[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HiGHFLYiN9 Don't forget UMD In all honesty Sony makes worthwhile formats, they just need to cooperate with other companies to make them stick around.

I agree, Sony for some reason thinks that they have to always have their own thing going.

PS, Rnb180, get on live now!

 

[marvin]

Well, BluRay is more scalable than HD-DVD, and can easily scale to 100 GB per disc. Not much of an advantage at the moment though, as the Blu-Ray launches seem to be mpeg-2 encodes, vs the H.264 encodes that the HD-DVD releases are going for. That's a boneheaded move if I've ever seen one.

 

[Duggeh]

Sony like to have its own controlled proprietary media format for every single series of electronics devices that they make. Their hope being of course, that one of them will be the one that will catch on in the way that things like MP3, VHS and DVD have done, and in going so, they can make a stinking fat haul of cash from it.

They fail to see though, that the reason those formats were as stupendously successful as they were was nothing to do with technical specifications or marketing. It was because they were easily or freely availible to all users and manufacturors for a reasonable price, did their job properly and did it well within any claims that may have been made.

Each successive generation of this type of technology brings the consumer a greater degree of material, either in terms of qualities or extras or functionality or whatever you want to insert that people want (at least what we are told we need). The real reason that progress happens this way though, really, is because the major publishers of material and electronics need us to keep upgrading in some way shape or form or they lose their revenue.

I'm very much a follower of the "I bought the LP 30 years ago, I SHOULD be entitled to be able to use the CD/SACD/DAT/CASETTE/MP3 version" school of thought. But thats another issue entirely, and im continuing to drift further and further away from the point of this thread.

Even months and months ago when both of these products (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) were in development I had my money on HD-DVD. I hope that my initial and continuing beliefs are ratified. Blu-ray when compared to HD-DVD, draws an awful lot of comparisons to the Betamax vs VHS story.

Ill be interested to see which of the formats rental houses like Global and Blockbuster favour. Ill also be interested to see if flick and amazon dvd postal rental use one rather than the other. Given how fragile Blu-ray discs are supposed to be according to some people. I think that that puts the rental industry heavily in favour of HD-DVD, just as it was for VHS.

Bored of writing now.

 

[VicAjax]

i think Sir Howard is in over his head, as is Sony as a company. there's really no way to reconcile the ways of Sony Japan with Sony USA, and it can't get any of its many-headed hydra to even coordinate with one another; they're going to eat each other to death.

it's like watching the last of the apatosauruses get sucked slowly into the tarpit.

oh, and JaGWIRE... send RnB a freakin' PM if you're so desperate to play with him.

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

From my understanding both formats offer 1920x1080 resolution at 24, 30, or 60fps. Both come with 24-bit color standard and could, in future, deliver 48-bit color. Both fully support Dolby TrueHD®, and its DTS rival DTS-HD (known to DVD users as Dts 24/96). Both formats can put a 3+ hour movie on one side of a disk.

This "war" will be decided by the movies: both quality of release (HD-DVD has set a very high bar right out of the gate) and quantity of release. Until one format gets an exclusive window on the "Killer-App" movies (James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Matrix Trilogy, Alien 1 & 2), this squabble can go on for years with the "winner" being re-decided every two months based on the quality of the latest releases from both camps.

I'm holding-out for a universal player.

 

[Carl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rock&Roll Ninja From my understanding both formats offer 1920x1080 resolution at 24, 30, or 60fps. Both come with 24-bit color standard and could, in future, deliver 48-bit color.

HD-DVD uses 1080i/60. Blu-ray can do either 1080i/60 or 1080p/24.


By 24 bit colour, I'm assuming you mean 8 bit per channel colour, but that isn't exactly true, as HD-DVD and Blu-ray use YCbCr rather than RGB, so the chroma channels are subsampled at a lower resolution.

What really confuses me is the 48 bit colour remark. Even if you're talking about aggrigate bit length, that still equals 16 bit per channel. Even professional video processing equipment doesn't get anywhere near that. 14 bit processing is sometimes used for the more complex, error prone processing stages, but only for the purposes of oversampling.

HD-DVD and Blu-ray are 8 bit per channel formats. Blu-ray does support as an extra option H.264-High Profile, which can do 10 bit video under some circumstances (HD-DVD doesn't support it, however), but as long as the keep flogging that dead horse known as MPEG-2 we ain't going to see anything use it.

 

[RnB180]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn side note, but the Qualia Store in NYC has(had?) a comparo demo showing off the Blu-Ray stuff using Spiderman and Lawrence of Arabia. I couldn't believe the difference - it HAD to be doctored, right? Anyhow, from what I saw that day, the future looks bright. Too bad Best Buy isn't exactly yo daddy's Qualia Store, so to speak.

I just found out the demos are running off massive hard drives and not using BD storage discs.

I suppose this is due to the unusable dual layer. Not really a fair comparison to an hd dvd demo that uses hd dvds., to say the least, unless 200 gig Blu Ray discs are released in the future.

 

[RnB180]

actual sammy unit sales seem to be selling lack luster and slow, while BD software sales are actually outselling the actual units. Either consumers are prepurchasing software for a different BD machine or they might be accidental purchases by unknowing buyers and PS3 prospecting owners.

Since BD discs are marketed similar to dvds, I dont think it would to far off to suggest that accidental purchases will occur and since opened BD disc movies are not allowed for return, they are counted as sales.

these are fairly new articles, which coorberate each other.


http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13627

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13599

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6348887.html

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...les-slow-start

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=13090

also an interesting new read on audioholics stand regarding the two formats against each other. including a comment about sony shooting themselves in the foot for using such an inflexible proprietary design.

http://www.audioholics.com/news/edit...Dupperhand.php

 

[euclid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl HD-DVD uses 1080i/60. Blu-ray can do either 1080i/60 or 1080p/24. By 24 bit colour, I'm assuming you mean 8 bit per channel colour, but that isn't exactly true, as HD-DVD and Blu-ray use YCbCr rather than RGB, so the chroma channels are subsampled at a lower resolution. What really confuses me is the 48 bit colour remark. Even if you're talking about aggrigate bit length, that still equals 16 bit per channel. Even professional video processing equipment doesn't get anywhere near that. 14 bit processing is sometimes used for the more complex, error prone processing stages, but only for the purposes of oversampling. HD-DVD and Blu-ray are 8 bit per channel formats. Blu-ray does support as an extra option H.264-High Profile, which can do 10 bit video under some circumstances (HD-DVD doesn't support it, however), but as long as the keep flogging that dead horse known as MPEG-2 we ain't going to see anything use it.

CURRENT HD-DVD is 1080i, the format can/will support true 1080p and one of the major complaints from hd-dvd buyers is that ATM they are forced to invest in inferior hardware and media which will be replaced soon and ultimately become obsolete within the hd-dvd world.

LG is reportidly coming out with a universal player, it will come down to the studio support for each format, and how soon the market can support 60"+ 1080p displays, under 50" at 720p it will be very hard to tell the difference between dvd and hd-dvd at regular 6-8' viewing distance. only super-fanboys are thowing money down now, firstly to have the $ to spend on a theater that can benefit, secondly to take such a gamble by choosing a format with so few good movies out for either, IMHO.

 

[marvin]

By most accounts, the Samsung player's HDMI is broken and will not run in 1080p mode with most 1080p TVs on the market.

Sony's continued support of MPEG-2 is supposedly due to licencing issues with H.264. As is painfully evident, Sony doesn't like paying royalties and will do anything it can to avoid it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by euclid LG is reportidly coming out with a universal player, it will come down to the studio support for each format, and how soon the market can support 60"+ 1080p displays, under 50" at 720p it will be very hard to tell the difference between dvd and hd-dvd at regular 6-8' viewing distance.

Telling the difference between DVD and 720p hd-dvd at 6-8 ft on an under 50" screen is very easy. Telling the difference between a 720p and 1080p set under the same circumstances is the difficult part.

 

[JaGWiRE]

Is it me or have these formats walked into the market kind of quiet? Yes, all the techies like us know about it, but when I mention it to the average person, they have no idea what I'm talking about, yet of course they know what betamax is lol

. Still, I think that hd-dvd sousnds nicer to the masses, just because it keeps the DVD in it's name, unlike blu-ray which sounds weird.

 

[euclid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin By most accounts, the Samsung player's HDMI is broken and will not run in 1080p mode with most 1080p TVs on the market. Sony's continued support of MPEG-2 is supposedly due to licencing issues with H.264. As is painfully evident, Sony doesn't like paying royalties and will do anything it can to avoid it. Telling the difference between DVD and 720p hd-dvd at 6-8 ft on an under 50" screen is very easy. Telling the difference between a 720p and 1080p set under the same circumstances is the difficult part.

its not a matter of pixel pitch or exposing the pixel matrix at a given distance like the difference between an SD or EDTV vs HDTV. and considering the 720p tv will have to scale to its exact native resolution no matter if the content is 1080p, 720p or 480i/p, the difference will very small between widesceen standard DVD content and 720p dvd content, i stick by what i said.

it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to tell the difference in detail between 720p/1080p at that screen size and distance, the only benefit may be perceived color saturation. to see the detail benefit of 1080p, viewing distance would have to be closer (to a point that would expose the pixel structure on a 720p TV), or the screen would have to get bigger, again exposing the pixel structure on a 720p TV at that 6-8ft distance(dending on your eyesight).

point being the new formats are going to remain a tough sell to the average movie watcher, untill the screens get big enough that he difference is just plain obvious.

 

[1911]

i was at the sony store in valley fair in san jose last weekend and there was quite a crowd checking out uinderworld on blu-ray..it looked great but at 13000 for the tv and $$ for player and bluray discs it aint gonna happen

 

[Welly Wu]

Have you guys read Bob Stuart's of Meridian Audio opinions about the Apple iPod winning the format war between SA-CD and DVD-Audio?

In a nutshell, he said that because universal DVD players exist on the marketplace, neither format succeeded because there was a standstill. So, the Apple iPod cut the slack and made great profits for the company with iTunes too.

If LG releases a universal HD-DVD and SONY Blue-Ray player with DVD playback, neither format will succeed because there will be a standstill. If other manufacturers release universal high resolution audio and video players, no clear winner will emerge. We will be stuck with the Compact Disc and DVD-Video formats while low resolution and portable technologies will continue to sell very well. Headphone sales will continue to improve too.

Only DVD-Video will continue to flourish. Plus the CD format and the myriad of lossless / lossy audio codec formats will gain greater marketshare too.

This is my interpretation of his opinion. It could turn out to be true.

 

[felixkrull6]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Welly Wu We will be stuck with the Compact Disc and DVD-Video formats while low resolution and portable technologies will continue to sell very well. Headphone sales will continue to improve too. Only DVD-Video will continue to flourish.

I completely agree with you, I just don't see how the movie industry is going to convince a majority of the people to upgrade to either format. It would be hard enough with just one new format but two will make it almost impossible imo. Most people I talk to have no idea about blu ray or hd-dvd and when I explain it to them their eyes just glaze up. Plus, what about all the people that have those shiny new lcds that can only display 720p? I think they'll be angry that they don't have the latest and greatest and will have to buy a new tv in order to show true hi def. Just a tough sell imo. Other than my audio gear, I like to live by the phrase, "it's good enough." I think most people will say the same when they actually think about upgrading everything they have just so they can show 1080p.