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Warner Backs Blu-Ray. End Times For HD-DVD?
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times reports: In addition to Apple, Warner Brothers is now going to throw its weight behind the Blu-ray format for high-definition disks. Warner has been the only major studio to publish its movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Today, the studio announced that from now on, it would only issue movies in Blu-ray.
Richard Greenfield, the media analyst with Pali Research, wrote that this marks the end of the format wars: "We expect HD DVD to 'die' a quick death.""
You could hear a high-def pindrop in here. I don't think anyone expected things to be over so quick. Does this mean there will be some good sales on HD-DVD players?
I hope the war ends quickly, and I hope blu-ray wins because blu-ray has a higher data rate (something like peak 48Mb/sec vs 32Mb/sec). Not to mention that blu-ray dual layer holds a whopping 50 gigs. But I'm not going to buy any kind of player until the war is clearly over.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
This thing of thinking one agreement will stop conflict has been done before.
There is one player left who will likely fight on, that being microsoft. They absolutely don't want blu ray to succeed, because that means they lose another round to Sony.
Should be fun seeing how they react.
I was wondering when this was going to make it to the front page. I've had an HD DVD player for the past few months, along with about 20 movies for it (half are HD DVD exclusives). I've been perfectly pleased with it, and I'm not particularly bitter about being on the "losing" side of things. Eventually I'll pick up a BD player, once the prices come down a bit more, and hopefully once they sort out their profile issues (c'mon, the ability to do PIP was only recently added, 1-1/2 years after the format came out). And I'm still hopeful that dual-format players will be available for a while to come, especially since there aren't too many hardware differences between the two formats. I think the most sensible thing for the HD DVD consortium to do would be to drop their licensing fees before too long, specifically to allow hardware manufacturers to add HD DVD capabilities to their players for little extra cost. Of course, there are still two studios that are HD DVD exclusive at the moment, and I'm sure Toshiba/MS/et al are going to try to fight it out till the bitter end. Oh well, c'est la vie.
This guy's the limit!
I buy all my HD-DVDs from amazon.com instead of amazon.co.jp (where i live) or amazon.co.uk (where i'm from) because... they are INSANELY CHEAP AND REGION-FREE. seriously, this is about the only time i've seen globalisation work for the consumer. it feels like amazon has had nearly non-stop promotions on HD-DVDs for the last 6 months; i've ended up with about 45 of the damn things. ordering them a few at a time from the US (admittedly especially good as i'm paid in GBP and the dollar has gone doooooown) means they are practically half the price of the UK, and even less than half the price of japan. so really it's just like i'm still buying regular UK DVDs, except they look vastly better... (and what is it with these people who say they can hardly see the difference between regular DVDs and HD? is the world full of people who don't realise that they are legally blind?? someone needs to round these people up and administer some eye-tests, on road-safety grounds alone...)
the real question, i suppose, is: do i feel bad HD-DVD might now disappear? no -- because that nice new samsung dual-format player is being released as we speak. i was planning to buy that anyway, as a handful of movies i like are on blu-ray, at which point i can forget about the whole sorry mess and move on...
I paid $100 for a good upscaling player that also happens to do HD-DVD and came with 300 and Bourne Identity, which I wanted to see anyways, and a handful of other DVDs which included some reasonable titles (most notable Full Metal Jacket). Did I waste my money?
Frankly, this just reinforces my decision to only buy combo discs if at all. Which means, since I've never heard of BD combo in the wild, I'll be buying plain jane DVDs from Warner in the future.
I have to say that I disagree with the statement that 'the gain is marginal'. Once you get used to watching HD stuff you don't want to go back. People often say that about some new improvement in some media. I also think that 2007 was the breakout year for HDTV in terms of consumers. There were/are a lot of affordable HDTVs available. According to TVPredictions.com. U.S. installed base is now estimated at 30 million sets. The Consumer Electronics Association is predicting that for 2008 25.3-million HDTV units will be sold. I would say then that in 18 months time HDTV will go from optional extra to mainstream. The potential market for HD players will be huge. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205207879&subSection=All+Stories
There are 2 inhibitory factors. Firstly the we have the cost issiue. Blue-ray disks are so expensive right now. I think the studios are sabotaging themselves by charging so much money for them. It's easy to forget that although in the US GDP per capita has gone up like crazy since the 1970s that's really only benefited a small segment of society - 10%. The only way the average Joe has done better is by both partners working and not by much. Since 1980, US gross domestic product (HDP) per capita has increased 67%[1], while median household income has only increased by 15%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income For individual income the situation is even worse. In 1970 adult US median income in 2004 dollars was $28,100. In 2004 it was $30,513. Thats only 8.6% higher in 34 years in real terms. But now people have significant college loans to pay back. In real terms many are poorer as a consequence. So people have very little wiggle room. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
Of course if you want to market stuff to the top 1% with average income above $1.7 million (aprox for 2006) then you can sell them fancy shit. But not the the average Joe. Big corporations need to remember that using debt to get people to buy more stuff only works in the short term. Eventually people get maxed out - like now. Then all of a sudden people can't afford any higher prices. If the studios had any sense of their own best interest they would make peace in the format war, charge for an HD disk what a regular DVD now costs and discount DVDs. Within 2 years we would all see massive uptake of the new technology and everyone would be a winner.
The second inhibitory factor is the format war and its consequences. I bought my first DVD player for my computer in 1998. I would buy an HD player now if there was not a format war. It looks to me that this war is stalemated for now. I see downloads becoming more and more prevalent as people wait for the HD war to resolve itself. The thing is though, that by 2013, maybe even by 2012, there will be enough bandwidth so that most US high speed connections will be able to download HD content. Now there will be DRM issues and storage issues. But I am betting they will figure that stuff out. But Apple, Microsoft, Lg-Netflix ect will be providing the service and making money and Sony and Toshiba will be cut out completely. Of course Sony's studio will still make money from such a model.
This is such a shame. I would prefer a physical medium that works right now. It would also provide competition to downloads so that they wouldn't otherwise be able to have such extreme DRM terms and conditions.
The HD broadcast I get are the locals for the four major networks. Prime-time looks great though the commercials are so annoying I never watch. Sports comes through crystal clear and I can't stop watching even though the games themselves bore me. :) I have a cheapie DVD player but the video seems quite nice from it -- comparing DVD movies with HD movie trailers on the Xbox, I can't really notice any problems.
I do see a tremendous difference between SD and HD channels on broadcast. It's illustrative to switch between the SD and HD versions of the same event to see just how drastic the change is. It's like you're not even watching the same broadcast. Oddly enough though, not every sports venue has upgraded their cameras. I can see one football broadcast that looks like washed out crap on HD and then the one following it has the HD quality I'm used to.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Current BD hadware is running 299, so price difference is almost zero for a 1080P player. Granted, the 1080i HD players are cheaper still. I don't see pricing as a significant advantage for HD, especially considering street media pricing for BD is actually less, and you end up spending more on media than hardware in the end. Those combo dvd/hddvd disks were really expensive.
I am a alittle surprised at slashdot opinion here though. BD is a superior format with higher disk capacity and higher bandwidth. I was surprised to see so many preferring dvd. This is a group I wouldv'e expected to like HD formats in general with an edge to BD. Instead I see numerous people saying that can't even see the difference between hd media and dvd. I've had a HD set for years now getting a BD player this summer and the difference between dvd and bd is very apparent to me.
"Most people that have a good HDTV can tell a large difference in good HD content."
You mean, some people _think_ they can tell the difference (notably TV salesmen and people who've bought a HDTV).
Despite many agreeing with you, I cannot, because like so many things in consumer electronics, users are too often fooled into thinking they're assessing one thing when they're assessing another.
To begin, "good HD content" is already qualitative rather than quantitative. HDLite seems prevalent on DirecTV - please see http://www.stophdlite.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Lite (probably in that order). I'd consider it "good HD content" and appreciate it a lot compared to SD - but it's not highest quality HD, as might be found with the OTA ABC or CBS broadcasts. What we call HD Lite is more along the lines of what you get from good DV tape - which I'll admit might qualify as "good HD content" but isn't HD.
Next - and I'm going to contradict myself a little bit w.r.t. the above paragraph and I'm ok with that - comes native resolution of the TVs themselves. My DLP has a native res of 1280x720p. The sign at the store calls it a 1080i set - because it accepts and converts 1920x1080i to native (all HDTVs convert whatever to their native formats) - so you have to beware of marketing crap. I haven't looked at the latest models, but most plasmas sold to the date I'd checked last year were native of 1024x768, and LCDs are very often 1366(or so)x768 native res. On those models, you're not going to get 1-to-1 mapping of HD anything without processing inside the TV - so like it or not, further signal degradation occurs in the format changeover.
Next, not all HDTV inputs are created equally. See http://www.dbstalk.com/ if you're a satellite TV user (or want to check my references) and you'll see plenty of newbie posts answered by very qualified TV engineers telling that no, they're not crazy, for their set / brand / production run, the component inputs are noticably better than their HDMI inputs or no, they're not crazy, for the same reasons, the HDMI inputs are noticably better than the component inputs.
Next, tuners. I have 3 ATSC tuners in my house, until recently, two were hooked to the same DLP HDTV - and just switching between the two caused guests - drinking beer and watching the game - to exclaim, "WTF did you just do?!?!?" So, even though the source could be qualified as "good HD content" the differences in h/w quality was easily observable by people with no vested interests in oooohs and aaaaahs of HDTV ownership.
Next, cabling. Yes, yes, yes, anyone paying too much for cables is an idiot. Try it. 'Nuff said. Now add in store cabling (have you ever worked in a consumer electronics store?) and you'll know all bets are off for controlling that part of your experiment.
Next, as you point out, color engines. Two HDTVs with same native resolutions? The one with the better color engine wins everytime - in fact, it's often been shown that given the choice between higher native res and color engine, spend the money on the better engine. My Helio Ocean phone with its 2 megapixel camera looking like crap (knew it before I bought it, didn't care) is an excellent proof point on this.
Next, SD upconverters built in to HDTVs all vary - and there are some very scary good ones. Ditto on set-top boxes.
Finally - the source material itself. Hitchhiker's Guide on HD (Lite) is better than on DVD - it's slight, but not subtle. I switched between the two without telling my wife what the switch was (to see if it was just my bias, as you suggest), and got one of those, "WTF did you just do?" moments again. Take something that really cared about HD during production and it's just no contest.
So - there's a lot more to HD comparisons and good HD content and what to invest in the HDTV world than just what
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
This is interesting. It's an area I know little about. Isn't the decoding of the content off-loaded to the graphics card normally, and doesn't this mean that a quad-core CPU doesn't help?
Not meant as a challenge - interested in more information.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
What's stunning me is that we're seriously discussing whether we want Sony or Microsoft to "win". It's like the choice between a giant douche, or a turd sandwich. Have we so quickly forgotten Microsoft is responsible for the horrendous DRM in Vista, and Sony was responsible for the rootkit fiasco?
Vote Cthulu when you're tired of choosing from the lesser of two evils.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are very good at doing repetitive fp and fixed-point operations, and much less good a bit-twiddling. I.e. the motion compensation stage of video decoding, where you copy (possibly sub-pixel-located) source blocks into the target frame has been handled by graphics hw since the very first sw DVD players, like Zoran's SoftDVD which was the first.
(In fact, SoftDVD was capable of handling 30 fps even without hw assists, running on a PentiumMMX 300 Mhz cpu, and without dropping any frames, but having the motion comp hw made it much easier to avoid drops. BTW, I did a very small bit of asm optimization work on that sw player.)
High bitrate HD/BR video is encoded using the CABAC (Content-Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding) algorithm, which provides slightly better compression rates, but which is also particularly unsuited to a GPU: Each decoding step requires multiple if/then/else stages, just to decode a single bit of information. It is also completely serial, in that you normally cannot determine the context to use for the next decoded bit until you've finished the current bit and possibly even branched on the result!
When you need to do this more than 50 million times/second, CABAC becomes the real bottleneck.
OK?
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Where can I get an affordable multi-region Blu-ray player?
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It's disappointing that studios are willing to choose the quick payola for format exclusivity over long term customer satisfaction. As broadband and storage tech gets cheaper and more pervasive, you can bet more and more customers alienated by choosing the "losing format" will turn to solutions that require less financial commitment and even provide a little spiteful satisfaction. Namely illegal downloading. Sure, Comcast can try to throttle downloads and Microsoft can try to DRM-lock their OS, but there will always be a way around these draconian restrictions and they seem to be getting more consumer friendly, rather than less. The record labels are slowly learning, but at least their follies aren't costing the general music consumer money (I'm talking about obsoleting an entire format, not DRM-crippled/rootkit costs). November 2007 numbers indicated 750,000 HD-DVD players, that's a whole lot of pissed off customers.
Actually, the main reason for that is the BOGO (Buy one get one). Previously it was for HD-DVD and now it is for BD. However, it will be interesting to see the stats when no specials for either format is going on.