Apple To Back Blu-ray and HD-DVD? [Archive]

MacRumors

Oct 17, 2006, 09:48 AM

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

ThinkSecret claims to have uncovered documents that indicate that Apple may support both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD next-generation high definition DVD formats (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0610brieflyhddvd.html). Apple joined Blu-ray's board of directors (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2005/03/20050310144840.shtml) on March 10, 2005, and has been expected to include the technology in future Mac Pros (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/07/20060713232130.shtml), however the ongoing changes in the HD-DVD / Blu-ray market war may be changing Apple's plans.

Blu-ray has seen stiff competition from HD-DVD, which beat the product to market and has consistently undercut Blu-ray's price point. Another point of interest is that Intel has supported HD-DVD since September of 2005 (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2005/09/20050927122309.shtml). While ThinkSecret points out that neither format has yet to claim any clear market lead, some still view Blu-ray's trump card as the upcoming Playstation 3.

Blu-ray had initially gained a lot of studio support, but recently Universal Studios has decided to drop initial support for Blu-ray (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2017527,00.asp). Warner Brothers, who has not yet officially sanctioned a format, has recently filed for a patent for a Blu-ray / HD-DVD / DVD hybrid disk (http://www.technewsworld.com/story/L1B9NP7BTiA278/Warner-Bros-Seeks-Patent-for-Hybrid-High-Def-DVD.xhtml).

In 2004, Steve Jobs went on record siding with content creators (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/06/20040614144108.shtml) on the topic of high definition DVD burners and the timing of their inclusion in computer hardware.

As the CEO of Pixar [ed note: now part of Disney], Jobs is taking sides with content creators, suggesting that studios not release movies in the high-definition DVD format until adequate copy protection methods are in place. Jobs even suggests that HD DVD burners not be bundled with computers at all, but admits this is an "extreme" scenario.

bigandy

Oct 17, 2006, 09:52 AM

mcmadhatter

Oct 17, 2006, 09:53 AM

JDOG_

Oct 17, 2006, 09:55 AM

Ick. This whole format war is nasty, but I guess I never understood why Apple decided to support blu-ray over HD-DVD. Seemed like they did it just to go against what Microsoft had chosen. The and the whole Steve wanting crippled hardware for another (his other) company's benefit over computer users...the whole situation stinks.

As a consumer I'm trying as hard as possible to sit this one out. :mad:

bigandy

Oct 17, 2006, 09:55 AM

As soon as someone creates a dual format drive all this fuss will die down. It was the same with DVD +/- . Give it a year and NEC will have a dual format drives for both computers and players and no-one will have to decide.

I'm not sure about what you're saying here, because content producers will still be having to supply the same film in two different formats.

They'll likely drop the less popular format, and thus, we'll have a winner.

DVD +/- is a writing thing. It's not the same, because people don't care where they get their blank discs from as much.

Ick. This whole format war is nasty, but I guess I never understood why Apple decided to support blu-ray over HD-DVD. Seemed like they did it just to go against what Microsoft had chosen. The and the whole Steve wanting crippled hardware for another (his other) company's benefit over computer users...the whole situation stinks.

As a consumer I'm trying as hard as possible to sit this one out. :mad:

Have you read the format specifications? Blu Ray is clearly better (on paper at least), and I'd assume that's the reason they went with it.

longofest

Oct 17, 2006, 09:57 AM

marco114

Oct 17, 2006, 09:57 AM

It's VHS vs. BETAMAX all over again. Hopefully this time, the superior technology will prevail.

What will hurt the adoption of these is that there are too many standards. DVD came out and it was great. One format and it was easy. All these new emerging technologies will make consumers confused and market availability go down, so people will resort to iTunes. Yea! Better go buy more AAPL stock today. It's goin up after earnings tomorrow.

FoxyKaye

Oct 17, 2006, 09:59 AM

Now I'm definitely waiting this battle out, no matter how interesting it becomes.

Small White Car

Oct 17, 2006, 09:59 AM

I'm not sure about what you're saying here, because content producers will still be having to supply the same film in two different formats.

They'll likely drop the less popular format, and thus, we'll have a winner.

No they won't.

If (I said IF) everyone can end up buying a player that plays both formats, why would they have to release both formats?

Maybe all Sony movies are on Blu-Ray and all Warner Brother's movies are on HDVD. Everyone can buy either and play them in their dual-player.

That's it. Easy.

I have lots of doubts that it will work out this way, but hey...that WOULD be best, wouldn't it?

longofest

Oct 17, 2006, 10:06 AM

I'd rather see Blu Ray win this. It's clearly the better product on paper.

However, as history shows us, this doesn't mean it will win :(

Apple supporting both? I think it's a good option to give the customers - it's us who'll decide... But a hybrid drive will be the best bet.

Bluray is clearly better, and TDK (I think) is definitely doing an incredible job of pushing disk capacities through the 200 GB roof (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/04/28/tdk_200gb_blu-ray_disc/) (with multiple layers, and increasing the single-layer capacity to 33 GB). But I heard in this forum that the content creators are still using MPEG-2, which while H.264 and WM9 is fully supported in both Bluray and HD-DVD, only HD-DVD is using the advanced codecs. So, the end result is the studios aren't using Bluray to its full capacity.

If true, I'd like to see studios stop being stupid and start using the better technology. But another BIG problem I see with bluray right now is that it is so darn expensive. There is a 2:1, and sometimes a 3:1 price difference between them and HD-DVD. I don't have over a grand to spend on a Bluray player, and I don't want to wait a decade to get one either...

No they won't.

If (I said IF) everyone can end up buying a player that plays both formats, why would they have to release both formats?

Maybe all Sony movies are on Blu-Ray and all Warner Brother's movies are on HDVD. Everyone can buy either and play them in their dual-player.

That's it. Easy.

I have lots of doubts that it will work out this way, but hey...that WOULD be best, wouldn't it?

Warner looks like they will put movies out on the hybrid disks, so if you have a blu-ray player, you can play it, and if you have an HD-DVD player you can play it. Same end game. The problem comes when you have a studio like Universal that only puts out stuff on HD-DVD or Fox that just puts out on Blu-ray. Then you need the universal player.

NEC has developed a chip that can decode both, as you have hinted at. The optical technology is coming along (I saw something on Digg a little bit ago that noted some progress in that arena), but still not there yet.

asencif

Oct 17, 2006, 10:13 AM

The better technology for the future is definitely Blu-Ray, however it may be trying to make it's way too early and that is working against it. Prices are just too high right now for Blu-Ray drives and discs and the PS3 is a gaming system that is just too pricey.

HD-DVD is much simpler and has a more recognizeable name and getting much cheaper which a lot of times is what the consumer market will favor. Right now it's still going to be another 2 years before people start looking away from DVD itself. How many people have a HDTV right now? When I say people I mean non-tech aficionados like us in these forums.

twoodcc

Oct 17, 2006, 10:16 AM

i wouldn't mind seeing both blu-ray and hd-dvd in one computer :cool:

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 10:17 AM

the ps3 is sony's method to push the blu-ray format.
but the ps3 is delayed since march 2007 in europe and the number of units at launch is not impressive. so blu-ray won't be seen in many europe's living rooms any time soon i think.

so perhaps this could be one hint that hd-dvd could win after all.

edit: i think it's sad because i think blu-ray is the superior format. but look at sony. the hole blu-ray, ps3 and the notebook-akku thing is a whole disaster.
blu-ray is better, theoretically. but it still seem to be beta more or less like everything sony is putting on the market these days.

kalisphoenix

Oct 17, 2006, 10:17 AM

*yawns loudly* Didn't we know this months and months ago?

ImAlwaysRight

Oct 17, 2006, 10:27 AM

Perhaps this explains why the Mac Pro was designed with two optical drives? ;)

Now your Mac Pro will cost $3500-$4000 instead of $2500-$3000.

sartinsauce

Oct 17, 2006, 10:30 AM

It's VHS vs. BETAMAX all over again. Hopefully this time, the superior technology will prevail.

You know, I was going to suggest that, but I figured it would be over the heads of most of the folks in this forum. Needless to say, we're both grandpa's (grandma's) around here.

Similar characterstics to that format war. Betamax (Blu-Ray) has superior image quality, but VHS (HD DVD) is cheaper to produce. Ultimately, production costs may be the deciding factor in this war. Backward compatibility with (SD) DVD is a nice added bonus, if the manufacturers put decent upconverters into the boxes. What's up with Sony and it's effing production line anyway? Delays, delays, delays. They're full of it these days.

On the way in to work this morning, I was thinking that HD DVD is about to win this war. If PS3 tanks, Blu-Ray may be lost forever.

Belly-laughs

Oct 17, 2006, 10:31 AM

yawn! the disc is dead.

(dying, at least.)

ifjake

Oct 17, 2006, 10:33 AM

That comment about not including the burner is interesting, and I'm at least trying to give it some more thoughtful consideration. Who really needs to burn 30 - 50 GB of data? For backup solutions, wouldn't just getting a huge external hard drive be more practical? Portability might be a factor there, but external drives aren't that cumbersome I don't think. I'm thinking that the majority use of those HD media burners would be to copy movies with illicit applications. Could Apple put in place some protection framework that attempted to only allow creative-works-originating software to burn HD discs, (ie, iMovie, iDVD, FinalCut and other pro apps that use full quality, large size files) therefore denying use of a program that takes a quick and dirty imported disc image and burn it to disc, so that you'd have to work around some long and annoying solution to make an illegal copy (ala burning audio CDs in iTunes and reimporting them to strip the DRM) that would deter any easy mass pirating?

More simply, I'm curious of who out there needs to burn 30 to 50 GB chunks of data, too large for a dual layer DVD to hold, and why.

juststranded

Oct 17, 2006, 10:33 AM

Being completely serious, the porn industry has a lot to do with it.

VHS vs. BETAMAX, BETAMAX was teh better product, but the porn industry went with VHS and thus forced it into production more than BETAMAX.

Bluray vs. HD DVD, Bluray is better, and teh porn industry has gone with Blueray. I think between all teh competitors and the porn industry Bluray will stick this one out and win it.

Apple may also just be waiting it out a little longer to see which one is looking stronger. Yes, putting Bluray in Macs would help Bluray to win, but if they put them in, and HD DVD wins, there's a few millions Macs out there with onsolete drives in them that can't play the standard HD format disc.

I'll give it 6 months befre Apple chooses one or the other officially to put into their machines.

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 10:38 AM

in our stingy society it should be clear who will win - the cheapest, hd-dvd

Yannick

Oct 17, 2006, 10:39 AM

To me, it would be good news that Apple supports both HD-DVD and BD.

bommai

Oct 17, 2006, 10:41 AM

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 10:44 AM

To me, it would be good news that Apple supports both HD-DVD and BD.

well no, i think that's a bad idea. software has to be pressed on both formats - expensive - prices will increase (not only in the software branch - two holy expensive drives in one mac?)
we need one standard. every format needs a standard.

mcmadhatter

Oct 17, 2006, 10:46 AM

I'm not sure about what you're saying here, because content producers will still be having to supply the same film in two different formats.
No they won't they can produce their film in whatever format they like because all players would be dual format so it wouldn't matter, they wouldn't even need those fancy hybrid discs

They'll likely drop the less popular format, and thus, we'll have a winner. This could happen though it is unlikely with dual format drives

DVD +/- is a writing thing. It's not the same, because people don't care where they get their blank discs from as much.

When it was going on it was a big thing, because a lot of dvd Players would only Play one type of disc so if you recorded to + and your friend had - they would not be able to play it

More simply, I'm curious of who out there needs to burn 30 to 50 GB chunks of data, too large for a dual layer DVD to hold, and why.

I do , I have 140Gb of Photos from my DSLR (and previous digital cameras) putting this on 3 discs rather than 40 discs would be great

I also have 28Gb of music, backing up form itunes to 1 disc rather than 8 would also be useful

External drives are very easy to break beyond repair with osx (3 different NEW external drives, 3 different disk manufacturers disks, and the longest they lasted without dying so badly they needed an RMA was 72 hours) and dvd blueray etc discs take up less space, and you have the possibility of having 3-4 copies.

DTphonehome

Oct 17, 2006, 10:52 AM

Yannick

Oct 17, 2006, 10:53 AM

yawn! the disc is dead.
(dying, at least.)

I personnally don't agree. Movies you can buy and download still have poorer resolution, only one language, no bonus. Plus it takes so much room on your hard drive! You end up having to burn them anyway on a disc, or having to buy two huge hard drives for backup/safety purpose in case your hard drive dies. I own something like 150 DVD. That's about 1 TB (2 TB if you backup)… You really can't compare it to the music situation. Movies on DVD are cheaper than music CD. I get brand new DVDs through internet for an average of 7 € ($8.77). For me to buy a movie on iTunes, it would have to sell for 3 or 4 € ($4 or $5) to be worth it.

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 10:53 AM

Yannick

Oct 17, 2006, 10:54 AM

I do , I have 140Gb of Photos from my DSLR (and previous digital cameras) putting this on 3 discs rather than 40 discs would be great

I also have 28Gb of music, backing up form itunes to 1 disc rather than 8 would also be useful

External drives are very easy to break beyond repair with osx (3 different NEW external drives, 3 different disc manufacturers discs, and the longest they lasted without dying so badly they needed an RMA was 72 hours) and discs take up less space, and you have the possibility of having 3-4 copies.

+1

it was the same with DVD instead of CD

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 10:55 AM

So why not just use an external HD?

because this can die easily. should we buy 5 external hd's to backup the backup disk of the backup disk? no. 3 or 4 hd's i owned died since the last 10 years or so. i think it's too risky.

dr_lha

Oct 17, 2006, 10:58 AM

Before people start quoting VHS vs Betamax, can people use actual facts rather than urban legends?

For example: Betamax being superior to VHS is a myth, most people cannot tell the difference between the two formats. Read this excellent article:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,881780,00.html

The real reason VHS beat Betamax is the following:

1. VHS had longer tapes, Betamax's tapes were smaller, and Sony had difficulty coming out with larger capacity tapes. Faced with one system that's standard tapes could record 1 hour and one that could do 3 hours, most people chose the latter (VHS).

2. Sony's tight grip on the Betamax format kept prices high and innovation low. VHS decks were cheaper and made by more manufacturers, and hence consumers had more choice.

3. The porn industry chose VHS.

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 11:01 AM

1. VHS had longer tapes, Betamax's tapes were smaller, so had difficulty coming out with larger capacity tapes. Faced with one system that's standard tapes could record 1 hour and one that could do 3 hours, most people chose the latter (VHS).

2. Sony's tight grip on the Betamax format kept prices high and innovation low. VHS decks were cheaper and made by more manufacturers, and hence consumers had more choice.

3. The porn industry chose VHS.

so it's kind of a mixture here.
1. more capacity -> blu-ray
2. lower price -> hd-dvd
3. porn industry choses the cheapest format -> hd-dvd

the big thing will be the players. blu-ray players had a bad start (frames were dropped, image quality wasn't that good, delays).

it looks like blu-ray will have a hard fight.

BornAgainMac

Oct 17, 2006, 11:01 AM

HD DVD for movies and Blu-Ray for data. Problem solved.

Personally, I would rather just have digital downloads from a high speed download service and store them on my own storage whether it is on DVDs, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD as data. For large downloads, I would like to go to a local video store and download them to my laptop using Firewire 800/400 or USB but that is probably too far in the future.

kingtj

Oct 17, 2006, 11:05 AM

Never underestimate the storage capacities people will require! It wasn't THAT long ago I remember having a 10 *megabyte* hard disk drive on my old TRS-80 computer and thinking "This thing is HUGE! I can store every program I own on here AND all my data!" And we all know the ever popular "640K should be enough for anyone!" quote regarding RAM memory.

But if you're talking about simply the "here and now", yeah - the typical user won't have a good reason to store 30-50GB on a single piece of media. On the other hand, someone who works with video a lot easily might. (Think of the idea of making a single disc that contains a full collection of HD video clips you made and edited so you could copy/paste them into future projects, at will.) Sort of like those "50,000 clip art images collection!" CDs people buy, except your own, personal HD video version.

I'd also imagine this would be nice for corporate backups. People currently shell out around $90-100 each for DLT or LTO type backup tapes that hold maybe 40GB or so of compressed data. They could substitute one with HD-DVD or Blueray media and have more reliable backups with easier, quicker retreival too.

That comment about not including the burner is interesting, and I'm at least trying to give it some more thoughtful consideration. Who really needs to burn 30 - 50 GB of data? For backup solutions, wouldn't just getting a huge external hard drive be more practical? Portability might be a factor there, but external drives aren't that cumbersome I don't think. I'm thinking that the majority use of those HD media burners would be to copy movies with illicit applications. Could Apple put in place some protection framework that attempted to only allow creative-works-originating software to burn HD discs, (ie, iMovie, iDVD, FinalCut and other pro apps that use full quality, large size files) therefore denying use of a program that takes a quick and dirty imported disc image and burn it to disc, so that you'd have to work around some long and annoying solution to make an illegal copy (ala burning audio CDs in iTunes and reimporting them to strip the DRM) that would deter any easy mass pirating?

More simply, I'm curious of who out there needs to burn 30 to 50 GB chunks of data, too large for a dual layer DVD to hold, and why.

dr_lha

Oct 17, 2006, 11:06 AM

so it's kind of a mixture here.
1. more capacity -> blu-ray
2. lower price -> hd-dvd
3. porn industry choses the cheapest format -> hd-dvd

the big thing will be the players. blu-ray players had a bad start (frames were dropped, image quality wasn't that good, delays).

it looks like blu-ray will have a hard fight.
The capacity argument was only really important for VHS vs Betamax because of the recording aspect. AFAIK there are no HD-DVD or BluRay recorders right now so essentially the capacity of the disk is meaningless to most people for Movies. Picture quality should be the deciding factor, and much like VHS vs Betamax, most people apparently can't see any real difference between BluRay and HD-DVD.

Really the only thing BluRay has on its side is the PS3.

prady16

Oct 17, 2006, 11:15 AM

I had already posted this on my blog a couple of months back:

Analysis of the pros and cons of Blue-ray vs HD-DVD reveals that Blue-Ray disks have higher capacity (about 50GB), are more expensive, and blue-ray players can burn disks. On the other hand HD-DVD is comparitively cheaper, little less capacity (about 40GB), but cannot be burnt by commercial players.

Hence, I belive that the cheaper HD-DVD disks would be used instead of the traditional DVDs for distributing movies, games, music and other such applications. Whereas the Blue-Ray disks would be used majorly for storing data off a computer in a home or office setting. So, in the future laptops would come equipped with Blue-Ray drives and home theater systems would come equipped with HD-DVD players.

emotion

Oct 17, 2006, 11:17 AM

As a consumer I'm trying as hard as possible to sit this one out. :mad:

Which isn't that hard though, let's face it.

bommai

Oct 17, 2006, 11:21 AM

The capacity argument was only really important for VHS vs Betamax because of the recording aspect. AFAIK there are no HD-DVD or BluRay recorders right now so essentially the capacity of the disk is meaningless to most people for Movies. Picture quality should be the deciding factor, and much like VHS vs Betamax, most people apparently can't see any real difference between BluRay and HD-DVD.

Really the only thing BluRay has on its side is the PS3.

On paper, Bluray has more support across the board but they have not come out with anything yet.

Samsung came out with the first BD player
Panasonic just came out now.
Sony will come out soon
Pioneer will come out soon
Philips - don't know.
HP, Dell, Apple, TDK, etc. are all in Bluray camp.

Fox and Disney are Bluray only
Paramount and Warner are in both camps
Universal is HD-DVD only

The only hardware vendor right now for HD-DVD is Toshiba. Even the RCA one is made by Toshiba.

So, even though BD has all this support, they cannot seem to come out with a cheap player. The movies are priced about the same. So, once the price comes down, I think it will be great. I don't agree with PS3 being the savior because I don't think most people use their game consoles to watch movies.

sartinsauce

Oct 17, 2006, 11:23 AM

3. porn industry choses the cheapest format -> hd-dvd

OKay, so I've heard both sides now. Can anyone say if the "pr0n industry" has chosen a format, and if so, which format have they chosen?

llahsram

Oct 17, 2006, 11:25 AM

Blu-ray had initially gained a lot of studio support, but recently Universal Studios has decided to drop initial support for Blu-ray (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2017527,00.asp).

This is false. Blu-Ray initially had less studio support. Universal never supported Blu-Ray (which the linked article states, despite the misleading headline), and Warner Brothers and Paramount only added support for Blu-Ray comparatively recently; they were initially HD-DVD only. Universal is now the only studio without Blu-Ray support.

On the other hand, Fox and Disney are still supporting only Blu-Ray (though there have been rumors of Disney looking at HD-DVD). So for the time being, it's Blu-Ray for Star Wars and Pixar fans -- assuming this is still the state of affairs when the studios release those titles...

Picture quality should be the deciding factor, and much like VHS vs Betamax, most people apparently can't see any real difference between BluRay and HD-DVD.

Given the same quality decoding hardware, for most movies they shouldn't see any difference at all. Both support the same codecs (MPEG-2, h.264, and VC-1). The first Blu-Ray discs were encoded using MPEG-2, which produced a lower quality image than the VC-1-encoded HD-DVD discs, but newer Blu-Ray discs are using VC-1 as well. The picture should be identical between the two.

The only case I could see where the capacity would affect it would be for longer movies like Lord of the Rings, where the encoded video plus lossless audio may reach the boundaries of HD-DVD. We could conceivably see more compression artifacts or the dropping of higher-resolution audio or commentaries on HD-DVD in these cases, whereas Blu-Ray would have more space. But this shouldn't affect most titles.

Loge

Oct 17, 2006, 11:32 AM

because this can die easily. should we buy 5 external hd's to backup the backup disk of the backup disk? no. 3 or 4 hd's i owned died since the last 10 years or so. i think it's too risky.

Whereas discs last forever, right? ;)

gkarris

Oct 17, 2006, 11:39 AM

Given the same quality decoding hardware, for most movies they shouldn't see any difference at all. Both support the same codecs (MPEG-2, h.264, and VC-1). The first Blu-Ray discs were encoded using MPEG-2, which produced a lower quality image than the VC-1-encoded HD-DVD discs, but newer Blu-Ray discs are using VC-1 as well. The picture should be identical between the two.

The only case I could see where the capacity would affect it would be for longer movies like Lord of the Rings, where the encoded video plus lossless audio may reach the boundaries of HD-DVD. We could conceivably see more compression artifacts or the dropping of higher-resolution audio or commentaries on HD-DVD in these cases, whereas Blu-Ray would have more space. But this shouldn't affect most titles.

Doesn't matter if they are now using the same codec. People's displays are messed up (component vs HDMI, version of HDMI, is the resolution REALLY 1080p?) as well as the players. As far as I'm concerned, the whole thing's messed up....

I posted this in this forum:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=236514

"Wow, I went online to see the pros and cons of each format. When someone posts a pro/con of one system, they post the rebuttle of it on the other....

Like, I heard that Blu-Ray only has MPEG-2 right now, but it is capable of MPEG-4 and studios backing both formats will start releasing Bluray in MPEG-4 since they have to encode the movie in that for HD-DVD anyways.... what about the current Bluray titles?

I heard that Sony does have the dual layer Blurays available, and hybrid DVD/BD available also...

I saw a post of a guy online who actually hooked up his Samsung to a massive HP 60"(?) monitor that actually takes 1080p/24 scan signal (I guess a lot of TVs will take only 1080i and will upscale it to 1080p inside the TV) and he says Bluray is great! Do people actually have this sort of monitor?

Then, there's this whole 1080p/24 discs and if you want 1080p/60 Bluray has to take 1080p/24 go to 1080i/60 then to 1080p/60... what?

Then, I heard that the HD-DVD players if you have a 720p set that the player will take a 1080i disc, down it to 480p, then up it to 720p. They recommend to make the player output 1080i and have your set take it down to 720p (which my projector won't do, it just takes any signal you give it and shows that).

Wow, I'm now sooooo confused, I'm going to watch my Laserdiscs and Betamax for a while....."

Willis

Oct 17, 2006, 11:43 AM

so it's kind of a mixture here.
1. more capacity -> blu-ray
2. lower price -> hd-dvd
3. porn industry choses the cheapest format -> hd-dvd

Actually, the porn industry has gone with Blu-Ray.

ChrisA

Oct 17, 2006, 11:55 AM

krestfallen

Oct 17, 2006, 11:55 AM

Whereas discs last forever, right? ;)

no but the risk is marginal that a disk dies in 10 years.
of course you shouldn't play frisbee with them ;)

gkarris

Oct 17, 2006, 11:55 AM

Actually, the porn industry has gone with Blu-Ray.

Where's this information?

I saw a special on 80's technologies and had Beta and VHS on there. The porn industry was really the one that finally tipped the scales (especially the rental of it).

AidenShaw

Oct 17, 2006, 11:57 AM

I saw a post of a guy online who actually hooked up his Samsung to a massive HP 60"(?) monitor that actually takes 1080p/24 scan signal (I guess a lot of TVs will take only 1080i and will upscale it to 1080p inside the TV) and he says Bluray is great! Do people actually have this sort of monitor?
Yes, I have the Samsung 46" LN-S4696D (http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/LCDTV/LNS4696DXXAA.asp?page=Specifications), connected to both a Samsung BD player and a Core 2 Duo Media Center Edition mini-tower with a Quadro FX graphics card and HD tuners.

It does 1080p native, as well as native 1920x1080 on the PC.

Some of the Blu-ray Discs are simply amazing (House of Flying Daggers is superb), although others just make the shortcomings of the original production more apparent. (Kind of like a CD of an old live concert, where the CD perfectly reproduces the hiss and noise in the master tape.)

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 12:01 PM

HD DVD for movies and Blu-Ray for data. Problem solved.

Um, no....

At 30GB max on HD-DVD, even with a good VC1 transfer, 3 hour and longer features must start sacrificing quality to fit. In other words, films like "Titanic" are going to run into the same shortcomings on HD-DVD as they did with DVD.

There's other reasons to choose BluRay and this whole format war would be compltely non-existant had Sony released their product nearly a year ago when they first promised and if it had actually worked. Now they keep fumbling the ball and losing out to an inferior format at every turn.

In the end, we'll see universal players as a solution, but I doubt HD-DVD vs. BluRay will be solved before the next big format comes along. All the pieces are in place to manufacture a universal player, but Sony's Blu-Ray licensing agreements specifically forbid the inclusion of support for HD-DVD, DVD-Audio and other competing formats on the same device. It's questionable whether or not this is legal, Sony and Philips tried it with DVD+R and the exclusive licensing failed. It will only be a matter of time before someone challenges the Sony licensing. Unfortunately, the few companies already in the best position to produce a universal player (Samsung, Panasoic, LG, etc...) are already Blu-Ray allies. So it may take a bit more time.

Personally, I would rather just have digital downloads from a high speed download service and store them on my own storage whether it is on DVDs, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD as data. For large downloads, I would like to go to a local video store and download them to my laptop using Firewire 800/400 or USB but that is probably too far in the future.

Direct downloads would definitely be welcome, as long as there is the option to write them to some form of tangible media like an optical disc. There's also the issue of download times and quality. A top-notch VC1 transfer on HD-DVD or BluRay at 1080p is going to occupy 25+ GB of space. That's a significant download for any conventional broadband connection. VC1 or H.264 versions of films at near-DVD quality like we'll find in the iTunes store are OK compared to DVD and are a good start, but I think we're still just a couple years away from it really happening with HD on a broad scale. The infrastructure is being constructed now, products like iTV, iPod and yes even the Zune, will pave the way for this to happen. So we're on our way...

I think ultimately what will happen is films/videos will become entirely on-demand. Users will be able to connect directly to major studios and have on-demand access to their entire catalog of every film ever created. Sites like iTunes will still serve a purpose as a portal or gateway to access multiple catalogs from different studios all in one place with a common interface. Probably still several years off and broadband and widespread wireless access methods need to be enhanced a bit, but this is no doubt where we're headed.

bilbo--baggins

Oct 17, 2006, 12:13 PM

It's VHS vs. BETAMAX all over again. Hopefully this time, the superior technology will prevail.

Nope. Cheap always prevails when it comes to marketshare. The average consumer is fairly thick, when they walk along the aisles at Walmart and wonder which one to chuck in their shopping trolley the majority will go for the cheapest.

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 12:15 PM

More simply, I'm curious of who out there needs to burn 30 to 50 GB chunks of data, too large for a dual layer DVD to hold, and why.

I routinely work with video files and animation frames/models/scenes that are several gigabytes in size. Our current back-up solution is an ever-evolving archive on a redundant SAN with rotating tape archives. It would sure be nice to be able to record a project onto a single disc again instead of multiple discs. Because, doing the whole multi-DVD backup of a project is a pain in the arse and I rearely mess with such a thing given the other solutions in place.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are just another evolution of the CD / DVD / optical disc format. Just as CPU speeds and hard drive storage capacities increase, so must the capacities of other types of media.

As for yoru comment on 1080p displays... All HDTV sets are now in the progression to 1080p with most new '06 model DLP and LCOS rear projection sets now accepting and displaying full 1080p. There are currently 4 plasma displays on the market between the US and Japan that are full 1080p and several LCD models.

FWIW and I'm not trying to boast too much, I waited patiently to replace my old 36" tube set until 1080p was reality. I finally did so this July and bought the Samsung HL-S7178W - a 71" DLP TV with full 1080p and it's absolutely stunning. Did cost me $3600 on special with another coupon, but that's actually $180 less than I paid for the set it replaced when I bought it about 7 years ago.

Jschultz

Oct 17, 2006, 12:15 PM

Yes, I have the Samsung 46" LN-S4696D (http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/LCDTV/LNS4696DXXAA.asp?page=Specifications), connected to both a Samsung BD player and a Core 2 Duo Media Center Edition mini-tower with a Quadro FX graphics card and HD tuners.

It does 1080p native, as well as native 1920x1080 on the PC.

Some of the Blu-ray Discs are simply amazing (House of Flying Daggers is superb), although others just make the shortcomings of the original production more apparent. (Kind of like a CD of an old live concert, where the CD perfectly reproduces the hiss and noise in the master tape.)

If you get the chance, watch either ultraviolet, or Underworld 2 on your BD player. It looks so good, it's rediculous!

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 12:21 PM

Nope. Cheap always prevails when it comes to marketshare. The average consumer is fairly thick, when they walk along the aisles at Walmart and wonder which one to chuck in their shopping trolley the majority will go for the cheapest.

Exactly. Which really makes me question Sony's logic as well as the thinking by the rest of the Blu-Ray camp when they're pushing players in the $950 to $1700 range, all but one of which are still vapor-ware.

HD-DVD isn't doing any better seeing how they're cutting features on the low end model for gen.2 while keeping the price the same and they're elevating the higher-end model to Blu-Ray price levels. Seems to me that if either side truly wanted to end this format "war", they would invest the necessary capital and produce 250 million players and get their cheap price and flood the market. OTOH, neither Toshiba or Sony are known for taking risks, especially Toshiba who is in the best spot to do such a thing right now. But the first one to have a player in Wal-Mart at the $199 price tag will win this "war". Especially if they do it with several months advantage on their competitor and before the holidays. But I guess asking Santa for Sony to drop the $199 BDP-S1 bomb on Thanksgiving weekend is just too much to hope for.

ifjake

Oct 17, 2006, 12:38 PM

no but the risk is marginal that a disk dies in 10 years.
of course you shouldn't play frisbee with them ;)

I was always under the impression that if you wanted to save something for that long your best bet would be to use some kind of tape archival system.

Anyone who owns a video camera and uses it will have way more then 30 to 50 GB of data. Mini DV camera make 12Gb of data per hour. If you own a DSLR and shoot in RAW format the image files are on order of 10MB each. My music colection is 50GB.

This is the kind of user I'm interested in hearing the opinion of, the professional creative user. What do people do now that HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs would so graciously replace?

I've always thought external hard drives would work fine, especially now that you can make SATA connections externally. You work from the external drive, when you're done you take it with you, no need to wait to burn. As far as backing up goes, that's just going to take a long time no matter which way you do it (unless it's like that Time Machine stuff, which is always going on, and uses a hard drive), and for me, I'd rather back up a whole drive at a time, which would require more space than a disc would provide.

Marx55

Oct 17, 2006, 12:52 PM

HYBRYD. The answer is a hybrid burner that can handle both standards, plus DVDs and CDs. That EASY!!!

ITR 81

Oct 17, 2006, 01:18 PM

so it's kind of a mixture here.
1. more capacity -> blu-ray
2. lower price -> hd-dvd
3. porn industry choses the cheapest format -> hd-dvd

the big thing will be the players. blu-ray players had a bad start (frames were dropped, image quality wasn't that good, delays).

it looks like blu-ray will have a hard fight.

HD DVD is barely any cheaper then Blu-Ray right now.
I mean few bucks isn't going to change my mind.

Also the porn industry more then likely went with VHS because of it's 3 hrs capacity then it just being cheaper of the two. Think how much porn could be crammed onto a blu-ray disc!?

DamonNoisette

Oct 17, 2006, 01:27 PM

That comment about not including the burner is interesting, and I'm at least trying to give it some more thoughtful consideration. Who really needs to burn 30 - 50 GB of data? For backup solutions, wouldn't just getting a huge external hard drive be more practical? Portability might be a factor there, but external drives aren't that cumbersome I don't think...More simply, I'm curious of who out there needs to burn 30 to 50 GB chunks of data, too large for a dual layer DVD to hold, and why.

We have 5.4 TB of available external file storage in SATA enclosures, but a lot of it is duplicate data from past jobs because we're afraid of disk failure. The enclosures are NOT small and they are not cheap to build -- even with the dropping price of >= 500GB HDDs.

We're dying for and end to this format battle because we'd like to start storing past photographic assignments/jobs on one disc -- two, actually; one backup to be taken offsite and the other to go in a file cabinet -- and not have to trust a massive file server with moving parts.

Given the eventuality of a HDD failure, tape cartridge read error, and degrading discs, I've been banging my head against a wall trying to figure out the best long-term data storage compromise between reliability, price, and size. :confused:

Being able to store 30GB of RAW NEFs on one disc would be incredible. That would knock out an entire job in one disc. As camera sensors get even better, I can only imagine how much our storage needs are going to increase...

I don't even want to guess how the people shooting with 22MP Leaf backs are storing their images...

ITR 81

Oct 17, 2006, 01:43 PM

On paper, Bluray has more support across the board but they have not come out with anything yet.

Samsung came out with the first BD player
Panasonic just came out now.
Sony will come out soon
Pioneer will come out soon
Philips - don't know.
HP, Dell, Apple, TDK, etc. are all in Bluray camp.

Fox and Disney are Bluray only
Paramount and Warner are in both camps
Universal is HD-DVD only

The only hardware vendor right now for HD-DVD is Toshiba. Even the RCA one is made by Toshiba.

So, even though BD has all this support, they cannot seem to come out with a cheap player. The movies are priced about the same. So, once the price comes down, I think it will be great. I don't agree with PS3 being the savior because I don't think most people use their game consoles to watch movies.

Sony is releasing two new blu-ray players in Dec, in Japan.

Also I first messed with DVD's when I first got my PS2 player..so I would say most will experiment with blu-ray dvd's on their PS3's just like I did before buying a DVD player.

Jeonat

Oct 17, 2006, 01:47 PM

I haven't read the rest of the thread but yes, absolutely makes sense that Apple support both types of drive. We don't know the outcome yet of the format war - it could go either way. Why alienate, for example, movie makers who would switch to another platform if HD-DVD wasn't supported.

Sensible move.

gkarris

Oct 17, 2006, 02:08 PM

Yes, I have the Samsung 46" LN-S4696D (http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/LCDTV/LNS4696DXXAA.asp?page=Specifications), connected to both a Samsung BD player and a Core 2 Duo Media Center Edition mini-tower with a Quadro FX graphics card and HD tuners.

It does 1080p native, as well as native 1920x1080 on the PC.

Some of the Blu-ray Discs are simply amazing (House of Flying Daggers is superb), although others just make the shortcomings of the original production more apparent. (Kind of like a CD of an old live concert, where the CD perfectly reproduces the hiss and noise in the master tape.)

$4,000 for a TV? Quoting an commercial for Circuit City or Best Buy(?) when asking people about "HD", one of the answers was "Wicked expensive...."

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 02:22 PM

$4,000 for a TV? Quoting an commercial for Circuit City or Best Buy(?) when asking people about "HD", one of the answers was "Wicked expensive...."

Just about any major electronics purchase at CC or BB is "wicked expensive". They're both known for listing large ticket items higher than MSRP. I paid $3600 for a new 71" Samsung from an authorized deal with white-glove delivery, they even called me a week later to see if I was still happy with it or if I wanted to swap it for something else. BestBuy wanted over $5K for a two year old 73" Mitsubishi or nearly $6200 for the same Samsung set I bought (price included delivery - ooooooh). :rolleyes: MSRP on that 71" Samsung is $4,499. Where does BB (or rather the Magnolia Center in BB) get off charging a $1,200 premium over MSRP? ...Should be a law against that.

...But then again, other than the occasional DVD or small purchase I never shop there. It just gives me that sick to the stomach feeling knowing I'm buying something from a place that charges $100 for a $5 cable on a daily basis.

But the general consumer is oblivious to most of this. They don't understand the products, let alone whether or not they're getting a fair deal. ...Sad, really.

brianus

Oct 17, 2006, 02:45 PM

I was always under the impression that if you wanted to save something for that long your best bet would be to use some kind of tape archival system.

Tape!?! :confused: who on earth uses tape anymore? This is.. 2006. And I was always under the impression that a medium with moving parts would be more prone to failure than one without. Certainly my VHS and cassette library have had their share of tapes being chewed up by the machine or worn out from use.

I've always thought external hard drives would work fine, especially now that you can make SATA connections externally. You work from the external drive, when you're done you take it with you, no need to wait to burn. As far as backing up goes, that's just going to take a long time no matter which way you do it (unless it's like that Time Machine stuff, which is always going on, and uses a hard drive), and for me, I'd rather back up a whole drive at a time, which would require more space than a disc would provide.

External drives are *not* long term archiving solutions. They are useful for storing vast amounts of data that presumably you want to actually access and use (and possibly modify) on a regular basis; also, they are good for the kind of incremental backups you refer to, Time Machine, Retrospect, other 3rd party backup tools can be used for this. But if you have important files you know aren't going to change, while having them on HDD is useful for instant access, that's not where they should be permanently archived -- they should be burned to a permanent medium, preferably more than one copy, and stored in a safe place (or places). If your drive fails and you still need the data to be on that drive, you can then restore from the permanent medium.

BoyBach

Oct 17, 2006, 02:51 PM

weldon

Oct 17, 2006, 02:54 PM

I realize that the discussion has gone off towards the relative merits of each format, but I'm going to go back to the original statement that Apple is going to support both...

This is non-news. Because Apple is involved in content creation (Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, etc.), they are going to support both formats so that people can author discs for HD-DVD and Blu-ray and create fancy menus, etc. It's no big leap to go from supporting authoring content targeted at both formats to supporting hardware to play and burn both formats.

brianus

Oct 17, 2006, 02:57 PM

I think the humble DVD-9 is going to be the 'top dog' for movies for quite a while yet. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, plus HD televisions with 780/1080i/p etc resolutions are difficult for the average consumer to understand, never mind get excited about enough to pay out thousands of pounds/dollars for - unless they're cimema-philes or geeks. (No offence meant.)

These massive storage mediums are only useful for computer users for the foreseeable future, where photo & music collections can be backed up to fewer discs.

My unimportant view on the topic, but I'm always right :p

Yup. Video right now is where audio was about 5 years ago -- new, higher density, higher quality disc formats being released (SACD/DVD-Audio then, HD-DVD/Blueray now), but consumers and the media focused not on that "-ophile" stuff but rather on downloads. Then it was MP3 filesharing and the attempts by Apple and others to start legal download services; now it's bittorrent on the one hand and the ITunes Movie Store, Amazon's Unbox, etc on the other. People seem to be more interested in convenience than the highest possible quality.

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 03:33 PM

Tape!?! :confused: who on earth uses tape anymore? This is.. 2006. And I was always under the impression that a medium with moving parts would be more prone to failure than one without. Certainly my VHS and cassette library have had their share of tapes being chewed up by the machine or worn out from use.

Tape is still the most reliable, long-term archival media available. Newer tape systems can transfer over 150MB/sec. to and from the tape and store several hundred GB on a single tape. Cost-wise, tape is expensive to buy into, but if you have sufficeint archival needs, it pays for itself over time. Many tape solutions once they reach their ROI point afer a year or two, often are cheaper than HDD storage by half or more. Sounds weird, I know, but that's the way it still is.

Most large data centers covering everything from web storage, insurance databases, financial institutions etc... Have mostly converted over to large-scale redundant servers and storage networks using RAID subsystems. This serves all their immediate storage and backup needs on site and is very reliable if managed properly. But nearly all of them still use an additional tape archival workflow for off-site data storage. There really is no other way right now... Wish there was. Hence the reason tape systems also keep evolving and pretty much match HDD capacity with tape capacity in most cases and transfer rates continue to improve. Comparing tape archival systems to VHS or miniDV tape is not a good comparison, data tapes (or at least the good ones) are very robust and actually very hard to damage. Short of placing them in a magnetic field for a period of time, they're mostly indestructable. They do have moving parts, but hardly any compared to a hard drive.

Using hard drives as an archival solution is a bad idea... Hard drives are not designed for this and can corrupt data over time. Not to mention, the platter system and motors are not designed to sit stationary for years at a time for long-term storage. Optical media isn't too bad, but most photo-sensitive dyes and films used in optical media will decay over time. CD-R media was originally claimed to have a lifespan of 30 to 100 years. Now that it's been around for 30+ years, we're finding out that claim was somewhat exaggerated. Recordable DVD media and HD-DVD and BD are no different, just higher data density on the discs. And also not anywhere near practical for large-scale solutions. Just how do you archive and manage 300 petabytes per year to DVD-R???

For small business type users and home users though, DVD-R media in addition to a good redundant RAID setup probably makes the most sense. Unless they're pushing lots of data doing HD video editing or something like that. In which case, it may still make sense to give tape a consideration as the long-term archive solution. Prosumer level tape archive systems exist and are not that expensive and much more reliable than shelved hard drives and much easier to manage than optical media. The VXA2 format can afford someone an external Firewire tape system w/2 tapes for < $1K. Tapes hold up to 160GB each and factoring in the cost of the drive plus enough tapes to back up about 3 terrabytes of data, the cost becomes cheaper than individual hard drives. So a few terrabytes down the road and you could be wishing you had considered tape if you're still using DVD-R. OTOH, DVD-R is just fine and dandy if a terrabyte or two is all you need. Because you can fit a lot of discs in a shoebox and sharpie pen to label them is pretty cheap too.

External drives are *not* long term archiving solutions. They are useful for storing vast amounts of data that presumably you want to actually access and use (and possibly modify) on a regular basis; also, they are good for the kind of incremental backups you refer to, Time Machine, Retrospect, other 3rd party backup tools can be used for this. But if you have important files you know aren't going to change, while having them on HDD is useful for instant access, that's not where they should be permanently archived -- they should be burned to a permanent medium, preferably more than one copy, and stored in a safe place (or places). If your drive fails and you still need the data to be on that drive, you can then restore from the permanent medium.

Um... I guess I got carried away and didn't mean to elaborate on what you already said. But, er... um.. Yep, I agree.

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 03:44 PM

People seem to be more interested in convenience than the highest possible quality.

Yes, it's appalling.. ;)

Oh, well, every time I hear someone say they can't see the difference between a standard DVD and an HD-DVD/BluRay disc when shown on a proper 1080p display, I cringe. Perhaps they need to just buy the 25" TV for $200 along with a $25 DVD player, take the money they save and get some laser eye surgery. :D

Actually, with my new HD set up, most family and friends that see it in action are usually awed by it. I have several friends and neighbors that continuously invite themselves over for monday night football and other events. Most of them think it's pretty cool, but would never spend that kind of money on their home theatre setup (I don't think I spent that much, the TV accounted for over half of everything and it was $3600). A couple of them in the past few months though didn't balk at the price and they went and bought one too...

But yeah, I'm an "-ophile" when it comes to audio and video. I don't really fit in with the rest of my family. I have an uncle that's only about 10 years older than me and I let him have a left-over 20" TV when I moved. I told him it's a nice set - only about 3 years old. His only concern was "is it color?".

I know I'm the minority around here when I say this, but I don't own an iPod. :eek: Yeah, it's true... I personally don't care for the MP3 format and the lesser quality offerings of iTunes. If it isn't at least CD quality, uncompressed, I don't want it. And yes, I can hear the difference on my sound system which is a separate setup from my home theatre.

My wife tells me that I'm insane... She's probably right, but what do I care. :D

brianus

Oct 17, 2006, 04:01 PM

Yes, it's appalling.. ;)

Oh, well, every time I hear someone say they can't see the difference between a standard DVD and an HD-DVD/BluRay disc when shown on a proper 1080p display, I cringe. Perhaps they need to just buy the 25" TV for $200 along with a $25 DVD player, take the money they save and get some laser eye surgery. :D

Actually, with my new HD set up, most family and friends that see it in action are usually awed by it. I have several friends and neighbors that continuously invite themselves over for monday night football and other events. Most of them think it's pretty cool, but would never spend that kind of money on their home theatre setup (I don't think I spent that much, the TV accounted for over half of everything and it was $3600). A couple of them in the past few months though didn't balk at the price and they went and bought one too...

But yeah, I'm an "-ophile" when it comes to audio and video. I don't really fit in with the rest of my family. I have an uncle that's only about 10 years older than me and I let him have a left-over 20" TV when I moved. I told him it's a nice set - only about 3 years old. His only concern was "is it color?".

I know I'm the minority around here when I say this, but I don't own an iPod. :eek: Yeah, it's true... I personally don't care for the MP3 format and the lesser quality offerings of iTunes. If it isn't at least CD quality, uncompressed, I don't want it. And yes, I can hear the difference on my sound system which is a separate setup from my home theatre.

My wife tells me that I'm insane... She's probably right, but what do I care. :D

Well, my dad's the same way with audio. He's a professional sound engineer, so it stands to reason -- he's still got a huge stack of DAT tapes next to the computer. No DVD-Audio though; you just can't find it much anymore.

If most folks not only don't have the knowledge or interest, they also don't have the kind of money to invest in these kinds of hi-def technologies in their early, expensive years (for HD that includes, of course, the enormous televisions required to really get anything from the higher definition). By the time this stuff comes down in price and is more readily available, SD downloads will be more common.

I suppose working in the HD formats' favor is the coming of HDTV, which will be the standard whether we like it or not. Sooner or later DVD-9 will *have* to be superceded by something in a high definition format, else the stuff we download or buy will be crappier looking than the stuff we can watch for free. And, of course, in the mean time the discs themselves will be extremely useful for some types of data storage. I eagerly await the day when, in my job, I can archive a TB of files to eight 200GB Blu-Rays instead of 200-odd DVD-Rs, and I'm sure many small/medium businesses do too.

bommai

Oct 17, 2006, 04:49 PM

HD DVD is barely any cheaper then Blu-Ray right now.
I mean few bucks isn't going to change my mind.

Also the porn industry more then likely went with VHS because of it's 3 hrs capacity then it just being cheaper of the two. Think how much porn could be crammed onto a blu-ray disc!?

Few bucks!!! The cheapest HD-DVD player the Toshiba HD-A1 is now under $400. I have seen the XA1 for under $600 now. The cheapest BD player is $999 and don't even bring up the PS3!! People are not going in droves to buy a PS3 just to play their BD-ROM media. Also, it will not even be available for a while.

Shotglass

Oct 17, 2006, 04:59 PM

So why not just use an external HD?
The price. Why burn your library to CDs, you could just use a flash drive. It's the same thing.

In the future, maybe in 5-10 years, I think maybe people will have their entire collections in full-blown 1080p HD. I mean, look at PAL/NTSC. The resolution sucks. HDTV is just worth it.

juststranded

Oct 17, 2006, 05:20 PM

The porn industry did choose blu-ray because of capactiy and because they believe the PS3 will be a huge factor in the winning format.

GO HERE! (http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/05/02/pornhd/index.php?lsrc=mwrss)

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 05:36 PM

Few bucks!!! The cheapest HD-DVD player the Toshiba HD-A1 is now under $400. I have seen the XA1 for under $600 now. The cheapest BD player is $999 and don't even bring up the PS3!! People are not going in droves to buy a PS3 just to play their BD-ROM media. Also, it will not even be available for a while.

PS3 = November 24. But if you're not already on a waiting list (and near the front) don't count on getting yours before Christmas.

The only difference between the Toshiba A1 and XA1 is that the XA1 has a different front bezel and a serial control interface. There is no difference in audio, video or other capabilities. Don't buy the XA1 unless you're using an AMX, Crestron, Zantec or similar control system that uses a serial control.

That being said, I saw the RCA version of the A1 at my Local Sam's Club last week for $329.99.

OTOH, when considering the next generation HD-DVD players and announced prices in comparison with BluRay and the curious fact that all HD-DVD features thus far average $8 more from most retailers vs. Blu-Ray, the cost of the two formats is identical to a consumer who picks up a library of about 40 or more films. At current pricing, buying a $1K BluRay player and 100 movies (oh, wait there aren't 100 movies yet), would be cheaper than a $400 HD-DVD player and 100 movies (also not that many yet). So it's too early to tell what's going to happen....

IMO, I wouldn't buy the Samsung BP1000 player anyway. It's a complete turd and there's a lot more wrong with it than the image softening effect going on in the scaler. IMO, I doubt any firmware update is going to fix this player and Samsung is going to try and patch it as best as they can and move on as quietly as possible.

Also the PS3 will be to BluRay what the PS2 was to DVD... It will just be a capable player and nothing more. You won't get the advanced audio capabilities of the BDP-S1 player or the same color depth and image processing hardware. The PS3 uses a software-based player, which does leave some room for future upgrades though. While I have not seen a PS3 in action, I've been two several Sony demonstrations of the BDP-S1 and several of their reps have said that the PS3 will be a second-rate player and primarily a game system.. Well, duh.

Not that it really matters... Current estimages from IGN and others put PS3 pre-order numbers at a staggering 14 million (world-wide). I think that's a gross over-estimate given the PS3's intro price. But even if it's half of that, that pretty much ensures instant BluRay success overnight. Toshiba has yet to ship 200,000 HD-DVD units.

And no I don't think the format "war" will end anytime soon... I just don't see either format losing enough ground to actually be pulled from the market.

gugy

Oct 17, 2006, 06:27 PM

this whole war just upsets me.
I would love to have a disc that I could back up 100gig of data at a reasonable price ($10/$15 disc) and not to worry about which to choose. Blu-ray or HD-DVD.
Meanwhile I'll keep buying my 300gb drives at Fry's for less than $80 and use it for back-up and storage.
I hope the hybrid players and hopefully recorders will stop this crap.

nuckinfutz

Oct 17, 2006, 06:58 PM

Apple supports both formats. They've made this clear last April when they announced HD DVD support (rudimentary) in DVD Studio Pro 4. At NAB 2007 I fully expect them to announce authoring support for HD DVD and Blu-Ray. They may make them modules that you add on if you need to for licensing/cost reasons.

HD DVD vs Blu-Ray- forget the specs. You can't win that argument since both platforms use the SAME codecs. Both will look identical with the same encode. Thus it comes down to price and content.

HD DVD has the price - players can be had for $399
Blu-Ray has the content- 7 of 8 large studios

The storage is inconsequential. HD DVD already has 3 hr movies in Troy and King Kong (nov 14) which look phenomenal. These new codecs AVC and VC-1 can kick out a phenomenal picture at DVD bitrates.

Don't wait...by the most affordable player you can and start enjoying the best HD you will see on your HDTV.

Do it now!

iMikeT

Oct 17, 2006, 08:24 PM

What ever the outcome is in the end, the hardware of one of these formats will be nothing more than a paper weight.

hulugu

Oct 17, 2006, 09:09 PM

I know I'm the minority around here when I say this, but I don't own an iPod. :eek: Yeah, it's true... I personally don't care for the MP3 format and the lesser quality offerings of iTunes. If it isn't at least CD quality, uncompressed, I don't want it. And yes, I can hear the difference on my sound system which is a separate setup from my home theatre.

I have one word for you Lossless.

Shintocam

Oct 17, 2006, 09:20 PM

Sure BluRay has more capacity to this point BUT I've watched several things on both a Toshiba HD-DVD and a Samsung BR player and everytime I come away with the same impression - HD-DVD simply looks better. Same TV (a Samsung LCD). I've read several reviews in home theatre mags too - the general consensus seems to be (from what I have seen) that Samsung messed up and their player needs some work. Similarly - the HD-DVD camp seems to have picked better transfers for their premier discs which is helping them along.

Add to this that HD-DVD players are half to one third the cost of a BR player and all the "on-paper" advantages for BR are starting to disappear. I'm not surprised if Apple is hedging their bets....

AppliedVisual

Oct 17, 2006, 10:11 PM

I have one word for you Lossless.

Yeah, already work that way... I already have all my audio collection on a centralized music server. I wouldn't mind an iPod for what it is, but I'm also not the kind of guy that enjoys listening to music through cheesy little earbuds. I can do larger DJ-style headphones in a pinch, but I prefer to listen to my music loud on a good sound system where I can feel it. And if anyone else there doesn't like it, they can just leave. :D

However, I'd like to get back into developing games for a commercial platform and I'd be all over the iPod if Apple would open up an SDK.

benthewraith

Oct 17, 2006, 10:32 PM

Nope. Cheap always prevails when it comes to marketshare. The average consumer is fairly thick, when they walk along the aisles at Walmart and wonder which one to chuck in their shopping trolley the majority will go for the cheapest.

Thick or smart? The average consumer is NOT going to spend the amount of money for Blu-Ray player, when they can get HD-DVD for cheaper. Not everyone is as fortunate as you to put $1000 down on a player.

stephenli

Oct 17, 2006, 10:54 PM

I have already used 220GB on music / movie / photo
I dont want to use over 20 DVD DL to backup.... its terrible
so, give me Blu-ray disc please, Steve.

currently, a BD-RW drive cost around $1000usd
if Mac equip with this monster drive, the price must increase by more or less $1000....so, does Apple waiting for a drop in price for drives?

Sweetfeld28

Oct 18, 2006, 11:24 AM

Personally, i don't think this format war is very worth while to begin with. I mean Blu-Ray does seem to be the leading format, but i think i will rather wait for this Hybrid Disc to come out that uses the same Red laser that our burners already have:

Versatile Multilayer Disc [VMD] (http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/26/hd-dvd-blu-ray-and-dvd-all-in-one-disc-draws-closer/)

ryan

janstett

Oct 18, 2006, 12:32 PM

For those who aren't intimately familiar with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, I've really gotten into it in the past few months so here's a quick primer:

Discs will be replaced by downloads? Let me know when I can download a movie in 1080p with lossless 5.1 sound in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps to the iToons generation that thinks 128kbps sound is good you can live with downloaded movies, but for me I don't think CD is good enough (I'm an SACD/DVD-A geek). Likewise I don't think DVD is good enough, why do I want to go backwards (downloadable movies) instead of forward (HD disc)?

Blu-Ray is the superior format, on paper. No doubt. However, there are a couple of wrenches in the works.

First, both formats are actually 90% the same. The physical storage medium is based on the same principles (blue laser) but different implementation (mostly depth of the reflective layer in the substrate). Blu-Ray is slightly denser and offers a higher total capacity (50GB vs 34GB, something like that). Blu-Ray is actually sort-of a superset of DVD from there, once you get to what's actually on the disc. HD-DVD has a new encryption layer (they learned from CSS), Blu-Ray uses this same scheme and then puts a 2nd layer of encryption on top of it. Both use the same codecs -- MPEG2, MPEG-4 H.262, and VC1 (Microsoft's codec), and Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Pure HD, DTS Plus, etc.

I believe movie studio support determines who wins. The studios were split 50-50 pretty much. Then, something funny happened. Some HD-DVD studios announced they would ALSO support Blu-Ray. In my mind, that meant Blu-Ray wins.

The launch came, HD-DVD came out first and Toshiba led the way with a pair of chunky, heavy, PC-based players at $500 and $1000. Everyone hated the Toshiba players, they were slow, unwieldy, and have awful remotes. A few months later Blu-Ray launched with Samsung's $1000 player, and surprisingly this player was AWFUL, and the picture quality looks worse over HDMI than component because they forgot to turn off some video filtering. Worse, the Blu-Ray transfers thus far have been very poor quality. This seems to be because Blu-Ray is leaning towards old MPEG-2 HD transfers, while HD-DVD has embraced VC1 (which is the best of the 3 video codecs for quality and size) and gotten new encodings with Microsoft's attention. Then, Toshiba started putting out firmware updates for their HD-DVD players and suddenly their players didn't suck so bad.

So here we are; the only Blu-Ray player on the market is a Samsung, Sony has no presence. We're one month away from the launch of the PS3 (which will play Blu-Ray) and the X-Box 360 HD-DVD drive.

Right now, HD-DVD has all the momentum. The Blu-Ray titles are low quality, they have no $500 player, and HD-DVD is building a head of steam.

I know I'm the minority around here when I say this, but I don't own an iPod. :eek: Yeah, it's true... I personally don't care for the MP3 format and the lesser quality offerings of iTunes. If it isn't at least CD quality, uncompressed, I don't want it. And yes, I can hear the difference on my sound system which is a separate setup from my home theatre.

:) I love iPods but I know I'm trading off quality for convenience. Meanwhile, I'm re-ripping all of my hundreds of CDs into Apple lossless format and putting the CDs in storage. It's not SACD, but at least I'll be back to CD quality.

janstett

Oct 18, 2006, 12:37 PM

NEC has developed a chip that can decode both, as you have hinted at. The optical technology is coming along (I saw something on Digg a little bit ago that noted some progress in that arena), but still not there yet.

I'm curious to see how that plays out. Samsung at first wanted to put out a hybrid player, as well as another company whose identity I forget; but apparently Sony's Blu-Ray licensing explicitly forbids combo players. So I don't understand, is NEC's chip a clean-room solution or did they find some other solution?

janstett

Oct 18, 2006, 01:21 PM

[merged posts]

janstett

Oct 18, 2006, 01:25 PM

[merged posts]

nuckinfutz

Oct 18, 2006, 03:30 PM

HD DVD is the superior platform. After perusing their specs a bit closer I find that:

1. There are more mandatory features in HD DVD players. Ethernet, secondary Audio and Video decoders, persistent storage that must play a certain amount of 1080p content at a given bitrate, Dolby TrueHD support is mandatory. Sure Blu-Ray can add these but they don't mandate them so as of today only one BD player(The pioneer) will come with ethernet.

2. Less DRM- HD DVD has AACS 128-bit encryption. Blu-Ray has the same but tosses in BD+ and ROM Mark. BD+ could prove to be problematic and gives too much power to studios.

3. Legacy support- Most people don't know but the current "flipper" Combo discs (DVD on one side HD on the other) are giving way to Twin Format discs which contain a DVD layer and HD DVD layer on the same side. This means disc art comes back but you still have the legacy support. Currently right now it's two layer so you can do 15GB/4.7GB discs. Three Layer discs are being tested by the DVD Forum for inclusion to the spec. This would allow for 30/4.7 or 15/9.4 discs. Sure legacy support sounds stupid but how many minivans and cars have DVD players as standard or optional equipment? It'll be a long time before you get HD in the car. Twin Format HD DVD will ensure you can view your movie on millions upon millions of players.

The networking features of HD DVD will impress people. HDi interactivity allows you to tap into the net for updates to trailers and bios. Or you can create a "playlist" of favorite scenes and send this to friends who own the same disc for playback. Voice annotations of scenes is possible as well. The key here is that the annotations or playlists contain syncing information for the disc. You never have to copy the actual movie content. The ethernet port on the HD DVD players can access your network using industry standard protocol.

We're all computer people and we should all be asking why we have to spend $1500 on a pioneer BD player to get network connectivity that is available on a $400 HD DVD player. Things that make you say hmmmmmmmm

AppliedVisual

Oct 18, 2006, 04:07 PM

I'm curious to see how that plays out. Samsung at first wanted to put out a hybrid player, as well as another company whose identity I forget; but apparently Sony's Blu-Ray licensing explicitly forbids combo players. So I don't understand, is NEC's chip a clean-room solution or did they find some other solution?

Ricoh already has the necessary optical elements for a dual format player -- they announced this two months ago. In addition to NEC, LG also has a chipset for a universal player. All the pieces are in place except the legal/licensing restrictions.

Samsung and LG both announced they would begin work on universal players, but once Sony finalized the Blu-Ray licensing, LG just disappeared and announced two Blu-Ray only players, the higher end model will sell under the Marantz label. Samsung, recanted and said they would not pursue a universal player at this time... You won't see Samnsung challenging Sony on any such thing -- these two now share manufacturing and technology for several products, including LCD panels.

Most likely, due to it's ties to LG and NEC, Philips would be the most likely to come out first with a universal player. But until someone finds a way around Sony's licensing restrictions, it isn't going to happen... Many don't think that their licensing is legal and constitutes an antitrust violation, but at this stage in the game the small market doesn't jsutify the effort. Ultimately, we will see universal players, it's a guaranteed thing. But I doubt Sony will budge from their licensing restrictions until they feel HD-DVD has lost the market... At that point they'll lift the restriction and like everyone else they'll release a BluRay player that can also play those "other" discs.

sarge

Oct 18, 2006, 04:18 PM

Please, this conversation is so 2005...

November 17, 2005 (Computerworld) -- Turner Entertainment Networks has its lenses focused on holographic storage for the future of storing and retrieving its movies, cartoons and commercial spots. The network giant has completed a test of the cutting-edge storage technology, which it said will soon move the company away from tape- and disk-based storage.
"The holographic disk promises to retail for $100, and by 2010, it will have capacity of 1.6TB each. That's pretty inexpensive," said Ron Tarasoff, vice president of broadcast technology and engineering at Turner Entertainment. "Even this first version can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160MB/sec. data throughput rates. That's burning. Then combine it with random access, and it's the best of all worlds."

Optware is now neighbors with its only other U.S. competitor, InPhase Technologies Inc., which is also in Longmont. InPhase said earlier this year that it will begin shipping its own 300GB drive by the end of next year.
Holographic disks can attain far higher density of data storage than standard magnetic disk drives, which store data only on the surface of a disk. Holographic disk technology allows data to be stored as a holograph throughout the polymer material that makes up a disk.

Optware also plans to release a holographic disk product for streaming video that's targeted at the film and broadcast industries, and a consumer disk product that is about the size of a credit card with 30GB of capacity.

mdntcallr

Oct 18, 2006, 04:24 PM

Please, this conversation is so 2005...

Optware also plans to release a holographic disk product for streaming video that's targeted at the film and broadcast industries, and a consumer disk product that is about the size of a credit card with 30GB of capacity.

hah, so funny, but then again, it has taken alot of time to make blu-ray hope this could come faster.

but.... it all depends on pricing. will holographic storage be cheaper? more reliable.

if so... sign me up. alot of us just want reliable storage.

but... with turner movies using it. sounds like a professional tier product, not consumer yet

minnesotamacman

Oct 18, 2006, 06:47 PM

It has been said here already, but Apple is smart to back both. I have a feeliing that HD DVD is going to win out in the end. Sure Sony is going to Blu Ray everyone, but not many people over 30 are going to get a PS3...

nuckinfutz

Oct 18, 2006, 06:59 PM

With the new codecs Sony can barely justify 50GB discs for movie distribution. How in the world can you justify 300GB discs?

HVD or something like it would be keen for an Ultra HD format or a 4k format in 10-15yrs but right now it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for movie playback.

AppliedVisual

Oct 18, 2006, 08:28 PM

With the new codecs Sony can barely justify 50GB discs for movie distribution. How in the world can you justify 300GB discs?

That's easy... The next video format, which is already forming alliances within the industry. Currently known as SuperHD or Super Hi-Vision with 4K and 8K resolutions.

Or... We can put all 6 Star Wars films on a single disc in full 1080P glory.

But seriously, the new codecs aren't that magical and even with VC1 or H.264, it's pretty easy to run into a barrier with a 25 to 30 GB disc size. Sony shouldn't have any troubles with fitting films at full quality on a 50GB disc. Also keep in mind that the layer substrate within BluRay is a lot thinner than DVD/HD-DVD discs and they claim that a disc could potentially hold up to 12 layers... Sony has done lab tests and industry demonstrations with prototype 4-layer discs, but the exposure has been very minimal.

Also Holographic storage is going to be the next form of optical media, almost surely anyway unless something incredible comes out of nowhere. It has a lot of room to grow as a format as well and as capacities increase, we will begin to move from compressed video to uncompressed and/or lossless codecs. So when the 3.6TB holographic storage media hits, we'll be able to put full HD res 1080P24, uncompressed 32bit color transfers of features plus full uncompressed 8 channel audio on a single disc with room to spare.

HVD or something like it would be keen for an Ultra HD format or a 4k format in 10-15yrs but right now it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for movie playback.

Yep, but I think that day will be here quicker than 10-15 years. While there will be a move to continue to push HD resolutions higher as I mentioned. I think we're going to see an even bigger push to max-out the quality of the image resolution we can deal with now. Current HDTV sets are shipping with the ability to display a full 1080p uncompressed signal. While BluRay and HD-DVD do a fair job of using this ability there's still noticeable compression artifacting and color limitations, black crush, etc.. Just imagine what would be possible with an uncompressed or lossless codec.

nuckinfutz

Oct 18, 2006, 10:10 PM

But seriously, the new codecs aren't that magical and even with VC1 or H.264, it's pretty easy to run into a barrier with a 25 to 30 GB disc size. Sony shouldn't have any troubles with fitting films at full quality on a 50GB disc. Also keep in mind that the layer substrate within BluRay is a lot thinner than DVD/HD-DVD discs and they claim that a disc could potentially hold up to 12 layers

Therein lies the issue. HD DVD's first titles had an avg bitrate of 16-20Mbps with peaks of almost 30Mbps. Batman Begins just shipped with an avg bitrate of 13Mpbs and it's PQ is top notch. That translates to roughly 6GB per hour so it was pretty easy for them to toss this 2.5 hour movie onto a 30GB disc and have it consume only 18-20GB for the picture. Add in your lossless audio track, Dolby Digital+ and IME linked to the extras in that final 10GB and you're fine. Speaking with some Microsofties about their VC-1 they believe they can get down to 9Mbps for HD material and 11Mbps for "comfortable" material so there's still room for improvement. 50GB is cool for movies that just have a huge amount of extras though.

so Holographic storage is going to be the next form of optical media,

I doubt we see another widely distributed movie format on disc. Both Blu-Ray and HD DVD can integrate network content along with the disc syncronized. This is just the precursor to downloading the whole movie without a physical medium. It'll take a decade to get last mile coverage to rural areas but broadband speed and pervasiveness will ensure that warehousing packaged discs goes the way of the dodo.

We'll see. If yet another disc format comes out I want to see

10-bit per channel RGB
4:2:2 color sampling
huge bandwidth
3840x2160 resolution

AppliedVisual

Oct 18, 2006, 11:55 PM

Therein lies the issue. HD DVD's first titles had an avg bitrate of 16-20Mbps with peaks of almost 30Mbps. Batman Begins just shipped with an avg bitrate of 13Mpbs and it's PQ is top notch.

While it's neither here nor there, I watched Batman Begins last night on HD-DVD. The PQ was pretty good, but not the best I've seen out of HD-DVD. The PQ wasn't any better than Serenity (which is also quite good) and I thought wasn't as good as The Corpse Bride. I was somewhat disappointed with some of the banding and edge artifacts on white/bright objects. High contrast edges tended to show some halos at times. But yeah, either way, the PQ coming out of HD-DVD is great.

I doubt we see another widely distributed movie format on disc.

You may be right about the disc part... Upcoming storage media technologies are taking various other shapes. Many of the holographic applications being researched now take various shapes from cards about the size and thickness of a credit card to a 4cm cube. Not all are based on a spinning disc implementation. :D

I think there will always be a tangible medium for delivering a hard copy of music or movies. Consumers want it. People were saying this very same thing about music 10 years ago... Here we are today, CD sales continue to hold steady even with online buying options. Even for what people download, most still want a type of media to store that on and not necessarily hard drives or their iPod being the final destination.

It may take time for another format to supplant HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but it will happen. 1080P HD delivered via a compressed data stream is hardly the pinnacle of potential for our current display technology, let alone upcoming display systems. Sony and Runco are already shipping 4K projectors at prices lower than 1080P/2K projectors were selling for only 3 years ago. TI is ready to ship full 2K DMD systems for DLP TVs and are applying their wobulation technique to build 4K DLP systems, expected sometime next year. And even as broadband access continues to grow and serve more areas, newer technology will need to come about to increase speeds and overall bandwidth.

We'll see. If yet another disc format comes out I want to see

10-bit per channel RGB
4:2:2 color sampling
huge bandwidth
3840x2160 resolution

Er... How do you figure 30bit RGB and 4:2:2?

Current HD-DVD and Blu-Ray standards allow for 10bpc as does the ATSC broadcast standard. And you would want full 4:4:4 representation for that 10bit color stream.. Why cripple it? While were at it, since we're hypothesizing a new format with huge capacity and ample bandwidth, why not just go full on 16bits/channel 4:4:4, lossless, 4K resolution. I figure that optical/holographic media that could reliably and affordably handle that sort of data requirement is probably about 10 years off. Or about where HD-DVD/Blu-Ray were 10 years ago - just a sparkle of hope in some lab demonstration as the DVD format was just starting to show up. Oh, wow, has it been that long? Yep, almost... I bought my first DVD movie in '98.

I agree on the 4K resolution, though.