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.""

Comments

What's that sound?

[jeffmeden]

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?

Re:What's that sound?

[Adambomb]

Now that would be a fun situation.

Warner throws behind Blu-Ray, Retailers put HD-DVD stock on sale in response, manufacturers continue supplying to demand, suddenly HD-DVD has the significant market base, studios make play of "providing for the needs of all their customers", more expensive blu-ray dies over a long agonizing period.

Conjecture without caffeine is wacky.

Re:What's that sound?

[squiggleslash]

It's not really over. There are still a number of studios, most notably Paramount, committed exclusively to HD-DVD. The situation is that more studios are currently in the Blu-ray corner.

What happens long term is still open, though the bias is towards Blu-ray at this point. HD-DVD's hardware is currently less expensive, so I suspect that the war will intensify over the next few months as the DVD forum, who are the promoters of HD-DVD, make a last big push to make it more available.

As an aside, I find the fact the studios are trying to decide on the format war somewhat depressing. It's hard to see how supporting both formats and allowing consumers to make the final choice is going to cause any serious level of expense. It's all the more depressing because, of the two, Blu-ray, with its compulsory DRM and continued use of region codes, is the more closed and that's what the majority of major studios have gone for. The net effect is that smaller studios are likely to be locked out of HD until a viable downloads system becomes available.

Re:What's that sound?

[Blkdeath]

As an aside, I find the fact the studios are trying to decide on the format war somewhat depressing. It's hard to see how supporting both formats and allowing consumers to make the final choice is going to cause any serious level of expense.

By my reckoning it'll cause them to double their expenses. Not only in film editing (different audio and video standards/capabilities, different media capacity), physical production, but in storage, shipping, handling and marketing costs for two formats while at the same time maintaining 'legacy' support in the form of DVDs.

The other problem with the above is the "customers" and "decision" part. The common trend amongst the proletariat these days is "Just make up your damn minds and I'll buy whatever wins!" hence the necessity for the producers to have the final say.

Personally I don't care which format wins, but I won't make any purchase, no matter how small or meaningless, until I know which format I'll be able to rely on for the next decade.

Re:What's that sound?

[squiggleslash]

Not only in film editing (different audio and video standards/capabilities, different media capacity),

Not in practice. Both formats have similar capacities in their most common forms (dual layer HD-DVD vs single layer Blu-ray), and use identical codecs. Only the additional rich content - the menus, etc, are different.

physical production, but in storage, shipping, handling and marketing costs for two formats while at the same time maintaining 'legacy' support in the form of DVDs.

Nope. The only way you're going to save in physical production, storage, shipping, and handling is if you reduce the number of units you sell, which of course results in a predictable reduction in revenues, so what are you gaining by doing this? You're treating this as if 100,000 Blu-ray discs take half as much storage as 50,000 Blu-ray discs and 50,000 HD-DVD discs. That's clearly not the case.

And the loss in revenue is WB's problem here, they are, at least in the short term, merely cutting the number of units shipped and sold, reducing their profits. Their hope is that by taking a side, others will fall in line with the same side and so in the long term their sales will rise again as consumers feel obliged to buy Blu-ray players and throw away their HD-DVDs. But see below on that.

And what marketing costs are you looking at that are saved by ditching HD DVD?

The other problem with the above is the "customers" and "decision" part. The common trend amongst the proletariat these days is "Just make up your damn minds and I'll buy whatever wins!" hence the necessity for the producers to have the final say.

Up to a point. I don't think this would have been an issue if studios had all supported both formats and had shown no signs of deciding that one was going to get better treatment than the other in future unless one did spectacularly badly.

Here's something worth bearing in mind: I'm not doing Blu-ray. I looked at the three formats a month or two ago, DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray, and decided that I felt HD-DVD was a clear step up from DVD, whereas Blu-ray was a step down. (For my logic, see here.) The studios "making the choice for me" doesn't mean I'm breathing a sigh of relief and rushing out to buy a Blu-ray drive, it means they'll be seeing less of my money, especially if they decide to drop DVD as well.

Hopefully the latter will not happen. Actually, hopefully the "war" isn't over yet.

Re:What's that sound?

[EBorisch]

There are still a number of studios, most notably Paramount, committed exclusively to HD-DVD. Of course, the $150M payoff might have something to do with that.

Re:What's that sound?

[gmack]

The consumers already descided. Blockbuster supported both then discovered that more people bought blue ray by a significant margin.

The previous articles putting the two in a dead heat could do so only by discounting the number of PlayStation 3 owners by not counting it as a player even though most of the time when I ask for blue ray player prices they just tell me to buy a PS 3 in case I ever want to play games. Without the PS3 the number of players is almost even with the PS3 the numbers are deep into Blue Ray's favour.

Why anyone thought that fudging the numbers was a good move is beyond me.

Re:What's that sound?

[badasscat]

It's not really over. There are still a number of studios, most notably Paramount, committed exclusively to HD-DVD.

70% of the industry (in market share terms) is now exclusively supporting Blu-Ray. BD software is outselling HD-DVD 3:1, standalone BD players are now outselling standalone HD-DVD players even at a higher price, and of course when you factor in the game consoles (which do count, because those people are a big part of the software advantage), it's no contest and never has been.

Moreover, Paramount is now reportedly looking for ways to get out of its deal with HD-DVD. (Scroll down, it's there.) No studio wants to be the last one holding the bag on a dying format while their competitors all jump ship.

The format war is over. It's funny to see people talking about "good sales" on HD-DVD players - how good does a sale need to be to make buying a piece of dead tech worth it? There are only a couple hundred movies on HD-DVD, and there aren't ever going to be many more than that.

It's fun to root for the "underdog", but come on, people - this is your own money. Why waste it?

Re:What's that sound?

[bigstrat2003]

Excellent wikipedia pie chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HighDefShare.svg

Looking at that chart, while HD-DVD has support, it's definitely in the minority now with this announcement. Moreover, New Line is owned by Time-Warner, so they're likely to go Blu-Ray only too at some point. I'd say that the situation looks pretty grim for HD-DVD, although it's not quite over yet.

Re:What's that sound?

[j-turkey]

Here's something worth bearing in mind: I'm not doing Blu-ray. I looked at the three formats a month or two ago, DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray, and decided that I felt HD-DVD was a clear step up from DVD, whereas Blu-ray was a step down. (For my logic, see here.) The studios "making the choice for me" doesn't mean I'm breathing a sigh of relief and rushing out to buy a Blu-ray drive, it means they'll be seeing less of my money, especially if they decide to drop DVD as well.

I read your journal entry and I tend to agree with you...at least on paper. From an end-user experience, the two formats have shown to be nearly identical. I have a HD DVD/BD combo drive in my computer. At first, both formats were a severe pain in the ass. I run one video output to an HDMI flat panel display and another to a straight DVI flat-panel monitor. It doesn't complain if I disable the DVI monitor and only run to the HDMI display. However, if my non-HDMI monitor is enabled (regardless of whether or not the video was streamed to the non-HDMI device), AACS-protected video would not play. Certain titles were somehow sensitive to the version of my video driver as well. Eventually, all DRM problems became a non-issue when I installed AnyDVD HD.

So what does this all mean?

1. Like I said, both formats are identical from an end-user experience
2. Out-of-the-box, the DRM is equally intrusive on either format (again, from an end-user standpoint -- technically, they're different)
3. Circumvention of DRM on either format is trivial, making it a non-issue for computer viewers

If both formats can hang in there long enough for multi-format readers/players to become ubiquitous, disc format will become irrelevant for just about everyone. Other than the fact that BD is more propritary, and includes additional license costs, I don't care who wins. They both look and sound equally great, and they both suck in the same ways.

Re:What's that sound?

[squiggleslash]

Moreover, Paramount is now reportedly looking for ways to get out of its deal with HD-DVD. (Scroll down, it's there.)

No it isn't. The author is saying that Paramount should look for ways out and speculates they will. I see nothing that says they actually are.

Re:What's that sound?

[gmack]

Ok so the early adopters have decided.

Everyone else is waiting for two things:
1: The format war to be over since no one wants to shell out for a player and movies only to end up on the losing side and end up with movies they can't play or a player they can't get movies for.

2: The players to get cheaper.

You make it seem like the non early adopters even matter on which way the war will end. They quite frankly don't. The war will be over before they ever bother to buy one themselves.

With today's news announcing that one of the larger studios is dropping HD DVD will only tilt the war further in Blu-Ray's favour since there is no point in buying HD DVD players if you can't get content for them no matter how cheap they get.

Re:What's that sound?

[Basehart]

If you want to see new releases in HD on your HD-DVD player six months from now, the only way you'll be able to do it is to somehow copy it from a Blu-ray disc onto a HD-DVD disc or download a HD file from somewhere and do the same (although that's a waste of time for obvious reasons). HD-DVD as a format is dead in month if not weeks, however amazing it may be.

Re:What's that sound?

[h4rm0ny]

You make it seem like the non early adopters even matter on which way the war will end.

Well of course they do. If two groups are targetting a market of a billion+, they're not going to say, "oh dear, of the first three million sold we only got 25% lets abandon our investment now." The market has barely been scratched. By the time it's even a tenth of the way to being fully exploited, dual-format players will likely be in the same price range as single format players (it's not as though the manufacturing cost is wildly different and it's a great selling point), so there will be plenty of market for both. Besides, what I'm hearing a lot of, is people saying they prefer HD for the stability of the format and the lack of region coding (and other DRM issues). So I think the vast numbers of people out there who haven't bought in yet, are very significant. They represent a vast untouched market that any company would love to get a slice of. You're not thinking just how much money 10% of all the TV owners out there represents. It's enormous! If you can claim that 10% of the market and you don't, any CEO would be rightly kicked out by the company's investors.

HD will certainly be around long enough for dual-format to be the norm (you only need a tiny difference in title releases between formats to make dual-format appealing to the hardware purchaser), and once that happens, both formats have survived the critical format war stage.

Re:What's that sound?

[squiggleslash]

I disagree. It's not "Early Adopters" who have "chosen" Blu-ray or HD-DVD. It's "Interested parties" who have done so, and done so for a variety of reasons, in Blu-ray's case in major part because their games console came with a Blu-ray player. "Early Adopter" is a term used for people who get hold of new technologies at a time they're new ahead of everyone else, but the overwhelming evidence is that this isn't one of those cases.

The people I've been talking to generally don't care about either format. They like DVD. Upconverted DVD looks fantastic on their spiffy new LCD HDTV sets. For either Blu-ray or HD-DVD to be attractive to them, it has to have advantages over DVD, and for the majority of consumers, neither format does, not because of competition issues, but because the hardware costs a small fortune, the discs cost a little more (albeit not much more), and the quality improvement is marginal.

That's the fundamental reason why consumers have picked DVD over both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and it's why proposing that this is somehow a matter of what the 3% of consumers who have actually gone high-def have "chosen" is a waste of time and fundamentally misleading. At this stage, until one or other of the formats can be slipped in under the radar (say, by making cheap, $99, boxes that are great DVD players and also support a high-def format), neither format looks set to be anything more than the next Laserdisc in comparison to DVD's VHS.

And yes, I'm aware consumer advice sites keep recommending everyone not buy anything until "the industry" chooses one format or the other, but I don't think that's actually translating into consumers actually doing just that, even if they say that as the "smart answer". Most people I've talked to do not even know there are multiple formats, if they've heard of the war at all.

The choice has not been made. If we're choosing what's going to replace the Laserdisc, and the studios decide that's really what they see hi-def as, then yeah, Blu-ray is probably what has the momentum. But if they're trying to replace the DVD, both formats are failures as of now, and that's not going to change until either the advantages of hi-def can be seriously promoted, or the pricing of a DVD player that supports a Hi-def format can be reduced to the point there's no advantage in buying something that only plays DVDs.

Re:What's that sound?

[Basehart]

"The question I asked though was how am I wasting money?"

You're not wasting money if all you want to watch is the movies that are currently available on HD-DVD, but in the future (at least until HD is easily available via cable) you may want to watch a new release in HD at home and you won't be able to, because HD-DVD as a format is not going to exist.

People with Blu-ray player can also pick up existing movies and they will also be able to watch new releases, again until HD is easily available via cable, and even then they may want to buy a hard copy for all the extra content and whatever.

We all know that HD-DVD players and discs isn't going to somehow cease to exist in a few months, but there won't be any new stuff for you to enjoy at some point. So on that level you're wasting your money buy buying deeper into the HD-DVD format.

Re:What's that sound?

[Blkdeath]

Not in practice. Both formats have similar capacities in their most common forms (dual layer HD-DVD vs single layer Blu-ray),

Are you in marketing? "similar capacities"? "most common forms"? I said different. They are not the same, therefore they are different.

Nope. The only way you're going to save in physical production, storage, shipping, and handling is if you reduce the number of units you sell, which of course results in a predictable reduction in revenues, so what are you gaining by doing this? You're treating this as if 100,000 Blu-ray discs take half as much storage as 50,000 Blu-ray discs and 50,000 HD-DVD discs. That's clearly not the case.

Are you saying that the market is split evenly at 50/50 and they will produce and sell an identical number of each units? There won't be any overhead, overruns, surplus production of either format? Or, to be less pedantic, are you saying that a given production house can nearly accurately forecast the number of sales of either given format for any given title over a period of time? Further, the fact that the production equipment is physically different and that there are licensing fees involved, etc. doesn't factor into your equation. Business 101.

Up to a point. I don't think this would have been an issue if studios had all supported both formats and had shown no signs of deciding that one was going to get better treatment than the other in future unless one did spectacularly badly.

Time to take the naive cap off my friend. There's billions of dollars at stake here and everybody's got their hand out with golden eggs in it. The content providers, hardware and console makers have had to decide which egg looks the most appealing. Money talks. Welcome to capitalism.

Here's something worth bearing in mind: I'm not doing Blu-ray. I looked at the three formats a month or two ago, DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray, and decided that I felt HD-DVD was a clear step up from DVD, whereas Blu-ray was a step down. (For my logic, see here.) The studios "making the choice for me" doesn't mean I'm breathing a sigh of relief and rushing out to buy a Blu-ray drive, it means they'll be seeing less of my money, especially if they decide to drop DVD as well.

Sorry, but your arguments are a tad misguided. DRM is a component of media conglomerates, not media storage formats. It will exist as long as the "War On Piracy" continues to rage on.

As for the studios seeing more or less of your money, well, if BluRay does become the clear victor and HD-DVD goes the way of BetaMax that's your choice. Do you participate in purchasing new entertainment media, do you pirate, or do you opt out of current entertainment media all together?

But in the long run, I don't think you get it. You are not a typical consumer. You are nothing remotely resembling a typical consumer and the people responsible for producing these formats, I'm sorry to say, don't shive a git what your opinion is or where your wallet goes one way or another. Your arguments mean as much to a movie studio as the subtle nuances of rocket science mean to me. But this is Slashdot, so please don't hesitate to respond and tell me how one DRM format/requirement is subtly different than another or some other pedantry.

Re:What's that sound?

[Basehart]

OK already. Enjoy your crappy HD-DVD discs. See if I care :-)

Re:What's that sound?

[gmack]

What overwhelming evidence is that? The 60% drop in player prices in the last year? The fact that both HD format players are finally starting to show up in stores? The fact that DVD used to be just as rare? If I recall correctly both Blu-ray and HD DVD seem to be taking off faster than DVD did. How can you possibly argue that one of these won't be the next standard?

A lot of the non technical people I've talked to are very worried about choosing the losing side and won't buy in until there is a clear winner.

Your also forgetting why Laserdisc failed. Laserdisc failed because the media was a lot more of a pain to carry around than VHS tapes. VHS tapes were a lot smaller and a LOT less fragile so it wasn't until they came up with a smaller format (DVD) that it even begun to catch on. Both Blu-Ray and HD DVD.

And yes I hate region coding as much as you do but as much as we all try and argue around reality we still won't make the result any less true: At this moment HD DVD is losing the content battle from both a production(movie studios) perspective and a distribution (blockbuster) perspective.

Next up...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it just has to take on the DVD. Good luck. I look forward to dragging my feet.

Re:Next up...

[heinousjay]

DVDs still look fine on an HDTV. Sure, HD formats look better, but DVDs are VHS tapes. They're actually still pretty good, especially with an upscaler. Don't hold your breath waiting for DVD to die or you might just go first.

Re:Next up...

[Fanboys_Suck_Dick]

DVDs look great on my HDTV (40" LCD). I have seen HD content on the same TV and though it looks better it doesn't look better enough for me to care. Sometimes HD can even be distracting. I don't want to see every wrinkle and pore on the 90 year old grandma in the movie Titanic. I hope to skip HDDVD and Bluray completely.

Dear Hollywood

[Landak]

Do you perhaps think that the "Slow HD uptake" referred to in the article might be as a consequence of the overwhelming cost of, and over-restrictive DRM associated with HD video? Have you thought perhaps that for the vast majority of spice-girl-loving, Shrek-3 adoring consumers, DVD is more than "Good enough"?

Re:Dear Hollywood

[schnikies79]

I think it has very little (closer to nothing) to do with the DRM and more to do with DVD being "good enough"

DVD is good enough for me. I've yet to impressed enough with HD to replace my tv or media and I have no intention of sitting at my PC and watching movies.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[nagora]

DVD is good enough for me. I've yet to impressed enough with HD to replace my tv or media

Indeed. I was in Curry's yesterday and walked around all their HD TV's, playing HD sources. Talk about unimpressed! What is the point? I have a 22-year-old CRT TV and the picture quality on it is not even apparently lower than most of the LCD/Plasma screens I saw yesterday and those that were better had such a small advantage that I'd have to win one for it to be worth upgrading.

TWW

Re:Dear Hollywood

[gEvil (beta)]

Keep in mind that a lot of stores still aren't actually feeding their HD displays HD sources. Take a look at the back of the TVs and you'll find that quite a few Best Buys are still feeding a good portion of their HD displays via RF feeds. Sure, the nice showcase displays are being fed from HD sources, and many of the larger screens, too. But not all of them are getting HD sources--a lot are getting bottom of the barrel SD feeds.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[Dogtanian]

Have you thought perhaps that for the vast majority of spice-girl-loving, Shrek-3 adoring consumers Spice Girls were at their commercial peak 10 years ago- all the little girls who were into their music back then are now grown up and halfway through university.

I've also noticed that "Backstreet Boys" and the like seem to crop up as examples of bad manufactured modern music, despite being phenomena of the late-1990s/early-2000s. Perhaps a sign that the Slashdot demographic is getting older (including myself, admittedly) and more out-of-touch? Not that I'm saying that a lot of current manufactured music is worth being "in touch" with- let alone listening to ;-), but that's beside the point.

Anyway, Slashdot's archetypal "bad manufactured modern pop" princess, Britney Spears, originally dates from the same period (despite having an ongoing career). And she (or her producers) have released at least two bona fide pop classics (Baby One More Time and Toxic)- manufactured or not- as well as some other decent pop stuff. Granted, she's also released an awful lot of worthless pap, but enough with the "everything Britney Spears does is crap" schtick.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[FatherOfONe]

Yes and VHS was "good enough" for most people as well. Remember that a 25" TV was HUGE back then...

Most people that have a good HDTV can tell a large difference in good HD content. Please note that I am not saying many of the movies that have come out on either format, but "some" of the movies there is a HUGE difference in quality.

The fact is that Microsoft isn't a content provider and because of that they can't leverage any monopoly this time to win this format dispute. The real issue is all about Java on these players. I bet you can guess which player has Java and which one doesn't :-)

The HD-DVD camp just pulled their talk tonight at CES and that comes as no surprise, also it now has come out that Universal has an "escape clause", so this could be over sooner than most thought. The only real question is "if" Microsoft wants to dump a LOT more money at Universal to try and continue this dispute. I would imagine that now it would take a lot more than 150 million.

Again, don't get confused about any company caring about the consumer, Sony used the PS3 to cement Blu-Ray and Microsoft HATES Java and will do a lot to make sure it doesn't gain a significant foothold in the living room. At the end of the day I would much rather deal with Sony, because I can easily use someone else's player but if Microsoft controls the software in the living room then history shows we will be in for decades of crap.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[vidarh]

Partly alienated? I own 400+ DVDs. I've never pirated a movie in my life. I have an HD capable TV, but I won't buy a single HD product until I'm 100% sure I can continue to easily copy it to my media server. I'll happily admit I haven't kept up to date with whether or not BluRay DRM is definitively broken in a way the mafiaa can't stop again or not. DVD is good enough for me to not invest a lot of time in figuring it out.

If they stop releasing stuff on DVD before I'm sure, then I'll resort to torrents rather than jump onto a format thats too encumbered.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[Znork]

"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).

I read a recent blindtest where three experts and a bunch of non-experts were tested for the difference between HD and non HD material on several LCD's and plasma displays.

On the first test, 42 inch screen, 3.5 meters away (10 ft), they all guessed 720p. It was 480p. After much flipping back and forth, some managed to get it right. More tests and eventually getting down to 50" 2 meters (6 ft) away, and there were still some who couldnt even tell 480p from 1080p. Nobody could tell 720p from 1080p better than random chance.

The fact is, such tests show that under normal viewing conditions most people simply dont have eyes and visual centers good enough to reliably notice the difference between SD and HD, nevermind deciding what looks best. You have to get up to 60-100 inch screens at a normal viewing distance to be able to reliably tell the difference; most people would be much better off getting a TV with better color and contrast ratio and simply slap a HD sticker on it so they think it's buzzword compliant.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[notext]

The fact that microsoft most likely got behind hd dvd just to be a thorn in sony's side is probably more correct. They can make a blu-ray drive add on for the 360 easily. I don't think they really care at this point.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[TheBracket]

I have a 27" CRT that can do 1080i (picked it up for $200 in a sale). For normal viewing, I really can't tell the difference between 480p and 1080i - both look pretty good. Occasionally, HD content does look much better - mostly when watching televised sports (not something I do often!), but mostly I really have to look to see the difference. The only time 1080i really makes a difference is on my xbox 360, particularly for text rendering and small texture details on characters.

I wouldn't pay thousands more just to get better xbox text - but for $200, I can't really complain! I don't think a bigger TV would fit in my apartment anyway!

Re:Dear Hollywood

[Puff Daddy]

Gotta jump in here and say I don't think anyone is saying that there is no difference between DVD quality and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD quality. What I, at least one GP, and the seeming majority of Americans are saying is that we just don't care. Once an HD screen and an HD media player become cheap enough that I'll consider them next time I have to replace my aging equipment, I might consider buying an HDTV. I, and many, if not most, others, will probably never seriously consider buying a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. Why? It would be a stupid waste of money to tie myself to discs when the technology is already in place to do away with them. Let me put it this way, DVD is, and will continue to be, good enough. Until a widespread, practical, and legal HD media center comes along, most consumers will continue to roll their eyes at the ridiculous amount HD anything costs. Quick, someone mod an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player to do something useful, I'll pick one up cheap when people realize playing HD content on scratchable, breakable, losable, inconvenient little discs is about as useful being able to translate hieroglyphics into Sanskrit.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely true.

I ran a little "experiment" of my own, which isn't really scientific but whatever. I set my HD TiVo to only output at 480p (which is the default) and showed a bunch of "HD" content on my 1080p-capable TV.

No one noticed.

And since it IS the default setting, I wonder how many HDTV owners with HD TiVos are staring at 480p content and thinking that it's amazing HD. (Besides, in most people's minds, HD=16:9. Get a widescreen digital SDTV, and people will swear it's HD.)

Which isn't to say the HD TiVo wasn't worth it - it stores something like 180 hours of SD programming, and outputs in digital, which really does help the picture quality. (Plus it comes with a network adapter so I no longer have to hook it up to the phone.)

The move from analog to digital massively improved the picture quality. The move from 480p to 1080i was completely unnoticeable.

Well, almost. The network brand in the lower-right corner is a bit sharper in HD...

(Which, I think, hints at the truth. The difference between SD and HD is only really noticeable in static imagery - once things start moving, the motion completely obscures the difference. And since I rarely watch TV shows of walls, there's really no point in HD.)

Re:Dear Hollywood

[Firethorn]

It used to be dirt easy to feed dozens of TVs - you just needed a roll of coax, a bunch of t-junctions and ends, appropriate tools, and a cable type amplifier box.

Pushing out dozens of copies of an HD stream is much more expensive, so many stores haven't bothered.

Viewing a DVD is 10X as hard as viewing a video Cassette

Say what? A DVD doesn't have rewind, I don't(generally) have fast forward through ten minutes of outdated ads, it's just plop the disc in and hit play.

If you want a DVD that can record, they're sitting on the shelves today. You're just going to end up spending some more money to get one.

I suspect that HD content will require 10X as hard to view as the DVD, which will probably eventually involve a long conversation between the device that is want to play the content and a central server in order to gain authorization to play the content, which part of the content may be played, at a which resolution and with which options.

While that seems to be what the MPAA wants, so far blueray and HDDVD are pretty much as 'difficult' to play as DVD. No central server needed.

Re:Dear Hollywood

[earlymon]

"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

Hope it works...

[elwinc]

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.

Re:Hope it works...

[Liquidrage]

If storage size was all I cared about I'd agree with you. The DRM in blu-ray is less consumer friendly then HD-DVD. Not to mention I'd rather just about anyone control a standard for us then Sony. If HD-DVD was enough to give me HD movies, and it appears it was, I was hoping it would win out. But sadly the shifting DRM was probably why blu-ray's more appealing for the movie studios.

If there's a silver lining here it's that I think winning this race is meaningless. I don't think blu-ray is the next DVD. Laserdisc maybe.

Re:Hope it works...

[TheGratefulNet]

The DRM in blu-ray is less consumer friendly then HD-DVD

the drm in BOTH is totally unacceptable to me.

runnable code?? in a VIDEO disc?

oh please!

come back (vendors) when you have learned your lesson. we don't want no stinkin' "revoke lists" and all that java crap going on.

a/v players should JUST relay a/v bits to the display/speakers. and that's ALL.

in that respect, they both got it horribly wrong. so I boycott and will never buy bd/hd discs. buying only tells them that you approve and I will never approve of this. vote with your dollars.

Re:Hope it works...

[Mordaximus]

Not to mention I'd rather just about anyone control a standard for us then Sony.

Good thing there is also Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung and Sharp then I guess. You do realize that Blu-Ray isn't a 'Sony' format?

I knew it...

[Fnkmaster]

I knew that $199 HD-DVD player with 10 free HD-DVDs from Amazon.com was too good a deal to be true. But I got suckered into it anyway and bought myself one for the holidays. Betamax all over again.

I figured with HD-DVD players so cheap, they couldn't help but beat Bluray, with their absurdly overpriced players. Apparently I was duped by a dumping strategy - clearly they knew their market position was about to slip off a cliff and they decided to flood the market with cheap players.

I am boycotting further purchases of any high def DVD products for the next few years. This experience has left me utterly disgusted. Move piracy, here I come.

Re:I knew it...

[91degrees]

Betamax all over again.

Not really. Betamax players started cost over $1000 in 1977. Even by 1983, when Betamax was clearly losing the war, Betamax players started at $380. Adjusted for inflation this would be about $750-800. Buying both High Def DVD players really isn't a huge financial undertaking for most movie fans. $199 wasn't even a terrible price for the free DVDs you got, aside from lack of choice.

Any HD DVD you purchase in the next few years will continue to be playable until your player dies. By that time they'll all be available in the bargain bin.

Re:I knew it...

[Justus]

That's a wonderful point, except that the article and the grandparent poster are complaining about HD-DVD. You know, the non-Sony format.

Personally, I don't really care who or what wins this stupid high-def format war, so long as it goes away. I suppose I'm technically in the Blu-Ray camp (I unexpectedly received a PS3 over the holidays), but mostly I just want to purchase high-definition movies without worrying about which studios are supporting which type of disc.

Re:I knew it...

[Sponge Bath]

This simply is not worth worrying about. I picked up the exact same deal as you and am happy. Just remember:

* The format war is *not* over because a couple of 'experts' say so
* Until the war is over, don't build a large library (rent)
* The cost of the player for a few years use is modest
* Amazon started selling discounted Bluray players with the same 10 disc offer a couple of weeks after the HD-DVD offer, so it is not part of a dumping scheme by either format.

In the short term you get to enjoy 1080P video and TrueHD audio now for a low price. I see a lot of postings here about there not being a significant difference between SD and HD discs, but I see a huge difference. I was sceptical before I got the player, but now I am a believer and have no buyers remorse even *if* HD-DVD goes away after a few years.

In short: Don't worry, be happy.

Re:I knew it...

[xigxag]

This experience has left me utterly disgusted. If you can get so emotionally worked up over a $200 purchase, why did you spend so much in the first place?

Look at it this way. You got ten movies that will play forever, you got a very good upscaling DVD player, and you got an opportunity to buy a bunch of films in the very near future at fire sale prices.

Also, don't expect HD-DVD to entirely die out so quickly. Toshiba will still be making players and recorders for a good while longer -- the standard may even manage to live on as a drop-in replacement for DVD+Rs. Furthermore, HD-DVD is supposedly compatible with China's new CH-DVD standard. After cheap upscaling DVD players start to flood the market with HD-DVD compatibility mode, you won't have to worry about your collection being unplayable in the future. Don't minimize China's influence here, after all, old Chinese (S)VCD's are still playable on every new $30 player, some 10 years after they were obsoleted by DVDs.

Re:I knew it...

[Mex]

What?

NO! Don't be a pawn! Do not wait for these wars to be over! You are essential to success! Be a soldier, mister! Drop down and give me 20 (dollars) for your old movies that you had to buy again!

Only YOU can decide who wins this war!

- This message brought to you by the MPAA. Buy more movies plz k thx bye

They hold in their hand a peice of paper....

[rucs_hack]

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.

Re:They hold in their hand a peice of paper....

[DrXym]

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.

Microsoft only has itself to blame if HD DVD fails. They could have bundled the HD DVD drive into the 360 (e.g. the top end "Elite" model), or promoted the external add-on more but they didn't. I suspect they know the format was doomed and didn't want any of their IP to get dragged down with it. Microsoft also have ambitions with downloadable content and may have perceived that ANY dominant physical HD format is a threat. This may explain why they've been propping up HD DVD, to prolong the war and sow confusion, but not wishing either side to actually win.

There were even rumours circulating this week that they might licence XBox 360 technology to other manufacturers. This was probably so that Toshiba could produce some HD DVD / 360 hybrid under their own brand and keep Microsoft out of the picture if it tanked. I wonder what will happen if there was substance to that rumour. I can't help but think an HD DVD / 360 device would be stillborn so it may be the first casualty of this announcement.

Re:They hold in their hand a peice of paper....

[ergo98]

I suspect they know the format was doomed and didn't want any of their IP to get dragged down with it.

Microsoft has significant IP in HD-DVD, and there was no way they "knew" the format was doomed (indeed, trends for the last twelve months, with HD-DVD showing much more momentum than Blu-ray, showed quite the opposite).

Indeed, the market hasn't spoken at all, and the likely explanation for Warner's decision was some back office hand greasing.

Microsoft left HD-DVD out of the Xbox 360 purely for cost/profit reasons: Unlike Sony, they couldn't take a loss on a speculative next generation player simply to build a base for their home electronics division (which is exactly how Blu-ray won this war. Without the PS3, Blu-ray would have been stillborn).

Warner's decision, and the inevitable outcome of it, is effectively a multi-billion dollar tax on the entire home electronics industry.

But Warner got their greasing, and every consumer is going to pay for it.

Re:Sony formats

[sgant]

Yeah, Sony needs luck...poor poor company. On it's last legs...barely alive....struggling...

Oh wait...Sony?

Money from both camps.

[vodevil]

Microsoft shouldn't care too much if blu-ray succeeds. The VC-1 codec that most blu-ray movies uses needs to be licensed from Microsoft. Money in their pocket either way.

Re:Money from both camps.

[Basehart]

H-264 is set to replace VC-1 pretty much exclusively, especially now that Microsoft is out of the picture (geddit).

About time...

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Screw Blu-Ray...

[yeremein]

Screw HD-DVD too.

I'm holding out for Gamma-Ray.

Re:A win for DRM.

[Jugalator]

HD-DVD supports AACS, Blu-ray supports AACS, region coding, BD+.

That may in part be why Blu-ray seems to be winning this "war".

But in either case, AnyDVD can decrypt all of that, yes, including BD+.

The format wars have only just begun

[Marcion]

I am ignoring both of this broken format.

I won't buy any except perhaps some Chinese DRM free HD extended EVD. Or even just huge hard-drives. In five years time we will have 10 terabyte hard-drives as standard. Blueray disks are 25 Gb single layer and 50GB dual layer. A ten terabyte hard-drive can hold 200 to 400 of these films.

RTFA CmdrTaco

[Udo Schmitz]

From now on?

"Now" as in "May"?

"After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008."

Not likely

[Sycraft-fu]

Studios forget their history rather quickly. Back when DVDs where first coming out Circuit City came up with a competing format called DIVX (no, not the video codec, they just stole the name). The idea was that DIVX players could play DVDs, but also DIVX discs which were "enhanced" DVDs which you'd buy for cheap but then have to rent to play. Studios just loved the idea and a number like Fox, Paramount, and Dreamworks decided to release only on DIVX. Well as it turned out, that didn't matter. Consumers didn't like it, so they didn't buy it. DIVX died and it cost Circuit City a couple hundred million for their trouble.

So just because some studios are initially backing Blu Ray doesn't mean anything in the long run. They'll release their movies for whatever format consumers decide to buy, or they'll go out of business.

Also please remember we are a long, long way from any sort of critical point in the HD format move. It is going to be much slower than DVD, which wasn't all that fast. See with DVD, there was a reason for everyone to upgrade. Even if you had a small, crappy, TV, DVD was still better. The picture was generally better even on poor sets, but picture quality aside the other features were more important. No degradation, no rewinding, instant seeking, special features, smaller size, all these things added up to something that was worthwhile for everyone to purchase, regardless of what they watched on.

Not so for HD formats. The only benefit is image quality (and possibly sound quality for the few titles mastered with the new formats). Well, this means that the only people who are going to notice a difference are those who own HD TVs, which aren't all that many people at this point. Even if you do own an HD TV, the gain is marginal. No new features or anything, just a better picture. That's nice, but not a big deal especially since upconverting DVD players give an amazingly nice picture and since not all discs come from a high enough quality transfer to really look nice.

So it is a good while yet before there starts to be a critical mass of HD formats and there's any sort of victory in the HD war.

Finally, it is entirely possible neither format will win. It may be that dual format players become the norm and both formats continue to survive. This is rather feasible since both formats are on the same size disc, both use AACS encryption, both use the same video and audio codecs and so on. Indeed, there's a couple of companies working on dual format players right now. So it very well could work out that both formats continue to be released by different studios.

But to say that this is the end of the format wars is just wishful thinking.

Re:Not likely

[gEvil (beta)]

It is going to be much slower than DVD, which wasn't all that fast.

Wasn't DVD the fastest that any consumer electronics device/format has ever been adopted? I seem to recall seeing that a few places.

Re:Not likely

[Raisey-raison]

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.

Re:Not likely

[DrEldarion]

So just because some studios are initially backing Blu Ray doesn't mean anything in the long run. They'll release their movies for whatever format consumers decide to buy, or they'll go out of business. This isn't "some" studios. This is "almost all" studios. Paramount and Universal are the only major studios left supporting HD-DVD (minor: Weinstein, Focus). Contrast that with Sony Pictures, Buena Vista, Warner, Fox, and New Line supporting Blu-ray (minor: Lionsgate, MGM, Screen Gems, Searchlight, Miramax). Even prior to this change, Blu-ray movies were outselling HD-DVD movies 2:1 - this move will probably push that to 3:1 or further. (In other countries besides the US, the ratio is even higher. Up to 9:1 in Japan, I believe.)

Finally, it is entirely possible neither format will win. It may be that dual format players become the norm and both formats continue to survive. I agree with your first statement but not your second. HD-DVD is pretty much dead at this point - there is much more hardware support, much more studio support, and much more retail support for Blu-ray.

Blu-ray's biggest threat now is digital distribution. Sadly, what's holding this back is the cluelessness of media corporations. Remember how horribly the music studios handled music distribution online? Yeah.

Re:Not likely

[Snowmit]

There is a significant difference between DVD and HD when you have the right equipment.

Err you just supported his argument, which is that HD might be nicer for people who have HD TVs most people don't have HD TVs and that beyond the HD nicer picture there is no compelling reason to upgrade. Sure, with the right equipment you don't ever want to go back. But most people don't have that yet.

Well guess what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU wasted 99 bucks. Sucker. But you can enjoy your free copies of HDDVD "Gigli" and "Flashdance" for at least 4 or 5 years until the thing takes a crap.

Re:Well guess what ?

[Enahs]

Well, I "wasted" more than that on a 3rd-gen player. With it I got Bourne Identity and 300, and have the chance to get at least 5 more titles (they pretty much suck, but they're free, eh?) I didn't take advantage of the 1st-gen and 2nd-gen firesales, so I don't get AS MANY movies, but I guess I have a point here:

For the price of a DECENT upscaling DVD player, I got a DECENT upscaling DVD player which also plays a HD format that may be going out. Do I care? Not really...I have no plans to buy Blu-Ray for a while, and the reason I bought an HD set and DVD player was largely because about a month ago my TV and DVD player got fried by lightning.

Warner Brothers hit it on the head, at least for me, but they forgot another issue: With all the FUD surrounding the current BD players, coupled with the price, many of us have no plans whatsoever to buy one, at least for now. Waiting until after people snatched up the 1st- and 2nd-gen players, then (like me) lower-priced 3rd-gen players, and not just that but wait until CES was about to start was just mean-spirited. Their stance toward the whole thing, up until yesterday, left a bad taste in some consumers' mouths. Is it enough to hurt them? Probably not, but I think they may have just extended the format war rather than killing it as intended. I certainly hope I'm wrong about that.

I don't get some people's attitude about HD-DVD being the underdog, though. In one corner you have Sony and Pioneer, along with Sun and a number of companies that're pushing a proprietary format built on a mix of open and closed standards. In the other corner, you have Microsoft and Toshiba, along with a number of other companies, pusing a proprietary format based on a mix of open and closed standards. Both camps have technologies that are similar to each other. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, and they were never as hugely different as many fanboys of both formats made them out to be.

So yeah, I guess you can say that we "wasted" our money, but thus far, most people buying HD stuff have the money to burn, so unless you're living in your parents' basement and blowing your McDonalds wages on HD equipment, this isn't as huge as people seem to be making it out to be. At least we've decided who's going to win the SACD vs DVD-A...excuse me, HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war.

Yeah, seriously, I don't think Blu-Ray will have a long shelf-life, either. DVD had 10 years. Whoopty doo. My prediction is that in 5 years you'll be tivo-ing all the movies you want to watch, and by "tivo" I mean your PVR will be pulling down your HD content either straight through dish or cable or through your cable/phone/internet combo deal. Blu-Ray will be the format that you'll get when you absolutely, positively don't want to commit your movies to your PVR's hard drive, and for videophiles who'll recognize that the streaming options are inferior to the more popular streaming options.

Re:Well guess what ?

[IrquiM]

$100 is a lot! A lot of beer! or just over 1 hour overtime at work

Re:Well guess what ?

[Wdomburg]

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.

Re:Well guess what ?

[fredricodagreat]

Along similar lines, my DVD player just crapped out on me. After scouring the consumer reports for about a month or so, it turns out if you want a good Upscaling DVD player, it will cost you between $120 and $160 (Yes I am aware that you can get an upscaling DVD player for $50, but I'm talking good quality ones) So why wouldn't I want to put out an extra $30 for something that will play HD discs plus get 7 free DVDs, at least 4 of which I had been wanting to pick up in regular DVD format. I'm very happy with my purchase and I think this format war is far from over. Likely it will come to a stale mate and everything will be running off of solid state drives.

Re:Well guess what ?

[hedwards]

YOU wasted 99 bucks. Sucker. Haha, I'm sure $100 seems like a lot of money when you are living on frozen pizzas in your mom's basement, but it really is a pittance to someone with a decent job. I usually spend that about once a week at a nice restaurant. I'm sure it sounds that way, but if you were to replace HD-DVD with magic beans, the point becomes more obvious. While it is possible that HD-DVD will take off anyways, the format that will ultimately win will be the format which has the content that people want. Realistically, I knew people as late as the '89 who were still using their betamax recorders on a regular basis, but they hadn't been able to purchase any original content in a number of years. That's largely what HD-DVD is going to be like if the studios start to put emphasis on blu-ray without providing content to HD-DVD.

So, in the long run, if there's no content, and you have to purchase a blu-ray player anyways, you've bought the metaphorical magic beans. $100 dollars is a relatively large amount of money, especially when one combines it with the most powerful force known to man, compounding interest.

Just because something is really cheap, doesn't make it a good deal, even if the product does work as advertised, nobody in their right mind would buy a 1950s TV set for everyday use. They might buy one as a collectors item, or for a museum, but they aren't going to buy one for use. Yet, with repair the set might function well. Yes, that's a bit of an over dramatization, but a dvd player with no content is less useful, at least the TV could be hooked up via a converter to new broadcasts, even if the picture is about 4 inches diagonally.

Re:Well guess what ?

[clang_jangle]

nobody in their right mind would buy a 1950s TV set for everyday use.

I watch my 1956 Philco exclusively, you insensitive clod!

Re:Well guess what ?

[dangitman]

Both had their advantages and disadvantages, and they were never as hugely different as many fanboys of both formats made them out to be.

Wait, this crap has fanboys??? Ye Gods.

cheap if you order them from the US...

[alexander m]

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...

The poison is in the bloodstream

[Ralph Spoilsport]

BlueRay, HD-DVD, whatever. The genie is out of the bag. Torrents pouring video all over the planet, used DVD sales, online video, youtube, etc. BluRay is not going to dominate anything. IT's just goign to be another niche in the panoply of video standards. The point is that with ubiquity, things get consumed in different ways by people at different times and places.

The BR/HD devices may well take over where obese supine consumers mindlessly suck the tit of the Culture Industry in their overstuffed barcaloungers in the family "Enertainment Center". There, picture quality in a darkened and directed room makes sense. But that is only one particular consumption ritual practice. There are many others. My typical practice is watching video in tiny stuttering windows online, because I can watch one thing, check my email, and work on a project at the same time, or in short sequences. A friend of mine is the same, yet he uses a video projector as his screen. Parties at his place are great - watch online video? Sure. DVD? Sure. Dance Dance Revolution? WTF? Oooh, OK - why not... Wii? OK - but only after we watch that online video of the guy's head exploding. And freak out your sister with the goatse guy.

Betamax and VHS were such a pitched battle because there were no other options. Now, I can't get a cup of coffee without some giant flat panel telling me how white my shirts should be, and then I go to work, and some knucklehead sends me a link to a youtube video of the longest fart EVER, or I visit my brother and his 5 jillion channels of TV pumped all over every screen in the house, etc. etc.

In the early 1980s, there were fewer options, so there was more at stake in a format. Now, it's just another fish in the sea. And with bandwidth increases and everybody and his ugly cousin getting in on the online video action thanks to Flash video, I think it may well be that BR or HD will be the LAST disk format...

RS

Studio Support

[Verxion]

Seems to me no one has mentioned something which to me says a lot:

"For a long time, Hollywood was lopsided in favor of Blu-ray: 7 of the 8 major movie studios (Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM) supported Blu-ray, and 5 of them (Disney, Fox, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM) release their movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. Only Universal was exclusively HD-DVD. Now that is rapidly changing what with HD DVD exclusive converts Paramout and DreamWorks Animation, and Warner Bros now for Blu-ray." (this from http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/boost-for-blu-ray-warner-bros-will-release-high-def-titles-exclusively-in-that-format/)

So in summary, we have:

HD-DVD Exclusive:

Paramount/Dreamworks

Bluray Exclusive:

Disney
Fox
Sony
Lionsgate
MGM
Warner Bros

Not mentioned in the article above, I believe Universal Studios is actually HD DVD exclusive, but rumours seem to indicate that they aren't that way by contract, so they COULD jump ship. Further, New Line Cinema is owned by Warner Bros, so it would stand to reason that they will end up Bluray exclusive.

At this point, it LOOKS like a pretty lopsided situation to me. Add in that while supposedly HD-DVD players (and PCs with HD-DVD in them) have outsold bluray players, (again supposedly) bluray titles themselves seem to have outsold HD-DVD, especially in non US markets.

I have been reading about this since the news broke yesterday on places like http://engadgethd.com/ and http://avsforum.com/ and it really sounds like even the HD-DVD diehards (for the most part) are conceding victory to bluray.

-Verxion

Re:The Cost is Way Overboard

[SerpentMage]

The movie I was looking at was Spiderman 3...

So tell me... You are prepared to pay almost double for Pirates of the Caribbean 3? This is a scam that the big movie theater companies are running to get you to pony up more money for the same darn content...

Think of it as follows. You are buying a digital camera. Regular DVD is your phone camera, and BlueRay is your 10 Megapixel camera. The cost of generating the picture is higher with the 10 Megapixel. The cost of displaying the higher content is also higher, but that is not a function of the movie theater since they are not carrying the costs. So you could argue that highdef DVD would cost more, but to the tune of what you have illustrated?

Yet here is the kicker, all of this would make sense if the movie theaters actually needed to invest in new equipment. They don't they already generate high def and thus whether they move the DIGITAL content to DVD or BlueRay is a question of using the proper encoder. In other words content should cost only a small fraction more.

Yet your examples illustrate a minimum price hike of 80% for more content? Sorry but you are getting duped here on a major scale.

This is a scam that the movie theaters are doing so that you will pay more for movies so that actors can get paid more...

Sorry not with my money!

Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[StCredZero]

A Sony format WON!? Did Nostradamus talk about this? Maybe Sony Blu-Ray DRM is the "Seventh Seal?"

Age-old question

[Rydia]

If a company wins a format war and nobody cares about it, have they really won anything?

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[91degrees]

It's not totally without precedent. The 3.5" floppy disk was a Sony format.

NPD numbers

[stabiesoft]

The NPD sales numbers showed BD sold more disks every week in 2007. Even transformers release week did not sell more HD DVD's. Warner made the correct decision. BD's were outselling HD's by a 61 to 39 advantage YTD07.

Re:NPD numbers

[stabiesoft]

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.

Looks like the writing is on the wall for HD DVD

[jbellis]

Blu-ray titles take 10 spots on the Amazon DVD bestsellers list atm, including the top four. There are _no_ HD DVD titles in the top 25. The bestselling HD DVD title is #35. (Behind 4 more blu-ray titles on the way.)

I know hating on Sony is de rigeur here. Sorry.

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[stonecypher]

So did CD, 3.5" discs, DAT and a bunch of computer tape formats.

Not there yet.

[Animats]

I'd been hoping we'd skip HD and Blu-Ray and go to one of those higher-density mediums one hears about on Slashdot every few weeks. Both formats still require too much compression.

We're not there yet. We're probably there when we get 2K high images at 72FPS without compression artifacts. Somewhere around 72FPS, the annoying strobing on pans disappears. Or, in other words, football games finally look right. Football games are hard because the background is moving, there's action moving in different directions, and viewers care about the detail. The motion compression algorithms can't really handle that situation.

The digital cinema industry has a standard for this. They have two formats, "2K", which is simply 1080p, that is, 1080x2048 pixels, and "4K", which is 2160x4096 pixels. They define two speeds; 24FPS and 48FPS. Color depth is 12 bits. Compression is JPEG 2000. Maximum image data per frame is 1,302,083 bytes (which is actually smaller than you'd expect). Audio is sampled at 96KHz with a depth of 24 bits, and is not compressed. There are 16 audio channels. That's the Hollywood/SMTPE definition of a "movie" in the digital era.

In actual practice, most films now being distributed digitally are going out in "2K" mode, at 24 FPS,with 8 audio channels. The spec has headroom to double each of those numbers.

A 2-hour movie at all the highest ratings is about 500GB. So that's what needs to be delivered to the consumer. Neither HD nor Blu-Ray can do that yet.

Re:Not there yet.

[ChaoticLimbs]

The consuming public has no need for what is essentially a studio master uncompressed copy. What is suitable for public exhibition is not the same as what's suitable for buying at Wal-Mart. Those 2k exhibition copies cost thousands of dollars, don't they? I would think that 1080p DV with MP4 compression or equivalent would be plenty for movies. For sports and other things, even true 60fps is better than nothing. Perhaps a standard with 75 fps at 720p resolutions would be better for sports broadcasts and highlights.

Re:Not there yet.

[Doppler00]

I know most of my friends still don't care about the difference between DVD and HD quality, how on earth are you going to convince people that they need 2160p and 48 fps? I think trying to standardize long term on 1080p for everything is going to be hard enough.

sure they look fine...

[Reverend528]

DVDs look great on my HDTV (40" LCD).

Sure they look fine, but they don't support the 96 kHz audio sampling rate. By sticking with DVDs, you're missing out on a vast spectrum of inaudible sound.

Re:sure they look fine...

[antibryce]

That added spectrum sounds like nothing else. I can't wait till a remastered version of John Cage's 4'33" is released for it.

BluRay is slightly better for sw players

[Terje Mathisen]

I have spent a couple of months optimizing code for HD decoding, and mostly the format doesn't really matter:

Both use the same codecs, they support the same resolutions, and the maximum bitrate is more or less the same (30 vs 40 Mbit/s for HD vs BR).

The one important difference is that a "full HD" 1080x1920 BR frame will always be encoded as four quadrants, each at 540x960.

This does lead to marginally lower compression rates, since you get more borders, but the great benefit is that you can have multiple CPU cores (up to 4) work in parallel on each of the parts!

You can of course do the same with a multi-core decoder for HD-DVD, but only by starting each cpu/thread at a different key frame, and since each 1080p picture requires 2 Mpixels, it is far too easy to trash both the TLB tables and the L2 caches when doing the motion compensation step which normally requires multiple source frames to be available to generate each target frame.

Terje

Re:BluRay is slightly better for sw players

[h4rm0ny]

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.

Re:Compulsory DRM?

[squiggleslash]

Are you saying it's not possible to create a non-DRM Blu-ray disc even if you wanted to? And that it's possible to do with HD-DVD?

Yes. AACS is an optional feature of HD-DVD discs, but a compulsory feature of (Blue laser) Blu-ray discs.

It is possible to master a type of red-laser (DVD) Blu-ray (data) format disc without AACS, but for obvious reasons this isn't exactly an attractive option.

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[Per Wigren]

DAT and MiniDisc were successful?! Yes, very much so. MiniDisc is still a very common and popular format in asia and DAT has been THE way to store the masters in small-to-medium sized music studios for 20 years and it's still going strong. Maybe it's popular in big-name studios also but I don't have any experience with them so I don't know.

Re:most people still have small screens

[jollyreaper]

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.

To be fair...

[hudsonhawk]

You're not talking 44K vs 96K like you were with CD vs. DVD-Audio.

With DVD vs. HD-DVD / Blu-Ray you're talking lossy Dolby Digital (roughtly equivalent to a 96kbps mp3 per channel) vs. lossless 5 channel (either via LPCM, MLP, or the DTS and Dolby Digital lossless formats).

There's a huge difference there.

DRM Soapbox & Comparison Chart

[Amigori]

Fellow geeks, the only people who really care about DRM (on movies) is us geeks. Joe Sixpack just wants the disc to work when they put it in the player. Since we seem to debate DRM at least weekly, Here is a chart comparing the two plus SD-DVD. If you notice, ALL THREE have DRM. So the argument of HD-DVD having better/no DRM is pointless. Any of the formats can be DRM free if the author of the disc allows it.

Notable facts:

• DRM: AACS-128 on Both; BD+, ROM-Mark optional on Blu-ray
• Larger aperture on Blu-ray, allowing for the higher capacity
• 3 layer HD-DVD is v2.0 spec, 3 x 17GB = 51GB, currently unknown compatibility
• Max bitrates (total, audio, video) are higher on Blu-ray
• DD+ and Dolby TrueHD are mandatory on HD-DVD, optional on Blu-ray
• HD-DVD is region free; Blu-ray has 3 regions; SD-DVD has 7 regions
• Microsoft's HDi in HD-DVD vs. Sun's BD-J in Blu-ray
• Stand-alone component manufacturers: HD-DVD: 5; Blu-ray: 5
• LG has a player that supports both discs but is expensive
• Blu-ray discs are hard-coated

Most people I know that have an HDTV are quite satisfied with an upconverting DVD player and SD-DVDs. They're cheaper to buy at $BIGBOXRETAIL, look good enough scaled, and sound great. For most, DD 5.1 or DTS 5.1 are good enough for their setups. Even with the DD+/DTS-HD/TrueHD/DTS-HD Master, unless you have better speakers (think bought seperately, not a home-theater-in-a-box), you probably won't notice the difference in codecs.

Also interesting to note how many geeks here are praising HD-DVD even though its an MS product. Isn't MS = Bad? Did I miss the MS = Good decision? Is it the lesser of two evils? Subjective, so you decide for yourself.

Of course they are going to say that

[2ms]

You people act like Warner is some kind of independent expert and accurate fortune teller. Of course they are going to say "We expect HD DVD to 'die' a quick death." That's what they want to happen because they are a Blu-ray only studio and they're obviously going to say it is going to happen because the more people say that then the more likely it is for it to actually happen.

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[The Clockwork Troll]

I am a big fan of their screwdrivers work. My understanding is that they had a lot of influence over the design of the popular cammed cross tool.

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[ehrichweiss]

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.

Offloading HD/BR decoding to the graphics card?

[Terje Mathisen]

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

Re:Sony NEVER made a 3.5" floppy disk.

[91degrees]

Yes, I know. They were 90x94mm, but most people in the US and UK knew them as 3.5 inch disks so I'll stick with the well known convention.

New Line already announced they are Blu-Ray only

[SuperKendall]

In a number of the press releases you'll see New Line is Blu-Ray only as well. LOTR will only be on Blu-Ray now.

Most discs no region coded, and after a year none

[SuperKendall]

Blu-Ray isn't nearly as bad as DVD was:

1) Most Blu-Ray discs today have no region codes enabled.

2) All Bly-Ray discs are required to drop the region code a year after first sale.

So the majority of content you buy except for the very latest releases will be region free.

Blu-ray players not cheap enough

[metamatic]

Where can I get an affordable multi-region Blu-ray player?

The real winner of the format war is... BitTorrent

[stickyc]

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.

Misinformed

[SuperKendall]

Not in practice. Both formats have similar capacities in their most common forms (dual layer HD-DVD vs single layer Blu-ray)

100% of Blu-Rays released in the last two months have been dual layer (50GB discs). Of all Blu-Ray discs on the market now, something around 20% of them are single layer (basically some of the ones release in the first few months of the year).

More space, means more room for higher bitrates and lossless audio. 100% of Disney and Fox Blu-Ray discs have lossless audio. What percentage of Universal or Paramount titles offer that on Blu-Ray?

You're treating this as if 100,000 Blu-ray discs take half as much storage as 50,000 Blu-ray discs and 50,000 HD-DVD discs. That's clearly not the case.

They take up the same space but are half as complex to track and distribute, all being just one unit instead of two different kinds.

And what marketing costs are you looking at that are saved by ditching HD DVD?

If you'd been paying attention you'd have seen multiple full-page ads from Warner - some for HD-DVD only, some for Blu-Ray only. They can reduce the full page ads by half now.

Up to a point. I don't think this would have been an issue if studios had all supported both formats

The issue would have been both formats dying because people continued to stay away until there was one. No-one wants two players. No-one wants an overly expensive combo player.

Here's something worth bearing in mind: I'm not doing Blu-ray. I looked at the three formats a month or two ago, DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray, and decided that I felt HD-DVD was a clear step up from DVD, whereas Blu-ray was a step down. (For my logic, see here.)

Your "logic" there is equally as flawed as your post was.

Some points:

1) AACS is not mandatory on Blu-Ray, and in any case all HD-DVD discs to date have made use of it.

2) As noted, Blu-Ray has more space for higher bitrates and also a higher maximum bitrate.

3) Blu-Ray the format also supports managed copy.

4) If Blu-Ray discs are cheaper to manufacture how come movies on both formats costs the same, except for the horrible HD-DVD combo discs that are $5 more?

Every single point you have would have gone to Blu-Ray had you got the facts straight. You boght into the FUD and misinformation campaign that so many HD-DVD backers were pushing the whole year.

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[SP33doh]

just like spdif (Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format)

UOP: Press a key, see a Danish letter

[tepples]

[With DVD] I don't(generally) have fast forward through ten minutes of outdated ads Instead, you may have to sit through them. On some discs, pressing next chapter, search forward, menu, or title during the commercials results in a big Ø in the corner of the screen.

Re:HD DVD is consumer commodity and Blu-Ray is pri

[aristotle-dude]

The player you bought is artificially underpriced. Toshiba was trying to capture a hardware monopoly by selling below cost and makeup the money on disc royalties. The BDA group wanted to have a profitable business plan where prices would fall as economies of scale kicked in.

I feel sorry for you that you were tricked into buying hardware yesterday and that you cannot see how 7 to 10 free movies for a device that costs the same as the retail price of the movies is a big scam to product dump and lock you into Toshiba hardware and their HD DVD format.

If you really want to know more about the formats rather than FUD, check out wikipedia.org.

Re:It's assholes like you

[MBraynard]

So you got burned on betamax, did you?

Re:Hell Freezing Over? Sony Actually WON!?

[Nazlfrag]

Yes, we here at slashdot have forgiven Microsoft all their evils. That borg look we gave Bill is just because robots are cool, almost as cool as Microsoft. 2008 will be the year of the Microsoft desktop as we wipe linux off for the awesomely secure power of Vista. Sony taught us that it is right and good that powerful multinationals treat their customers as criminals, as it should be. All is well in slashland, all we need now is to bring the ponies back.

Oh, and Cthulu needs not the puny votes of mortal flesh.

Re:And not a moment too soon

[DaveCBio]

No sure what you mean, but BR and HD-DVD security has already been cracked.

Re:Looks like the writing is on the wall for HD DV

[bommai]

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.

They are all multi-region

[SuperKendall]

Since almost no titles include region codes today, and any titles that do have region codes will not after a year, AND there are only three region codes (unlike DVD's seven) AND Japan is in the same region as the US - any Blu-Ray player will do.

But you didn't really want an answer, you just wanted to look smart. Sorry I foiled your little plan.