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No Ceasefire in DVD Format Battle
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jan 09, 2007 09:17 AM
from the fight-to-the-last-player dept.
from the fight-to-the-last-player dept.
haja writes "The BBC reports that the high definition DVD format war will continue until a winner is declared. There is no sign of the two camps working on a unified format. Some believe the industry at large is being damaged by the war due to consumer confusion. From the article: 'Backers of Blu-ray are bullish and are predicting victory. Blu-ray has more backing from film studios and more makers of the players, but HD-DVD has sold equally well in the first year of release. But the Blu-ray camp believes a library of exclusive titles and the power of PlayStation 3 - which has an in-built Blu-ray player - will see the format pull ahead in the next 12 months. Mike Dunn, president of worldwide home entertainment for 20th Century Fox, said: "I really believe the format war is in its final phase."'"
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They Can Keep Battling it Out (Score:3, Interesting)
Seagate announces Hard Drives will be at 300TB in a few years, what do we even need these formats for? DRM? yaaaaay!
Re:They Can Keep Battling it Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:They Can Keep Battling it Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus you also have other people doing the same, like Sonic Solutions and Apple. Downloadable content will end the HD format war or at least give them a hard slap to the face so that they will move to ending it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well I think of it as "truth in advertising" (Score:3, Informative)
When people buy a DVD they aren't buying a movie--they are putting down $20 or whatever to buy a cheap, over-packaged plastic disc worth a few cents plus a license granting them permission to private, non-commercial exhibition. The only true reason for physical distribution media under such a business model, in the media industry, is that it is the best, most established practical technology right now for distribu
They Can Keep Me Out of It (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They Can Keep Battling it Out (Score:4, Interesting)
As of now hard drives life sucks horribly. At least my DVD's don't crash and take all the data with them like my last 3 Fujitsu, last 2 Western Digital, and last 4 Seagate drives.
Every drive I have owned above 120gig capacity has not lasted more than 18 moths. this is with cooling fans to keep the insane temperatures down and REALLY GOOD power going to them.
Hard drive longivity simply sucks right now to the point that I dont trust them to hold data safely for more than 3 months.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you mean like I already mentioned in my original post? I have really REALLY good power and cooling on them. and they STILL fail simply because hard drives with capacities above 120Gig are unstable.
Been there done that, consumer quality drives are really low grade.
Also as others have mentioned... if I scratch a single DVD, I have a chance at recovering it and then I only lose 1 movie.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got lots of counterexamples -- 3 emachines PCs, each about three years old, with 160 GB hardrives, cheapo power supplies and no fans besides the CPU heatsink one. All are running fine. My 2 x 250 Seagate drives at home have been running for close to a year and a half now and are fine.
I hate to say it, but you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maxtor low profile drives in the Hewlett-Packard machines were decidedly unreliable - about 15% failed in less than a year in the network of 80 machines (and these are only 40GB drives). We replaced them with WD and Seagate drives - we've not had a single failure since then. Part of the problem is the design of the cooling in the ultraslim HP machines isn't very good - the drive bay gets very little cooling.
The trouble is it's a crap shoot. You don't know which
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, which they were rightly pilloried for. It's like a store that advertises itself as being open 24 hours... just not in a row.
The fact is hard drives don't last very long. Or at least, you can't count on them lasting very long - you may get lucky, but most don't make it past ten years, and that's being generous. Meanwhile, none of my DVD's has failed yet
Re:They Can Keep Battling it Out (Score:4, Informative)
Source for the last statement?
Seagate consumer drives [seagate.com] come with a mere 5 year warranty, and there's something that directly refutes your point.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seagate announces Hard Drives will be at 300TB in a few years, what do we even need these formats for? DRM? yaaaaay!
Doesn't matter how big the hard drive is. How is that movie going to get from the publisher, to you, at full resolution, without a removable disk? As has been happening for decades, hard disk capacity is growing faster than communications bandwidth. So great, you can fit a bunch of movies on your hard drive. It'll still take you a day to download the movie. If only there were a way to ge
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think connection speeds are going to remain at their current levels? Right now I've got a cable connection that can download at over 1MB/sec .. sure an HD movie might be big, but I could probably download it (buffered) in about an hour.. which is only slightly longer than if i went to the video store and rented it..
I think the size of crap people want to download will keep growing faster than connection speeds, as it has done for decades.
An example: If an HD movie can't fit on a regular DVD, then we
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Holds more data..." yes, per layer, however Current BRDs have 1 layer and just recently came out with dual-layer discs due to tremendous issues they had with the stability of the second layer, single layer discs are 25GB and dual layers are 50GB... there's speculation that they wont go beyond 2 layers due to the problems they experienced with getting to 2 layers, at least not in any reasonable amount of time.
HD-DVD has been dual-layer from it's release which is 30GB (15GB per layer),
Until a winner is declared (Score:5, Funny)
Couldn't get more Irish than that could you? Here's another pearl of wisdom:
Ah, to be sure it'll rain tomorrow unless it doesn't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There needn't be a winner in a format war. Remember MiniDisc v Digital Cassette? The winner then was MP3. Remember SACD v DVD-Audio? The winner in that war was, well, nobody really as neither format sells in large quantities.
Personally, I expect the winner is going to be likely to be EVD or FVD, the alternative Asian standards. If HDDVD and Blu-Ray keep faffing around like this, they're going to swamped by a tide of next-generation Asian electronics that will be cheap, flexible and Just Work. Which neith
Ahh well... (Score:3, Funny)
Consumer "confusion"? (Score:4, Insightful)
There, corrected that for you.
The dickens, you say! (Score:3, Funny)
A war worth ignoring (Score:5, Interesting)
An HD TV set, with a PVR, and digital cable is serving me just fine. On Demand movies in HD 5.1 gets it done for me.
The only counter argument that nags in the back of my mind is that I borrowed the LOST first and second season DVDs from a friend, and truly enjoyed watching the series on DVD. No Commercials, and three episodes a night really move the plot along. I find it very difficult to stay interested in the show now that I am watching it on a weekly basis, when they happen to bless us with an episode. Too long between important events, and the hook is gone... So the DVDs of Complete seasons may be a better way to enjoy quality TV shows.
But, I suspect that it won't be long before the LOST series shows up on the On Demand service, just like the fine HBO content... and I can again enjoy three episodes in a sitting.
what format war? (Score:5, Insightful)
One argument I hear is that more will adopt when the formats get cheaper, but even if players were $50 like cheap standard DVD's you still have to replace your library to take advantage of it. Maybe im in the minority but the difference isnt great enough to justify replacing a collection of around 700 movies.
With the consistently plumetting costs of storage I'm leaning towards the idea that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both flop as movie standards in favor of video on demand and other downloadable content.
Name recognition (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, if the average Joe walks into an electronics store looking for high definition movie players he/she will see a wall of "Blu-Ray" and "HD-DVD". Most people will see the "HD" and think "yeah, that is what I want, Blu-Ray, what is that? No.. No.. I want high-definition".
Based on name alone HD has an advantage. Blu-Ray needs some serious marketing because if they rely on the sales person in the electronic store for supplying information they will be hosed!
The war is almost over...?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes," Vice President Dick Cheney says. (June 20, 2005)
Some people clearly can't see the forest through the trees.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You misspelled "vast ocean of self-delusion thousands of miles away from the forest".
Dual-format players (Score:3, Insightful)
In about six months (Score:3, Insightful)
There's your winner!
I really don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not because I'm a Luddite, but for two very critical reasons:
1) It's too damned expensive and I don't have the money to blow on HD toys. Maybe the rest of the world makes over 100K a year and lives in an inexpensive area, but I don't. I have bills to pay, damnit, why the hell would I waste my money on an HD setup?
2) I have kids. Autisitc kids with a penchant for running up to the T.V. and giving the screen an open-palm slap just because they like the sound. How long do you think a $3000.00 LCD or Plasma is going to last under that kind of punishment? And if I can't expect the T.V. to last, why the heck would I shell out for the player if I can't view all that "HD goodness" on my old 480P NTSC tube T.V.?
The problem is that the hardware and media guys, in all thier excitement to re-energize the home entertainment market by forcing upgrades, have forgotten that a large percentage of the population either a) just doesn't give a damn, or b) are like me, and can't get an HD setup even if they want to. So really, WHO GIVES A SHIT about HD other than the videophiles with more money than brains? Let THEM buy into all the HD hype, and the rest of us will just wait until the dust settles and we can guy a 27" HD T.V. for the same price that we can buy a 27" regular T.V. today.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Naturally the solution is to use a projector. If they knock holes in the drywall, at least it's easily patched.
Re:I really don't care... (Score:4, Interesting)
BUT
You forget that a LARGE percentage of the population (At least in the U.S.) has children and small disposable incomes. Yes, there are plenty in the correct income range that have the disposable incomes to blow on HD equipment, but there are plenty more that don't, and don't want to have to blow the money.
My kids also watch TONS of DVDs. So many so, that we just had to replace the DVD player AGAIN because the old one wore out with use. (Autistic kids like the familiarity of DVDs, so we watch alot of them) What kind of DVD player did I buy? I bought a $120.00 DVD-VCR combo unit as our VCR was also wearing out. No HD-DVD, no Blu-Ray, just plain old DVD. I go through about one DVD player every 2 years or less because we play so many DVDs.
I actually use DVD shrink and duplicate all of our DVDs because if I didn't we would be re-buying all of our DVDs each year too because the kids are so rough with them. If you think I'm upset about the cost of the HD players, how do you think I feel about the cost of the HD Burners and the DRM contained on the Discs?
This whole HD format war debacle has me furious because it's just so damned obvious that the players involved don't give a damn about what the customers want, they just want to line thier pockets at our expense. At some point I'm just going to have to invest in 15 to 20 DVD players and about 300 DVD-R's because the format will go out of style and I won't be able to afford the new equipment anymore.
I'm just praying that the DVD Shrink people will figure a way around the DRM inherent on the new HD stuff because I need to be able to continue to duplicate my DVDs, as I can't afford to replace 30-40 HD-DVD's or BR-DVD's each year.
Parent
I hope the format war continues (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'm thrilled that the studios and hardware people are having a rough time of this. I doubt that they'll ever say, "DRM is preventing an resolution to the format wars", but at this point I pretty much just want DRM pushers to suffer.
Yeah, this is profoundly dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason DVD was huge was not because it was so inherently great as a format. (in fact, it has a number of glaring flaws) It's because it was a huge leap forward over VHS in practically every area. Better picture, better sound, more compact on the shelf, longer run times between disc\tape changes, easy chapter seek, and all those glorious extras for people to play with. There were so many benefits that it was worth it to people to upgrade their libraries.
But what does HD/BR offer? Better picture, to roughly 10% or 15% of the public. And better sound to an even smaller percentage than that. And that's about it.
Why in the hell would people pay to re-buy their libraries AGAIN? Especially as it was just in the last couple years that the DVD collection became "complete"? There's just no reason at all. And that's leaving out how, in the grand scheme, increasingly few movies really benefit from high-def. There was little real improvement in your average romantic comedy from VHS to DVD. The shift from DVD to HD produces even less of use. Do you really want to get distracted counting the pores on Meg Ryan's nose?
Both formats were doomed, from the very outset, to be a specialty niche product, pretty much like Laserdisc. It amazes me that both camps were (apparently) totally blind to this and sunk millions and millions into them anyway. The BEST outcome would have been if the PS3 or 360 became big and people picked up a handful of compatable discs to play in it. (big name titles, like King Kong or such) They're not going to re-buy the library. Ever. Not until a new format offers as much of an improvement over DVD as DVD offered over VHS.
About the only way the studios might be able to force a format shift would be if they decided to just drop support for basic DVD and swallow the profit losses that would incur. (since it would destroy home video sales for a couple years) But even that might not do the trick. At that point, piracy would start looking like the viable alternative to all but the most steadfast consumer.
The studios have really painted themselves into a corner, and I'm curious how they're going to get out of it.
Sigh. (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice if it came down to which format was more technically excellent. Yeah, I know, it doesn't work like that. It's sad.
Re:Sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I used to feel the same way, that tech never seemed to win because it was better tech but because of externalities. Then I started to realise that those externalities are as much a part of the tech as what I as an engineer geek would call the tech. Is the format that plays only 1/10th of the movies really a better format even if it has higher resolution, better scratch resistance, or whatever else? In a very real and practical sense I'd say no. Just like a "better" Internet with newer routing protocols and every other wiz-bang thing you could improve about the internet wouldn't actually be any "better" if it never connected to more than 100 hosts.
I feel the same way about software licenses. People say "use whichever is best for the job!" but forget how significant an effect the software license can have on how the software does the job. I learned this the hard way when a very good hspice simulator wasn't up to the task because we didn't have enough licenses to run the simulations we needed in the time frame we needed them.
It depresses us geeks that our great work can be ruined by an accountant, marketer, or lawyer, but that's just the way it is. The product isn't done until the accountant, marketer, and lawyer get their hands on it -- because without them, it would never be a thing that is sold. I've learned to just accept this as part of engineering.
Parent
Does anyone else see the contradiction? (Score:3, Insightful)
But looking at it another way, if you can get an ADSL connection, then you probably have somewhere between 2-8 MB/s bandwidth at the moment. (Sure, some people can get more than this from cable providers but they're still in a minority.) This means that it probably takes around an hour to download a movie in, say, DivX or Xvid format. In other words, you probably get 720x480 resolution in a file about 1GB size. (Yes, the sums are a very rough estimate.) A DVD will take 4-8 hours, a 30GB HD-DVD over a day. It's therefore safe to assume that, as things stand currently, Internet delivery will be in a compressed format, albeit a DRMed one. Therefore, is the assumption being made by the movie studios that everyone will be buying everything at least *twice*? That is, on disc for the big LCD at home and also downloaded for a PC or handheld player?
Sure, most of us replaced our vinyl LPs with CDs and our VHS tapes with DVDs - so, yes, we've already bought a lot of the stuff we have at least twice. But getting people to part with their money twice for the same thing at the same time is surely something completely new.
The point I'm trying to make is that it seems this is as much a battle between disk formats and Internet delivery (in the same way as CDs and MP3/AAC/etc are) as much as it is about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD.
I'm actually beginning to wonder if the movie/media/hardware/OS companies are now involved in so many different battles on so many different fronts that they have all completely lost any sort of direction anyway.
Remember - No Free markets. (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep saying that there are no Free markets when it comes to "goods" protected by copyrights and / or patents.
This is a good example of people with monopolies in one area trying to leverage that to win in another market.
"exclusive titles" = copyright monopolies.
other market = media format / players.
Yes? No?
all the best,
drew
What is there to watch? (Score:3, Interesting)
Television shows are OK to watch in Hi-Def. I watch Smallville and (god, I hate to admit it) Enterprise on HD-Net every Monday night but I wouldn't buy either series in DVD format. That means you can forget about me spending extra money for it in either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, or Total Movie.
As for movies; movies STINK lately. This is where they could grab me, but they have failed miserably!
I have a Hi-Def, surround sound set up at home and I like nothing better than to sit on my comfortable couch with a two-liter Dr. Pepper and a bag of microwave popcorn and watch a good movie. I can pause the show when my wife and I want to argue about some plot point, or even return to a previous point in the show to show her just how wrong she is. :)
Just give me SOMETHING to watch!
Last year I wanted to see Mission: Impossible and Superman Returns, but having been burned in years past I procrastinated and missed them in the theaters. I rented then on DVD. Boy was I happy I had not wasted time and money trying to see these shows in an expensive theatre setting. And I'll clue you in on something that came to mind while I have been watching movies lately: Hi-Definition does NOT make the shows any better.
In summary, it doesn't matter which format "wins" if there is nothing to watch.
There was a good article in the December 10, 2006 New York Times by Richard Siklos entitled "The Hat Trick That Didn't Happen" in which it suggests that interest in Hi-Definition formats is actually declining among the population.
Sony as an acronym (Score:3, Informative)
Selling Only Not Yet.
Sucks, Only Now Yours.
Stops On New Years(or 's)
Slow Ornery Nitwit, Yup.
True a lot of things took off (minidisk) in some markets, but were so constrained to geographic
regions it was almost a Pyrric (SP?) victory.
There's never really been a "Walkman" since the walkman that (coff) walked away from the competition.
Rootkits and exploding batteries aside, friends with Sony stuff are finding hidden gotchas with alarming
frequency. Home movies and burned disks that won't play and ask me if I know why.
My response so far is "It's a Sony, sorry".
WHO cares! WHO CARES? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a "technodork!" with a fairly decent amount of disposable income and frankly, I couldn't give a hoot about these 2 formats.
We all got burnt on DVD's for the PC, yes they might be cheap now but the fact of the matter is the DVD format had +R / -R AND RAM!
It's a disaster, sure it's fixed now and yes prices are finally good but they took longer than they should have, (Dual layer blanks are still overpriced - quite likely due to that screwup)
We might have had low cost DVD players, burners and blanks faster than we got them - and while it's good now I'm sure some of us have been either burnt, confused or stuck due to that format war, let alone this one where the stakes seem much higher, last round it was only the writable discs which were a mess, at least the ROMs themselves seemed to follow a consistent standard!
Standards are meant to be there to make things easier for EVERYONE! The consumer, the supplier, etc - if HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can't get their shit together, I'll be damned if I'm joining a camp only to possibly be burnt, plus ultimately it's a damned waste of resources.
Here's 2 small pieces of information which may or may not be correct which are even FURTHER dilating things and screwing @#%t up for us. (note: I'm not 100% on these but I have heard them 'around' on the web)
Blu-Ray are having problems getting the second damn layer working properly.
HD-DVD is looking at getting 17gb on the discs per layer and moving to 3 layer (51gb)
Now these two, if true are just mind bogglingly retarded! Not only do we have enough trouble with the fact there's not one single standard, they now may be changing / modifying their own standards to fix or add those features,.. can you say WTF?
I can rant all day, I've done it before on these formats - I'm a bitter little man and ranting is my thing but let me get to something productive for a change.
DON'T BUY THIS SHIT - don't buy a dual format drive, don't buy a dual format disc, don't buy a single format drive or disc!
DON'T DO IT.
FUCK them! - DVD was a perfectly good picture for ALL of us only 18 months ago, on a damn nice TV with a nice player and good cabling, there's nothing wrong with it and there's substantially less copy protection screwing us.
I for one am going to sit back and wait - until they can offer me a cheap, simple solution which isn't going to burn my wallet,..... and frankly considering how much of a ballsup it is so far, I have serious suspicions that we're not going to see a single, cheap simple solution for many years to come.
I dread to imagine trying to purchase blanks of these in 12 months "Yeah I need a HD-DVD 1.0 spec 15gb per layer but dual layer blank please" - what the heck!"
Save yourselves the hassle and the cost and let this stuff fizzle out and heck while you're at it - stop submitting stories about it too, it's just frustrating to read about, let them both wave their dopey flags at each other all day long while I'm sitting at home enjoying regular DVD's, high def is simply not ready yet.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More importantly, the PS3 could even win, and blu-ray could still lose. Since when has Sony ever been able to push a format? Heck, even with as popular as the PSP is, they still can't sell UMD media. Why would people pay twice as much for a medium when the existing one meets and exceeds most people's quality standards? (disclaimer: I like HD, but most people are not like me)
You need to seriously recalibrate your expectations when it comes to new, expens
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, when have they done that? You must be thinking of all those standards they were a part of that flopped, like 3.5" floppy disks and compact discs.
Or perhaps you mean minidisc? Not very popular here, but they were definitely around, and in the UK quite pervasive for awhile. They did "win" vs a little thing called DAT, if you recall.
MemorySticks? All over the place. Particular
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
By that logic the N64 should have trounced the PS, and thus the NGC should have crounced the PS2, Xbox, and DC.
This time the price and the avaliablity are making
Re:It's quite easy, really. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm still waiting a while to get a good HDTV, much less a HD player (waiting to see how things play out a little more).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As long as you have a television that can accept and (if necessary) do a good job of scaling a 1080i or 1080p signal, the PS3 is the best, and cheapest, Blu-Ray player currently on the market.
The only things to be aware are that the PS3 doesn't have an IR port, so you'll need to plan on using the wireless game controller to control Blu-Ray playback, or you'll need to spend $30 to get Sony's Bluetooth remote control, which doesn't come with the system.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What I don't
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They still have not solved the dual layer problem. So all Blu-Ray discs right now are single layer and LESS capacity than HD-DVD.
Until the solve the Dual layer manufacturing problems (hope to by the end of Q1) it's an inferior format to HD-DVD.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Single layer capacity for a Blu-Ray Disc...IE, all currently produced Blu-Ray discs, movies, and PS3 games...is 25GB.
HD-DVD is only 15. Sure, Dual is 30, but they're not being produced very much either...and that is the absolute max for HD-DVD anyways.
More than 25GB is not needed at the moment for Blu-Ray, they know this so haven't done anything stupid to try to rush 50GB dual layer discs through manufacturing...there is basically zero demand at the moment. It does indeed wo
Re:How can they be that confident? (Score:4, Informative)
"Lots of people" ?? Gee, that sounds like hard, scientific, evidence. I'm not a Sony defender by any means (still playing my 4 year old PS2 just fine), but to insinuate that XB360/HD-DVD as king's of the hill is a little premature. PS3 has only been available in very limited fashion for about 2 months. XB360 has been out for how a while and still lags behind the old PS2 in sales. The high-end XB360 is $400. Tack on the cost of the HD-DVD and you are probably gonna spend over $600, same as you would for a PS3.
Neither HD-DVD or Blu-Ray really excite me much now, at least as a video medium. DVDs in progressive scan on a high-quality bigscreen TV look pretty damn good to my tired old eyes. HiDef discs might be nice, but not enough to justify the change, at least not for a couple of years.
Parent