HD-DVD Surrenders

[mist2123]

Originally Posted by Nenkitsune

Yeah, I plan on building a new system that will be overkill for high def stuff (because i'm sick of crappy frame rates)
I tend to archive stuff as disks. Hard drives are cheap, but anime tends to take up a lot of room VERY fast (along with video games) so even if hard drives become cheap, disks will always be cheaper to me. Also, it's easier to store disks away for archiving than it is a hard drive. (to me at least)

Blu-ray isn't region free, but it might as well be. here's a breakdown of the blu-ray regions (i love them compared to dvd regions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Region_codes

As you can see, japan AND the us are in the same region XP. that's all that matters to me.

also, according to wiki, up to this year about 2/3rds were region free

Chinese anime fans will be pissed for sure

[ApostleOfGod]

Point proven. I guess it really comes down to preference and willingness for the product then..

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by boggart

I think one thing to remember about the PS3 is that it is one of the earlier generation BD players out there, so it will probably act like ass even if you load it up with the latest firmware etc. (I assume you can get that from Sony via some internet functionality).

Actually, if you're going to buy a Blu-ray player right now, the PS3 is the player to get. I can find the official quote if anyone's that skeptical, but people on the Blu-ray panel basically stated that the PS3 is the only player that stands a chance of being compatible with the future Blu-ray specifications.

What, didn't you know? In order for Blu-ray to compete with HD-DVD it was rushed to market. Blu-ray in its current form is incomplete. Did you hear about how a number of players had issues and/or couldn't access special content on certain discs made using the Blu-ray 1.2 specification, because they were only 1.1 or 1.0? Did you hear about how the official response to that was "consumers knew what they were getting into"? Count me in with WanderingKnight in feeling a bit disillusioned about the marketing hype.

HD-DVD was a completed product and it was region-free. I see some of you howling with delight about how the US and Japan are in the same region. I'm quite angry that we're still being subject to that garbage at all. I utterly detest the forced controls imposed on DVD regions, and I hate to see it still being carried on.

In truth, I don't care about HD content. I know it's the next big thing, but as someone living in a small apartment, with a limited budget, and who isn't crazy about movies, I'm only interested in the amount of data that can be stored per disc. Blu-ray's theoretical maximum was higher than HD-DVD's, if I remember correctly. Now we just need to wait for the prices to fall.

[NoSanninWa]

Yeah, well Betamax lost to VHS also. It's all about the marketing. Personally I think Blu-Ray won because it has the cooler name. And Blu-Ray is only 2 syllables while HD-DVD is 5 syllables. They may take up about the same space on the page, but HD-DVD is much harder and longer to say.

Stupid, but I really believe that is why Blu-Ray won.

Oh, that little detail about every PS3 being a Blu-Ray player probably helped a tiny bit also. Sadly, it was never really about which product had superior specs or was nicer to the consumers.

And to answer your actual question, Blu-Ray will theoretically hold twice the capacity of a HD-DVD, so if you want 50GB on a single disk, then you won as a consumer.

[D a m i e n]

iirc when betamax lost to VHS it was partially due to the porn industrie choosing to the VHS format for their releases.
Never underestimate the power of porn!!

(laught all you want but what i said hold more truth than you may think)

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

HD-DVD was a completed product and it was region-free. I see some of you howling with delight about how the US and Japan are in the same region. I'm quite angry that we're still being subject to that garbage at all. I utterly detest the forced controls imposed on DVD regions, and I hate to see it still being carried on.

It was also somewhere (since I can't find the source) that Sony purposely separated the region code locking and the BD encryption into two separate channels in the standard since they knew people were going to go after the region codes. The strange irony of this is all the hacker types are going after the encryption, not the region codes, since region codes are easily changeable on the computer.

[Nenkitsune]

actually bayoab, there currently is no way to circumvent the region codes on the disks, but the encryption was broken pretty fast after it came out, so i think they're trying incorporate a more advanced method of encryption or something like that.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Yeah, well Betamax lost to VHS also. It's all about the marketing. Personally I think Blu-Ray won because it has the cooler name. And Blu-Ray is only 2 syllables while HD-DVD is 5 syllables. They may take up about the same space on the page, but HD-DVD is much harder and longer to say.

I may be misunderstanding why you're bringing up Betamax vs. VHS, but is it because you're saying that a superior format (Beta) lost to an inferior format (VHS) in the past? The Beta technical specifications may seem superior to VHS, but I've actually read a rather compelling argument which shows that VHS was the superior format for regular consumers - and not just because it won. If you'd be interested, I can probably dig it up.

As for why Blu-ray won specifically, it all has to do with movie studio support. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but I wouldn't be surprised if studios are bribed/persuaded to adopt a certain standard exclusively, similar to how video game companies are persuaded to make a release exclusive to a certain console. Eventually it came to be that even a slight majority of the studios signed on to Blu-ray exclusively, and the rest soon followed. HD-DVD was more established and was cheaper, but because it had no studio support it quickly lost retail support as well and dried up. I don't imagine that the movie studios cared too much about what the name of the format was or what the technical specifications were.

And to answer your actual question, Blu-Ray will theoretically hold twice the capacity of a HD-DVD, so if you want 50GB on a single disk, then you won as a consumer.

This is true. HD-DVD was marked as being able to hold 15 GB on a single layer, making for 30 GB dual-layer discs (versus DVD's 4.7 GB per layer). Blu-ray does 25 GB per layer, making for those 50 GB dual-layer discs that you mentioned.

Originally Posted by D a m i e n

iirc when betamax lost to VHS it was partially due to the porn industrie choosing to the VHS format for their releases.
Never underestimate the power of porn!!

While that's largely accepted as truth, the decisions of the porn industry clearly didn't have the influence of the past. Times have changed, and the influential players were the regular movie studios this time around.

[SeijiSensei]

I was around to watch the Beta/VHS format "wars," and I see all sorts of claims about why VHS won that just don't ring true to me. (I was actually working for a consulting company that specialized in new media at the time, and home video was one of my "beats.")

At the time that the two formats were in direct competition (mid-1970's), there was hardly any pre-recorded content in either format. People were buying VCRs to record off-air, not to watch rental movies. So when VHS arrived at a lower price point, with the capacity to record a full two-hour movie, it easily won over ordinary consumers when they compared it to a more expensive device with half the recording time. Eventually Beta had competitive recording times, but by then the market had spoken. Longer recording times, even with lower video quality, was the preferred choice.

Sure there was a small market for porn films on cassettes, but that wasn't a real factor once the Beta/VHS battles reached the broader consumer marketplace.

[boggart]

Yes, I also find that the region coding nonsense is still a pain in the ass. Being someone who lives in a region B and not region A... *sighs*... think of all the HD anime from Japan I will miss out... until they sort this crap out.

EDIT: LOL @ French Guiana in South America...

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

While that's largely accepted as truth, the decisions of the porn industry clearly didn't have the influence of the past. Times have changed, and the influential players were the regular movie studios this time around.

That's because now the internet is for porn.

[Vexx]

Note: Sony's DVD players are hardwired locked for region. That makes it fairly interesting that Blu-ray's region definition overlap US and Japan (says the guy who bought ONE Sony player, then did the research, and will not buy another dvd player that isn't region free).
The region coding map for Blu-ray is ... bizarre (AU linked with Greenland? SA linked with NA?). Not exactly economic regions, eh? O.o

Region-coding is basically the industry's way of saying "Globalization is for the benefit of big corporations, not for consumers."

Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to buy my clothes directly from Vietnam and Cambodia because I can pay them four times what they get for a shirt and still pay ten times less than what'd cost me in Big Name Corp. Box Store even after shipping.

I saw an interesting article in a business journal that seemed to think that Blue-ray's backers essentially bought out HD-DVD's backers for about $400 million just to end the debate. Unfortunately, I don't have it handy but I thought it was the NY Times I saw it in. Hopefully, someone will spot a linky or correct my memory.

edit: ah, my bad - it was a Canadian paper, here's the link for your edification:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...?query=Toshiba

And about digital downloads..... I can see them replacing rentals or ephemeral purchases. But I like to own a piece of physical media and despite everyone's drooling predictions -- its going to be a Long Damn Time before the majority of America actually has access to true Fat broadband (if ever). Start counting the numbers and you'll find very few people actually have access to 50-100GB/month despite the claims of their ISP/telco/cable and certainly fewer if *everyone* connected starts actually streaming that amount.

The telcos still haven't deployed full broadband despite getting billions in government welfare and the cable people have fundamental assymetric problems in their infrastructure as well as basic misunderstandings of what "Internet" means.
So I suspect Blu-ray will enjoy enough time on the radar to be profitable.

[hobbes_fan]

Originally Posted by Demoss

I think HD-DVD would of had more of a chance if it was built in to the Xbox 360 from the start, but oh well, i dont really care. Either way Blu-ray is not worth it yet in my eyes till they bring out burners that can do at least 16x burning speed, i mean 2x was horrible for dvd burners, imagine the waiting time burning a Blu-ray disk

And yeah i was only ever interested in the capacity of Blu-ray, with films it took me ages to switch from VHS to DVD, so i think it'll be the same here.

As an early adopter I have a BD drive and a PS3, I don't think it would've made a difference if M$ bundled the HDDVD with the 360. By making it an external device they were hedging their bets. All M$ needs to do is release a BD add on and maybe firmware updates for the 360. Also factor in the costs of the add on it would've cost as much as the Ps3 negating it's main selling point.

The slowest BD burner I've seen burns 25gb in about 25mins. That's acceptable speed personally (4x?). Moving 25gb from my HDD to an external HDD via e-sata or USB takes a similar amount of time. So it's not like you're being crippled by speeds when the alternatives aren't offering much better performance.

Porn on DVD/HD DVD/BD wasn't going to make a massive difference this time. Porn executives have generally stated that they like the current business model they use where they generate most of their income from pay sites and streaming. And honestly it is a good business model for them.

[X10A_Freedom]

Well, it's good to see what seems like a superior technology format winning. Sony's in the doldrums right now so it should be a good boost to them. Losing Sony would have been a pretty big loss of innovation.

I've never really bought DVD movies and will probably very rarely buy if ever, BD movies in the far future, because I tend to only watch them once for time reasons! What's interesting is, people accept bad quality as perfectly normal and good until a new format comes out. I can remember my childhood days being very content with watching stuff on VHS on SDTV.

It would be interesting if Blu-Ray will really benefit S.E Asia as people live in tiny flats and anything over 26 inch widescreen isn't exactly practical. As for the Dolby Sound or whatever on BD, it wouldn't exactly benefit you unless you have some sort of home theatre system. I am likely to end up in a tiny flat with limited space for TV and speakers so I see very limited benefit of BD as a movie playing device. My big wish is a way to hook up PC speakers to the TV/DVD player somehow. For me, Blu-Ray would possibly benefit me in the future when it comes to storing videos (and anime) and being the larger capacity format vs HD-DVD and more versatile (quad-layer), I see it being around longer than HD-DVD would have, had they won.

Region codes are a pain in the butt. I (unfortunately) don't lead a sedentary life due to factors out of my control and this DVD region codes rubbish was the final nail in the coffin which led me to completely avoid movie DVDs.

Nonetheless, it would take a few more years until BD really takes hold because of the price. The average prices of HDTVs also need to come down to 40% of today's levels before it really becomes mainstream. I see high and medium-high income families in the UK shelling out on huge TVs while the majority of the middle and working classes are still using SDTVs.

My family still uses SDTVs and will probably do so until that TV cooks itself. My parents actually use a hands-me-down widescreen SDTV from a friend who upgraded to HDTV.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by X10A_Freedom

Well, it's good to see what seems like a superior technology format winning. Sony's in the doldrums right now so it should be a good boost to them. Losing Sony would have been a pretty big loss of innovation.

Superior technology is debatable. They both did the exact same thing very well - play high definition movies. Anything after that for either format is a bonus feature, a selling point sure, but a bonus.

Sony is in the doldrums because their gaming division has taken massive losses from the PS3 development and its lackluster launch. I think they are just now turning some kind of a profit after many cost cutting revisions of the hardware, including one of the larger selling points - backwards compatibility.

Losing Sony wouldn't hurt innovation anymore than losing Microsoft would. They're companies, not people. Losing them would just mean some other company would fill in the gap. You could even argue that such companies stifle innovation, but that's an entirely different subject.

In its own kind of funny way, the loser is the consumer. Even though consumers were choosing blu-ray players over hd-dvd players, the people who made the ultimate decision for everyone else was the movie studios.

If the studios had chosen HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray, we'd just be using that instead. Really would have made no difference in the long run.

[X10A_Freedom]

I'd have thought the higher capacity of BD meant superior bitrate/playing time per disk.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Vexx

And about digital downloads..... I can see them replacing rentals or ephemeral purchases. But I like to own a piece of physical media and despite everyone's drooling predictions -- its going to be a Long Damn Time before the majority of America actually has access to true Fat broadband (if ever). Start counting the numbers and you'll find very few people actually have access to 50-100GB/month despite the claims of their ISP/telco/cable and certainly fewer if *everyone* connected starts actually streaming that amount.

Though you don't need true fat broadband to use digital downloads as they are now though. Even fansubs are showing that you don't need to download gigs to get "HD" content. Being on really crummy broadband hasn't ever stopped people from downloading. A good percentage of the people on napster were 56k dialup or ISDN users. Also, digital downloads are going to go a lot farther than that with the mindset of those who are currently in college and below.

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

As an early adopter I have a BD drive and a PS3, I don't think it would've made a difference if M$ bundled the HDDVD with the 360. By making it an external device they were hedging their bets. All M$ needs to do is release a BD add on and maybe firmware updates for the 360. Also factor in the costs of the add on it would've cost as much as the Ps3 negating it's main selling point.

It would have made a huge difference if MS had bundled an HD-DVD drive in with the 360 at either the elite level or all levels. It would have given a huge boost to the hardware sales and probably disc sales. Sony had essentially bet the farm by bundling the blu-ray drive into the PS3 at all levels and making it so that the PS3 was the cheapest blu-ray player on the market for the majority of the time.

Remember, blu-ray won because they convinced retailers and companies that it was selling better by moving more units. (I wonder how much sales are down now that all the gimmicks are over.) If HD-DVD had more hardware out there, they would have moved more units too and may have gotten studios to come aboard.

[hobbes_fan]

Up until recently remember that the the add on was close to $200USD (prior to xmas) the console itself was around 400USD. The PS3 was 500USD. Now say what you want but one of the key selling points of the 360 was it's price. Had the HDDVD drive been bundled it would of been on par in price with the PS3. You've got to be kidding yourself if you don't think a major reason the 360 sold so well is the price. It was one of the biggest selling points in the console wars. Had the 360 come out at the same price because it included a HDDVD drive you'd have seen the same sales figures as the PS3. The console sales firgures would be very similar instead of the 18million 360's vs 7 million PS3's. I would've expected more Ps3to be sold had they had a similar price mainly for the fact that the Ps2 was the dominant console of the previous generation. People bash on the PS3 for being so expensive, well truth be told if you added the HDDVD by all rights the 360 will cop the same flak. You seem to keep forgetting that. Or do you expect M$ to give away the drives for free?

Now at that time around Oct/Nov, Walmart?/Best Buy was selling Toshiba HD DVD players at $200USD. The uptake still sucked. They were still in a better position to get their hardware to the masses in a more afforfable package at all stages. It was still 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of the Ps3. There's no excuse there.

If they didn't count the HD DVD addon for 360 well sucks to be them, Marketing team should be canned immediately. It is a HDDVD drive. Not a gimmick BD won because it sold more hardware when in counted, it's a simple fact. The Ps3 is a BD player, why shouldn't it count in sales figures? It was engineered to be an entertainment centre holy hell Sony banged on about it for long enough, unlike the xbox who's main role is to be a game console. It's pretty clear in the design of the products.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

Up until recently remember that the the add on was close to $200USD (prior to xmas) the console itself was around 400USD. The PS3 was 500USD.

The lowest xbox that could play it was the arcade which was only $279. By the time the arcade was out, the HD-DVD addon was already down to $180. The lowest Blu-ray capable PS3 is 400 USD. The reason the addon was $200 was MS was not interested in taking a hit in order for HD-DVD to win.

Now say what you want but one of the key selling points of the 360 was it's price. Had the HDDVD drive been bundled it would of been on par in price with the PS3. You've got to be kidding yourself if you don't think a major reason the 360 sold so well is the price. It was one of the biggest selling points in the console wars. Had the 360 come out at the same price because it included a HDDVD drive you'd have seen the same sales figures as the PS3.

There is one thing you misinterpreted which is by bundle, I meant actually physically putting the drive in, but that was my poor choice of words. If they had actually thrown the HD-DVD drive inside the 360 or bundled it, it would not have added $200 to the price. When you bundle something or put something like that in the hardware, it does not add its MSRP onto it. If they had added the HD-DVD drive to the already expensive elite model, there wouldn't be noise about it since there were still the two cheap SKUs and people who were buying that clearly didn't care about the price to begin with.

People bash on the PS3 for being so expensive, well truth be told if you added the HDDVD by all rights the 360 will cop the same flak. You seem to keep forgetting that. Or do you expect M$ to give away the drives for free?

Well, MS could have taken a hit or part of it if they had actually wanted to try and make HD win like Sony was. Sony was losing money on every console. MS could easily have lost money on the player to try and and push it harder. But as MS said when Toshiba gave up, 'Our system actually has games to play on it and HD media to download, not a glorified HD player.'

Now at that time around Oct/Nov, Walmart?/Best Buy was selling Toshiba HD DVD players at $200USD. The uptake still sucked. They were still in a better position to get their hardware to the masses in a more afforfable package at all stages. It was still 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of the Ps3. There's no excuse there.

The issue is that blu-ray was shoving it down the consumers throats while HD-DVD was waving their hands in the background. Want a PS3 back then? Sure, then you get upwards of 10 free blu-ray discs! This is why blu-ray won.

If they didn't count the HD DVD addon for 360 well sucks to be them, Marketing team should be canned immediately. It is a HDDVD drive. Not a gimmick BD won because it sold more hardware when in counted, it's a simple fact. The Ps3 is a BD player, why shouldn't it count in sales figures? It was engineered to be an entertainment centre holy hell Sony banged on about it for long enough, unlike the xbox who's main role is to be a game console. It's pretty clear in the design of the products.

The HD-DVD addon counted. And removing the PS3 from the equation, HD-DVD actually sold more hardware (this even counts if you remove the HD-DVD addon). Therefore, counting the "not-everyone is getting it as a blu-ray player but it is also the cheapest blu-ray player on the market" PS3 is technically a gimmick. However that's just nit picking. BD actual disc sales on the other hand, were a gimmick. When you offer BOGO and count both as a sale or 10 free discs with a PS3 and count all of them as sales, those are gimmicks and those are how BD won. By making it appear that it was selling a lot better than it actually was, you convince people that it is actually doing better than it actually is. BD Disc sales should have dropped off dramatically after all the BOGO and the free disc offers went away.

[WanderingKnight]

Can you actually imagine the technical inferno that the Xbox 360 would have been had it been bundled with HD-DVD? It's already bad enough with the absurd amounts of RRoDs and broken DVD trays, and if you add HD-DVD to the equation... I don't even want to think about it.