Blue Ray closer to victory?

Getting off point, but I'm not sure LD failed because of laser rot - it's not like discs would fail after 3 months, more like several years. It failed because everything about it was so goddamn expensive (the reason why I like it nowadays!)

 

Are you a collector? I have been considering collecting LD as there are a ton around here for quite low prices and the cover art on the disc sleeves is beautiful! Like the old Vinyl days.

Aye, I checked on Amazon and the Blu-Ray players on there all played DVDs. There is also a dual disc machine that can play both HDDVD and Blu-Ray. The region coding thing might be trickier though. If you don't have HDMI then you can't play the disc upscaled. The way I get around both of those problems with my upscaling DVD player is to rip my Region 2 discs and strip macrovision and region coding off the disc, then burn them. Then the player lets me upscale over component. I haven't tried that with the PS3 yet though.

 

I think you miss the point. When a company creates a format, they own the patents. Everytime you buy an audio cassette or recorder/player then philips gets paid, every time you buy a vhs tape or recorder/player jvc gets paid. Doesn't matter who makes it.

So, why wouldn't Sony develop a format? Why can't they be the one that makes the money? I would prefer to give money to Sony for the Mini Disc patents than fraunhofer for the mp3 patents.

HDDVD is basically a copy of bluray, the only advantage is you can manufacture them cheaper because you don't need to invest in new production plants. But that introduces technical disadvantages. Basically you get what you pay for.


Beta max came out first. VHS won, not because it was better but because there was more tapes available at rental ( back handers are not a new thing ). Some people claim that it was also because of the amount of pornography that was available.

Mini Disc was great when it came out, editting audio like that was revolutionary. Alot of radio stations used it, I help out at a hospital radio station where we used it until pc editting became cheap.

For memory sticks, I don't know why they made their own. Maybe they were getting screwed on patent licenses.

UMD is just like a small dvd, it needs to be small to fit in the PSP. Sony tried to create a market for movies on the PSP and it didn't catch on, that doesn't make them evil.

Bluray and HDDVD aren't the only higher capacity discs that were developed ( lets not forget GDROM that the dreamcast used, although that predates DVD ). They are just the only ones that made it to market, the other companies that designed them did it to make money on patents. We need higher capacity discs, we need more bandwidth off the discs. As far as I can tell the bluray media not only has a higher capacity but it also has a higher bandwidth.

HDDVD is backed by Microsoft, who are much more "evil" than Sony. Although I personally don't mind Microsoft nowadays, I know others are quite biased against them though.

But it seems you've already made your mind up and that Sony are the bad guys and everyone else doing the same or worse are the good guys.

Both HDDVD and bluray are DRM'd. It's not going to go away, get over it. If idiots don't stop pirating movies on a large scale we're just going to see more and more stupid measures forced upon us. Putting it into perspective, if piracy wasn't a problem then there would be no DRM because nobody would spend the money to fix a problem that didn't exist.

HDDVD needs region coding to succeed. Leaving it out was a stupid decision. Studios need it, you might think it's unfair but it's all to do with economics.

Here are some issues you need to consider.

1) movies need to be released at different times in different countries.

this is because before a film is released it's already cost alot of money, marketting is another load of money. once you've made the money in the first country america or india you can then use that to market the movie in another country.

also the stars of the film can only realistically do public appearances in one country at a time.

some movies are sure fire hits and they can secure funding up front, but thats fine as long as you don't mind the same film being made because it will be popular.

distribution isn't always handled by the same company and the rights are often not sold until it's proven that it can make money.

so, we can't avoid movies being released at different times. this means they have to release dvd's at different times. which causes a problem because then the cinemas in other countries will not book a movie if they know that it's available on dvd on the net, because lots of people would stay at home ( this is also the reason why hard back books come out a long time before paper back books and why apple released the iphone months before the ipod touch ).

2) you need to be able to adjust prices in each market.

like it or not, if you live in a country with a high cost of living then you are likely to get paid more than someone in a country with a low cost of living.

to make money by selling dvd's you really need to be able to make more money in the markets where the customers have a higher disposable income, but in other countries more people will turn to piracy if prices are too high.

have the price too low and no matter how many copies you sell you don't make enough money to cover the cost of making the movie. have the price too high and you don't sell enough.


For a simple exercise, imagine that you've just spent 30 million dollars on making a movie. Which format would you choose? You need a bit of money left over to pay your wage bill & to make the mortgage payments on your house & feed your kids as well. Personally I'd be pushing Sony to make a disc that was DRM'd a load more to stop people from ripping movies.

It was expensive, but then so was VHS at the time. Not being able to record on LD meant you would end up buying both a VHS and a LD player.
Plus the discs were huge, but you had to turn them over as a movie will not fit on one side.

VCD failed for similar reasons ( apart from the physical size issue ), except from in countries where VHS tapes basically melt.

I think you understand wrong. There is no way that either of them could cope with uncompressed video at the same quality that they can handle compressed video.

Except that the DVD-R / DVD+R war is different. DVD-R was already out there and sanctioned when phlips decided it wanted some of the patent pie.

With bluray vs HDDVD, bluray was being evaluated by the dvd-forum. Up until that point the forum had ruled out blue lasers, they weren't going to do anything like hddvd... After seeing what sony had developed it was decided to take the ideas and make them their own and then reap the benefits of the patents. Nice one toshiba, interestingly they don't get as much shit for that as they should.

The biggest sticking point and one of the major differences is that while bluray uses java for interactive features, which is a nice cross platform development tool that is taught in universites etc. HDDVD uses a microsoft technology.

 

Well, yeah, consider me a collector who started out two years ago only to get into a coma shortly afterwards and awoke yesterday.

In other words, I don't have that many LD's and not a very good player (though its a HK-modified Japanese model with the original box!). The whole thing's definitely appealing though, it's just that the discs are damn hard to get around here and often not cheap at all. I normally get them on ebay, but shipping from the US isn't that cheap.

 

Yeah, if you're posting them then it must be something of a nightmare. Those things aren't small!

 

Both Formats already lost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

 

i like my 1080p rips with dts that i can burn on a dl dvd or simply play from my hdd . Just get a nice LCD tv with VGA out and you're set .

 

Winning and losing isn't about what you create, it's about what you sell.
I haven't seen any of those holographic discs in the shops yet, so I don't think they sell too many.

 

Something I think will help BR in the near future is some of the new things in the 2.0 standard. It's pretty wicked that films will contain a 1GB encoded version of the movie for portable devices.

I've been waiting on that damn thing for ever.

 

i wouldn't be waiting for them if i were in you. they won't be available for long, and FOR A COMMERCIAL choice.

i guess you can wait at least 6-8 years before having them around and even more for a burner for your pc.

 

Technically, it was DVD that killed off LD (most vendors & manufacturers moved to DVD once it started taking off), though it was never particularily alive in terms of consumer market penetration. As you say, the expense limited its mass-market appeal/spread (plus I don't think it was ever marketed effectively to consumers - it always remained a high-end purchase). When DVD came along, the market was very ready for a new format, as the aged VHS was showing it's limitations, LD had never really succeeded & the equipment people already had was capable of handling the better quality video now available.

In terms of market desire, both Blu-ray & HDDVD have being introduced a little too early, IMHO. DVD continues to offer acceptable quality for the equipment that most folks currently own. Although the studios & hardware manufacturers strongly desire you to go out & replace your video libraries, there isn't anything like the same desire for a new video format from consumers, yet.

This will most-likely change, once the analog over-the-air TV signal gets turned off in more & more places - this will drive the purchase of more HD capable equipment & thus more desire for a replacement for DVD. It is then, that the winner of the Blu-ray/HDDVD format war will reap the rewards. For now, many folks are remaining uncommited (buying neither), or have been pushed one way by other considerations (came with PS3/movie choice/price). I don't consider either format to yet have sufficient technical superiority over the other, to lay claim to victory, though it seems that Blu-ray is currently winning the marketing battle.

Disclaimers: I am not a typical consumer, as I'm an early adopter of both Blu-ray & HDDVD, but retain a huge soft-spot for LD (along with a library of several hundred LDs & 6 players).

ps: Yakumo, there are discman sized DVD players out there, that are region hackable - personally, I'd retain at least one DVD player, if only to limit wear/tear on my much more expensive Blu-ray/HDDVD boxes.

 

Yeah my point was they're in the pipeline as well as a few more formats some of which are already being used in Movie Theaters.

So I'm just going to wait for the next format. forget Blu Ray and HD DVD.

 

Indeed. Both formats are going to be obsolete in 3-5 years.

 

Yeah, the one I have now is smaller than a Wii . It's even PAL / NTSC output compatable. That is region hacked to play all DVDs as well as the old style VCD, SVCD, JPG and MP3. Not a bad little player to be honest and even gives out a very nice progressive scan image via component.

Yakumo

 

5-10. Then we'll have higher def.

 

if storage meets today's geometrical rate of growth we ll be better off with holographic video content:lol:

 

That makes no sense... Why would HD-DVD be able to use un-compressed video, but Blu-ray not be able to when blu-ray discs have over twice the capacity?

All HD-DVDs use compressed video. All Blu-rays use compressed video. True uncompressed HD video runs in the TB as far as file size goes, so it can not fit uncompressed on either format. It is, however, less compressed on Blu-ray than on HD-DVD.
The problem lies in comparing quality between the two formats as you are not able to see a difference in quality when watching the same movie in both formats. The reason behind this is that studios whom release on both formats use the same digital master for both versions to save money, but, HD-DVD cannot handle the higher quality video codecs (AVC for instance), thus the master uses a codec of a lower quality. Which causes both to look the same, even though the blu-ray version could have looked much better.
My roommate works for a company that puts together dvds, hd-dvds, and blu-rays for the studios. The following comment may help you decide which format to go with/whom is actually winning.
The monday after Warner's announcement, he was walking through the hallways at his office in the afternoon and saw some people he hadn't seen all morning. When he asked them what they had been doing they replied (seperatly mind you): "Deleting HD-DVD projects from the harddrives."
To be fair, they were joking to a degree, but projects have been getting cancelled since the annoucment.

 

awesome! if the HD-dvd fails, i can get myself an HD-DVD-360 drive for cheap!

 

The surge and confusion around HD-DVD sales once all players go dirt cheap is going to be very amusing.