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Software Businesses

Blu-ray Coming Out On Top? 360

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the i-copy-blu-leader dept.
wh0pper writes "Some interesting information came out at at the latest Blu-ray Disc Association meeting at Twentieth Century Fox Studios. Apparently, 90 percent of the CE industry and seven movie studios now back Blu-ray Disc. And most of the IT industry (except Microsoft) also supports Blu-ray Disc. This has prompted Mr. Parsons, Senior VP of Advanced Products Development for Pioneer Electronics, to say "There's no format war looming because it's not Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. It's simply Blu-ray versus standard definition DVD... Currently, DVD has 50,000 titles presently available, and both formats will co-exist for several years to come with new BD players supporting both formats. BD players make the perfect complement to new HDTVs that are being purchased by consumers." Mr. Parsons then announced that the upcoming CES would be used to launch Blu-ray Disc."
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Blu-ray Coming Out On Top? More

Blu-ray Coming Out On Top?

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  • My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:38AM (#14244681)
    It used to read DVD-RAM discs just fine. Now, it says that the disc is unreadable.

    I'm another victim of the DVD format wars.

    I'm glad that the industry is standardizing the next generation media now when there are very few (any?) players on the market. It's good to have a standard, even if it is a de facto standard rather than a de jure standard.

    • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Docmach ( 785888 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:40AM (#14244685) Homepage
      I agree. Even though I am on the Blu-Ray side I'll just be happy to have one standard. It does seem that there are many technical reasons to use Blu-Ray, though.

      • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:4, Informative)

        by Craig Davison ( 37723 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:51AM (#14244717)
        I thought it was just one technical reason: the capacity of the disc. That's really all there was to it, right?
        The point HD-DVD had going for it was that the discs and players would have been cheaper to make.

        • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:4, Insightful)

          by el americano ( 799629 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:30AM (#14245107) Homepage
          Theoretical capacity or capacity-in-a-laboratory is completely irrelevant and is comparable to this press release that claims Blu-ray is what consumers want, even though you can't buy any movies in either format yet. The fact remains that HD movies only require twice the space that a regular movie does, so the first cheap player for cheap discs @ 20GB should be the winner.

          Hmmm, let's see... Panasonic's Blu-ray player costs $2780 with $69 for the mythical 50GB disc or $32 for the real-world 25GB disc. Nope, not there yet. Not there in 2006 at all, I think.

          Personally, I think consumers are going to be hard to push from good-enough DVDs to over-hyped hi-def anyway. Add to that a ridiculous DRM that requires new TVs and monitors and prohibits copies of media that's likely to be less durable than DVD (especially Blu-ray), then I know I'm going to save a fortune by not buying any of it. Non-DRM dual-layer DVD will be my solution of choice until they offer me something truly better.

          • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:4, Interesting)

            by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @06:11AM (#14245313) Journal
            I'm unlikely to buy a BluRay or HD-DVD player anytime soon, even if they get cheap. Therefore I personally don't really care how many Movies I'll get on which format. I highly doubt I'd see much of a different on my (non-HDTV) TV anyway (and I'm not going to buy a new TV either). I might, however, buy a burner as soon as they are reasonably cheap. Not for burning movies, but for storing data. And for that, there are basically three benchmarks:

            • How much data can I store on it?
            • How much data per Euro can I store on it?
            • How reliable/durable is my data on them?

            In a nutshell, I'd like to have large, cheap and reasonably reliable storage.
            • People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only (Thanks FCC. I had some money saved up, and I was feeling guilty about it.) - but I don't see people buying the players until they're easily affordable with comparably priced media.

              As for archival storage, why anticipate investing in an upgrade unless it's an order of magnitude greater than what you have now? I haven't bought every storage option that came down the pike (e.g. I never owned a Zip d

              • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:5, Informative)

                by yabos ( 719499 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @08:01AM (#14245635)
                The FCC isn't forcing broadcasters to transmit in HD only(yet). They're forcing them to transimit in digital only which is very different.
              • People here might be forced to buy new TVs when the FCC forces broadcasters to transmit in high definition only (Thanks FCC. I had some money saved up, and I was feeling guilty about it.)
                That's a definite possiblity, but I've been having some interesting conversations about the whole 'forced conversion' to digital. It will be nearly impossible to make millions of people go out and purchase a new TV overnight just because the FCC says everything has to be digital. I know I'll go without TV if that's the ca

      • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:29AM (#14244839)
        There's plenty of technical reasons to use blu-ray.

        There is very invasive DRM measures in blu-ray that make divx look like it would make Richard Stallman proud. You need to get permission every time you play a disc, and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

        The studios love it but the consumers will be totally screwed over by it.
        • I don't understand how this is a reason to use Blu-ray.. ? I don't personally want any DRM that comes close to that and I don't think it would last in the market more than a week before someone says "Why is my disc broken?"

          I'm assuming the invasive DRM you refer to is not included in those technical reasons to use Blu-ray or something.?? *shrugs*
        • The content industry is going to see a serious backlash if they try this.

          They tried region coding, and people over here in the UK just got players chipped and hacked. Everyone I know has a multiregion player so that they can watch unavailable US movies or cheaper far east versions.

          Start telling people that they can't lend a movie to a mate, and they'll either boycott, or work out a way around.

          • I don't know what the situation is elsewhere but here in France, you'd probably be hard pressed nowadays finding a player that only plays zone 2.
            Granted there's always some kind of chicken dance you have to do to switch regions (like 7 7 Enter 7 on the remote on my model) but that's acceptable for the occasional disk.

            However those tricks are always undocumented (in the supplied manual). You always have to refer to the manufacturers support area on their website. Because of this a number of users seem to be
          • "The content industry is going to see a serious backlash if they try this. They tried region coding, and people over here in the UK just got players chipped and hacked." The 'hackers will always find a way' argument is often made to make one's self feel better, but regardless of whether it has merit if people choose to believe it it will always diminish any possibility of a real victory. This is because it takes people and attention away from real arguments about the *principle* of giving consumers certa
        • what a waste of time.

          if i have the discplayer, it obviously has output channels to a tv and to a sound system.

          so obviously i can rip it off from these same outputs. they can have all the drm they want, a bit divx encoding in there which loses their mighty "identification" spots that have been under discussion here somewhere, and the movies will again be out on the torrent sites. sure it will lose some quality, but i don't really think that downloaders will mind the drop of quality in such tiny amounts. (now camrips and ts's are loss of quality, a clean cablerip is as good as it can be on your tv). if you have a tv/video card with tv-in port, you're the man and the drm people are wasted.

          if you really think that drm works, show me a drm that can't be just cableripped or that hasn't been cracked by software already (oh that dvd region joke never expires i guess...).

          any measure they make with 3 years will be hacked with 3 months. any big secret about drm that you trust into taiwan hardware makers (hdtv producers for example) will be out soon enough & counter measured to make the whole investment in drm a total waste. and the saddest thing is that taiwan&china produce massive amount of everyday electronics already and the advanced countries can't afford to cut these out of the production system.

          don't the movie/soundmakers really understand that the only bloody way to fight piracy is to lower the prices and make the content affordable ? this is the only thing that will ever decrease the piracy.

          fight the bloody problem and not the results it creates.
          • (now camrips and ts's are loss of quality, a clean cablerip is as good as it can be on your tv).

            Actually when done professionally, a camrip off your TFT-TV can be just as good as transferring it by cable. When using a good test-pattern, you can get 1:1 pixel alignment. A good engineer might also be able to rip off the electronics of a digital TV.

            I'm pretty sure professional pirates (in Asia) are willing to do this, so whatever DRM the industry may try won't change a thing.

          • Totally missing the point (Score:5, Informative)

            by droopycom ( 470921 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @06:10AM (#14245311)
            You are totally missing the point.

            The point of Blu-Ray is High Definition. So your analog video and audio outputs are not going to get you HD. You are not going to plug your HDTV to your DVD player using analog if you want HiDef.

            The purpose of the DRM in Blu Ray is to block you from ripping the decrypted, compressed bitsream. If all you can do with BluRay is capture the analog, then we can already do better with regular DVD, so it would be a huge success for BluRay DRMs.

            And if you know about what kind of DRM they are talking about, you would realize that its not going to be simple to permanently hack, even a software implementation.

            Even if you are able to get the uncompressed HD image by hijacking your display device, watermark detection will make sure that your BluRay player keys will be revoked and wont be able to play new content.

            The design of BluRay's DRMs has really been though out, and covers a lot of scenarios. Off course the implementations will have problems, bugs and exploits, but what it really comes down to is how well BluRay will keep track of compromised players, and how bad they are willing to perform key revocation.

            Each player is supposed to have an unique ID, but I can see it from here: some manufacturer (cheap chinese for example) will mess up and produce 1000s of player with the same ID. When one of this player his compromised, 1000s of players will stop working with new releases if the studios revoke this key. 1000s of people will complain.

            In the best case the manufacturer (contractually at fault for producing clones) will change the players.
            In the worst case there will be lawsuits flying around between Studios, BluRay authorities, OEM, silicon vendors and consumers.

            The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced. The huge liabilities that the OEM will face if they screw up will be enough to give Pioneer, Sony etc.. time to make a buck on BluRay.

            • The purpose of the DRM in Blu Ray is to block you from ripping the decrypted, compressed bitsream. If all you can do with BluRay is capture the analog, then we can already do better with regular DVD, so it would be a huge success for BluRay DRMs.

              You think a 1920x1080p transcode will look worse than a 720x480 original encode? Hint: It won't. Try looking at some of the HDTV -> Xvid/WMV rips out there. Since they are still sticking with MPEG2, reencodes would be the norm rather than the exception anyway. Ce
            • The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high.

              This is what I don't believe. U.S. investors will be falling over themselves to be the first to build a production line to turn these things out wherever labor is cheapest. Hell, that's pretty much all we ever do now -- outsource it to China; and not just shoddy molded-plastic stuff.

              The manufacturers will want to maximize profits at a given price point, and that means driving down production cost
            • The good thing for the Japanese: the barrier of entry for cheap Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturer will be high. There will be the need to put in place "secure" production lines , making sure that keys are not leaked and that no clone are produced. The huge liabilities that the OEM will face if they screw up will be enough to give Pioneer, Sony etc.. time to make a buck on BluRay.

              So, there will never be cheap BluRay players like there are cheap DVD players. That should help market penetration. I only boug

        • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:5, Informative)

          by nutshell42 ( 557890 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @05:26AM (#14245240) Journal
          You need to get permission every time you play a disc

          This would require a mandatory, permanent Internet connection for your BD player and I doubt we'll see stuff like that in consumer electronics in the next 10 years.

          and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

          I assume you refer to Sony's patent for such a mechanism. That patent was issued in 1999. They didn't put it in the PS2, they didn't put it in the PSP, now a few months ago it resurfaced and suddenly everyone assumes they'll use it for the PS3. IMHO Sony's too afraid of losing to MS to try something harebrained like that

        • You need to get permission every time you play a disc, and your discs are permanently mated to your player. You can't play your disc at a friends house or in another room in your house, and if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection.

          This is absurd. Discs can't be mated to a player unless they are rewritable. The fact is that a Blu-Ray disc will play on any player.

          Anyway, any regional / disc encryption they may employ is a waste of time. The image quality from these discs will be so good t

        • > You need to get permission every time you play a disc,

          No you just made that up. Permission from who? Will the players have a cell phone built in and call up?

          > your discs are permanently mated to your player.

          Err, no! Obviously not. Otherwise when you upgrade your player, your entire collection would be written off.

          > if your player breaks, you lose your whole DVD collection

          *Obviously* not or they would never sell a single player. Please stop saying whatever stupid little thing pops into your head.

          S

        • Re:My DVR doesn't read DVD-RAM discs anymore (Score:4, Informative)

          by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @10:31AM (#14246817)
          Just because the Blu-Ray spec allows discs to be DRM'ed out the ass doesn't mean that every disc released is going to use those features.

          I doubt that the content industry has forgotten about the failure of DIVX already -- they lost money on that, right along with Circuit City, for every movie on DIVX disc that sold for $2 on clearance after the product bombed.

          Expect the full set of restrictions to be enabled only for Oscar screeners and things of that nature.
      • The question really is: Who cares which format will prevail? I for one, don't. Very soon, most - if not all - players will play all formats available. So well, who gives a damn if it's going to be a HDDVD or a BRDVD?

  • Technology driver (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MyIS ( 834233 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:41AM (#14244688) Homepage
    As usual, the pron industry will decide which format wins.

    • Re:Technology driver (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ChadN ( 21033 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:24AM (#14244825)
      I have discovered that DVD has easily more than enough picture clarity for my pron watching needs, and I'm not sure I am really looking forward to HD porn... Maybe I just got used to grainy porn, but the high color fidelity, high contrast, and glisteningly realistic porn of DVD (rather than old school film transfer) is already more than a bit off-putting for me, sometimes.

      As for dual angles: I wish they'd pick one angle and stick to it (hey, no pun intended), rather than have a movie edited to constantly switch cameras on me. Whenever it switches to bung-hole cam, I hit the alternate angle button, and by the time it actually switches (a few seconds), the movie cuts back to brown-eye-vision. If they really want to advance the technology, they should build a "hairy, bobbing man-ass" pixelizer right into the DVDs, for us more reserved porn enthusiasts.
    • Oh, come now. This comment is repeatedly echoed in every article about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. It's almost becoming groupthink of a sort, if so many people keep saying it, I might as well say it too!

      Do you really think if the porn industry decided to go for HD-DVD while 9/10 of the major movie studios went for Bluray that HD-DVD would win out? And here's another hint: the porn industry is concerned with making money; they will go to either format that wins out.

      The only reason this keeps coming up is because yea
      • Porn has a history of adapting to new technology a lot faster than the major movie studios. They end up as essentially the first group to pick up a format, which then gives that format a big lead in terms of acceptance and units sold. The extra lead snowballs into the format dominating over the other.

        Admit it, which ever group is the most expiremental and fastest to move and use a new media the most tends to get to choose which direction it goes, and I don't think anyone would argue against the porn indu

    • Re:Technology driver (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:38AM (#14244868) Homepage
      In that case, DVD will win. Seriously, only a few top producers like Hustler, Playboy and such appriciate HDTV, because they got the means to hire real beauties. Your average porn actress does *not* look more attractive in HDTV. The porn industry jumped all over DVD primarily because of random access. No more rewind/forward, easy looping, play at quarter/half speed and so on. Porn does not need to be watched in a linear, start-to-end fashion. What does HDTV bring to porn producers? Honestly, only much higher demands on them. But with HDTV cams at $1600 (Sony HDR-HC1) and dropping, perhaps it'll happen anyway. But I don't think the porn industry will lead it.

      • DVD will win (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:01AM (#14245050)
        In that case, DVD will win. Seriously, only a few top producers like Hustler, Playboy and such appriciate HDTV, because they got the means to hire real beauties. Your average porn actress does *not* look more attractive in HDTV. The porn industry jumped all over DVD primarily because of random access. No more rewind/forward, easy looping, play at quarter/half speed and so on. Porn does not need to be watched in a linear, start-to-end fashion. What does HDTV bring to porn producers? Honestly, only much higher demands on them. But with HDTV cams at $1600 (Sony HDR-HC1) and dropping, perhaps it'll happen anyway. But I don't think the porn industry will lead it

        I have to agree on this one.

        Furthermore, as i see it, the only possible benefict that moving to a new format can give to the porn industry is "high definition content". This might be a real benefict for the part of the industry that concentrates on showing naked physically perfect women - aka softcore - (or maybe not if they rely on the technology to disguise the imperfections) but what value does it add to the part of the industry that concentrates on the action - aka hardcore. After all, most hardcore movies are hardly known for the grandeur of the scenarios (or the depth of the stories, or the quality of the acting of their casting)

        If you think back to the change from videotapes to DVDs, you can see clear beneficts to the industry:
        • A DVD (in a standaard DVD box) will use 1/2 the space of a videotape. This means you can store and transport twice the number of DVDs than videotapes.
        • Manufacturing of DVDs is cheaper and more reliable. It can be easilly outsourced and also scales up more easilly (pay another 200$, get 1000 DVDs more)
        • DVDs (as long as packed in DVD boxes) are less likelly to get damaged on transport, especially due to external factors such as strong magnetic fields
        • Lets also not forget that resistance to damage on transport and size (and weight) are also relevant for mail delivery


        As i see it, none of these new technologies seems to bring any comparable beneficts for a business model such as the one from the porn industry.

        Obvious beneficts for the traditional film industry, such as getting their customers to (again) buy their personal film library in another format, are hardly applicable to the porn industry - there is hardly a hot market for a new edition of "Debbie Does Dalas"
        • After all, most hardcore movies are hardly known for the grandeur of the scenarios (or the depth of the stories, or the quality of the acting of their casting)
          I dunno, maybe I'm accostumed with Private, but it seems to me that its movies fit the bill for:
          * hardcore action
          * grandeur of scenarios
          * production values (including /some/ stories and acting)
      • There is no such thing as "real beauties".
        Unless you factor in the time spent with photoshop.

        None of the girls you see in the magazines are real. They might as well be rendered for all the retouching that has taken place prior to publication.

        If they dump their models on HD TV, you might be sorely disapointed.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Or maybe not, maybe I'll keep on pirating my movies and music instead of giving another cent to the majors.
    Screw them. I prefer indie stuff anyways.

  • A reich that will last a thousand years! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Siguy ( 634325 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:42AM (#14244695)
    From the bottom of the article: But the bottom-line is that this is an exciting time to be developing next-generation high definition digital TV products that will take us well into the third millennium. ...Right. It's not like we all read news reports last week saying that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD would be replaced with HVDs within 10 years.
    • Of course HDTV will be phased out in 15 years and replaced by HrDTV (Higher Def TV). Anything so the TV companies can keep us buying for years to come...
      • You mean the way they have been phasing out CDs? Oh wait, they haven't. HDTV @ 1080p is perfect from around 3x-3.5x the screen size away (for NTSC it's more like 8x-9x). What does that mean? It means that if you have a 42" TV and you sit further away than 42"*3,5 = 147" ~= 12feet ~= 3,6m away, it can't possibly get better. Even if you sit closer you have to have excellent vision and notice a very subtle lack of detail. So either video walls / projectors will have to become really cheap, or people will have
    • Saying we are in the 3rd millenium (2001-3000) is the same thing as saying we're in the 21st century (2001-2100), or that you're in your 25th year.... it simply implies that we're no longer in the 2nd millenium (1001-2000) or 20th century (1901-2000).
    • Millenium 1: 0-999
      Millenium 2: 1000-1999
      Millenium 3: 2000-2999

      It doesn't have to last a thousand years... it only has to last 10-15 for us to be "well into the 3rd millenium"

      • Re:A reich that will last a thousand years! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Siguy ( 634325 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:37AM (#14244861)
        I don't see how 10 years can be considered "well into" a thousand years.

        If I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close, am I?
        Sigh, not very close at all.

      • Actually, they are 1-1000, 1001-2000, and 2001-3000. The year 1 C.E. was the first year of the common era, so the year 1000 was the last year of the first millenium. It's like counting pennies. Your 100th penny is part of your first dollar, not your second dollar.
        • No, ISO 8601:2000 [wikipedia.org] stipulates that the year before year 1 is referred to as the year 0, and the year before that is the year -1. Therefore according to the international standard for dates, centuries are from 2000-2099, 2100-2199, etc.

          Technically, everyone that refused to celebrate the new millennium on 1 Jan 2000 and held out for 1 Jan 2001 missed out because the ISO declared those that had already celebrated it to have been retroactively correct. Serves 'em right, I say, I celebrated both and got 2 parties
          • No! No! No!

            In the wikipedea article you link to it clearly refutes your statement...

            Year 0001 corresponds to AD 1. The year before that is 0000, which corresponds to 1 BC

            It further links to an article on the 20th Century [wikipedia.org] where it states...

            The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begun in the year 1.

  • More info.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Cherita Chen ( 936355 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:43AM (#14244698) Homepage
    Everything you ever wanted to know about Blue Ray... http://www.blu-ray.com/ [blu-ray.com]

  • HD-DVD will win (Score:5, Funny)

    by skyman8081 ( 681052 ) <skyman8081&gmail,com> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:48AM (#14244710) Homepage
    I think that HD-DVD will win the end, simply because it is the inferior format. Which is usually is the one that wins in the end.

    But Greedo shooting first must be nice at 1080p, either way.
  • That seems kind of odd. What would it have instead... S-Video and HMDI?

    • yep. HDMI (Score:3, Insightful)

      by YesIAmAScript ( 886271 )
      Sending the video out over analog (component) or unencrypted digital is forbidden.

      The DVD CCA won't even let you send out uprezzed DVDs over analog or unencrypted digital (if the Macrovision flag is set).

      It's completely ridiculous.

      DVI w/HDCP is electrically identical to HDMI I guess, so that's probably permissible.

  • Birds of a Feather (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:51AM (#14244721)
    ...and seven movie studios

    Birds of a feather, or in this case movie studios in this chummy chummy business, flock together. Since Sony is one of theirs, well you get the picture [pun alert].

    In short, this is hardly surprising. Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3. Might have been different if XBox 360 was shipping with HD-DVD, but that's clearly not the case.

    • You hit the nail right on the head.

      It appears that most people here on slashdot hate Blue-Ray. I understand, but look at the alternative. A Microsoft backed system that will also have the copy protection crap in it.

      So for once it looks like a technology that Microsoft hates it going to be the "standard".

      It isn't like we have a totally open spec on one side and a DRM closed solution on the other. We the consumers (people that will actually buy a device), have a choice of one evil player or the other. It

  • This is great (Score:4, Funny)

    by Depris ( 612363 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @01:55AM (#14244739)
    I love it when major corporations fight large battles against each other instead of the consumer. ...Oh wait.

  • One question I have (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:06AM (#14244765) Homepage
    The pits on HD are 6-times the length of those on Blu-ray. So shouldn't there be less degradation, meaning a longer lifespan for the disk? (One would think that marks only 1/6 the size would deteriorate faster, no?)

    • Re:One question I have (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:20AM (#14244815) Homepage Journal
      I guess you didn't notice, but the point behind Sony's tactics here is to provide an extremely fragile media so that you'll both not be able to back up your videos due to draconian DRM and you'll end up rebuying your videos every time they fuck up.
    • Stupid question but if the pits are 6 times on HD the length why doesn't Blu-ray offer 6 times the capacity? Are they longer but thinner? Does Blu-ray waste three quarters of the disc for something else?

      Do you have any link about that?

  • What about HD-DVD? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nermal6693 ( 622898 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:08AM (#14244769)
    OK, so 90 percent support Blu-Ray, but what percentage support HD-DVD? It won't be 10 % because some companies (eg. Apple) support both formats, and others probably don't support either of them.

    • Re:What about HD-DVD? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ..well.. seeing that Apple is on the board of Directors of the Blu-Ray group, I doubt they'll back HD-DVD that much.
  • Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu [slashdot.org] won most of the industry over.

  • Both will fail (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:34AM (#14244851)
    Older HDTVs and almost all computer monitors do not support HDCP. People have little incentive to pick bluray or HDDVD when they can't take advantage of the HD content without being forced to upgrade their monitors or tvs. Company that wins will be the first one to remove the HDCP requirement for video out but I have feeling both will not and they'll end up as the same fate DVD audio. Consumers will just ignore the technology.
    • I sure as hell hope you're right!
    • Heh many of the CURRENT cheaper flat panels and plasmas with HD resolutions dont support HDCP. There are going to be a lot of ***** off consumers when they find out their 1 or 2 year old panels will only display degraded video. In fact given the litigous state of the US, I strongly expect to hear of numerous class action lawsuits against retail chains and electronics manufacturers (Weeeelll the sales man toooooooll me it waaas a ach-dee tee-vee!).

      This is going to be messy. VERY messy!

      Personall though Im loo
    • I read an article just the other day saying that a lot of people think they are watching HD today, but they aren't. But these people like their "HD". So I suspect these people will buy Blu-ray players, attach them to their HDTVs (or even better, EDTVs) with analog component cables, and marvel at the wonderful quality. Never underestimate the placebo effect.

  • The PS3 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wyldeone ( 785673 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:38AM (#14244867) Homepage Journal
    It has seemed pretty clear to me that Blue-ray will win, because thanks to the PS3, it defeats the chicken-and-egg problem of any new media, which is that no one will spend hundreds of dollars on a player for a new format when there are no movies, and no studio will produce movies if no players exist. Because the PS3 will put millions of blueray players in homes, compared with the meagre amount of early-adopters who will have hddvd players, studios will by neccessity go with blueray.

  • A Sony format winning in the marketplace... (Score:3, Funny)

    by DCheesi ( 150068 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:40AM (#14244876) Homepage
    ...Law of Averages? Or sign of the Apocalypse??

  • (Analog) HDTV... I will need HDMI?? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @02:52AM (#14244904) Homepage
    From what I gather, neither BluRay nor HDDVD will suport full HD resolution via component video, instead consumers will have to use HDMI for its HDCP copy protection.

    Well, this is fine if I had a new TV... but instead I have a beautiful 3 year old rear projection HDTV that uses analog component inputs. This is currently connected to a HD DirecTV reciever and my DVD player. The DVD player is of course 480p but I do get as high as 1080i with some of the DirecTV channels.

    So now what am I going to do when BluRay or HDDVD comes out and I want to view the full resolution siginal? What are the odds Sony will sell me new electronics to add HDCP digital to my TV? Will I have to use an illegal device to convert the digital stream to component for my TV?

    • Will I have to use an illegal device to convert the digital stream to component for my TV?

      Most likely. I bought a Sony PS2 as a DVD player because of Datel's DVD Region X. Most big companies simply have no idea how much of their sales are due to grey-market (or even black-market) products. Heck, the original Sony Playstation was so popular because you could so easily get cheap copies of the games.

      Now, however, Sony is dead to me. I was already moving away from big brands like that anyway. In fact, my

    • This might not be the case still. They ARE looking at changing this stance since so many folks will be left out and won't buy the devices because they don't have hdmi on their tvs.

      Nothing is set until the devices start hitting the stores, until then there is still hope.
  • I was really excited. VHS was a dumb format. Expensive, low quality, quality reduced with time and it needed rewinding. It was so dumb, that people didn't even mind loosing the ability to record TV when they moved over. In addition to that DVDs usually contained more than just the show, they also had extras, another great incentive. What has blu-ray got? Higher resolution... but only when you've bought a new TV.

    Now don't get me wrong, I'll buy one... but then I'm finding it increasingly more difficult to li

  • Consumers will return them (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tekrat ( 242117 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @04:18AM (#14245079) Homepage Journal
    Think about it. Joe Consumer sees the Blu_ray at "The Wiz" or "Best Buy", and drools "Wow, what a sharp picture!!!". He buys the unit, takes it home, pops in a standard DVD on his standard TV set, and then wonders where all the extra resolution is.

    You think I'm kidding but I'm not. I deal with people who hook their DVD into the VHS machine and then wonder why they can't see the DVD's play -- because the VHS machine is still set to "tuner", when it needs to be changed to "Aux" or "line in".

    Believe me. People will return these things like mad when they don't get the same quality of image they saw in the store. They are not being told that they have to buy new DVDs and New TVs as well as the new player. It's like saying "This new stereo requires that you throw away your old speakers and buy new speakers too, plus, you can't play your old CD's in it either!"

    I predict phantom warehouses of returned merchandise to keep it off the books so the stocks don't tumble.

    Trust me on this. People are stupid.
    • Think about it. Joe Consumer sees the Blu_ray at "The Wiz" or "Best Buy", and drools "Wow, what a sharp picture!!!". He buys the unit, takes it home, pops in a standard DVD on his standard TV set, and then wonders where all the extra resolution is.

      No, he'll say "Wow I can't believe how amazing this looks" and he'll tell his family he got some brand new blu ray player for $500 and show them and they'll say "Wow it looks great!" and then he'll show a real videophile and they'll say "What the hell is wrong
  • And I don't know very much about the relative technological merits of either product. It's just got a cooler, more memorable name.

  • Obligitory /. comment (Score:3, Funny)

    by StaticFish ( 839708 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @05:35AM (#14245259) Homepage
    1. Invent a new, mostly unneeded format 2. DRM it to hell 3. ??? 4. Profit!

  • BluRay not really 54gb (Score:3, Insightful)

    by derrickh ( 157646 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @06:33AM (#14245356) Homepage
    Not at first anyway. Sony dropped a bombshell on it's partners when they stated that the 50gb discs wont be available at launch, and probably not for a while. So content producers will have to make do with the 25gb discs. Sony also said that they're sticking with Mpeg2 to encode. This isn't good, because using Mpeg2 at a high bitrate most of the disc is taken up by the movie and it doesn't leave much space for the extras. And all that extra space was a big reason companies choose BluRay over HD-DVD and most already planned on filling up the discs. Looks like Sony pulled a bait and switch on a lot of big companies.

    HD-DVD will use VC1 or Mpeg4 which will give the same quality picture and using a lot less space. So even though on paper, BluRay has better specs, in real life HD-DVD will allow more stuff on a disc.

    D

  • What's in it for me? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima@Pandava.gmail@com> on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @08:06AM (#14245654) Journal
    So what's so great about Blu-Ray? Let's review the "Features"...

    Somewhat higher capacity but not as much as initially promised
    New and Improved Onerous DRM
    Ancient encoding schema
    Macrovision
    Region encoding
    Prohibited user operations
    Language & subtitle choices which are limited to region

    Can someone remind me why we want this?

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