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v1.0 of HD-DVD Physical Specs Approved 323

Posted by CmdrTaco from the the-race-is-on dept.
Repran writes "The DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0, a specification that will compete with Blu-Ray which is not yet approved for the future of the DVD disc format. This effectively gives manufacturers a green light to begin producing devices. In related news Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included in the official HD-DVD specs."
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v1.0 of HD-DVD Physical Specs Approved More

v1.0 of HD-DVD Physical Specs Approved

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  • Not that it will do much good... (Score:5, Funny)

    by aminorex ( 141494 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:36AM (#9431189) Homepage Journal
    I can't imagine that a green light will be much help
    in making Blu-Ray disks.
  • raargh raargh snort gibber DMCA

  • Better and faster (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mzkhadir ( 693946 )
    now all we need are better and faster computers to display the movies.

  • Now I get to spend more money... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Komi ( 89040 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:40AM (#9431243) Homepage
    Great, first my VHS collection, now my DVD collection will become obsolete. At least know we know why George Lucas finally decided to release the original Star Wars DVDs this year. He had to make sure everyone had the chance to buy it before HD-DVD becomes standard. Then he'll release the ultra-super-special edition on HD-DVD later.
    • No kidding, the movie studios sure do know how to milk the money on these gimmicks. At least some of the companies tell you up front that they will be releasing new editions with more features in X months. I hate it when they suprise you later on with an edition you wish you had waited for.

      --
      Only click here if you are cool. You know who you are. [dealsites.net]
    • And like sheep, we'll buy it again... don't flame me... i'll be in the checkout line with you ^_^

    • Re:Now I get to spend more money... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:52AM (#9431424) Homepage Journal
      I don't understand your problem with new disc formats. The great thing about them is that disc players are generally backwards compatible. DVD players can play CDs, for example. So, your DVD collection doesn't really lose any value because you can play them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players.

      This is different from VHS tapes, that are completely obsolete and unplayable on modern hardware. Plus discs are much smaller and more convienient for storage purposes.

      I'm all for better disc formats as long as the hardware can continue to play the old ones.

      • Re:Now I get to spend more money... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Ryosen ( 234440 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @12:13PM (#9431705)
        Ahhh, but you assume that the new discs will be the same form-factor. All they have to do is make the discs wide enough so that the reader/burner will not fit into a 5 1/4"-bay. That will ensure that the device will never become standard on PC's, thus limiting the market for pirated discs. As for the myth of downloading movies, the amount of physical storage required for a movie will make downloading impractical. In light of bandwidth and monthly data-transfer caps being imposed by some ISPs, it'll take you a couple of months worth of bandwidth allotment to download a single flick.

        Voila! Illegal downloading is cured and the MPAA can go back to sleeping peacefully at night.

        This will bode well for all those critics who complain that audio CDs don't offer enough fidelity, as well. For certain, as soon as the RIAA sees how well the new format works for movies, they'll start utilizing the higher definition format as well. Granted, they'll probably waste the extra storage on commercials for other artists and draconian DRM protection (just to be safe), but one of them could, conceivably, slip and use the extra space for a higher quality recording.

        We all could win. With the question of file swapping finally rendered moot, the discussion topic of whether file swapping is legal will finally fade away in irrelevance and we can all get back to what we came to Slashdot for in the first place: trashing Microsoft.

        Seriously, the **AA has just been sucking up too much of our time, anyway. ;)

        • Dude... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 ) *
          just download it to your harddrive, recode it to MPEG4 (or MPEG2) and burn it on a DVD.

          Get one of those set top player deals from the Asian market that can play MPEG4 and read DVDs. No problem!

    • Re:Now I get to spend more money... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stigmata669 ( 517894 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @12:01PM (#9431548)
      I know this was intended as a joke, but I am so sick of people complaining about advancing standards and their old {record, tape, VHS} collection.

      IF YOU DON'T LIKE BUYING THE NEW STANDARD, DON'T BUY THEM!!!!!!!!

      Last time I checked you could still go to Fry's and buy a VHS player or blank audio tapes. Maybe they quit selling record players at Radio Shack but you don't have to look very hard to find a good record player either.

      NOBODY and I mean NOBODY is telling you that you have to upgrade your whole collection. Sure you might have to buy a HD-DVD player to buy the latest releases, but that won't cost much (cheap DVD players are less that $60 now) and there are improvements in the standard.

      People complain either way. Take television, it took decades to see any improvement in the TV standards and with the way other technology grows I am not alone in greeting the HDTV standard with a big "it's about damn time."

      Now quit your whining, all of you.

      • Re:Now I get to spend more money... (Score:5, Funny)

        by pilgrim23 ( 716938 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @12:59PM (#9432293)
        My 78 RPM Records are stored in the Victrola, LPs with the direct drive turntable. Eight tracks went to Goodwill, CDs are in the cabinet by the stereo, Cassette Tapes above the CDs. Sandwich into the VHS Drawer(s) by the TV are the 8mm tapes of the kid's birthday party, a new and small case on top has the MiniDV tapes in it. Beta tapes and the Sony are in the closet. DVDs and VCDs are on top of the player. Why is it that the only media I have from 30 years ago that I can still use in the same format, in the same player, in the same way, without degradation of signal or data integrity... IS A BOOK?

      • But you aren't paying for just the improvements (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @01:00PM (#9432297)
        NOBODY and I mean NOBODY is telling you that you have to upgrade your whole collection. Sure you might have to buy a HD-DVD player to buy the latest releases, but that won't cost much (cheap DVD players are less that $60 now) and there are improvements in the standard.

        I think what upsets people is that someone upgrading from a VHS to a DVD to an HD-DVD copy of a movie pays just as much as someone who's buying the HD-DVD version as his first copy. That is, you aren't just paying for the improvement in the standard. You're paying for the improvements + any intellectual rights to view the movie. If you own the VHS and DVD versions as well, you've paid for those intellectual rights multiple times.

        This flies in the face of the MPAA/RIAA's argument that filesharing is bad because when you buy a DVD/CD, you are purchasing intellectual rights to view/listen. If it's wrong for me to view/listen to the DVD/CD without buying a license, it's wrong for them to sell the same license to me multiple times in different formats. The software industry figured out this contradiction long ago and offers discounts for upgrade versions.

  • Microsoft creating open standards? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AC-x ( 735297 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:40AM (#9431245)
    By the sounds of the article Microsoft has submitted their VC-9 codec as an open standard, does that actually mean that OS encoders/decoders can be developed free from MS lawer related hassle, or are there still strings attached?

    • Re:Microsoft creating open standards? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:55AM (#9431467) Homepage Journal
      Well, it is an open standard, but that doesn't mean that it is royalty free. It's similar to MPEG in that the specification is known, but if you implement and sell it you are required to pay a royalty (to Microsoft in the case of Windows Media).

      Essentially, with the mandate of this requirement for HD-DVD certification, it ensures that Microsoft will get a small fee from every HD-DVD certified player that is sold.
      • Moreso, I'd expect there to be distributed-as-source implementations of VC-9 before long, like LAME for MP3 and Xvid for MPEG-4. MP3 and MPEG-4, like VC-9, are open standards with royalties.
        • Without a doubt this will happen. However, just because the source is open, that doesn't mean that companies using the source in commercial products are excused from paying royalties.

          In fact, the standards organizations in charge of these things (the MPEG group, for example) could go after Xvid, MPlayer, etc for distributing implementations without paying royalties. However, there is obviously not much money in going after a group of volunteers. They will however, go after companies distributing this co
    • Just because a standard is open does not mean that there are no patent issues.

      Here, the articles on the topic (and others they link to) imply that at least SOME patents are held by M$. They're asking around for anyone else with relevant patents, to see whether the "reasonable and non-discriminatory" license fees need to get split between M$ and others, or whether M$ keeps the whole license pie.

      Patent license issues will (probably, IANAL) make the license requirements inconsistent with the GPL's clause
    • here's a link [microsoft.com] provided by Malc [slashdot.org] a few posts up.
      on the left side, second to last paragraph of black text you see a notice for users to upgrade their drm software in order to play films marked with an asterisk. so open it hurts
    • That being license fees. However it's fixed fees, so anyone can pay them and develop what they like. Also the spec can't be changed without STMPE approval, which then makes the changes available to everyone. So they can't restrict what kind of software (or hardware) you make, and they can't screw you over by introducing changes to the spec or the fees. Once you've paid, you're good to go.

      Open, but not free.
      • Moreover, the acutal intellectual property issues behind Microsoft VC-9 (the version of Windows Media submitted to SMPTE for standardization) remains to be determined.

        My impression (microsofties, correct me if I am wrong) is that the slow progression of technology to get from Netshow 1.0 to VC-9 may not have at all times been done in a way to completely examine all intellectual property rights, and now there is some "catch up" now to figure out whose might have been infringed upon (poor Microsoft, eh?)

        H.2
    • Open standard doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It means that MS will document it and posssibly provide source for a sample encoder or decoder. It doesn't mean patent-free. It doesn't mean money-free. MPEG standards are open. How many free MPEG-2 encoders have you downloaded lately?
    • I think there might still be IP royalties. Also of note, is that it looks like there are two other CODECS that are part of the spec, which is good.

      I'm not sure why Sony is singled out as the creator of Blu-Ray because several hardware makers were involved in its specification, Pioneer being a partner in equal standing with Sony, IIRC.

  • Compatibility (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:41AM (#9431258) Homepage
    I hope these new players are backwards compatible with everything - DVD's, CD's, VCD's, etc. Otherwise I'm not buying it. The thing is, I like movies on DVD pretty much the way they are now - The Quality is great on my TV, and I can play movies on my laptop. I don't see myself playing these new formats on my powerbook any time soon - Unless they have a DVD layer on the disc too - now that would be cool.

    • Not me... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Mustang Matt ( 133426 )
      I hope that they potentially sacrifice backwards compatibility for the sake of quality.

      I was watching the movie Miracle on a very nice widescreen TV and I could readily see jagged edges and compression.

      I'm pretty sure it was the encoding and not a problem with the dvd player or TV.
      • This has (IMO) nothing to do with the quality of the media, or the space available. Just that some people seems to be highly incompetent when it comes to authoring a DVD.

        I once rented a movie from Netflix (I don't recall the title though) and I had to give up after 5 minutes of watching. It was like watching one of these bad pr0n mpg movies that I downloaded from CuteMX back in the days. But it wasn't pr0n so not worth my eyes bleeding.
        • Not when it comes to black colors, and some blues. Watch the Finding Nemo DVD, and you'll see this glowy blue haze around Marlin in many of the shots (no, not the ocean water, it's something different - looks like an encoding problem). If Pixar doesn't know how to get a DVD authored, I don't know who does...

    • Re:Compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)

      by anakin357 ( 69114 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:51AM (#9431392) Homepage
      Backwards compatiblity is the driving factor for any new purchase in my mind. From the article: The only Blu-ray recorder currently available in Japan is the Sony BDZ-S77 Google for "Sony BDZ-S77" and hitting I'm feeling Lucky takes you to here: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/blu-ray/ And within that article (Decent review by the way) is this: The drive can record only blu-ray media, but it supports reading of blue-ray, DVD-Video, DVD-RW, DVD-R, CD, CD-R and CD-RW discs. So to answer your question, yes they are backwards compatible.
    • The Quality is great on my TV

      Then you need a better TV.

      Part of the problem is with widescreen movies. You can either sacrifice part of the image (pan&scan) or you can letterbox them. If you do that, you can get as few as 300 vertical scan lines actualy playing the image, which is very poor resolution. If you have a very large TV, you'll notice the jaggies; if you have a small or mid-size TV, you simply won't see much detail.

      Whether you really need improved visuals on your home theater, and whethe

      • Re:Compatibility (Score:3, Informative)

        by cens0r ( 655208 )
        Part of the problem is with widescreen movies. You can either sacrifice part of the image (pan&scan) or you can letterbox them. If you do that, you can get as few as 300 vertical scan lines actualy playing the image, which is very poor resolution. If you have a very large TV, you'll notice the jaggies; if you have a small or mid-size TV, you simply won't see much detail.

        This isn't really true anymore. Almost any recent TV (last 4 years) of any quality has support for anamorphic DVD's. It uses all t

  • RIAA Should Take Notes (slightly O/T) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by baudilus ( 665036 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:42AM (#9431282)
    Not that this has anything to do with the MPAA yet, this is the way things should be done. Once there is a decent standard in place, and there is a widespread enough install base of players that can paly these discs, the film industry will begin phasing over to this format for DVD releases, eventually phasing out the older format (or perhaps making it backwards compatible). Provided that pirates could (and eventually will) figure out how to rip these, would you really sit on kazaa waiting for a 30+GB movie download, just to avoid buying the DVD? Even with a great connection, it's just not worth the time / HDD space. I for one, would rather just buy the DVD.

    New technology. It's sux but it's great.

  • What about compatability? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:42AM (#9431290) Homepage
    I researched long and hard to find out if my current DVD player was most compatible with DVD+R or DVD-R. It's an Apex 500w model. Turns out it's not compatible with either standard, although some online reports conflict with my findings. I eventually had to buy a new dvd player to play anything that I burned in my Liteon DVD+/-RW drive.

    I can't imagine that all these new standards will work with many existing DVD players. Everyone is always playing catch-up, although all DVD movies rented from Blockbuster will always work in older models. Just getting a new DVD writer for the latest and greatest standards will result in having to buy more electronics equipment for the house. Hell, even the current +R and -R standards haven't been hashed out.

    --
    Only click here if you are cool. You know who you are. [dealsites.net]
    • You expect an exisiting player to play one of these new disc's? What kind of crack are you smoking? The players will have backwards compatability for sure. You will have no problem playing CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD+RW in them. But to even suggest that an existing player should play the new standard is asinine. Did you expect your 1990 CD player to play a DVD just because the discs look the same?
    • These new standards will work with absolutely no existing players, either in a device or in a computer.

      We're talking a new physical form factor here in any case. While today's computers high end computers likely will be software upgradable for playback, but a new drive will be needed.

      For playback devices, we're need all new systems, with new lasers, decoder chips, etcetera. This is a leap akin to that from VCD to DVD.

  • For those not aware (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tuvai ( 783607 ) <zeikfried@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:42AM (#9431291) Journal
    HD-DVD format uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology, in contrast to the 650nm-wavelength red laser technology used in traditional DVD formats. The rewritable Blu-ray disc, with a data transfer rate of 36Mbps, can hold up to 27GB of data on a single-sided single layer disc (compared to the traditional DVD's 4.7GB capacity), which amounts to about 12 hours of standard video or more than 2 hours of high-definition video.
    AOD is pretty much the same, except it has a storage capacity of 20GB on a single-layer disc

  • A girl's gotta gave standards (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bperkins ( 12056 ) * on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:43AM (#9431298) Homepage Journal
    While we're on the subject of standards, how about some story submission standards.

    The current story should read:
    Repran writes "Extremetech reports that the DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0 [extremetech.com], [...] In related news, an arstechnica story reports that Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included [arstechnica.com] in the official HD-DVD specs."

    I think it's important to keep story sources in the headline. It's a matter of politeness, and gives the reader a immediate idea on who is saying what. For stories with a zillion links, I think it's generally OK to leave the names of the sources out if it would lead to excessive clutter.

    Even more annoying is this story [slashdot.org]:

    An anchor tag on "The University of Tokyo" should go to the University of Tokyo's website. The link should be anchored to "illusion of invisibility" or perhaps "Optical Camouflage."

    I never liked the tendency to anchor irrelevant things to stories, but it's done often enough that it's confusing when it gets mixed up. Also, the submitter's diatribe should be left out, but that's another matter.

    Or maybe I'm just getting old and crusty.

  • Format wars (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:45AM (#9431333) Homepage Journal
    HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. It's time for another format war. Consumers don't want this -- especially when regular DVD is "good enough" for most of them, and from their perspective, DVD is only a few years old. VHS got a couple decades of use before DVD showed up on the market, and when it did, the improvement in picture and sound quality (not to mention taking up less space) was enough to get consumers to adopt the format.

    Now they expect consumers to shift again? No. It's too soon. And the fact that there's a format war on top of all that, will make both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray about as successful as SACD and DVD-A have been in replacing the good old audio CD -- i.e. not successful at all except for a handful of high-end enthusiasts.
    • I think the larger issue may be recordability. While the siginficant quality jump, convience and ultimately price have been enough to bring millions of people to DVD, the only thing HD-DVD & Blu-Ray bring is a marginally better quality (because XX% of consumers have TVs that won't really show the improvement). If they're serious about getting a critical mass to adopt next-gen DVD, they need to get recording at least closer to VCR cost & ease of use. Granted I guess that may just be a pipe dream w
    • "especially when regular DVD is 'good enough' for most of them"

      I don't need a cell phone. Landline phones are 'good enough'.
      I don't need a CD player. Cassettes are 'good enough'.
      I don't need a TV. Radio is 'good enough'.
      I don't need a telephone. Mail is 'good enough'.
      I don't need a car. Horsel-drawn carriages are 'good enough'.

      'Good enough' doesn't last very long.

      • Re:Format wars (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mog ( 22706 )
        Your comparisons to this advancement are a bit flawed.

        A cell phone lets you talk anywhere.
        A CD player gives you improved lifespan, improved audio quality, and random track access with no rewinding needed.
        A TV gives you video.
        A telephone lets you talk instantly.
        A car is much faster, with less maitenance required.

        The new DVD standard gives you ... a slightly crisper display? I know, HD is cool. But I just don't think it's nearly as revolutionary as the others on your list.

    • Re:Format wars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jordy ( 440 ) *
      I'd say that Blu-Ray has a significant advantage due to recordability, size and the companies pushing it. As I understand it, Blu-Ray was never even submitted to the DVD Forum because they considered it far more than just a replacement for DVD and they didn't want to be under the DVD Forum's thumb any longer.

      They are right. A dual-layer blu-ray disc can hold about 50 GB of data. With hard drives becoming stupidly large, being able to back up your data onto 4 or 8 blu-ray discs would be very handy.

      Blu-Ray

  • What about HighDef Recording? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by riptide_dot ( 759229 ) * on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:46AM (#9431343)
    I have a high definition TV and I get a few HD channels. I also watch pseudo HD DVDs (DVDs only display at 480p, while "true" HD is 720p), but overall HD content offerings are pretty slim. What I'm wondering is when everyone expects that the TV/movie industries will start filming exclusively with HD cameras instead of the traditional cameras that most are still using.

    The absolutely highest quality HD content that I can receive is from Discovery Channel HD, which films all of its content using HD cameras exclusively, and believe me, it shows. It's the channel I use to "show off" my equipment, because none of the other channels even compare. Having TNT and ESPN is HighDef is nice, but it seems that they're not taking the same efforts to ensure the crystal-clear quality that Discovery is with their channels.

    Having a higher density DVD format should help to prod movie makers into putting more "oomph" in their output because they'll be capable of higher resolutions on a single disc, but when do you all think the film/tv producers will start filming using HD digital equipment exclusively? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

    • Film (Score:4, Interesting)

      by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:58AM (#9431498) Homepage
      Movies, for the most part, are already "HD" or better in their original film formats. All that will be required to make true HD versions of these will be to go back to the reel and re-digitize them to 1080i or 720p, instead of to 480p.

      Not all HD content is filmed with HD digital equipment, either. Alias, for example (which broadcasts at 720p) is filmed with, well, film.

      35mm movie film is significantly better in effective resolution than 480p, and anything filmed that way will have little trouble making its way into the HD world.
    • Personally, I find the content of the better-mastered DVDs (progressive scan, on my Sony Grand Wega III TV) to rival or even exceed the filmed HD content available to me via HBO HD.

      Discovery HD is pretty stunning, but primarily when they show content shot on HD video, although their film transfers look a little better, too. Sports is OK on HD, but they appear to cut between HD and SD cameras during the same telecast, and the overall production is seldom even in 16x9, let alone HD. TNT's basketball covera
      • "having to wait for the corpus of films to get re-telecined to HD may take as long as a decade."

        I'm not sure it's true of most movies, but a lot of bigger movies have already been telecined in HD and then downconverted to SD for the DVD release. Those movies can trivially be re-released on HD.

        "I also wonder if 35mm film has the grain necessary to be more than just a mild improvement in HD over SD"

        Uh, yes. 35mm film is generally considered to be equivalent to at least 2k pixels across in resolution, and a
        • Certainly 1080 line HD footage doesn't look as good to me as a cinema projection

          It doesn't even look as good as 720p video, either. I don't have that much to go on besides HBO-HD, but the HD version is clearly more detailed than the non-HD version, but it's hardly as stunning as HD video from basketball or Discovery-HD.

          What I wonder is what the effective resolution of film was. If I'm sitting 100 ft from a 65' diagonal movie screen, how does that compare from sitting 10' from a true 720p HD TV?
      • DVD production can include a very time-consuming two-pass encode, which will make things look very good compared to a single-pass or quick two-pass encode for HD broadcast. Plus the HD you see on cable or DBS is usually around half of the bitrate of over-the-air HD DTV.

    • What I'm wondering is when everyone expects that the TV/movie industries will start filming exclusively with HD cameras instead of the traditional cameras that most are still using.

      It's going to take quite a while for TV to switch, especially because there's a chicken and egg problem. There's not much poing in TV switching to higher quality cameras if nobody has TVs that will show the high quality video, and there's less reason to get a HDTV without TV shows that take advantage of it. It's also a lot mo

    • 35mm has a resolution well in excess of 720x480. Since it's analogue you can't put a hard and fast number on it, but good 35mm should have resolution sufficent for about 4000 pixels of detail. Now, for a number of reasons, it doesn't look quite as clear when you transfer a movie from film tha when you shoot it straight to digital, but it still looks a hell of a lot better than DVD. When you then take the time to clean it up and remaster it, it looks really slick.

      So more or less any existing movie with a go
    • You may want to take a look at your local over-the-air PBS DTV channel, especially if your local public television station is dedicated to HD during primetime and not running a multicast SD channel or two.

      Cable and DBS HD are usually ~12 Mbps or lower. PBS delivers a full 19.4 Mbps 1080i signal to stations, if they want to take it to air like that.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:48AM (#9431363)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Why would you need a new TV? True HD TVs today are capable of 1080i and 720p scan modes, and current DVDs can only store 480p content, so I was assuming that the new format would allow them to be "truly" HD and finally catch up with the TV's capabilities. Am I missing something?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • "So yeah, great, HD-DVDs live up to the full potential of HDTVs. But I don't have an HDTV."

          So you plug in the SDTV output of your HD-DVD player to your crappy old TV and it will downconvert for you. Then when you go to your mate's place and see just how much better the DVDs look in HD, you buy an HDTV.

          Assuming the disks don't cost much more than an SD DVD, then movie companies can release only HD-DVD versions of the movies and anyone with an HD-DVD player can watch them.
      • Actually, very few "HD" monitors you buy in a comsumer store can actually resolve 1080 vertical lines. Infact, only some can resolve 720 vertical lines. But they all can do much more than 480.
    • "Not only do I need a new DVD player, I also need a new TV to play it on?"

      No, you just install an HD DVD drive, switch your monitor to 1920x1080 mode, and off you go...
    • I specifically waited to buy an HD TV, because I knew that eventually there would be an HD DVD player, and I bet there was a good chance that it'd be incompatible.

  • So.. will the players be backwards compatible? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fallen Kell ( 165468 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:49AM (#9431377)
    Just wondering if the MPAA managed to force non-backwards compatibility into the standard or not so they would get people buying all the favorite movies all over again in the new format in 2-3 years...

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:56AM (#9431473)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ugh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @11:59AM (#9431527) Homepage Journal
    One thing that really spooks me is that I've had enough trouble with fingerprints messing with dvds. The pits are too small. This is going to be worse, right?

    I *really* hope they have the sense to put these in some sort of caddy. I know that won't be a popular idea here, but it really bugs me that the mere act of handling a disc puts it at risk. And since the movie industry won't let me make backups....

  • ON2 off? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FerretFrottage ( 714136 )
    Looks like on2 [on2.com] and their vp6.2 codec didn't make the cut. I guess they could still implement a codec based on the open standards . Time will tell, but MS is positioning itself out of the PC world and into the DRM revenue one.
    • I'm wondering what DRM this HD-DVD has in it.

      If you look over at MacRumors.com [macrumors.com] They talk about a Wall Street Journal article where Steve Jobs(Pixar/Apple CEO) complains about HD-DVD not having "adequate copy protection methods." So Is he complainging about having to use M$ DRM, or what? I can't get to the DVD forums site to see what the spec actually says about DRM.

      What's interesting to me here is that 2 of the biggest console makers are backing different DVD standards. I'm guessing the XBox2 will play

  • IMO, far more important than the physical format is the capabilities of the HD-DVD spec. The HD-DVD spec need to be dramatically more powerful than the current spec which has virtually no RAM (16 variables), no processor, no permanent storage etc.

    Interactivity, Interactivity, Interactivity
    HD-DVD will NOT take-off in a big way unless the format supports a greatly expanded level of interactivity. Interactivity that requires much better hardware. I'm talking a REAL computer-level components inside the box;
    • "DVD Forum: Ignore this advice if you wish. Go ahead and blow billions on another failed format if you want. Just don't say you weren't warned."

      You mean like the interactive CD-i? Interactivity is for video games and is completely unnecessary for watching movies. What you suggest will drive up costs, and possibly limit manufacturers' choice of suppliers for components, which will lead to production problems.
    • that included the entire 7 year run of Buffy on a SINGLE DVD

      $40 US per season times 7 seasons is $280. for one disc. don't scratch it. Star trek's (TNG and newer) even worse, they want $100+ per season. They might cut the price because you are basically buying in bulk, but i don't know if i'd bet on that.

  • Theaters vs. home theaters (Score:3, Insightful)

    by srussell ( 39342 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @12:31PM (#9431942) Homepage Journal
    I wonder what the threshold is, where people stop going to theaters? When is the technology good enough, and how many people have to have it, that theaters can no longer do business?

    I mean, given a 40 or 50 inch flat-screen HDTV (whether LCD, Plasma, DLP, or whatever), a decent dolby-supporting sound system, and HDTV-quality DVDs... is it enough to give a theater-quality experience? If not, how much higher resolution do the DVDs, and how much bigger do the TVs, have to get before this happens? And then, will it be enough to kill theaters?

    I'm not a proponent of eliminating theaters, but I don't have a lot of nostalgia for them, either; I go to the theater for the immersive qualities. I'm mostly curious how much better this sort of technology needs to get before Regal Cinemas starts getting nervous.

    • 1080 would be pretty much close enough for me: I was watching the LoTR movies on DVD a few weeks ago, and with a decent display and 7.1 sound it wasn't too far from a cinema experience... other than the lack of mobile phones, not having chewing gum on the seats, kids not talking through the entire movie, babies not crying, etc, etc, etc.
    • I think you stated your own answer to your question...

      Theaters will never be out of vogue -

      1) theaters are a medium for instant gratification
      2) most people WANT to get out of the house
      3) movies are cheap enough to enjoy regularly
      4) movie theaters offer sound systems & quality that takes big bucks to reproduce, even if prices come down on home components
      5) most movies aren't worth owning personally or even watching the first time - less people are willing to own something bad if they hear a bad review,
    • "I mean, given a 40 or 50 inch flat-screen HDTV (whether LCD, Plasma, DLP, or whatever), a decent dolby-supporting sound system, and HDTV-quality DVDs... is it enough to give a theater-quality experience?"

      From my experience at a higher-end consumer electronics store, generally no. The key is a front projection system. The sound system isn't even that important as long as it's Dolby Digital. There's no comparing even a 70" widescreen Grand Wega (which you shouldn't buy, stay tube or wait for OLED) to a 1

  • Media reliability (Score:3, Informative)

    by coolsva ( 786215 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2004 @12:46PM (#9432120)
    One of the key things to consider would be the media reliability

    Magnetic media (like tape) are extremely reliable in the sense that I can slip a bit here, scratch a bit there but still hear or view the content with minimal distortion. They can also be 'overburned' by recording and playing at lower speeds.
    Low density optical media (like CD) are also reasonable fault tolerant (with the built-in 8/13 and error checking) to the extent that radial scratches do not effect the content. There is also sufficient 'extra' space to permit overburning.
    Medium density optical media (like DVD-R) are more stringent in terms of error checking. There is very little ECC and other error handling mechanisms and small scratches or smudges can really mess up the content. Also, there is no space for any overburning, the disks are 'maxed'

    Now with these 25GB/110cm^2 disks, the disks are very error prone and I for one would be very careful of scratches or marks.

    This plus the format of the data (MPEG-4) means that one small piece of data loss, I cannot view any frame till the next I frame (FYI, MPEG frames are I-full, P-delta and B-reverse delta. P and B depend on the prior/next frames and a typical sequence is IPBPBPBPBPBPBI and many videos have about 10 seconds or so between the I frames)

  • Too soon (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 )
    It's too soon. Normal people don't "upgrade" nearly as fast as geeks do. People are just now getting DVD players as home. There's going to be virtually *no* market for a new standard for at least another 5 years. Nobody will buy it!

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