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How is DivX Doing
Breadf-n wrote in to send usa link to an interesting
techweb snippit where you can read how
DivX and Circuit City
are doing. The interesting thing to me was the number of
DVD players sold. I wonder how long before it becomes the standard.
I'd really love to obsolete analog movies ASAP.
I'm sorry, I don't like DVD. I've seen high-quality DVD movies on high-quality DVD players on really nice television sets and I still notice the encoding artifacts. Maybe when they move to a next-generationg MPEG encoding that doesn't leave pixelation all over the place, I can be happy with DVD, but not until then.
(I've been told if I buy a _really_ nice DVD player, those artifacts get filtered away, but I really don't want to buy a $2500 DVD player to watch a $35 movie...)
Now we've got the worst of both world's. High-school level journalism and PHB-style word usage.
"Obsolete" is an adjective, not a verb.
> "Obsolete" is an adjective, not a verb.
I won't defend the apostrophed plural, but you really need to get over your immutable view of language. Any noun can be verbed, and by extension, adjectives are fair game as well if their meaning comes across adequately.
After all, language is a method of communication, not a justification for your superiority complex.
Actually, my 1913 Websters Unabridged lists:
:)
Obsolete \Ob"so*lete\, v. i. To become obsolete; to go out of use. [R.] --Fitzed. Hall.
So there.
Personally, I can't wait to get a DVD player once I get a decent TV...
I get tired of analog VCR things that keep rejecting my brandnew tapes. Searched around last night and found out I need to clean my VCR (not just heads, other moving parts). Yay. Just imagine if I had to clean my CD-ROM or CD player periodically, ugh.
Down with analog!
So, crunching some numbers on Xcalc, each person who purchased a DivX player purchased an average of 6.1 movies. This adds an additional $30 to the purchase of the machine off the top.
Now those movies will have a per-watching charge. This will cost, umm, ad infinitem. Let's say twenty years down the road they pop in "Rocksee and the Bungee Twisters, 1999," and zingo, they are charged yet again. That just sucks too much.
I'm of the idea that we are not purchasing the right to view a movie, but we are purchasing a movie for the unlimited right of viewing.
So, does anyone know the per-viewing charge of a DivX movie, I'd like to calculate how much people are getting ripped off.
Same goes for digital cable. It's disturbing to
watch movies and see those wonderful, blocky mpeg
artifacts.
I love watching pixelated movies! Let's get rid
of film, too!
-- I don't believe in a paperless office
the format isnt the thing that bothers me,
its how hard it is to get anything worth looking at.
guess how english got invented in the first placce?
the angles and saxons and jutes and french and romans
and irish and scotch and god knows who else
all came to this place and mixed each others
languages up.
now, what do you thinks gonna happen when
several hundred million people start speaking to each other
on the internet?
im just waiting for the next "Shakespeare"
I saw some early players where the artifacts were noticeable, so I waited before jumping onto the DVD bandwagon. I still think that a good laserdisc player produces a better picture. However, I finally came to the realization that laserdisc is on the decline and DVD will eventually replace VHS. So I went the cheapo route and bought a Creative Encore DVD-ROM setup for ~$220. I have a computer fairly close to the HT setup, so it was a logical choice for me.
The picture on the computer monitor totally sucks, but the picture on my RPTV is as good as most midrange ($500-800) players and is much, much better than VHS. In most scenes you don't see any compression artifacts. You can see artifacts around text and in animated movies, but otherwise they are hard to notice unless you are really looking for them. Again, it is still way better than VHS. You definately need at least an S-video connection, preferably component video. Composite just ruins the picture.
You can wait all you want, but MPEG2 is going to be the standard for quite a while.
What I really want is progressive scan digital TV & video at HDTV resolution, but I'm not going to get it.
Dave K
daking at infinet dot com
Judging from the tone of this article, I don't think a lot of you know that Dixv and DVD are two different things.
Sure, they both ship on CDs in the same format and so on and so forth. But Divx is essentially Pay-Per-Use DVD. And Circuit City gets to know what you're watching all the time.
Divx is very, very bad. DVD is very, very good.
I strongly encourage you all to do some research into this before you go buying into it.
The best way to go bankrupt
Let's say, for the sake of argument that "any noun can be verbed". Look at the original message for a moment. "Obsolete" is a adjective not a noun.
Can't be much more than 58 bit RSA right? Not if they want to export their technology outside the US. Maybe we could turn distributed.net to the cause of Evil, or someone could shell out for one of those $60K machines that'll crack RSA in about 10 hours...
(this is enry at home)
The Best Buy stores that opened up around here (Boston area) had a circular in today's paper about the advantages of DVD:
"Watch your favorite movie as often as you want without using your phone line"
"Only DVD features director's cuts, and interviews with the director and case on select titles"
"We have the brands you trust, including Sonce, Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung, Philips and Pioneer"
Now I see whay so many people rave about Best Buy..time to go buy a DVD player I guess...
Please, buy DIVX if you want to support closed standards and a soon-to-be monopoly.
Can't wait untill somebody releases a firmware upgrade for these beasties.
Check a dictionary.
Besides the quality of your DVD player, sometimes the _studio_ does a crummy job of outputting the movies. I bought Tommorrow Never Dies and there was this horrible action scene where the lines were interlaced for an entire five seconds. Five seconds sound short, but during an action scene, it seems like forever. I wouldn't even call it artifacting, because artifacts are just little squares here and there. The interlace was all across the entire screen, and looks like the original master got scratched or corrupted or something.
Steve
This is an easy one...just the fact that it's on a cd based media. The lamest media of all...I can't wait for the rental stores to have these for a few months and have them turn out like the console game cds where you rent them and are lucky if they play at all due to the abuse they go through when they are handled by the renters. The cd media format as a WHOLE needs to take a hike...audio, video, all of it.
Obsolete Analog? I'd love to, but the quality is miles away.
Last fall I was at a guy's house who had a BUD (Big Ugly Dish...10'er). I couldn't believe how fabulous the picture was on his just average Sony TV. DSS, etc doesn't even come close. Most of this stuff they are trying to sell us was designed for the ignorant masses, just like Windoze. Sure owning a BUD can be a pain, but so can Linux sometimes. You gotta decide for yourself how important quality is, and when good-enough is enough.
For now, I refuse to give money to the monopolies (Microsoft and the cable company), and won't pay for the crappy mini-dishes. When I get a back yard or a roof, I'm getting a big-ass dish with one of those 4DTV recievers, till then I'll save my cash and try to watch less boob tube.
I don't see any loss of precision here. Isn't the meaning of "obselete" used as a transitive verb fairly obvious? I can see some point in demanding totally rigorous compliance with existing conventions, but once you've admitted that it's ok in princisple, this instance seems fine.
Although, I wouldn't have used it myself.
Much like PSX games DVD's have regional lock-outs (6 of em). And like PSX hardware many DVD players are hackable with the use of a mod chip or some simple board work (Pioneer's 606 is the easiest, no need for a mod chip, just bridge two points on the board). By changing the regions you can then buy bootlegs from Hong Kong for the same price as a damn DIVX movie but get full DVD features and quality! So why bother hacking DIVX to get a poor quality film when you can import better stuff for the same money.
(pepsee at home) dc71@cornell.edu
the CD medium is fine. If you have your own discs and take care of them you should be fine. True, rental CDs get scratched up, but tapes get messed up as well due to normal wear and tear.
How about using CD's with caddies built on? Kind of like a 3.5" floppy, and you never touch the medium. It'd be interesting to integrate the CD with the jewel case...
The 6th one was for the p0rny flic that they
wanted but was excluded from the 5 movie deal.
Most major distributors are cutting back LD production to make room for DVD. Image, one of the biggest LD distributor can attest to the cannabilization effect DVD has on LD sales. DVD is also eating into VHS profits.
As I understand it, with DIVX, the machine has to be plugged into the phone line so that it can dial up the movie vendor and get a code for the disc (and tell them what you're watching).
This is pretty much a non starter outside the US, especially the UK.
Here in the UK, British Telecom really still have a monopoly on the market and we still have to pay for local calls. No-one here is going to use a video format that uses the phone.
I don't know what the position is across the rest of Europe though.
An also important thing to know about divx is that the movies you're
watching at are known. By this way, your preferences are studied, and
you can be spammed with appropriate publicities.
That's realy a bad thing.
I just can't jump on this 'digital for everything' bandwagon. Maybe it's just keen vision, but I always see the digital 'artifacts' (for lack of a better word) in digital video, whether DVD or DSS uplinks.
Am I the only one that can see the 'shades of grey' in a DSS image (and also DVD)? Until these 'shades' can't be seen DVD and DSS just won't be for me.
Guys,
Get A Life, How can yall carry on a long thread over the usage of a word? Are you all a bunch of English majors? If so, what the hell are you doing here??
I was told that it stores your CC info in the system and dials into a computer everytime you
want to play a movie. frankly. i dont like the idea of it storing my CC info or tying up my phone line in order for me to watch a movie. then, if you do buy the movie, the info saying you payed for it is stored in the player. meanin you are stuck using only one player to play your movies (that is, you couldnt take the movie to play at someone elses house or on a new player, even if you payed for it). its a gay setup. besides DVD is about the same price as VHS, only a few bucks more and can be used on all DVD players.
-Zebulun
I've never seen it. I haven't watched many DVDs yet, but of the hundreds(?) of hours of digital satellite TV I've watched, I recall only once, for maybe a couple of frames (fraction of a second), seeing any pixelation. And that was during a snow storm when we were just at the edge of losing the signal altogether.
The analog proponents might have a point if the movies were routinely released on S-VHS, but anyone who bitches about pixilation on DVD but praising the what, 240 lines resolution of analog (ie VHS) is blowing smoke.
Divx is absolutely the worst idea I've ever heard of - and not because of the money. It follows the same principle as disposable cameras - stuff the landfills to make peoples' lives more convenient. If this scheme becomes successful, people may be throwing out millions of perfectly good discs a year for the sake of laziness!!
The DVD media will not go through the same abuse as game console CDs, for the obvious reason that most DVD media will not be regularly handled by 8-year-olds.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I know that you and I aren't on the best of terms
and all, what with me agreeing with Jody Foster's
character in that one movie and all, but I have a
prayer to offer up if you're listening:
Please, kill DIVX.
Maybe slaying the first-born of every Circuit City
ad exec would do it. Maybe raining brimstone
inside each Circuit City would do it (assuming the
sale isn't that great -- I bet people would deal
with the brimstone for a $80 scanner).
I know you're trying to help, but just giving the
salespeople facial blemishes doesn't seem to be
helping.
Amen.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
> now, what do you thinks gonna happen when
:-)
> several hundred million people start speaking to
>each other on the internet?
>im just waiting for the next "Shakespeare"
My guess is that you won't be writing it
The people who buy Divx are going to be in a world of hurt if the format dies (which I hope it does soon). When nobody is selling additional viewings anymore, they'll be stuck with a whole stack of disc's they can't watch anymore! Yuck.
Posted by Charles Bronson:
I have an extensive video collection of movies that won't be on DVD for a long, long time. Most companies arn't in a big hurry to put cult classics on DVD. The price is forbidding, so the only companies putting out DVD movies are the ones who pay $200,000,000 to make a movie. Maybe when I can get Ed Wood movies on DVD, it might be worthwhile.
Besides, so many of the movies I love are just crap I taped off of HBO.. stuff that you could never find it stores. Eliminating the recordable aspect of video is sort of silly. That's why people love their VCRs.
Posted by HarryZ:
Those of you whining on about grainy VHS quality, due yourselves a favor and pick up a S-VHS system, and stop whining. You can get those for the same price, or better than DVD systems - and they record.
Claiming that DVD is the only option to VHS, and thus it's okay to take artifacts and all the other DVD crap into account just shows how little you even bother looking at the options in the market.
DVD Sucks for several reasons:
* Digital artifacts/pixelation. The most obvious one, and while dual-layer DVDs provide better quality, obvious MPEG problems, like flashing still backgrounds at keyframes locations are still annoying. Try rapid pans, and you get the same problems. I viewed a DVD of 'Devil's Advicate' on my friend's high-end DVD player, and I ended up picking it up on Laserdisc instead - much better quality.
* Regional encoding - the discs are digital media, thus, theoretically any disc should be playable on any machine in the world, the local machine taking care of the local TV conversion, right? Not so - thanks to the $$$ industry's clueless greed, we now have regional encodings which make sure that you can NOT buy discs from one country to play in another country. Supposedly to stem piracy of discs - funny that all pirated discs are encoded without regional coding, thus they are playable everywhere, so that really didn't do anything for that problem, except annoy consumers. Sure, I could pay more to get a DVD player that has no regional coding, but why should I pay more to fix a problem that shouldn't be there to start with.
* DVD sounds is inferior to LaserDisc digital tracks. This is true as the DVD's PCM tracks have less dynamic range and quality than LaserDisc's digital tracks. You *can* hear it if you have them side-by-side.
In summary, IMO, DVD is not worth it unless these items are fixed (albeit the sound is the least of them). Otherwise, it is just a medium that allows the movie companies to profit from the apathetic consumers.
DiVX? Not even worth mentioning - it was dead before it wa even conceived.
HarryZ
Posted by jonrx:
Are you complaning about encoding artifacts! Where have you been!? I guess you have been living in some remote cabin up in the mountains for the last 20 years. You know, there is this thing called VHS, and it does not suffer for "encoding artifacts", however, I get muffled sound, "snow", out-of-sync colors, "skew" (now that's scary, it's so common, that players actually are coming with "anti-skew" button on them!) I take DVD over hyped, sucky, bulky VHS anyday! JVC HQ should be burnt to the ground for the years of suffering!
-jon
Posted by Sam Robertson:
If you've ever owned a DSS, you'll absolutely hate Digital Cable. I had Digital Cable for two months, and called the cable company and told them to shove it. It's crap, and considering what's already out there on Satellite, it's absurd that they think they are competition to DSS. The truth is, they think they can keep people ignorant of the benefits of small dish technologies by touting it's price, but the reality is that it pays for itself within a year as compared to Cable!
And so it is written upon the book of the Disc 6:66 that Upon the 99th year of the 20th century that a great plague will be upon us. And so a great hero named DaViD will come and save us from our blight; and so the evil demon known to us as DivX will be engaged in a battle of the Titans With DaViD, and He shall taketh his Quake CD, and his SlackWare CD, and his Debian CD, and his Quake 2 CD, and he shall use the Disk Launcher fromth the game Tribes, and he shalt use it upon the evil Demon, and it shall be destroyed, it is so written in the Man pages of god.
I've heard this argument before, but isn't Blockbuster "Big Brother" too? Big rental chains already know what movies you're watching, so why is DIVX any different>
They can record and re-record, easily.
Even CDRs have not replaced the cassette for this because (1) The recording process is still too complex for Consumer Joe Schmuck to execute and (2) CDRW's don't work in most CD players and (3) The usual CDRW packetized re-recording format isn't understood by any audio CD decks and (4) The tech is still bulky (compare to microcassette recorders for lectures) and (5) the recording process is power hungry (no CDR portable recorders).
Considering that CDs came out almost 20 years ago. I don't see VHS going away for at least another 20 years as well.
When I see handheld DVD camcorders for $500, I'll believe that VHS will die.
What about 35mm film? Wanna make that obsolete too?
Don't forget that part of Pi's unique look is down to its use of an unusual development process, using the "obsolete" analogue techniques of "subjecting a load of chemicals to light"...
I've never seen any form of digital TV (be it DVD, digital cable TV, whatever) that was free of VERY obvious artifacts. They are a pain! Yes, I know, digital TV is inherently limited, but the quality at the moment seems more limited by the imagination of the people pushing these cruddy formats than by digital technology itself.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Here's the thing. Divx sucks. It's inferior technology with a higher price tag, cleverly disguised so that it looks cheaper in the beginning. Everyone on Slashdot knows that. Most others don't. A few unfortunates will have to learn it the hard way.
Once they do, however, the word will spread, and Divx will die the quick, nasty death it deserves. It doesn't need our help.
After reading all these posts I have a question. Several of the posts refer to the fact/idea that there is a definite visual improvement with more expensive DVD players. So if I buy a 300.00 set I'm going to have a worse experience than my nice VHS machine? I don't want to have to buy a 1000.00 machine. I'll just wait.
Any advice or a good URL link would be wonderful. Thanks for you help.
Ron
If you properly calibrate your TV, the artifacting effects to which you refer will be much less noticeable. Also, many people don't realize you need to turn the "sharpness" or "picture" control to it's lowest setting on most TV sets. A high sharpness or picture setting exagerates the artifacting effects by introducing more noise to the picture. Also, an S-video or component video connection is a must.
I suggest getting the DVD "Video Essentials" to help calibrate a nice home theater setup.
I have a midrange DVD player (Sony S500D) and a small but growing collection of DVDs (14). My television is a decidedly low-end 25" GE model (I'm not getting a new one until I can get a 16x9 flatscreen model).
Maybe I'm just not 3l337 enough, but I have noticed exactly one instance of MPEG artifacts in all those hours of viewing, and that instance lasted about 1/2 of a second.
DVDs kick ass. They're cheaper than VHS (I got all of Bubblegum Crisis on 3 DVDs for $50 as opposed to $160 on 8 VHS tapes), they include cool stuff (making of, production stills, cast interviews). Most importantly, VHS looks like total shit once you've watched a DVD. It's so *blurry*!
I can live with a half-second of artifacts per 30 hours of video in exchange for crystal clear images and wonderfully clear, obnoxiously loud and noise free sound.
Everybody: go buy a DVD player right now. DIVX must die.
--
Posted with Mozilla
Actually they do use encryption better than that and that's exactly why they don't export to other countries. Also, it's one of their reasons they dont have multiple languages selection.
Slider
I've had digital cable for almost six months now, and all things considered, I like it. Every now and then, if you look really, really hard, you can see a compression artifact or two. I'll learn to live with that considering I wouldn't even have those stations on the old analog system (yes, the channels I had with the old system are still analog). As far as the delay when changing channels, no big deal. The on-screen program guide is a much better way to see what's on, so the only time I change channels is when I already know what I'm going to watch. Never was much of a channel-surfer anyway.
The thing to remember about technology and the "digital revolution" (hate that phrase) is that it's full of trade-offs. All things considered, I think digital cable is still a much better service than the old analog cable, flaws and all.
Actually, they're only charged 20 years from now IF the DIVX system is still available to authorize the viewing.... it's a bizarre little system, and it's all useless if they don't get it to catch on.
Even if you purchase the full release (for ~$20 extra?) for unlimited views, I believe it still has to authenticate off it's central server.
--- http://foo.ca
>>"Obsolete" is an adjective, not a verb.
>Any noun can be verbed.
"Verbing weirds language." (Where's that from?)
I miss Meept.
Divx is evil... the scourge of all good.
I hate to tell you, but all of the cable feeds come down off of the satellite in a digital format these days (Digicypher II). So, if you're watching HBO, or whatever, it's from a digital source.
You get artifacting with digital video when people try to cut corners on the bits-per-second in order to cram more onto a single disc. But in a professional environment, it can be done right so that you wouldn't notice it. You crank up the bitrate until the artifacting goes away.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I really like DVD. It is a nice medium, that takes the convienience of CD and brings it to video. Unlike some peoples complaints about pixilization here, they are unfounded. Yes there are issues on high grade video, but that is not what you get from the video store. DVD fails as a media for profesional mixing but pixlated high resolution is better than grainy low resolution. The sound is nice as well.
While I am a firm LP for quality sound man. VHS has multiple failings. One VCRs use variable gain so dynamic range of sound and sound quality is not preserved. Could Analog tape be a better media? Yes. When I rent "Apocalypse Now" and view it at home will it look and sound better on DVD or VHS? Definitly DVD. Not to mention how grainy and worn out video places let their video's get.
Though I have to admit I have already rented a scratched up DVD from blockbuster.
DIVIX is a dumb idea. I think it is a niche market to make some money for a little while, then toss. (and leave the DIVIX purchasers with an overpriced piece of crap that can't get new DIVIX titles.)
People still go to the close place ot rent videos. DIVIX makes people go to circuit city and pay more to "rent" a video. And if I want to buy, I can still purchase from Blockbuster, Amazon.COM, Fry's, Best Buy.....
The common fool will eventually succumb to his pocket book.
"His[Mankind's] heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque." -Satan "Letters From Earth" Mar
I have been hesitant to buy DVD because of the different codings for all the continents. I do understand that the movie companies wants to do something about pirated films from Asia, but this is such a hassle. Just when I had gotten NTSC capable TV and VCR. When we are on the subject of incompatibility, especially annoying is the "staggered release" that we have to live with in Europe and the rest of the world. Only when the film has earned enough money in the US to make a release to the rest of the world a safe bet do we get to see the latest and greatest - after six months or so. :-(
As someone else mentioned, quality movies might not be converted to DVD, and the risk could be even greater for those with non-US encoding -unless I only want to watch French movies. And I don't. Delikatessen and others are great, but I would like to see independent movies from all over the world. These things make me wonder if there is any idea to buy DVD here.
However, someone said to me that "all DVD players sold in Sweden these days are with zero encoding so you can see any films". Is this true? Are there any legal DVD players with that ability?
If this is the case, DVD - here I come!
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I concur.
Obsolete may be used as a transitive verb meaning "to make obsolete." In fact, my websters indicates that the word "obsolete" is derived from the past participle of the latin verb obsolescere.
Mmm. I miss latin class...
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
so basically someone needs to find out a way to grab the keys once and then replay them. I hope divx doesn't get to the point where someone has to bother, but if it does become successful, it'll probably happen.
I am desking?
You are roading?
He/she/it is treeing?
Sure, I talk like this all the time.
It seems to me that anyone can make changes to English. If the change is understood and accepted it may become "standard protocol" and soon may become part of the commonly accepted language.
Question: Does the dictionary TELL us how to speak properly? Or does it merely DESCRIBE and CATALOG how we speak? Ie, which came first, the words or the dictionary? It seems that the dictionary definations are a reflection of how we use words, FOLLOWING language usage-- not an authority on how we SHOULD talk.
Language wants to be free.
(unless you're trademarking "you've got mail" of course)
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Are these free forever or did they just waive the charge for the purchase price (about $5 if memory serves)? If they're not free forever, the poor sap who falls for the DiVX scam ends up paying the per view charge 48 hours after the first viewing. What a deal, eh?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
That still doesn't make any sense.
Granted language does evolve, but that does not mean we should abandon the confines of proper english. For example, look at the inner cities. You have 'ebonix', this 'language' has become utterly unintelligible. The fact is, even the people who speak it hardly understand each other. Imagine trying to read a programming book, or an API filled with such nonsense. The problem is, if it evolves too rapidly it tends to splinter in a sense. There must be a certain common thread, a backbone if you will, which everyone can learn from and use to communicate without problems. This simply can't be done, if it becomes standard practice for anyone to mangle it at will. This is kind of like MS altering some well defined APIs, but atleast they've got the clout to make the rest of the world adapt to them.
When I read a DivX press release, Circuit City was really the only viable vendor listed for movies The rest looked like a bunch of shops that had about five stores. Blockbuster and mom-n-pop video stores aren't going to sabotage their own rental sales, and without support from Best Buy or other major electronics stores, there is no way that the movies or the players will sell for much longer.
If movie studios REALLY wanted a piece of the rental market, the format would be simple. Screw the whole phone-line/silver disc crap, I think that is too Big Brother for most consumers. I don't want my rental habits charted by anyone. Lower the price to $2 and reduce the packaging to nothing, and let me watch the movie for 48 hours.
I don't know how this would be enforced (this movie will self-destruct in 5 mins?), but I'm sure someone could come up with something. An added bonus would be if you could bring a rental in for $1 off of the regular movie.
What's so bad about DIVX. Once someone figures out how to hack it, DIVX will just be a cheap way for people to add to their DVD collections.
Shouldn't we all be hoping that DIVX takes off like wildfire, and that every film is released in that format, so that we can all benefit from the upcoming hack?
Or is someone actually going to use the work 'unhackable'?
IIRC laser discs have analog sound tracks, and dvds allow either dolby digital, or uncompressed PCM, or mpeg-2 audio.
-matt
Hey guys, what is DIVX? I assume it is some US only thing, as we haven't heard of it in Asia. DVD, meantime, is big time in Asia - limited only by our economic woes.
There don't appear to be any pirate DVDs at present. The pirate production business haven't taken off so far as DVDs are so damned hard to produce.
Probably the first pirate DVDs will be from Sony or Pioneer. Don't laugh. Their contract pressing divisions are the main source of pirate LDs. Their confidentiality practices don't allow them to check what they press. I guess in another year or so the villages in GuangDong will be buying DVD making machines, and the piracy business will take off.
The authorities in China are making some real efforts to reduce piracy, but its tough. A pirate CD plant can be a village's main money earner. Try to shut it down and the villagers get violent. They have to sent armed soldiers to shut these plants down, and people have been killed.
There have been a lot of comments about DVD artefacts here, but consider:
1. VCD gives poor video and sound. However, its video is about the same as VHS. VHS looks like an impressionist painting. While I love the French impressionists, I don't want to see the world like that 100% of the time. With the latest encoders the VCD's MPEG1 artefacts aren't too nasty, and even subtitles can be kept clean. The sound is pretty awful, though (MP3 essentially, at a fairly low bit rate). The PCM sound on VHS is certainly better.
2. DVD is way ahead of VHS and VCD in picture quality. Sure, you can get some amazingly nasty artefacts. With the right material it goes completely crazy. However, most of the time it looks about the same as LD. Subtitles are about as clear as a conventional TV can resolve. The sound is still a bit iffy, though (MP3, but I don't know the bit rate).
3. LD quality has always been limited by the quality of the source material, and not the medium itself. That is true for DVD too. You don't need something better than DVD until the production people produce cleaner results.
4. MPEG2 broadcast quality is a totally variable thing. They can give you high or low quality, depending on how they program the bit rate. It can be excellent. It can be awful. Don't judge the technology by a few samples you may have seen. This is especially true in the US, where price wins over quality every time. Demand quality, and be prepared to pay extra for it.
5. None of the new media - DVD, MP3, etc. - offer Hi-Fi sound. As in the phone market, there seems to be a drift away from sound quality to reducing costs with excessively low bit rates. The DVD audio disks offer wonderful sound - far better than CD, especially in the quieter passages of a classical piece - but so far I have only seen demo disks. It is unclear whether there will be any production releases (though I may be wrong). Until the production costs of DVDs come down I don't expect to see any mass market audio disks.
6. There is no good reason why an inexpensive DVD machine should give poor pictures. Those high end machines are a con. There is a good reason why the sound quality may vary, especially if they really market the DVD Hi-Fi audio disks.
7. Rental DVDs suffer scratch problems, just like game CDs. Soemone made a reasonable comment about them not being used by 8 year olds. If you have rented LDs, though, you will know they get badly scratched. DVD will be worse - its compact format encourages mis-handling.
8. Compared to a fractal coded solution, MPEG-2 quality stinks at equivalent same bit rates. Fractal coding is very asymmetric, though - it requires enormous resources to code, but quite limited resources to decode. MPEG-2 was designed for things like mini-DV, as well as replay only systems like DVD. I guess DCT based solutions were the only choice to suit all needs.
'Nuff said.
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I am worried that a lot of movies will get 'lost' in the conversion process. This is the first time we have really changed 'home' standards for movie viewing. I know mots movies will make the transition but will that old out of distribution B grade sci fi flick be ported? How about that independant film by a small distributor who went out of business 10 years ago and whose library was never picked up?
Working in a boutique video store ( not this BlockBuster crud ) long ago has really given me an appreciation for just how gigantic the videography really is and hard it will possibly be to port all of this old videoware over.
Sure, the huge movies, classics, not so huge and even small films will get ported, but finding certain old films by 3rd party distributors, indies etc will probably be impossible and its saddening. DVD is the format of the future but I think it will forget much of its past far to quickly. This could possibly be a major loss to our film heritage and really a blow to our culutral memory, sad as it is, movies and TV are our cultural scat for which we will be collectively remembered...
Hmmm. Maybe this would be a good application for a beowolf cluster? I think that would be great fun.
//geach
//An once of plutonium makes a bigger bang than a ton of TNT
There's nothing finer than screwing Circuit City
Looking at the technical issues involved, you can't take your Divx disk to a friend's house and play it on their machine. In addition, what if Divx goes out of business? You are then left with a worthless disk that you cannot watch any more.
Open DVD is the only way to go. That's why there are so few titles available on Divx...movie studios aren't willing to support such a worthless standard.
High end audio/video manufacturers aren't making Divx players. We're talking Meridian, Runco, Theta, Pioneer Elite. Buying Divx is like throwing your money down the toilet.
to follow up the previous poster, i got kurosawa's
"Ran" a little while ago. i don't know why it wasn't broken down into chapters, but otherwise it's a very nice disc
-- 'Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that are achieved'
I think from the rest of this thread just about everyone knows what DIVX is. However, IMHO, don't get DIVX. Let me give you some stats.
Circuit City sunk a shitload of money into the DIVX project. This was enough to hurt their quarterly earnings the quarter they did that. When that happened, their stock dropped a nice share, representing the support of the investor into CC's venture.
When you are buying a player, DIVX players are only sold at a couple places, and is more or less more expensive than a comperable DVD.
If you go to Best Buy, before the end of last year, their deal was five free DVD moves and 13 free DVD rentals from Hollywood video. Circuit City has something like 10 free DIVX. Please.
DIVX, just because of the lack of popular support, expecially from movie studios shall be the downfall of it.
-Michael J. Lu
"The little secret that haunts Corporate America...a techonology that won't go away."
I have not experienced the interlacing on TND. However, I did have some trouble with a copy of Ninja Scroll. The audio track gradually wandered out of sync with the video, and *lots* of pixelization was present in various scenes.
I contacted Manga, the publisher, and they sent me a new copy, along with a t-shirt. The new copy is absolutely flawless.
It appears that some discs have buggy encoding, which causes problems on some players. I believe that this is simply a learning stage associated with the *relatively* new technology. When problems do occur, the companies involved seem to be very anxious to correct the problems and to make the consumer happy.
I for one am very happy with DVD, and continue to be impressed by the new releases.
Never attribute to malice that which can be more easily attributed to stupidity -- Hanlon's Razor
DVD is great. You can't argue that. I have a player on my computer to go along with my tv/tuner card. I don't have to buy a TV now. I got my cable and movies when I want them. I don't think hooking up a VCR to my computer would be logical. DVD has saved my a lot.
And Divx. A great idea. I'm not to blast on it. If you want one, buy one. I don't want one. But I got a great thought coming from the hacking point of view. What if there was a mod chip? Just like the playstation. A chip that would let you play the divx movies without paying. Once that happens I'll buy a divx player, but until then, I'm sticking with the DVD-ROM in my Dell
It would be really bad if DIVX would take hold.
Just to prevent that, I bought a DVD machine and some movies:-) My vore is on DVD. DIVX will never take hold, especially outside of the USA.