Blu-Ray and HD-DVD

[Tetsuo_Shima]

It looks like the blu-ray and HD-DVD formats will soon be appearing in homes nationwide! Well, maybe just homes belonging to russian oil billionaires.

It'll be reasonably interesting to see how this plays out. However, personally I think its a little too early to start pushing regular plain ol' DVDs out the market. Discuss!

 

[Pestcontrol]

blu-ray seems the better format to me, i'm not a watcher but iirc hd-dvd has a slightly better chance of becoming the main format. It's betamax vs vhs all over again.

 

[HotStuff]

Yeah it's a pain this fighting of formats. It's ridiculous they haven't learned from lessons of the past with multiple formats. One of them will undoutedly win but it may take a few years before the clear winner crosses the post.

My money is on HD-DVD because that will be the cheapest to manufacturer. Current manufacturing machines for DVD's only need to be altered slightly to create HD-DVD.

Blu-Ray can store more information and has the backing of a few major film companies because it is more difficult to copy Blu-Ray disks. Not that it will stop hackers from trying thougth.

 

[BiG D]

If I recall, someone (honestly don't remember who, but probably not Sony ) has already made a player that can handle both, so I'm not sure it's even such a big issue anymore...

 

[Pestcontrol]

It means shelling out more cash for such a player if you don't want to take a risk. The format war introduces delays and increases cost, everybody loses.

 

[Haven]

I'm happy with a big hard drive and torrent technology. Physical disks are so 1980's anyway. Roll out bigger phatter net connections and who cares what format the major players are using.

 

[thatbloke]

I'm all up for a little bit of competition... but in a situation like this we may see certain movies released on ONE format only... if it is released on two formats this will increase costs dramatically for the movie makers and distributors... meaning that cost will get passed on to the consumer. This means more expensive movies!!!

Not that I myself buy very many movies anyway...

 

[Pestcontrol]

Yes haven, but you're far from a standard consumer are you?

Optical disks are a cheap, easy, portable, and protectable means of distribution of large amounts of data. I don't see them being replaced by other forms of storage or distribution for the mainstream, but don't quote me on that.

The competition usually happens before the hardware is even made, what happened up until about a year ago was that various companies would submit their suggestions to a technology forum (IEEE is an example you may know) and then discuss the proposals and come to agreement on what the new standard should be. In this case two camps formed who couldn't agree with eachother and so decided to release their own dvd successor.

A similar thing was almost going to happen on the next wireless networking standard, 802.11n, but now it's just delayed while some manufacturers release products before the standard is finalised, hoping to make them compatible through a firmware upgrade when the moment arrives.

 

[Ronin Storm]

I remember BBC News reporting an article, some weeks ago, about a third format that could (potentially) support both HD-DVD and Blu-ray on the same media, made possible because each format stores its data at a different depth.

Can't find the BBC News article I was looking for, but the following supports my memory:

http://digitalbattle.com/2006/09/21/hd-dvdblu-ray-hybrid-on-the-way/

 

[PsiSoldier]

Whats Blu-Ray?

 

[DocBot]

Whats Blu-Ray?

*sings*

There's a magical friend you can always count on - there's always somewhere you can tuuuuurn

If you're stupid or slow, or if you just don't know; and you don't like the flaming that buuuuuuurn

If you're struck with wonder at something, then ponder that one thing
will help you to answer your queeestions

Just a few clicks away - there's a laden buffet
full of answers (not always the beeeest ones)

So to not waste my time and produce all that gall
Go to what rhymes with fuckall

- GOOGLE!

[/sarcastic musicalities]

edit: yes, I wrote it myself - thus the lousy rhymes ;P

edit2: english spelling instead of swedish.

 

[Birdy]

love it. Make sure u copyright that

 

[PsiSoldier]

Um, isn't it buffet not buffé?

I'm good with ye ole DVD player tbh...

 

[Haven]

True I probably am not the standard consumer. But the tech I use today will filter down until it is available in cheap branded supermarket electronics. I honestly think that devices firstly net connectivity and secondly hard drive storage will become far more important than physical media.

Movie studious are already using online distribution systems (badly admitedly) and with the likes of Apple moving strongly in this direction I can see media being relegated (but still available) behind other means of distribution.

Its not going to happen tomorrow but it is happening. Whilst I have no doubts that blue ray and HD-DVD will still make a lot of people very rich, I do feel that this may be the last disk based format war that we will see before other technologies supplant it.

 

[PsiSoldier]

I cannot understand why nobody has made something that uses a small chip instead of a disk...

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Cartridges, flash drives, memory cards ... Fast loading, but not enough memory on the chip. In saying that, Nintendo use cartridges for the DS and it has plenty of memory.

 

[PsiSoldier]

Don't forget the multiple GB memory of the PSP mem. cards and iPod's memory.

 

[BiG D]

Way too expensive. Right now, the high capacity (2 gigs or more) compactflash cards retail for somewhere between $20 and $30 per gig on average. Meanwhile, blank dvds retail for around $.10 to $.20 per gig. If you're making thousands of copies of a movie, spending an extra $.5 per copy would hurt profit significantly. Spending an extra $20 per copy would be suicide.

 

[Pestcontrol]

In terms of cost it's important to distinguish storage and distribution memory. Flash and harddrives may be okay for storage inside a device, but not distribution. Optical disks roll those two functions into one and are cheap. The only problem is you have to swap them out when you want to see another movie. Big deal. In terms of distribution the only alternative is a download, the disadvantage of that is that you need storage memory which is more expensive for the end user, limited, and you're at a bigger risk of losing your data (hdd failure). Worldwide not everyone can have access to a fast connection. There are many advantages to owning movies physically and individually.

Don't forget the HD movies we're talking about are 30-50GB per disk.

 

[PsiSoldier]

Weren't optical disks also rather expensive in their birth?
As all other things they will decrease in price over time, so I find it highly likely that they could be used as next gen media storage and distribution ma-jigs...