Consumer Problems with Blu-ray and HD-DVD 403
bart_scriv writes "Business Week looks at the upcoming Blu-ray and HD-DVD product launches and predicts problems and confusion for consumers. In addition to anticipated difficulties in distinguishing between the two formats, some studios will be using copy protection that will intentionally down grade the picture. When combined with Sony's plans to upconvert based on hardware configuration and the fact that most HD TVs aren't capable of displaying either format at full resolution, early adopters may be getting a lot less than they bargained for. As the article suggests, it may be that 'the best bet for either format to gain acceptance now lies with next-generation game consoles.'"
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:5, Informative)
Hopefully they continue foot-shooting procedure. (Score:4, Informative)
What's the best way to put your Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movie on your iPod? Oh, yeah. Right. Eat a dick, MPAA.
Re:erroneous (Score:4, Informative)
For their first generation of media they will not be enabling the flag. Their hardware players will still support it.
The flag is an optional feature which they will not use, initially.
Re:Early adopters and FULL HD resolution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Early adopters and FULL HD resolution (Score:3, Informative)
Film holds more image data than 1080p, the projection is the problem. Watching a fourth generation print at the local multiplex may not look as good as digital projection. Until 1080p digital is projected in the largest theater, then people start noticing the sharp, square pixels.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:4, Informative)
1080p displays don't have 1080p inputs :( (Score:1, Informative)
The PS3 is going to output natively in 1080p. It doesn't make since to output 1080i and have the TV upscale it when the PS3 can do it from the start.
There are only 2-3 sets currently that have this feature. I guess I'll wait until Summer to buy.
Re:No more HDDVD Blu Ray Stories Please (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure there are people who believe they can tell the difference. Most of them probably have their super-high quality flatscreens hooked up incorrectly so that they are are actually getting worse quality on it. But they still believe they can tell the difference. (I'm sure some actually can tell the difference.)
I can easily tell the difference, though I am watching on a 73" rear projection TV. You did not mention what sort of equipment you are using?
My TV will do HDTV (1080i, I believe), and it looks incredible. I would love to see High-Def DVD movies, and am quite happy to pay for them. I am effectively the market for this new technology.
That said, my set does not include the HDMI connector, and it is only 2 years old. So if that is a limitation (however iffy), then I'll just stick with the current DVD format. In this case, I am the market that is being lost due to all this stupid DRM crap.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:3, Informative)
Limits, but doesn't eliminate. There's a decent market for burned copies of rips on the sidewalks here in NYC. Heck, even if you did downsample (plenty of the latest releases are cruddy camcorder bootlegs), people would still buy them up now and again - and for many people (dare I say most), DVD resolution is plenty.
I'm sure it pales next to online distribution, but it's there enough that stodgy MPAA execs would want to stamp down on it, I'm sure.
Re:Nice, but sadly misled. (Score:1, Informative)
DVD players usually output interlaced video as well, since that's what the vast majority of televisions are capable of reproducing. Some DVD players will spit out progressive upconversion of the interlaced signal for those few TVs that support it.
The way that resolution is usually described is somewhat misleading: 500 lines of horizontal resolution does not mean horizontal lines, it means how many lines can be discerned in the horizontal direction; in other words, how many vertically-oriented lines can be counted on the screen. So, when you say that VHS stores 352 pixels horizontally and I say that the horizontal resolution of VHS is about 250 lines, we're describing the same exact measurement - and mine is actually more generous. To discern 250 black lines, you need 499 pixels alternating between black and white so that 250 of them are black and the other 249 are between them, and white. 210 lines is probably more accurate.
However, the NTSC standard defines the number of horizontal lines (which, as I said, is a different quantity than lines of horizontal resolution) at 525. Many of these occur off-screen, during the so-called "vertical retrace interval" and some occur in the in-between region that's on some screens but not others. Nearly all standard televisions exhibit "overscan" to varying extents, which means that the picture is expanded to extend beyond the actual viewable area. TV people refer to the region that can be virtually certain to be visible on any television as the "safe title area" because you can put text there and viewers will all be able to see it. But I digress: an NTSC signal has the same number of horizontal lines (or, put another way, the same number of lines of vertical resolution) regardless of whether it came from VHS or DVD, because the number of lines is an implicit consequence of the timing of the signal. More or fewer of them may be blank, but they're all there.
So yes, you're correct on all counts. I simply used slightly more obscure jargon to say the same basic thing. You're also correct that the image is clearer on a decent TV - and it doesn't have to be more than simply decent.
Re:FSF urges comsumers to avoid DRM-poisoned media (Score:4, Informative)
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use h.264 [1]. Also, DivX is not usually MPEG-4 compliant, and XviD often is not.
Anyhow, the compression is not the issue, it's the bitrate. Sure, you can fit a movie on a CD, but only at bitrates less than about 1Mbps. For HD content, that won't even remotely cut it, no matter what codec you use. You'd either have deplorable quality or deplorable capacity. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both range from around 10Mbps up to 40Mbps, even using modern codecs. In other words, you need a new kind of disc.
[1] h.264 is one of the required formats, in addition to VC-1 and MPEG-2. That is, the content can be in any of these, but all players must support each.
Re:DRM has both good and bad sides... (Score:2, Informative)
Copyright law was started so that content producers would have a limited time to recoup their cost before it became available for all to enjoy (a balance between the copyright holder and the general public ). In other words an incentive to develop public domain works.
Finally, to sum up why I think this limited-copy DRM is a good thing: it removes the pro-piracy argument of "I just want to make personal copies!" from the equation. If you can make your own copies -- but can't distribute them -- then there's no reason why any legal owner would ever complain. With that farcical argument gone, the pirates have no pseudo-righteosness to hide behind.
Let say I wanted to rip to a media server but it is not supported by the DRM. What then?
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DRM has both good and bad sides... (Score:3, Informative)
This statement is incorrect, insofar as it applies to Western concepts of copyright.
Copyright law is there to ensure a flow from creative authors into the general culture of arts and science of a population. A culture which does not have a rich shared commons of cultural works will rot and die.
It is most certainly a balance between the needs of creators to have the opportunity to recoup costs of creation (note: opportunity to recoup, not right to recoup) and the rights of the community to communicate those ideas through the medium of shared culture. No-one - and I mean no-one - has produced completely original art for millenia beyond counting: all of art is founded upon popular culture.
Of course you have a right to it. The right to quote, excerpt, review, criticise, parody are enshrined (if you are a US citizen) in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. I can't stop you saying something because I said it first.
Fair Use is what stops copyright becoming censorship. Can you imagine not being able to quote people like Martin Luther King, or John F Kennedy, in print, online, or whatever? I choose the examples deliberately, since the King estate in particular is quite hot on ensuring that Dr Kings full speeches are paid for.
And all of this is without consideration for those who would like to enjoy works but for various reasons cannot enjoy them in the format in which they were originally distributed. Should visually impaired people not be allowed to enjoy books because suitable media were thought to be of insufficient economic value to the original producer?
What you describe here is more properly covered under patent law, not copyright law. You cannot copyright a drug.
To return to the original topic - what is copyright for. The US Constitution defines it thus:
So clearly the rewarding of authors is set down, but that is a means to an end. The end is progress in arts and science. The beneficiaries of the temporary derogation of the normal rights of free expression is the population at large.
--Ng
Re:DRM has both good and bad sides... (Score:3, Informative)
Copyright exists, not to benefit the copyright holder, but to benefit society by encouraging the creation of new works.
Original american Copyright legislation was enacted with the specific statement 'for a limited time' as a nod to the fact that Copyright is needed to encourage the creation of new works (books, plays, paintings) so that the holder can sell such works, but only for a (very) limited time. After this time period, those works fall into the public domain and are available for the benefit of all.
Those who tried to foresee the future of what Copyright would do didn't want works to be limited to those who'd paid for copies, they wanted everyone to have free access to all media, but conceded a time limit wherein creators could benefit financially from their works.
Unfortunately, that time limitation has grown again and again, and is now practically a joke.