I hate to point this out, but the lawsuits themselves have generally had the names of the labels on them, not the RIAA. The RIAA is the average Slashdotter's shorthand for "the music industry" (well, kind of shorthand, seriously many of them can't tell the difference.)
The article is about the trade association. The lawsuits are from the industry. The RIAA (the trade association) has had a hand in organizing the lawsuits but ultimately the lawsuits themselves have been pushed by the publishers themselves. The RIAA doesn't even have standing.
So if anyone's reading this as "The RIAA is being punished for all the lawsuits!! No more lawsuits!!!", then, well, they're wrong. The RIAA's primary purpose is lobbying, and I guess the lobbying it does just isn't worth the money being spent on them.
Argh! Please tell me you're having an off day (or, Excruciating English-wise: do the conveyance of explanations for additionalized word redundantwise with a temporary problem thinkedly.)
The "smart" (it's lower case, apparently) car hasn't actually been officially launched in the US yet, the cars sold today are gray-imports. Official marketing of a US version will start this year, with apparently a $12,000 asking price for the base model.
So don't get too pessimistic, they haven't started yet.
Never had a problem with the VIC-20 keyboard, which was the same as the C64 one. It was well spaced, comfortable to type on, and the keys were generally in the right positions. The two inch height may have annoyed some people, but over-all it was a good design. I thought the article was bizarre for that.
I'm glad they pilloried the habit of many 1980s home computer manufacturers of integrating a dangerous key with all the others. One of the bizarrest examples I can think of is the BBC Micro's. This had a reset key (called Break, IIRC), on the main keyboard itself and it was very easy to hit by accident. Acorn, who designed it, recognized the problem and put in a little screw you could use to lock the key so it wouldn't press.
This is the kind of hack that usability gurus get very excited by. Why not just move the key? Would it seriously have cost more to put a switch at the back of the computer, or to change it from a key to some other form of button, than it did to do the "screw" hack? And what were they thinking anyway? "Hmmm. People generally divide into two groups: those who want to lose their work regularly by accident, and those who never want to reset their computers. We should cater for these two groups by allowing them to customize their Reset button."
The worst of it was that, minus the Break button, the BBC keyboard was excellent.
Oh, and while we're on the subject, why do we still make CAPS LOCK a large, easily pressed by accident, key? And why do Windows and most GNU/Linux system treat it as an "Invert Case" lock rather than "Caps Lock"? The former is almost entirely useless, if you type at speed you're likely to instinctively hit the Shift button every time you start a word that would normally be capitalized, so once depressed (deliberately, that is), typing with caps-lock engaged requires thinking about.
Can we just start making keyboards without caps lock? It'd be easier. Or, hey, maybe we could put a little screw in it...
In fact, it would be really cool if it popped up an alert if you pulled the drive while it was still writing to the effect of "oh no! plug it back in and I'll finish the operation so you'll have a coherent filesystem"
Everything old is new again. If you ejected a disk on the Amiga when it was in the middle of trying to write to it, it popped up with a dialog saying "You MUST insert the disk labeled "..."" and wouldn't let up until you did. If you ejected a disk when a file was open for writing, but not actually being written to, then later when the program tried to write to the open file, the Amiga would prompt you to insert the disk more politely "Please insert the disk labeled...", and if you canceled, would give the app an I/O error. In the mean time, the disk would be left in a state between writes that essentially left it recoverable in the event the user decided to be an ass about things (well, ok, or had some legitimate reason not to give the Amiga the disk.)
Here's a clue for OS developers: removable media is removable. That's what makes it, er, removable. If your operating system can't handle the media being removed, your operating system is the thing with the bugs, not the user. It's one thing to treat an internal drive that can only be accessed with a screwdriver as fixed in place and under the control of the OS, it's another to treat a removable USB stick the same way. Especially when 99% of the time, you can't get it right anyway. I mean, what idiot designed the Mac OS X and GNOME systems (two I'm familiar with, I can't comment on KDE or Windows) for dealing with removable storage? I unmount the drive, and before I get a chance to pull the thing out, 99% of the time the operating system has unmounted the drive, and then gone "Woah! An unmounted USB drive is connected. Let's mount it and see what's on it!" So I get the same fucking patronizing "Dude, you're an idiot, next time unmount the drive first!" message when I do the process correctly.
At some point, everyone at Microsoft, Apple, and the disparate group of people who make up KDE and GNOME, need to be bought Amigas. The Unix slogan is wrong: It really should be that those who don't know AmigaOS are doomed to re-invent it - badly.
As a bizarrely related anecdote, when I moved to the US from Britain, I found that, after a few months, I had some difficulty with the concepts of left and right. Not only did I often use the wrong word for the direction (and believe there to be no mistake until I thought about it), but even my memories often had sides switched that didn't make any sense.
Why? Well, I was used to driving on the left side of the road (or more being a passenger on vehicles on the left; I didn't drive much in the UK), and then had to switch to right-side driving when I moved to the US. That might sound minor, but the same issues also affected such simple tasks as crossing the road and knowing which direction to look for traffic in. From what I can figure out, my brain over-compensated.
Well, what prevents us from doing this in Blu-Ray? nothing. The secure path system is part of HDCP, which is equally a part of BR as it is HD.
This has nothing to do with secure path. This has to do with mandatory licensing. In order to license AACS for HD-DVD, you need to agree to allow your content to be copied using managed copy. This is not the case for Blu-ray.
HD DVD is also an updatable system. However, since most HD players don't have integrated ethernet as almost all BR players do, you'll have to DL patches to your PC, burn them to disk, then manually update your player. This is more difficult for most people to accomplish than simply letting their BR player DL the updates all by itself over the already configured port.
HD DVD is pretty much set in stone at this point. Even if it wasn't, it doesn't support BD+ which will require constant updates.
"Blu-ray isn't finished" - ? Where did you get this? Blu-Ray is standardized, and complete.
I got it from the fact that they're still announcing updates to the spec and forthcoming updates to the spec. As an example, Profile 1.1 became mandatory just over a month ago, and BDLive has been announced but not completed. DVD and CDs are successes because their players are self contained and formats known qualities.
If you buy a Blu-ray drive today, in order to play new Blu-ray discs two years from now you will have to update the firmware on your player, both to ensure the access controls offered by BD+ work, and the content on newer discs is accessible. That's a deal breaker for most people.
Already can, already do. Both HD & BR schemes have been cracked and easy one button ripping software is available.
But only illegally (in countries with a DMCA equivalent.) So while this feature is available on Blu-ray and DVD to those with the technical knowledge who're happy using non-commodity equipment to control playback, for the vast majority of people the feature might just as well not exist.
Like it or not, managed copy was the best we could hope for while the current combination of a paranoid, controll-freaking, Hollywood and draconian copyright laws continues to exist. And, alas, I suspect they will for a long, long, time.
Yes, I do, an HD-A2. The firmware updates have been bug fixes and to add new functionality unrelated to HD DVD (for example, simpler networking and 1080p) There's only likely to be one update required due to a spec change, if at all: one to update the new three layer system.
After that, it's finished. All firmware updates are going to be for adding functionality (unrelated to HD DVD) or to fix bugs. If you don't want the functionality, you don't need to update. Bug fixes are bad, but at least the mechanism is there to make them possible, which isn't the case if your DVD player has a bug in it.
This is entirely different from Blu-ray: Blu-ray users can expect to have to install firmware updates periodically over the next few years. This is because the Blu-ray spec is in constant flux, and because BD+ pretty much inherently requires regular updates to stay compatible with discs that use it.
You see the difference? Anyone who buys a three layer HD DVD player once it comes out will probably never need to do a single update. Blu-ray users would be so lucky.
I was watching a Blu-Ray movie and it didn't look like a movie, it freakin' looked like I was watching action just outside a window. It was literal jaw dropping. I have yet to see that with HD-DVD.
Given they both use the same encoding, really, I seriously doubt that you've noticed any quality improvement Blu-ray has over HD-DVD watching the same movie on the same screen. No serious commentator is suggesting either format has an edge with quality. And right now, anyone who doesn't have a very, very, large TV, that does 1080 and has a really good contrast ratio is not going to notice a significant advantage either format has over DVD. It's not that there's no difference, I was pretty excited seeing the opening scene of "Bladerunner" on HD DVD, and there are a few panoramic shots in The Bourne Ultimatum that stand out too; but for most of most movies, there's no significant improvement. It's a scene here and there that looks slightly better but you'd never have even noticed a lack of quality on DVD.
Besides, HD-DVD uses rep to identify their movies; where as Blu-Ray uses blue.
Wow, there's a technical advantage right there! I'm going to create the SuperAwesomeHD format, they'll have to switch to it with a name like that!
No, Microsoft is not to blame. Assuming HD DVD is dead (and the lead story here is false, but it does feel right now like it's a matter of time), then I blame a number of groups. Microsoft shouldn't have put HD DVD in to the X-Box 360, it would have hurt X-Box 360 owners just as Blu-ray did Playstation 3 buyers. I'm not going to criticize them for doing the right thing.
Microsoft's support for HD went beyond what was right for Microsoft. They ruined Vista in part by implementing a viable DRM and "secure path" systems to make it easier for Windows based systems to play AACS based content. This delayed Vista, reduced its compatibility with previous versions of Windows, and made the operating system less friendly to end users.
And to their credit, they pushed for features of the HD DVD standard that, had (or if...) HD DVD taken off, would have been net gains for consumers, notably the mandatory managed copy system that would have provided some means for format and space shifting of access controlled content. Had/if HD DVD taken off, we'd see HD DVD players that can store entire libraries of movies, and stream them around the house. You'd be able to store HD DVD movies on your laptop computers instead of carrying the discs around with you. You'd be able to condense movies into forms storeable on compatible portable video players.
What's happened is that the DVD Forum didn't push hard enough. Before Christmas, I saw huge amounts of advertising for Blu-ray and nothing for HD DVD. I saw stores locked up so they only sold and marketed Blu-ray. HD DVD advertising has concentrated purely on high quality video, the only area where it's identical to Blu-ray in features.
The equipment making supporters of HD DVD didn't push out the equipment fast enough. HD DVD burners are hard to come by. HD DVD jukeboxes and other devices that make use of the managed copy features are non-existent. Toshiba was also pretty close to alone in pushing the format, with most of the other manufacturers making token efforts but skimping entirely on the marketing.
Today if you want HD DVD, you can get a player to do it that has no major advantages over a Blu-ray player except in that it doesn't need constant firmware updates. And as most consumers have never heard of firmware, and aren't aware that Blu-ray isn't finished and that discs sold within the next couple of years will be unplayable on current equipment without updates, consumers have largely gone for the marketing pushed brand.
The DVD Forum would have won if they'd gone either positive or negative on the advantages over Blu-ray. They instead have ignored it. They have a few months to turn this around, and I think it's doubtful they'll be able to do it.
HD DVD can offer unencrypted content, and the mandatory managed copy system means even encrypted content can be stored in a central library, format shifted, and even streamed, if you're willing to use consumer tools to do so.
Blu-ray also has a number of downsides over both HD DVD and DVD, most notably that the BD+ system requires regular firmware updates, and that these firmware updates will be needed for the next year or two anyway because the Blu-ray spec, unlike HD DVD, still hasn't been finished.
And that pretty much guarantees that regardless of whether HD DVD dies or not, Blu-ray never, ever*, will displace DVD. A only marginal improvement in image and sound quality in return for a system unusable to a large portion of the population who neither have the skills nor resources to ensure their players are connected to the Internet.
* Well, ok, it might if they fix the bloody thing. But, at least as currently built, Blu-ray objectively is worse than the technology it supposedly obsoletes. If the Blu-ray consortium freeze the spec within the next six months and remove BD+ from it, then it might displace DVD. Operative word "might", the more expensive standard has to have real, discernible and compelling, advantages over the cheaper, incumbent, standard if it's going to get anywhere, and I'm just not seeing them. HD DVD did.
That's fascinating and all, but aside from the obvious fact that Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony and BMG and is therefore something Sony is responsible for, this entire article is about the Sony BMG and it was clear from the context that that was what I and the person I was responding to were talking about.
Save your "No, that would be Sony BMG" correction for the next discussion of Playstations or Vaios. We'll point out that Sony is responsible then too, but at least your point will be marginally more appropriate.
Are you sure you want to do that? This is Sony we're talking about, the music publisher who thought rootkits were a legitimate thing to put on music CDs...
What existing European standard? ATSC and DVB were developed at around the same time. Arguably, those involved should have worked together, but to claim there was an existing European standard the industry could have adopted is completely wrong.
How is that helped by making it a fight between Sony and Microsoft/Toshiba?
If you want to persuade people to use a format, you have to tell people the advantages. It's exactly the problem that they don't know the advantages that makes the Sony vs Microsoft/Toshiba thing a problem for HD-DVD. If you don't tell them, they will not know.
If Blu-ray succeeds (and HD DVD fails), I expect it to be the next laserdisc. If HD DVD, somehow, succeeds, I think it could displace DVD.
Hmm, my original reply to this appears to have disappeared for some reason. Let's try again but let me add one more thing:
His objection (if I'm reading him correctly) is similar to that of people who refuse to download any content that is shackled with DRM, for any price
Not really. It's a cost-benefit scenario.
Blu-ray offers one thing (and only one thing) over DVD, slightly improved video and audio. But it also has real downsides - constant firmware updates and the risk of incompatibility for new releases. Part of that is BD+, and part of that is that the Blu-ray spec seems to be in a state of constant flux. And it costs more money, and almost certainly always will.
I don't see any point in buying Blu-ray. DVD will always work without problems unlike Blu-ray, it's cheaper, and the difference in video and audio quality is just not great enough for most people to care, least of all me.
I didn't get a laserdisc player either...
Now, if Blu-ray were to have the spec frozen within the next six months, with AACS made optional, managed copy made mandatory, and BD+ completely removed with disks that used it re-issued, I'd obviously change my mind. It would then have advantages over DVD (beyond not exactly compelling image and sound quality) and no disadvantages.
I remember back in the early eighties when Xenix was still a Microsoft product drooling over it but realizing I would never be able to afford the 1,000GBP or so it cost just to get the basic edition that didn't include so much as a C compiler.
I think GNU/Linux would have still succeeded even if Microsoft had continued to push Xenix and not decided to start the OS/2 and NT projects instead.
And people understand Microsoft==LongListOfCrimes==Bad. The thing is, it's beside the point. I agree with your second paragraph and have pointed it out myself a number of times - it's fundamentally why I chose HD DVD, not just over Blu-ray but also over DVD; but if this turns into a war about who backs it, the technical advantages of HD DVD from a consumer standpoint are going to be ignored. And that favours Blu-ray, because quite honestly Sony is not more unpopular than Microsoft or vice versa, so the reality is that criticism that people might take notice of is buried and criticism that has critics written off as raving lunatics (and rightly so) is ignored.
Here's the deal: If the Blu-ray backers decide they're going to "seal the deal" and make a serious effort to challenge both HD DVD and DVD by abolishing BD+ (with BD+ discs re-released and made available for free replacement without BD+); make managed copy mandatory, backdated to all existing BD discs; make AACS optional; and freeze the standard so whatever it is in six months will stay current for the next ten years, no more firmware updates required, I'll change my mind and back Blu-ray. I want them to make Blu-ray palatable to me.
If Sony were to withdraw from the Blu-ray coalition and support HD DVD in HD DVD's present form, that wouldn't change my mind at all. Why should it?
Oh come on, even on DVD where they put all the trailers, the amount of unskippable content these days is generally tiny, usually the legal and copyright notices and half the time not even that is unskippable.
On HD-DVD I've noticed you don't even get that. I assume it's the same with Blu-ray. There's a copyright notice, and then it generally goes right to the menu.
In any case, here's the real reason why the online stuff isn't doing it: Unless your a confirmed computer geek, the only way to get content to a TV from the Internet is to use a device like the AppleTV. There's only one AppleTV, it doesn't have content that seriously rivals either of the HD formats in quality (not that that matters much), and it requires a computer to do the whole buying and downloading thing. And, just to add insult to injury, you have to have a decent 'net connection.
Now sure, some people like to watch movies on their laptops. But most of us prefer watching it from the comfort of our couches on a moderately largish screen.
For the time being, the next five-to-ten years at least, online "HD" viewing is going to be hard media based for the vast majority of viewers.
And unless the HD DVD people really find some way to turn the situation around over the next six months, they'll be buying the same plain-old DVDs they've been buying for the last ten years, save for the laserdisc crowd who'll get Blu-ray.
Nope, Blu-ray has more capacity per layer, but the capabilities are poorer from a consumer point of view.
Ironically, Blu-ray and HD-DVD had just caught up in terms of maximum capacity per disc - in the middle of November, HD-DVD adopted a system that increased the maximum capacity of an HD-DVD disc to match Blu-ray's (51G HD-DVD compared to 50G Blu-ray, using three layers and two layers respectively), but to date no discs have been made (well, it's been a month and a half) and no players have been updated to support the three layer format.
HD DVD discs do not need DRM, and do have to support "managed copy" meaning consumers can assume that if they buy an HD-DVD movie, they'll be allowed to (using licensed software) transfer copies to their computer or to a movie jukebox or something similar. HD DVD also has a slightly better sound codec selection, specifically making player support for the lossless Dolby TrueHD format compulsory, allowing studios to master HD DVDs with sound in that format. Not that that's a big thing, I just thought I'd mention it.
With the exception of the above issue of the new three layer discs, the HD-DVD format is more or less finalized, whereas Blu-ray is still in a state of flux. Blu-ray also has some issues, from a consumer point of view, such as the BD+ access control system, which meant some discs last year wouldn't play on some players without firmware updates, and region encoding.
There's an interesting fact about region encoding and next generation players - unlike DVD, where you had to worry about whether your TV can be hooked up to a "foreign" player, pretty much every next generation TV in the world supports HDMI, and pretty much every Blu-ray and HD-DVD player in the world also supports HDMI and is available in your native voltage.
And Blu-ray supports three regions. Three. So if you want to play any disc in the world, you need three players.
And the regions have pretty much nothing economically in common. Africa and Europe are in one region for instance.
Which then raises the question: why did they bother? Blu-ray's region encoding does nothing but cause hassle. Studios that are genuinely worried about release dates are going to find that countries outside the US are full of US-region Blu-ray players. And Europeans can import cheap African discs, and Americans can get cheap Asian discs, so not even the old price-differential (sell discs at a low price to claw back some revenues rather than giving in to piracy in poorer regions) reasons explain any of this.
I'm pro-HD DVD myself, but this "Sony vs Microsoft" or "Sony vs Toshiba" crap has to end.
Sony was the largest backer of Blu-ray and was involved in its early development. But Blu-ray is a format controlled by a wide consortium of interests, of which Sony is a small player. Blu-ray was designed to appeal to studios, and to some extent, it does more than HD-DVD: Studios want region encoding, they want (however moronic it might be) 1980s software style copy prevention schemes (which, effectively, is what BD+ allows them to do. Make your discs faulty and then write Java code to make the player ignore the faults. Wow. That worked really well back when Woz was building disk drives...), and they don't want to be forced to sell anything other than a disc. HD DVD appealed to consumers. It's designed to be reliable at the expense of the discs being easier to copy. It's not region encoded. And it made managed copy a mandatory feature.
These feature collections have nothing to do with promoting Sony, Microsoft, or Toshiba, and there's pretty much no way any of these three companies could suddenly start dictating terms to the studios if the format they've nailed their colours to succeeds.
So can we stop using Sony as a reason to attack Blu-ray?
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I hate to point this out, but the lawsuits themselves have generally had the names of the labels on them, not the RIAA. The RIAA is the average Slashdotter's shorthand for "the music industry" (well, kind of shorthand, seriously many of them can't tell the difference.)
The article is about the trade association. The lawsuits are from the industry. The RIAA (the trade association) has had a hand in organizing the lawsuits but ultimately the lawsuits themselves have been pushed by the publishers themselves. The RIAA doesn't even have standing.
So if anyone's reading this as "The RIAA is being punished for all the lawsuits!! No more lawsuits!!!", then, well, they're wrong. The RIAA's primary purpose is lobbying, and I guess the lobbying it does just isn't worth the money being spent on them.
After checking, it looks like the screw was added with the Master Series. So the screw post-dated the Model B.
Argh! Please tell me you're having an off day (or, Excruciating English-wise: do the conveyance of explanations for additionalized word redundantwise with a temporary problem thinkedly.)
The "smart" (it's lower case, apparently) car hasn't actually been officially launched in the US yet, the cars sold today are gray-imports. Official marketing of a US version will start this year, with apparently a $12,000 asking price for the base model.
So don't get too pessimistic, they haven't started yet.
Never had a problem with the VIC-20 keyboard, which was the same as the C64 one. It was well spaced, comfortable to type on, and the keys were generally in the right positions. The two inch height may have annoyed some people, but over-all it was a good design. I thought the article was bizarre for that.
I'm glad they pilloried the habit of many 1980s home computer manufacturers of integrating a dangerous key with all the others. One of the bizarrest examples I can think of is the BBC Micro's. This had a reset key (called Break, IIRC), on the main keyboard itself and it was very easy to hit by accident. Acorn, who designed it, recognized the problem and put in a little screw you could use to lock the key so it wouldn't press.
This is the kind of hack that usability gurus get very excited by. Why not just move the key? Would it seriously have cost more to put a switch at the back of the computer, or to change it from a key to some other form of button, than it did to do the "screw" hack? And what were they thinking anyway? "Hmmm. People generally divide into two groups: those who want to lose their work regularly by accident, and those who never want to reset their computers. We should cater for these two groups by allowing them to customize their Reset button."
The worst of it was that, minus the Break button, the BBC keyboard was excellent.
Oh, and while we're on the subject, why do we still make CAPS LOCK a large, easily pressed by accident, key? And why do Windows and most GNU/Linux system treat it as an "Invert Case" lock rather than "Caps Lock"? The former is almost entirely useless, if you type at speed you're likely to instinctively hit the Shift button every time you start a word that would normally be capitalized, so once depressed (deliberately, that is), typing with caps-lock engaged requires thinking about.
Can we just start making keyboards without caps lock? It'd be easier. Or, hey, maybe we could put a little screw in it...
Everything old is new again. If you ejected a disk on the Amiga when it was in the middle of trying to write to it, it popped up with a dialog saying "You MUST insert the disk labeled "..."" and wouldn't let up until you did. If you ejected a disk when a file was open for writing, but not actually being written to, then later when the program tried to write to the open file, the Amiga would prompt you to insert the disk more politely "Please insert the disk labeled...", and if you canceled, would give the app an I/O error. In the mean time, the disk would be left in a state between writes that essentially left it recoverable in the event the user decided to be an ass about things (well, ok, or had some legitimate reason not to give the Amiga the disk.)
Here's a clue for OS developers: removable media is removable. That's what makes it, er, removable. If your operating system can't handle the media being removed, your operating system is the thing with the bugs, not the user. It's one thing to treat an internal drive that can only be accessed with a screwdriver as fixed in place and under the control of the OS, it's another to treat a removable USB stick the same way. Especially when 99% of the time, you can't get it right anyway. I mean, what idiot designed the Mac OS X and GNOME systems (two I'm familiar with, I can't comment on KDE or Windows) for dealing with removable storage? I unmount the drive, and before I get a chance to pull the thing out, 99% of the time the operating system has unmounted the drive, and then gone "Woah! An unmounted USB drive is connected. Let's mount it and see what's on it!" So I get the same fucking patronizing "Dude, you're an idiot, next time unmount the drive first!" message when I do the process correctly.
At some point, everyone at Microsoft, Apple, and the disparate group of people who make up KDE and GNOME, need to be bought Amigas. The Unix slogan is wrong: It really should be that those who don't know AmigaOS are doomed to re-invent it - badly.
As a bizarrely related anecdote, when I moved to the US from Britain, I found that, after a few months, I had some difficulty with the concepts of left and right. Not only did I often use the wrong word for the direction (and believe there to be no mistake until I thought about it), but even my memories often had sides switched that didn't make any sense.
Why? Well, I was used to driving on the left side of the road (or more being a passenger on vehicles on the left; I didn't drive much in the UK), and then had to switch to right-side driving when I moved to the US. That might sound minor, but the same issues also affected such simple tasks as crossing the road and knowing which direction to look for traffic in. From what I can figure out, my brain over-compensated.
This has nothing to do with secure path. This has to do with mandatory licensing. In order to license AACS for HD-DVD, you need to agree to allow your content to be copied using managed copy. This is not the case for Blu-ray.
HD DVD is pretty much set in stone at this point. Even if it wasn't, it doesn't support BD+ which will require constant updates.
I got it from the fact that they're still announcing updates to the spec and forthcoming updates to the spec. As an example, Profile 1.1 became mandatory just over a month ago, and BDLive has been announced but not completed. DVD and CDs are successes because their players are self contained and formats known qualities.
If you buy a Blu-ray drive today, in order to play new Blu-ray discs two years from now you will have to update the firmware on your player, both to ensure the access controls offered by BD+ work, and the content on newer discs is accessible. That's a deal breaker for most people.
But only illegally (in countries with a DMCA equivalent.) So while this feature is available on Blu-ray and DVD to those with the technical knowledge who're happy using non-commodity equipment to control playback, for the vast majority of people the feature might just as well not exist.
Like it or not, managed copy was the best we could hope for while the current combination of a paranoid, controll-freaking, Hollywood and draconian copyright laws continues to exist. And, alas, I suspect they will for a long, long, time.
After that, it's finished. All firmware updates are going to be for adding functionality (unrelated to HD DVD) or to fix bugs. If you don't want the functionality, you don't need to update. Bug fixes are bad, but at least the mechanism is there to make them possible, which isn't the case if your DVD player has a bug in it.
This is entirely different from Blu-ray: Blu-ray users can expect to have to install firmware updates periodically over the next few years. This is because the Blu-ray spec is in constant flux, and because BD+ pretty much inherently requires regular updates to stay compatible with discs that use it.
You see the difference? Anyone who buys a three layer HD DVD player once it comes out will probably never need to do a single update. Blu-ray users would be so lucky.
Given they both use the same encoding, really, I seriously doubt that you've noticed any quality improvement Blu-ray has over HD-DVD watching the same movie on the same screen. No serious commentator is suggesting either format has an edge with quality. And right now, anyone who doesn't have a very, very, large TV, that does 1080 and has a really good contrast ratio is not going to notice a significant advantage either format has over DVD. It's not that there's no difference, I was pretty excited seeing the opening scene of "Bladerunner" on HD DVD, and there are a few panoramic shots in The Bourne Ultimatum that stand out too; but for most of most movies, there's no significant improvement. It's a scene here and there that looks slightly better but you'd never have even noticed a lack of quality on DVD.
Wow, there's a technical advantage right there! I'm going to create the SuperAwesomeHD format, they'll have to switch to it with a name like that!
No, Microsoft is not to blame. Assuming HD DVD is dead (and the lead story here is false, but it does feel right now like it's a matter of time), then I blame a number of groups. Microsoft shouldn't have put HD DVD in to the X-Box 360, it would have hurt X-Box 360 owners just as Blu-ray did Playstation 3 buyers. I'm not going to criticize them for doing the right thing.
Microsoft's support for HD went beyond what was right for Microsoft. They ruined Vista in part by implementing a viable DRM and "secure path" systems to make it easier for Windows based systems to play AACS based content. This delayed Vista, reduced its compatibility with previous versions of Windows, and made the operating system less friendly to end users.
And to their credit, they pushed for features of the HD DVD standard that, had (or if...) HD DVD taken off, would have been net gains for consumers, notably the mandatory managed copy system that would have provided some means for format and space shifting of access controlled content. Had/if HD DVD taken off, we'd see HD DVD players that can store entire libraries of movies, and stream them around the house. You'd be able to store HD DVD movies on your laptop computers instead of carrying the discs around with you. You'd be able to condense movies into forms storeable on compatible portable video players.
What's happened is that the DVD Forum didn't push hard enough. Before Christmas, I saw huge amounts of advertising for Blu-ray and nothing for HD DVD. I saw stores locked up so they only sold and marketed Blu-ray. HD DVD advertising has concentrated purely on high quality video, the only area where it's identical to Blu-ray in features.
The equipment making supporters of HD DVD didn't push out the equipment fast enough. HD DVD burners are hard to come by. HD DVD jukeboxes and other devices that make use of the managed copy features are non-existent. Toshiba was also pretty close to alone in pushing the format, with most of the other manufacturers making token efforts but skimping entirely on the marketing.
Today if you want HD DVD, you can get a player to do it that has no major advantages over a Blu-ray player except in that it doesn't need constant firmware updates. And as most consumers have never heard of firmware, and aren't aware that Blu-ray isn't finished and that discs sold within the next couple of years will be unplayable on current equipment without updates, consumers have largely gone for the marketing pushed brand.
The DVD Forum would have won if they'd gone either positive or negative on the advantages over Blu-ray. They instead have ignored it. They have a few months to turn this around, and I think it's doubtful they'll be able to do it.
HD DVD can offer unencrypted content, and the mandatory managed copy system means even encrypted content can be stored in a central library, format shifted, and even streamed, if you're willing to use consumer tools to do so.
Blu-ray also has a number of downsides over both HD DVD and DVD, most notably that the BD+ system requires regular firmware updates, and that these firmware updates will be needed for the next year or two anyway because the Blu-ray spec, unlike HD DVD, still hasn't been finished.
And that pretty much guarantees that regardless of whether HD DVD dies or not, Blu-ray never, ever*, will displace DVD. A only marginal improvement in image and sound quality in return for a system unusable to a large portion of the population who neither have the skills nor resources to ensure their players are connected to the Internet.
* Well, ok, it might if they fix the bloody thing. But, at least as currently built, Blu-ray objectively is worse than the technology it supposedly obsoletes. If the Blu-ray consortium freeze the spec within the next six months and remove BD+ from it, then it might displace DVD. Operative word "might", the more expensive standard has to have real, discernible and compelling, advantages over the cheaper, incumbent, standard if it's going to get anywhere, and I'm just not seeing them. HD DVD did.
Yes, it is a denial. The FT report is that they plan to switch to Blu-ray.
That's fascinating and all, but aside from the obvious fact that Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony and BMG and is therefore something Sony is responsible for, this entire article is about the Sony BMG and it was clear from the context that that was what I and the person I was responding to were talking about.
Save your "No, that would be Sony BMG" correction for the next discussion of Playstations or Vaios. We'll point out that Sony is responsible then too, but at least your point will be marginally more appropriate.
Are you sure you want to do that? This is Sony we're talking about, the music publisher who thought rootkits were a legitimate thing to put on music CDs...
What existing European standard? ATSC and DVB were developed at around the same time. Arguably, those involved should have worked together, but to claim there was an existing European standard the industry could have adopted is completely wrong.
How is that helped by making it a fight between Sony and Microsoft/Toshiba?
If you want to persuade people to use a format, you have to tell people the advantages. It's exactly the problem that they don't know the advantages that makes the Sony vs Microsoft/Toshiba thing a problem for HD-DVD. If you don't tell them, they will not know.
If Blu-ray succeeds (and HD DVD fails), I expect it to be the next laserdisc. If HD DVD, somehow, succeeds, I think it could displace DVD.
Not really. It's a cost-benefit scenario.
Blu-ray offers one thing (and only one thing) over DVD, slightly improved video and audio. But it also has real downsides - constant firmware updates and the risk of incompatibility for new releases. Part of that is BD+, and part of that is that the Blu-ray spec seems to be in a state of constant flux. And it costs more money, and almost certainly always will.
I don't see any point in buying Blu-ray. DVD will always work without problems unlike Blu-ray, it's cheaper, and the difference in video and audio quality is just not great enough for most people to care, least of all me.
I didn't get a laserdisc player either...
Now, if Blu-ray were to have the spec frozen within the next six months, with AACS made optional, managed copy made mandatory, and BD+ completely removed with disks that used it re-issued, I'd obviously change my mind. It would then have advantages over DVD (beyond not exactly compelling image and sound quality) and no disadvantages.
I remember back in the early eighties when Xenix was still a Microsoft product drooling over it but realizing I would never be able to afford the 1,000GBP or so it cost just to get the basic edition that didn't include so much as a C compiler.
I think GNU/Linux would have still succeeded even if Microsoft had continued to push Xenix and not decided to start the OS/2 and NT projects instead.
And people understand Microsoft==LongListOfCrimes==Bad. The thing is, it's beside the point. I agree with your second paragraph and have pointed it out myself a number of times - it's fundamentally why I chose HD DVD, not just over Blu-ray but also over DVD; but if this turns into a war about who backs it, the technical advantages of HD DVD from a consumer standpoint are going to be ignored. And that favours Blu-ray, because quite honestly Sony is not more unpopular than Microsoft or vice versa, so the reality is that criticism that people might take notice of is buried and criticism that has critics written off as raving lunatics (and rightly so) is ignored.
Here's the deal: If the Blu-ray backers decide they're going to "seal the deal" and make a serious effort to challenge both HD DVD and DVD by abolishing BD+ (with BD+ discs re-released and made available for free replacement without BD+); make managed copy mandatory, backdated to all existing BD discs; make AACS optional; and freeze the standard so whatever it is in six months will stay current for the next ten years, no more firmware updates required, I'll change my mind and back Blu-ray. I want them to make Blu-ray palatable to me.
If Sony were to withdraw from the Blu-ray coalition and support HD DVD in HD DVD's present form, that wouldn't change my mind at all. Why should it?
Oh come on, even on DVD where they put all the trailers, the amount of unskippable content these days is generally tiny, usually the legal and copyright notices and half the time not even that is unskippable.
On HD-DVD I've noticed you don't even get that. I assume it's the same with Blu-ray. There's a copyright notice, and then it generally goes right to the menu.
In any case, here's the real reason why the online stuff isn't doing it: Unless your a confirmed computer geek, the only way to get content to a TV from the Internet is to use a device like the AppleTV. There's only one AppleTV, it doesn't have content that seriously rivals either of the HD formats in quality (not that that matters much), and it requires a computer to do the whole buying and downloading thing. And, just to add insult to injury, you have to have a decent 'net connection.
Now sure, some people like to watch movies on their laptops. But most of us prefer watching it from the comfort of our couches on a moderately largish screen.
For the time being, the next five-to-ten years at least, online "HD" viewing is going to be hard media based for the vast majority of viewers.
And unless the HD DVD people really find some way to turn the situation around over the next six months, they'll be buying the same plain-old DVDs they've been buying for the last ten years, save for the laserdisc crowd who'll get Blu-ray.
Nope, Blu-ray has more capacity per layer, but the capabilities are poorer from a consumer point of view.
Ironically, Blu-ray and HD-DVD had just caught up in terms of maximum capacity per disc - in the middle of November, HD-DVD adopted a system that increased the maximum capacity of an HD-DVD disc to match Blu-ray's (51G HD-DVD compared to 50G Blu-ray, using three layers and two layers respectively), but to date no discs have been made (well, it's been a month and a half) and no players have been updated to support the three layer format.
HD DVD discs do not need DRM, and do have to support "managed copy" meaning consumers can assume that if they buy an HD-DVD movie, they'll be allowed to (using licensed software) transfer copies to their computer or to a movie jukebox or something similar. HD DVD also has a slightly better sound codec selection, specifically making player support for the lossless Dolby TrueHD format compulsory, allowing studios to master HD DVDs with sound in that format. Not that that's a big thing, I just thought I'd mention it.
With the exception of the above issue of the new three layer discs, the HD-DVD format is more or less finalized, whereas Blu-ray is still in a state of flux. Blu-ray also has some issues, from a consumer point of view, such as the BD+ access control system, which meant some discs last year wouldn't play on some players without firmware updates, and region encoding.
There's an interesting fact about region encoding and next generation players - unlike DVD, where you had to worry about whether your TV can be hooked up to a "foreign" player, pretty much every next generation TV in the world supports HDMI, and pretty much every Blu-ray and HD-DVD player in the world also supports HDMI and is available in your native voltage.
And Blu-ray supports three regions. Three. So if you want to play any disc in the world, you need three players.
And the regions have pretty much nothing economically in common. Africa and Europe are in one region for instance.
Which then raises the question: why did they bother? Blu-ray's region encoding does nothing but cause hassle. Studios that are genuinely worried about release dates are going to find that countries outside the US are full of US-region Blu-ray players. And Europeans can import cheap African discs, and Americans can get cheap Asian discs, so not even the old price-differential (sell discs at a low price to claw back some revenues rather than giving in to piracy in poorer regions) reasons explain any of this.
I'm pro-HD DVD myself, but this "Sony vs Microsoft" or "Sony vs Toshiba" crap has to end.
Sony was the largest backer of Blu-ray and was involved in its early development. But Blu-ray is a format controlled by a wide consortium of interests, of which Sony is a small player. Blu-ray was designed to appeal to studios, and to some extent, it does more than HD-DVD: Studios want region encoding, they want (however moronic it might be) 1980s software style copy prevention schemes (which, effectively, is what BD+ allows them to do. Make your discs faulty and then write Java code to make the player ignore the faults. Wow. That worked really well back when Woz was building disk drives...), and they don't want to be forced to sell anything other than a disc. HD DVD appealed to consumers. It's designed to be reliable at the expense of the discs being easier to copy. It's not region encoded. And it made managed copy a mandatory feature.
These feature collections have nothing to do with promoting Sony, Microsoft, or Toshiba, and there's pretty much no way any of these three companies could suddenly start dictating terms to the studios if the format they've nailed their colours to succeeds.
So can we stop using Sony as a reason to attack Blu-ray?