What will be done about hi-def DVDs for the 360?
Displaying poll results.31529 total votes.
Most Votes
- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 14348 votes
Most Comments
- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to any other poll question?
Just sayin'...
This is an important question because (Score:5, Funny)
The CN-HD consortium is made up not of representative engineers from a number of technology companies, but rather a bunch of discussion thread posters! Systems design takes a unique format, such as this example from the framebuffer design document: Of course, studios have already voiced skepticism about the format because most of the content protection documents have been modded "-5 Flamebait," but these concerns have been mostly met with the reasoned rebuttal "in Soviet HD format, disc plays you!"
I for one welcome our new HD overlords!
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry couldn't resist.
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's for various features, including updating DRM, other firmware updates, and access to the Internet for "enhanced" features.
Welcome to the future, sir. Everything will connect to the Internet someday, despite the derision of those who don't believe it's coming.
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the same reason I avoid Steam like the plague, I don't like things that depend on internet access to use, or reuse. I have boxes of floppies (5.25" even) just in case I feel like firing up my Commodore 64, but with internet only content this ability is time limited, on how long the server stays up, a faceless corp remains interested, and if said corp feel like continuing to offer what I want to play. These problems are now true for movies.
Call me old fashioned (which would be odd since I'm just pushing 29), but I like permanent media, if I buy it, I might want to use a long time from now. I don't trust 3rd parties to respect this desire.
That said, I really don't care, I don't see myself adopting to Blu-Ray in the near to long future. I don't care enough to spend the couple grand needed to upgrade. Still not different enough from DVD to be an improvement.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Enjoy.
Re: (Score:2)
Maintenance of old floppies is critical to keep the magnetic signals strong. I tried booting up my carefully preserved original IBM DOS 3.3 diskettes to resurrect a neighbors floppy-only PC. The diskettes had essentially faded to the point being blank and unformatted.
Has anyone preserved bootable DOS images that can be recorded to a floppy?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
With steam, you basically trade DRM for the convenience of having a guaranteed-as-long-as-Valve exists download source; likely more reliable than torrents and so forth.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because there's a big difference between "doing it because you can" and "doing it because you have to"
Re: (Score:2)
Online content.
Exclusives for those who paid for the video.
Firmware upgrades.
Remote control and programming [through a web browser]
The network connection is becoming standard on all but the cheapest AV hardware. Internet radio is built into up-market HT receivers from Denon.
Re:What high-def DVD for the 360? (Score:4, Insightful)
To revoke keys as they are cracked, of course. Pretty soon your DVD player will even require "activation".
just you wait and see.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I'm missing something, but why the hell does a DVD PLAYER need internet access? One would think that a DVD player would play, you know, DVDs.
A DVD player only has to handle one video format (MPEG2) and has very limited scripting facilities. Blu-Ray allows for dramatically more interactivity. Whether this is desirable to you or not is unimportant to me; it allows for rich media applications that will work in any Blu-Ray player.
Some DVD players are already more complicated, however, than the simple type. In fact, it's probably hard to find a unit that won't play MP3 and WMA and display JPEGs. And a lot of units will now play MPEG4 movies (XviD
Re: (Score:2)
Downloadable subtitles for new languages
Fan-generated content, like "MSTK" style soundtracks
Updates actor/creator bios, so they aren't locked in time
Live links for more information on the above, or anything else in the movie
Ability to download recent relevant movie trailers
Community features, allowing people to share favorite clips, or even do real-time chat about the movie as they're watched.
Basically, think all the InterVideo stuff, except
Fully integrated into all players
Good integration with
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From a privacy perspective, no discs required a live internet connection, and there were privacy rules in place.
In HD DVD's life, I never heard of any privacy breaches or practical privacy concerns with anything that was released.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You can bet that all the interested companies will be falling all over themselves to offer hi def movie rentals over the internet shortly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that you phrased the question that way provides its own answer.
Re: (Score:2)
Or was there a game released on HD-DVD that I just never saw or cared about?
The fact that you phrased the question that way provides its own answer.
I disagree. Just because I couldn't really care less about the existence (or lack thereof) of a 360 game in HD, doesn't change the existence (or lack thereof) of one. I posed the question because I have no idea what the answer is. Though I am not an xbox owner of any sort, so even if they released halo 7 on HD, I wouldn't have noticed.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Keep it in perspective though (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Still waiting for a useful disc format (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://rdstuff.stores.yahoo.net/sonlasdispla.html [yahoo.net] The model I have is a little older than this one. It's the one which came in the Dragons Lair videogame. It has full RS-232 control and auto-plays on power on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You would have the advantage of the big album covers of yesterdecade, the advantages of both vinyl and digital (and both have strengths and weaknesses).
The downside would be you would need new hardware to play the digital part. Also they would be hard to play in your car.
Re:Still waiting for a useful disc format (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to October 2007. A CD that's vinyl on the label side and a normal CD on the other.
You were over-estimating the audio density of vinyl, a ring around the edge of a cd wouldn't hold enough. This uses an entire side of the CD and still only holds one 3-minute song on the vinyl. At least it holds the entire rest of the album on the CD side.
This way is easier to make than your idea, and compatible with most CD players. I say "most" because it'
Re: (Score:2)
does anybody know of any attempts at optical analog audio? Kind of like a CD only instead of 1s and 0s, there's a variable-width groove. It would reflect laser light at different intensities to give analog sound.
I don't know how this would work with dust, and what the data density would be, but it seems like a good compromise between vinyl and digital.
Re: (Score:2)
Penny Arcade in Reverse? (Score:2)
Sorry, I can't find the original comic, maybe somebody else can
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
DISABLE LINKS FOR ANONYMOUS COWARDS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
(Or have a happy middle where you can set an option to strip their links. But really, what does that buy you? They can still post URLs and say "go there".)
You forgot one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's the option for "They'll buy another company offering high-capacity storage and use that instead"? Microsoft is not as well-known for innovation as they are for marketing.
If Microsoft research determines it is profitable (Score:2)
My bet? They will wait awhile. Even though Blu-Ray has won, they still are far from taking over standard DVDs. In a few years when costs are down and BR has gained more marketshare they will release another addon.
Re:If Microsoft research determines it is profitab (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, but what did they win?
I see "who cares" with a significant lead, and we're the tech crowd that gets off on this kind of technology. A couple weeks back I had a conversation over lunch with a handful of my customers, and they didn't even know blu-ray was High Def.
I'm not sure winning this war means anything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I see "who cares" with a significant lead, and we're the tech crowd that gets off on this kind of technology. A couple weeks back I had a conversation over lunch with a handful of my customers, and they didn't even know blu-ray was High Def.
Yes, but technically literate people are not the target demographic. The target demographic are the people who wander into big box stores and get told by the floor critters that BluRay is the future of home entertainment and that their new home theatre system just won't be complete without a player and several titles. These people will then pressure their local rental outlets and retail video stores until they have a selection of titles available to justify their purchases, at which point BluRay will have
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow! (Score:2)
Who Cares?
bet it would get the most votes on 90% of the polls ever taken.
Summary of the poll options (Score:5, Informative)
No, they already announced that they would discontinue it. Many places already cleared out the MS HD-DVD drives, often at prices in the $50 range.
They will invent their own format
In essence, this has already happened. MS has been offering 720p digital downloads for about $5 for some time now.
They will port Blu-Ray, eventually
Eh, maybe... They might wait until prices are lower on BD-ROM drives before they push to this, but MS has the secondary problem that a large chunk of their 360s don't have HDMI support at all. This wasn't a big deal when they released an HD-DVD drive and the Image Constraint Token was still years off, but it's approaching quickly. On top of that, the big reason for having the HD-DVD drive was to counter Sony's PS3 movie+game combo. In essence, MS feared that Sony was going to pull off that ultimate "Living room hub" concept that everyone talks about, but in the end that never happened. MS may just see their success with digital downloads and media center integration and hold off until the next XBox. At their four year cycle, the next XBox is only about two years away, so it may not be worth it for MS to drop a blu-ray player out there.
They will repackage HD-DVD
Errr, no. See the first point. Remember, the HD-DVD add-on had nothing to do with games, period. It was a movie player to counter the PS3's HD video playback. No games came out on HD-DVD, and no games will come out on HD-DVD. Repackaging the HD-DVD player would be pointless now that Toshiba's announcement means that no more HD-DVD movies will be released.
Nothing will be done about it
Beyond announcing the end of the player, this is pretty much correct. Again, the players were clearanced at about $50 by a lot of retailers, althoguh a few still haven't cut the prices. As a side note, the player hooks up over USB and is useable on PCs - if there are a few HD discs that you really want, $50 isn't a bad price.
Who Cares
The people who voted for other, non-Neal categories?
Other two choices omitted because they're already self-explanatory.
Re: (Score:2)
At their four year cycle, the next XBox is only about two years away
This implied-established "four year cycle" that you describe; are you extrapolating from the *single example* of the gap between the original XBox and the 360?
The original XBox was released quite a bit later than its rivals (PS2, Gamecube, Dreamcast), whereas the 360 was released long *before* most of the "next" generation consoles.
Unless there's any clear indication that MS are intent on releasing consoles on a more frequent cycle than the competition (continuing their current "trend"(!)), then it's s
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, you know, it worked for them.
I am curious why it's "more plausible" to follow the five-to-six year cycle when the early movers in the last two console rounds have been more successful (as long as we ignore the Dreamcast, which at the time of the XBox release was
Re: (Score:2)
I can't provide links as it's been a while, but I have seen more than a couple articles/interviews where MS reps have said that they intend to stick with that strategy.
If you've actually seen them say that, then fair enough- I just didn't see any indication of it in your original post.
Besides which, where else am I to extrapolate MS' game console cycle from?
Assuming that was all you had to go on, my advice would be "don't". You don't have to speculate or extrapolate if there's not enough data to do it reliably. If one has to, it's at least a good idea to make clear that the basis for the figure is straight-line extrapolation of two points, not some established trend.
Plus, you know, it worked for them.
My original point was meant to be that (again, in the absence of further inf
Re: (Score:2)
However, I have seen several articles where MS reps indicated a desire to push for quicker hardware replac
Re: (Score:2)
Only the most recent 360 models have HDMI output, the console only supports 1080p with special VGA cables or in HDMI versions, the combination of DVD-ROM and lack of a standard HDD means some games (read up on the issues with GTA4) are running into trouble, and that's only going to get worse. The 360 would be really long in the tooth by fall of 2011.
Hence the problems with launching early :) And of course, if they did launch in 2009, the 3G XBox would be looking quite dated by the PS4's "due" date of late 2012.
One nitpick that's otherwise unrelated to the rest of your argument: The 360 launched November 2005 in the US vs. November 2006 for the PS3, so there would be an 12-month lead, not 18, if a 5 year cycle was adopted by all.
That was assuming a 6-year cycle which the PS set; the PS2 launched six years after the original Japanese PS1 launch, and the PS3 launched six years after the PS2.
The 360 launched a year before the PS3, and to keep up a four (instead of six) year "cycle", the next XBox would have to launch three years (i.e. 18 months) before the PS4.
There's also the X-Factor that comes from the solidifying of CableCard standards
I wasn't
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wasn't very familiar with "CableCard" (I'm in the UK), but I see that it's apparently a US-specific standard with no indication of use elsewhere.
It's only US-specific because we're the only ones pushing it. There's nothing preventing its use in other markets. It is entirely possible that some non-US cable companies will use it, and savvy consumers will be able to take advantage.
CableCard is ultimately a stopgap until broadcast-type television goes away and is replaced entirely by Video-on-Demand. But until VoD becomes more technically feasible (the problems as I see them being in order from greatest to least licensing, initial cost, storage array
Re: (Score:2)
It's only US-specific because we're the only ones pushing it. There's nothing preventing its use in other markets. It is entirely possible that some non-US cable companies will use it, and savvy consumers will be able to take advantage.
Is the technology compatible with the cable TV technologies used in other countries? I know (for example) that the ATSC standard for terrestrial TV in North America isn't used here in Europe- we have DVB-T instead.
I don't know how digital cable TV works (does DOCSIS figure in that at all as the underlying data carrier?), but even if the underlying data facility is the same or similar in different countries- as it is for data transfer with DOCSIS- it doesn't mean that the TV data itself will be the same.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually i
Re: (Score:2)
As for the Blu-Ray issue, you're right that MS c
Re: (Score:2)
As a 360 Owner (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now I did just see an ad for a horror movie on Blu-Ray where you could jump to different angles to choose which characters live or die [wikipedia.org]. *LINK CONTAINS SPOILERS* That's
Re: (Score:2)
This sort of thing can be done in ordinary DVD-video, so I wouldn't really expect a big flood of this material in blu-ray.
Downloaded Content (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Two Remarks (Score:2)
2. Didn't Nintendo use to make gaming consoles, as well?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
AOL Disks (Score:2)
I have to abstain.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'm impressed
back in the old days (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Online video service (Score:2)
Missing Option (Score:2)
Who cares is right on. (Score:2)
Invent their own? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh i'm sorry, i mean 'embrace'.
Complaining about choices. (Score:4, Informative)
Let's see those choices again:
* Microsoft will continue to use HD-DVD
Well, obviously not. They have already said they have discontinued the drive.
* They will invent their own format
Depending on your point of view, this has already happened. After all, they have 720p movies for rent from XBox Live Video. They will not invent their own optical drive, though.
* They will port Blu-Ray, eventually
I think this will happen if it becomes obvious that Blu-ray will 'win' over digital downloads. I think Microsoft will try to go with digital downloads a lá Apple's iTunes HD on AppleTV for a while, though.
* They will repackage HD-DVD
Uh, no. See #1. HD DVD is dead. There will be no revival.
* Nothing will be done about it
Depending on if this is solely referring to optical discs, this one could also be true. If their movie rentals over Xbox Live works out, they won't bother with a Blu-ray drive.
One option that was missed was "using one of the other HD disc formats", like HVD, FVD, or VMD.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's see those choices again:
* Microsoft will continue to use HD-DVD
Absolutely, they are committed to continued development and support for a product the beloved consumer has purchased.
When was the last time you heard of a large corporation turning a blind eye to
* They will invent their own format
Wooohhhh, Thunder! It's not dead, it's just resting! See, there it just moved.
* They will port Blu-Ray, eventually
Despite the patent encumbered technology licensed
Re: (Score:2)
HD VMD (Score:3, Interesting)
Aren't the (Score:2)
Re:missing option: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You underestimate the severity of OCD in the typical slashdotter.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that the 360 *at this point* is actually a good bit more expensive than the PS3 if you buy the wireless adapter (before the price drops it was still cheaper) because that thing is just a way to steal $100 from people. But oh well. I'm a huge gamer and so I
Re: (Score:2)
I understand that a DVD capable Wii is coming. To bad according to Nintendo it will require more that just a firmware update.
As for Blu-Ray, I couldn't care less. I'm not at all interested in HD content.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So every result returned by Google is just the word "good" ?