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Toshiba Going After Blu-ray?
Swifty Nifty has an adventure submitted a link to a story about Toshiba's new High Def Disc Format. No, I'm not kidding — apparently Blu-ray has a new contender. This seems to be intended as a DVD backwards-compatible format, but there's not a lot of detail.
Who the hell is going to buy this? Even if it proves to be a superior format, Toshiba have already shot themselves in the foot by dropping HD-DVD which they helped create. What's to say they won't drop this format too?
Summation 2
DVDs are way more sensitive to damage than CDs, which were not that robust in the first place. It seems to me that every new optical format will be progressively more sensitive to scratches and other kinds of surface damage/warping.
While my need for high-capacity data storage is ever-growing, just like everybody else's, I don't put much hope into optical media anymore.
I just buy a new hard drive, swap it out and put stuff on it.
It's faster, more reliable and takes up less space. It's just a bit less portable, is all.
The only way I'm getting a Blu-Ray or any other contender format, current or future, is if my new laptop comes with a compatible drive. Otherwise... I don't really care, and I doubt it that I ever will.
Ignore this signature. By order.
After the battle, most just hung up their cares and said "Meh...upscaled DVD is fine".
Yeah - having a single high-def format is fine, but to rehash what a lot of people said while the format war was in progress I still don't think it's a killer app for most people the way DVD was over VHS. It's no surprise that Blu-Ray still hasn't taken off the way some had hoped/expected it would.
- Want to force customers to buy new, expensive players instead of minor DSP/Firmware upgrades to existing player designs
- Want to force customers to have a difficult time making their own HD media because Blu-Ray writable media and burners are too expensive.
- Believe that by making the size larger that pirates can't figure out how to transcode to a smaller formant before posting on the internet (and that 30G images are too big to download)
- Want to be able to ship many movies on a single disc... but that doesn't seem to be happening
The companies could have come up with a new format using better compression. Players would be marginally more expensive because of increased decode processing, but in general I think you'd see $30 DVD players become $35 DVD/HD players very fast because of the very marginal increase in capabilities needed.Oh well.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Please could you post references for your assertion? Then you can be modded up and the parent modded down (assuming you're right).
My money's on this being the result of some moron tech writer who completely misunderstood what was going on when Toshiba announced something like a new line of up-converting DVD players...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
According to heise.de (German only, sorry), Toshiba will release a DVD player equipped with a Cell processor that will upscale the DVD content. That article only talks of "DVD" all the time, there's no mention of a new format.
Remember the floppy disc? As it became more older and senile, there was a frantic rush to find a replacement. The Zip drive was the closest contestant, but Iomega refused to let a tidal wave of cheap OEM drives loose on the public. So the floppy was replaced by ... nothing. CD's, were used for software distribution, tape for backup, the net for sneakernet and the memory stick for booting. Expect the same to happen here. UPNP media players and the net will kick Blue-ray's ass.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Well, I guess this is one way to do DRM - Just release a shitty new standard every year and watch it fail. After aother year headly anyone will be able to play the stuff, let alone take the time to track down tools to decode it.
You do realize that you probably just signed yourself up for some hate from the Sony Fanclub? I really liked the PS1 and PS2, but Sony seems to be back to inspecting their own colon again. Beta, Minidisk, MemoryStickDuo, and now BluRay. It's like these assholes can't get enough of themselves. Not to mention my Sony fanboy friend has a Sony digital camera on top of all his other Sony shit and that piece of crap that uses some strange video codec. I have been able to play videos off of that damned camera without headache on ONE computer out of 6 so far. Most don't have the codecs and even the "just works" Windows installs fail on finding the appropriate codec most of the time. All of this coupled with their dealings with the RIAA lawsuit mess. Oh and the PS3 flops of "oh well our stuff is so sensitive we can't make the controller vibrate cuz 6 axis is too good" when the real story was "lawsuits are kicking us in the balls and we can't do it without getting in trouble...so all of you need to forget the fact that the Wii can do everything we can't in a controller and believe our stupid lines about why it won't work". Sony really needs to pull their heads out of their collective ass and get with the program.
Personally, I still want my money for that stupid ass claim about "if you can find a PS3 on the shelves we will pay you!" In the mean time, years later and I am still having a damned hard time finding the latest Wii accessory and I am apparently some kind of luck God for just walking into a Gamestop and buying a Wii because they are STILL perpetually sold out.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Fuck this shit. Lemme download an electronic copy to play directly from my hard drive.
Recession plays an obvious part in discretionary spending on things like hi-def
This is what really sucks about BD. The constantly changing profile spec.
What is essentially a "movie appliance" should not need to be firmware-upgraded to play a disc. It is just STUPID.
HDDVD got that right - build all the features into the minimum spec from the get-go.
And the Wii, which can't even play DVD, is outselling both of them. I think Nintendo was smart to stay out of this race.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Agreed. I see that as one of two main reasons for blue-ray not being adopted as fast as DVD.
1. DVD media offered great improvement over VHS (no random access, media wear) and VCDs (Poor picture quality, no menus). But what "must have" feature does Blu-Ray offer over DVD? (Sure, the quality is stunning, but DVD quality doesn't exactly make you want to poke your eyes out).
2. You need high-def TVs to really enjoy blu-ray. That costs a boatload of cash. This is my main personal reason for not even thinking about blu-ray at this point. DVD did not make your existing TV obsolete.
My PS3 is a rather nice upscaler, and replaced a $250 upscaler I bought a few years back. Both BluRay and DVDs look great on it, and I'm not throwing away my collection of 350 DVD's anytime soon. So no, BluRay owners don't just want DVDs to disappear. We just want the price on BluRay movies to come down to $20 or less.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Seeing how I already have a few HDD's, I may as well continue to use them as long as 1) they still function and 2) speed is not a major issue.
It's the same thing that happened with laserdisc after it was discontinued. No new content is being made, and old content is getting scarce. People with those players are willing to pay a premium to get the content before it's no longer available.
A secondary factor is that distributors are giving volume discounts to resellers for BluRay, but HD-DVD isn't selling enough anymore to qualify.
Now I'll preface this by saying first and foremost. I paid 325.00 for my PS3 with 7 games and 3 controllers. I did not pay Sony directly.
:(
I'm pretty much like most of Slashdot and I am typically disgusted by Sony.
However as you can see below it's a nice machine.
I have dvd9 disks burnt with BDMV format and they work. "and look excellent on 1080i/720p"
I have it running Linux. Yellowdog or Ubuntu either one work good. "as far as my limited Linux experience goes.. hehe"
I have it streaming WMV, XVID and DIVX it will stream mpeg4 or H.264 too "from inside the ps3 OS not from Linux!" Not that Linux cannot.. I'm just stupid in Linux...
I can add a larger drive.
A rumor says I can rip a bd-dvd using the DD command but I don't really have a big drive to work with just yet.
It's had two updates since i owned it and so far both seem to work great.
However for the price I paid I have blu-ray support. Streaming video over gigabit. Lots and LOTS of high def support including the fact it's a great upconverter.
I also own a HD-DVD. Sadly... It's a nice player and I own a few disks. But as a format it's dead
So I'm not a SONY fanboy but as far as systems go it's a hell of a nice package. For what I paid it's friggin outstanding. "gotta love Craigslist!"
Ohh yea.. and it plays games..
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
First off, if you don't pay for content, then don't be outraged when that content disappears. The PC gaming industry gets worse and worse every year due to piracy. All of my favorite PC game houses went bankrupt.
Next, how much time does it take to rip that DVD, convert it to fit on a single layer disc, burn it, label it, etc?
Most of my DVDs I buy used from Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. They pretty much always have a 3 for $25 deal. I'm paying $8 for a movie to own it legally.
My time is worth far more than $8 an hour, so even if it only takes 1 hour to pirate a DVD, then it really is a huge waste.
I'd happily pay $20 for BluRay movies at this point. And while Wal*Mart, Best Buy and the like are trying to sell movies for $35 a pop (and wondering why sales are so low) Amazon.com sells tons of BluRay movies for $20 or less.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I can barely stand to watch SDTV now.
Does that extend to DVDs?
Alternately, all you're seeing is the effects of your Dollar's free fall.
Look, if it were just the Euro getting strong, it would be just the Euro getting strong. The fact is that the Canadian dollar is now worth a little more than 1 US Dollar, and has been for a while. Up from a little over 60 US cents, back in early 2000's. Even an Australian Dollar is slowly aproaching parity with the USD. Up from 47 US cents in 2001. Etc.
I don't think the strength of the Euro plays that much influence in those economies.
So basically I'm just saying that if the whole rest of the world seems to be going upwards fast, it isn't. It's you going downwards.
And with or without HD-DVD competition, you'd still have a dollar in freefall. It drives all import prices up over time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Could you care to name which PC gaming houses you like went bankrupt? And some sort of evidence that this was due to piracy?
Theres a different between a knock-off that can potentially be sold at market and a propaganda tech "win."
So how's the Dragon PC w/ the People's Linux coming along?
If they had some sense, they'd use standard dvds with high def content encoded with h264 - and a network port of course :)
You're average home theater customer would have been thrilled and it all would have stuck with the planned obsolescence in five/ten years to sell us 1080p
And what, it's your belief that technology is only going to slow down from here?
Blu-ray players have gotten more expensive. In some cases, a lot more expensive
The PS3 has not got any more expensive.
The Sony BDP-S300 is not any more expensive.
You try to deceive by including the introduction of very expensive high-end Blu-Ray players from companies uncommitted before HD-DVD folded.
Blu-ray sales, paradoxically, have collapsed
Only if you think disc sales being lower from Christmas to the start of the year as an odd thing. In reality, Blu-Ray disc sales are now week to week generally about 9% of standard DVD sales and climbing. In anticipation of your next argument, Blu-Ray disc sales also long ago eclipsed online movie sales and growing more rapidly than that segment.
High definition media gets almost no attention
From who? Consumers are buying HD-TV's in droves. PS3 sales are up, along with Blu-Ray media sales. You may not care, but you are simply sticking your head in the sand to absorb the tears from the loss of your dear HD-DVD.
Retailers that used to push both Blu-ray and HD-DVD now push....nothing. I find it hard even finding a single Blu-ray player for sale.
Unless you go into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. Now you are just a parody of yourself as anyone with even a sliver of shopping experience has seen Blu-Ray discs and players in big box stores.
Former HD-DVD supporters are so pathetically transparent...
I myself only got a Blu-Ray player at the beginning of the year, and have but a few discs - I have no great commitment to the format myself but can realize it's the next video format, just as it was easy to do before the war even started because of studio support.
However as marginal my own interest in the format may be, I cannot let complete fabrications by those who would damage the whole HD media market with outright slander and fabrications go unchecked. As a movie lover I would prefer the HD media market remain healthy so we get more good quality transfers. If you loved movies yourself you would abate your attacks which cause only harm, and for what - revenge on Sony? So not worth your time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can pretty easily compress most movies to 700MB with the right codec, maybe double that for HD, and most people wouldn't know the difference. Most people don't have HDTVs, and most of those don't have 1080p capability either. Also, most people never seem to check out the extras on discs, either (which is *really* strange to me). Considering the state of the economy, I think people will be more open to things which cost less, and no physical media scales to lower costs a lot easier, especially considering all the marketing, packaging, display, transportation costs involved in BluRay, not to mention the cost of the players right now (though that'll obviously come down soon enough). BluRay *really* needs some sub-$100 Korean players on the market, plus they need to chop the price of the discs in half to actually compete with DVD. The problem with all of that though is that most people still can't see anything better than DVD resolution anyway.
The direct stated opinions of several game devs who said they stopped developing for PCs because of piracy.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Then there's the fact that piracy on consoles is even easier than it is on PCs. No messing with drive emulators or firewalls. Just buy an adapter that costs about as much as a game, flip a switch and you can play copies of any game you like.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I have to agree. And until they can come out with a burner that isn't crippled with DRM with media that is even close to being as affordable as DVD so I can backup and hand out software without needing to worry about getting it back I'll also have to pass. I personally am hoping that those hologram discs will become affordable,as have 1Tb or more in a hard to damage cartridge makes for a VERY appealing backup solution. Until then I'll stick with DVD. but that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And Oldsmobile didn't get any money when I bought my car. Does that mean it was "just a step up" from theft?
This reminds me of what happened with DVDs when they first came out. Ever seen an early DVD disc? One of the ones with four or five movie previews at the start, which publishers configured to be unskippable? So you have to watch them over, and over, every time you want to watch the movie?
This is also similar to the ads that all HD-DVD discs I've played contain... ads for HD-DVD. 'The look and sound of perfect!' Great, except I already have a damn HD-DVD player! I'm already sold!.
It seems like studios just don't get it sometimes.