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Toshiba Execs Declare HD DVD Not Dead Yet
Lucas123 writes "HD DVD proponent Toshiba remains defiant that its format will not succumb to the mounting tsunami of support for Blu-ray Discs. Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, said at CES today that he was surprised by Warner's decision." It should also be noted that the HD DVD group has cancelled many of their meetings at CES.
How would they demand that? Microsoft simply does not care about HD-DVD enough to risk tanking it's game console like Sony did (by forcing the price up for something that doesn't actually help games).
Insightful? Someone wasn't paying attention and got it slightly backwards. Of course that wasn't exactly true either as there are apparently some titles out and more coming.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
That may be, but Bluray is pretty disastrous on a green level. HD DVD can use existing DVD factories, but a whole new factory has to be built for BluRay. I think I'll be putting off buying a player for as long as possible - DVD is just fine for me on the desktop.
Now Digital Playground is releasing their titles on HD-DVD and Blu-ray. No longer exclusive like the were.
It has a few technical advantages (more GB per layer is the big one), but Blu-ray has only one thing that the movie distributors care about - an extra level of DRM.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use AACS encryption, which has been cracked. HD-DVD only has this DRM, so the format is compromised from now until the end of it's life. Blu-Ray on the other hand has an additional optional layer of DRM, BD+, which has not been cracked yet.*
The rabid, paranoid executives at BIG MOVIE COMPANY are always going to demand that it be difficult to copy their movies, so it's no surprise they are going to the format that makes it harder to do so.
*note, AnyDVD can circumvent BD+ now, but not completely. The latest version can copy a BD+ enabled disk to a harddrive, where it can only be played back using PowerDVD. Still no copying to recordable discs or transcoding or anything useful, unfortunately.
In short, this is going to work out fine for everybody. You know, except for the whole region codes thing.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
OK, I'll correct you. It's actually spelled Blu-ray and it's not a fad. Stupid yes, but not a fad.
Most of the stuff on
That makes HD-DVDs as scratchable as regular DVDs (read: very).
From what I hear, that coating on Blu-ray is very good.
You don't say what country you're referring to in regards to broadband adoption, so I'll just assume you're talking about the US. Here in the States, there's a disconnect between urban/suburban and rural areas with respect to broadband, but that gap is slowly closing with DSL technologies working farther and farther away from COs, long-distance wireless, and fiber rollouts (I grew up in a rural area, and even my parents have broadband now thanks to long-distance wireless from the town 5 miles away). That combined with the fact that much of the population is in urban/suburban areas where broadband is available means that most of the market can get movies online if they were available.
On distribution speed, nothing's ever going to beat the convenience of driving to your local Blockbuster (assuming you have a local movie rental place, anyway) and picking up a disk. That said, I can download a ~5GB 720p movie off of Xbox Live in about a day on my 6mpbs cable line, while Netflix takes two days to get me a new movie (even with a local distribution center, it takes a day to get there and a day to get back), so I can definitely see online distribution taking over the Netflix/Blockbuster Online model. Sure, I'm "only" getting a 720p copy off of Xbox Live, but my TV is 720p and most HD disk material is natively 720p as well so it's not like I'm losing anything. That means it's a race between 1080p as a distribution standard and bandwidth increases allowing me to still download movies in about a day.
And finally, I don't think studios are going to be too concerned over their cut, since online movie distribution generally follows a rental pattern. You pay $5, and you can keep the movie for 2 weeks (some work needs to be done on the current licensing, as Xbox Live has a lame "2 weeks or 24 hours after first play" restriction that is too limiting -- bump the "after first play restriction" to 3 days or even drop it entirely and people will be much happier). Maybe I'm atypical, but I'm not a big movie purchaser. Once I've seen a movie once, that's enough for me. I own maybe a dozen DVDs of movies or TV series that I actually cared to keep, but the vast majority is a one-time-only deal. Given the prevalence of movie rentals, I suspect I'm not alone.
I was referring more to the interface and availability rather than raw capacity. As a marketplace, Xbox Live is very appealing because it presents everything to you in a logical way. PSN is more haphazard, acting as a simple web page in the PS3 browser. Unless you're using a mouse and keyboard on your PS3 (which you can, though it's a bit annoying to do so from a couch), the Xbox Live interface is much easier to navigate and
Perhaps not, but many households have a spare dvd player in the bedroom, kitchen, garage, etc. The kids might have one in their room. His point of the issues with migration is a good one. HD-DVD had one that didn't involve trashing discs because their format was incompatible.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
HD-DVD has optional AACS encryption. You can burn an unencrypted HD-DVD, even on a dual-layer standard 9 gig DVD, and it will work. I think it won't let you access network or storage, which makes it not as useful or cool, but technically, the crypto is optional.
HD-DVD is also region-free. There is no option whatsoever for region coding. If you really wanted to, you could release a multi-region, encrypted HD-DVD which adapted based on the default language of the player, or even a GeoIP lookup if they have it plugged in to the Internet.
Blu-ray has mandatory AACS encryption, and the optional BD+, and as far as I know, absolutely no format cheaper than a single-layer Blu-Ray disc (25 gigs). So much for home recording.
Oh, and there are a large number of technical advantages to HD-DVD -- for one, there's a triple-layer disc coming, so it now beats Blu-Ray on capacity. But it's obvious that Warner doesn't care about the technical issues.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Nope, Blu-ray has more capacity per layer, but the capabilities are poorer from a consumer point of view.
Ironically, Blu-ray and HD-DVD had just caught up in terms of maximum capacity per disc - in the middle of November, HD-DVD adopted a system that increased the maximum capacity of an HD-DVD disc to match Blu-ray's (51G HD-DVD compared to 50G Blu-ray, using three layers and two layers respectively), but to date no discs have been made (well, it's been a month and a half) and no players have been updated to support the three layer format.
HD DVD discs do not need DRM, and do have to support "managed copy" meaning consumers can assume that if they buy an HD-DVD movie, they'll be allowed to (using licensed software) transfer copies to their computer or to a movie jukebox or something similar. HD DVD also has a slightly better sound codec selection, specifically making player support for the lossless Dolby TrueHD format compulsory, allowing studios to master HD DVDs with sound in that format. Not that that's a big thing, I just thought I'd mention it.
With the exception of the above issue of the new three layer discs, the HD-DVD format is more or less finalized, whereas Blu-ray is still in a state of flux. Blu-ray also has some issues, from a consumer point of view, such as the BD+ access control system, which meant some discs last year wouldn't play on some players without firmware updates, and region encoding.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
there's a difference between obsolete and "not being able to run all the extra materials"
This is blinging
The same goes for my ps3, I bought it primarily for games but also use it as my primary movie player now. Blu Ray, on the other hand, I've heard nasty things about, like that not all the players will play all Blu Ray discs. Also, I've heard that there is a Blu Ray 2.0 which is in the works, and some of the older 1.x discs may have problems... And the HD-DVD players are cheap, too. Some need firmware upgrades to play newer discs, which in a year or so's time should be inconsequential. We're still in the early adopters phase and crap happens. Bluray 2.0 isn't really in the works. The profile has been defined, it's more a matter of deploying the profile which some manufactures have taken into account and some haven't. The PS3 is Profile 2.0 capable as it's main difference over 1.1 (which the ps3 is compliant with as of update 2.10) is internet connectivity and 1GB of local storage read somewhere that WB chose Blu Ray because of a recent surge in it's popularity, especialy in December... Uh, can we say Cristmas? Take that number and subtract the number of Playstation 3s sold in the same month. Um, I'm pretty sure Warner could care less about how many actual bluray units are in homes than how many BDs they sold during that period, and if you check the charts, the potter series and 300 sold very well in BD format during the holidays; which is why they made their decision to go blu
This is *NOT* just a Sony Corporation technology! It's an Association of company's
From wikipedia:
The current 18 board members (as of December 2007) are:
* Apple Inc.
* Dell
* Hewlett Packard
* Hitachi
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
* Warner Home Video Inc. (Exclusively as of January 4 2008)
Not even close...
Bluray $337
HDDVD $299
Or if you're into bundles, Walmart to a PS3 and 15 free disks for $499.
"If the PS3 continues to outsell the 360, they are going to do fine selling movies online."
When exactly did the PS3 start outselling the 360? In Nov for example the 360 sold 770k and the PS3 only sold 466K according to NPD. Here is a decent graph of sales over the last year to show that the PS3 worldwide isn't closing the gap.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
HD-DVD needs three layers to reach 51 GB. Blu-Ray hits 50 GB at two layers. Both formats are capable of more layers than that, but the demand for that much space is not yet significant enough to justify the investment costs. For what it's worth, however, prototype Blu-Ray discs have been produced with a capacity of up to 200 GB. All of this information is likewise on Wikipedia.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
I think the point was that blue lasers need for both HD-DVD and BluRay drives were hard to get when the PS3 launched, they would have been impossible to supply the number needed to launch the 360 a year earlier with an HD-DVD drive built in. Thus the 360 wouldn't have had a big head start and wouldn't have as many games. If MS had included the HD-DVD drive they'd probably be in last place, instead of second place.
Much of their success is directly attributable to launching early and getting some early bandwagoners on board.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Then you might want to check out the PS3. Bluetooth controllers, headsets, mice, and keyboards, SATA hard drive, WiFi, USB, Linux installable (instructions in the manual), supports DivX playback and DLNA networking, Ethernet... There's a LOT of "standard" stuff in the PS3. More than Sony has gotten credit for so far. The only thing really remotely "proprietary" in the PS3 is the Blu-Ray drive. And that seems to be making its way to becoming a standard as well.
Why exactly are you comparing two last gen players? The HD-A3 is $179.98, and the Panasonic DMP-BD30K (the only shipping 'final spec' BD standalone) is $414.99. From the announcements at CES it sounds like the gap will be narrowing shortly (with reasonable playerrs running $350 and crap off-brands around $300), but Toshiba still has a significant price advantage.
Toshiba fell victim to believing HD-DVD was going to ever be supported by anyone beyond that niche demographic. And it cost hundreds of millions in their losing battle against BluRay. HD DVD could be a serious competitor if there wasn't MS and their OS fascist media division wasn't involved. They showed signs of "Windows only" from the start, they could sit and write HD DVD.Framework via XCode to support OS X, they could release a not cheap but working fine Quicktime export plugin for VC-1, they could make Roxio (Adaptec) support HD-DVD recorders on their OS X consumer products, they could help Linux guys sort out basic data recording, they could plug into OS X professional tools like Final Cut suite, AVID suite to support HD-DVD output.
What did they do? All the media industry, using Sony/Apple devices daily saw Windows Vista laptops made by Toshiba supporting HD-DVD. Imagine you are a high end Hollywood technical person using Mac OS X and you don't even have basic data recording capability if you use your Mac. You will choose HD-DVD while you are happily backing up those DV files to BluRay?
For a long time, if you have good money to spare, you can buy a Firewire Blu-Ray recorder from Lacie, install Toast 8 (comes free) and even use BluRay RW on OS X. HD-DVD was basically non existent on anything except Windows.
I really don't get this "Sony hate" anyway. It uses H264, has Java which is totally open now, they sponsored TerraSoft solutions to ship a PS/3 Linux, they use industry standard frameworks like OpenGL on Sony PS3... Just because we hate Sony, we should support MS'es best friend Toshiba and XBox 360 introduced format?
Toshiba should have chosen their friends well. On media industry, you can't dare to mess BOTH Sony and Apple and get successful. You can't get adopted when you are friend of a company which sees everything except Windows doing that "multimedia thing" as a loss. We speak about a company who hated the fact that Linux/FreeBSD/OS X people can happily watch Youtube via Flash technology and decided to kill (!) it with SilverLight.
With current prices, you are shipping $30-$40 , high end 1080P content having audiophile like features, your target demographic is NOT XBox 360 gamers. They will happily download those 720p highly compressed x264 torrents, they will pay $30-$40 for a game they play. Sony made clever choice while they added everything to make PS3 a high end home multimedia/communication central. There are many people who has Ps3 and uses it just like a very high end personal entertainment device rather than gaming. Same for PSP too. I got friends having PSP but only using it as a handheld multimedia device.
Blu-ray has a lot going for it. Everyone who bought a PS3 assuming that it would be the best console ever got a Blu-ray player. Blu-ray has also been marketed like nobody's business, and it got Disney as a backer.
From a production studio perspective, it has better DRM. HD-DVD DRM was cracked pretty early on, and I bet that caused studio execs to wet their pants. Blu-ray (and BD+) were cracked later, but firsts often matter more.
HD-DVD has... very little to compete with Blu-ray. Independent examinations have shown slight quality differences favoring HD-DVD for films released in both formats, though there's no technical reason that this must be the case. They've also got pricing--HD-DVD players are cheaper than Blu-ray. Generally speaking, though, that's not going to matter much. The studios are going to do what they want, and they want draconian, difficult-to-break DRM.
I don't believe that for a second. HD DVD and Blu Ray are so close to each other in terms of their system requirements, their technical specifications and the standards they implement that I doubt there is any significant difference in the cost of either.
If HD DVD appeared cheaper (appeared being the operative word), it is more likely due to Toshiba being the sole provider of HD DVD players while Blu Ray consisting of a consortium of consumer electronics firms. Toshiba can set its prices however it likes including taking a large loss while BDA members are attempting to sell their players for a profit.
I expect that even Sony didn't subsidize its standalone players (though maybe it did with the PS3) for the obvious reason that it doesn't want to hurt BDA members.
Even so, BD players are dropping rapidly. Some are already sub-$300 and chances are they'll be sub $200 before the year is out. Chinese manufacturers will get in on the act to ensure cheap end systems and there are plenty of new models being announced in CES.