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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.
The only way out for HD-DVD is to concede defeat and open the specification in ways that Hollywood cannot handle. By removing the DRM, and removing any RAND licensing. Allowing anybody to produce HD-DVD devices and disks without obtaining license. Only act as a certification agency.
;-).
This will allow cheap HD-DVD devices and disks to be made in China and dumped into the US market. These will be used by people wanting to rip, burn, and trade the BlueRay DVDs available in the market. That would be sweet revenge
There is a huge market potential for HD-DVD in backups.
-anandsr
Not really. I thought so too, but in practice, HD-DVD wins. (And I'm not just saying this because of my job; for all I know, our company will be forced into Blu-Ray, or something completely different.)
What Blu-Ray has going for it (other than this latest blow) is capacity and bandwidth, and a ton of empty promises about features which are mostly not implemented. And capacity, at least, was rumored to be about killed by some triple-layer HD-DVD format, which would beat dual-layer Blu-Ray by a gig.
What HD-DVD has (had?) is price and features. Since people are pronouncing the format dead, I think I'm entitled to one last rant -- I am an HD-DVD developer.
So here's how it breaks down: Blu-Ray requires entirely new equipment to press. HD-DVD can modify existing DVD equipment. There have also been (barely) sub-$100 HD-DVD players at some point -- that's yet to happen for Blu-Ray, cheapest I've seen is a $200 drive (not a standalone player).
The price of the discs is mostly irrelevant, as now is really not the time to be buying discs to keep. But I would expect them to be cheaper, and there was also the strange run of dual-format (HD-DVD and standard DVD) discs -- literally two-sided, side A for HD, side B for DVD.
Now, as to the actual technologies... Note that I have not actually seen a Blu-Ray disc play, so all of this is from what I've heard my co-workers say, and I don't remember it incredibly well. But the HD-DVD information should be dead accurate.
To start with, Blu-Ray requires AACS, and supports region coding and something called "BD-Mark". Meanwhile, HD-DVD has optional AACS (though some features are inaccessible to unencrypted discs), and does not support region coding. So even if you hate Microsoft, as a geek, you really want HD-DVD to win, for that reason.
It also supports standard dual-layer DVDs as a medium. Same HD content, good codecs (VC1, h.264, etc), scripting, but if it fits in 9 gigs, you can burn it to a cheaper disc. I don't know if it actually supports single-layer DVDs (though I imagine it does), or CDs (though I doubt it). So, low-capacity all the way up to the proposed triple-layer makes it more flexible than Blu-Ray in terms of disc format.
Blu-Ray is Java. HD-DVD is JavaScript. Having used both languages, I'm amazed anyone would argue for Java, but people do. And it almost seemed logical -- I expected the Java to be faster, but it's not.
Let that sink in a moment. In the actual, real-world use, any Blu-Ray player other than the PS3 is slow as hell with simple menu animations. By "slow as hell", I mean you will actually see it redrawing each frame in blocks, for a tiny menu taking up maybe an eighth of the screen. HD-DVD, on the other hand... Well, I can make it slow, but not that slow. Half-second animations that take up half the screen are, at worst, a little jerky, but never do you see it redrawing in chunks like that.
Now, just guessing, but I suspect that Blu-Ray hands over more control to the Java itself -- that is, it is actual Java code doing those animations. Not so with HD-DVD -- I just tell it to change some property (x, y, width, height, opacity, etc) by some amount over some duration, and let the player handle the rest -- probably with native code, probably a good chunk of it in video hardware.
And, from what I've heard through the grapevine, Warner's actual tech people agree with me -- they'd much rather work with HD-DVD and with JavaScript. So this smells like an executive decision, made for strategic reasons, not technical ones, and certainly not with the consumer in mind.
HD-DVD also has a much stronger base of what's required. Even in those sub-$100 players, you get:
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!