DVD Format War Already Over? 640
An anonymous reader writes "'Nobody likes false starts' - claims the assertive and risky article "10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed" published by Audioholics which outlines their take on why the new Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will attain nothing more than niche status in a marketplace that is brimming with hyperbole. Even though the two formats have technically just hit the streets, the 'Ten reasons' article takes a walk down memory lane and outline why the new DVD tech has a lot to overcome."
They might have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They might have a point - Try holographic (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, try this:
www.inphase-tech.com
Guaranteed 50 year media life, first generation will be 300 GIG per disc, going to 1.6TB per disk. Drives going out to OEM's right now.
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
I backup all my DVDs onto external hard drives and throw the shiny discs into the closest. The flimsy plastic is really only good for a couple of uses before scratching, fingerprints or other marks degraded them.
HD DVDs would be useful as a transient storage container for transporting data between locations, because its eay to transport and after copying the data to its real location it can be thrown away. But not as a backup. Same as DVDs today.
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Under what conditions? Sealed in an air-tight, moisture-proof box? Handled with gloves like any fragile document from the 13th Century? The cheap media most people buy is about as reliable a hard drive.
Crap. No other word for it.
I've been backing up on hard drives for over four years now - in fact, I now have 8 hard drives purely for dedicated backups (well, I have a 1.5TB media library). Every now and then I need to restore a file that has been accidentally deleted or corrupted and I have yet to go to one of my drives and find it unusable.
Granted its only been four years, and yes, hard drives are not archive grade storage mediums. If I wanted archive quality I'd go back to backing up on tape drives - that is the only proven archive media in the industry today. I've gone back to DVDs and CDs that I haven't used on twelve months and find they are unreadable - let alone four years. I'm sure there are people on /. that have had working hard drives for 7, 8, hell 10 years+.
Even audio CDs don't last more than a couple of years, particularly if you do something ridiculous, such as actually use them. Who here as a pile of audio CDs they bought in the 90s that are degraded beyond use?
I have to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
I also wouldn't count too heavily on tapes as being "proven archive media". Have you ever heard of people having to "bake the tapes"? That is because a lot of tapes that are only a couple of decades old have started to seriously degrade. Also, you can't just throw tapes into a non-climate controlled environment any more than you can a CD. About the only area that a tape has greater reliablity than a CD is when they are tossed in a pile on a desk without being put in a case. And that is only because the tapes have a built in case.
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Not me, unless you count "two" as a pile. And those two failed because I let them bang around in my truck and get scratched to hell, not because they were played or otherwise magically rotted.
Given much less care than LPs or cassette tapes, virtually all of them play as well now as they did when I bought them. ExactAudioCopy does occasionally report an error or two when I'm ripping them. I'd estimate that 90% of my discs are error free, and the rest are mostly 99% or better (EAC figures.) And while I don't deliberately manhandle them, I'm far from a paranoid audiophile with alcohol swabs and white gloves.
And as far as burn-'em-yourself discs, I've not had any data discs degrade on me (that I'm aware of.) Those, I definitely treat better than audio discs, with limited handling and their lives spent inside clean CaseLogic CD folders.
As for hard drives, I certainly haven't had the good luck you seem to be having. If I have an older drive that is powered down for a couple of years, the chances of it spinning up seem to be far from 100%. And that's not just cheap Maxtors I'm talking about (although Maxtor is no proof against failure), I've had it happen with a number of server-class SCSI drives, too. While it's certainly not a 50% fail rate, I'd guess that long-term stored hard drives seem to have only about a 90-95% chance of spinning up again.
No medium is perfect. And there's another point I've not mentioned yet, and that's the availability of readers / interface electronics. If I had backed up all my valuables on an old Winchester drive, what are the chances I'd be able to read it today? First, I'd have to find a working machine with an ISA bus, video card, possibly a monitor, a keyboard, and some kind of boot drive. I'd need to scrounge a copy of DOS, although pirating an ancient one off the Internet seems pretty doable (but creating a bootable disk is less simple.) Then, I'd have to find a WD503 ISA card for it, and cables. I'd probably have to come up with a network card, too, so I could get the data off the machine.
Of course, these same arguments will hold true for CDs and DVDs at some point in the not-too-distant future, as well as any current hard drive communications bus. Maybe it won't be BluRay or HD-DVD that spells doom for the CD/DVD/hard-drive backup plan, but it will be something.
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Funny)
Now how could you possibly trust *that*?
My methode of datastorage is much more secure. I have all my data written on the hand of God. I did had to erase a lot of names of it first, so some of you might experience some difficulties when trying to enter heaven. But I'm sure you'd enjoy hell too. They seem to have great barbeques. And it's for a good cause. I can't be expected to let my Simcity save games go to waste when the universe ends, can I?
Re:They might have a point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want a decent backup cheap, either optical or cheap hard drives are fine for a few years - just store them in a different building than your PC.
If you want to backup something important, put a tape in a safety deposit box. Just verify your backups when you make them, as cheap tape drives will go bad without any indication that they're no longer making usable tapes. (Good tape drives read after writing, to avoid the problem.)
And always remember: RAID is not backup. Neither is anything you can accidentally delete, or have trashed by a virus, or whatnot. A hard drive isn't a backup until it's disconnected.
The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This War (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W (Score:3, Insightful)
They will buy neither to avoid getting stuck with what may be the next Beta.
I don't quite follow this. Beta got trounced by VHS largely because the consumers found the image quality acceptable, given the longer recording times. It's the consumers that made Beta, well, Beta.
If consumers don't find that the new formats offer enough, compared to what they have, then they both will become the next Beta.
That's the alpha and omega of it. (sorry, sorry everybody.)
Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of VHS vs Beta, consumers didn't have a reasonable other choice. If they wanted to videotape Star Trek episodes, they had to pick one or the other. So the decision wasn't whether to buy, it was what to buy. And VHS killed Beta because of the extended recording times.
However, there's already a choice that's a clear market winner - DVD. Players are cheap, (I can now get a DVD with stereo audio and DVI for $30) media is cheap (movies cost ~ $10-$20) and it's widely supported.
So the choice consumers make is not "Which HD-DVD to buy?" but rather "DVD or one of them expensive, risky HD thingies". If they go DVD, they get all their movies and titles, decent video/sound quality, and don't pay too much. If they go HD-whatever, they get marginally better video, no noticable difference in sound, and a limited, high-priced movie selection.
Which would YOU buy? I don't know about you, but I'm in NO HURRY to adopt HD-DVD - I might end up buying an LCD TV in about a year to replace my aging 19" CRT...
On a side note, I've gotten to where I just don't like DVDs anymore. I have 5 kids and a busy career. When we rent DVDs, we end up paying late fees a good percentage of the time. When we buy them, they often get scratched or lost. I don't have time to be a "DVD cop". But a Dish Network Pay-Per-View is easily recorded on the DVR and played over and over, with no media to lose, no trips to the local video store, and no stupid envelopes to mail back. (a la NetFlix)
When we want a movie, we buy it on PPV. The selection still isn't fantastic yet, but it's just so much less hassle! IPTV is definitely where I'm going to go, as soon as it's available for my DVR!
My vote for the next media format: IPTV on-demand, with a DVR or iTunes. The real question is simply: does Apple have the gonads to actually penetrate the living room, or are they content to just be a cool fad?
They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but that's probably the Civic you're hearing, not the vinyl.
Re:They left one out (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for that.
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Informative)
Or, if you're lazy and don't want your mp3's as vinyls, just use a Winamp plugin [winamp.com]?
Re:They left one out (Score:4, Interesting)
4. Studios are Conservative (Score:5, Funny)
Relative to the Southern Baptist Convention, though...
Another reason for failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another reason for failure (Score:5, Funny)
Heck, the bastards stick around to this day.
Floppy disks are the media format parallel to Paris Hilton.
They simply refuse to get impopular despite how crappy they are.
Re:Another reason for failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Zip files, 120MB floppy (whatever it was called): Expensive, more reliable, more storage, more features, etc., FAILURE.
DVD: Cheap, convenient, and sufficient for most people.
HD-DVD: Expensive, higher res, more storage, etc. FAILURE?
Re:Another reason for failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, if you have a halfway-decent CD player, you probably do. The question is, how many SACD's do you see actually getting pressed?
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, they can both easily store surround sound. An Audio CD could as well, of course, but then it's not really a red book (is that the one?) Audio CD anymore. I know a lot of people did get basic 5.1 speakersets for the audio that comes with DVD movies because it -is- perceptible better.. it's a wh
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Informative)
That isn't strictly true, although it does depend no what you consider "surround sound". While currently unused, Red Book does permit four channel [wikipedia.org] audio formats. As well, Dolby Pro Logic can be encoded into the standard two channel Red Book format without violating the specification.
So if you're referring to discrete 5.1 surround, you are correct -- however, there are different types of surround sound, at least two of which can be encoded on to Red Book CDs.
Actually, both standards can handle H.264 [wikipedia.org] video, which is a signficantly better encoding standard than MPEG-2. Depending on what profile is used for the encoding, it is possible to specify much higher colour fidelity.
This isn't to say I disagree with your overall argument, however. I'm not so sure that the quality differences are going to be sufficiently significant to the average viewer (which would include myself) to matter. As I've stated in other articules on this subject, I'm personally more interested in these formats (BlueRay in particular) for data storage than for video.
Yaz.
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Interesting)
How will I know (just by looking at the package) that a HD-DVD title is done in H.264? And even if it has that information on the back, thats meaningless to the average consumer.
I would be happier if one of the specifications dictated H.264 (or at least did not permit MPEG2 to be used on HD-DVD/BDs). At least that would remove one variable, you know that they're at least using the best codec permitted.
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe there will be a demand for HD DVD and Blu Ray when HD sets are a lot more common, but not until then.
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:3, Informative)
While I agree with most of your comment, the bit about $50 DVD players is revisionist history. I seem to recall they were more like in the neighborhood of $1000 when the DVD format first launched. Sure you can get a $50 player now but not at the beginning. Cheap players had little to do with the initial success of DVD. I think it was just the improved quality and the nice form fact
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual uptake rates for HDTV are anemic. THats likely to continue for the rest of the decade. People are replacing dead TVs with HDs, but not running out to buy HDs (and not always replacing with HD, since there's still a huge price difference). Until the price difference drops dramaticly, and we give it most of a decade for the old sets to break, we won't see a significant market penetration.
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Interesting)
LCD prices are barely dropping (and not everyone wants an LCD- horrible picture quality compared to a tube IMO). Sales of HDTV are basicly flat. And the OTA drop dead date has been pushed back twice already- its going to be pushed back again.
Basicly, the vast majority of people don't give a shit about HDTV. The product has failed in the marketplace so badly even Congress had to admit to it and push back adoption dates twice. On top of that the format changed so even early adopters are scared of reinvesting. HD is a no go, write it off.
The deadline is not for HDTV but for digital TV (Score:5, Insightful)
All that would be required would be a new receiver box. I've heard that they are even considering subsidizing these receivers for everyone, since the sooner they can complete this conversion, the sooner they can auction off the current analog TV spectrum for billions upon billions of dollars.
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Insightful)
As an anecdotal response, I know of no person with a HDTV. Not my family, not my friends, not my coworkers. I know a few people who have travel LCDs; everyone else has SDTV CRTs. A lot of people have LCDs for their computer displays (that's what things come with now), and most of the people I know that upgraded specifically to a LCD run dual-head with a CRT for graphics work.
HDTV is really just another example of the industry killing it's upgrade path with stupidity. It's a noticable, but not incredible, increase in quality. They screwed the early adopters, it's still too expensive, and the entire product landscape is crippled by DRM. Who wants to spend three times more money to get a slightly better looking picture, but that they can't use to do what they can already do with their older equipment?
Also, the AV Science Forum isn't exactly unbiased, either.
Re:wrong on so many fronts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people don't want to spend four digits amounts for a TV set. They go to the store, they see a $300 TV that's the size they want, and they buy it. Maybe they really want a LCD for some reason, so they buy the $450 20" LCD. Most people see the prices as 2x - 3x more than a CRT, and say forget it.
Extremely few people are willing to spend the $1800+ to have a 1080p TV. That's just an absurd price to pay for television. It's especially absurd when you realize that $1800 buys you the low end.
Also, direct view *MEANS* CRT.
Here is a page from May of this year: http://www.cnet.com/4520-7874_1-5108443-1.html [cnet.com]
The basic sentiment from that page, and most others, is that LCD is getting cheap because it's the worst on tech on the market. My own experience confirms this, even. CRT looks better and is cheaper. DLP looks almost as good as CRT, and is comparably priced and sized to LCD.
Basically, people *don't* care about HDTV, and the early adopters *did* get screwed. All of that HD tech the big money spenders bought won't work right because it lacks the industry DRM infections. They industry then went and confused the hell out of the market with all different versions of HDMI, confusing terminology left and right, and different vendors abusing what *had* been established terms.
Re:wrong on so many fronts... (Score:4, Informative)
Regarding LCD color, LCDs now have enough color depth and fast enough response time to match the color performance of CRTs. A CRT has a logarithmic color response to input voltage, which matches the human eye very well. An LCD has a linear color response, so electronics in the display have to mimic CRT behavior by applying a gamma curve function to the input signal. Nicer LCDs do this quite well (take a look at Apple's Cinema Display), and can match the best CRTs in color. The vast majority of LCDs do not do this very well, however, and so a cheap CRT will always have better color than a cheap LCD.
Also, direct view *MEANS* CRT.
Actually, no, direct view means anything that doesn't involve projection, but instead the image generation device is viewed directly. CRTs, LCD flat panels, and plasma flat panels are all classified as direct view. Non-direct view means RPTV (CRT-based, LCD microdisplay, LCoS/SXRD, or DLP) or front projection (typically either LCD microdisplay or DLP).
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole problem with today's entertainment industry!
Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost. Those high def DVD's really do look nicer on ***BIG*** HDTVs. On smaller ("regular size") tvs dvds and hddvds look pretty much the same at normal viewing distances.
Admittedly 'big TVs' are in right now, but its going to be a *long* time before everyone has one. (If ever; some people are perfectly happy with a 20", 25" or 30" set.) Plus, for someone to be won over by an HD media format, he's going to be looking at his other playback devices -- his laptop/portable dvd player, the one mounted into the back of the seats in his SUV, the one in his bedroom, the one at the summer cabin...
Even if he has a big screen in his living room, the fact that the disc won't play anywhere else will be an issue. Tapes lingered on for years beside cds partly because they were recordable while cds took ages to get there, and partly because all our 'walkmans', 'car stereos', 'ghetto blasters' and other devices still used them. We could buy the CD, and make a tape to use in our other players until the rest of our world caught up.
Can we easily do that *that* with our HD purchases? Nevermind perserving the "HD" Can we even easily hook up a CD burner or SVHS VCR to our HD player to make copies? Can we rip them to our PSPs, and iPod videos?
The whole HD format just isn't looking to be very user friendly. That's going to hurt it. I think there's a very decent chance it will be repeat of the "LaserDisc".
Reason number 10 the most likely reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reason number 10 the most likely reason (Score:3, Insightful)
The MPAA members and other studios will start in a few years to release their blockbuster movies HD-ONL
#3 is the killer (Score:5, Informative)
- Much higher quality video and audio
- Random access
- Don't have to rewind them
- Switchable audio tracks
- Subtitles that are optional
- Extras
- Nifty menus
Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:Re:#3 is the killer (Score:3, Informative)
Much higher quality video and audio
Random access
Don't have to rewind them
Switchable audio tracks
Subtitles that are optional
Extras
Nifty menus
Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:
Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV.
Also multi disc movies can now be on 1 disc and the menus can have more neat things int hem liek small java games ect.. Also the major studios have d
Re:#3 is the killer (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah you left out one:
- more robust forms of DRM
In my mind, this is the real motivation behind the HD-DVD / BD camps -- they aren't trying to sell consumers on HD quality, they're trying to convince Hollywood to adopt the format based on how well you can lock it down. Then, just kill of DVD's. Why entice consumers when you can *force* them, right?
Of course this scheme will fail -- you can't convince Hollywood to embrace a new technology (for any reason) because they are scared of change and hate risks. You have to drag them kicking and screaming into new technology.
Troll article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Troll article (Score:5, Funny)
But what about the troll children? Won't anyone think of the troll CHILDREN?!
In part because they're useless (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll be amused if we start seeing DivX encoded pirated DVDs start to appear in the states that offer HD on a standard DVD. The studios response should prove interesting
Divx is much lower quality (Score:4, Informative)
HD DVD is at least as much of a jump from Divx HD as Divx HD was from DVD.
Re:Divx is much lower quality (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, not everything is Divx (The bastard offspring of the Microsoft MPEG4 codec from 1998.)
VC-1 has been doing full 1080p and fitting on a standard DVD for years now, including support for 7.1 surround without artifacts (Even when viewed on a native 1080p rear DLP projector with a 20' screen size.)
The problem is that studios had initially planned on using this format for the next generation DVD content, but the DRM promises of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray made them wait for the new medium.
There have been a few movies released in the VC-1 format in HD on standard DVDs, but not many. Go buy T2 Extreme at Walmart for an example of a movie in this format that is 3 years old now. (You can also download sample movies and clips in this format from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mus
Just an FYI to everyone, VC-1 is one of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray codecs, but it is also known formally as Windows Media 9 Format (WMV9), VC-1 is the name adopted after it was approved as a standard format.
And divx? Fine, thanks :-/ (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no, no! (Score:5, Insightful)
I fundamentally disagree with this statement. Most people now have at least heard of HDTV; there have been plenty of adverts for high-def digital cable and satellite services here in the UK, especially in the run-up to the World Cup (which can be viewed in HD with the required equipment).
I'm also pretty sure that people buying larger TVs today are buying HDTVs. The big thing about it is the 'Wow' factor of these sets. With a good HD source, the massive screens are pretty amazing. Now, people bought enough DVDs of old VHS tapes for a huge back catalog of old (and oftentimes, shite) films to be released on DVD. What is to say it won't happen again?
Personally, I believe it is far to early to tell what will happen. But, no matter what Audioholics says, High definition IS the future and it WILL take over eventually.
Re:No, no, no! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, no, no! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, no, no! (Score:5, Insightful)
For that matter my parents, who do not work blue collar jobs and do make more than me, still don't own a large HDTV and I'm not sure they ever will unless I get them one as a present. It is simply in the "too expensive" category. In their world, TVs are meant to cost a couple hundred bucks, and they don't care about the pretty picture. They've been to my house, they've seen Discovery HD on a nice TV with nice sound, it's just not a priority. So it *IS* expensive in terms of being "more than most peopel want to pay for it". Something is cheap when people feel like the price you are asking is less than it should cost. No matter what the absolute price, if they see it as not worth what you are asking, it's expensive.
Re:No, no, no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of what that does for HDTV, though, it doesn't really mean much to BR or HDDVD. The better picture is nice, but it's still hard to justify a whole new player and library when there aren't any convenience benefits, like portability or ease of use. If DVD had exactly the same picture and sound as VHS, it still would have replaced it. THe primary reason for its adoption was the convenience of the format. Until there's a new format that's easier to use than laser-read discs, DVD is here to stay and I think the HD formats are dead in the water.
Let's not even get into the fact that the new formats actually make things less convenient with their DRM "features". Or the fact that someone's going to tell me that my $3200 plasma TV won't work with the formats because it doesn't have an HDMI input.
10 really good reasons plus a new one (Score:5, Insightful)
But they forgot another one - most Americans don't have, and don't want to buy, an HDTV set that would even need either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, nor do most consumers see any reason to pay twice as much for the same product they can use today.
Is this true in a few years? Perhaps not. But it's true today.
Which leads us to the conclusion that both Sony and our other player decided to fight this battle early, after what happened to them when Beta and VHS fought - the stakes are so high they're trying to front-end the decision, but both sides ended up trying to steal a march on their competition, resulting in two formats way too early for consumers to be interested in either.
Re:10 really good reasons plus a new one (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the various companies pushing "HD" movie formats are *radically* overestimating how many HDTV sets are actually out there. Most people I know don't own an HDTV. Most people in the U.S. don't own an HDTV. Most people in the U.S. don't *have* the disposable income to buy an expensive set. And as the article said, if you don't have HD channels, then the picture is worse.
HDTVs won't be everywhere until *most* of the content on regualar broadcast TV/cable is in HD, and the sets are under $400 or so, and HD DVD players drop to under $100. And that's a long ways away.
Plus, many people just bought new TVs in the last few years, since the price of 32" CRTs dropped through the floor. They're not about to upgrade.
Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
not sure how lawn darts relate exactly but it sounded good:)
Re:Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
It already exists. It's called "the internet".
I remember reading this somewhere, and I totally agree with it. By the time this is settled it will be like the battle between Floppy cameras and Smart Media cameras: both lost and were obsolete.
There are those rumors about a Netflix set-top box, or that they will finally integrate into TiVo. That's what is going to happen. It's clear as a bell. After all, once the pipes get big enough, why should I bother to pay $20 to buy a disc I'll watch once or twice when I can pay $2 to watch it each time I want, when I want. That's what PPV is, but instead of having 100 movies to choose from, I'll have Netflix's whole inventory. ANY movie. Like those old Quest commercials: "We have every move ever made in every format in every langauge starting any time" (or something like that).
The only DVDs I watch I get from Netflix because I don't like buying them. Why should I pay $20 for a movie I'll watch once, or $50+ for a single season of a TV show? If Netflix released a set top box (or makes my TiVo do it) so that whatever is in my queue is automatically downloaded on to the drive during the night or whatever, I'll be happy. Watch what I want, when I want. And because hard drive space is cheap (DVDs are only 9 gigs tops, uncompressed) they can pre-load more than the 3 movies that I would currently be allowed to watch (based on the plan I pay for).
Let the early adopters and studios sort it out. My way is more convenient. It's cheaper (you can P2P the popular movies between boxes) and there is no distribution. My way has no postage, no delivery, no "I'll go to the store and buy the movie tomorrow". No broken discs, no scratched discs, no lost discs.
When there is a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war, I hope they enjoy it. They'll have a year TOPS before the average consumer passes them by for set top boxes and the iTheater store. The only chance they have is with high-def content, and bandwidth and the ability download films 24/7 will nix that advantage pretty soon.
Re:Yep, it's the Laserdisk all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, the pipes won't be big enough for HDTV in reasonable download time for well-over a decade. Just calculate how many days it would take to download a 50GB movie on your connection.
The consider you'll need to buy a second line, or upgrade your speed, since your connection will be effective unavailable as you are downloading each movie, for DAYS at a time. Internet access isn't free.
Then consider how much money it's going to cost companies to pay for their own pipes to let you download 50GBs from them, and try to figure out how that will turn into a $2/movie business model.
How is maxing out your connection (which you pay for) for several days more convenient than NOT wasting your connection, and getting the disc in 1-2 days as Netflix currently does?
Bullshit. Bandwidth is massively expensive. There is too much variety in movies to expect several people to have them available when someone else wants to watch. ISPs will rake Netflix over tho coals for having their customers uploading 50GB files. Far too many users are behind firewalls and NAT routers for this to work. Nobody is going to max-out their upstream, all day, every day, making their connections useless. Asyncronous connections mean you need 10+ people who have the movie, and are willing to share, for every 1 person that wants to download it. Nobody is going to want to pay for Netflix, pay again with all their downstream bandwidth, pay again with all their upstream bandwidth, wait several days, etc. It's complete nonsense, until bandwidth is orders of magnitude cheaper, everyone has connections that is orders of magnitude faster, etc.
Bandwidth is FAR more expensive than postage, and you'll have pretty much all the same delivery problems.
Yes, and far worse than now.
In other words: Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. And, Bullshit.
What strange, magical, mystical world do you live in?
Ignoringthe format - is HiDef a furfy anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet, even at 100 inches, it looks fine. Yes, I don't disagree that tripling the resolution to 1080i *should* make it better to watch, but how much. At that size, sitting about 3-4m away my eyes are constantly shifting focus from one side of the screen to the other, and we really can't sit much closer or we'd get a very sore next and miss a hell of a lot.
When designing PAL the designers settled on 480 vertical lines because when sitting at the recommended distance (3 times the width of the screen) the human eye can only see 480 vertical lines. 1080 lines seems like overkill.
HDTV and Lack of Content (Score:5, Interesting)
I too have an HDTV but no HDTV service. (In my case, I knew regular TV would look "worse" and picked plasma over LCD/DLP because IMO plasmas look better when playing non-HD content.) DVDs do look significantly better - but the high price of HDTV service (extra $20+ a month, plus money to Dish Network for a new receiver, plus loss of ability to archive shows like I can with my old pre-encryption DVR) together with the lack of content (football, Lost, and Law and Order are about it right now for me) makes it far, far too much to pay.
I'm not certain off hand if my TV has the correct plugs (HDMI, whatever) to work with the highest resolution HD-DVD/Blue-Ray players. Be assured, if it doesn't, there is no reason that I would ever consider buying either type of player for many, many years to come. (P$3 is already off the list, so no sneaking one in that way either, Sony.) Even if my TV was supported, I'm not sure yet if entire-seasons-of-TV-shows-on-one-disk is better than ability-to-backup-and-play-from-server, if I were to want to do that. I doubt it.
Re:HDTV and Lack of Content (Score:3, Interesting)
What bugs me the most is when a show/commercial/movie preview is a let
Similar to DVD... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Similar to DVD... (Score:3, Interesting)
-matthew
Mass confusion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats whats going to kill these formats.
You have HD dvd players (upscaling) that dont play HD-dvd's, Tv's are HD ready, HD compatable, what HD, 720p, 1080i/p? Component, DVi, HDMI, HDCP, region codes or not... Can I play my CD in my HD-DVD, my blu ray in my car..?
Your avererage consumer, ne average sales guy doesnt know the answers, it its new expensive and confusing it wont sell.
I expect HD DVD will make inroads (Score:4, Interesting)
It will make no significant inroads as a ROM medium in any flavour. It may even damage PS3, as if they had picked Betamax.
Talk about your mountains out of molehills (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a fucking grip people.
Two formats, too much DRM and RCs kills anything (Score:5, Informative)
They're already screwing up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Undettered though, I looked at another display they had which was showing HD movies on a smaller screen which was not rear projection. The picture quality was better, but I still couldn't tell, even looking at CG like Chicken Little, if I was seeing a better picture than I would get on a DVD. Or rather, I couldn't tell how much better the picture was. I couldn't tell if it was just a small improvement or a big one.
All these idiots had to do was make their demo disc show the movies side by side with the DVD version and it would make the difference clear. But they didn't. Instead the consumer is left to guess about the difference in quality between the two formats. Also, they only had a display for the Blu-Ray and I asked them if HD DVD had come out yet, and they said yes, and they pointed me to a small display in a corner with no video being shown. I'm looking at this, and I'm saying to my self, how the hell do they expect this thing to sell at all if they've got it stuck in a corner and they're not even showing video of it?
Oh and another thing. Instead of being in slick black DVD cases like all the rest of the DVD's, the HD DVD's were in these blue cases I think. Or maybe that was the blu-ray discs and the HD ones were in white cases. I think they were slimline too. Anyway the packaging struck me as really cheap and flimsy looking, and the discs were $10 more than new release DVD's, and these were OLD titles! Haha! Hollywood thinks they can get people to pay $30 for a movie which is selling for $15 on DVD at Wal Mart because it's been out for 12 months? DREAM ON!
Re:They're already screwing up. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html [cornbread.org]
It's a LOTR DVD/HD-DVD comparison. The page I linked to containes DVD captures compared with downsampled HD-DVD captures. You can click on each one to see an upsampled DVD capture compared with a 'native' HD-DVD capture.
Not quite the same as having FMV side-by-side, but it's the next best thing.
Re:They're already screwing up. (Score:4, Insightful)
In those comparisons, you notice that the up close visuals of people are nearly identical, but the backgrounds, where people aren't really looking, look much sharper. This could very likely be an artifact of the video compression on the DVD vs. the newer compression on the HD stream. The color space is noticably better on the HD version too, but that could be for the same reason.
Reason 11 - no one cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Great. I can see the zipper on the back of Darth Vader's uniform, or the edges of Spock's ears. Big flipping deal. DV-Audio died for the same reason quadrophonic music died: who listens to music in that chair set up just so? Outside of audiophiles, no one.
This is technology without a need or a demand.
wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong, and this is why this whole article is useless. Remember the first time you used a modem, how you thought "this is how all information should be transmitted", and when you tried to go out and tell everybody about it, their response was basically "leave me alone kid, I'm reading the newspaper here"? 10 years later, and people are starting to realize that "OMFG, newspapers might become obsolete!!!!?" Pleople like their technology at least 5 years behind of its time.
I'm not really defending the new formats (and I won't buy into them until they sell me a drive that can play both formats for = $100), but a bunch of guys saying "we don't need some new fancy format, we're fine with good old DVDs" sounds familiar.. Lets talk again in 5 years.
Re:wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
My Oracle says... (Score:3, Interesting)
solid state
SD, Compact Flash, etc. why not a movie on a chip in a credit card sized package? easy enough to make a secure ROM card, and each one can have it's own custom DRM hardware, or not.
Just slap it into the slot, pull it out when you are done, no moving parts, no optical surfaces to get scratched, worst case use some contact clearer like old NES cartridges.
Carry your favorite movie in your wallet, to enjoy at home or on the go (players built into public transportation seat-backs)
Even if the technology dosn't allow a whole HD movie on a card, the card could be the license key for on-demand download of the high quality version, with the portable version built in.
Netcraft confirms it: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are dying (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at the current players. The Toshiba HD-DVD player is a subsidized Pentium 4 that sells for 500$, with Toshiba losing about 200$ on each unit. The 1000$ Sony Blu-Ray player is a similar hack, built not with custom chips but with a general purpose CPU that's way more complex and expensive than is required for Blu-Ray playback.
Think about the next generation of players, or even the generation after that. For starters, those players will use custom electronics that are less expensive and less complex than first-generation players. They will be smaller, draw less power, and will be built in far greater quantities. Those second and third-generation HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players will be far cheaper; I predict a 200$ HD-DVD player by the end of next 2007, and a 100$ player by the end of 2008.
Now, Blu-Ray will get a boost from the PlayStation 3 - which, by the way, will not remain at 500$ for very long. Just consider the PlayStation 2, which originally sold for 300$ and now sells for 130$. I predict that by the end of 2007, the PlayStation 3 will cost no more than 350$.
DVD took a few years to get established, and so will these formats. But the prices will start dropping, and more people will start using them. HD really looks great. And regardless of the trolls who claim that you need a 5000$ TV to enjoy HD, 720p TVs (which do offer a significant quality improvement over standard DVD resolution) are pretty cheap nowadays.
Let's also consider the other big factor that will drive HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray adoption: computers. Optical drives for computers are usually cheaper than stand-alone units. Soon, software players will be available, and computer manufacturers will start installing HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray drives in their machines.
Right now, Blu-Ray RW is incredibly overpriced, but when the drives can be bought for 300$ and the discs 3-4$ each, you can bet that people will start buying them in droves. Optical media does have some advantages over hard drives; people will not stop using discs and replace them with portable hard drives.
Will those new formats replace DVD? Of course not. DVD will keep on living for a long time. But the two HD formats will become quite popular: after all, HD does look awesome. Once you've seen HD content, going back to a normal DVD kind of hurts.
One over the top claim (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so full of it.
If they had pushed out CD's to replace them with DVD-A standard then the DVD-A DRM would have been cracked..
As it is now most people dont use it so there has not been a huge impetus to crack it.. yet it has already been effectively circumvented through that windvd crack.
this guy is a starry eyed idiot if he actually believes that drek he spews.
What is the porn industry doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
The porn industry!
I understand porn is a big percentage of DVD sales too.
While I agree with most of the points of the article I would like to hear
what the big producers in the porn industry have to say.
When the price hits $100 I'll buy one for my computer for backup.
Re:What is the porn industry doing? (Score:5, Informative)
"Geez -- our customers really don't want to see every pimple on her butt or the incision lines from her boob job."
Re:What is the porn industry doing? (Score:5, Funny)
My first encounter with higher quality porn came from my days of working on high-end hotel entertainment systems a few years ago. We'd gotten in some samples of DVDs where the manufacturer was touting the high video production quality of the product, all the way to using a higher than average bit-rate when encoding; none of this soft focus stuff. My boss wanted to know whether there was a big enough difference there that it would make for a good demo (the real money in hotel video on demand is all in the porn). As a single guy who had a 65" HD-capable Toshiba rear-projection CRT setup at home, I was the obvious flunky to check that out. I watched for a bit that night and brought the DVDs back the next morning, frown on my face. When asked "what's the problem?", I said "two words: razor bumps. I don't need to see that much detail."
Fast forward to last year. My sister had a nice HD LCD TV, so she jumped at the chance to get her cable upgraded with Comcast's HD box ("The Sopranos" in HD was the big draw). Late one night I stopped by, wired up the component video, sorted out the surround sound issues, and went browsing around the channels for good HD content to show the result off. After going through a few channels of "HD" that was obviously just upsampled junk, I found an unexpected source for some great quality video obviously shot in real high-def: HBO's "Cathouse", a documentary series about the goings on at a Vegas brothel. This was just amusing for a bit, and then I saw her eyes get big and she moved closer to the TV. She works in cosmetic surgery, and her first comment about the picture was "my God, I can tell you what they did wrong when they stitched her boobs back together".
Woohoo! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh... sorry... wrong thread... and decade....
Balderdash! Also horsefeathers! (Score:4, Funny)
Getting the compression right is hard (Score:4, Insightful)
There are some big problems with Blu-Ray. Getting the compression right is hard. I was watching a Blu-Ray demo at the Sony Style store at the Metreon in San Francisco. Now this is Sony gear in a Sony retail store set up by Sony employees playing a Sony demo disk in an environment intended to show the technology at its best. And I'm seeing blocky areas of bright light jumping in the background in a concert video. It looks like the compression algorithm has trouble with camera rotation.
Some of the content looks great; some looks terrible. It's painfully clear that you can't just dump the content into the compressor and expect good results; it's going to become another labor-intensive step in post production, at least for a while.
Key Points (Score:3, Interesting)
It is my opinion that the transition to HD will be pretty painless. Three years from now you'll be able to get a player that plays DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray for $100, and we will have forgotten what all the fuss was about. Oh, and one of the formats will be relegated to leverage the studios use against the owners of the other format.
-Peter
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
For the most part I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
For someone with a similar large format setup, this technology is a worthwhile leap in quality because I can see the lack of resolution and compression artifacts inherent in many DVD transfers. Having a large display surface area makes noticing such issues much easier even for novices. However, those people who are content with their Sony and Hitachi consumer level television regardless of the display technology involved (tube, LCD, and Plasma) probably won't see the difference nor will they care.
I'll go through the points quickly...
1. Nobody likes false starts
I agree that the Toshiba HD-DVD player is lacking in terms of usability and quality, but it is a Toshiba and a first generation product so bugs are expected. It would be rather unfair for me to compare to my US$10k+ Meridian 800 series [meridian-audio.com] DVD player that has gone through a number of revisions for refinement to a first generation DVD player from many years ago. Even if they were both new and unused, products and implementations improve with time. However, even the Toshiba HD-DVD "budget" player with its superior resolution still makes my combination of Meridian 800 with line quadrupler look soft in comparison.
This technology cannot simply be written off even though I am disappointed 1080p isn't available. For a majority of consumers, the difference between 1080i and 1080p will be even less noticable than the jump from 480i/p to 1080i. Even for an enthusiast this isn't a problem until the new 3-chip DLP solutions capable of playing 1080p are widely available from Marantz and Runco. I also find the lack of HDMI is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we can't run 1080p and multichannel audio over one cable but the amount of copy protection possible on that interface makes me cringe. The fact that movie houses have a right to protect their content isn't in dispute, but the very notion that with the flip of a switch any component can be rendered useless through key revocation makes purchasing expensive and esoteric a much larger risk than it should be. If nothing else, I expect the esoteric ultra-high end companies will produce (and they have in the past) a better interconnect format but that won't make a difference with Joe Public.
2. Format Wars Don't Sell Players
Agreed. This curse hit SACD and DVD-Audio as few years ago. The initial bickering and lack of material made buying into either format a liability. Furthermore, there were artists on both formats that I liked which weren't available universally across formats so I bought machines that played each format. Other technical problems such as no individual channel volume and delay adjustments and the lack of a single digital output made hooking up the player difficult for consumers. Meridian and others made a proprietary single interconnect but this wasn't available in any budget machines.
Arguably, the general public doesn't care about multi-channel audio because CDs are good enough. Besides fanatics such as myself, who here has both an SACD player and a DVD-Audio player? Not many. Penetration of these formats into the market has been very slow and nearly non-existant. Interestingly my car has a DVD-Audio system from the factory but the manufacturer probably did research and realized that their target demographic probably has the disposable income to play with such formats.
3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
From the article: "Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players..." (emphasis mine). The general public doesn't care. Many times I see my friend's te
An amusing look back... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.robertsdvd.com/failure.html [robertsdvd.com]
Upconvert DVDs Look Good on HD (Score:4, Insightful)
Chris
Incomplete (Score:5, Interesting)
So the question should be, will pornography on the new formats be better in any substantial way? More interactive, more content, more arousing? Will they be making films of a longer duration, will they be providing more extras?
Wait and see what the adult industry does with this format - if they yawn and put out 60-120 minute, linear 480p movies with no more extras than a DVD, then the format is not going to have a rapid adoption rate. If they get more creative with the new format, well, then there's a shot.
As an "avid consumer" (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there is anyone who cares LESS about HDDVD/Blueray.
I can't tell much of a difference between Progressive Scan and HDDVD as demonstrated in the store (except the usual here is a CRT bubble with a DVD playing, and a $9,000 HD Plasma with a HD-DVD playing, see how much better?)...
I have a 2000 lumen 1024x576/1024x768 projector (yeah I know it is not 1080p, but it is still higher quality than I need) and HD HBO/Starz/Network channels with an HD-DVR (which is the only DVR my cable company offers otherwise I would have a much better Standard Resolution Tivo), so I have seen a lot of movies that way and I just could care less about the barely perceptable differences between these and DVDs, and I am definatly not an average consumer.
Hell I have a decent VCR (most VCRs are crap) and it is connected in with SVideo, and I can tell you that some of the old VHS tapes don't look that different from DVDs.
I guess I am just not "in" to quality that can only be measured by reading the specs on the box.
Re:Right... (Score:3, Informative)
-matthew
Re:Congress will ensure at least one format succee (Score:5, Informative)
NO ... what's being mandated is a change to digital TV broadcast. Digital TV != HDTV.