discs have outsold HD-DVD discs 2-1. But PS3 hasn't sold nearly as well as had been predicted, and a 2-1 selling advantage isn't that big, not nearly enough to kill off HD-DVD. Now, HD-DVD players are being sold for $200 and less (even $99), and BestBuy/Walmart sold 100k HD-DVD players just last weekend. Meaning that HD-DVD players are beginning to sell faster than PS3s, and all of those players are going to be used to play HD-DVD discs, while only a fraction (could be big, could be small) of PS3s are used to play BR discs. Meanwhile, the standalone BR player market (i.e. the BR players that aren't PS3s) is pretty much dead, with very few units being sold.
So, even though BR has had the "lead" due to the PS3, things are beginning to trend the other way now. Sony was ready to declare victory a few months ago. That they are now declaring "stalemate" is an admission of defeat.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD "tapes" are cheaper--they are both prohibitive expensive in -R/-RW versions, and movies on both are quite expensive. If you were really paying attention during the VHS/Betamax wars, the real issues were:
- availability of rental movies (because there was no retail market for movies at reasonable prices until DVD)
- length of recording time (Beta couldn't originally do an hour and a half on a single tape)
- other features (VHS integrated a clock for time shifting).
Format Wars in Home Theater
None of those issues really apply to BR or HD-DVD. You also gloss over the fact that Sony helped to develop both CD and DVD, in your attempts to suggest that Sony has only ever failed with Betamax and MiniDisc. That sounds like "concern FUD."
The real failures that are relevant today are SA-CD and DVD-Audio, both of which tried to sneak in new DRM under the premise of delivering HD audio content. Sound familiar? Here's a hint: BR and HD-DVD are doing the same thing for video.
What's really shocking is how badly both are selling. Both sides are chatting up how they're in the lead, but combined together, both couldn't manage to sell more than a million players by this summer. That's ZUNE-like! Each have sold about 300,000 stand alone players up to this summer.
The only clear winner is Sony's bundled PS3, which purposely tagged along a BR drive to create an installed base for BR and drop the price of manufacturing. That means there are lots more BR players, but only because of the PS3:
Blu-Ray: 7.3 million
300,000 standalone
7,000,000 PS3 bundled
HD-DVD: 0.3 million
150,000 standalone
150,000 Xbox 360 optional disc player units
That isn't good on either side. Neither format delivers anything that couldn't be done with DVDs using H.264. Who needs PC-style navigation or 20 hours of "extra features" when you can easily put an HD movie on DVD? The only reason for either format to exist is to sell stronger DRM under the guise of HD, and to resell everyone the movies they already own.
As for all the astroturfing about the "Sony root kit," remember that Microsoft's Windows Media is the same thing, you just voluntarily install it. Running from Sony into the arms of Microsoft, which facilitated the Sony root kit in Windows after launching Bill Gate's DRM wet dream of Palladium--well, its obvious that you're all frauds. Come on, Microsoft has never supported anything open or consumer-friendly.
Origins of the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD War
Blu-ray vs HD-DVD in Next Generation Game Consoles
Is a Root Kit only evil if its installed by an evil third party, but "A-OK" if its shoehorned in by Microsoft? Because WGA and WMA are both exactly the same thing as Sony's third party root kit, it's just that Microsoft additionally uses its access to send home data on top. Spyware + Root Kit DRM. The Windows Enthusiasts don't seem to mind getting bent over by Microsoft, but sure have a lot to say about DRM from anyone else.
Ten Myths of Mac OS X Leopard: 9 Apple Is Spying on Users!
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Blu-ray may have a higher storage capability but take a look a the stats for discs actually used... http://www.blu-raystats.com/index.php - approx. 60% use the 25 GB disc while almost all HD DVD movies are in the 30 GB dual layer format.
>Ideally, it would be a lossless transfer.
Yeah, good luck with that. Uncompressed 1080P video is roughly 500GB per hour (assuming 1920*1080 & 3 bytes/pixel @ 24hz). When you find a lossless compressor which can compress that down to 20GB or so, please let me know.