Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD

[kelvin]

URL: blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/12/review_bluray_v.html

Monday, December 11, 2006
Review: Blu-Ray Versus HD-DVD

Dean Takahashi, 12:01 AM in Dean Takahashi, Gaming

Here's a longer version of what we're running in the paper.

The idea of creating a home theater takes a big leap forward with the introduction of
high-definition movie disc players this year. But because of a lingering war over what format
the discs use, it's not worth diving into the market yet.

The simple advice is to stay on the sidelines and hope for the war to end soon so you don't
run the risk of buying something that will be a dead end. But the reality is more complex than
that, and you may be forced to take sides even if you really don't want to.

Until this year, buying a DVD player was simpler since DVDs came in only one format (that
was not the best high-definition). But now, the battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs at the
dawn of high-definition video players is just like the VHS-Betamax war in the early days of
the VCR. If you're buying a PlayStation 3, you're already voting for Blu-ray. If you're buying
a Toshiba laptop, you're likely going to be voting for HD-DVD, though Toshiba has models with
regular DVDs.

And nobody knows yet which format is likely to prevail and become widespread. The makers of the next-generation successor to the DVD couldn't agree on a common format, and that is creating a dilemma for consumers. Toshiba and its allies created the HD-DVD player, while Sony and its friends backed Blu-ray.

Both take advantage of blue lasers, which can be used to create discs that can store much more data than DVDs. The blue lasers can record more data because they can be focused more finely than the red lasers used in DVD players.

Blu-ray discs store as much as 50 gigabytes, while HD-DVD discs store as much as 30. In the future, the Blu-ray number may grow to 200, while the HD-DVD number could possibly cap at 45 gigabytes. DVDs typically store 4.7 gigabytes or 8.5 gigabytes.

There are more hotly debated details that have to do with quality. Some Blu-ray discs used a poorer encoding technology early on and so they don't look as good. HD-DVD transfers data at a slower rate, but that may not be noticeable to most people. Over time I expect the movie-quality debate to equalize to a tie. The discs for the new machines range from $19 to $40, though some are being discounted.

Both kinds of the newer discs are much more interactive than DVDs. You can see videos such as a director's comments running in small windows at the same time you're watching a movie. The studios can create little games, such as targeting bad guys in a movie with a remote control. You can bookmark a scene that you want to come back to, and you can also search through the movie for scenes that are tagged with keywords such as "falling scene.'' "Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift'' shows off HD-DVD interactivity in the form of storyboards and director comments on how he shot certain scenes, while "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' shows off Blu-ray interactivity in the form of target practice with the remote control.

"We're just beginning to tap the potential of the interactivity,'' says Ron Schwartz, an executive vice president at Blu-ray supporter and film studio Lions Gate Entertainment.

The HD-DVD players are more closely tied to the original DVD technology. You can take a hybrid disc (HD-DVD on one side, DVD other the other) and play it in an old DVD player. You can't do that with Blu-ray, although you can put DVDs into a Blu-ray machine. Hence, if you have a library of DVDs, you can keep them and play them with the new players on either side. This may not tell us much at all, but an analysis by Cymfony, a market analyst firm, found that there were more positive discussions about HD-DVD than Blu-ray on blog and media sites in the past couple of months.

Do you want HD movies? On bigger sets, yes. On smaller screens, I think regular DVDs look pretty good. I watched HD-DVD movies on a Toshiba Qosmio G-35 AV650 ($2,499) with a 17-inch screen. I also looked at Blu-ray on an upcoming Dell laptop. With the small screen sizes, the picture looks nice but not good enough to be a big deal. I can't even tell these high-def images from normal DVD images with such small screens. The real reason to get a writeable next-generation HD player on a laptop is for easy archiving of your hard drive data.

The HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs have enough capacity to store full HD movies, and they display the movies in the best format, 1080p, meaning there are 1,080 lines of vertical resolution in every picture frame. Because there are so many lines, you get much more detail, so you can see the pores on an actor's face in a close-up.

As I noted in my last column on HDTVs, the larger the screen, the more you will appreciate movies in the 1080p format. But it's worth noting that many TVs on the market at reasonable prices only display movies in 720p resolution, which isn't as good.

HD-DVD players debuted at $499 in April from Toshiba, while the first Blu-ray machine came out from Samsung in June at $1,000. The price gap is closing, and the PlayStation 3 is a big boost for Blu-ray.

If you have an Xbox 360 game console, you can get an add-on HD-DVD movie player for just $199. I used this to watch Tom Cruise bounce off a car in "Mission Impossible III" on a 42-inch Philips electronics Ambilight TV. The picture was nice. The first box from Microsoft failed, but that was because they sent me a test unit instead of a finished machine by mistake. The real machine works fine. It's easy to jump around between scenes because the videos of each scene show up as a picture-in-picture at the bottom of the screen. You can even do this while the movie is playing.

Some emissarries from the Xbox group visited us on Friday, lugging a 46-inch Sony Bravia LCD TV. They showed how Mi-III looked in 1080p and 720p on the TV using the HD-DVD add-on accessory. They also showed the same scene in the same movie with the Blu-ray version on the PS 3. Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for the Xbox 360, tried to argue that the HD-DVD version showed more details and that the Blu-ray version look too dark in certain areas in a freeze frame. But everyone in the room acknowledged that they couldn't tell the difference between the two. In fact, I even had trouble distinguishing the DVD version from the 1080p HD-DVD version. That's pretty subtle, and probably not worth spending a ton of money on.

HD-DVD evangelist Kevin Collins at Microsoft says the numbers show that HD-DVD has more momentum this season (with more than 1.5 million movies shipped), but that may not matter much
in the long run as Blu-ray momentum grows with PlayStation 3 sales.

With HD-DVD, you're expected to be able to make a personal copy of your discs. The exact details of how you can do this are not available yet.

Also, the anti-piracy provisions are worth paying attention to. If you're interested in that, do an Internet search on HDCP, or high-bandwidth digital copy protection, to get an explanation of why this prevents you from playing unauthorized discs, among other things. Why care? Your new player may not work well with your old TV, even if it is an HD set.

For now, there are more than 100 movie discs out for each format. In the long run, HD-DVD faces big problems. It stores less data, and only three of eight major studios have agreed to release movies on it. Blu-ray stores more data, and seven of eight studios support it. As a result, the odds are good that your favorite movies will likely be on Blu-ray. It's likely that pirates will have a much harder time pirating either kind of disc.

Blu-ray players debuted in June at a $1,000 price. Suggested retail prices for machines listed at www.blu-raydisc.com/players now sell for $750 to $1,500. But the cheaper way to get Blu-ray is to buy a $500 or $600 PlayStation 3. Right, with a big PS 3 shortage, that's easier said than done. I watched "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," on the PS 3. Again, nice picture.

The way for this war to end is either through one side winning, which isn't a certainty yet, or the creation of combination players which can play both kinds of discs.

Combo drives ended the format war with the recordable DVD drives used in computers. By next year, one chip industry chief executive told me, combo HD-DVD and Blu-ray players with cheaper electronics could be on the market.

But there are skeptics. ""The idea of a combo player is a false hope,'' says Brian Zucker, technology strategist at Dell, a big supporter of Blu-ray.

It won't be hard to come up with video chips that can process both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, but the combo players might have to use two different optical block assemblies, or multiple drives, making them expensive, says Stan Glasgow, head of Sony Electronics in the United States. Only VidaBox (www.vidabox.com) has announced a combo machine at a ballpark of $6,000 at this point. Steven Cheung, co-founder of VidaBox in Garden City, N.Y., says that it's more expensive than buying two separate players, but his target of extreme consumers will appreciate the convenience of having one box.

One of these days, you may be able to download HD movies to huge hard disks on your computers so that you don't need the HD storage discs at all. We aren't there yet. But that may kill off the disc as a means of storage for everything except backup purposes.

Lastly, as I learned with last week's HDTV story, a lot of readers know a lot more about the HD wars than I do. Please weigh in with your comments. As for me, I'll wait as I'm hoping not to get stuck with the Betamax of this generation.

[kelvin]

URL: www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=12153

Glass Houses: Blu-ray or HD DVD? What the Market Needs to Know
By Debbie Galante Block - Posted Dec 9, 2006

'Tis the holiday season, and I've been seeing commercials advertising both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. SicolaMartin has produced a series of advertising and marketing initiatives to promote the Blu-ray format. 30-second commercials have been airing since November 17.
Why is it, then, when I ask friends outside my business circle, "which new disc format will you support?" their answers are almost always a resounding, "Huh?" That is, of course, unless they have an avid gamer in the house who has been anxiously awaiting PlayStation 3. At least, then they may have heard of Blu-ray.
While those of us who work in or report on the optical disc business are usually knee-deep (or deeper) in the next-generation DVD hoopla, consumer awareness of the formats remains sketchy, and understanding of the differences between the two is generally pretty muddled. This disconnect, of course, prompted me to write this column, and put both camps' assessment of the formats' relative merits, readiness for prime-time, and product positioning in one place. Why Blu-ray? Why HD DVD? Why would you choose one over the other? Replicators and consumers might ultimately have different opinions, but nevertheless I will try to offer some facts without opinion.

For the replicator, the primary plus for HD DVD is its similarity to the already-familiar DVD disc structure. No news there. If you are making DVDs now for a relatively a modest cost, you can have your machines updated so that you can make DVDs and HD DVDs, according to Mark Knox, a consultant for Toshiba. With standard equipment from companies like Singulus and M2, he says, it will cost about $150,000 to upgrade a replication plant, and he says that most of those who plan to make the jump have already done it. "I was talking with a guy from M2 who said, ‘I've done my HD DVD business. I've upgraded and sold new machines, and I'm not expecting to see any new HD DVD business because all my customers are ready to fly.'"

Admittedly, replicators are more tight-lipped with me these days, but my educated guess is that there are five replicators "ready to fly" into high-definition of any sort. That's more than enough capacity for now. But are equipment manufacturers satisfied already? Is their equipment perfect? Replicators haven't been sharing info on yields because, I expect, they have customers on both sides of the format fence. According to Knox, "None of the replicators are predominantly doing business on one side or the other."

In terms of getting titles and players to the market, HD DVD came first and jumped out ahead, but Blu-ray is starting to catch up in terms of hardware and software availability. Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development at Pioneer, and chair, U.S. Promotions Committee, for the Blu-ray Disc Association, contradicts my belief that consumers are mostly in the dark about the new formats. "I was at my neighbor's house and someone came up and started asking about HDTV, and I said, ‘There is a disc called Blu-ray,' and he said, ‘Oh yeah—I know all about that' and proceeded to tell me about disc manufacturing issues he'd heard about," Parsons reports. "Word is getting out, and I notice a distinct difference from even six months ago. At least people have an inkling. If we can get people to understand that Blu-ray equals high definition, that's a huge plus. A lot of emphasis is being put into this."

According to Knox, "For the consumer, there is a more basic and fundamental benefit of HD DVD today versus Blu-ray: price. We're at $500 to start for a standalone player, and $200 for a drive if you already own an Xbox 360. Price-wise, it's less painful to get into the game." PlayStation 3 may be the first glimpse some consumers get of Blu-ray, and according to Parsons, PlayStation adds an extra million (estimated) players in the marketplace by the end of the year added to players from Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, and Pioneer. PlayStation 3, if you can find one, is selling for about $500, which puts it roughly in line with the Xbox/HD DVD combo (and means that Sony is selling it at even more of a loss than Toshiba is taking on their first-generation HD DVD set-tops). Other than that, the most inexpensive Blu-ray player I could find was the Samsung BDP-1000 HDMI Hi-Def Blu-Ray player for $600. The rest of the players cost anywhere from $600 to $1,000.

Both HD and Blu-ray are talking about new and exotic features. One feature Toshiba is touting is internet interconnectivity. "An internet jack on the back of every machine is necessary or it can't have the HD DVD logo on it. Also, compatibility with the interactive programming platform, HDMI is built into every single HD DVD player as well," says Knox.

Another benefit of HD DVD hardware, according to Knox, is that "if a studio does something that we hadn't anticipated with the current machines, there is a program in place that can automatically update machine's firmware either online, or you can call the manufacturers' customer service and they will send you a disc."

Parsons doesn't refute anything Knox says but predicts that Blu-ray will start to gain real momentum by the end of the holiday season. While about 150 HD DVD titles are expected by the end of the year in the U.S., 80 Blu-ray titles were already available in the U.S. by November, and that number changes almost daily. Five major studios are supporting Blu-ray exclusively: Disney, Fox, Sony, MGM, and Lionsgate. Paramount and Warner were originally HD DVD-only studios, but they are now producing titles for Blu-ray as well. Universal supports HD DVD.

Sony DADC has six 50GB Blu-ray Disc production lines up and running (Adam Sandler's Click is a 50GB disc). The company is currently ramping up production to 60K discs per day. "We are encouraged by the performance of both our 25GB single-layer and 50GB dual-layer production technologies, both of which are meeting our expectations," ssays Michael Mitchell, executive VP, manufacturing and engineering for Sony DADC. The company also has nine 25GB Blu-ray Disc production machines in operation and has shipped over three million Blu-ray Discs for a client base of over 35 customers since beginning production in May of this year.

That's a summary of what I know now, but before I sign off for 2006, I'd like to take a moment to get on the soapbox. I was just at the IRMA show in New York last week, and had a chance to talk to some replicator friends. I also had a chance to listen to some Wall Street types talk about the future of physical media. I know there are a number of replicators who think that both Blu-ray and HD DVD will fail, and believe that it would be a lot less costly to keep replicating DVDs. I'm not a replicator, and admittedly I am not a manufacturing expert, but I am a consumer. And while I write about all of the new technology, I am rarely an early adopter, at least not on the video side of things.

However, after seeing both Blu-ray and HD DVD on high-definition televisions, and after seeing some HD broadcasts of sports events, I find it hard to believe that at least one of these formats will not catch on. Perhaps they may not reach the same market penetration that DVD has, but their market impact will be significant—more so than the once-promising DVD-Audio format (to which HD DVD and Blu-ray's naysayers have often compared the new formats), which has won over few non-audiophile fans. As Knox pointed out to me, someone willing to spend thousands of dollars on a HDTV is not going to quibble about the purchase of a new video playback machine. Once more channels are broadcast in HD, these same people are going to hate watching DVD because it won't look as good as what they see on TV every night. As the price of HD televisions goes down, more and more people will replace their aging SD televisions with HDTVs; it's a natural progression. New high-definition discs have the capacity to offer more, giving the studios opportunities to build discs and create fans and ultimately keep physical media alive. Replicators who ignore that potential are only contributing to the possible future obsolescence of the optical disc.

Will replicating high-definition discs turn out to be a business for only larger replicators? Perhaps. However—and this is a big however—while smaller replicators may not make the discs, they can certainly offer some ancillary services. Every replicator I've spoken to says the manufacturing business will continue to change, not just in terms of the types of media produced, but in terms of business models. That's true of every business. Remember, though, during the Christmas season, smaller replicators already do overload work. Maybe these kinds of replicator relationships will grow. Creative manufacturers will see how the internet can work for them as well.

Truthfully, manufacturers have been talking gloom and doom since I began reporting on the business in the early days of CD technology. And there is no denying that the business has certainly have suffered because of consolidation. Let's face it, while new formats and the internet are affecting replicators negatively, it has been undercutting of replication prices that has really been driving the business into a hole. While the replication business will likely continue to consolidate, unlikely partnerships may form, and new business may arise. It's like the old saying: "When a door closes, somewhere a window will open."

[kelvin]

URL: www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6398587.html

Hackers hit first level
by Paul Sweeting is editor-at-large at Video Business.

DEC. 8 | Now that both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc are on the market, the real games can begin.

Both format camps are counting heavily on a boost from the videogame industry: Sony’s PlayStation 3 is expected to serve as Blu-ray’s Trojan Horse, riding the popularity of game consoles to build the hardware base for the high-definition movie format.

The HD DVD camp is looking to Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 game platform now supports an add-on HD DVD drive, giving interested gamers a low-cost way into the high-def movie market.

But the respective alliances with game platforms has also been problematic for the movie formats.

Not only did production problems with Blu-ray drives cause a delay in the launch of PS3, but the priority given to the game platform by Sony meant shortages of blue-laser diodes for stand-alone Blu-ray players.

For HD DVD, the absence of an HDMI connection on the Xbox meant a less-than-optimal presentation of the format’s capabilities.

Now that gamers are finally getting their hands on the PS3 and the Xbox add-on, however, new problems are starting to emerge for Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Right after Thanksgiving, stories began popping up on geek sites around the Internet describing how to use a PS3 console to “dump” Blu-ray movies to the console’s hard drive using the Linux operating system supported by PS3.

Hackers have apparently figured out how to move Blu-ray images to an ISO file—a kind of digital image of the disc—using the Linux install procedure (here’s how to do it if your conscience will let you).

The first movie to be “dumped” in this fashion, apparently, was Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which came bundled with PS3 players. The ISO file reportedly weighed in at 20.9GB, so you could only get the whole file if you have the 60GB hard drive version of PS3.

Because the ISO file is a complete image of the disc, the movie remains encrypted on the hard drive. You can’t copy the file to another disc or transfer it off the hard drive.

All you can do with it is play it back on your PS3.

At this point, the Blu-ray dump is more a party trick than a serious threat. But it would be a great irony if the PS3 turned out to provide hackers with a tool to someday crack Blu-ray wide open.

Hackers have also found a way to turn the Xbox 360 against HD DVD, although the method is neither as practical or as elegant.

A week after word of the PS3 trick for Blu-ray began to circulate, stories appeared on the Internet about how to use the Xbox to capture an unencrypted copy of an HD DVD movie.

The method takes advantage of the Xbox’s lack of an encrypted HDMI connection to add a high-def capture card to the unit’s component analog outputs—essentially taking advantage of the “analog hole.”

Because the signal at that point is uncompressed, however, and comes pouring out of the component cable at something like 6GB per minute of video, the method requires massive amounts of storage with extremely fast write capability, not something the average Xbox owner is going to have lying around the house (again, here’s how to do it).

If the studio had set the Image Constrain Token on the disc, moreover, the signal going over the component cable would have been down-resolved, making the whole exercise pointless.

Neither the PS3 nor Xbox workarounds represent genuine hacks of the copy-protection on Blu-ray or HD DVD. In both cases, the encryption remains intact.

But they illustrate the inherent vulnerabilities that arise when you try to make platforms and formats interoperable.

The PS3 is designed to read data off the hard drive as well as the disc during game play, which means data has to be able to move seamlessly between the two.

That makes game play faster and more compelling, but it’s not a natural environment for a disc that is never supposed to be copied, in whole or in part, without permission.

The Xbox 360 was not originally designed to output 1080p high-def images, so it lacks the HDMI connections such images typically travel over.

The only way to do it is to use unprotected analog outputs—the sort of environment HD DVD discs were designed to avoid.

But with consumers increasingly demanding such interoperability, those vulnerabilities will be a fact of life.

[kelvin]

URL: www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602781

Sony Blu-Ray Gets 'General Dislike' Among Web Posters
Early adopters more frequently praise rival HD DVD, while panning Sony's high-definition format

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek

Dec 8, 2006 02:43 PM

Internet discussions on Sony's Blu-ray show a general dislike for the high-definition format that's a key component in the company's overall strategy for grabbing a big share of the high-definition consumer electronics market, a research firm says.

A Cymfony Inc. analysis of comments on 323 blogs, discussion boards and other social media show that positive comments on Blu-ray's rival HD DVD, backed by Toshiba and other tech companies, are 46 percent higher. In addition, 2.5 times more posts discussed being impressed with HD DVD than with Blu-ray.

Nearly 60 percent of the comments were on 44 sites with a focus on early adopters of entertainment technology, particularly videophiles and gamers. While early adopters are not always reflective of how the general consumer population will react to technology, they do set a tone and influence media coverage.

Sony is in a high-stakes war with HD DVD supporters to influence consumers, as well as manufacturers of high-definition DVD players. The battle is often compared to the VHS-Betamax battle that ushered in the VCR era. Sony lost with Betamax, and many posters in the Cymfony survey believed that it would lose again with Blu-ray.

Much of the Blu-ray discussion on the Web was driven by the Nov. 17 release of Sony's PlayStation 3, which includes a Blu-ray player, Cymfony said. While Sony hoped to seed the market for Blu-ray through PS3, the research firm says the technology was not well received among posters.

A significant segment of the audience expressed a "general dislike" for Blu-ray, often based on doubt regarding Sony's credibility as an innovator, given its failures with Betamax and the MiniDisc. They also questioned Sony's chances of succeeding with the new platform.

Posters resented having the Blu-ray player forced on them through PS3, Cymfony said. Microsoft, on the other hand, was praised for offering an HD DVD player as an option to the Xbox 360.

Posters also were concerned that the Blu-ray player wouldn't be compatible with older high-definition TVs, the research firm said. Xbox 360, on the other hand, was praised for its ability to display in lower resolutions.

The analysis found 70 percent more posts discussing HD DVD's advantages than Blu-ray's strengths, which include its highly promoted larger storage capacity. Posters doubted the extra capacity would be needed for games or movies.

The Cymphony report, released this week and available online, analyzed more than 17,600 posts on social media sites between Oct. 1 and Nov. 23. The discussions were evenly divided between HD DVD, supported by Toshiba and NEC; and Blu-ray, which is favored by Sony, Hitachi and Philips.

[kelvin]

URL: www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/10reasonsHDDVDsfailed.php

10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed
Wednesday, June 21 2006

I’m not typically a doom and gloom kind of guy – really, I’m rather optimistic. But this pending format release/war is simply the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in a long time. The hype machine is entirely enthusiast-created and since that day I realized Steve Jobs could sell a fart provided he sued a public Mac forum for talking about it before its release, I began to understand the power of public mania.

There are a number of reasons why the new high definition DVD formats have already failed and I’ll gladly go over some of them in this article. I am not a soothsayer, but I do study the industry – and at times, sit back and take assessment of what’s happening from both a consumer and manufacturer perspective.

Without any further ado, here are the reasons HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc will never turn into the dominant formats for digital media viewing:

1. Nobody likes false starts
With the debut of HD DVD at an underwhelming 720p/1080i, coupled with a buggy interface and a transport that makes boiling water seem like a speedy event, the entrance of high definition DVD into the mainstream came out of the starting gate lame and hobbled. For Toshiba to release a player that didn’t support true HD at 1080p (even though the software does), and with no lossless audio format to accompany the video track, the high definition wave was more of a ripple. Add to this the delay of HDMI 1.3, lack of market penetration and supply, and a dearth amount of software titles and you have a very unimpressive product launch.

2. Format Wars Don’t Sell Players
The only reason Sony’s Playstation, Microsoft’s Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube can sell so well simultaneously is because of the prevalence of excellent software titles. People want to buy the hardware just so they can play the software. This is not a format war – it is choice, just like Chevy and Ford (and just like the gaming systems, some people have one of each). The high definition DVD formats, however are really just the same source material packaged in two different wrappers- not to provide choice, mind you, but because the two camps simply are too greedy to combine forces, and not innovative enough to drive two truly separate products successfully. Take careful note – a format war is NOT competition, it is a hindrance and the bane of high definition DVDs.

3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
Consumers came over in droves when CDs were released back in 1982. The new format offered not only a new digital media, but also a way to instantly access tracks across an entire “album”. Convenience, not technology, drove this format to almost instant consumer adoption. Fast forward a bit to 1997 when the first DVD player was released. Again, convenience, not technology, drove people to the market en masse. Unlike VHS tapes, the new DVD format was smaller, easily navigated and would not wear down over time like existing tape-based formats. Heck, the concept of a shiny plastic disc was new – and quite frankly, it was the coolest thing to hit the technological shelf since solid state technology. In comparison, the high definition DVD formats, save the color of the business side of the disc, look exactly the same… and consumer confusion will surely follow.

What do the new high definition DVD formats offer consumers over DVD? Technology and more storage. Is this enough? Not on your life. Consumers, most of whom rarely know how to properly configure their players or home theater systems, are perfectly content with their current DVD players (and indeed some have just jumped on board to DVD in the last several years). While the potential for more extras and alternate endings exists due to increased storage on the new media, there is no compelling reason for consumers to migrate over to the new high definition DVD formats in large numbers.

4. Studios are Conservative, Greedy and Unmotivated
Studios are so conservative in their practices as to consistently miss out on market advances – even those that can make them money (ie. Why is a computer company running the world’s most successful online music store?) The studios are not jumping on board the high definition DVD bandwagon just yet – and you can see the lack of titles to prove it. If the movie studios decided that HD DVD or Blu-ray (or both) was to be the next dominant format, it need only to flood the market with software titles and present a plan to roll back on DVD production over the next 10 years. Even though this would grant them the secure format that they seem to want (HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs promise to be much harder to rip or duplicate) there is no indication in the industry that this is taking place or even in the works. The studios are making money hand over fist with DVD they cannot seem to bring themselves to seriously initiate a new, unproven technology – even if it saves them from some other copyright headaches.

Add to this the fact that new titles are coming out at $30 a pop (and this down from an initial $35/title) and you have a really hard sell for consumers who are used to $15 titles at Wal-mart and the large electronics chains.

5. Playstation3 Cannot Save the World
We have consistently heard it said that the Playstation3 will “jump start” the market by flooding it with millions of gaming systems capable of handling Blu-ray Disc software. The problem with this theory is that the PS3 is not being marketed as a home theater component and, if current installations prove the rule, most will not be situated in the average consumer’s living room. The result is that the PS3 will primarily be a *gasp* gaming system. Maybe I have a more traditional group of parents in I disagreeociation of friends, but, taking into account #4 above, I do not think that Blu-ray will make any major leaps forward in market penetration as a home video format – at least not anytime soon.

History is bearing this out, as the HTPC market, though driven hard by such manufacturers as Microsoft, Dell and HP, has struggled to find a place in the living room. Nearly every gaming system of the past: PS2, Xbox, and even the legendary 3DO system have been touted as “set-top boxes” but in reality find themselves situated in more “gaming-centric” environments playing… you guessed it, games.

6. Those Who Ignore History…
For years we’ve heard about the evils of MP3 and illegal downloading. All the while the RIAA and music industry had two formats that could have prevented any illegal copying – at least for all but the most dedicated crackers: DVD-Audio and SACD. These formats proved to be higher quality than CD, presented much enhanced copy protection schemes and were easily used as alternative formats to CD. Yet both formats failed miserably to achieve any significant market penetration. Why? Without an artificial “shove” from the record industry – which never materialized – technology alone is never enough to push a new format into the hands of consumers. In terms of convenience and ease of use, DVD-Audio and SACD offered nothing to consumers. In fact, they made listening to music more complex, since most hardware was unable to correctly decode and provide adequate bass management for the new formats.

Could these formats have succeeded? Absolutely. If the recording industry had presented a plan to phase out CDs and the “format war” had been avoided (simply by the industry picking one format over the other) we would all be using DVD-Audio players and illegal downloadable music would be mostly confined to analogue rips or older music. Is this a stretch? Perhaps, but only because history shows us that corporate greed causes most companies to miss the long term economical gains over a short term loss of licensing revenues.

7. People Want Technology that’s 15 Minutes Ahead of Its Time
For many people, getting into HDTV is all about the widescreen and being able to see their DVDs with more clarity than ever before. When Billy Bob comes home with his new high definition 720p display, the difference between that and his older SD TV is amazing – at least when he’s watching DVDs. You see, that’s the problem – and it’s two-fold. While most consumers are still getting into the HDTV craze, they’re already impressed. And the difference between SD TV and HDTV is more amazing than the difference between 480p DVDs and 1080i downrezzed high definition discs.

The other side of the coin is the lack of HD content available on TV – and this is a biggie. While Billy Bob is impressed by his DVD player, he is dumbfounded by his cable TV – which actually looks worse than it did on his old set (mostly because it’s bigger). You see, nobody told Billy Bob that he’d have to get an antenna or subscribe to HD service from his cable/satellite provider. He was also not told that most of his favorite shows (Billy likes sitcoms and the Sci-Fi Channel) aren’t yet available in HD, regardless of technology or service provider. As a result, many Americans are underwhelmed or feel like they got burned by HDTV. The last thing they’re going to do is rush out and buy the next greatest thing.

8. Enthusiasts Are Getting Tired (and Smarter)
While some home theater audio- and videophiles have the money and inclination to rush out and buy the latest and greatest toys as soon as they are available, many more are becoming more cautious. Burned by 8-track, laserdisc, SACD, and DVD-Audio (and possibly soon non-HDCP HDTV) – these war-weary consumers are going to think long and hard before jumping onto any new technological bandwagons. This leaves a shrunken market of even the bleeding-edge consumers, and that means even less sales to early-adopters.

9. A Skeptical News Media Doesn’t Help
I’ll admit it, we’re part of the “problem” (though I’d like to think we’re saving consumers from making the next big mistake). An increasingly skeptical news media isn’t buying into the hype of HD DVD and Blu-ray, especially not after wasting millions of editorial words on DVD-Audio and SACD, only to watch the software and technology dwindle into obscurity. Even after almost 6 years, most consumers continue to proffer puzzled looks when these audio formats are mentioned. The new DVD formats are getting plenty of press, mind you, but with the Toshiba flop and lack of software, the fact that the Emperor has no clothes (at least not yet) is hard to avoid.

10. Broadband and IPTV to Compete?
With Verizon, AOL, Time Warner and others jumping to provide HD on-demand services for the consumer it is a very likely event that high definition DVD will be something that isn’t relevant in a service-directed marketplace. Add to this Apple Computer’s recent push for video downloads and we may find that consumers are far more interested in quantity, portability, and ease of use over high quality source material. Even with respect to high definition formats, downloadable files burned to consumer-supplied media may make data high definition DVDs more significant than the retail formats. This consumer model is being readied for testing in South Carolina’s head-end for Time Warner Cable this year.

So, while I certainly hope for the best, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. High definition is headed for a niche market at best, not an industry takeover.

By Clint DeBoer

Editor's Note: We've added some footnotes for some odd commentary we've been seeing around the net in criticism of some of our article's statements.

*VCRs took from 1976 (introduction) until the 80s and 90s to become widespread in consumer market. Even though there was initially a "format war" there was nothing like it at the time for consumers. Even so, it took over 10 years to hit truly mass market levels. VHS had (eventually) COMPLETE industry support.

*The audio cassette was introduced in ~1963. It didn't peak until the 80s (when it actually overtook LP sales). The cassette format had COMPLETE industry support.

*CD was introduced in ~1983. By 1986 there were 3 million players sold in the US and 53 million CDs. By 1988 it outsold LP. There was no real format war and the CD had COMPLETE industry support.

*DVD took over VHS in 2003 - it was introduced in ~1997. By 1998 over 1 million players had been sold in the US. By 1999 player prices dropped below $300. There was no real format war (to speak of) and the DVD had COMPLETE industry support.

*Component output for HD-DVD beyond 480p is up to the discretion of the content providers. It is on a PER DISC basis. I was personally told at CES that this is likely temporary and future discs will be locked down after HDMI 1.3 and 1080p outputs are released... As you apparently can't upconvert CSS-encrypted DVDs past 480p on these players, it is a mystery why certain consumers believe all the new HD discs will continue to be upconvertable via component.

[kelvin]

URL: www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/blurayHDDVDupperhand.php

Blu-ray & HD DVD - Who Has the Upper Hand?
Tuesday, June 27 2006

Now that Samsung's new Blu-ray player the BD-P1000 has been out, the reviews are out on the web-o-sphere for both first strikes in the latest format war. Toshiba fired the first salvo with the HD-A1 HD DVD player hitting the market at half the price of the first Blu-ray player. According to a market research firm called iSuppli Toshiba is taking a tactical loss on its player - to the tune of $200 per unit. Being first to market and being sold at a lower cost provides an obvious advantage, but is it the better unit?

BD-P1000 vs HD-A1
According to the first reviews the two players are far cry from the next generation DVD player bliss we'd been reading about in the months leading up to the format war. Neither can do Dolby True HD (or DTS HD), the upcoming lossless multi-channel audio formats. Neither player has an HDMI port that supports the new 1.3 specification. Overall most sources pointed to minor annoyances with the HD-A1 being slow to load a disk or and most reviews complained that fan was too noisy and the word on the street is that the image quality of the early Blu-ray movies isn't quite up to par with HD-DVD.

HD-A1
The most critical review I found was from Consumer Electronics Net where Charlie White absolutely hated the HD-A1 cursing its very name and the camel upon which the device rode into his presence. Charlie complains of everything from the salesman trying to sell him a $100 HDMI cable denying that one was included (an HDMI cable is included so save your $100). This review was also plagued with a hardware error "HDMI Error D".

Design is a subjective matter. The HD-A1 is big and bulky reminiscent of an old VHS player. But some might call it retro. One nearly unanimous observation about the HD-A1 is that it has a remarkable image quality. Most reviews really liked the quality of video, but then this is probably the first time they had seen a real high definition disk format.

BD-P1000
Overall the BD-P1000 is a sleek machine, not nearly as bulky, slow or loud as the HD-A1. Samsung's Blu-ray player has a couple of tricks the HD-A1 cannot do - like native 1080P output and a 10 in 1 memory card reader that can display a still image slideshow in HD.

"For costing twice as much as the HD-A1, Samsung’s BD-P1000 isn’t anywhere near twice the machine." - dvd.themanroom.com

The image quality of early BD disk releases have been beaten up badly, but it's difficult to place blame on the machine. Blu-ray is having problems perfecting dual layering so the largest commercial BD movie disk is only 25Gigs, which makes the new HD DVD movie disks larger at 30 Gigs. The Blu-ray format is suffering for it according to most reviews including this one at Projector Central the image quality is noticeably worse off than HD-DVD. But this is probably because of the MPEG-2 codec chosen for early Blu-ray movies. It's the same older, slower codec used on standard DVDs. When the action heats up in HD, MPEG-2 only has an upper limit of 19.4 Mb/sec to decompress all those pixels, and aliasing and macroblocking are inevitable.

"Early word on the initial wave of Blu-ray titles is the MPEG-2 codec chosen to fit the content on 25GB single layer disks has compromised video quality" - dvd.themanroom.com

HD DVD movies on the other hand are using VC-1 encoding Microsoft's next generation codec comparable to MPEG-4. It's is widely seen as the reason for HD DVD's apparently superior image quality. But it should be noted that this isn't the fault of the player itself, the Samsung BD-P1000 will be capable of playing back 50Gig BD disks when Sony finally overcomes current problems perfecting it. Sony anticipates dual layer BD by late summer or fall, if they can keep this schedule (if recent Sony timetables are any indication - don't hold your breath) they could be producing disks with at least as good image quality as HD DVD.

HD DVD v BD Media
Current HD DVDs are not only much larger than BD, but also larger than it seems Toshiba first anticipated. Weren't we told that a full HD movie feature would fit on a single layer HD DVD disk at 15 Gigs? Here is how some of the numbers shake out today:

"The Last Samurai (which topped out at 27.3GB), Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles (25.4GB), The Phantom of the Opera (24.8GB), Jarhead (24.7GB), The Bourne Identity (22.7GB), Serenity (19.6GB), The Fugitive (18.2GB), and Doom (16.5GB)."

The size of many of the current films almost requires the entire dual layer disk. This means features like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Trilogy are going to require multiple disks. This might be a consideration if you're planning on going with the first HD-DVD player.

Another concern is the old proprietary standard trick and tools issued to studios to author their own disks in one or the other format. One would assume that Sony has learned a lesson from Beta and will be absolutely forthcoming with the proprietary standards. John Biggs of Gizmodo recently interviewed Kathee (no last name? how surprising!) from an "adult film" production studio that didn't have such good things to say about Sony and Blu-ray:

Gizmodo: Well, they’re saying that where the adult industry goes, the tech industry follows. So let’s discuss next gen DVDs. Have you gotten a chance to see them both?
Kathee: I have seen HD-DVD product. Blu-ray is a bit trickier for the adult industry, because Sony is proprietary about it. There are a couple of products emerging that allow HD-DVD authoring, though
Gizmodo: Huh? So you’re saying that Sony is going to shoot itself in the foot by being closed? Is that accurate? Or is it a “wait and see” sort of thing?
Kathee: Apparently so on the shooting in the foot thing

History it seems, will teach Sony nothing.

Considering both formats and players, the smart money is on wait-and-see. I would personally not buy a next gen disk player for a technology whose media still uses MPEG-2. If you trust the promises of Sony you're truly bold.

Nor would I buy the first machine that looks like it has a few bug ridden issues, no matter what they can do with firmware to patch up any problems. I'm waiting for the one machine that can playback the big trilogy of trilogies including - Star Wars, Terminator and Lord of the Rings. The player that can pull that off gets my vote.

by Wayde Robson
HomeTheaterFocus Blog

[kelvin]

DVD Wars on Amazon

www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

[kelvin]

Review on Blu-Ray

URL: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121100290.html

An Overdue Look at Blu-Ray

Rob Pegoraro
Monday, December 11, 2006; 9:12 AM

Last week, I had a PlayStation 3 in my home, but I didn't get around to playing any games on the thing. Instead, I was using it to watch movies--this was my months-delayed introduction to Blu-Ray, one of two would-be high-definition replacements for the DVD.

As I wrote in yesterday's column, while each movie I watched looked impressively sharp, the future for Blu-Ray as a whole is a lot less clear. Neither it nor HD DVD, its competitor, is offering consumers any great reason to risk buying into what could turn into the Betamax of this decade.

In Help File, I explore a strange--seemingly meaningless but gratuitously annoying--error message that at least 10 different readers have complained about after installing Internet Explorer 7.

I'll be online at 2 p.m. ET today to talk about those two issues, and anything else tech-related that's on your mind. Submit a question or comment here.

Blu-Ray Blues

I hadn't meant to wait this long to try out Blu-Ray--the first player, Samsung's BD-P1000, arrived this summer. But when I asked Samsung's publicists if they could loan me one to try out, I was told that no review units were available. After experiencing no better luck with a couple of other manufacturers, I set the whole topic aside until the PlayStation 3 arrived; after Mike Musgrove had written his evaluation, I knew I could use the PS3 to conduct my long-delayed Blu-Ray evaluation.

That long wait did, however, help me out in one way: Instead of citing estimates or forecasts of how many movies would be available in Blu-Ray by the end of the year, I could go with actual numbers. (If you're interested in seeing how the selection of discs for each format has increased over time, visit The DVD Wars, which tracks sales on Amazon.com.)

I also was spared from having to report promises of future hardware--back in January, companies at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas told me that they'd have Blu-Ray recorders on the market by now. As you can see, that category of hardware remains in the vaporware category.

Lest it seem like I'm beating up on Blu-Ray here, I'm not a fan of HD DVD either. I think the competing format has some distinctive features that could have made it a much more attractive technology--the big one being combo discs that can be used in regular DVD players--but the companies behind it seem determined to let them go to waste. (Here's my earlier review of HD DVD.)

What I hate most about this whole format war is how the companies on either side of it try to advertise their cause. Over and over, I've been told that the best reason to buy one format and not the other is because of the companies supporting it. Forget features, quality or convenience--this pitch boils down to something like, "Do you really want to wake up one day and find that nobody makes any hardware or software anymore for your sad little forgotten format anymore?"

Thanks for the pep talk, guys! It's like negative campaign ads in politics, except here nobody even pretends to represent any sort of higher principle.

Deleted Scenes

Two other topics that I didn't get to in my review because I ran out of space:

* The PS3's HDMI connection--a copy-controlled, digital cable--at first would not work with one of the two televisions we tried, a 47-inch Westinghouse LCD. The picture and sound would only play for 2 seconds at a time, followed by 2 seconds of nothing, followed by video and audio flashing back on. This can happen when a video source and a video display fail to complete the "handshaking" process necessary to determine that the video display will obey whatever copying restrictions are enforced by the video source. (Other reviewers have seen a similar problem.)

We finally got the PS3 to play nicely with the Westinghouse HDTV by following a complicated reset procedure--then, once I had the PS3 back on my home network, I discovered that it was missing a firmware update, which I can only hope fixed this problem. (I left this out because this isn't a Blu-Ray-specific problem; any HDMI device can exhibit these issues if something goes wrong.)

* Not only are there not that many movies available in Blu-Ray, most of them are titles that I don't want to watch in any format--for example, "The Benchwarmers," "Stealth," "Gone in 60 Seconds," and "Click." Why can't the movie studios focus on getting their best content in what's supposed to be their best format, instead of grabbing whatever's due for home release? I'm not even talking about stuff like the Star Wars Trilogy (if George Lucas takes as much time to ship a Blu-Ray edition as he did with the DVD release, we won't see it anytime in this decade, and possibly not in the next); how about simply movies that actually lasted more than a few weeks in the theaters?

(While I'm on this subject, whoever's responsible for the design of most of the movie-studio sites listing their Blu-Ray and HD DVD titles needs to be taken to the woodshed. These pages are uniformly horrible to browse--first you have to sit through the stupid animated intro, then you have to wait for some worthless, bandwidth-hogging Flash interface to load before you can get to anything useful. See, for instance (if you dare), the sites for Paramount, Warner Video and Sony Pictures.

[kelvin]

URL: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/27/AR2006052700089.html

Two Movie Formats, Heading for a High-Def Collision

By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, May 28, 2006; Page F06

Eight years after the first HDTVs brought sitcoms and sports events into a clearer focus in our living rooms, there's still no simple, widely available equivalent of the high-def experience for a purchased or rented movie. And this is for lack of trying.

Ever since a digital videotape format called D-VHS launched in 1998 -- just in time for DVD to wipe VHS off the face of the Earth -- and quickly sank into oblivion, it should have been obvious how to solve this problem. People just want a high-definition version of the compact, versatile DVD.

But only now is the industry finally bringing that kind of disc to the market.

And it's doing that twice.

Instead of heeding every painful lesson of the past 30 years -- does VHS versus Betamax ring a bell? -- and putting in the effort to come up with a single standard, the consumer-electronics industry elected to Balkanize itself around two incompatible formats. Each one can boast manufacturers and movie studios that have pledged to support it alone.

The first of these, HD DVD, arrived last month; the second, Blu-Ray, is due to debut next month.

HD DVDs look just like regular DVDs; even their logo hardly differs from the one that's graced movies for the past decade. But they store about three times as much data as a DVD -- 15 or 30 gigabytes' worth.

That allows an HD DVD to store a high-definition copy of a full-length movie, plus all the extras you'd get on a DVD, such as deleted scenes, alternate endings and commentary about the movie from directors and actors. (And you can browse and select these extras without stopping the movie; press your remote's "menu" button and a list of this bonus content appears at the bottom of the screen.) Some HD DVDs will feature interactive content that you can watch while the movie plays -- for instance, picture-in-picture overlays to show how a stunt was put together.

This format also supports "hybrid" discs that include a second, DVD-compatible side to use in a standard DVD player or computer. Rewriteable versions are due later this year, even though users looking to back up ever-larger hard drives could use that help now.

Only a few HD DVD players are available: two from Toshiba (the $500 HD-A1 and the $800 HD-XA1, which adds a fancier display, a different case design and other minor refinements) and one $500 model from RCA. Only one HD DVD-equipped computer is on sale, Toshiba's $3,000 Qosmio G35-AV650.

The selection of HD DVD movies isn't much broader at this early stage-- a scant, puzzling mix of classics (for example, "GoodFellas" and "Full Metal Jacket"), recent releases ("Cinderella Man" and "Jarhead") and older flops ("Swordfish" and -- why, why, why? --"Doom"). Most have suggested retail prices of $29 to $35.

HD DVD certainly does make movies look good on TV, to judge from the releases I've watched on a loaned HD-XA1 hooked up to a 40-inch Sony LCD. In the HD DVD of "GoodFellas" I could make out little details like the text on a paper on a security guard's desk and the title of a mural on a courtroom wall; on a DVD, those things were obscured or blurred.

Not all HD DVDs make such an impression; "Blazing Saddles" appeared distinctly grainier, lacking the knife-edge sharpness of the best over-the-air HDTV.

HD DVD supports both of the established high-definition resolutions, "720p" and "1080i," plus a third, still-higher resolution called "1080p" that almost no HDTVs -- and neither Toshiba player -- can display. (The numbers refer to the lines of horizontal resolution in the picture; a DVD maxes out at 480.)

The HD-XA1, however, exhibited some issues in daily operation. It took almost a minute and a half to boot up and play a movie and froze two times in a week of testing. Twice, this massive box wouldn't even start a movie, instead flashing "HDMI ERROR 0" on its screen. Turning it on and off fixed whatever glitch had prevented the player from using the encrypted digital HDMI connection to the television.

I could also switch to this box's analog component-video outputs -- but future HD DVD titles might not allow that workaround. This format, along with Blu-Ray, allows studios to ban high-definition playback over any analog interface. Any TV without HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) connections would display a degraded picture little better than DVD quality.

No current titles utilize this feature, but nobody should be surprised when some do. In this respect, HD DVD represents a massive downgrade from DVD, which implements less onerous copying restrictions that can easily be circumvented with the right software.

The single worst feature of HD DVD, however, is its competition with Blu-Ray. You cannot buy an HD DVD player and expect to watch every movie you like in high-definition -- some studios, such as MGM, Fox and Sony Pictures are only releasing movies in Blu-Ray. (Conversely, Universal is sticking with HD DVD, leaving Blu-Ray buyers in the lurch.)

This format war also limits your choice in hardware, as most manufacturers seem inclined to back only one format, not both.

Movie studios issuing HD DVD titles could greatly reduce this uncertainty by only shipping hybrid discs and selling them at a modest premium over DVD releases. That way, even if HD DVD joined Betamax in the grave of format-war losers, you'd still have a perfectly good DVD. But almost all of the releases so far have been HD DVD only, with hybrid discs scarce and expensive -- for instance, Warner's "Rumor Has It" retails for $40.

But you don't have to jump off the HD DVD or Blu-Ray cliffs to improve your home movie viewing. If you're willing to settle for something slightly short of high-definition, you can take advantage of a feature on the HD-XA1 as well as most new DVD players: "upconversion" of DVDs, using video-processing hardware to simulate a near-HD version of the movie.

Videophiles may scoff at this trickery, but on a big-but-not-enormous screen like that Sony LCD, upconverting can work pretty well. It can help a well-produced DVD look almost as fantastic as an HD DVD -- especially to a viewer not looking for that difference in the first place.

If upconversion feels like cheating -- but you can yield some control over what and when you watch in high-def -- you have another choice: Call your cable or satellite provider and order up an HD package that includes a set of movie channels and a digital video recorder.

Neither of those options comes close to being perfect. But they're a lot smarter than risking hundreds of dollars in the hope that the ego-driven, self-destructive greed of the movie and electronics industries will somehow work out in your favor.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro [e-mail].