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Microsoft To Drop HD DVD
HockeyPuck writes to let us know that Microsoft has decided to stop making HD DVD players for the Xbox 360. No word on supporting Blu-ray on the platform though. "Microsoft said Saturday it would continue to provide standard warranty support for its HD DVD players. Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida last week estimated about 300,000 people own the Microsoft video player, sold as a separate $130 add-on for the Xbox 360."
Will the new ones come with blueray?
They are now called "Upconverting DVD players". And I hear they are all the rage these days. Didn't you read the fliers in todays paper?
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
I think that this isn't a good sign for the xbox either. Existing owners feeling that they have obsolete hardware, and a clear advantage to the playstation.
Microsoft has damaged its whole gaming platform by getting into a sparring match with Sony over video formats.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Microsoft comes out with an external Blu-Ray player. According to people's comments on various forums I read through, the end of the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war was not only suppose to kill HD-DVD but the 360 as well. (as if everyone who bought a 360 bought it for the HD-DVD capabilities)
Microsoft today announced a new High Definition DVD format they have labeled MSOpenDVD. Microsoft chairthrower Steve Ballmer said, "this is a very exciting project by combining MSOpenDRM with our SilverLight technology and embedding the DVD data in XML we have created an open extensible platform that will confound anti-trust regulators for decades - Muhahahaha".
The MSOpenDVD format will be publicly released under the Microsoft patent promise next quarter.
... the cartridge to make a comeback.
Or will online distribution overtake it? I don't buy physical CDs anymore and would like to buy video content online as well.
Won't Microsoft have to pay Sony royalties on blu-ray players if they were installed into 360's?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Whack, whack, whack, the sound of the last nail in the coffin of HD-DVD. I'm glad it's dying earlier, rather than later.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
As the saying goes, "if you get into bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
From some of the forums I've read, Blueray rips can be up to 27GB. Even with high-speed broadband, that's still several hours or more to legally download a movie. All that bandwidth will cost the distributer a lot of money. So I'm assuming they will compress the hell out of it (like HD-lite) and you'll see artifacts. Then what's the point of HD if there's a bunch of macroblocking, etc.? Plus, legal downloads are DRM'd to your PC. What if I want to transfer it to my media PC in the living room? Or if I want to watch a late night movie in my room? No, I don't think online disto can compete with the quality and "freedom" of a physical disc.
Ofcourse these players will stop being made, Microsoft doesn't make them, Toshiba does. Though the price mentioned is only the current price, not the original...
Given that Microsoft didn't really make these but just bought other HD drive production, and that these will no longer be produced, there was no other option but to stop selling them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Why is it so hard for people to grasp this simple concept? My Wii doesn't play movies at all and yet it still sells well. If people really cared that much then I would say that yes Microsoft is in trouble. But no, you can't say that this is a nail in the coffin of the 360.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
To me, it looks like someone else's site, and you're getting a mite bit uppity over it.
But if it's that important to you, go browse the source.
Microsoft should be publicly humiliated for taking sides in the first place. It's not for them to take sides in terms of media.
Would they (for example) not support MemoryStick but choose to support SecureDigital? of course not. People want to just use their computer and have the freedom to choose, not have the decision made for them because the alternative media is made by a rival in another market.
This is what's wrong with Microsoft (and Apple to a degree too), they're way too involved in the media business to be objective in making decisions about new technology.
I don't really see how it can make a difference, although I'm not sure if you're under the impression the 360 has an HD-DVD drive built in? It doesn't.
Anyone who bought the HD-DVD addon already has a 360, by their HD-DVD drive becoming useless it's not going to somehow un-sell the console and reduce adoption and it's unlikely to stop people buying games for the 360. Chances are if people weren't fussed about the games they'd have bought the much cheaper Toshiba EP30/A30 HD-DVD player.
If anything I'd say it's a burden of Microsoft and the 360's back, they've basically had to support HD-DVD up until now due to their initial decision to do so yet it's not been a real bonus for the console for a long while now as a result of HD-DVDs decline. Now they're free of HD-DVD they can take the option of supporting Bluray and remove one of the PS3's major advantages over their system. 360 owners with the HD-DVD addon at least have the option of running both formats on their same system that way so they're not totally screwed over by the whole format war thing and it'll likely be cheaper to buy any Bluray addon drive that might be released than to ditch the system and buy a Bluray player or PS3 instead.
It's going to be a hard decision for Sony however, do they attempt to sabotage Microsoft's attempts at adding Bluray to the 360 if MS chooses to do so and in the process risk Microsoft sabotaging Bluray on the Windows platform as a result or do they take the hit on PS3 console sales by allowing the 360 to also play Bluray movies but gain Microsoft's support for Bluray in the grander scheme of things?
From some of the forums I've read, Blueray rips can be up to 27GB. Even with high-speed broadband, that's still several hours or more to legally download a movie
;-)
Bah, kids these days. You should have been about fifteen years ago. I left my 56k (which was really about 33600) connection up more than two continuous days (re-dialing every 8 hours which was the limit before prodigy disconnected you) to download some mp3s.
And yeah, the senile posters who are going to talk about the dinosaur era in BBSs can refrain from doing so
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Microsoft was originally backing HD-DVD because it had their VC1 codec on it. Microsoft made a few pennies for licensing fees on the codec for each HD-DVD sold. Sony's codec was inferior, so image quality tests were showing HD-DVD to beat Blu-ray early. Sony quickly adopted VC1, so Microsoft makes a few pennies sold on every Blu-ray also. Hence, they no longer cared who wins. The Xbox player was just a side effect of their early support for HD-DVD.
http://brandonbloom.name
Perhaps you don't remember the DVD / DIVX war or the CD / DAT war. There's always a format war, it's just that sometimes the winner is more obvious and the war doesn't last as long.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
No, rips (not encodes) can be up to 50GB because the disc is 50GB, I don't know anyone who'd make a 27GB encode. Maybe you're confused with HDDVD rips that usually is close to 30GB? Encodes usually go for DVD5/720p and DVD9/1080p sizes, 1080p is 6x the pixels of 480p so roughly the same quality per pixel as a 2CD rip but with each pixel only being 1/6th the size in the total picture.
Remember there's a lot more headroom in the Blu-Ray standard, a regular DVD9 only in HD resolution would be 6xDVD9 = 54GB in MPEG2 but H264/VC-1 compresses a lot better so in reality you have more bandwidth per pixel on top of having a much higher resolution. Given the number of people that must be blind or something and can't tell HD from 480p, only a very small minority would be able to tell these rips from the real Blu-Ray disc. I'd say they're better than any HDTV you can get over the air in the states (ATSC is MPEG2 at 15-20GB/movie).
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The short answer is that by the time Blu-ray can be delivered digitally without any quality loss and without serious drawbacks in delivery time, something better than Blu-ray will be on the market. This BD replacement will outstrip our Internet connections, too. We'll be right back at physical media for the optimum quality. We're many, many years from networks that can completely outpace that.
Look at the millions who were ripped of buying Vista.
Okay, I'll address what you said - it's a bug that could have been caused by literally millions of things that I am not in a position to enumerate because I don't know the codebase.
Your reaction demonstrates a serious imbalance in your social understanding of other people, by the way. You aren't nearly as important as you seem to believe you are. You certainly aren't important enough to garner the sort of reaction from me that you seem to believe took place. All I was saying is: who knows? Slashdot is buggy, always has been, and the code is available to peruse. I don't care about you or your message.
Adding a BR player at this point has GOT to cost well north of $250 minimum perhaps more than $300. Are you willing to add $300 to the cost of an Xbox? I'm not. I'll just get a Wal*Mart Sony BDP-S300 $370 BR standalone player.
- MS were pushing their VC-1 codec, but that's available on both formats, not just HD-DVD.
- MS also licenced their HDi interactivity platform and authoring tools to HD-DVD.
- Initial BD discs didn't have high-quality authoring tools available, so they had to use MPEG-2 instead. As a result, quality suffered.
- Most BD discs now use H.264/AVC, not VC-1. H.264 is also available for HD-DVD.
MS initially adopted a neutral approach to format support. They changed to supporting HD-DVD, citing its greater consumer friendlyness (lack of region coding, and mandatory support for managed copy). The Xbox player was clearly a response to the PS3's built-in player, while still hedging their bets as to which format might win eventually.Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
To quote a friend, "Meanwhile Microsoft has been quietly building one of the largest digital distributions systems in the world."
Remember, the reason that MS is where it is today is because Mr. Gates saw the opportunity when it came time to sell software rather than including it with the computer. Now that time has come again, not to just sell software, but to leave behind the idea of selling the media it comes on and selling it as a download service.
Consider that they can undercut Sony like nobody else. Want to get the latest game? Sure, download it for $2.00. Profit: $1.98, cost to Sony: $50.00. Multiply by 2,000,000. Who laughs last?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
i cant see them OPENLY supporting blue ray for a while, for Microsoft its pretty much admitting that they lost, and as everyone knows Microsoft is a VERY sore loser...
-Noc
If Microsoft had fully embraced hd-dvd into the xbox360, instead as an add-on, the format would have survived as a gaming format.
Although maybe it could still live on. Anyone else remember the SegaCD?
Arg! Not enough substantial info to crunch my teeth into! A very important thing to note is 8GB is the size of an XBox 360 DVD. Therefore 8GB is more than fairly decent game storage.
On ebay, an 8GB Sony USB flash stick can be bought for about $30. The average cost of N64 cartridges are 25 dollars according to Wikipedia. So yeah, cartridges would actually be very feasible. It's even more feasable when you realize that Xbox 360 games average at about 4.5GB in size.
BUT third party games would jump by 10 to 20 dollars just like they did in the N64 days.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Personally, I like BluRay's higher density and I like the fact that Microsoft had nothing to do with it.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Personally, I like BluRay's higher density and I like the fact that Microsoft had nothing to do with it. Yes, it's great that they have *limited* support for Linux on the PS3. Now, if only they'd allow GPU access. I remember reading that someone had unofficially figured out a way around being blocked out of it - anyone have any updates on this? I would be installing Linux on my PS3 right now, if not for this fact.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
Sony will laugh long and hard at that one, because MS isn't going to make a profit selling games at $2.00.
Not necessarily.
It depends on what kind of FUD you eat.
I live ten minutes from two video rental places and five minutes from a video rental machine. If I want to rent a movie tonight, I can in twenty minutes or less, and a download would take the night. On the other hand, I can be streaming video, watch cable, or rent a movie electronically from my cable company without dressing for public, and the time to exercise those options is measured in seconds.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
The short answer is that by the time Blu-ray can be delivered digitally without any quality loss and without serious drawbacks in delivery time, something better than Blu-ray will be on the market. This BD replacement will outstrip our Internet connections, too. We'll be right back at physical media for the optimum quality. We're many, many years from networks that can completely outpace that.
Will anybody care? The HD formats (blueray/HDDVD) already really aren't overwhelmingly compelling vs an upconverting dvd to a lot of people. Yes you can see the difference but its not 'omg that's amazing am I'm going to rush out to buy Zoolander and Disney's Cars *again* just to see it like this...
Now, how much better is the *next* thing going to be?? 2160p? with 11.2 audio? Is the public going to care? Or is it going to be like DVD-audio, a format that only the 'philes masturbate about in there perfectly constructed home theatres.
Consider music. CD is good enough; DVD audio is getting almost nowhere after 10 years. At some point this happens to video... I think HD is already pushing it as far as mainstream adoption. HD^2? I'm not sure I would bet on that horse.
[redundant]
How, exactly, does a 15 minute trip to the video store (or a 30 second trip to the mailbox) compare to the 12-14 hours it would take to download a full quality BD file?
The 30 second trip to the mail box presumes you ordered the movie a couple days ago if not MUCH longer ago. A D/L service beats the likes of netflix hands down. Its faster, AND its not going to delay your selection for weeks on end due to supply issues.
As for vs a video store... its a tradeoff... D/L service can win on selection and availability. Video store currently wins on speed... but really... if I can get a D/L in 2 hrs, and start watching it after 15 minutes buffering D/L is good to go. And for that we only need to improve speeds around 6x. That's not far fetched at all.
And see my other post about the issues with assuming that by the time the network catches up, we'll have an even fatter format on disc...
I'd have to disagree, actually. I'm largely disappointed with my Wii, which I eagerly purchased for pickup at 12:01AM release day. Nintendo most certainly is winning in sales, but they're essentially shooting themselves in the foot when they release ports of previous generation games (Brothers in Arms, Okami), the Virtual Console won't be Nintendo's saving grace, and there's simply too much focus on innovation. No company is willing to make a Wii game without motion control except for Nintendo. Meanwhile, the 360 and the PS3 are getting all the original games and the Wii owners are stuff with, frankly, a horrific lineup. Unlike other consoles, recent Nintendo consoles have relied mainly on sequels. Near the end of the Gamecube's lifespan, I'd venture to guess that 95% of them were used simply to play Smash Bros. Melee and maybe Wind Waker and Double Dash. And coming this year is Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii, the games that will be played over and over until the next Nintendo console.
For now we're stuck with Professional Bull Riding, Bob Ross: The Joy of Painting, and any number of games featuring "kid(s|z)" or "Wii" in the title, which I've noticed generally suggests low quality and a complete lack of creativity or suggestion of new content (it's just Mario Kart again, but on the Wii). It's not like the Wii can't and won't have good games, they just push the wrong ones.
But I'll admit I could be wrong. Maybe Nintendo will do something surprising. Personally, I hope they do. I hate feeling like I wasted money.
Your ad here.
I too hope that Sony will drop the other shoe and open access to the GPU. And while they're at it, NVidia should open their chip specs as well. Maybe Sony will do the right thing a littler closer to the end of the product cycle. One factor in favor: Sony is going to have to answer Microsoft's opening up the XBox last week. Actually, this is competition working properly, Microsoft is doing some good by applying pressure to Sony over the current development restrictions that in practice gain Sony nothing, and which if removed could gain them a lot of mind share, never mind bringing in a new wave of cell engine programmers.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Digital distribution is not a replacement for physical media, because physical media still delivers superior quality and content. Digital distribution is a perfectly reasonable replacement for last-generation content. Online distribution isn't a Blu-ray competitor, and that's the whole point. It's a DVD competitor, and a great one.
the current development restrictions that in practice gain Sony nothing
Games consoles are generally sold on a similar principle to inkjets and cartridges or razors and blades. The console is sold cheap (sometimes at a loss sometimes at a small profit) and the real money is made from the games.
That afaict is why the linux system is locked out of the 3D graphics. If it wasn't locked out people would be able to develop and market games without going through the official channels. That would be bad for the game revenue stream.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Sony doesn't solely control the Blu-ray spec (its the most vocal member of the consortium), so they can't sabotage it or stop MS form licensing it.
The 360 is already a DVD-Upscaler
They could easily add a Blu-Ray player.
Thats been confirmed.
Get rid of that HD-DVD before it starts gathering dust in the closet with that old laser disk player and beta-max porn.
They can afford to sell games at $2.00 for a few years until everyone's got a digital library of 20 or 30 games and they're used to the service.. as sony loses massive money too
It would be easy for Sony to keep control of the content distribution just as they do now while opening the hardware entirely. Just license the keys needed to unlock the GPU. Give away keys for non commercial use, and continue to make the usual deal with anybody who wants to do a release. Voila, nothing changes for commercial releases, but gadget hackers get to have fun with the toy and probably create a lot of value for Sony in the process.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
If this had happened before Toshiba caved it'd have been different, but it didn't. Microsoft got stuck with a loser(pause for the cheers, vista jokes, general fanboism), and they've ditched it and are moving on.
I'm sick of this story, it's all over the news everywhere and it's not news. If Microsoft had decided to keep going on HD-DVD after Toshiba had given up that'd be news(and idiocy).
Having been a console and pc gamer all my life (28 years) I have seen all the consoles come and go over the years. What it's really about is sitting down, chilling and gaming. Whether that is with your family, your best friend, or by yourself... it has to be fun. We'll see how the PS Home thing works out, but for now the 360 is king when it comes to playing while at home by yourself, because you aren't "by yourself", the whole world is waiting to play you. Hardware is only a tool. If you buy a game console for the optical drive then you are buying the product for a reason secondary to gaming.
Being a former Wii owner and current 360 owner I can impart this into the conversation: My mom and dad got me a Wii because they remembered when they bought me a NES back in 1986 with zelda and excitebike. So they did a 20 years later kinda thing and it was great. I played through Zelda :TP and it was great, Ocarina of Time great. But I ended up hocking it on eBay this last Thanksgiving for $400 and bought a 360. Why? because the games just weren't what I was after. I hate to say it because Nintendo go this wrap back when the Genesis came out, but the games seem kiddish, plus it's nice to just kick back and play instead of standing and flailing about.
The 360 and PS3 are a little premature in the "HD Generation" of gaming. HDTV's are just now becoming affordable at 1080p. I would hate to be someone who bought a 720p native resolution TV, but it's not that big a deal when it comes to watching TV, GAMING however is a whole different story. 1920x1080 is a beefy resolution for even the latest PC's to to handle at a playable framerate. PC gamers have been playing in HD for years now, ever since games were playable in 1024x768 on their monitors. But HD is the buzzword for the new tv market, and they have to give it name. I guess HD sounds cooler than HR (High Resolution).
I for one look forward to the NEXT generation of consoles. 1080p Big HDTV's will be even more affordable, The format war is over, and consoles will have to huddle up with a company to come up with some really impressive hardware to ensure their console has a 4-5 year minimum lifespan. In that respect, Sony has delivered on with it's last two consoles with DVD, and now with the Cell and Blu-Ray. I am a fanboy of neither Microsoft or Sony, I am a gamer and I just want a way to play good games at a reasonable price. My opinion on this generation at this time, Microsoft wins.
"The irony when tending a flock of sheep is the dogs you put in place to protect them are genetically mutated wolves"
Guitar Hero does not require the guitar controller - it will play just fine using the regular control pad.
It's just not as much fun.
Dunno about Rock Band though.
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
My feeling is that Downloadable movies will actually HELP bluray adoption. why, you ask ?
Downloadable content will soon reach a point where it will compete with standard DVDs for quality and ease of use... killing the need for the support, and leaving Bluray as the "natural" physical support for movies.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
So you're pissed they're not forgoing game license fees by allowing developers to program Linux games that run on the PS3?
Microsoft ISN'T doing it. XNA games could be played on the Cell with Vesa drivers.
now betamax, vhs, and dvd(regular) have a new buddy to join them in eternal forgottenness. as for microsoft, they will just get some first-party developers (crappy ones at that) to make a new alternative to blu-ray (cause they will never support an opponent). personally, i think it will happen sooner than the redmont giant accepting linux as a legit os.
In Soviet Halo, the game kills you (socially anyway)
Copy protection can be done to both files though downloaded versions can even have player or user specific protection.
What lack of physical media really does is prevent you from legally sharing your movie. No DVD to hand from friend to friend after you've watched your special edition with all the extras. No disc on the shelf of your library. No disc for Blockbuster or Netflix to rent out over and over again.
Unlike CDs that people listen to over and over again, many many movies are watched just once or twice. That makes DVDs even more attractive to loan out, give away, or sell used. If you disregard illegal extraction and copying DVDs are more attractive for buying and selling used or loaning out than CDs. People can get all the use they would have got out of a purchased copy from a borrowed, rented or purchased used copy.
All those easy abilities to rent, borrow and sell discs legally are killed by downloads. There may be legal ways to share, but that's up to the entity that's providing the downloads, like burning a CD from iTunes.
You mean the Blu Ray VC1 encoder that Microsoft make money from? Thats really hands off.
Yes, Blu Ray has additional space, *but* it has region codes. And, with BD+ key revocations and player bricking are now easy.
On another note:
HD DVD compliance means DVD5/DVD9 HD DVD (3XDVD) support as well. (a standard way to have high def content in on regular DVDs). Which makes it easy to "roll your own", without an HD DVD burner. Now, supposedly, the BD-S300 player (the BD player from WalMart) will play BD9 (the Blu Ray player equivalent), but I don't think anyone has it working yet (the drive continues 1x operation rather than going into 3x mode). The cheap Toshibas play 3XDVD just fine (from any cheap DVD-R media).
*IF* anyone has the BD-S300 and has generated and sucessfully played a BD9 on it, let me know -- I am very curious. I am thinking of stockpiling a few A3 (or A30) players for this reason.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
So where's the fiber optic? I don't see why people just innately accept our current internet speeds as "acceptable", when clearly media size is increasing, along with all digital content. Japan has fiber, so why don't we? I know the arguments about the infrastructure, but at the very least "we" (the slashdot crowd) should be trying to get better internet than the current slow-ass capped ADSL/Cable crap available to the masses.