Blu-Ray wins the format wars

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by MethodGit

IFox and Disney only sided with Blu-Ray after being informed enough rigorous protection would be applied to fuck the consumers over as usual.

BTW, BD-Java is crap. My friend tested the top of the line Sony Elite BD player on a Di$ney title, which had so much animation that bogged down the menu selection and there was no way to skip.

[P-J]

Originally Posted by Ian

Newsflash for methodgit: Film companies do not want their work to be stolen.

So, by your logic, the new trend towards lack of DRM on most important music download services indicates that music companies do want their music to be stolen?

Incidentally the only fanboy in here is you, or at least as far as I can tell.

[NLS]

Originally Posted by Unch

What do these HD formats really offer?

erm... let me make a wild guess: HD?

[spiff]

Originally Posted by Unch

Seriously, what are the real benefits of these HD formats? DVD offered practical benefits over VHS - compact media, the ability to jump to arbitrary points in playback, no physical degradation / loss of quality over time. What do these HD formats really offer?

They offer just as much/little as VHS had on dvd, depending on your views

• Menus/information that integrates with the movie with out being preencoded as with dvd, ie you don't need to stop a movie if you want go through settings.
• Picture in picture (for HDdvd, will probably be useful in future BD upgrades)
• 6x the resolution
• Finally lossless encoding of audio, especially spatial orientation.
• Video codecs that aren't bit starved and with artifacts around the 2h+ mark.
• Actual seamless branching, not that fade crap DVD has.

The biggest drawbacks right now would be that BDs java specs are ad-hoc:ed in reality and that anamorphic/custom aspect encoding wasn't in the base profile (indeed probably not even in the 1.3+ specs)

A interesting side note is that the actual hardware requirements for running java means that when $60 players arrive, modified firmwares can go really crazy. Think xbox media center, but blu-ray instead.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by P-J

So, by your logic, the new trend towards lack of DRM on most important music download services indicates that music companies do want their music to be stolen?

Incidentally the only fanboy in here is you, or at least as far as I can tell.

You really think they don't want DRM? They want it, but they don't want the backlash from poorly implemented efforts like what Sony tried to do a year or so ago.

When they find a way to DRM without you even knowing, they will.

I never denied being a Sony fanboy, but what has that got to do with the price of fish, Blu-Ray is superior, anyone that actually wanted the inferior product to win has got to be drinking someones special cool-aid.

If they live in America I can understand the cost argument as HD-DVD players have been heavily subsidised there, but not in the UK.

[seuden]

Sony fanboy, I have nothing else to say. I just hope that the right product has won and Sony don't try to screw the consumer, again. Btw how IS the backwards compatibility of UK PS3's?

[IFW]

...and just as importantly related to BD movie playback: who will win the elections?

btw: do you realize at all, that BD is NOT a Sony format?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

Sony was just one of the major players supporting it by integrating playback capabilities into the PS3 and thus helping it to achieve a strong market penetration.

As Ian said HD DVD players are sold at the same premium prices with BD players in Europe so price was not a deciding factor, the real market economy and technology was.

People buying these players are early adopters:
1, rich, buying any new toy
2, people who are technology aware, and for them the difference in storage capacity meant more than to the average consumer who will buy into it once it will be cheaper - which will happen NOW that HD DVD is killed off for good.
3, people with a PS3 or Xbox 360. For the 360 you had to buy an additional player which did cost roughly the same for the bargain price you would get a standalone player for in the US. Europe gets shafted as always, so no love for HD DVD on 360. PS3 has BD built-in. Which one do you think one would go for...? Even if you just play games, curiosity kicks in, you will buy a few movies.

Microsoft clearly backed HD DVD to generate fragmentation in the market, and to become a saviour through its own digital download distribution.

This is a major blow for Microsoft, although they won a one year headstart for their download service by sacrificing some hardware cost - which is nothing compared to the expected revenue generated from DLC.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by seuden

Sony fanboy, I have nothing else to say. I just hope that the right product has won and Sony don't try to screw the consumer, again. Btw how IS the backwards compatibility of UK PS3's?

Why not just admit you've lost the argument rather than trying to be clever. BC is just fine on mine. I couldn't give a crap if people buying one now cannot play PS2 games on it.

Me being a Sony fanboy doesn't make me any less right or you any less wrong by the way.

[P-J]

Originally Posted by Ian

Me being a Sony fanboy doesn't make me any less right or you any less wrong by the way.

No, but you've admitted it, and that was the real goal. Case closed.

[Ian]

I've never denied it. No shame in supporting a product through thick and thin, if there was no one would be here in the first place, would they?

There are a few people that I bet "love" their Microsoft noisebox360's which is really why they are so disappointed by blu-ray coming out on top.

There is no logical reason for someone living in the UK to have wanted HD-DVD. It's not better and it's not cheaper either.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by seuden

Sony fanboy, I have nothing else to say. I just hope that the right product has won and Sony don't try to screw the consumer, again. Btw how IS the backwards compatibility of UK PS3's?

So long as you go for the 60gb version, its quite adept at backwards compatibility.

[Interceptor]

you know, if they'd called ASBO's 'HD-DVDs' then they'd not be as popular as they are now too.

[Merlin]

The answer to this is one word: Pr0n.

Once the pr0n industry announced it was behind (oooerrr) Blu-Ray, it was all over (even more oooerrr).

The Internet was built by pr0n and anything driven by pr0n is guaranteed to be successful.

Merlin

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by Ian

Why not just admit you've lost the argument rather than trying to be clever. BC is just fine on mine. I couldn't give a crap if people buying one now cannot play PS2 games on it.

And that's why I and many other not-so-much-into-Sony will by one when it comes to reasonable price under 200 dollars, but only if it supports PS2. (seems that will never happen)

I don't give a shit about HD movies as they cost more. I'll stick with DVD for couple of years (maybe more) and I'll make a move when I can by pack of 50 BD for less then 20 bucks. (how much I'm paying right now)

I see the point of getting all of my AVI files on couple of disks... and being able to encode at 1400kbps video - 128kbps sound and have all season of series on one disk.

[Unch]

Originally Posted by spiff

They offer just as much/little as VHS had on dvd, depending on your views

• Menus/information that integrates with the movie with out being preencoded as with dvd, ie you don't need to stop a movie if you want go through settings.
• Picture in picture (for HDdvd, will probably be useful in future BD upgrades)
• 6x the resolution
• Finally lossless encoding of audio, especially spatial orientation.
• Video codecs that aren't bit starved and with artifacts around the 2h+ mark.
• Actual seamless branching, not that fade crap DVD has.

I was talking about real practical benefits that Joe Public will reap from changing over to a HD format.

• I'm not quite sure what you mean here, I've never seen a setting on the DVD menu that couldn't be changed with the remote while the movie is playing. Unless you're talking about scene selection, but then why do you need to keep the current scene playing if you are changing to a different one?
• You need PiP to watch a movie or TV show why? I can see the benefits for the deaf and signing, but there are already subtitles and we all know that isn't what it is used for.
• That's a given, but how much of a benefit is it really? It's not exactly a quantum leap like CDs were over vinyl or DVD was over VHS.
• How many people could actually tell the difference without being told?
• Again, how many people actually notice this?
• No idea what you're talking about.

So basically, it shoves more pixels on the screen and the menus are a bit flashier. Whoopy-do.

[7-Zark-7]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

It was a totally unecessary format war, Toshiba and Sony should know better. All they achieved was to dilute and ensure both formats didn't get the start that DVD had.

Actually if you ever read the rantings of director Michael (Transformers) Bay, he seemed convinced that M$ involvement in supporting HD-DVD was purely designed to ensure both formats failed & instead esure the success of digital distribution instead-courtesy of M$ of course!

I think it's a mercy the "war" has been a relatively brief one. In the interim I can't see it making too much difference in terms of multi-platform releases on 360/ps3 but in the short term at least it does provide a little extra marketing leverage to the ps3. And dvd playback did the ps2 no harm when it was launched either.

[Galahad/FLT]

Well Michael Bay was probably right, Microsoft wanted iHD utilised, and were probably a bit miffed that the Blu-Ray group didn't take it.

Common misconception that people have that Blu-Ray is a solely Sony medium, when its not. Sony happened to be ONE of the many partners in the format.

Now that Blu-Ray is the winner, it stands to reason that sales of the PS3 will go up as its currently the cheapest way to get Blu-Ray and a decent console.

Only thing that will hamper that is Microsoft significantly dropping the price of the 360 and releasing a dirt cheap external Blu-Ray drive, but then that would then be Microsoft admitting that there is a digital format that they don't have a stranglehold on.

[Ian]

MS would not sell the player at a loss, so player addon + console will not be any cheaper than a PS3.

Rumour has it, MS are going to release a blu-ray addon as soon as May.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Unch

I was talking about real practical benefits that Joe Public will reap from changing over to a HD format.

• I'm not quite sure what you mean here, I've never seen a setting on the DVD menu that couldn't be changed with the remote while the movie is playing. Unless you're talking about scene selection, but then why do you need to keep the current scene playing if you are changing to a different one?
• You need PiP to watch a movie or TV show why? I can see the benefits for the deaf and signing, but there are already subtitles and we all know that isn't what it is used for.
• That's a given, but how much of a benefit is it really? It's not exactly a quantum leap like CDs were over vinyl or DVD was over VHS.
• How many people could actually tell the difference without being told?
• Again, how many people actually notice this?
• No idea what you're talking about.

So basically, it shoves more pixels on the screen and the menus are a bit flashier. Whoopy-do.

A lot of the Blu-ray releases are also missing extras that were prominent on the original DVD releases too... and paying upto £25 per disc is daylight robbery for any HD disc imo. Just wait, they'll have 'special edition Blu-ray' discs with the added extras in a year or so to maximise profits.

I see no point in it tbh for films. Standard DVD is cheap, cheerful, looks crisp, clear (Anchor Bay releases tend to be brilliant) and sound wise are fine to my ears with a decent set of cans on my head

Another gimmick and not really a quantum leap in picture/sound.

There will also be far less releases of older DVD releases too onto the Blu-Ray format and there's not a cat in hells chance I'm going to replace all my DVDs

I'm waiting for the day when Isolinear optical chips are released with 2.15 kiloquads of data storage

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

Another gimmick and not really a quantum leap in picture/sound.

There is a significant difference in picture quality. I was watching Blade Runner BD on 2 of my friend's TVs. One was a LCD that the picture quality looked better than the theatre screening, and the other was a projection TV that matched the theatre's quality. Overall, I saw enough of a quality jump between the DVD and HD format to think about accelerating my purchase of the new format.