DVD Format War Already Over?

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."

The Markets Will Determine The Winner Of This War

[Real World Stuff]

See what Gizmodo [gizmodo.com] said in 2004.

#3 is the killer

[Have Blue]

Advantages of switching from VHS to DVD:

• Much higher quality video and audio
• Random access
• Don't have to rewind them
• Switchable audio tracks
• Subtitles that are optional
• Extras
• Nifty menus

Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:

• Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV.
• ...and that's about it.

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[Anonymous Coward]

> SACD... Does anyone have an SACD player?

Actually, if you have a halfway-decent CD player, you probably do. The question is, how many SACD's do you see actually getting pressed?

Re:#3 is the killer

[king-manic]

Advantages of switching from VHS to DVD:
Much higher quality video and audio
Random access
Don't have to rewind them
Switchable audio tracks
Subtitles that are optional
Extras
Nifty menus
Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:
Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV. ...and that's about it.

Also multi disc movies can now be on 1 disc and the menus can have more neat things int hem liek small java games ect.. Also the major studios have decided thats the way they want to go and if they do it right you won't have much of an option just as it's very hard to find vinyl copies of yoru favorite top 40 hits it'll be very difficult to find DVD's of your favorite movies eventually.

opinions are like a-holes...

[disturbedite]

i agree, this article is a bit of a troll. .."this pending format release/war is simply the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a long time." while he makes some reasonable points, it seems the motivation that sparked this was frustration. just because its the "most ridiculous thing" hes seen in a long time (in his opinion) doesn't necessarily mean squat. look at all the other format wars such as beta/vhs and laserdisc/dvd...

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[AuMatar]

I know my CD player doesn't play SACDs (I picked up a free one somewhere, popped it in just to see). Nor does my car's. Or any of my computer drives. I really doubt most do- there's no demand, so why incur the extra cost? Maybe high end stereos do, so they can put it on the box as a feature point. But the majority of people don't have high end stereos.

Re:Right...

[misleb]

The author was specifically referring to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as mediums for delivery... not HD in general. Obviously, if people don't have to do anything or buy anything extra to use HD content there won't be a problem getting them to buy it.

-matthew

Re:Congress will ensure at least one format succee

[Bassman59]

What the author of this fairly dry article has failed to mention, is that congress and the FCC are mandating a change to HDTV.

NO ... what's being mandated is a change to digital TV broadcast. Digital TV != HDTV.

Two formats, too much DRM and RCs kills anything

[Nice2Cats]

There is no way in hell I am going to invest in a technology when there is a 50-50 chance that it will go the way of the Betamax. A brief and informal survey among my friends -- some of whom actually bought laserdisks and such -- shows the same thing. Also, the thing is so riddled with control mechanisms that I get the impression I would never really own a movie again: It seems that they could just decide to switch off my copy when everything they plan to do is finished and done. Oh, and then there is the region code thing again. That has to go before I will even consider it. In short, no way either way. Try listening to the customers and getting your act together next time, and we'll see.

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[Yaztromo]

On the other hand, they can both easily store surround sound. An Audio CD could as well, of course, but then it's not really a red book (is that the one?) Audio CD anymore.

That isn't strictly true, although it does depend no what you consider "surround sound". While currently unused, Red Book does permit four channel [wikipedia.org] audio formats. As well, Dolby Pro Logic can be encoded into the standard two channel Red Book format without violating the specification.

So if you're referring to discrete 5.1 surround, you are correct -- however, there are different types of surround sound, at least two of which can be encoded on to Red Book CDs.

HD-DVD (or BlueRay) over DVD might not be as particular a jump. It does have higher resolution, of course, but it doesn't specify anything with regards to possible higher framerates or even better encoding

Actually, both standards can handle H.264 [wikipedia.org] video, which is a signficantly better encoding standard than MPEG-2. Depending on what profile is used for the encoding, it is possible to specify much higher colour fidelity.

This isn't to say I disagree with your overall argument, however. I'm not so sure that the quality differences are going to be sufficiently significant to the average viewer (which would include myself) to matter. As I've stated in other articules on this subject, I'm personally more interested in these formats (BlueRay in particular) for data storage than for video.

Yaz.

Re:They left one out

[Jugalator]

Record vinyl [vestax.com] from any external audio source.

Or, if you're lazy and don't want your mp3's as vinyls, just use a Winamp plugin [winamp.com]? :-)

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[baxissimo]

Suddenly, everyone could have a GREAT copy of their favorite movie ... for the output cost of about $50 for a cheap player.

While I agree with most of your comment, the bit about $50 DVD players is revisionist history. I seem to recall they were more like in the neighborhood of $1000 when the DVD format first launched. Sure you can get a $50 player now but not at the beginning. Cheap players had little to do with the initial success of DVD. I think it was just the improved quality and the nice form factor. Maybe they were a little cheaper than LaserDisc players too, but it wasn't $50. I don't even think VHS players were going for as low as $50 back then.

Divx is much lower quality

[benwaggoner]

Well, the Divx HD profile is 1280x720 and only 5.1 audio at best. Both advanced formats are 1920x1080, and support up to lossless 7.1 96KHz 24-bit audio. And I've never seen a Divx HD disc without palpable artifacts, while the standard for VC-1 encoded HD DVD is transparency to the D5 HD master.

HD DVD is at least as much of a jump from Divx HD as Divx HD was from DVD.

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[Ahnteis]

No. Only DIGITAL BROADCAST is a legal certainty. That's NOT the same as hi-def. In fact, a lot of the new digital broadcast is going to be 480p so that broadcasters can broadcast more channels rather then better quality channels.

Re:Well, duh. I could have told you that

[henryhbk]

My DVD player (a higher end Sony) has SACD as well (of course not DVD-Audio also, why converge?). I was going to try it out, back when I bought it, until I discovered that due to copy concerns the SACD only worked over 6 ANALOG CABLES!!! So let me get this straight, my video DVD's will come through on the digital link to my receiver, but if I shove a SACD in, I have to switch inputs (even though it's the same device with essentially the same media [yes I know, just making a point]) but it won't play the same way... And I have a large bundle of cables now, instead of one elegant fiber-optic cable. I know some of the newer players can do it all over digital, but it's too little too late...

Re:They're already screwing up.

[MP3Chuck]

"All these idiots had to do was make their demo disc show the movies side by side with the DVD version and it would make the difference clear."

http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html [cornbread.org]

It's a LOTR DVD/HD-DVD comparison. The page I linked to containes DVD captures compared with downsampled HD-DVD captures. You can click on each one to see an upsampled DVD capture compared with a 'native' HD-DVD capture.

Not quite the same as having FMV side-by-side, but it's the next best thing.

Re:Talk about your mountains out of molehills

[AReilly]

No, supply chains hate double inventory, let alone tripple. That's one of the reasons that DVD-A and SACD floundered: most retailers wouldn't stock even the pitiful range of titles that *were* available, because they percieved no demand, and the extra range took up shelf, display and warehouse space (all costs to the distribution chain). There has to be consumer demand. That was easy with both CD and DVD. There's nothing in HD/Blu DVD to induce that.

I'll wait for the war to end

[WCD_Thor]

I wont be, and nethier will my parents, be buying ether of these formats anytime soon. I don't want to start buying blu-ray tech only to find out a few months down the line that blu-ray lost the war and HD-DVD won, or vice versa. If I had to pick one though I'd go with blu-ray because 1) the name sounds so much cooler, and 2) it has more storage capacity. Believe me, I want beter video quality than DVD offers, but not if its going to cost me so god damned much money. Also, in a few years, holo-disks are going to start coming out with a predicted 100-300 gigabyte storage capacity initialy, with a thearetical storage capacity of more than a tarabbyte. (Yes I know I can't spell, so live with it).

Re:What is the porn industry doing?

[Steve B]

While I agree with most of the points of the article I would like to hear what the big producers in the porn industry have to say.

"Geez -- our customers really don't want to see every pimple on her butt or the incision lines from her boob job."

Actually it's not just copy concerns

[Sycraft-fu]

It's the the S/PDIF format can't handle the bandwidth for 6 channel uncompressed audio. It was designed for 2-channel audio. When you play back something like a DTS or DD track, what it's actually doing is sending a compressed signal via S/PDIF. If you hook it in to a non-DD/DTS aware DAC you'll get invervals of static and silence.

Without a new spec, they can't do uncompressed DVD-A transfer. It is my understanding that HDMI will support it.

SACD is a whole different ball of wax. It doesn't work like CD or DVD audio. They are PCM, meaning they take level snapshots a certian number of times per second. CD takes 16-bit readings, 44,100 times per second. SACD is PWM and works like variable speed electric motors. It takes only 1-bit samples, but does so at a rate of 2.8MHz. There's a whole line of reasoning as to why that you can look up if you want, but suffice to say normal DACs can't handle it.

Re:They might have a point

[rmerry72]

That catalogging program sounds interesting. What OS is it under? Interested in sharing?

Its written in Java so (in theory) most platforms. I'm running the server on Windows 2000 Server, though I have other Windows clients and a Puppy Linux client attached.

It's free and available from http://blade.dnsalias.net/ [dnsalias.net] or as a torrent.

The Blade Multimedia Catalog [dnsalias.net] has some volume and archive management built in. This gives me a snapshot of my mounted volumes showing me capacities and free space that I have available, including the archive drives, plus indexes all my videos, music and photos and tracks which have been copied to the archive drives. Next version also integrates with BitTorrent clients such as Azureus.

Email address on the site if you have a prob :-)

Re:wrong on so many fronts...

[Black Cardinal]

I work in the industry, designing technology that goes into high-def RPTV sets. My own opinion largely matches yours, that the majority of people won't really be that interested in either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, at least for several years. I totally agree that the jump in image quality from VHS to DVD was much more significant than it is from DVD to either the 720p or 1080i HD formats. Recent large 1080p HD sets have excellent scalers that can make a 480p DVD look pretty good, although the level of detail will be a little lacking. Videophiles will want true HD sources now, but the more typical consumer will be content to wait.

Regarding LCD color, LCDs now have enough color depth and fast enough response time to match the color performance of CRTs. A CRT has a logarithmic color response to input voltage, which matches the human eye very well. An LCD has a linear color response, so electronics in the display have to mimic CRT behavior by applying a gamma curve function to the input signal. Nicer LCDs do this quite well (take a look at Apple's Cinema Display), and can match the best CRTs in color. The vast majority of LCDs do not do this very well, however, and so a cheap CRT will always have better color than a cheap LCD.

Also, direct view *MEANS* CRT.

Actually, no, direct view means anything that doesn't involve projection, but instead the image generation device is viewed directly. CRTs, LCD flat panels, and plasma flat panels are all classified as direct view. Non-direct view means RPTV (CRT-based, LCD microdisplay, LCoS/SXRD, or DLP) or front projection (typically either LCD microdisplay or DLP).

Re:They might have a point - Try holographic

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, to qualify as real archive quality, it has to hold up to a host of environmental conditions, and few home burned cdrws will meet 50 years - as pointed out in this thread, some wont read in 3-4 years.

From what I've heard, the first generation of holographic drives are aimed at users with huge storage needs and libraries (Think $$), kinda enterprise class stuff, with consumer drives to follow.

i somewhat agree...

[AxemRed]

The point that really got me is #2: Format Wars Don't Sell Players.

I know that when I had to choose between DVD+R and DVD-R, I initially refused to go with either. I finally ended up getting a recorder that could do both, although what I was really waiting for was for nearly all new DVD readers and players to support both.

I, for one, can definitely tell the difference between 480p and 1080i. I would love to get my hands on a "better" format. However, I don't plan on buying either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray until one format comes out as the clear winner or both formats are almost fully supported on all new readers.

Yes there is.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Buffalo Linktheatre [buffalotech.com] plays HD DivX and WMV at 720p and 1080i. I own one primarily as a network media player, and whilst it does suck at this, it may be worth looking at as a HTPC replacement if you wish to play HD content from sources other than HD-DVD/BluRay

Re:10 really good reasons plus a new one

[drsquare]

They're planning for the future, and in 3 years a *lot* of people will own HDTVs. I'd say at least half of all the TVs being sold today are some variant of HiDef. And DLP sets are rather cheap. As for not having the income - it's amazing how people on welfare can scrounge money for rims, for instance. Anyone who wants one bad enough can scrounge $1K for a decent sized DLP.

No-one wants a TV bad enough to spend a grand on it. Projection will never be anything more than a niche, you need a giant room with no windows. Most people have their TVs in the corner of a small room, how the hell do you project into a corner?

Most people are not buying TVs at all, let alone HDTVs. Especially when a similarly sized CRT is four times cheaper, and HDTV is only beneficial at huge sizes (less than 10% of the market).

HDTV will gradually increase in market share as there is *now* enough benefit to pull in a lot of consumers, and already have a high penetration among younger professionals.

Yuppies are also a very small part of the market.

Re:They might have a point

[Ginger Unicorn]

The most sensible solution to all these problems is to copy all you backups onto new media every year or two. That way you dont have to worry about media degradation, and also it gives your data every opportunity to migrate from potentially obsolete media to more current stuff.

Re:They might have a point

[ScottLindner]

Let's not mince words. I very carefully said archival quality discs.. not discs. There is a huge differene between these products.

You should do some reading on archival of digital media unless you don't care that much about the data you believe is protected so well. Magnetic media has always been terrible and the increasing densities on the platters is only going to make the problem worse. People don't know it.

You can roll the dice if you want. It's your data. But I do encourage you to research archiving digital data before putting too much faith in your current approach.