Actually, Blu-ray Disc is the format everyone should be hoping wins if you have any interest in data backup to optical media. HD DVD is a joke compared to BD (15/30 GB for HD DVD vs. 25/50 GB for BD). And don't get me started on the kind of extras we'll see on BD that we'll never see on HD DVD simply due to the capacity issue (or that TV shows on BD will fit more episodes per disc than HD DVD can, or that longish movies like The Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King Extended Edition will probably work fine on a single 50 GB BD disc, but will likely have problems with an HD DVD disc).
Blah. Sony may be screwing up this format launch so far, but I really hope they pick up the ball on this. Since it'll be at least another 5-10 years before another optical format emerges, I'd hate to see HD DVD be the one we're stuck with for that duration...
That's pretty much how I view it. Sony didn't backstab anyone, the DVD Forum was largely biased against Blu-ray Disc for some (to me) unknown reason. HD DVD (15 GB) is barely a step above DVD (4.7 GB), whereas Blu-ray Disc has nearly twice the capacity (25 GB) as HD DVD. So we have one format that's just over 3x the capacity as DVD, and another format that's nearly 6x the capacity.. why would I want the lower capacity medium to succeed again? Because it's not-Sony? Is there a rational reason why we would avoid Blu-ray Disc and not just knee-jerk brand hating (recalling that it's not just Sony producing BD devices; Pioneer has a PC drive shipping soon, the BDR-101A, and other CE manufacturers are shipping BD set-top players soon)?
I'll be so happy when I can actually have a hard time remembering the last time I saw JPEG artefacts in screenshots of software on the internet. The top image in their threesome of screenshots is 200 KB and looks like ass because of the JPEG compression. For the love of all things good and pure, please people, stop using JPEG for this kind of simple stuff...
Other than that, and back on topic, who cares about Windows Media Player. It stopped being good after Media Player 6.4 (and now I use Media Player Classic exclusively). Skins and shit are for lame retards that aren't actually watching their media but looking at pretty UI widgets.
I dunno, but that last bit about oingo.com turned up something curious. I did a WHOIS on it (I'm lame and just used godaddy.com to try and register the domain, then viewed who owned it when it said it was taken) and it seems to be owned by Google / Markmonitor.com (never heard Markmonitor.com before). So, definitely fishy things going on with them.
..."Battlestar Pegasus". Basically a way to leapfrog back and forth and continue the story at a faster pace (or, they could split the ships up from time to time). But this might be interesting.
Unlike Beta vs. VHS where the physical formats were quite different, with HD DVD vs. Blu-ray Disc the discs are generally the same physical size, and some consumer electronic manufacturers are already saying they'll be producing dual format players.
A better analogy here is the DVD-R vs. DVD+R format war (which, if the "war" was any indicator, the consumer ultimately wins by having the formats competing with eachother on prices). I strongly suspect we'll see a price war on software (that is, HD movies) if both sides in this take it even remotely seriously to try and win consumers over.
The only recent precedent where this didn't work out well is SACD vs. DVD-Audio, and I think that had more to do with low interest in a high-def audio format (sad but true, since I'd have loved DVD-A or SACD to succeed). OTOH, I think the interest in HD movies is significantly higher, so we'll hopefully not see that again. =)
SACD is awful (one of the other comments noted the technical problems, and I'll note that bringing out SACD just to ruin the market for higher quality audio was lame).
Now, on the other hand, Blu-ray Disc is the bee's knees. In that war, it's HD-DVD that sucks.
It can, multiple sample rates and multiple channel configurations for those sample rates (and 16/20/24-bit can also be chosen independently of the sample rate/channels). Dunno what the GP poster is on about.
The "think Beta" argument doesn't work. Beta and VHS were physically different shapes; HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc are physically the same size, so making a "dual format player" is indeed possible (and in fact, has already been announced). HD DVD vs BD is more like DVD-R vs. DVD+R. Eventually burners/players/etc. will just support both.
FWIW though, I plan on diving in with Blu-ray when it ships in May/June (The Fifth Element should be awesome).
"A few more scan lines"? DVD is 720x480 (NTSC); Blu-ray Disc is 1920x1080. That's a lot more lines (and if you've ever seen HDTV; at a story demoing HDTV's or if you own one, then you know the difference is pretty easily visible).
Not to mention the fact that this format will be recordable as well, and PC drives are coming from companies like Pioneer (so you'll be able to backup 25/50 GB of data to a single disc).
Sony has revealed that they'll street their first titles on 5/23, in keeping with a May format launch (and timed to coincide with the first Blu-ray players from Pioneer and Samsung). The studio will debut eight titles on 5/23 - 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, The Last Waltz (via MGM), Resident Evil: Apocalypse and xXx, which should all sell for around $25 each. Lionsgate will add five more that same day, including Crash and Lord of War at $39.99 each, as well as The Punisher, Saw and Terminator II: Judgement Day at $29.99 each. Sony and MGM will then release seven more catalog titles on 6/13, including Kung Fu Hustle, Legends of the Fall, RoboCop, Stealth, Species, S.W.A.T. and The Terminator (at around $25 each). That same day, Lionsgate will add six more, including The Devil's Rejects ($39.99) and Reservoir Dogs, Total Recall, Stargate and Frank Herbert's Dune (all $29.99 each).
If you were talking about the price of players, well.. I guess you'll have to take my common sense for what it's worth. The $1,800 price frequently cited here is usually in reference to Pioneer's ELITE player (which, as I said before, usually have a very high premium attached). Blu-ray Disc players from other manufacturers will very likely be in the $500-1000 often cited for HD DVD.
I mean, look at it this way. The last game system that retailed for > $700 (the 3D0) did very poorly in the market. As Sony is unlikely to retail the PS3 for over $400-500, common sense says regular stand alone players will likely cost slightly more than the PS3 (taking into account that game systems sell at a loss). My guess? No more than $100-200 more (so, for example, if the PS3 sells for $400; I expect BD players to sell for $500-600).
Cost of disc is irrelevant. Economies of scale will take care of any difference in production costs.
I was under the impression Blu-ray Disc was also supporting VC-1 (or that H.264 and VC-1 were very similar), so I don't see how this is that big of an issue.
The interactivity thing, for me anyways, is a non-issue. If I had my way movies would just be movies, with a menu to choose the commentary/trailer/whatever later if I want. Interactivity for the studios seems to be putting in stupid mini-games or trivia (or forcing me to endure advertising like in the VHS days). I'm not thrilled with either format on this...
And we'll be able to buy a Blu-ray disc player in a little over 2 months too, probably for nearly the same price (remember: that $1,800 price tag I see thrown around so much is for Pioneer's ELITE Blu-ray Disc player; nothing from their ELITE line sells for under $1000). I'll be able to buy BD movies in a few months too, of course. And regarding the PS3; it's highly unlikely they'd sell it for more than $500, so I expect sales from that to really push BD.
And we have your good word on this. As opposed to the Blu-ray camp which claims dual layer movies will be out this year, and the media manufacturers who say they'll have writable dual layer discs out this year as well.
And is it my imagination, or are you always here for these Blu-ray vs. HD DVD discussions to dispense your often slanted opinion? I mean, it gets really old seeing you go on about Blu-ray and MPEG2 (even though Blu-ray supports the exact same formats as HD DVD). When you take away the fact that they have identical CODEC support, you're left with Blu-ray having more capacity than HD DVD (by almost double). And that's a really hard thing for the HD DVD camp to fight against, IMO.
I get tired of this getting repeated as fact. The first Blu-ray Disc player will be cheaper than $1500 (try more like sub-$1000). The only reason people keep bringing up $1500 (or more) is because Pioneer's ELITE Blu-ray Disc player is going to cost $1800 (suggested retail). But Pioneer's ELITE line always has a price premium attached (nothing from their ELITE line sells for less than $1000; their ELITE DVD player retails for something like $1100 to put this in perspective).
Hmm, and you weren't kicked off the property for soliciting? (This is a serious question). I know I've seen people outside Wal*Mart from time to time trying to sway people to vote for something or gather signatures for something, but wasn't sure if they had permission; or if they did, if they'd give permission for someone trying to get the word out over something like copyright. (Which, you know, Wal*Mart loves to sell things, be it at their brick and mortar storefronts or online with their music store; getting copyright changed might be viewed as being negative for them).
Neither HD DVD nor Blu-ray will solve the blur issue from action (that's caused by frame rate, and AFAIK we're still using NTSC/PAL frame rates).
HD DVD and Blu-ray are better in that the image is sharper (only really noticable on an HDTV, especially HDTV's that support 1920x1080p) and that more data space is available so higher bitrates can be used (less artefacts/blocks during high movement scenes). On the audio side, more audio formats are supported as part of the standard. For example, DTS is part of both the HD DVD and Blu-ray standards. And both also offer lossless audio formats (unlike AC3 and DTS, which are more like MP3 in that they lose content when compressed, these lossless formats are more like FLAC or Monkey's Audio).
Really, you'll only care about this if you own an HDTV. If you don't, don't worry about it. Though if you want to keep yourself from rebuying films in two formats, you might consider buying an HD DVD or Blu-ray player anyways; both of them will include analog outputs (S-Video, Composite) that will more than satisfy your SDTV.
The $1,800 Pioneer Blu-ray player is from their ELITE line (generally any product in this line automatically costs > $1,000; even their ELITE DVD player costs $1,000 to put it in perspective). I'm almost 100% certain that other brands of Blu-ray players will likely be in the $1,000 or lower price range. And with the PS3 unlikely to cost more than $500, I find it difficult to believe that set-top players can afford to cost more than $500 for too terribly long.
It could happen that way, it depends on how they price the discs and the players. The problem with LD was that the cheapest players were $300-400 (and that was in 1990 dollars). If they can get an affordable Blu-ray *or* HD DVD player (that is, one that sells for a little over $100) available within a year or so of launch, they'll have people lining up to buy them.
Also, keep in mind that unlike VHS/LD, a Blu-ray (or HD DVD) player will also play DVD (so you get your backwards compatibility) and likely CD as well. With LD you had to own both players (so if you were just looking to upgrade your VCR, you couldn't just buy a LD player and get both out of the box).
Moving pricing will affect this as well, but to a lesser extent (especially if the players are affordable as mentioned above; people won't have a reason not to get one if they can continue to play their DVDs on it). Hopefully the actual street prices (NOT MSRP) aren't more than $30-40 per title. And from what I've heard, many studios plan to do simultaneous day-and-date releases of new movies in Blu-ray/HD DVD (so they'll likely be sitting on the shelf alongside eachother at your local Best Buy/Circuit City).
Anyways, LD/VHS is not a fair comparison methinks. It's possible, but the variables are very different this time around. (And don't forget the copy-protection aspect; studios aren't exactly pleased we can copy DVDs using our PC, and are likely eager to get something better protected to market to curb so-called casual piracy. If nothing else, they could force these new formats onto the market by cutting prices on players/media to speed adoption).
It'll never fly. Add-on drives never do. First, it'll likely cost a couple hundred dollars (which, on top of the already high X-Box 360 price, is sure to push the total towards $1,000). Second, game companies know the price will be a killer, and won't want to develop for it if there's little chance of adoption by gamers.
Look at, for example, SegaCD. Sure it had about 20-30 good games, but the total number of games released was only around 100. And then they compounded that failure with the 32X. *groans*
At least Nintendo had the good sense to ditch their CD-ROM attachment for the SuperNES. Hopefully Microsoft will ditch their HD-DVD plans before it, too, becomes another footnote in the "expensive attachments always fail and never gain support" section of your favorite gaming history book.
It'll never fly. Add-on drives never do. First, it'll likely cost a couple hundred dollars (which, on top of the already high X-Box 360 price, is sure to push the total towards $1,000). Second, game companies know the price will be a killer, and won't want to develop for it if there's little chance of adoption by gamers.
Look at, for example, SegaCD. Sure it had about 20-30 good games, but the total number of games released was only around 100. And then they compounded that failure with the 32X. *groans*
At least Nintendo had the good sense to ditch their CD-ROM attachment for the SuperNES. Hopefully Microsoft will ditch their HD-DVD plans before it, too, becomes another footnote in the "expensive attachments always fail and never gain support" section of your favorite gaming history book.
Well I mean, from the Penny Arcade rant it looked like he'd created an article on Wikipedia and it got deleted. I was curious to see the argument on Wikipedia (in Articles for Deletion or wherever it got nuked). =)
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Actually, Blu-ray Disc is the format everyone should be hoping wins if you have any interest in data backup to optical media. HD DVD is a joke compared to BD (15/30 GB for HD DVD vs. 25/50 GB for BD). And don't get me started on the kind of extras we'll see on BD that we'll never see on HD DVD simply due to the capacity issue (or that TV shows on BD will fit more episodes per disc than HD DVD can, or that longish movies like The Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King Extended Edition will probably work fine on a single 50 GB BD disc, but will likely have problems with an HD DVD disc).
Blah. Sony may be screwing up this format launch so far, but I really hope they pick up the ball on this. Since it'll be at least another 5-10 years before another optical format emerges, I'd hate to see HD DVD be the one we're stuck with for that duration...
That's pretty much how I view it. Sony didn't backstab anyone, the DVD Forum was largely biased against Blu-ray Disc for some (to me) unknown reason. HD DVD (15 GB) is barely a step above DVD (4.7 GB), whereas Blu-ray Disc has nearly twice the capacity (25 GB) as HD DVD. So we have one format that's just over 3x the capacity as DVD, and another format that's nearly 6x the capacity.. why would I want the lower capacity medium to succeed again? Because it's not-Sony? Is there a rational reason why we would avoid Blu-ray Disc and not just knee-jerk brand hating (recalling that it's not just Sony producing BD devices; Pioneer has a PC drive shipping soon, the BDR-101A, and other CE manufacturers are shipping BD set-top players soon)?
It probably shouldn't be against the law then, should it?
I'll be so happy when I can actually have a hard time remembering the last time I saw JPEG artefacts in screenshots of software on the internet. The top image in their threesome of screenshots is 200 KB and looks like ass because of the JPEG compression. For the love of all things good and pure, please people, stop using JPEG for this kind of simple stuff...
Other than that, and back on topic, who cares about Windows Media Player. It stopped being good after Media Player 6.4 (and now I use Media Player Classic exclusively). Skins and shit are for lame retards that aren't actually watching their media but looking at pretty UI widgets.
I dunno, but that last bit about oingo.com turned up something curious. I did a WHOIS on it (I'm lame and just used godaddy.com to try and register the domain, then viewed who owned it when it said it was taken) and it seems to be owned by Google / Markmonitor.com (never heard Markmonitor.com before). So, definitely fishy things going on with them.
..."Battlestar Pegasus". Basically a way to leapfrog back and forth and continue the story at a faster pace (or, they could split the ships up from time to time). But this might be interesting.
Unlike Beta vs. VHS where the physical formats were quite different, with HD DVD vs. Blu-ray Disc the discs are generally the same physical size, and some consumer electronic manufacturers are already saying they'll be producing dual format players.
A better analogy here is the DVD-R vs. DVD+R format war (which, if the "war" was any indicator, the consumer ultimately wins by having the formats competing with eachother on prices). I strongly suspect we'll see a price war on software (that is, HD movies) if both sides in this take it even remotely seriously to try and win consumers over.
The only recent precedent where this didn't work out well is SACD vs. DVD-Audio, and I think that had more to do with low interest in a high-def audio format (sad but true, since I'd have loved DVD-A or SACD to succeed). OTOH, I think the interest in HD movies is significantly higher, so we'll hopefully not see that again. =)
You got a link/source for this (the bit about UMD being stored/encoded at DVD resolution)?
I about choked on my dinner when I saw someone saying UMD movies didn't suck. Gimme a break.
SACD is awful (one of the other comments noted the technical problems, and I'll note that bringing out SACD just to ruin the market for higher quality audio was lame).
Now, on the other hand, Blu-ray Disc is the bee's knees. In that war, it's HD-DVD that sucks.
It can, multiple sample rates and multiple channel configurations for those sample rates (and 16/20/24-bit can also be chosen independently of the sample rate/channels). Dunno what the GP poster is on about.
The "think Beta" argument doesn't work. Beta and VHS were physically different shapes; HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc are physically the same size, so making a "dual format player" is indeed possible (and in fact, has already been announced). HD DVD vs BD is more like DVD-R vs. DVD+R. Eventually burners/players/etc. will just support both.
FWIW though, I plan on diving in with Blu-ray when it ships in May/June (The Fifth Element should be awesome).
"A few more scan lines"? DVD is 720x480 (NTSC); Blu-ray Disc is 1920x1080. That's a lot more lines (and if you've ever seen HDTV; at a story demoing HDTV's or if you own one, then you know the difference is pretty easily visible).
Not to mention the fact that this format will be recordable as well, and PC drives are coming from companies like Pioneer (so you'll be able to backup 25/50 GB of data to a single disc).
The sooner this format gets launched the better.
If you were talking about the price of players, well.. I guess you'll have to take my common sense for what it's worth. The $1,800 price frequently cited here is usually in reference to Pioneer's ELITE player (which, as I said before, usually have a very high premium attached). Blu-ray Disc players from other manufacturers will very likely be in the $500-1000 often cited for HD DVD.
I mean, look at it this way. The last game system that retailed for > $700 (the 3D0) did very poorly in the market. As Sony is unlikely to retail the PS3 for over $400-500, common sense says regular stand alone players will likely cost slightly more than the PS3 (taking into account that game systems sell at a loss). My guess? No more than $100-200 more (so, for example, if the PS3 sells for $400; I expect BD players to sell for $500-600).
And is it my imagination, or are you always here for these Blu-ray vs. HD DVD discussions to dispense your often slanted opinion? I mean, it gets really old seeing you go on about Blu-ray and MPEG2 (even though Blu-ray supports the exact same formats as HD DVD). When you take away the fact that they have identical CODEC support, you're left with Blu-ray having more capacity than HD DVD (by almost double). And that's a really hard thing for the HD DVD camp to fight against, IMO.
I get tired of this getting repeated as fact. The first Blu-ray Disc player will be cheaper than $1500 (try more like sub-$1000). The only reason people keep bringing up $1500 (or more) is because Pioneer's ELITE Blu-ray Disc player is going to cost $1800 (suggested retail). But Pioneer's ELITE line always has a price premium attached (nothing from their ELITE line sells for less than $1000; their ELITE DVD player retails for something like $1100 to put this in perspective).
Hmm, and you weren't kicked off the property for soliciting? (This is a serious question). I know I've seen people outside Wal*Mart from time to time trying to sway people to vote for something or gather signatures for something, but wasn't sure if they had permission; or if they did, if they'd give permission for someone trying to get the word out over something like copyright. (Which, you know, Wal*Mart loves to sell things, be it at their brick and mortar storefronts or online with their music store; getting copyright changed might be viewed as being negative for them).
Anyways, inspiring story nonetheless.
Neither HD DVD nor Blu-ray will solve the blur issue from action (that's caused by frame rate, and AFAIK we're still using NTSC/PAL frame rates).
HD DVD and Blu-ray are better in that the image is sharper (only really noticable on an HDTV, especially HDTV's that support 1920x1080p) and that more data space is available so higher bitrates can be used (less artefacts/blocks during high movement scenes). On the audio side, more audio formats are supported as part of the standard. For example, DTS is part of both the HD DVD and Blu-ray standards. And both also offer lossless audio formats (unlike AC3 and DTS, which are more like MP3 in that they lose content when compressed, these lossless formats are more like FLAC or Monkey's Audio).
Really, you'll only care about this if you own an HDTV. If you don't, don't worry about it. Though if you want to keep yourself from rebuying films in two formats, you might consider buying an HD DVD or Blu-ray player anyways; both of them will include analog outputs (S-Video, Composite) that will more than satisfy your SDTV.
The $1,800 Pioneer Blu-ray player is from their ELITE line (generally any product in this line automatically costs > $1,000; even their ELITE DVD player costs $1,000 to put it in perspective). I'm almost 100% certain that other brands of Blu-ray players will likely be in the $1,000 or lower price range. And with the PS3 unlikely to cost more than $500, I find it difficult to believe that set-top players can afford to cost more than $500 for too terribly long.
"Moving pricing..." -> "Movie pricing". Sorry. :(
(warning, minor speculative rambling follows)
It could happen that way, it depends on how they price the discs and the players. The problem with LD was that the cheapest players were $300-400 (and that was in 1990 dollars). If they can get an affordable Blu-ray *or* HD DVD player (that is, one that sells for a little over $100) available within a year or so of launch, they'll have people lining up to buy them.
Also, keep in mind that unlike VHS/LD, a Blu-ray (or HD DVD) player will also play DVD (so you get your backwards compatibility) and likely CD as well. With LD you had to own both players (so if you were just looking to upgrade your VCR, you couldn't just buy a LD player and get both out of the box).
Moving pricing will affect this as well, but to a lesser extent (especially if the players are affordable as mentioned above; people won't have a reason not to get one if they can continue to play their DVDs on it). Hopefully the actual street prices (NOT MSRP) aren't more than $30-40 per title. And from what I've heard, many studios plan to do simultaneous day-and-date releases of new movies in Blu-ray/HD DVD (so they'll likely be sitting on the shelf alongside eachother at your local Best Buy/Circuit City).
Anyways, LD/VHS is not a fair comparison methinks. It's possible, but the variables are very different this time around. (And don't forget the copy-protection aspect; studios aren't exactly pleased we can copy DVDs using our PC, and are likely eager to get something better protected to market to curb so-called casual piracy. If nothing else, they could force these new formats onto the market by cutting prices on players/media to speed adoption).
It'll never fly. Add-on drives never do. First, it'll likely cost a couple hundred dollars (which, on top of the already high X-Box 360 price, is sure to push the total towards $1,000). Second, game companies know the price will be a killer, and won't want to develop for it if there's little chance of adoption by gamers.
Look at, for example, SegaCD. Sure it had about 20-30 good games, but the total number of games released was only around 100. And then they compounded that failure with the 32X. *groans*
At least Nintendo had the good sense to ditch their CD-ROM attachment for the SuperNES. Hopefully Microsoft will ditch their HD-DVD plans before it, too, becomes another footnote in the "expensive attachments always fail and never gain support" section of your favorite gaming history book.
It'll never fly. Add-on drives never do. First, it'll likely cost a couple hundred dollars (which, on top of the already high X-Box 360 price, is sure to push the total towards $1,000). Second, game companies know the price will be a killer, and won't want to develop for it if there's little chance of adoption by gamers.
Look at, for example, SegaCD. Sure it had about 20-30 good games, but the total number of games released was only around 100. And then they compounded that failure with the 32X. *groans*
At least Nintendo had the good sense to ditch their CD-ROM attachment for the SuperNES. Hopefully Microsoft will ditch their HD-DVD plans before it, too, becomes another footnote in the "expensive attachments always fail and never gain support" section of your favorite gaming history book.
Exactly what I was looking for, thanks. =)
Well I mean, from the Penny Arcade rant it looked like he'd created an article on Wikipedia and it got deleted. I was curious to see the argument on Wikipedia (in Articles for Deletion or wherever it got nuked). =)