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Author Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray? Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-25-2007 08:29 AM                     An interesting article on the HD-DVD vs. Blew Ray war... just as I imagined it with Sony Loosing.... Link Sales of next-gen DVD players still stalled Report: War between Blu-ray and HD DVD to run another 18 months Paramount chooses HD DVD over Blu-ray Aug. 20: The studio's decision is the latest move in the high-definition DVD format war. "On the Money's" Julia Boorstin reports. Price pressure to intensify HD fight NEW YORK - Sales of next-generation DVD players are not seen as likely to take off for another 18 months as consumers are still waiting for prices to fall and for the battle over two competing technologies to be resolved. Referring to the high-definition DVD format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, Forrester Research said in a report on Monday that while the two camps have "been fighting what seems to be a war of attrition for consumers' hearts and minds," few consumers are warming to either type of device. Sony Corp. backs the Blu-ray standard against Toshiba Corp's HD DVD. Hollywood and electronics manufacturers hope new high-definition DVDs, with better picture quality and more capacity, will revive the slowing $24 billion home DVD market. But the format war has curbed adoption in a way reminiscent of the Betamax-VHS videotape format battle of the early 1980s, experts say. Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder stood behind his company's view that Blu-ray would eventually win out over HD DVD, but he said the Blu-ray camp needs to cut prices. A stand alone Blu-ray player sells for about $500, while HD DVD players cost about $400, and prices are expected to drop further as the holiday shopping season nears. Gownder said Blu-ray's content advantages are somewhat diminished since the recent decision by Viacom's Paramount studio to commit exclusively to HD DVD. HD DVD hardware prices have also dropped into consumers' preferred price range, he said. "Weakened by these developments, Blu-ray needs to offer a viable hardware model at the $250 price point by Christmas 2007," he said in the report. "The Blu-ray camp must also stave off further studio defections, and employ more aggressive promotional tactics to counter HD DVD's recent momentum." Forrester said typical owners of high-definition televisions are not willing to pay more than $200 on average for a new HD DVD or Blu-ray player. "Failure to alter strategy would open up Blu-ray to a possible upset defeat at the hands of HD DVD," Gownder said.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 09-25-2007 11:57 AM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen just as I imagined it with Sony Loosing.... Ahem, that's a matter of interpretation. It's obvious you are really hoping with great gusto for Sony to lose. Just why, I don't know. Are you going to be badly disappointed when the whole thing just ends in a typical format stalemate? HD-DVD has really gained little other than make the situation even more stalemated than it was before. The fact remains that as long as numerous studios are backing Blu-Ray exclusively it isn't going to die off like the HD-DVD people are wishing. If Disney and Fox were to suddenly jump to HD-DVD exclusively then I would be ready to crown HD-DVD as the "winner," but I am not going to give HD-DVD that at all until a significant defection like that happens. As to the playback hardware itself, a bunch of it is SHIT. When anyone digs into any of the specifications on these players lots of little compromises are exposed, such as nasty limitations on output quality due to an ever wavering HDMI standard that cannot seem to get its shit straight. Lots of people remember just how glitch-infected the first couple or so generations of DVD players were a decade ago. Many have had to change out DVD players for new ones due to poor build quality. Prices are a little high, even for the cheapest HD-DVD hardware, for that kind of short product life to be tolerated. Apparently this little point seems lost on many of the idiot suits making the decisions in this so called "format war." As it stands, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray hardware have playback issues and price issues that need to be corrected before the general public is going to embrace either format. And then there's the other issue that many people think regular DVD is good enough for their purposes. Maybe I need to yell it so the people in the back row can hear me. But stating it clearly, neither of those formats is going anywhere until dual format HD disc players are common. When it comes to digital media storage/playback formats, there just isn't any such thing at all anymore as one format winning out. Everywhere you look you find multiple standards. Unlike the VHS/Beta situation, it is very feasible to have one single player be able to handle both formats. The sooner Hollywood and various other greedy parties stop dicking around and agree to let those two formats coexist (for now) the sooner they'll be racking in lots and lots of cash from people updating their movie libraries. If they want to keep playing the infantile zero sum games, they can keep on whining about HD-movie format revenue coming in at a trickle.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-25-2007 02:52 PM                     All it would really take for Blew Ray to be snuffed is another major studio siding exclusively with HD-DVD. I don't see things like Blockbuster siding with Blew Ray as helping it along at all... Stop to consider that Amazon ships more DVD's each day then Blockbuster rents!! Folks that rent don't typically frequent places like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Prices on Blew Ray players need to reach the low 200.00 mark before it'll ever be sucessful. Toshiba's already close to that price and has been for close to a year. And yes... Absolutely... I hate Sony... they're probably the worst electronics company I've ever had to deal with... over the last 30 years in multiple areas of electronics. The SDDS debacle is just the tip of the iceberg. Mark  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 09-25-2007 06:29 PM                     There's lots of anecdotal evidence anyone can bring up to support either side of the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray debate. A lot of people are jumping on this Paramount thing, but meanwhile Target is doubling the amount of store space for BD discs while not increasing space for HD-DVD. I don't think that's necessarily a vote for the Blu-Ray format as much as it is in acknowledging the fact Disney sells a huge amount of product. Another point worth mentioning: Sony isn't the only company making Blu-Ray-based players. Thank God for that. My first DVD player (a Sony unit) turned out to be a piece of garbage. The Pioneer player I bought next turned out to be much better. I see these disc format differences in the same light as that of DVD-R versus DVD+R. I remember heated debates over those formats. Now just about every DVD burner supports both. I suspect the same thing is going to happen with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray when all these sales people finally get tired and stop arguing with each other. Both sides of the argument are hopelessly entrenched. Neither format is in any position to do in the other. It would have taken one of the two arriving in the marketplace years ahead of the other for any chance of that happening. Since it is already perfectly feasible to have a single player support both formats its obvious the electronics companies just need to swallow their pride, pay the extra licensing fees and get the dual format players built right so they can allow the next home video gold rush to happen.  |  IP: Logged Blaine Young Master Film Handler Posts: 477 From: Kirkland, WA, USA Registered: Sep 2006 posted 09-26-2007 03:47 PM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen Ah humm, That was actually Bobby that said "no one watches the extra stuff".... not me. I usually watch through it or watch what I want of it. Of course when HD-DVD goes three layers then Blew Ray will be scratcing it's disk to figure out what to do. The 3rd layer standard for HD-DVD isn't even finalized, and as such will really only give the system slightly more capacity than Blu-Ray already has. It's not going to change the overall configuration and limitiations that the HD-DVD standard has with regards to total datarate available. Of course, by the time that 3-layer HD-DVDs become a reality, the standard for quad-layer 200gb Blu-Ray discs will have already been finalized and I guess that will have HD-DVD scratching it's disks.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 09-26-2007 04:09 PM                     I'm skeptical of the feasibility of producing and selling three and four layer HD video discs. The error rates on replication go way up when you add more than one layer onto another platter of data. The next problem is player compatibility. Toshiba can brag all it wants about perfecting three layer discs. Sony can brag about four layer discs. And some geeks elsewhere can talk all they want about 10 layer or 100 layer discs. They're coasters and frisbees if they're not compatible with the disc players. And then there's the nasty issue of durability. The situation is bad enough with DVD rental discs. I'd hate for my view of humanity to be confined to the perspective of how rental DVDs are treated, because then I would just think most people are hateful, careless pigs who don't give a damn about what they break. Single and dual layer HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs take the fragility factor to new extremes. Because the data pits are so much smaller now than what is seen on standard DVD-V, the discs are even less forgiving of nicks, scratches, smudges of fingerprint oil, dust and even "laser rot" (where the glue bonding the two data layers breaks down and causes a slightly milky looking separation). The factor of disc fragility could force a number of video stores to not make HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs available to rent and confine them to sell through purposes only. And that would be a big problem for either of those formats. For triple layer, quad layer and higher layer counts on a disc to be truly feasible in the real world marketplace, I think a lot of improvements will have to be made in disc replication, laser technology, error correction in software and protection of the disc's playback surface.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-26-2007 04:24 PM                     I can actually see the multiple layers being used for dual format stuff... not extras. Its might be possible for a HD-DVD layer to be first then a standard DVD layer to be second and lave the laser read through the HD bits. As for capacity its not even an issue with film content if they go multi layers or not. Ther is plenty of capacity for any film out there plus some extras all on one layer. Mark  |  IP: Logged Blaine Young Master Film Handler Posts: 477 From: Kirkland, WA, USA Registered: Sep 2006 posted 09-26-2007 05:17 PM                     Capacity certainly may not seem like a factor, but it has played a part. For example, when Paramount was working on "Blades of Glory", they had this very elaborate extra content thing planned that they had done in both HDI and BDJ. But when it came time to author the disc, they simply were out of room on the HD-DVD system, even at 35gb. So it was decided that that piece would be a BD exclusive. Of course, when Paramount bent over and took it up the whazoo from Toshiba and they terminated the entire BD effort, all work and effort went into the crapper. Perhaps when the 18 month exclusive agreement is over, we'll finally see what they originally intended. Don't misunderstand me - while I may personally prefer BD, I'm certainly not anti-HD-DVD. I've got the Microsoft add-on drive to the X360, so I can enjoy both. And while I'm no fan of some of the BS that Sony has done over the years (let's face it, their LaserDisc replication was the worst ever - and their first BD player didn't even play CDs ???) I think it's total horse shit for Toshiba to be playing their games with the movie studios - and then accusing Sony for doing the same thing. As Bobby said earlier, it's reminiscent of the DVD+R vs DVD-R. Simply jumping on the "whatever the DVD Forum wants" bandwagon is short-sighted in my opinion. And by my way of thinking, they strong-arm their poor decisions with the almighty $$$. From a physical disc standpoint, I like what Sony has done with the hardened surface for BD. I understand it was out of necessity, but HD-DVDs are so soft, that they can be scratched by simply trying to wipe dust off them. [ 09-27-2007, 11:48 AM: Message edited by: Blaine Young ]  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-29-2007 05:25 PM                     Blaine, Again it isn't really going to matter what the extras come to. If they want to release it they will... if they have to drop Joe Blows interview so it'll fot so what. Its the movie that 99.9% of the buyers are really after! I don't base what disks I buy on what extras are there... but sometimes I do watch the extras. Mark  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 09-29-2007 06:50 PM                        Maybe I am naive, but why would any studio agree to release in only one format? How is that an advantage? Surely the MPAA acts enough like a trust on many other issues, why not on this --member studios all get together and decide that it is in their combined best interests NOT to sign exclusivity agreements for either hardware format. They can just hold and continue to release on standard DVD (are we now calling that SDVD?) until they get their way. They can sit it out as long as they have to, given the miniscule penetration of either hi-def formats. The studios are the ones who can really call the shots -- if they don't release product in either hi-def format, both are formats are dead. If they do release in both, then the hardware side can hawk the advantages of their format based solely on it's merits and advantages and the consumer can decide which to buy not on which films are available (all would be in each format) but on how he perceives the features of each. Everyone wins.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-30-2007 08:20 PM                        quote: Frank Angel Maybe I am naive, but why would any studio agree to release in only one format? There are lots of reasons for this, all centered on one thing: $ It cost twice as much to manufacture a dual inventory. On top of that, no stores want to stock multiple formats. Especially when they know they're competing with downloadable, burnable movies (which will be the standard within a few years anyway).  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 09-30-2007 10:55 PM                     This all points further to why a single HD-disc player that can handle both formats would be by far the most practical solution. Warner Bros. has been having problems with their "Total HD" format (which sandwiches HD-DVD and Blu-Ray layers back to back). According to The Digital Bits website, Warner Bros. is backing off the Total HD format and will continue to release certain titles in both Blu Ray and HD-DVD. Subsidiary New Line will also continue to do the same for now. Packaging movies with backward compatibility to DVD doesn't appear to be working all that great either. Universal has been having problems with their HD-DVD/DVD combo disc releases. Knocked Up is one of the latest examples. When it comes to HD formats, it seems likely various studios will just go one way or the other exclusively for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD release. I'm not optimistic all the major studios will unanimously side with one format or the other anytime soon, if ever.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-30-2007 11:02 PM                        I hear that HD-DVD, despite having a really lame name, is really susceptible to scratches. I hear you can take a BluRay and scratch it with a knife, duct tape it to the outside of the space shuttle and remove it when it gets back, and take a belt sander to it and it will be fine. But HD-DVD (despite having a really lame name) scratches if a piece of dust lands on it. Is this an exaggeration?  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 10-01-2007 05:32 AM                        Joe, when have we ever known you to exagerate? I bought this stuff called Lens Doctor Rx. Its a dual solution that you are supposed to put on lenses to remove minute scratches. First solution cleans the surface, second is applied with a swab and it forms a clear coating that fills in the scratches. So, figures I, it should work on DVDs and CDs that are damaged. I got a DVD from Netflex that did that stutter thing and then froze....no amount of coaxing could get it to pass that point, even after I cleaned it. So out comes Lens Dr. Rx. I cleaned it with the solution and applied the coating as per instructions. I am thinking the disc is crapola already, this stuff can't make it any worse. Hmmmm. Where as before it got stuck someplace in the film, now the thing wouldn't even start. The player just kept saying "Loading". Sometimes ideas that seem plausable at first just crash and burn. I have a feeling quadruple layer discs might meet the same fate.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-01-2007 05:14 PM                     Actually both Armor-All and Rain-X work really well on Audio CD's if they get heat damage from being afixed to the outside of the shuttle during re-entry. Coating the disk with one of these will generally at least allow you do make your ah hummm... back up disk that you forgot to make when you bought it. Quite honestly, I haven't had any scratching problems with any of my 30 or so HD-DVD's as of yet... When I get home tonight I'll play frisbee with one of them with our dog Dakota... He'll give it some real break in testing then we can see if it still plays... Mark  |  IP: Logged

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