quote:

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U.S. studio reportedly signs onto Sony-backed standard for next-generation systems.
October 3, 2004: 8:40 AM EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. film studio Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. will support the Blu-ray standard for next-generation optical discs, a Japanese business daily reported Sunday, advancing the cause of Sony Corp. and its partners in a war over the next generation of DVDs.

Backers of two rival DVD formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, are wooing studios to issue movies in their format, in an echo of the VHS-Beta videotape battle of 20 years ago.

The rival formats, both of which use blue lasers to read discs, offer much greater capacity than existing DVDs. This would enable discs to hold higher-definition and longer recordings.

Blu-ray backers say their discs will hold 25 gigabytes of data, five times the capacity of current DVDs.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun said Twentieth Century Fox, the distributor of "Titanic," "Star Wars" and other blockbuster films, would join the Blu-ray Disc Association, which would be launched on Monday.

Obtaining the backing of Hollywood studios and their large film libraries will be key to winning the race to produce the next generation of DVDs.

No one at Sony (SNE: Research, Estimates), Twentieth Centry Fox or its parent, News Corp Ltd. (NWS: Research, Estimates), was available for comment.

The support of Twentieth Century Fox would be another step forward for the Blu-ray camp, whose case was buttressed last month when a group of companies led by Sony bought film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM: Research, Estimates) for $2.85 billion plus debt.

The rival HD DVD camp groups Toshiba Corp., Sanyo Electric Co. and NEC Corp.

Blu-ray's backers include Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., the maker of Panasonic products, and Sharp Corp.

The blue laser light used for both technologies has a shorter wavelength than the red light used in current DVD recorders, so can read and store data at much higher densities.

Twentieth Century Fox was the sixth-largest player in the North American movie market in 2003 with a 8.8 percent market share, Nihon Keizai said, citing figures from the Hollywood Reporter.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 Reuters All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-03-2004, 09:18 PM:
 
So how soon is this stuff going to hit the store shelves?

Mark
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-04-2004, 12:13 AM:
 
Blu-Ray ssupposedly has much more storage capacity than HD-DVD. I want the one with the larger capacity to win. Unfortunately Blu-Ray was invented by Sony which means on paper it looks great and even onscreen, but there will be some HUGE flaw like it compresses the hell out of red and only red (like the DV format, also thought up by Sony) or some such nonsense.

I also hope they don't waste their time trying to come up with anti-piracy stuff, as it WILL be cracked and that is guaranteed. The best way to thwart piracy is to give us the goods at reasonable prices. I still can't believe FOX thinks people want to pirate their HDTV broadcast signals that are free anyway. Some companies are just run by retards with unwiped asses, I guess.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-04-2004, 11:18 AM:
 
As best as I can tell, first-quarter of 2005 for BD, sometime later in 2005 for HD-DVD. Anti-piracy stuff is indeed a continuing issue. BD recorders are already out in Japan. And apparently the new PS3 game console will use BD.
 

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 10-04-2004, 12:23 PM:
 
Does this also mean that physically, the data will be squeezed tigheter onto the same sized disc? So even a small defect or scratch would cause a larger flaw than on current DVDs.

Why not just come out with Blu-Ray Laserdiscs? They could probably hold 2500 GB

=TMP=
 

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Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 10-04-2004, 08:49 PM:
 
I'm against BlueRay currently because it isn't apparently backwards compatible with the standard dvd format.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-04-2004, 09:11 PM:
 
The lack of BluRay having backward compatibility with standard DVD doesn't really bother me. I already have a standard 5-disc DVD player. I still thinking about getting an X-Box, which would be yet another DVD capable machine. Then there's my desktop computer and the laptop PC I'm looking to buy.

Don't get me wrong, it might be nice for BluRay to be compatible with the existing DVD format. However, I would rather BluRay to succeed than HD-DVD. The Time Warner-Toshiba camp has chosen a bitrate as puny as 15MB per second for HD-DVD content. BluRay runs much closer to the D-VHS standard. BluRay also has a lot more storage potential. The dual layer BluRay discs will be standard for HD content. Sony is also talking about improving the format to four layers, with that happening first for computer data content.

I'm not sure who was actually first to do it, but BluRay was the first next-generation disc format I read about that made both Dolby Digital and DTS playback mandatory standards as part of the format. HD-DVD has since announced the same thing.
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 10-04-2004, 11:10 PM:
 

quote:

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The dual layer BluRay discs will be standard for HD content. Sony is also talking about improving the format to four layers, with that happening first for computer data content.

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Try EIGHT.

I'm excited about the new formats. I hope they make some significant improvements to the functionality of the format over DVD too. For example, layer changes should be mandatory aboslutely seamless; menus should be capable of seamless looping, and more randomization effects; etc... It just seems like there's a lot of stuff they could have done with DVDs but they just never had anyone with enough imagination to make sure the proper capabilities were built into the standard.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2004, 12:25 AM:
 
Bobby, do you mean 15Mb per second? Wouldn't 15 megabytes per second would be plenty for HD?
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 10-05-2004, 02:02 PM:
 
I'd like to see menus on discs just disappear, or at least only come up when you want to see a scene index or watch the 'extras'. I'm sick of DVDs that start out like a video game before you can have it start the movie!
 

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Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 10-05-2004, 08:07 PM:
 
To add to Jesse's wish list, NO MORE FOOL SCREEN!!!
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2004, 10:53 PM:
 

quote:

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Bobby, do you mean 15Mb per second? Wouldn't 15 megabytes per second would be plenty for HD?

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quote: Jesse Skeen

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I'd like to see menus on discs just disappear, or at least only come up when you want to see a scene index or watch the 'extras'.

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quote: Joe Redifer

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Word has it now that due to the studios being so god damned paranoid over piracy, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players will not be able to output a HD signal over component. HDMI only. So if your TV does not have HDMI you are screwed. No HD for you.

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quote:

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WMV-9 looks pretty darn good projected on a 3 chip DLP considering how absurdely compressed it is. However you don't want to get too close to the screen!

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quote: Joe Redifer

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Compression should not be used on theatrical presentations in my opinion, and should be used only moderately on Blu-Ray DVD.

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Much of it comes down to the rate sustained data transfer for the playback device. A disc based medium like BluRay would probably not be able to play a mildly compressed HD video stream. I certainly don't expect it to match data transfer rates of HD digital video tape or high speed hard disc systems.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-13-2004, 11:52 PM:
 
Is Phil's definition of temporal artifacting what you meant by the term, John?
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-14-2004, 06:55 PM:
 
I usually notice any "stutter" in the action, not just the "ghosting". Although film can have "motion blur" and "strobing", the action is usually rendered smoothly.
 

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Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 10-15-2004, 10:23 AM:
 
I wonder where It will stop , if it ever will.

As a kid I collected movies on super 8mm , which had progressed from standard 8 , then I went on to collecting on Betamax video , which fell to VHS , I then collected on laser disc which has now fallen to DVD , my collecting reluctantly continues on DVD , while wondering where It will go next, having read this , I now know.

Maybe the studios just like making lots of $$$ out of selling the same movie a thousand times over on many different formats .
 

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Posted by Adam Wilbert (Member # 1184) on 10-15-2004, 01:37 PM:
 
... or maybe technology helps the movie look and sound better than it did before. While I won't deny the perk of selling the same essential product over again, if that were the true motivation, there would be a ton of intervening steps, instead of the relatively large technological leaps. Only people who strive for the best presentation possible need to replace their collection.
Phil, if you're really concerned with keeping up with better formats, just jump straight to the end and purchase 35mm prints!
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-15-2004, 05:41 PM:
 
After HDTV there is something called "Ultra-High Definition" or some such nonsense. It offers up to 4000p of resolution. Dead serious.
 

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Posted by Liam Utley (Member # 1931) on 10-19-2004, 07:57 AM:
 
In that case i'll skip buying a BD or HD DVD player and wait another year for the UHD DVD player. I'm one of those suckers that buys superbit DVD's despite my better judgement.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-19-2004, 04:07 PM:
 
Here's another thing which demands that you be careful when buying a HDTV set. According to a news story on CNN's website yesterday, some fellow with a Toshiba brand plasma TV suddenly had a bunch of cops and fireman running into his house looking for someone to rescue. His plasma screen TV was emitting a signal that a satellite picked up and interpreted as a distress signal. The frequency band emitted by the TV set is usually only used by boats. It is a mystery how the TV set was able to put out a signal strong enough that a satellite in orbit could receive it. The TV set owner was ordered to keep the thing turned off or face a $10,000 fine. Toshiba is reportedly replacing the guy's TV with a new model free of charge, sans the distress signal.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-19-2004, 04:50 PM:
 
Ha ha! That would be 406 MHz, the new emergency frequency for planes as well as boats. Those satellites are designed to pick up weak signals on that freq, as in the case of a downed aircraft with broken ELT antennas. All it takes is a couple of passes from any member of that constellation and the emitter can be located to within a few meters. Also, many of the new ELTs transmit last GPS coordinates and aircraft ID when activated (e.g. by a G-switch).

Funny that a TV would put out a spur on that freq, but it's not the first time that sort of thing has happened. In the aviation community we presently have a couple of spurious radiation issues between GPS and existing VHF nav/com gear.

[Edit] Read further on this story on AvWeb. Turns out the spur was on 121.5 MHz, the older soon-to-be-phased-out emergency frequency. And the TV was ultimately pinpointed the old-fashioned way--by a team of USAFA (CAP) volunteers using handheld ELT sniffers. I've gone on quite a few of those ELT hunts myself over the years. Usually it's a real ELT that goes off due to a hard landing or someone tossing a portable one into a closet. The guys were surprised to find that a TV set was the source this time.

[ 10-22-2004, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-20-2004, 09:44 PM:
 
Looks like Toshiba (pushing HD-DVD along with NEC) feels it has a number of studios in its camp. Apparently these studios are set to publicly declare their choice of HD-DVD by the end of this year:

Disney
Time Warner
Universal
Paramount

In the BD camp so far:

MGM
Fox

Toshiba Interview: DVD Format Winner May Be Set This Year

By Kanji Ishibashi
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--The battle over the high-definition successor to the current generation of DVDs is escalating with a winner possibly declared within the year, an executive at Toshiba Corp. (6502.TO) said.

Major Hollywood movie studios are expected to announce by year-end which of the two rival next-generation DVD formats they will support, said Toshiba Corporate Senior Vice President Hisashi Yamada.

"At the moment, Hollywood is leaning toward our side," he told Dow Jones Newswires in a recent interview.

Toshiba and NEC Corp. (6701.TO) are promoting the HD DVD format that they jointly developed. A rival next-generation DVD format called the Blu-ray Disc is being promoted by an international group including Sony Corp. (6758.TO) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (6752.TO).

A Hollywood industry endorsement is seen as a key to winning the race for leadership in the next-generation DVD format.

"Since Time Warner has been our friend for a long time, I have no doubt that they will support us," he said.

The Blu-ray group has Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM) on its side. News Corp.'s (NWS) Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. has also become a board member of the Blu-ray Disc Association.

"I think the rest (of studios) are swinging in favor of our side," said Yamada who is also head of Toshiba's HD DVD development operations.

The other big studios include Walt Disney Co. (DIS) group, Time Warner Inc. (TWX), Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures Corp. (PTP.XX).

If these four studios come to the HD DVD side, "that would effectively mean the end of the game" even before the two sides of different formats roll out their versions of products in late 2005, he said.

After forming ties in the movie, television content production and distribution business, Toshiba took about a 3% stake in Time Warner in 1995. It now holds a 0.1% stake in the U.S. media company.

About 50 Firms Show Interest In Promotion Group

Toshiba has already unveiled specific plans to launch its HD DVD hardware products.

The company said it plans to begin marketing HD DVD players in the U.S. in October-December of 2005 at a retail price of $999, and it expects the HD DVD group to sell 1 million units of HD DVD players worldwide in 2006 lowering the sales price to around $500 that year.

Toshiba also said it plans to launch globally in December 2005 notebook personal computers equipped with HD DVD disc drives at similar prices to its existing high-end PC models.

"We are asking Hollywood to hurry up," as we have showed them this much of our commitment in the business as a hardware maker, Yamada said.

He said he wants Hollywood to commit to the release of HD DVD movie titles as soon as possible, so that Toshiba and others in its group can focus on the hardware business more securely. "Otherwise, it would be hard for hardware makers" to go ahead with parts procurement and other preparations.

And Hollywood seems to acknowledge such a need for urgency because, for one thing, they know it requires sufficient time and close-knit efforts between hardware makers and content holders to protect illegal copying of content in a broadband network environment, he added. "I hope they will announce (their support) by the year-end."

Yamada said he is fairly confident that about 1,000 HD DVD movie titles will become available in 2006.

On the hardware front, he said he isn't worried at all about support of the HD DVD format.

Four Japanese firms - Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo Electric Co. (6764.TO) and Memory-Tech Corp. - plan to create in the spring of 2005 "the HD DVD Promotion Group," a voluntary association, to promote the development and use of HD DVD equipment and content worldwide.

About 50 firms have already agreed to join a preparatory organization for the promotion group, including Canon Inc. (7751.TO), Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. (4902.TO), Taiyo Yuden Co. (6976.TO), Kenwood Corp. (6765.TO) and Hitachi Maxell Ltd. (6810.TO), Toshiba said.

"We are considering bringing forward" the creation of the promotion group and "we want to hold the first meeting as early as within this year," Yamada said.

Five to six electronics makers are expected to introduce HD DVD consumer equipment as early as next year, he said. This means two to three makers, in addition to Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo, are planning to release such equipment.

Currently the biggest benefit for HD DVD discs is a low-cost mass-production technology that its group has established, he said.

Memory-Tech, a maker of music and movie optical discs, said its lines can make both regular DVDs and HD DVD discs, with production switching time of only five minutes. This will enable flexible disc manufacturing.

"If the HD DVD market really takes off, a maker can shift more to HD DVD discs. If not, it can focus on (regular) DVDs," Yamada said.

Memory-Tech said manufacturing costs for HD DVD discs will be 10% to 15% higher than those for current DVDs in 2004-2005. The cost gap will narrow to 5% to 10% in 2006 and will be gone in 2007-2008, according to Memory-Tech's estimates.

A Sony spokesman said production costs for Blu-ray discs will match those for the current DVDs in a mass-production phase, which is expected around 2008.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-20-2004, 10:15 PM:
 
$999? That'll be the death knell for HD-DVD since the Sony PlayStation 3 will have Blu-Ray suport built in for less than $400 late next year.
 

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Posted by Ron Yost (Member # 1850) on 10-20-2004, 10:42 PM:
 
HD = High Dollar. (Actually, it stands for High Density [not Definition] Digital Versatile Disc, according to an article I read on the net somewhere).

I wonder if the HD-DVD's will be $40-50?? Ackk!

Ron Yost
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 11-18-2004, 07:08 PM:
 
And in the PC world, HP just announced that they'll support the Sony Blu Ray (BD) disc format starting with selected desktops and laptops late next year. (Not that I'd buy an HP PC after the lousy experiences we had with them at PanAmSat.) Dell has also announced their decision to go with Blu Ray drives. I imagine several manufacturers will have BD and HD-DVD drives available by mid-year.

On a related note, TDK has announced a coating that renders DVD surfaces unscratchable. Looks like this coating will be a standard feature on Blu Ray discs due to their greater vulnerability to scratch damage.

[ 11-18-2004, 08:33 PM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
 

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Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 11-18-2004, 09:12 PM:
 
All right I am no technical genius or anything so can someone please explain why if the new HD DVD laser is not backward compatable to regular DVDs, why they just can't put two lasers in the things so they will be? Cost can't be the thing since DVD players now a days run about 50 bucks. It would be worth an extra $20 or so to have one player do all instead of having to have two seperate players.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 11-29-2004, 06:04 PM:
 
Toshiba announces Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal, and New Line have all signed up for HD-DVD distribution. So the current tally is:

HD-DVD:
Disney
New Line
Paramount
Time Warner
Universal

BD
Fox
MGM
Sony Pictures (formerly Columbia/Tristar)

Paramount, Time Warner, and Universal were all listed before as probables. Here's the Reuters story:

Toshiba Wins Support for HD-DVD from Four Film Studios
Mon Nov 29, 2004 07:05 AM ET

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Nathan Layne
TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp. said on Monday it had won support for the HD DVD optical disc standard from Warner Bros. Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema, advancing its cause in the battle for the next-generation DVD.

Toshiba, with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., is promoting a next-generation DVD technology called HD DVD, while Sony Corp. and several other giants of the electronics, computer and movie industries are backing a competing standard dubbed Blu-ray.

Support from U.S. film studios is seen as vital in this format battle, just as it was when the VHS standard prevailed over Sony's Betamax two decades ago.

"After extensive research and careful consideration ... we have determined that HD DVD has the highest quality of performance and offers key advantages in the areas of durability and reliability," Warner Bros. said in a statement.

Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema are units of Time Warner Inc., Universal Pictures is a division of General Electric Co., and Paramount Pictures is a unit of Viacom Inc..

They represent about 45 percent of Hollywood's prepackaged DVD sales in the United States, Toshiba said.

Those studios are expected to release movie titles on the HD DVD format in time for the planned launch of HD DVD players in the last quarter of 2005.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray technologies use blue lasers, which have shorter wave length than the red lasers used in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data at the higher densities needed for high-definition movies and television.

At stake is pole position in the $10 billion-a-year DVD player and recorder market, and a PC drive market of similar size. The winner would be able to license its technology, meaning billions of dollars in royalty income is also up for grabs.

Toshiba, Japan's second-largest electronics conglomerate, alone expects its HD DVD-related sales to grow to 300 billion yen ($2.92 billion) by 2010 from an estimated 5 billion yen in 2005.

BATTLE YET TO BE OVER

"We think this carries a great impact," Toshiba Corporate Senior Vice President Yoshihide Fujii told a news conference.

"There is a strong desire in Hollywood for a single format (for next-generation DVD). Support from studios whose DVD sales account for nearly half of the market means, in our view, Hollywood has started moving toward the single format (HD DVD)."

Toshiba, however, said it was too early to declare victory over the Blu-ray camp, whose members include such heavyweights as Dell Inc, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Philips and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., maker of Panasonic brand products.

Blu-ray has the support of Sony Pictures and the tacit backing of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., recently acquired by a Sony-led consortium. It is also counting on Twentieth Century Fox, which recently joined the Blu-ray Disc Association board.

With the same physical structure as current discs, HD DVD allows makers to use much of their existing DVD equipment, keeping fresh investment minimal and curbing manufacturing costs, Toshiba has said.

The Blu-ray firms say their format is better because a single-layer disc can hold about 25 gigabytes, enough to record up to three hours of high-definition TV, versus 20 gigabytes for HD DVDs. Blu-ray says the possibility of even higher capacities in the future would give its technology a longer life span.

Ahead of the announcement, Toshiba shares closed up 1.64 percent at 435 yen, while Sony gained 1.9 percent at 3,760 yen, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electric machinery index, which was up 1.52 percent. ($1=102.63 Yen)

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 01-04-2005, 05:40 PM:
 
Here's an article from the IEEE Spectrum about the new AACS (Advanced Access Content System) encryption that is part of the HD-DVD specification. AACS uses a strong key, the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard approved by the US NIST. Also the AACS system allows for new keys to be used as the old ones are broken. Compromised players would become "obsolete", i.e. they'll be able to play old discs but not any new releases with the newest key. BluRay will use a similar encryption method.

quote:

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DVD Copy Protection: Take 2

The next generation of technology won't have a Hollywood ending

By Tekla S. Perry

In 1999, a 16-year-old Norwegian high school student took on the motion-picture industry and won. The teenager, Jon Johansen, wrote software that decrypted the Content Scrambling System (CSS) that rearranges the bits on prerecorded DVDs to prevent the discs' being played back on unauthorized hardware. Until Johansen wrote his software utility, which he called DeCSS, you could copy the bits from a DVD to your computer hard drive, but because those bits were scrambled, you couldn't play a movie from those copied bits.

Johansen's DeCSS soon reached every corner of the globe, thanks to the Internet, and prompted a host of legal battles. In the end, Norwegian judges ruled his actions legal, but U.S. judges ruled the distribution of the software illegal. Nevertheless, anybody who wants to make a copy of a DVD can now do so easily, much to the dismay of the entertainment industry. It is not clear whether such copying is done legally under copyright law, but no individuals have been prosecuted for making copies for their own use.

With manufacturers about to unveil a new generation of DVD players and discs, moviemakers now see a rare opportunity to get the horse back into the barn and lock the door tight. So, this past July, two entertainment companies joined with six electronics manufacturers and chip makers to announce the creation of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the copy protection scheme designed to keep future generations safe from pirated DVDs. The specification was due by year-end 2004, and products incorporating it are slated to appear by year-end 2005.

Backers of the protection method are betting that AACS technology will finally thwart unauthorized copying of DVDs while allowing consumers to distribute movies legitimately over networks within their homes, play them on a variety of devices (standard televisions, portable movie players, and laptop computers), and store them on home media servers. "We wouldn't be investing our time otherwise," says Michael Ripley, the chairman of the AACS alliance's technical working group.

But critics of the technology say it is bound to fail in achieving its most important objective—blocking wholesale pirating of DVDs—and it may irritate consumers if the promised in-home distribution isn't quickly forthcoming and easy to use. The AACS project "doesn't make very much sense," says Seth Schoen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "The commercial copyright infringers in Southeast Asia that burn billions of counterfeit discs will not be deterred by this."

AACS
GOAL: To develop a specification for copy protection of next-generation DVDs
why it's a loser: It won't deter commercial copyright infringers
ORGANIZATION: AACS License Administrator
NUMBER OF PEOPLE: Not available
BUDGET: Not specified

EFFORTS THAT BRING TOGETHER INDUSTRIES with competing interests are challenging at the least and have often broken down acrimoniously. Witness the failure of the Secure Digital Music Initiative, an attempt to bring watermarking technology to digital music. Also keep in mind the different goals the entertainment and electronics industries certainly have. Movie moguls would prefer to make all copying impossible. You want two copies of a movie? Buy two. By contrast, electronics firms would prefer relatively unrestricted copying, because being able to move videos you already own to new devices (such as media servers or handheld players) helps drive sales of those devices.

"Any of these [electronics and entertainment] consortiums runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight," Michael McGuire, research director of the media team for GartnerG2, in San Jose, Calif., told IEEE Spectrum.

The AACS group was founded by IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Sony, Toshiba, Disney, and Warner Bros. Studios. The alliance is optimistic, says Panasonic representative Richard Doherty. "So far, it's going very well, though discussions are spirited at times," he adds.

"We are confident that AACS technology will be part of the next generation of content on optical media," declares AACS's Ripley, who is a senior staff engineer at Intel Corp., in Santa Clara, Calif.

The key to the spirit of compromise is an agreement that the AACS specification will allow consumers to move the data on an optical disc to the various devices they own, including video servers and portable video players, either directly or via a home network. In all the scenarios developed by the AACS alliance, that data would exist on the disc in encrypted form. It would stay encrypted when transferred to other devices and would be decrypted by those devices. The details of this portability have not been announced, but the technological underpinnings are expected to be included when the first version of the copy protection specification is released.

Once products do ship, potential crackers—including teens in basements, academics, and large-scale pirates—will undoubtedly tackle this new encryption challenge. Some details of the specification were apparently still under discussion as this article went to press, including where on the disc the encryption codes will be physically stored.

But one key parameter has been made public. The CSS encryption in the first generation of DVDs, which Johansen defeated, used a proprietary 40-bit key for encryption. AACS will use a so-called strong key, the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard approved by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

"This removes one of the obviously dumb things from CSS—they were using a cipher that was easy to break," says Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University, in Houston.

Because even strong keys can be compromised, the heart of the new protection technology will be its ability to keep on protecting data even after it has been cracked.

The basic idea in recovering from cracking is to make a compromised player key obsolete. Compromised players could continue to play old discs, but not new releases. And crackers would have to start all over again.

Ripley identifies a technology called media key block as an important element in recovering from cracking. With this system, there are actually two keys—one is on the disc itself, but it doesn't work until it is decoded by a second key installed in each player. Multiple versions of this second key can exist; indeed, it is possible that each player would have a unique key, or that groups of players would share keys. Either way, if one key is compromised in the way that CSS was compromised by Johansen and if that decoding method becomes public, new DVDs could include updated on-disc keys that would cause the compromised player-based key to fail. They would, nevertheless, still work with other, uncompromised player-based keys.

Under this scenario, it seems that additional methods might still be needed, since someone who cracks a key but doesn't broadcast that fact could fly under the radar and be able to continue to copy new releases.

AACS's plan shows that the industry has learned from its embarrassing experience with the Norwegian teenager. But that lesson doesn't solve the whole problem, says Rice University's Wallach. "When you give a secret to a million people, and one of them reverse-engineers it and releases a movie, you might not even be able to identify what key you need to disable," he points out.

GartnerG2's McGuire says he appreciates the industry's need to address cracking, but he also sees the cycle of crack/fix/crack as an endless loop. The motivation to crack high-value content like movies isn't going to go away, he notes, so the overall economic benefit to the industry is not obvious.

"The movie-studio people are thinking that by doing this, they can maybe slow commercial copyright infringers down for two weeks, and that would improve their bottom line," says the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Schoen. "I would be impressed if that is the case. No technical measure ever has been proven to have an effect on these people."

PERHAPS THE BIGGEST QUESTION OF ALL is: Will consumers who have become used to freely copying DVDs for viewing on their hard drives or for sharing with friends accept a new technology that restricts such copying?

"We can understand that the technology companies and movie studios have become attached to the idea of creating proprietary encryption for optical discs, but it doesn't do much good in terms of the stated objective of preventing copyright infringement, and it has a lot of downside for consumers," says Schoen.

He and others say success or failure of the approach may hinge on whether consumers will be able to move videos around a home network and among multiple players right from the outset. If they can, they might be more willing to accept the new technology. "It might lead to a higher level of satisfaction for mainstream consumers," Schoen says. "So there will be less pressure from them for unauthorized products that allow backups. But at this point, the details are a bit sparse."

If they can't, individual consumers will find ways to transfer their content anyway, Wallach says. "It is not a matter of if—it is a matter of when. As long as I have the technology in my living room to watch it for myself, I can modify the system to extract the video. They can make it hard, but they can't make it impossible.

"They are living in a fantasy world," he concludes.

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quote:

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And crackers would have to start all over again.

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quote:

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The "format war" that studios and consumers were hoping would never happen will begin this fall, with the announcement by Warner Bros, Paramount and Universal of their initial offerings on HD-DVD. Many of the titles represent recent blockbusters and classic contemporary films, with special effects films and animation-related films surprisingly high on the list, including high definition bows for Forrest Gump, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, Sleepy Hollow, The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie (all Paramount), Contact, Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone/Chamber Of Secrets/Prisoner Of Azkaban, The Mask, The Matrix Trilogy, Spawn, Troy (from Warners), and Van Helsing, Apollo 13, 12 Monkeys, Dune and Waterworld (Universal).

As a co-developer and chief advocate of the format, Warner Home Video really is throwing themselves behind the launch, with several even-yet-to-open-theatrically titles already lined up for HD-DVD release, including this summer's Batman Begins, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The Dukes of Hazzard and House Of Wax, as well as recent hits Ocean’s Twelve and The Polar Express. For real animated delights, we'll have to see what Disney offers us on the competing Blu-Ray format, developed and being pushed by Sony. DVD File has the full list - sadly we consumers can only stand on the sidelines as the battle begins...

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quote: Mike Olpin

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Point goes to the HD-DVD camp.

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Huh? They are playing for points?

Oh please don't let the inferior HD-DVD win!
 

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 01-09-2005, 11:21 AM:
 

quote:

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with several even-yet-to-open-theatrically titles already lined up for HD-DVD release, including this summer's Batman Begins, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The Dukes of Hazzard and House Of Wax,

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There ya go. They're planning DVD releases BEFORE the films ever hit theaters.

=TMP=
 

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Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-10-2005, 11:28 PM:
 
I guess the good part of the inferior standard winning would be that it'll be easier for Digital Cinema to have a higher quality image than HD-DVD!!!
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 03-26-2005, 02:10 PM:
 
Hmmm. Talk of a technology compromise and merge appears to be in the works.

Sony May Unite Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD

quote:

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Top exec says the two competing formats may come together.

Paul Kallender, IDG News Service
Thursday, March 24, 2005

After more than a year of touting Blu-ray Disc as the best technology to replace DVD for storing high-definition video, a top executive at Sony, one of Blu-ray's major backers, has opened the door to the possibility of unifying the format with its arch rival, HD-DVD.

"Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing and we haven't totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise," Ryoji Chubachi, Sony's president-elect, said at a news conference Thursday in which he discussed the company's performance and future strategy.

The statement may surprise backers of the rival camps, who have assembled consortiums of major electronics companies, disc makers, and Hollywood studios to promote the formats in a battle that echoes one fought a quarter of a century ago between Betamax and VHS.

HD-DVD backers, which include NEC and Toshiba, say HD-DVDs can be produced for about the same price as DVDs and are backward-compatible with DVDs and CDs, making the format more convenient for both consumers and the industry. HD-DVD movie titles, PC drives, and players are all due out by the end of the year.

Sony has steadfastly promoted Blu-ray as a technology that has greater capacity, saying this makes the format more useful because more content can be stored on a disc. The technology also has wider support in the technology industry, although release dates for movie titles have not yet been announced.

Reaching a Compromise

Chubachi's comments mark the second time that a Sony executive has signaled the possibility of a compromise between the two camps. In January, Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president of Sony, said a format war was not in the public interest and that Sony had not ruled out the possibility of uniting the formats.

As Sony's future president, Chubachi's remarks Thursday may carry more weight. Currently head of Sony's electronic components and manufacturing businesses, he will replace Kunitake Ando as Sony president on June 22 following the recent shake-up of Sony's top management. That shake-up saw Kutaragi step down from Sony's board, although he still heads its important gaming business.

Kutaragi also admitted in January that Sony, by supporting its proprietary audio encoding system and not the widely-supported MP3 format, had lost ground to competitors such as Apple Computer in the portable music player market, which Sony had once dominated with the Walkman.

While Sony's technological and engineering base is sound, the company must ensure that its products are aligned with the wants of consumers, Chubachi said. Sony's engineers have traditionally been regarded within the company as heroes and the creators of new markets, but recently their ideas have not always led to products that matched consumers' needs, he said.

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quote:

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Sony, Toshiba to develop common next-generation DVD format
TOKYO — Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp have started talks toward an agreement to jointly develop a new unified standard for next-generation DVDs, after battling three years to push for separate rival standards, company sources said Thursday.

Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co introduced the Blu-ray standard in February 2002, and Toshiba and NEC Corp followed with the HD DVD standard.

The two camps are expected to agree as early as next week to unify their next-generation DVD formats into a common standard to cut costs and benefit consumers. Engineers are negotiating to jointly develop a new format incorporating the strengths of their existing technologies, they said.

They have already talked to Hollywood film producers as DVD title suppliers about the hybrid format, the sources said.

Sony and Toshiba have so far developed and promoted different formats, dividing other Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers into two camps.

Next-generation DVD players use blue lasers to give a shorter wavelength than the red light used for current DVDs and CDs, allowing the storage of the large volume of data necessary to allow DVD quality similar to high-definition television.

The two formats touted by the groups would not have been compatible with one another. A Blu-ray movie disc, for example, would not play on an HD DVD player.

The rivalry would have caused confusion and inconvenience for consumers, similar to the war between VHS and Betamax videocassette formats in the 1980s.

After competing over the past three years, the two camps are now considering a hybrid format, acknowledging that the standards need to be unified to popularize next-generation DVD players and software titles, the sources said.

"In developing the present DVDs, manufacturers unified the standards when it was almost too late," a source said. "It is desirable to have a single standard for next-generation DVDs as well."

Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co introduced the Blu-ray format in February 2002. Toshiba and NEC Corp soon followed with the HD DVD standard.

Both standards are capable of accommodating a movie on a single disc in high-definition format, but their data structures are very different.

The battle between the major Japanese electronics firms has caused a split between consumer electronics makers and movie companies in the United States and other countries. Some electronics firms, including Paris-based Thomson S.A., have said they will support both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats.

Supporters of the Blu-ray technology include Apple Computer Inc, Dell Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Samsung Electronics Co.

Among the Hollywood studios, Walt Disney Co and Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc back the Blu-ray. HD DVD supporters include Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros Studios.

Behind the move to unify the next-generation DVD formats is a fear that the two camps could go down together if personal computers were developed to store massive amounts of data such as television programs and make DVDs meaningless, an industry analyst said.

Hollywood movie companies have apparently requested the Japanese firms to unify the new DVD formats since the existence of two different formats could force their DVD production costs to double, another analyst said.

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-22-2005, 05:37 PM:
 
I'm glad to see Toshiba is actually talking to Sony about this. A few days ago The Digital Bits website reported how Warner Bros. was dragging their feet, issuing a "don't bet it" scoff over a unified format.

Movie studios have not been known, at least lately, for having level-headed thinking. Combine that with the hair-brained nature of American-style business practices. One easily see how a next generation HD-disc format would be screwed up if left in the hands of American "suits" in entertainment companies. Not that I want to cheerlead for foreign companies, but Japanese corporations aren't known for journeymen CEOs, overpaid executives and painfully short-term business plans.

This move on the part of Sony and Toshiba seems to be more sanefully forward looking.
 

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 04-23-2005, 04:47 PM:
 
Warner Brothers, or rather Warren Lieberfarb, is usually credited with the early pioneering of the DVD format. It would suck if there's a format war but hopefully it will all work out in the end.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-23-2005, 05:28 PM:
 
AOL/Time Warner fired Lieberfarb late in 2002. Some think this happened because he was getting so powerful in the organization. Others didn't like how that looked in the management restructuring (with "AOL" getting knocked off the masthead). The last I heard, Lieberfarb was suing over the deal, claiming he was owed back royalties over DVD sales.

Whatever happens with the HD-DVD thing, and Warner trying to hold onto some hopes of exclusivity, Lieberfarb won't be involved in WB's dealings. Perhaps Sony and Toshiba might talk to the guy.
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 05-05-2005, 01:11 PM:
 
Another company has announced another HD DVD format.

New Medium Enterprises, Inc. unveils first full length Bollwood movie "Shabd", In stunning High-Definition, On it's red laser 20GB and 40GB Versatile MultiLayer disc (VMD).

New York, (May 2, 2005)--New Medium Enterprises Inc. today announced it will unveil its highly anticipated pre-industrial VMD (Versatile MultiLayer Disc) , the next generation HD Disc and drive containing 20GB of storage capacity on the current red laser technology platform, before investors and news media in the United States. The HD content will be shown in genuine HD formats (MPEG-2, 1920x1080 interlaced and progressive scan).

The company plans to launch production and sales of 20GB and 40GB discs and drives in the fourth quarter of 2005. The drives will be inherently backward compatible with existing pre-recorded and recordable DVD and CD formats.
New Medium demonstrated and described this revolutionary new technology before significant investment bankers in New York City on May 5th. 2005. VMD was recently demonstrated to enthusiastic groups of industry leaders in several countries and at CeBit in Hanover, Germany where it was hailed and embraced as a breakthrough and compelling solution for cost-effective High-Definition pre-recorded discs and players.

The pre-recorded VMD has four layers on one side for an initial capacity of 20 GB and is entirely based on the current red laser DVD industrial infrastructure. VMD is designed for viewing High-Definition content requiring high storage capacity and high bit rate (up to 40 Mbs), such as full motion pictures sport entertainment and other demanding video content and data. Pre-recoredVMDs are capable of playing next-generation, High Definition movies and other video content, catering to the vast consumer base of owners of HDTV television.

This is from the press release for the event.

New Medium Enterprises Inc.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-05-2005, 02:08 PM:
 
Oooooo! A real contender! Bollywood ownz us all.

40GB is nowhere near enough. The H.26354544534675673465756346564 codec (that just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) that will be used is MUCH less efficient than MPEG2. A trailer for a movie like Batman Begins (which was a little over 2 minutes in length) ends up being about 145MB at 1080p. I dunno. Maybe that's about right what it should be. Nevermind.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 06-13-2005, 12:30 AM:
 
The BD/HD-DVD talks have collapsed. Looks like they'll let us decide. Let the games continue...

quote:

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Sony, Toshiba End DVD Talks

Talks between Japanese electronics giants Sony and Toshiba aimed at reaching an agreement on a unified next-generation disc format have collapsed, says SCE president Ken Kutaragi.

Speaking in a press conference, Kutaragi said: "There's very little chance that the negotiations will go through." This follows Toshiba's announcement last month that it would not agree to a unified format based around the Blu-ray disc.

Kutaragi went on to discuss Sony's decision to adopt Blu-ray for the PS3, claiming that "product planning" had forced the company to make a choice early on.

Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Toshiba's favoured format, use blue lasers rather than red to store data at higher densities. Companies already behind the Blu-ray format include Philips, Apple, Hitachi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung and LG.

HD-DVD supporters include NEC and Sanyo, and more than 80 films from studios such as Paramount, Warner Bros and Universal are slated for release on the format later this year.

Sony had been hoping to avoid a VHS vs. Betamax-style format war by opening talks with Toshiba back in February, but the two companies found it impossible to agree over storage.

Blu-ray discs can hold 50GB of data, while HD-TV discs only store 30GB. But the HD-TV camp argues that this is more than adequate, and that manufacturing costs are lower as the discs can be produced with current-gen machinery - making the format cheaper and therefore more appealing to consumers.

Blu-ray supporters say capacity should take priority over cost of production - adding that although such a large amount of storage might not be essential now, it will be required in the future as high-definition entertainment becomes increasingly popular.

The next generation of DVD players is expected to roll out to the mass market at the end of the year, and it now seems certain that both Blu-ray and HD TV products will be found on the shelves.

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Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 06-13-2005, 07:44 PM:
 
When DVDs came out, they required new equipment to produce them. The equipment used to make CDs could not be used to make DVDs, and since "they" were not going to make fewer CDs in order to make DVDs, it makes sense. DVDs will be made for some time to come, so extra equipment will be needed to produce the new format anyway. So, the corporate "it's going to cost money" whine, just doesn't hold up.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-13-2005, 09:31 PM:
 
Y'know, I would be pretty excited about a new HD disc based format for watching movies -along with buying a "1080p" HDTV with native 1920 X 1080 pixel display.

However, I'm just a little more concerned about other events -such as the price of oil jumping $2 per barrel today. Housing prices are inflating out of control, and Alan Greenspan says there's no housing bubble. GM is laying off 25,000 workers and laying some of the blame on the huge amounts of money they have to spend on health insurance premiums.

I don't know. Some of this stuff makes me think it might be kind of stupid for me to run out and spend several thousand dollars on a cool HD home theater setup. I guess I'm kind of worried about the economy taking a sudden downturn. Several thousand in debt would be kind of a pain to deal with if your level disposable income evaporates down to next to nothing.

I think the electronics companies are strutting around with their competing formats absolutely convinced there's going to be a shit load of business just waiting for them. I don't think that's going to be the case. Record high prices for housing, education, health care and freaking gasoline has a lot of people wierded out. And then consumers just don't like format wars either. Who wants to gamble on one kind of player only to see it get bulldozed by the opposite format?
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-14-2005, 09:05 AM:
 
They better settle on one format...Bobby is absolutely correct...consumers can't stand multiple standards. It also doesn't work out very well for manufacturers...sooner or later, there will just be the one standard and if you lose, you lose big.

Video "on-demand" at HDTV rates might also make a dent in things...why bother storing your own library when you can just select from a massive library?
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-14-2005, 12:26 PM:
 
Video on demand services will eventually take up a huge stake of the video rental business. However, it will be at least a few more years before any workable infrastructure allows that to happen (along with pricing, digital rights management schemes, etc.).

I think video on demand will hit a "must have" point when viewers can hit a button on their remote and view just about any movie ever made instantly. View a new release for $4 or a classic movie for much less. I think such a resource would have to be controlled independently of any single movie studio.

People will still prefer to have their own tangible copy of a film to hold in their hands for a long time to come. It's nice to have the pretty packaging. The downside is a library of DVDs takes up more and more space. A gradual transition will occur over a period of perhaps a decade where viewers will eventually just download the movie and all the extra content they want to see online.

A good example of this transition is what has already taken place in print. Newspapers don't sell as many copies anymore. Same for magazines. More and more people are just hopping onto the Internet to get the same information, and do so at a faster pace. I don't subscribe to any newspapers or magazines anymore partly due to the Internet. The other factor is the space savings. I hate throwing things in the trash that cost me money, such as magazines. But damn. A few years worth a magazines stacked up on a shelf starts grabbing out a greedy footprint of space in your house.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-14-2005, 05:37 PM:
 
I hate video on demand. I hate the idea of paying each time I watch something. What a stupid idea! Worked out REALLY WELL for Divx.

I also hate the idea of subscribing to any kind of television service whatsoever. You are truly a sick individual when you like TV so much that you will actually pay for its programming. People like that should be shot in the face, have their left testicle snipped off, a needle poked into their right one, and then switch out their left eyeball with the previously removed left testicle.
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 06-16-2005, 02:00 AM:
 
That is the coolest statement I've ever heard about cable TV that did not come from me!
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-16-2005, 07:07 PM:
 
Satellite TV is not vital for my survival at all. And my Dish Network service will be the first thing I'll sacrifice if I need to cut costs if hard times arrive.

Still, video on demand has its place. I'm not going to buy a copy of every movie I watch -or just wait for it to show up panned and scanned and all cut up to hell "for free" on broadcast TV. My time is worth more money to me than that.

Lots of movies are just not good enough to buy on DVD. I have a few DVDs in my collection that have not paid for themselves. For a DVD to pay for itself, it should be viewed at least 5 or 6 times. The formula can be lower if you're not single. Basically it is a lot cheaper to pay $2 to $4 (or a lot less) to watch a movie once than pay $15 to $25 for the DVD and have it sit dormant on your shelf after you watched it only once or twice.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-22-2005, 10:37 PM:
 
So rent them on DVD. Or have John Pytlak send you a pirated copy from his vast collection!
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 06-23-2005, 02:31 AM:
 
It looks like the talks to create a unified next-generation DVD format have fallen through, so we'll be treated to Beta Vs. VHS: The Sequel. This'll confuse even more people since they'll both use 5-inch discs that'll fit in any machine, but won't play in all of them. I'll be sitting it out until either one format dies, or if I can be convinced factually that one is superior to the other, or if someone makes a machine that can handle both (still using my Pioneer combo DVD/Laserdisc player right now.)
I've never rented a DVD BTW- I buy and keep all my movies, even the crappy ones.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 07-12-2005, 12:17 PM:
 
The latest HD-DVD salvo from Toshiba: Their players will only put out true HD via HDMI (with Intel's built-in DRM), and not DVI, which the pirates have shown to be too easy to break. The analog outs will be downrezed to 480i only. If you bought an HD display without HDMI inputs and want to use a Toshiba HD-DVD player, you're screwed.

We'll see how the Blu-Ray camp responds to this one.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-12-2005, 04:15 PM:
 
Pirates will be able to crack HDMI. I actually hope they do it. Not because I want to pirate HD material, but because I think that the DRM they are employing is asinine and quite extreme. I hope Toshiba gets AIDS.
 

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Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 07-13-2005, 01:09 PM:
 
Here is some interesting info from tvtechnology on the web:

tvtechnology.com

Toshiba HD DVD Format Details Emerge
As Toshiba's coming HD DVD disk format gets closer to clashing head-on with Sony's incompatible Blu-ray disk, more details are emerging about each of their differences, which are considerable. In various published reports on HD-DVD's specs prior to its expected November rollout in the United States, there already seems to be growing evidence that Hollywood will go the cautious route on both formats, to no one's surprise. For example, less than a hundred titles (mostly motion pictures) reportedly will greet new HD DVD consumers when the new HD players are introduced for the holiday selling season.

Consumers at various demos can readily tell the difference between standard DVD video and the HD kind. (This would be a good thing.) Whether large numbers, however, are ready to chuck their current players for higher-priced HD units--assuming they already have HD sets, to begin with--is a question that will begin to be answered late this year. Although the HD DVD player is backwards-compatible and will accept standard disks (so no one had to toss out their current DVD collection), only HD DVD disks will provide HD quality.

Notably, Toshiba apparently has reported its HD-DVD player will only output HD on its HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) connection. The player also will have a USB interface to allow connecting to computers for additional content and interactive options. HD DVD's content will be based on 1080p, and the HD-DVD disk will come in 3 storage sizes: 15GB, 30GB, and 45GB (single, dual or triple layer).

And there will be a fourth variety which contains a standard SD-DVD version of the featured content on the reverse side of the disk, allowing retailers to sell the same type of disks to all consumers--and encouraging consumers (perhaps unknowingly) to begin building an HD DVD library even before they have all the necessary new equipment.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 07-28-2005, 10:33 PM:
 
Saw this link to cdfreaks come up for discussion over on AoD:

quote:

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HD DVD requires Digital Imprimatur to authorise playback

Posted by Seán Byrne on 25 July 2005 - 00:00 - Source: P2PNET.net

A while back there was a mention that the next generation DVD format, HD DVD will use the sophisticated content protection system AACS. According to the AACS Pre-recorded Video Book Specification, in order for media and players to be AACS compliant, a disc can only be published if it contains a digital imprimatur and players for the media must reject any work that lacks a digital imprimatur. An imprimatur is the latin for "let it be printed", which means that a work cannot be published without first being approved by some central authority.

Every disc that is published must contain an up-to-date list of revoked works and when ever a disc is loaded, the player must update its revocation list and prevent the playback of any disc that contains a revoked digital imprimatur.

If the HD DVD format becomes the main format for movies, the AACS organisation will likely decide on who handles the digital imprimaturs. The AACS organisation is founded by several members from both the HD DVD and Blu-ray sides such as Sony, Toshiba, Microsoft, Disney, Intel and so on. Unfortunately, as there will likely only be one single central organisation reponsible for issuing digital imprimaturs, they may be subject to anticompetitive abuses as this organisation would be reponsible for the authorising of every single HD DVD disc for publishing.

From the AACS Pre-recorded Video Book Specification

quote:

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The technical details are in the AACS Pre-recorded Video Book Specification. The digital imprimatur is called a “content certificate” (see p. 5 for overview), and is created “at a secure facility operated by [the AACS organization]” (p. 8 ). It is forbidden to publish any work without an imprimatur, and player devices are forbidden to play any work that lacks an imprimatur.

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From what I can see, if a HD DVD player is forced to reject HD DVD media that lacks a digital imprimatur, this means that blank media must also contain a digital imprimatur in order for a HD DVD player to allow playback. This likely means that should someone succeed in copying HD DVD movies and illegally resells them, then it is possible revoke all (or at least the majority) of media that the pirate has used. If this is true, this is likely one method the movie industry will use to tackle piracy in the future.

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quote: Paul Mayer

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Their players will only put out true HD via HDMI (with Intel's built-in DRM), and not DVI, which the pirates have shown to be too easy to break.

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quote: Paul Mayer

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We'll see how the Blu-Ray camp responds to this one.

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quote: Stephen Furley

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It's not just a Toshiba thing, this will apply to all makes of equipment.

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Are you implying that somehow Toshiba does not deserve AIDS?
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 08-03-2005, 03:41 PM:
 
Microshaft's Vista (nee Longhorn) will require HDCP-equipped monitors in order to view HD content. I'm sure Apple will follow suit. Linux? Who knows?

Here's the link to CD Freaks:
Monitor with HDCP support required to play HD content in Windows Vista
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-03-2005, 05:19 PM:
 
I'm sure there will be patches that fix this "problem". Why is the industry so paranoid about HD content? I have never been able to get an answer that makes any sort of sense.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-03-2005, 10:37 PM:
 
There's increasing value in keeping old computers alive. This HDMI copy protection HD thing will just be another reason.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 08-09-2005, 10:23 PM:
 
Blu-ray goes with AACS DRM too... and goes HD-DVD one better with BD+ and ROM Mark

Blu-ray Disc Association Adopts AACS, BD+ Renewability, and ROM Mark Technology

quote:

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HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 9, 2005--In a move to protect against illegal copying and large scale piracy while leaving consumers the flexibility to manage and enjoy copies of their legally purchased content, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has adopted the most comprehensive content management system ever employed on an optical disc format.

The Blu-ray content management system includes three primary components: Advanced Access Content System (AACS), "BD+", a Blu-ray-specific enhancement for content protection renewability, and ROM Mark, a measure unique to Blu-ray Disc to guard against mass production piracy or the mass duplication and sale of unauthorized copies of pre-recorded media.

"Content protection is a critical issue for next-generation media distribution," said IDC's Joshua Martin, Associate Research Analyst, Consumer Markets. "Finalizing the content protection scheme is critical for the launch of blue laser optical disc technology, and new protection schemes should allow for increased consumer flexibility while better protecting prerecorded content compared to current DVD technology."

The foundation of the Blu-ray content management system, AACS(1), is a state of the art content management system that is many times more powerful than that used in DVD. Additionally, AACS enables new consumer usage models around network functionality and internet connectivity including managing copies, in an authorized and secure manner.

In addition to AACS, the BDA took a dramatic step in the battle against mass production piracy with the adoption of ROM Mark. ROM Mark, which is unique to Blu-ray Disc, is a new technology designed specifically to thwart large scale, mass production piracy, a problem that experts estimate costs the movie industry alone in excess of $3 billion per year in lost revenue. To combat this, the ROM Mark technology embeds a unique and undetectable identifier in pre-recorded BD-ROM media such as movies, music and games. While invisible to consumers, this ROM Mark can only be mastered with equipment available to licensed BD-ROM manufacturers, essentially preventing unauthorized copies of a disc.

The BDA also adopted "BD+", a Blu-ray Disc specific programmable renewability enhancement that gives content providers an additional means to respond to organized attacks on the security system by allowing dynamic updates of compromised code. With these enhancements, content providers have a number of methods to choose from to combat hacks on Blu-ray players. Moreover, BD+ affects only players that have been attacked, as opposed to those that are vulnerable but haven't been attacked and therefore continue to operate properly.

"The level of unauthorized copying and industrial piracy associated with DVD not only jeopardizes studios and other content creators, but also results in increased costs and limited flexibility for consumers," said Maureen Weber, General Manager, of Hewlett Packard's Optical Storage Solutions. "It is good news for everyone that the BDA has adopted a series of measures that gets it right for the next disc format."

About Blu-ray Disc

Blu-ray Disc is the next-generation optical disc format being developed for high-definition video and high-capacity software applications. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc will hold up to 25 gigabytes of data and a double-layer Blu-ray Disc will hold up to 50 gigabytes of data.

About the Blu-ray Disc Association

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is responsible for promoting and further developing business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc -- the next-generation optical disc for storing high-definition movies, games, photos and other digital content. The BDA has 140 members. Its Board of Directors consists of Apple; Dell Inc.; Hewlett Packard Company; Hitachi, Ltd.; LG Electronics Inc.; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Panasonic (Matsushita Electric); Pioneer Corporation; Royal Philips Electronics; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sharp Corporation; Sony Corporation; TDK Corporation; Thomson; Twentieth Century Fox; and Walt Disney Pictures and Television.

(1) The Blu-ray Disc Association's adoption of AACS is subject to the BDA's approval of the final AACS specifications and license terms and conditions.

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quote:

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The technical details are in the AACS Pre-recorded Video Book Specification. The digital imprimatur is called a “content certificate” (see p. 5 for overview), and is created “at a secure facility operated by [the AACS organization]”

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quote:

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Finalizing the content protection scheme is critical for the launch of blue laser optical disc technology, and new protection schemes should allow for increased consumer flexibility while better protecting prerecorded content compared to current DVD technology."

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quote: Tom's Hardware Guide

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Redmond (WA) - In an exclusive interview with Tom's Hardware Guide, one of Microsoft's lead representatives on the DVD Forum Steering Committee said that decisions regarding whether his company and Intel would back and promote HD DVD as a high-definition video disc standard, were determined only within the last few days. Prior to some critical recent developments and announcements, both companies - which had proclaimed neutrality - may have been ready to back Blu-ray.

"Until now, we viewed ourselves more as a technology provider for both groups," said Jordi Ribas, Microsoft's director of technology strategy for Windows Digital Media, and a key developer of the VC-1 codec currently in use by both HD DVD and Blu-ray. He revealed that Microsoft and Intel had produced a list of what he called "key requirements for the success of next-generation DVD." For several months, while those requirements were being circulated, both companies worked on developing key standards to be implemented by both formats. Ribas said he was directly involved with implementing the VC-1 codec, and also worked jointly with Disney to produce the iHD interactive layer considered by both camps, but eventually adopted only by HD DVD (Disney is a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association.) During that time, Intel and Microsoft both maintained their public neutrality. But very recently, from the two companies' perspective, things started unraveling unexpectedly for Blu-ray.

"Our decision is based mainly on where the formats are today," Ribas said, referring to Microsoft. "A year and a half ago, both format organizations had very similar goals, and to some extent, the story of Blu-ray was actually very powerful. It had higher capacity, it had what we would consider benefits at the time. But then as time went on, and we'd seen what's the reality of both formats today, and what were promises versus what's proven and what's real, that's when we decided to make the decision."

Blu-ray failed the Intel/Microsoft test in six critical areas, Ribas told us, referring to a document listing those areas that a Microsoft spokesperson provided to Tom's Hardware Guide:

First, and perhaps foremost, is the ability for a consumer to make authorized copies of a legally obtained disc, in order to store the content on a hard drive and stream it to devices around the house. Intel particularly wants this capability for its Viiv home entertainment platform, announced last month. "We think it's a great consumer win, and it's a great industry win, to be able to ensure that with good copy protection, you can have so much functionality for the user," Rivas told us. But when recently questioned about its support for these features, Ribas said, although Blu-ray had appeared supportive at one time, its current stance is now uncommitted.

Support for hybrid discs that can be read in both current DVDs and future players, was the second critical element. This would "future-proof" new releases, enabling consumers to buy DVDs that can play in today's players, while also providing high-def content for tomorrow's. "That's something that both promised," said Ribas, "but HD DVD delivered, and Blu-ray has not - and it seems it's nowhere in sight. [Blu-ray has] claimed they have it in the lab, but to go from the lab to mass production is like night and day. There's a lot of effort that needs to happen. So as of now, there's nothing that leads us to believe that that's going to be possible [from Blu-ray] at this point."

Maintaining low production costs is a critical factor, which has been a key HD DVD talking point in light of current revelations about factory upgrade costs for Blu-ray. "For a long time, we actually thought that the Blu-ray Group had the upper hand in costs," Ribas said, mainly because of the involvement in Blu-ray of most of the major Japanese CE manufacturers - Sony, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, and Sharp - as well as Philips. Here is where recent events played a critical role: In a development that was brought to light only this morning, two of the world's leading China-based DVD player production facilities announced their support for HD DVD over Blu-ray. In press statements, these companies cited the relative openness of the DVD Forum compared to the Blu-ray Disc Association. "Now that we see China embracing HD DVD," said Ribas, "we actually see that on the cost side, HD DVD will have an advantage, because the Chinese have been the ones who have lowered the prices, via the competition, for HD DVD players." As much as 75 percent of DVD players sold in America today come from China, he added.

Maintaining low disc replication costs affects the consumer price for media, said Ribas, which would play into any price/performance evaluation. A disc production factory can make minor upgrades to its equipment, he stated, with the result being equipment that can produce both conventional DVD as well as HD DVD. Citing figures circulating this week throughout the industry, Ribas said it would cost as much as $1.7 million per production line to install Blu-ray disc production equipment, and as much as $2.0 million for each new mastering system installed. That's a significant expense, he explained, for a business which only turns over a 10 percent margin.

The surprise entry in Microsoft's and Intel's list of failures is disc storage capacity. On paper, Blu-ray appears to have the advantage. But the two companies looked beneath the paper: Capacity, said Ribas, "used to be the biggest advantage of Blu-ray, and we believed it. We thought, they'll get 50 GByte BD-ROM discs working, but it's not happening, and it's nowhere in sight. There are not even pilots. It's only in the lab that they are building these discs." With regard to demonstrated capacity, he told us, HD DVD-ROM actually leads BD-ROM by a score of 30 GByte to 25 GByte.

The final entry is interactivity standards. Although Microsoft and Disney jointly developed the iHD interactivity layer, based on XML - which is the glue that holds together the "Vista vision" of Microsoft's future Windows platform - and even though Disney is a Blu-ray proponent, the Association chose instead to endorse BDJ, an implementation of Sun-s Java Mobile Edition. Ribas told us that the major studios - either publicly or quietly - are opposed to BDJ, citing its relative complexity and its lack of compelling new features compared to iHD. An optional commentary track for videos, for example, that superimposes the speaker's image on-screen as well as providing audio, is one key iHD feature that BDJ will support only as an option, maybe. "Which means nobody will use it," said Ribas.

"Intel was looking at similar issues," said Ribas, "and [we] realized, 'We are getting very close to getting these things into the market, we have to stop hoping or expecting or believing promises. We have to look at what's real and what's not.' That's where our decision came from."

Ribas told us more about his and his company's expectations for the future of video disc technologies and interactive media in general. Stay in touch with Tom's Hardware Guide for more of our interview this afternoon with Microsoft's Jordi Ribas.

Tom's Hardware Guide has contacted the Blu-ray Disc Association early Tuesday for comment on today's developments. So far, the organization has not responded to our inquiries.

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-28-2005, 04:48 AM:
 
Speculation? The DO support it. Officially.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 09-28-2005, 06:08 AM:
 
Question, when is HD-DVD coming out in the USA and more importantly when the United Kingdom.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-28-2005, 06:27 PM:
 
Considering all the copy protection measures deployed, that will in effect screw most folks who already own a HDTV set, I think a different question has to be asked.

The pertinent question is who will give a fart about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray at all? I don't. Not in the present form of either format. If Hollywood insists on requiring HDMI or HDCP compliant DVI to pass through a HD quality video image, then both HD-DVD and Blu Ray will have little appeal. The vast majority of HDTV sets in the marketplace have no ability to do what Hollywood wants. In essence, all those HD set owners would be better off saving their money and sticking with the DVD players they already own.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-28-2005, 06:46 PM:
 
That's a good question, but even without all of the extra BS, the question still exists. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for most people to upgrade from DVDs. None. The moneymen out there think people will flock to this like they did to DVD. I wish I was stupid so I could make a ton of money.

Oh, and somehow high-bandwidth HD images are far more piratable than SD images. That's why no analog non-HDCP for you!!! You cannot be trusted. Nobody will pirate SD. Ever! Bow to the brilliance of this decision. I still urge people to fight back.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-30-2005, 02:24 AM:
 
Agreed: DVD superseded VHS as CD superseded vinyl because both (i) offered vastly improved functionality to their predecessors, and (ii) were significantly cheaper media to manufacture and distribute, once the initial R & D costs had been recovered through unit sales.

HD-DVD video is neither - it offers the same functions as DVD, but with a higher picture resolution. Not only does it have no additional core functionality, but it'll require two big hardware investments (the player and a compatible display unit) for anyone to get the benefit of it. If you have no interest in watching video images at home which are larger than a 28" telly, I can't see how you would be a potential customer for this technology.

I predict one of two possible outcomes: either HD-DVD will follow a similar path to laserdisc in the 1980s (a niche, speciality product with very expensive hardware and software that is only used by a small minority of enthusiasts), or its introduction will be very gradual. PC manufacturers will start to incorporate the drives into production models as Moore's Law makes it economical to do so, and set top players will be sold that include a facility to down-res the output for a standard NTSC or PAL TV, as well as an HD DVI output. When PAL superseded the 405-line system in Britain, it took 17 years (1968 to 1985) before the number of old sets was so low that the government thought it safe to switch off the 405-line broadcasts. Digital media (i.e. CDs and DVDs) has achieved market saturation a lot quicker so far, but I can't help wondering if with this one, the old model might start to re-emerge.
 

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 09-30-2005, 12:59 PM:
 
If the majority of the public was interested in picture resolution, S-VHS would have been a successful product.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-01-2005, 10:26 AM:
 
Mitchell’

I agree with Mitchell’ it’s down side was the lack of support from the consumer and the film distributors; I was always waiting for S-VHS films to come out with blacker blacks and whiter whites with less video noise?

But what about D-Theatre D-VHS, is this based upon the technical standards that S-VHS was putting on the market, or is it many steps ahead of S-VHS?

Today S-VHS can be picked up for as little as £400.00 when they first came out in the late 1980’s they where around £850.00 there about, the S-VHS tapes where more costly than standard VHS tapes.

So what about D-VHS D-Theatre, with its ability to play six-track Dolby with split-surrounds, how does that work, I mean what does a D-VHS D-Theatre, VCR look like from the outside and inside?

The heads on the deck must have had some major alterations to make this all doable, I remember hearing around 1992 when Dolby digital the affordable costly approach and solution to 70mm film cost, was rising huge questions, is it possible to put Dolby digital onto VHS, the answer was yes, but a lot of modifications would have to done to achieve this standard.

Not soon after all this Laserdisc was offering six-track Dolby with split-surrounds, to rave reviews everywhere, and then came DTS, and the rest is history.

I would never thought this possible, and thinking the exclusive six-track Dolby format would stay I the cinema with big films like “STAR TREK 6” which was the last 70mm film I saw in Lucasfilm THX sound system theatre, and Last Action Hero in a regular 70mm theatre.

Behold DVD, with classic films six tack films, lighter than a 70mm print and easy to access any part of the film, with bright colours far less video noise, blacks are blacker and whites are whiter too, it’s taken years to reach to this technical high achievement.

HD-DVD now does this mean the video line resolution is going to be greater over standard DVD with higher blacks and whites, and total robust colours that would make “David Lean” say yes now that looks far better, over what as gone before.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-01-2005, 02:04 PM:
 
D-VHS is HDTV. If it's not a dead format yet, it will be very, very soon. It has lots of reported problems. Plus, tapes suck anyway. I don't recommend storing anything on tapes. They degrade over time, even if you store them properly. Discs can be duped easily. I have HDTV but decided to pass on D-VHS because I could see the lack of long-life potential with the product, plus the fact that hardly anyone supports it. I know one guy on the entire planet with a D-VHS and he doesn't even have HDTV.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-03-2005, 06:26 PM:
 
My parents have a D-VHS player and a huge Mitsubishi HDTV set. The D-VHS movies do look very good. They have "Fight Club" both on DVD and D-VHS. The D-VHS version has a much more highly detailed image. However, the problems described of D-VHS are very real and will indeed kill the format. Not enough movies and not enough retailers stocking the few available are the biggest problems.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have their own big problems as well.

Intel and Microsoft are now thrusting a lot of support behind HD-DVD and spinning a lot of misinformation about Blu-Ray in the process. The thing I don't understand is why Microsoft and Intel even give a damn about the format. With Hollywood lawyers severely crippling the functions of the disc, what good will it be to average computer users?

The latest wrinkle in the brewing format war appeared yesterday. Paramount announced it will support the Blu-Ray format. Conflicting statements on DVD File and The Digital Bits websites don't make it clear if Paramount is removing support for HD-DVD. Why is Paramount suddenly changing its tune about Blu-Ray? It has to do with the extra, anti-customer features Sony is promising in the players. Blu-Ray seems to have an even tougher level of copy protection that may take the average script kiddie another minute or two to break.

I think Paramount apparently likes the idea of a movie player that has to be connected to the Internet so it can phone the studio to verify the authenticity of a disc being played. If the disc is pirated, the studio can lock down the machine. But really the whole thing is about pulling up customer data, compiling viewing habits and then having a lot of push-marketing bullshit invade your movie watching experience. Watch a certain movie and then get a bunch of spam and telemarketing phone calls for products placed in the movie you watched!

I don't think most people realize it yet. When the "Big Brother is Watching You" spectre comes true, it won't be coming from your government. It will get pushed on us by big business. These copy controlled Internet connected movie players are just one of many possible examples to develop.

There is some speculation Universal Studios will announce support for Blu-Ray. It is even possible Warner Bros, the most ardent backer of HD-DVD, may make a Blu-Ray support announcement.

Honestly, all those guys can issue out lots and lots of press releases and spout pidgeon-tech sales droid half truths. But that still doesn't guarantee many people will buy it.

My feeling is once Blu-Ray gets launched it will receive a very cool reception. A few early adopters will grab up the players. But sales levels won't snowball the way they did with DVD. It will take at least 2 to 5 years and a number of more customer friendly compromises in the player designs before people will start buying them in earnest.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-04-2005, 02:11 AM:
 

quote: Bobby Henderson

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I think Paramount apparently likes the idea of a movie player that has to be connected to the Internet so it can phone the studio to verify the authenticity of a disc being played.

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quote: Leo Enticknap

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Has Sony forgotten that restrictive product licensing was effectively what killed Betamax?

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quote: David Stambaugh

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Do you mean Sony's refusal to grant licenses to competing companies to manufacture Beta machines?

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quote: David Stambaugh

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But if I remember correctly, the VHS format had longer recording time going for it as well.

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Initially, but that was also piracy paranoia. Betamax was aggressively marketed as a timeshifting device from day 1, whereas VHS was primarily marketed as a means for watching rented films. A lot of the first generation of VHS models were playback-only machines which didn't have a tuner in them, but the tapes ran for three hours; whereas to start with, Betamax tapes were limited to an hour in length in order to quell Hollywood fears that the system would be used by consumers to record and permanently keep off air film broadcasts. When it became clear that the concept of a VCR which could be used for timeshifting or watching rental movies but not both was limiting sales (just as the lack of a recording facility limited laserdisc sales throughout the format's supported lifetime), VHS machines began to incorporate a record facility and tuner, while Sony licensed the manufacture of three-hour Betamax cassettes.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2005, 10:37 PM:
 
Since women in prison genre movies rock, do you think I can get hold of a copy of "Chained Heat" on Beta? Sybil Danning had such titanic knockers! Awwww, man! That brings back some early teen age memories of hijacking a Showtime signal!

I'd really flip out and laugh if that one showed up on Blu-Ray Disc.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2005, 11:32 PM:
 
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be the Super VHS and LaserDisc of this generation.
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 10-06-2005, 01:11 PM:
 
I have Chained Heat on CED Videodisc (And there's a Chained Heat 2 coming out on DVD soon but doesn't seem to have anyone from the original in it.)
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-10-2005, 02:19 PM:
 
Jess, burn that CED to a DVD....FAST.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-11-2005, 02:42 PM:
 
I always thought DVD was going to be a “Dead Video Disc” looks like it’s doing well though the cost of the DVD players around 10 years ago was an arm & a leg I mean bread dosh, now the DVD players cost less than the Star trek TV box set £39.00 at “ASDA” if you all get my meaning….

So come on HD-DVD, oh yeah is this a backward compatible format, you see I don’t what to buy something like HD-DVD if it can’t play DVD’s as well….

Still think they should add a newer sound format to it like SDDS….

 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-22-2005, 12:04 AM:
 
Another one for the Blu-ray camp:

Warner Bros joins Blu-ray Disc Association

And the DVD Forum has published their technical requirements and guidelines for HD-DVD (pdf document):

HD-DVD Video Product Requirements & Guidelines
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-22-2005, 01:37 AM:
 
Blu-Ray is looking more and more like a winning format -in the eyes of Hollywood studio chiefs. But I think that's about it.

Hewlett Packard was ready to endorse Blu-Ray disc drives for computers it will market in 2006, but had a reversal of opinion based on the extreme restrictions in how the format can be used. They're now looking more closely at HD-DVD, which doesn't have quite as restrictive scheme.

Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, gave a speech this week stating that he didn't like either format. They won't be easy for customers to use. He also predicts they will not last long in the marketplace. Gates says within a few years most people will just download the movies they want to buy or just watch video on demand via IP. That may work if most broadband speeds are well over the 30Mb/s mark by the decade's end. My current DSL connection maxes out at 3Mb/s. Got a ways to go.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-29-2005, 01:08 AM:
 
Here's yet another news item to show many of the people working on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are idiots:

Link to Article

quote:

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Most Monitors Won't Play New HD Video

Vista's content protection will block or blur high-def movies on today's displays.

Scott Spanbauer
From the November 2005 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Tuesday, October 04, 2005

If you dropped a bundle on a high-end computer display or HDTV, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise when you slip your new high-definition DVD of Star Wars: Episode III into your Windows Vista PC. Vista, the next version of Windows that's slated to appear in about a year, will feature a new systemwide content protection scheme called PVP-OPM (see box below). If your monitor doesn't work with PVP-OPM, all you'll likely see is either a fuzzy rendition of your high-def flick or Hollywood's version of the Blue Screen of Death--a message warning you that the display has been 'revoked'.

High-Def Hard-Liners

Forthcoming Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs promise higher resolution than a standard DVD's 480-line maximum. But to protect its high-quality content from pirating, the film industry, along with disc and hardware makers, has created an umbrella content protection scheme known as AACS. If Windows is to play the new discs, Microsoft has little choice but to support AACS, which is where PVP-OPM comes in. According to Microsoft, PVP-OPM will prevent pirates from attaching recording devices directly to the PC graphics card's DVI or HDMI video outputs in order to capture a pristine digital copy of the disc's otherwise encrypted content. A related component, PVP-UAB, will prevent savvy computer owners from installing data capture cards in order to grab high-def movies straight off the PCI Express bus.

Unfortunately, PVP-OPM will also shut out plenty of law-abiding video watchers whose current displays aren't future-proof. To comply with the film industry's protection scheme, PVP-OPM employs HDCP technology to determine whether graphics boards and displays are allowed to output and display high-def video. If HDCP sees a blocked display (such as a video capture device) or one that does not support HDCP (including any HDTV with only analog connectors), it prevents output or reduces the video resolution until the offending display or protected content is removed from the system.

Costly Upgrades

If that scenario sounds disturbing, it gets worse: Few existing wide-screen desktop displays support HDCP. If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of current wide-screen desktop display owners, you can probably forget about viewing Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs on your nearly new (and far from cheap) monitor. To watch high-def content, you'll likely have to upgrade your monitor. A handful of HDCP-compliant displays from NEC, Samsung, Sony, and ViewSonic are just starting to appear, according to market research firm iSuppli. And manufacturers such as Dell have plans to incorporate HDCP support into future wide-screen displays, though details are scarce.

Think you could avoid this expense by sticking with XP? No such luck. To see HD, you'll have to upgrade to Windows Vista as well; Windows XP's security and driver models lack the ability to support HDCP. Consumers intent on viewing HD discs via their PCs will have little choice but to spring for the new operating system in addition to an HDCP-compliant monitor.

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quote: Joe Redifer

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Real smart. I wish I worked in that industry so I could be a dumbass.

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quote: David Stambaugh

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Regular old HDTV doesn't work right half the time. I was watching "Surface" in HD a couple weeks ago and the picture was very pixelated and loaded with motion artifacts. I emailed the station's chief engineer and his reply was "Oh yeah we had a new technician on duty that night and he screwed up. It'll be right next week." The next week, the broadcast started out in HD then about 5 minutes into it it switched to up-rez'd SD.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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Let's see. The economic picture is not so rosy. Gas prices have everyone pissed off. Interest rates are rising. Home values are leveling off in many markets.

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Don't forget rising heating bills, going up by over a 3rd for NO REASON AT ALL. They are charging more just because they can. My anus feels so tender.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-29-2005, 07:17 PM:
 
Software for HDTV the newer HD-DVD will be a great format?

How much does a HDTV cost and do they do HD-video projectors and the cost of them as well?
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-29-2005, 07:48 PM:
 
They cost between 1,000 and 2,000 lbs.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-29-2005, 07:55 PM:
 
$2.000 quid hay, that’s cheep…
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-29-2005, 07:58 PM:
 
Since we were playing around with "official artwork" of surround sound format logos in the Episode III thread, I thought I would post the newest Dolby brand marks in this thread since Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD were mentioned.



Kinda wierd how Dolby went with the heavier weight of Eurostile on the "Dolby" letters, as well as making them arguably too big for the box around the letters. Seems kinda crowded. It's their artwork though. I made a 15% black background behind the logos, just to be an asshole to others looking to reuse them. "Dammit, Bobby, couldn't you use a White background!? Now I have more work to do!"

Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD both look very promising. However, the Dolby True HD lossless format seems like a replacement for Meridian Lossless Packing. Dolby removed most, if not all, of the documentation they had about MLP from their website. That's why I think it seems like a replacement for MLP.

It's just too bad Hollywood studio execs and lawyers are hamstringing the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats so badly. Much of the public may forego seeing just how well Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD perform.

BTW, I thought I would throw in that Dolby Digital Cinema logo as well. It seems kind of appropriate with how Disney is serving up a lot of brand confusion with its "Disney Digital 3D" hype. On top of that, aren't most (or all) of these setups Texas Instruments DLP installations? Shouldn't TI be out there making demands the DLP logo be used?

And some thought the alphabet soup of logo formats for movie posters and credits would be simplified with digital cinema (as a barb toward the three digital surround formats for mainstream film release prints).
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-29-2005, 08:07 PM:
 
Bobby’

You designed those logos by yourself, they look great nice what tools on the pc did you use to cerate this, I did an art and graphic design course around 17 years ago, like to have a try at it on the pc.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-29-2005, 08:54 PM:
 
I didn't design those logos. I merely worked with their logos within Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create the GIF you now see in this thread. Any competent graphic artist could do that.

The Dolby brand mark goes back 40 years. These new logos Dolby developed are simply spin offs from that theme. Lucky for Dolby, the "Double D" brand mark is one of the most recognized logos in the world.

The only thing I can take any credit on concerning Dolby branding is perhaps lighting a fire under Dolby back in the early 1990s with regards to the company's logo use. My complaint letter in Widescreen Review, "Ads That Confuse" was a factor in getting Dolby to dump the "tri" logo they were using. It combined the Spectral Recording and Digital formats into an all purpose kind of logo, complete with a "verify theatre format" tagline. Dolby did a bunch of market research. They even found the long used "Dolby Stereo" term caused some confusion. People think of stereo as simply 2-channel sound. In 1995 Dolby changed to the logo model still in use today (with some minor changes in type).

That "Ads That Confuse" letter also delivered some criticism toward DTS and SDDS as well. Both companies adjusted their brand identity programs.

On actual design work for surround sound companies, I did provide DTS with some design ideas to use in creating the DTS-ES logo. The logo's final design is a bit different though.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-29-2005, 09:17 PM:
 
Bobby’
Adobe Photoshop! I’m sure I have that how to use it effectively is another question, also have Lexmark Photoshop as well, which came with my new printer Lexmark Z815.

I’d like to use these features, but to what degree, creating some images or poster work, any ideas where to start in the digital realm?
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-29-2005, 10:07 PM:
 
Lexmark Photoshop?

That would be a pretty big trademark violation against Adobe Systems, Inc. Perhaps you mean "Lexmark Imaging Studio?"

Lots of people have Adobe Photoshop. Few have it legally and few know how to use it well. I think a great deal of people download it and other warez apps just to collect them. It's kind of like people who buy other items like expensive electric guitars and then do nothing with them. Just something to admire I guess.

Photoshop is a great application, but it is not an all purpose tool for graphics work. For instance, it annoys the living hell out of me when people design logos in Photoshop. You're supposed to do that kind of work in a vector-drawing program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Want to publish something, such as a brochure, newspaper or quarterly report? You grab your photos and other bitmap images from Photoshop, logos and other vector graphics work from Illustrator and then assemble it all together in a page layout program like Adobe InDesign or Quark Xpress.

Most graphics jobs, be it something in print, web design, video, etc., require the use of multiple applications. There will never be a single application that "does it all." Nor should there ever be. Stronger applications specialize in a core area. Photoshop does just that regarding bitmap images.

Nonetheless, you've gotta put your brain to work on some creative thinking and do some old fashioned doodling "in analog" on paper before you jump in front of the computer. It sucks to design blind starting out from a blank white page on a computer screen. You're going to be faster and more productive if you have a plan.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-30-2005, 01:18 AM:
 
Man... in a few years Dolby's logo will look like this fabrication I made in Lexmark Photoshop:



Or better yet:


 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-30-2005, 01:17 AM:
 
Oh man, the bottom one....OMG...it's....ARIAL!!! The horror! The horror! Halloween came a day early! The horror!
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-30-2005, 07:13 AM:
 
Bobby’

Afternoon and Happy Halloween, to all the spooky Film-tech what a creepy place this is……

Don’t you mean, “The Nightmare before Halloween” LOL yeah like to know how to use the “Adobe Photoshop” 2.0 tried doing some paste-up work on it early this with a Psycho 98 image captured from the film on DVD, but I must have missed a step in the process and every time I go into it, to retrieve the image keep getting (?) now then.

Working with the Windows cut and paste seems just but I’m its got limitations, and page layout can you do anything that’s round, squares is all it has?
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-30-2005, 12:56 PM:
 
So Bobby, just what is it with this fascination with Arial you have?
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-30-2005, 03:43 PM:
 
Arial is evil. Many hate Helvetica. But Arial is a more ugly Helvetica knock-off. Its tyranny on Windows computers is horrific. For anyone who cares, here's a good article about it:
The Scourge of Arial

Andy? Photoshop 2.0?

Considering that version was released in June of 1991, you would have to be running something like an old Mac with a 030 or 040 processor. Windows and Mac PowerPC support didn't come along until Photoshop 2.5.

Here's my Photoshop 2.5 box, an April 1993 release:

Yes, the installer is on just four floppy discs. The full installation takes 8MB of hard disc space and can run on a PC with as little as 4MB of RAM.

Compare that to Adobe's CS2 package:


Six CDs. Four install discs and two resource discs. You need 650MB of hard disc space and at least 384MB of RAM for PhotoshopCS2. With Adobe Bridge and Version Cue and to run multiple applications you need at least 512MB to 1GB of RAM. The full install of CS2 Premium takes over 3GB of hard disc space.

Oh, and by the way, Andy, those Altec Lansing computer speakers in the background are THX certified. Wow! THX SPL (but not JBL)!

Added Edit:
To redirect the thread from its current, somewhat hijacked state, here's the logos of those crazy formats that are being discussed:

 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-19-2005, 10:28 PM:
 
From another forum I frequent, looks like at least BD will have region coding...

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Blu-Ray Region Coding (08:41 AM EST): AACS has been finalized or is just about to be signed off according to several parties and some information has leaked out. Of big interest to folks around here is region coding. While film studios who are voting members of the AACS group had no interest in region coding and essentially did not want to use it, studios outside of it unsurprisingly did want region coding. So while region coding will be implemented in the Blu-Ray format (HD-DVD is so far undecided), it has been changed from what we're familiar with in DVD land. And it will certainly cause issues, though less than before in my view:

• Region 1: North America, South America, East Asia except for China (India, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia etc.)
• Region 2: Europe and Africa
• Region 3: China, Russia and other countries

It's also apparent that unlike previous plans to ensure that region coding was outside of the heavy copy protection scheme in order to avoid it being a first round target for breaking, it now looks like region coding will be a part of AACS and therefore much harder to crack.

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Foster City (CA) - Yesterday, the Taipei-based electronics news service DigiTimes reported that it had received indications from a Sony spokesperson that the company may be delaying shipments of its PlayStation 3 game console from this spring, when it was initially expected, until at least August.

The spokesperson apparently indicated to DigiTimes that Sony was not pleased with the pace of progress reportedly being made by the developers of Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the sophisticated copy protection scheme being developed for Blu-ray Disc. Sony's PS3 is slated to contain a BD high-definition player as standard equipment. Although Reuters reported last week that progress was finally being made in finalizing the AACS specs, the DigiTimes report hinted that the Blu-ray Disc Association - of which Sony is a principal member - was displeased with the results so far, and may be delaying Blu-ray development as a result. Caught in the wake may be Sony's PS3, which up to this point had been expected to be the premiere vehicle for Blu-ray, especially in North America.

But PS3 shipments to North America could be delayed even later than August - perhaps as late as January 2007, according to a Financial Times report last weekend. The report cites a Merrill Lynch analyst in Japan as having completed a preliminary teardown analysis of the PS3 - albeit without the system in hand - which concluded Sony's total materials cost per unit could approach $900. According to the DigiTimes report, which cites the Merrill Lynch analysis in greater detail, Sony could be spending as much as $230 per unit just for the 3.2 GHz Cell processor that IBM plans to produce for PS3, plus $350 for the Blu-ray drive and $70 for the Nvidia RSX 550 MHz 1080p graphics processor.

It could be the excessively high cost of materials, the FT report states - not the AACS delays - that could be the principal roadblock to PS3's timely release. In the wake of this analysis, Merrill Lynch has cut its estimates of Sony's annual shipments worldwide for 2006 to between 2 and 3 million units, which may include zero units shipped to the US and Canada. By comparison, Microsoft's Xbox 360 sold 1.5 million units worldwide in the months of November and December 2005.

Last November, electronics analyst firm iSuppli performed a teardown analysis of Xbox 360 - this time, with the actual unit in hand - and concluded Microsoft spent as much as $550 per unit in materials cost alone, during the console's initial production run. That cost included a less expensive CPU than PS3's appears to be - a $106 Power 3 versus an estimated $230 Cell. But Sony may be saving money on its graphics processor, spending $70 on the Nvidia chip by Merrill's estimate, versus $141 spent by Microsoft on its ATI chip.

Curiously, the Merrill report omits the cost for PS3's included hard disk drive, which is not negligible. iSuppli's analysis of Xbox 360 concluded its HDD costs Microsoft about $60. Factor that into the picture, and Sony may actually be paying more to produce each PS3 than Apple pays to produce a Core Duo-based iMac, according to iSuppli estimates.

The FT report claims Sony will probably have more to say about its PlayStation 3 plans during the upcoming E3 Expo in Los Angeles this May. But similar words were stated prior to January's CES in Las Vegas, though Sony declined to follow up. If Sony holds tight even up to may, the negative signal it sends to the market could send shockwaves throughout the entire CE industry, especially the home entertainment division depending on a stellar premiere for Blu-ray Disc. If that happens, last year's shipment debacles concerning Xbox 360 could quickly fade into history. Sony spokespersons have yet to return TG Daily's request for comment.

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