DVD Format War Already Over? 640
An anonymous reader writes "'Nobody likes false starts' - claims the assertive and risky article "10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed" published by Audioholics which outlines their take on why the new Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will attain nothing more than niche status in a marketplace that is brimming with hyperbole. Even though the two formats have technically just hit the streets, the 'Ten reasons' article takes a walk down memory lane and outline why the new DVD tech has a lot to overcome."
They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
4. Studios are Conservative (Score:5, Funny)
Relative to the Southern Baptist Convention, though...
Troll article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another reason for failure (Score:5, Funny)
Heck, the bastards stick around to this day.
Floppy disks are the media format parallel to Paris Hilton.
They simply refuse to get impopular despite how crappy they are.
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but that's probably the Civic you're hearing, not the vinyl.
Re:Troll article (Score:5, Funny)
But what about the troll children? Won't anyone think of the troll CHILDREN?!
Re:They left one out (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for that.
Re:They left one out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Troll article (Score:1, Funny)
Woohoo! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh... sorry... wrong thread... and decade....
Balderdash! Also horsefeathers! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is the porn industry doing? (Score:5, Funny)
My first encounter with higher quality porn came from my days of working on high-end hotel entertainment systems a few years ago. We'd gotten in some samples of DVDs where the manufacturer was touting the high video production quality of the product, all the way to using a higher than average bit-rate when encoding; none of this soft focus stuff. My boss wanted to know whether there was a big enough difference there that it would make for a good demo (the real money in hotel video on demand is all in the porn). As a single guy who had a 65" HD-capable Toshiba rear-projection CRT setup at home, I was the obvious flunky to check that out. I watched for a bit that night and brought the DVDs back the next morning, frown on my face. When asked "what's the problem?", I said "two words: razor bumps. I don't need to see that much detail."
Fast forward to last year. My sister had a nice HD LCD TV, so she jumped at the chance to get her cable upgraded with Comcast's HD box ("The Sopranos" in HD was the big draw). Late one night I stopped by, wired up the component video, sorted out the surround sound issues, and went browsing around the channels for good HD content to show the result off. After going through a few channels of "HD" that was obviously just upsampled junk, I found an unexpected source for some great quality video obviously shot in real high-def: HBO's "Cathouse", a documentary series about the goings on at a Vegas brothel. This was just amusing for a bit, and then I saw her eyes get big and she moved closer to the TV. She works in cosmetic surgery, and her first comment about the picture was "my God, I can tell you what they did wrong when they stitched her boobs back together".
Re:They might have a point (Score:5, Funny)
Now how could you possibly trust *that*?
My methode of datastorage is much more secure. I have all my data written on the hand of God. I did had to erase a lot of names of it first, so some of you might experience some difficulties when trying to enter heaven. But I'm sure you'd enjoy hell too. They seem to have great barbeques. And it's for a good cause. I can't be expected to let my Simcity save games go to waste when the universe ends, can I?
Re:Troll article (Score:1, Funny)
You, sir, deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for unselfishly leading by example.
Re:The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This W (Score:3, Funny)
Confusion in format is a killer (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They might have a point (Score:3, Funny)
And that'll fail the second the next Neitsczhe comes around.
I have the only truly permanent backup mechanism: make your data into a Slashdot joke. It will be archived on roughly 1/4 of all blogs for the next eight years, and will be repeated ad nauseam in Slashdot for the rest of time.
Of course, you need some sort of steganography which is resistant to hot grits noise in your signal. Even with Russian prodigy hacker groups watching the machine, the high signal/noise ratio would cause capacitance effects in large metal grids, bringing the information in over powerlines and exposing people in homes to and large volumes of the evil bit. Since those go the last mile to the home, they get near our kids. Won't somebody please think of the hacker children? (Though, as established previously, in Soviet Russia, the hacker children think of you.)
And even then it might be vulnerable to some ^H^H^H^H^H^H, leading to media-delivered data FUD even if you're running the sampler on a Beowulf Cluster on all your base (in Japan!,) even though by then it's likely to be on Aibo, the family dog (in Japan!,) which is popular pretty much everywhere but Nebraska (and no, I didn't forget Poland.) If we get to wifi power distribution this might be handlable, which seems likely since only old people in Korea use power lines, and when I was your age we didn't need power besides - we made our own candles from tallow and abacus rods, and we liked it. The hardware requirements unfortunately would be huge; sooner or later, it wouldn't be a beowulf cluster - it'd be a space station.
[[ SIG Out of jokes.
On a tangent: You kids and your powered light; we had to wear special glasses to see in the dark, because it built character (not Angband characters.) Now, you kids in your bright rooms don't even wear the goggles, because they do nothing. If the power grid ever gets terroristed, you'll be in the dark ages, unable to see, tripping over furniture, and I only hope and pray that no-one gets hurt by flying chairs. Also, it's going to fucking kill Google, and since Google leads to Wikipedia Syndrome, the source of all stupid, we're looking at a possible takeover by Grammar Nazis. If they take power, the only legitimate answer to "how many Libraries of Congress is that?" will be "none." (This is offensive to anyone who knows that the appropriate answer is 42.) Indeed, the Library of Congress will be book-burned down to zero: no wireless, less space than a nomad; lame.
[[ SIG Out of jokes. Buffering more offtopic nonsense. ]]
But, if everyone tries to use this backup, since we're all so afraid of losing our facebook in this post 9/11 world, it might crack under the strain, and by then, of course, the dog is on fire - except in Nebraska - and even if you think you need to control shift kill it (I find your lack of faith disturbing,) since it's a robot dog, it's not vulnerable to normal anti-FIDO-net technologies, you insensitive clod. And poisoning won't work, because you didn't offer chocolate for it (therefore you can take your chocolate bar and shove it up your ass; I'm watching TiVo, not FiDo AiBo.) In fact, you'll need some powered exoskeletons just to take it down. This would mean to preserve your data would need 1) excursion for great justice into the Korean Demilitarized Zone, 2) ???, 3) Exoskeleton!. (I urge you from Zimbabwe to prepare for this eventuality; please fill in you credit card number, social security number, date of birth, mother's maiden name and your password to all you most important information below.) The attack would mean eliminating about 1/4 of the blogosphere, at which a great disturbance would be felt in the Emo, as if a million blogtards cried out and then were silenced at once. Talk about NO CARRIER.
[[ SIG (You keep saying that word, Sig. I do not think it means what you think it m