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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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

[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

[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

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...

[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: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.

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.

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

[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: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?

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

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.

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: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 ?

[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: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: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.

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.

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: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: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.

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

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:It's assholes like you

[MBraynard]

So you got burned on betamax, did you?