HD-DVD comments

In My Humble Opinion
1

from cnet:
http://news.com.com/Why+the+world+doesnt+need+high-def+DVDs/2100-1041_3-6071610.html?tag=nefd.top

Why is this thing made so big, is there a reason, or just to make it look expensive.

Ignoring the FBI warning part, can there be any reason for the over 1 minute warmup time after all even Windows can get booted up in far less time then that.

Didn’t we learn back int he late 90’s that button placement is very critical to a remote?

What is going on here, only 2 things come to mind, the first is that they rushed this to market, to beat $ony’s blu ray, used a bigger box to ensure everything will fit, used a slow OS because they know it works, and some old remote form factors they had lying around since the 80’s.
The other option is to ensure you will buy another once they get the bugs worked out. You buy this for $500, as opposed to the $ony format which is expected to be 2x that cost. After a few months they get out the new and improved one, you knwo they one that really works well and doesn’t take up much room, and will sell for also $500, so they get the same income as $ony’s, but get a extra unit, that sortof kindof works as well, perhaps even a prototype model.

2

Don’t forget that folks aren’t exactly busting down the doors of the electronics places to buy HDTVs, which are still around a kilobuck for a decent sized unit. Then, of course, there’s the fact that you’ll have to rebuy all your movies to get them in the HD format. In reading the whole article, it really doesn’t look like there’s that much difference between ordinary DVDs and HD-DVDs (yes, there is some, but it’s not great). Unless somebody comes up with the uberdork of bonus features, I can’t see me plunking down the necessary bank for all of this. (If they let Ridley release the uber version of Bladerunner with all the various incarnations of the film, director’s commentary, etc. that he wants to do, but the rights holders won’t let him, I’ll certainly consider it.)

3

I predict this new format will be a disaster, and here’s why.

Every successful audio/video format has been a quantum leap in size, convenience, and quality. Audio started with reel-to-reel tapes, and eventually LP records. 8-track came and went; cassette tapes lasted longer, because of their recordability and broad functionality. Then came CDs, which killed records. DAT failed miserably. Now, mp3/iPods are slowly replacing CDs, despite all efforts by $ony and MPAA to kill them.

With video, there wasn’t really a home format until VHS. Laserdisc was a slight improvement, but too cumbersome for the wide market. DVDs were a HUGE leap forward from VHS, and that’s why it became the most successful entertainment format, ever.

So…what’s next after DVD? HD-DVD? The same damn thing, only slightly better quality? And you need an HDTV to even get that much benefit? Not to mention there are TWO competing formats? Wow, hold me down. :rolleyes:

HD-DVD & BlueRay (whichever one survives) may find a niche in the high-end, videophile market. The mass consumer, however, has no need for the new format. $ony, et al are deluding themselves if they think hi-def DVD will ever replace regular DVD – it’s an invention seeking necessity, and it remains to be seen just how much money they will lose attempting to market this pointless format.

4

Well, on a high-end HDTV system, the difference isn’t slight - it’s astounding. Even broadcast HDTV blows the doors off of DVD, and as the article stated, it’s not nearly as high in quality as HD-DVD.

I’m dying for HD DVDs, whether blu-ray or this format. But I’m worried that the formats won’t take off, because the average person really doesn’t care all that much. SACD and DVD-A are so much better than regular CD that it makes it hard for me to listent to regular CDs after listening to SACD for a while. It’s almost like listening to AM radio - dull, flat, and lifeless. But those hi-rez audio formats are dying, because very few people really care. In fact, most people are now listening to their music on MP3, often at 128kb/s, which is quite inferior to even CD. And they don’t care.

I suspect that eventually we’ll get a hi-rez DVD format that will supplant the current one over time. It might even be one of these formats. But it’s going to take a long time - the changeover will be nothing like the switch from VHS to DVD. DVD was one of the fastest-adopted technologies in history. And even that took years. I suspect the majority of people will still be watching DVD 5-10 years from now.

5

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Well, on a high-end HDTV system, the difference isn’t slight - it’s astounding. Even broadcast HDTV blows the doors off of DVD, and as the article stated, it’s not nearly as high in quality as HD-DVD.
[/QUOTE]

What I got out of that article is that sure, most people are pretty impressed comparing a regular TV side by side with an HD TV. But what leaves people unimpressed is comparing a DVD with an HD DVD. The difference isn’t as great as the difference between VHS & DVD was. You have to have an expensive, cherried-out system and you have to pray you got all the connections right.

This may kill HD DVD & Blu-ray, while most of us sit it all out & wait for someone else to work everything out for us three or four, or maybe ten years from now.

6

I emailed the article to a buddy of mine who’s a gadget freak and his comment was, “Go for the format that has the largest pr0n titles. That’s what will be the determining factor.”

7

And there’s the problem of all the DRM junk being put in. I refuse to buy until it is removed and a lot of people who bought a HD TV earlier will be seriously pissed when everything they play gets down-converted because they aren’t HDCP-compatible. Heck, I don’t even think I’m going to go digital, much less HD, until the FCC forces me to.

8

[QUOTE=asterion]
And there’s the problem of all the DRM junk being put in. I refuse to buy until it is removed and a lot of people who bought a HD TV earlier will be seriously pissed when everything they play gets down-converted because they aren’t HDCP-compatible. Heck, I don’t even think I’m going to go digital, much less HD, until the FCC forces me to.
[/QUOTE]
The DRM stuff doesn’t really worry me, since about 2 weeks after the crap goes on sale, someone will have a crack uploaded to the internet. The crack will be well publicized, I’m sure, because 2 weeks after it shows up, somebody like the EFF will point out that the DRM crap leaves a gaping security hole in your system that hackers can use to steal your credit card info and DNA.

9

The article also mentions that 82% of American households have at least one DVD player. Very important.

If you go into an electronics store, you will see that flat screen televisions with HiDef have gone down drastically in price. In model homes here in Las Vegas, they have already stopped building in those obnoxious, huge caverns designed for the old big screen television.

In other words, more and more people are upgrading their systems, getting digital cable and starting to get spoiled by better picture and sound.

How many of you would sit down now and watch a film on a regular tv with a vcr, once you have a dvd player and flat screen television and surround sound?

I don’t know which system will win (remember Beta vs VCR?) but whoever does win, they will find an eager consumer who has learned that, yes…technology sometimes is worth the price once they have seen it.

And remember what the first dvd players cost, or for that matter, the first vcr’s? Prices will drop once the winner has been declared.

10

And don’t forget that HDTV is now growing by leaps and bounds. I think that will drive the real demand for HD-DVD. Once people get used to watching HDTV programming, DVD’s will start to look a little dull and lifeless. They’ll want the HD experience in the movies, too.

What I’d really be worried about if I were Toshiba or Sony, however, is the rise of interactive media. I’m not sure the future of media is bound to little discs you slide into a player. Rather, it will be video on demand, hard drives, downloads, etc. I already know a lot of people who use Bit Torrent and other programs to watch all their TV shows. They download them and watch them when they want. The cable companies have standard-definition video on demand working pretty well now, and I think it’s only a matter of time before companies like NetFlix start allowing downloads of their movies rather than having DVDs mailed out to you.

We’ll need something like Internet2 to handle the bandwidth of downloaded HD content, so this isn’t going to happen next year. But it might happen soon enough to kill the hi-def formats before they achieve real market penetration.

11

Sam Stone, you have nailed it.

The concept of Internet2 will most certainly be the next big step. If you think about it, already music downloads are exceeding in-store purchases. It is only a matter of time before your Internet2 is the major source of video. Kids in the future will be asking grandpa, “what is a disc?”

12

It could be a long time, though. The death of physical media has been heralded since DSL first came out, and it’s been announced and re-announced with every new generation of broadband. There are already services out there that do this, like CinemaNow and even good ol’ iTunes, and some of the big cable companies already have video on demand services integrated with their DVR boxes. It’s already happening all around us, but aside from the pirate/BitTorrent scene, VOD has gone mostly ignored and DVDs are as popular as ever. Why is that?

13

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
What I got out of that article is that sure, most people are pretty impressed comparing a regular TV side by side with an HD TV. But what leaves people unimpressed is comparing a DVD with an HD DVD. The difference isn’t as great as the difference between VHS & DVD was. You have to have an expensive, cherried-out system and you have to pray you got all the connections right.

[/QUOTE]

That’s a little exaggerated.

In terms of convenience, DVD was a great leap over VHS. In quality. . .not so much.

But, a HD broadcast compared to a DVD is pretty noticeable. Even with a progressive-scan DVD you’re getting a 480p picture. The worst quality HD signals are 780p, and most are 1080i, with some moving towards 1080p.

On just image-quality, HD over DVD is more of a leap than DVD over VHS, and when you get used to watching HD movies (through HBO-HD or HDNET movies, or HD Pay-Per-View through your provider), you notice the step down on your regular DVD player.

That said. . .I’m not an “early adapter” of anything. HD-DVDplayers will have to be under $200 to get me interested. By then, I figure that there will be more choices for HD PPV at home. Of course, I’m not a person who buys DVDs. I just like to watch movies, so more affordable HD PPV with more choices is what I’m holding out hope for. Currently, HD PPV through Dish Network is $5.99 (or maybe even $6.99).

14

[QUOTE=Trunk]
In terms of convenience, DVD was a great leap over VHS. In quality. . .not so much.
[/QUOTE]

:o :eek: :confused:
You must have an ultra high-end VCR, or a very poor DVD player. Or both.

15

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
What I’d really be worried about if I were Toshiba or Sony, however, is the rise of interactive media. I’m not sure the future of media is bound to little discs you slide into a player. Rather, it will be video on demand, hard drives, downloads, etc. I already know a lot of people who use Bit Torrent and other programs to watch all their TV shows. They download them and watch them when they want. The cable companies have standard-definition video on demand working pretty well now, and I think it’s only a matter of time before companies like NetFlix start allowing downloads of their movies rather than having DVDs mailed out to you.

We’ll need something like Internet2 to handle the bandwidth of downloaded HD content, so this isn’t going to happen next year. But it might happen soon enough to kill the hi-def formats before they achieve real market penetration.
[/QUOTE]

I argued pretty much the same thing in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray thread a few days ago. Do I want to invest a lot of money on these new HD discs, or do I want to wait a couple years and start archiving all my video on 1TB discs?

Regarding Bittorrent, it’s almost as if the internet has become a huge hard drive everyone can store their video on. Sooner or later, some entrepreneur is going to figure out how to make money off that while respecting copyright issues.

Trunk, I think you may have misunderstood me. I wasn’t saying that an HD broadcast on an HD TV isn’t better than DVD. The author of the article said the quality of video you get from an HD-DVD disc on this new HD-DVD player isn’t to DVDs, what DVDs were to VHS tapes.

16

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
I argued pretty much the same thing in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray thread a few days ago. Do I want to invest a lot of money on these new HD discs, or do I want to wait a couple years and start archiving all my video on 1TB discs?

Regarding Bittorrent, it’s almost as if the internet has become a huge hard drive everyone can store their video on. Sooner or later, some entrepreneur is going to figure out how to make money off that while respecting copyright issues.

Trunk, I think you may have misunderstood me. I wasn’t saying that an HD broadcast on an HD TV isn’t better than DVD. The author of the article said the quality of video you get from an HD-DVD disc on this new HD-DVD player isn’t to DVDs, what DVDs were to VHS tapes.
[/QUOTE]

I knew what you were saying.

HD-DVD is, persumably, going to be the same quality as a HD broadcast. It can’t be better – a HDTV can’t handle better.

And, what I’m saying is that the leap from VHS to DVD wasn’t as great as the leap from DVD to HD.

I’m not going to beat that drum too loudly, though. I don’t know enough about how those things are measured, and it’s not like I’ve done side-by-sides. But, percentage-wise, I don’t think you get as much of a leap in vertical resolution going from VHS to DVD as you do from DVD to HD. I don’t know how much of a role the signal to noise ratio plays. S-VHS is different from VHS. DVD progressive is different than DVD. There’s a lot at play.

17

[QUOTE=Trunk]
HD-DVD is, persumably, going to be the same quality as a HD broadcast. It can’t be better – a HDTV can’t handle better.
[/QUOTE]

The guy in the article seems to think so:

18

[QUOTE=interface2x]
The guy in the article seems to think so:
[/QUOTE]

Well, now we’re getting into funny land. (take this FWIW. I have a little background in signal processing, but I’m no expert.)

First of all, an HD broadcast uses MPEG-4 (or MPEG-2) compression.

A HD-DVD player may allow for a higher bit rate from the source to the TV, but HD-DVD still uses MPEG compression to encode the movie to disk. Now, whether they can fine tune the compression algorithms to account for a higher bit-rate, I’m not sure, but I don’t think that it’s trivial. It would require that two different HD sources are out there. . .one compressed for broadcast, say by HBO, and one for encoding to a DVD, and I doubt that that happens.

Now, to be sure, with some HD broadcasts, you see artifacts. If they’re artifacts that occur from the compression, those will be reproduced by the HD-DVD. If they’re artifacts that are produced in the transmission, they won’t. But, the typical artifacting (the “blocking” you see sometimes) in HD is from the compression.

However, for most of the movie, you’d just get less LOSS in the parts that get loss at all. The parts of the movie that are fine, you’re not going to get a “sharper” or “brighter” or “whatever” picture because it’s coming off the HD DVD.

19

[QUOTE=Trunk]
Well, now we’re getting into funny land. (take this FWIW. I have a little background in signal processing, but I’m no expert.)

First of all, an HD broadcast uses MPEG-4 (or MPEG-2) compression.

A HD-DVD player may allow for a higher bit rate from the source to the TV, but HD-DVD still uses MPEG compression to encode the movie to disk. Now, whether they can fine tune the compression algorithms to account for a higher bit-rate, I’m not sure, but I don’t think that it’s trivial. It would require that two different HD sources are out there. . .one compressed for broadcast, say by HBO, and one for encoding to a DVD, and I doubt that that happens.

Now, to be sure, with some HD broadcasts, you see artifacts. If they’re artifacts that occur from the compression, those will be reproduced by the HD-DVD. If they’re artifacts that are produced in the transmission, they won’t. But, the typical artifacting (the “blocking” you see sometimes) in HD is from the compression.

However, for most of the movie, you’d just get less LOSS in the parts that get loss at all. The parts of the movie that are fine, you’re not going to get a “sharper” or “brighter” or “whatever” picture because it’s coming off the HD DVD.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know that much about how HD is broadcast, but I don’t think you are correct. My understanding is that the original source material is compressed further by the cable company, and this compression adds additional artifacts that are not in the source material. Certainly the various HD forums contains numerous discussions of the quality of various broadcasts, and they seem to differ dramatically. When my cable company added two new HD channels, I thought I could see a degredation of image across the board, which I chalked up to them dialing back the bitrate so they could squeeze more channels down the pipe. I believe the same thing happened when ShowTime moved to three channels per transponder on their satellite. The image quality degraded substantially. Here is a before and after comparison of the quality difference on Showtime after they throttled back their bitrate.

So if the original source is 18 mb/s, and the cable company is sending down compressed 9 mb/s feeds, I’d expect HD-DVD to look a lot better.

20

[QUOTE=Trunk]
Even with a progressive-scan DVD you’re getting a 480p picture. The worst quality HD signals are 780p, and most are 1080i, with some moving towards 1080p.
[/QUOTE]

Which you can simulate by setting your computer monitor to 640x480 and watching a full-screen-video clip while standing about six feet away, and then repeating the exercise with it set to 1024x768. That’s a pretty big difference…