People generally buy the hardware first, paying no attention to whether it's Appley or not
Couldn't disagree more. If someone bought an Apple and discovered Windows on it, I suspect that there's a very high probability that they will be displeased with that. People buy Apple computer hardware for OSX. They don't buy it just apples-to-apples comparing it with a Dell.
You don't need 4.7gigs for a DVD even though they use it for a DVD you buy in a store. It compresses quite easily to 700megs without a noticeable loss of quality.
It's a very noticeable loss of quality (and features -- thinks like Dolby Digital 5.1 often get lost), and you're fooling yourself claiming otherwise. Note that most DVDs are dual-layer, and are closing on 9GB, not 4.7GB.
H.264 for one but when it's a file that can be transcoded you can use other compression techniques which are more effective.
Such as? H.264 / VC1 are pretty much the best codecs out there. Furthermore they do massive processing to yield the best bits to press onto the master. Again, you're just fooling yourself if you think that you can magically do that much better than them.
The content producing industry never uses the latest and greatest, they only go with what they know works.
But they are the latest and greatest...
Seriously, though, if you really think that there's no difference between a CD-sized re-encode and an original DVD, then the high definition formats are not for you or your rig. They are gross, monstrous overkill.
but for a $5-per-month premium membership, players have access to an ad-supported version of the site
I presume they misstated, and you actually pay to get an ad-free version of the site.
Otherwise...is this a slashvertisement? Yet another of hundreds of online gaming sites...what's the news for nerds in this? No, seriously, I really want to know.
To get you started, here's a search for you. It looks like IBM is only promising a 100-fold performance increase, but Sun got the contract (despite the possibly inaccurate story, it doesn't sound like they actually figured out anything thus far, besides "how to get some government loot") by promising a 1000x increase.
Hey DARPA — I'll give you a 1,000,000x improvement! Email and I'll tell you where to send the cash.
Commentary on this, from an actual EE, not the pretend ones on Slashdot (you know who you are)?
Just look up any of the countless other "use light instead of wires" stories that have been widely reported over the past decade(s). I'm not saying it's not going to happen — I'm sure at some point it will — but barring additional information, preferably actual accomplishments, this is just more of the same.
No. You can't (legally or easily) load OS X onto your generic or HP, Dell or Lenovo PC. OS X only runs on Apple hardware, therefore it does not compete with Windows in the non-Apple hardware space. Linux does.
I don't think many people buy hardware based upon the binary "Apple or non-Apply hardware?" decision point. OS X absolutely is a competitor to Windows, regardless of whether it implicitly binds additional decision points.
But their standard is completely dead now it seems, and to keep pushing for it is incomprehensible.
HD-DVD is indeed completely dead, and Microsoft has stopped manufacturing the HD-DVD add-on (more correctly they no longer Toshiba to make it for them). Microsoft knows that HD-DVD as a physical format is dead.
However XBox Live! isn't dead, nor is traditional DVD. The former has great future potential (it, and similar services like iTunes movies, aren't something I'm interested in because the bitrate is going to remain far too low until the end-to-end infrastructure of the internet is dramatically improved, but it's good enough for a lot of people), and the latter is easily good enough for most consumers.
So no, their "standard" isn't dead. DVD is easily going to be dominant until the next generation of game machines, possibly even to the one after that. And then there comes a point where optical media doesn't even matter anymore.
Really this is all rather silly. Microsoft barely supported HD-DVD. Why do people think they're going to rush and support Blu-ray, especially given that the technical requirements of Blu-ray guarantee that such an add-on would be very pricey: How can you compete with Sony that is already selling a full game machine with Blu-ray at less than the cost of a competing companies stand-alone, no-game-machine-included players.
it's not a good sign that people are not prepared to pay even $5 for 4 CDs worth of music in a DRM-free format
You assume that it's all people who didn't pay. While I wouldn't even guess at the distribution, that isn't necessarily true.
I paid $5 and followed the link to download the FLAC copy.
First attempt -- 6KB of the 600MB and the download fails, the connection closed by their grossly overloaded server. Second attempt -- 6KB of the 600MB and the download fails, the connection closed by their grossly overloaded server. Third attempt -- 600KB (I was optimistic for a moment) of the 600MB and the download fails, the connection closed by their grossly overloaded server. Fourth attempt -- You've exceeded your download quota.
Sent them an email, and still no reply two days later.
Yesterday I tried the link again, now to get "Please click the download link in your origional email.". Very origional email.
It was only $5 and big deal, however they weren't remotely equipped to handle the onslaught (and had zero queuing or load distribution plans in place).
Let's just say that I have a torrent connected and streaming right now, and it isn't because I was too cheap to pay a measly $5.
Listen, PS3 nerds: You won. You don't need to defensively strike out at anything that undermines your Sony-world-view. Everything in the above post is right on the money, regardless of asinine moderation.
Actually, the truth is pretty much the opposite of this statement
No doubt the comment you replied to was ignorant, however...
Because Blu-ray had 50% more bandwidth, it could be compressed less, and since it supported exactly the same video codecs as HD DVD that's all that really matters
It supports the same codecs, but most Blu-ray vendors simply used the extra space to put out the discs MPEG2 encoded. Of the discs released on both formats, where the blu-ray disc actually took advantage of its benefits, most reviewers couldn't discern any difference whatsoever.
Yes, HD DVD were cheaper to produce, but the discs cost the same to the consumer.
HD-DVD supported combo discs, meaning I buy my Bourne Ultimatum once and have the ease of using it in multiple devices. That is a huge loss of blu-ray's win (and it's exceedingly unlikely that they'll just give you each format on separate discs). Being able to buy one next generation format and knowing I don't have to upgrade every player simultaneously is value.
Blu-ray is superior from a gross storage/max bitrate perspective.
HD-DVD is, err, was, superior from a maturity, feature-set, interactivity, and consumer friendliness perspective.
BD+ should scare everyone. While it brings on the "FUD!" crying head-in-the-sand PS3 faithful to their flags defense, BD+ forebodes a future that will remind us what Divx is all about. In essence it allows each disc to do whatever it wants -- only allow X plays, or for the disc to be activated on one player after phoning home: That's the sort of thing that BD+ offers, and it's one of the reasons your-balls-in-a-vice companies like Disney support Blu-ray.
I'll buy a PS3 (the only worthwhile BR player. Too bad it has the gaming stuff in it), but this is a sadly inevitable. While Netflix is a sad pawn looking for some free publicity (if not incentives), Walmart deserves thanks for actually putting in the finishing move, just resolving what was going to be a long, drawn out waste of time.
I think some moderators are confused about the scoring -- you are supposed to apply a -1 for every instance of "M$". Given that the above has a full NINE (9) of them (we get the point - you're caught in a 1998 time warp where you think M$ is at all humorous/insightful/interesting), clearly it should be testing Slashdot's minimum karma.
Reminds me of the Sony root kit debacle, the blogger who released the information about the root kit, his association with M$ and that M$ was fully aware of the root kit well before it's release and for some odd reason the release of the information about the root kit coincided with the launch of the PS3.
This just blows me away. Yes, Microsoft, in concert with some nefarious blogger, is to blame for "$ony" taking over people's PC with a rootkit.
And that's ignoring that your conspiratorial "$ony the victim" timeline is just completely wrong.
I'd like for you to provide evidence that a Blu-ray-only studio has produced an HD-DVD disc.
Do you know how to use Google? I'll give you 10 minutes to find at least 25 releases that are Blu-ray only in the US, but can be found in overseas market on HD-DVD. If it takes you longer, well then you need a tutorial or something.
Uh, no. HD-DVD mandates Managed Copy, completely cutting your argument to shreds.
HD-DVD was a format that mediated between the needs of consumers and media companies. Blu-ray is designed entirely and only for media companies (what do you know - Sony also has a significant media arm...can't see any problem with that?)
Thus I believe you have never backup a HD DVD disk and it's pure FUD coming out of your mouth.
So basically you're just full of shit, but decided to add you "wisdom" regardless.
The only fanboy here is you. I have a preference for what I'd like to see, but it isn't some sort of ridiculous, somewhat pathetic army that I've joined just because I bought a game machine (I'm going to go way out on a limb and guess that you have a PS3? Come on, tell us the truth). I chose HD-DVD on its merits before making any purchases, versus a fanboy that just puts on their colours.
Perehaps you'd like to make an actual point refuting anything I said, in any way
You are incredibly boring, and your points are brilliant gems like completely ignoring when Toshiba started their sale, correlating completely unmatched sales stats. You've said nothing worth refuting because it's just the standard, ignorant Blu-ray-4-Ev4 fan rhetoric.
Get back to your PS3 site and talk about how great the cell processor is.
So, no matter how you play it, your statement that "it doesn't cost more to do both formats" is completely without merit.
Actually I said marginal, which is quite a bit different.
This kind of lets the air out of your whole its-a-corporate-conspiracy argument, doesn't it?
No, it doesn't at all. The most extraordinary proof being that you can buy, in a select number of markets where they haven't embargoed a whole format, HD-DVD media for blu-ray only houses, and vice versa. This simple fact of reality completely invalidates your claim.
NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH HD-DVD FTW NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH
Seriously, though, perhaps myopically I was talking about North American numbers. For whatever reason Toshiba has always (poorly) focused on the North American market, and there is no doubt that it was to its detriment elsewhere. Not that it did much good in North America either, however standlone player sales always fell in HD-DVD's favor, often significantly.
As one aside -- follow virtually any pro-blu-ray article back to its source, through layers of blogs referencing blogs, and you'll eventually end up at Home Media Magazine. Color me a little cynical, but I can't help but notice how many of their issues have a two-page Blu-ray ad just inside the cover....
The *actual* reports are that BluRay players were outselling HD-DVD the entire time
The month of December someone equals "the entire time"?
HD-DVD standalone player sales always beat Blu-ray until the Christmas season. There's where things get interesting -- up here in Canada the large electronics store started bundling a free Blu-ray player with virtually every bigscreen sold (probably trying to dump them before consumers caught onto the whole profile thing).
The only people still waving the HD-DVD flag are the ones who don't want to admit they backed the wrong horse so badly that they can't look at the situation objectively
Let me summon Godwin here, but this nonsensical rationale is about as reasonable as claiming that the only people in France who didn't back the Nazis during WWII just wouldn't admit that they backed the wrong horse.
I truly, honestly believe that blu-ray winning is a huge loss for consumers, and I will hang on for hope that Sony can be beaten down. Excuse me for not just laying down arms and chanting seig heil.
Splitting the market down the middle is very harmful to consumers for very little gain.
It's a completely artificial split, however.
Imagine if every media company released every disc in DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD (the cost to them is marginal. For all of the common bluster about the difficulty supporting both new formats, the reality is that almost every media company does -- you can find HD-DVD discs overseas for Blu-ray exclusive studios, and vice versa). Hell, when I buy HD-DVD discs, the other side has DVD on it.
That would be the idea situation, letting the consumer really choose. Instead their hand is being forced not on the relative merits and economics of the format, but rather a battle between the media companies.
A 50 percent reduction in price isn't a competitive sale. It's a clearance sale.
Given that rumor has it that Sony incentivized Warner to the tune of $500 million dollars, that's money that Toshiba saved. They can use that to halve the price of 4.2 million or so HD-A3s (which would, it should be mentioned, have won them this war).
I'm being facetious, but making presumptions about pricing of electronics is a risky proposition.
Player sales - not media sales. Remember the point of this format war is not to sell players below cost, but to sell media. What were the numbers for the previous weeks sales? 83:17, for Blu-Ray. The week before that? 85:15, Blu-Ray (NPD figures). The last weeks figures include the time period of Toshiba's "massive" player sales.
Toshiba just started the sale several days ago, first through Amazon and it just started trickling to the major electronics sales. Your figures don't account for the sale at all.
People thinking the format war, which kept consumers from BOTH formats. was in any way healthy.
I agree, insofar as the solution to that problem was HD-DVD winning. Blu-ray winning is a huge loss for consumers, setup by bought media companies and hoards of gamers unbalancing the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't disagree more. If someone bought an Apple and discovered Windows on it, I suspect that there's a very high probability that they will be displeased with that. People buy Apple computer hardware for OSX. They don't buy it just apples-to-apples comparing it with a Dell.
It's a very noticeable loss of quality (and features -- thinks like Dolby Digital 5.1 often get lost), and you're fooling yourself claiming otherwise. Note that most DVDs are dual-layer, and are closing on 9GB, not 4.7GB.
Such as? H.264 / VC1 are pretty much the best codecs out there. Furthermore they do massive processing to yield the best bits to press onto the master. Again, you're just fooling yourself if you think that you can magically do that much better than them.
But they are the latest and greatest...
Seriously, though, if you really think that there's no difference between a CD-sized re-encode and an original DVD, then the high definition formats are not for you or your rig. They are gross, monstrous overkill.
I presume they misstated, and you actually pay to get an ad-free version of the site.
Otherwise...is this a slashvertisement? Yet another of hundreds of online gaming sites...what's the news for nerds in this? No, seriously, I really want to know.
To get you started, here's a search for you. It looks like IBM is only promising a 100-fold performance increase, but Sun got the contract (despite the possibly inaccurate story, it doesn't sound like they actually figured out anything thus far, besides "how to get some government loot") by promising a 1000x increase.
Hey DARPA — I'll give you a 1,000,000x improvement! Email and I'll tell you where to send the cash.
Just look up any of the countless other "use light instead of wires" stories that have been widely reported over the past decade(s). I'm not saying it's not going to happen — I'm sure at some point it will — but barring additional information, preferably actual accomplishments, this is just more of the same.
I don't think many people buy hardware based upon the binary "Apple or non-Apply hardware?" decision point. OS X absolutely is a competitor to Windows, regardless of whether it implicitly binds additional decision points.
HD-DVD is indeed completely dead, and Microsoft has stopped manufacturing the HD-DVD add-on (more correctly they no longer Toshiba to make it for them). Microsoft knows that HD-DVD as a physical format is dead.
However XBox Live! isn't dead, nor is traditional DVD. The former has great future potential (it, and similar services like iTunes movies, aren't something I'm interested in because the bitrate is going to remain far too low until the end-to-end infrastructure of the internet is dramatically improved, but it's good enough for a lot of people), and the latter is easily good enough for most consumers.
So no, their "standard" isn't dead. DVD is easily going to be dominant until the next generation of game machines, possibly even to the one after that. And then there comes a point where optical media doesn't even matter anymore.
Really this is all rather silly. Microsoft barely supported HD-DVD. Why do people think they're going to rush and support Blu-ray, especially given that the technical requirements of Blu-ray guarantee that such an add-on would be very pricey: How can you compete with Sony that is already selling a full game machine with Blu-ray at less than the cost of a competing companies stand-alone, no-game-machine-included players.
One the nightly build of Firefox 3 (built in VS 2008, running on Vista x64), it yields 67/100.
Having said that, is it really such a quantitative, numerical test?
You assume that it's all people who didn't pay. While I wouldn't even guess at the distribution, that isn't necessarily true.
I paid $5 and followed the link to download the FLAC copy.
First attempt -- 6KB of the 600MB and the download fails, the connection closed by their grossly overloaded server.
Second attempt -- 6KB of the 600MB and the download fails, the connection closed by their grossly overloaded server.
Third attempt -- 600KB (I was optimistic for a moment) of the 600MB and the download fails, the connection closed by their grossly overloaded server.
Fourth attempt -- You've exceeded your download quota.
Sent them an email, and still no reply two days later.
Yesterday I tried the link again, now to get "Please click the download link in your origional email.". Very origional email.
It was only $5 and big deal, however they weren't remotely equipped to handle the onslaught (and had zero queuing or load distribution plans in place).
Let's just say that I have a torrent connected and streaming right now, and it isn't because I was too cheap to pay a measly $5.
Uh...overrated?
Listen, PS3 nerds: You won. You don't need to defensively strike out at anything that undermines your Sony-world-view. Everything in the above post is right on the money, regardless of asinine moderation.
No doubt the comment you replied to was ignorant, however...
It supports the same codecs, but most Blu-ray vendors simply used the extra space to put out the discs MPEG2 encoded. Of the discs released on both formats, where the blu-ray disc actually took advantage of its benefits, most reviewers couldn't discern any difference whatsoever.
HD-DVD supported combo discs, meaning I buy my Bourne Ultimatum once and have the ease of using it in multiple devices. That is a huge loss of blu-ray's win (and it's exceedingly unlikely that they'll just give you each format on separate discs). Being able to buy one next generation format and knowing I don't have to upgrade every player simultaneously is value.
Blu-ray is superior from a gross storage/max bitrate perspective.
HD-DVD is, err, was, superior from a maturity, feature-set, interactivity, and consumer friendliness perspective.
BD+ should scare everyone. While it brings on the "FUD!" crying head-in-the-sand PS3 faithful to their flags defense, BD+ forebodes a future that will remind us what Divx is all about. In essence it allows each disc to do whatever it wants -- only allow X plays, or for the disc to be activated on one player after phoning home: That's the sort of thing that BD+ offers, and it's one of the reasons your-balls-in-a-vice companies like Disney support Blu-ray.
I'll buy a PS3 (the only worthwhile BR player. Too bad it has the gaming stuff in it), but this is a sadly inevitable. While Netflix is a sad pawn looking for some free publicity (if not incentives), Walmart deserves thanks for actually putting in the finishing move, just resolving what was going to be a long, drawn out waste of time.
This just blows me away. Yes, Microsoft, in concert with some nefarious blogger, is to blame for "$ony" taking over people's PC with a rootkit.
And that's ignoring that your conspiratorial "$ony the victim" timeline is just completely wrong.
Do you know how to use Google? I'll give you 10 minutes to find at least 25 releases that are Blu-ray only in the US, but can be found in overseas market on HD-DVD. If it takes you longer, well then you need a tutorial or something.
Uh, no. HD-DVD mandates Managed Copy, completely cutting your argument to shreds.
HD-DVD was a format that mediated between the needs of consumers and media companies. Blu-ray is designed entirely and only for media companies (what do you know - Sony also has a significant media arm...can't see any problem with that?)
So basically you're just full of shit, but decided to add you "wisdom" regardless.
On Amazon. Best Buy near here dropped the price a couple of days ago. Other electronics shops are the same.
You are incredibly boring, and your points are brilliant gems like completely ignoring when Toshiba started their sale, correlating completely unmatched sales stats. You've said nothing worth refuting because it's just the standard, ignorant Blu-ray-4-Ev4 fan rhetoric.
Get back to your PS3 site and talk about how great the cell processor is.
Uh oh...it looks like I riled up the Blu-ray fanboy headquarters, so the kids are incoming.
Actually I said marginal, which is quite a bit different.
No, it doesn't at all. The most extraordinary proof being that you can buy, in a select number of markets where they haven't embargoed a whole format, HD-DVD media for blu-ray only houses, and vice versa. This simple fact of reality completely invalidates your claim.
[Covers Ears]
NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH HD-DVD FTW NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH
Seriously, though, perhaps myopically I was talking about North American numbers. For whatever reason Toshiba has always (poorly) focused on the North American market, and there is no doubt that it was to its detriment elsewhere. Not that it did much good in North America either, however standlone player sales always fell in HD-DVD's favor, often significantly.
As one aside -- follow virtually any pro-blu-ray article back to its source, through layers of blogs referencing blogs, and you'll eventually end up at Home Media Magazine. Color me a little cynical, but I can't help but notice how many of their issues have a two-page Blu-ray ad just inside the cover....
The month of December someone equals "the entire time"?
HD-DVD standalone player sales always beat Blu-ray until the Christmas season. There's where things get interesting -- up here in Canada the large electronics store started bundling a free Blu-ray player with virtually every bigscreen sold (probably trying to dump them before consumers caught onto the whole profile thing).
Let me summon Godwin here, but this nonsensical rationale is about as reasonable as claiming that the only people in France who didn't back the Nazis during WWII just wouldn't admit that they backed the wrong horse.
I truly, honestly believe that blu-ray winning is a huge loss for consumers, and I will hang on for hope that Sony can be beaten down. Excuse me for not just laying down arms and chanting seig heil.
It's a completely artificial split, however.
Imagine if every media company released every disc in DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD (the cost to them is marginal. For all of the common bluster about the difficulty supporting both new formats, the reality is that almost every media company does -- you can find HD-DVD discs overseas for Blu-ray exclusive studios, and vice versa). Hell, when I buy HD-DVD discs, the other side has DVD on it.
That would be the idea situation, letting the consumer really choose. Instead their hand is being forced not on the relative merits and economics of the format, but rather a battle between the media companies.
Given that rumor has it that Sony incentivized Warner to the tune of $500 million dollars, that's money that Toshiba saved. They can use that to halve the price of 4.2 million or so HD-A3s (which would, it should be mentioned, have won them this war).
I'm being facetious, but making presumptions about pricing of electronics is a risky proposition.
Toshiba just started the sale several days ago, first through Amazon and it just started trickling to the major electronics sales. Your figures don't account for the sale at all.
I agree, insofar as the solution to that problem was HD-DVD winning. Blu-ray winning is a huge loss for consumers, setup by bought media companies and hoards of gamers unbalancing the market.