Toshiba To Halt HD-DVD Production

Multiple users have written to tell us that Toshiba is planning to halt production of devices related to HD-DVD. According to Japanese broadcasting network NHK, Toshiba will lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" as the format war finally draws to a close. Regardless, investors are pleased that Toshiba has made the decision to cut its losses. This comes after a last-ditch price cut was unable to prevent Wal-mart from throwing their lot in with Blu-ray, although some sources suggest that Wal-mart was already aware of Toshiba's plans to withdraw from fight.

Comments

whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-Ray is so much easier on the tongue than a mouthful of acronym(s).

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ledow]

Yeah, they would have been much more accepted if they had pronounced it "Heidi DVD". :-)

I always think the funniest acronym is PXE UNDI - it sounds like fairy knicker to me.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[mrxak]

But HD DVD doesn't sound stupid. It says exactly what it is, and doesn't embarrass itself. Blu-ray, besides being spelled incorrectly, says nothing about what it is. Whatever happened to the glory days of Video Home System, Compact Disc, and Digital Versatile Disc?

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Eivind]

Nobody gives a fuck. Ok ?

90%+ of average consumers don't have any clue whatsoever what "VHS" stands for, and couldn't care less.

For that matter, most consumers couldn't tell you what "HD" stands for either.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot Damn!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Escogido]

But HD DVD doesn't sound stupid. It says exactly what it is, and doesn't embarrass itself. Blu-ray, besides being spelled incorrectly, says nothing about what it is. Whatever happened to the glory days of Video Home System, Compact Disc, and Digital Versatile Disc? Are these all *that* much better than BR really? I agree that unlike BR they give people a vague idea what they are about, but you honestly don't expect people to instantly understand what either of them implies anyway. Think of it, if you never knew what a Digital Versatile Disc is, what'd you imagine it to be? A disc with digits on it that can be used as a lot of other things? :)

It's more like a product trademark to me: you don't complain that the word Panasonic is 'better' than say Toshiba, just because Panasonic literally means pro-sound and Toshiba is a compound noun where To- means Tokyo, and what -shiba is I forgot. But that doesn't still make Panasonic any 'better'.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[flajann]

"DVD" use to mean "Digital Video Disc" initially. But really, if you don't know what "Blu-Ray" is by now, you must live in a cave somewhere....

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ozamosi]

It's a feature.

Digital Versatile Disc is a backronym - DVD originally meant Digital Video Disc, until they realized how stupid the name actually was ("Yeah, this game is distributed on a video disc. But it's not really a video..."), at which point they just redefined the abbreviation. When I think about it, I realize that HD-DVD's name is just as stupid: you can have just as High Definition audio/video or interactive media on HD discs as you can on "SD discs", just not as much.

By not having a meaning, blu-ray avoids that problem - a blu-ray disc is a disc that uses blue rays.

I do think that CD is a good name - it tells me what it is (a disc that's quite small, compared to LP's), not what they developed it to contain. But CDSDWEMRFDTDVD (Compact Disc-sized Disc With Even More Room For Data Than Digital Versatile Discs) doesn't have such a nice ring to it... Of course, today it's more of a Big Disc, compared to Minidisc or mini-DVD, which again shows that neutral names are better.

To finish off, let me just counter your "glory days" argument by saying "BetaMax" and "Video2000".

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[somersault]

Hard Drive? >_> That's what I used to identify it as anyway ;)

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[AvitarX]

Imagine the confusion when Hard Disk camcorders became available.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ceeam]

You mean "Vertical Helix Scan" and "Digital Video Disc"? (and I like these original "decodings" better)

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[drsquare]

HD-DVD doesn't tell you what it is. From the name, I'd assume it was a normal DVD with HD content on, that could be played by hooking up a normal DVD player to a HDTV. With blu ray you know it's a different format straight off. And five fucking syllables...

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Metorical]

[rant]

This is not insightful, you've just made up facts, so you're forcing me to finally sign up.

I visited Samsung back when DVD technology was still in the labs and their guys were very keen to show it off. They all referred to it as a Digital Versatile Disc. Remember at this point you couldn't buy a DVD in the stores and data DVDs became mainstream a long time after videos.

Also for it to be a backronym then it couldn't have been an acronym beforehand. From dictionary.com:

backronym jargon
(Backward acronym) A word which has been turned into an acronym

or

n. [portmanteau of back + acronym]
A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended.

[/rant]

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[mrxak]

Yeah, it's a common misconception that it's a backronym. Back before the spec was finalized, it was called Digital Versatile Disc.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[nmg196]

There is already mass confusion, with some hard disk camcorders being labeled just "HD" rather than "HDD". Thankfully most of them are switching to "HDD" as consumers complain.

The worst thing I've seen as recently as today, is still photo (as opposed to movie) cameras which bear the "Full HD 1080p" logo, even though they CANNOT record video. It's simply stating that it has a digital output which can show still images at 1080 line.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Jon_S]

I'm still amazed at how many times I hear, *on the radio* that HD-radio stands for "High Def" radio. Ibiquity has a great scam going there.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Tony Hoyle]

Blu-Ray is so much easier on the tongue than a mouthful of acronym(s).

I'm not sure something that can be (and frequently is) pronounced 'Blurry' is a great name for an HD format either...

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[bluie-]

Yeah, who would guess that Blu-ray means the ray of light used to read the disc is blue?

Anyway, blu-ray sounds high-tech and cool. HDDVD sounds like something you have to clean up. I firmly believe people will always at least WANT to buy what sounds cool.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

But really, if you don't know what "Blu-Ray" is by now, you must live in a cave somewhere.... Why yes, I know it's an excessively expensive DRM'd to the hilt piece of Hollywood catering hardware that won't play anything not bought on a commercial BD disk.

Unfortunately, HD video in commercial format will be limited to BD, as D-VHS is a fringe format. I wonder whether BD will limit HD media in the same way Laser Disks were limited. I'm not so sure that HD content is all that convincing for most people with the TVs they have. The last study I saw says that less than 5% of US households even have HD TVs.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because 'Video Home System' doesn't sound retarded. No sir, not at all.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[tcc3]

But they cold have "backronymed" it again and used the old floppy definition of HD - High Density.

But i guess its not going to matter anymore.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Qwerpafw]

Blu-Ray is spelled "incorrectly" in order to ease its protection as a trademark. HD-DVD isn't even a word, so I'm not sure how spelling is a valid criticism. What does HD-DVD even stand for? High-Definition Digital Video Disc? Versatile Disc? Does that make sense in a context of storing data instead of movies?

Blu-Ray refers to the blue lasers used on the disc. Since a Blu-Ray disc can store more than just movies, it makes sense to give it a name that applies to more than just movies. It's also a shorter name, (who wants the five syllable mouthful of HD-DVD?) easier to say, and more importantly, deciding which format is better based solely on the name is fucking stupid.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[IGnatius T Foobar]

90%+ of average consumers don't have any clue whatsoever what "VHS" stands for, and couldn't care less.

And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.

An even smaller percentage know that it actually stands for "Vertical Helical Scan," a technical acronym which describes the physical tape format and transport.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Check that study again, Mr. Luddite. It's actually more along the lines of 50%.

Also, buy glasses.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[shokk]

That's because the acronym for a Blu-ray disk being used for DVD purposes is BD-DVD. That rolls off the tongue so much better than HD-DVD. Neither is as bad as the nightmare of DiVX which was usually preceded or followed by "Is this how you say it?" while walking through any store. "CD" and "DVD" are simple and none of these have that charm.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Deadstick]

For that matter, most consumers couldn't tell you what "HD" stands for either.

Of course they can. It stands for more money, so it's better.

rj

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to interrupt your rant, but DVD is not an acronym, it's an initialism. (Bolding mine)

From Dictionary.com:
acronym /ækrnm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ak-ruh-nim] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation -noun
1. a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words, as Wac from Women's Army Corps, OPEC from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or loran from long-range navigation.
2. an acrostic. -verb (used with object)
3. to make an acronym of: The committee's name has been acronymed MIKE.

DVD is an initialism. You pronounce the first letter of each of the words, like NATO (North American Treaty Organization) or IRS (Internal Revenue Service). To put it simply, if you make it into a word then it's an acronym.

From Dictionary.com:
initialism (-nsh'-lz'm) Pronunciation Key
n. An abbreviation consisting of the first letter or letters of words in a phrase (for example, IRS for Internal Revenue Service), syllables or components of a word (TNT for trinitrotoluene), or a combination of words and syllables (ESP for extrasensory perception) and pronounced by spelling out the letters one by one rather than as a solid word.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ContractualObligatio]

The things is, it can sound stupid even to an "expert" like me. Just imagine a random consumer asking you "so I can't transfer the HD video of my onto a standard DVD" and the ensuing conversation about what actually HD means, and you can quickly see that HD DVD requires an assumption or two to make sense. Confusing names are stupid names.

Personally, I like the Blu-Ray precisely because the meaning of anything normally requires *some* background information. And with Blu-Ray, the easy explanation is that it's use of a blue laser ray rather than the old red one means it can store more information. That gives people something easy to grasp on to. If you can appreciate how the different laser wavelengths are important, great. If not, at least you can still appreciate to some degree there is a fundamental difference in the technology. Either way, you can take onboard a new concept and have an easy-to-use new bit of jargon everyone can work with.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[police inkblotter]

...Blu-ray refers to the laser itself, which is smaller and allows a higher capacity data storage

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[whmac33]

Who says n-a-t-o, don't most people say Na-Toe?

NATA is an acronym.

Oh, and you're just being pedantic!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[mcsqueak]

The worst thing I've seen as recently as today, is still photo (as opposed to movie) cameras which bear the "Full HD 1080p" logo, even though they CANNOT record video. It's simply stating that it has a digital output which can show still images at 1080 line.

Are you sure that the camera in question could not do video? As far as I know, the only still photo cameras that cannot do video are DSLR cameras. Every consumer-level point-n-shoot camera I've ever seen can do video, and now a lot of them can record at HD quality.

I'm not trying to say you didn't read it correctly, and I know that a lot of those stickers they put on electronics are full of marketing-speak garbage, but that just seems like a weird thing to advertise if the camera couldn't do video... 1080 lines of vertical resolution for a still image is horribly low. My 6 MP Nikon D100 outputs an image that is 3008 px wide by 2000 px tall.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[CohibaVancouver]

HD DVD doesn't sound stupid. It says exactly what it is, and doesn't embarrass itself.

Until the next thing comes along and it starts to get complicated...

"Super" High Definition DVD

"Extreme" High Definition DVD

...etc.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Just Some Guy]

And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.

That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).

The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

I guess it'd be redundant calling an AC a troll, idiot, moron, and just out of the question to suggest that they provide links or any backing info of any kind.

6 million HDTV homes by the end of 2007 receive HD programming in some form or other. This is from subscribed HD sources and may not cover all HDTVs, but likewise it is no guarantee that all those subscribers have HDTVs either. With 6 million being <5% of the more than estimated 106M households in the US (2000 data), I think that answers anything the AC wishes to say.

On the need for glasses, on TV's less than 42" at normal viewing distances, HD content isn't that noticeably better than DVD sources. On larger TV's, the differences are directly affected by the quality of the TV itself, as there are large disparities in rendering capabilities of TVs, so my response to you might be "get something other than a bottom end 'HDTV'"....

And FYI: my current HDTV is greater than 42", and has enough processing power to render acceptable quality pictures even out of SD satellite sources. It upconverts everything to 1080i and has very good filters that limit things like the stair stepping effects.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[C0rinthian]

And five fucking syllables... Obligatory RvB quote:

Grif: What about HDDVD?
Sarge: Bad marketing. Not enough repeated letters in the name to be catchy. So it's being replaced with HHDDVVDD BVD.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Hatta]

Does anyone really care what the name is? They could call it cheese in a hat for all I care, it's the features that matter. For every reason anyone can think of that Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is a stupid name, I can find a successful product with an even stupider name. It really doesn't matter all that much.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[toleraen]

6 million HDTV homes by the end of 2007 receive HD programming in some form or other. Not that I really feel like defending an AC, but that study only covers payed HD programming. My mother, father, and in-laws all own HDTVs, but they don't pay for any programming. I'm assuming they're not the only ones getting their HDTV fix from OTA sources. For that study you'd have to compare that 6 million to the number of people who receive cable or satellite TV. Or you could just go to Nielsen, and see the number is about 14%, which is still well below what the CEA states.

Just wait until those congress approved free HDTV checks start coming in the mail later this spring...that should give a nice bump to those HD adoption numbers.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[edwdig]

Just wait until those congress approved free HDTV checks start coming in the mail later this spring...that should give a nice bump to those HD adoption numbers.

Where do I sign up for those?

Or do you mean the digital to analog signal converters? Digital vs analog has nothing to do with resolution.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

After a few shots of sake, I forgot Tokyo too.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[martin_b1sh0p]

Video Home System? You're not talking about VHS the system that stores video/audio on a cassette are you? Because it actually stands for Vertical Helix Scan. Although most people have probably forgotten that and replaced it with their own words like you just did.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

So what exactly is an "ipod". It says nothing about what it is or what it does. It sounds stupid. It's not a real word, in English at least. Yet the "ipod" is the most popular digital music player right now.

Marketing works.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[iamhassi]

"Whatever happened to the glory days of Video Home System, Compact Disc, and Digital Versatile Disc?"

Not to be a troll but... Sony actually won a format war?! This is big news! After all those years of trying to push Betamax, Digital Audio Tape (DAT), and Minidisc down our throats Sony actually won a format war!

I don't know if I should congratulated Sony or ask if hell froze over.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[toleraen]

Where do I sign up for those? Just file your taxes!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anpheus]

So you're wrong about NATO then because you can pronounce it as a word?

Or do you really say "N-A-T-O" instead of "Nay-toe" like everyone else?

You grammar nazis need to turn on the television or (*gasp*) go outside and determine actual usage before coming on Slashdot.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Panasonic is better than Matsushita.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[The Qube]

Not to burst your bubble, but Sony has won pretty much every format war:
3.5" Floppy Disc - today's format is based on Sony design
Compact Disc - developed by Sony and Philips
DVD - developed by Sony and Philips
Digital Audio Tape - de-facto standard in the music and professional audio industry
Beta - the standard tape format in the video industry for the past 20 years

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

My guess is that the low adoption rate of high definition tv is partially due to the Blu-ray HD-DVD format war. Now that (thankfully) it is finally over, prices will drop and I, and almost everyone I know, will go out and get some hi-def equipment.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

Frequently? never heard that before - sounds like product bashing from the HD-DVD fanboys.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[madsenj37]

Blu-Ray is named for its blue laser.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Kalriath]

Betamax? The standard tape format? Are you smoking something?

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[KingSkippus]

NATO generally is a true acronym, but he is otherwise technically correct in that acronyms are pronouncable. Don't get bogged down in one thing being incorrect to imply that the other is also.

DVD is not an acronym, and neither is VHS. Loran is, as is scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), OPEC, NATO, an so on.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[The Qube]

Not at all. Surgeon General says that smoking is harmful...

Betacam, Betacam SP, DigiBeta and the newer HD versions are THE standard in the video industry. Even the Betacam SP, now 20 years old at least, is very widly used and still hasn't been fully replaced by the newer digital versions, even in the "Western" video world.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Blkdeath]

And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.

That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).

The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.

Erm, that means the acronym actually stands for "vertical helical scan" my friend. Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning. Hence the term used by the OP "backronym" - an explanation that won't scare the neophytes who purchase the technology.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[rtechie]

I visited Samsung back when DVD technology was still in the labs and their guys were very keen to show it off. They all referred to it as a Digital Versatile Disc. He's not wrong. The SPEC was originally called "Digital Video Disc" and it was changed to "Digital Versatile Disc" during development. However, the term Digital Video Disc was widely used in promotional materials, particularly by the DVD Forum. So "Digital Video Disc" became semi-official. You can still find new discs labeled Digital Video Disc. I saw this on some DVD-Rs I bought the other day.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

I guess you missed the gleeful cackle when the BD guys got the first whiff of victory? The one where when asked about BD 2.0 players and price drops, they responded effectively: no price drop. You can expect prices to start at 599 to 699, and there will be no foreseeable price drop in the future. I didn't keep the link, but that's what they said.

So I wouldn't go holding my breath waiting on a price drop.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

6 million HDTV homes by the end of 2007 receive HD programming in some form or other. Not that I really feel like defending an AC, but that study only covers payed HD programming. Guess you missed the part where I indicated that those were subscribed HD source numbers? Nice editing.

But, to get to the point, those were the only available numbers I had available. HDTVs sold don't equal out either, because many people I know that have HDTVs, have more than one. So total number sold don't mean much either, other than giving a maximum potential penetration.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Just Some Guy]

Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning.

It also doesn't make the original meaning "more correct", except for people who want to sound smart at parties.

Hence the term used by the OP "backronym"

That's not really appropriate here. Since VHS was never known as anything other than Video Home System to the world at large, you can't really claim that it's wrong. At the very least, you could say that both are correct.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[earlymon]

Is it just me, or are you Insightful, not Funny?

Aren't you making INSANELY valid points about Sony's impact on the various media industries, especially pro video? I have a LOT of friends in pro video production, and they wouldn't find this at all funny - like me, they'd find the mods "+10: Confusing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam

Either IHBT or I'm the only one getting it..... rsvp.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[porcupine8]

I had no idea that HD didn't actually stand for anything there. The first time I heard a commercial for "high definition radio" I actually thought it was a joke. What? That makes no sense! Now it makes so much more sense. Surprising no one's called them out for false advertising.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[w.timmeh]

Also, *technically* an acronym is an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word, such as NASA. Thus DVD is not an acronym at all, but an abbreviation.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[bill_mcgonigle]

I can find a successful product with an even stupider name.

*looks up at URL field...*

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[SETIGuy]

Where do I sign up for those? Just file your taxes! Yeah, lets borrow $100 billion from Canada, the UK and China, and then ship it to Japan and Korea in exchange for some TVs. And we can call it economic stimulus. That's the ticket.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Andy Somnifac]

No, he's right. Beta lost to VHS in the consumer market, but it flourished in the pro market (or at least a derivative, Betacam, did). In fact, one of the widely used formats in the pro world today, HDCAM SR, is a decedent (several generations) of Betacam.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

History has shown in previous format wars that once a standard has been chosen prices for both hardware and the medium drop.

And given that current prices for BD players are half of what you state, I'm seriously doubting the accuracy of your statements.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning. It also doesn't make the original meaning "more correct", except for people who want to sound smart at parties. You know what really grinds my gears? People who say "Mac" and "PC" (Macs ARE PCs). Also, people who call crackers "hackers." I'm sure people really appreciate it when I interrupt them mid-sentence with these semantic corrections.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[toleraen]

Except you can't take bad data and try to twist it to back up claims. That's what wikipedia is for.

You're right, total HDTV sales does not mean 1 HDTV per household. If that were true, that estimated number would be 36% by the end of 2007. Nielsen took that into account, and put that number at 13.7%, as I stated earlier.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[toleraen]

That is the ticket! Sorry, every time CNN or whoever covers the tax rebate story, they toss up either a stock image of cash, or a row of HDTVs. All the media outlets seem to think that everyone is going to go out and buy new TVs...so that's what I've been referring to them as.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[aliquis]

Yeah, beacause everyone know what DVD stood for anyway? Or CD-ROM? Thought good enough for vibrator och masturbation sleeve, but what about the fleshlight?! Where is the light!?!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[donaldm]

In Australia NATA stands for "The National Association of Testing Authorities".

Or NATA could also be "The National Athletic Trainers' Association".

Both have web pages.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[mixmasta]

Untrue ...

It says exactly what it is, an optical disk read by blue laser.

Only a basement-dwelling propeller-head could think HD-DVD was a better name. Try to say it five times, fast. ;)

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anand7]

The merger in 1939 of Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki created a new company called Tokyo Shibaura Denki(). It was soon nicknamed Toshiba, but it wasn't until 1984 that the company was officially renamed Toshiba Corporation. (from Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[LadyLucky]

And to add to that, how many people know what DVD stands for? The V is not video!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Eivind]

"Video Home System" also suffers from being plain bad english, a consequence of being a backronym.

If that was the intended meaning, you'd be more likely to go with "Home Video System" -- "HVS".

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Dracophile]

Hence the term used by the OP "backronym"

That's not really appropriate here. Since VHS was never known as anything other than Video Home System to the world at large, you can't really claim that it's wrong. At the very least, you could say that both are correct.

No. That just makes the world at large ignorant. FFS, WTF is wrong with getting it right? Would it actually kill anyone to get it right for a change? Like Joe Sixpack is going to be all "oh no, I can't buy that; it's one of those vertical thingamajiggers, much better to buy that Beta thing that nobody else buys". FMD.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Just Some Guy]

WTF is wrong with getting it right?

Nothing. And since JVC sold and marketed their devices as "Video Home Systems", people who call it that are getting it right.

FMD

First Marblehead CP?

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Yakko_94]

Agreed.... I would have called it "DVD-H". But they could have called it "Sex In A Box" and still not have prevailed against Blu Ray. The deck was stacked when Sony put those drives in the Playstation 3. P

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you don't live in the 'Gud Ole Suthern U.S. of A'...

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Trogre]

Oh good, so we're agreed that DVD stands for Digital Video Disc, and always will.

Thanks.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[mattmatt]

Yes it is.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

It's MSRP. Real prices should be somewhat lower.

And current BD players need to be liquidated. The BD Live (2.0) players are coming, and all current players (PS3 excepted) will be obsolete.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

You'll notice I did not argue your 13.4% number. That's because Nielsen numbers are nothing more than an estimate, and can only be stated to be an estimate, however correct or incorrect. I didn't feel like researching it to determine the level of (in)correctness. Even HDTV sales numbers are questionable: my first question would be is that "shipped" numbers or actual retail sales minus returns(exchanges)?

Your leading statement is merely an attempt to argue by innuendo. Nicely done!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[jafuser]

Blu-Ray is so much easier on the tongue than a mouthful of acronym(s). What's wrong with Hood Doovdé?

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

And current BD players need to be liquidated. The BD Live (2.0) players are coming, and all current players (PS3 excepted) will be obsolete.

Why would they be obsolete? Profile 1.1 players will play all future BD disks, regardless if they are live or not. The only thing you miss is internet connectivity, and given that I've been able to watch movies without internet on both VHS and DVD for years, I don't think I'll miss much. If you own a Profile 1.1 BD player now you will not have to junk it anytime soon, nor will it be obsolete.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

The industry wonks themselves have stated they'll be obsolete. Also, haven't there been a lot of reported issues with various players playing the couple of BD Live disks that are out?

Also, in reference to your GGP, the lowest price on a new BD player on and available from Amazon is $349. The lowest price for new/used in their reseller listings is $249. I'm not up on the quality of BD players so I don't know if any of those are "decent" prices for what you're getting. I do know that the press release after the HD DVD defection about BD Live players was that they'd start at $599.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

The industry wonks themselves have stated they'll be obsolete. Also, haven't there been a lot of reported issues with various players playing the couple of BD Live disks that are out?

Have not seen that. Please provide link to the reference.

Also, in reference to your GGP, the lowest price on a new BD player on and available from Amazon is $349.... I do know that the press release after the HD DVD defection about BD Live players was that they'd start at $599.

The best BluRay player out there now (at least until the HD-DVD manufacturers switch over to make more BluRay competition) is the PS3 and it will do BD Live 2.0. That unit new is under $400, with a movie thrown in, and you get a free game machine as a bonus. Best deal around.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

Have not seen that. Please provide link to the reference. Just google Blu-ray player audio problem.

Also, in reference to your GGP, the lowest price on a new BD player on and available from Amazon is $349.... I do know that the press release after the HD DVD defection about BD Live players was that they'd start at $599.

The best BluRay player out there now (at least until the HD-DVD manufacturers switch over to make more BluRay competition) is the PS3 and it will do BD Live 2.0. That unit new is under $400, with a movie thrown in, and you get a free game machine as a bonus. Best deal around.

Perhaps I don't want a viral game system, or is that a viral BD system? But yes, the PS3 is probably the best deal out there, which makes BD all the more questionable when a game system is both the cheapest and the "best" BD player. But, that still goesn't get around the fact that I do not want a PS3 gaming system.

But, I'm not paying $400 for a PS3 or any other BD system. I probably won't even pay $100 unless they'll play home burned BD disks. The only option there is PC BD players/burners. And if I'm buying a burner, there's no need for a player. The burner is just over $360 currently.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

Just google Blu-ray player audio problem.

Seems to all be either very first release players (1.0 which were identified as non compliant), or people trying to play back an audio codec thats not supported on their system, or old firmware.. Nothing that's not obvious or easily fixed.

But, I'm not paying $400 for a PS3 or any other BD system. I probably won't even pay $100

Fine - you don't like BluRay (or to be more precise Sony). Then why are you responding to a BluRay message discussion then other than to be an argumentative troll?

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

Seems to all be either very first release players (1.0 which were identified as non compliant), or people trying to play back an audio codec thats not supported on their system, or old firmware.. Nothing that's not obvious or easily fixed. Yeah, let's just blame it all on out of date firmware. The BD spec is about to come out, everything before then is merely prototype hardware.

But, I'm not paying $400 for a PS3 or any other BD system. I probably won't even pay $100

Fine - you don't like BluRay (or to be more precise Sony). Then why are you responding to a BluRay message discussion then other than to be an argumentative troll?

No, I don't like Sony specifically, but for more reasons than their buying the win in the HD format war.

As for responding in a "BlueRay" message discussion, I'd rather call it an HD media message discussion, which Blu-ray happens to be the only material version of as of 2/19/2008. And wasn't the title of this "Toshiba to Halt HD DVD production" Mr Troll?

Furthermore, in this thread the initial discussion was about someone not knowing what BD was, implying it was good. (Hint, it's not, for so many many documented reasons - go read bluraysucks.com for some more info - it's slams both HD formats btw, even though BD is worse than HD DVD.)

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

Yeah, let's just blame it all on out of date firmware. The BD spec is about to come out, everything before then is merely prototype hardware.

Early adopters get fried - that's why they call it bleeding edge.

Hint, it's not, for so many many documented reasons - go read bluraysucks.com for some more info - it's slams both HD formats btw, even though BD is worse than HD DVD

Those are the lamest excuses I've ever read. Most of the information is invalid or out of date. Not one of those complaints about HD apply to me or affect me in any way. Most of those complaints are about getting screwed for being an early adopter. That happens with all new technology, not just BluRay and HD-DVD. pI'm just glad one format is chosen, and in my opinion the better one was. More room, more capability and more features.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

Early adopters get fried - that's why they call it bleeding edge. That's about the lamest excuse I've read.

Hint, it's not, for so many many documented reasons - go read bluraysucks.com for some more info - it's slams both HD formats btw, even though BD is worse than HD DVD

Those are the lamest excuses I've ever read. Most of the information is invalid or out of date. Not one of those complaints about HD apply to me or affect me in any way. Most of those complaints are about getting screwed for being an early adopter. That happens with all new technology, not just BluRay and HD-DVD.

I guess you didn't bother truly reading it then. The removal of fair use is the primary theme and the ways that consumers are getting screwed.

I'm just glad one format is chosen, and in my opinion the better one was. More room, more capability and more features. The only thing BD has is more capacity as realized. The 51GB HD DVD triple layer spec would have removed that as well. From what I recall, BD's triple or higher layer specs required new players, HD DVD didn't.

If BD removed region encoding, ROM-Mark, BD+ and allowed for non encrypted disks to be played on players, then it would be the better solution.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

I guess you didn't bother truly reading it then. The removal of fair use is the primary theme and the ways that consumers are getting screwed.

I read it - none of that affects me.

Wont play high res (downsamples) on older non-HDMI TVs. I wasn't an early adopter so I'm not in that boat, but regardless, those older TVs wont play 1080p anyway so I don't know what they are whining about. If your player downsamples a 1080p source to 720 when your TV can only display 720 anyway is not a big concern.

Playing on a PC. I've never watched a movie on a PC. Don't see the point. I want to watch movies on a big screen with good sound. Watching on a PC is just stupid. And if you are thinking about the ability to download movies on demand, my cable provider alrady has this capability - I can watch on demand hundereds of regular and hi-def movies from an onscreen menu. Why would I want any of that capability on a PC?

Copying movies. Never had the need to do that either, and I dont want to put the movie on a PC. Take care of the disk and there wont be a problem.

Region encoding. DVDs already have region encoding - never has been a limitation.

Their complaints about the format war are now obsolete.

That pretty much covers all of the points on that page. Like I said, none of that affects me.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

Wont play high res (downsamples) on older non-HDMI TVs. I wasn't an early adopter so I'm not in that boat, but regardless, those older TVs wont play 1080p anyway so I don't know what they are whining about. If your player downsamples a 1080p source to 720 when your TV can only display 720 anyway is not a big concern. I have a 1080i TV that's now 7 years old. Plays HD movies just fine, as long as that CIT flag isn't set. HDCP is an arbitrary restriction that buys you nothing.

Playing on a PC. I've never watched a movie on a PC. Don't see the point. I want to watch movies on a big screen with good sound. Watching on a PC is just stupid. And if you are thinking about the ability to download movies on demand, my cable provider alrady has this capability - I can watch on demand hundereds of regular and hi-def movies from an onscreen menu. Why would I want any of that capability on a PC? Record your own home movies. Edit out stupid 30m trailers that disney inserts at the beginning of their movies. Create a disk that your kid(s) can use without fear of death when they scratch it (that's thrown in there because of your statement about "caring" for your disk). How about a HTPC setup? How about a 1s startup for a movie vs the 45+s startup for a HD disk of either type? I could go on, but it seems pointless.

Region encoding. DVDs already have region encoding - never has been a limitation. Guess your vision is limited. Never wanted to see anything that wasn't in the 200 selections at your local BlockBuster?

Their complaints about the format war are now obsolete. They weren't complaints about the format war, but about the formats themselves.

But I'm happy that in your bubble you're happy. May you always march in lock-step with your content overlords, as apparently you're happy to swallow whatever they send your way. I'd prefer not to give them any new "rights".

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

Record your own home movies.

Sure but that's got nothing to do with Blu-Ray.

Edit out stupid 30m trailers that disney inserts at the beginning of their movies.

Ever try skipping over them? Works for me. Just tell it to go to the next scene.

Create a disk that your kid(s) can use without fear of death when they scratch it (that's thrown in there because of your statement about "caring" for your disk).

Why not teach your kids to care for their stuff? If they break it they lose it.

How about a HTPC setup?

Again nothing to do with Blu-Ray. PVR capabilities and movie on demand come with the cable box.

How about a 1s startup for a movie vs the 45+s startup for a HD disk of either type?

I don't know what you are talking about with that one. Buy quality equipment not cheap crap next time.

I could go on, but it seems pointless.

Well your bullshit whining is highly entertaining.

Guess your vision is limited. Never wanted to see anything that wasn't in the 200 selections at your local BlockBuster?

Sure I have, but with the several hundred at Blockbuster, several more hundred for purchase at varius stores,and close to a thousand available for on-demand viewing (including hi-def) through my cable provider, I'm gussing it will be hard to find a movie I cannot see.

But I'm happy that in your bubble you're happy. May you always march in lock-step with your content overlords, as apparently you're happy to swallow whatever they send your way.

I don't know who the 'them' is you're talking about, but I see no reason to apologize for the fact that I have no issues with the technology. And I'm not swallowing anything, there's just nothing to complain about.

I'd prefer not to give them any new "rights".

Fine. You have obviosly made up your mind, so quit your bitching and ranting at others that dont have any issues. Geez what a whiner.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Gr8Apes]

...the 45+s startup for a HD disk of either type?

I don't know what you are talking about with that one. Buy quality equipment not cheap crap next time.

Thanks for pointing out your total lack of experience with HD media formats for all to see.

Now crawl back under your bridge, as your trolling devolved to nothing more than boring lame insults and name-calling.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

I see you resort to name calling when it is revealed all you want to really do is steal movies and complain because of your unfounded bias against Sony. Get a grip.

Better luck next time

[djupedal]

Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers. Maybe other manufs. will also learn something and fight this stuff out in the labs rather than hope for luck by trying to confuse consumers again and again.

Now if we can convince England to use the euro and drive on the right side of the road we can at least pretend to be a modern civilization :)

Re:Better luck next time

[Jafafa Hots]

Exactly. When will huge multinational corporations stop forcing competition down people's throats and realize that what consumers want is monopolies, lack of choice and the resulting high prices!

Re:Better luck next time

[garlicbready]

I've heard they're going to phase it in
Heavy Goods Vehicles / Trucks for the first month on the right side
then cars / bikes later on

Re:Better luck next time

[IBBoard]

On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax, Mini Disks and something else proprietary that escapes me at the moment and yet they still went in to the HD fight with BluRay.

Off-topic: We do drive on the right (correct) side of the road, it is just those strange foreigners who insist on driving on the wrong ('right-hand') side of the road ;) As for Euros, all I can say is "funny money" - it looks like you've pilfered your Monopoly game for extra cash!

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains the roadworks in the Cumberland Gap, they're not upgrading to motorway, they must be building a crossover.

Re:Better luck next time

[djupedal]

'formats' and 'competition' mean the same thing to a simple mind. Just the type of mind manufs. love to fuck with when they run out of original ideas and let 'new and improved' marketing babble take over.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much doubt Sony will learn anything, especially as they won this time (BluRay).

The other proprietary things you're thinking of are probably memory stick (unfortunately still not dead) and UMD video disks on the PSP.

Ironically, Toshiba were with Sony on Betamax.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever anyone mentions England driving on the right, it reminds me of an April fool joke on the news pages of Teletext(remember that) years ago.

They said to ease the transition, all even number plates would change one year and all odd ones on another.

Re:Better luck next time

[mrxak]

For those that think we're better off without standards, imagine if there were multiple competing HTTP protocols.

Re:Better luck next time

[terjeber]

Why is it that people conflate competition and competing formats? There was more competition in the Blu-Ray camp than there was in the HD DVD camp. Toshiba was dumping players, but there was still no real competition, Toshiba was the only (real) manufacturer. You can have competition when there is a single standard, no problem. There is, for example, competition in the DVD business, always has been. Are there more than one DVD format? Did the DivX fiasco add value for the consumer?

The format war would have made sure we had continued high prices for a long time to come since the war it self slowed down adoption. With slow adoption both consumers and producers will tend to do a lot of fence sitting, and that is not good for anybody since it takes longer to get to the benefits of economics of scale. Everybody but pirates benefits from this war being over.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't compete on the format. Compete on the devices/software for that format.

Sign: ODT advocate

Re:Better luck next time

[Kris_J]

I don't want more choice, I just want better stuff.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't HD-DVD decided as the successor by the DVD forum and then Sony came out with a competing format?

Re:Better luck next time

[Charcharodon]

Left, right it doesn't really matter. I took me all of two weeks to stop feeling weird driving on the left and a month to stop making random right lane errors.

The only thing that I find unfamthomable is the use of some of the colors on the road.

For example they only use white paint for the lines. In the States they use white and yellow. You can tell the difference real quick which lanes are for your direction of traffic (white) and which is the divider line (yellow). I've had more than a few moments of panic where I could not tell for the life of me which lanes were which.

I take that back there are two things about driving in the UK, the second is do you people believe in F'ing street/road signs? Considering that the names of the streets change every 3 blocks and they don't run in a straight line more than 25 yards at a go, it would be simply amazing to have both the street and the cross street names on a sign, you are lucky just to even have a cross street that you can see from the road you are travelling on.

I foresee a GPS in my immediate future.

Re:Better luck next time

[Ed Avis]

This has already happened.

Re:Better luck next time

[robosmurf]

Except that the Blu-ray specification is such a mess that there is exactly one Blu-ray player on the market that is worth buying as it will be properly compatible - the Playstation 3.

The Playstation 3 has outsold all other high-definition disc players on the market put together by a huge margin. This is the only machine that disc manufactures will make sure is fully compatible.

If this situation continues, and the other manufacturers don't drastically improve their performance, then Blu-ray is set to become almost as proprietary to Sony as the UMD.

Re:Better luck next time

[Gerzel]

They mean the same thing to a complex mind when the formats in question are both proprietary and do about the same thing.

In this case there was competition between the formats not only in which format was "better" in terms of storage quality (not to mention archival, access speed and other properties) but also even if one format was clearly superior which was better in terms of price and availability.

I don't think having both formats around was hurting anything as both are still in early adoption phases, most users don't have Blu-Ray or HD DVD yet and a large portion perhaps even a majority don't have the capabilities to use such formats (at least in the new abilities they provide) yet over the older standard.

I still see this as a bad thing and perhaps the "wars" are not over at all as Hard Drives, Flash drives and other storage options are coming down in price and are able to offer similar amounts of storage. The real contender in these "wars" as I see it could be download bandwidth rather than delivery of a physical piece of media.

In the end these media wars are good for the consumer. Take CDs for example, a format that won with relatively little competition. The way things are sold to consumers is that the new format is more expensive at first but as it takes hold and becomes dominant is prices drop to match the old cost with a margin determined by the cost of production. Music CDs are still fairly expensive and have not come down (as I believe) to a price comparable to that of Cassettes even though the older format has been more-or-less out of the market for several years now.

For Formats it is difficult to raise prices on consumers as there is an expectation that the prices will fall over time and consumers will need a reason to pay more with the information on the format primarily being a luxury good. However that expectation works both ways as consumers expect that two items of the same format will cost about the same on average.

Re:Better luck next time

[Hognoxious]

At least the signs are big enough to see. In Belgium they're often tiny, only visible from one direction, and covered in dirt so you can't read them anyway.

I thought in the UK a centreline is more line than gap whereas lane markers are 'lghter':

---- ---- ----

and

- - - -

But it's been a while.

Re:Better luck next time

[terjeber]

Massive exaggeration. The standard is evolving, and some of the earlier players were badly designed - who on earth builds non-upgradeable players today - but calling it a mess is a huge exaggeration.

Re:Better luck next time

[0xdeadbeef]

Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers.

I bet you post comments on YouTube.

Re:Better luck next time

[clickclickdrone]

>Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers
Quite how ths got marked inightful is a mystery. HD-DVD is (or now, was) the official standard for HD and was sanctioned by the DVD standards body, the DVD Forum. BluRay was the non-standard bully boy. After all the previous wars, the whole point was there is a DVD standards body who decide upon updates and new features in conjunction with the various manufacturers - SOny decided to go off on a tangent (again) but this time won (probably as a result of bundling it in the PS3)

Re:Better luck next time

[kaizokuace]

Um, u know they think we drive on the wrong side of the road. We could come with a compromise of driving down the middle of the road but that might hurt more people that it will help.

Re:Better luck next time

[Threni]

> I bet you post comments on YouTube.

That's different to posting comments on Slashdot, right?

Re:Better luck next time

[dikkyboy]

Hurrah, we have a winner. Now watch the rolling tumbleweed as literally no one rushes out to invest in Blue-ray.

Re:Better luck next time

[IBBoard]

No, that's the difference between a "it is safe to overtake" divider on a single carriage way road or lane dividers on multi-lane stretches and a "only overtake if you're absolutely sure or it is a tractor doing 5mph" divider on a single carriage way road.

The general idea with telling the difference is that it is two-way unless it says otherwise, so your side is for you and the other side is for other people. If there are two lanes then it is normally either a dual-carriage way or you get the short gaps or solid lines on the divider. We use yellow for "do not park here" (which makes sense as everything else tends to be obvious with white lines).

Motorways and dual-carriage ways use colour, but only at night. Different colour cats eyes mean different things (central reservation, lane line, hard shoulder and slip road entry). The rest of the time we assume that you can drive and pay attention at the same time.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone living in the UK I would love to be able to reap the benefits of the Euro, but the Bankers won't let me.
There is too much profit to be made converting between currencies.
  Driving on the right, probably would result in many deaths, and to who's benefit? foreign car makers perhaps and then how can the british be made to pay higher prices for cars than the rest of europe.

Re:Better luck next time

[Hognoxious]

I never said anything about solid lines, wanker.

Re:Better luck next time

[CmdrGravy]

Have a look at the highway code - the type of line designates which lanes you can go into and when, various dashes, solid lines etc or failing that assume it's a single carriageway unless you see the sign that specifically says "Dual Carriageway" that they put before all dual carriage ways. On motorways there are 3 lanes and a metal barrier between each direction.

Re:Better luck next time

[Onetus]

Firstly you'll need to learn to spell correctly.
Colour has a u. ...ism has a s and not a z.

Oh .. and the rest of the world is using metric.
Try and catch up. :-)

Re:Better luck next time

[ratboy666]

Isn't that the definition of a "mess"? Is there another player (other than PS/3) that is profile 2.0?

Re:Better luck next time

[LuNa7ic]

Yeah, all this damned competition has made Blu-Ray so damned chea... wait a minute, no it hasn't :O

Re:Better luck next time

[gsslay]

Whenever anyone mentions England driving on the right, I think; "Good, won't be affecting the rest of us in the British Isles then."

Although it would make crossing the borders interesting.

Re:Better luck next time

[aplusjimages]

why would that matter to the average consumer? No one types in HTTP when going to a website. If there was another protocol, it would go unnoticed to the end user, just like they don't see the difference between a site written in CSS, Javascript, DHTML, XML, etc.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have some roads where lanes change direction twice a day to accommodate the predominant flow of rush-hour traffic into and out of conurbations. Needless to say we get plenty of spectacular crashes during the change from GMT to BST and vice-versa twice a year. It would help if the light-bulbs in the signs telling you which direction to drive in worked occasionally.

Anyway, I'm off to celebrate the Blu's win with a 568.26125 millilitre though I shall limit my American buddy to a 473.176473 millilitre (as he's driving).

Off-topic? - this is actually a pretty close analogy to what's been going on with Blu vs. HD-DVD.

Re:Better luck next time

[PMBjornerud]

Exactly. When will huge multinational corporations stop forcing competition down people's throats and realize that what consumers want is monopolies, lack of choice and the resulting high prices! Exactly. If only different automobile industries had incompatible types of gasoline and used two competing road grids, one with left-side driving, the other right-side.

Standards? Bah, humbug!

Re:Better luck next time

[drsquare]

For example they only use white paint for the lines. In the States they use white and yellow. You can tell the difference real quick which lanes are for your direction of traffic (white) and which is the divider line (yellow).

Roads with multiple lanes are supposed to have central reservations. Otherwise, the lane dividers will be dashes, and the central lines will be solid.

I take that back there are two things about driving in the UK, the second is do you people believe in F'ing street/road signs?

No, we usually know where we're going. Otherwise we read a map or get directions.

Re:Better luck next time

[Tridus]

Actually, it'd be more like how they didn't see a difference between a site written for Netscape-HTML vs. a site written for IE-HTML.

Oh wait...

Re:Better luck next time

[bmartin]

The problem is that without one, you can't afford the other. There are technologies developed in the 90's that you can't afford yet because of legitimate patents. With even a single other player in the market, the better stuff becomes affordable. With one vendor, your only choice is between buying from that vendor and not having their product, no matter what the cost is.

I'm simply not naive enough to believe that you can have the good products without healthy competition. If your product is "good enough" for consumers and you're the only supplier, where's your motivation to innovate or improve?

Re:Better luck next time

[91degrees]

England drives on the correct side of the rode. Ask any Indian, Australian, Japanese person, Australian, or Irishman.

Re:Better luck next time

[cloakable]

As somebody who also lives in the UK, I too would like to reap the benefits of the Euro, like having a weak currency. Oh wait.

Re:Better luck next time

[sgant]

If this situation continues, and the other manufacturers don't drastically improve their performance, then Blu-ray is set to become almost as proprietary to Sony as the UMD. And who's fault will this be? Sony's? You answered this right in your statement: the other manufacturers need to drastically improve their performance. Are you saying that it's not fair that Sony builds a better Blu Ray player than other manufacturers? Why should other manufacturers get an easy ride? If they want to compete, then let them get their collective asses in gear and start making quality, high performance Blu Ray players. If they fail due to their ineptitude, I have no sympathy for them.

Re:Better luck next time

[IBBoard]

And at no point did I say that you did, only that we use them in the UK as carriage way dividing lines (specifically as a "do not cross this line to overtake as it is unsafe to do so" marking).

Re:Better luck next time

[jean-guy69]

Titles that will use the features like the Internet connectivity will be compatible with players who do not support Internet, only without the internet connectivity.

Any future title should be compatible with any current player, as long as it support the advanced encryption which is already present in some titles.

Re:Better luck next time

[RalphSleigh]

You can embed FTP resources in html just fine thanks, provided they all used a unique protocol handler I suspect browsers would soon support all of them. Except IE ofcouse.

Re:Better luck next time

[gEvil (beta)]

Except that the Blu-ray specification is such a mess that there is exactly one Blu-ray player on the market that is worth buying as it will be properly compatible - the Playstation 3.

And even that one isn't feature-complete with regards to the audio codecs that BD supports. To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single BD player out there that supports the full range of options that are in the BD spec.

Re:Better luck next time

[Kokuyo]

Hey, I think the Brits will happily take the Euro as soon as the US starts using the metric system ;).

Re:Better luck next time

[Tony Hoyle]

PS3 isn't profile 2.0 yet either.

Not that it matters. 1.1 is all 99% of people will ever need... who needs online content on your bluray player? It'll all be advertising anyway.

Maybe in 5-10 years when downloads become popular.. but by then all bluray players will have some kind of 2.0 support and be able to participate in that when it happens.

Re:Better luck next time

[iainl]

Sony aren't being unfair by building the 'best' BluRay player (a statement I'm tempted to argue about anyway, since the 5.1 analogue audio output on many standalone players has value to me). But if I worked for Pioneer or Panasonic, I'd have my reservations about the fairness of using game software license money to underwrite the price of that excellent player.

Re:Better luck next time

[gabebear]

They are coming, but I don't think most people won't care. Profile 2.0's only real feature is Internet connectivity, which is kinda neat...

I'm guessing most Players will be profile 1.1 (or maybe 1.2) except for computers and the PlayStation 3.

Re:Better luck next time

[gEvil (beta)]

Don't forget the Australians!

Re:Better luck next time

[Mordaximus]

SOny decided to go off on a tangent...

• and Samsung
• and Philips
• and Panasonic
• and TDK
• and Sharp
• and LG

and so on, and so on... a little research is in order, before throwing on the Sony Troll hat.

Re:Better luck next time

[m50d]

And even that one isn't feature-complete with regards to the audio codecs that BD supports. To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single BD player out there that supports the full range of options that are in the BD spec.

So what? That's what options are there for, to be optional. And in this particular case it's better for customers, because it means studios just put uncompressed audio on the BDs (and there's room for it)

Re:Better luck next time

[Xesdeeni]

We tried in the 70's.

My theory about why it failed is that this was the same time the government decided we needed to slow down on our huge highway system. So 70+ Mph roads were reduced to 55 Mph. About the same time, there was an attempt to introduce the Metric system, requiring cars to have kph on their dials and Speed Limit signs to include it as well. The problem (my theory) is that they chose to equate 55 Mph to 80 Kph. It didn't take a calculator to figure out that 80 Kph is closer to 50 Mph, because it was clearly obvious on your own speedometer! So drivers eschewed the Metric system so they didn't have to slow down even more. If the powers that be had had the greenest of green marketing team, even they would have realized posting 90 Kph (almost 56 Mph) would have garnered more public acceptance.

But as a result of the attempt, we now live in a perpetual limbo. Gas and milk are sold by the gallon. Cola (soda pop, whatever you call it) is sold by the liter. Everyday life is measured in inches, feet, yards, and miles, while anything scientific is carried out in meters. Dry medicine is measured in milligrams, but our weight in pounds. Sigh...

Xesdeeni

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single BD player out there that supports the full range of options that are in the BD spec. The lack of such a player is pretty irrelevant because there currently are no titles which exercise the full range of options of the BD spec.

Granted, such titles will eventually exist, but they likely won't happen until there's a sufficient critical mass of 2.0 players in consumer hands.

Also, just in case you were unaware of it, a good number of DVD players (yes, good old fashioned standard-def DVD players) do not properly implement the full DVD specification. You may recall the kerfuffle about "The Abyss: Special Edition" and the initial issue of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," both of which had significant compatibility issues with top name-brand players. It turned out that player manufacturers had skimped on putting all the features in place because nobody ever expected anyone to make a DVD that used every feature. I have a small company I run that makes custom DVD's with advanced features and I still find clients with incompatible players -- in some cases, players they just purchased! Denon's seem to be the worst, followed by Marantz and Pioneer.

Lastly, Profile 2.0 titles should be playable on Profile 1.1 players but without the 2.0-specific features. Looking at what 2.0 brings to the table over 1.1, I have to say that it's nothing the average movie viewer is going to horribly miss. How many of us want to dynamically interact with a movie while we're watching it? It's a movie, not a video game. Most movie buffs (myself included) just want a great picture with great sound and some nice extras (commentary, making-of documentary, etc.). Having pop-ups all over my movie is just damned annoying.

Re:Better luck next time

[gzerphey]

See... this is why I have and will continue to advocate industry standardization on formats. That way everyone can make the same damn thing and we can have competition. Theoretically we will get a higher quality product as well. Not just the one with the better marketing campaign.

Re:Better luck next time

[plague3106]

Tell me, do your maps have road names as well as landmark names? If its only road name, and there are no signs, I fail to see how a map helps.

Re:Better luck next time

[plague3106]

Yes, because the Stone is a metric measument, right?

Re:Better luck next time

[mgblst]

Oh, agreed 100%. What is the deal with road signs in this country?

Another thing that gets me, the round green means you can turn, and they use an arrow to go straight. So often you get a round green meaning turn, and a red arrow so you can't go straight - does this make sense to anyone at all?

Where I am from, you have the round green to go forward or turn, unless there is a red arrow.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens if someone wanted to go to http://www.ilovebees.com/ yet they never typed the http:/// part, and their browser redirects to, oh lets say htstp://www.ilovebees.com?
Now, in a nice world, that would be the same site, but don't kid yourself, this is the internets, we all know that it would turn out to be that lovely picture of bees on a penis, the same one that you get when trying to visit the /z/ board from 4chan.

Re:Better luck next time

[Deadstick]

Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers.

Why? It's not like they didn't see it happen before with quad sound...

rj

Re:Better luck next time

[Miamicanes]

It's ironic... the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play. I had a friend with the exact same problem... the $600+ Denon he had in his living room refused to play anything from a DVD+R, but the $129 no-name player from WalMart in the bedroom worked just fine (this was a few years ago, as you can tell from the prices).

Concerns about 1.1 players aren't completely unfounded thanks to BD+ and its DRM "enhancements". BDA has reserved every right to revise the Blu-Ray standard in a way that would render 1.0 (and possibly 1.1) players unable to play even the main feature. They haven't done it yet... but they could, and consumers (in the US, at least) would have no recourse whatsoever. It says so right on the first or second page of every new player's manual.

Re:Better luck next time

[profplump]

I think the US will start using the metric system as soon as the Brits do. But as long as they are driving 150 stone cars at 70 MPH to go get a pint of ale it seems a bit silly to pretend that they use the metric system.

Re:Better luck next time

[eldepeche]

I don't think IE has a problem with FTP resources, since it's the file browser too. (Although Windows is embarrassingly lacking an FTP client, so if Explorer doesn't support it, you're SOL.)

Re:Better luck next time

[eldepeche]

Oh snap.

Re:Better luck next time

[ZorbaTHut]

On everything up through XP, at least, you can type "ftp" at the command prompt to get an FTP client.

Re:Better luck next time

[SydShamino]

anything scientific is carried out in meters

Note that PCB design, to a large extent, is still done in mils - which is 1/1000 of an inch. Converting millimeters to mils is a common occurrence, and woe be the designer that confuses the two.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we usually know where we're going.

Where I live not only are there no street signs, there are no addresses. And they sound just like you.

A typical "address":
300 meters south of where Radio 710 used to be.
100 meters west.
25 meters south.
The second white house on the left.

And people are proud of this. If I try to explain how it would be simpler to say "123 main street" they just shrug it off. And I don't know how many years it's been since the radio station was there.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice uid, Kris. By chance, are you the marketing guru behind Dr. Pepper's 23 ingredients?

Re:Better luck next time

[ShadowsHawk]

The problem is that CD prices really only started to fall after Walmart decided to drop them. Changing formats hurts the consumer because we're expected to repurchase all of our media.

Re:Better luck next time

[erroneous]

Quite funny really, but if they bundled in a decent GUI FTP client (as opposed to the command line ftp.exe or the limited support in IE) they'd be accused of breaking yet another third-party app market with their OS monopoly.

And when they don't bundle one in it's "embarrassing".

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

It's ironic... the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play. I had a friend with the exact same problem... the $600+ Denon he had in his living room refused to play anything from a DVD+R, but the $129 no-name player from WalMart in the bedroom worked just fine (this was a few years ago, as you can tell from the prices). You are so right on the money. You have no idea how many tortured conversations I've had with idiot clients that went something like this:

Client: The DVD your sent me is worthless! It doesn't work! Send me another one!
Me: Sir, what brand player do you have?
C: It's a Marantz, their top of the line! Your product is crap! I want a new DVD!
Me: Sir, the Marantz players are not compatible with DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW media, and they do not properly implement the full DVD specification. It's not our disc, it's your player.
C: [frothing] That's impossible! It's the most expensive player on the planet! I paid $8,000 for that DVD player! It's made of precious metals! It has to be the best because it costs the most! Your product is the problem! I demand a new disc!
Me: Sir, there's nothing we can do to make it play on your Marantz. If you call Marantz they will confirm it will not play burned media. I suggest you go purchase a cheap $99 upscaling DVD player at Wal-Mart. It will play our discs just fine and with a quaility indistinguishable from your Marantz.
C: [completely unhinged] That's insane! How could a $69 player work better than my platinum-encased $8,000 Marantz? It must be your disc at fault!

Eventually I convince the client that reality does indeed exist. They try the cheap player. They see it work. They try the same disc in their gold-plated uber-player and it doesn't work. They feel like complete asses for spending that kind of dough on a DVD player. Next client, please.

Barnum was right.

Re:Better luck next time

[HTH NE1]

Profile 2.0's only real feature is Internet connectivity, which is kinda neat... I remember when the complaint about DiVX was that it phoned home your viewing practices. I guess this has become more acceptable now that it uses the Internet instead of your phone.

Re:Better luck next time

[benzapp]

What does the UMD, a portable game system format, have to do with Blu Ray?

The reality is the Blu Ray specification has finalized at a quicker pace than DVD did - I wouldn't worry.

Re:Better luck next time

[SithGod]

Tell me about it. Way too much work with airplane engines is done in english units, and they loves to say mils. Fortunitley I do finite element analysis so I just mindlessly spit out data based on the numbers they give me.

Re:Better luck next time

[gyrogeerloose]

the Brits will happily take the Euro as soon as the US starts using the metric system

We already are, it's just not official yet. The metric system has been introduced here incrementally and by stealth. For example, my family has two cars, both built by Ford in the U.S. for the U.S. market, both designed completely to the metric system standard. GM cars are metric as well.

I can't even remember the last time I used my imperial measurement wrenches on a car.

Re:Better luck next time

[hairyfeet]

It won't matter too much for me until they offer Blu-Ray burners for under $200 along with cheap media.If I can't burn my own content to it it is just a plate full of DRM,which doesn't sound like anything I'd want.At least with DVD I can back those up easily to keep my kids from scratching them.And I've dealt with a LOT of customers with kids,and when they ask about Blu-Ray I tell them "no way to backup so if your kid scratches it break out the wallet" and that ends that conversation.Plus more and more customers are coming in wanting to burn photos,home video,etc. So I don't really see DVD going anywhere,at least until burners and media become as cheap for BD as they are for DVD.

That is why I'm sad to see HD-DVD go.With a cheap burner I'd have had a one stop solution for HD and regular DVD,plus a great way for customers to backup and share their ever growing home media collections.Knowing that the studios are probably going to do everything they can to make sure home brewed BD discs won't play in their DRM players for fear someone might make a copy and they won't be able to buy that new Gulfstream III.But until I can burn my own content and have it play in any BD player like I can with DVD I think I'll just sit this one out.

Re:Better luck next time

[AaronW]

I think you nailed my Marantz DVD player to a tee. Though I have been able to play all the DVDs I've thrown at it except one and some others cause it to lock up at certain points and its retail cost (which I didn't pay) was well into the 4 digits. It handles DVD+R/-R but I doubt it will handle RW and I know it fails CD-R discs thanks to it's first generation DVD ROM drive.

Re:Better luck next time

[AJWM]

I take that back there are two things about driving in the UK, the second is do you people believe in F'ing street/road signs?

Nah. It's a holdover from WW II, when they took down all the road signs to confuse the enemy if Hitler had landed an invasion force. I think that's also why none of the roads run in a straight line for more than a mile and why none of them meet at 90-degree angles.

Re:Better luck next time

[shutdown -p now]

One thing at a time, guys, one thing at a time. Right now it's HTML vs Silverlight. Once that one is done with, I'm sure Microsoft will see to that pesky HTTP thing.

Re:Better luck next time

[Dogtanian]

England drives on the correct side of the rode. Ask any Indian, Australian Dude, the Australians are so f****d up that they drive *upside down*!

And that makes their "driving on the left" actually "driving upside-down on the right", so it's probably best not to mention them at all! ;-)

Re:Better luck next time

[Luyseyal]

I guess you could have Lotus Bridges everywhere. Might be neat to have a row of bowties from outer space delineating England and Scotland, e.g.

-l

Re:Better luck next time

[Dogtanian]

But as long as they are driving 150 stone cars [snip!] Sorry to disappoint you, but although many years ago it was (apparently) used as a general-purpose measure, nowadays stones are only used for expressing peoples' weight. WP confirms this (albeit without a reference), and I can't think of any counter-example.

This didn't really occur to me until you brought up the wrong-sounding example of a "150 stone car"(!)

Re:Better luck next time

[Charcharodon]

Well in that case they must think 'Ze Germans' are still on there way because even the new housing is built the same way.

Re:Better luck next time

[Charcharodon]

Highway code shmyway code, I took the 20 question online US driver familiarization quiz and then went out and then went out the same day and rented a right hand drive manual transmission car (that was a mistake) until my truck could get shipped over here.

Now I gleafully terrorize people in Newmarket who didn't realize sidewalks are meant for passing, and not just just for parking!

The motor and autoways are easy enough to deal with since they are typically all divided by barriers, it's when you get into the cities, towns, and villages, were things stop making sense very quickly though I'm sure originally when the roads were layed out, in the 1700's, made plenty of sense.

Re:Better luck next time

[Charcharodon]

A map does help, it let's you know that you have missed your destination by a village or two (10-15 miles).

The biggest culture difference in the UK verse the US is how the signs give directions.

For example to go from where I used to live in South Dakota to where I lived in Missouri. Would go something like this

Get on I-90 go east, then go south on I-29, then west on I-70, get off on I-270 and go east, then go north on 67 then stop you are now in Florissant, MO. Pretty straight forward. There would be nice easy to read signs the whole way there, including what road you are currently on.

Not so in the UK. In the UK it's more about what's a long the way rather than what road you are on.

The same directions in British.

Starting in Rapid City, take the road to Wall (It's probably called Wall Road or just simply a sign pointing Wall this way), then follow the signs to Chamberlain, on to Michell, and then Sioux Falls as so on and so forth. The Motorways and Autoways do tend to have better signs that the local roads, but not that much better.

As long as you know where you are going (what town) it's actually very difficult to get lost, but man if you need a specific street in a specific town you are buggered my friend if you've never been there and doubly so if you are traveling at night. The smaller the town/village the worse the signs tend to be.

I can't tell you how many times I've driven someplace and missed a turn because there were no signs only to turn around at the next village and double back and hit the same intersection that I needed to turn at with a nice big fat sign plain as day but only visible from that direction.

Re:Better luck next time

[MinusOne]

You have this theory, but do you have any evidence at all to back it up? I was around in the early 70's, and don't recall *any* road signs indicating a metric speed limit anywhere. This includes a couple of transcontinental trips on major interstates. The only ones I recall seeing were in Canada, which of course used the Metric System. Seeing something in kilometers in the US would have been so unusual I have little dobt I would have remembered it.

Re:Better luck next time

[jwdav]

You actually have this backwards - Blu-Ray predates HD DVD by several years. Toshiba, faced with losing their DVD royalties if Blu-Ray succeeded, partnered with Microsoft and fast-tracked HD DVD to market in an effort to block Blu-Ray. This caused a split in the DVD Forum and resulted in the Blu-Ray members of the forum abstaining on any vote regarding Hi-Def media - effectively, HD DVD took over the DVD forum.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

And when exactly will the Brits start using the metric system?

I mean for real - not just some b.s. proclamation back in the 70's that "we have adopted the metric system". Drive down the roads in England, what do you see? Speed limits in MILES per hour. The cars have MPH as well. Go into a London butcher shop, everything is pounds, ounces, etc. Ask someone what they weigh, and, heavens, they tell you how many freakin' STONES they weigh - good grief, is this something from medieval times that predates pounds???

Meanwhile the US is about 60% metric already (if you don't believe this, remember that megahertz, megabytes, etc. are all metric measures). We legalized the metric system early on - in the mid 1800's. We just didn't force it down everyone's throats, or pass a hypocritical law / pronouncement that we are "officially metric", then continue to use old English measures all over the place.

An example of a country that really went metric is Canada. They totally banished all old English measures.

Re:Better luck next time

[drinkypoo]

The lack of such a player is pretty irrelevant because there currently are no titles which exercise the full range of options of the BD spec.

The lack of such a player is going to be a convenient shield to hide behind for still more insidious "copy protection" schemes.

Remember how compact discs which broke the spec weren't allowed to be labeled with the philips CD logo? You're going to see Blu-Ray on anything burned to a Blu-Ray disc, whether it will play in anything in particular or not.

Re:Better luck next time

[perdue]

I was about to surmise that metric is popular in many scientific and engineering applications simply because a length-time-mass system, but it seems my perception of the Imperial system as using length-time-weight fundamentals is outdated. [wikipedia.org - 3d paragraph]

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Remember how compact discs which broke the spec weren't allowed to be labeled with the philips CD logo? You're going to see Blu-Ray on anything burned to a Blu-Ray disc, whether it will play in anything in particular or not.

And if you'll recall, every time someone has tried anything like this, it's always either been hideously easy to crack or it's been a compatibility nightmare that backfires. Retrofitting a completely different DRM scheme onto an existing format is almost impossible for these two reasons.

So, to use your example, once BD+ is cracked (and it will be, and the crack will become widespread just like DeCSS), Sony can either do minor revisions of BD+ (which will again get cracked) and retain compatibility with the millions of existing player, or Sony could completely revamp BD+ (BD++?) and break all existing players. Obviously the latter is an untenable position.

Now, Blu-ray players do have the "advantage" of allowing firmware upgrades to "support" newer encryption schemes. However, Sony cannot overuse this idea. Consumers are used to their stuff just working. Having to frequently update your player every time somebody cracks Sony's encryption just isn't practical in the long run. Consumers will rebel, or there will be a massive negative PR backlash. If Sony wants to drive customers to downloaded content, this is the surest way to do it, and they know that.

DRM will continue to be an annoyance in the short-term, but nothing more. Real pirates (China-based mass duplicators) will continue to bypass it. P2P will get around it. In the end, it will be no more effective or annoying than DeCSS.

One thing to note: there is a very beneficial side-effect to the end of the format war. The more players that are sold, the more difficult it will be for Sony to make the alterations you're so afraid of. Now that HD-DVD is dead, Blu-ray sales should pick up all that slack, effectively doubling its adoption rate. Regardless of what you think of Sony and its policies, mass adoption of its hardware locks Sony into a format. This is a Good Thing(tm), as we have all the time in the world to crack it.

Re:Better luck next time

[Longhair]

Blu-ray was the first introduced HD format and would have been the DVD forum's choice too, but Toshiba decided to make it a format war because they didn't have the same licensing revenue coming from Blu-ray that they had from DVD. Microsoft backed Toshiba's plan furiously as it's HDi was ditched in favour of Java as the technology for interactive content on Blu-ray discs.

So, Toshiba along with Microsoft were the bully and warmonger in this case, not Sony.

Re:Better luck next time

[Chaos Incarnate]

There's a difference between "optional when building a disc" and "optional when building a player". If something is optional for the discs, they'll use it when it's helpful, and not otherwise. If something is optional in the hardware, then those people mastering the discs can't use it, because they can't rely on it being present. In that case, it might as well not be in the spec.

Re:Better luck next time

[rtechie]

once BD+ is cracked BD+ has already been cracked. You don't see pirate Blu-ray movies widely distributed because the file sizes (20 GB+) are too large for P2P and blanks still cost $20. When the blanks come down in price expect to see pirate Blu-ray movies on the street in Hong Kong.

Re:Better luck next time

[Kalriath]

You think you have it bad? Our government over here is TRYING to weaken our dollar because the exporters are complaining that the USD they are getting isn't worth enough NZD. Never mind the importers (of which there are more) who are pretty much jumping for joy.

Re:Better luck next time

[m50d]

It gives a way to give the standard more longevity - sure, not all players are full-profile now, but as costs go down it's likely that manufacturers will put all the features in, and we'll get to the stage where those features can actually be used. Which is a lot better than switching to entirely new formats - I have often remarked on the superiority of hard disks where we mostly just gradually move up through the same specifications with a lot of forward/backward compatibility (yes, SATA puts a big hole in this, but that's the first major change in as long as I can remember), rather than optical media where we need a completely new spec every few years.

Re:Better luck next time

[drsquare]

The map tells you the name of the road you're on. Pretty simple really.

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

BD+ has already been cracked. You don't see pirate Blu-ray movies widely distributed because the file sizes (20 GB+) are too large for P2P and blanks still cost $20. When the blanks come down in price expect to see pirate Blu-ray movies on the street in Hong Kong. Actually, I've seen several Blu-ray movies cracked and distributed on P2P networks, so your idea that they're "too large for P2P" doesn't hold water. HD-DVD movies were cracked even sooner and distributed as well, and their file sizes are no smaller than Blu-ray. BD+ movies, however, have not been cracked and distributed yet that I can tell. Slysoft's AnyDVD will allow decryption of BD+ titles but, unless I'm mistaken, you cannot rip the BD+ to your hard drive. As for your "blanks still cost $20" issue, that is largely irrelevant. P2P distribution is usually done so it can be viewed on a PC, not burned to a disc.

Still, I have no doubt that a garden-variety BD+ hack will appear in fairly short order. There are too many people out there trying to break it, and too much ego on the line for the person or group who gets to it first.

Re:Better luck next time

[cloakable]

No, I love my strong pound :) Being able to head over the border to pick up cheap goodies is a nice thing.

Re:Better luck next time

[Amitz Sekali]

the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play.

amen to that.
I notice that the DVD player from china can recover and tolerate extremely unreadable surface gracefully. Is there any awesome technology behind it or it's just that chinese DVD player demand format standard less strictly than others?

Re:Better luck next time

[blackmonday]

How does that make your client an idiot? He paid good money for the best DVD player, and expected it to actually *be* the best DVD player. I'd be pissed too. I didn't infer that you sold him the Marantz, but I hope you didn't sell it to him, then come here and make fun of him. Very few people out there have the tech knowledge of a slashdotter.

Re:Better luck next time

[syousef]

I live in Australia and recently bought a 68cm CRT TV for $127, a DVD player for $50 and a digital an SD-STB for $50.
Total price $227 (All prices in Aussie Dollars, about USD0.90). None are top of the line but none are crap either.

Let's say you want to put one of these in each bedroom, one in the living room, one in the kitchen/dining area, and one in the family rumpus area. Let's say it's a 4 bedroom house. That's a total of 7 rooms. 7 x 227 = $1589.

Now the above scenario is extreme and perhaps a little insane. You don't need a 68cm TV in every room. Most people can't fit one in even if they want it. Yet I'd be pushing it getting even one decent blu-ray setup for that amount of money. Rough pricing is $500 on a PS3, $200 on the HD set-top box, and ??? for the screen. Yeah the $900 left over might get you an okay screen, maybe if you're lucky, and maybe even a bit larger than 68cm. But hell if I wanted to enjoy that HD in all it's glory I'd be after a big screen and that 1 big screen would eat up more than the entire $1600 budget.

F*^& that!!! I'll put up with a bit of blurriness and a big screen instead of a monsterous one, and keep my money. Having 2 or even 3 TVs is much more valuable to me than one wiz bang one (which is also a single point of failure). Truly unless you're rolling in cash and have so much free time you're glued to the tele, this is madness.

Re:Better luck next time

[zeropointburn]

They don't need to bundle it. Offer it as a free download. Avoids the monopoly problem, avoids the technical ineptitude problem.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I love my strong pound :) Being able to head over the border to pick up cheap goodies is a nice thing. Um, which border? The pound is weaker against the Euro that it's been for years. My ski trip in January cost way more than I expected :-/

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to disappoint you, but although many years ago it was (apparently) used as a general-purpose measure, nowadays stones are only used for expressing peoples' weight. Sure, but you'd express the weight of a car in tons. It's easy to convert stones into hundredweight (1/8) and hundredweight into tons (1/20). So 150 stone is ~1 ton. It only sounds wrong because there's a more appropriate unit for weights in that range.

Re:Better luck next time

[ryanw]

You have this theory, but do you have any evidence at all to back it up? I was around in the early 70's, and don't recall *any* road signs indicating a metric speed limit anywhere. This includes a couple of transcontinental trips on major interstates. The only ones I recall seeing were in Canada, which of course used the Metric System. Seeing something in kilometers in the US would have been so unusual I have little dobt I would have remembered it.

I saw several signs that went up that showed the metric system. The problem was it was never done "all the way". On the road inbetween california and arizona there were several.. but only 1 in 20 signs would have the metric system on them. What's the point of attempting a rollout if you're not going to fund the whole effort. I believe that the effort wasn't completely funded and nobody really cared. If we could put a man on the moon, we can do metric conversions and make dang sure they're posted on the stupid signs on the freeways. If there was enough money to do it, all the signs could have the metric system on them in the matter of 6 months all across the entire united states.

Re:Better luck next time

[Buran]

I find 70 to 170 to 270 (briefly) then whatever exit I need to be simpler. But I guess it depends on where you are going. The friend I have in Florissant lives off 67/Lindbergh, though, and I nearly never wander to that part of town for anything else. In fact the friend works such weird hours I haven't seen him in a very long time. I really do need to visit him when it gets warmer.

I can see that when I do get to Australia (sometime in the next year or two) to visit a friend there, I really need to have studied a driver's manual before going, because without yellow lines on the roads I'm going to be very confused at first about what all the markings mean.

Re:Better luck next time

[Alioth]

Road sense is actually taught in this country (much more so than the vague excuse that 'drivers ed' is in the USA) so it's actually pretty obvious which line divides opposite traffic just from context. However, I do agree differentiating the colour like what's done on US roads would be better; clarity is always good. Interestingly enough, for signage, the State of Texas is adopting a font very similar to the British "Transport" font used on road signs. The "Transport" font was developed by road research. So was the new font being used in Texas and parts of Canada - since both were developed by researching what looks clear on a road, it's not entirely surprising that it lead to a font that looks extremely similar to the "Transport" font.

The main problem with street names isn't so much that they aren't there, but that they tend not to be in a consistent place, and then don't use the bloody "Transport" font which was designed to be highly readable and is used on every other road sign in the land! When giving directions, navigation by pub is a lot more effective than navigation by street name ('second left after the Fleece and Firkin' instead of 'Turn left at Foo Road').

Re:Better luck next time

[Alioth]

It's worse than that - many packages are in mils (such as 100 mil spacing of DIP pins) and many packages have pins spaced in mm. Many SMD packages are in mils. Many are in mm. You quite often have designs with packages spaced in mm and packages spaced in mils which plays havoc with your grid when laying out - either you have your grid spacing in mils and it makes life more awkward than it should be with the packages on your layout that are in mm, or the other way around!

Then comes the verbal confusion of mils and mm. Especially here, where people often abbreviate millimetre by calling them 'mils'!

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying it's a GOOD thing that the player manufacturers are using planned obsolescence to sell us new players that incrementally add features that they've been planning since the beginning? It will make the format last longer? Sorry, but since I know these players are coming down the line someday, I'm holding off on buying one. I think this is one thing that may actually seriously hurt Bluray. If people knew that fully capable players won't be out for another year (yes, that's right - profile 2.0 players aren't supposed to come out till next spring), it would keep them from buying them right now, when the format needs support the most. And let's not even get into the whole software issue. The studios have been putting out their big catalog titles (and new blockbusters) using the profile 1.0 spec. And people have been snatching them up. Don't think for an instant that they won't re-release those with PIP (errmm, "Bonus View" [WTF kind of name is that?]) and online content once those players are out there. People bitch about "having" to rebuy their movies in a new format. And yet they're perfectly fine when those same movies are re-released on the same format adding new features with incremental improvements. And remember, all of this has been planned all along! This is one of the reasons why the studios prefer BD - the format has various levels of planned obsolescence built right in!

Re:Better luck next time

[Dogtanian]

Sure, but you'd express the weight of a car in tons. It's easy to convert stones into hundredweight (1/8) and hundredweight into tons (1/20). So 150 stone is ~1 ton. It only sounds wrong because there's a more appropriate unit for weights in that range. I didn't say that it was impossible or even unreasonable to express the weight of a car in stones. (IMHO, I'd still consider stones to be a reasonable measure for something in that weight range, since "150 stone" sounds okay to me).

What I said was that- for some reason of custom rather than practicality(?)- nowadays stones are only used for people's weights. You'd get strange looks from people in the UK if you talked about a "150 stone car", although that's probably because it wouldn't have *occurred* to most people to weigh a car in stones.

Re:Better luck next time

[m50d]

So you're saying it's a GOOD thing that the player manufacturers are using planned obsolescence to sell us new players that incrementally add features that they've been planning since the beginning?

It's better than using same to sell us new players and new format copies of the same movies. So yes.

People bitch about "having" to rebuy their movies in a new format. And yet they're perfectly fine when those same movies are re-released on the same format adding new features with incremental improvements.

Yes, because the latter doesn't have the problems that go with the former - you can keep your old movies, need only one player (and be able to replace it if it breaks), and play all your movies without rebuying any of them.

Re:Better luck next time

[Xesdeeni]

Evidence? What would you accept/demand as evidence? I can't go back in time and take a picture, and the Internet wasn't around, so sources of pictures from then aren't readily available.

I was a mere lad in the mid-70's, and we lived in the midwest. I'm sure I saw the signs along I-70, since that was the most significant highway around, and the most likely place for 55 mph speed limits.

Since they were teaching the metric system in school, it surprised me at that time that they made such a strange choice of conversion on the roads, which is why it stuck with me. I chalked it up to lazy rounding.

But it's just a theory. You're welcome to disagree. YMMV. Etc.

Xesdeeni

Re:Better luck next time

[Doctor Faustus]

Some of us are just fine with a single TV, even with multiple family members. I admit that being able to watch TV while doing dishes would be nice, but there's no way it's going to happen in my kitchen.

Re:Better luck next time

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, YKMV.

Re:Better luck next time

[rtechie]

As for your "blanks still cost $20" issue, that is largely irrelevant. P2P distribution is usually done so it can be viewed on a PC, not burned to a disc. The vast majority of video/movie pirating is DVD-R copies of DVD movies sold on the street. For this market, the primary market, the cost of blanks is very relevant. And most people don't have their fancy HDTV hooked up to their desktop (and increasing number do, but most don't) so they might want to play the movie on their standalone player. Or maybe they just don't want to waste 20GB of hard disc space.

a garden-variety BD+ hack Alright, I was a little confused. I thought you meant AACS which has been completely cracked. BD+ has been mostly cracked (ex. the AnyDVD crack) and a complete crack should follow shortly.

too much ego on the line for the person or group who gets to it first. You're a little naive. Organized crime makes a fortune off pirate DVDs. They also want to make a fortune off pirate Blu-Ray discs. Who do you think AnyDVD works for?

Re:Better luck next time

[dangitman]

It's pretty idiotic to think that something is the best, just because it costs more, without doing any research whatsoever. Or do you think it's smart to buy expensive items without investigating what you are buying?

Re:Better luck next time

[dangitman]

That is why I'm sad to see HD-DVD go.With a cheap burner I'd have had a one stop solution for HD and regular DVD

Huh? There are no burners for HD-DVD on the market, let alone cheap ones. But there are reasonably priced (for a new technology) Blu-Ray burners on the market. I don't see how your comment makes any sense.

Re:Better luck next time

[dangitman]

Uhhh, why should the DVD Forum be the authority on high definition optical discs? The DVD standard never mentioned high definition.

Re:Better luck next time

[hairyfeet]

Because the standard for HD-DVD was already done. Do you really think BD discs burnt with a version one burner will play correctly in a 2.x player? Since Sony can change the specs at anytime(and already have once so far) it will be trivial to simply change the spec if the studios get worried about piracy.And I really don't want to be hunting through stores or worrying if player X will play nice with my burner Y.With DVD it all just works.

Re:Better luck next time

[gabebear]

The Divx spec made it mandatory to call home to check your DRM status, where the Blu-Ray spec makes it mandatory for a disc to play in Spec 1.0 players that can't call home.

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

The vast majority of video/movie pirating is DVD-R copies of DVD movies sold on the street. For this market, the primary market, the cost of blanks is very relevant. And most people don't have their fancy HDTV hooked up to their desktop (and increasing number do, but most don't) so they might want to play the movie on their standalone player. Or maybe they just don't want to waste 20GB of hard disc space. I'm sorry...at what point did you completely jump off the deep end and forget this whole discussion is about high-def? You're talking DVD-R blanks, non-HD televisions, and bootleg DVD's, none of which has a damn thing to do with the discussion at hand.

You're a little naive. Organized crime makes a fortune off pirate DVDs. They also want to make a fortune off pirate Blu-Ray discs. Who do you think AnyDVD works for? And you're more than a little presumptuous and pompous in flinging around such accusations. I never said anything about who SlySoft (AnyDVD is the product, not the name of the company, just in case you were too busy calling me naive to know the difference) may or may not be allied with. No doubt organized crime would be happy to use their product to further its goals. Crime syndicates may even be actively funding SlySoft. Even though such collusion would make sense (the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all) I challenge you to put forth conclusive proof of any such partnership. You won't find any, so perhaps you ought to be more careful next time before you accuse someone else of being naive.

Refund?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Toshiba will be offering any relief to the suckers who bought their laptops with expensive hd-dvd players in them in the last few months...

Re:Refund?

[Hanners1979]

Well, they now can't spend loads of money rebuying all their favourite movies on HD-DVD... Sounds like a relief to me.

Its peace in our time!

[plierhead]

This is of course great news (that the war is over - nothing to do with who won), but having forked out for a Blu-Ray disc lately (running around $50 over here) I can honestly say that I wish I had not fallen for the blandishments of that sales guy who told me I should buy a smaller, but much higher definition, TV.

If I had my buying decision over I would say after the initial technogasm brought on by seeing every hair on the actor's heads, you very quickly forget about the quality and just wish your screen was bigger. (Apparently this is a common effect.)

Re:Its peace in our time!

[sqrt(2)]

Depends what your needs are. I wouldn't have use for a TV above 32 inches or so on the high end, it wouldn't be practical for the space I have. If you have a much larger room with a big space in between then you'll want a 42 inch or even larger because you're simply sitting farther away. So with a small space to get a better picture you want a higher resolution, with a big room you want a big picture (and high res too but that's probably secondary in terms of viewing experience).

I'm happy I decided to wait before jumping into HD, because I was tempted to buy an HD-DVD player for my 360. Good thing I waited.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[Lumpy]

Actually what is common is downsizing. I am a integrator and the sales guys talk clients into the 60" monsters all the time. my Installers call saying "it wont fit" more often than not because the customer was sold a TV that is entirely too gigantic for their room size.

for a sane apartment or home a 37 is more than big enough. I have a 50 and it is honestly too big it dominates the room and requires 2 people to safely move it. the 60" monsters or larger get even worse. Unless you have a HUGE living room anything bigger than a 42 is nuts.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[Tony Hoyle]

Not really - we should be thinking above the postage stamp stuff of the SD era now. You measure based on your distance from the screen... 1.5x screen width (often quoted as 2x screen height but I think they're roughly equivalent). At 37" you're looking at a recommended viewing distance of 4.1 feet. You can use http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html to do the calculation.

In fact a lot of stores are undersizing what they sell to consumers for two reasons (1) people have been used to TV as a little box in the corner for years, and that's a hard habit to break, and (2) there's lots of tiny TVs in stock and they have to sell them.

In fact the the average person sitting 8 feet from their TV they shouldn't be looking at around 70 inches ideally, so those 'monsters' you're talking about are the right size. Personally I'm quite happy at 92" and wouldn't go smaller (I'm thinking of going 100" at some point).

Re:Its peace in our time!

[afidel]

I don't know what you consider sane but my living room is 18' deep and so I could definitely use a screen larger than my 42". The reason I didn't buy something large is that to get 1080P in something larger than 42" was an absolute fortune. I got away with mine for $1500, to go up to even a 50" screen was going to roughly double the price. I wanted 1080P to futureproof the purchase and because I was using it as a display for a HTPC, gaming is just great fun on a really big monitor =)

Re:Its peace in our time!

[eldepeche]

Sounds like you sell TVs, since that's absolutely fucking ludicrous. My parents have a 37" screen, and watching it from closer than 8 feet makes my eyes dry up. And I'm nearsighted.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[DirkGently]

You're making the very large assumption that the TV is the center of attention for the room. If the room is dedicated to media and home theater, then sure. Go massive. But if the room has other purposes, sizing the screen to SMPTE or THX projection recommendations (which is what you linked) is absurd. You've got to live with the thing. If you also use the space for chatting with people and entertaining, a screen like that really dominates the space in an uncomfortable way. I thought this issue would go away as we transitioned from CRT RPTVs to nice flat panel jobs, but it really hasn't had as much an effect as I was hoping.

Also, a massive screen sitting plainly in your living room makes you look like a tool the way owning a European sports car does.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[CopaceticOpus]

I hear this argument sometimes, and I honestly can't understand it. I have a tiny living room and a 52" screen, and it's the perfect size. A large screen fills more of my field of vision. I feel that a movie should be a grand experience and take over the space in which it's being shown. Seeing a movie on a 32" screen in comparison feels like sitting far away and watching the movie through a window. It's just not as engaging.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[porpnorber]

Fortunately I am older now and I only have real trouble with this effect when computing, but as a child I often used to find it difficult to see the picture because of all the lines it was made out of. It was even worse when we got a colour TV with its clusters of coloured spots. Even today I'm really upset because my employer got me a BIG laptop when a smaller one with the same specs and pixel count (and thus higher text legibility) was available from the same source. Apparently (judging from the number of people at the office who think my complaint is starkly insane), those of us who care about resolution every minute of every day only run to about 10% of the population, but we, too, exist. So perhaps the salesman was not deceiving you, but simply has the opposite problem to yours.

Now, when we can get a >75Hz frame rate so that I can integrate moving objects without effort? Going to the cinema is often ok, resolution-wise, but all the motion is blink-blink-blink....

Re:Its peace in our time!

[mahlerfan999]

That was the reason I used for purchasing my tv! I'm glad that someone else thinks like me. I wanted it to be big enough that I could enjoy the benefits of hd, but small enough that I could sit up close in my smallish living room and still enjoy sd. Being a geek I positioned my chair at exactly the average of the distances to have a perfectly balanced appreciate for either 720p or 480p based on visual acuity. I wouldn't think about a large hdtv until hd becomes the norm and I can do nearly all of my watching in 1080p, which should be several years down the road.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd actually say the opposite tends to be true. That is to say, the bigger the screen you have the more pixels you will want.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[Doctor Faustus]

32" was the biggest my wife would put up with. I'd like bigger, but if I watch a Blu-Ray movie after dark with the lights off and my glasses on, I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[RedWizzard]

I wouldn't have use for a TV above 32 inches or so on the high end, it wouldn't be practical for the space I have. The SMPTE recommend a minimum horizontal field of view of 30 degrees for home theatre installations. With a 32" widescreen TV that means they recommend you sit no further away than 4.3 feet. THX installations specify a minimum of 26 degrees (5ft viewing distance) and recommend 36 degrees (3.6 ft). Personally I think those recommendations are uncomfortably close, but even so you may be underestimating how large a TV you can get away with. Just how small is this room of yours?

Viewing distance calculator.

re:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/15/1716241

now if they'll only

[Dr. Hellno]

halt construction on devices related to blu-ray, I can finally stop hearing about this irrelevant crap. The slashdot poll said it best: no one gives a shit.

Re:now if they'll only

[bri2000]

I think you may well be right. I know of more than a few people, like my mother and many of her friends, who have bought HDTVs because they're slim and look nice but have no idea what high definition means or what, apart from the the size and integrated Freeview tuner, makes the new TV different from their old CRT set. These people will not be buying an HD disc player.

I, on the other hand, am something of a movie buff, I got into DVD in a fairly big way and own 500+ movies (excluding porn and TV shows). There's no way I'm going to pay to replace these with Blu-Ray or any other HD format. A found a a £150 DVD player with HDMI and on-board scaler to be a much better investment. Maybe it's not quite as good looking as an HD disc would be (but who can really tell? I don't think more than a dozen of my movies are actually available in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD yet), but it certainly revitalised my disc collection.

Re:now if they'll only

[LarsWestergren]

now if they'll only halt construction on devices related to blu-ray, I can finally stop hearing about this irrelevant crap. The slashdot poll said it best: no one gives a shit.

Actually, at the time of writing, 45% in the Slashdot poll claims not to care about Blu-ray. Hardly everyone, even if Slashdot was representative of humanity as a whole.

Re:now if they'll only

[Dr. Hellno]

Fair enough, sir.

Still, at the time of writing, 45% of voters don't think HD is worth it, and another 23% are holding out for downloads. This makes for a fairly large majority who don't care at all about HD-DVD or blu-ray. And remember, we're talking about a segment of the population which is probably four or five times more likely than average to even know what blu-ray is. I think if you held a referendum in America right now between blu-ray and HD-DVD, they'd choose Betamax.

Re:now if they'll only

[Anonymous Coward]

but who can really tell?

I can. Of course, I watch all my video on a pc, sitting about a meter from a 22" widescreen. Might also be in part due to better compression (x264 vs. xvid). Also, sod physical formats, the interweb is the only true way.

Re:now if they'll only

[MBGMorden]

I don't think the point is for you to go replace your whole collection with BD or HD-DVD discs. That's why both players will play regular DVD's. The idea is that you buy a Blu-ray player, and then *from now on*, when you buy movies you can buy them in Blu-ray.

Re:now if they'll only

[Swampash]

If 45% of respondents on a tech- and media-crazy site like Slashdot don't care, then that's close enough to "humanity as a whole doesn't give a shit" for me.

Re:now if they'll only

[LarsWestergren]

If 45% of respondents on a tech- and media-crazy site like Slashdot don't care, then that's close enough to "humanity as a whole doesn't give a shit" for me.

Perhaps, but non-tech savvy people can easily be swayed into thinking "I must have this!!" based on commercials...

Re:now if they'll only

[feepness]

There's no way I'm going to pay to replace these with Blu-Ray or any other HD format. You are aware they are continuing to make movies?

Rest In Peace, HD-DVD

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

May there be a niche market of stupid rich guys waiting for you up in heaven.

Re:Rest In Peace, HD-DVD

[mrxak]

Well, I was definitely rooting for HD-DVD. I mean seriously, wtf kind of name is Blu-Ray? Still, that's not really to say that I wanted either format to win. I'm really hoping they both don't sell all that well, and we get a newer better technology in a few years with a decent name and a standard everyone can agree with.

Re:Rest In Peace, HD-DVD

[91degrees]

Rich? How much do you think these players cost!?

Re:Rest In Peace, HD-DVD

[PrescriptionWarning]

You know going based solely off the name of something is a little dumb, especially if you're completely ignoring any and all facts. Granted, I thought HD-DVD was a better name because people "get" what HD means. However in the end it all just reminds me of the episode of South Park where they had to vote between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. And unfortunately thats what a lot choices are really about, when you have to choose between two things that really have no great effect on your life because each choice is the right choice and the wrong choice at the same time.

Re:dundant

[Anonymous Coward]

...you do realize that was one of the links in TFS, right?

I too am wondering what has changed, that the editors feel we need to talk about this again. I'm not seeing any more facts, I'm just seeing the same rumors.

Lest We Forget...

[stupidflanders]

"Don't cry for me, HD-early-adopters! The truth is I will never leave you!"

I wonder how long it will be until revisionist historians start telling this over, not as a format war in which one was better than the other, but as a story of martyrdom. I can see it now: "the Toshiba executives, in the interest of promoting better television quality, chose to nobly sacrifice themselves for the good of all mankind."

For that matter, I wonder if there will be some holdouts, such as those in the deep south who still believe that the south shall rise again. Maybe a historical re-enactment society will latch on to the idea, and they can have mock battles in staged boardrooms. Lest we forget.

*TAPS PLAYS SWEETLY ACROSS A BATTLEFIELD*
*CURTAIN*

Sony won a format war...

[beset]

And in other news, satan is ice skating to work today.

Re:Sony won a format war...

[91degrees]

If Bluray is a Sony format, so is DVD and CD. Sony backed it strongly and presumably did a lot ofthe original development but it's not a Sony format in the same way that minidisc and Betamax were. Sony got other companies on board as part of the standards consortium.

This might explain why it didn't fail. Companies prefer it when the standards body isn't the same organisation as their rival. There's always a risk that the standard might change specifically to favour one manufacturer.

Re:Sony won a format war...

[edwardpickman]

And here everyone thought I was crazy stocking up food for the end of the world! Tomorrow there'll be a dual headline, "Sony Wins Format War!" and "Killer Asteroid Strikes At Noon".

Re:Sony won a format war...

[macrom]

Actually, he skates for a living.

http://www.nhl.com/players/8459534.html

Re:Sony won a format war...

[kellyb9]

Actually - I think the two universal reasons why it didn't fail. Blockbuster and Playstation 3. I'm not really sure other than that because from what I've seen the hardware has been much more expensive.

OK, so they lost this round

[hyades1]

I'll still turn to Toshiba for relevant hardware needs. The company laptops are Toshiba, and they're solid, reliable machines.

And since Sony stuck that effing rootkit on their CD's, I decided I will never, ever voluntarily have anything to do with that company again for any reason. The last Sony hardware I saw was a kind of "all in one" stereo system some department store sold to my great aunt. All design, all plastic, no performance. For what she paid, it sucks. Too bad...they used to be the gold standard for affordable, reliable electronics.

Re:OK, so they lost this round

[jonwil]

Sony stopped making good electronic gear when they stopped being an electronics company and allowed the content producers to dictate the direction of the company.

Re:OK, so they lost this round

[mgblst]

Wow, comparing Toshiba and Sony, and have Toshiba coming on top is high praise indeed. Just like how getting stabbed in the guts is slightly better than getting stabbed in the chest.

Re:OK, so they lost this round

[Boycott BMG]

You seem to be confusing Sony/BMG and Sony Corporation. It wasn't Sony that installed the rootkit on CDs it was Sony/BMG. Sony/BMG is 50/50 owned by Sony and Bertelsmann with most of the decision makers (at the time) being from the BMG side. It isn't too much of a surprise really, given than BMG had a very crappy reputation previous to the merger, even for a record company. Sony does hold some blame being a major shareholder, but the ultimate decision was not theirs. If you insist on boycotting Sony, you should at least be consistent and also boycott anything from Bertelsmann as well.

Re:OK, so they lost this round

[Kenshin]

This is what I wanted to say. Sony Music is fairly autonomous.

If teenager breaks your window, you can blame the parents for not controlling him, but it's still the teen acting out on his own.

Re:OK, so they lost this round

[hyades1]

I guess I pretty much do stay away from Bertelsmann, but it's as much about my listening/reading habits as by design. I generally steer clear of Columbia and RCA (which I believe they have a stake in), but I have to admit I'm not above getting the occasional CD out of the library.

License costs

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have not given up so early. There were other things they could do.

They could remove the license costs, this way it would be cheaper for manufacturers to make HD-DVD compatible devices and equipment, which would make HD-DVD more widespread and popular.

They should have avoided the proprietary route, and embrace openness and freedom.
Should have tried to make it an open standard without licensing costs.

Re:License costs

[Kenshin]

They could remove the license costs, this way it would be cheaper for manufacturers to make HD-DVD compatible devices and equipment, which would make HD-DVD more widespread and popular.

How would that benefit Toshiba?

They spent hundred of millions developing and marketing HD-DVD. They're not going to let everyone else eat their dinner for free.

Re:License costs

[NicknamesAreStupid]

I think the odds of free licenses are just about the same as a televised Toshiba press conference with all their executives mooning the audience. That said, the simpler design specs would be really conducive to a true commodity product. The Chinese might even opt for it over their standard, CH-DVD, a HD-DVD derivative. If China does HD-DVD, you can say sayonara to Blurry, because the 'CH' stands for CHEAP!

Re:License costs

[Kenshin]

If China does HD-DVD, you can say sayonara to Blurry, because the 'CH' stands for CHEAP!

Cheap, as in inexpensive. Or Cheap, as in falls apart after 6 months?

Like most of the no-name Chinese crap I see at Tiger Direct, I'd avoid it.

Better post next time

[Anonymous Coward]

"On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax"

Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.

Mini-disc became Mini-HD

Memory stick is still being used.

Re:Better post next time

[RespekMyAthorati]

On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax" Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.

Not true.

BetaCam is the dominant professional video format, but is completely different from BetaMax. Sony just likes to put "Beta" in front of its video equipment, since the path of the tape through the machine looks like the Greek letter Beta.

Re:Better post next time

[Dogtanian]

On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax" Which enjoyed better success in professional settings. Not true. BetaCam is the dominant professional video format, but is completely different from BetaMax. (My emphasis).

Not entirely true either- Betacam and Betamax *are* related to some extent. However, they're not identical or even playback-compatible, and I'm still fed up of seeing people repeat the "Betamax was a massive success in the professional market!" myth every time the format is discussed.

Summary of the differences between (professional) Betacam and (domestic) Betamax.

Written by some highly-intelligent guy, apparently! ;-)

Digital Versatile Disc?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of it.

Re:Digital Versatile Disc?

[Lachlan Hunt]

Digital Versatile Disc is the alternative expansion to Digital Video Disc, since DVDs can contain more than just video. Wikipedia has info about its etymology.

Re:Digital Versatile Disc?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia has info Wikipedia doesn't have any info worth read^H^H^H^Hquoting. You Wikipedians are worse than the Microsoft fanboys. Wikipedia makes the Goatse guy look profound.

So...

[VirexEye]

Did Sony *finally* win a format war...?!

Re:So...

[draxredd]

yeah. floppies, CDs and Hi8 were such miserable failures, after all.

Re:So...

[robosmurf]

It looks like it. Though it remains to be seen whether Blu-ray will make significant headway against DVD, or will flop like SACD.

In fact, if Blu-ray is successful, then this could be a major victory for Sony. With the complexity and compatibility problems of the Blu-ray specification, the Playstation 3 is pretty much the only Blu-ray player worth getting. I predict other manufacturers are going to struggle to produce Blu-ray players that can compete.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck... when will people get it. Blu-Ray != Sony.

Sony merely chose to back the format, they put the largest foot forward by committing their entire company to the format early on. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:So...

[TheThiefMaster]

What's Hi8?

Ok, so I wiki'd it and found out, but I've seen exactly ONE of this kind of tapes ever in real life, and all I know was that it was a small video tape used in a camcorder, I couldn't tell you if it was a "Hi8" or some similar competing format (were there any?).

Regardless, I wouldn't call it successful, at least not on the level of Floppy disks and CDs.

Re:So...

[Qwerpafw]

Hi8 was tremendously successful. Just because you're too young to remember it doesn't mean it wasn't popular.

Re:So...

[petermgreen]

were there any?
HI-8 is an improved version of video-8. Afaict the main competitors were vhs-c and it's impvoved variant svhs-c.

I'm not sure which analog camcorder format had the highest sales but both hi-8 and vhs-c were popular enough to be availible from places like argos (which is hardly a specialist supplier) for years.

Re:So...

[Dogtanian]

I'm not sure which analog camcorder format had the highest sales but both hi-8 and vhs-c were popular enough to be availible from places like argos (which is hardly a specialist supplier) for years. That pretty much sums it up. I couldn't have told you which was the better seller either, though if forced I'd probably have chosen Video-8/Hi-8 over VHS-C/SVHS-C.

Basically, neither format totally dominated the analogue camcorder market, and this duopoly seems to have persisted right up until both were simultaneously pushed out of the market by digital formats. (*) In a way, this shows that the camcorder market was not the same as domestic VCRs; the former could probably tolerate two formats in a way that the latter couldn't, since people didn't buy prerecorded material in either format, and also because they probably transferred most of their video to full-size VHS when editing anyway.

(*) I note that Argos- who 18 months or so ago still sold both Hi-8 and SVHS-C analogue models at the bottom of their range no longer seem to stock either. Using Argos as an indicator of mainstream acceptance, it seems fair to declare that the analogue camcorder market is all but dead.

Re:So...

[james_gnz]

Did Sony *finally* win a format war...?!

I don't think we should jump to conclusions too quickly. It's early days yet, HD-DVD could still make a comeback.

The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Schmiggy_JK]

The real competition is DVD. HD media isn't doing terrible by any means, numbers wise it is doing better than DVD was at this time in its life cycle. However DVD sales are dominating both HD formats. And thanks to this competition prices should continue to be reasonable as HD adoption hasn't taken over yet. Thus this lone single format should be good for HD business, and for consumers.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Jarik_Tentsu]

The real competition is DVD. I don't agree.

True, both companies have to convince everyone to switch from the Standard Definition formats to the High Definition ones...but that will occur over time. Unlike XP vs Vista, HD does have considerable advantages over its predecessor, so you just have to wait for it to become more popular. Like how VHS was phased out in favour of DVD - took a couple of years, but it happened.

These days HD Plasma/LCD screens and Blu-Ray DVD players and becoming standard, so now we just gotta wait for shops to start having Blu-Ray-Dominated stock and such.

But the competition between the two formats was so that WHEN the phase ended, one of them dominated. And that war was not about DVD vs HD.

~Jarik

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Eivind]

Sure. The real competition is DVD and downloading. I think there's a real chance that DVD will be the last physical format to achieve market-dominance. There's no real reason we need to mess with physical formats at all, sure files need to be stored -somewhere- but exactly where can safely be left to the consumers.

Music is already like that. Some store their music as round plastic-discs. Others on a hard-disc. Others on flash-based music-players or any combination of these. It doesn't matter. It's the same file. It sounds the same. Okay okay, so that's not strictly true if you compare an original CD to a mp3, but it's close enough that 95% of the population don't care about the difference.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[duncan3dc]

What exactly are the benefits over DVD that these 2 formats hold? Is it simply the higher quality image? And can anyone honestly say that they notice a difference? Or shall we say a worthwhile difference at least?

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Schmiggy_JK]

It depends on how you rate the subjective "worthwhile differences". 6 times the pixels, considering 1080p vs 480p (assuming you have a progressive DVD player) is worth it to me. There is also the question of uncompressed audio which these formats also hold. There are obviously the two main benefits of these new mediums, but there are others like interactivity, online content, and other stuff that doesn't really concern me. But the primary differences are worthwhile to me. But I also own a 42" 1080p TV. And no this isn't bragging, but often I wonder how many people question the need for HD content when they themselves don't have the means to display it and see its value other than seeing HD football games at their buddies house. So it is worthwhile here, and I can definitely notice it. I can even tell the difference of my upconverted to 1080p DVDs vs. that of my Blu-Ray media.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Schmiggy_JK]

While HDTVs may be slowly becoming a standard, Blu-Ray and HD DVD players are no where close. I think we are a bit tech biased here, but when I tend get out of my tech world, and my job, it seems a lot of people out there really have no clue what the hell either format is yet. And VHS vs DVD isn't a valid comparison in this case. DVD is a massive improvement over the analog content that was VHS. From size and being compact, to digital material, to ease of navigation and menus, higher quality sound, bonus features, etc. The two main improvements in HD vs DVD is more pixels, and sound quality. At this point not everyone is seeing a need to upgrade, even people in my experience with HDTVs don't see the need for HD content other than their TV broadcasts. Of my friends and family that have HDTVs, say 9 of them, I am the sole person that has a HD player, and that is because I bought a PS3 mainly for this years crop of incoming games.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[duncan3dc]

Then it seems to me that the having to buy a new TV to see the difference is what is putting a lot of consumers off. But I also think that the perception of the new format is "better DVD's". When DVD came out it was a new concept to most people, they saw it as a film on a CD. It probably felt revolutionary to a lot of people. I don't think the same buzz can be created for Blu-Ray and this will cause slow adoption.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[MPAB]

Perhaps plain AACS cracking tumbled HD-DVD down. Blu-Ray, on the other hand, has 3 different protection systems with BD+ and BD-ROM being perhaps the most virulent of all. When all HD content becomes available only on Blu-Ray, downloading will be stalled for a good while.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Schmiggy_JK]

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/09/bd-has-not-been-compromised-yet/ I don't think either one of them is really having any effect on ripped content yet according to the above.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[jtshaw]

It isn't just DVD that is attempting to compete here, though I agree it the biggest competitor currently. I really think the major battle Bluray will ultimately face is with the likes of Apple iTunes, Amazon UnBox, and on-demand from the likes of DirecTV (which just enabled on-demand via eithernet on my HD DVR box) and cable companies (which largely have had on-demand for a long time).

I'm always surprised to see Apple listed as a Bluray backer... particularly considering I don't believe I've ever seen an Apple device with Bluray built in.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[rm999]

An HD movie at the compression most commonly used on blu-ray/hd-dvd runs around 25-50 gigs. Going much less than that can create artifacts that are noticeable on a TV larger than 30 inches. I don't see people dealing with these file sizes anytime in the next five years. Even uncompressed ripped DVD movies (which run around 5-10 gigs each) are not commonly downloaded because of their massive size, more than five years after DVD became mainstream.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[sgant]

While HDTVs may be slowly becoming a standard, Blu-Ray and HD DVD players are no where close. I think we are a bit tech biased here, but when I tend get out of my tech world, and my job, it seems a lot of people out there really have no clue what the hell either format is yet. Could it be that because there was no one standard for High Def video that people were all waiting to buy...which is why neither Blu Ray or HD-DVD are close to DVD sales? DVD sales took a little while to build up steam too, and was no where close to VHS sales. It takes time. DVD took over more quickly than CD did to vinyl, but it still took a few years. Now that we have a standard for high def, maybe adoption will come about quicker else all those 1080p TV's being sold today are being wasted on low-rez DVD content.

Also, and you're not the only one doing it, the elitist attitude of "the masses are asses" is growing old. When my 66 year old mother-in-law knows about this stuff, then lots of people do.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[clickety6]

DVD is a massive improvement over the analog content that was VHS.

yet on my VHS tape I can actually fast forward through the advertising crap at the start of the tape...

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Anonymous Coward]

sir,

(wrong item #1) your 25-50 gigs is at mpeg2 not any of the mpeg4 codecs(xvid, divx, wmv, h264), they could be down to 10G (and less) using a newer codec with the same quality/compression ration and have been available for awhile now to dl.

(wrong item #2) your uncompressed DVD movies 5-10 gigs is not uncompressed, they are also mpeg2. Uncompressed would be about (assuming colour=32bit) 32(bits per colour)x720(hpixels)x480(vpixels)x30(fps, 29.97 really, and sometimes 23.976) so that comes to ~330mbit/second=~41MB/sec
for a 90min movie that would be about 220 gigs uncompressed and that contains no audio.
While the colour bits may be off, I still don't think it will bring it down to 5-10gigs from 220.
For regular DVDs you may be comparing mpeg2 (5-10gigs) with some type of mpeg4 codec (usually 1.4gigs is about the same quality).

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[9Nails]

I still agree with the original post, with the exit of HD-DVD the real war is about standard definition DVD vs. Blu-Ray High Definition BR-DVD. But I can't discount your observations reflecting that a majority of consumers feel no need to replace their DVD library with any form of high definition media. With a lack of appreciable enhancements and higher prices, BR-DVD stands little chance at succession over DVD.

Perhaps this new war can be likened to VHS vs. Super VHS (which was a technology enhancement that also stalled in terms of adoption.) I'm one for sitting back and letting Sony decide how they want to approach this war. But I must admit that with the high potentials for consumer hostile DRM, I'm likely to sit on this fence until the next big things comes along.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Miamicanes]

The existence of two standards was the least of anyone's problems. A much bigger one, IMHO, was the fact that both standards screwed anyone with a TV purchased more than ~2.5 years ago that lacked HDCP. Or, for that matter, anyone with a single HDCP port and more than one thing to plug into it. Or (for one frustrating first night) anyone without a spare HDMI or HDMI-to-DVI cable. The HDCP requirement itself slashed the size of their available market by eliminating a fairly big chunk of people who'd have otherwise been early adopters.

960x540? Give me a break. A PAL DVD ripped to a laptop's or HTPC's hard drive is 720x540. Adding insult to injury, if the TV's native resolution is 1280x720, they aren't even allowed to do a GOOD JOB SCALING it to that resolution after downrezzing it. A well-upscaled SD-DVD has better picture quality on a natively-720p TV than a downrezzed Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

When all HD content becomes available only on Blu-Ray, downloading will be stalled for a good while.

That's already not true: you can purchase and rent HD movies from iTunes, and get them via download.

Therefore, Blu-Ray stands little chance of being the only HD delivery media. In fact, it may be quickly obsoleted by downloads.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[DirkGently]

Take it easy on the FUD. To the best of my knowledge, no discs (Blu or HDDVD) have yet shipped with the image constraint token enabled specifically because of the number of playback devices that are hampered. Until the ICT is flipped on, you state a non-issue.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that the real competition wasn't HD-DVD, but DVD. And when the masses finally want something better than DVD, HVD will probably be more suitable.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[tlhIngan]

It depends on how you rate the subjective "worthwhile differences". 6 times the pixels, considering 1080p vs 480p (assuming you have a progressive DVD player) is worth it to me.

I have both systems. HD-DVD was "better" than Blu-Ray IMHO (mostly because most HD-DVDs had 30GB to play with, and most BD's have only 25 (there were very, very few dual layer BDs), and with BD's insistence on "Uncompressed PCM Audio" (versus Dolby TrueHD lossless compression), well, that hurts.

But the other reason is, you may have 6 times the pixels, but you don't necessarily get 6 times the resolution. If a director soft-focuses a scene, no amount of pixels makes the image any sharper. "High def blurry" is still blurry. For visual fests like say, Transformers (HD-DVD - 27GB, and NO lossless audio, grr... just Dolby Digital Plus), 6 times the resolution is great. But for dramas and such, all you're doing is upping the pixels without upping the clarity.

In fact, I've bought more DVDs because they were not only cheaper than either BD or HD-DVD, but often contained more extras and stuff (than the BD - the HD-DVDs typically have equal or superior content to the DVD, go figure). That, and my HD-DVD player is a really, really good upscaling DVD player. There are very few movies out there that really justify the enhanced resolution. (Heck, even Transformers gets interesting due to Bay's ADHD-inducing technique). I have many HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays where I'm simply less than impressed with the clarity and resolution, not because of the medium, but of the way the director did his filming.

Or, let's take Cloverfield. Do people really want to watch shaky-cam in high-def? Is it even worthwhile? High-def shaky you can't tell from regular upscaled shaky? Or the "high-def" ST:TOS TV series? Do people really care about seeing the cracks in the plaster?

High def is great, no doubt. But its a lot like the "Megapixel myth" in digital cameras. You can buy 12MP digital camera point and shoots, but they're not much better than a 6MP one that can produce just as good an image (or better), but a smaller filesize. There's still a bunch of things like directing techniques that make the enhanced resolution of high-def pointless.

Sure, there are a few good things that deserve to be in high-def - Pixar's shorts, for example. Animation looks great in high-def. But for many people, the enhanced resolution isn't worth what you get. A good upscaling DVD player can produce images close to the high-def version for a lot of director techniques (especially ones that rely on soft-focus, depth-of-view control, etc). The only thing an upscaled DVD can't do is produce more detail, for those visual fest movies.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[HTH NE1]

I'm always surprised to see Apple listed as a Bluray backer... particularly considering I don't believe I've ever seen an Apple device with Bluray built in. As am I, considering that DVD Studio Pro supports HD DVD, not Blu-ray, and Apple's DVD Player software is the only player built into an operating system (Leopard) that supports an HD format, and that format is HD DVD (provided that it was mastered with DVD Studio Pro).

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[samkass]

While you're mostly correct about item #2 (I think you're a little optimistic about file sizes), the parent poster was correct about item #1. The default encoding on Blu-ray is h.264/AAC and a well-encoded movie can take up a substantial portion of the disc. You can see tons of comparisons of Blu-ray vs. Apple's iTMS where the iTMS looks slightly better than upconverted DVD and substantially worse than Blu-ray, as an example.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[petermgreen]

It seems to me that you can only really appreciate HD if you are prepared to either sit very close to a TV or do an installation that makes a very large (and therefore expensive) TV the dominant feature of one of your rooms.

Afaict that isn't how most people watch TV and videos, they sit or lie on the sofa watching an ordinary sized TV in one corner of thier living room.

A lot of people are buying HD ready TVs but afaict they are only doing that either because nearly all LCD TVs are HD ready or because they wan't a TV that can double up as a PC monitor.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[adolf]

2.5 years, you say?

Strange.

I've got a 32" Sony CRT with an HDCP-supported DVI input, and the model was already six months or so old when I bought it almost exactly 3 years ago.

Which makes it closer to 3.5 years old, by my reckoning.

It works just fine with both of my upscaling players ($45 cheap-shit RCA DVD and a PS3) at 1080i, using a ~$4.00 DVI-HDMI cable from these guys.

And even 3 years ago, I was somewhat early to the HD game - back then, we had CRTs, projectors (ugh), and plasma (ouch). The rush to buy large-format HD sets (if there has ever been one) didn't happen until some time after this, when big LCD panels became available and cheap. By that point, HDCP was fully entrenched.

Therefore, I really don't think there's very any HDCP-related drama to be seen here.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Jarik_Tentsu]

Hmm...

Well, down here (Australia), I walk into JB Hi-Fi and they have a whole section of just Blu-Ray Movies. And this up the front of the store - the first thing you see as soon as you walk in. Granted, whether this is from customer demand or the shop trying to gently persuade you to move changes it a bit (I am leaning towards the latter actually), but at the very least it is cost effective enough for them to blatantly throw it at you.

I've don't know anyone who has Blu-Ray formatted media yet (Though a lot of them have HDTVs), but I know when we went to the Home Theater stores to find out about pricing, models, etc, all of them made a point to suggest one of the newer DVD players - ones that supported Blu-Ray as well. They did make an effort to explain to my Dad what Blu-Ray was, and why it's important to have it.

So yeah, I don't think the change is being made fast...but it is being made from the 'player' side, and soon, when the prices of Blu-Ray media drop, it'll come from that side.

It'd also be great if people started releasing Blank Blu-Ray media too for data...

You make a good point about VHS vs DVD (which was a considerable step from analogue to digital). But if we look at the data formats - CD-ROM and DVD-ROM, the latter one even though it just has more size. Blu-Ray is not only progressive, but offers over half more pixels...it isn't a mild jump...it's 576i/p (4:3) to 1080p (16:9). And yeah, from a data point of view *considerably* more storage space.

But yeah, you're right...it will take longer than VHS to DVD...then again, Blu-Ray players can play DVDs, so it's got legacy support - unlike DVD players and VHS.

~Jarik

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[rm999]

On #2 I was going to say unrecompressed, but I found this unnecessary. As far as ripping DVDs are concerned, I believe it is fairly standard to call an unrecompressed DVD uncompressed. Everyone knows DVD uses some lossy compression, but at those levels it is very difficult to find artifacts. Move to a 1.4 gig mpeg4 and I can personally see artifacts in action scenes on my big TV. It is a result of the way mpeg4 movies compresses neighboring frames.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Eivind]

My point is, I see no overwhelming demand for PERFECT picture-quality (or sound-quality) recompressing a CD to a 128kbps mp3 produces quite noticeable artifacts too, but reality is that most people don't care very much. Okay, so there's a trend towards 196kbps since today in many contexts its nearly irrelevant if the filesize is 4MB or 6MB.

A 10GB DVD recompressed to 1.5GB is perfectly acceptable to 95% of the movie-watchers out there. Including those who have 42" HD-capable flatscreens.

It is true that recompressing a 35GB blue-ray movie to say 5GB degrades quality. Most people could not care less. The quality will still be significantly better than todays 9GB DVDs (which use a poor compression-scheme and don't have HD), which is ALREADY more than good enough for most people and most movies.

You also underestimate bandwith and storage. 5-10GB DVDs are indeed commonly downloaded, but most people opt for the 1GB recompressed ones, not because they can't handle 10GB, but because the difference in quality is not such that they CARE to spend 10 times the effort.

Downloading 10GB takes about 50 minutes at 25Mbps, which is the "normal" speed offered by my ISP. Even at the -lowest- available speed, 10Mbps, it takes less than 3 hours, not undoable in the least. It's just that it's not worth it to wait for 50 minutes or 3 hours when the other file which is 1/9th the size is in practice equally enjoyable to watch.

I understand residential broadband is still in the stone-age in USA. Perhaps that fools you into thinking that 2Mbps is "fast" or that there are few consumers with 25Mbps+ around ? It's just a question of time until USA also gets reasonable networking, there's no technical barrier, it's mostly a lack of real effective competition.

Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Eivind]

There is no risk of that. (either of them)

There is no risk that all HD-content becomes available ONLY on blue-ray. There are -already- other sources of HD-material (such as various forms of broadcast and download-services) and these will only multiply, not go away.

Second, there is no risk that the DRM on Blue-ray will actually suceed in preventing EVERYONE EVERYWHERE from copying the content. Remember that the DRM only need to be broken once, by one person. The freed result can thereafter be distributed effortlessly.

10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I was kind of hoping HD DVD would win this one, now we'll be stuck with region locked movies for another decade till the next thing comes along.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[robosmurf]

It's even worse than that: at least with DVD region-free players were available easily almost from the beginning.

With Blu-ray, almost all Blu-ray players in existence are Playstation 3 consoles. As far as I'm aware, no one has managed a region-free version of this.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[iainl]

The bright side is that it's only 20th Century Fox that are insisting on using regioning for every disc. Other studios (principally the ones who were originally dual-format, and so amenable to the HD-DVD situation of no regioning anyway) are completely region-free, with the remainder only using it for new releases that have worldwide staggered release dates that reflect the cinema dates.

It makes for an annoying amount of research when buying out-of-region, but it's overall better than DVD was. You'll still need to keep your original player around for your SD discs, however.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[DrXym]

The reasons HD DVD lost are many but one of the was lack of region encoding. As a consumer region locking sucks big time, but it's important for studios. Just consider a movie like Ratatouille or No Country for Old Men. Both of these appeared on Blu Ray in the US while they were still showing in cinemas in Europe. It suited Disney's model to encode the disks. Other titles might have different distributors in different regions so lack of region coding could cause all sorts of issues. I know as a consumer these concerns seem pretty lame, but clearly some studios think different. One marginal benefit for users is that you get the release as soon as possible in your region rather than it being delayed by its release elsewhere. And some disks are not region encoded at all and there are websites where you can find out which disks are and which aren't.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[ceeam]

I don't know... there are a lot of DVD players with no region encoding. And most of those which are shipped with it can easily be "fixed" with a cheatcode on remote. Google for it. I fully expect that BluRay's protection will be a similar scarecrow.

Also - many 2nd/3rd tier manufactures make players which can skip advertisements and FBI "warnings".

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[FireFury03]

Both of these appeared on Blu Ray in the US while they were still showing in cinemas in Europe.

The solution here is to set sane release dates for stuff (both in cinema and on disc) instead of locking out your customers (also, there are a lot of suggestions that region coding is an illegal restriction on free trade... shame no one's sued the studios yet).

Honestly, if you release stuff in one country before another, you really can't complain when people take it upon themselves to import it (through legal or illegal means).

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[mooglez]

Region locks were being planned for HD-DVD also, because some of the major studios would not have even thought about HD-DVD if that wasn't possible (Disney to name one). Just because Region coding wasn't used at the start didn't mean it would never have existed.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Golden Samurai]

Just as a comment about region encoding, the PS3 isn't region encoded for Blu-Ray films (I've yet to try games). I've got a couple of region 1 Blu-Ray films for my region 2 PS3 and they work perfectly fine.

The PS3 is only region encoded for DVDs and PS2 games.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[91degrees]

I wonder whether they will continue to do this though. It makes sense to do this with a new format to help promote it over DVD, and because that's a selling point of the rival format.

I'm sure Region free Blu-Ray players will be available at some point. I'm certainly never going to buy a region locked one even if all the studios start releasing region free.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux linux linux foss screw microsoft sony sucks blah blah linux linux!!!

Sorry about that, my "free the WORLD, man" personality was escaping again.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[jellomizer]

It is called leaving money on the table. Every day week or month that there is a region that doesn't have media for sale. Is a time they are not making money. They are a company and you need to expect a company to maximize profits.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[kidgenius]

But, there's a reason that you delay release dates. For instance, a movie can come out here, get a lot of good press (ratatouille) and it can result in a lot of people in another country to go see it. This positive press allows you to spend less on advertising because you can then reduce the amount you advertise in foreign cinemas. Don't think there isn't a reason that the studios do it this way.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[DrXym]

The solution here is to set sane release dates for stuff (both in cinema and on disc) instead of locking out your customers (also, there are a lot of suggestions that region coding is an illegal restriction on free trade... shame no one's sued the studios yet).

That might suit some studios more than others. Disney appears to prefer staggered releases. Perhaps it allows them to fine tune their marketing based on the response they got in other regions. In any respect it's their perogative if they prefer that model.

Honestly, if you release stuff in one country before another, you really can't complain when people take it upon themselves to import it (through legal or illegal means).

Hence the reason for region encoding. Personally I would have preferred if Sony / Disney et al implemented no encoding at all, or at least some kind of time release encoding that unlocked disks some time after their release but it's hard to see how they could make it foolproof.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[FireFury03]

But, there's a reason that you delay release dates. For instance, a movie can come out here, get a lot of good press (ratatouille) and it can result in a lot of people in another country to go see it. This positive press allows you to spend less on advertising because you can then reduce the amount you advertise in foreign cinemas. Don't think there isn't a reason that the studios do it this way.

You can't have your cake and eat it - if you want to save on advertising by staggering released dates and taking advantage of the public's impatience, don't complain when people get impatient and import content.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[FireFury03]

Hence the reason for region encoding.

Which is almost certainly illegal (shame no one has been sued yet).

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[iainl]

"at some point", possibly. For now, however, there are still enough bugs in the players that you _need_ to keep updating firmware, and that firmware is going to keep checking for region-lock mods.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[kidgenius]

Ah, but you see there is a system in place so I can have both, and that is region-locking. Look at this another way. Movie theaters show movies so they can make money. They don't make money off of showing movies mind you, but they make money by selling you concessions. Now, if you have a ton of people that are importing my movie, they don't go to the theater to watch it. As a result, the theaters don't need to order as many copies of the film because they won't have as many moviegoers AND they will have reduced sales of concessions because of fewer patrons. As such, they aren't going to want to pay me as much to show my movie in their theater. I lose money again, and so do they. So, the system is in place, and if you don't like it, then too bad. Does it really kill you to wait an extra few months?

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[FireFury03]

So, the system is in place, and if you don't like it, then too bad. Does it really kill you to wait an extra few months?

Well, it actually doesn't affect me at all since I won't be buying any HD movies until I can play them with Free software. However, the problem is that they are using a (almost certainly) illegal restriction on free trade which prevents people from taking advantage of pricing differentials across the world (all the while the studios *are* taking advantage of pricing differentials. For example, they get the DVDs pressed in Asia because it is cheaper - why should they be allowed to do this but their customers not?). Also, what do you do when a movie is not released in your region and never will be? Seems a pretty sucky position to be in...

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[gEvil (beta)]

Which is almost certainly illegal (shame no one has been sued yet).

Under which laws? And in what countries specifically? Or are you referring to some international laws or agreements? If you're going to make a bold claim like this, you need to have something (anything) to back it up.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not Japanese by any chance are you? Because Japan is in Region 1 for Blu-Ray, along with most of East Asia and both North and South America, so it would make sense that US discs would play.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[FireFury03]

Under which laws? And in what countries specifically? Or are you referring to some international laws or agreements? If you're going to make a bold claim like this, you need to have something (anything) to back it up.

In certain jurisdictions there are laws regarding free trade. For example, in the EU it is illegal to restrict trade between member states (DVD region 2 covers the whole of the EU, so technically this is not placing such a restriction on trade). New Zealand and Australia, however, have declared region coding to be illegal. Several governments have also suggested that it contravenes global WTO free trade treaties (not that the US seems to give a damn about treaties they have signed).

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

The region encoding is put on new movies only, older movies (about a year old) are region free and the region encoding is used by studios to stagger the release of movies in different regions to allow the movie to have a full run in theaters. Which means basically, they can run a movie in theaters in the US and release the movie in the other two regions.

It's a great compromise between what the studios want and what consumers want (believe it or not, studios want certain things too...). Some studios (namely Disney) refused to use HD-DVD due to the region issue.

If you actually look at the usage of the regions (NA/Japan, EU, China (and other secam areas), this is not really a bad thing and the regions are much more friendly to consumers than DVD regions were.

Not to mention the time to release on physical media from theater release is rather small (around 3-6 months nowadays). You shouldn't have to wait to long for a movie to come out in your area after it makes its theater run

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as there are only 3 Blu-Ray regions, I don't think as many people will notice. Brits and Aussies that like untranslated anime will grumble, but thankfully I don't need Dr. Who the moment it comes out. Region A is A-ok for me.

And if you don't like region coding, write the studio. They have the choice to publish open discs, just as you have the choice not to buy them.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[tenton]

Just as a comment about region encoding, the PS3 isn't region encoded for Blu-Ray films (I've yet to try games). I've got a couple of region 1 Blu-Ray films for my region 2 PS3 and they work perfectly fine.

The PS3 is only region encoded for DVDs and PS2 games.

Seeing as Region 1 and Region 2 aren't the Blu-ray regions, I'll have to ask where the discs and PS3 are from?

For example, if by Region 1, you mean USA and by Region 2, you mean Japan, be aware that those two areas are now in the same region, for Blu-ray (Region A). The region coding can be found at Wiki. Believe me, it wouldn't fly for the PS3 to not enforce region coding on Blu-ray.

The other thing to keep in mind that not all studios are using region coding.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[bogjobber]

That might be possible for large blockbusters that are guaranteed to be released worldwide, but for a movie like No Country for Old Men, there was no way of knowing that it would be a huge financial success. If they did that, it would guarantee that worldwide audiences would never get lower budget movies in the cinema.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Chris Brewer]

But IIRC, the region coding mechanism is available, they haven't switched it on yet (released region coded content). Now that the format war is over, what's going to stop them from doing so?

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, region locking sucks. But at least the regions are larger and there are only three total. But all I really care about is that North America, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea are in the same region. This is great for people in the US that frequently watch movies coming from those Asian countries.

But it's really a matter of time before someone figures out how to break the region locks. So it's wait and see for now.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Citizen of Earth]

I was kind of hoping HD DVD would win this one, now we'll be stuck with region locked movies for another decade till the next thing comes along.

About two-thirds of Blu-ray discs have been released region-free. It seems that the distributers may be trying not to piss off customers unnecessarily.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't HD-DVD do region locking too anyway?

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Kenshin]

...but thankfully I don't need Dr. Who the moment it comes out.

BBC's show are outrageously priced on DVD as it is. I can't imagine what they'll cost on Blu-ray.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[daffy951]

Many of the Blu-Ray movies doesn't have any region lock: http://bluray.liesinc.net/

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[in5ane]

I have a Japanese PS3, and there are plenty of UK Blu-Ray discs that won't play in it :( The only thing not region coded on the PS3 are PS3 games, and even then, different regions are treated differently. The US version of Resistance for example plays with no blood whatsoever on my console because it detects the Japanese region, where the blood was cut from the game.

It ain't over till the fat lady sings

[reybrujo]

Gaming sites report that Toshiba hasn't given up yet. I guess they want to deplete their HD-DVD hardware before killing the format.

Its being able to see in our time!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do see one advantage of HDTV sets over the old standard. They're more sutiable for upcoming digital services including the convergence with the internet. The same with all the other new gear.

do blu-ray suffer from the same mold problem

[m1ndrape]

After living down in costa rica and brazil, most of my burnt dvds started suffering from the mold problem. After that I simply gave up on shiny metal discs. Does blu-ray suffer from this as well?

PS3 Success?

[Agent00Wang]

I think that the PS3 is largely responsible for this outcome. I've heard it cited in numerous reports as a major driver of blu ray sales, so even though it's been disastrous otherwise, the PS3 may have actually paid off for Sony in a way most people didn't expect.

Re:PS3 Success?

[MosesJones]

Its an interesting definition of disastrous to say that the biggest selling HD console has been a disaster, and as for the idea that bundling Blu-Ray into the box wasn't a smart move this has been cited from the beginning as a major issue with XBox 360 in that while MS backed the HD-DVD standard they didn't integrate it into the box because of the desire to get the console to market quicker. This led to a market in which one "HD" console has HD level movie content (and similarly large available storage on its gaming disks) and the other has an after point of sale device with no gaming advantage.

Anyone who thinks this wasn't part of the strategic play for Sony and that having the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market won't help PS3 sales is looking at this from a purely gaming perspective.

Wii remains the family console, Sony is now the HD player and the "pretty" graphics console option.

The biggest question is now where this leaves XBox as it is in a real bind as to how quickly they role out a Blu-Ray player extension to stop people buying the PS3 to get Blu-Ray and whether they release a new XBox 360-HD edition that has Blu-Ray baked in.

Re:PS3 Success?

[Gulthek]

I bought a PS3 for its blu-ray capability last week. Movies? Sign me up! Games? All the really good titles are multi-platform and done better on the 360. It's all about the achivements and XBox live. The graphics are the same for both so that point is moot. Unless the PS3 gets a great exclusive (and they're going to have to do better than Resistance, Motorstorm, Rachet and Clank, Heavenly Sword, Uncharted, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma) it's just a movie player to me.

The PS3 needs its own Dead Rising, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxies, or Metroid Prime 3.

Re:PS3 Success?

[Jonathan_S]

Wii remains the family console, Sony is now the HD player and the "pretty" graphics console option.

The biggest question is now where this leaves XBox

Let me clear up that confusion for you. Xbox is the one people actually play games on (especially multiplayer online games).

Re:PS3 Success?

[failedlogic]

I think the answer, for me anyways, on the defining game for the PS3 is Metal Gear Solid 4. Personally, I'm waiting to get a PS3 for MGS4. I don't particularly care for, nor have the time to play games. I've grown fond of MGS series and want to see how it ends.

Truth be told, I could care less for getting a PS3. But I will as a catalyst to upgrading slowly towards HDTV and stereo system. I'll need to do the TV and DVD player anyways as I'm still on a TV and second gen DVD player .... sooner basic cable and renting movies, I think, will be impossible without an HDTV. At least the PS3 is standardized ... I think I still have to be careful to get a good quality fairly standards compliant, expandable HDTV without having to spill major coin.

Re:PS3 Success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox is the one people actually play games on (especially multiplayer online games). Let me clear THIS up for you.

Xbox is the one a colossal mass of 16-23 yr olds jumped ship from the PC to play.

You know it's true. Everything from the ridiculous Halo hype, to the stupidly high attach rate, to the sickeningly high accepted failure rates support this.

Sony's CEO memo, 18-02-2007

[Shohat]

1) Win format war
2) ???!?!?!?!?!
3) Profit
Step 2 is uncharted territory, my friends

Re:Sony's CEO memo, 18-02-2008

[Shohat]

08
Doh =(

Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[segedunum]

With rather an expensive, obsolete drive, lacking in film titles to play and games being produced on a media that now has no economy of scale. Mind you, it should make piracy a bit more difficult!

However, I think it's going to be a long road for BluRay to get to a point where it will move past DVD, and it will take far longer than DVD took to move past VHS. Arguably, DVD only really accelerated in popularity when people realised that they could be copied, the purchase of blank DVD media and DVD writers then accelerated and this accelerated the usage of DVD further. I just can't see that happening with BluRay for quite some time, not to mention that people are confused as to why they should spend more on a BluRay disc than a much cheaper DVD one if they can't really see the difference.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[grumbel]

The Xbox360 doesn't have a HD-DVD drive it has a normal old DVD drive. The HD-DVD is an extra thing that you have to buy and place next to your XBox360, Microsoft will simply release a BluRay extension drive. For games it doesn't matter, since neither is used in games.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[grking]

Where Does This Leave the Xbox? With rather an expensive, obsolete drive, lacking in film titles to play and games being produced on a media that now has no economy of scale

The XBox doesn't have a HD DVD drive built in, games are shipped on DVD. There's an optional external HD DVD drive available for the Xbox.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[pandrijeczko]

However, I think it's going to be a long road for BluRay to get to a point where it will move past DVD, and it will take far longer than DVD took to move past VHS.

I don't think it will ever move past DVD, at least before someone else comes up with another format.

You could definitely see some logic to why DVD beat VHS:

1. Better quality.

2. More resilient format.

3. The inclusion of extra content.

4. Easy use of indexing and chaptering.

Blu-Ray only brings 1. as an improvement to DVD, and even then you're only going to notice a difference with the best quality TV and equipment. This puts Blu-Ray in league with proper hi-fi - it will be a minority for the real enthusiasts only.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[AC5398]

Is funny, except for Pirates of the Caribbean, there's nothing out on Blu-Ray that makes me want to rush out and purchase a unit.

BSG season one on HD-DVD was the reason why I purchased a Toshiba A2, and now that I have the unit, I'm by no means unhappy with it. And from what I hear, it'll be two years before Universal releases any BSG titles to Blu-Ray. Unless some awesome fantastic tv series - *hint* FIREFLY */hint* - gets released to Blu-Ray I'll be a late adopter of the format.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[z0idberg]

rumour has it there is already one on the way.

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Gaming/Console/J7L7H2R4?page=1

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[kidgenius]

Doesn't suprise me. Really, Microsoft would be absolutely stupid if they didn't create an Blu-ray add-on concurrently with the HD-DVD add-on on the off chance that HD-DVD would lose. If that played out, they could then very quickly flip the switches and fill the pipeline with a blu-ray drive.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy is microsoft going to be pissed.

The Xbox360 will be running Java for BD-J. :)

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[DrXym]

If MS were really sharp, they'd produce a new model with Blu Ray built-in. Their lineup is looking distinctly whiffy at the moment and with the PS3 costing less than an Elite they'd better do something quick to revamp the lineup if they want to keep their sales lead in the only territory where they have one over Sony.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[gEvil (beta)]

Unless some awesome fantastic tv series - *hint* FIREFLY */hint* - gets released to Blu-Ray I'll be a late adopter of the format.

IIRC, Firefly was shot on film, which would benefit from an HD release. However, due to budget constraints, the effects were only done at SD resolutions, which may not look so good in HD. I don't have UniversalHD, so I couldn't tell you how good it actually looks--I'm just recalling what I read somewhere.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[SuiteSisterMary]

When you say 'obsolete' drive, are you talking about the built in DVD, which they chose for the data speeds (allowing, for example Devil May Cry 4 to be as fast to load as it is on the PS3, which has a *20+ minute install routine* or are you talking about the external and optional HD-DVD drive?

If HD-DVD truly is no longer being produced, we'll see an external Blu-Ray drive for the 360 before year's end. Knowing Microsoft, it's been ready for mass-production for at least a year.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[segedunum]

The Xbox360 doesn't have a HD-DVD drive it has a normal old DVD drive.

Yer, I did a shit job of explaining what I meant. I assumed that in the future Microsoft would gear the Xbox up to being HD-DVD-centric for films and also games as well, with a lot of Microsoft influenced technology thrown in. Those plans look to have been pretty scuppered now. If they still go with HD-DVD then they're going to need it to do BD as well.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[erroneous]

5. No need to rewind before you could watch it again.

Seriously. That's a big deal.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[HTH NE1]

I'm a bit more concerned that Microsoft may not want to continue to license HDeaDVD support from Toshiba and, with an update, render the platform incapable of playing HD DVDs.

As someone who is taking advantage of the current fire sale on discs, this concerns me.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[pandrijeczko]

Well, if I was being pedantic I could say 4 (Easy Indexing) covered that issue - but I'll give you that one.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[Spyrus]

I don't think it will ever move past DVD, at least before someone else comes up with another format.

You could definitely see some logic to why DVD beat VHS:

1. Better quality.

2. More resilient format.

3. The inclusion of extra content.

4. Easy use of indexing and chaptering.

Blu-Ray only brings 1. as an improvement to DVD, and even then you're only going to notice a difference with the best quality TV and equipment. This puts Blu-Ray in league with proper hi-fi - it will be a minority for the real enthusiasts only.

Actually, Blu-Ray brings more than that. 1. Better quality -- this is a given, and the resolution is significantly higher. Anyone with a new HDTV will notice how blurry standard DVDs look now. 2. Blu-Ray discs are coated with a hard anti-scratch coating that is really really difficult to damage. 3. 2x to 5x the content isn't significant? Blu-Ray discs hold a lot of data. HD video is big, but you can fit a lot of SD on a BD. Also, see #4 ... 4. Seamless branching is a lot more sophisticated on the Blu-Ray format. Check out the new Blade Runner collection for an example -- one disc contains HD versions of 3 different cuts of the film. If we ever get a "definitive" version of the Star Wars movies, it would play best on BD so we could choose whether Greedo shoots first *and* have the cleaned up space battles.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[feepness]

Knowing Microsoft, it's been ready for mass-production for at least a year. Knowing Microsoft, 30% of them will fail after watching your first movie.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Really? I haven't heard a single story about a 360 HD-DVD drive failing.

For Sale

[PinkyDead]

1 HD-DVD Player, never used. Best offer accepted.

(Please...)

Re:For Sale

[TeamSPAM]

Does it support 1080p? I've been tempted to get a HD-DVD player mainly to use as a DVD upconverter. I'll be watching for the HD-A30 to go on clearance.

Re:For Sale

[gEvil (beta)]

Does it support 1080p? I've been tempted to get a HD-DVD player mainly to use as a DVD upconverter. I'll be watching for the HD-A30 to go on clearance.

Newegg put the A20 on sale for $100 a few days ago. They're out of stock, but if they get any more in it's a good deal. However, it's somewhat doubtful that they'll get any more since it's the older model. Doesn't hurt to add your name to the notify list, though.

Re:For Sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Go cry in the rain alone at night. Nobody wants your HD-DVD player.

Re:For Sale

[willbry]

I still wouldn't upgrade to Blu-Ray just yet. Prices will be dropping big time in the next year AND current Blu-Ray players don't support firmware upgrades (except PS3's), rendering them obsolete once the next standard comes out.

I have a huge DVD collection and I'm sticking with my DVD upconverter for now! http://dvdupconvert.wordpress.com/

Re:For Sale

[Wordsmith]

At A30 is oddly bad at 1080p/60 (but just fine at 1080p/24, if you've got a TV that swings it), in a way that suggests a processing screw-up. It handles 1080i just fine, and most reviews recommend setting it to that if your TV does a good job with the deinterlacing. From what I understand, 24fps film content converted properly to 1080p/60 should work out identically to 24fps film content converted first to 1080i/60 then deinterlaced.

Re:For Sale

[CrazyTalk]

I will trade you for my betamax.

Re:For Sale

[PinkyDead]

Throw in your 8-track player and we've got a deal.

If only they gave it to MS for free

[cheekyboy]

I did suggest 18 months ago it only has one chance to survive, if Toshiba gave it away or payed MS to put it inside EACH xbox360 for zero cost, ie $30 overhead.

So instead of loosing $250m 1 year ago, they are loosing it now. Tip for toshiba, if your marketing sucks copy the competitor, asap quickly.

Re:If only they gave it to MS for free

[CmdrGravy]

Whereas with MS keeping it as a seperate peripheral they can easily make and sell another extra peripheral blu-ray drive, and all the people who bought the HD one will have to buy this new one off them as well.

Who says they have won anything yet?

[LingNoi]

They might have beaten HD DVD but they haven't beaten the biggest contender.. DVD.

Re:Who says they have won anything yet?

[ccp]

They might have beaten HD DVD but they haven't beaten the biggest contender.. DVD.

I see this idea here all the time. Haven't you guys realized that Sony couldn't think of killing DVD until AFTER HD-DVD was dead?
Blu Ray adoption will happen at a leisurely pace, mimicking the rate of TV replacement, but will happen all the same. Five to eight years, depending on the duration of the coming recesssion.

Cheers,
CC

Re:Who says they have won anything yet?

[Kjella]

I think that's pretty much all about price... ok, so DVD is good but Blu-Ray is a lot better on a big 1080p screen, it's cheap enough to be in the PS3, it's 25GB worth of storage. Most of all the differences are much larger. I'd love to see some good ABX tests of video feeds, I bet 480p would be picked out quite quickly. In short, Blu-Ray isn't great but I expect it to replace DVD, it's not that tall an order.

Re:Who says they have won anything yet?

[trenien]

How long has blue-ray been out?

Considering the TV renewal rate you state (which I actually don't think is quite that fast for most people except technophiles), that gives plenty of time for a new standard to appear. I seem to remember hearing/readig about a new one with disks going up to about 1 Tbytes.

Of course that's not taking into account such things as download, flash memory (much more convenient to write on), Tivo type recorder and the like.

I doubt blue-ray will enjoy a success anywhere close to that of the DVD, and I'd have said the same thing about HD-DVD

Re:Who says they have won anything yet?

[random0xff]

So true, last year I bought an HD-Ready TV, upscaling DVD player and I have collected 50+ DVD's. This year I plan to buy another 100+ DVD's. I am 100% satisfied with the setup, price and quality. I have no need for Blu-ray.

blu-ray is better on a technical level.

[timmarhy]

This is all that matters to me. the rest can sort itself out over time. twice the storage space is all you need to know.

Re:blu-ray is better on a technical level.

[Constantine XVI]

This is all that matters to me. the rest can sort itself out over time. twice the storage space, region coding, an unstable format, and more restrictive DRM is all you need to know. There, fixed that for you.

Re:blu-ray is better on a technical level.

[Carrot007]

> twice the storage space is all you need to know

2 * 15 = 25?

But yeah BR is the better format despite its many downsides.

Plz send to me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bid $0.01!

There's probably some fun stuff in there to play with after I tear it down!

Too bad I already moderated... Seriously, though, I wouldn't mind opening one up for a peek.

It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[rolfwind]

The real target should have been DVD-R/DVD-RW. With computers are where you can be reasonably sure the monitors on them are HD quality. Being able to write ~50GB instead of 8GB would be the killer app.

VHS sucked. Rewinding/forwarding sucked on VHS (although DRM-crap on DVDs sure is trying to make it hard to sabotage a paying customer's experience with ads/fbi_warning/regioning). It was the same difference between cassette and CDs.

Notice that music didn't move to Music DVDs. It went straight to digital.

If HD-DVD were serious about winning the format wars, they should have tried getting a burner to the market as fast and cheaply as possible. Hi-end computers would have started shipping with them and people with money to burn would be buying HD-DVD that they could rip to their harddrive as well.

Even though I can get a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive, there is absolutely no incentive for me. I'm sure DVDs are good enough for the vast majority of the audience as well for the time being.

If Blu-ray will win for any reason at all, it was because people would have bought PS3 anyway. Otherwise it would have stayed a niche product like Laserdisc.

And DVD would have kept it spot (is keeping its spot) and 5-10 years down the line some digital/internet solution would have been agreed upon by the major studios. Itunes is attempting it already.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[afidel]

LG has a dual format writer that can be had for as cheap as $327. I couldn't find a burner that only supported HD DVD for any cheaper.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that music didn't move to Music DVDs. It went straight to digital.

Music went to digital in the early 80s with the advent of the CD. Perhaps you're looking for a different word here.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[BVis]

Notice that music didn't move to Music DVDs. It went straight to digital.

Leaving aside that a CD is digital, as has been pointed out, I think what you're meaning is that there was no intermediate format between CD and mp3. There were two:

SACD
and
DVD-Audio.

Some albums were also issued in 5.1, which could be played in any DVD player without the need for a player that could do SACD and/or DVD-Audio.

The problem was that 1) nobody had or has ever heard of these formats, because of the utter failure of the publishers to promote the formats, and 2) nobody gives a crap about quality. (Most people can't tell the difference between an mp3 ripped at 128 vs one ripped at 320, or the difference between 480p and 1080i/p.) By the time the players came down in price to around $100 to $200, the format was dead.

I have a player that can use both formats. The sound is fantastic, even on older recordings such as Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours". But you need a player that can read the format, a 5.1 system that's properly set up (I can't tell you how many times I've seen all five speakers just piled in a corner because the owners were so fucking stupid) and speakers good enough to handle the improved sound. Equipment from Wal-Mart won't be good enough for it, so it's dead. TVs are much more of a commodity item, so there's a chance for the economies of scale to allow for improved quality to be available on a wide scale.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, on owning some of the rare SACD's and DVD-Audio discs.

Do you have Laser Discs and MiniDiscs as well?

Why exactly would anyone bother with these obsolete discs.

Fleetwood Mac CD $15 (stereo)
Fleetwood Mac SACD $20 (5.1 audio)
Fleetwood Mac DVD-Audio $20 (5.1 audio)
Fleetwood Mac DVD $15 (5.1 Audio + Video)

Buy the DVD. You can turn of the TV if you just want to listen.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[HTH NE1]

DRM-crap on DVDs sure is trying to make it hard to sabotage a paying customer's experience with ads/fbi_warning/regioning I've been watching Lost season 2 on DVD and have been surprised that while I can chapter-skip past the Buena Vista logo at the start, the warnings about copying and performance can't have anything done to them, not even pause, and the first one goes by far too fast to even read it! I'd have to use a still-store feature in my display to read what I'm not supposed to do with the disc.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[Dogtanian]

Leaving aside that a CD is digital, as has been pointed out, I think what you're meaning is that there was no intermediate format between CD and mp3. There were two: SACD and DVD-Audio. Actually, MP3 has been around since the early-1990s as part of the MPEG-1 standard (MP3="MPEG-1 Layer 3"), and IIRC standalone MP3s first appeared in the mid-90s. I don't know when SACD launched, but DVDA came out in 1999, by which time MP3 had already started to rise to prominence .

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[BVis]

Because they sound good. Better than 5.1 audio.

It's not all about money, you twit. Some of us give a shit about how it sounds and will pay a premium for quality. Just because your ears can't hear the difference (or your brain can't tell), doesn't mean mine can't.

Go listen to Insane Clown Posse or whatever it is you retards listen to.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

you fail at life. if 99.999% (5 nines bitch) of the population cant tell the difference, do you really expect that the format is going to succeed? the reason it failed is the same reason dog shit marinaded in cats piss isn't on the menu at restaurants, people dont want it

Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[rpsoucy]

Seriously.

I like the 360, but I wasn't about to spend the cash on their HD-DVD drive. Release an external BluRay drive and I might go for it.

Of course I think the days of buying movies on disc are almost over; you can rent movies in HD (okay it is only 720) on XBoxLive and iTunes. So you sell your soul to the DRM lords... it's still nice to legally get content online.

Instant gratification must be one of the seven deadly sins...

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[timmarhy]

"only 720p"

seriously i don't get this attitude that it's ONLY 720p. only 2 years ago people would cream their pants over 720p, and now it's somehow defunct?

have people even SEEN a 720p movie on a good tv? it's amazing. and to qualify i HAVE a 1080p 70" inch, and i still select 720p movies over 1080p because of speed of the download and the quality difference is at time not noticable.

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[rpsoucy]

I have a 40" 1080p Samsung LCD and I can clearly see a difference between 1080p and 720p.
I think you need a better TV...

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[bri2000]

Not only is it "only" 720p, it's only 2 channel sound as I discovered (and was disgusted by) after downloading the Matrix to compare to the DVD version. The DVD version - played through a DVD player with HDMI and 1080p upscaler - also won on picture quality in my entirely unscientific and subjective opinion.

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[rucs_hack]

If its viewed as defunct its because the mighty marketing machine is always trying to encourage the continuous upgrade cycle on consumers.

Those who fall for this shite can end up feeling that technology which has only been around for a year is somehow old and unworthy of further use.

It's insane, but its a consequence of the free market economy, which has no interest in stable, unchanging technology that just gets more reliable, rather than undergoing frequent shifts into 'the next best thing'.

Open source software vs proprietary is a good comparison. How long has Vi been around? It's great, but hasn't changed much. We like it, we use it, no problems. But look at Ultra-Edit. Another nice text editor. I've lost count of how many upgrades and versions of that there have been.

I'm not dissing the creator of ultra-edit one bit, I used to be a huge fan of it. He suffers from the same problem as other products that require ever increasing sales to survive, he has to change and add more and more features, or his product will become 'old' and rubbish, even though its new compared to Vi.

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[CavemanKiwi]

Perhaps you are the one that needs the better TV as your scalar is bad? To be honest I too have a 1080p Samsung and on my set I can tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, ESPN, Local ABC and the local Fox Channel are all 720p. Text and close ups are where it is most noticeable it just seems like it is a little blurry and not quite as crisp. Although during a good movie I probably wouldn't notice as I would be absorbed by the movie.

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[benzapp]

I don't even know where you can buy a 70" screen. The largest I have seen are 65". That said, you expect us to believe you spent $7 to $10,000 on a television, and you're happy with lower resolution images?

I live in a NYC apartment and 50" is about all I can reasonably fit in my place. I spent a lot of money on my system, and let me tell you - I want the BEST. I can see a difference in the resolution, but I can also hear the difference with compressed audio.

Why bother spending money on a high end setup if you aren't going to have the opportunity to appreciate it?

I see a lot of these posts on these sites, and I strongly suspect they are written by poor kids/students who just haven't actually seen this technology in action and enjoy pretending that it doesn't matter. Is it an ego thing? Does it really bother you that you can't participate in this orgy of high def because of your limited earnings? Does it really make you feel better about yourself?

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[earlymon]

I think the guy was saying that 720p shouldn't be treated as crap, as common marketing would have us do.

Now, I'm curious - not slagging at all, sincerely curious. What common sources are you using for your comparison? Rilly high quality OTA (not cable or DirecTV) 720p broadcast vs. BD, for example? I'm assuming ahead of time that you know about format lying by the majors in the industry - so - what sources show the big difference?

Many thanks.

Err.

[Xenex]

Yes.

acronym is BD

[draxredd]

Big Disc soon to be the backronyme to Bluray Discs.

Re:acronym is BD

[somersault]

Please don't start with the craziness again! Aren't blue lasers the best for accuracy/data density at the moment? We want to just keep it blu-ray disc for now, otherwise we'll end up with Big Disk, Very Big Disc, Amazingly Big Disk, Ultimate Big Disk and such. I say enough it's time to end all the disc waving!

Re:acronym is BD

[HTH NE1]

Aren't blue lasers the best for accuracy/data density at the moment? They could have gone with UV-ray had there not been that connection with skin cancer.

BD-R Prices

[TrevorB]

The only thing I care about is the cost of BD-R (Blue Ray Writable). We've been waiting a very long time for a replacement for DVD-Rs, and DVD-R9 at decent write speeds are only now becoming both affordable and practical (compared to DVD-R5).

I figure my BD-R threshold is about $5 per disk. Presently they seem to be going for $15-$22 per disk. I'll be willing to buy a BD-R reader/burner when 25GB single layer BD-R's are at $5, which interestingly is the price of CD-Rs when I finally decided to make the switch from floppies in 1996. That was a 450 fold increase in media size. CD-R to DVD-R was a 6 fold increase. I'll be content with another 6 fold increase.

Hopefully BD/BD-R support for MythTV will be available by then.

Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger

[The13thSin]

The current 18 board members (as of January 2008) are:

• Apple Inc.
• Dell Inc.
• Hewlett-Packard Company
• Hitachi, Ltd.
• LG Electronics
• Mitsubishi Electric
• Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
• Pioneer Corporation
• Royal Philips Electronics
• Samsung Electronics
• Sharp Corporation
• Sony Corporation
• Sun Microsystems
• TDK Corporation
• Thomson SA
• Twentieth Century Fox
• Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
• Warner Home Video Inc.

Like the PS2 was one of the biggest DVD players in the beginning, the PS3 will be the biggest Blu-ray player... that is untill in 1 1/2 year a $100 Samsung / LG profile 2.0 Blu-ray comes on the market.

Re:Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger

[XxtraLarGe]

Noticeably absent from that list: MICROSOFT :-D

I think a standard format will be good for consumers, and it's nice to see Sony win one for a change. They've been on the losing end on many formats (Beta, DAT, MemoryStick, UMD, etc.). I know Sony's not much better than Microsoft, but this helps to keep the giants slugging it out and gives the PS3 a leg up.

Re:Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger

[Miamicanes]

> I know Sony's not much better than Microsoft

Microsoft shows us daily that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Sony, by contrast, is just plain evil. ;-)

Re:Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger

[the eric conspiracy]

I think it is pretty well established that Microsoft is a good-intention free zone.

nearly obsolete

[OrangeTide]

I think both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD lost the format wars in the long term. And neither format has taken into account the new world order for media distribution that is quickly coming upon us. No doubt putting a high-def format on the shelves will make some people a whole lot of money for the new few years. But I have my doubts Blu-ray will grow and endure over the next decade like DVD did for the last decade.

I want to see a jump like 1.44M floppy to 650M CD. Not a relatively insignificant increase from 8.5G to 50G. Movies still need lossy compression to fit on Blu-ray. I figure you would need around 1T-10T media to encode high def video loss-less. And it is something that I suspect we will see shortly.

Yet I also believe that the age of buying physical media to obtain content is in its twilight hours, and the age of video-on-demand and downloadable content will quickly overtake the traditional retail channels.

Re:nearly obsolete

[Overzeetop]

I tend to disagree. B&M sales will remain strong for quite a long time. Partly because there is something permanent to the physical product, but mostly because broadband simply isn't capable of sustaining the on-demand bandwidth in 98% of the US. In fact, I would bet a dollar that more than 80% of the area of the US has sustained maximum home internet speeds of less than 3Mb/s for the length of a movie - and that's not even enough to stream a DVD, much less an HD disc. Worse, that's not going to change soon. Oh, sure, there are some places which will have that speed, but for most of the country it's just a pipe dream.

I get about 2.5TB for a 2 hour movie with deep color, provided that there's no error correction. Unless there's some breakthrough technology that we haven't heard of, it will be a decade before we have that kind of capacity in a disc format. Given the apparent slow down in HD sizes, it may still be three years before we see a multi-platter consumer drive with that much storage.

Re:nearly obsolete

[OrangeTide]

for reference here are the two I tried:

1080p @ 60fps using RGB 16-bit floats:
1920 pixels/line * 1080 lines/frame * 3 components/pixel * 2 bytes/component * 60frames/sec
= 746496000 bytes/second (712MiB/sec)

4096 pixels/line * 2160 lines/frame * 3 components/pixel * 1 byte/component * 30frames/sec
= 796262400 bytes/second (759MiB/sec)

For a 120 minutes I get 4.8TiB. I chose 180 minute which gives you 90-120 minutes plus some extra content and I got 7.3TiB.

obviously you could do something crazy like 4K@60fps,48bpp or something low-end like HD@30fps,24bpp to shift the size either way by a factor of four.

Also I completely ignored audio or the possibility of lossless video compression. I think compressed video/audio will always be the dominate format for online use. Bandwidth is just too costly to waste for the ever so slight improvement of detail. But as media sizes balloon we will quickly be able to justify those sizes with less compression and higher detail.

I really don't see much point for anything beyond 4K video for the kind of TV/projector you could fit in a normal home. So filling a 1TB+ disc becomes a problem unless you use the space to rid yourself of compression artifacts instead of cranking up the number of lines.

Obl. comment

[Anonymous Coward]

So a major player has ended a format war. And it's posted on the front page of /. ?!?!? And this is news how?

(Revised) I see a real news story made it pass the editors :-)

Fail...

[sgant]

So there should be two formats or even more out in the world to give a choice for consumers? A choice to not buy either until one format wins so they don't get left with obsolete hardware where nothing new is going to be released on?

How about this, every studio comes up with their own format! That way, there's tons of choices for the consumer! Want to watch a Univeral or Paramount movie? You have to buy a special player to play their formats. Think of the possibilities! Think of the competition! Think of the illegal downloads because no one would want to put up with that bullshit!

I think your analogy needs work.

Re:Fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds very much like gaming systems, except you have to find a decent emulator for your downloads or they're worthless too.

(pointless self-congratulations)

[rilister]

This makes up for all the times I've been wrong! 2 years ago...

"i think people are a little confused about what Sony are trying to achieve with the PS3. Sure, it's going to be up against the Wii and XB360, but I'm guessing that's a secondary concern to Mr Stringer.

The PS2 sold 105million units. Let's say the PS3 is a disaster - how bad could it be? 50million? 25million?

Those are all Blu-ray devices. At least an installed base of 25million Blu-ray players sold in a few years time. Versus how many HD-DVD players? How can HD-DVD compete with that kind of a headstart?

Owning the next-gen DVD format is the prize here. HD-DVD is only 33% ahead of Blu-ray today, before the PS3 even hits the market. I think that's more precious to Sony than losing a bit of ground to Microsoft. Maybe they calculated on losing gaming market share this time round."

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206006&cid=16798816

I thank you!

Re:(pointless self-congratulations)

[bs7rphb]

As there's no '-1 Annoyingly Smug'...

Sage?

Re:(pointless self-congratulations)

[Anonymous Coward]

oh fuck off you twat. congratulations, you correctly called a coin flip. what sycophant modded this narcissistic masturbation interesting?

PCMCIA

[smittyoneeach]

People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.

Re:PCMCIA

[Monty_Lovering]

Everything has been downhill since TWAIN;

T.echnology W.ithout A.n I.nteresting N.ame

Now THEM were the days...

Re:PCMCIA

[Anonymous Coward]

T.echnology W.ithout A.n I.nteresting N.ame

W.e w.ould h.ave g.otten i.t e.ven w.ithout t.he a.nnoying p.eriods.

Re:PCMCIA

[BrunoUsesBBEdit]

HA! A non-mod +1 to you!

Re:PCMCIA

[VoltageX]

Or the best example of computer acronyms gone wrong: Technology Without An Interesting Name

Re:PCMCIA

[rainhill]

This one is even better: WYSIWYG ;)

Re:PCMCIA

[smittyoneeach]

This one is not: QWERTY.

Re:PCMCIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I guess it is now called CardBus.
Firewire is another nice one. If you are Sony however, you call it iLink so you don't have to pay apple any royalties. Either way it's still IEEE1394.
Although all through the early Nineties I thought USB meant "Unsupported Serial Bus" as you couldn't find any devices that used it and no PC came with it as standard. Firewire was faster, so nearly all video gear used it over USB, and every Mac had a firewire port.

Blu-Ray != Sony

[jean-guy69]

While Sony did invest much to make BR a success, many other companies like Panasonic and Philips worked together to create Blu-ray and perceive royalties.

And what about AVC, VC-1, Dolby TrueHD etc..

Here is the Blu-Ray association board of directors:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment

Not yet dead!

[silanea]

German IT news site Heise.de brings good news to all the format war fans:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/103678

Impromptu translation:

Toshiba contradicts reports about hd-dvd hardware production stop
Toshiba in a short release on its japanese website has contradicted the report carried by Reuters and Japanese tv station NHK on the weekend which claims that the company has ceased production of hd-dvd players and recorders. The company currently reconsiders its business strategies, no decision has been made so far, the company says. [...]

Sorry for the rather clumsy translation, I just got out of bed.

Thanks for the misinformation Sony fanboy

[Comboman]

Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.

So what? Macs have better success in desktop publishing than PCs, that doesn't change that fact that 90%+ of all computers are PCs.

Mini-disc became Mini-HD

And no one but Sony uses either of them.

Memory stick is still being used.

by Sony products. Face it, Sony has a poor track record for format introductions. Want some more examples?

DAT (digital audio tape)

"Universal" Media Disc (UMD)

Super Audio CD (SACD)

ATRAC

Re:Thanks for the misinformation Sony fanboy

[metamatic]

How could you forget Elcaset?

Re:Thanks for the misinformation Sony fanboy

[SeaFox]

Mini-disc became Mini-HD
And no one but Sony uses either of them.

Actually there were other companies besides Sony that made Minidisc players. Sharp and Panasonic to name two. I also recall a Kenwood brand car deck.

At least in the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

the PS3 is permanent in 3rd place status right now in the U.S.

Yes, I have one, but then, I have one of every console. The PS3 suffers from lack of games, still. The Wii is finally getting some games worth watching. And for my teenage son (and his friends), the XBox360 is the console to have and play. It has the titles, the price is better than the PS3, it is readily available, it has a massive collection of games (and enough backwards compatibility to play old favorites).

But Xbox Live is the killer enabler on the Xbox. One low monthly price, full access to the network for every game you own.

Despite the usual cast of people claiming the 360 loses money, I don't believe it for an instant. Microsoft is cleaning up right now. They made exactly the right decision with their optical disk selection (as did the Wii).

Betamax wins!

[Zebra_X]

Back in the day, beta was the superior format - at least from a quality perspective. VHS won out because... we'll I don't really know - I was too young.

I own an HD-DVD player - but the Blue-Ray *disk* format is superior and more extensible than the HD-DVD disk. Blue-ray will increase in capacity with time, as it was designed to do. HD-DVD didn't really have this in mind it was for the most part, easier to implement and designed specifically for carrying HD video content. Blue-ray carries with it an entire execution environment within the player - one of the reasons for the difficulty that vendors have had complying with the specification.

Note that the disk format has nothing at all to do with the content format. Almost all HD-DVD's contain SMPTE VC-1 content, but there is a mix of VC-1 and H.264 within Blue-ray disks. Blue-ray and hd-dvd are capable of playing other stream types.

The "Blue-ray" logo really represents just a particular disk format and a player that has a certain set of capabilities.

Glad to see the non-noob tech prevail.

Re:Betamax wins!

[Bo0bMeIsTeR]

Regardless of Blu-Ray being the technically superior format, HD-DVD was a superior format for customers. I have never once had an issue with my HD-DVD player. However, on the other hand, I have had to update my firmware on my Blu-Ray a few times, had some playback issues with a couple movies, etc etc. Blu-Ray is not a finalized specification, on the other hand HD-DVD for the most part was. HD-DVD beat Blu-Ray into production so Blu-Ray was released as a partly unfinished spec. The consumer cannot always just pop in a video and go with Blu-Ray. So this is not necessarily the best of news. Once again marketing made something seem better then it actually may or may not be.

Re:Betamax wins!

[Citizen of Earth]

VHS won out because...

...you could record two hours of video on one tape instead of betamax's one.

Re:Betamax wins!

[19Buck]

While longer recording time WAS one noted reason, it sacrificed quality to do so. Beta was superior in image quality, but consumers didn't care. the longer recording time was perceived as being of more value. The primary reason was that JVC chose to give the standard away. Wider availability at a cheaper price is what won them the consumer market. However, Sony and Beta completely owned the professional market.

Re:Betamax wins!

[RightSaidFred99]

Actually, you do know both HDDVD and BluRay had plenty of space? And that in general the HDDVD releases had more (useless, IMO) extra content? VHS was actually the superior format, don't let people convince you otherwise. It was better in most areas, and only inferior in a limited way in terms of video quality.

Also, HDDVD has a lot of H264 content, and again BluRay's extra space was useless. The only good thing about BluRay winning is that the war is over finally. It was generally inferior in most of the metrics important to me - e.g. ease-of-archiving, simplicity. C'est la vie.

Re:Betamax wins!

[Zebra_X]

Yeah, they were both insanely big - Blue-ray more so though. I bought the HD player because i knew it would work, and i didn't feel BR was ready for prime time. Sadly, the war is over and it's still a little broken. I'm just glad VC-1 will live on...

'Bout time

[stewbacca]

Now that the "war" is over, can I get just a "little" bit of content for Blu-Ray rentals? I was in one of the major chains this weekend, and they had more PS3 games based on movies than they did Blu-ray rental titles! I can PLAY (insert name of recent blockbuster flop) on PS3, but I can't watch it in high definition yet?

Re:'Bout time

[dxjnorto]

Get Netflix. You can set up your account so that whenever a movie you want to watch is available in Blu-ray you get Blu-ray instead of DVD.

And it's denied already

[bluescreenbert]

Toshiba, not surprisingly denies that this move is decided already: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/ir/en/news/20080218_01.htm

See you next week on Slashdot's "HD-DVD is dead" discussion.

and ISDN

[kybred]

My favorite:

ISDN: It Still Does Nothing.

Re:and ISDN

[kryptkpr]

Don't forget TWAIN: Technology Without An Interesting Name

Re:and ISDN

[HTH NE1]

It was also intended that SCSI be pronounced "sexy".

Re:and ISDN

[Citizen of Earth]

I'd give her my hard drive, but her box is SCSI.

Re:and ISDN

[Blkdeath]

It was also intended that SCSI be pronounced "sexy".

Seriously? I'd never seen that possibility until just now. "Scuzzy" always seemed so natural. Even though it's not.

HD TV Still On The Sidelines

[Hangtime]

I refused to get in the middle of HD DVD vs. BluRay and refuse to catch BluRay now that this supposed war is over. The BluRay format has bounced around like a damn super ball and No I am not buying a Playstation 3 for the purposes of watching movies. I want a machine that will remove my need for my upconverting DVD player and above all else the format and player are solid, finished, and done. Versioned software 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 is good. Versioned hardware is bad. Somebody wake me when Sony is tired of tinkering and actually settles on the final standard. No, having new features become available for new hardware isn't an option all it does is screw the original purchasers (take a look at 1.0 spec players).

Re:HD TV Still On The Sidelines

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that you don't want to buy a PS3... but the PS3's are the same price as the cheapest BR player, has upgradable firmware for new BR profiles, will upconvert your current DVD to near-HD, can play your media(such as MP3's) from your computer over the network, and will play games. You honestly get more bang for your buck with a PS3.

pet peeving

[ImTheDarkcyde]

Is anyone else getting sick of these "x TO x" stories?

My problem is not the story format itsself, as much as it is the title insisting something will happen, while the article is just speculating and rarely fact. Microsoft To Buy Yahoo. Yeah- that happened. (yeah, it was a real story, but "Microsoft Makes Yahoo an Offer" would be more accurate.)

As for the article, as an unfortunate HD-DVD player owner I look forward to the soon-to-be clearance titles I will be adding to my library.

Re:pet peeving

[Boogaroo]

Is anyone else getting sick of these "x TO x" stories?

They must have heard you. This is in the Firehose!
Headline: Slashdot to Stop Making "Noun 'to' Verb" stories.

This is why I wait

[Daloten]

I have never been interested in being an "early adopter" of any product and this is a good example of why. I already have a standard DVD player and recorder and both of those are great improvements over the VHS players they replaced. My old fashioned TVs wouldn't show me any improvement with a HD format anyway, so when I get a HD TV set, maybe then (maybe) I'll buy yet another friggin' piece of hardware that will be made obsolete in 3-4 years. In any event, I'd rather read a good book than watch what passes for entertainment on TV.

Now How About The TVs?

[blueZhift]

There's been a lot of comment about how ultimately downloads will make the physical format irrelevant. I still agree with that for the most part, but now that the HD format war appears to be over the next thing that comes to mind are the TVs. Even if I wanted to run out right now and buy a Blu-ray player, it'd be a waste of money without an HDTV to go with it. HDTVs are still too expensive in my book, so I'll be waiting a bit longer. Hopefully we'll see some nicely priced bundles in the near future designed to get people off the fence.

Slow down there Sony hater

[RedK]

How about these successful standards :

Compact Disc : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc

3.5" Floppy : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#New_3.0-3.5.22_formats

Betacam : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam

And Mini-disc is very popular in Asia. Just because it failed in your small part of the world doesn't mean it didn't take off somewhere where there's an actual population bassin.

It's funny how people always bash Sony for even trying to bring new stuff out to market.

Re:Slow down there Sony hater

[Just Some Guy]

Compact Disc

Co-developed.

3.5" Floppy

Dead.

Betacam

Dead outside a very niche market.

And Mini-disc is very popular in Asia.

Just because it's popular in your small part of the world doesn't mean it wasn't a market failure.

Re:Slow down there Sony hater

[toriver]

Co-developed.

Ooh, just like Blu-Ray, then. "The Blu-ray format was developed jointly by Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson, Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer and Philips, Mistubishi and LG Electronics."

Next you are going to say DVD must also be dead since Sony were part of the consortium that made that standard?

Dead.

But dominant when people actually used floppies. You are really reaching, you know: you are trying to make it sound like a dominant medium was a "failure" just because it's "dead" now that recordable media have moved on.

Dead outside a very niche market.

Ooh! Why don't you say Ferraris are "dead outside a very niche market" next? A niche-by-nature product is NOT dead if it dominates its intended niche!

Just because it's popular in your small part of the world doesn't mean it wasn't a market failure.

Ooh, a technology fails to become dominant and instead finds a niche you don't belong to, and it is a failure! "Look at my pretty belly-button!"

Go cry in the corner over Toshiba's dead monopoly.

Re:Slow down there Sony hater

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how people always bash Sony for even trying to bring crap stuff out to market.

I think you misspelled a word so i fixed it for you.

General data storage?

[ThirdPrize]

Will this kill HD-DVD as a data storage medium for PCs as well?

Disks vs Files

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone remind me again why we need shiny little disks?

Re:Disks vs Files

[TeknoHog]

Have you ever opened a hard drive case? Mmmm, shiny disks. Where did you say you store your files?

Re:Disks vs Files

[aristotle-dude]

As others have noted, the platters in your hard drive are shiny and the movies are stored as files on these shiny discs in Blu-ray format.

Are you talking technology

[blueZ3]

or the 2008 elections?

Re:Are you talking technology

[PrescriptionWarning]

certainly there are plenty of similarities between the choice of which HD movie disc is best and which president would have been a better choice in the 2004 elections. Hopefully the 2008 elections will show two candidates who are worth voting for.

And in other news....

[cjjjer]

Sony pays millions of dollars in favors and kickbacks to various large consumer businesses to sell blue-ray exclusively. News at 11:00.

Re:And in other news....

[demon]

As opposed to Toshiba slipping Paramount $100 million to get them to back HD-DVD? I don't particularly like it, but don't pretend that Toshiba is immune to such payola strategies - both sides do it, so trying to use that to say "hurr bluray r teh sucx they had to pay to make it popular" is rather disingenuous.

Apple has struggles with this

[BrunoUsesBBEdit]

There are lots of great 3rd party FTP clients for the Mac. Apple has been pretty respectful of the market over the years.

But, that's not always the case. See Konfabulator.

Hmmm

[PenguinGuy]

Strangely enough, the fact that there is now only one High Def DVD format doesn't make me want to buy it? Why? Oh I know, I don't have the HDTV or the audio system or any High Def DVDs so it would be pointless for me to buy any of it...

Maybe in a few years...

blu-ray == region coding?

[Adam J. Richter]

Wikipedia claims "Blu-ray discs may be encoded with a region code" and "There is no Region Coding in the existing HD DVD specification", although these web pages indicate that both formats usually carry digital restrictions management and there are only three blu-ray regions currently defined.

Who's Ray, and why is everyone blowing him?

[Dogtanian]

Blu-Ray is so much easier on the tongue than a mouthful of acronym(s). "Blu-Ray" sounds like a reference to fellatio. So some might argue that it's still not so "easy on the tongue", and quite a "mouthful" in a very different sense :-O

Re:Who's Ray, and why is everyone blowing him?

[benzapp]

You obviously suck way too much dick.

Seriously, I really have no idea how the hell you relate the words Blue and Ray with any kind of sexual activity.

Re:Who's Ray, and why is everyone blowing him?

[Dogtanian]

You obviously suck way too much dick. Answer 1) You're pretty objectionable yourself Ben, and my name's not Dick.

Alternate Answer 2) Whereas you suck just the right amount, right? Quit projecting neuroses about your sexual habits onto me, you weirdo.

Seriously, I really have no idea how the hell you relate the words Blue and Ray with any kind of sexual activity. Here's the extremely convoluted and difficult-to-understand wordplay that led me to this conclusion:-

"Blu-Ray" sounds like "Blew Ray".

Uh... that's it. Though it's probably still a little too complicated for you to understand.

AACS not mandatory for HD-DVD

[Ivlis]

According to SlySoft,
HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no region coding, AACS not mandatory).

Great...

[EmagGeek]

This sucks. I like my HD-DVD player much better than my BluRay player. On the BRD player, it takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes just to power up, open the tray, close the tray with a disc in it, and finally load up and get to the main menu. Then, it's another 5 minutes or so before the movie starts, and that is iff there are no mantatory previews for 3 year old movies on it.

It takes less than 2 minutes to get to the movie from PowerOff on the HD-DVD player.

Re:Great...

[ToasterMonkey]

I hope you got a hell of a deal on that standalone BRD player... My PS3 wakes up and loads/ejects a disc in 2 or 3 seconds. The movie starts in 25 seconds. That's powered off, shoving a disc in, waking up automatically, loading it, and playing movie with auto-start on. No auto-start would take a few extra seconds to navigate the menu manually.

On the other hand, I hope you got a hell of a good deal on that HD-DVD player also, because 2 minutes really sucks.

your comment != insightful

[perdue]

standard != monopoly

competition != format war

Drama queen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the drama. Are the profile changes really all that great?

No I am not buying a Playstation 3 for the purposes of watching movies. Any particular reason?

Somebody wake me when Sony is tired of tinkering Quit being a bitch, the newer profiles incrementally add features HD-DVD had over BR. Now HD-DVD is dead, and you're all fussy about it.

Really, stop being a big douche bag for a minute. Are the original purchasers of standalone BRD players really "screwed"? Pah-lease, fucktard.

I must be "screwed" too because this years model of my car has +10 HP. Pansy.

Helical scan

[DragonHawk]

An even smaller percentage know that it actually stands for "Vertical Helical Scan," a technical acronym which describes the physical tape format and transport. I believe "helical scan" (used in VHS) is not vertical but diagonal. The read/write heads are at a diagonal to the tape, and spin to bring new sections of the tape under the heads more quickly. Hence "helical", meaning spiral. So why would "VHS" stand for something it isn't?

Better standards next time

[Anonymous Coward]

Try comparing it in some ways to the way HTML is handled in the market. There's a standard but browsers are engineered to tolerate coders who don't closely follow the standard. Now look at how much attention standards are getting that people realize what the hidden headaches not following the standards were.

Re:Freedom in our lifetime!

[sqrt(2)]

Sorry that you got modded offtopic; should have put that part after the relevant comment about HD-DVD.

I in fact know a great deal about what libertarianism is, and what it is not. I have been around the apologists and the critics and found reason and logic to be only in the minds of the latter. Libertarianism is NOT the only (or best, or even a feasible) solution to the problems of overspending, wasteful spending, and warmongering. Many people inside the Democratic party feel very strongly about these issues too, as well as several things you lumped into the concept of "mommy government". For instance, I advocate drastically reducing the size of the active military by at least 50% (based on dollars not personnel) this would free up a huge amount of money for social (no, I'm not afraid of that word, or socialism. It's not a pejorative no matter how hard the right tries to make it sound like one) welfare programs AND make it impossible for us to even start wars of aggression in the first place. Don't think for a second that the LP has a monopoly on peace.

But that's besides the point. Libertarianism is a self-serving, self-interested, selfish ideology for individuals with the political minds of teenagers who have absolutely no concept of responsibility or empathy. In short, they want to smash and grab as much as they can and then take it all home. But you can't do that in modern society without rewriting all the rules and obliterating the social contract that CREATED the country. In the same breath libertarianism legitimizes the very thing it attempts to denounce. It is closer to Fascism, or Corporatism, than it is to any ideology that uses the term "liberty" to define itself.

I would point you to this website for further reading on the subject, specifically the section titled "Exercises and contact".

You also might be interested in reading a piece that is linked to from that site titled, I'm Still Not a Libertarian.

Re:Freedom in our lifetime!

[flajann]

As a long-standing Libertarian myself, and NOT a teenager (I am 46), I will have to strongly differ with you. I would not consider myself nor most of my libertarian friends "self-serving" or anything of the sort. However, many of us are simply tired of being harassed by the police, the IRS, the child "protective" services, and on and on, when we've done nothing wrong. We've not harmed anyone, we've not acted irresponsibly, we do not put people in danger or jeopardy, and many of us -- myself included -- actually do things to enhance the community at large positively.

So it makes me angry to see us slammed as "selfish" and "self-serving" when all we want is freedom not only for ourselves, but everyone.

But I guess freedom is becoming a pejorative in these days and times.

Also, I never claimed that Democrats don't care about freedom, especially since I know they do first hand. Indeed, myself and a libertarian friend of mine founded a local peace group, NashuaPeace.org, which we handed off to those more of a Democratic bent to carry forth the candle.

I and other fellow libertarians have done much in our local area to promote peace and freedom and prosperity, so I take strong offense at anyone who would dare suggest we are "self-serving" or "selfish". I personally have put a lot of effort into helping others in the local community, libertarians and non-libertarians alike, atheist and non-atheist alike, etc.

We hackers hated it when the media came in and turned our name into a pejorative -- are you now to do the same to Libertarianism?

Re:Freedom in our lifetime!

[sqrt(2)]

I have no qualms about calling something what it is.

"being harassed by the police, the IRS, the child "protective" services" is not part of the political philosophy of ANY party, they are problems. We agree that these are problems. Anarchy however (Which libertarianism is a form of), isn't the solution.

What I hear from Libertarians is that people should be allowed as much freedom to succeed as possible, and government activity (of any kind) can act only to restrict that freedom. The other side of that statement is that someone should be free to fail, to starve, to die. I reject the notion that those are freedoms. Someone with the freedom to starve to death is not more free than someone who collects money from the government, as this person can now buy food. Heartless, isn't it, that government dependence? Moreover, Libertarian ideology not only says that it's OK for this to happen, but that it's the RIGHT outcome because it was the result of a pure and perfect system. Again, I reject that notion outright.

If we transformed overnight into a Libertarian society, the people who would do the best are the ones who are ALREADY doing the best. So of course it ends up being THOSE people who want to see such reform. That is why I call it self-serving. And no amount of charity work, although noble an endeavor in itself, will correct that error.

Too bad

[Chuzpah]

Even though I knew in my heart that HD DVD was doomed I bought one anyway and I'm glad I did! I got an upconverting DVD player and 7 free movies for $129.00 plus tax, not a bad deal when you think about it. I have been picking up a lot of HD DVD movies for as low as $15. I just hope that Toshiba supports the player for at least a year!

This decision makes no sense

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

I'm not sure something that can be (and frequently is) pronounced 'Blurry' is a great name for an HD format either... You're joking of course, but I don't think the real truth is much less arbitrary... http://manwhoknowsthemac.blogspot.com/2008/02/suddenly-everybody-loves-blu-ray.html

Re:Freedom in our lifetime!

[flajann]

Well, we can go back and forth forever over semantics and the definition of words, and totally miss the point.

1. The problems of government cannot be ignored. In Libertarianism, government has a specific function -- basically, to protect us from each other and to protect the country in general from external aggressors. Outside of that, government should but out of our private lives as long as we are not harming anyone against their will.
2. Yes, I agree, a transition to complete libertarianism overnight would be disastrous for many, but that is not what I am proposing. It would not be any more successful than what the US is doing trying to ram "democracy" down the throats of countries that have never known democracy.
3. Central to success of Libertarianism is self responsibility. You have to agree that if everyone -- or at least a good majority -- acts responsibly in all things, you'd need far less government than you have today.
4. Another problem with government is it is next to impossible to eliminate a department/ministry/agency once its instituted and firmly entrenched, even if the need for it goes away. Like a cancer, government has this annoying tendency to grow and grow without bound. And if you've been paying attention, the US government is probably the worst offender with regards to growing new departments, agencies, and bureaucracies without bound. Not to mention the quality of service goes downhill because the extract tax dollars from you and I at gunpoint.
5. Libertarianism is not anarchy. It is a minimalist approach to government, not the complete elimination of it. There's a huge difference, and there are those who wish to scare you by trying desperately to muddy up the waters on the distinction.
6. We are all essentially selfish creatures, and we are motivated best by selfish reasons. In all actions that humans choose to do there is always an underlying selfish component, even if it's nothing more than the satisfaction of helping your fellow humans. I freely admit this is what motivates me to help others.
7. Many fear change and wish to cling to the status quo, because they cannot imagine the alternative. There is a better way, but the better way will never see the light of day because the rank-and-file will fight against it out of fear, clinging even stronger to the status quo, and thus nothing will ever be accomplished.

I propose a solution that I need to work out the details on, but basically it has to do with ending geographic monopolies current governments exerts over us. We must have the freedom to choose association and alligence without having to change our geography. This is a very dangerous idea because nearly all current governments will rail against the notion, but think for a moment of the advantages:

1. Wars would become infeasible because your own citizens may be living in the land.
2. Governments would have to actually compete for our citizenship. Think of how much would improve!
3. Governments all over would have to think more business-like and trim down their bureaucracies to run smoothly and efficiently. No excuses.
4. If you don't like any of the existing governments, you can always start your own. Or even be stateless.
5. If a government is misbehaving, simply disassociate without having to move anywhere.

Poverty and the Poor

To address your -- and mine as well -- concerns about the poor and poverty in general, one must look at the root cause of such. Basically, the root problem lies in the very real fact that it is nearly impossible to do subsistence living these days. Everything you own is taxed to death, and even your real estate is taxed annually even after you've paid off the loan. This forces you either to continue to work or secure an income by other means, or to be homeless. The elderly are kicked out of the very homes they've spent a lifetime in for no other reason than not being able to pay the ever-increasing property tax. Is that fair? And wh