Video Games and the Hi-Def Format Wars 260
Pika the Mad writes "Reuters has a concise but interesting article up about how video games will help decide the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD. According to industry analysts "What Sony and Microsoft decide to announce publicly or to dealers at E3 next week will be key." So this year's E3 could very well be a deciding factor in how you view your movie library for years to come."
Real determiners of HD format wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting, but untrue (Score:3, Insightful)
To be completely honest (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean I'd like Hi-def, but the amount it's going to cost me to upgrade and all the hassles with the competing standards, the retarded prices they'll be charging, the 'oh this can't play on your PC as we don't like the connector you're using' blah blah
I just can't be bothered. DVD'll do me fine for a few more years - and after that I'll be sticking to media-less content.
Formats are Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real determiners of HD format wars (Score:2, Insightful)
What is the trend according to the past ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Music industry promoted the classic black disc
Music industry promoted the tape
Music industry promoted the CD
Video/Movie industry promoted VHS/Beta
Video/Movie industry promoted DVD
Console games initially used cartridges then moved to CD then to DVD. They always had to adapt to the market directed by the music and the video industry. Actually the music industry is pretty much overwhelmed by the MP3/Internet "media". So I really think the video industry (and of course the consumers of that industry) will decide the new standard. The video game industry should adapt to that standard. Also the industry that is using a media optimally (meaning almost 100% of its capacity) will effectively promote that standard. I don't think video games will need to use 25 GB or 50 GB of data until at least 2-3 years. The video industry *actually* need that capacity.
"NEITHER" (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps if digital television had taken off a few years earlier, pushing higher-def TVs and better home theater sound into a majority of households, this might be a winning proposition... but for now, most people are quite happy with the DVD experience.
Unlike the transition between video tape and DVD, the improvements moving to HD are far more elusive, and when finally observable, are not really all that great over the "old" DVD format. Early reviews state that a clear difference is only discernable at very high screen sizes; and at the prices those extra-large format, hi-def TVs run, only the most affluent will be able to afford to see what the hype is all about.
In the end, there's no point declaring anybody a winner in "next gen" DVD until the Walmart crowd gets behind it, and "old" DVDs fade into oblivion.
Re:To be completely honest (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly. Why buy either when both will be replaced by direct download? Until then, the DVD is good enough. In fact, DVD will probably be around much longer than that, just as the floppy is still around today.
People keep comparing the BluRay vs HD-DVD war to the VHS vs Betamax war, but I think the comparison is flawed. This is more like the Zip-disk vs LS120 "war." Remember that? People wanted to know which format would replace the floppy disk, but both are now irrelevant. The difference is simple - VHS and Betamax both competed in a market where there was no existing alternative, while the Zip-disk and LS120 competed in a market with a well-entrenched but less-capable alternative. In the end, better technologies like flash drives, email, and networks destroyed the market for the high-capacity floppy replacements. Meanwhile, the floppy itself still lives on for the few things it can still do well, like system recovery. For the same reason, the DVD wil still be with us years after the HD-DVD and BluRay are forgotten. How else will we watch our massive collections of "old DVDs?"
And the Winner Is... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the article totally misses the dark horse candidate which I, with my great knowledge and keen insight of the market, predict will be the real winner.
The losers will be both BLU-RAY and HD-DVD. The winner will be downloaded content.
All of the game systems are network centric. In order to get much benefit out of any of the systems you practically have no choice but to connect them to the internet and that is typically going to be a broad-band connection too.
Combine that ubiquitous high-speed internet connectivity with the high-powered processing built into these systems and you have the ideal platform for media distribution using new highly efficient codecs like h.264.
An hour of 720p encoded with h.264 to just 1GB looks pretty good. In most cases it looks a lot better than a DVD. A low-end 1.5Mbps (DSL) connection can transfer that 1GB in under 2 hours. A mid-range 8mbps (comcast cable) connection can transfer it in less than 20 minutes, and high-end 20mbps (Verizon FIOS fibre) will do it in under 10 minutes with plenty of bandwidth to spare.
This combination of processing and network throughput will make it feasible to sell direct downloaded hi-def video to anyone with one of these game consoles.
I believe that just as MP3's portability convenience trounced the non-portable high-def audio products like SACD and DVD-Audio, so too will downloaded (possibly, but not necessarily) pay-per-view hi-def tv and movies.
Of course the quality of 1080p at 8G/hr with h.264 will be significantly better than just 720p at 1G/hr - but for many people the lower quality will be still be more than good enough, and for the videophile, waiting a little bit longer for the download of a top-notch 1080p encoding won't be a terrible inconvenience.
Re:Have you seen the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting, but untrue (Score:3, Insightful)
Industry analysts are predicting that because of the expense of the standalone players this is EXACTLY how thw "winner" is going to be decided- therefore what Sony and MS say at E3 _is_ going to have a big impact- but everyone knows what they're going to say anyway.
Re:Real determiners of HD format wars (Score:3, Insightful)
And what they do sell as elite porn... Well what can you expect from the pr0n industry after all?
Re:Real determiners of HD format wars (Score:3, Insightful)
(Incidentally, I also think that this is the direction that movie distribution will take.)
Re:Real determiners of HD format wars (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to pick the winner? Look at the market for family entertainment.
How much do you think the Harry Potter franchise is worth to Time-Warner? To Walmart? It has made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen.
Re:Blu-Ray will win (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I don't agree. PSP had its own proprietary movie format, and there are probably 1 million PSP sales to date (actually, according to Wikipedia, 10 million units as of oct 2005), yet UMD is struggling/floundering/dying. People do not yet buy video game consoles and let that drive their movie purchases. You're right, no one will buy a $300 add-on. People will just buy a $300 HD-DVD standalone unit and have both.
Kids will probably play Blu-Ray movies on their PS3. But adults still don't understand technology convergence that well. They'll want a standalone player. Don't underestimate the weirdness of the market.
Heck, the real turning point (past %50 penetration) of DVD was the DVD/VCR combo box. People were so deathgrip on the old technology that they bought both in one box.
Re:Interesting, but untrue (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it.
If the novie plays that will be the end of it for just about everyone.
If one click in Vista or OSX saves HD to your hard drive or low-res to a portable player, so much the better.
But only a Geek to give a damn about codecs, cables and connectors, or the fine points of managed copy. Everyone else will just buy the standard color-coded MCE bundles from Dell or HP and be up and running in under an hour.
Re:To be completely honest (Score:3, Insightful)
Up to WHO? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who says I have to buy into whatever HD format they choose? Last time I checked it was still the consumer who's in charge. If nobody buys the format, it will just turn into the next LaserDisc-drops-while-VHS-puffs-on story. If I don't have an HD TV (which I don't) is there any reason for me to upgrade to a differnet format, other than lots more DRM headache?
Re:To be completely honest (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Why bother? It's so much less expensive to use standard DVD, I already have the equipment, there are lots of movies available, my TV upsamples to get close to HD resolution (it can't resolve small stuff that was never resolvable in the first place -- not like those magical photoshop plugins CSI has --, but it makes the picture look much better).
And then look at the prices. $300 and up for a player? That doesn't work with just any TV? (It will work with mine but that's beside the point). I got my player for $50, a couple of years ago. The most recent DVD acquisition cost me $10. Why should I spend hundreds for a player and then 3-5 times what I pay now for movies?
No thanks. They've hit the point of diminishing returns. And then there's the fact that I can play back the disks I have now on just about anything, extract content from them (I have a few tracks from a live concert disc in MP3 format in my music library, so I can listen to it at work or in the car). And then there's the fact that it's just too much hassle to switch.
The only thing I am interested in HD-DVD and Blu-ray for? Data storage at work. Once I figure out which one is going to catch on I will buy blanks and a burner and make sure that all the computers in the lab can read the media, and start dumping data to those discs. We have thousands of disks right now and I'm rapidly running out of storage space, and the idea of disks that can hold 20-25 GB of data, not just 4.3 or 8.6, is something that has me waiting to see where this goes.
Re:To be completely honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, anyone else out there realize that $900 is extremely expensive for the average joe to spend on a TV? Let's see, the majority of TVs are bought by late teens and 20-somethings, heading out into the world, or college bound to fit in their tiny apartments or basement flats. As they have famillies, SOME will become wealthy enough to spend $500 on a 30" TV, most will be happy with a 20" (as my familly has been for years), an elite few will be purchasing $800 widescreen, rear projection systems with surround sound equipment. The /. community is a VERY BAD sample of mainstream society. Most (not all) /.ers are middle class to to upper class citizens, as they had the fortune of being able to be introduced to high techology at an early age (I know there's a few of you here and there that are exceptions, but you are a minority). Also, we LOVE gadgets and technology, and various forms of entertainment. And still, from what I'm seeing, the majority of people even HERE wouldn't even benefit from HD.
Take off your rosie colored glasses and realize:I haven't done a direct comparison, but going to take a guess that HD will only be of real significantly noticable difference on 40"+ TVs. That's an extremely tiny part of the market. Most everyone else is fat and happy, and would rather spend their time trying to figure out a way of paying less at the pump.
Funny, I consider myself a film buff, I even work as a video editor and producer at a TV station, my life litterally revolves around the tube, yet I have zero interest in any of this HD stuff. When I see a movie, I don't care if it has the nth degree of resolution. My favorite movie of the year was "Good Night & Good Luck", how is HD going to help that? Even if "King Kong" was the hit movie of the year, I really don't see how HD is going to "increase my viewing pleasure", the graphics were neat enough as it was. This is 100% hype driven by video equipment manufacturers. Hollywood doesn't care (in fact, they'll be the big losers of this, because it might make more people stay home then go to the theatre), the mainstream public doesn't care, NOONE CARES! When The NES begot the SNES, the entire gaming community was ready for a change in quality, when VHS begot DVD, most people were ready for a media distrobution change to match their music media (notice I didn't say "quality", DVD adoption wasn't about quality, it was about convenience). People would still be using VHS if it weren't for the added convenience of DVDs, HD doesn't add any convenience. I seriously think that the HD revolution is going to die even before it gets off the ground. When 95% of the population goes to the store, see sa DVD version of a movie and an HD version of the same movie for twice the price, and buys the DVD version, suddenly the HD manufacturers are going to look a bit green around the gills.
The immediate future of movie distorbution is in cheap, simple, low-bandwidth internet distrobution. The population won't care if quality takes a hit, just as audio quality took a hit with the iPod. The TV manufacturers know this, so they're desperate to get a new media off the ground before traditional media distrobution becomes a thing of the past. Even if HD gets off the ground, they're only buying a little time, maybe a year or two. I bet you anything that even if everyone switches over to HD, the average citizen will be willing to fall back to non-HD if renting a movie becomes as simple as iTMS.
It's about the content (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Formats are Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
25-100 gig BR discs showing content in hd will appeal to home theater afficiondo's first and as prices go down it will whittle down to the general masses.