Apple To Back Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

[AppliedVisual]

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]

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]

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

 

[ITR 81]

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]

Photographers need it

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.

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]

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]

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]

Yes, I have the Samsung 46" LN-S4696D, 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]

$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). 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]

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!?! 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]

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

 

[weldon]

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]

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

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]

Tape!?! 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]

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.

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. 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.

 

[brianus]

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.

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. 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.

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]

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]

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]

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!

 

[AppliedVisual]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[hulugu]

I know I'm the minority around here when I say this, but I don't own an iPod. 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]

Do I want HD for data capacity or picture quality?

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....