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.'"
The key to acceptance: (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple as that.
Surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
No more HDDVD Blu Ray Stories Please (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Cassetes --> CDs: CDs are thinner and higher quality that does not degrade. Even still, it took *almost* 10 years before cassetes were completely and fully replaced. Even to this day, unless you count, say, iTunes, CDs reign supreme and music on DVD is still a joke.
2. ?? --> Beta/VHS: No fromat existed for viewing movies at home... except maybe an 8mm projector!! But I can't remember video stores that had 8mm rentals... is it just me?
3. VHS --> DVD: DVD is smaller, thinner, and holds more at a better quality. Plus, like every previous post has pointed out, many people have invested in buying DVDs and, like me, see no reason to "upgrade" the quality of their movies... for... $30+??
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Ball's in your court, online video distributors (namely Apple).
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:5, Insightful)
However, implementations will differ from manufacturer to manufacturer and maybe even from model to model of player. So we may find that a certain player has an exploitable weakness that others do not.
Technies needed for adoption but not wanted (Score:5, Insightful)
The content produces are doing everything in their power to make the format unattractive to technically minded people. Meaning they're scaring away all of the early adopters. Which means that the format will never be adopted.
For me, degrading the signal over analog connections was the thing that pushed me over into the "not gonna buy it" category
Re:No more HDDVD Blu Ray Stories Please (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this analogy fits with those examples anyway. This is more akin to the following:
Stereo LP -> Quadrophonic LP
VHS -> Laserdisc
Cassette -> DCC
CD -> SACD / DVD-Audio
In other words, I think this is a specialized path, which only appeals to the high end consumer and won't get any broad market penetration. Even if Blu-Ray "wins" by piggy-backing on the PS3's market penetration, I don't think it will ever get much in terms of consumer acceptance.
DVD is here for at least a few more years.
Two solutions to Blu-Ray and HDTV (Score:4, Insightful)
Solution 2: Don't buy DRM and other invasive products.
Either solution will work, the former assumes you're just a cog in the machine and you don't need this technology absolutely today but can wait until 50 percent of the population has switched over, the latter assumes you think a non-DRM OpenSource-friendly version will be adopted at some point.
Choose your poison.
Why can't these people just go out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they suck at what they do.
I mean, HDTV is what a late 90s thing? And we still don't have hidef content. They only hidef that I can get is from cable, satellite, or OTA TV. CDs are late 70s technology (maybe early 80s). The oldest digital recording I own is from 1978.
Why can't these people flood us with content at a reasonable price that we simply do not have the time or need to pirate the stuff?
My HD DVR has firewire output that I can copy the stuff to my computer. Supposedly some of the channels are encrypted, and it takes realtime to make a copy. But I never have made a copy, but I always have 80 gigs of fresh content on my DVR that I can watch anytime. I love it. Oh, and someone is getting the $70 a month or so that I pay for content, right? I mean, sometimes I even watch or listen to the commercials because I'm busy doing something else and don't feel like fiddling with the remote control.
What I don't understand is that the content "providers" dabble in all aspects of the modern era, but they insist on putting stuff on plastic disks and sell them at a brick and mortar store. I mean, Sony makes electronics, but they are talking about making the PS3 so that it does not play Sony movies. Huh??? Time/Warner owns a cable TV outfit and internet, but won't let you download their movies or with little streaming capabilities.
The movie industry lets TV channels broadcast their stuff. The music industry lets radio broadcast their stuff. When are they just going to get with the times and deliver modern day technology?
Oh, the funny thing is that I would assume most people would prefer the lower quality DVDs via DRM. Look how popular iTunes and AACs and MP3s are. Can't figure that one out.
The real key to acceptance: Adult Movies (Score:4, Insightful)
No problems .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumers hear the DVDs won't work with the HDTV they already have.
Consumers don't buy new HD DVD formats.
Media companies find themselves holding onto a billion dollar albatross they've made unpopular with people.
No problem.
Re:No more HDDVD Blu Ray Stories Please (Score:5, Insightful)
VHS -> Laserdisc
Cassette -> DCC
CD -> SACD / DVD-Audio
And the grandparent mentioned Beta, and I will add minidisc and DAT.
Lets take a look at the history here:
Beta -> killed, basically because of Sony
minidisc -> killed, basically because of Sony
SACD -> killed, basically because of Sony
DAT -> killed, basically because of the recording industry and SCMS
DCC -> not sure why that was killed. AFAIK, it did not have SCMS. I believe it was not that good of a format. Less than CD quality if I remember correctly
DVD-Audio -> don't know what the problem here is. I would love to get DVD-A in my car. CD+ quality with hours of content? I would love that.
Laserdisc -> killed because the discs were too big and scary looking, but good quality for the time.
Quadrophonic probably never took off because electronics were already expensive back then, so it was probably hard to overcome that hurdle.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:5, Insightful)
Solomon's baby. (Score:4, Insightful)
This format war is turning into a twisted modern day version of the parable of King Solomon. In that parable, two women both claim that a baby is theirs. Solomon guilefully says the only way to resolve the issue is by cutting the baby in half and giving a half to each woman. The first woman agrees, but the second woman pleads with the King to spare the baby's life and let the other woman have the child. Solomon knew the second woman was the real mother.
Today, that baby is high definition DVDs, and unfortunately for us, both women would rather see that baby slaughtered than give up potentially lucrative royalties from it. The HD-DVD and Blu-ray camps are trying to compete with each other for money, and their greed is about to kill what could be the successor of the DVD. So what happens now? Well, as other people have pointed out, most will wait for one format to beat out the other. Or wait for players that play both formats, assuming such a thing would be made. I don't see it happening. After this whole battle, why would you license a player if it will decode the competition?
In a way, we are Solomon. I think the only smart thing to do is to keep the baby ourselves and leave them both empty handed, by not buying the players or the discs. If the two camps could just get past their greed and see that their actions mean both of them will lose revenue, they might rethink their strategies.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the whole point. With the new protections in place, many people who have not had a problem up until now, will now have issues. Suddenly "average Joe" who bought an HDTV last year will realize that his 'hot new HD-DVD movies' don't look as good on his HDTV as they do on his buddy's [Rich John] HDTV even though average Joe's HDTV has no problem displaying 1080i video. Then he'll find out that his HDDVD's are being displayed at half resolution simply because the movie studio thinks he's going to steal the movie he just bought because he only has a component input.
I liken it to color TV's. Some old Color TV's don't have a coax [cable] input, they only have the two screws for an antenna. If the studios had suddenly told everyone that because they didn't have the new coax input they would be forced to watch TV in B&W, even though their TV displayed color just fine, the people who had purchased those TV's would have been pissed. This is the same thing really.
I especially think it's interesting that the main two entities involved in implementing this push to make people buy new TV's [for no real technical reason] are the very companies that stand to profit mightily by that new surge in HDTV purchases. [ie. Sony & Toshiba ]
I have an HDTV that only has component inputs. Only the most expensive TV's even had DVI inputs when I bought mine, and hdmi didn't exist yet. There isn't a chance in hell that I will be buying a BluRay or HD-DVD player until these companies are forced to ensure that all movies will display at the full resolution supported by the TV [1080i in my case] regardless of what connection is used. Until then I'll just have to keep getting DVD's from Netflix.
HDTV is late anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
For movies, HD-DVD and BlueRay won't sell very fast becuase the studios have to still make the releases on standard DVD to make any money. The consumer won't care. Only the game machines will pick up the players and that is only for the kids and young adults that waste thier time doint that.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
The NTSC DVD Video spec is indeed limited to 480 lines. (PAL DVD is higher, of course.) You can put whatever you want on a data DVD, but if there are few or no players for it, people won't care.
So someone should just take MPEG-4, spec-out some new resolutions, and call it DVD-Ultra or something cool sounding.
It was called DivX HD, but very few players and no movies support it. It was also called WMV-HD, with a few movies and no players. AFAIK, Nero Digital HD has no movies and no players. There were several factors at work here IMO:
It costs so much to establish a new media standard that you can only do it every 10 years or so. Since each standard needs to last for a decade, it needs to be a big improvement over the previous, not a small improvement.
Putting HD MPEG-4 (or WMV or whatever) on a regular DVD is so easy that N different companies tried to do it in incompatible ways, and the format war killed all the formats before they even got started.
Re:No more HDDVD Blu Ray Stories Please (Score:3, Insightful)
The VCD to DVD upgrade seems silly as it forced consumers to use diffrent formats to burn their Video and Audio discs.
How many of you have both blank CDs and DVDs for this reason.
If the video disc market had upgraded their players to support Xvid or Divx or indeed any quality above mpg 1/2 (They did upgrade from mpg 1 eventually) no one would have upgraded to DVD.
Most movie encodes on the internet still adhere to the 700 meg (Cd size) format using encoding such as Xvid or Divx, these can be played on pirate/advanced DVD players, modified consoles etc.
People complaining about the new upgrade cycle have already missed the boat even the technical users have given in to the power of mass market by embracing DVD.
If a cd with an Xvid has more quality and equal features to a DVD (even menu's thanks to new Divx releases) then why did we upgrade in the first place? I have no idea and I doubt most
Truthfully we're caught up in the upgrade cycle, for me it doesn't matter I like the 700 meg Xvid format and until I feel the need to upgrade to the next pirate/home movie standard (likely 4.7 gig Xvid or H.263/4) I won't... My players will support those discs as well.
Acting like we won't have to upgrade is silly, it will happen just as it did with DVD our only real hope is that Xvid or another open standard will make itself available to DVD player manufacturers in time to replace the current system.
Buy and return philosophy (Score:4, Insightful)
I suggest others do the same so we can send a message and make sure the MPAA et al know there's a segment of the market who won't stand for degraded standards for committing the crime of purchasing an HDTV before THEY got THEIR act together.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the funniest part actually - they're worried about a bunch of nerds ripping off high definition content and then either downsampling the shit out of it, or trying to p2p/ftp/irc around 40GB files. The former isn't worth it (might as well do the DVD, it'll be quicker), the latter really isn't practical even now. The only really practical way to shift that much data currently is on disc (or tape), which seriously limits distribution.
Word association (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No more HDDVD Blu Ray Stories Please (Score:2, Insightful)
Does Target carry Xvid CDs? Does Netflix? Blockbuster? WalMart? Anybody? Most people want to go to a store and buy (or rent) a movie, or order it over the internet. They don't want to download it (and you know the MPAA is going to sue you if you do) and then burn it onto a CD.
Now if I've got this all wrong and all those people really do carry Xvid, then please set me straight.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:1, Insightful)
Sony and pals are so scared of nerds ripping off their signal and trading it peer-to-peer they're going to screw those who spent $3000 on TVs and who can afford and do purchase large amounts of DVDs.
No. They. Are. Not. When are you slashnerds going to realise this?
They know very well that nothing will stop the content getting onto the internet. What they want is: ACCESS CONTROL. They want to get their sticky legal fingers into the device makers and force them to build equipment the way the content industry wants (while paying royalties for the priviledge)... devices which are crippled and broken and with features that no electronics manufacturer would willingly add.
The hysteria over piracy is a smokescreen. Always has been.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the winner in that battle has been iTunes.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically those nerds with their LCD screens can't give the MPAA their money if they wanted too: HD-DVD won't play back on any of the existing computer monitors at above DVD resolution.
I watch all videos on my computer monitor (don't have a TV), and was excited by the prospect of getting some real high-quality video for these high quality monitors. Yet I could blow a few hundred bucks for an HD-DVD / Blu-Ray player, but only get video output equivalent to that of a 20$ DVD drive. I might as well keep pirating, because there is no reason to fork over the money for a new standard that I can't support. What is the incentive for upgrading?
Don't forget the sampling problem of many HDTV sets... if you try to play a low-rez movie at high rez, you will incurr the wrath of the "upsampler," which has the nasty habit of getting video and audio out-of-sync on many displays. So now the problem may be that your 8,000 dollar plasma-screen TV shipped before the MPAA's chosen video interface standard, but all you will know is that people's voices are coming out a bit before they open their mouths and the picture seems blurrier than when using your Xbox.
Bad MPAA. No doughnut.
Re:The key to acceptance: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, it might be part of the specs. But that doesn't mean that this DRM scheme will be enforceable. They can include anything they want into the specs, but if the players don't sell, or they sell and people sue, they will have to change the specs. Poorly designed technology gets rejected by consumers and driven into disuse all of the time.
How long do you think a manufacturer will continue producing a device that no one wants? And if no one wants to buy a Blu-Ray player, will the studios continue to distribute in that format? I don't see a lot of DVD players supporting DIVX [wikipedia.org] these days.
What is ridiculous isn't whether or not the movie studios will try it, but believing that the scheme would actually work (IEEE Spectrum magazine voted AACS as one of the technologies most likely to fail). We just don't have the kind of technology required for such enforcement to be feasible--broadcast encryption [wikipedia.org] will always be vulnerable to key-sharing, which is a problem that is mathematically insoluble. And once people figure out how to generate/extract/steal decryption keys, regular users will start being affected by revoked keys, and the manufacturers will end up with the same problem as disabling an entire line of players when a single device is compromised.
Besides, consumers won't put up with the kind of inconvenience such a scheme would cause. Unless these players come with useful features (outside of DRM enforcement) requiring an internet connection, I wouldn't agree to hooking my player up to ther internet. And if I have to worry about the player not working if my internet connection goes down, or their servers go down, then I'd just opt to buy my movies in other formats. And like I said earlier, there's no guarantee that the manufacturer will find out that a machine has been compromised.