Blu-ray Yet To Be Mainstream

[w1retap]

only bigger disk that i have heard of is a 51gb disk, unless you cant post me a link that shows hd-dvd disk can hold more then 200gb's like bluray disks can?? For the not much difference, wtf, GET GLASSES.

lol, zomg 200gb. Too bad it wouldn't work in the current profile players because they would all need a diode replacement due to the track pitch. Hell, BR has enough trouble with their 50GB disks once they try reading past the 45GB mark in most players. The majority of BR movies are released on the smaller 25GB counterpart anyhow. Your point is invalid.

 

[fallguy]

That's why I felt confident in getting an HD DVD player and a whole bunch of movies. Besides that, Best Buy has a B2G1Free deal on HD DVD movies online right now.

They had B1G1Free on Bluray last week.

 

[WicKeDcHilD]

lol, zomg 200gb. Too bad it wouldn't work in the current profile players because they would all need a diode replacement due to the track pitch. Hell, BR has enough trouble with their 50GB disks once they try reading past the 45GB mark in most players. The majority of BR movies are released on the smaller 25GB counterpart anyhow. Your point is invalid.

Im'a have to ask for a link showing some proof... I've never heard of that before.

 

[w1retap]

Im'a have to ask for a link showing some proof... I've never heard of that before.

I'm not going to dig the net for you. TDK themselves showed it off in their "prototype" and blu-ray.com forum members confirmed it. It was just the very first stages of development to show it was possible with blue laser technology.

 

[mastertard]

OHHHHHH YEAAAAHHHH BIGGER CAPACITIES ~~~~~~~~~> BIGGER E-PENIS

JUST LIKE THE DIGICAM MEGAPIXEL WAR OR THE BEST $1000+ VIDEO CARD WAR

 

[ZenOps]

Well... Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray are having teething problems.

Me and my crappy 16/20 vision really can't tell much of a difference between a well upscaled DVD and either of the new formats on a 50" or smaller screen. Even on occasion one of the two formats tends to look worse than DVD (not due to resolution, but due to coding and colourization errors)

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=252

You would think that Sony would be able to get The Fifth Element right the first time around. The early DVD version(s) had the exact same problem with the analog film to digital transfers.

 

[WicKeDcHilD]

It was just the very first stages of development to show it was possible with blue laser technology.

ok thanx for pointing out that im still right and bluray CAN do 200gb's and that my point is valid... The only reason it wasnt is because your God hd-dvd cant!

@mastertard

BIGGER E-PENIS = less compression
less comp = better quality

 

[ZenOps]

lol, zomg 200gb. Too bad it wouldn't work in the current profile players because they would all need a diode replacement due to the track pitch. Hell, BR has enough trouble with their 50GB disks once they try reading past the 45GB mark in most players. The majority of BR movies are released on the smaller 25GB counterpart anyhow. Your point is invalid.

Meh, anything past the 45GB mark is usually the credits which noone watches anyhow. I've seen plenty of DVD's that are marginal (heavy PI/PO errors at the ends of the disc)

 

[Serpico]

DVD to High-Def... not much difference. Quality, marginal (come on- not near the increase VHS to DVD was)

I personally think media over the Internet, or InternetTV (plug Ethernet cable straight into your set...) is how this world will go.
Once we get to that point- the competition is huge. Cheaper prices for everyone as well, with some healthy competition.
HD content becomes standard, and I don't have to pay to watch ads all the time (which is what we do with cable nowadays!)

I disagree. Aside from resolution, the biggest benefits of the HD formats are reduced compression and better fidelity in the colors. Notice that there is lots of banding and bleeding in strong primary colors like intense reds and even browns on DVD. None of that with the physical HD formats, just a smooth color gradient or a solid color, whatever it is meant to be with no bleeding. Again, higher bitrates buy you much more than just lines of resolution.

It is also a huge advantage that physical HD has over broadcast and downloaded HD content (such as over XBox 360). The broadcast/downloaded HD films are much more highly compressed due to bandwidth. Compare a 30GB movie over HD-DVD or BluRay vs the same film being compressed to 4GB with the same codec, and as a result have similar issues that DVDs do (artifacting, blockiness in areas of high movement, color banding, color bleeding, etc etc). The economics are going to hold back the quality of any streamed HD, as a higher bitrate = more money and space to move down that pipe or go over the air. You don't have nearly as much restriction with HD-DVD or BluRay, which is why they will always look better.

This is at least until the economics of the situation changes (bandwidth gets real cheap and/or plentiful all of a sudden) or codecs get INSANELY good. Of course, most people think streamed or broadcast HD looks good enough compared to the physical formats so it may not even matter. This last thing bums me out because I really am a huge believer in physical HD media, it's just too bad this format war started in the first place (I own both).

 

[ZenOps]

But there is a point where the average consumer says "its good enough"

With audio, consumers basically stopped at compact disc 16-bit 44Khz stereo. When DVD-audio 24-bit 96 Khz 5.1 surround showed up, how many consumers and for that matter how many recording artists moved over to the new format - less than 1%.

You could even say that most consumers have regressed from uncompressed cd sound, going to a heavily compressed 16-bit 22 or 44khz stereo AKA: the portable MP3 player.

 

[w1retap]

ok thanx for pointing out that im still right and bluray CAN do 200gb's and that my point is valid... The only reason it wasnt is because your God hd-dvd cant!

lol, HD DVD could do it too.. it is the same laser technology. It just isn't practical so they aren't wasting money developing it. 6 to 8 layers? You know how much room for error there is there?

 

[pigpen]

HDTV is still working its way into mainstream, so of course it will still be awhile before HD players for them make it.

 

[Arialis]

I just checked the net, and total sales figures are as follows. BluRay has moved 2.7 million players. Where Hd DVD has moved roughly 700K. The numbers are from before the holiday season. But I bet are somewhat accurate as to where we are now.

The lowering of the Toshibe players has helped move a lot. But in the same bucket the new PS3 has also moved a lot.

I personally own a PS3 and the XBOX HD DVD addon connected to my HTPC. I encounter much less problems with the BLU RAY player then I do the XBOX HD drive. Picture and sound are about the same tho.

 

[w1retap]

I encounter much less problems with the BLU RAY player then I do the XBOX HD drive.

hrm, never had a single problem with mine. What type problems are you having?

 

[Serpico]

But there is a point where the average consumer says "its good enough"

With audio, consumers basically stopped at compact disc 16-bit 44Khz stereo. When DVD-audio 24-bit 96 Khz 5.1 surround showed up, how many consumers and for that matter how many recording artists moved over to the new format - less than 1%.

You could even say that most consumers have regressed from uncompressed cd sound, going to a heavily compressed 16-bit 22 or 44khz stereo AKA: the portable MP3 player.

I agree, and that thought bothers me a lot. DVD stopped being "good enough" for me back in 2001. I've thought they looked like crap every since and am so glad that these new formats are so superior. Unfortunately, there are enough people out there who think DVD is "good enough" where HD video formats will be an extremely difficult sell, and this format war will now make it almost impossible.

 

[nilepez]

In all honesty, I hope that this never becomes mainstream. This is purely because I'm sick of this format war, and I want to be able to buy a HiDef something without having to worry about it becoming obsolete.

Seriously though, if neither HD-DVD or BlueRay are mainstream within the next year, neither one of them will be. I don't think the consumer will deal with this crap for years on end.

Hurdler, there's absolutely no merit to what you wrote. DVDs weren't mainstream until late 1999 or maybe even 2000: three years after DVD came out. And I'll probably repeat this later in this post, but nothing is going to become obsolete. Dual Format players will become the norm. What type of recordable DVD do you use? I use DVD-R, but my recorder could just as easily record DVD+R.

People are going to buy what they can afford. HD DVD is within the affordability range (you can get Toshiba HD DVD players under $200 on Amazon, which is quite mainstream) but even the CEO of Sony said that Bluray players aren't going to drop below $400.

Blu-Ray players will drop below $400.00, but not this year. Seriously, there's no way that the cost of manufacturing a BD player will be the same next year. As such, the price of players will drop. As for what people are buying, it's still early in the game. There are probably more people in the U.S.A. without an HD display than there are with HDDVD and BD combined.

HD-DVD has sold more stand alone players. They have a much higher attach rate. HD-DVD was clearly winning before the PS3 came out.

As I recall, the first BD player came out a 2 -3 months before the playstation 3, while the first 2 HD-DVD drives had been out since roughly march of that year. What's more the BD player was at least grand, while the cheaper HD-DVD drive was around $500.00. I fail to see why you'd drop all Playstations from teh equation when for a year or more, it was the cheapest Blu Ray player available.

The only reason Blu-ray is even in the game is because Sony put a Blu-ray player in the PS3, and then had to sell the PS3 hundreds below what it cost to make. Sony has lost billions

How much did the Xbox and Xbox 360 lose for MS? I certainly wouldn't be surprised if teh PS3 lost more/unit than is typical for game systems, but losing money on H/W is the norm, not the exception.

And Consumer DVD players took roughly three years to get to the prices where the HD players are after only one year. It'll only get cheaper.

QFT

The difference between beta vs vhs and the other old format wars was making dual players was hard. Dual players for Blu Ray / HD already exist since the disk size is the same, only need different laser or whatever.
I think neither will win, and combo players will.

Amen.

When you have a dual format release like 300 and the image and audio is identical on both formats, but the cool picture-in-picture "before and after" feature is only on the HD-DVD version, you go with the HD-DVD. It is the reason why Warner still hasn't released the Matrix Trilogy on Bluray; they are still waiting for all of that stuff they had on the HD-DVD release to work on BluRay.

Serpico, the problem with direct comparisons is that the studios are mastering the movie itself only once. Now if they were maximizing the bit-rate for BD and down sampling for HD-DVD or doing a completely different video master for HD-DVD, we'd know for sure. As it stands now, our choices are compare 2 completely different movies on each format (presumably the best looking ones exclusive to each) or compare the same movie that was likely mastered for HD-DVD (since it has the less storage capacity).

One thing that is true: most people don't have a display good enough to tell the difference...especially since most are now buying less than great LCDs.

And HD-DVD will end up supporting much more space per disk than BlueRay

Until HD has the media out and movies on that media and we see that current players can play that media, it's a non-issue.

I personally don't care either way. I just see this as the BetaMax all over again- proprietary device that Sony is hoping to sell customers on, which will utterly fail.

VHS vs. DVD time... huge differences there. HUGE difference in quality, smaller disk, easier to store, no rewinding, benefits are huge.

DVD to High-Def... not much difference. Quality, marginal (come on- not near the increase VHS to DVD was)... and space are the main two. Most people would care less.
It took DVD quite awhile to overtake VHS- just imagine the time it will take HD to overtake DVD!!!!!

Huh? Last time I checked, the http://www.hardforum.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1031858158
[H]ard|Forum - Reply to Topicpercentage increase in resolution from VHS->DVD was much smaller than from DVD-HD.

VHS => 320*480 = 158,400
DVD => 720*480 = 345,600

So we got roughly 2.2 times greater resolution with DVD. And yes it was noticable.

HD Discs => 1920x1080 = 2,073,600

That's 6 times the resolution of DVD. I don't recall if DVDs are stored as interlaced or not. If they are, then I guess you could argue that HD movies have an even greater advantage.

I personally think media over the Internet, or InternetTV (plug Ethernet cable straight into your set...) is how this world will go.
Once we get to that point- the competition is huge. Cheaper prices for everyone as well, with some healthy competition.
HD content becomes standard, and I don't have to pay to watch ads all the time (which is what we do with cable nowadays!)

I sure hope you're wrong. Cable already gives us piss poor quality. For broadcast TV, you're better off putting up an antenna...and the difference is frequently obvious. I still recall watching the U.S. Open (tennis) at a friends and switching between the antenna and Satellite (same exact station), and the antenna won hands down. HD Disks have far better pictures than broadcast TV. Downgrading to cable is a depressing thought.

It's happened to music, so it will inevitably happen to movies, tv-shows, and everything else.
Of course, this is just what I think will happen.

It's happening to music. But at this point, the vast majority of music is still purchased on CD. I can understand buying a lossy file for a single song, but buying an album makes no sense. It's not much cheaper than a CD, and it either locks you into a specific player or it's an MP3 which has lower fidelity than most other formats (e.g. AAC, WMA, Vorbis).

With audio, consumers basically stopped at compact disc 16-bit 44Khz stereo. When DVD-audio 24-bit 96 Khz 5.1 surround showed up, how many consumers and for that matter how many recording artists moved over to the new format - less than 1%.

You could even say that most consumers have regressed from uncompressed cd sound, going to a heavily compressed 16-bit 22 or 44khz stereo AKA: the portable MP3 player.

DVD-Audio was killed because neither it, nor SACD became a part of every CD player, in particular car CD players. Yes SACD had a CD layer, but unless your home CD player/DVD Player supported SACD, what was the point?

That's not an issue with HD, because most of us watch movies exclusively at home.

I agree, and that thought bothers me a lot. DVD stopped being "good enough" for me back in 2001. I've thought they looked like crap every since and am so glad that these new formats are so superior. Unfortunately, there are enough people out there who think DVD is "good enough" where HD video formats will be an extremely difficult sell, and this format war will now make it almost impossible.

I think you're far too pessimistic. It will take time, but as prices of HD players drop, people will just move to those drives....and from there they'll buy the movies. I don't see the downloading of movies as any sort of immediate threat. There aren't DVD quality downloads, so the likelihood that we'll get HD quality downloads anytime soon is minimal. And beyond that, most people don't have media servers at home, so how will they get these downloads to their TVs? Yes there's XBOX Live, but again, it's not even DVD Quality at this point. Can you imagine 15 or 20 GB downloads to watch a movie? Maybe with FIOS, but in the rest of the U.S., that's a very long download.

 

[nilepez]

ouch, that was a really long post

 

[Red Falcon]

These new formats suck. I'll just stick with Beta-Max and Laser Disks!!!!1

 

[TechieSooner]

I disagree. Aside from resolution, the biggest benefits of the HD formats are reduced compression and better fidelity in the colors.
<snip>

I think best said by this next quote:

But there is a point where the average consumer says "its good enough"

Yes, it is great we are all technology fans around here and care about this stuff.

However all those reasons you listed- most people could give a rat's ass about.

I realize it offers 6X the resolution.
(Exaggerated example but illustrates my point...) If you have a 1Gig-Pixel picture on a 19" monitor full-screen, it's going to look exactly the same as a 8Meg-Pixel picture full-screen. Yes, you have a ton more resolution available, but there comes a point when it isn't doing anything for the people that are actually looking at it.

Far too often the [H]ard people lose sight of this fact: the end-user consumer.

 

[Serpico]

Serpico, the problem with direct comparisons is that the studios are mastering the movie itself only once. Now if they were maximizing the bit-rate for BD and down sampling for HD-DVD or doing a completely different video master for HD-DVD, we'd know for sure. As it stands now, our choices are compare 2 completely different movies on each format (presumably the best looking ones exclusive to each) or compare the same movie that was likely mastered for HD-DVD (since it has the less storage capacity).

One thing that is true: most people don't have a display good enough to tell the difference...especially since most are now buying less than great LCDs.

nilepaz - I am fully aware of this. That said, a comparison between the best mastered films that each format has to offer (say, Pirates on BR vs King Kong or Batman Begins on HD-DVD) shows no real difference in quality. They both have the potential to look amazing with a great source and great encoding. The only way for us to know for sure is if, like you said, they maxed out the capacity on either format with the same film. I do suspect that there is a point of diminishing returns though, something I didn't think I would say as I am very critical on visuals (I am a professional cinematographer in the film industry for over ten years, and a videophile for much longer as I had a laserdisc player in high school). Either way, it would be a great experiment. I am good friends with the post house that does the final color on films for the Scott brothers, Michael Mann, Michael Bay, people like that. I should ask their opinion on what such a thing would yield.

 

[nilepez]

I think best said by this next quote:



Yes, it is great we are all technology fans around here and care about this stuff.

However all those reasons you listed- most people could give a rat's ass about.

I realize it offers 6X the resolution.
(Exaggerated example but illustrates my point...) If you have a 1Gig-Pixel picture on a 19" monitor full-screen, it's going to look exactly the same as a 8Meg-Pixel picture full-screen. Yes, you have a ton more resolution available, but there comes a point when it isn't doing anything for the people that are actually looking at it.

Far too often the [H]ard people lose sight of this fact: the end-user consumer.

1. your 8MP example is only valid for people who don't print pictures. As soon as you start printing pictures, the higher resolution matters...especially if you decide to zoom in.
OTOH, if you're only looking at it on your monitor, then a 2MP camera is more than enough for every wide-screen computer monitor under 30"


2. If you have a decent TV set and have decent vision, then it matters.

this debate reminds me a lot of a friend of mine when buying a 5.1 system 8 years ago. He swore up and down that he could by any old POS system, because he couldn't hear the difference. And he was correct.....right up to the point where he actually compared crap with something good.

And you may be correct that many people don't see a need for a better picture, but as they upgrade those old analog sets to high def sets and as better technology becomes cheaper, they will.

Frankly, if you point out to people all the flaws on DVD, they'll see the need for HD players.

DVDs are great right up to the point where you see all the compression noise.

regardless, the picture improvement from DVD to HD is greater than VHS to DVD....and frankly, the reason people jumped on DVDs had far less to do with better picture quality than it did with ease of use, durability and the price of media (which was significantly less than VHS).

The true beauty of the picture required a wide-screen display capable of ED or better and the vast majority of people didn't have those....I suspect the vast majority still don't.

 

[nilepez]

Either way, it would be a great experiment. I am good friends with the post house that does the final color on films for the Scott brothers, Michael Mann, Michael Bay, people like that. I should ask their opinion on what such a thing would yield.

You definitely should. I think that any differences between BD and HDDVD are probably hard to see if you don't have a very good, large display that's professionally calibrated, but I don't know, because I can't afford it a 70" XBR5, much less a top quality front project and screen....oh hell, I'm in an apartment, i don't have a place to put what I want

 

[TechieSooner]

1. your 8MP example is only valid for people who don't print pictures.

Thank God the majority of people aren't planning on taking screenshots of their movies and printing them out

Frankly, if you point out to people all the flaws on DVD, they'll see the need for HD players.

Therein lies the flaw.
If you can't notice anything until you "point it out"- people aren't going to see flaws in DVDs. If they aren't noticing, why upgrade?

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Yes, I doubt you. HD-DVD already did this and is still losing market share.

Plenty of pr0n on blu-ray, or does your internet not get google?




Facts vs you. game over.

there are NO $99 players yet and the ones they did clear out at $99 sold out within minutes of being online or available in retail stores. Like I stated before (but maybe I should clarify) the one who gets to $99 (and stays there) wins.

 

[Serpico]

Therein lies the flaw.
If you can't notice anything until you "point it out"- people aren't going to see flaws in DVDs. If they aren't noticing, why upgrade?

Yup. Unfortunate but it is the truth. Many people are just fine with DVD even when they upgrade to HD sets.

 

[Monkey God]

I wont buy Blu-Ray period (FU Sony) and I wont buy HD unless it wins the format war.
In the meantime, regular old DVD works for me, even on a new 1080p HDTV.

 

[w1retap]

Sucks to be you. You're missing out.

 

[Monkey God]

Sucks to be you. You're missing out.

maybe, but in this case, I dont see the value in buying a bunch of media that may or may not be useful in a few years. unless someone releases a player that will play all DVD's, blue-ray and HD-DVD for under $200, maybe then I'll care. Until then, im just not interested in making a bet on technology. I remember the beta/VHS wars.

 

[w1retap]

$235 for the HDDVD/BR/DVD ROM drive at NCIX right now.

 

[himmy]

format war talk makes baby jesus cry.

 

[jmackay]

$235 for the HDDVD/BR/DVD ROM drive at NCIX right now.

Great for those with HTPC but not for the average joe.