Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend

An anonymous reader writes "One day they're out, the next day they're in. Back in March, Disney CEO Bob Iger seemed to indicate that his company (which has exclusively backed Blu-ray since the start of the high-def format war) was on the verge of supporting *both* high-def formats. What a difference a couple of months of good press for Blu-ray makes: this week, the CEO reversed his earlier position, saying 'the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, (and) to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage.'"

Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

What's better...

HD DVD [impoll.net]
Blu-Ray [impoll.net]

Re:I Don't Get It

[Doctor_Jest]

I guess Disney wants to stack the deck in favor of their "preferred" format. (Not wanting to back a losing horse, so to speak... as they've done in the past...) I really don't care if Disney puts their drek on edible undie flavored discs... Disney is a non-starter in my book. I truthfully don't buy enough movies for them to care what I think, and I've pretty much grown ever-so-tired of the "sticky floor/bratty snot/laser pointer/cell ringers" atmosphere theaters have wrought. So, in the grand scheme of things... I'd much rather have the next-format data burner settled in a reasonable time frame... :)

In the realm of movies, I think we're going to see a dual-format for quite some time... no one's giving a nod to either one (besides the press-release chest-thumping) and porn (despite their power earlier on) is more of a paper-tiger in this fight... Everyone knows, the _internet_ is for porn anyway. :-)

Still, it's probably worth noting (as others have posted) that Apple's a big backer of Blu-Ray.. I don't bloody well care, because it'll be a few years before we can get 80GB backup discs, at least at a reasonable price... And by then, my system disk will have grown too large (yet again) for a "single disk" backup. ;)

Yeah, I'm a digital packrat... :P

Re:I Don't Get It

[FateStayNight]

saves costs. No need to author and publish in two different types, encode in two formats, stock two skus of each movie, create additional covers and booklets etc

Re:HD-DVD's are better for consumers

[News for nerds]

Would you care to explain again how HD-DVD is more accessible to the average consumer? I'm not into anime or that sick tentacle porn so I could care less about movies from other regions.

Since the US the region code for the US and Japan is the same those who have American players can watch and collect BD discs for "anime or that sick tentacle porn" to your heart's content.

Re:You gotta wonder...

[ppanon]

In France (and Belgium), BD is Bande Dessine'e (comics). Given that Disney are an international company with a very young target market, perhpas they wanted to avoid the possible confusion.

Re:HD-DVD's are better for consumers

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

HD-DVD initially was not going to support anything above 480p through component video which would have forced everyone with a non-HDMI HDTV to "upgrade" to a newer HDTV. They relented "after" Sony came out and said they would not enforce content protection for the first couple of years and allow 1080i through component.

Sony said no such thing. The Image Constraint Token (ICT) [wikipedia.org] is an anti-feature of AACS, the copy-prevention system for BOTH HD-DVD and BLU-RAY. It wasn't Sony that said ICT would not be enabled, it was HOLLYWOOD as the MPAA that said they would not set the ICT bit on any AACS releases for either format. It had nothing to do with competition between BLU-RAY and HD-DVD and everything to do with not pissing off the early adopters who are the target market for any HD products.

There are numerous Blu-ray burners/drives for PCs and macs out right now. Where are the HD-DVD burners for macs? Where are the consumer level HD-DVD burners for PCs?

Considering that you can't buy one for much under $500 and the blank media is at least $15 a disc, the question is moot, even for most of the early adopters.

I'm not into anime or that sick tentacle porn so I could care less about movies from other regions.

Are you fucking kidding me? Do you really believe that the rest of the world has no cinema of note beyond anime and hentai?

Anyone holding such a ridiculous opinion has no business discussing any aspect of cinema, you are just too ignorant to have any insight whatsoever. Which is probably why your claim about the ICT was total bunk too.

Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR

[alphamugwump]

Get with the picture. The only real difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is the frequency of the laser, and thus, the density of the bits on the disk. AFAIK the encryption for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are just different enough to be incompatible. They were both "broken" pretty much simultaneously. However, all AACSLA has to do to "close" the hole is to change their keys, leading to a new cycle of cat-and mouse. AACS is no more broken than RSA; they just lost their key.

Blu-Ray has some extra stuff like BD+, which allows the player execute arbitrary code to search for debuggers, patch the player, install rootkits, and so on. Blu-Ray also has something called ROM Watermarking. However, I gather that these thing are just another annoyance, and not a serious problem.

No, as someone else said, this is probably political. Disney is associated with Jobs Who is associated with Apple, and Apple backs Blu-Ray. Their just digging their trenches deeper.

Do you support crap or crap?

[iamacat]

Ok, CDs and DVDs were not specifically designed for use in computers or anything besides standalone players. But what is the excuse for products introduced in 21 century? Where is support for building a library on a hard drive of a computer or DVR? Where are the computer drives that can play and record movies for a reasonable price? Where are the on-demand/online services to deliver an equivalent-quality movie over the wire? Both formats should go the way of Sony's minidisc and memory stick ATRAC players as consumers revolt and find other forms of entertainment.

Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR

[LordVader717]

Just to nitpick: The laser frequency is the same, a blue 405 nm wavelength.

Re:Disney's largest shareholder....

[Threni]

All this stuff is about money, not principles. You shouldn't expect the suits to understand how stuff works (encryption, laser frequency etc) - just about whether or not this will make more money than that. If Disney turns something down, and later a better offer is made, there's no concept of loss of face, just the possibility of reduced profits.

Re:Whatever...

[TheRaven64]

150Mb/s is a bit more than you'd need, considering that BluRay and HD-DVD have a maximum throughput (for video) of about 30Mb/s. DVD is about 10Mb/s. Considering the rate at which network bandwidth is increasing, I expect the average home Internet connection to be faster than either of the 'next generation' formats by the time they have widespread deployment. Even mobile services are likely to be offering far more than that kind of speed within a decade.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Poll

[Dogtanian]

This poll is flawed anyway, because it's not absolutely clear that clicking on one automatically casts a vote. I clicked both to see what they were about, and discovered that I'd already "voted" for HD-DVD. FWIW, I don't know either way, so I wouldn't have voted at all.

Re:Doesn't mention the little problem of broken DR

[Anonymous Coward]

A 2-disc game fits into the same size box as a 1-disc game, packaging costs don't increase at all. As for pressing a second disc, pressed DVDs in bulk cost a couple of cents each. Shipping a multi-disc game has next-to-no extra costs for a developer, except for having to make enough stuff to fill them and possible problems with free-roaming level structures (e.g. swapping discs each time you entered a different area in GTA would suck).

Re:HD-DVD's are better for consumers

[aristotle-dude]

HD-DVD is supported by MSFT.

Is that supposed to be a bad thing for HD DVD? Blu-ray is supported by SONY (root kits, UMD, Memory Stick, ATRAC).

Like them or not, Microsoft (with their power) can have a large influence in HD DVD's favor. Other big backers of HD DVD include:

• Intel
• Toshiba
• NEC

Big backers on Sony/Blu-ray's side include:

• Dell
• Apple
• Panasonic

Every other significant company supports BOTH formats (for now) or are waiting for a winner. These include HP, Samsung, LG, Sanyo, Hitachi, et al.

Yes, MSFT is a bad thing. They have been quite anti-consumer lately. There is no fair use support in Playsforsure DRM, MSFT implemented the protected media path which disables features on consumer's PC components. MSFT DRM is tied to WMP and windows. MSFT's CEO is a vocal supporter of DRM and has stated that he will only allow his children to listen to music DRM'ed as Playsforsure or Zune's marketplace DRM. MSFT's Vista operating system is one big rootkit/DRM which prevents you, the consumer, from using your own hardware to it's full potential. Cancel or Allow?

I think you forgot a few Blu-Ray supporters:
http://www.blu-ray.com/players/ [blu-ray.com]
http://www.blu-ray.com/drives/ [blu-ray.com]
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_information/Sec tion-14009/Index.html [blu-raydisc.com]