The successor for the DVD format is up for grasps. And it’s shaping up to be a remake of the old VHS vers. Betamax match, with Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD being the contesters.
The main difference from a user perspective seems to be that HD-DVD can contain less data on the same space than Blu-Ray, but may be cheaper to manufacture.
Behind HD-DVD are such behemoths as: Toshiba, NEC, Microsoft (X-Box) and Intel and movie studios: New Line Cinema and Universal Studios. In the Blu-Ray corner: Sony (Playstation PS3), Apple, Phillips, Thomson, Disney and Fox – and importantly: the porn industry.
Which technology is going to win out?
Which is the most deserving?
Is it conceivable that the market now is large enough to contain both formats for many years, without forcing a showdown? Perhaps with combo drives able to play both formats (as well as DVD/CD).
I’ve read that the games market’s early adopters will be the crucial battleground, in which Sony’s PS3 seems to have the edge. But that’s only a couple of articles out of many.
Heck, if holographic memory becomes feasible, this might be a battle between 8-track and Elcaset.
What I’ve heard so far is that Blu-Ray is loaded with DRM crapware… And since Sony has proved so trustworthy about this kind of thing in the past…
HD-DVD is backwards compatible (I’m pretty sure regular old DVDs won’t play in a Blu-Ray player) and doesn’t have as much DRM crapware. OTOH, the logo for HD-DVD is one of the fugliest logos I’ve ever seen.
Doesn’t necessarily mean much. You have to factor in cost, portability, compatibility, which companies are going to support it, how willing the market is to adopt it, whether it’ll be proprietary…I’m pretty sure BetaMax had technical advantages over VHS but we all know who won that one.
Phillips was active in competition to set the video standard (with a third product), but lost out. Apparently this time, they’re content to look by while the Japanese decides. Why only Japanese companies in this? Why are have none of the big US companies (IBM, Compaq, Dell) trying to win support for a standard invented by them?
Honestly, I’m not sure either will really get off the ground. When you figure that many people are still using a computer from the Clinton administration and aren’t early adopters in any way, it’ll take some time for either one to get started. Then, of course, you’ll have to buy a couple thousand dollars in new equipment for it to be any use and lots of movies aren’t made for high-definition output anyway. So instead the studio releases it in SD, which leaves tons of room for extras and the like. But how many DVDs do you own that actually take advantage of lots of extra space? Only thing I can see happening is entire seasons of TV shows on a single disc.
Also, as I see it, there’s the problem of “good enough.” When you’re like me and only have a 19" TV, DVD is good enough. There aren’t immediately obvious advantages like there were for DVD over VHS or CD over vinyl.
Theoretically. The ‘better quality’ would be the 1080p resolution that its capable of running at, when there are but a few TVs and devices currently on the market that will actually output and/or recieve a 1080p signal. Anything thats HD will do 1080i and/or 720p guaranteed. Also, take a look at a 1080i and a 1080p signal sometime @ 10-12 feet and tell me if you can tell the difference
And about the storage… it can store ~25% more. 25-35+ gig (which HD-DVD can store) is more than enough for an HD movie and extras.
Not to mention the current players for Blu-Ray cost $1000 and for HD-DVD are $500 with the HD-DVD media also costing 25-50% less. If I weren’t holding off and hoping that they both fail, it’d be an easy decision (HD-DVD) especially considering Sony is the one behind Blu-Ray.
The PS3 will be backward compatible all the way to original Playstation titles. That means it will read Blu-Ray, DVD and CD media just fine, by definition. I’m sure regular Blu-Ray players will be able to do the same, otherwise Sony deserves to lose on that point alone.
Not really. The manufacturing process is backwards compatible. That’s the big selling point to media producers. But both HD-DVD and Blu Ray use a different laser than the old DVD.
The players will almost certainly all be backwards compatible, if only because it’ll cost less than $5 in production costs to throw a DVD laser and decoder in the box.
I do not understand this. Is there some kind of monolithic “porn industry” committee that arbitrarily decides on the method of content delivery? I thought most porn was delivered via the internet anyway? I don’t know ANYONE who actually buys porn dvds, not when online porn is so easily accecible.
This is the first I’ve heard that the pr0n industry had taken sides. I think it’s sort of an old chestnut that the porn industry decided the Beta/VHS war. I’ve only ever heard mostly anecdotal evidence of it.
Seems to me, the porn industry wouldn’t care about HD or Blu-ray one way or the other. The video iPod would be more their market. They charge you a lot for a short, easy to produce film, and it can be distributed via the internet.
Why would porn studios want to put ten full-length pornos on one disc? Why would they want to put one porno on a disc, and have it be super high definition? I certainly don’t want my porn with too high a definition. Yuck! All those ass-pimples, moles, warts? You could actually see the crabs! Ew.
Everyone keeps comparing this to the Beta/VHS war but I’m not convinced that’s what we’re looking at. Consumers may be on the verge of giving up on discs, what with hard drives getting smaller yet with larger & larger capacities.
You know, levdrakon, that’s the first time I’ve heard of someone bringing up that discs could die and hard drives take their place. It makes perfect sense to me, at least.
Perhaps we’re gearing up for a laser disc-like fall?
I just don’t see HD or Blu-ray being the next big thing for delivering media. The internet & really large hard drives are the next big thing for your media. Discs are increasingly irrelevant. I see HD discs to DVD, what the C120 cassette tape was to the C60. Great! But we’re about to dump your format.
I can’t see the internet and hard drives taking over; the vast percentage of people out there don’t have their entertainment centers and computers hooked up to each other. Why would you want to watch a movie on your 21" monitor when you can watch it on your 110" projector?
(And don’t even try to get started about porn on an ipod. Please. Just don’t. The jokes that would result are too pathetic to mention.)
Regardless of whoever wins, the new players will of course play the old disks, or everyone will buy the competition’s, which do. So nobody has to worry about obseleting their collection of DVDs anytime in the near future.
As for this particular format war, I think it will be decided amongst the companies, pretty much independently of consumer preference. For myself, I’ve pretty much decided I’m not going to buy either until the war is over, and I’m probably not the only person who thinks that they’d rather subsist on DVDs for a little while longer than buy betamax.
Hard drives are not mobile, plus there’s the hot swap problem. And media content will not be distributed online, en masse, before better copyright protection exists, something which will not happen before Microsoft puts a chip in every computer (and maybe not even then, there’s also the bandwidth hunger). Pendrives are a way too expensive method of distributing content - compared to dvds.
VHS won over Betamax mainly because of the liberal licensing program, but I’m pretty sure Sony will not repeat the mistake.
Right now I would put my money on HD-DVD, because players are already on the market and they are cheaper to manufacture so they will sell more. 15 gigabytes per layer is also more than enough for the kind of content distribution we’re talking about here, yes, even for porn movies.
Keep up. What’s a DVR? I keep hearing people wondering aloud, “how can I transfer my DVR stuff to my computer? I just need more space!” They’re not saying, “gee I should get a DVD recorder so I can painstakingly burn my shows to DVDs.”
I have my Mac laptop plugged into my TV, and regularly watch videos that way. The new Mac Minis even come with a remote control so you can sit on the couch and call up all your music, video and boring vacation slide shows, all plugged into your entertainment center as easily as you hook up a VCR.
People don’t want to keep filling up their bookshelves with discs.
People don’t go jogging with 50 CDs strapped to their waist, they jog with an iPod. People don’t want to sit in their living rooms running back and forth between their TV & that large bookcase filled with discs. The entertainment companies would love that. But people don’t.
They used to make these huge carousel CD changers. I’ve heard they’ve even made them for DVDs. Yuh. Like I want that more than I want my computer wirelessly streaming everything to my entertainment center. Which is where it’s already at for some people, and where it’s going to be for everyone, pretty soon.
