Comments on: The party for HD DVD is over, literally
Warner leaves the HD DVD consortium, so HD DVD cancels its CES party.
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(this article is from CNBC, you know... NBC Universal... Universal Studios... hint- rocket science NOT required)
Those crying hd DVD superior
{
/* no, it ISN'T better looking, you're just crazy when you say you can see a difference */
<bd>1080p == <hd>1080p;
50GB > 30GB;
}
are now officially on notice.
All aboard the red fail train. The format storm will now surely clear, as we see blu skies ahead.
Full disclosure: I DON'T hate Toshiba, I own one of their HDTV's) ~~We get signal!
are you an illiterate robot?
***To psibot saying that image quality is better on 50GB then 30GB, first of all you don't have a clue about technology, and second of all, why then dont we use 1TB HDD for movies because 1TB > 50GB no?
Anyways, the future is to movie download service. (I'm not talking about that crap of Itune)
The whole Beta vs VHS war is why HD hasn't taken off. Too many remember getting stuck with useless stuff they spent hundreds if not more on. Now people will be more likely to upgrade to HD with blu-ray. More players sold mean lower prices. that's simple economics. And prices will drop faster than they would with dualing formats.
Movie downloading is over a decade away. 25% of American that have intenet are still on dial-up adn they will be for years because ISPs don't want to give these people more options because they live in the bonies and it's not worthwhile for the ISPs to build out their broadband services. Don't mention satelite as an option for these people. The 6-17 GB monthly caps won't allow you to download any HD content. Of those with broadband half don't even half 3 meg speed. You'll need at least 10 Mbps speed to even begin to enjoy any HD from the internet and that's maybe 5% of households.
1st: image quality Blue-Ray/HD-DVD.
1080p in a Blue-Ray is not the same as 1080i in a Hd-dvd. If you noticed the difference in the suffix ([p] in blue ray and [i] in Hd-dvd) there seems to be a difference.
Read Carefully
A: An image optimized (or video filtered) for interlaced display has a resolution equivalency or sharpness that can be down to approx. 70% (some call it the Kell factor) of a progressive image in a worst case scenario. (In other words, "It's all in the mastering!")
B: Your 1080i input display or player could either deinterlace correctly (weave) or "incorrectly" (bob) a progressive (film) image, and of course all 1080p displays and/or 1080p output players have to deinterlace interlaced (shot on HDTV video) images by some method, ranging from optimally (motion pixel adaptive, etc, etc), to the more common bob, that again, at worst, would give you 70% of the sharpness. (In other words, "It's all in the deinterlacing!")
Remember this reduction to 70% of 1080p can happen if the transfer is "suboptimal" and you have a 1080p player -> 1080p display; or if the transfer is "perfect" and at some point between the 1080 player and 1080 display there's a worst (bob) deinterlace occurring.*
So depending on those two factors, a 1080i vs 1080p path can vary from the 1080i being equivalent to about 768p, to looking equal to 1080p
(If you wanna play the laws of averages between the extremes of those two possibilities occurring :-P, that comes out to be about 900p, which in comparison to 1080p is: about the same difference between a 16:9 coded widescreen movie DVD and a 4:3 coded widescreen movie DVD).
Then:
C: Seating distance also affects perceived quality:
The eye finds an about 2000p image to be excellent at 0.8x screen width viewing distance from a 16:9 screen.
At 1x screen width sitting distance 1600p
At 1.25x screen width sitting distance 1250p
At 1.6x screen width sitting distance 1000p
At 2x screen width sitting distance 800p
At 2.5x screen width sitting distance 640p
At 3.2x screen width sitting distance 500p
At 4x screen width sitting distance 400p
(In other words, "It's all in how close you sit to the screen!")
D: You may also tolerate a less than excellent image (well, we accept average 35mm theatrical projection which is miles away from perfectly focused 70mm, etc ) For example, tho a 2000p image watched 9 feet from a 16:9 wide 12 feet diagonal screen will look outstanding, that doesn't mean a 1000p image will look bad, it'll look great still. (In other words, "It's all in what you think is good enough!")
E: A judiciously adjusted sharpness control with proper contrast and black level can do wonders to a slightly fuzzy image :-P (In other words nothing beats a correctly calibrated home theater!)
F: So in answer to your question: In some cases it might be more thrilling, (but if you have 1080i now don't worry about it and start enjoying your 6x times better than interlaced NTSC DVD video
G: I can't wait for Blu-ray
I hope you see that it is not the same. To your untrained (cheap) eye not a costumed to the elegance of HD-TV, anything over 420i is marvelous.
Maybe you have yet to see them both in a tv over 46" lets say maybe in circuit city. when you see the pixels being out-lasted by the size of the tv, then you could see a more diverse world between both of them.
sitting on a fence (like me) waiting for an end to this silly
standards war can finally go out and buy in confidence a player
and software (disks). This is the definite moment when the leevy
breaks, I mean when people will go and buy in droves a player
(if things go well, this will probably happen by the next
Christmas). This will in turn determine a substantial price
decline for the hardware, a definitive benefit to the users. The
sub-$100 BlueRay player is finally in sight.
In this case, it seems there are a lot of people having a wrong
understanding of what compettition means: competing
standards historically brought pain to consumers-and in the end
to manufacturers themselves (see NTSC/PAL/SECAM, DVD-
Audio/SACD, ...); the competition will happen between
manufacturers of the same standard-based players, as it was to
DVD (as someone correctly pointed out).
However, I also think that in the mid-term disks of any sort are
doomed as a distribution medium, broadband (read: fiber!) will
kill all of them in about 5 to 10 years.
But that doesn't mean its result will be.
SONY has not been so fair with us for a long time.
I fear for consumers If SONY wins this battle.
watch the adoption rate now. i personally have not bought a new dvd in almlost a year because i was waiting to see what happened I bought my blu-ray in october because ray charles could have seen that this was coming
I use IE and I use XP I'll never get a Mac. That's not going to stop me from gettign a lbu-ray player because Apple supports it. And just because I use IE and XP doesn't mean I like the XBOX 360 because actually I think the PS3 is better. And just because I like the PS3 doesn't mean I'm going to automatically get a Sony Tv. Fanboys are funny sometimes.
So yes they are good at making you buying their products.
Don't get me wrong they do make some very good product, and other of very questionnable quality, as a lot of company...
no?, well don't talk is meaningless.
Need a job? or a life?
www.newyorktimes.com/classified/jobs
Second, Flash is having real problems scaling to HD size capacities. That is why, after almost 3 years, most Flash storage is still hovering the 4GB range and the products that have reached out to 16 and even 32 are slower than their smaller breathren. And there is the cost. A 32GB USB drive is over $200. Gonna take some serious improvement to compete with $5 optical disk.
Not saying it won't happen, but just like HD downloads via the Internet, there is still a lot of work to do.
caved that fast! Just because Warner Home Video decides to go
Blu-Ray...you cancel your Press conference? How do you think
that makes your other HD DVD partners feel? What you SHOULD
HAVE DONE is get your other HD DVD Partners together, taken
your press conference, booze and hors d'oeuvres to the Warner
Booth with the biggest flat screen you could find, an HD DVD
player and a copy of Jurrasic Park and played the Tyrranasouras
roar just to show them how it's done.
Enjoy your overpriced DVD player with its soon-to-be-discontinued format. :-)
thier format losing the war. it's up to Toshiba and Microsoft to
make things right for their customers since they are the ones on
the losing end here. when Toshiba starts making some blu players,
there should be some kind of switch program, please! otherwise, i
have this really expensive up-converter player.
Go ahead, flame on...the superior format is finally on it's way to being the lone format. I especially like how the "Promotional Group" canceled their party. I guess they had tons of faith in their format *rolls eyes*
Someday I'll buy into this hi-def format bull, but it WON'T be on lame, slow-to-load discs, no matter how hard Sony tries to spin them. CD-sized media is barely living on borrowed time. It's high time these hardware and content blowhards get real and use less wasteful and polluting delivery systems to get their crappy movies to us ignorant and generally tasteless consumers.
But this war really isn't over by a long shot. The circumstances behind what happened with Warner is the stuff of backdoor deals...and it will perk the interest of the Justice Department and the EU. Consider that Blu Ray's actions have long interested the Justice Department and EU - http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6458096.html
I don't care about how much data either format carries...what matters is who controls what. Sony has an awful record of trying to control how and what we see and hear (MS less and less able to control how we use computers), so it simply doesn't make sense why the media companies do not support both formats....you can buy DRM-free mp3s, mp4s and wma...why can't you get competing HD video?
Let' just get on with the show, so we can start buying the winning format and retire the loser to the museum with Sony Beta.
Also, companies don't increase profits by illegal price fixing; they do it by ramping up production, which allows economies of scale to minimize costs. Collusion rarely happens anyway, because firms in such agreements usually break them. (When quantities of a good are held artificially low to inflate its price, firms usually can't resist the temptation to flood the market with that good to make excess profit.)
There are also legal monopolies, which result from normal competition in the marketplace. These natural monopolies exist simply because one seller is more efficient than many sellers for the given market. This is why we don't have competing utilities, such as
water and waste management. I guess the same goes for hi-def media.
Did you not see that there's a price-fixing investigation going on with online music distribution?
And "Collusion" does not just refer to the artificial scarcity; it also can refer to price-fixing.
Collusion rarely happening in 21st century? You're nuts. If you look with a discerning eye, you can see the current Writer's Guild strike is a form of collusion...to get their hands into the pot of money from revenue of online sales.
The marketplace did decide the betamax-vhs war...no one bought betamax, since sony was the only company with betamax players, and you probably don't remember this, but they were more expensive to buy.
Further, were it not for the competition between Blu Ray and HD-DVD, do you really believe that Blu Ray prices for players and recorders would have dropped so aggressively (at a tremendous loss I might add) this past year? It's not exactly true what they say...that Blu Ray players outsold HD-DVD 2-1, when the vast majority of those players were in the form of PS3s. There is an implication that Blu Ray was popular because of consumer choice, when in fact that is not a logical argument. Many people buy PS3s because of the level of graphics and legacy titles. That it plays movies is a big side benefit, but they would have bought the PS3 regardless of whether or not it was loaded with Blu Ray. Hell, the PS3 may have sold better if Sony didn't try to package Blu Ray with it - allowing for lower price point than $500. And we already knew that Sony is taking a beating from the loss on each PS3 sold, specifically because the Blu Ray itself cost more than the PS3 unit's retail price to begin with.
As for legal monopolies, I think you're confusing yourself. Water is delivered by municipalities, and that in itself is neither an argument for nor against legal monopolies (if you've defined it as a result of normal competition in the marketplace). And waste is not always monopolistic. In my city I have several companies that offer pickup services. There are in fact competing recycling services. There is no inefficiency by breeding competition between waste companies.
I mean seriously...how can you NOT see that competition, even between formats, is a good thing? Apple versus IBM PC? Autocad versus Microstation? CD versus digital download? Canon versus Nikon? Helloooo people?!#%^%%!?!!!
I you really wanted a format war then try promoting something worth fighting over like an open-source format.
Take a look at all of the geeks out there who want a matching set of boxes on their shelves, or the companies who add "limited edition" post cards or booklets to their products to get you to buy them, or all of the traditionalists who simply like something tangible like a boxed movie.
Worse, that one format will win in the US and another will win overseas. Potentially leading to (for example) Asian and Eastern European countries opting for he Cheaper HD DVD format for econoic reasons and Western Europe and the US opting for the quality and storage of Blu Ray. This could force the need for dual releases and all sorts of messing about for years to come
Please show me how that competing formats causes a consumer problems more so than any other technology release. You don't really care if it's DVD-RW, DVD+R,..etc, do you? Do you??? Most consumers just want to push a button and have it work. Dual players could solve the issue of competing formats if you're a confused consumer.
- So now we've got to wait for Blu Ray players to get their act together
- by dddavidn January 5, 2008 5:06 AM PST
- Well, like a whole lot of consumers, with families, who don't
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 3 pages (175 Comments)have time to argue on these forums, I bought a low cost HD DVD
player from Toshiba, researching that the format worked now,
and didn't want to be stuck with 1.0 Blu Ray, 1.1 Blu Ray, 2.0 Blu
Ray, or whatever since the versions and standards continue to
change. This makes me, as a consumer, uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, the reality is Sony just bought the war. Sony sells
the among the most expensive electronic stuff out there...I think
it's dvd for me at least for another 12 months. It's just that
John Q Public still won't make the jump until the $200 level
player...with interactive blu ray...not the obsolete, un-
upgradable 1.0 blu ray boat anchors (at least I didn't buy one of
those...and I never opened my Toshiba from Amazon after
seeing this story) become available.
Thanks for trying to make hd affordable, Toshiba and MS,
beyond the psycho "blu ray rules" techies. The rest of us will
sadly have to wait to get it for a while, until blu ray profiles
stable out and prices come down lots for those stable profiles.