Howdy folks

Just finished reading up on Toms Hardware about how they estimate the Blu-Ray standard to be dead within a year. This is mainly due to the lack of numbers of the PS3 going out the door, combined with the XBox 360 and it's abundance of HD-DVD drives that are apparently selling like hot cakes.

If any of you have been reading the latest issue of Maximum PC (the Dec issue), then you'll see that the stats for other media (CD's, DVD's both single and dual layer). To top that off, the slow burn speeds for the Blu-Ray disks themselves is just outright sick and wrong given the speeds that media can move these days. Needless to say, I'm not really that impressed, but again I see hardware day in and day out.

It's probably not fair of me to completely dis Blu-Ray like this as I really haven't gotten to look indepth at the HD-DVD drives, but given Sony's track record (Remember Beta Max?), I'm not all that confident that Blu-Ray will take off like some expect it to.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Given the surge of questions and discussion regarding hardware, I'd like to hear what others have to say. :)

Lets see, X-Box 360 = 399 and gives me HD quality games, works as a media center extender, and plays most the tiles I want. Nintendo Wii = 299? Plays a bunch of games I want, and I can pay for all the old school games I used to play.

PS-3 = 599? or more if you go to E-bay And all it does better than the other two systems is play a type of movie I have no interest in buying yet anyways until they figure out the whole thing with the connectors and wether or not they'll require firmware updates everytime someone breaks the encryption

Fuck Sony, I'm gonna go play with my Wii

More to the point, I'm normally on the bandwagon for getting the latest and greatest technology, but in this case dumping $700 - $1000 on something that is still up in the air is ludicrous. That and the only people that seem to be backing Blu-Ray is Sony, and we all know what happens when they get ahoold of stuff.

I think HD-DVD will end up being the winner in this one, and blu-ray will limp along for a couple years because of the PS-3 but I think thats the only thing that will even keep it alive.

Lets see, X-Box 360 = 399 and gives me HD quality games,

except that's not true, at least not yet. They haven't started with the HD-dvd drives yet, though they advertised that they were hd-dvd drives before launch.


It has high definition output, supports 1080i output blah blah, but with a standard dvd-rom you don't get a high def picture. You get what you get from your dvd player if you run it to the tv with a digital output.

plus the hd-dvd player on the xbox if i remember is a add on thats gonna cost another 200 bucks?

Companies backing Blu-Ray


On June 30 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_30), 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004) Panasonic
On October 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_3), 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004) 20th Century Fox
On December 8 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_8), 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004) The Walt Disney Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company) (and its home video division, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buena_Vista_Home_Entertainment)) announced its non-exclusive support for Blu-ray Disc.
On January 7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_7), 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005) Vivendi Universal Games and Electronic Arts announced their support for the Blu-ray Disc format.
On March 10 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_10), 2005 Apple Computer announced its support for Blu-ray Disc
On July 28 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_28), 2005 Verbatim Corporation
On August 17 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_17), 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005) Lions Gate Home Entertainment announced it would release its content using the Blu-ray Disc format.
On September 7, 2005 Samsung confirmed their next-generation of optical drives will support Blu-ray Disc
On October 2, 2005 Paramount announced they would endorse Blu-ray Disc
On October 25, 2005 Warner Bros. announced they would release titles on the Blu-ray Disc format
Of the six largest hollywood studios, this leaves only Universal Studios supporting HD DVD exclusively.
Sony Pictures is a great place to start when it comes to backing your format (I.E. Spiderman and such).

plus the hd-dvd player on the xbox if i remember is a add on thats gonna cost another 200 bucks?

Which brings an HD XBox 360 up to the same price of the PS3, not to mention they haven't released the HD drives yet, or at least hadn't a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, but as far as the Blu-Ray drives go, it could be a case of Beta Max all over again. They did release movies on it, but as was quickly evident, they were slowly pushed out of the video stores by the more readily available VHS.

Who knows? Only time will tell.

The big thing for me was looking at the performance of the burners. I mean, talk about sub standard! The Plextor drive reviewed in Dec 06 issue of Maximum PC is just horrid! CD-R's are written at 24X speed. Single layer DVD's at 8X, Dual Layers at 4X. So you figure you're trading all this off for quick burning to Blu-Ray right? Try 1 hour, 34 minutes to burn a 22.6 GB write-once disc.

Ok, so you say "I don't care about burning, I wanna play movies!" Well, I hope your Video Card supports HDCP (or for a regular player apparently the TV must meet HDCP spec) otherwise you get less than DVD quality.

And you still pay a cool $1000 USD for all of this?

Even by going the PS3 route, you're spending a fortune on hard ware that has known issues, that requires a certain level of hardware to perform up to standard, and to top it off, it might not even be around in a years time given Sony's track record with media. Am I the only one that feels like they should stand back and wait for the dust to settle on the whole Blu-Ray Vs. HD-DVD?

A system that has problems that need to be fixed? No way, unheard of and undeniably pathetic on Sony's side lets burn down there headquarters. 1 hour and 34 minutes to burn 22.6 GB OF DATA, how is that horrible? its 22.6 GB of data not 4.8gb come on, farther we get into the new format the faster the burn process will be like always. Theres a reason why they dont bring out the fastest burner right away, do you really think the fastest burn speed at one point for cd-r's was x2, no way most commercial burners put that speed to shame but you can make more money on simple technology by upgrading the speed every so often.

Beta Max died because lack of support. Almost all big time hollywood studios are working with Blue Ray and Sony Pictures is alot bigger I mean ALOT bigger player in the industry these days then it was then. They have a bigger impact now on it.

The funny thing is I am going to buy a Xbox 360 because I want to play Assassins Creed, Mass Effect, and the Next Jade Empire/KOTOR game, but I will always be a bigger fan of Sony then Microsoft.

Well I don't play console games, so buying a PS3 for the sake of a Blu-Ray drive is kinda a waste of money for me. I'm pretty much looking at it from a computer perspective. Not to say that Blu-Ray will won't shape up, but given Sony's track record I'm more inclined to be doubtful. If they can pull it off and get the speeds up, I'd definately support it, but it seems to me that Blu-Ray has been kind of rushed out the door.

I don't mean to harp on them, but when you market an item as being so "next gen", and it doesn't live up to the hype (at least, not yet), you can't help but be skeptical. Who knows? Only time will tell. Sony could use a break with all the bad press lately regarding thier Laptop batteries....and their digital camera LCD's.....etc, etc. They really could use some good news right now.

You obviously don't care about blu-ray, but I don't see you commenting on it's competition. How fast do HD - DVD's burn 22.6 GB of data? How about the 360 still not supporting it a year after release of the system, when it was supposed to be at launch originally?

I see alot more movies advertised in Blu-ray than I do HD-DVD. One of those formats will ultimately win out, just like VHS and Beta. It appears from all I've seen thusfar that Blu-ray seems to be more adopted than HD-DVD.

I think Fast and the Furious:Tokyo Drift is a Hd-Dvd lol :P. I really have absolutely no clue which format is going to win and truth be told, I could care less, god knows I prob wont use either until there is a clear winner and the players become cheaper.

I think Fast and the Furious:Tokyo Drift is a Hd-Dvd lol :P. I really have absolutely no clue which format is going to win and truth be told, I could care less, god knows I prob wont use either until there is a clear winner and the players become cheaper.

QFT! :)

If you get a chance Binu look up the companies backing up the Hd-Dvd I just did and most of the companies are software and computer companies, I really think the industry that is going to decide the winner is the entertainment industry IE movies not memorex.

I just bought a third of a blu ray writer. It could be a huge mistake, but there are a lot more production companies only going blu vs the alternative. We'll see, you never know.

The place it blows is when I want to buy equipment to make the stuff that costs upwards of $100,000. Do I get a sony or a panasonic format, and if I get it will I ever pay it off enough to make a profit?

2 1/2 hours of high definition H.264 encoded video could fit on an ordinary dual layer DVD...

I don't see a compelling reason to change disc formats, just encoding.

I don't see either of these formats "winning" in the next 4-5 years. Current DVD's are fine for 95% of consumers. HD Movies and all the headaches that the MPAA has attached with them will be a niche market like Laserdisc was. The advantages of conveinience from VHS to DVD was huge... from DVD to a new HD Format it's going backwards since special connectors and new TV's are required in addition to buying an expensive player while there is a well-known format war going on.

except that's not true, at least not yet. They haven't started with the HD-dvd drives yet, though they advertised that they were hd-dvd drives before launch.


It has high definition output, supports 1080i output blah blah, but with a standard dvd-rom you don't get a high def picture. You get what you get from your dvd player if you run it to the tv with a digital output.

wrong 720p, 480p, and most recently 1080p are all supported in the xbox 360.

I dont fully agree with that Garl, HDTV's are getting cheaper all the time so naturally people are going to want there Movies to be HD quality to put there new tv's to good use. But you are right it will be 4 to 5 years before that happens, when the players finally hit a 200ish dollar range.

2 1/2 hours of high definition H.264 encoded video could fit on an ordinary dual layer DVD...

You contradicted yourself. H.264 encoded is a mpeg-4, its a VERY compressed file. Its not the same as what you could put on a Blu Ray or HD-DVD that has 6 times the capacity. One of the two will beat out, especially as the networks prepare to drop standard definition broadcasting and simply issue down-converters to their clients. It is just simply a matter of which.

Once again 8gigs =/= 50 gigs worth of data.

Betamax products are still used by some industrial production/news/whatever studios. The industrial studio down the hall for the company I work for does some things with Betamax (in house training, mostly, I think).

I'm not a fan of either format, but then again I've got a crappy old TV and don't have any plans to get a new one.

http://bluraysucks.com/

Betamax was the consumer version, I think you mean BetaSP Esbat. And yes, its still the national standard for standard definition video - most networks use it still. At work we shoot maybe 50% Beta SP, maybe 5% DigiBeta, 20% DV, and the rest is High Definition.

Looking over that website you linked, I've got a lot of problems with it. Sure, Tom Cruise isn't hurting for money but the movie industry certainly is. They want to protect their product, not have it copied 100 times over on the internet. If you created something that cost you a few million dollars, you'd want to protect that too. You can't copy a car so more than 1 person can use it, but you can copy data - so companies that deal in data, all of them - not just the motion picture association - are protecting that. Otherwise those of us who do purchase the items legally will have to pay twice, three times, four times the cost to cover all of those who don't or these companies will have to stop making their products - which is bad.

The part about hacking may leading it to self destruct - what part of "When you purchase this item you agree not to hack it under penalty of law" and those big legal warnings at the beginning of movies do people not understand? We're asking to be able to break the law and upset we can't?

As for the format war, and the price, both of these will resolve themselves in time. Its a great reason not to buy one, now. But not a reason to get down on both formats forever. If I ever buy a HD DVD player (or even an HDTV since I don't have one yet) it'll certainly be after the war is over and one medium wins out.

Then of course he made the same argument Palarran did. 8 gigs isn't 50 gigs. We are computer users, this argument shouldn't make sense to anyone here. Specializing in audio personally the guys argument about the audio not changing is absolutely mind boggling - you'll have a lot more true base and you'll have a lot more mid-ranges when the audio doesn't need to be compressed as much.

And lastly, the public is not ready for a new format argument. If that were the case, people wouldn't be buying HD TVs when Standard Definition looks good enough (at least to me). But there are those who like the best picture and the best sound. They have their HD TVs and want a better way to watch their videos - and if they don't they won't buy a player. Making an argument against not buying something and then ending the argument with "you don't want it anyway" seems pretty lame to me.

I threw that link up there mostly to stir the pot.

The part about hacking may leading it to self destruct - what part of "When you purchase this item you agree not to hack it under penalty of law" and those big legal warnings at the beginning of movies do people not understand? We're asking to be able to break the law and upset we can't?

Part of this is that when I buy something, I want it to be mine to do with as I wish. I'm not looking to open a clandestine theater or anything, but if I want to do a silly montage of HD clips to make my wife laugh, I should be able to do that without being a criminal. Likewise, if I want to modify a DVD player that I bought so that I can watch movies from another region, I should be able to do that and not be a criminal. Most of all, if I want to copy a piece of media so that I can archieve and preserve the original so as to save it wear and tear, I should be able to do that and not be a criminal.

To use your car metaphor, when I buy a car I can modify it however I want (within reason*). I can put in a different engine, paint it a different color, put on different tires, add an upgraded stereo, drive it wherever I want and loan it out to a friend if I want to. Sure, I might void the warranty if I do some of those things, but I might also make it better- the important thing is that it is my choice to make. If the movie industry was the automotive industry, they would want us to each buy a car that was unable to be modified, could only drive on approved roads, would only run on approved fuel and could, at their discretion, be disabled if they thought we were using the car in a fashion with which they did not agree.

The digital revolution has harpooned a lot of business models- anyone can see that. Music and movies are struggling to keep up with the changes technology has brought to their business. Rather than throwing money at lawmakers to introduce litigation to support their current business model in a reactionary fashion, they should introduce some new way to market and sell their products.

The entire DRM thing is insidious and pervasive. I'm less concerned about Blue-Ray and more concerned with the DRM creep that is happening across the board. I buy movies that I like within my budget and watch them on non-hacked hardware for the most part. However, there are occasions where, under the current rules, I might be breaking some kind of law. For example, I've been known to obtain episodes of TV shows that I've missed and watch them without commercials after uploading them to my Tivo. The industry doesn't like this. Hell, Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcasting, already thinks that skipping TV commercials (a la Tivo) is theft. I wonder what the networks would think of my practice? If left to their own devices, the industry might lobby to make it a criminal offense.

Ehh... this has gone past Blue-Ray and into a more DRM related rant. I'll stop, but I will provide a few links on the subject. The first article below is of special interest:

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005047&intsrc=hm_ts_head

If you get a chance Binu look up the companies backing up the Hd-Dvd I just did and most of the companies are software and computer companies, I really think the industry that is going to decide the winner is the entertainment industry IE movies not memorex.

The "Industry" is going to go where the sales are, period.

I don't know which one will win out, but when I walked through Target the other day I saw over a hundered HD-DVD titles sitting on the shelf and 0 Blu-Ray titles. Honestly, the only thing I've seen from Blu-Ray are their commercials.

Should be a good kick in the rear when people realize Blu-Ray players don't play anything but Blu-Ray discs.

Samsung is making a player that plays Hd and Blu-ray so this is all pointless

Moglor, that player is gonna cost probably 1.5x what either of the other 2 cost simply because of the need of 2 separate lazers. It'll be better for everyone if one type wins over the other :)

Samsung is making a player that plays Hd and Blu-ray so this is all pointless

This I think is what will happen in the end, much like the whole DVD -+ R/RAM thing

This I think is what will happen in the end, much like the whole DVD -+ R/RAM thing

We can only hope!