Groups like MPAA has always tried to maintain strict control of all aspects of release from time and location. DVD, HD-DVD, and BlueRay all have region encoding for a reason.
You're almost right.
HD DVD does not have region encoding. This is actually one of the reason some studios chose to support Blu-ray exclusively -- the studio demands region encoding, and HD DVD doesn't allow it.
The lack of region encoding (and less restrictive DRM in general) is why I choose to vote with my wallet for HD DVD instead of Blu-ray.
Considering I've got almost everything mentioned in the article. (I don't have Blu-ray, and I chose HD DVD because it has less restrictive DRM-- that and I see Sony as the Microsoft of consumer electronics)
I think I'm able to make a decent comparison:
HD DVD & Blu-ray use the same codecs (in many cases, there was only one encode, which was then copied to both discs), and bitrates well above human perception-- they look and sound identical.
Xbox Live Marketplace is only 720p, vs the 1080p of HD DVD & Blu-ray. (The difference between 720p and 1080p do exist, but you've got to sit pretty close to the screen to see them.) Movies are VC-1 encoded, and are about 6-8 GB in size, and are 'rentals.' You have to watch it within 14 days of 'renting' the movie, and you can only watch it for 24 hours after the first time you play it. The cost is somewhat hidden, as it is rented in terms of 'microsoft points', which you have to buy first. Why there's an additional level of indirection for xbox live purchases, I don't know.
DVD is the standard most are familiar with. It's better than broadcast TV.
And Apple TV is anywhere from TV Broadcast quality (obviously in cases where the source was broadcast quality), up to DVD quality. Movies are about 1.5-2 GB in size. And you buy the movie outright, and can watch it whenever you want, forever.
So, to nobody's suprise, the Apple TV doesn't to full HD content -- and frankly, I'm fine with that. Most people forget that full HD would mean much larger downloads, and more hard disc space.
Part of the 'joy' of the iTunes store is that you're able to download something in less time than it takes to go to the store and buy it. And at the moment, it takes a lot less time to drive to the store and buy a HD DVD than it does to download on consumer broadband.
So in a few years, when there's higher speeds for consumer broadband, I can see full HD downloads, and an upgraded Apple TV. Apple is probably trying to build a new market, not compete in a pre-existing one.
The Xbox suffers because it can take *forever* to download movies, because you can't keep the movies ('rental' only), and because Xbox Live Marketplace movies can't be transferred to a PC for storage. Apple TV works with both Mac and Windows (and is probably hackable for Linux use), where the 360 is strictly Windows-only. If you only use Windows, it's no big deal, but if you use something else, you're SOL.
TFA doesn't seem anti-US; it really was a 'oh crap' moment, where Fermilab, other US labs (probably something like ORNL, LANL, Sandia, or LLNL), as well as CERN, reviewed the design, over a period of four years, and the flaw was overlooked every time. There's plenty of blame to pass around, and Fermi is simply trying to save face by stating that they aren't the only ones who missed it, and they aren't the only ones with egg on their faces. It's a weak argument, but saving face is important to any group dependant on grant money.
The Slashdot post, however, does have an anti-us slant: It insinuates that Fermilab intentionally sabotaged the LHC; Fermilab is just as interested in the LHC's success as everybody else-- perhaps even more intereste in LHC's success, given that they designed some of its core components. Fermilab isn't getting a new collider anytime soon; at the very least, it's not possible for Fermi to somehow stall the LHC long enough for an even larger collider to be proposed, accepted, funded by Congress, designed, built, and brought into operation -- espescially on where there's so much politics (and money/jobs) in what locale gets to build it.
LHC already fought those battles, and is the only collider that large on the roadmap for years. When the LHC goes online, and is successful, Fermilab gets to slap a "Fermi Inside" sticker on the LHC, if only figuratively. If LHC doesn't go online, and it's the fault of FermiLab's magnet assemblies, I somehow doubt that Fermilab would ever recover.
OK, on paper, you'd be quite correct. They all allow for the same codecs, although there are differences about what codecs are mandatory, and what are optional.
In reality, there are quite a few differences, and good reasons.
1.) Blu-ray often has an uncompressed PCM track for audio. Whether you can actually hear it or not, there's at least the psychological thing saying that uncompressed is going to sound better than compressed. HD DVD can also do uncompressed PCM, but they choose not to; Dolby TrueHD is lossless (similar to FLAC), but takes less space on disc than uncompressed PCM. Even then, only a fraction of HD DVD's have lossless audio. Most HD DVD's use 1.5 Mb/s Dolby Digital, which is a number of times greater than the bitrate in movie theatres.
The sound argument is dubious in my head; just like there are people who still assert that vinyl records sound better than digital, there are people who claim that they can tell the difference between lossless and lossy audio. It's not a knock against Blu-ray; they have the room for uncompressed audio, so why not. I just don't buy into the arguments about compressed audio being undeniably worse; espescially at the bitrates that BD and HD DVD use for lossy audio.
2.) Early BD releases only had MPEG-2 compression available. It wasn't a hardware problem, but a problem with disc authoring software; you just couldn't make a BD disc that used VC-1 or MPEG-4, because the tools to make them didn't exist. The video took a lot more space on disc, due to the efficiencies of MPEG-2 vs VC-1 or MPEG-4, which coupled with uncompressed PCM audio and only having one layer to work with, the bitrate for the video had to go down for the whole thing to fit. And it showed.
3.) Now that they can produce dual-layer BD discs, and the authoring tools allow for VC-1 and MPEG-4, new BD releases have the video quality that HD DVD always had (HD DVD started out, and is still almost exclusively VC-1, although there are a few MPEG-4 releases). But that doesn't change the 'early' BD releases that relied on MPEG-2, single-layer discs, where quality suffered, and brought the average down.
There are subtle differences, but for the most part, there's hardly any functional difference. Hidefdigest (the source of TFA) had an article where Microsoft mentioned that they wrote a tool for Warner Brothers that would convert a VC-1 HD DVD to a BD release. This means that Warner makes the HD DVD version, then runs Microsoft's script to convert it to BD. This in turn means that when all is said and done, both formats have the exact same data on the discs, with the only difference being the menu system. So in the end, BD has more space, and costs more to produce. The thing is, few movies would require a full BD, so the advantage of the extra size is questionable.
And I'm left deciding which I dislike more: Sony or Microsoft. Tough call.
1.) The LOTR trilogy will fit on a single BD either. The DVD edition(s) alone weigh in above BD's 50 GB spec (yes, there have been 200 GB discs, but you know what? They've had 50 GB DVD's (10-layer) too. I certainly haven't seen a 10 layer DVD yet. At standard definition with a fair amount of audio compression, BD isn't big enough. And if you're getting it in HD, it had better be in HD -- which means 6x more pixel data (offset by better compression, ~3x more data), as well as many, many times more audio data (espescially if using the uncompressed PCM that is common to BD). In other words, the LOTR trilogy would likely have trouble fitting on the mythical 200 GB disc. 2.) Consumers are pretty indoctrinated into believing that more is better. We've got multi-disc boxed sets for DVD already -- quite often, it's not because there's a need the room on the second disc. Consumers just feel they get more for their money when they get 'extra' discs.
Bottom line: The single-disc version is a pipe dream that doesn't face the hard facts. The complete LOTR trilogy is on 12 dual-layer DVD's, or ~96 GB of data. And that's in standard definition, and much lower audio bitrates. And, even if they could fit it onto one disc, they wouldn't, because consumers are already conditioned to believe multiple discs are better than one.
BluRay: Has better audio, probably because of the larger capacity and better support for advanced codecs. Bonus features should catch up once more BD-Java tools are developed.
Blu-ray doesn't have better support for advanced codecs. In terms of 'optinal' formats, it's a wash; both support the same list. In terms of mandatory codecs, HD DVD gets the win. HD DVD requires many codecs that are merely optional for BD. The (lossless) Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD codecs are optional, not mandatory, on Blu-ray. TrueHD decoding is mandatory on HD DVD.
That being said, I can see how an audiophile would say that Blu-ray has better sound. Since TrueHD isn't mandatory, most BD discs target compatibility by using raw uncompressed PCM. (BD also uses Dolby Digital & optionally DTS, as does HD DVD). So the 'better' sound comes down to the old argument between uncompressed/lossless vs high-bitrate lossy sound. (HD DVD titles with TrueHD soundtracks rank on the same level as BD's raw PCM).
The bitrate of the lossy Dolby codecs on HD DVD is 1.5 Mb/s. This is well above the transparency level of 1.2 Mb/s for the codec. I wonder if it's a case of subconsciously thinking "this one is lossy, so it can't sound as good," and that a double-blind test would have different results.
BD-J is also an optional extention to Blu-ray; it's not a mandatory part of the spec. While BD-J has the possibility of giving excellent interactivity, the end result may be far below the potential. The reason: HDi is not much more complex than editing HTML, whereas BD-J requires Java skills. Ease of development counts, and BD-J doesn't appear to have it.
HD DVD supports both Dolby and DTS. Much like a normal DVD, whether or not it has DTS is entirely up to the studio mastering the disc. Dolby mandatory, and I believe DTS is optional (just as it is with standard def DVD's). HD DVD also supports both Dolby and DTS lossless formats, should the studio master the disc to use it. (Again, Dolby TrueHD decoding is mandatory, DTS-HD is optional)
The reason why Blu-ray is credited with 'sounding better' is because many Blu-ray discs use raw PCM encoding for audio, rather than any sort of compression (lossless or not). Some purists believe they can hear the difference between compressed, lossless and lossy compression.
While many HD DVD titles use lossless compression, not all of them do.
When an HD DVD title does have lossless compression, its audio is ranked as good as Blu-ray's (and it had better, given that the decoder should be seeing an identical bitstream).
To be honest, I'm a believer in lossy compression; at the bitrates used in HD DVD, I seriously doubt anybody could tell the difference between lossless and lossy in a double-blind test on identical equipment; the bitrate is well above the level of transparency.
You know, joke aside, it's a very good point. And, in fact, the same lesson should be taken: Just because one is selling well, it doesn't spell the doom of a competitor.
Sony's just doing a bit of grandstanding to try to get more people to buy Blu-ray: "The format war is over! We won!" Fear sells, and they're attempting to boost their sales by saying the competition is doomed; one of the oldest sales tactics in existence.
Just like consoles, the success of one does not mean the demise of another. There's no reason why both can't succeed, no reason why "there must be one."
Cases in point: CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM (Cell phones). There's no small amount of grief that this caused, and the solution was to build phones that do all of 'em. Oddly enough, that's what is starting to happen with the "HD" optical discs. PS3 vs. Wii vs. Xbox Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows Apple's music vs. everything else...
I bet you that advocating a coup d'etat would get you arrested for treason, terrorism or threats against the president, if you get charged at all and not just thrown into Guantanamo.
Do you live in a cave or anything? Or have you just not seen Leno, Letterman, The Daily Show, any of a score of political pundits, authors, journalists, or celebrities?
Being hated and having people calling for removal from office by force is one of the perks of being President of the United States, and is about as normal as toilet paper-- it's so common nobody gives it a second thought.
This reminds me of a conspiracy theory my Roomate had going while I was in college. The gist of it is that the Canadians have a widespread effort to subvert government of the United States, and effectively take over the country.
Naturally, it was satirical, but now I'm wondering... what if there was something to it?
You're right about conversions-- at least where it applies. On paper, with perfect electronics (which don't exist), a CD is enough to satisfy the most sensitive ears. But because we don't have perfect electronics, we've moved to 96 kHz/24 bit audio -- able to reproduce frequencies dogs can't hear at volumes that virtually no audio equipment can reach (and certainly not with any level of fidelity) The same can apply to video.
Quantization error (technical jargon for conversion problems) can arise if you have cheap hardware (by which I don't refer to price...) Some TV's won't be noticible at all, others might be very apparent. Which is why it's important to get a good TV first.
I've got an 1080p LCD HDTV; it has to digitize any analog signal it gets for display.
My brother, OTOH, has a 1080i CRT HDTV.
Both have Component and HDMI. Interesingly enough, HDMI looks slightly worse on my brother's CRT. (A CRT's 'native' signal is the component video... in fact, component video's signal describes what the TV has to do to aim and fire the electron beam that makes a CRT work. When HDMI is used, the signal has to be converted to analog first.) On my LCD, they're not distinguishable.
As far as why you get a bad picture at 1600x1200 on your PC: There are a number of possible reasons. Your video card is one of them, the monitor itself is another. If you are using one of those DVI->VGA adapters to connect the monitor, that is a pretty big red flag.
If you're using a DVI->VGA adapter, it's going to look bad; I've had more than a few video cards that had both DVI and VGA outputs, and I've tried the quality of the adapters. My advice-- use the native VGA output; the adapters just plain suck.
I used to have my Mac Mini hooked to a KVM (sharing the monitor with a PC), the Mac Mini had noticible 'banding' scrolling up the screen constantly. At 1600x1280, it was intolerable; at 1280x1024, it was at least livable. When I switched the KVM to display from the PC, the picture was gorgeous with the same settings. Swapping the KVM cable around didn't do anything, nor did removing it entirely-- the Mini just couldn't output a VGA signal that looked as good as the video card in my PC (no suprise considering the only choice I had was to use one of those lame DVI->VGA adapters)
Last but not least is the cable. VGA cables differ quite a bit from TV cables-- much thinner wire, much smaller surface area on the connector. A Component cable has the ability to push a far more powerful signal; this also means that you can get a higher quality signal.
1080p60 works out to: * 1080 Lines * 60 Hz * 1920 pixels/line
= 124.416 MHz, if you are using one clock tick per pixel. (At best you can get two pixels/clock, which would bump it down to ~62 MHz of bandwidth, but I'll be pessimistic and user the higher number) Bytes/second doesn't apply, because it's an analog signal; the amplitude of the signal on each cycle is what determines the color.
124.416 MHz is well below the level where signal smearing becomes a problem, even with 24 gauge wire (which is pretty thin stuff;).
Keep in mind that a high-res VGA signal is very close to an HDTV signal in terms of bandwidth: 1600x1280@75Hz has a bandwidth of 153.6 MHz; more than a 1080p60 signal.
On an LCD screen, the (analog) VGA signal is indistinguishable (to human eyes) from the equivalent (digital) DVI signal at that resolution; the picture is sharp, clear, with rich colors.
I have devices that output both HDMI and component. It's not hard for me to look for differences; it is hard to find any differences.
Does it allow me to say 'Rent a movie' from Live marketplace, store it on my computer and stream it from there when I want to watch it? or download a game demo and store it there?
I don't really know for certain; I don't use Windows on a PC (I use Linux & Mac -- unix variants). Wintendo's only virtue is games, and that's what I have an Xbox for.
It would score points for MS to do let Windows users download & stream Live Marketplace content.
It would be bonus if they'd allow non-windows boxen to stream content to the 360 (yeah, I know... I'll be shoveling snow in hell before Microsoft does it.)
(Alternatively, if you have a 'Media Center PC', you don't need to download anything.)
And the 'core system' can have a Hard drive snapped into it; takes about as much time as changing the battery pack on the 360 controller (seconds). Since the drive is trivially replaceable, it's no big deal to swap disks, or to offer a bigger replacement drive.
That's OK. I design products for customers. If a company can't make money in the end, it's better off not having your 'business.' I've seen multi-million dollar deals turned down because the customer more or less said "I'm not buying until you give me _____." We would have lost money on it, so we told the customer to take a flying leap.
Adding HDMI, HD DVD, and a bigger HD will raise 360's the price to $600 (the same as the PS3.) Sony's reputation in consumer electronics will carry it much farther than Microsoft's reputation ever could. Sony is seen as a top brand; Microsoft is seen as an exploitive monopoly. Being lower in price is one of the biggest things the 360 (and the Wii, to an even greater extent) have over the PS3. Microsoft knows full well that they simply cannot beat Sony on its own terms.
When the PS2 costed the same as the Xbox, the PS2 sold better. With a lower price point, the 360 has a chance against the PS3. But at the same cost, that advantage is gone.
That's BS, of course there's a need for that. Most HDTV sets, the true 1080 ones, comes with at least 2 HDMI ports, but only one component entry. HDMI will give you the best quality at 1080p, unless you buy ungodly priced component cables with enough bandwidth from the connectors to the cable.
Considering I have a true 1080p TV (brand new), I can look at it: 2 HDMI, 2 component. Do they look any different (even with the stock 360 cables)? Nope (I do have devices that can use both, and I connected both up as an experiment). Expensive cables are largely marketing as well. As long as you have a wide enough gauge wire (ie. lower resistence) it's not going to matter.
I'm an electrical engineer; I'm not so easily swayed by advertising claims made by Monster and the like. Most of their 'independant tests' are of thin-gauge wire vs (their) thick-gauge wire. When you compare an el cheapo wire with the same gauge as Monster's cable, there is no difference. Quite a profitable marketing ploy on the "premium" cable makers, though.
Bandwidth is a red herring; until you're to the point where signals start to 'mush' together (into the GHz range), there's not going to be an issue. Considering an analog TV signal has a vertical bandwidth of Now, we don't even know if the games can be output at true 1080p on the 360. This information seems very hard to get. Is the 1080p games from XB360 true 1080p, or just 720p scaled up to 1080p ?
The signal is 1080p, but I know your point. Some games are 1080, but most are 720 and scaled up (just like the PS3). But 720 games make an even stronger case that HDMI is not necessary.
Accept it or not, but HDMI seems to have won the connectors' war. Partially true; HDMI's virtue is that it is compliant with HDCP DRM-- something every movie studio have stated they won't use for fear of angering customers. HDMI is the digital cable of choice, and Component is the analog. Both can output a full 1080p signal at 60Hz.
First time I heard any of that. Every time I discussed with XB360 owners, it was the other way around : the current size of XB360 HDD is not enough, and that's on PS3 you can swap drives in a few seconds, not on XB360. Do you have a source for what you're saying ? I thought I mentioned in my original post that I have a 360. I have all kinds of dashboard themes, gamer pics, downloaded demos, videos, live marketplace movie 'rentals', music, and savegames. I still have 8 GB free.
To replace the drive, you pull back on the catch, and lift the drive off. Then you just snap the new drive in place. It's about as hard as changing the battery pack in the 360's wireless controller, and uses a similar set of motions.
Except that currently, BD or HD-DVD players aren't cheap or plentiful. Neither are plentiful; but that's the nature of being less than a year old. To be honest, the 'next-gen' consoles aren't plentiful either; not compared to stand-alone DVD players, at least.
Stand-alone BD players aren't currently that cheap ($700-1200); but HD DVD players are much cheaper ($375). In six months, the price of both will have dropped. The point is that it doesn't make sense to make the HD DVD drive a standard offering when the advantage of having it is evaporating quickly- just as the built-in DVD player rapidly became more of a footnote with the PS2 and Xbox.
These supposed 'Upgrades' are laregly fanboy dreams. There is no *need* for HDMI -- at all, ever, period.
The Component video the 360 uses is quite capable of full 1080p @60 Hz. The Optical out can handle the 5.1 surround the 360 cranks out.
There simply is no reason that HDMI is a 'must-have'; those who believe otherwise have been drinking too much of Sony's HD kool-aid. Adding HDMI will add absolutely nothing to the consumer experience, but will add quite a bit to the cost of the unit.
The 120 GB drive is, quite frankly, overkill. Some fanboy must've decided that twice what Sony is offering is worth bragging rights. If you want more space, get another drive. You can swap drives in a few seconds flat -- try that with a PS3. Moreover, I've got some-odd 20 games, played all of 'em. I've downloaded movies from Xbox live, as well as demos. I've only used about 70% of the current drive -- and most of that is the movie rental I downloaded and haven't watched. Drive space is a non-issue with the 360, as you can replace the hard drive almost as easily as swapping a memory unit.
Last, HD-DVD. I never watched DVD's on my original Xbox. I never knew anybody who watched them on a Playstation. It's not because they weren't capable players: It's that stand-alone DVD players were already plentiful and cheap.
The HD DVD drive is probably the most successful add-on drive on any console. I bought one, and I can't complain abot it. The HD DVD drive lets Xbox owners get a high definition player at a modest price.
But with the cost of stand-alone HD DVD players dropping rapidly (Down to about $300 now, IIRC), the real advantage of having HD DVD on the 360 just isn't going to be there for much longer. You're never going to see games that use the HD DVD disc-- it would be suicide, as you'd piss off legions of customers who don't have an HD DVD drive. There's also the false belief that you can actually play games from the HD DVD Drive-- the truth is, when you put a game into the HD DVD drive, the result is exactly the same as if you put the game in a standalone DVD player (try it sometime).
In every one of these three cases, you're adding a substantial amount of cost that does nothing to benefit the customer; HDMI is marketing puffery, with no real benefit to consumers (unless, that is, you see DRM as a good thing). More hard disc space would be useless to most users (I didn't even get *close* to filling my original Xbox's drive, and the 360 isn't faring much worse). HD DVD players are dropping in price rapidly enough that six months from now, it will be cheaper to just get a standalone HD DVD player. Forcing an HD DVD drive on the consumer will drive up the cost of the 360, and make it less able to compete with the PS3 and Wii. History tells us that people don't use game consoles to play movies; and adding a substantial amount to the price for a feature that few will really use is insane. Like I said earlier -- a very small fraction of console owners used their Xbox or PS2 to play DVD's; there's no reason to expect some magical change this time around.
Stop buying into the Playstation marketing madness; Sony threw Blu-ray into the PS3 to try to tilt the 'format war' in its favor, and it added a couple hundred bucks to the console's price. The PS3 needs more hard disk space, as the games install substantial amounts of code to the hard drive-- something the 360 doesn't to. They made design decisions that are a gamble, and may well backfire on Sony quite thoroughly. Where there's opprotunity, there's also risk.
The problem is one of engineering vs marketing (one I'm sure you're familiar with).
You're absoultely correct, as without the hard coating, scratches make Blu-ray discs unreadable quickly, where HD DVD will take the abuse and keep on turning.
Clever marketing is great at getting you to buy things you don't need. 'Scratch-removal' kits for optical discs sell well. Scratched discs are perceived as a problem, and an anti-scratch coating is something that is well-received. Some clever person managed to turn the absolute necessity of a hard coating on Blu-ray into a desirable feature.
Consumers think "Hard anti-scratch coating- HD DVD which doesn't have it, so I'll chalk that up as a 'pro' to Blu-ray and 'con' to HD DVD." The fact that Blu-ray doesn't last long without the coating, while HD DVD is durable enough to not need one is cleverly hidden from the consumer. And the HD DVD folks can't do much about it, because it takes longer to explain than the average consumer's attention span.
A similar thing can be said about the Xbox 360 not having HDMI. I'm a electrical/computer engineer. I know perfectly well that you don't need HDMI to display gorgeous 1080p; I have component video running from my 360 to my HDTV. My TV displays its video mode whenever the video mode changes; 1080i for my Mac Mini, 1080p for my 360, 480p for DVD player, etc. I know perfectly well that on a non-CRT TV, the difference between 1080p and 1080i is whether or not the TV is using its deinterlacing chip; the actual output is 1080p regardless.
Seriously-- how asinine is it to have interlaced output on a display that doesn't have a scanning electron beam?
I know all those things in my head, I know you don't need HDMI for 1080p. I know there's no difference in the resulting picture between 1080p and 1080i on a non-CRT television.
And yet I still wish the 360 did HDMI output, and that an HD DVD had a hard anti-scrach coating on it.
Actually, there is a shift among the public. * The outlook on Nuclear (fission) power is far less negative. The fear of possible nuclear meltdown is far less than of guaranteed climate change. * More people are becoming concerned with energy efficiency: Compact Flourescent light bulbs being pushed at Wall-Mart and on TV, Hybrid Vehicles, etc. People are looking to cut financial burdens by reducing their energy costs. Some (like CF bulbs) can have a significant impact with little extra cost. Same thing with insulating homes for cheaper heating and air conditioning. More energy efficiency=less carbon in this economy. * The people who are more educated (managers, engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.) are becoming more convinced and concerned with global warming, and aren't "joe sixpack." In other words: Joe sixpack may not care, but his boss does. You don't need Joe Sixpack to care nearly as much as you need his boss to care.
So his boss does things that force Joe Sixpack to change his behavior, both on the worksite and as a consumer. (More efficient/environmentally friendly policies & practices at work, and produces more environmentally friendly products)
Huge vehicles aren't without cost. Eventually, Joe then gets burned by high gas prices, and low mileage, and sells his SUV because he can't afford it. I've seen it happen a lot in the past two years. I see people I never expected to do the environmental thing change their behavior and opinions.
On the other hand, xbox player is a lot simpler and doesnt support advanced sound nor 1080p (actually no current HD player supports 1080p)
Actually, the 360 does support 1080p output with HD-DVD. I've got it.
As far as needing the 360 for it... it's sort of a 'no kidding' argument. Of course you're gonna need the Xbox 360 to use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. You also need an Xbox 360 to play an Xbox 360 game.
If you don't have a 360, then the cheaper option is to get a stand-alone HD-DVD player. The only thing the HD-DVD drive is (and will ever be) good for is playing movies.
If you insert an Xbox game into the HD-DVD drive, you end up with the same result as if you put the disc into a stand-alone DVD player (a single video frame with a multilingual error message saying the disc will only play in an Xbox 360.)
Unlike what some would want you to believe: 1.) You don't need HDMI for 1080p. The 360 outputs analog 1080p over VGA just fine, as well as output 1080p over component video. (The caveat there is that HD-DVD is 1080i over Component, verses 1080p over vga. Games are 1080p either way).
2.) With none of the movie studios asserting the HDCP DRM (and having stated that they don't intend to for the forseeable future), there's no danger of DRM-related downconversion because you don't have HDMI.
3.) The only place 1080i vs 1080p is going to make any difference is on a CRT TV. Interlacing is a trick used on CRT displays to provide higher resolution with less expensive hardware; it only matters to a CRT. None of Plasma, LCD, DLP, and LCOS care about interlacing, as they don't have a scanning electron beam. Internal circuitry de-interlaces the output; you never get interlaced output, regardless of the input signal.
4.) The HD-DVD add-on will never be used for games. It's for movies and movies alone, and has no effect whatsoever on the gameplay experience.
So, *if* you're a 360 owner, and *if* you want to play HD movies easily, the 360's add-on drive is a big win. It costs $150 less than the next option (a stand-alone HD-DVD player). This is a significant win to the 10 million 360 owners.
If you *don't* have the 360, then you end up with a pretty level playing field filled with fanboys on both sides.
The 360 with the HD-DVD addon costs about the same as the cheaper PS3. Most of the game programmers I know (as well as notes from those who are making supercomputers using the Cell processor) say the Cell's performance isn't up to the hype, and it's a pain to develop on. One quote from an IBM engineer was "There are only about 5 guys on the planet who can really program the Cell." (IBM co-developed the Cell).
The 360 and PS3 are on more or less equal footing in terms of horsepower (with the PS3 having a small edge, although most developers say it's not significant enough to be noticible).
So overall, I see the HD-DVD add-on as Microsoft's way to bring the 360 up to par with the PS3's capabilities (One PS3 model has a larger hard drive... but the 360's HD is as swapable as a memory card... Six one, half a dozen the other...) As I've already stated: you don't need HDMI for 1080p output.
The HDMI buzzword Sony keeps hawking is just that -- a buzzword. HDMI's advantage is that it's a single connector, compared to several for Component video. HDMI is all-digital, compared to the analog Component. And a good analog feed is indistinguishable from a digital feed.
Since my TV has both HDMI and component, and I have devices that use both, I can plug them both in and look at the difference. So far, my opinion is simple: HDMI is less of a spaghetti bowl behind the TV. But as I don't spend much time behind my TV, it's a non-issue. From the front of the TV, things look identical; the same levels of brightness, contrast & saturation.
In other words: If you put marketing hype in its place, the 360 and PS3 are in the same league. Both output 1080p, both c
In the end, I ended up going with a player I could buy for cheap. I can enjoy HD movies on my 720p projector now and if the format ends up "losing" the war, I won't care. By the time that happens, the other format would be cheap enough to buy in a stand alone player.
I did the same thing. The way I look at it is I may as well enjoy it, and if the format I chose loses, it's not like I won't be able to play the media I bought with the player I have. I'm still on my original DVD player; I have no reason to expect my HD Disc player will be short-lived either.
In any event, I think it's pretty comical when I hear comments from those (not you) who've bought into the Sony party-line that you can't have HD without HDMI. My 1080p and its component video TV begs to differ. Well, that and the positively ancient antenna and coax that gives me crystal-clear 1080i broadcast DTV. If the TV isn't a CRT, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is effectively nil.
True, there was some concern about component video not using HDCP, but the major studios have chosen not to implement HDCP, for fear of pissing off customers who bought an HD disc, but aren't getting the HD picture.
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Groups like MPAA has always tried to maintain strict control of all aspects of release from time and location. DVD, HD-DVD, and BlueRay all have region encoding for a reason.
You're almost right.
HD DVD does not have region encoding. This is actually one of the reason some studios chose to support Blu-ray exclusively -- the studio demands region encoding, and HD DVD doesn't allow it.
The lack of region encoding (and less restrictive DRM in general) is why I choose to vote with my wallet for HD DVD instead of Blu-ray.
It's not called "shit" anymore.
It's "Shit Vista"
Considering I've got almost everything mentioned in the article. (I don't have Blu-ray, and I chose HD DVD because it has less restrictive DRM-- that and I see Sony as the Microsoft of consumer electronics)
I think I'm able to make a decent comparison:
HD DVD & Blu-ray use the same codecs (in many cases, there was only one encode, which was then copied to both discs), and bitrates well above human perception-- they look and sound identical.
Xbox Live Marketplace is only 720p, vs the 1080p of HD DVD & Blu-ray. (The difference between 720p and 1080p do exist, but you've got to sit pretty close to the screen to see them.) Movies are VC-1 encoded, and are about 6-8 GB in size, and are 'rentals.' You have to watch it within 14 days of 'renting' the movie, and you can only watch it for 24 hours after the first time you play it. The cost is somewhat hidden, as it is rented in terms of 'microsoft points', which you have to buy first. Why there's an additional level of indirection for xbox live purchases, I don't know.
DVD is the standard most are familiar with. It's better than broadcast TV.
And Apple TV is anywhere from TV Broadcast quality (obviously in cases where the source was broadcast quality), up to DVD quality. Movies are about 1.5-2 GB in size. And you buy the movie outright, and can watch it whenever you want, forever.
So, to nobody's suprise, the Apple TV doesn't to full HD content -- and frankly, I'm fine with that. Most people forget that full HD would mean much larger downloads, and more hard disc space.
Part of the 'joy' of the iTunes store is that you're able to download something in less time than it takes to go to the store and buy it. And at the moment, it takes a lot less time to drive to the store and buy a HD DVD than it does to download on consumer broadband.
So in a few years, when there's higher speeds for consumer broadband, I can see full HD downloads, and an upgraded Apple TV. Apple is probably trying to build a new market, not compete in a pre-existing one.
The Xbox suffers because it can take *forever* to download movies, because you can't keep the movies ('rental' only), and because Xbox Live Marketplace movies can't be transferred to a PC for storage. Apple TV works with both Mac and Windows (and is probably hackable for Linux use), where the 360 is strictly Windows-only. If you only use Windows, it's no big deal, but if you use something else, you're SOL.
TFA doesn't seem anti-US; it really was a 'oh crap' moment, where Fermilab, other US labs (probably something like ORNL, LANL, Sandia, or LLNL), as well as CERN, reviewed the design, over a period of four years, and the flaw was overlooked every time. There's plenty of blame to pass around, and Fermi is simply trying to save face by stating that they aren't the only ones who missed it, and they aren't the only ones with egg on their faces. It's a weak argument, but saving face is important to any group dependant on grant money.
The Slashdot post, however, does have an anti-us slant: It insinuates that Fermilab intentionally sabotaged the LHC; Fermilab is just as interested in the LHC's success as everybody else-- perhaps even more intereste in LHC's success, given that they designed some of its core components. Fermilab isn't getting a new collider anytime soon; at the very least, it's not possible for Fermi to somehow stall the LHC long enough for an even larger collider to be proposed, accepted, funded by Congress, designed, built, and brought into operation -- espescially on where there's so much politics (and money/jobs) in what locale gets to build it.
LHC already fought those battles, and is the only collider that large on the roadmap for years. When the LHC goes online, and is successful, Fermilab gets to slap a "Fermi Inside" sticker on the LHC, if only figuratively. If LHC doesn't go online, and it's the fault of FermiLab's magnet assemblies, I somehow doubt that Fermilab would ever recover.
OK, on paper, you'd be quite correct. They all allow for the same codecs, although there are differences about what codecs are mandatory, and what are optional.
In reality, there are quite a few differences, and good reasons.
1.) Blu-ray often has an uncompressed PCM track for audio. Whether you can actually hear it or not, there's at least the psychological thing saying that uncompressed is going to sound better than compressed. HD DVD can also do uncompressed PCM, but they choose not to; Dolby TrueHD is lossless (similar to FLAC), but takes less space on disc than uncompressed PCM. Even then, only a fraction of HD DVD's have lossless audio. Most HD DVD's use 1.5 Mb/s Dolby Digital, which is a number of times greater than the bitrate in movie theatres.
The sound argument is dubious in my head; just like there are people who still assert that vinyl records sound better than digital, there are people who claim that they can tell the difference between lossless and lossy audio. It's not a knock against Blu-ray; they have the room for uncompressed audio, so why not. I just don't buy into the arguments about compressed audio being undeniably worse; espescially at the bitrates that BD and HD DVD use for lossy audio.
2.) Early BD releases only had MPEG-2 compression available. It wasn't a hardware problem, but a problem with disc authoring software; you just couldn't make a BD disc that used VC-1 or MPEG-4, because the tools to make them didn't exist. The video took a lot more space on disc, due to the efficiencies of MPEG-2 vs VC-1 or MPEG-4, which coupled with uncompressed PCM audio and only having one layer to work with, the bitrate for the video had to go down for the whole thing to fit. And it showed.
3.) Now that they can produce dual-layer BD discs, and the authoring tools allow for VC-1 and MPEG-4, new BD releases have the video quality that HD DVD always had (HD DVD started out, and is still almost exclusively VC-1, although there are a few MPEG-4 releases). But that doesn't change the 'early' BD releases that relied on MPEG-2, single-layer discs, where quality suffered, and brought the average down.
There are subtle differences, but for the most part, there's hardly any functional difference. Hidefdigest (the source of TFA) had an article where Microsoft mentioned that they wrote a tool for Warner Brothers that would convert a VC-1 HD DVD to a BD release. This means that Warner makes the HD DVD version, then runs Microsoft's script to convert it to BD. This in turn means that when all is said and done, both formats have the exact same data on the discs, with the only difference being the menu system. So in the end, BD has more space, and costs more to produce. The thing is, few movies would require a full BD, so the advantage of the extra size is questionable.
And I'm left deciding which I dislike more: Sony or Microsoft. Tough call.
1.) The LOTR trilogy will fit on a single BD either. The DVD edition(s) alone weigh in above BD's 50 GB spec (yes, there have been 200 GB discs, but you know what? They've had 50 GB DVD's (10-layer) too. I certainly haven't seen a 10 layer DVD yet. At standard definition with a fair amount of audio compression, BD isn't big enough. And if you're getting it in HD, it had better be in HD -- which means 6x more pixel data (offset by better compression, ~3x more data), as well as many, many times more audio data (espescially if using the uncompressed PCM that is common to BD). In other words, the LOTR trilogy would likely have trouble fitting on the mythical 200 GB disc.
2.) Consumers are pretty indoctrinated into believing that more is better. We've got multi-disc boxed sets for DVD already -- quite often, it's not because there's a need the room on the second disc. Consumers just feel they get more for their money when they get 'extra' discs.
Bottom line: The single-disc version is a pipe dream that doesn't face the hard facts. The complete LOTR trilogy is on 12 dual-layer DVD's, or ~96 GB of data. And that's in standard definition, and much lower audio bitrates. And, even if they could fit it onto one disc, they wouldn't, because consumers are already conditioned to believe multiple discs are better than one.
BluRay: Has better audio, probably because of the larger capacity and better support for advanced codecs. Bonus features should catch up once more BD-Java tools are developed.
Blu-ray doesn't have better support for advanced codecs. In terms of 'optinal' formats, it's a wash; both support the same list. In terms of mandatory codecs, HD DVD gets the win. HD DVD requires many codecs that are merely optional for BD. The (lossless) Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD codecs are optional, not mandatory, on Blu-ray. TrueHD decoding is mandatory on HD DVD.
That being said, I can see how an audiophile would say that Blu-ray has better sound. Since TrueHD isn't mandatory, most BD discs target compatibility by using raw uncompressed PCM. (BD also uses Dolby Digital & optionally DTS, as does HD DVD). So the 'better' sound comes down to the old argument between uncompressed/lossless vs high-bitrate lossy sound. (HD DVD titles with TrueHD soundtracks rank on the same level as BD's raw PCM).
The bitrate of the lossy Dolby codecs on HD DVD is 1.5 Mb/s. This is well above the transparency level of 1.2 Mb/s for the codec. I wonder if it's a case of subconsciously thinking "this one is lossy, so it can't sound as good," and that a double-blind test would have different results.
BD-J is also an optional extention to Blu-ray; it's not a mandatory part of the spec. While BD-J has the possibility of giving excellent interactivity, the end result may be far below the potential. The reason: HDi is not much more complex than editing HTML, whereas BD-J requires Java skills. Ease of development counts, and BD-J doesn't appear to have it.
Some purists believe they can hear the difference between compressed, lossless and lossy compression.
Stupid keys... I meant that some can hear the difference between UNcompressed, lossless, and lossy compression.
HD DVD supports both Dolby and DTS. Much like a normal DVD, whether or not it has DTS is entirely up to the studio mastering the disc. Dolby mandatory, and I believe DTS is optional (just as it is with standard def DVD's). HD DVD also supports both Dolby and DTS lossless formats, should the studio master the disc to use it. (Again, Dolby TrueHD decoding is mandatory, DTS-HD is optional)
The reason why Blu-ray is credited with 'sounding better' is because many Blu-ray discs use raw PCM encoding for audio, rather than any sort of compression (lossless or not). Some purists believe they can hear the difference between compressed, lossless and lossy compression.
While many HD DVD titles use lossless compression, not all of them do.
When an HD DVD title does have lossless compression, its audio is ranked as good as Blu-ray's (and it had better, given that the decoder should be seeing an identical bitstream).
To be honest, I'm a believer in lossy compression; at the bitrates used in HD DVD, I seriously doubt anybody could tell the difference between lossless and lossy in a double-blind test on identical equipment; the bitrate is well above the level of transparency.
You know, joke aside, it's a very good point. And, in fact, the same lesson should be taken: Just because one is selling well, it doesn't spell the doom of a competitor.
Sony's just doing a bit of grandstanding to try to get more people to buy Blu-ray: "The format war is over! We won!" Fear sells, and they're attempting to boost their sales by saying the competition is doomed; one of the oldest sales tactics in existence.
Just like consoles, the success of one does not mean the demise of another. There's no reason why both can't succeed, no reason why "there must be one."
Cases in point:
CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM (Cell phones). There's no small amount of grief that this caused, and the solution was to build phones that do all of 'em. Oddly enough, that's what is starting to happen with the "HD" optical discs.
PS3 vs. Wii vs. Xbox
Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows
Apple's music vs. everything else...
And so on...
I bet you that advocating a coup d'etat would get you arrested for treason, terrorism or threats against the president, if you get charged at all and not just thrown into Guantanamo.
Do you live in a cave or anything? Or have you just not seen Leno, Letterman, The Daily Show, any of a score of political pundits, authors, journalists, or celebrities?
Being hated and having people calling for removal from office by force is one of the perks of being President of the United States, and is about as normal as toilet paper-- it's so common nobody gives it a second thought.
Well, if Shatner is leading the effort, I suppose I can stop worrying.
Thanks for the link, BTW
This reminds me of a conspiracy theory my Roomate had going while I was in college. The gist of it is that the Canadians have a widespread effort to subvert government of the United States, and effectively take over the country.
Naturally, it was satirical, but now I'm wondering... what if there was something to it?
You're right about conversions-- at least where it applies. On paper, with perfect electronics (which don't exist), a CD is enough to satisfy the most sensitive ears. But because we don't have perfect electronics, we've moved to 96 kHz/24 bit audio -- able to reproduce frequencies dogs can't hear at volumes that virtually no audio equipment can reach (and certainly not with any level of fidelity) The same can apply to video.
Quantization error (technical jargon for conversion problems) can arise if you have cheap hardware (by which I don't refer to price...) Some TV's won't be noticible at all, others might be very apparent. Which is why it's important to get a good TV first.
I've got an 1080p LCD HDTV; it has to digitize any analog signal it gets for display.
My brother, OTOH, has a 1080i CRT HDTV.
Both have Component and HDMI. Interesingly enough, HDMI looks slightly worse on my brother's CRT. (A CRT's 'native' signal is the component video... in fact, component video's signal describes what the TV has to do to aim and fire the electron beam that makes a CRT work. When HDMI is used, the signal has to be converted to analog first.) On my LCD, they're not distinguishable.
As far as why you get a bad picture at 1600x1200 on your PC: There are a number of possible reasons. Your video card is one of them, the monitor itself is another. If you are using one of those DVI->VGA adapters to connect the monitor, that is a pretty big red flag.
If you're using a DVI->VGA adapter, it's going to look bad; I've had more than a few video cards that had both DVI and VGA outputs, and I've tried the quality of the adapters. My advice-- use the native VGA output; the adapters just plain suck.
I used to have my Mac Mini hooked to a KVM (sharing the monitor with a PC), the Mac Mini had noticible 'banding' scrolling up the screen constantly. At 1600x1280, it was intolerable; at 1280x1024, it was at least livable. When I switched the KVM to display from the PC, the picture was gorgeous with the same settings. Swapping the KVM cable around didn't do anything, nor did removing it entirely-- the Mini just couldn't output a VGA signal that looked as good as the video card in my PC (no suprise considering the only choice I had was to use one of those lame DVI->VGA adapters)
Last but not least is the cable. VGA cables differ quite a bit from TV cables-- much thinner wire, much smaller surface area on the connector. A Component cable has the ability to push a far more powerful signal; this also means that you can get a higher quality signal.
Let's do some bandwidth calculations:
1080p60 works out to:
* 1080 Lines
* 60 Hz
* 1920 pixels/line
= 124.416 MHz, if you are using one clock tick per pixel. (At best you can get two pixels/clock, which would bump it down to ~62 MHz of bandwidth, but I'll be pessimistic and user the higher number) Bytes/second doesn't apply, because it's an analog signal; the amplitude of the signal on each cycle is what determines the color.
124.416 MHz is well below the level where signal smearing becomes a problem, even with 24 gauge wire (which is pretty thin stuff;).
Keep in mind that a high-res VGA signal is very close to an HDTV signal in terms of bandwidth: 1600x1280@75Hz has a bandwidth of 153.6 MHz; more than a 1080p60 signal.
On an LCD screen, the (analog) VGA signal is indistinguishable (to human eyes) from the equivalent (digital) DVI signal at that resolution; the picture is sharp, clear, with rich colors.
I have devices that output both HDMI and component. It's not hard for me to look for differences; it is hard to find any differences.
Does it allow me to say 'Rent a movie' from Live marketplace, store it on my computer and stream it from there when I want to watch it? or download a game demo and store it there?
I don't really know for certain; I don't use Windows on a PC (I use Linux & Mac -- unix variants). Wintendo's only virtue is games, and that's what I have an Xbox for.
It would score points for MS to do let Windows users download & stream Live Marketplace content.
It would be bonus if they'd allow non-windows boxen to stream content to the 360 (yeah, I know... I'll be shoveling snow in hell before Microsoft does it.)
You just nailed why Microsoft isn't going to add unnecessary fluff that will just make it cost more.
Price matters.
It's why the Wii is the top seller, and why the 360 is outselling the PS3.
However, for those who do need more space why not throw a bone to the 360 owners (Even Core System owners) and let us stream it from our PC?
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They do. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/alldownloads.ht
(Alternatively, if you have a 'Media Center PC', you don't need to download anything.)
And the 'core system' can have a Hard drive snapped into it; takes about as much time as changing the battery pack on the 360 controller (seconds). Since the drive is trivially replaceable, it's no big deal to swap disks, or to offer a bigger replacement drive.
That's OK. I design products for customers. If a company can't make money in the end, it's better off not having your 'business.' I've seen multi-million dollar deals turned down because the customer more or less said "I'm not buying until you give me _____." We would have lost money on it, so we told the customer to take a flying leap.
Adding HDMI, HD DVD, and a bigger HD will raise 360's the price to $600 (the same as the PS3.) Sony's reputation in consumer electronics will carry it much farther than Microsoft's reputation ever could. Sony is seen as a top brand; Microsoft is seen as an exploitive monopoly. Being lower in price is one of the biggest things the 360 (and the Wii, to an even greater extent) have over the PS3. Microsoft knows full well that they simply cannot beat Sony on its own terms.
When the PS2 costed the same as the Xbox, the PS2 sold better. With a lower price point, the 360 has a chance against the PS3. But at the same cost, that advantage is gone.
That's BS, of course there's a need for that. Most HDTV sets, the true 1080 ones, comes with at least 2 HDMI ports, but only one component entry. HDMI will give you the best quality at 1080p, unless you buy ungodly priced component cables with enough bandwidth from the connectors to the cable.
Considering I have a true 1080p TV (brand new), I can look at it: 2 HDMI, 2 component. Do they look any different (even with the stock 360 cables)? Nope (I do have devices that can use both, and I connected both up as an experiment). Expensive cables are largely marketing as well. As long as you have a wide enough gauge wire (ie. lower resistence) it's not going to matter.
I'm an electrical engineer; I'm not so easily swayed by advertising claims made by Monster and the like. Most of their 'independant tests' are of thin-gauge wire vs (their) thick-gauge wire. When you compare an el cheapo wire with the same gauge as Monster's cable, there is no difference. Quite a profitable marketing ploy on the "premium" cable makers, though.
Bandwidth is a red herring; until you're to the point where signals start to 'mush' together (into the GHz range), there's not going to be an issue. Considering an analog TV signal has a vertical bandwidth of Now, we don't even know if the games can be output at true 1080p on the 360. This information seems very hard to get. Is the 1080p games from XB360 true 1080p, or just 720p scaled up to 1080p ?
The signal is 1080p, but I know your point. Some games are 1080, but most are 720 and scaled up (just like the PS3). But 720 games make an even stronger case that HDMI is not necessary.
Accept it or not, but HDMI seems to have won the connectors' war.
Partially true; HDMI's virtue is that it is compliant with HDCP DRM-- something every movie studio have stated they won't use for fear of angering customers. HDMI is the digital cable of choice, and Component is the analog. Both can output a full 1080p signal at 60Hz.
First time I heard any of that. Every time I discussed with XB360 owners, it was the other way around : the current size of XB360 HDD is not enough, and that's on PS3 you can swap drives in a few seconds, not on XB360. Do you have a source for what you're saying ?
I thought I mentioned in my original post that I have a 360. I have all kinds of dashboard themes, gamer pics, downloaded demos, videos, live marketplace movie 'rentals', music, and savegames. I still have 8 GB free.
To replace the drive, you pull back on the catch, and lift the drive off. Then you just snap the new drive in place. It's about as hard as changing the battery pack in the 360's wireless controller, and uses a similar set of motions.
Except that currently, BD or HD-DVD players aren't cheap or plentiful.
Neither are plentiful; but that's the nature of being less than a year old. To be honest, the 'next-gen' consoles aren't plentiful either; not compared to stand-alone DVD players, at least.
Stand-alone BD players aren't currently that cheap ($700-1200); but HD DVD players are much cheaper ($375). In six months, the price of both will have dropped. The point is that it doesn't make sense to make the HD DVD drive a standard offering when the advantage of having it is evaporating quickly- just as the built-in DVD player rapidly became more of a footnote with the PS2 and Xbox.
These supposed 'Upgrades' are laregly fanboy dreams. There is no *need* for HDMI -- at all, ever, period.
The Component video the 360 uses is quite capable of full 1080p @60 Hz. The Optical out can handle the 5.1 surround the 360 cranks out.
There simply is no reason that HDMI is a 'must-have'; those who believe otherwise have been drinking too much of Sony's HD kool-aid. Adding HDMI will add absolutely nothing to the consumer experience, but will add quite a bit to the cost of the unit.
The 120 GB drive is, quite frankly, overkill. Some fanboy must've decided that twice what Sony is offering is worth bragging rights. If you want more space, get another drive. You can swap drives in a few seconds flat -- try that with a PS3. Moreover, I've got some-odd 20 games, played all of 'em. I've downloaded movies from Xbox live, as well as demos. I've only used about 70% of the current drive -- and most of that is the movie rental I downloaded and haven't watched. Drive space is a non-issue with the 360, as you can replace the hard drive almost as easily as swapping a memory unit.
Last, HD-DVD. I never watched DVD's on my original Xbox. I never knew anybody who watched them on a Playstation. It's not because they weren't capable players: It's that stand-alone DVD players were already plentiful and cheap.
The HD DVD drive is probably the most successful add-on drive on any console. I bought one, and I can't complain abot it. The HD DVD drive lets Xbox owners get a high definition player at a modest price.
But with the cost of stand-alone HD DVD players dropping rapidly (Down to about $300 now, IIRC), the real advantage of having HD DVD on the 360 just isn't going to be there for much longer. You're never going to see games that use the HD DVD disc-- it would be suicide, as you'd piss off legions of customers who don't have an HD DVD drive. There's also the false belief that you can actually play games from the HD DVD Drive-- the truth is, when you put a game into the HD DVD drive, the result is exactly the same as if you put the game in a standalone DVD player (try it sometime).
In every one of these three cases, you're adding a substantial amount of cost that does nothing to benefit the customer; HDMI is marketing puffery, with no real benefit to consumers (unless, that is, you see DRM as a good thing). More hard disc space would be useless to most users (I didn't even get *close* to filling my original Xbox's drive, and the 360 isn't faring much worse). HD DVD players are dropping in price rapidly enough that six months from now, it will be cheaper to just get a standalone HD DVD player. Forcing an HD DVD drive on the consumer will drive up the cost of the 360, and make it less able to compete with the PS3 and Wii. History tells us that people don't use game consoles to play movies; and adding a substantial amount to the price for a feature that few will really use is insane. Like I said earlier -- a very small fraction of console owners used their Xbox or PS2 to play DVD's; there's no reason to expect some magical change this time around.
Stop buying into the Playstation marketing madness; Sony threw Blu-ray into the PS3 to try to tilt the 'format war' in its favor, and it added a couple hundred bucks to the console's price. The PS3 needs more hard disk space, as the games install substantial amounts of code to the hard drive-- something the 360 doesn't to. They made design decisions that are a gamble, and may well backfire on Sony quite thoroughly. Where there's opprotunity, there's also risk.
The problem is one of engineering vs marketing (one I'm sure you're familiar with).
You're absoultely correct, as without the hard coating, scratches make Blu-ray discs unreadable quickly, where HD DVD will take the abuse and keep on turning.
Clever marketing is great at getting you to buy things you don't need. 'Scratch-removal' kits for optical discs sell well. Scratched discs are perceived as a problem, and an anti-scratch coating is something that is well-received. Some clever person managed to turn the absolute necessity of a hard coating on Blu-ray into a desirable feature.
Consumers think "Hard anti-scratch coating- HD DVD which doesn't have it, so I'll chalk that up as a 'pro' to Blu-ray and 'con' to HD DVD." The fact that Blu-ray doesn't last long without the coating, while HD DVD is durable enough to not need one is cleverly hidden from the consumer. And the HD DVD folks can't do much about it, because it takes longer to explain than the average consumer's attention span.
A similar thing can be said about the Xbox 360 not having HDMI. I'm a electrical/computer engineer. I know perfectly well that you don't need HDMI to display gorgeous 1080p; I have component video running from my 360 to my HDTV. My TV displays its video mode whenever the video mode changes; 1080i for my Mac Mini, 1080p for my 360, 480p for DVD player, etc. I know perfectly well that on a non-CRT TV, the difference between 1080p and 1080i is whether or not the TV is using its deinterlacing chip; the actual output is 1080p regardless.
Seriously-- how asinine is it to have interlaced output on a display that doesn't have a scanning electron beam?
I know all those things in my head, I know you don't need HDMI for 1080p. I know there's no difference in the resulting picture between 1080p and 1080i on a non-CRT television.
And yet I still wish the 360 did HDMI output, and that an HD DVD had a hard anti-scrach coating on it.
Actually, there is a shift among the public.
* The outlook on Nuclear (fission) power is far less negative. The fear of possible nuclear meltdown is far less than of guaranteed climate change.
* More people are becoming concerned with energy efficiency: Compact Flourescent light bulbs being pushed at Wall-Mart and on TV, Hybrid Vehicles, etc. People are looking to cut financial burdens by reducing their energy costs. Some (like CF bulbs) can have a significant impact with little extra cost. Same thing with insulating homes for cheaper heating and air conditioning. More energy efficiency=less carbon in this economy.
* The people who are more educated (managers, engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.) are becoming more convinced and concerned with global warming, and aren't "joe sixpack." In other words: Joe sixpack may not care, but his boss does. You don't need Joe Sixpack to care nearly as much as you need his boss to care.
So his boss does things that force Joe Sixpack to change his behavior, both on the worksite and as a consumer. (More efficient/environmentally friendly policies & practices at work, and produces more environmentally friendly products)
Huge vehicles aren't without cost. Eventually, Joe then gets burned by high gas prices, and low mileage, and sells his SUV because he can't afford it. I've seen it happen a lot in the past two years. I see people I never expected to do the environmental thing change their behavior and opinions.
On the other hand, xbox player is a lot simpler and doesnt support advanced sound nor 1080p (actually no current HD player supports 1080p)
Actually, the 360 does support 1080p output with HD-DVD. I've got it.
As far as needing the 360 for it... it's sort of a 'no kidding' argument. Of course you're gonna need the Xbox 360 to use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. You also need an Xbox 360 to play an Xbox 360 game.
If you don't have a 360, then the cheaper option is to get a stand-alone HD-DVD player. The only thing the HD-DVD drive is (and will ever be) good for is playing movies.
If you insert an Xbox game into the HD-DVD drive, you end up with the same result as if you put the disc into a stand-alone DVD player (a single video frame with a multilingual error message saying the disc will only play in an Xbox 360.)
Unlike what some would want you to believe:
1.) You don't need HDMI for 1080p. The 360 outputs analog 1080p over VGA just fine, as well as output 1080p over component video. (The caveat there is that HD-DVD is 1080i over Component, verses 1080p over vga. Games are 1080p either way).
2.) With none of the movie studios asserting the HDCP DRM (and having stated that they don't intend to for the forseeable future), there's no danger of DRM-related downconversion because you don't have HDMI.
3.) The only place 1080i vs 1080p is going to make any difference is on a CRT TV. Interlacing is a trick used on CRT displays to provide higher resolution with less expensive hardware; it only matters to a CRT. None of Plasma, LCD, DLP, and LCOS care about interlacing, as they don't have a scanning electron beam. Internal circuitry de-interlaces the output; you never get interlaced output, regardless of the input signal.
4.) The HD-DVD add-on will never be used for games. It's for movies and movies alone, and has no effect whatsoever on the gameplay experience.
So, *if* you're a 360 owner, and *if* you want to play HD movies easily, the 360's add-on drive is a big win. It costs $150 less than the next option (a stand-alone HD-DVD player). This is a significant win to the 10 million 360 owners.
If you *don't* have the 360, then you end up with a pretty level playing field filled with fanboys on both sides.
The 360 with the HD-DVD addon costs about the same as the cheaper PS3. Most of the game programmers I know (as well as notes from those who are making supercomputers using the Cell processor) say the Cell's performance isn't up to the hype, and it's a pain to develop on. One quote from an IBM engineer was "There are only about 5 guys on the planet who can really program the Cell." (IBM co-developed the Cell).
The 360 and PS3 are on more or less equal footing in terms of horsepower (with the PS3 having a small edge, although most developers say it's not significant enough to be noticible).
So overall, I see the HD-DVD add-on as Microsoft's way to bring the 360 up to par with the PS3's capabilities (One PS3 model has a larger hard drive... but the 360's HD is as swapable as a memory card... Six one, half a dozen the other...) As I've already stated: you don't need HDMI for 1080p output.
The HDMI buzzword Sony keeps hawking is just that -- a buzzword. HDMI's advantage is that it's a single connector, compared to several for Component video. HDMI is all-digital, compared to the analog Component. And a good analog feed is indistinguishable from a digital feed.
Since my TV has both HDMI and component, and I have devices that use both, I can plug them both in and look at the difference. So far, my opinion is simple: HDMI is less of a spaghetti bowl behind the TV. But as I don't spend much time behind my TV, it's a non-issue. From the front of the TV, things look identical; the same levels of brightness, contrast & saturation.
In other words: If you put marketing hype in its place, the 360 and PS3 are in the same league. Both output 1080p, both c
In the end, I ended up going with a player I could buy for cheap. I can enjoy HD movies on my 720p projector now and if the format ends up "losing" the war, I won't care. By the time that happens, the other format would be cheap enough to buy in a stand alone player.
I did the same thing. The way I look at it is I may as well enjoy it, and if the format I chose loses, it's not like I won't be able to play the media I bought with the player I have. I'm still on my original DVD player; I have no reason to expect my HD Disc player will be short-lived either.
In any event, I think it's pretty comical when I hear comments from those (not you) who've bought into the Sony party-line that you can't have HD without HDMI. My 1080p and its component video TV begs to differ. Well, that and the positively ancient antenna and coax that gives me crystal-clear 1080i broadcast DTV. If the TV isn't a CRT, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is effectively nil.
True, there was some concern about component video not using HDCP, but the major studios have chosen not to implement HDCP, for fear of pissing off customers who bought an HD disc, but aren't getting the HD picture.