Toshiba Paid Off To Drop HD-DVD?

TripleP writes "Was Toshiba paid-off to concede the HD battle? There are some signs that may point to this as a direct result of the ended format war. Reuters has reported that Sony has agreed to sell its Cell and RSX fabrication plants in Japan to Toshiba. The WSJ is reporting that is is a joint venture in the form of 60% Toshiba,%20 Sony and %20 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc."

Comments

Who cares

[CastrTroy]

Who really cares. At least the war is over. I was tired of the format war. Neither format really had a real reason to choose one over the other. They were both pretty evenly matched. I just hope that they don't try to kill off DVD now. I'm perfectly happy with DVD, and don't feel like spending more money just to watch movies.

Re:Who cares

[PhrostyMcByte]

Blu-ray has higher storage and (I think) slightly more DRM, while HD-DVD has no region codes. I'm sure a lot of people won't be affected by region codes, but those of us who get international stuff would have prefered HD-DVD.

Re:Who cares

[CastrTroy]

Actually, the latest 3 layer HD-DVD had 51 GB, which is just ahead of BluRay. I'm not sure if any players ever supported 3-layer, but from what I know, they actually had it working. Both formats had pluses and minuses. I don't think either player had a really compelling reason to buy one over the other.

Re:Who cares

[Luthair]

I imagine people who bought the HD-DVD players are none too pleased. I wonder if they would have any recourse in a situation where the manufacturer was paid to pull out.

Re:Who cares

[CastrTroy]

They knew it was risk when they bought the player. Even without buyout, it was inevitable that one of the formats would lose out.

Re:Who cares

[Gr8Apes]

BD requires AACS and ROM-Mark, IIRC. BD players won't play home burned disks, only commercially pressed ones, due to the Rom-Mark and AACS requirements. BD has region codes. BD lacks (still) many of the features already present in HD DVD. BD also costs about twice as much, even before the firesales. And last but not least, BD has BD+, essentially a back-door into your player that can brick it if some content provider's BD+ code decides your player doesn't match up with their expectations.

To be fair, BD also had more space. (Yes, had, the proposed 51GB triple layer HD DVDs evened that score as well, even though BD could have layered one more on top of that, but that's a never ending game of one-upmanship.

Re:Who cares

[phoenixwade]

Neither format really had a real reason to choose one over the other. Oh, I dunno - sounds like Warner had about 400 million reasons that blu-ray was better... And, at least on paper, It's a better format, more capacity and faster....

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Was HD-DVD really planned to stay region free? I read that region coding was being discussed, at least.

Anyway, the Java-based scripting language is certainly a good thing for Blu-Ray, and I imagine there'll be a full featured open source HD-player a lot sooner because of it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Who cares

[timeOday]

Who cares indeed. While it sometimes rises to the level of a religious issue on slashdot, this deal shows that to Sony and Toshiba, it's just business. They'll fight on one front while wheeling and dealing on another, whatever makes money.

Re:Who cares

[CastrTroy]

It's also more expensive, and doesn't really result in higher quality video or sound though. So to the end user, they get the same experience, but it costs more.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years back someone demonstrated a 200GB BluRay disc. It had many many layers (after some googling, it looks like it has 8 layers), so just like you I don't know if it was supported by all players, but it existed.

This is why I've always favored BluRay. From my limited understanding of the subject, I can see that it is a little bit more modern of a technology, so it has higher potential.

Re:Who cares

[IrquiM]

No players supported the format. No discs where ever made - it was all on paper, so you could say that since there actually has been made BD100 discs, HD DVD was only ~50% of the size

Also, the 3rd layer couldn't be used for anything else than data storage. It had no value as a multimedia layer.

Re:Who cares

[Midnight Thunder]

BD requires AACS and ROM-Mark, IIRC. BD players won't play home burned disks, only commercially pressed ones, due to the Rom-Mark and AACS requirements.

Even more reason to wait a few years before going to Blu-Ray. Wait a few years and we will have our players with 'debug' menus that were accidently left it :)

The only place I am tempted to use Blu-Ray is for my home computer, since the extra storage makes for a great back up solution.

Re:Who cares

[CastrTroy]

What else can you store on a disc other than data? Multimedia is stored as data. Everything is data. I'm not sure if you just didn't explain yourself right, but I'm not sure how any of the layers could be used for anything other than storing data.

Re:Who cares

[LBArrettAnderson]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Ongoing_development

That's a good explanation or the capabilities of the two formats.

Re:Who cares

[ccguy]

There are multiregion blu ray players available as well. Still expensive as the original models need hardware modding, but available nonotheless. Besides, it's just a matter of time that some chinese manufacturer starts selling a model with a hidden menu that allow switching regions.

Re:Who cares

[the eric conspiracy]

Both formats had their plusses and minuses. HD-DVD is cheaper to implement, but doesn't have the ultimate bit rate that is the final determination of the picture quality ceiling.

I really am glad the format war is over. Now I can start looking at the technology and maybe open up my wallet for some hardware without worrying about the format war. Manufacturers will now focus on the one technology, and getting costs down.

Re:Who cares

[vidarh]

The space is meaningless. What would they fill it with? Sure, boxed sets of multiple movies would require fewer disks. Who cares.

The other things are things I care about, though, and essentially means I'll stay away from buying any BluRay disks until all the security measures have been properly broken.

Re:Who cares

[fastest fascist]

Maybe reading from the third layer would have been too slow to be of use for multimedia applications?

Re:Who cares

[PingPongBoy]

I just hope that they don't try to kill off DVD now. I'm perfectly happy with DVD

I don't miss this "war". Clearly, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both hold much less than a regular size hard disk you can buy for $100, and that kind of money buys very few Blu-Ray recordable disks. That only means there should be an even better recordable disk technology to come and the war might have existed only long enough to deter people from throwing their money at a technology that is going the way of the 8-track.

DVD is much more affordable, especially when you make a bad burn. By the time Blu-Ray attains even 1/4 of this affordability, a better offline medium is likely to appear.

Economically, it's more affordable to watch movies on DVDs and store data on external hard drives. Any nonvolatile storage new tech should rival this combination to make sense to the consumer.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I'm *NOT* glad the format war is over. I was hoping for the emergence of a 3rd standard (perhaps based on Matroska format) that was open and adaptable to use by one's own programs rather than severely locked-down and patent/licensing-encumbered. If one of the formats becomes entrenched, as it looks like Blu-ray will be, it's bad news for everyone but Sony and the movie studios.

Re:Who cares

[vertinox]

Who really cares. At least the war is over.

No its not. If you want and analogy to real life I would say the BlueRay and HDVD war was only the Spanish civil war between Fascist and the Republicans. The real World War is pending between physical media and streaming/downloads. I'll let everyone decide who plays the part Axis, Allies, and Soviets are on their own.

Keep in mind that downloads is not simply torrent pirates but also includes corporations who would rather have their customers use their "On Demand" feature to download HD quality titles rather than buy a disc.

Re:Who cares

[the eric conspiracy]

The space is not meaningless. The Transformers HD-DVD ran out of space for a lossless audio track and was released without one.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

There was about 6 or 7 GB of free space on the Transformers disc. They could easily have fit a lossless audio track on there if they wanted to.

Re:Who cares

[Brian Gordon]

By the way the additional DRM was optional, and has only recently been implemented.

Re:Who cares

[mahlerfan999]

The bit rate cap is NOT the last word on pq. The wonderful about hd was going past the old, tired and poor mpeg2 to wonderful, newer codecs like VC-1 that shine really well with relatively low bitrates, and do not see much improvement if you use really high bitrates. I'm surprised that this bogus argument about bigger being better are still mentioned to this day when nobody has seen any discernable difference between identical releases of a movie between bd and hd. Both formats supported bit rates that were high enough for what they were doing, the rest is just the law of diminishing returns.

And who cares if hd-dvds were cheaper to manufacture? The prices on retail are determined more by the supply-demand curve than they are by the initial production cost.

Re:Who cares

[CastrTroy]

You can't combine open source and DRM. DRM relies on a secret. Once it's open source, and you can change the code, DRM is useless.

Re:Who cares

[Szester]

i agree. for those of us who dont have a 72 inch tv a blu ray isnt necessary

Re:Who cares

[Tony Hoyle]

Streaming has an uphill struggle simply because the infrastructure isn't there. And not just the last mile, the entire internet isn't set up for it.

eg. I was just watching a programme on Hulu. I have an 8mb connection with a good ISP (can sustain about 7.1mb 24/7.. I pay for the privilege though) and still, given the really low resolution the hulu uses, every few minutes the programme would begin stuttering as it couldn't keep up. Their HD stuff is just unusable.

99% of consumers are on cheap ISPs that have low sustainable bandwidth, 'fair use' caps, shaping, etc.. they'd have zero chance. That isn't going to change - in fact it's getting worse, as ISPs drop prices they're overselling their bandwidth more and more.

For streaming even to be viable for the general population you'd have to be talking about sustaining about 8=12mb to every household at the same prices that the average consumer pays now. Which would in turn require massive ugrades to the infrastructure. The maths don't work - who's going to pay for this?

What's happening is there's a building crisis. Apple in the US and the BBC in the US are increasing the ISPs costs at no cost to themselves. The bandwidth isn't there for these services to become too popular - and neither Apple nor the BBC are paying for it.. at some point it'll hit critical mass - either the ISPs will start throttling video services, or they'll split the accounts allowing video download on only higher priced tariffs (much like the mobile phone companies have done from the start), or worst case they'll cut them off altogether.

That's without even considering HD.. the end users simply don't have the ability to download 20gb+ of HD data and won't for years (the apple thing is so compromised it only gets to be called HD on a technicality).

Re:Who cares

[mahlerfan999]

That was a stupid call, they should have just made it two discs for the main feature. That reminds me of the early dvd release of Titanic (and it's not alone in receiving this disservice)-- instead of splitting the main feature onto two discs the studio decides to use a non-anamorphic transfer to save space. Oh for shame!

Re:Who cares

[mahlerfan999]

Well I do own an hd-dvd player, and I like watching hd-dvds, but I AM pleased to see the war end. I want to see mass hd adoption everywhere. I want to see tons of blu-ray titles in every video store, I want to see compressed cable channels replaced with high bandwidth hd channels. Ending the format war wins a battle in a greater war-- hd adoption.

Re:Who cares

[TheRaven64]

HD-DVD is cheaper to implement Not exactly. The players cost about the same amount - the expensive part is the blue laser which is used in both. Toshiba had been heavily subsidising their players to counter the PS 3, but it looks like that will be ending soon. More to the point, you could convert a DVD factory to manufacture HD-DVDs more cheaply than converting it to BD. This isn't a huge advantage, however, since the market for DVDs is still huge (and growing) so no one has DVD plants that they want to convert. New plants cost a similar amount for both formats.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that BD was developed to allow such high bitrates because it was originally only supposed to contain MPEG-2 data. Once the HD DVD forum announced that they were also supporting AVC and VC1 as optional codecs, the BD forum added support for those in a quick "Me Too" moment. Had it not been for HD DVD, BD would only support MPEG-2.

Re:Who cares

[zippthorne]

"And not just the last mile, the entire internet isn't set up for it."

The internet is up for it. It's only the last mile that matters. There is more than enough regular bandwidth to serve all the popular movies and music (and approaching all the digitally encoded movies and music...) if you posit multicast and ISP caching.

Re:Who cares

[TheLink]

Don't have to buy it :).

Just like I'm not buying Vista.

Re:Who cares

[TheRaven64]

The BBC iPlayer works fine here, and my ISP is upgrading their infrastructure so I'll be going from a 4Mbit to a 10Mbit connection in the next couple of months, with the more expensive plan staying at 20Mbit. The backbones are being upgraded at a similar rate.

Sure, the iPlayer quality isn't great - it's watchable, but nowhere near DVD quality. On the other hand, it is very convenient. I can watch any BBC program broadcast in the last week whenever I want. They'll probably increase the quality soon (it doesn't come close to saturating my existing connection, let alone my new one).

Re:Who cares

[Z00L00K]

Region codes are effectively affecting everybody since they also are a way to keep prices up and limit the availability of movies to the types they "think" is the right for the given market.

I wonder if not the region coding could be considered an unduly limitation of freedom of speech?

Re:Who cares

[cHiphead]

sounds a lot like betamax. br is sony's revenge for the betamax vs vhs debacle. Seems rather foolish that suddenly sony, the company with a long history of shady and excessive 'drm'ing of media suddenly wins by bribing and everyone just rolls on over.

Re:Who cares

[squiggleslash]

There will never be an open source Blu-ray player legal for use in the US (though "legal" open source DVD and HD DVD players are of questionable usefulness given there were no HD DVDs shipped without DRM, and the vast majority of DVDs were shipped with DRM.) Blu-ray makes AACS mandatory on pressed blue-laser media, so the DMCA effectively prohibits it.

I cannot fathom why DRM is mandatory, I know some Blu-ray partisans have even gone into a state of denial about it when I've brought it up before, but that's what the situation is.

Our best hope, ironically, is Microsoft throwing their weight around a little. They have a lot of reasons to be pissed about the end results of the HD war. Vista was screwed up mostly because of the secure path initiative, probably the biggest thing to be fucked up as a result of Microsoft trying to get Hollywood on-side. If they were to omit secure path in Windows 7, the AACS LA would either have to liberalize the AACS license, or else see virtually everyone play Blu-ray discs using unauthorized players.

Re:Who cares

[houstonbofh]

Even more reason to wait a few years before going to Blu-Ray. Wait a few years and we will have our players with 'debug' menus that were accidently left it :)

So I can wait for my grandmother to say "Why can't I watch your movie at Ethyl's house? Can you come and fix it?" I think I will pass...

Re:Who cares

[warcow105]

You are joking right? Time has proven over and over again that that is a stupid statement...I sure remember thinking that no one could possibly need a hard drive larger than 10mb back when it first came out. Or that a CD would be the end-all for transferring data, I mean 650mb was huge. Even standard dvds when they came out...who could possibly need more space. The fact is hddvd in its most common form is only 60% the capacity of blu in its most common form...lets future proof ourselves a little and take the larger capacity disc. mike

Re:Who cares

[bdjacobson]

The only place I am tempted to use Blu-Ray is for my home computer, since the extra storage makes for a great back up solution. Why? 500GB harddrives can be had for $100, and a SATA/PATA->USB connector and HDD power cable kit for $25. That will purchase you about 4 Blu-ray dual layers, assuming you invested in the burner. So, 200B for $125 and you get to write those discs once, or 500GB for $125 and you get to write as much as you want. Oh, and you can take that harddrive+usb dongle to your friend's any day and he can get data off it. Good luck doing that with your bluray.

Re:Who cares

[houstonbofh]

Apple in the US and the BBC in the US are increasing the ISPs costs at no cost to themselves.

If Apple can get an OC-3 with unlimited bandwidth at no cost, I want one too!

at some point it'll hit critical mass - either the ISPs will start throttling video services, or they'll split the accounts allowing video download on only higher priced tariffs (much like the mobile phone companies have done from the start), or worst case they'll cut them off altogether.

You mean like Comcast, which Congress is looking at and the FCC is considering investigating? And this is for the geek protocol, bit torrent. Wait till the mess with momma's shows!

Re:Who cares

[squiggleslash]

I always wondered whether the HD DVD people (it'd have been them rather than Sony, given HD DVD was "next generation DVD" from the DVD Forum, whereas to some extent Blu-ray was Sony et al looking for an application for blue-laser technology) could have saved a lot of time and money by continuing to use red lasers and designing a six layer red-layer DVD. The drives would then have cost about the same as existing DVD drives, and only the rest of the hardware (an HD DVD or Blu-ray player is pretty much an entire PC, somewhat more powerful than a Wii, complete with flash storage) would have cost a little more.

My guess though is that adding layers, while cheap on the hardware side, does make disk duplication significantly more expensive and complex. Which gets back to the point about three layer HD DVDs. Nobody ever implemented it or shipped a three layer HD DVD, and I suspect it wasn't seen as an optimal solution for publishers to begin with. Despite the lower cost per layer of HD DVD duplication compared to Blu-ray, prices ended up being similar because many Blu-ray discs were single layer, as 25G was more than enough space, whereas virtually all HD DVDs were dual layer.

Re:Who cares

[CSMatt]

True, but Blu-Ray's regions are more encompassing than those of DVDs. Americans can't play discs from Europe, but they can play discs from Japan.

Also, Wikipedia's BD article says that about 2/3 of all released BD titles are region-free, so there's a slim chance the regions might not even be used in the long run.

Re:Who cares

[tabrisnet]

It depends in large part on how large the caches would have to be (and where they'd have to be located), and the hit-rate. I think that the cache hit-rate would be high on maybe a state-by-state basis, but might be less so on a per-neighborhood basis (the 'last mile').

There is more bandwidth at the 'last mile' (as a sum total) than the total bandwidth of the core.

To try to hedge my bets a little, I'm going to try to define the above statement more effectively: There is more bandwidth at the cable local-loop than there is at the uplink from the loop to the internet at large. There is more [non-burstable] bandwidth on the 'premises side' of the DSLAM than there is on the uplink side.

The last mile might need more work, but what we need even more of is increased uplink capacity between the 'last mile' and the greater cloud. Light up all of that fiber that was laid by the telcos in the last 15 years.

Re:Who cares

[Wdomburg]

Modern has nothing to do with it. Both formats are based on identical 405nm blue-violet lasers. The difference in capacity comes from BD using a wider apeture, which allows greater storage capacity but moves the data closer to the surface. The trade-off is higher manufacturing costs since existing production lines need to be retooled and discs require an additional protective coating.

Proponents of the HD DVD format (myself included) argue that because both formats have ample capacity for a full length feature film in 1080p/24 with lossless audio the trade-off wasn't worthwhile. For most titles the additional spaces simply isn't used or is wasted with inefficient encoding; for example, the majority of titles that contain lossless audio forego compression entirely because the BDA made lossless compression (TrueHD or DTS-MA) optional instead of mandatory like the HD DVD spec. And since the overwhelming majority of standalone players don't implement them the titles which do use advanced compression will simply default back to DD 5.1 sound (i.e. no better than bog standard DVD).

The additional capacity makes it more attractive as an optical storage format for computers, but I question whether that's particularly important these days. Now that USB hard drives are so cheap the consumer market is largely shifting that direction for archive and backup. Software distribution is likely to remain CD and DVD for a good long time, since very little software requires more space and very few computers had BD drives. File transfer is likely to remain a mix of DVD and (increasingly) flash storage. USB drives are cheap and far more compact and convienent than any optical media.

Home video mastering is a potential market as well but given that the capacity of AVCREC (i.e. Blu-ray content on a standard DVD) is about two hours of high definition video, I suspect most of the market will stick with the media that costs a nickel a disc instead of the one that costs twelve dollars a disc. :) Prices will certainly drop as time goes on, but there's a chicken and egg problem here - prices won't drop with mass adoption, mass adoption won't happen without a price drop.

(By the way, yes - TDK created a prototype of a 200GB disc about two years ago. No existing player supports them and there's been no indication that they're pursuing commercial production. They also showcased a 100GB disc at CES 2006 but have yet to bring anything to market. Hitachi has also demonstrated 100GB media and stated last quarter they were working on bringing it to market "soon" and is also working on 200GB but has yet to create a prototype.)

Re:Who cares

[Znork]

A few years back someone demonstrated a 200GB BluRay disc.

I recently saw a 1000GB SATA-RAY disc demonstrated. Actually I even saw it for sale. Slightly thicker than the plastic, but I can live with that.

Seriously tho, judging from the development, sale and prices of ordinary multilayer DVDs, I expect the new optical formats to remain permanently impractical and inferior as a storage medium as compared to simply buying more harddisks. They haven't been designed as data storage, they've been designed with the primary purpose of gathering shelf-dust in stores and at home. With the rapid spread and expansion of USB drives and memory sticks I doubt they'll manage to gather as extensive use as backup and transportation medium as the older optical formats.

Re:Who cares

[MikeBabcock]

BD also has a higher transfer rate, which is more important than some of the other issues that get so much notice.

A higher transfer rate means being able to use higher maximum bitrates in whatever codec you choose, meaning higher quality in high-motion scenes for example.

Re:Who cares

[Znork]

since the extra storage makes for a great back up solution.

As far as I can tell it wont be a great backup solution anytime soon. BD-R disks are twice the cost per gigabyte compared to SATA disks, rewritable even more. And that's excluding the writer. Further, they're so small in comparison to todays storage that just the pain of changing disks would be reason enough to use USB disks instead. And that's only going to get worse.

So personally I haven't been tempted to use either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD anywhere, nor can I see any such temptation in the foreseeable future.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Their players are movies they currently own abruptly didn't work when the 'format war' ended?

Re:Who cares

[derspankster]

Yes, agreed about the region codes. Plus, as usual, it's the consumer that gets fucked, especially those that opted for HD-DVD players. And, then manufacturers can't understand why the public is hesitant and distrustful. From what I've seen of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content, it isn't worth the hassle and the cost. But, I'm certain that the day will come where the DVD will be abandoned, forcing consumers to buy new players and pay more for HD disks. Finally, there's the "upgrade" merry-go-round with new players with "features" not previously available.

Re:Who cares

[Lehk228]

hard drives are NOT suitable for long term backup, they just don't do well enough sitting idle for years. i know that BD does include physical protection from scratches, if it also includes specs for chemical resistance it could very well be a good archive format.

Re:Who cares

[webheaded]

And furthermore...what does it matter? If they can make a 3 layer HD-DVD, they can make a 3 layer Blu-ray so the point is moot.

Re:Who cares

[mgblst]

....but from what I know...

Translation: From what I have read on the odd internet site. So I don't really know anything, I just read it somewhere.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

But either way, Blu-Ray plays video at a higher bitrate. Who cares if you can store 8 hours when you only need 2, it's much better to get a clearer picture of what you ARE watching.

Re:Who cares

[Gr8Apes]

Odds are that BD will be as obsolete as DVD for the next gen video standards. Was it Panasonic that was talking about 33Mb video in 5-10 years? No way that will fit on even a 10 layer BD disk.

Re:Who cares

[Just because I'm an]

What we need now is for the 3.9TB HVD's to come to the party ;-)

Re:Who cares

[ratboy666]

Thank you for your post. Yes, I hold the opinion that Toshiba was bought off. I will hold on to my A3 player, and I hope that Studio Canal will continue pressing movies for it.

Now, I am looking forward to the content firesales as Blockbuster, WalMart et. al. start dumping HD DVD media stock.

Re:Who cares

[mahlerfan999]

I'm sorry but why should I be impressed with 33Mb video when Blu-Ray's max bitrate is higher? Blu-Ray's max is 40Mb. http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/

Re:Who cares

[SnowZero]

i agree. for those of us who dont have a 72 inch tv a blu ray isnt necessary If you don't have a 42" TV, neither HD format is necessary[1]. However, as someone who would like to own a large TV at some point in the near future, I'm glad that a format has won. With widespread adoption, and more competition between hardware manufacturers, the players will not cost as much.

[1] DVD still looks fine at that size, although HD TV will be noticeably better than analog TV.

Re:Who cares

[donaldm]

What we need now is for the 3.9TB HVD's to come to the party ;-) And do what? (Yes I saw your smiley)

The DVD market won't be going away any time soon and movies on DVD are very well suited to small screens using Standard Definition (I am aware of upscaling DVD players I have one myself). For High Definition movies Bluray will be the defacto standard for the media and anyone with a HDTV of reasonable size will appreciate it (lets keep downloads out of it for now). For HVD the market for this is not really for movies it is aimed directly at the backup market and this market is worth billions of dollars.

If you compare DVD and Bluray or even HD-DVD the hardware is almost the same except for the laser diode, however HVD hardware is different and the cost of a small HVD burner/player is not cheap compared to the few hundred dollars of a Bluray burner/player which is affordable now and is similar in price to what DVD's were around 2000. If you look at he backup market high speed near-line backup systems are essential and at present tapes dominate except they are not a true near-line solution, When HVD media and burner/players become more affordable then the tape backup solution will go the same way VHS went and IMHO that can't come soon enough.

Re:Who cares

[Gr8Apes]

It's a 33M pixel picture as compared to the roughly 2M pixel picture for HDTV. (My bad, not Mb, but Mp(ixel))

Re:Who cares

[SeaFox]

I'm sure a lot of people won't be affected by region codes, but those of us who get international stuff would have prefered HD-DVD.

Well anime fans sure aren't annoyed. Japan and the U.S. are in the same BluRay region.

Re:Who cares

[Lost Engineer]

Unbelievable that you can't play your own discs. Basically you can take HD movies with consumer grade equipment, but sending a copy to your grandparents in a format they can handle without resorting to Video Professor is out of the question. Stupid.

Re:Who cares

[Lost Engineer]

Eh DVD is fine at 42" but real HD content is better. Not enough for me to have bought my own yet, but you can tell.

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kinda neutral news for the average paying customer. It's good news for studios. It's terrible news for people who don't want to pay for their entertainment but still want it anyway.

Re:Who cares

[Daniel Phillips]

You can't combine open source and DRM. DRM relies on a secret. Once it's open source, and you can change the code, DRM is useless. Wrong. Only the DRM encryption keys are secret, the encryption algorithms can be as open source as you like.

Re:Who cares

[shmlco]

It's precisely the fact that DVD is "more affordable" that will prompt retailers to kill it off as soon as possible. High-definition is their secret weapon in raising DVD prices, something consumers have resisted for years now. With new Blu-Ray titles selling at a 50-70% premium over SD titles, as a retailer which one would you want to sell?

The box stores also hated the format wars because they had to waste precious floor space space stocking the same title three times: Blu-Ray, HD DVD, and SD. Now that they've gotten rid of HD DVD, guess which one is next?

Re:Who cares

[zonker]

You know I've said the same thing a zillion times myself and the Blu-Ray fanboys flame me for speaking the truth.

Worse yet most people have TVs with screens smaller than 42" and fairly mediocre quality audio systems. Most people will never see any benefit whatsoever from a difference in bitrate. Look at the quality of product WalMart sells and this will tell you what most people have in their living room. I'm willing to bet this won't change by the EOL of BRD tech either.

Re:Who cares

[zonker]

Which sucks for me because I enjoy a number of European titles. Aside from a few exceptions I'm not into Japanese films nor anime...

Re:Who cares

[king-manic]

Blu-ray has higher storage and (I think) slightly more DRM, while HD-DVD has no region codes. I'm sure a lot of people won't be affected by region codes, but those of us who get international stuff would have prefered HD-DVD.

Only matters if it's not Japanese international material. NA and JP are the same region.

Re:Who cares

[king-manic]

Actually, the latest 3 layer HD-DVD had 51 GB, which is just ahead of BluRay.
They were never in commercial production. The DVD standard could technically be expanded to several more layers but as far as I know it's not commercially feasible.

Re:Who cares

[king-manic]

It's also more expensive, and doesn't really result in higher quality video or sound though. So to the end user, they get the same experience, but it costs more. More expensive to retool a DVD factory to press BD's vs HD DVD. The entire "more expensive" argument is massively over blown. They used essentially the same technology, same codecs, mostly the same DRM. There was few distinguishing hardware features aside form capacity and some software differences but they were in fact almost the same product.

Re:Who cares

[king-manic]

No its not. If you want and analogy to real life I would say the BlueRay and HDVD war was only the Spanish civil war between Fascist and the Republicans. The real World War is pending between physical media and streaming/downloads. I'll let everyone decide who plays the part Axis, Allies, and Soviets are on their own. I agree downloads will be important, but you vastly over estimate the US internet infrastructure and the US Media consumer. Your still looking at 1 more physical media generation before Downloading will take over.

Re:Who cares

[dave87656]

I agree with the region codes argument. For those of us living overseas that pick up a movie every now and then in the states which we legally paid for, we couldn't watch it unless our player was a code-free player.

But, blu-ray has a capacity of 25GB (50 dual layer) compared to HD DVD's 15 and 30GB. That's a pretty significant difference and HD DVD had MS's backing which made me question what might be implemented to make it incompatible with other OS's or non-MS gaming products.

Re:Who cares

[msromike]

The war is over, we lost. We need to start having babies.

Re:Who cares

[totally bogus dude]

Well, the sources I've read say that they're designed to last for years and years (I think Sony were claiming ~30 years for 100 GB discs at one stage), but then they made similar claims about CDs; and consumer CD-Rs typically only last 2-5 years. As with any new tech, we won't know how long burnt discs actually last in real-world circumstances for some time.

BD might be suitable if you have a small amount of data you want to archive, but magnetic tape still seems to be winner by far if you want to archive largish quantities of data. The main problem with tape is that the drives are pretty expensive; the cartridges themselves give much better bang for the buck than BD.

For home use though, I think (external) hard drives are still the best candidate. Few home users need to archive their data for years and years; they just need to be able to recover a recent copy of it if disaster should strike. An external HDD or two that you plug in once a week to update your backup should last long enough that you'll want to replace it with a higher capacity drive before it actually fails.

It also gives you the ability to back up all those "not really crucial but would be annoying to lose it" things like your media collection (whether or not it's acquired from legitimate sources). Even though I could re-rip all my CDs I have stored as FLAC files, I'd prefer not to have to; but doing multi-disc backups to slow optical media on a regular basis is annoying.

Re:Who cares

[CastrTroy]

Yes, but to decrypt it, it has to have the key in memory. So if your open source program has access to the key in memory, you could just change the source to display it on the screen. If you can't change the source, there's no point in calling it open source.

Re:Who cares

[Znork]

hard drives are NOT suitable for long term backup, they just don't do well enough sitting idle for years

I'd trust my data to a contained drive that I've frankly never, ever, seen go bad offline, over very unreliable optical media any day. I don't know where you store your harddrives, but considering many still contain recoverable data even after having houses burn down around them it must be harsh.

Perhaps we'll get some reliable MTBF data on idle harddrives what with MAID becoming popular.

At the rate disksizes are progressing you'd have to have massive amounts (as in the range of exabytes) of never-accessed archival data to make non-disk storage worthwhile. For most storage sizes, you get better cost and reliability with multiple online or nearline integrity managed replicas, and you get the benefit of trivial upmigration for really long-term data.

Re:Who cares

[mahlerfan999]

Oh gotcha, that is different. Well if several years down the road 100+ inch hdtvs are common household items maybe that format will be a success. But if people remain content with tvs that can fit through the door (and then won't need resolution past 1080p), ultra hd might never be a target for mass adoption. An ultra hd set would be a cool thing to have around, even if it would be just for wealthy videophiles.

Re:Who cares

[Gr8Apes]

But if people remain content with tvs that can fit through the door Think projectors and rollable screens.

Re:Who cares

[Steve001]

CastrTroy wrote:

Who really cares. At least the war is over. I was tired of the format war. Neither format really had a real reason to choose one over the other. They were both pretty evenly matched. I just hope that they don't try to kill off DVD now. I'm perfectly happy with DVD, and don't feel like spending more money just to watch movies.

I agree with you in that I'm very satisfied with DVD and I don't have a compelling reasons to move to an HD format. I doubt that DVD will be discontinued for a long while because it will take a long time until the installed base of Blu-Ray players approaches that of DVD is right now. Moving from video tape to DVD was a big leap in video and sound quality. It is much less of a leap to move from DVD to Blu-Ray.

One thing I've noticed that has been a disincentive for me to move to an HD format is that it may actually look too good. I don't know if others have experienced this, but some of the theatrical movies (like Transformers) I've seen on display in HD at some electronic stores looked to my eyes like they were on video tape, rather than looking like they were on film. I don't know if this is the case, but I'm guessing that a possible reason for this is that the image is coming directly from a digital source rather than being taken from an analog source.

Re:Who cares

[Daniel Phillips]

Yes, but to decrypt it, it has to have the key in memory. So if your open source program has access to the key in memory, you could just change the source to display it on the screen. If you can't change the source, there's no point in calling it open source. You have no idea how easy it is to change a closed source, binary program to do something other than it was originally intended to, without any access to the source. You seem to be unaware of how drm algorithms operate. Software is prevented by hardware from having access to the keys, it does not matter whether the software is open or closed source.

Re:Who cares

[iainl]

Sadly, no they couldn't fit a lossless track on there. Not because of the 30Gb space limitation, but the lack of bandwidth; HD-DVD's maximum bitrate is only 30Mbit/s, compared to BluRay's 48Mbit/s. To avoid flattening the peaks off the video bitrate (and causing mess in the busiest shots, of which there are plenty in any Michael Bay film) there just wasn't room for a 5.1 TrueHD track in there as well as all the other audio options. It's this limitation, far more than the 30Gb one, that has been the bugbear of HD-DVD mastering teams.

Re:Who cares

[SuiteSisterMary]

Nah, probably more that store displays tend to be turned up to 'melt your eyes' torch mode, in terms of brightness, contrast, sharpen, and the like; all the better to stand out on a bright showroom floor.

Go to a specialty shop that has demo rooms set up with properly calibrated displays, and do your testing there. You might still decide you don't like it, or it's not worth it to you, which is fine, but at least you'll have given it a fair shake.

Re:Who cares

[pnewhook]

BD requires AACS and ROM-Mark, IIRC. BD players won't play home burned disks, only commercially pressed ones, due to the Rom-Mark and AACS requirements.

You've spewed that nonsense before and that is such a load of crap.

Do a quick search and look into the camcorder forums. There are both BluRay high def recorders out there that record directly to BluRay disc, and there is also PC and Mac software that can take a 1080 digital source from a high-def camcorder and record directly to Blu-Ray. So your statement that BD players won't play home burned discs is clearly wrong.

Just because you bet on the wrong horse doesn't mean you should run around spreading FUD on every forum. Sony won with a superior product. Get over it.

Re:Who cares

[Gr8Apes]

BD requires AACS and ROM-Mark, IIRC. BD players won't play home burned disks, only commercially pressed ones, due to the Rom-Mark and AACS requirements.

You've spewed that nonsense before and that is such a load of crap.

Do a quick search and look into the camcorder forums. There are both BluRay high def recorders out there that record directly to BluRay disc, and there is also PC and Mac software that can take a 1080 digital source from a high-def camcorder and record directly to Blu-Ray. So your statement that BD players won't play home burned discs is clearly wrong.

Just because you bet on the wrong horse doesn't mean you should run around spreading FUD on every forum. Sony won with a superior product. Get over it.

Commercial BD players will NOT play home burned BD disks, no matter how misinformed you are. But, your tenacity really brings out your better characteristics. You must really really badly want someone to put you on their "foes" list. Your response will merely prove the point.

You truly are an idiot.

Re:Who cares

[the eric conspiracy]

Consumer CD-R's are cheap crap manufactured to sell off the shelves without any regard to quality except absolute minimal standards needed to dupe music. People who buy them expecting them to work for long term data archiving are at best uninformed. Good CD's like MAM-A archival quality CD's have an estimated lifetime in the 100+ year range. Accelerated thermal stability testing shows an error rate stability for these better than commercially pressed CD's.

There are now DVD R's made at the same quality level. I expect that we will eventually se the same thing for BD's.

Re:Who cares

[pnewhook]

Commercial BD players will NOT play home burned BD disks, no matter how misinformed you are.

If that was true, please explain the purpose of camcorders that burn directly to Blu-Ray discs.

Re:Who cares

[totally bogus dude]

...and looking at their store, 50 gold DVD-Rs will set you back $152 US. That's around 215 GB of storage, which works out to about 70c per gig. Granted that's a better PPG than current Blu-Ray discs (~ $25 au for a 25GB disc) but it's still on the expensive side. Then there's the speed. At the moment BD is still painfully slow though, and it seems they always will be: according to their FAQ, 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). So in the future they'll be almost as fast as a slow hard drive.

Meanwhile, you can pick LTO 4 Ultrium cartridges for about $150 au, and write 800 GB of data to them (about US 17.5c / GB) at up to 120 MB/sec - today! Sure, they won't last 100+ years, but I seriously doubt BD readers will be available in 100 years. You should get 20+ years out of a tape cartridge though, and by then it'd be well and truly time to upgrade to newer media anyway.

I guess I can see expensive long-life optical media working for people with very small sets of data, where a spindle of 50 discs will last at least a couple of months. I'm just not sure who these people are... which might go some way toward explaining why the discs cost so much.

Re:Who cares

[Wdomburg]

I have plenty of babies already. Two toddlers and one infant is more than enough. :)

Really, though, it's not a big deal. I paid less than a hundred for my player and didn't make a huge investment in movies. Likely I'll pick up one of those combo BD/HD drives LG is coming out with. Assuming I can dump the film successfully with DumpHD, I'll buy up any HD DVD titles I'm interested in and just serve them from my (soon to be) media machine.

Not going to buy in to BD just yet. The standalones are still far too expensive. May just skip it in favor of on-line distribution.

PS3 = Still Sucks

[Skeetskeetskeet]

What's sad is that the only reason most people get the PS3 is because it's a cheap blu-ray player, the development kits are a nightmare for the PS3, which is why you see significant delays in title releases for other platforms such as UT3 and GTAIV...these two titles have been done for months on the 360 but can't be released for it because Sony cries and whines that their version must be released first otherwise the other platform versions will cause a decline in PS3 sales. Get over it Sony, the PS3 has lost...it's now just a cheap blu-ray player and nothing else.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[CastrTroy]

With the format war over, that may just be enough to make the PS3 really attractive. It worked for the PS2.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[rob1980]

People said the dev kits for the PS2 were a nightmare too, and well...

More likely, it's just some junior programmer getting his panties in a knot because he has to learn something new.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Nick Fury]

THIS IS SLASHDOT MAN!!!! Your title should be PS3 == Still Sucks. GAH!!

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Jarjarthejedi]

Unless he was trying to imply that it was previously assigned the value 'PS3 = Sucks' and now is being changed to 'PS3 = Still Sucks'. And if he was going to be == he would need to be comparing something, otherwise it would be a worthless piece of code...maybe something like

(PS3 == 'Still Sucks') ? Sony.VideoGameDepartment.Management.doWhateverYouNeedToMakeThePS3PopularVsOtherTitles(XBox360, Wii, PS2) : System PS4 = Sony.VideoGameDepartment.Management.congradulateYourselvesAndStartWorkOnMessingEverythingYouveAchievedUp(Playstation, PS1, PS2, PS3);

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[snarfies]

Difference: The PS2 played PS1 games. PS3 does NOT play PS2 games. Therefore, do not want. I'll save a few hundred and buy a stand-alone blu-ray, IF I bother at all.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what I've been hearing. Two of my friends just upgraded their 360s to PS3s and aren't looking back, they say it's a night and day difference. From built-in wireless, built-in BD player, the excellent home media player, better graphics, better controllers, etc. The only thing the PS3 had lacking was a good selection of games, which is not the case anymore.

Maybe you can go pick yourself up another 360 or two for when yours breaks. I hear you can get them really cheap now.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[DrXym]

The PS3 was attractive before (wifi, free networking, browser, bluetooth support, swapable HDD, AVC/H264 playback, DIvx etc. etc. etc.). It is a great console and a great multimedia player. Being one of the best players of the defacto HD video format certainly can't hurt it any.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, what planet are you from. I pretty much only play PS2 games on my ps3 since I am still trying to work through my backlog of games.

There is only 1 version that doesn't play ps2 games. Get your facts straight.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Dun Malg]

People said the dev kits for the PS2 were a nightmare too, and well...

More likely, it's just some junior programmer getting his panties in a knot because he has to learn something new. More likely, you don't know what you're talking about. The PS3 has 7 cores and less than awe inspiring memory bandwidth. Developing for multiple cores gets geometrically more difficult for every core or two you add, particularly when you have a memory bottleneck to keep track of. Developing for the PS3 is not just a matter of "learn[ing] something new". It piles on a whole lot of juggling onto an already difficult process. The complaints about the PS2 were with its irregular SDK. The underlying hardware was a bog-standard single core MIPS addressing two banks of 256MB RAM. No comparison.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, you don't know what you're talking about. The PS3 has 7 cores and less than awe inspiring memory bandwidth. Developing for multiple cores gets geometrically more difficult for every core or two you add, particularly when you have a memory bottleneck to keep track of.

Either you write your application so it can utilize a multithreaded environment or you don't. It doesn't get harder the more cores you have.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Dude.... waaaay to much time on that one.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if Sony could decide what features they want to include in the PS3 it would be easier for people to keep it straight. Sure there's only one model that plays no PS2 games at all, but there are several models that play varying degrees of PS2 games. I owned one from just after the switch to software-only emulation and it didn't play the first 3 PS2 games I tried. I returned it the next day. I'll wait until they get their act straight. I'm a fairly agnostic gamer, I own basically every console produced to date since the 2600, but Sony is making it hard for me. The PS3 is like the Forrest Gump of gaming consoles, "you nevah know what you gonna get".

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[AJWM]

Dude, you really need to start thinking about shorter variable, or rather method, names.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[OrangeTide]

The PS3 hardware is more reliable, it is significantly quieter especially compared to the 1st gen 360s with all the dvd and fan problems, it's not nearly as ugly as the 360 (subjective).

I really wish Sony would have just gone with a desktop OS onto a Console model like Microsoft has. It makes a tremendous difference for development. I think Linux would have been a natural fit, seeing as the device already runs it. But even a linux-compatible OS like FreeBSD that already has a small team at nvidia would have been something.

Desktop games are easier to develop in many ways than these highly embedded and integrated console systems. People should take advantage of that, while at the same time taking advantage of a console having a static hardware configuration that you can easily take to the very edge of the hardware's capabilities without worrying about the compatibility issues you get on desktops.

I don't own a PS3, already have a Wii and 360. But I think the PS3 already has some better games than the Wii. And has some nice online features (better than Wii, on par with 360) and pretty graphics that are in many cases better than the 360.

I think it's too early to say PS3 is dead. But unless Sony can help game developers crank out games as fast as the 360 gets them I think a lot of PS3s will be used as Blu-Ray players and few games will be played on them. (thus causing Sony to lose money on those consoles)

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Brad1138]

Out of the 4 PS3 models so far, 20, 40, 60 & 80 the 40 gig is the only one that doesn't play PS2 games. The 20 & 60 have a built in PS2 "emotion engine" and play PS2 games perfectly. The 80 gig model (also 60 gig pal version) uses software emulation and currently plays ~55% of PS2 games without problem (check here), the other 45% have problems of some sort or another, although future software updates may increase compatibility. Here is the Wiki link, explaining it all.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[DuranteAlighieri]

Wow. Calling someone out for "not knowing what he's talking about" and then claiming that "The underlying hardware [of PS2] was a bog-standard single core MIPS" is hilarious. Ever heard of VUs? Which were the key to PS2 performance and one of the main reasons PS2 games continued to improve even years after release? If you actually want to learn something: http://www.bringyou.to/games/PS2.htm

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[drinkypoo]

The PS2 EE is made up of two 64 bit MIPS cores glued together, with an additional 32 bit MIPS core riding on top of them to keep them in line (a much slower and more limited core in general.) Both cores support some 128 bit data types, which is not unusual in a 64 bit processor from MIPS (except that such a thing is now unusual in itself.) VU0 and VU1 are AFAIK based on the same core, but tweaked in different directions. Have a nice day!

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[donaldm]

Difference: The PS2 played PS1 games. PS3 does NOT play PS2 games. Well if you had purchased a PS3 with backwards compatibility you can play PS2 and PS1 games with enhanced (read smoothed) and upscale'd capability. This makes a PS2 game appear to have much nicer graphics on a HDTV, the only problem I find with my PS3 which is a PAL one hence software backwards compatibility of approx 85% to 90%, is the fact that I have a large library of PS2 games and while I have some PS3 games I still find myself playing PS2 games which actually saves me money. I am well aware I could use a PS2 but I don't want extra game machines (I do have a Gamecube as well) in my entertainment cabinet.

As far as the 40GB PS3 goes it does not have PS2 backwards compatibility (it can play PS1 games though) which IMHO is a bit short-sighted although it does not affect me. Since the PS3 is a computer in it's own right it is very possible to put back software backwards compatibility for the PS2 since all that may need to be done is translate the PS2 graphics output to that of the PS3's graphics. This is not difficult but it may not be very efficient. At the moment Sony is pushing the PS3 as a general purpose entertainment machine with emphasis on PS3 games and Bluray movies so PS2 backwards compatibility is a fairly low priority. Still only time will tell.

I'll save a few hundred and buy a stand-alone blu-ray. I very much doubt that you are going to save a few hundred on a Bluray player compared to a PS3, still it is your money but personally I would never buy a standalone DVD, Bluray or HD-DVD player, I prefer something that offers more value-add such as a PS3 or even a DVD/HDD (got one of these) or Bluray/HDD player/recorder (expensive now but will come down in price). They do cost more but you get what you pay for. It helps if you think of a player as something you only use to play a movie and in many cases it rarely gets used at least with a PS3 you can play games and with a HDD recorder you can save and time-shift provider movies and shows.

I have read many ill informed or trolling people say that the PS3 is two complex for the average person. To watch a movie or play a game via the PS3 I put the disk into the entry slot (Bluray or DVD) and the PS3 automatically starts, then I press the Playstation logo on my controller (if not already) then I select who I want to login as or just press "X" then press "X" again and the movie plays. Not exactly rocket science :-)

It should go without saying if you don't have a HDTV connected to your HD player or game machine via component or HDMI (composite or "AV" cables are not appropriate) then you won't see any difference in screen resolution over SDTV. Of course if you don't have a HDTV then a HD player (PS3, Bluray, HD-DVD or even an Xbox360) is rather pointless.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[Jarjarthejedi]

Eh, I actually like verbose method and object names (guess I'm crazy :P). Means I don't have to read/write comments, because the code itself is the comments :P.

Re:PS3 = Still Sucks

[AJWM]

Wrongo. The code just tells you what it does. Comments tell you what it's supposed to do.

Surprised?

[Gr8Apes]

This was known or rumored already for weeks and weeks, even prior to the WB announcement IIRC.

Along with the $120M paid to Fox at the last minute to get them to stick with BD, and the reputed $400-500M WB received, I'm not shocked at all.

Sony bought the win in the format war, and that alone would be enough of a reason to not buy into the inflated BD format. (Inflated as in cost)

Re:Surprised?

[JordanL]

I find it remarkable that people honestly believe a company like Sony can hide payments of over a half billion dollars fromt heir financial statements to shareholders.

Sony won. Get the fuck over it.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the buyout is rumoured to be in manufacturing discounts since Sony owns one of the largest BD manufacturing plants. Basically, every time Warner's puts in a big disc order, Sony knocks a chunk off the manufacturing price. It's pretty easy to hide a few hundred million when you have all sorts of ways to fudge the accounting.

Re:Surprised?

[DrXym]

I'm not saying Sony didn't money hat studios, but do you have evidence they actually did? The last /. story alleging $400m payoff didn't present any evidence at all. It was just speculation of a bidding war, which if true meant both sides were at it.. And even if they did pay off studios how is this any different at all from what Toshiba / Microsoft already did for Paramount & Dreamworks? The doctrine of unclean hands etc.

Re:Surprised?

[uncoveror]

If you want to understand anything, just follow the money. Bribery and graft are how the world works.

Re:Surprised?

[blair1q]

They sell something worth $11.38 billion for 10.75 billion, but never booked it at 11.38 billion in the first place.

Sony shows $10.75 billion in cashflow, no appreciable decrease in assets, and covers it with profits from its new hi-def disc monopoly.

90% of its shareholders are fund, anyway, whose managers won't care as long as their funds still sell, and since SNE is only going to be 0.8% of any one fund, the effect of the graft is a tiny splash buried in the roaring surf of the market.

Sony bought your future. Get the fuck over it.

Re:Surprised?

[Gr8Apes]

Then your IT geek card is in doubt, as 1s of googling brings up:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08012/848675-96.stm/
http://times.busytrade.com/1153/4/Toshiba_Cuts_Prices_and_Increases_Marketing_for_HD_DVD.html/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080220.RBLURAY20/TPStory/?query=Toshiba/
http://gizmodo.com/344680/the-real-reason-warner-went-blu+ray/

I don't think the payouts nor the amounts are in doubt.

What is in doubt is whether BD will actually succeed. It's price tag makes downloads look inviting.

Re:Surprised?

[feepness]

I find it remarkable that people honestly believe a company like Sony can hide payments of over a half billion dollars fromt heir financial statements to shareholders. Stringer just kind of put it in his pocket one day from petty cash as he walked out the door to a business meeting...

Re:Surprised?

[burnetd]

You'd better hand in your literacy and written comprehension cards. All those links amount to are a bunch of self referential
cross links eventually leading to the original 'Analyst makes up a bidding war and picks a winning figure from his ass' article.

The 2:1 (US), 4:1 (EU) and 9:1 (JPN) Blue to Red sales ratio's are far more likely to have pushed Warners in Blues direction.

Re:Surprised?

[webheaded]

Thank you. Took the words right out of my mouth. People will find ANY reason to bitch about Sony even when they don't deserve it. You've got enough legitimate reasons to bitch about Sony so why the hell would you need to start reaching and making shit up?

Re:Surprised?

[DrXym]

I don't discount the money hat idea. Indeed, it would be odd if there weren't incentives on the table from both camps for exclusivity. It's just these reports all appear to be recycling the same unattributed stories with no verifiable source to say if they're true or not. I also don't understand the GP's issue with the BDA doing it when the HD DVD camp had already pulled a similar stunt with Paramount and Dreamworks.

Concerning downloads... In the short term I see DLC being mainly for rentals. There is a lot of potential amongst those who know how to hook up their PC / console to the network and have the broadband to do it. And I don't see DLC taking off in the general population while the broadband requirements and practicality of DLC are still as they are.

I don't see DLC movie ownership taking off any time soon. Even among people who might rent via DLC. After all, who really wants to buy a digital movie which is locked to a single device (or a even a handful), costs near to DVD / BD price, has zero features and less quality to the comparable DVD / BD. I think it would be insane to buy movies in this way.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what Enron did?

Re:Surprised?

[westlake]

I find it remarkable that people honestly believe a company like Sony can hide payments of over a half billion dollars fromt heir financial statements to shareholders

The problem can be defined even more simply:

You cannot be a significant player in home video without being backed by Disney.

Ratatouille alone brought home a Golden Tomato award for best-reviewed feature. 10 Annies, a Grammy, Oscar nominations for best screenplay and best feature animation.

Re:Surprised?

[feepness]

Sony bought your future. Get the fuck over it. My future is my own. Whether it includes BluRay is also my own choice. It's just a media for movies for chrissakes!

Re:Surprised?

[Gr8Apes]

Downloads are already here.

Take a look at comcast, FIOS, and uVerse VoD solutions, as three that I've seen personally. The prices on VoD are pretty darn low, and could mean the end of Netflix, as it's virtually instantaneous select to view. Then there's also AppleTV/iTunes, which offers a several viewing options with the cheapest being quite acceptable. Granted, all of these are below HD media capabilities in resolutions, but are generally better than DVDs and several work with what you already have, no extra components required.

As for rental periods, most movies are view once for me. My video library is actually quite small as compared to my music library. There's only a handful of movies that I'd watch more than once, so I bjuy very few these days.

Re:Surprised?

[Gr8Apes]

Since three of those links are to corporations with actual funds and reputations behind them, I seriously doubt they'd make accusations of that scale without some backing information. Then again, nothing they're accusing Sony of is illegal AFAIK, but it certainly colors readers views of them. Probably enough that if false, Sony would be going after them for a retraction/correction.

Re:Surprised?

[zonker]

It's called "Hollywood Accounting". Get the fuck over it.

Re:Surprised?

[king-manic]

Since three of those links are to corporations with actual funds and reputations behind them, I seriously doubt they'd make accusations of that scale without some backing information. Then again, nothing they're accusing Sony of is illegal AFAIK, but it certainly colors readers views of them. Probably enough that if false, Sony would be going after them for a retraction/correction. Read your post again. You are assuming that simply because a news source is a corprate that they obviously wouldn't write anything that is untrue... Yes, like how Fox news never distorts the news or how Reuters has never been caught "doctoring" the news. No, a large corp won't really dig deeper and report more accurately. What they will do is review any possibly troublesome news story with their lawyers and then make as vague as possible to avoid litigation. So they might have heard a rumor that Dole uses slave labor but instead of investigating further they will say "industry insiders say that Dole may have violated some labor laws." Accuracy and news ought to be an oxymoron.

Re:Surprised?

[burnetd]

The Globe and Mail printed 'some analyst says this...' it does not even name the analyst, and the other links just say 'The Globe and Mail printed that some analyst said...'
So we've got some anonymous analyst postulating a bidding war and a bunch of links all referencing the original report of what the analyst said.
Excuse me if I do not consider this to add up to 'I don't think the payouts nor the amounts are in doubt'

Re:Surprised?

[Gr8Apes]

Actually, I assuming the lack of response from Sony to multiple large media sources indicates that there's significant truth in the reported statements.

AFAIK, Reuters has never been caught doctoring the news. One of their photographers however was recently caught and was removed from their contributors list. I also distinctly recall the massive embarrassment and instant action on Reuters part to distance themselves from that individual.

The allegations made in those stories are far stronger than "Dole may have violated some labor laws".

money flow

[MassiveForces]

Toshiba was "paid off" by Toshiba deciding to buy a risky venture for $835 Million... what?

in other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Were they paid to make the same decision that any businessman in the world would have made? Well, maybe the Sony guys picked up the check for the sukiyaki this time, but that's about it.

Re:in other words

[gruntled]

Except that paying your only competitor to stop competing, and paying that competitor's "suppliers" (movie studios) to stop making critical assets for that competitive product (pre-recorded movies on HD-DVD) is a clear violation of antitrust laws in the United States and Europe (maybe Japan too, but I know nothing about that). This is going to be hilarious. Sony, of course, being a Japanese company, can ignore US antitrust law. As long as they're willing to stop doing business in the United States. I'm literally laughing out loud....

Re:in other words

[Tony Hoyle]

Oh get over yourself. Toshiba were already in a firesale in January. They knew that it was over the day Warner made their decision.

When Walmart (followed by everyone else) dropped HDDVD suddenly Toshiba couldn't sell their players any more... why the hell would they keep making something when only a few specialist shops would stock them? Toshiba ended it for one reason and one reason only - because their shareholders would have gone nuclear if they didn't.

Consolation Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like losing presidential hopefuls with some backing often end up as a VP on the ticket.

Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the world is we've let the wrong people set the standards. Business should build to standards, not build standards to produce psuedo profits.

What going around these days is crap, and it's come right back at us!

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[foniksonik]

BD isn't a *standard* the way you describe it. Just as CDs are not a *standard*. They are simply a defacto media format for distributing commercial data. Anyone can use them or not for distributing data but there are plenty of alternatives.

Until there is a societal need to have 30GB of data sent out to everyone in a nation or state... on a physical disk media, there simply is no need for a *standard* such as this. It's purely convenience and entertainment. Yes there is a lot of money to be made but no one's life or standard of living is at stake.

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[the eric conspiracy]

So where do standards come from if it isn't new products developed by businesses?

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[houstonbofh]

The purpose of business is to make money. Sony does this very well. They just don't make any of my money.

The first rootkit got me thinking about a boycott. The second rootkit made it solid. The format war just made sure that any trust I might have ever had for Sony is gone. I will not ever buy Blu-Ray DRM tech, and I will not every buy Sony. And I will damn sure never buy hardware that needs to phone home for permission to play. (A Toshiba Blu-Ray drive in my Linux box possibly...) If consumer predatory business fails to make money, it will stop immediately.

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[IceFox]

So KDE or Gnome? We sure know how to choose standards alright.

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[Anonymous Coward]

You should edit this wikipedia page that talk about obviously mythical "standards defining the allowed formats of Compact Discs". CDs are an IEC standard - you don't need to pay any licensing fees to create a CD.

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[blob.DK]

4.7 GB ought to be enough for everyone......

Re:Standards should be set by engineers, not PHBs!

[dickdono]

"The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from" :^)

Re: This is old news!

[Anonymous Coward]

This move is part of setting up a new joint venture between Toshiba and Sony that will be in effect next fiscal year (from 1. april 2008). They allready operate a similar joint venture today, where Toshiba owns 51% and Sony 49%. But since the current joint venture deal expires this fiscal year (31. march 2008), its just a continuation.

So this has nothing to do with the lost HD DVD battle. It was actually announced back in october of last year :

  http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206800618

More discussion here:

[BigBadBus]

http://www.rtforum.co.uk/

Someone must be really pissed off ...

[MattGS]

... that HD-DVD is dead. With all those articles claiming "shady business practices" that led to Blu-Ray winning the format war. I don't care. At least it's over. Yes, I would definitely have prefered no region codes but the end of the format war is a victory for the consumer in any case. And yes, I know that having multiple options to choose from basically means more freedom for the consumer - but what good is this freedom if you had to buy multiple players in the end just to be sure that you would have been able to watch your favourite movie? There would always have been "exclusives" for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. I, for one, am glad that this is over.

So now please just stop those "Blu-Ray only won because they cheated" articles. If Microsoft *really* wanted to push HD-DVD over downloads what do you think they would have done? They would have shoved it down our throats as well. And our rectums just to be sure. That's just how these things go. It's a dirty business. Liars, thieves, backstabbers, greedy bastards. We all know that. Now let's just be glad that *they* paid for the war and not us.

Well at least not all of us. I am very sorry for those who bought HD-DVD players and feel cheated but come on, early adopters should damn well know the risk. Especially since it was obvious that sooner or later one format would bite the dust.

Disclaimer: I might not be totally neutral since I've wanted to buy a PS3 for quite some time now and Blu-Ray winning was the final reason for me to go for it. But if the format war would have continued I would have waited a while longer I guess.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is less usable media, and vertical monopoly lock-in a victory for consumers?

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[mickwd]

Now let's just be glad that *they* paid for the war and not us.

Oh yes, of course.

No way that the customer will end up paying, no siree.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[MattGS]

They did pay for the war. Whether the consumer ends up paying for the outcome is another matter. Of course they'll try to screw us over. They're Big Business. It's their job.

But you don't have to buy a Blu-Ray player. In that case you won't be paying for anything. Although if you do you can be pretty sure that your favourite movie will be released on a Blu-Ray disc and not exclusively as another format that's incompatible with your player.

So apart from still getting screwed over one way or another, as a consumer the end of the format war gives me consolation. Now I now what I get when I decide to pay for it. At least I'm more sure than before the war ended and half of the movies would be released on HD-DVD and the other on Blu-Ray.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Enahs]

Having followed it for a while (and I have to say I'm not neutral either, since I own an HD DVD player) and it does sort of suck, especially given that HD DVD was ready to fly in 2006 and Blu-Ray still isn't 100% there yet, but give it a few months and the BDA members will figure out they have to get the prices down and have to compete to get the thing to take off. People like me will make out like bandits. The people I feel sorry for are the people who bought early Blu-Ray players and couldn't really afford it, and are left trying to unload the things on eBay to unsuspecting suckers, since, despite any protestations to the contrary, are basically paperweights (or, if you go for the optimistic HD DVD outlook, great upscalers.)

Personally, I don't feel cheated. I lost a TV to lightning about Christmas time, bought an HDTV, and the player cost much less than an Oppo and looks dern near as good. So I at least have a really nice upscaler until such time I find a BD player I want to get; I'm not in as huge a hurry to get a BD player as companies like Warner would like. ;-)

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Collusion and restraint of trade are NOT how businesses are supposed to function, that is why we have antitrust laws.
Come on, if Microsoft bought off the support of every game developer to stop putting out games for the PS3 forcing Sony to stop producing them, you wouldn't be pissed and calling for the DOJ to intervene? I'm sure you would just move on and be happy to buy an Xbox 360. What the BDA offered the studios to go exclusive will be peanuts to what they will be getting in return so it is you who will be paying for this war in the end, not the BDA. Sony was willing to risk billions because tens of billions are at stake.

How exactly does this benefit consumers? Most would have ended up buying combo players once those came down in price so it wouldn't matter to them if one format got exclusives over the other.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Lehk228]

i'm actually considering going on ebay and picking up a dirt cheap HD DVD player to watch DVD's on.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that HD-DVD is dead. With all those articles claiming "shady business practices" that led to Blu-Ray winning the format war. I don't care. At least it's over.

Yeah, I felt the same thing around December of 2000. I was so sick of all the claims of Florida voter fraud and was so glad the Supreme court stepped in and declared Bush the winner. I didn't care who the president was, after all Bush and Gore are essentially the same guy and hey, at least it's over.

So now please just stop those "Blu-Ray only won because they cheated" articles. If Microsoft *really* wanted to push HD-DVD over downloads what do you think they would have done? They would have shoved it down our throats as well. And our rectums just to be sure. That's just how these things go. It's a dirty business. Liars, thieves, backstabbers, greedy bastards. We all know that. Now let's just be glad that *they* paid for the war and not us.

If you're weary of the articles then pass them by, but I was every corporate malfeasance to be shouted from the rooftops and discussed ad nauseam. Public outrage is really the only weapon that we as consumers have.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Enahs]

Well, I can only talk about the A3, because that's what I've got, and that's the one that sold the best.

It'll only do 1080i. Not a problem if you have (like me) a cheaper set.

Another thing: Nearly 40 seconds to boot. Not horrible (it's not a 5-minute wait to play a movie, in other words) but far longer than my first DVD player.

Finally: I had a really anal-retentive JVC DVD player, and it was more permissive than my A3. I have a few home-authored discs that I KNOW are NTSC that the A3 identifies as PAL. For those, I have a cheapo DVD recorder that plays them (but looks like poo.)

Aside from those gripes, it does a fantastic job of playing DVDs. If you have a kickass (read: expensive) TV, you probably don't need an upscaler at all, but if you're like me, the HD DVD player is raftloads better than a DVD player over composite cables.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Whiteox]

Re: Sig.
I get the 2 girls bit... but the cup?

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Lehk228]

do a google search for 2 girls 1 cup. do it at home when nobody is around, bring a bottle of eye bleach.

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Whiteox]

thnx,
Found the same as your sig on Forumwarez... I wondered what it meant!

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[Zumbs]

Now let's just be glad that *they* paid for the war and not us. If we buy their products (and I suspect most here do), we are the ones paying ... where else would they get the money for the war?

Re:Someone must be really pissed off ...

[deathrider]

[q]
Well at least not all of us. I am very sorry for those who bought HD-DVD players and feel cheated but come on, early adopters should damn well know the risk. Especially since it was obvious that sooner or later one format would bite the dust.
[/q]

I feel worse for those who purchased a GEN1 BR player that isn't a PS3. Since, in order to get the most, they still have to purchase a new one if they want to get to use all the features of BD Profile 2.0

What a waste...

[iwein]

to drop a perfectly fine TV!

Apologies for a somewhat offtopic post...

[Enleth]

But what, for the $(DEITY)'s sake, is going on with this damn "it's"!? It's the THIRD TIME in the past 24 hours and hell knows which in the past few weeks that the editors can't spot such a basic, common mistake. I'm not a native English speaker - not even a near-native - and I can see them, hunderds of slashdotters see them, they look just silly, if not discrediting, yet they are still there. Maybe the submission system should highlight every "it's" in red for the editors reviewing the stories, just in case it's a mistake, or something like that?

Re:Apologies for a somewhat offtopic post...

[Anonymous Coward]

Didnt you get the memo? Apo'strophe's now mean "look out, here comes an 'S"

Re:Apologies for a somewhat offtopic post...

[Hal_Porter]

I'm not a native English speaker - not even a near-native - and I can see them, hunderds of slashdotters see them, they look just silly

Snicker.

Re:Apologies for a somewhat offtopic post...

[Enleth]

Typo, see this - I know how to spell that word.

Re:Apologies for a somewhat offtopic post...

[Hal_Porter]

It's vs its can be a typo if you are a native English speaker. Certainly if you read back what you wrote it is easy to miss it and other similar homonyms (e.g. their and they're). I think your brain just error corrects them away if you consciously focus on the higher level meaning rather than spelling and grammar. Since I come here to criticise people for their sloppy thinking, I tend to ignore their sloppy spelling and grammar.

Incidentally, it is also possible that language is changing - because so many people make this mistake that it will become accepted. Unlike other less popular languages correct English is eventually determined democratically by usage, not by some unelected council of pedants. Style guides and textbooks exist, but they are merely descriptive of the current usage of language. An example would be that split infinitives were widely regarded as an grammatical mistake in English English but because they are accepted in American English (famously "to boldly go"), they are not regarded as an error now. At least not by anyone worth listening too unless you are a linguist.

Of course all this probably drives non native speakers (and the anally retentive) crazy because they do all the parsing consciously. But that is by design. If people want to speak a rigorous Germanic language, they should learn German.

Re:Apologies for a somewhat offtopic post...

[Enleth]

Sure, it can. Sometimes. But it's the single most common "typo" I see in /. submissions. There's probably more of it than of all the other mistakes combined, "bamalance" included. And I can spot such mistakes just as easily in my native language, which is Polish, even though I don't parse it consciously for sure. Hell, I can see them even in German, a language I hate and barely know. And I'm not talking about mistakes made by non-native speakres, very common on /. - those are easily distinguished and I can "forgive" them (although it sometimes makes the intended meaning extremely difficult to understand) - what bothers me is when a native speaker makes them, whereas I do my best to write correctly just for the sake of the respect due in communication. Maybe that's something wrong with me, but I see this as something important.

Incredibly stupid headline

[wronzki]

Sony supposedly paid off Toshiba by making Toshiba pay $835 million for production facilities that Sony would still be able to use (as part of the joint venture)? I sure hope Sony never tries to pay me off for anything. Oh, and the deal was made in October (just the price was made public now). And TFA (yes, I read it) never even suggested there was a tie between this and the death of HD-DVD. It mentioned it to provide some context for the companies' current positions but never implied that there was a link.

Re: Who cares (Who knows?)

[A1rmanCha1rman]

Who knows, posterity may yet find a use for the abandoned HD-DVD format, much like the broadcast TV industry adopted the BetaMax format for use in advanced video editing, leveraging those qualities that failed to impress the market in its struggle with VHS. Having lost the war, HD-DVD may well win a few battles that may justify and pay back some of its R&D, marketing and distribution costs.

If this is true, Toshiba should be sued...

[BUL2294]

Frankly, I agree with the concept that class-action lawsuits only make the lawyers rich, but it does often change a company's behavior for the better. If Toshiba was paid off and left its HD-DVD customers in the dark, they should be sued so some of those early adopters get some remuneration.

Here's a hypothetical example... Let's say HD-DVD won the format war, and Sony gave up and started including HD-DVD drives with their PS3s. To add, it's confirmed that Toshiba paid off Sony. Sony says all new games would be released in HD-DVD format only and those who bought PS3s containing Blu-Ray drives were SOL. So, what's the difference? PS3-BluRay owners would definitely sue.

On the surface, I think this is a form of collusion, eerily similar to the rumor that Microsoft approached Netscape to split the market and not develop their browser for Win95. Only, it looks like this may have actually happened. I call anti-trust violation here--"You stop selling HD-DVD, leaving Blu-Ray as the only game in town, and we'll give you a fat manufacturing contract..."

Re:If this is true, Toshiba should be sued...

[yabos]

People buying either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray before a few weeks ago knew eventually one format would be dead. If it turns out to be the format they bought then tough for them. If they didn't want to be stuck with a useless piece of hardware(for future movies anyways) they should have just waited until the format war was over.

Re:If this is true, Toshiba should be sued...

[mh1997]

"I call anti-trust violation here"

I am not sure, but I think the ant-trust violation you would be refering to is based on US law.

Although at has been several years since I've been out of the US, I also think that there are other countries in the world, in this case Japan. Since this has already happened in the possibly ficticious country of Japan and nobody went to jail, this action has probably been deemed legal in Japan.

I apologize to anyone, real or imagined that lives in the real or imagined country of Japan.

UPDATE:

I just saw a picture of a globe on TV and although I still cannot confirm the existence of Japan, it did appear that there are other countries in the world in addition to the USA.

Re:If this is true, Toshiba should be sued...

[BUL2294]

Although at has been several years since I've been out of the US, I also think that there are other countries in the world, in this case Japan. Since this has already happened in the possibly ficticious country of Japan and nobody went to jail, this action has probably been deemed legal in Japan.

Aaaah, so just because nobody gave it a second glance in Japan, we're all subject to Japanese law regarding competition, collusion, etc. So, under your logic, the EU has no basis for an antitrust complaint against Microsoft because it's an American company. And I've got some swampland, er, pristine untouched land for sale, just for you!!!

Re:If this is true, Toshiba should be sued...

[mh1997]

Aaaah, so just because nobody gave it a second glance in Japan, we're all subject to Japanese law regarding competition, collusion, etc. So, under your logic, the EU has no basis for an antitrust complaint against Microsoft because it's an American company. And I've got some swampland, er, pristine untouched land for sale, just for you!!!

Could somebody please tell me what the html tag for sarcasm or the html tag for joke. I tried and but people still respond as though my original post was serious.

For future reference, if I ever make another post suggesting that Japan is a ficticious country, it is a joke.

And by the way, if something is legal in one country, and that act has occured in that country, it is legal. If MS commits an illegal act in another country, then that country has the right to press charges or whatever punishment they wish. Where you are based is not the issue, it is where the act was committed.

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 (Pedantic)

Oh, and you must be new here if you expect the editors to actual edit or even proofread :)

Re:Mod Parent Down

[Dun Malg]

-1 (Pedantic)

Oh, and you must be new here if you expect the editors to actual edit or even proofread :) I prefer to think that if it were not for their constant exposure as little more than trained chimps, the Slashdot "editors" wouldn't even bother with the little effort the presently exert. Why keep pointing out that the illiterate Slashdot janitors are page-hit delivering errand boys? I think it helps keep people aware that the source of their reading is simply haphazard and thoroughly untrustworthy. I also secretly wish that such comments make the editors feel bad, but that's unlikely. People that dumb usually wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.

HD DVD could still come back

[thanksforthecrabs]

If the Church of Scientology bought bout the format and produced those groovy Xenu speeches on them. Imagine -- a free HD flick with each E-reading.

Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[voss]

Reasons for DVD staying around for a long time...

1) There are 500 million dvd players versus maybe 12-15 million blu-ray of which 10 million are ps3
2) For most people for the time being, DVD is "cheap and good enough"
3) Cheapest blu-ray $250, cheapest dvd player $18

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[houstonbofh]

Reasons for DVD staying around for a long time...

1) There are 500 million dvd players versus maybe 12-15 million blu-ray of which 10 million are ps3
2) For most people for the time being, DVD is "cheap and good enough"
3) Cheapest blu-ray $250, cheapest dvd player $18

4) Since many "High Def" movies are just upscaled DVD video, a upscaling player does the same thing for a lot less. Blu-Ray just doesn't look that much better than a good software algorithm. (Other than a very few exceptions)

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[Enahs]

Well, you hit the nail on the head there; most movies just aren't high-def quality even if they're scanned in at a high resolution. Until studios start using HD equipment, or start springing for the process used for the classic Star Wars trilogy, people will feel a little ripped off.

It's equivalent to early DVDs, though. Remember getting some of those early discs and seeing excessive film grain? That was the first thing I thought of when I got my HD DVD player. I've seen the same thing on other peoples' Blu-Ray players as well.

If you're a movie junkie and have to have high def right away, by all means go right ahead. If you don't like staring at crappy transfers, though, you ought to wait.

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[Anonymous Coward]

There is clearly more than 500 million DVD players. The PS2 was one of the first to make it into the home, Sony sold a mere 150 million of them (sure pisses over the current 360/Wii/PS3 sales). I don't know anyone who doesn't have at least one DVD player hooked up to a TV, let alone all the computers that also have DVD playback duties.

Cheapest device isn't relevant when you have a decent HDTV. All you wankers moaning about $300 playback devices are kids jerking off with your warez and crap torrents. People in the real world, with real lives and income spend $2000-$4000 on HDTVs, depending on their favourite screen size.

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, people said the same about VHS. I seem to remember the adoption rate of DVD being fairly quick, despite VHS having more players, cheaper players, and people thinking VHS was "good enough."

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[ovideon]

I heard exactly the same reasons used as justification for why DVD players will never overtake VHS players.

Price differences drop over time, especially when the only real differences are a laser and a bit of software.

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[mahlerfan999]

Completely disagree. In case you forgot, movies were meant to be played on large theater screens. We have already had decades of 70 mm films, and even the more usual run of the mill films are still compressed to fit on bd/hd. We have yet to reach the stage of lossless/faithful reproductions of films.

The quality of a transfer to blu-ray does indeed something to do with film grain, but it's the exact opposite of your complaint. The lack of film grain happens when the bd/hd transfer did not faithfully reproduce the movie. The best transfers (such as Blade Runner) have some amount of film grain, and usually the poorest transfers are the over processed ones that have none.

And honestly I have yet to find an hd transfer that was worse than the dvd release. Nearly always the hd release is superior to the dvd in some way.

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[Excelsior]

You know, I wonder if you speak from real experience. As we speak, I am watching 300 on BluRay. While there is a bit of grain, it still looks fantastic. It is a noticeable improvement over DVD, which was a noticeable improvement over VHS.

I still think the $600 I spent for the PS3 is some of the best money I've ever spent. This device does everything I could hope for. Excellent games and a great BluRay DVD player. A great DLNA client that lets me play all the music, video, and pictures on my main computer seamlessly. Not to mention, every couple of months a new update comes out that gives me new features for free. And now you can get it for $400 (if you don't need PS2 compatibility).

I remember people paying thousands for CD players early in their life, so I just don't understand the amount of talk around the expense of BluRay. Compared to early DVD players, and taking inflation into account, I think BluRay is already a better deal than DVD was at this point in its young life.

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[king-manic]

4) Since many "High Def" movies are just upscaled DVD video, a upscaling player does the same thing for a lot less. Blu-Ray just doesn't look that much better than a good software algorithm. (Other than a very few exceptions) I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this. A DVD has a limited bit rate, you must do many things to it to make it fit. Part of it is reducign busy scenes to crappy blurs. Many DVD still have digital artifacts in busy scenes. If you took a HD TV at 42" (a modest size) and compared the upscaled version of borne to the HD version there is a obvious and notable difference. A good software algorithm can only invent so much data. A well encoded DVD may be competitive with a poor encoded HD movie but equal effort will result in clearly better picture for HD. Any claims otherwise are delusional.

PS. DVD will stay around, merely because i has a lot of inertia. It took DVD a long time to saturate the market in this way, VHS actually stuck around for a long time too. So while I agree with your conclusion I find your reasoning faulty.

Re:Dvd isnt going anywhere anytime soon

[voss]

Blu-ray will start to pickup when blu-ray players get under $100.

Most people do not have $2000 hdtvs, they might get the $500-$600 hdtv with the 27-32 inch screen.
Many people still have tube hdtv ready rvs. I have a 30 inch hd ready tube tv, im waiting for blu-ray to drop in price under
$200 myself.

The difference between vhs and dvd is obvious and dramatic. the difference between an upscaled widescreen dvd and blu-ray on
a 32 inch or less screen not so much.

This is old news

[rickward]

The agreement to sell the plants to Toshiba was made back in Oct/Nov 2007. It was one of the things that IMHO prolonged the format war, because it really looked like Sony was giving up on their flagship platform and taking greenmail. I remember distinctly thinking that maybe I should bite the bullet and get an HD DVD player because of that.

BY the same token

[xmodem_and_rommon]

I remember reading back in early 2006 that they had 6-layer Blu-ray working in the lab, with 200GB on a disc. I'll try and dig up the article.

Re:BY the same token

[LordVader717]

They had lots of prototypes with a zillion layers "in the lab" for both formats. But it probably will never materialize, and would have been many years away anyway. Nobody's interested in optical media anymore for anything other than Film and Games distribution.

BTW I could never understand why everyone was pumping this whole thing up to "format war", and comparing it to Betamax and VHS. It was nothing like the situation back then. Both Formats could have coexisted for a lot longer if it wasn't for the bastards in the industry with all their coercion, flip-flopping and bribery.

A bit of economics

[Nodamnnicknamesavial]

Even from a purely financial standpoint, Blu-Ray makes no sense.

For the cost of a PS3 or a standalone blu-ray drive, you can purchase and build a very nice HTPC instead, stick a 1 TB harddrive in it, and get all your 720p/1080p content in matroska containers... When the 1TB fills up, delete something, downscale it, or just add another bigger drive. Acquiring legal download content is probably (haven't checked just now) also cheaper than buying blu-ray discs.

So what's the point?

Unless you have rediculously low bandwidth, very high morals (lack of legal online HD outlets), or simply a complete lack of tech savvy (in which case you wouldn't be reading this in all probability), download direct to player is THE way to go which makes any physical format a mere curiousity in the very near future.

That said - the PS3 will probably be the last physical media player I will own - and I only own it because it was free.

Re:A bit of economics

[houstonbofh]

Unless you have rediculously low bandwidth, very high morals (lack of legal online HD outlets), or simply a complete lack of tech savvy (in which case you wouldn't be reading this in all probability), download direct to player is THE way to go which makes any physical format a mere curiousity in the very near future.

My morals have taken a beating from the amoral media industry lately. That, combined with being called a Pirate for the last 5 years for using bit torrent to develop FOSS has me about ready to give in and join the tide. (To steal shit, I mean. I can't buy in to DRM, because I still have some principals!) And Comcast says I am already a dirty rotten Pirate, and I don't have any vast Video/Music collection to show for it!

Re:A bit of economics

[yabos]

For people here that's not that hard but how can you expect anyone who's not a nerd to even contemplate doing what you suggest.

Re:A bit of economics

[westlake]

Unless you have rediculously low bandwidth, very high morals (lack of legal online HD outlets), or simply a complete lack of tech savvy (in which case you wouldn't be reading this in all probability), download direct to player is THE way to go

"Broadband" - however you chose to define it - reaches less than 50% of American households.

You want to nurse a TB of artifact-ridden downloads - the amateur's DiVX rips - to get the content you want? You think this makes semse for anyone being paid above minimum wage? I don't.

You want to put this up on the 65" screen and pump the audio through your HT surround sound system? I doubt you'll find many who will.

Re:A bit of economics

[king-manic]

For the cost of a PS3 or a standalone blu-ray drive, you can purchase and build a very nice HTPC instead, stick a 1 TB harddrive in it, and get all your 720p/1080p content in matroska containers... When the 1TB fills up, delete something, downscale it, or just add another bigger drive. Acquiring legal download content is probably (haven't checked just now) also cheaper than buying blu-ray discs.

So what's the point? The point is most consumers would rather shell out $30 for a physical media then pay $15 and wait 35+ min (700 megs at 3.0 mbit/s) for a download. For HD it's more like 3 and a half hours. For the Geeks it's grand for the majority of the entertainment market physical media makes sense. Bringing up the old axiom "never under estimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of data tapes hurtling down the highway at 60 mph"

Who cares? Those who bought HD DVD care

[markdowling]

If Sony et al had any class they would be spending their cash on buying back HD-DVD players and media (bought at early adopter prices) in exchange for discounts on BR players, not paying off other manufacturers or content makers. I'm not advocating full refund - those buyers were taking a chance after all - but say the $ difference between a BR player and a current upconverting DVD player.

[Doesn't matter to me - I've been holding out for a winner]

Re: Who cares (Who knows?)

[pnewhook]

Beta was kept for broadcvast TV because it had superior resolution to VHS, therefore there was a benefit of standardizing in that industry on Beta. Actually if you look at the cameras news reporters use they are all still Beta.

HD-DVD does not have any benefits over Blu-Ray. Therefore the likeliness that it will find a niche market in the same manner that Beta did is remote.

Toshiba Playstation Clone

[Doc Ruby]

Oh, please let Toshiba return the favor by selling a PC with Cell and RSX to compete with Sony's Playstation, without the Sony Hypervisor lockout (and with RAM expandible beyond 512MB).

If it's got both Blu-Ray and Firewire, then the revenge will be complete. And I will support it in every way.

Re:Toshiba Playstation Clone

[Lehk228]

do you hate programmers? did a programmer kill your family or something?

I can't think of any other reason to support the proliferation of such a "Unique" hardware architecture.

Re:Toshiba Playstation Clone

[Doc Ruby]

No, I'm a programmer with a PS3 running Linux who's stopped by Sony's artificial limits.

Do you think you're doing programmers any favors by limiting us to only x86, and keeping us from screaming fast, cheap, and fascinating new parallel HW?

If it proliferates (and there are already several million PS3s out there, while IBM, Toshiba and others are marketing Cell machines - if only a few, at the high end) it will hardly be "unique".

Toshiba and Sony on Cell from the start

[Zantetsuken]

First off, Toshiba was the third main company in on the Cell from the start (first two being Sony and IBM) - if I recall, the processor fabrication plants were Toshiba's to begin with (Sony contracted IBM to design it and Toshiba producing the Cell). Anybody that thinks this is some kind of payoff must have been too young to read the news 3 or 4 years ago when the Cell was first announced...

Blu-Ray won - get over the fact that you spent thousands to be an early adopter only to see your choice not make it...

This was planned years ago...

[YesIAmAScript]

The price was even set before the format war even started in earnest. It did change about 10% since then, but if you think that represented a payoff to Toshiba, it was less then $60M. If all the conspiracy nutters believe Warner got $500M to stop supporting HD-DVD, would they think Toshiba needs only $60M to drop out of the race completely?

From the people

[future assassin]

who brought you corporate root kits onto consumers, no thanks. I've already decided to never buy another Sony product. I'm 100% happy with DVD and the viewing movies in HD doesn't do much for me. Now I have to pay more. LOL get real, I speak with my wallet. Yes it might not mean much but they still don't get my money.

Re:From the people

[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: Who cares (Who knows?)

[WilliamSChips]

And anyways, although broadcast TV uses Beta it usually uses one of the more expensive Beta systems like Betacam rather than Betamax.

I seriously expect

[wild_berry]

I expect Blu-Ray profile 4.0 to require a Cell chip -- which would be a huge win for Sony, Toshiba and IBM (who developed the chip). Profile 5.0 might need the RSX, so that everyone's buying a PS3...

I care, I admit to owning a HD-DVD player

[Shivetya]

but the point is that I made my choice because HD was being price competitive to the old DVD format and Blu-Ray wasn't even trying.

So now we have a standard. Big deal, Blu-Ray/Sony isn't trying to compete with DvD and unless other makers join in I doubt it will come down anytime soon. Plus as others have posted BluRay has all sorts of issues with drm/restrictions/etc...

at least with HDDVD I could play the freaking movie when I wanted to...

Re: Who cares (Who knows?)

[Cowclops]

Betacam SP and Betamax are almost completely unrelated. A sibling post hinted at this, but it really must be clarified that the broadcast format and the consumer format are two completely different animals. TV crews didn't "decide to use the consumer video format," they chose a completely different and significantly better professional format that records on different tapes in different cassettes with high bandwidth analog component instead of low bandwidth analog composite video. (Technically color-under y/c but the point is its inferior to separate YPbPr).

Betacam SP has SIGNIFICANTLY higher resolution than both VHS and Betamax, as it has ~6mhz of luma bandwidth and about 2mhz of chroma bandwidth.

The consumer formats are more like 2.5khz luma and .5khz chroma. Revisionist historians might say that betamax had "better" quality than VHS, but the reality is the quality difference was negligible.

Re: Who cares (Who knows?)

[Cowclops]

2.5mhz and .5mhz that is, on the consumer specs, in case anybody was planning on jumping on my typo.

Re: Who cares (Who knows?)

[AJWM]

much like the broadcast TV industry adopted the BetaMax format for use in advanced video editing,

No, they didn't. The TV industry adopted BetaCam, not BetaMax. The technologies aren't compatible.

Yes and no!

[Anonymous Coward]

additional DRM was optional? Yes and no:

BD+ optional? Yes. But it's still an extra layer of DRM we now have to live with. And with HD DVD, AACS was also optional. With Blu-Ray, AACS is MANDATORY (Most recent PowerDVD switched to profile 1.1, and won't play AACS-less movies anymore!)

Nevermind HD DVD also:
-had no region codes
-didn't need bullshit profile updates, 1.0 to 1.1 now, and 2.0 soon
-supported all codecs out of the box (TruHD and DTS MA support not optional)
-didn't need BD-J updates
-often had a plain old DVD compatible layer (so the same disc will also play in the car/bedroom or such -- i'm not getting a blu-ray player for the car anytime soon, nor buying the same movie twice for that, nor reencoding them)
-cost far less (even before price cuts, and sony is also losing money on PS3 sales)
-from what i've seen, the titles played faster (damn slow BD-J crap, damn slow players, etc) -- it can take seen several minutes of wait to play a Blu-Ray disc... (HD DVD used simple html-like markup, with free dev tools/full docs and all)

The *ONLY* advantage Blu-Ray had was more disc space, which is unnecessary -- just look at the DVD9-sized x264 reencodes from many groups out there... They look as good as the retail disc to me (on a fairly high end TV, and I'm not blind either). On a 25GB disc, that would still leave you with 14GB left for extra audio tracks and extras. From a computer storage/backup standpoint, that DOES make Blu-Ray better, but as for a entertainment/video format, not.

Re:Yes and no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of your points need addressing.

-had no region codes There were discussions to bring region codes to HD DVD, mostly to try and lure Disney. There was the ability to add region codes, and if somehow Toshiba had been able to lure Disney and Fox region codes would have been one of the major sticking points. http://www.dvdforum.org/34scmtg-resolution.htm http://whathifi.com/forums/t/5138.aspx Dec 20, 2007 9:51 AM Clare Newsome, Editor-in-Chief of What Hi-fi? Sound and Vision Answering the question: "Is all HD DVD multi region ?"

-supported all codecs out of the box (TruHD and DTS MA support not optional) DTS MA is optional on HD DVD as well. And although TruHD is mandatory, HD DVD still had a much smaller % of titles with lossless audio than Blu-ray.

-didn't need BD-J updates All HD DVD players and BD players needed updates for playback problems. In fact, HD DVD players had more updates than some BD players. I expect that this will be the norm from now on with all reasonably complex CE equipment.

-often had a plain old DVD compatible layer (so the same disc will also play in the car/bedroom or such -- i'm not getting a blu-ray player for the car anytime soon, nor buying the same movie twice for that, nor reencoding them) Yet those same discs with DVD on the other side cost more.

-cost far less (even before price cuts, and sony is also losing money on PS3 sales) They cost far less because Toshiba was willing to lose money selling them. Unfortunately they were the only one willing to lose money to sell machines, because they were the only ones who stood to make a significant amount in licensing fees. Contrast this to Blu-ray, where Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Pioneer, and Philips all have major stakes (with Panasonic having the largest).

-from what i've seen, the titles played faster (damn slow BD-J crap, damn slow players, etc) -- it can take seen several minutes of wait to play a Blu-Ray disc... (HD DVD used simple html-like markup, with free dev tools/full docs and all) Just the opposite, most Blu-ray titles started playing faster than HD DVD because most of them used hardly any/none BD-J at all. This is also why when you stopped a BD it was also able to start back up from the same spot, unlike BD-J titles and all HD DVD titles with advanced menus, PIP, etc. where if you pressed stop it would not be able remember where you were last.

The *ONLY* advantage Blu-Ray had was more disc space, which is unnecessary -- just look at the DVD9-sized x264 reencodes from many groups out there... They look as good as the retail disc to me (on a fairly high end TV, and I'm not blind either). On a 25GB disc, that would still leave you with 14GB left for extra audio tracks and extras. From a computer storage/backup standpoint, that DOES make Blu-Ray better, but as for a entertainment/video format, not.

Then why did almost all HD-DVDs use 30GB? Wouldn't a cheaper 15GB disc have been enough for everyone?

Re:Yes and no!

[billcopc]

DVD was never about high compression. It wasn't even about good compression. It was simply what the idiot film industry had bought into, and Blu-Ray/HDDVD is no different.

Me, I'm still super happy with standard-resolution Xvid, or even HRHD (960x540). Hi-def is great for things like sports (that @#^$ing tiny puck), but for movies and primetime TV it doesn't matter so much. Since 99% of all I watch is movies and TV series, I'm hardly bothered.

If I'm satisfied with an outdated compression algo (Xvid) that crams 90 minutes into 700mb, going up to hi-def I wouldn't tolerate much more than 2 to 3gb per 90-minute film, or 1gb per TV episode. 25gb BluRay discs ? Ridiculous! Unless they pack an entire season of TV shows on it (hint: they won't). I've already seen some hi-def movies encoded to a 2gb x264 file, the quality was fantastic and I could discern no artifacting whatsoever... not on my TV, nor my high-end LCD monitor. If some teenage dirtbag on the internet can do it, why can't Hollywood ? Oh, silly me, it's because they couldn't brag about the "super high bitrate" and the increased difficulty to rip it to your Kaleidescape system.

Fuck BluRay, that's my stance.

Re:Yes and no!

[GauteL]

"The *ONLY* advantage Blu-Ray had was more disc space ....."

This is not true. Blu-ray also has the advantage of being a good excuse I can tell my wife for getting a PS3.

Since Microsoft wasn't ballsy enough to release an Xbox 360 with a built-in HD-DVD player it is much harder for me to justify spending our money on one.

Re:Yes and no!

[The13thSin]

*Sighs*

-often had a plain old DVD compatible layer (so the same disc will also play in the car/bedroom or such -- i'm not getting a blu-ray player for the car anytime soon, nor buying the same movie twice for that, nor reencoding them) Oh really? Cos I only hear from Amazon that people bought HD-DVD's by mistake and then complain they can't play it on their old DVD player. I can only find 2 out of the hundreds of HD-DVD titles on amazon and their far from big titles.

-cost far less (even before price cuts, and sony is also losing money on PS3 sales) No it doesn't. And Sony has said they are now pretty much breaking even on the PS3 sales.

-from what i've seen, the titles played faster (damn slow BD-J crap, damn slow players, etc) -- it can take seen several minutes of wait to play a Blu-Ray disc... (HD DVD used simple html-like markup, with free dev tools/full docs and all) Probably true to some extend, if it wasn't that 85% of all blu-ray players are PS3's. Having a better (Java) language for interactivity is a plus in my book.

The *ONLY* advantage Blu-Ray had was more disc space, which is unnecessary -- just look at the DVD9-sized x264 reencodes from many groups out there... They look as good as the retail disc to me (on a fairly high end TV, and I'm not blind either). On a 25GB disc, that would still leave you with 14GB left for extra audio tracks and extras. From a computer storage/backup standpoint, that DOES make Blu-Ray better, but as for a entertainment/video format, not. How is that not a major advantage, considering it will no doubt also become the main choice for your future pc storage? How is being able to upscale to 8 layers / 200GB not something very important for the next optical storage format? Don't we want that format to be the same as the HD optical format? And how about the entire season of a tv show in HD on 1 or 2 discs?

Anyway, the most important thing is that we have one HD format now, so new HD consumers don't have to be afraid to cut themselves with the wrong format. I'm glad it's Blu-Ray, but HD-DVD would've been acceptable as well.

Mod Parent +Informative

[Anonymous Coward]

And to think I just used all my mod points...

HD-DVD Consumer buy back?

[blankoboy]

So, hopefully Toshiba will offer to buy back all the HD-DVD hardware and media from their poor/unassuming consumers since they lied and were touting as the next big thing. No? I didn't think so. Boycott the b*st*rds.

/happy I stayed away from both formats. DVD is still fine for me =).

It's HD DVD without a hyphen, fools!

[News for nerds]

Though nobody will care about the dead format anyway, the official name of Toshiba's HD format is "HD DVD", not "HD-DVD".

As for the transfer of semiconductor plants, it was decided well before the Warner switch. I wonder why this kind of conspiracy stories continue even though you can search Google and know it's false speculation by the TFA immediately.

The Inside Dope

[Whiteox]

Toshiba have more corporate brains than Sony.
It is a very complicated scenario, but briefly Toshiba came to the conclusion that the Full 1080P HD screen technology, although accepted wasn't being adopted in the larger screen sizes. People are buying HD screens in compatible resolutions or as full HD but in small sizes.
Why? Well most people (world wide) have lounge rooms around 3x3M or about 10'x10' and smaller, where a full HD would be too large for the room. Or it's more of a personal viewing experience in a bedroom, kitchen or whatever.
This meant that the real war is between HD formats and standard DVD which is so entrenched and suits smaller screens.
Other factors that led to their decision were that Free to Air Digital HD is still 2 years away and that technology advancements are overtaking media storage.
This obviates the need for consumers to purchase HD media. Even though it is almost impossible to buy a non-HD screen now, those who are buying screens are still buying small =>32" where HD DVD/Blu-Ray is just not warranted.
Everyone is looking for the next gen technology which the insiders are seeing as Satellite/Microwave/Cable based encrypted systems, Flash (consumer HD on Flash drive), FTA encoded; and Internet, the last choice due to problems with the world wide infrastructure being slow and fragile.
So some sort of localized storage like a drive in a TV or a Tivo style for encrypted media, flash rom for consumer purchases, standard DVD for those who don't care.
Now the Studios have a big problem too. If they start putting out movie as HD only, then they'll go bust, so they don't. They are still pumping out DVDs because they can sell them. They can't sell any form of HD disk is the consumer doesn't have a player, or has a small screen where the HD isn't required.
So as the next gen technologies are being researched and invented, the studios have to sit back and wait for a more suitable method of selling their wares.

Absurd FUD

[SuperKendall]

Do you think Dell and Apple would back a format that THIER users could not write media to?

Toshiba always involved with Cell

[SuperKendall]

Toshiba has been involved from the outset of the processor development.

This is just another rabid HD-DVD supporter not believing his format could lose on the merits. Sorry buddy, a year of poor sales in comparison to Blu-Ray would have had anyone looking to end the war and choose Blu-Ray. Be grateful Toshiba put a bullet in the head of the thing before you bought even MORE discs or newer players to support the 50GB HD-DVD discs.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR CmdrTaco AND TripleP!

[Anonymous Coward]

to sell it's Cell

"its".

Restrictions

[dave87656]

My hope is that the Chinese bring their format through with cheaper and unstricted players (no region codes, no DRM) and that some of the foreign movie makers release films in that format. This whole Blu-Ray, HD DVD setup has way too many restrictions and limitations to appease the movie companies. As a society we're going backwards.

Hollywood has gotten too corrupt and has too much of a monopoly.

Re: Who cares (Who knows?)

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5 millihertz? That's even worse quality than I thought.

Reminds me of Ryan K. Johnson's MST3K homage using Star Trek V....

Klingon: "Range to target--ten thousand kellicams."
SoL Crew: "Ten thousand kellicams?! That's two inches!"

region codes on HD DVD

[jean-guy69]

From the PDF "Requirements Specification for HD DVD Video Application"
(http://www.dvdforum.org/gen-reqspec.htm), an official document from the DVD Forum.

Apart from the requirements listed in this document it is required that the HD DVD Video application layer will support and improve upon features offered in DVD such as regional coding, multiple menu languages,

During the 34th steering committee meeting (May 24, 2006), DVD Forum created a "HD DVD RPC Ad hoc group to work with appropriate WGs to develop a specification and enforcement plan for RPC on HD DVD-Video including region map and requirements in consultation with the studios"

http://www.dvdforum.org/34scmtg-resolution.htm

This subcommitee is shown in the DVD Forum steering committee diagram:

http://www.dvdforum.org/images/forumorg-sc-06.jpg

HD DVD regional coding was a "feature" they were working on, they were probably to be added at a later date.

MPEG-2 Only

[alexhmit01]

The idea for MPEG-2 only was because the HDTV world was supposed to be MPEG-2. Remember all the Firewire sets before HDMI "won?" The idea was that all your media would be MPEG-2, from OTA (ATSC), DVD/HiDef DVD, etc., and from Cable (QAM encoded). You would string Firewire from your TV -> Cable -> HiDef DVD player -> Amplifier. You wouldn't need a receiver per se, you'd just use HAVi controls over Firewire... each device would implement its menus in Java, and your display system (either TV with MPEG Decoder, or Receiver with MPEG decoder, wherever the image was created) would create the interface.

It was a beautiful, tempting world, that seemed was more pleasant than what we were looking at before, 3 Component Cables + Optical/Coaxial audio for everything.

But the media companies panicked and decided that Firewire would lead to piracy because the files were manageable (you were passing around compressed data), and they wanted only uncompressed data, so they pushed DVI. Well, DVI meant two cables (video/audio) and the plug was big. So the industry created HDMI, took the DVI-D spec, put audio in there, and made the plug smaller, and we have the new world. This happens to bring Consoles into the picture (since the CE companies consider them children's toys, the fact that they wouldn't output MPEG-2 never hit anyone's radar screen).

The abandoning of MPEG-2 for "advanced codecs" meant abandoning Firewire as a transport medium, and meant more powerful players. So we made the media "smaller" (ability to use 15 GB HD DVDs), at the expense of these ridiculous players. Sticking to MPEG-2 would have vastly simplified the system, since we already have plenty of MPEG-2 Silicon being developed for OTA ATSC tuners that come with TVs now. While MPEG-2 decoders were really expensive 6 years ago, they are cheap now. Instead we have Codec soup in the BD world, and Codec soup means having a general purpose CPU instead of dedicated decoder chips, and you need a LOT more horse power to process something in a generic matter than a dedicated matter.

A simple system of MPEG-2, an advanced audio codec (for transport to receiver in bitstream), a legacy one (DD/DTS), and a Stereo/PLII stream could have all fit on 50 GB Dual Layer Blu Ray discs, looked nice, preserved Firewire as an option, and not required the insane horsepower, because I bet you could include a $20 MPEG-2 chip at this point, and transporting the audio bitstream over HDMI OR Firewire OR Toslink (technically, not legally) OR DenonLink OR some other digital format would have all been viable.

Instead we need overly fancy players that are really expensive. The Blue Laser was initially a yield expense, but the current processor expense will be with us for the next 5-6 years.

well...

[argStyopa]

Since even Netflix has now said they're dumping the HD format, it would be nice if they'd just say "hey, when we send you an HD DVD, just keep it, we'll send you the next movie on your list".

I voted with my $ and bought an HD DVD player for Xmas, so I have to console myself with the fact that it is
a) an excellent upsampling DVD player
b) I wasn't going to be buying HD movies anyway
c) HD movies should be firesale cheap for a while, too bad there aren't many of them.