While this might be a bold statement, all things point to this. Blu-Ray was already winning in market share slowly but surely, and today’s Warner decision to go BD-only puts the final nails into this HD format war as Warner is the biggest movie distributor. The HD-DVD Group didn’t seem to know about Warner’s decision and they canceled their CES conference out of the blu tonight, amidst making vague references to possible legal action. My take: I wish Blu-Ray had a region-free policy like HD-DVD does. Living in USA today but one day moving to Europe, it will have an impact in my media library.
Format Wars Are Over and Blu-Ray Won?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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What was wrong with HD-DVD? I thougt it was cheaper to produce and the quality was the same or almost the same.
While on paper blu-ray was a bit better, in reality the two formats were equal for the casual viewer. As a person who needs region-free media because I want to live in two continents during my lifetime, HD-DVD provided me with region-free disks by default, and that’s the only thing I will miss from the standard. I own both a Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD player btw, I am not a fanatic for one or the other format, they were pretty equal in entertaining me with top quality.
For me it’s too up in the air right now, plus BluRay is too expensive. I don’t even have a HDTV.
No, I’ll wait until my SDTV fails in a few years then upgrade. By then hopefully this is resolved.
The stupid thing about this is that they’re missing out on sales due to stubbornness, on both sides.. “Is it BluRay is it HD-DVD? Sheesh, I hope I don’t waste my money on the wrong format…”
Edited 2008-01-05 07:26
Eugenia, that is not true.
Most BD titles are region free, I have a couple from amazon.com (I live in Greece) and a friend of mine has more than 20 from amazon.com which are region free. To be honest I don’t remember a BD title that is region locked!
http://blu-raystats.com/
Second column from the end. Click on “region free” to sort.
Most BDs are region-free. All HD DVDs are.
I’m willing to concede that HD DVD is less evil in a couple different ways (no region encoding, AACS not mandatory), but on an LCD TV at least, there’s just no comparison in quality. HD DVDs look awful. So do Blu-Rays that use VC-1, so I hope the end of HD DVD means a lot fewer BD titles with lowest common denominator picture and sound (VC-1 + Dolby Digital = yuck.)
Why is AAC evil? “Omg, better sound quality for compressed music, I don’t want that!”
I would say the individual is actually referring to AACS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System
Ah, sorry.
This is the same issue I have. I wanted to HD-DVD to win purely for this reason. I have about 70 DVDs in the region for Africa. When I lived in the US I never bought a DVD precidely because I knew I was leaving. The other night I bought Goodwill Hunting. I got home to find that I needed a DVD player that ignores regions to play it because it was set for another reason. The DVD was in the “Collectors” section and more expensive than normal so I probably should have realised it was imported. But it bugs the hell out of me.
Not as big discs and the only reason it was even considering was massive $ from Microsoft just so Sonys format would fail / PS3 using blu-ray wouldn’t be an argument against the 360?
Cheaper to produce is something that is only true while DVD’s are still being produced “en masse”. Once the (slightly more costly) transition to BR has been made, it will not be any more costly than DVD or HD-DVD.
What’s wrong with HD-DVD is it doesn’t have as many DRM layers as blu-ray…
so the later is supposed to be more pirate-proof…
It’s a real shame, every sane person knows DRM only impair regular users.
“What’s wrong with HD-DVD”
one word….. Microsoft!
I, for one, am not surprised. Seems Sony gamble on the PS3’s has indeed worked, they have nearly all the players.
But Sony’s gamble on PS3 has been nothing less than an unmitigated disaster. Compare the units sold, the fact that they once held a 70% dominance, and now XBox 360/Nintendo Wii have taken over. Interesting how there was once a view by some that Nintendo would exit the market place and Microsoft would eventually give up on XBox.
I go down the road and I certainly don’t see people gravitating around PS3’s at the local Harvey Norman or Noel Leemings; XBox 360 and Wii are now king.
As for BluRay vs. HD-DVD; in the end its not going to matter; very few people I see are jumping into it; the big retailers are pushing, but most are quite happy with DVD for now; heck, its only been recently that I bought a DVD recorder.
Don’t assume because a large number of geeks and techno boffins here have the latest technology, it represents the rest of society. Those of us who frequent this place are lucky to represent 5-10% of the marketplace.
For almost everyone else, until there is a real killer application where by there are tangible benefits over and above traditional DVD, its not going to matter. I mean, I’m still using an old CRT 29inch television – the move to BluRay or HD-DVD would yield me nothing in the way of benefits.
You are missing the point. While PS3’s sales have not been good as a game console, they have been VERY good as an HD player! Both BD and HDDVD have sold so bad, that the “low” sales of the PS3 are so “high” compared to its competitors that were enough to give BD an edge by year’s end.
Frankly I see it as a little unfair to add the PS3 sales into the count without knowing the number of people who made the purchase for the BD capabilities.
I’d suspect that the vast majority, if not a very sizeable chunk, are due to the games, not the format of the disc.
Aslong as the people who bought the PS3 for games happen to buy some movies aswell it doesn’t matter for the people who sell movies ..
Frankly I see it as a little unfair to add the PS3 sales into the count without knowing the number of people who made the purchase for the BD capabilities.
Half-agree. While that’s true, the fact that the BD drives are in the hands of consumers means that it’s reasonable to include them in the count, even if people aren’t using them for that purpose. My feeling is that most people are using them strictly for games. But that could change over time.
“Frankly I see it as a little unfair to add the PS3 sales into the count without knowing the number of people who made the purchase for the BD capabilities.
I’d suspect that the vast majority, if not a very sizeable chunk, are due to the games, not the format of the disc.”
So! more players in the market… mean…. more opportunity for BR discs to be played! it does not matter that i may have purchased my PS3 to play games. when i see spider man 3 BR at target…. for $25.99…. next to the DVD…. i may just chose the BR disk. its simple!
BR is going to win this…. OR both platforms may survive. HD-DVD however will not get the whole bag!
And if XBox 360 had an HD-DVD player included by default we’d be debating something else.
The question will be when HD-DVD games come out for XBox 360, and the HD-DVD drives are pushed – what number of XBox 360 owners will upgrade their machines to the new drive? even if only 80% of users upgrade their drives to HD-DVD, it will simply crush BluRay in one swoop.
That is the issue; once you have the installed base, and the necessary games and movies, then its going to be a heck of alot easier to get someone to spend US$179 on upgrading their XBox drive than telling that same person to purchase a PS3 which in New Zealand dollars is considerably more expensive than Wii or XBox 360.
I tend to agree with this. I simply do not want a lot of devices cluttering my entertainment space, so if I can pay a relatively small amount to get access to HD movies in small form factor, compared to either a very large PS3 or an entire new BD player in addition to my Xbox 360, then I will go with the add-on device.
Ideally it’d be nice to see Microsoft sell Xbox 360’s with HD-DVD drives as standard, but I doubt that’ll happen.
Edited 2008-01-05 08:23
Well, there are rumours they might do a refresh; I’m surprised they haven’t done that yet, or bought in a ‘XBox 360 HD Deluxe Pack” loaded with an DVD drive pre-installed along with 5 free movies (or something to that effect).
For me, I’m looking at getting a Nintendo Wii; what would really kill the BluRay is if Nintendo and Microsoft work together and come out with an HD-DVD drive for Nintendo – then Nintendo start releasing HD-DVD games for it.
Edited 2008-01-05 08:35
lol, and why the f–k would Nintendo fit the drive of the failing format in the Wii? Not to mention 8.5GB of storage space in a console which is more or less a Gamecube which only had 1.5GB of storage space is plenty. All the textures and stuff will be smaller on the Wii so why would it need HD-DVD or blu-ray? Not to mention it would raise the price aswell.
Craptastic HD-DVD/Microsoft fanboy.
Could you please tone down the mouth frothing and head spinning – this is a forum for debate, not for you to air you dirty laundry of anti-Microsoft zealotry.
Who said about replacing the format in Wii; the HD-DVD drive for XBox 360 is an external drive; I’m sure that the Wii has a port which allows expansion if need be.
If an HD-DVD player can be added, then it would open the possibility of it being used as a HD-DVD player for HD-DVD content – which increases the pool of possible customers which HD-DVD producers can aim their movies at.
Again, less mouth foaming, more mature debate please.
Noone want to play movies with their console anyway, and the Wii probably haven’t got powerful enough hardware to play the content, not to mention it may also lack encrypted DVI/HDMI. And the external drive would probably cost almost as much as a real player anyway.
Not to mention the GPU are probably not capable of doing HD either, so it would just be the only HD-DVD-player which required a Wii to work aswell, great! And it would have to have all its hardware onboard anyway.
Edited 2008-01-05 14:58
Hang on, you go from one extreme to another; firstly your side say that BluRay wins because of all the PS3’s out there, and the other side you’re saying that it doesn’t matter if it comes with the console – which one is it?
As for the external drive, its IIRC US$179 for the XBox – who knows how cheap it could be with the combined user base of XBox 360 + Wii.
No, my point for why Blu-ray should win have always been as simple as that the discs could carry the most data. I don’t see why we should go with anything less than the biggest if we will have to change format anyway. The bigger the media the longer the format will last. To make small increments all the time just to have to redo it later suck. If we are going to mess it all up better do it right.
The PS3 and movie sales argument was just that, blu-ray have sold more for some reason and I guess PS3 buyers which bought one or two movies may have been part of that, (or people buying PS3 mostly because it’s a hd-player but secondly because it was a next gen console aswell.)
Of course it matters if it came with the console FROM THE BEGINNING. Any developer will know that a PS3 have a hdd for caching data from the disc, and that the discs can hold 50GB of data or whatever. A 360 developer won’t. They will have to make sure that the game is for DVD if they want to be able to sell to everyone and that it works without caching data on the HDD since not everyone got a HDD.
But Wii has nothing to gain from having a hd-dvd-drive. Why not just buy the Toshiba ones, they are very cheap anyway. Aren’t the Toshiba drive CHEAPER than 179 dollar? In the USA atleast. (http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005840.html I’ve also seen low prices with movies.)
The later is actually one huge point which make it hard to understand why HD-DVD isn’t the winner, if the players are that cheap how come it can fail? =P)
Edited 2008-01-05 15:08
I just had a look here:
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/01/04/warner-bros-goes-blu-ray-e…
It appears that BluRay now has 70% of the market place in terms of content. Before that, Warner was pretty much sitting the war out – now they have weighed in, its pretty much the end of war; time for HD-DVD to come to a compromise.
Assuming all things are correct; we’ll start seeing BluRay in Mac’s soon, along with all the nastiness that’ll come with the territory (aka the huge 350MB 10.5.2 update that is apparently going to be released around expo time).
Regarding the storage; there is great potential but could be horrifying when I see it as a greater justification for vendors to justify bloatage in their respective softwares – or worse, pawn off third rate clipart as ‘extra’s’. Sorry if I sound bitter but having been through the DVD wars, the 56K X2 vs. Flex war, and god knows what other war that occurred in the past, I was hoping for some maturity by the big players.
But at the end of the day, it comes back to; what does it provide to the end user by way of benefits; like I said, I’m still on CRT – the stuff I purchase are BBC series from 20-30 years ago, so HD, no matter who wins, is a non-issue for me.
Edited 2008-01-05 16:28
Haha I’d nearly managed to forget about the 56K X2 vs Flex war!!! Thanks for reminding me!!!! *groan of irritation mixed with unbearable nostalgia*… (ah AOL 3.0, making sure the local dial-up number featured X2 to match my U.S. Robotics modem, those were the days…)
Edited 2008-01-06 15:36 UTC
But Wii has nothing to gain from having a hd-dvd-drive.
I agree, this discussion was misguided from the beginning. Wii can’t even play DVD movies (even though they use DVD as their format)! Clearly, they’re not angling their machine towards people who want to watch films, and they don’t need to. Aside from that, Wiis can only do standard definition output.
…and *they’re doing just fine*, despite all this.
Nintendo doesn’t need such “value-added propositions” to sell their machines. The gaming experience alone (combined with the low-price factor) is enough to move their units.
Minor quibble: the Wii can do 480p. which is extended definition, not standard definition.
But selling HD players is the last thing MS & Nintendo want to do. The want to sell games and make money off the software. Software is where they recoup their margin.
Their hardware has never been very profitable.
Ideally it’d be nice to see Microsoft sell Xbox 360’s with HD-DVD drives as standard, but I doubt that’ll happen.
If MS chooses to do this, though, I hope that they maintain two separate products: One with a standard DVD drive and one with the HD-DVD drive. The reason is that price is an important factor with game consoles. In my opinion, people aren’t buying the PS3 because it’s too darned expensive. Sony really screwed themselves by tying the BD-Drive to the console. Of course, the choice of games isn’t that great, either, but I think that game makers have already done the math based on projected sales and figured out that PS3 is a long-range market loser.
Uh, no, they haven’t. Xbox360 has the upper hand now, but PS3 will be increasingly attractive as more exclusive content is available for it (MSG4, anyone?). The main problem with the PS3 is that it’s harder to develop for than the Xbox360, which means lots of games were delayed while developers rushed to make their game engines work on Sony’s new console. Now we’re seeing to see the results, too late to overtake Microsoft, but still enough to guarantee a solid userbase. This is *not* a “winner takes all” industry!
The last round of console wars showed us there was enough room for three (but not four) consoles. I don’t expect this to change. As for BR vs HD-DVD, the latest announcement by Warner indeed signals a clear advantage for Blu-Ray. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Blu-Ray add-on for Xbox360 in stores for Xmas 2009…
And if XBox 360 had an HD-DVD player included by default we’d be debating something else.
The Xbox 360 has a bigger market share today because it came out one year before and at a cheaper price. That’s thanks to using a standard DVD player.
So if the Xbox 360 had an HD-DVD player by default we would definitely be discussing something else, like Microsoft failing yet again to beat the PS. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Where have you been? Again, go down the road; explain to me why people are STILL purchasing XBox 360 even after PS3 have released, even AFTER the price cuts, even WITH heavy promotion.
It sucks not because XBox 360 got an early start, but simply because it is over priced and under delivers; when you have bugger all titles, you do little to improve the user experience via quality online services, when you can’t even be bothered teaming up with telecom’s companies to deliver a good online experience – whose fault is it? big bad Microsoft or a lazy Sony who thought that they would win simply by virtue of being Sony?
Again, sales are still flat – even after release; there was never an upsurge when it was released – if XBox 360 had a big marketshare but PS3’s were flying out the door – your point would stand, but the fact is, they aren’t flying out the door; the only things flying out the door are customers purchasing their Wii’s and XBox 360’s.
Where have you been? Again, go down the road; explain to me why people are STILL purchasing XBox 360 even after PS3 have released, even AFTER the price cuts, even WITH heavy promotion.
Games. The Xbox has more of them, it’s simply a more mature software development platform at this point. And even AFTER the price cuts the PS3 is far from having a great price tag.
you do little to improve the user experience via quality online services,
I have to disagree with that, Home sounds very interesting for example. And it’s a free service.
Again, sales are still flat – even after release
It’s already over selling the Xbox 360 in Europe and Japan.
Sorry to contradict, but anyone looking at the actual numbers can tell you’re wrong.
These are sales charts (worldwide) for all three consoles, comparing the numbers relative to their launch dates:
http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php
You’ll see that the line representing the PS3 is almost identical to the one for Xbox360. That means that, relative to launch date, the two consoles have been selling at pretty much the same rate.
This next charts gives actual weekly numbers:
http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php
We do note an advantage for the Xbox360 between August and November, however if you look at December you’ll see that PS3s actually edge out Xbox360s in sales (both being dwarfed by the cheaper, casual gamer-oriented Wii).
What this tells us is that the Xbox360 did get a nice headstart (which resulted in a better current library of games), but that the PS3 is nowhere near the failure many people make it out to be.
As I said in another post, this isn’t a “winner takes all” game. All three consoles will have their market, and we game developers will keep on making games for all of them.
Mate as a PS3 owner, I can tell you now, your wrong.
Play drakes fortune and then come back to me with ps3 sucks. Microsoft have had a year lead. Id doesnt under deliver in any way. It has so far done nothing than impress me, games publishers have been doing a poor job of porting games from xbox 360 to ps3.. Its not an easy process and you cant just port titles across. The ps3 has a cell processor 8 spe’s one controllor. The controllor chip is what they are probably over utilising on the crap ports and ignoring the spes. New games, the developers are getting to grips with what the processor is capable of and great titles are popping up now. Give it a year and Sony will be leading the console war probably. By that time the wii physical limitations will be showing greatly, dont get me wrong, its a great bit of kit for getting exercise while you play, but in terms of graphics whats the difference between it and a gamecube ? You havent been following whats going on.. Basically the PS3 is a completely region free awesome games machine and a great bd player to boot.. Then you have the psn network which is completely free the playstation eye which is awesome in its own respect. Basically it takes a year for developers to be able to begin to utilise the capabalities of a great console and after that is when the great titles start popping up.
If the ps3 wasnt flying out of the door, then the 60gig model would still be in stock here in the uk, but thats all sold out (60 gig models have been phased out in europe for the 40 gig model retailing much cheaper but without ps2 backward compatability).. Wait till mid january – February to see how sales stand in relation to the console, but so far I havent seen any of the 60 Gig models here in stock which is just showing how many are being sold.
While your at it please look at the trailers for Metal Gear Solid 4, play a game of Drakes fortune, basically just test the console out for your self.. Warhawk another example and then say the console is crap..
Even the developers while initially bamboozled by the architecture and not favourable to it are liking it and realising its potential.
Dont forget initially it was just the cbe processor, but they realised this wasnt gonna be good enough and the nvidia graphics card got added for gpu.. So what does that say about the cbe (cell broadband engine ? )
360 was supposed to have a HD-DVD-player, I have no idea why Microsoft skiped it, because it become such a big part of the price and they wheren’t sure the format would win? It gave them a price advantage vs PS3 anyway which keeped the blu-ray.
“Even if only 80% of the users”, yeah right, keep dreaming on, the users will hate Microsoft if they do.
Go shave some sheeps.
HD-DVD wasn’t ready – what is Microsoft meant to do – do a Sony and lose a potential market?
Yeah, that is *REAL* mature. I guess that’s what happens when you live in a Scandinavian paradise where the government has taken over the job of personal responsibility. Be as dense as you want because nanny state will take care of your sorry ass.
I guess the normal Microsoft reaction would be to wait until the standard is done, then implement a similair but totally different one and hope that everyone chooses that so they get it all for themself ;D
IE-video!
“Yeah, that is *REAL* mature. I guess that’s what happens when you live in a Scandinavian paradise where the government has taken over the job of personal responsibility. Be as dense as you want because nanny state will take care of your sorry ass.”
You seem to know more about Scandinavia than the average Canadian.. However, by reading the comments I can’t decide where the people are the most mature.. Please enlighten me?
Could you explain to me whether people are a little slow up there; because the conversation went off track when the smarmy bastard just *had* to bring out the cheap sheep joke.
So you keep sitting there in dazed confusion whilst saying, “now whats this all aboot”.
> Yeah, that is *REAL* mature. I guess that’s what happens when you live in a Scandinavian paradise where the government has taken over the job of personal responsibility. Be as dense as you want because nanny state will take care of your sorry ass.
—
Kaiwai, just like you I live in NZ too. I don’t think it’s fair to criticise another person’s country as you did that (even though he mentioned shaving sheep, he doesn’t know we only sh@g them here
). By the way, wake up and realise that it is you that’s living the the “nanny” state – given all the recent anti-smacking/anti-smoking/anti-fireworks/anti-free-speech (electoral reform) legislation in NZ. It is our present government that is overreaching traditional boundaries and intruding into daily life. Far more so than the relatively liberal Scandinavian states. So no need to slag other countries off, eh? We’re surely big enough to take a joke about sheep (although we still cry nto our beer about the World Cup Rugby loss).
By the way, we don’t care that you have a 29″ CRT and personally never want to upgrade. We would have cared if you said that as part of a point that there are plenty of people in the world like yourself that don’t care about hi-def. That’s fair enough. However, you’re not the target audience for hi-def stuff, so no need to rabbit on.
Personally, I have a 28″ monitor (Viewsonic vx2835wm) connected to my PS3 (and laptop too) that does 1080p and the blu-ray movies are very nice (though I wouldn’t say that the expense is worth it unless you really are an enthusiast). The PS3 games do look outstanding (although probably as good as Xbox360, but not quite as good as my high-end PC with Nvidia 8800GTX). The real difference will be in the future where the PS3 can keep upping the texture resolution (since BluRay as the space for it) while XBox360 is will only have 4.7GB DVD as lowest-common-denominator (even if later models all get HD-DVD or, heaven forbid, BlueRay).
Chill folks.
actually, all Xbox360 game are basically using DVD9 media.
Plus some sort of compression optimized for the CPU’s multi-core… Also, the DVD’s reading speed is 50% faster than PS3’s BluRay. And don't forget that storage is not everything, the Xbox360 has dynamic memory (512 for all on X360 versus 256 sys + 256 vbuffer on PS3) that can allocate more memory for texture than PS3, that can be seem in pretty much every multi-system game comparation when looking to the more sharpen system…
So, don’t take conclusions so easily. There’s too many things to look for when the subject is 3D games.
Also, the suject here is the Warner sell-out. Let’s keep it that way.
The question will be when HD-DVD games come out for XBox 360, and the HD-DVD drives are pushed – what number of XBox 360 owners will upgrade their machines to the new drive? even if only 80% of users upgrade their drives to HD-DVD, it will simply crush BluRay in one swoop.
Correction: “The question is, if HD-DVD games were to come out for the XBox 360…”
(which won’t actually happen, so it’s pointless arguing about it…)
But Sony’s gamble on PS3 has been nothing less than an unmitigated disaster. Compare the units sold, the fact that they once held a 70% dominance
I wonder which is more important to them, the console war, or the HD format war?
I mean, I’m still using an old CRT 29inch television – the move to BluRay or HD-DVD would yield me nothing in the way of benefits.
Amen. I am getting an HD TV .. probably never. Unlike some folks (“I am not a fanatic for one or the other format, they were pretty equal in entertaining me with top quality.“) picture quality above a certain point is not a factor for me. I am entertained by good movies and shows and the occasional sporting event. DVD is “good enough.” I’ll stick with my CRT, and for special occasions the projection screen (7′), at 800×600. I don’t see myself splurging to replace that unless it breaks.
The highest definition display in the house is my computer monitor, but the studios are determined that I won’t be able to play HD movies on the OS of my choice, so that avenue is out as well.
Selfishly, I am hoping the format war continues indefinitely, hampering adoption and making sure the continued prevalence of plain old DVDs for me
It’s really amazing. I first heard of Bluray (then HD-DVD sometime later) back in college, and that was years and years ago. This transition has been a lot slower than I could have imagined.
Edited 2008-01-05 08:59
I wonder which is more important to them, the console war, or the HD format war?
I think that BOTH are important to Sony; however, they stand to gain a lot more from the HD format war, since the market is much wider for players and content than consoles.
DVD is “good enough.” I’ll stick with my CRT, and for special occasions the projection screen (7′), at 800×600. I don’t see myself splurging to replace that unless it breaks.
When you go to a HD TV with a high resolution, you almost have to make the jump to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, because the compression artifacts really suck with plain DVD — even with new upscaling DVD players.
Selfishly, I am hoping the format war continues indefinitely, hampering adoption and making sure the continued prevalence of plain old DVDs for me
The basic issue here is that TV manufacturers are moving increasingly to selling nothing but HD sets. Over time, when you buy your next TV set, you probably won’t have much choice than go HD. My guess is that DVD is “good enough” for most consumers on their current non-HD sets but, as soon as they see that “good enough” means “sucks really bad” on HD TVs, that will change — and the migration will begin in earnest. But it could take YEARS.
>>I wonder which is more important to them, the console war, or the HD format war?
I think that BOTH are important to Sony; however, they stand to gain a lot more from the HD format war, since the market is much wider for players and content than consoles.
Eh, I’d have to disagree. I’d imagine they make a lot more money on their consoles and games than they ever will simply by licensing Blu–ray technology. Mind you, Blu-ray isn’t Sony-only technology; it really can’t and shouldn’t be compared to the likes of Betamax and MiniDisc. It was jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, which includes Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, and Sony–basically everyone except for Toshiba and NEC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hd_dvd
It’s not like losing the format war would be the end of the world for Sony, not even close, they’d just sell their studios’ films on HD-DVD, make HD-DVD players, and that’d be the end of it. Hell, they’d even get the added benefit of PlayStation games being much harder to copy!
Losing the console war, on the other hand…. I doubt they’d take that nearly so lightly.
Edited 2008-01-06 15:46 UTC
That one incredibly bitter and inane post sums up the past two years absolutely perfectly.
Thank you! LOL!
Xbox 360 sales since Nov 2005 are just over 17 million units sold. 6 million in the US. 8.1 million units of Halo sold.
PS 3 sales since Nov 2006 are approaching 6 million. Definitely third, but in the Oct – Nov 2007 sales in the US are up 285% due in part to price cuts and Wii production failures.
Wii sales since Nov 2006 are 13.17 million units with 11.86 million units sold of Wii Sports.
PS2 Sales World Wide: 120 million
Observation: NO ONE IS THE WINNER FOR THE LATEST CONSOLES.
It’s just begun.
Microsoft has SHIPPED around 17 million 360s – just under 15 million have been SOLD worldwide.
Sony has SOLD 9 million PS3s worldwide. Shipment numbers won’t be out until march for Sony.
The PS3 has SHIPPED 129-130 million consoles worldwide. Sony has SOLD some 127-128 million consoles worldwide.
There is no winner because we are FIVE YEARS AWAY FROM THE END OF THE CURRENT CONSOLE CYCLE.
Grow up guy, spouting inane fanboy numbers for console sales has never worked in previous gens and it isn’t going to accomplish anything this gen.
I am supporting the PS3 and that it hasn’t lost. Either you can’t grasp that or you responded to the wrong post.
Don’t give a damn which console you ‘support’. You posted a bunch of crap and were corrected.
End of story.
360 have NOT taken over, last stats I saw a couple of months ago PS3 and 360 sales have been very much the same month by month on each consoles life. 360 was released earlier however so in total units it had sold more.
Part of the high price are probably due to the bluray yes, but on the other side they can have much bigger games, and I guess Sony had hoped it would have been over sooner.
360 are not “king”, some people buy 360s, early 360 life had less sales than early xbox life, I don’t know how it looks now, but noone would say that xbox was a total success, thought piracy helped with units sold.
Ah, yes, perhaps a console failure. It could be nothing less, even if they sold a billion units, when they are selling below cost!
DVD’s will disappear in time, though the upcoming format shift suffers from chicken-egg syndrome all over the place: Requiring HD TV’s, HD players, HD titles, and to be any better than DVD, 7.1 stereo’s. Oh, and really, HD TV from the sat/cable providers on some large scale as well. So, yes, for now .. and for a while.. 10%.
In time though, it will hit critical mass and DVD will become legacy. Just as, on a 13″ CRT TV, the benefits of DVD are minor over VHS (no re-winding, or skippable ads…), blu-ray will still ‘work’ on 29″ CRT’s. Those of us with 42″ plasma sets will get to appreciate the higher quality picture.
The whole situation is simular to IPV6.
Well said. Sony made a mistake trumpeting BlueRay using the PS3. Coming from a gamers perspective here, most people in my camp cares about the format, they care about the games. I’ve heard a number of people suggest that most PS3 owners don’t eve know their console can play BlueRay movies. It wouldn’t surprise me.
I don’t think it has to do with which format is better technologically but more like who has the most to lose. There is a lot of rumors going around saying that Warner Bros accepted some money from the Blu-ray group to go all blu-ray. Just like those rumors last year about some movie studios going all hd dvds because some hd-dvd group were paying them to do so. I don’t think anybody cares about which is a better format but more like they just want one format and will be willing to be bribed to help that cause.
Porn industry won’t help like they did with Betamax and VHS because back then, there wasn’t Internet like now. All the good porn are on the Internet nowaday, why would you buy high quality HD porn that cost 30 bucks when you can just get unlimited hd streams or downloads for 30 bucks a month.
I don’t think it’s the deep pocket reason. Blu-Ray is mostly Sony, Apple, Sun, & Dolby. HD-DVD is Toshiba & Microsoft.
My personal reason for not liking HD-DVD is the specification. Toshiba menu control language and Microsoft Media file for audio and video.
Blu-Ray uses Java for the menu control language; Dolby’s AAC audio format. Video is supplied by ITU-T Video Coding Expert’s Group (VCEG) & ISO/IEC Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG). Thus the audio comes from an expert in audio and the video comes from two groups of experts who worked to gather.
I don’t consider Microsoft an expert in video or audio. From having to deal with their software for all these years, I hardly consider them software experts. I haven’t looked into Toshiba’s control language, so I can’t tell if it’s better or worse then Java.
To support HD-DVD you need to license Toshiba’s control language engine and also Microsoft’s media CODACs. Blu-Ray is licensed by the standards bodies and is thus a little more accessible to implementers.
Microsoft created HD-DVD because the group developing the 2nd generation DVD refused to accept Microsoft’s Media files as part of the standard. I;m not sure if this was done because the Media Files were poorly designed of if licensing demands came into play.
I don’t know how accurate the rest of your very charged statements are, but WM9 is quantifiably one of if not the best codecs in terms of quality:size.
Edited 2008-01-05 06:10
but WM9 is quantifiably one of if not the best codecs in terms of quality:size.
and h.264 (=MPEG-4 AVC) is quantifiably one of the codecs that’s significantly better than VC1 (=WMV9) in terms of quality:size.
The whole discussion is pointless though because both BD and HDDVD support h.264 and VC1. Use whatever you want.
Edited 2008-01-05 13:54
I agree Alex. Having worked quite a bit with WM9 content for compressing videos, I would have to say, it is probably the easiest way to get quality HD content. That’s not to say H.264 isn’t good (it is also great, actually), but I just find it a lot easier to get content to WM9 via Microsoft’s freely-available tools.
I think you have your facts backwards.
For both BluRay and HD-DVD, there are three supported video codecs. MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and Microsoft’s VC-1.
Most earlier BluRay titles used MPEG-2, but newer BluRay titles and virtually all HD-DVD titles use VC-1.
In terms of audio, both formats support AC-3, DTS and LPCM, the same as DVDs. HD-DVD requires support for several more advanced audio codecs, including two high-quality lossess variants, while those same formats are optional on BluRay. Even so, both disc formats support the same audio codecs.
Also, there was no “group developing the 2nd generation DVD”. There were two separate efforts, one by Sony and one by Toshiba. The DVD Forum, who maintain the original DVD spec, also maintain the HD-DVD spec, so HD-DVD is actually the “official” successor to DVDs. BluRay exists because Sony and several associated companies weren’t happy with the DVD Forum’s control of the DVD format, and wanted to control the replacement themselves.
The interactivity stuff on HD-DVDs was developed by Microsoft, not Toshiba.
Well said. The two formats are almost identical, with Blu-Ray only having some edges in storage etc, while HD-DVD is region-free. But as I said, overall for the casual viewer, the two formats are pretty much identical. There’s no “better and worse”, neither Microsoft is “bad at codecs”. This was simply a strategic war, not a technology one.
Ive got a ps3, which is completely region free (x360 isnt), Looking at some of the films I have:
1. Casino Royale Blu Ray, On the back says all regions aka region free (a,b,c are different regions)
2. Resident Evil Apocalypse all regions (aka region free)
3. Click (Adam Sandler) region B only.
So I guess, Blu ray as a media/medium is region free. The region lock in is probably to do with the distributor.
check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
.. Just found out hd-dvd capable of 17×3 layers == 51 Gigs. Although currently 34G, I guess (dual layer)
BD == 25×2 no triple layer disks talked about so max 50 Gigs but on two layers. Is a third layer possible? that would make storage 75G per disk, which is huge really.
I believe the blu-ray spec allows for 6 layers; a press release from TDK talking about previews of their 200GB disks is here:
http://www.tdk.com/procommon/press/article.asp?site=con&recid=140
“This was simply a strategic war, not a technology one”
very true! so…. personally, i am happy to see MS loose yet another battle!
BluRay exists because Sony and several associated companies
If by “several associated companies”, you mean everyone except Toshiba and NEC, then you are correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
P.S. Sony and everyone else on the Blu-Ray Disc Association are also members of the DVD Forum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Forum
Looks like you ought to do a little fact-checking yourself….
Edited 2008-01-06 15:56 UTC
You realise that WMV9, aka VC1 isn’t controlled by Microsoft; its an SMPTE specification – WMV9 happens to be an implementation of the VC1 specification:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE
Side issue; BluRay’s specification includes VC-1 support (aka WMV9).
Edited 2008-01-05 08:09
To be more specific, VC-1 is a standard largely built by Microsoft based on their original WMV3/WM9 codec (Which existed before VC-1).
Microsoft later pushed out Windows Media Video 9 “Advanced Profile” which fully conforms to the said SMPTE VC-1 standard.
Many people don’t know that Microsoft’s original WM video codec was based on a broken implementation of MPEG4 ASP. The multiplexer for .asf files was then hacked and gave rise to DivX v3.xx and the popularity of MPEG-4 in the AVI file container we see today on peer to peer networks.
As I understand it Blu-RAY disks have the capability for almost twice the storage. And in that sense the decision makes sense as it should prevent the problem we ran into with the CD with files soon becoming too large to fit on one. These companies seem to be very skillful at underestimating future needs.
What’s interesting is that when quad-speed CD drives hit (and thus, single & double speed CD drives started to become affordable), hard drives were small: compared to a 40mb hard drive, a 650mb CD seemed impossibly large. Check out the MPC spec;
“The MPC 1 Specification defines the following minimum standard requirements: a 386SX or 486 CPU; 2 MB RAM; 30 MB hard disk; VGA video display; 8-bit digital audio subsystem; CD-ROM drive”
For an equivalent estimation of “future needs”, and assuming say a 250gb drive as ‘standard’, the disc would have to hold 5TB. For their time, CD’s were great and DVD’s have been pretty good, we’re just hitting ‘diminishing returns’ on optical media.
Exactly. Optical media is slow and vulnerable to damage. It also has a very high rate of imperfect copies.
I have known since the start that BluRay was technically superior to HD-DVD, but I still can not get over the name “BluRay.” Everyone knows that HD = higher quality, and that DVD = movies. That kind of recognition is much more important than the extra Xgb, in my opinion.
It will not matter in the end (apparently it doesn’t matter now). If you go back in time to the beginning of ebay, and were asked to choose which is the better name for instant recognition (and according to your post, better acceptance) – auction.com or ebay.com – which would you choose?
All that matters is the product they produce, and the marketing they provide to educate people what that product is all about.
Blu-Ray is an imaginative “sci-fi” name (although dumbed down without the ‘e’) compared to meaningless ‘HD-DVD’.
Clorox, Pop-Tarts, Weed-Eater… BluRay could one day hold the same level of meaning, as far as “being” its product. I’m not saying it will, just that it could.
Err, and you don’t think there will be a shitload of region free players? Yeah right …
It might not be that easy:
BD+ was developed by Cryptography Research Inc. and is based on their concept of Self-Protecting Digital Content.[53] BD+ is effectively a small virtual machine embedded in authorized players. It allows content providers to include executable programs on Blu-ray Discs. Such programs can:[51]
* examine the host environment, to see if the player has been tampered with. Every licensed playback device manufacturer must provide the BD+ licensing authority with memory footprints that identify their devices.
* verify that the player’s keys have not been changed.
* execute native code, possibly to patch an otherwise insecure system.
* transform the audio and video output. Parts of the content will not be viewable without letting the BD+-program unscramble it.
Movie producers apparently wants this region nonsense and BD+ gives them a way to enforce it (since the player has to be authorized and not tampered with). And working around copy protection systems like BD+ is not leagal in parts of the world (like in the USA).
So what you are saying is Blu-ray discs can contain executable code that runs inside a virtual machine on a compromised device to try and determine whether the said device is compromised…
Ever heard of the saying “Closing the barn door after the horses have fled”?
Working around cryptography may be illegal, but implementing an “engineer” menu or some such thing activated via an arbitrary sequence of buttons on a remote control, and having a debug option to disable the virtual machine wouldn’t have any legal issues, would it?
Possibly not legal issues, but it may very well have contract issues. I have no idea what kind of contract you have to sign to be allowed to make bluray players, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had language forbidding that sort of thing.
If you piss of the bluray consortium enough they can not only prevent you from making any new players, but they can also revoke your crypto key and make sure discs released after a certain date don’t work on any of your old players. All of which would be kind of bad for your business.
BD+ was developed by Cryptography Research Inc. and is based on their concept of Self-Protecting Digital Content.[53] BD+ is effectively a small virtual machine embedded in authorized players. It allows content providers to include executable programs on Blu-ray Discs. Such programs can:[51]
It doesn’t matter. The ingenuity and market incentive for pirates is too great. It will be cracked.
I can only speak for the UK, but region free DVD players are available in all major electronic stores.
As a movie format BluRay and HD-DVD are close rivals. But as a data storage format BluRay is superior with greater storage capacity. Therefore BluRay makes more sense as internal computer drives.
Edited 2008-01-05 07:34
Xaero_Vincent wrote:
–“But as a data storage format BluRay is superior with greater storage capacity.”
well, iirc HDDVD initially had 15gb/30gb for single/dual layer, with BluRay having 25gb/50gb for single/dual and definately being superior storage-wise.
last I read though, HDDVD now have 17gb/32gb for single/dual layer and a three layer 51gb disc aswell (although when I read about it the three layer had not been confirmed to function on (then) existing hardware).
when it comes to watching HD content, like you said I also gather that the difference is close-to none, and being region-free makes HDDVD the more consumer-friendly format in my opinion, not surprising then that the majority of the movie industry’s big players are opting for BluRay
I already heard talks of an 8-layer BluRay disc, capable of storing 200 GB.
Its all relative and non-standard.
People arent going to put up with constantly changing specs. Nobody will want to be forced to buy new players or drives each month just to support BluRay or HD-DVD layer +1 discs.
Edited 2008-01-05 08:53
I think Warner’s decision was based on the fact that the BD+ copy protection layer of Blu-Ray is still unbroken.
It probably has nothing to do with the quality of either format.
Apart from the type of people that frequent this site. Most people don’t know and don’t care about this whole blue ray / HD DVD kurfuffle.
I read somewhere (probably on el reg) that one of the most returned items of 2007 by consumers was HD TV’s. The reason was most people expected the amazing quality the salesperson told them about and then when they got home the quality was worse. They go back to the shop to ask why. Sales person says “aah, but you need to buy a new disc player (we have two types….), you need to subscribe to HD broadcasts (we have a good package for you…)”. Customer thinks “screw this, take the damn thing back”.
I’m gonna wait this one out for a couple of years methinks. Maybe my eyes aren’t as good as they were but DVDs look pretty good to me.
This is a classical example of battling over nothing.
The battle seems to be BlueRay vs HD DVD right? It’s actually fixed medium vs the Internet.
While I was skeptical of Internet TV and content from the Internet I am not anymore. I just subscribed to CNBC Plus and have to say it is impressive. Yes quality leaves to be desired, but I actually have content everywhere and I can call it up however I desire.
And I was reading it from somewhere else (slashdot?) Look at what the Porn industry is doing. They are going Internet whole hog…
i was expecting that move.
but having only crt tv and one dvd player and no plan to upgrade, i don’ t care.
Blu-Ray was outselling HD-DVD 60:40 in the US. Apparently in even larger proportions in Europe.
That is what it boils down to for a profit-making enterprise.
The differences between the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD capacities, CODECs, menu languages and possible regional differences are all irrelevant except to geeks.
I had a hunch already some time ago that BluRay would win in the end, but well, I couldn’t really care less. Not going to buy BluRay player nor a HD-DVD player. Our old CRT TV just won’t be able to display any higher picture quality no matter what player I use, and frankly, IMHO DVD quality is more than enough. If our old TV ever breaks down I’ll probably just hunt down some other cheap CRT and be done with it. BluRay (and HD-DVD) are good as big optical storage but I just don’t see any other need for them..
Living in italy gives me an interesting point of view on the subject. In this country owning a highend technology device is still considered a status symbol, so, even if the reasons are less than ideal, HDTV is widespread and 20Mbit ADSL has become the de-facto standard of communication in the whole northern part of the country and given the “extremely flexible” attitude towards law of the general italian public, piracy in this country is considered almost a normal thing. These are the main reasons why BluRay and HDDvd are almost unknown terms in our vocabulary, being replaced by emule and divx. I know it sounds offtopic, but basically no-one in here is going to bet on one format or the other and, I must admit, with good reason. The war of formats, as we percieve it, is definitely played between physical and unphysical media, the two main arguments being High definition VS portability. I’ll be honest: with a 20mbit connection, even the highest definition content is just a few hours away, and portability is way too convenient. As an example I’m gonna say that there’s more and more people downloading movies they already have on original dvds, just for the sake of having them in a convenient usb hardrive. Therefore my take on the subject is that no matter which format will win, there are very good chances that users might want to opt for portability instead of high definition. Let the majors clearly understand that (or “accept”, that is) and we’ll see the rapid demise of the physical medium, and the rise of highdef streaming and downloading.
Edited 2008-01-05 13:11
At least with HD-DVD you had a finished product, with the spec completed since day 1, network ready, region free, working HDi for interactive content and even Combo HD-DVD/DVD disk. All movies are in VC1 since day 1. The player you buy today will work with all movies, no missing features.
It’s realy not the same thing with Blu-Ray. Most player are Profile 1.0, the PS3 can be upgraded to Profile 1.1 because the CELL CPU is able to take the extra load. You only have a couple of Profile 1.1 player ready. The others will probably not be firmware upgradable because of missing hardware to support 1.1 – But wait, Profile 1.2 is also comming but the best part is Profile 2.0 (that require more hardware change, so player sold today wont be able to do Profile 2.0!!).
Profile 2.0 will be what we currently have with HD-DVD. It is supposed to be the final spec for Blu-Ray. But for any early adopters, this means buying at least 2 or 3 Blu-Ray player to follow the Profile saga. You’re safe with the PS3 for P1.0 to 1.1, but nothing is set about P1.2 and P2.0.
And Blu-Ray is not region free, they put out lame first generation movies using MPEG2… Oh, and Blu-Ray player cost more than HD-DVD player…
Anyway, seems to me that the worst format just won. I still can’t beleive it.
I won’t go into the profile stuff, except to say that I very sincerely do not care about interactivity and PiP. One of the final deciding factors for me that Blu-Ray was better was the experience of trying to watch the PiP on V for Vendetta. It just played the movie as normal, with the occasional unrelated snippet of an interview with an actor popping in to provide no insight whatsoever into the scene. The clips were too short and unrelated to be interesting and only served as a frustrating distraction from the movie. Mind you, I intended to watch a special feature, not a movie, but because the interview clips were so spaced out, I really couldn’t watch either. It’s an eye-catching tech demo of no practical significance.
Oft-repeated load of crap. The only codec I’ve been impressed with is MPEG-2, at least for live action. Dreamgirls was the first movie I saw where I felt like I was looking at what HD promised. It was Paramount’s policy with their dual releases to put the Blu-Ray in MPEG-2 and the HD DVD in VC-1, when it would have been easier just to use the same video encode for both discs like Warner Bros. did, so Paramount had to like something about MPEG-2. Tekkon Kinreet is AVC and looks amazing, but Chicago and Hitchhiker’s Guide (also AVC) look like there’s an extra layer of glass over the picture. VC-1 is just terrible. Yellows, oranges, and browns all band together into a paint-by-numbers rainbow, and the black level is set way too high. This is a problem if your movie prominently features, you know… actors, or… the sky. Everything I see on HD DVD, someone has black rot where their hair meets their scalp. Alexander on Blu-Ray (VC-1) has a scene in a tent where the people outside are half-melted into the dark background. They were visible in the theater. VC-1 just drops details in low light and assumes people won’t notice. “Look and sound of perfect” indeed.
See Dreamgirls, Memento, and House of Flying Daggers if you need to be convinced how wrong you are about MPEG-2. The first one because its picture is the absolute best I’ve seen in HD (and the HD DVD version, which I also rented for comparison, has the above mentioned problems with hair and skin color), and the other two because the directors intentionally used very grainy film stock, and MPEG-2 just gets along with that, while VC-1 and AVC would have made some of the grain bigger, VC-1 would have aliased some of it out, and in both cases it would have become distracting. The Heroes HD DVD set (VC-1) looks worse than bargain bin DVD transfers unless I turn my TV’s brightness way down because of all the noise in the picture, and worse, only parts of the picture. Interframe compression + visual approximation = very bad for handling film’s natural quirks. MPEG is called Motion Picture Experts for a reason: They know how to make a digital video look like film.
Excuse the long-windedness and slight OT, but I just can’t stand the HD DVD camp’s MPEG-2 haterade. It’s the best-looking option for live action, and the newly-released Simpson’s Movie uses it as well, so it’s not just “first-gen” weakness. Obviously some studios think it’s the best choice for some of their releases, and I agree. All the above is research and observation, but this next part has some speculation, so grain of salt and correct me if I’m wrong: According to blu-raystats.com, 33% of the BD25s that use MPEG-2 also have uncompressed LPCM sound. That’s all the biggest file types on a disc smaller than a dual-layer HD DVD, so storage space is not the issue. The BD kiosk at Target tells me Blu-Ray has faster read speeds for higher bitrates, and I think that’s the real reason HD DVDs don’t come with more uncompressed sound and video: the players simply can’t pull that much data off the disc in real time, so they’re compelled to settle for lossy compression. Blu-Ray releases have close to a 1:1:1 ratio of the three video codecs, but 87% of HD DVDs use VC-1, and only about 10% use AVC, with no actual Hollywood movies (just concerts and a low-budget documentary) using MPEG-2. The popularity of WMV over H.264 could have a lot to do with Microsoft’s claws in the format, but as most of us here are aware, H.264 is great compression but extremely CPU-intensive, and it’s likely the case that if an HD DVD is using AVC for the main feature, there just aren’t enough clock cycles left for uncompressing sound and doing any kind of interactivity or PiP. So HD DVD PR extolls the imaginary virtues of VC-1 because they’re stuck in the middle with a not-great-compression (because the CPU can’t handle it) and not-too-uncompressed (because then the drive couldn’t read it) video codec.
HD DVD is (was?) inferior for more reasons than storage space, and never trust Microsoft when they tell you Windows Media looks better than the competition.
Uncompressed audio is a pointless waste of space and bandwidth.
BluRay doesn’t mandate a lossless audio codec, so the only options are AC-3 / DTS, or LPCM. HD-DVD at least has Dolby’s lossless audio codec as a required part – using LPCM on an HD-DVD is completely pointless, because that lossless codec would provide identical quality, at lower bitrate.
Oh yeah… If the specs say the player has to be able to handle two AVC streams, then the players will be able to handle them. If they don’t, they violate the specs. Remember – stand-alone players are not PCs.
As for MPEG-2’s supposed superiority… don’t you think that has more to do with MPEG-2 encoders being something like 15 years old, and the movie industry having had 15 years experience with them? AVC is only four years old (and was developed by the same people who developed MPEG 2).
I might agree with you about VC-1 though. Still, all codec complaints apply equally to both formats, so I don’t see how VC-1 or AVC are problems with HD-DVD only.
I can’t disagree because I have a current-gen surround system. LPCM / Optical = Stereo. I also can’t agree for the same reason, because that would be like all the people in the thread talking about how pointless these formats are because they’ve chosen not to buy an HDTV. From the smart purchasing perspective though, I like knowing that some of these BDs I have now with nothing but basic Dolby Digital have a theater-quality soundtrack waiting to be unlocked when I get a more advanced surround receiver down the line. LPCM isn’t the most efficient and immediately beneficial way to go, but it’s probably the most broadly software compatible and hardware future-proof, so it does have some practical advantages.
Well, LPCM is lossless, and support for that is a given across the board.
As far as I’ve seen, there aren’t any HD DVDs that just have Dolby TrueHD; they all have a DD or DD+ track that’s on by default, so I wouldn’t be so sure TrueHD is mandatory or that it really means much for the players or releases that it is. Just an observation, though; there could be other explanations for this quirk.
On the other hand, Fox BD releases have DTS-HD Master Audio as the only English audio track, so all Blu-Ray players must be able to handle lossless DTS to some extent, or Fox movies wouldn’t play sound at all.
With those titles, the PS3 downmixes and sends regular DTS out over optical, and my HD DVD player does the equivalent by sending TrueHD signals as regular DD. The potential of the discs is the same, assuming no differences in how the different encodes are mixed, and the potential of the HD DVD player for sound output to future hardware is actually a little higher right now, with the PS3 reportedly not fully compatible with DTS-MA HD. But with my current surround system, what ultimately arrives is either vanilla DD or vanilla DTS, and the latter is much preferred, so Blu-Ray is still winning me with sound.
To put it all more concisely, I concede that HD DVD took a solid approach to audio, except that I wish they hadn’t championed Dolby over DTS as their lossless codec provider, because it means crappier surround, for me, today.
If only. My HD DVD player takes 47 seconds to boot up, from hitting eject to the tray actually opening. I’m pretty sure that’s longer than any PC I use on a daily basis. A friend of mine said it’s booting a full Linux environment. Believable, but I don’t make a habit of trusting his facts. It’s loading a great deal of data with a fairly slow CPU in any case. I’ll concede ignorance to how player functionality requirements are handled, but blu-raystats rules out storage space as being the only motive for HD DVD’s exclusive use of VC-1, so there has to be something else.
That’s a perfectly reasonable hypothesis about MPEG-2, and I don’t mean to dismiss AVC as a failure or dead-end format. I think it’s totally ready for CG and animation, and it may very well surpass MPEG-2 for live action in the future. But for now, any upcoming release I want in high-def, I’m crossing my fingers it’s going to be MPEG-2 video. If it’s HD DVD exclusive, that’s just plain out of the question: it’s almost certain to be VC-1, with a very slight chance of being AVC. At least on Blu-Ray there’s a two-thirds chance it’s not VC-1 and a one-third chance it’s MPEG-2.
So yeah, the biggest thing to get out of all my ranting and venting about HD DVD and Blu-Ray is that the practical reality of the products you can buy is very different from how they look on paper. Either there are some more important factors that get left out of the usual breakdowns (like BD’s superior streaming speed = higher bitrate audio and video + more options), or the Blu-Ray backers just have better habits and take more care with their products. Either way, I’ve done the comparisons myself, and found the exact opposite of what HD DVD proponents say is true: VC-1 looks the worst and MPEG-2 looks the best.
who cares which format wins as long as there will be dual format players/writers as there is today.
I definitly do, dual format players SUCK. Why the f–k should I as consument be forced to pay dual license and eventually for extra hardware just because the f–king media industry can’t get along and define ONE standard? It’s just as stupid as buying two players (sorry Eugenia.)
Just wait until there is only one and then buy that.
I too would have wanted to have downloadable content, but then over government messed up and didn’t started to give everyone fibre back in 2002 so that doesn’t work I guess.
Edited 2008-01-05 14:50
Cheap PC hardware and fast broadband have made both HD-DVD and BluRay irrelevant. Within 2 years we will have 2TB hardrives for $50. Why have physical disks when you download a movie and watch it on a cheap HTPC?
I don’t see propper fast broadband becoming regularly available any time soon. Hell even if we manage to get 100Mbit/s to all houses in all major cities (something which seems a lot more than 2 years away), there’s no way you’ll get that in rural areas. And people in rural areas will probably want to watch movies too.
And even if we manage to get 100 Mbit/s connections to every household in the civilized world, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to download it anything near 100Mbit/s from the movie providers unless there are major backbone upgrades done all around the world. I mean there are countries that don’t even have 100Mbit/s backbone to US.
I don’t care who wins the format war. I just want
a player that is under $100 dollars US …
unfortunately,
the costumer looks like more a wallet than a person these days…
To bad governments don’t regulate properly these issues anymore… the ones who suffer are independent and little distributors, besides FOSS systems.
I just want to point out that http://www.slysoft.com already produces AnyDVD, which allows you to strip copy protection from BluRay, HD-DVD, and of course regular DVDs. I backup my DVDs since they get abused by my little brother and sister. So much in fact that they rely on the fact that I always have a backup and can burn a new disc.
Their programmers cracked BD+ pretty fast, and I’m surprised that nobody in the OSS community has figured it out yet. But I assume that eventually somebody will put in the time to make it possible for OSS.
If you want portability then go with HD-DVD, since its copy protection is already broken in the OSS world, and it is region free. Slysoft even encourages it in their AnyDVD changelog:
6.2.0.1 2007 11 20
– Note to people considering to invest in HD media: Please buy HD DVD
instead of Blu-ray. HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no region
coding, AACS not mandatory, no BD+). Don’t give your money to people,
who throw your fair-use rights out of the window.
http://www.slysoft.com/download/changes_anydvd.txt
The point being that I wouldn’t worry to much which format you purchase, since the copy protection will undoubtedly be cracked. Though, it is a big hassle.
I don’t own any HDDVD nor Bluray content, but I have always been rooting for HDDVD to win the war. Why? Because any proprietary format Sony has come up with has always been more expensive than the standard formats. Just the other day, I went shopping for a M2 memory stick. The best I could do at a brick and mortar store was 1 gig for $35.00. For that price, I could have gotten 4 gigs for any other format. I’m sure I could have found something cheaper but the simple fact is that retail price of Sony stuff is 2-3 times more expensive. I sense once Sony wins the format war, you won’t ever see prices of players drop down to $40-$50 like you see for DVD players. Also, you wont ever see the price of Bluray content drop down neither.
I don’t own any HDDVD nor Bluray content, but I have always been rooting for HDDVD to win the war. Why? Because any proprietary format Sony has come up with has always been more expensive than the standard formats. Just the other day, I went shopping for a M2 memory stick. The best I could do at a brick and mortar store was 1 gig for $35.00. For that price, I could have gotten 4 gigs for any other format. I’m sure I could have found something cheaper but the simple fact is that retail price of Sony stuff is 2-3 times more expensive. I sense once Sony wins the format war, you won’t ever see prices of players drop down to $40-$50 like you see for DVD players. Also, you wont ever see the price of Bluray content drop down neither.
Very good points. I’m not aware of the licensing terms for Blu-Ray players and content but clearly, if Sony is charging royalty fees with every disc and every player, it introduces unnecessary cost. Media formats should be open. I don’t mind if players have embedded royalties because it’s a flat cost and you’re not being nickled and dimed with every piece of content that you buy. Worse still, as you suggest, it could constrain the prices of content from ever coming down. That really sucks for consumers.
but clearly, if Sony is charging royalty fees with every disc and every player, it introduces unnecessary cost. Media formats should be open.
No matter what, you’re going to have to pay the piper. Toshiba/Microsoft/DVD-Forum or Sony/Sun/Blu-ray Disc Association, take your pick.
I think you’re wrong. HD-DVD is cheaper now, because that’s a technique for it to stay in the market. But if Blu-ray wins, it will, without a shade of a doubt, eventually come down in price.
How do I know this? Well, to start with, Sony doesn’t control the price of the players. Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung are also on board. Toshiba will be making Blu-ray players if Blu-ray wins, as well. And they will all be competing with one another, no doubt about it.
If it’s still not clear to you, Blu-ray is not any more of a proprietary one-company product than SD cards are. Just because Sony built their console around it seems to have confused a lot of people….
I am wondering how this will impact Linux distro’s such as Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu with this format for example.
Will this effect the way like multi-media is viewed on the internet or not?
Sorry to ask such questions I am totally naive in this subject arena.
I knew this was the case as soon as I saw that Blockbuster opted to carry Blu-ray but not HD-DVD.
those people claiming upgrade from dvd to bluray doesent give benefit on standard sizes TV are simply insane, or blind.
even on a 17″ screen the quality is simply outstanding compared to DVD, and much more so on larger screens.
its not a matter of opinion, it is FACT(well, for like 95% of the releases which actually has the details)
those people claiming upgrade from dvd to bluray doesent give benefit on standard sizes TV are simply insane, or blind.
Well, I still see umpteen people going into electronics shops everywhere who cannot tell the difference. I still see people going into these places, watching a DVD and thinking that what they are watching are high definition pictures, despite the ‘HD Ready’ logo.
even on a 17″ screen the quality is simply outstanding compared to DVD, and much more so on larger screens.
On a 17″? Errrrr, no. The difference is only discernible on much larger screens, and even then, I still see people who cannot tell the difference from upscaled DVDs.
its not a matter of opinion, it is FACT
I’m afraid not. Like audiophiles who are convinced that certain cables make a difference, or that certain speakers make a difference, it is very much a matter of opinion.
None of this is going to make people buy Blu-Ray discs in any numbers, and they certainly won’t replace their DVD collections. On the contrary, many people still buy DVDs, pop them in the machine and believe that the upscaled picture they’re watching is hi-def. The notion that Blu-Ray has ‘won’ is well, well wide of the mark.
“On a 17″? Errrrr, no. The difference is only discernible on much larger screens, and even then, I still see people who cannot tell the difference from upscaled DVDs. ”
then they are blind. it makes a HUGE difference.
“I’m afraid not. Like audiophiles who are convinced that certain cables make a difference, or that certain speakers make a difference, it is very much a matter of opinion. ”
afraid not.. differences in cables and speakers are measurable, speakers very much so. just like we know how small things have to be before humans cannot see the difference, and that DVD resolution doesent reach this on 17″ screen, and we also know that interpolation cannot really produce the details a higher resolution gives..
so again, it is FACT, if people cannot see difference, even as low as on 17″ screens, they are blind, and i certainly would not sit in a car they are driving.
then they are blind. it makes a HUGE difference.
To a great many people it doesn’t make as much difference as some people seem to think.
afraid not.. differences in cables and speakers are measurable, speakers very much so.
No they’re not, because how good it sounds and whether the differences mean anything is very much down to personal opinion. It’s sort of like how a great many people feel that the sound quality of MP3s is good enough for them in reality.
so again, it is FACT, if people cannot see difference, even as low as on 17″ screens, they are blind, and i certainly would not sit in a car they are driving.
I’m afraid it isn’t a fact because you don’t seem to grok that what one person considers better is not for another. It is very much an opinion. You have an awful lot of ‘blind’ people around then, because you can walk into any electronics store anywhere, chat to the salespeople and find out that the vast majority don’t see all that much difference with hi def content. Certainly, there’s no great difference that will make people spend thousands in new equipment and content.
just because people do not consider it significant enough to upgrade, doesent mean it isnt extremely visible, and it is, and IF for some reason the vast majority of people cannot see that it is a very much better image(yes, nonblurry and much more detailed _IS_ better), then they are simply blind, or atleast visually impaired in some way.
just because people do not consider it significant enough to upgrade, doesent mean it isnt extremely visible, and it is, and IF for some reason the vast majority of people cannot see that it is a very much better image(yes, nonblurry and much more detailed _IS_ better), then they are simply blind, or atleast visually impaired in some way.
It’s not about whether the picture is of better quality or not, the question is “Is it so good that it is really worth upgrading my TV, my players, my movie collection…” Most people just consider DVD quality more than enough, including me. Personally, I don’t even know anyone who’d consider buying some BluRay or HD-DVD player.
that is not what the question was, but yes, if it isnt worth it, then one must really not care about quality, or be blind, or perhaps both.
Their announcement leaves plenty of time to continue selling HDDVDs, and it leaves them plenty of time to go back on their decision.
It is not a coincidence that this announcement came out the day before the HDDVD press event at CES. Behind the scenes things are happening of which we are not aware.
Warner is clearly making a power play for some reason. They are possibly trying to end the war by choosing a side, or they could be trying to force Toshiba/MS/HDDVD into doing something.
It was very obvious that BlueRay would win sooner or later. Not beacuse it has any advantages for the user but because the copy-protection ist eviler then on HD-DVD.
Personally I don’t bother much about HD-TV. I barely watch any TV or even movies these days. Most are crap in PAL/Secam/NTSC so why would I want that same crap in HD crippled with really nasty DCE (Digital Consumer Enablement) aka DRM.
Just my two cents…
uh, is dvd dead?
#
Is Blu-Ray more like Open-Source or is it
closed source type of implementation?
Will this benefit the Linux Community distro’s
in the end or hurt.
Neither of them is a standard that can be implemented in OpenSource software because of ACSS and BT+
Just found it on digg.com.
http://gizmodo.com/340956/interview-why-warner-went-full-throttle-w…
“… In a sentence: Because the format war is killing regular DVD sales on top of hurting sales of both HD formats. …”
That is completely untrue. Movies are not getting longer, in general. Special features on discs are getting bigger, but most cunsumers don’t want that shit – they just want to watch the movie.
Since the movies aren’t getting longer, the only reason you would want more space is to encode movies with greater resolution and quality. However, in order to do that, your player has to actually support those enhanced codecs, newer wiring that supports greater than 1080p, and so on. Since changing formats is going to require everybody to get new hardware anyway, what is the point of using the largest disc possible when we don’t need it? All that means is that we pay a premium for more space on a disc that we aren’t able to actually use. The only times that extra space will come in handy is when you’re buying TV shows, as more episodes could fit on each disc.
I already own an HD-DVD player, and while I’m a little perturbed over all this, I’m not really worried. I already planned on buying a Blu-Ray player (a PS3) eventually anyway.
Also, Samsung already has a player that does both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. It’s expensive ($800), but prices will drop. Eventually I expect to be able to buy a combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/DVD/DivX player for the low price I bought my Toshiba HD-DVD player for. In the end, us early adopters might lose out a couple hundred bucks worth of hardware, but big deal. I lost more investment in the switch to DVD from VHS (that was a _lot_ of movies I had to rebuy in DVD format, because I didn’t feel like lugging around an ancient VHS player forever) than I’m going to lose if Blu-Ray actually beats out HD-DVD disappears.
I’m also not sure that HD-DVD has actually lost just yet. Warner made an announcement, that everyone here should know that tech and service announcements don’t mean squat. And, if worse comes to worst, I move the HD-DVD player to my bedroom TV so I at least have a DVD player there, and I get a multi-format player for the living room. I still win.
One might expect that since BluRay players cost more money than HD-DVD players that BluRay buyers have more money to spend on more BluRay disk titles than HD-DVD buyers. The statistics do not account for this hidden variable.
The cost to the consumer is what is the deciding factor, not the movie production companies. While I can see the benefits for increased storage space being a bonus for Blue-Ray I don’t see consumers willingly paying for the huge price difference just to have Blue-Ray. HD-DVD is far less costly both to the consumer to purchase and also for the manufacturing process. Unless Blue-Ray players and discs drop in price to a reasonable cost then consumers will side with HD-DVD. Thus leaving studios that focus solely on Blue-Ray losing profits.
Except of couse that it just isn’t happening. Blu-ray hardware and more importantly software outsold HD-DVD despite the price advantage.
Even is the US, which is the closest market Blu-ray movies outsold HD-DVD every single week last year even in the weeks where HD-DVD movies where being heavily discounted (BOGOF and 3 for 2 offers).
As the CES press event reports are coming fix and fast it appears that more and more companies are bringing out Blu-ray players, hopefully the competition will force the player prices down.
Edited 2008-01-06 23:54