Why HD-DVD and Blu-ray Are DOA 289
mikesd81 writes "Slate has up an article on why both new DVD formats are effectively dead on arrival. Article author Sean Cooper cites internet movie and cable on demand services, the price of new hardware, and the inexpensive cost of newer hard drives as the reasons behind his argument. The article goes on to say buying movies online isn't there yet. Titles in standard-def are few, in hi-def fewer still. With five times the visual information of a standard-def flick, an HD download of The Matrix, were it even available, could take all day over the average broadband connection. But consumers are demanding change, and change will happen fast." From the article: "On iTunes an album costs about 10 bucks--as much as $8 less than some CD retailers charge, partially because of the reduced cost of getting music to buyers online. Look for the same savings when it comes to downloading movies. And then there's the fact that hard-disk storage capacities are pushing ever upward while size and price drop. In a few years, you'll buy every episode of The West Wing on a drive the size of a deck of cards rather than on 45 DVDs in a box the size of your microwave oven." Phil Harrison is already saying the PlayStation 4 won't use discs.
His prediction is 5 years too early (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how much people might ask for it, there's no way it could possibly happen fast enough. If he was arguing that this next generation of video players will be the last to use physical media, he would have a decent argument, but it will easily take at least 5 years to upgrade our telecommunications infrastructure to the point needed to quickly deliver HD content.
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http://www.isp-planet.com/cplanet/tech/2006/prime
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Re:His prediction is 5 years too early (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, I believe that it has been taking roughly 45-50 minutes to download the entire movie. I could essentially handle double the file size and still watch immediately but 10 times the file size would mean waiting.
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Well reality says otherwise. I have 3Mbps ADSL now, can soon get 6. Period end of story. BellSouth won't be upgrading their plant here in the forseeable future. They only installed DSL because the State told them to make it available in every parish seat. Outside those towns it doesn't exist, even when towns are bigger than some parish seats. Cities do pretty much all have DSL. We also have cable modems as
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And they're certainly not going to do it unless they're allowed to charge both the user and Apple's store for the same bandwidth. And the movie producer and director. And the lead actors and actresses. And I hear they even want to charge the janitors as well, ever
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Re:His prediction is 5 years too early (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:His prediction is 5 years too early (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:His prediction is 5 years too early (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe in urban or suburban areas you're right, but most of the country (area) isn't urban or suburban. Population wise, you'd probably have a majority in those areas, but my guess is you'd still have a sizeable percent who aren't in those areas and don't have those options. DSL is pretty much the same around here, with lowest being 768kbps and highest being 5.0mbps max, but they don't reach that for anywhere except maybe the house directly next door to the switching station. Wi-Max isn't available, and as the area is beset by mountains and valleys, I'm not sure how well it would work to put in any towers. Not having any cell phone service depending on which hill you're on or dell you're in doesn't help.
I wouldn't find it to be much of a stretch that 1.5mbps is the average. Not everyone thinks they need the super fast speeds. Some just check email or sit on IM. I know so many families with the 320kbps/320kbps connection and it truly boggles my mind. But not everyone is willing to spend 70$ on internet on top of the rest of the TV costs and phone costs.
So, that turned out to be exceedingly tangential. My bad.
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Every physics teacher in the universe suddenly cried out in horror...
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Re:His prediction is 5 years too early (Score:5, Informative)
A positive review of satellite internet. (Score:3, Funny)
The dish on my roof looks cool. I feel like a spy or a military outpost. Sure, the connection sucks, but have you ever seen the inside of a Ferrari? I bet that looks crap as well. Quid pro quo.
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Makes me wish I lived in Sweden. Damn those lucky bastards!
-Eric
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Not really. iTunes television is taking off now. The technology may not have fully emerged yet, but it is being adopted by the public at an incredible rate. (I actually submitted a story about how "The Office" was saved from cancellation by the iTunes sales. Predictably, it was rejected.) Apples does not provide exact numbers on their TV and movie sales, but it's a pretty good bet that iTunes growth is outpacing Bluray and HDDVD adoption. Given that it took about 5 years f
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That's funny. I take it you've never used iTunes or even have an iPod? Only way to get music on an iPod? My CD collection disagrees with you. You do realize the iPod existed before there was an iTunes
I don't see anybody "demanding" faster connections (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any consumer backlash?
No. Think back to when Coca-Cola changed the formula for Coke. People took to the streets and it hit ALL of the major news media in the US.
People don't care. I think they don't care because what they have is fast enough. It's the same with DVD and Hi-Def. I already have movies in DVD format. I have seen one of my favorites, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in Hi-Def this summer and compared it, on the same television, to my DVD copy. Net result, I LOVED the Hi-Def image but I'm not going to buy the movie again in Hi-Def for the simple reason that there is no compelling reason to buy it in a lesser format.
What I mean by lesser format is DRM.
Re:I don't see anybody "demanding" faster connecti (Score:5, Interesting)
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If the DRM no longer does it's job and even non-techies can get around it I don't think it's really DRM anymore. I think it's just obsolete software.
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I don't see his logic. Americans might demand faster connections and more storage space, but they're not going to get it before the Blu Ray and HD DVD player become mainstream.
Look at ti this way. HD-DVD and Blu-ray provide more space for higher definition video and a few other features. Internet download movies currently provide convenience of acquisition and storage and potentially lower prices. The market is demanding the latter more than the former. Faster connections are becoming much more common, m
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Is this Insight [insightbb.com]?
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Why do you need 100Mb/s? For reference, the speed of HD-DVDs and BluRay is 30Mb/s. Once you pass this, you can watch a HD movie as easily from somewhere on the Internet as locally. In the UK, cheap home Internet connections are 4-8Mb/
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Not as early as you think. (Score:2)
Now
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Hello, my name a Borat and I have one high-speed internet in my home country of Kazakhstan. It is much faster than connection in US and A. High Five! It is nice. Please don't download my movie, or I will be execute by MPAA.
Umm (Score:5, Funny)
Oh God...make it stop...
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Vongo (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I haven't tried online videos through iTunes or any other service but I am a user of Netflix.
I was watching TV the other day and saw a commercial for Vongo [vongo.com]. It almost seemed too good to be true. And it was.
The commercial lead me to believe that I was going to open an account on a site and that I would be able to pay $10/month and download any movie I wanted to my hard drive. What a naïve idiot I was.
The problems I had with Vongo:
- They needed my e-mail address just so I could download the client. So even if I didn't like it or join their service, they still had contact info.
- You'll notice their site is in complete Flash--so is their client. And, much to my chagrin, all the movies are viewed through Flash & it's required. I had problems accessing the site with mozilla.
- Not only are the files encrypted (this was expected) but they're of Flash quality meaning that they're bulky and low quality.
- You don't get any movie you want, you get to pick from a selected list. But be careful, only some of those titles are free.
- Of those select titles, the only one I wanted to see was The Devil & Danial Johnston. But when I wanted to download it, Vongo wanted $4 USD for it.
- Two hours later, after D&DJ was finally on my laptop, I tried to watch it only to have a warning pop up informing me that once I started playing it, I had 24 hours to watch it before it deleted itself.
I could continue bitching but I think you get the idea. I was dissatisfied with Vongo & and heavily recommend everyone to stay away from it. The fact that I have to read the fine print in order to understand how their service works should have been a big warning sign. But in my opinion, the free 14 day trial isn't even worth it.Oh, and one more thing, there was a freaking client application that was set to default start when Windows starts as a service on my laptop. Annoying and invasive.
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Micro-microwave ovens? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Micro-microwave ovens? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mpeg4/Xvid/Divx can do it now. You cant buy it legitimate because those formats don't have 600 pounds of DRM encryption on them but the technology is here right now and better than what he "envisions" maybe he should get out and actually look at what people are doing right now.
Cripes I have well over 300 movies in DVD quality and 10 full TV series on my Media portal box right now (Yes series the size of Babylon5 and the Simpsons) and still have room for way more.
His tommorow was here yesterday... it's the idiots at the movie companies and record companies that are keeping out of the hands of joe sixpack.
OT: Your sig (Score:2)
Wholly crap me too... Right now it's the biggest bug in my ass any why I'm starting to dislike Linux...
What could have been... (Score:4, Interesting)
The studios want everyone to believe that to get HD, we have to mess around with an entirely new disc format, but that's bogus. Using the much better compression technologies available today, we could squeeze a highdef movie onto a dual-layer DVD.* Heck, with some DVD players, it would probably just require a firmware reflash to be able to play them. The entirely new disc and drive mechanism is there to purposely break forwards-compatibility.
But, because such a format wouldn't offer the studios total control over your living room, it's never going to happen as long as the movie studios have any say in the matter.
* Apple's page says H.264 can compress 1920x1080 down to around 8Mb/s [apple.com], so given a DVD-9 capacity of around 6.8E10 bits, that's about 140 min of video. This is comparable to MPEG-2 SD video, which is allowed at up to 9.8Mb/s [wikipedia.org] by the DVD Video specification.
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One kernel at a time.
How soon they forget. (Score:5, Informative)
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Not only do I remember that but I still use BitTorrent in the same fashion. I don't gobble up bandwidth and I'm fine with getting a fairly high quality video of unlicensed anime in about a day or two. It's kind of the same crap except it's much nicer to the rest
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a very different scale, when you begin talking about 18 to 50 GB per disk.
and a very different market. the trend in HDTV sales is to very large screen projection and theatrical digital sound even at entry level.
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HDs vs Optical Disks (Score:2, Interesting)
Optical Disks don't
Which is more reliable?
That said, the summary is a bit misleading.
Here's the full quote:
"In a few years, you'll buy every episode of The West Wing on a drive the size of a deck of cards rather than on 45 DVDs in a box the size of your microwave oven. If you think that sounds far-fetched, consider that shortly after releasing a comprehensive, eight-DVD New Yorker collection (since updated to nine discs), the magazine released the same collection on an (admitted
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Optical discs get chewed on by pets and children, and left out on scratchy coffeetables.
I have a whole bag of unreadable otical discs. Still looking for a way to recycle them.
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I've considered retrofitting a DVD player whose drive failed with a removable hard drive bay, formatted to look like a very high capacity DVD, containing ripped tracks from an entire series accessible through remastered menus.
Are there any rippers that can deconstruct a DVD into a DVD Studio Pro project file and assets?
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Optical Disks don't
Which is more reliable?
well the disk itself has fewer moving parts, but surprisingly, hard drives are more reliable. But I don't think HDDs or optical disks are the future of transportable storage.
It's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to manufacture USB stick with permanent contents for cheaper than flash memory. I mean, if you don't need to be able to change the contents ever, that's gotta significantly reduce the number of transistors r
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How many DVDs do you own? Picking a random DVD from your collection, when was the last time you watched it?
I stopped buying DVDs (with a few infrequent exceptions) when I realised I had about 100 of them and most of them were watched less than once a year. Now I just rent (fixed monthly fee) and if I want to watch a film again then I just rent it again.
I really don't care about HD-DVD or BD. The quality is better, but not sufficiently better to justify the effort of upgrading my equipment. What woul
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I'm not sure what you're getting at. Usually things with moving parts are more prone to failure, however my computer has a 40 GB drive in it that I purchased in the late 90s. It has been used regularly ever since, and still works fine. I can't think of any CDs or DVDs I have from the same period that are still functional - they've either been scratched or lost. I've had a lot more optical disk "failures" than I've had hard drive failu
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$130/400Gb = $.30 [outpost.com] if you pay $1000 for a blue-ray player compared to even a write once hard disk, and blue ray disks were free it would take 400 disks before you would break even. with them currently more like $1/MB for the blue ray disk...
makes alot more sense for blockbuster to be replaced with a atm, inside walm
2 1/2 hours (Score:3, Informative)
A full length HD format movie would be around 5 Gigabytes, according to this article [yahoo.com]. So considering my download of the 1 Gigabyte Battlefield 2142 demo took about 30 minutes last night over my basic $34.95/month FiOS connection, that means it would just take about 2 1/2 hours to download a full length movie. Theoretically less than an hour with the faster service offerings. I really don't see the problem with that. Netflix takes a day or so to get your movie and it is very popular. I could see just leaving the computer on over night to get the download and watch the movie the next day. A torrent like download could even distribute the load.
The only thing holding back distribution over broadband Internet is the studios. If the studios allow distribution like this, then there is a big enough market out there to make this work.
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A current DVD holds over 7GB, but doesn't hold a sufficiently high quality HD movie to make people happy. Article or not, if we could have simply added a new decoder to existing hardware and been blessed with 1080p HD goodness, we would have done.
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90 mins = 5,400 secs
5GB = 5120 MB = 40,960 Mb
Therefore your bitrate is 7.6Mb/s. That's in the realm of MPEG2 rates for DVD. AVC and VC-1 codecs should use half that. However, that's at standard def, not 1080p. NTSC 480p has 337,920 pixels. 1080p has 2,073,600. That's 6 times the amount. I suspect your 5GB download isn't quite up to the same quality as HD or BD discs. It certainly won't offer anything else secondary video, alternative language audio, etc. BTW, MSFT's
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And the Fiber is being rolled out now and is available in many communities, it is not just in some distant future. Where BlueRay and HD-DVD still require millions of households to buy a player which costs
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HDCP would only be needed if HDCP was enabled in whatever format the content was encoded. Last time I checked most content did not have HDCP because it would piss off a lot of people that had HDTVs but not the HDCP enabled HD
consumers are demanding change? (Score:3, Insightful)
We are just now looking into an HDTV because the prices are coming down to a reasonable range...
Well I think they may be dead (Score:5, Interesting)
When DVD came out, it's easy to see why it took over. Not only is the picture better, and even on low end TVs, but the sound is better and supported surround, you can seek instantly, quality doesn't degrade over time, there are extras, the disc is much smaller and so on. Basically DVDs provide a big upgrade to anyone. Even if you are watching an an old 20" TV, DVDs provide extras and a picture that doesn't get worse, in additon to a better picture quality to start with.
Well the HD formats offer none of that. They can, in theory, offer better sound, but only if you have a system capable of the new formats (and I've yet to see a compatible receiver) and only if the disc has it and many don't since Dolby Digital and DTS are the formats that are actually used in theatres. So really you are down to better picture, and only for those that own HD sets which is still a small number of people.
I just don't see there being the reason to upgrade. I'm not going to. Sure an HD picture is nice but really, I'm not unhappy with DVD. It looks good on my HD set. So I can easily see the formats failing for the same reason DVD-Audio failed: lack of interest. I mean DVD-A is better than CD in terms of quality. It's higher sample size and rate, as well as supporting surround sound. However do most people give a shit? No, not worth it to them. To the extent they replace CDs it's with MP3s which, while lower quality, are more convenient.
Not all HD programming is real HD (Score:3, Interesting)
There is very little programming that is really honestly truly 720p/1080p - but the stuff that is, is spectacular.
I agree with you that a 480p DVD looks pretty damn good on an HD screen, but real shot-in-HD content is a whole lot better.
What I'm afraid of with Blu-Ray/HDVD is a similar problem - is the content actually generated in higher resolutions, or is it ju
Nope. (Score:2)
The xbox 360 has what, a 20GB HDD? so it will be able to hold...1 HD movie (at Bluray/HDDVD quality), maybe a 3 or 4 if it's compressed more? And as mentioned, it lasts 24 hours, then it's gone. So if something comes up and you can't finish your movie, too bad!
Cable on-demand.
Instead of paying 3 or 4 bucks for a movie rental, which would display at full 1080p resolution, you get a compressed version for ~85 bucks a month (per Comcast pricing). Oh, and you don't really know if the movie
Music drove the broadband revolution (Score:3, Interesting)
Will HD video drive the next step and bring the US back into the lead for home internet access? IPTV and HD-on-demand will help drag broadband into the rural areas and increase connection speeds everywhere. Here's hoping he's right and the new HD discs are doomed to fail in favor of digital distribution.
TV is the limiting factor (Score:2)
What I expect to see is tailored movie downloads that fit what presentation devices you have present. A simple web form can ask what type of: television, sound system, connection speed, timeframe desired, and storage desired that will select whi
Much depends (Score:2)
Well, much depends on the codec you are using. I'm not an expert, but a properly coded film can be HD without taking such a lot of space as a HD-DVD or Blue-Ray. Think H.264, or even XVid. And surely better methods will appear. I'm waiting to see in bittorrent the first 4Gb xvid files compressed from a Blue-Ray or HD-DVD. I don't think it'll take too long, and I guess the quality will be much better th
Not this again (Score:2)
Fuck that, I'll just get a PS3 and be done with it.
Buy a good handheld (Score:2)
http://thepiratebay.org/browse/206 [thepiratebay.org]
Prices fall (Score:2)
Uh, it is available.. (Score:2)
First off, It is available though not legally(The.Matrix.1999.720p.HDTV.x264-THOR). Second off, thanks to the wonders of good video encoding its no larger than any other DVD - 4gigabytes. How long that takes is obviously a matter of what your connection is, but I see 6mbit as about the current standard for residential cable
According
Waiting for better technology (Score:2)
And then I'll leech it off bittorrent.
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Yeah, but you just know they'll release the "Super Deluxe Gold-Plated Crystal" version a week later, with all the extras and deleted scenes...
The original poster has a point, a good one (Score:3, Insightful)
By the time they start asking those questions, all the arguing will be nearly done. When there is a proven market for a product or service, every large corp. worth anything will trip all over themselves to sell it to the public, and will do so no matter what DRM hurdles are in the way.
In the same way that YouTube and MySpace made headlines and garnered public attention, digital on-line on-demand video services will do the same.
It's boring is the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Frankly, I'm in no rush to replace my TV, but it's clear that you'll never get HD if you wait for your TV to break before upgrading. On the other hand, having
Thumb drives and Blockbuster (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally think Blu-Ray will win, though. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) It has far more movie studio support than HD-DVD. Particularly important is Disney's support, since Disney DVD's have always been very strong sellers to start with anyway. Can you imagine a Pixar movie released on Blu-Ray format? (big thumbs up)
2) The storage capacity is larger (50 GB versus 30 GB), which means you can put more extra features on a single Blu-Ray disc than an HD-DVD disc.
3) The arrival of Sony's PlayStation 3 means immediately the arrival of a large user base that can play Blu-Ray discs.
4) We're still a long way from offering HD-quality video downloads over the Internet. It would require huge increases in download speeds, maybe as high as 50 megabits per second at bare minimum (the number of broadband Internet home users with anything over 10 mbps download speeds is still very small even in Europe and Asia).
Yes, prices are high now, but I expect prices to drop rapidly during the course of 2007. Good quality standalone Blu-Ray players will probably cost around US$450 by the end of 2007, in my humble opinion.
3-5 years before either format catches on (Score:5, Insightful)
Both Blue Ray and HD-DVD have a lot going against them. Both formats are brand new to the consumer market. In quick summary, most people are going to wait 3-5 years before adopting either of these formats, if they take off. Buying one today means either you've got a lot of money to burn (paypal@dave-gallagher.net [mailto] please), or you're easily influenced by marketing.
Let's look at the history [wikipedia.org] of DVD's:
Other notable mentions during this time period:
This took from 1997 to 2006 to accomplish. It's almost a ten-year old format. To say either Blue Ray or HD-DVD will take off in a short period of time (1-2 years) is blasphemy. It'll take at least 3, but probably around 5 years, before either format becomes mainstream. IF either format survives, that is.
Things going against Blue Ray & HD-DVD:
By the time it takes for Blue Ray/HD-DVD to catch on (3-5 years), if they catch on, there will be:
Neither format is proven (asides from looking and sounding good, with the right equipment), and the VAST majority of consumers won't see a benefit from either of them today. What has to happen for consumers to benefit is:
only technophiles are demanding change (Score:2)
I disagree on both counts.
Customers (on the whole) are content with the quality and convenience of the DVD distribution model, and will be for another couple technological generations at least.
The real reason for HD-DVD and BluRay (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason they developed the new formats to support the HD video was to convince the users they needed to have the new DRM enabled systems.
A few notes:
The early computer BluRay drives will not play the BluRay movies.
Both f
He's Right, but his reasons are all wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
New Consumers, the ones who don't remember The Format Wars of Yore(TM) and who happen to be affluent, will pickup these devices and media but not in enough numbers to save the format. Kind of like the people who bought the UMD concept not remembering MiniDisc travesty.
PS enthusiasts will buy the PS3 but not many movies. PSP rerun
DVD is "good enough" for most consumers. Plus the selection will be 2 million DVD titles to 50 hdDVD and 100 BluRay.
The only thing that may save them is the universal players that the 2 big players don't want.
I have a 15yr old 32" TV and a 15 yr old 27" (oddly enough both Sony) in another room. One has a DVD, One has GameCube (soon to be replaced with a Wii) Both have cable boxes.
On Demand Cable, On demand Gaming, On Demand DVD. Hmmm do I really need to overspend on a new HDTV and expensive as hell player plus overpriced new media, No thanks, If I want high definition I turn on the PC. where the HD media lives anyway.
Here's hoping for a slow and painful death to both new Formats and perhaps one of the producers.
Current BD vs. HD-DVD Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no idea which of the two will survive (or if either will). It will probably be Blu-ray since I bought the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 this past weekend. I have a Panasonic 50" plasma (not 1080p, it's scaling to 720p/768p) but HD-DVD movies still look MUCH better than standard DVD. If it does die out, at least it was only $200. I'll enjoy Netflix HD-DVD rentals and a few purchases in the meantime.
I've been doing some research the last few days. My understanding of the history is that HD-DVD was released first. Blu-ray (commonly referred to as 'BD' which is short for Blu-ray disc I suppose) has more storage capacity and everyone expected the picture quality to be better. But that didn't happen. The initial BD releases were very disappointing and many people felt that HD-DVD looked better. New releases are apparently equal in picture quality. I think a lot of this has to do with the available drives as well as the mastering process. HD-DVD jumped out to a pretty big lead (not that either has sold a lot) but with the PS3 coming out tomorrow, there will be a lot more Blu-ray owners.
I'm curious to know how many 360 HD-DVD drives have already been sold and how it will continue to sell.
Who here actually owns a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? (Score:3, Interesting)
King Kong that came with it was pretty good. I REALLY noticed a difference when the scenes were in the forest or something with a lot of color. The colors and the brightness in the picture is much better. But I picked up Fast and the Furious Tokyo drift (ok ok, I know, terrible movie but the scenes in Tokyo was great) . And I could see a noticeable difference with the picture quality especially the reflection in the cars, etc.. It was like I was watching the movie through a window in Tokyo.
And to think, I think my HDTV is kinda shitty now compared to what's offered now (projection, doesn't look as good as my other friends tv's)
I want 2160p60+ format (Score:3, Interesting)
But that's going to require a disk with 100 to 300 GB of data. Well, for movies I'll settle for the frame rate being exactly what the original film was shot at and let my display up-scan it to some integral multiple over 60 Hz. of course this means I'm going to have to find a display that good at a decent price.
Sure, 720p and 1080i are a good notch above 480i. But it's not that good that I would be willing to buy into an HD media format for higher than what DVD costs today. When the HD media format gets down to this price, then why not. But until then, it's just not really worth it.
But a 25 GB optical disk would be nice to hold a kick ass Linux distribution and a whole lot of music.
Re: Portability (Score:2)
"Why would I want to drink my videos?"
"That's potability, Caboose!"
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You do realize that UMD Movies have been effectively discontinued, don't you?
Story: Sony PSP UMD movie sales not so hot [mobilemag.com]
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what don't you remember those formats. Of them all the only good one was minidisc, but since Sony did weird shit with formatting on them they never took off.
Not every new format gains acceptance, even good ones. I guess you never studied history or reality.
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what don't you remember those formats. Of them all the only good one was minidisc, but since Sony did weird shit with formatting on them they never took off.
Not every new format gains acceptance, even good ones. I guess you never studied history or reality.
There's just so much wrong with this post, it's hard to know where to start.
First of all, let's get the grammar Nazi stuff out of the way. Plurals are not made in English by simply a
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How about it's cheaper because the quality is less than 1/10 of that of a CD, let alone a SACD or DVDA?
You're thinking along the same lines as the HD-DVD and Blu-ray people. The fact is, most people don't notice or care about the minor difference in quality of the signal. I can't tell the difference between a FLAC and a 192 MP4 on my car stereo, especially with wind and road noise. Even on my fairly nice stereo setup, the difference between them is not a deal killer. If you're talking about my analog wir
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No it's not. If you sit and listen carefully, and there is little or no ambient noise then it's noticeable. But how often do you listen to your music like this? For most people, music is something that's on in the background, not something they focus their entire attention on, and in this situation it's very difficult to tell the difference between professionally encoded 128Kb/s AAC and CDDA.
Oh, and 128Kb/s AAC actually sounds better
Re:I call bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really: see above in that most people don't care enough about the difference in quality to worry about it. Joe and Jane Average consumer are just fine with MP3s and AACs, as can be seen from the success of downloading, both legal and illegal, and from the success so far of the iTMS videos and movies I think that most people won't care enough about the quality to worry about, either.
There seems to be a threshold of quality in audio and video above which the vast majority of people are satisfied. I think the only people who worry after that are the equipment-obsessed.
Re: (Score:2)
I borrow them from the library. I rent them from Blockbuster et al. I trade them on Peerflix and Barterbee. I buy 'em off Amazon and then resell them when I'm done with them. OK, the kids have had me keep a few, and I have a few classics just in case, but I've seen far, far more DVDs than I own.
So HD-DVD? Seems like a better format for my next rented/borrowed/traded/soon-to-be-resold discs. I just need a cheap enough player.
This philosophy applies to lots of o