We've been told repeatedly by HD-DVD supporters that 30 GB is more than enough. So obviously there is no need for these "science fiction" TL 51 discs.

But you forget Rob. Now that HD-DVD is going to TL51 it's going to be really, really good "science fiction".. I bet Paramount is holding off until they can get the "replicators" working on the Enterprise so they can do all the Star Trek movies on TL51. ;)

b2b

I'd say more correctly they're here to make sure Blu-ray doesn't succeed. If Blu-ray were to go away, I bet you'd see them drop there HD DVD efforts in a heartbeat. Not that anyone will admit to that right now...
Well, I wonder if you admit that if BDA threw out BD-J, say, to get support of Microsoft, Sun would lose all interest in BD format overnight?

One can play these games all night :).

Simple. All evidence points to the SoC used in many of the players, including the LG, as not being powerful enough to support the demands placed on it by HDi.
Have you seen the performance of LG player executing BD-J code?

If you choose to ignore the extensive survey Sony did, sure. For the rest of us the 80% figure of people who plan to watch Blu-ray movies on the PS3 gives us a pretty good idea.
Well, others have done extensive surveys too, with very different results: http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/?p=122

'In October and November 2006, as the PS3 was entering the market, Cymfony conducted a study that included an in-depth look at 2,000 posts selected randomly.

“Sony’s plan to jumpstart Blu-Ray adoption by building it into PS3 is rejected by a significant segment of this audience,” says the Cymfony report issued Dec. 5, 2006. It adds that many of those gamers surveyed were actually angry that including Blu-Ray technology in the PS3 raised the price and limited initial availability of the machines. They would prefer it had been an option, as with the Xbox 360.

....

There was also considerable concern in Cymfony’s study about Sony’s reliability in a long format battle after they gave up on Betamax and the MiniDisc system. “They said Sony has given up on too many formats,” Jim Nail, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Cymfony told Hollywood Today. “People have real doubts that Blu-Ray has any staying power at all because of that.”'

'In October and November 2006, as the PS3 was entering the market, Cymfony conducted a study that included an in-depth look at 2,000 posts selected randomly.

“Sony’s plan to jumpstart Blu-Ray adoption by building it into PS3 is rejected by a significant segment of this audience,” says the Cymfony report issued Dec. 5, 2006. It adds that many of those gamers surveyed were actually angry that including Blu-Ray technology in the PS3 raised the price and limited initial availability of the machines. They would prefer it had been an option, as with the Xbox 360.

Those two surveys aren't mutually exclusive though. There are obviously gamers who feel burned by the BD inclusion and are turned off by the PS3's associated higher price; we can assume to an extent, that these folk have not to date bought a PS3. Conversly, those who have bought a PS3 at this early stage, probably feel the additional price of the BD inclusion is worth it, and likely intend to make use of said feature.

By the way, thanks for the response with regard to to the Chinese players in the Insiders thread Amir; I know I tend to give you a hard time, but I do appreciate your willingness to participate in the back-and-forth. :)

The CELL is also Toshiba. When you wave your Sony Hate stick around blindly you tend to get collateral damage.

PS3 weak graphics? Difficult programming? Does the 360 render games at 1080p? Didn't think so. Programming tools are easy because they are provided by MS? You don't think developers can figure out the PS3 with Sony tools?
PS: the same "criticisms" were leveled at the PS2 as well. Didn't stop it from becoming the most successful platform in history, did it?

Graphics wise, it seems that just about all third party games look better on the Xbox 360. I'm not saying that the PS3 has weak graphics, I just don't expect it to outshine the Xbox 360. For the most part, I think both systems are on par, with the Xbox 360 getting a slight nod on current releases (probably due to the fact it's been out longer). Over time, they should keep that 'nod', or even out ... but I really don't think the PS3 will end up with decidedly better graphics. I did note that one of the games in 1080p got fairly poor reviews when it came down to graphics. Perhaps it's true what they say, this whole 1080p thing, when it comes down to gaming, is just marketing ... :confused:

Developers *have* stated, that even with the Sony toolkits, the Xbox 360 is easier to develop for.

The PS2 was different ... everyone took Sony at their word when they promised the 'Trojan Horse of the Internet' ... it was also a cheap DVD player that just about every household could take advantage of ... and it had a year on Xbox-1. Also, the PS2 started off selling at what the 360 Core sells for. Hmmm ... the PS3 is 2x that.

So ... I don't think it's the same ... no ... ;)

EDIT: Edited due to semantics of rendered vs. scaled and my own misunderstanding of such.

Well ... fwiw ... the PS3 can't render games at 1080-anything. I believe all the games for it right now are 720p only.

Dude, please educate yourself on these matters before you post. There are 1080p games for the PS3 out with launch.

Also, the 360 - although it can render at 1080p - is not rendering *all* content at that resolution. In fact, there is no present 360 game that renders natively at that resolution; they are scaled to it.

Not necessarily. If your player can decode those formats you can output the audio over HDMI (if your player and receiver support them) or analog (if your player supports them). Otherwise you're limited to using the optical connection, which is limited to stereo PCM or 5.1 compressed (Dolby and/or DTS).

Thank you ... I've got the optical connection part ... but if I use HDMI, and my player decodes those formats, what does my receiver see? Separate 'data' for each channel to distribute to?

I have a question Talk. I'm going to list out my understanding of things you've said. Tell me if there are any mistakes in here.

1. BD-Live is already defined. The June 07 meeting is not about defining BD-Live.
2. Manufacturers have known for a while what the hardware requirments are for BD-Live.
3. From your perspective the G2 Samsung should be able to support BD-Live with a software update.

If the above is true, why would Samsung not make it clear that they're going to provide a software update for BD-Live just like Toshiba has promissed a software update for 1080p24 on some of their new players?

I would think that if you know you can do it, you would want to highlight the fact that you will. It would absolutely help Samsung sell more G2 players.

If you choose to ignore the extensive survey Sony did, sure. For the rest of us the 80% figure of people who plan to watch Blu-ray movies on the PS3 gives us a pretty good idea.

Extensive Survey? What was the poll? 10,000 people? And who was surveyed exactly? Those that bought their players from 1-800-HDMOVIES.COM ? That's the think with survery's, they can all be very well manipulated depending on who was targetted, etc.

But ... to be honest ... I do want to see some facts and figures when it comes to what 'Sony Said', otherwise, yes, I do ignore it. Kinda like their press release about winning an Emmy for the Sixaxis (which, btw, is pulled from the website) ... you see ... apparently, they didn't win one for that.

Sooo ... would a company who created their own PSP Fansite and created their own movie reviewers potentially 'create' their own dataset for a survey? I dunno ... but it certainly seems plausible.

I know, I'll start a survey ... I'll call everyone who has registered their Xbox 360 Add-On with Microsoft (that'll be my dataset), and I'll ask them if they plan to watch HD-DVD movies on their Xbox 360 ...

I'll betcha I get a 100% response. :p

Dude, please educate yourself on these matters before you post. There are 1080p games for the PS3 out with launch.

Also, the 360 - although it can render at 1080p - is not rendering *all* content at that resolution. In fact, there is no present 360 game that renders natively at that resolution; they are scaled to it.

Do you know which titles are 1080p? I know there are some, but I asked this question of the PS3 folks at CES and they were having a really hard time coming up with the names of the titles. The one they were able to remember was the Gran Turismo HD download for PS3.

Dude, please educate yourself on these matters before you post. There are 1080p games for the PS3 out with launch.

Also, the 360 - although it can render at 1080p - is not rendering *all* content at that resolution. In fact, there is no present 360 game that renders natively at that resolution; they are scaled to it.

Which games are 1080p? I wasn't aware of a single launch title that supported it. If that's the case, then it's actually worse news for those with HDTV's that don't support 1080i/p and can only take in a 720p signal -- because they'll get to play that game in 480p. Next Generation of Gaming Indeed! :rolleyes:

And that you for correcting my semantics with regards to rendering vs. scaling.

At the end of the day, I think what really matters is that just about every third party title looks better on the 360 when connected via VGA outputting at 1080p al resolution vs. the same third party game on the PS3.

Do you know which titles are 1080p? I know there are some, but I asked this question of the PS3 folks at CES and they were having a really hard time coming up with the names of the titles. The one they were able to remember was the Gran Turismo HD download for PS3.

Well that one certainly is (as are several of the online downloads), but I'm not counting those... I'm talking strictly 'at retail.'

NBA 07 is one 1080p title, Untold Legends is another... Genji 2, NBA 2K7, and NHL 2K7... these are all titles I'm presently aware of that support internal rendering at 1080p.

Which games are 1080p? I wasn't aware of a single launch title that supported it.

Well, now you are. ;)

If that's the case, then it's actually worse news for those with HDTV's that don't support 1080i/p and can only take in a 720p signal -- because they'll get to play that game in 480p.

I'm not aware of a set billed as an HDTV *anywhere* that does not accept a 1080i signal. Nearly all present HDTVs - if not every - will successfully scale the game to 720p if they are not native 1080i or 1080p.

Do you know which titles are 1080p? I know there are some, but I asked this question of the PS3 folks at CES and they were having a really hard time coming up with the names of the titles. The one they were able to remember was the Gran Turismo HD download for PS3.

GTHD, yah, that I remember ... but I didn't count that since it wasn't a released title. Maybe the Tiger Woods game? Though I thought that was 720p as well. hmmm. :confused:

Sorry, 2Channel, network connectivity will one day enable a wide range of content, but it's ridiculous to claim that without it you have a very limited definition. There are many, many compelling interactive features which will be created without network support.

The LG fully supports BD-J. Therefore, it is fully capable of interactivity. Whether it can support BD-Live depends on whether they enable it (it would appear to be capable of it), but you cannot claim it doesn't support Blu-ray interactivity unless you're willing to claim there isn't a single disc of either format with interactivity (since none of them support the network).

Is LG keeping the BD-Live upgradability secret for the same reason Samsung is?

PS - As an addendum to the above titles I mentioned, Ridge Racer 7 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are also 1080p. In all honesty, it's the majority of PS3 launch titles. (7 out of 13)

Well that one certainly is (as are several of the online downloads), but I'm not counting those... I'm talking strictly 'at retail.'

NBA 07 is one 1080p title, Untold Legends is another... Genji 2, NBA 2K7, and NHL 2K7... these are all titles I'm presently aware of that support internal rendering at 1080p.



Well, now you are. ;)



I'm not aware of a set billed as an HDTV *anywhere* that does not accept a 1080i signal. Nearly all present HDTVs - if not every - will successfully scale the game to 720p if they are not native 1080i or 1080p.

Thanks! I wasn't aware ... I was probably thrown off by the poor reviews of some of those games, especially when it came down to "unimpressive graphics". I had just figured they were being shown at 720p-

On the TV Front, there are quite a few threads ... some of the early adopters who bought HDTV's are affected by sets that either only input 720p or 1080i. I believe you are correct though, every set available today should be able to take in either signal and display it.

I do have a question though, I was just looking up scaling/rendering ... from what I gather (simplisticly) is:

Rendered: The content is actually created in that resolution, 1080p for example.

Scaled: The content is created in some resolution and essentially 're-created' at some other resolution via a piece of hardware/software that either takes pixels out, or 'makes up pixels' to fill the image.

Is that right? :confused:

Thanks! I wasn't aware ... I was probably thrown off by the poor reviews of some of those games, especially when it came down to "unimpressive graphics". I had just figured they were being shown at 720p-

Eh, those games are ok... I mean, I don't own any of them mind you, because they're not my thing. I actually could go to lengths explaining some of the tradeoffs of 720p vs 1080p (1080p doesn't mean 'better' in all circumstances), but I was just answering your question.

(Not the right place to discuss this really! ;) )

On the TV Front, there are quite a few threads ... some of the early adopters who bought HDTV's are affected by sets that either only input 720p or 1080i. I believe you are correct though, every set available today should be able to take in either signal and display it.

It's the reverse actually of what you're thinking, but you cover it above. There are some HD sets that only accept a 1080i HD signal; I own one of these among my other sets. So... in a 720p game like Resistance, then you're forced down to 480p. Few (if any) modern US sets sold today are effected by this, and any content in 1080p(i) will be ok on any HD set.

I do have a question though, I was just looking up scaling/rendering ... from what I gather (simplisticly) is:

Rendered: The content is actually created in that resolution, 1080p for example.

Scaled: The content is created in some resolution and essentially 're-created' at some other resolution via a piece of hardware/software that either takes pixels out, or 'makes up pixels' to fill the image.

Is that right? :confused:

Yes, you've got it. That's what the 'ANA' scaler chip in 360 is all about.

Eh, those games are ok... I mean, I don't own any of them mind you, because they're not my thing. I actually could go to lengths explaining some of the tradeoffs of 720p vs 1080p (1080p doesn't mean 'better' in all circumstances), but I was just answering your question.

(Not the right place to discuss this really! ;) )


Ooopsie ... ;)


It's the reverse actually of what you're thinking, but you cover it above. There are some HD sets that only accept a 1080i HD signal; I own one of these among my other sets. So... in a 720p game like Resistance, then you're forced down to 480p. Few (if any) modern US sets sold today are effected by this, and any content in 1080p(i) will be ok on any HD set.


I remember reading some concerns with BR titles displaying at 480p because the set couldn't take a 1080i/p signal ... it was 720p only ... but it was a year or two old. It happened to be a Sony set if I remember correctly -- how's that for irony? ;)


Yes, you've got it. That's what the 'ANA' scaler chip in 360 is all about.

Thanks again ... I appreciate you taking the time to get me up to speed. ;)

I remember reading some concerns with BR titles displaying at 480p because the set couldn't take a 1080i/p signal ... it was 720p only ... but it was a year or two old. It happened to be a Sony set if I remember correctly -- how's that for irony? ;)

No that BD thing is something else different entirely. It's not that their sets won't accept the 1080i image, it's that there's a subset of 'purists' out there that would prefer the player to have an output setting that matches the native resolution of their HD set. Frankly I don't know why they get so worked up, since TV scalers are pretty decent these days, but anyway...

PS3 presently doesn't allow for 720p output on BD, so, these folk get upset. But they're still watching the movie in high def, don't let their sob stories fool you. ;)

Anyway no problem, happy to help. :)

When will G3 BR players come to market? G1 is a waist of money and G2 looks like a scramble trying to catch up. Lot's of promises and nothing solid yet.

PS3 is a no brainer. It's not near as usefull as a dedicated HTPC setup with a HDDVD/BR combo drive.

Pioneer literature clearly states that the broadband connection does not support downloadable Blu-ray content, or something to that effect.
It has an ethernet port, it has a chipset which supports Blu-ray secondary video, and my expectation that this will be a more-or-less standard feature of all G2 players.

I'm not trying to assualt the expired equine here, but you ar ethe one wh recently re-asserted that seombody should educate themselves abotu features important to them.

So is is your stance that a person should ignore the vibrantly colored demo running on a 60 RPTV w/ 5.1 Surround Sound at Best Buy, what the brochures say, what the Blu Ray website says, , etc... and download the manual in PDF and look for this footnote in order to have "been smart" with their purchasing dollars?



I am not a Samsung spokesperson. Even if I fully know that it will be BD-Live compliant, it's not appropriate for me to break that news here.

Nor would I expect you too. Your comment, however, belies the real state of affairs at this point... half a year after launch that's tha best a Blu Ray Industry Inisder can recommend.

I say again: Wow.

Sorry, 2Channel, network connectivity will one day enable a wide range of content, but it's ridiculous to claim that without it you have a very limited definition. There are many, many compelling interactive features which will be created without network support.

The LG fully supports BD-J. Therefore, it is fully capable of interactivity. Whether it can support BD-Live depends on whether they enable it (it would appear to be capable of it), but you cannot claim it doesn't support Blu-ray interactivity unless you're willing to claim there isn't a single disc of either format with interactivity (since none of them support the network).

That would be great, excpet for the fact that the Blu Ray demos include network usage as part of their display of "interactivity".

That would be great, excpet for the fact that the Blu Ray demos include network usage as part of their display of "interactivity".

I agree ... it seems as the word 'interactivity' is being used purposely ambiguitively. To me, it's as though HD-DVD has HDi (HD interactive?) and that includes Network Support, among other things.

Sooo ... Blu-Ray has to jump in and say, "Yah Yah! We're 'interactive' too! And we're better interactive! In fact, we're super 'interactive'!"

Look, see, you press a button, and the movie plays, or pauses, etc. That's "interactive" by definition, right? Soo ... we're not "lying" or anything. BD-J? Yah, that'll have some neat features someday if content publishers would include it -- and if the player's hardware can keep up. Oh, and BD-Live, yup, that works great ... just take a look at our demos. But, pay no attention to the current lineup of hardware because none of them currently supports it.

Blu-Ray: First to bring you PiP on a Title ... and First to provide Interactivity [when using a PC connected to the internet]. :rolleyes:

But ... Blu-Ray is definitely "Interactive" ... [just like HD-DVD] ... don't you worry. Plus, we have an extra 20GB of Interactivity [that's how we got you guys thinking we could use PiP with current generation hardware too]. :confused:

I agree ... it seems as the word 'interactivity' is being used purposely ambiguitively. To me, it's as though HD-DVD has HDi (HD interactive?) and that includes Network Support, among other things.

Sooo ... Blu-Ray has to jump in and say, "Yah Yah! We're 'interactive' too! And we're better interactive! In fact, we're super 'interactive'!"

Look, see, you press a button, and the movie plays, or pauses, etc. That's "interactive" by definition, right? Soo ... we're not "lying" or anything. BD-J? Yah, that'll have some neat features someday if content publishers would include it -- and if the player's hardware can keep up. Oh, and BD-Live, yup, that works great ... just take a look at our demos. But, pay no attention to the current lineup of hardware because none of them currently supports it.

Blu-Ray: First to bring you PiP on a Title ... and First to provide Interactivity [when using a PC connected to the internet]. :rolleyes:

But ... Blu-Ray is definitely "Interactive" ... [just like HD-DVD] ... don't you worry. Plus, we have an extra 20GB of Interactivity [that's how we got you guys thinking we could use PiP with current generation hardware too]. :confused:

Yep, all that stunning HDi "network interactive" stuff on the hundreds of those HD-DVD discs is something that is going to be hard to beat... :rolleyes:

b2b

Yep, all that stunning HDi "network interactive" stuff on the hundreds of those HD-DVD discs is something that is going to be hard to beat... :rolleyes:

b2b

Well ... PiP is everywhere ... and at least there were able to demo something on shipping hardware ... BDA can't even tell us which players will support it in the future ... last I understood, there was no timetable for BD-Live?

Do you know which titles are 1080p? I know there are some, but I asked this question of the PS3 folks at CES and they were having a really hard time coming up with the names of the titles. The one they were able to remember was the Gran Turismo HD download for PS3.

The GTHD 1080p demo is near photograph quality ... pretty amazing. Ridge Racer 7 does 1080p60 ... or so they say (I have been able to verify at least 1080p on my Sony SXRD XBR2).

The iPhone is an overpriced way too large cell phone.

Very OT, but also very wrong... First of all, it's a smartphone. Those are generally more expensive and bigger than ordinary cellphones. The iPhone's size fits right in with the other popular models:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-iphone-sized-up-and-compared-to-treo-750-moto-q-and-bb-p/

Cell phone guys breathed a sigh of relief when it was introduced.

Yeah? I'm not so sure Palm and RIM were so happy when they saw what happened to their stocks during/after the iPhone introduction...

Ridiculous - can't even fit in the pocket...

Actually it's almost exactly the size of a 30 GB iPod – millions upon millions of folks don't seem to have a problem putting one of those in their pockets...

and $500/$600 reminds me of PS3.

Remarks like this remind me of very similar remarks about the first iPod. Some folks just don't get Apple at all. Watch the video. It's a breakthrough in useability and will sell like hotcakes. And the price will come down soon enough.

I've referred Cisco's lawyers to this thread. :D

I've referred Cisco's lawyers to this thread. :D

:lol: ... are they handing out kickbacks? :D

... last I understood, there was no timetable for BD-Live?There isn't a timetable for BD-Live because it's not mandatory...it's an optional profile that a CE can use at any point in time. Even after the BD-Video profile evolves this summer (say hello to my leetle friend PiP!), CEs will still have the choice of selling BD-Video devices or BD-Live devices.

To their credit, the BDA at least appears aware that they need to start educating consumers here. Still, no use educating them into waiting for the next gen decks that all are required to support PiP, etc.; I expect the education campaign to kick into high gear sometime around, oh, I don't know, June 1, 2007.

Hmmm?

http://www.betanews.com/article/Sony_Says_687300_PS3s_Sold_Meets_1M_Goal/1168632804


In a statement to BetaNews this afternoon, a spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment of America said that NPD Group estimates of 687,300 PlayStation 3 consoles sold in the US - a figure which Sony did not deny - effectively meets the company's most recently stated sales goal of one million units in North America.

"As we announced on January 8, 2007, we met our previously stated goal of 1M units in North America by December 31, 2006," the spokesperson told BetaNews. The spokesperson goes on to point out that NPD Group's numbers fail to take into account units sold in Canada (which Sony estimates at 90,000), units sold in the past week (January 1 - 6, 2007, which falls outside of 2006, though whose sales figures Sony estimates to be 170,000), plus an estimated "units at retail that are in transit or on their way to from the warehouse to the store" (approximately 100,000 units).


Sony's addition, which would encompass the entire continent and include units shipped though not yet sold retail, would place its total at just under 1.05 million units wholesale.

With those adjustments having been made, Sony today popped open the champagne corks and began celebrating. In a statement early this afternoon, Sony CEA President Jack Tretton proclaimed, "If there was ever any doubt about the power of the PlayStation brand in the US, the December NPD data should quickly quell it. Not only did consumers drive records for PLAYSTATION 3, they also validated the excellent value represented by PlayStation 2 and the entertainment versatility of PSP. These sales figures bode very well for the company heading into 2007."

The PlayStation 2 figures to which Tretton refers include NPD's estimate of 1.4 million units sold to consumers last month. For this citation, Sony did not make adjustments or corrections to NPD's estimate.

Sony's statement to BetaNews came in response to our report earlier today, which noted also that Microsoft Xbox 360 sales in the US were estimated at 1.1 million units, for a lifetime figure of 4.5 million units. Microsoft's estimate of 10.4 million units shipped is apparently a worldwide estimate specific to Xbox 360.


There's also this article:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/1/11/6584

Sony misleads multiple times on MotorStorm resolution, revises PS3 sales goals to allow for success

It's starting to get frustrating to cover Sony. From being misleading in their Emmy press-releases and then pulling the evidence, to switching their stated manufacturing goals, I just can't keep the stories straight. The Emmy thing was okay—we all make mistakes, and perhaps Sony just jumped to a few conclusions. But the issue of Motorstorm's resolution is much thicker and smacks of negligence.

It's not like the gaming press made up the 1080p, 60fps Motorstorm story by ourselves. Sony employees were telling the press that would be the resolution and the framerate. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, and say the people running the televisions at trade shows may get their facts wrong. Of course, the Senior Vice-President of Marketing for your company should know better.

In the CES keynote, which you can watch here, Peter Dille states that we'll see Motorstorm at 1080p running at 60fps. He makes this point strongly, in an attempt to prove the power of the PS3, before telling us it's the only "true" high definition system on the market. I would say that point is arguable at best, but there is no doubt he was selling Motorstorm as an example of their 1080p content.

After all that buzz, they're now saying Motorstorm will be at 720p and run at 30fps. At least according to SCEA. Then again, at this stage who do you believe? I don't even think Sony knows anymore.

Mr. Dille also says they hit their goal of shipping 1 million systems in that speech. Since when was that their goal? We reported on what their actual goal was: they wanted 4 million by the end of the year, and 2 million at launch. That was then brought down to 2 million shipped when they talked to the press. When was it ever 1 million? Engadget has an even more damning interview with Peter Dille. Let me repeat that he is the Senior Vice-President of Marketing. He should know better than to give a keynote that directly contradicts his own interviews:

Engadget: So, you think you're still on track for 2 million units in 2006?

Peter Dille: Yeah.

Engadget: I'm gonna hold you to that.

Peter Dille: Okay, you can hold us all to it!

How can we, when you say now that your goal has been only a million units? Well, I'm holding you to it. You missed your goal. I'm sorry. Why can't you admit it publicly instead of changing the numbers and hoping no one notices?

Sony, you need to rein in your public relations staff and start telling us the truth. You need to either make sure you know you can hit the goals that you announce, or be willing to admit that you missed them when you fall short. Revising the number after the fact is not good enough. The more these things happen the less credibility you have, and the less credibility you have the harder it is for us who're reporting your claims to take them seriously. I'd like to think I can trust you, but after this past week I feel like anything your representatives say is going to be suspect at best, and at worst an outright lie.


These are the reasons I really don't want to jump on buying anything Blu-Ray ... sure ... BDLive is supposedly coming, and PS3 can supposedly handle all this. But until I can see it and touch it and smell it ... I just have a hard time believing anything that comes from Sony. :(

Dude, please educate yourself on these matters before you post. There are 1080p games for the PS3 out with launch.

Also, the 360 - although it can render at 1080p - is not rendering *all* content at that resolution. In fact, there is no present 360 game that renders natively at that resolution; they are scaled to it.
I understand certain 360 game(s) render at less than 720p. Apparently PGR3 is rendered at 600p, fwir.

I have played RR7 at 1080p on a X series and hoo mama. Makes RR6 on a 720p TV look like a half-re(a)zzed effort.

Does anyone really think BD-Live will ever happen if the PS/3 doesn't support it?

These are the reasons I really don't want to jump on buying anything Blu-Ray ... sure ... BDLive is supposedly coming, and PS3 can supposedly handle all this. But until I can see it and touch it and smell it ... I just have a hard time believing anything that comes from Sony. :(

Peter Dille saying that Motostorm runs at 1080p@60fps means nothing more than Peter Dille was confused.

Evolution developers have been saying as long ago as E3 of last year that 720p was the target resolution. Take the developers word over the PR guys every time...

As for the Ars 2 million thing, Ars is clearly confused and thinking that Sony meant to ship 2 million consoles into the US/NA, where it was 1 million for NA, and 1 million for Japan. They fell short on Japan, but made their 1 million in NA goal... which is all they were taking credit for.

Does anyone really think BD-Live will ever happen if the PS/3 doesn't support it?

I think both sides are going to have a problem convincing the general public to connect their "new" DVD player to the Internet... Has anyone ever seen any stats on the DVD discs that had special features if you put them in a PC ?? Wasn't that the "Interactual" stuff that most people just ignore ?

b2b

Peter Dille saying that Motostorm runs at 1080p@60fps means nothing more than Peter Dille was confused.

Evolution developers have been saying as long ago as E3 of last year that 720p was the target resolution. Take the developers word over the PR guys every time...


Agreed with you on the PR vs. Developers ... but ... like ... shouldn't people in Sony talk to ... well ... I don't know ... people in Sony? The whole 'Emmy' thing was wild as well, and Sony didn't admit they were mistaken there either, they just pulled the press release (Link not found now) as if it never happened. And, if the PR is going to use a title to take a shot at the competition, don't you think he should be clear in having the correct facts?


As for the Ars 2 million thing, Ars is clearly confused and thinking that Sony meant to ship 2 million consoles into the US/NA, where it was 1 million for NA, and 1 million for Japan. They fell short on Japan, but made their 1 million in NA goal... which is all they were taking credit for.

Well ... technically ... they did say 4 million end of 2006 to start ... which I believe was 2M and 2M for NA/Japan respectively. Then, they dumbed it down to 2 M total, 1M for each NA and Japan ...

And their 1 Million in NA goal includes estimated data from the first week of 2007 (177k units).

I guess my point is, if they can do this with shipment numbers ... why can't they do this with the June/2007 Date? Or with any other promised features of their products (or the products themselves). If Sony can just change what they say now to allow themselves to be correct ... then ... aren't we rather forced to ignore anything they say regarding anything in the future? :confused:

BD != Sony

Does anyone really think BD-Live will ever happen if the PS/3 doesn't support it?
That is a good question. But a better one might be, why does it matter? If they think 95% of their volume is going to be the PS3 as Talk says, then why are they bothering with the whole BD format? Why not target PS3 directly as a console and be done with it? After all, it already has networking, video and all.

The whole affair seems rather strange to me. They show trivia games as proof of network interactivity while at the same time claiming all that matters as far as players is PS3. Well, why not develop real games for PS3 then? Why make trivial games struggling to run in some Java virtual machine on a slow processor at 1/1000th speed? And 1/1000th of excitement?

Really, what is with putting trivia games on a movie disc? Are people really that interested in playing with them after they watch the movie on their PS3?

I am not saying the above as a partisan point. I just can't figure out where the business sense is in all of this. They rely so much on PS3, yet show crippled experience on it that make no sense in terms of the real customer using that device.

Peter Dille saying that Motostorm runs at 1080p@60fps means nothing more than Peter Dille was confused.

Key note address is not prepared by one person. You can't just lie in a keynote and make some excuses later ...

In the CES keynote, which you can watch here, Peter Dille states that we'll see Motorstorm at 1080p running at 60fps.

Really, what is with putting trivia games on a movie disc? Are people really that interested in playing with them after they watch the movie on their PS3?

I am not saying the above as a partisan point. I just can't figure out where the business sense is in all of this. They rely so much on PS3, yet show crippled experience on it that make no sense in terms of the real customer using that device.

For games, I agree completely. At least at this point (perhaps forever) the vast majority of BD users will have a full fledged game box.

But, BD-Live would probably be more than simple games. It could be movie trailers downloaded and merely the search criteria determined by the disc. It could be new languages for subtitling. Extra PiP content.

Same with HD DVD, I would think.

Gary

I am posting this here because B2b made a remark about Tom not being active lately (for those of you who don't know him, he is an insider working at our partner company, Broadcom). I heard this unfortunate news at CES and just got this from him. Here we think format war is what is important to us when things like this happen to someone over Xmas of all times! Really puts things in prespective, doesn't it?

Our deepest prayers go to him and his family.

-------

[Eileen, Peter, etc.; I cannot send Email to some of these lists from
this account so please forward for me, thanks. This is the first time I
have been either technically able to connect from the hospital or
coherent enough to connect at all once home, hence the lack of any
communications before this time.]

After suffering a severe seizure over the XMas holidays I have just been
released from the hospital (yesterday). The seizure resulted in burst
fractures in some of my mid-lower spinal vertebrae in addition to
cracked ribs which I've been told would have led to permanent paralysis
from the waist downward. So they locked me away in an ICU for the last N
weeks.

I am now living in an upper body brace and am pretty heavily drugged
with morphine, vicaden, Librium, and other stuff. I am told that this
was partially due to osteoporosis plus bad diet and too much stress
recently. I'll be pretty used up in physical therapy and drug/dietary
supplements over the next few weeks, and although I expect to be on line
a lot more now, physically I'll be pretty scarce.

My reason for this Email is to apologize to anyone and everyone I may
have let down during the CES lead-in and execution window. I am really
really sorry if I dropped any balls that led to problems for Broadcom,
the HPA, the IBC Council, or any members thereof. Monster people - I am
also really sorry I couldn't make your concert - I tried to fly from the
hospital direct last night but the answer from both my wife and the
doctors was NO. John Ive - I am also very very sorry about our trip.

My profound and sincere apologies. Please let me know what I can do to
help make things up or help in any way during the post CES follow-up
window.

Thank you and please accept my belated apologies - Tom.

Well, that snaps everything in perspective.

Thanks Amir for posting that.

He's worried about who he has let down? Wow, what a guy.

There isn't a timetable for BD-Live because it's not mandatory...it's an optional profile that a CE can use at any point in time. Even after the BD-Video profile evolves this summer (say hello to my leetle friend PiP!), CEs will still have the choice of selling BD-Video devices or BD-Live devices.

To their credit, the BDA at least appears aware that they need to start educating consumers here. Still, no use educating them into waiting for the next gen decks that all are required to support PiP, etc.; I expect the education campaign to kick into high gear sometime around, oh, I don't know, June 1, 2007.

Or, [PiP date] + [30-day return] = July 1st?

Almost a full year after players went on the market... great.

For games, I agree completely. At least at this point (perhaps forever) the vast majority of BD users will have a full fledged game box.

But, BD-Live would probably be more than simple games. It could be movie trailers downloaded and merely the search criteria determined by the disc. It could be new languages for subtitling. Extra PiP content.

Same with HD DVD, I would think.



BD-Live... HDi... Will I have the option to turn these offs and ignore this stuff is my question? I can't believe all the hoopla & back over forth over such irrelevent issues.

It's a neat gimmick that harkens back to the Matrix DVD and "follow the white rabbit" and the Ghostbusters DVD MST2k-style shadow commentary but is anyone really interested in this tripe after the first one or two times when the novelty wears off?

I've watched the IME PiP all of about 10 minutes on my MI3 before Tom Cruise annoyed me enough that I turned it off. The U-Control PiP documentaries for Miami Vice are much better, but would be just as effective off the main pop-up menu, as well, if not a simplier method already used in DVD (ala "follow the white rabbit"). My same... disregard also goes to Blu-wizard and the various BD analogs.

I can definitely see utility for new language subtitling.... if I spoke an uncommon language from the area I was buying my content in but just find it difficult to consider this relevent on a significant scale. Trailers? I admit I watch them occassionally, but I doubt I would expend the minimal effort to download them. I see far greater concerns in being forced to download NEW trailers that I can't skip through before I can watch the title I desire, though (which would make me UNPLUG the ethernet cable and/or turn off the wifi (if not block it at the gateway/firewall! :D ), but maybe that's just me.

Or are all of the features going to go the way of the multi-angle button still so available (yet unused) on many DVD releases? Even porn doesn't take as much advantage of multi-angle as I thought they would. I can definitely see THEM wanting to use interactivity to get a CC# or two, though...

Trailers? I admit I watch them occassionally, but I doubt I would expend the minimal effort to download them. I see far greater concerns in being forced to download NEW trailers that I can't skip through before I can watch the title I desire, though (which would make me UNPLUG the ethernet cable and/or turn off the wifi (if not block it at the gateway/firewall! :D ), but maybe that's just me.


I've always felt new trailers before theater movies was one of the best things about going to the movies.

What if you could have that at home? The studio gives you a few brand spanking new trailers every time you watch the disc?

Think about it. With title X comes first access to the trailer for a hot new title of the future.

Gary

Well, that snaps everything in perspective.

Thanks Amir for posting that.

He's worried about who he has let down? Wow, what a guy.

Ack ! That's awful to hear. Best wishes for a speedy recovery Tom and don't worry about this stuff, it will take care of itself while you are getting well.

b2b

I have Nothing but Trailers on HDNET when I do want to watch movie trailers. I hate being forced to watch them before the title I want to play via DVD/HDDVD/BD almost as much as I hate the FBI warnings, etc. At least for DVD we had tricks to skip past these, though. ;)

BD-Live... HDi... Will I have the option to turn these offs and ignore this stuff is my question? I can't believe all the hoopla & back over forth over such irrelevent issues.

... is anyone really interested in this tripe after the first one or two times when the novelty wears off?





Frankly, I tend to agree with this.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Sony_Says_687300_PS3s_Sold_Meets_1M_Goal/1168632804

BetaNews [CORRECTION: By "last week," we've now ascertained that Sony meant "the last week of the year 2006," not "this past week]"

BD-Live... HDi... Will I have the option to turn these offs and ignore this stuff is my question? I can't believe all the hoopla & back over forth over such irrelevent issues.

I can't either. Does anyone doubt that Disney plans on using much of this content for ancillary product promotion in the guise of "interactivity"?

Agreed with you on the PR vs. Developers ... but ... like ... shouldn't people in Sony talk to ... well ... I don't know ... people in Sony? The whole 'Emmy' thing was wild as well, and Sony didn't admit they were mistaken there either, they just pulled the press release (Link not found now) as if it never happened. And, if the PR is going to use a title to take a shot at the competition, don't you think he should be clear in having the correct facts?

You know what, yes I absolutely agree. But it wasn't the SCEE people doing the talking, and they're the ones that would know. I agree it's a bit pathetic for everyont to be on different pages, but it's a mistake (a stupid one) rather than a purposeful act of deception. I think though both are worthy of disdain, they are different.

Well ... technically ... they did say 4 million end of 2006 to start ... which I believe was 2M and 2M for NA/Japan respectively. Then, they dumbed it down to 2 M total, 1M for each NA and Japan ...

Yes they did dumb it down, but that was actually quite a while ago. It's frankly out of touch if Ars was thinking about the original 4 million target.

And as already mentioned, it was the last week of '06 that wasn't counted (NPD data is always first week of the last month, excluding last week of the current month).

I can't either. Does anyone doubt that Disney plans on using much of this content for ancillary product promotion in the guise of "interactivity"?

Just for grins I typed in www.disneyinteractive.com.. Give it a try and see what happens.. That's another thing... Which is better, BD being associated with Disney or HD-DVD being known as the "porn format" ?? ;)

b2b

Yes they did dumb it down, but that was actually quite a while ago. It's frankly out of touch if Ars was thinking about the original 4 million target.


They reduced their target to two million. One million for NA, and one million for Japan. Clearly they missed Japan.

Was it because a lack of demand? A continued constraint on diodes? Or that the Xbox 360 and HD DVD are near zero factors in Japan, so Sony doesn't need to lose big money pushing subsidized product into Japan at this point?

I honestly think neither Microsoft or Sony considers the Wii to be the actual competition. Perhaps they should.

Gary

Don't forget the forecasts for numbers with the release date intended when the forecasts were made. Sony's difficulties were with supply, not with demand. I have no doubt that the PS3 will eventually end up with a larger share of the market than both the 360 and the Wii.

But then, I've never considered the Wii a competitor with the PS3. In price and feature set, it more closely compares with the PS2. And I'd argue that the PS2 alone already dominates the Wii in it's chosen area with such things as Guitar Hero, etc. They're already matched graphically. All Sony needs to do is release the SIXAXIS for the PS2 along with a Guitar Hero wireless version and they'd completely trump them.

The 360 has been an utter failure in Japan and the PS3 passed it before December was out despite the year advantage. The Japanese just aren't interested in it.

The PS3 is easily available in Japan (no shortages), it's just that the demand isn't there. Also, the PS3 is $425, so they are obviously fighting tooth and nail not to lose to the Wii, which is trouncing it at the moment (and if the US is indication, will continue to do so on a worldwide basis).

...

I honestly think neither Microsoft or Sony considers the Wii to be the actual competition. Perhaps they should.

Gary

Sony probably considers the PS2 to be the Wii's competitor. People keep forgetting that the PS2 is still around and will be a strong contender for many years still.

They reduced their target to two million. One million for NA, and one million for Japan. Clearly they missed Japan.

Was it because a lack of demand? A continued constraint on diodes? Or that the Xbox 360 and HD DVD are near zero factors in Japan, so Sony doesn't need to lose big money pushing subsidized product into Japan at this point?

I honestly think neither Microsoft or Sony considers the Wii to be the actual competition. Perhaps they should.

Gary

I think they just missed their numbers in Japan because they allocated more to the US. I think they would have tried to ship that many into Japan if they could have, but... well they they fell short of 2 million, and wanted to make the US 1 million mark.

As for Nintendo, I don't think they compete with them... and that's not to say they're not in the same industry, and that Nintendo isn't a "threat," it's just that the product offerings are so completely different, and the consumer targeting conducted on entirely different levels.

I think Nintendo has the chance to do *extremely* well this gen, assuming people don't get bored of the Wii, but the traditional gamers that Nin/MS/Sony have targeted over the last ten years are still going to be receptive to the more powerful consoles. So I think the 'power console' market is 'safe' in a sense, it's just that the market Nintendo is selling into is simply a larger market.

The PS3 is easily available in Japan (no shortages), it's just that the demand isn't there. Also, the PS3 is $425, so they are obviously fighting tooth and nail not to lose to the Wii, which is trouncing it at the moment (and if the US is indication, will continue to do so).


Efralope they're not fighting not to "lose" against the Wii... they're just fighting to get their own product into homes. It's different. I don't think Sony views a Wii purchaser as being mutually exclusive from a PS3 purchaser.

My best wishes to Tom.

Thanks for posting that, Amir.

Just for grins I typed in www.disneyinteractive.com.. Give it a try and see what happens.. That's another thing... Which is better, BD being associated with Disney or HD-DVD being known as the "porn format" ?? ;)

b2b

In all honesty, I believe it's a wash between the two. Though I could make a case for either side.

Japanese developers have shifted a lot of development resources over the DS due to popularity of the system over the PS2 and PSP. Sony needs to keep up with the Wii or lose developers that are supposed to help the PS3 be a Blu-ray trojan horse.

Well, that snaps everything in perspective.

Thanks Amir for posting that.

He's worried about who he has let down? Wow, what a guy.

Agreed. I hope for the best for Tom and his family. The spirit shown in his e-mail is that of a real fighter. I'm sure that strength will help him as he recovers.

PS - As an addendum to the above titles I mentioned, Ridge Racer 7 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are also 1080p. In all honesty, it's the majority of PS3 launch titles. (7 out of 13)

I asked the PS3 folks specifically about Ridge Racer 7, Carbon and Fall of Man. They told me all of those titles are 720p. Are you sure about Ridge Racer?

Thanks for the list by the way. If you know a web site that has this kind of detail, please pass the link along.

Japanese developers have shifted a lot of development resources over the DS due to popularity of the system over the PS2 and PSP. Sony needs to keep up with the Wii or lose developers that are supposed to help the PS3 be a Blu-ray trojan horse.

I agree in the sense that the Nintendo-systems have had a tide effect that has drawn developers into their systems' wake. In that sense, it's true there is a pain Sony suffers development-wise from their success. I agree with that. But titles like DMC 4 and Final Fantasy XIII simply cannot be done on Wii; there will always be a class of game that will simply be unachievable on that weaker hardware. And once those titles come out, whether people already own the Wii or not, I'm sure we will see very appreciable uptake of the PS3 inside Japan.

Japanese developers have shifted a lot of development resources over the DS due to popularity of the system over the PS2 and PSP. Sony needs to keep up with the Wii or lose developers that are supposed to help the PS3 be a Blu-ray trojan horse.

Over the PS/2? That won the console war this holiday season in NA. Anyone know what happened in Japan?

Perhaps they see the PS/2 as being a slow decline from here on. There is a huge amount of software already out to choose from. And people that waited so long to buy into it are more likely to go for the Greatest Hits stuff (< $20 here).

And can you continue to launch titles for PS/2 at $49 if the PS/3 titles are $59? The value proposition to PS/2 owners just changed.

Gary

I asked the PS3 folks specifically about Ridge Racer 7, Carbon and Fall of Man. They told me all of those titles are 720p. Are you sure about Ridge Racer?

Thanks for the list by the way. If you know a web site that has this kind of detail, please pass the link along.

Yup, I'm sure about Ridge Racer. That just shows you how out of touch people can be on even their own titles! ;)

Here's a list of the PS3 launch titles:

* Call of Duty 3
* Genji 2: Days of the Blade
* Madden NFL 2007
* Marvel Ultimate Alliance
* Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire
* NBA ‘07
* NBA 2k7
* NHL 2k7
* Resistance: Fall of Man
* Ridge Racer 7
* Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
* Tony Hawk’s Project 8
* Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom

I got these resolution numbers honestly just by Googling into their game reviews, and very often if the game is 1080p, it will be explicitly mentioned.

Peter Dille saying that Motostorm runs at 1080p@60fps means nothing more than Peter Dille was confused.

Evolution developers have been saying as long ago as E3 of last year that 720p was the target resolution. Take the developers word over the PR guys every time...Besides the issue of people being misled, I had been thinking that Motorstorm might be a game that could really propel the PS3, especially in Europe, to get more out there and increase the possible BD movie watching base. However, I had thought it was going to be 1080p (not sure why I thought that). At 720p30, I think there is less chance of it being a must-have game and will be easier for the competition to compete with. I know it makes me less excited about it. I basically want a version of Rallisport in 1080p60 (or something close). I hope the Sega Rally game will do more than 720p30 (I'm assuming that is still coming for one or both platforms).

--Darin

Besides the issue of people being misled, I had been thinking that Motorstorm might be a game that could really propel the PS3, especially in Europe, to get more out there and increase the possible BD movie watching base. However, I had thought it was going to be 1080p (not sure why I thought that). At 720p30, I think there is less chance of it being a must-have game and will be easier for the competition to compete with. I know it makes me less excited about it. I basically want a version of Rallisport in 1080p60 (or something close). I hope the Sega Rally game will do more than 720p30 (I'm assuming that is still coming for one or both platforms).

--Darin

Darin have you played Motorstorm? Believe me, this thing will be a huge hit in Europe (and the US). It's incredible.

Darin have you played Motorstorm? Believe me, this thing will be a huge hit in Europe (and the US). It's incredible.

It's the #1 title in Japan, ahead of the N.A. Resistance:Fall of Man. I wasn't much of a gamer, but that game is excellent -- I believe it was authored by a Sony team in the UK that was interested in experimenting with physics algorithms to run on the cell sub-processors. Pretty amazing interaction. Got me hooked (it comes out next month in N.A., I believe), as I bought my PS3 as a BD player ... LOL

Over the PS/2? That won the console war this holiday season in NA. Anyone know what happened in Japan?

Perhaps they see the PS/2 as being a slow decline from here on. There is a huge amount of software already out to choose from. And people that waited so long to buy into it are more likely to go for the Greatest Hits stuff (< $20 here).

And can you continue to launch titles for PS/2 at $49 if the PS/3 titles are $59? The value proposition to PS/2 owners just changed.

Gary
The DS came out on top in both the US and Japan for the holiday period, but in Japan the DS and Wii are selling magnitudes better than any other systems. They are also the only systems that are consistently sold out and Nintendo is having trouble keeing them in stock. PS2/PS3/PSP/XBox 360 software in Japan isn't selling anywhere near the DS, and now the only legitimate challenger to the DS is the Wii (if they can get both of them in stock).

In the US and Europe it's a different story, but Japan is trending Nintendo with everyone else fighting for scraps.

It's the #1 title in Japan, ahead of the N.A. Resistance:Fall of Man. I wasn't much of a gamer, but that game is excellent -- I believe it was authored by a Sony team in the UK that was interested in experimenting with physics algorithms to run on the cell sub-processors.

Yes, Evolution studios, published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. And for future reference, those 'sub-processors' are called SPEs. :)

Pretty amazing interaction. Got me hooked (it comes out next month in N.A., I believe), as I bought my PS3 as a BD player ... LOL

Definitely amazing interaction... physics is the next frontier of gaming.

Darin have you played Motorstorm? Believe me, this thing will be a huge hit in Europe (and the US). It's incredible.I've played the demo. Maybe I'll like it better with multiplayer, but it didn't grab me as much as I expected. Really enjoyed the Gran Turismo demo even though I prefer the Rallisport 2 style of racing.

I will definitely be interested to see how well it does in Europe and how well the PS3 does. I think Sony needs to do what they can to get that game ready and a launch within 3 months or so to help Blu-ray, if nothing else. Supply doesn't seem like it should be a big problem with units still for sale in the US and Japan.

--Darin

I've played the demo. Maybe I'll like it better with multiplayer, but it didn't grab me as much as I expected. Really enjoyed the Gran Turismo demo even though I prefer the Rallisport 2 style of racing.

Well, understandable. I do think multiplayer will rock, and if you've only played the downloadable demo, you've only used two of the vehicles as well. There is a lot of variety, with *very* different performance profiling between them (through incredible physics simulation of their grip, curb weight, etc...)

I will definitely be interested to see how well it does in Europe and how well the PS3 does. I think Sony needs to do what they can to get that game ready and a launch within 3 months or so to help Blu-ray, if nothing else. Supply doesn't seem like it should be a big problem with units still for sale in the US and Japan.

Yeah, it'll be something to watch. I think with a launch of Motorstorm, F1, and Heavenly Sword (among others), they'll be set to do pretty well there. Not to mention like you say, supplies shouldn't be an issue.

PS2/PS3/PSP/XBox 360 software in Japan isn't selling anywhere near the DS, and now the only legitimate challenger to the DS is the Wii (if they can get both of them in stock).


Is a portable a real competitor to a console?

The PSP and the PS/3 are complimentary. I don't think either cannibalize much from the other. And with Sony's announcement of distributing PSP versions of movies on BD discs, this makes the PS/3 that much more attractive to PSP owners.

Is there any DS/Wii integration now or planned?

Gary

Sony probably considers the PS2 to be the Wii's competitor. People keep forgetting that the PS2 is still around and will be a strong contender for many years still.
So I guess that leaves the PS3 out in the cold.

Round one goes to the hackers: BackupHDDVD rips open AACS

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/13/round-one-goes-to-the-hackers-backuphddvd-rips-open-aacs/

Round one goes to the hackers: BackupHDDVD rips open AACS

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/13/round-one-goes-to-the-hackers-backuphddvd-rips-open-aacs/

Well, there we go... let's see where this eventually leads to. I wouldn't be surprised if by Monday morning, every HD DVD title worth owning is available in torrent form.

So I guess that leaves the PS3 out in the cold.


Uh no. PS2 sales are stilll top notch. They're beating the Wii at it's own game (Guitar Hero, DDR, etc) with their last gen system. It would be foolish to kill them off arbitrarily while they're still top console. And PS3 owners can still play the PS2 titles while the HD niche develops.

Well, there we go... let's see where this eventually leads to. I wouldn't be surprised if by Monday morning, every HD DVD title worth owning is available in torrent form.

Along with all of the BD titles worth owning. ;)

Along with all of the BD titles worth owning. ;)

Possibly, we'll just have to see. ;)

Either way though, I see it industrywide as a studio incentivizer for BD+.

Either way though, I see it industrywide as a studio incentivizer for BD+.
Or possibly incentivizing the one studio most paranoid about the stuff, to not publish at all. After all, all of their titles could be exposed now and there is no BD+ to use.

Then again, if BD+ gets hacked just the same, maybe said studio will stop putting false hope in things, and support both formats equally....

If BD+ was so significant to a specific studio then why would they release titles without this?

I think almost every level of security will get hacked at some point or another. It is the reality of the world that we live in.

If BD+ was so significant to a specific studio then why would they release titles without this?

I think almost every level of security will get hacked at some point or another. It is the reality of the world that we live in.
Same answer given to the other studio that wanted interactivity before supporting BD: promise it first, and then ask them to wait once they make the public commitment. Meanwhile, put them on the spot to publish anyway.

Makes you wonder why folks support such organizations/companies....But will give them the right excuse to bail out of their obligations, should they change their mind...

Right, Microsoft is going to preach to others about meeting obligations.

:rolleyes:

Same answer given to the other studio that wanted interactivity before supporting BD: promise it first, and then ask them to wait once they make the public commitment. Meanwhile, put them on the spot to publish anyway.

Makes you wonder why folks support such organizations/companies....But will give them the right excuse to bail out of their obligations, should they change their mind...

I don't have a problem with the interactivity because this can be changed in the future. If a studio is that worried about piracy and they want additional security then I cannot understand how any studio would release titles without this added security.

If BD+ was so significant to a specific studio then why would they release titles without this?

I think almost every level of security will get hacked at some point or another. It is the reality of the world that we live in.

Because you can't add extra security features after the spec is finalized. But, you can choose when to start using those extra features.

Are people actually complaining that BD doesn't use BD+ right now?

Gary

I think What'sHD's lost point is what happens if PiP or secondary video or menu popup or information text is on screen? Is the HD DVD player still outputting at 1080p24, if that is what was being output before with only primary video playing?
Lots of different ways this cound be implemented. Simplest way is to output the frame rate of the primary video, and then transcode secondary to match. You can also easily re-time the interactive stuff to produce a smooth 24p there as well.

Of course, best practice would be to have secondary video and timing all be 24p if 24p output is the presumed output, but it's not hard to get 24p out even if a title wasn't designed with it in mind.

Long term, I want 120 Hz, so we can do 24x6 and 60x2, so no interpolation needed.

Are people actually complaining that BD doesn't use BD+ right now?They are still coordinating their talking points on this issue. That takes some time, so be patient. :D

If BD+ was so significant to a specific studio then why would they release titles without this?

I think almost every level of security will get hacked at some point or another. It is the reality of the world that we live in.

Cory Doctorow from the EFF really put this whole problem in perspective for me.

http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore.

You're trying to protect something from the customer, while at the same time handing all of the tools to the customer to unlock and play this content. Such systems are inherently breakable. The only thing to do is try to minimize the damage, but even this is a fools errand in my opinion.

Now personally, I don't pirate music or movies off of the internet (though I have downloaded a couple of torrents of TV episodes that my Tivo failed to record properly). I don't buy downloads either for that matter. I like to buy physical discs (I'm kind of old fashioned that way). I don't feel this content is priced unreasonably, and I think it's good to financially support the folks who make the content we enjoy.

On the other hand, I do want the ability to move the music and movies I buy to whatever playback mechanism I want to. So when I set up my HTPC, I will transfer every CD I own to it. I would likewise want the ability to do the same with all of the movies I've bought.

^^^ Well put.

But reality check time. Where would things be right now if the new formats had no copy protection? Be completely honest here.

Gary

Because you can't add extra security features after the spec is finalized. But, you can choose when to start using those extra features.

Are people actually complaining that BD doesn't use BD+ right now?It seems that they are. Looks a little bit like claiming that a person must not care about 4 wheel drive if they buy a 4 wheel drive vehicle and drive it to work for a couple of months without ever putting it in 4 wheel drive mode, since they didn't go skiing or offroading during that time. Or when looking for job a person must not care about future prospects for career advancement if they will go in lower. Not exactly the same, but the whole argument that Fox doesn't care about whether the format of the future has BD+ or not because they are releasing titles without it seems obviously flawed to me. Especially given that people at Fox are hopefully smart enough to comprehend that holding back all content until BD+ is ready might decrease their chances of having it available 3 years from now (like if holding back content helps the side win that doesn't have the BD+ capability).

--Darin

^^^ Well put.

But reality check time. Where would things be right now if the new formats had no copy protection? Be completely honest here.

Gary

Oh, I understand that the companies selling content want it protected as much as possible. I'm just saying it's not feasible, at least in a form that a consumer would be willing to pay for. And once it gets out on the Internet, well to quote Serenity again...."You can't stop the signal."

It seems that they are. Looks a little bit like claiming that a person must not care about 4 wheel drive if they buy a 4 wheel drive vehicle and drive it to work for a couple of months without ever putting it in 4 wheel drive mode, since they didn't go skiing or offroading during that time. Or when looking for job a person must not care about future prospects for career advancement if they will go in lower. Not exactly the same, but the whole argument that Fox doesn't care about whether the format of the future has BD+ or not because they are releasing titles without it seems obviously flawed to me. Especially given that people at Fox are hopefully smart enough to comprehend that holding back all content until BD+ is ready might decrease their chances of having it available 3 years from now (like if holding back content helps the side win that doesn't have the BD+ capability).

--Darin

Once BD+ is released, it will be defeated as well. Do you really think BD+ will stop the hackers from getting in?

Once BD+ is released, it will be defeated as well. Do you really think BD+ will stop the hackers from getting in?I doubt any of this will stop some hackers. The important question is whether the studio believes that it is an advantage for them. If you can convince them that it isn't, then maybe they will switch sides. But unless they stop wanting it, it will continue to be one of the things that they base their decisions on.

--Darin

The BD side is forcefully competing with an opponent who got to market earlier. There are more important things to deal with than BD+ right now (like crushing HD-DVD), especially since so few movies have been released.

The BD side is forcefully competing with an opponent who got to market earlier. There are more important things to deal with than BD+ right now (like crushing HD-DVD), especially since so few movies have been released.

Was that statement directed at BD or HD-DVD or both?

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/

Our deepest prayers go to him and his family.


Oh ... thats really sad.

Can we send something to him on behalf of AVS ? We can paypal to someone who knows his address ....

I think What'sHD's lost point is what happens if PiP or secondary video or menu popup or information text is on screen? Is the HD DVD player still outputting at 1080p24, if that is what was being output before with only primary video playing?
Are you asking what happens if the video is 24p, but the PiP and graphics are not? If so, that is not a big deal as you can just drop frames from secondary elements or with better hardware, interpolate them.

So yes, you would continue to output 24ps, no matter what other element popped up at a different rate. On cheap hardware, you can just decimate (drop frames). On better hardware, you can interpolate the other streams.

Note that the above issue also exist with BD players as graphics overlays do not run at 24fps but whatever rendering performance the player has. So 24p output would look choppy on animations if not fully synchronized to source rate.

I doubt any of this will stop some hackers. The important question is whether the studio believes that it is an advantage for them. If you can convince them that it isn't, then maybe they will switch sides. But unless they stop wanting it, it will continue to be one of the things that they base their decisions on.

--Darin

Some studios likely backed BD specifically because they saw BD+ as one more lock. From my perspective (as a consumer), it's one more reason not to support BD. It's bad enough when you have playback problems early in the game when only G1 players are available. The Descent not playing on the Sony or Pioneer is a recent example.

What happens when the studios start embedding BD+ programs to boot and run before the movie starts playing? By the time we see BD+ titles there will be more generations of players in the field. What's the likelyhood that these BD+ programs will run trouble free on all of the players? It looks like another Sony DRM rootkit controversy to me.

This goes back to what I said about designing a system that people are still willing to tolerate and pay for. If it's not completely transparent, you risk alienating your customers.

One update on this subject. I've seen a couple of posts elsewhere that suggest that while the keys for a number of movies have been posted, people are still looking for proof whether they were extracted or stolen. I'm curious to see how this story develops.

BD != Sony

I think Sony has the most to gain from BD's success ... and ... as Talk believes, aren't 95% of the Blu-Ray players on the market Sony products? Besides, if HD-DVD = Toshiba/Microsoft, then why can't BD = Sony? :p

Some studios likely backed BD specifically because they saw BD+ as one more lock. From my perspective (as a consumer), it's one more reason not to support BD. It's bad enough when you have playback problems early in the game when only G1 players are available. The Descent not playing on the Sony or Pioneer is a recent example.

What happens when the studios start embedding BD+ programs to boot and run before the movie starts playing? By the time we see BD+ titles there will be more generations of players in the field. What's the likelyhood that these BD+ programs will run trouble free on all of the players? It looks like another Sony DRM rootkit controversy to me.

This goes back to what I said about designing a system that people are still willing to tolerate and pay for. If it's not completely transparent, you risk alienating your customers.

One update on this subject. I've seen a couple of posts elsewhere that suggest that while the keys for a number of movies have been posted, people are still looking for proof whether they were extracted or stolen. I'm curious to see how this story develops.

And look forward to more titles. That was CES was for wasn't it? Or I thought it was for consumor electronics. Day and date titles...some that may work ... and some that won't?

I am sorry but I was at CES and I just coudn't help myself. The BD group really showed themsevels with the BS in "Twice News."

Once BD+ is released, it will be defeated as well. Do you really think BD+ will stop the hackers from getting in?

Not that straightforward though; with multiple encryption systems, constantly changing across releases, cracking will be more of a hassle with BD+. It'll be done of course, but IMO it will keep the casual DVDecrypter/Netflix crowd from finding the program once and being done with it. It will require constant updating, and I thnk that will hedge a lot of the 'Sunday pirates' out of the equation.

And as I love to mention, although it's not defense against this piracy... *any* piracy puts security on the brain of studios. And against potential future mass replication efforts, ROM-Mark is a defense HD DVD simply does not have.

Just for grins I typed in www.disneyinteractive.com.. Give it a try and see what happens.. That's another thing... Which is better, BD being associated with Disney or HD-DVD being known as the "porn format" ?? ;)

b2b

Hmmm, let's see: high definition "Hannah Montana" interactive promos, vs high definition INTERACTIVE PORN..............the mind boggles.

...
Our deepest prayers go to him and his family.That is sad news indeed. My best wishes to Tom and his family and I wish to thank him for his participation on this forum.

There isn't a timetable for BD-Live because it's not mandatory...it's an optional profile that a CE can use at any point in time. Even after the BD-Video profile evolves this summer (say hello to my leetle friend PiP!), CEs will still have the choice of selling BD-Video devices or BD-Live devices.

To their credit, the BDA at least appears aware that they need to start educating consumers here. Still, no use educating them into waiting for the next gen decks that all are required to support PiP, etc.; I expect the education campaign to kick into high gear sometime around, oh, I don't know, June 1, 2007.

Hold the phone.

Is this correct? When BR insiders had stated that there's not yet a timetable for BD-Live, as there is for BD-Video 1.1, that actually meant there simply is no timetable at all????

I say again: Wow.

Darin, I saw your question on the insider thread regarding 1080p24 output on the XA2. Since my XA2 was in transit to my home when I was at CES, this is one of the things I wanted to check on while I was there. I asked three different Toshiba employees about 1080p24 support. They all confirmed that they will be releasing a firmware upgrade for 1080p24. They also showed me their new LCD panels coming out later this year that support 1080p24 input.

They were reluctant to commit to a specific release date, but it is definitely in the works.

Not that straightforward though; with multiple encryption systems, constantly changing across releases, cracking will be more of a hassle with BD+. It'll be done of course, but IMO it will keep the casual DVDecrypter/Netflix crowd from finding the program once and being done with it. It will require constant updating, and I thnk that will hedge a lot of the 'Sunday pirates' out of the equation.

And as I love to mention, although it's not defense against this piracy... *any* piracy puts security on the brain of studios. And against potential future mass replication efforts, ROM-Mark is a defense HD DVD simply does not have.

See that's the trick, it only needs to be done once. Once it's been decrypted and it floats out onto the internet, there's no way to shove the genie back in the bottle. It's now a torrent file out on the darknet, and anyone smart enough to use google and know what they're looking for can find it. You don't need a tool to crack these things at will. I expect the MPAA will get even more aggressive, but the nature of the Internet makes their job very difficult. And what will the MPAA do about this development?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/12/pirate_bay_buys_island/

Those torrents could be out there but first of all, they will likely be re-compressed. Otherwise, I don't see too many people downloading 30 GB of data (at slow torrent speeds) to watch a movie.

Anyways, the people who've been buying HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs aren't going to settle for something transcoded or a 30 GB file.

The bigger issue is if the decrypted source is used to press pirated discs, as happens with DVD.

Those torrents could be out there but first of all, they will likely be re-compressed. Otherwise, I don't see too many people downloading 30 GB of data (at slow torrent speeds) to watch a movie.

Anyways, the people who've been buying HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs aren't going to settle for something transcoded or a 30 GB file.

The bigger issue is if the decrypted source is used to press pirated discs, as happens with DVD.

Good point. Most consumer don't currently have access to the kind of bandwidth needed to make sharing files of this size practical.

Can you provide a link to the full text of this [Sony PS3] survey?Nope, I've only seen reference to it from the BDA and studios.

Well, I wonder if you admit that if BDA threw out BD-J, say, to get support of Microsoft, Sun would lose all interest in BD format overnight?You miss the prime difference. Sun doesn't have anything to gain by Blu-ray's failure. They aren't selling a competing format, and have little to gain by the failure of Blu-ray. Microsoft most definitely is competing with HD DVD with your various download services. Besides, for all your talk about how you don't compete with the hardware manufacturers, do you claim that the Xbox 360 + add-on sales do not come at the expense of standalone player sales (ignoring rumors that Microsoft is considering a standalone player, and that Microsoft has repeatedly gone into other hardware business such as wifi cards, though mostly unsuccessfully)?

Well, others have done extensive surveys too, with very different results: http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/?p=122

'In October and November 2006, as the PS3 was entering the market, Cymfony conducted a study that included an in-depth look at 2,000 posts selected randomly.Apples and oranges. One is directly querying PS3 owners regarding their intentions with the player. The other is sampling various websites regarding opinions related to HD optical media. Every gamer with an opinion could show up in that survey, and Microsoft's habit of providing kickbacks to bloggers who report positively on your products with free hardware surely doesn't hurt.

Do you claim the Cymfony study has any bearing whatsoever on likely Blu-ray consumption habits of PS3 owners?

I have a question Talk. I'm going to list out my understanding of things you've said. Tell me if there are any mistakes in here.

1. BD-Live is already defined. The June 07 meeting is not about defining BD-Live.
What June 07 meeting? June 07 is when secondary video and local storage become mandatory in all newly-released players. There is no June 07 meeting. BD-Live is fully-defined.
2. Manufacturers have known for a while what the hardware requirments are for BD-Live.Sure.
3. From your perspective the G2 Samsung should be able to support BD-Live with a software update.Based on my understanding of the player's hardware, yes.
If the above is true, why would Samsung not make it clear that they're going to provide a software update for BD-Live just like Toshiba has promissed a software update for 1080p24 on some of their new players?Could be many reasons. Perhaps they don't want to risk pre-announcing something until they have it ready for fear some sort of technical hurdle will arise. Perhaps Samsung has a G3 model due out in July and they want to provide differentiation, so they won't offer it in the G2 model. Perhaps Samsung has a policy of never pre-announcing features.

You miss the prime difference.
I don't know who missed what. Because I was kidding about silly argument you were making. ;)

Sun doesn't have anything to gain by Blu-ray's failure.
But you would lose all interest in BD format if it didn't have your technology in it.

Microsoft most definitely is competing with HD DVD with your various download services. [quote]
So does this mean Sun has given up on Java being used in any other form of entertainment technology?

[quote] Besides, for all your talk about how you don't compete with the hardware manufacturers, do you claim that the Xbox 360 + add-on sales do not come at the expense of standalone player sales (ignoring rumors that Microsoft is considering a standalone player, and that Microsoft has repeatedly gone into other hardware business such as wifi cards, though mostly unsuccessfully)?
Actually, there is very little overlap. But that is not the reason behind my comment. We are here to help any company build HD DVD players. Can you say Sony will do the same? Isn't that the best test of whether you consider someone your competitor or not?

Do you claim the Cymfony study has any bearing whatsoever on likely Blu-ray consumption habits of PS3 owners?
Who is burried in Grant's tomb?

That is a good question. But a better one might be, why does it matter? If they think 95% of their volume is going to be the PS3 as Talk says, then why are they bothering with the whole BD format? Why not target PS3 directly as a console and be done with it? After all, it already has networking, video and all.Come on, Amir, this "playing dumb" routine is getting old. The fact that 95% of Blu-ray players are currently PS3's is a side-effect of the PS3's incredible potential to launch the format. No one expects the PS3 to be a huge majority of all Blu-ray players a few years from now.
Really, what is with putting trivia games on a movie disc? Are people really that interested in playing with them after they watch the movie on their PS3?Oh, yes, and changing the color of the cars during Tokyo Drift, or, worse, having a Progressive insurance ad pop up on the screen during car crashes truly adds value to your efforts. I should think you of all people would recognize that interactivity efforts will start modestly and become more compelling over time. Besides, ever heard of "Scene It"? Given that a movie trivia game is the single most valuable title in the entire toy/gaming world (having surpassed "Monopoly" a few years ago), it seems your opinion regarding movie trivia isn't widely shared.

Is this correct? When BR insiders had stated that there's not yet a timetable for BD-Live, as there is for BD-Video 1.1, that actually meant there simply is no timetable at allNo timetable means no one will be forced to release a BD-Live player, as opposed to the "BD-Video 1.1" profile, which becomes mandatory for newly-released players after 6/07.

No timetable means no one will be forced to release a BD-Live player, as opposed to the "BD-Video 1.1" profile, which becomes mandatory for newly-released players after 6/07.
So no studio can count on 100% of players supporting networking in BD players, ever?

Why do BD companies think networking is so hard as to leave it optional forever?

Can you explain the dynamics of who pushes back on this stuff in BDA? Surely it is not the studios.

But you would lose all interest in BD format if it didn't have your technology in it.What bearing does this question have on the supposition that Microsoft is supporting HD DVD only to try to ensure that neither format succeeds in order to to pave the way for your download services?
So does this mean Sun has given up on Java being used in any other form of entertainment technology?I'm not speaking here for Sun, but that certainly doesn't appear to be the case given the rapidly increasing visibility of OCAP in the cable and retail markets...
We are here to help any company build HD DVD players. Can you say Sony will do the same? Isn't that the best test of whether you consider someone your competitor or not?What does Sony have to do with it? Broadcom or Sigma will help any company build Blu-ray players, as will many other companies. Of course Microsoft will, you'd love to sell them WinCE, Windows Media, and a host of other technologies. I fail to see how Microsoft's offer to help any other company build HD DVD players somehow places you above the fray.

So no studio can count on 100% of players supporting networking in BD players, ever? Can any HD DVD studio count on 100% of HD DVD players actually being connected to a network? Will that change their willingness to provide networked content? Of course not.
Why do BD companies think networking is so hard as to leave it optional forever? Can you explain the dynamics of who pushes back on this stuff in BDA?There are legitimate reasons for not mandating network support, such as giving manufacturers additional ability to differentiate. The fact is consumers will consume networked content if the studios provide a compelling reason to do so. The fact network support isn't mandated in all Blu-ray players won't have any bearing on the studios' desire to provide networked content.

So no studio can count on 100% of players supporting networking in BD players, ever?No, but to state the obvious no studio can count on 100% of HD DVD players being connected to the internet either. Even if we assumed HD DVD won the format war tomorrow in the long term I think it unlikely that you could get even 25% of HD DVD players connected to the internet.


Why do BD companies think networking is so hard as to leave it optional forever?Maybe because not everyone would want to go through the trouble and expense of connecting their HD player to the internet? Also for someone that is skeptical of future developments in regards to Blu-ray how many HD DVD movies at the moment have internet extras?

I'm responding here in order to keep the Insider's thread less cluttered. This is in response to this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9441455&&#post9441455) post by Amir. This is not a "politically-correct" post; HD DVD fans probably won't like what I have to say. This is my personal opinion, not in any way to be construed as speaking for or representing the BDA's position.
Universal's silence greatly disturbed me.Sorry, I really don't understand this angst about Universal. Universal could not shout any louder in support of HD DVD at CES. They are the chairman of the US HD DVD group and gave the keynote address at CES. They have committed strongly to releasing their titles for this year, including day and date for new movies yet to even come to theaters.Yet, unlike virtually every other studio, their launch calendar looks very sparse. Why the change?
More importantly, you did not hear a peep from them going to BD route, despite the confidence of BD group that they are doing well. Another CES came and went without them going near BDA.And another CES came and went without any headway being made in terms of the very, very significant disadvantage HD DVD has in terms of available and promised content. If Universal is going to go neutral, they certainly aren't going to announce it at CES, especially as "chair of the US HD DVD group". If they're going to announce in order to save face for HD DVD they would do so at a less visible time. Doing so at CES would clearly immediately and irrevocably doom HD DVD.
Net, net, you should see Universal more committed to HD DVD, than any BD studio is to BDA.And any evidence of that is sorely missing.
Plus, I was greatly disappointed not to see any new studios declaring format neutrality this January.Everything takes time. One has to have patience. Remember last CES where BDA declared HD DVD dead and everyone believed them? Look at where we are now, with a raft of new CE company announcements which they said was impossible for us to get.Oh, yes, three no-name Chinese/Taiwanese vendors, one high-end vendor who retracted their announcement and now doesn't commit to any actual product release, and Onkyo. How many people are going to buy a low-priced-special HD DVD player from a brand they've never heard of when they already have grave concerns regarding the viability of the format? $299 wasted on a dying format may be less than $499 wasted, but it's still wasted.

So in practical terms you've announced one fine new vendor, Onkyo (who is also a member of Blu-ray), who didn't publicly show product nor commit to a launch date.
We have 40 content studios worldwide distributing HD DVD. We have way more titles than BDA once you include these international titles. And that trend is going to continue with doubling the number of titles to some 600 by the end of this year.And, of the titles people actually care about, Blu-ray continues to widen it's already huge lead. What do you say to consumers who ask why 16 of 2006's top 20 best-selling DVD's aren't from studios supporting HD DVD?
And then we had LG breaking the ice by going from BD exclusive to not only supporting HD DVD, but saying great things about how well HD DVD works at CES.And then announcing that they don't support your interactivity layer, and then your employee Kevin Collins tellst he press that the DVD Forum might sue LG. Nice! I couldn't have written a better script! This is going to have strong impact on the attitude of BD-exclusive companies.Oh, yes, clearly Disney, Fox, and Sony Pictures were hedging their bets at the BD press event with all the great BD50 titles and increased support they committed.
Do you know anything, any news that can't be made public yet, a studio switchover, a batch of great title release annoucements, a new super-cheap player, anything at all, that would reverse/stall the news of impending doom for HDDVD?Impending doom? Where do people get this? Let’s look at the situation at CES. BDA companies showed no new companies adopting BD format. None.Perhaps because we already have every single major CE vendor except for Toshiba? There were two new vendors with committed Blu-ray product releases (LG and Sharp), plus new models or prototypes from Samsung and Sony. Compare this to one new model from Toshiba which breaks no ground whatsoever.
No demonstration of advancements in their format.Hmm, Hitachi showing 200GB BD-ROM discs playing back on current hardware seems somewhat significant to me.
More importantly, at CES one gets to meet with a ton of CE companies. And I can tell you that all of this news moved HD DVD significantly forward in their support behind the scenes. Obviously, in front of our competitors here I am not going to mention specifics. But you can count us announcing new CE partners this year.Spin, spin spin. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
The above is important as it starts to break down the last two arguments that BDA says was in their favor: CE companies and content. The former is now proven to be false and indeed, BDA no longer trumpet that at CES.The no-name Chinese and Taiwanese companies you added brings you to par with Blu-ray's Sony/Panasonic/Philips/LG/Sharp/Mitsubishi/Samsung/...?!? Wow. It sure doesn't look that way wondering the aisles at CES, Best Buy, or Circuit City. And I'm pretty sure Shinco isn't going to help much.
The content side will also come. It is inevitable that content companies will follow where the sockets and positive momentum are.Uh, 1M Blu-ray players were sold in the last two months, over 5x the total number of HD DVD players. Isn't that where the momentum is?
Remember, that alliances can change overnight. An executive could choose to support the other format with one decision and have titles in the market next month.Or Universal's Kornblau could get fired tomorrow and they could drop their exclusive HD DVD status.
But you can not solve the manufacturing and other difficulties of BD overnight.Oh, bring this one up again, in spite of the proliferation of BD50 titles in the market and in the pipeline.
Even if you can't tell us what it is, it would relieve me greatly to know there is SOMETHING around the corner that might counteract BluRay's great slate of announced titles.There are 16,000 DVD titles from what I recall. Compared to that, neither BD nor HD DVD holds a candle.Yet BD's candle clearly burns far, far brighter than HD DVD's.
HD DVD is also the only global HD format with no region coding. So you can continue to enjoy CE and content from anywhere in the world, with no worries about borders.Which is good, since the US releases are so clearly lacking.
Per note before, HD DVD is also bringing the widest range of products on the playback to the market. This includes super low cost far-east players which retailers can private brandAnd which will add no credibility to the format, but will add even more reasons for brand-name CE vendors to skip HD DVD.
And of course, everything in between from Toshiba including 1080p/24fps supportAlready available on multiple Blu-ray players.
With our significant partnership with Broadcom to provide a nice platform for building HD DVD players quickly and efficientlyOr go Blu-ray and get a platform from Broadcom or Sigma Designs which doesn't force you to use WinCE.
, you can expect to see companies able to enter HD DVD without a huge outlay of R&D dollars which few can afford, given how complex these formats are.Yes, trust Microsoft to design your hardware for you. We've seen how well that's worked for the PDA, tablet and micro-PC vendors.
And with over 10M and counting 360 machines out there and strong, strong demand for the HD DVD add-on, we are going to continue to bring a ton of people into HD DVD fold which the other guys simply can not match.Let's see, if I own an Xbox 360 it's $199 for HD DVD; if I own a PS3 it's $0 for Blu-ray.
Last but not least, as you hopefully know, you are dealing with a company behind HD DVD who at its heart, is made up of people like you. With likes of Stacey Spears, Kevin Collins, Ben, etc., you know that we love this technology and care to deliver the utmost A/V experience."Which we'll do as soon as HD DVD dies and everyone has to use our download system."
(We are not a competitor to CE companies which makes it so much easier for them to partner with us.)Except for the Xbox 360 add-on, but no one will pay any attention to that.

Amir, CES 2007 was a disaster for HD DVD. The PS3 is clearly propelling Blu-ray forward in a huge way, and as much as you care to spin it, there was simply no news which can provide any reasonable optimism for HD DVD supporters that the content situation is likely to change. Looking at the release calendars for the two formats makes that abundantly clear, and without better content support, HD DVD isn't going to make it.

__________________
Top 20 Most Popular 2006 DVDs from Blu-ray studios: 18
Top 20 Most Popular 2006 DVDs from HD DVD studios: 4

Speaking solely for myself

Wow Talkstr8t... it's snarky attitudes like that, and a complete dismissal of anything positive for HD-DVD that actually drives folks like me away from your format. Amir may say things you do not agree with, but he is level headed, at least. You seem like a pretty angry and defensive person on all of these points.

Sure, Blu Ray had a strong title/content showing at CES... but to dismiss all the new HD-DVD CE vendors as non-news... or to dismiss the Chinese vendors as insignificant when DVD became popular in America on the cheap Wal Mart players... it shows that you are going to spin every positive as a negative with your competition, even if it's not true.

The first guy to step up to the plate and say "Yeah, there are some good movies coming out for Blu Ray this year" from the HD camp, or "Slick move getting a consumer-priced player on the market," from the BD side gets kudos from me... I assume there is no middle ground here for you? If not, then everything you say is so much hot air to me.


edit: Sell me on your format by being positive, not pissing on your competition. You attract flies with honey.

Damn, getting hard to tell the "insiders" from the 12yr old fanboys.

It's posts from this guy that make me miss Cjplay all the more. :(

No chance that we could trade them out I guess? ^_^'

Talkstr8t... could you be any more childish? Apparently, the one thing BD doesn't have is professional representatives.

On a side note, BD hasn't sold 1m players; it's sold almost 1m game systems that can be used as players.

Talkstr8t... could you be any more childish? Apparently, the one thing BD doesn't have is professional representatives.

On a side note, BD hasn't sold 1m players; it's sold almost 1m game systems that can be used as players.

You dont count the Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and Phillips players yes? And the thousands of Blu-ray burners and laptops from 15 trusted brands...

Also its not 1m, its 1.48m game consoles. http://www.vgcharts.org/

I'm responding here in order to keep the Insider's thread less cluttered. This is in response to this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9441455&&#post9441455) post by Amir. This is not a "politically-correct" post; HD DVD fans probably won't like what I have to say. This is my personal opinion, not in any way to be construed as speaking for or representing the BDA's position.
Yet, unlike virtually every other studio, their launch calendar looks very sparse. Why the change?
And another CES came and went without any headway being made in terms of the very, very significant disadvantage HD DVD has in terms of available and promised content. If Universal is going to go neutral, they certainly aren't going to announce it at CES, especially as "chair of the US HD DVD group". If they're going to announce in order to save face for HD DVD they would do so at a less visible time. Doing so at CES would clearly immediately and irrevocably doom HD DVD.
And any evidence of that is sorely missing.
Oh, yes, three no-name Chinese/Taiwanese vendors, one high-end vendor who retracted their announcement and now doesn't commit to any actual product release, and Onkyo. How many people are going to buy a low-priced-special HD DVD player from a brand they've never heard of when they already have grave concerns regarding the viability of the format? $299 wasted on a dying format may be less than $499 wasted, but it's still wasted.

So in practical terms you've announced one fine new vendor, Onkyo (who is also a member of Blu-ray), who didn't publicly show product nor commit to a launch date.
And, of the titles people actually care about, Blu-ray continues to widen it's already huge lead. What do you say to consumers who ask why 16 of 2006's top 20 best-selling DVD's aren't from studios supporting HD DVD?
And then announcing that they don't support your interactivity layer, and then your employee Kevin Collins tellst he press that the DVD Forum might sue LG. Nice! I couldn't have written a better script! Oh, yes, clearly Disney, Fox, and Sony Pictures were hedging their bets at the BD press event with all the great BD50 titles and increased support they committed.
Perhaps because we already have every single major CE vendor except for Toshiba? There were two new vendors with committed Blu-ray product releases (LG and Sharp), plus new models or prototypes from Samsung and Sony. Compare this to one new model from Toshiba which breaks no ground whatsoever.
Hmm, Hitachi showing 200GB BD-ROM discs playing back on current hardware seems somewhat significant to me.
Spin, spin spin. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
The no-name Chinese and Taiwanese companies you added brings you to par with Blu-ray's Sony/Panasonic/Philips/LG/Sharp/Mitsubishi/Samsung/...?!? Wow. It sure doesn't look that way wondering the aisles at CES, Best Buy, or Circuit City. And I'm pretty sure Shinco isn't going to help much.
Uh, 1M Blu-ray players were sold in the last two months, over 5x the total number of HD DVD players. Isn't that where the momentum is?
Or Universal's Kornblau could get fired tomorrow and they could drop their exclusive HD DVD status.
Oh, bring this one up again, in spite of the proliferation of BD50 titles in the market and in the pipeline.
Yet BD's candle clearly burns far, far brighter than HD DVD's.
Which is good, since the US releases are so clearly lacking.
And which will add no credibility to the format, but will add even more reasons for brand-name CE vendors to skip HD DVD.
Already available on multiple Blu-ray players.
Or go Blu-ray and get a platform from Broadcom or Sigma Designs which doesn't force you to use WinCE.
Yes, trust Microsoft to design your hardware for you. We've seen how well that's worked for the PDA, tablet and micro-PC vendors.
Let's see, if I own an Xbox 360 it's $199 for HD DVD; if I own a PS3 it's $0 for Blu-ray.
"Which we'll do as soon as HD DVD dies and everyone has to use our download system."
Except for the Xbox 360 add-on, but no one will pay any attention to that.

Amir, CES 2007 was a disaster for HD DVD. The PS3 is clearly propelling Blu-ray forward in a huge way, and as much as you care to spin it, there was simply no news which can provide any reasonable optimism for HD DVD supporters that the content situation is likely to change. Looking at the release calendars for the two formats makes that abundantly clear, and without better content support, HD DVD isn't going to make it.

__________________
Top 20 Most Popular 2006 DVDs from Blu-ray studios: 18
Top 20 Most Popular 2006 DVDs from HD DVD studios: 4

Speaking solely for myself

Keep up the good work, Talkstr8t. I'm glad there's someone to balance the arguments, and to show the other side of the coin. Please ignore those who post behind the veil of an uninvited mob (who think they're entitled to insult other members).

Yup, good counters, Talk.

I reckon that Amir's comments re the great HD-DVD showing are either plain wrong (as in misinformation) or he has been misguided by an elaborate conspiracy which keeps the bad news away from his ears.

If anyone thinks that CES 2007 was great for HD-dvd, please buy the most expensive hd-dvd player you can and start loading up on titles pronto. No point waiting for the inevitability that is HD's march to victory.

Also, some Toshiba stock couldn't hurt.

Come on guys, CES 2006 was good for hd-dvd (better than expected by far) but 2007 was almost a death knell. I say this as someone who owns the add-on and doesnt want to see his investment go to waste.

My 2c

You dont count the Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and Phillips players yes? And the thousands of Blu-ray burners and laptops from 15 trusted brands...

Also its not 1m, its 1.48m game consoles. http://www.vgcharts.org/

What are the combined numbers on everything but PS3, like 50k?

Lots of people personally attacked Talkstr8t when all he did was trash hddvd's performance. Ridiculous hddvd fanbois and their double standards..

CES 2007 fallout as I see it, sifting thru the Talk/Amir talking points ...

CES 2007 didn't change the blu-ray situation much, it only reiterated what was already known. Most of the 2 key industries are pushing the blu-ray format, they were before CES and are still doing so now. So for Industry support BD is on top, no change.

In terms of Hollywood, Blu-ray has had the announced studio support advantage and CE advantage pretty much since Sony pledged to massively subsidize the format by pledging the PS3 to it. Nice the see those studios actually announce titles but wasn't that a foregone conclusion well before CES? Nice but certainly nothing new.

As for the CE situation, as Talk states, this didn't need to change much for Blu-ray since most of big ones are already announced for the format.

For hd-dvd there was some change although it remains to be seen how close it all is to materializing. On the content side it seems that the adult industry is forming solidly behind hd-dvd. How siginificant that is remains to be seen but it is a new development that was hinted at but seems to be solidifying. Bandai is another support change although again remains to be seen how large. Small content providers in general could add up though.

HD was behind on content and now it's a bit less behind if we assume no real change at Universal. 300 titles is fine IF it really shows up because most consumers will just see a lot of movies on the shelf, they won't count studios. They will notice big releases though, but for many that is *after* they have bought a player.

HD-DVD group didn't do much movie announcing so content is naturally still seen as the achillies heel. On the other hand IMO it was actually unreasonable to expect a big studio move when both formats just launched and blu-rays big hitter, the PS3 literally just arrived.

It's too soon for instance to know what Studios are really thinking. Truth is the PS3 boosted blu-ray significantly but also didn't deliver nearly as much as it was promised to deliver in the time frame it was promised to deliver in.

We dont' know if that less than promised PS3 performance will register as a significant negative with exclusive BD studios or if it will be considered good enough to wait it out and stay exclusive for the long term. In addition, how do they read the relative success of the 360 hd-dvd addon?

For hd-dvd on the hardware side is where the most significant news of CES 2007 came IMHO. Now given that the Onkyo, Meridian and Chinese companies have not shown players yet the impact is tempered but certainly hd-dvd went from 1 1/2 CE support (not counting PC) to now 6 or 7 strong with support coming at both high and low ends. RCA was the 1/2 that dropped out but was more than made up for by the other announcements.

On top of that MS is now even more directly involved in the support of hd-dvd hardware. Not a small point. If the new CE support materializes soon (summer to fall '07) it's the biggest change in the war.

In terms of blowing off the chinese support as somehow insignificant, I can remember at one time when Samsung was considered the "cheap" brand and a fly on the wall next to Sony. Funny how things can change if enough J6P consumers buy into those "cheap" brands. ;)

Net, net after CES 2007 Blu-ray is still in charge but barring a major change does not look ready to blow hd-dvd away any time soon.

Yup, good counters, Talk.

Indeed. In my opinion amir misused the Insider thread for his very long and very spinful "All is right with HD-DVD" marketing post. My respect to Talk for not doing the same and instead posting his answer here in the format battle thread. Even if it means having to endure hypocritical attacks like this:

Wow Talkstr8t... it's snarky attitudes like that, and a complete dismissal of anything positive for HD-DVD that actually drives folks like me away from your format. ... I assume there is no middle ground here for you? If not, then everything you say is so much hot air to me.

Do you find anything positive about Blu-ray in Amir's long post? Or any of his posts, for that matter? Me neither. He attacks BD on everything whenever he has the chance. So why do you single out Talk/BD and give Amir/HD-DVD carte blanche?

Talkstr8t... could you be any more childish? Apparently, the one thing BD doesn't have is professional representatives.

On a side note, BD hasn't sold 1m players; it's sold almost 1m game systems that can be used as players.

He's just stating a few facts. Is that something you can't accept?

Take the Meridian one for example. They said that they are not an HD-DVD exclusive and they were surprised that the HD-DVD working group at CES (headed by MS) announced their support without the formal consent of Meridian.

So where's the "professional" claim of HD-DVD group in that? Either they made a mistake or they're just trying to spin.

And one last thing, since the XBOX360 add-on was included in the list of total HD-DVD players, the total was now 175K.

Assuming that we add another 25k into the list, it becomes 200K for all HD-DVD sales.

Now the PS3 has over 1 million (VG charts), but let's say it sold at 1 million even(Nexgenwars). At 20% of that number, it leads to 200k figure.

Since the game consoles were included in the equation, the PS3 alone contributed to a big lead. At just 200k PS3 players (conservative figure) already topples the 175K figure of TOTAL HD-DVD hardware sales.

Just pointing out that fact. Take it either way.......but it's still fact.

Question is if how long can *certain* individuals refuse to believe in simple truths like these. :p

No timetable means no one will be forced to release a BD-Live player, as opposed to the "BD-Video 1.1" profile, which becomes mandatory for newly-released players after 6/07.

And I'm sure you have been once again technically correct in your previous references to this (I don't have the time or inclination to go look right now), but the impression certainly was that there was an intention of following the 6/07 drop dead date with an further time table for -Live as well.

With all the admission of "Yes, I would like to see the BDA be more clear bout things.", don't you think it might have been useful to state this up front?

I don't believe the BDA wants to be clear about these things. They just want HD DVD to go away so that these conversations will go away as well.

I have a question for Amir that I will post here rather than in the Insider's thread because of the nature of the question.

Perhaps I missed it, but have you responded to Talk's allegation that Microsoft's real motivation for supporting HD DVD is to prevent either format from prevailing quickly, and delaying any resolution of the format war in favor of downloading high definition content?

Talkstr8t boy you portray alot of anger in your reponses as has been stated.A proffessional person doesnt act so childish attacking the oposition the way you do.Comes across as more of chip on the sholder attitude.People criticise sure but wish you could do it in a more proffessional way.

I have a question for Amir that I will post here rather than in the Insider's thread because of the nature of the question.

Perhaps I missed it, but have you responded to Talk's allegation that Microsoft's real motivation for supporting HD DVD is to prevent either format from prevailing quickly, and delaying any resolution of the format war in favor of downloading high definition content?

Like he's going to own up to that.

One thing they want to make sure is that Blu-Ray doesn't take hold, because if it does, it has big implications for the console market, not just in this generation but the next one as well.

But it was Gates who was quoted as saying (and it's been repeated several times by other MS people, IIRC) that these will probably be the last optical formats and that neither will reign as long as DVD.

Hmm, 640k RAM anyone?

Talkstr8t's response makes me recall the line, me think thou doth protest too much.

All is apparently not well in the blu camp and Talk is worried. Makes me think the blu companies have definitely started applying the pressure or they'll go neutral. Not a good CES for blu by any stretch.

Crimsont I tend to agree with your comment.When the pressure is on some people can tend to grab at straws to compliment their argument.
I see people such as paidgeek for bluray doing it professionally here and respect his comments.Talk is all over the place.Crimsont your line is perfect [me think thou doth protest too much] it cracked me up --so apt. :)

Hold the phone.

Is this correct? When BR insiders had stated that there's not yet a timetable for BD-Live, as there is for BD-Video 1.1, that actually meant there simply is no timetable at all????

I say again: Wow.

Sooo ... BD-Live is optional and may never be supported? Wow ... yah ... that'll get used by the studios. :p

That said, I can't imagine they wouldn't put some effort into making it at least a de facto standard ... especially if the networking/interactivity components of HDi take off.

Wow, just wow. It amazes me how people are tending to view CES. Why can't people accept that Amir felt compelled to post/clarify about CES, and Talk responded to Amirs talking points. Why is everything so "personal" around here?

Look, you either believe Amir or you don't. You either believe Talk or you don't. I've seen the reaction from CES, and I know what I think. I also think a lot of people need to take a deep breath, and re-assess why they are supporting one format or the other. Really boil it down to what you want out of a HD optical disc format, and then go from there.

One thing they want to make sure is that Blu-Ray doesn't take hold, because if it does, it has big implications for the console market, not just in this generation but the next one as well.

But it was Gates who was quoted as saying (and it's been repeated several times by other MS people, IIRC) that these will probably be the last optical formats and that neither will reign as long as DVD.


Whenever I hear industrials pitching VOD over physical formats, I really wonder if these people really know the real world.

I have a 14 MB ADSL2+ connection on a good day. And maybe - just maybe - we could have fiber optics broadband beginning to be sold to consumers by the end of the year. That's great, but I'm fortunate to live in a large city (Paris). And if we exclude the high tech capitals in the world and possibly some chunks of Japan and Scandinavia, how many people are out there with less than stellar download speeds? Should we count the number of people living in small towns or in the countryside, in less advanced countries and in the emerging world?

I don't think that the number of households with ultrabroadband in the planet will be very significant before 2020 at least. And there lies the value of the optical disc. Whether you live in Minnesota, Mexico City or Sydney, you can enjoy the content immediately, and not having to wait for hours or days before the download ends.

I might be wrong, but I think that, right now, the main financial interest for MSFT to back HD-DVD, is to get volume licensing on VC-1 (and related software) and also to build the foundations and the reputation for further A/V codecs and download protocols. But as the codec is present on both platforms, they will still have significant returns even if Blu-ray wins.

Of course, had HD-DVD prevailed, they would have also benefitted from HDi licensing. But if HD-DVD dies, it's only one of their hundreds of product lines that wouldn't bear fruits. On the MSFT scale, that's pretty insignificant.

Crimsont I tend to agree with your comment.When the pressure is on some people can tend to grab at straws to compliment their argument.
I see people such as paidgeek for bluray doing it professionally here and respect his comments.Talk is all over the place.Crimsont your line is perfect [me think thou doth protest too much] it cracked me up --so apt. :)
Hehe I thought exactly the same thing when Peter Moore and Chris Satchell (two senior Microsoft executives) made some very immature remarks at CES saying PS3's online service for the newly-launched console was a "disaster" and said the company lacks the talent and the "DNA" to ever deliver a suitable online console service for consumers.
"It's going to take [Sony] a couple of years to get up to speed on this, and I'm not sure that they necessarily have the talent, or it's built into who they are as a company," Moore said.

Slightly off topic here but still this format battle plays a big role in the console world as stated on this thread earlier. After hearing what these Microsoft guys said I realised they are actually scared as well. The console war is not all based on what the online service is like. PS3 and Blu-Ray, together and on their own have a lot going for them. They both can only go up from here on in. I can't say the same for HD-DVD sorry. The stats don't look too good unfortunately. Xbox 360 will keep them afloat for a while maybe, untill Microsoft release a Blu-Ray addon for the 360.

Well Gates probably has a T3 line in his home. Same for the other execs. touting downloads.

But do they themselves bother watching a lot of those XBL HD downloads themselves, if they're really the videophiles they claim to be? You know, the ones which are just a fraction fo the bitrates of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? On their Sony Rubys and other expensive gear?

MS has been desperate to find new revenue drivers beyone Windows and Office for years. They have their eggs in a lot of baskets but so far, they haven't had a big hit elsewhere. So you bet they care about winning with VC-1 and HDi. Or at least, making sure nobody else gets a big win, like iPod or something.

Wow Talkstr8t... it's snarky attitudes like that, and a complete dismissal of anything positive for HD-DVD that actually drives folks like me away from your format. Amir may say things you do not agree with, but he is level headed, at least. You seem like a pretty angry and defensive person on all of these points.

Sure, Blu Ray had a strong title/content showing at CES... but to dismiss all the new HD-DVD CE vendors as non-news... or to dismiss the Chinese vendors as insignificant when DVD became popular in America on the cheap Wal Mart players... it shows that you are going to spin every positive as a negative with your competition, even if it's not true.

The first guy to step up to the plate and say "Yeah, there are some good movies coming out for Blu Ray this year" from the HD camp, or "Slick move getting a consumer-priced player on the market," from the BD side gets kudos from me... I assume there is no middle ground here for you? If not, then everything you say is so much hot air to me.


edit: Sell me on your format by being positive, not pissing on your competition. You attract flies with honey.

The more I read of his comments, the more he sounds like what Sony is personafied as to many. A company that pushes itself forward by disparaging others, putting negative spin on anything released by the competition, and stating 'rumors' or 'speculation' as if it was pure fact.

Microsoft could easily poll every person who has registered their Xbox-360 Add on via email or postcard with 2 questions: (1) Will you use your Xbox 360 to watch HD-DVD movies and (2) If so, how many HD-DVD titles do you plan on purchasing this year?. Then they could release a survey that says they polled 90,000 people and 100% of them said they'd use the Xbox 360 w/ the Add-On.

It's these deceptive tactics that just push me away from the format. I know I'd like some titles on Blu-Ray ... the content is surely there ... but ... I have this little problem with forking over money to people who lie and are deceitful. It just turns me off the format.

Frankly, it's gotten to the point where I'm just like, "Wow ... " and don't know what else to say. I haven't been here very long with regards to this whole HD-DVD/Blu-Ray thing, but I really feel sorry for those that are 'newer' to it than I am and take some of these posts as fact when they are just speculation at best and disparagement at worst. :(

I really, really try to stay format neutral but have to admit I get very turned off by Talkstr8t 's little rants. He obviously has a chip on his shoulder toward MS which makes it difficult to accept many of his counter points. As someone stated earlier it makes him appear worried and looking over his shoulder, which doesn't do Blu-ray's cause any favors.

Personally I saw CES as basically maintaining the status quo with maybe a slight gain for HD DVD .

Disclaimer: I own a Toshiba A1 and a PS3.

Yup, good counters, Talk.

I reckon that Amir's comments re the great HD-DVD showing are either plain wrong (as in misinformation) or he has been misguided by an elaborate conspiracy which keeps the bad news away from his ears.

If anyone thinks that CES 2007 was great for HD-dvd, please buy the most expensive hd-dvd player you can and start loading up on titles pronto. No point waiting for the inevitability that is HD's march to victory.

Also, some Toshiba stock couldn't hurt.

Come on guys, CES 2006 was good for hd-dvd (better than expected by far) but 2007 was almost a death knell. I say this as someone who owns the add-on and doesnt want to see his investment go to waste.

My 2c

Speaking of stock, thanks to whoever suggested buying Sony ... I made a nice penny on those puts I bought in just a couple of days. ;)

Wow, just wow. It amazes me how people are tending to view CES. Why can't people accept that Amir felt compelled to post/clarify about CES, and Talk responded to Amirs talking points. Why is everything so "personal" around here?

Look, you either believe Amir or you don't. You either believe Talk or you don't. I've seen the reaction from CES, and I know what I think. I also think a lot of people need to take a deep breath, and re-assess why they are supporting one format or the other. Really boil it down to what you want out of a HD optical disc format, and then go from there.

Didn't see any new facts or a real shift in BR camps current situation. in Talks reaction. Only DownTalk about HD DVD news.

Talks reaction is just blowing smoke to hide the fact that BR is still trying to catch up where HD DVD shows a steady but slow progess in developments.
Apart from a few date stamps on releases (and none at all for hardware!) there wasn't anything significant news at all for BR.

It's clear that BR camps strategy is about marketing HD DVD out of excistence.
It is all they can do at the moment.

It might succeed and if that happens it's entirly to blame on the HD DVD camp not doing the same.

I have to admit, Talkstr8t's post seemed rather hostile and unprofessional. Perhaps I should say, it seemed very Sony.
To be honest, I don't think CES was very good to either format. I didn't see any real news in the way of new cheaper BD players, just as I didn't see any real news along the title front for HD. I'm beginning to wonder, is both sides are trying to fail. I want more High def movies. HD doesn't seem to want to put them out, so, should I buy into Blu-ray? I'ld like to, but they have made it clear they don't want my money. I either have to buy a mediocre $1000 player that will probably be obsolete by the end of the year, or I have to buy a toy to watch the movies. Neither option is acceptable. If you cannot convince me, an early adopter, you certainly won't convince J6P. I'll probably ust go bacvk to buying DVDs, so when HD decides to get around to putting titles out, I'll already have the movie and won't double dip-same for BD. I'm really beginning to think both sides deserve to fail. You are both heading in that direction. Perhaps you will prove me wrong, but I suspect not.
J

Is it wise for anyone to select an A/V format based on an emotional reaction to what people are posting on this forum?

If HD DVD shifted toward full studio support tomorrow, and a bunch of the Japanese CE announced they intended to make HD DVD players, that would change the tide and I would have to consider going HD DVD.

The facts of the situation dictate my choices, not the personalities involved or an emotional reaction to what they are saying at any one moment.

Gary

The more I read of his comments, the more he sounds like what Sony is personafied as to many. A company that pushes itself forward by disparaging others, putting negative spin on anything released by the competition, and stating 'rumors' or 'speculation' as if it was pure fact.

Funny that is exactly how Microsoft if viewed by many people. "putting negative spin on anything released by the competition, and stating 'rumors' or 'speculation' as if it was pure fact" has been the "modus operindi" for them for years.

b2b

Hmm, Hitachi showing 200GB BD-ROM discs playing back on current hardware (???????????) seems somewhat significant to me.
Spin, spin spin. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

Note: Confused ?'s mine. 200gb on Current hardware? Playing back? :rolleyes:
Ok I will bite, what current hardware, and what do you mean by playing back . Was your next sentence about spin referring to the previous one? Saved me some typing. For someone with the name Talkstr8t, it's funny how your statements seem like a dryer at the laundromat.

BD has been guilty of outright falsehoods in addition to the spin that both sides do.

Wow look at all these new posters here out to denounce BD.

Wow look at all these new posters here out to denounce BD.
Yeah, the content by people with thousands of posts are of much higher quality :D
BTW, attack my post count (small) or my epeen size (small) or my real peen size (small) all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the questions posted are still unanswered :)

HD DVD seems to be letting the new hot releases slide and that's hurting them a bit. Meanwhile BD seems to think if they declare HD DVD dead enough times it will simply go away.

But according to eProductWars (http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/) it looks like BD disc sales are now catching up and things are now about even. So unless something interesting happens soon this may be a long war.

I'd go and join the format-neutral thread where people are nicer to each other but it's boring over there. ;)

- Tom

Note: Confused ?'s mine. 200gb on Current hardware? Playing back? :rolleyes:
Ok I will bite, what current hardware, and what do you mean by playing back . Was your next sentence about spin referring to the previous one? Saved me some typing. For someone with the name Talkstr8t, it's funny how your statements seem like a dryer at the laundromat.

I love how when a BD insider states a fact, no one believes him, but when a HD DVD insider states gives an opinion everybody decides it is a fact.

Maxpower1987
New Member

Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: London, UK
Posts: 1

I love how when a BD insider states a fact, no one believes him, but when a HD DVD insider states gives an opinion everybody decides it is a fact.

You joined to post THAT ?!?

You joined to post THAT ?!?

No I joined because so many of our BD forum members have been banned so I had to speak up somehow.

I love how when a BD insider states a fact, no one believes him, but when a HD DVD insider states gives an opinion everybody decides it is a fact.
Oh don't worry, I don't trust either sides insiders. Everyone spins. I just love to pick on the so called facts. It just so happens that a lot of these facts so far are from ... Btw, tell me how the quote about 200gb Bd playing on current hardware is fact :o Let the statement qualification games begin ...

HD DVD seems to be letting the new hot releases slide and that's hurting them a bit. Meanwhile BD seems to think if they declare HD DVD dead enough times it will simply go away.

But according to eProductWars (http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/) it looks like BD disc sales are now catching up and things are now about even. So unless something interesting happens soon this may be a long war.

On Dec 20, the gap between HD DVD and BD sales ranking was 2x (~1500 to ~3000).

Is there a reason to believe the BD rise will stop dead? All those CES announcements, and the forthcoming Warner catchup have yet to go pre-order on Amazon.

Gary

Oh don't worry, I don't trust either sides insiders. Everyone spins. I just love to pick on the so called facts. It just so happens that a lot of these facts so far are from ... Btw, tell me how the quote about 200gb Bd playing on current hardware is fact :o Let the statement qualification games begin ...

If a BD insider who was at CES says that current players were playing back a BD200, then it is a fact, if he says,'I think they could play the BD200 on current players', it is an opinion.

Is it wise for anyone to select an A/V format based on an emotional reaction to what people are posting on this forum?

If HD DVD shifted toward full studio support tomorrow, and a bunch of the Japanese CE announced they intended to make HD DVD players, that would change the tide and I would have to consider going HD DVD.

The facts of the situation dictate my choices, not the personalities involved or an emotional reaction to what they are saying at any one moment.

Gary

Full studio support.....hmmm.....Not that you would go HD-DVD, but you'd consider it. That's pretty good. It also illustrates your point. We are influenced by the posts on this forum.

For me it comes down to this. On one side I see insiders focused on the customer and soliciting feedback on what we feel is important. I see them working hard to deliver the things we care about. I see them delivering products that are feature rich, as opposed to stripped down. I see them trying to drive down the cost of their solution so more people can afford it. I see consistently strong reviews for their content. Does Amir present his side of the story, sure he does. I don't expect him to issue a CES report about the advances of Blu-Ray. But he presents his side of the story in a professional manner.

On the other side I see little to no interest in our feedback. I see practices of deceptive marketing with store demo clips showing features that no BD player shipping has. I see insiders trying to redefine a hardware feature like PiP. I see a roll out plan based on planned obsolence and churning the customer as they trickle out the features. I see them bemoaning low cost players as a terrible thing, terrible for who? And when they present their side of the story it's the way they do it that turns so many people off. It's essentially a mixture of condescension and anger.

I know how the forum influences me. I want to support companies that treat me like a valued customer, not a sucker.

Nice barrage of of statements, blind opinions, and attacks we have going on here in the last couple pages. Reminds me of when two heavyweight boxers are going at it and right when one boxer begins to win the other simply neutralizes the fight by turning it into a hug fest... Or in exteme cases bites an ear off the winning opponent. Wake me up when we get back to trying to appeal to reason. :)

If a BD insider who was at CES says that current players were playing back a BD200, then it is a fact, if he says,'I think they could play the BD200 on current players', it is an opinion.

Well, someone stating something doesn't actually make it a fact ;) If we saw this feat with our own eyes and independently verified it then we have something to talk about. Need I remind you of the LG "player" shenanigans at CES.

If a BD insider who was at CES says that current players were playing back a BD200, then it is a fact, if he says,'I think they could play the BD200 on current players', it is an opinion.
Uhm, that is where the question about what he meant by current player and playing back comes in. E.g What current player is this so that I can go buy it and be future proofed, and playing back what, because if I know what piece of news the post was referring to, I certainly did not see anything being played back. Of course I could be wrong, so take it FWIW.

Edit: Btw, had to toss this in, I'm a video game company insider, and I say (not think) that the PS3 and Xbox360 are going to be merged into the PX360 next week. Do you take that as a fact?

Full studio support.....hmmm.....Not that you would go HD-DVD, but you'd consider it. That's pretty good. It also illustrates your point. We are influenced by the posts on this forum.

lol, that was comedy. Some of the bias in these forums is mind-boggling; it's like people's children's future depends on the success of their format of choice.

For me it comes down to this. On one side I see insiders focused on the customer and soliciting feedback on what we feel is important. I see them working hard to deliver the things we care about. I see them delivering products that are feature rich, as opposed to stripped down. I see them trying to drive down the cost of their solution so more people can afford it. I see consistently strong reviews for their content. Does Amir present his side of the story, sure he does. I don't expect him to issue a CES report about the advances of Blu-Ray. But he presents his side of the story in a professional manner.

On the other side I see little to no interest in our feedback. I see practices of deceptive marketing with store demo clips showing features that no BD player shipping has. I see insiders trying to redefine a hardware feature like PiP. I see a roll out plan based on planned obsolence and churning the customer as they trickle out the features. I see them bemoaning low cost players as a terrible thing, terrible for who? And when they present their side of the story it's the way they do it that turns so many people off. It's essentially a mixture of condescension and anger.

I know how the forum influences me. I want to support companies that treet me like a valued customer, not a sucker.

Nicely put (my emphasis with spelling mod).

Well, someone stating something doesn't actually make it a fact ;) If we saw this feat with our own eyes and independently verified it then we have something to talk about. Need I remind you of the LG "player" shenanigans at CES.

What I am trying to get across is the double standards that I have witnessed, incidentally the same ones that made me leave the peace and relative quiet of the BD forum. If Amir had said he saw the TL51 playing back on current hardware, we would just accept it, I would in any case, but Talk says he has seen a BD200 playing on current hardware, people challenge him.

What I am trying to get across is the double standards that I have witnessed, incidentally the same ones that made me leave the peace and relative quiet of the BD forum. If Amir had said he saw the TL51 playing back on current hardware, we would just accept it, I would in any case, but Talk says he has seen a BD200 playing on current hardware, people challenge him.

Well, that's the point, Amir doesn't make such assertions so we don't have to wonder. Frankly, taking any person's statement with regard to anything without independent verification is a recipe for trouble. Further, in this case, given the BD propaganda track record, the first reaction of most people is skepticism and rightfully so.

Well, that's the point, Amir doesn't make such assertions so we don't have to wonder. Frankly, taking any person's statement with regard to anything without independent verification is a recipe for trouble.

Really, he doesn't, science fiction eh, which may I remind you wasn't even an assertion about his chosen format; lots of people just accepted that, well pretty much everybody. You are right about independent verification, but at the moment I don't know that many people that went to CES.

What I am trying to get across is the double standards that I have witnessed, incidentally the same ones that made me leave the peace and relative quiet of the BD forum. If Amir had said he saw the TL51 playing back on current hardware, we would just accept it, I would in any case, but Talk says he has seen a BD200 playing on current hardware, people challenge him.
This whole tangent about what I would do is off-topic and irrelevant since you don't know me (as evidenced by my low post count), but unfortunately up to this point you still haven't caught the jist of my post so let me spell it out. I am asking Talk for a clarification on what he said, not whether he saw something or not. I am sure he saw something that might possibly make what he said technically correct from his point of view, but I am questioning his representation of these facts.

I have a question for Amir that I will post here rather than in the Insider's thread because of the nature of the question.

Perhaps I missed it, but have you responded to Talk's allegation that Microsoft's real motivation for supporting HD DVD is to prevent either format from prevailing quickly, and delaying any resolution of the format war in favor of downloading high definition content?
I have answered that question many times on this forum and happy to do so again.

Let me start by saying that looking from outside, I can see why people make that assertion. But if one looks at our company and what businesses we are in, it should make sense why the above is not true. And that we have a genuine interest in optical HD business. But it does not solely describe us and that can confuse people.

Here is the situation. We live in an era of internet. We live in an era where the PC is finally recognized by many as a valid entertainment device (we won a Technical Emmy award last week precisely for this reason, voted in by the who is who of the traditional broadcast industry). Some 80% of the retail PCs ship with Media Center Edition of Windows. Yes, yes, not all are used for video and such, but the sockets are there, and will be easier and easier to target them. And many are used for music and photos.

At the same time, HD optical formats come pretty late in the cycle. It has taken some 6 years to get them off the ground. Some of the major studios did not believe in HD as they were enjoying the growth of DVD (kudos to those like Warner who predicted that the DVD ride would come to an end and pushed and pushed others including us). And no matter how much I love HD DVD, there is a risk that extra resolution and interactivity will not matter to good portion of the population who considers compromised audio quality just fine to get convenience.

At the same time, we see growth of broadband. At my house, Comcast surprised the heck out of me by providing for free, this turbo boost thing where if you do a download, it boosts your data rate to some 8+ mbit/sec. This is the opposite of them restricting continuous use. In Japan, people are trying to figure out what to do with FTTH (Fiber to the home) as they have more bandwidth than applications right now.

Then you look the power of the PC, with its built-in networking and amazing amount of storage. We now have vertical recording hard disks clocking at 750 gigabytes. Before either HD optical format becomes commonplace, we are easily talking about a terabyte or more storage on the PC, dying to get some movies on it as nothing else will fill it.

Where does this leave us with optical HD format? Well, we are not going to claim to have a better crystal ball than the next guy on any of this :). So we have decided to invest in it, while we also invest in the other ways of delivering content. So we do HD downloads to Xbox 360. And see the dynamics there being different where LionsGate gives us content for it, whereas they have not yet for HD DVD. And see very positive reaction to new service.

My personal point of view is that our investment in HD DVD is essential because it builds on a proven business model: consumers love DVD’s ease of use and content owners love selling it to them. HD optical also has the opportunity to expand our PC and Xbox business and drives people to upgrade their systems to take advantage of the new capabilities of the format.

At the same time, it would be foolish to ignore the other trends and as such, we must invest in them appropriately. On my team about half the people are in HD DVD/VC-1 side, but the half is building the technology for digital distribution of content. I am fortunate enough to work for a company which can afford to do so, and gives me the opportunity to be active in two new areas.

It might come as a surprise to some, but Toshiba also thinks the same. Main reason being that they are a diversified company, leading the charge for example in hard disk technology (iPod would not be here without their innovation in building 1.8” hard disks). As such, they are not afraid of a future where hard disks get used instead of optical discs for delivery of digital content.

It is educational to look at the three core companies in BDA behind that format: Sony, Matsushita(Panasonic), and Philips. While these are powerful companies in their fields, they have not been able to broaden their business in an effective way into ways of digital content delivery. None makes any hard disks for example yet they have huge investments in optical format. For that reason, when they think of new distribution formats, they have no choice but to put most of their eggs in optical formats. So their strategy makes sense for them, and our strategy hopefully makes sense for us. And they are going to look more dedicated to optical formats than us because that is what they do. I hope though, that you agree that our dedication to HD DVD/VC-1 is no less than it is for them, even though it is a subset of what we do.

We have been very open with our thinking here, which triggers the type of question like one posed here. That is, when asked, we don’t say that HD DVD is forever and for everything. It can not be. As a technology company driving innovations in digital content distributions, I owe to you all to find an attractive alternative to optical media distribution. If technology can not bring more convenience to our customers in the form of eliminating the trip to the store, as it has already done for music, we don’t deserve to lead these businesses. We might fail at the magic, but try we must.

In my time at Microsoft, I have seen internet connections go from a 28K modem (and people saying we were stupid to believe in broadband,) to today, where most people don’t know what I am saying when I mention a “28K baud rate” modem (“what is baud?”). So while it is true that people overestimate the nature of change in the short term, and think broadband HD download will be here tomorrow, we also have to understand that we tend to underestimate the nature of change in the long term, and that it is only prudent that digital downloads at highest fidelities will come to us in reasonable number of years from now. So investment we must, or we might find ourselves, and our customers, at a road that narrows more and more every day with the freeway going the other way past us….

Really, he doesn't, science fiction eh, lots of people just accepted that, well pretty much everybody. You are right about independent verification, but at the moment I don't know that many people that went to CES.

What statement(s) are your referring to from Amir?

What statement(s) are your referring to from Amir?

That the BD50 is science fiction.

Sorry, wasn't around back then. Interesting, got a link?

Sorry, wasn't around back then. Interesting, got a link?

Have you seen my post count, it is lower than yours, but I will endeavour to find one.

Have you seen my post count, it is lower than yours, but I will endeavour to find one.

Thanks.

I have answered that question many times on this forum and happy to do so again.

Let me start by saying that looking from outside, I can see why people make that assertion. But if one looks at our company and what businesses we are in, it should make sense why the above is not true. And that we have a genuine interest in optical HD business. But it does not solely describe us and that can confuse people.

Here is the situation. We live in an era of internet. We live in an era where the PC is finally recognized by many as a valid entertainment device (we won a Technical Emmy award last week precisely for this reason, voted in by the who is who of the traditional broadcast industry). Some 80% of the retail PCs ship with Media Center Edition of Windows. Yes, yes, not all are used for video and such, but the sockets are there, and will be easier and easier to target them. And many are used for music and photos.

At the same time, HD optical formats come pretty late in the cycle. It has taken some 6 years to get them off the ground. Some of the major studios did not believe in HD as they were enjoying the growth of DVD (kudos to those like Warner who predicted that the DVD ride would come to an end and pushed and pushed others including us). And no matter how much I love HD DVD, there is a risk that extra resolution and interactivity will not matter to good portion of the population who considers compromised audio quality just fine to get convenience.

At the same time, we see growth of broadband. At my house, Comcast surprised the heck out of me by providing for free, this turbo boost thing where if you do a download, it boosts your data rate to some 8+ mbit/sec. This is the opposite of them restricting continuous use. In Japan, people are trying to figure out what to do with FTTH (Fiber to the home) as they have more bandwidth than applications right now.

Then you look the power of the PC, with its built-in networking and amazing amount of storage. We now have vertical recording hard disks clocking at 750 gigabytes. Before either HD optical format becomes commonplace, we are easily talking about a terabyte or more storage on the PC, dying to get some movies on it as nothing else will fill it.

Where does this leave us with optical HD format? Well, we are not going to claim to have a better crystal ball than the next guy on any of this :). So we have decided to invest in it, while we also invest in the other ways of delivering content. So we do HD downloads to Xbox 360. And see the dynamics there being different where LionsGate gives us content for it, whereas they have not yet for HD DVD. And see very positive reaction to new service.

My personal point of view is that our investment in HD DVD is essential because it builds on a proven business model: consumers love DVD’s ease of use and content owners love selling it to them. HD optical also has the opportunity to expand our PC and Xbox business and drives people to upgrade their systems to take advantage of the new capabilities of the format.

At the same time, it would be foolish to ignore the other trends and as such, we must invest in them appropriately. On my team about half the people are in HD DVD/VC-1 side, but the half is building the technology for digital distribution of content. I am fortunate enough to work for a company which can afford to do so, and gives me the opportunity to be active in two new areas.

It might come as a surprise to some, but Toshiba also thinks the same. Main reason being that they are a diversified company, leading the charge for example in hard disk technology (iPod would not be here without their innovation in building 1.8” hard disks). As such, they are not afraid of a future where hard disks get used instead of optical discs for delivery of digital content.

It is educational to look at the three core companies in BDA behind that format: Sony, Matsushita(Panasonic), and Philips. While these are powerful companies in their fields, they have not been able to broaden their business in an effective way into ways of digital content delivery. None makes any hard disks for example yet they have huge investments in optical format. For that reason, when they think of new distribution formats, they have no choice but to put most of their eggs in optical formats. So their strategy makes sense for them, and our strategy hopefully makes sense for us. And they are going to look more dedicated to optical formats than us because that is what they do. I hope though, that you agree that our dedication to HD DVD/VC-1 is no less than it is for them, even though it is a subset of what we do.

We have been very open with our thinking here, which triggers the type of question like one posed here. That is, when asked, we don’t say that HD DVD is forever and for everything. It can not be. As a technology company driving innovations in digital content distributions, I owe to you all to find an attractive alternative to optical media distribution. If technology can not bring more convenience to our customers in the form of eliminating the trip to the store, as it has already done for music, we don’t deserve to lead these businesses. We might fail at the magic, but try we must.

In my time at Microsoft, I have seen internet connections go from a 28K modem (and people saying we were stupid to believe in broadband,) to today, where most people don’t know what I am saying when I mention a “28K baud rate” modem (“what is baud?”). So while it is true that people overestimate the nature of change in the short term, and think broadband HD download will be here tomorrow, we also have to understand that we tend to underestimate the nature of change in the long term, and that it is only prudent that digital downloads at highest fidelities will come to us in reasonable number of years from now. So investment we must, or we might find ourselves, and our customers, at a road that narrows more and more every day with the freeway going the other way past us….

A very insightful post, I would just like to ask how distribution over the internet will work when only a small part of the population in the USA are going to be using FiOS. Does the rest of the USA/world have no hope in getting the next generation HD content. I say this because in the UK only 50% of the country are hooked up to cable, which is getting a speed boost to 50Mbit, while the other 50% are stuck on out-dated ADSL2+ lines which are maxing out at 10Mbit.

If a BD insider who was at CES says that current players were playing back a BD200, then it is a fact, if he says,'I think they could play the BD200 on current players', it is an opinion.

Talk, can you settle this for us and provide the details of the BD200 test? For example, what was the model of the players used for this test? Will this disc work on any other players besides this model?

Thanks for that very detailed response, Amir.

I personally am not looking forward to the day when downloading is the predominant mode of receiving high definition content, and posts by others here suggest that I am not alone in feeling that way.

Full studio support.....hmmm.....Not that you would go HD-DVD, but you'd consider it. That's pretty good. It also illustrates your point. We are influenced by the posts on this forum.


I said a shift TOWARD full studio support (not a demand for all). And I said I would HAVE to consider. So, it's a lot better than you are making out.

If people want to search back 18 months or so, they'll see my top three criteria. And they haven't changed:

- Full studio support. Formats are useless if content providers refuse to release content on them. We'd all be buying $200 WMV-HD decks if this wasn't the case.

- CE support. I like to select everything on a component by component basis. I choose what I consider the best VALUE. Price and value are very different concepts. CURRENTLY HD DVD offers me no choice of CE.

- Computer use. I'm a computer geek as well as an A/V enthusiast. Computers were my hobby as a young man. I made it a career. I think we can all agree that at this point the available burners are 100% Blu-ray, and the announcements see only a Toshiba 1x burner with no RW support for HD DVD.

I don't use anything but rewritables until the price of creating a coaster is reasonable. This was the case for CD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW.

I believe my current choice is completely consistent with my long stated criteria. And these criteria are totally selfish. They are what I care about for me. I don't care about whether the studios are paying more for discs, or the replicators must make new capital expenditures.

And in the end, I've played it safe. I've got a PS/3, which is always something a lot more than a BD player. It just happens to have turned out to be an extraordinary HD disc player. Lucky me.

Gary

It just happens to have turned out to be an extraordinary HD disc player. Lucky me.Gary

We get that you're happy with your PS3, but let's try to stick to reality. There's no internal scaler so no 720P output, there's no internal scaler so no DVD upconversion and it has black crush; extraordinary is a bit much, particularly at the pricepoint.

A very insightful post, I would just like to ask how distribution over the internet will work when only a small part of the population in the USA are going to be using FiOS. Does the rest of the USA/world have no hope in getting the next generation HD content. I say this because in the UK only 50% of the country are hooked up to cable, which is getting a speed boost to 50Mbit, while the other 50% are stuck on out-dated ADSL2+ lines which are maxing out at 10Mbit.
It is true that not everyone will have high-speed networks in the short to medium term. As such, there is a lot of investments by us and others in so called mesh networks and other P2P technologies where you can distribute content at a local level, as opposed to centralize. In these scenarios, as long as someone gets the movie and you have a high-speed path to them (e.g. next generation wireless), you can get content that way.

And of course, there is the current trickle technology where downloads happen in the background. One can do a lot with 10 mbit/sec while folks sleep :).

BTW, a lot of our research into mesh networks is going on in your backyard at MS Research in Cambridge, UK. :)

Thanks for that very detailed response, Amir.

I personally am not looking forward to the day when downloading is the predominant mode of receiving high definition content, and posts by others here suggest that I am not alone in feeling that way.
Did you mean to say "not" above?

It is true that not everyone will have high-speed networks in the short to medium term. As such, there is a lot of investments by us and others in so called mesh networks and other P2P technologies where you can distribute content at a local level, as opposed to centralize. In these scenarios, as long as someone gets the movie and you have a high-speed path to them (e.g. next generation wireless), you can get content that way.

And of course, there is the current trickle technology where downloads happen in the background. One can do a lot with 10 mbit/sec while folks sleep :).

Still, unless compression improves immensely, optical is the way to go given 30GB+ content for the foreseeable future.

Did you mean to say "not" above?

Yes, I meant to say "not."

Yes, I meant to say "not."
We are sidetracking this thread but would appreciate a brief reason why. If provide you with exactly the same experience as HD DVD, with menus and all, and exact same encoding, what would be wrong with it? Your post says you are not looking forward to that day, and I don't understand that.

Yes, I meant to say "not."

By the way, given that I'm in the third world and I pay like $80 for 1GB down I'm with you. It's a LOT easier buying HD DVDs from the US and having them shipped over rather than wait well over a week for downloads that I then have to increase HD capacity for since I'm paranoid and would have to RAID everything to ensure that it's secure (not to mention regular backups). Frankly, the only improvement I want to see over optical media is flash type devices due to risk of scratching. Other than that no complaints about optical media.

Of course, I'm not even getting into a system where there's region coding and I'm locked out of US content due to my IP <stares at MS>

It is true that not everyone will have high-speed networks in the short to medium term. As such, there is a lot of investments by us and others in so called mesh networks and other P2P technologies where you can distribute content at a local level, as opposed to centralize. In these scenarios, as long as someone gets the movie and you have a high-speed path to them (e.g. next generation wireless), you can get content that way.

And of course, there is the current trickle technology where downloads happen in the background. One can do a lot with 10 mbit/sec while folks sleep :).

I heard that P2P was going to be integrated into Vista a while ago, is this still true, and if it is, was it because your company was looking at this type of distribution long before HD DVD/BD were even in existence?

Yeah I know what you can do with 10Mbit, I am currently on the SuperJANET network that the UK universities use, I think my flat gets 100Mbit, and there are 5 rooms in my flat, 3 of which don't have computers :D.

If companies like At&t are going to making the investment in networks in the future, is that not worrying, as they have already proven themselves inadequate when i comes to building a futureproof network, I hear they are looking at FTTN instead of FiOS because of the marginal cost-savings of not having to recable part of their pre-existing network.

We are sidetracking this thread but would appreciate a brief reason why. If provide you with exactly the same experience as HD DVD, with menus and all, and exact same encoding, what would be wrong with it? Your post says you are not looking forward to that day, and I don't understand that.

I am not looking forward to it because I anticipate that there will be a very long period of time when the experience is not yet the same, but rather filled with a variety of problems. By the time the experience is truly the same, I'll probably not be around to enjoy it.

We get that you're happy with your PS3, but let's try to stick to reality. There's no internal scaler so no 720P output, there's no internal scaler so no DVD upconversion and it has black crush; extraordinary is a bit much, particularly at the pricepoint.

OK, so it's currently an utterly ordinary DVD player.

Scaling can be done in software as well as hardware. That story hasn't been fully written yet for the PS/3.

Gary

BTW, a lot of our research into mesh networks is going on in your backyard at MS Research in Cambridge, UK. :)

They tried to recruit one of my friends who goes to University of Cambridge, but he is a complete open source geek so he declined. I don't think I should repeat what he said to his professor that mentioned his name to them.

By the way, given that I'm in the third world and I pay like $80 for 1GB down I'm with you. It's a LOT easier buying HD DVDs from the US and having them shipped over rather than wait well over a week for downloads that I then have to increase HD capacity for since I'm paranoid and would have to RAID everything to ensure that it's secure (not to mention regular backups). Frankly, the only improvement I want to see over optical media is flash type devices due to risk of scratching. Other than that no complaints about optical media.

Of course, I'm not even getting into a system where there's region coding and I'm locked out of US content due to my IP <stares at MS>

The improvement I really do want to see is ultra high definition.

OK, astroturfer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

:rolleyes:

The improvement I really do want to see is ultra high definition.
And that is what excites me about digital downloads. We could do 4K downloads tomorrow. No waiting, no format war, no nothing. You can think it and then deploy it. And you all as consumers will vote for its success.

The improvement I really do want to see is ultra high definition.

But we need the displays and that's how many years out. Frankly, I hope we get to the whole sci-fi I can't tell the difference between reality and video quality before I die.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

I am not looking forward to it because I anticipate that there will be a very long period of time when the experience is not yet the same, but rather filled with a variety of problems. By the time the experience is truly the same, I'll probably not be around to enjoy it.
Ah, so you are predicting it won't be a good experience which is not what I asked. My question was whether you would adopt it if it worked as easily and nicely as DVD/HD DVD does. You are still against the concept? If not, give us time. We are not trying to sell you anything now :).

The improvement I really do want to see is ultra high definition.

Now we're talking! :D

At CES LG-Hitachi were showing off reading 100GB discs from a modified current drive. And their posters showed 4Kx2K home digital cinema as being one application.

So, the upgrade path for the next next gen is already clear.

Discs won't survive if people become totally satisfied with 1080p. Downloads will eventually take over.

Gary

And that is what excites me about digital downloads. We could do 4K downloads tomorrow. No waiting, no format war, no nothing. You can think it and then deploy it. And you all as consumers will vote for its success.

Can you elaborate on "We could"?

As far as downloading HD content goes, I simply would like a hardcopy. I like having movies on my shelf that I can browse, loan out, and transport around to play wherever I want. I like to feel as though I own something. A movie trapped in my player wouldn't be the same.

Now if I could download a movie, then burn it on to a disc, I'd have zero problems with the concept in general.

I'm not interested in downloaded movies either. I enjoy the trips to the store to buy my films. To talk with other film buffs that are there. I also prefer having the disks and artwork on some type of permanent medium. I have had to many harddrive failures over the years to trust my content to a computer. I don't want to burn my own disks but I am interested in having copies on a server for household distribution on my network.

I live in the country so high speed access is limited to satellite for me, which means slow downloads. I will probably never get high speed land lines.

I guess it boils down to having the pretty little disks and cases in my hands not on my screen. Plus, they look great on the bookshelf!

And that is what excites me about digital downloads. We could do 4K downloads tomorrow. No waiting, no format war, no nothing. You can think it and then deploy it. And you all as consumers will vote for its success.

You can't even match the bitrates of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and now you're talking about doing 4k tomorrow?

Forget about infrastructure just on the consumer end, not just pipes but storage.

How many companies are going to invest in the storage and bandwidth to serve up such high-density content?

Or is this going to be 4k movies at like 10 Mbps VC-1? :p

Ah, so you are predicting it won't be a good experience which is not what I asked. My question was whether you would adopt it if it worked as easily and nicely as DVD/HD DVD does. You are still against the concept? If not, give us time. We are not trying to sell you anything now :).

I have never previously been an early adopter on anything. However, with high definition DVDs I wasn't willing to wait. Life is too short. I don't like waiting.

And that is what excites me about digital downloads. We could do 4K downloads tomorrow. No waiting, no format war, no nothing. You can think it and then deploy it. And you all as consumers will vote for its success.

What would be the bitrates required for 4K given the constraint that you must achieve the same artifact quality?

Digital downloads will rule. And if people can get their mind around the idea that a download must occur, it will catch on fast.

Here's the idea that sells it

Scenario: A hot new release is due on May 22 (arbitrary date).

Disc: On the day, the store opens at 10:00am. You head down, and hope it is in stock. This is a newish format, not DVD, so it doesn't arrive everywhere on the day and date, despite being supposedly day and date. If you're lucky you get a disc, and you watch it that evening.

Download: 30 days before release, a locked copy starts to download to those who have pre-ordered it. At 12:00am on release day, you have it and can play it.

The download is inconvenient and makes you wait?!

Gary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Oh well, if you still don't want to address my questions thats fine. BTW, I know what astroturfing is, if you think I am one, you are welcome to :rolleyes: Unfortunately the probability of me being one according to the link you gave isn't that high, I actually only post when I see statements that are just out there in bizzaroland to question them, but I haven't actually espoused the ol why you should buy blah blah blah cause brand x is crap, so if I am a PR shill, I am doing a pretty bad job.

But it seems you haven't read the link I gave you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) :( e.g. Even if I am an astroturfer, you still haven't presented anything to answer my earlier questions ;)

Don't expect more posts in this reply by reply match going on since it is off topic, apology to the mods.

Can any HD DVD studio count on 100% of HD DVD players actually being connected to a network? Will that change their willingness to provide networked content? Of course not.
There's a huge difference between choosing not to use network support and not being able to use network support. But I'm sure you don't agree, since there's no guarantee that any BD player will ever be BD-Live capable.

I'm responding here in order to keep the Insider's thread less cluttered. This is in response to this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9441455&&#post9441455) post by Amir. This is not a "politically-correct" post; HD DVD fans probably won't like what I have to say. This is my personal opinion, not in any way to be construed as speaking for or representing the BDA's position.

So this frees you to act anonymously as BD attack dog, while offering whatever industry interest you work for, the benefit of plausible deniability. Got it; your purpose in being here is clear.

Yet, unlike virtually every other studio, their launch calendar looks very sparse. Why the change?

Good question.

And another CES came and went without any headway being made in terms of the very, very significant disadvantage HD DVD has in terms of available and promised content.

In terms of "family friendly" content, this is absolutely true.

If Universal is going to go neutral, they certainly aren't going to announce it at CES, especially as "chair of the US HD DVD group". If they're going to announce in order to save face for HD DVD they would do so at a less visible time. Doing so at CES would clearly immediately and irrevocably doom HD DVD.

A clever mix of pure speculation, combined with a reasonable assumption, but FUD nonetheless.

How many people are going to buy a low-priced-special HD DVD player from a brand they've never heard of when they already have grave concerns regarding the viability of the format? $299 wasted on a dying format may be less than $499 wasted, but it's still wasted.

Doesn't this depend on the price vector between an up-converting standard DVD player, and one which also offers HD-DVD playback at the time of release? How many cheap, Chinese manufactured DVD players vs. "name brand" CE units have been sold to date? In any event, both formats assume an HDTV in the playback environment, so assuming the purchase of a step-up piece beyond a disposable $79 unit doesn't seem unreasonable.

So in practical terms you've announced one fine new vendor, Onkyo (who is also a member of Blu-ray), who didn't publicly show product nor commit to a launch date.

Have they announced their intention to produce a BD player?

And then announcing that they don't support your interactivity layer, and then your employee Kevin Collins tellst he press that the DVD Forum might sue LG. Nice!

So enforcing consistency of interactive capability across platforms is a bad thing? Mmkay. Planned obsolescence would seem to be the driving philosophy of the BD camp. But that's OK, early adopters will get over it. They always do, right?

Compare this to one new model from Toshiba which breaks no ground whatsoever.

So feature-sets commensurate with different price-points are a bad thing. Gotcha.

Hmm, Hitachi showing 200GB BD-ROM discs playing back on current hardware seems somewhat significant to me.

How's all that interactive content going to work on "current hardware"?

The no-name Chinese and Taiwanese companies you added brings you to par with Blu-ray's Sony/Panasonic/Philips/LG/Sharp/Mitsubishi/Samsung/...?!? Wow. It sure doesn't look that way wondering the aisles at CES, Best Buy, or Circuit City.

And how many non-Sony stand-alones have been moved through these channels?
I think this war will ultimately be won or lost in the aisles of Wal Mart.

Uh, 1M Blu-ray players were sold in the last two months, over 5x the total number of HD DVD players. Isn't that where the momentum is?

Anecdotal evidence appears to indicate that the sales momentum for this product is slowing significantly. If this is borne out by hard numbers over the next few months, won't this be troubling for the exclusive studios? Sony clearly hasn't delivered on the numbers timetable they promised last year. I'd be curious to see precisely how the PS3 survey question on which you've apparently based the oft-repeated "80%" figure, was worded.

Or Universal's Kornblau could get fired tomorrow and they could drop their exclusive HD DVD status.

At this point, speculative musings by both sides are really indistinguishable from those regarding frogs, and wings, aren't they?

Yes, trust Microsoft to design your hardware for you. We've seen how well that's worked for the PDA, tablet and micro-PC vendors.
Let's see, if I own an Xbox 360 it's $199 for HD DVD; if I own a PS3 it's $0 for Blu-ray.

Who has the gaming software momentum in the console war? Sony exclusives have been evaporating like rain water in a shallow desert pool.

I think you play the role of "bad cop" advocacy for the BD format quite well, but perhaps I could be forgiven my cynicism in believing that anonymity of interest representation hardly offers any increased credibility over those who by necessity adopt a more conservative stance, as they candidly post their industry affiliation in every exchange.

You can't even match the bitrates of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and now you're talking about doing 4k tomorrow?
I meant tomorrow in ease of deployement. We don't have to fight a 4 year political war with a bunch of comapanies with different interest slowing things down.

Forget about infrastructure just on the consumer end, not just pipes but storage.
Not a big deal really for some content. Think of computer generated shorts/animation. Easy to render at 4K and deliver electronically. File sizes will actually be smaller than full length movies.

How many companies are going to invest in the storage and bandwidth to serve up such high-density content?
If there is consumer demand, a lot. If there is not, then question is moot.

Or is this going to be 4k movies at like 10 Mbps VC-1? :p
You may be surprised. There is a lot of corrolation between pixels in 4K. So data rate does not go up linearly. And in case of clean content like the example above, the incremental rate is even less.

Again, please note that I am not saying people are going to deliver such content tomorrow. I made a statement that things that slow down optical HD such as format war, and slow standardization cycles, do not exist in the world of digital downloads. We can innovate fast and adapt quickly. If tomorrow someone deploys FTTH, we can have better than HD DVD/BD content available to them. That's all.

I have never previously been an early adopter on anything. However, with high definition DVDs I wasn't willing to wait. Life is too short. I don't like waiting.

Indeed. Being a gamer was my salvation here, as I already had a 360 and a PS3 was a foregone conclusion.

As much as I'd love to have a Toshiba HD-XA1 and Sony BDP-S1 (both gorgeous standalone players, though a bit on the large side) in my AV rack, I still wouldn't get a dedicated player at this stage.

What would be the bitrates required for 4K given the constraint that you must achieve the same artifact quality?

Digital downloads will rule. And if people can get their mind around the idea that a download must occur, it will catch on fast.

Here's the idea that sells it

Scenario: A hot new release is due on May 22 (arbitrary date).

Disc: On the day, the store opens at 10:00am. You head down, and hope it is in stock. This is a newish format, not DVD, so it doesn't arrive everywhere on the day and date, despite being supposedly day and date. If you're lucky you get a disc, and you watch it that evening.

Download: 30 days before release, a locked copy starts to download to those who have pre-ordered it. At 12:00am on release day, you have it and can play it.

The download is inconvenient and makes you wait?!

Gary

I remember when the jump happened from 300bps to 1200 bps. Do you think we'll always be stuck at <10Mbps at the home?

The Internet interconnect points have already been deploying 10Gbps for at least a couple of years now. They're clamoring for 100Gbps to be standardized so they can start buying and deploying those links. The pipes continue to get bigger in the core and they will continue to get bigger at the edge as well.

I remember when the jump happened from 300bps to 1200 bps. Do you think we'll always be stuck at <10Mbps at the home?


Hmmm, kinda of dates us, doesn't it? :D

Yeah, I started at 300bps on a Commodore 64, and made a little name for myself writing commercial terminal software for that and the Commodore 128. Heck, it paid for my university education.

I wonder if anyone here will suddenly understand my handle now?

Gary

We live in an era of internet. We live in an era where the PC is finally recognized by many as a valid entertainment device...Amir,

I have been meaning to thank you for bringing to attention (last summer) MusicGiants hi def music download service. More recently they have started to offer 5.1 surround sound, 24bit/96 kHz WMA lossless (typical bitrate of 8.2 Mbps). Very convenient to order a 5.1 surround music album and have it ready to play an hour later. Yep, they have DRM and I use WMP 11 but I can live with that once I figure out to get more client playback locations on my home network.

I think down load is a valid option now for high definition surround lossless audio. But at my current cable modem download rates (and market size), HD movie download to local storage is likely 5 years away at least.

Thanks for the music :D

You may not deal with standardization issues for new optical formats.

But surely the studios would have to be wined and dined, various kinds of deals struck. Also new DRM and copy protection will be haggled over.

Plus you can see why studios aren't jumping on downloads right away. They have existing revenue sources to protect and clients like Wal Mart has a lot of clout.

The other reason is, it's much easier to measure how many optical players have been sold but it's not as easy to measure what percentage of households have good pipes and of those, which percentage have hardware good enough to decode and then of those, which have enough storage and then of those, which of those households have the PCs connected to a big screen.

A very insightful post, I would just like to ask how distribution over the internet will work when only a small part of the population in the USA are going to be using FiOS. Does the rest of the USA/world have no hope in getting the next generation HD content. I say this because in the UK only 50% of the country are hooked up to cable, which is getting a speed boost to 50Mbit, while the other 50% are stuck on out-dated ADSL2+ lines which are maxing out at 10Mbit.

In the US, Verizon's FIOS wont be the only option. AT&T is rolling out new fiber, not to the house like FIOS, but to the local demarc. It's still copper to the house, but apparently they can get a dramatic increase in performance for a relatively small cap-ex. If this is successful in the US i dont see why phone companies all over the world couldnt replicate what AT&T is doing.

We live in an era where the PC is finally recognized by many as a valid entertainment device

Announcements like Philips wireless HDMI could cause this to explode. The critical problem up to now was that PCs don't merge well into the HT/living room.

Now you can have a PC off where the PC is, and use it as a media server, without the cabling, noise, or other issues.

A new age dawns. Now get that darn MC out! Or 4K downloads. That would be acceptable too. :D

Gary

Hmmm, kinda of dates us, doesn't it? :D

Yeah, I started at 300bps on a Commodore 64, and made a little name for myself writing commercial terminal software for that and the Commodore 128. Heck, it paid for my university education.

I wonder if anyone here will suddenly understand my handle now?

Gary

Hey, very cool! I never used the Commodore 64 but the first computer I worked on in school was the Commodore PET followed by the Apple II and TRS-80. I think I remember hearing about your app.

A very insightful post, I would just like to ask how distribution over the internet will work when only a small part of the population in the USA are going to be using FiOS. Does the rest of the USA/world have no hope in getting the next generation HD content. I say this because in the UK only 50% of the country are hooked up to cable, which is getting a speed boost to 50Mbit, while the other 50% are stuck on out-dated ADSL2+ lines which are maxing out at 10Mbit.

Statewide video franchises are coming ...

http://news.com.com/FCC+vote+could+speed+up+telecom+TV/2100-1037_3-6144945.html

I expect better internet in the US in 5 years ....

In the US, Verizon's FIOS wont be the only option. AT&T is rolling out new fiber, not to the house like FIOS, but to the local demarc. It's still copper to the house, but apparently they can get a dramatic increase in performance for a relatively small cap-ex. If this is successful in the US i dont see why phone companies all over the world couldnt replicate what AT&T is doing.

AT&T U-verse: uverse.att.com.

Notice the top speed they're offering is 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up.

They're doing fiber on the cheap. They can only give you one HDTV channel at a time.

Wall Street and others are telling them to just do FTTP like Verizon because sooner or later, they will have to, in order to boost speeds and be competitive with cable.

But for now, U-verse is not a revolution.

What would be the bitrates required for 4K given the constraint that you must achieve the same artifact quality?
80 Mbps? Less? Anything is a SWAG at this point. As Amir says, there's more correlation at higher resolutions, so the bits per pixel you need to hit the same level of per-pixel quality is lower.

And we have lots of fruit yet to pick as far as compression efficiency optimization goes for VC-1. One of the nicest trends in IP video has been matching increasing bandwidth with increasingly efficient codecs.

My first real-time streaming web video was (circa 1997?) a pilot project for Deloitte & Touche, using a beta of the first version of RealVideo, targeting 19.2 Kbps modems. Now we can do real-time SD, HD downloads, and we can see 4K from here.

It's been a fun decade!

Verizon has the glass backbone everywhere around here in Southern California, but getting it to the MPOE is the hard part because they need to dig conduit, get permits, etc etc and that's time consuming and expensive. New development is mostly what's seen FIOS around here. On the web side, Verizon is being kinda annoying (filtering port 80, etc) so people don't use web servers (currently easily circumenvented by going to port 8080 or 81, etc), but that's neither here nor there.

I myself can't wait to kick Charter to the curb, though.

Wow, we have some real old timers on here. :D I started with 14.4k modem which was soon outdated by the 28.8 and faster. I do remember being real excited to see the first computers with ISDN at a nearby Best Buy though. :D

Amir,

I have been meaning to thank you for bringing to attention (last summer) MusicGiants hi def music download service. More recently they have started to offer 5.1 surround sound, 24bit/96 kHz WMA lossless (typical bitrate of 8.2 Mbps). Very convenient to order a 5.1 surround music album and have it ready to play an hour later. Yep, they have DRM and I use WMP 11 but I can live with that once I figure out to get more client playback locations on my home network.

I think down load is a valid option now for high definition surround lossless audio. But at my current cable modem download rates (and market size), HD movie download to local storage is likely 5 years away at least.

Thanks for the music :D
Oh, thank you so much. They have been a great partner. I am now pushing more companies to support lossless streaming in the home. Once we get that in our receivers, then we have even more freedom to enjoy that music.

Agree on your rough time frames for major deployement of HD downloads...

You may not deal with standardization issues for new optical formats.

But surely the studios would have to be wined and dined, various kinds of deals struck. Also new DRM and copy protection will be haggled over.
Seems like we have to do that for optical formats too :).

Plus you can see why studios aren't jumping on downloads right away. They have existing revenue sources to protect and clients like Wal Mart has a lot of clout.
This used to be very true. But over the last 9 months or so, their mindset has changed a lot. And I mean the biggest change I have seen in a decade. Doesn't mean they put out entire libraries out there tomorrow, but the ice is broken.

The other reason is, it's much easier to measure how many optical players have been sold but it's not as easy to measure what percentage of households have good pipes and of those, which percentage have hardware good enough to decode and then of those, which have enough storage and then of those, which of those households have the PCs connected to a big screen.
On the other hand, when we do deploy digital downloads, with user consent, we get amazing amount of useful data. Studios for the first time, can get real-time response from their end customers on their level of satisfaction, what they like to watch, enabling them to adjust pricing and other offers as time goes. Lots and lots of flexibility here...

Announcements like Philips wireless HDMI could cause this to explode. The critical problem up to now was that PCs don't merge well into the HT/living room.
Indeed, that was pretty cool. Alas, I think the price is too high. Hard to imagine people paying $400 for short distance wireless. But hopefully the price comes down.

LG's BH100 hybrid Blu-ray / HD DVD player unable to be sold sans HDi?

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/14/lgs-bh100-hybrid-blu-ray-hd-dvd-player-unable-to-be-sold-sans/

Wow, we have some real old timers on here.Some of us had to hand build our first modem (300 baud) out of Exar chips and some op amps. And then rig up an acoustic coupler. The servers were local RBBS bulletin boards written in MS Basic -- eventually compiled Basic.

Looking forward to optical fiber to my house -- and wireless :eek: HDMI inside!

Doesn't matter, nobody was going to pay $1300 for an LG box.

Indeed, that was pretty cool. Alas, I think the price is too high. Hard to imagine people paying $400 for short distance wireless. But hopefully the price comes down.

Hopefully nVidia and ATI were watching and build it into future cards! ;)

Gary

Indeed, that was pretty cool. Alas, I think the price is too high. Hard to imagine people paying $400 for short distance wireless. But hopefully the price comes down.

Would it be possible to use N standard wireless routers for A/V data transmission?

Would it be possible to use N standard wireless routers for A/V data transmission?

None of the wifi standards have enough bandwidth currently.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/sanyo-demos-whdmi-wireless-hd-projection-227101.php

The Sanyo official told us the system is capable transmitting 1080p video over 60 to 90 feet, probably true if it's indeed able to transmit and receive at 1.5Gbit/sec. as quoted. But the label on the exhibit said we were watching 720p video, so that gave us pause.

None of the wifi standards have enough bandwidth currently.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/sanyo-demos-whdmi-wireless-hd-projection-227101.php

The Sanyo official told us the system is capable transmitting 1080p video over 60 to 90 feet, probably true if it's indeed able to transmit and receive at 1.5Gbit/sec. as quoted. But the label on the exhibit said we were watching 720p video, so that gave us pause.

Wow, that is a lot of bandwidth!

Would it be possible to use N standard wireless routers for A/V data transmission?

Even N doesn't have enough bandwith for AV data transmission in raw uncompressed form to be output, assuming you HDMI (10Gbps IIRC).

Would it be possible to use N standard wireless routers for A/V data transmission?

Need something approaching 5Gbps to do HDMI fully. All of the other stuff is designed to be cheap soon. Wireless HDMI will remain relatively expensive.

Gary

Seems like we have to do that for optical formats too :).


This used to be very true. But over the last 9 months or so, their mindset has changed a lot. And I mean the biggest change I have seen in a decade. Doesn't mean they put out entire libraries out there tomorrow, but the ice is broken.


On the other hand, when we do deploy digital downloads, with user consent, we get amazing amount of useful data. Studios for the first time, can get real-time response from their end customers on their level of satisfaction, what they like to watch, enabling them to adjust pricing and other offers as time goes. Lots and lots of flexibility here...

Amir,

I am excited about HD DVD and about Vista, but alas I do not currently use MCE. There are a variety of reasons, but prominently is DRM. My current 3rd-party PVR software (running on XP) allows me to capture SD, OTA-HD, and unencrypted QAM SD/HD, and watch those files anywhere I like, be it on the main HTPC, client PC's, or even portables.. and all of this is very legal.

So while my excitement for Vista for one is the audio improvements, my excitement for HD DVD is portability of the higher fidelity video and audio. I can take that HD DVD disc in my hand and easily play it anywhere I have a capable player, just like I currently do with DVD's or my PVR recordings.

My concern about MCE is the same as my concern about digital downloads: DRM vs. portability. So when you say you would provide with digital downloads the same experience has having an HD DVD in-hand, please keep in mind the portability factor. Within Microsoft itself, we do not have to look very far to see confusing and limiting DRM implementations: Zune, Urge, Playsforsure, etc.

Some of us had to hand build our first modem (300 baud) out of Exar chips and some op amps. And then rig up an acoustic coupler. The servers were local RBBS bulletin boards written in MS Basic -- eventually compiled Basic.

Looking forward to optical fiber to my house -- and wireless :eek: HDMI inside!
I got in at 1200BPS, but my 1st modem had an acoustic coupler as well.

Ran my own BBS for a few years, using RenegadeBBS software... then the internet showed up to the public domain, and I lost my fire for it.

My concern about MCE is the same as my concern about digital downloads: DRM vs. portability. So when you say you would provide with digital downloads the same experience has having an HD DVD in-hand, please keep in mind the portability factor. Within Microsoft itself, we do not have to look very far to see confusing and limiting DRM implementations: Zune, Urge, Playsforsure, etc.
Oh I am :). We have quite far to go to bring ease of use to digital downloads. Indeed, this is one of the reasons we back HD DVD. Because it is easier to use. But give us time. DRM technology is still very new...

Would it be possible to use N standard wireless routers for A/V data transmission?
It would for comressed video transmission. So for many scenarios, home LAN is great.

The other solution is a cable replacement technology for short distance which does not replace the need for whole house distribution. Indeed, the high frequencies used for wireless HDMI, will not be able to go through walls and such.

It would for comressed video transmission. So for many scenarios, home LAN is great.

The other solution is a cable replacement technology for short distance which does not replace the need for whole house distribution. Indeed, the high frequencies used for wireless HDMI, will not be able to go through walls and such.

Correct me if I am wrong amir, but even by compressing the transmission (meaning decoded player output), you wouldn't be able to easily improve on anything more than the actual data rates that the encoding is done at correct (eg 15mbps VC-1/30Mbps MPEG2)?

How much compression do you think can be applied to such a signal (of course you could always reencode or just pass through the video to be decoded by some box at the output, but I mean in terms of something practical soon) ? Thanks.

Correct me if I am wrong amir, but even by compressing the transmission (meaning decoded player output), you wouldn't be able to easily improve on anything more than the actual data rates that the encoding is done at correct (eg 15mbps VC-1/30Mbps MPEG2)?

How much compression do you think can be applied to such a signal (of course you could always reencode or just pass through the video to be decoded by some box at the output, but I mean in terms of something practical soon) ? Thanks.
Sorry, I think I confused you :). I was not talking about compressing the HDMI signal. But rather, transmit it in its original form, and then decompressing in the display.

But you are right that those are the rough data rates for 1080p.

Sorry, I think I confused you :). I was not talking about compressing the HDMI signal. But rather, transmit it in its original form, and then decompressing in the display.

But you are right that those are the rough data rates for 1080p.

Thanks, got it ;)

If HD DVD shifted toward full studio support tomorrow, and a bunch of the Japanese CE announced they intended to make HD DVD players, that would change the tide and I would have to consider going HD DVD.

Why Japanese CE in particular?

And that is what excites me about digital downloads. We could do 4K downloads tomorrow. No waiting, no format war, no nothing. You can think it and then deploy it. And you all as consumers will vote for its success.

Amir, that makes no sense what so ever. Download or disk you still need a machine on site that can decode the content. An od stand alone device made for DL movie watching that only supports X won't magically start supporting Y. As for a PC, just because a new DL format came out my PC won't magically become much better. If it did I would still be using my ancient IBM PS2 model 30.


As for the question you asked earlier (why not excited about DL) you asked someone else.

1) DL will be even more lowest common denominator and dial up means that movies can't be HD

2) internet (and even more importantly high speed internet) is not available everywhere. For example we had a three day new years party at my sisters cottege. I brought some DVDs and so did some others. and she has a DVD player connected to the TV. On the other hand she does not have a phone line nor internet.

3) I am not interested in renting. DL can be to own, but I think it will end up being renting (DL for 5 days type of thing)

4) I don't want to have to go with a more expensive internet package (regular high speed is enough)

5) I like going to the store, picking up some disks then looking down saying "no that is way to many" then putting some back, picking up some others and doing that little dance until I have to leave the store.

6) not looking forward to having to wait for DL when I decide to buy something



more importantly

I am not willing to chance the movie equivalent of MP3 when the movie equivalent of SACD/DVD-A is here.

It would for comressed video transmission. So for many scenarios, home LAN is great.

The other solution is a cable replacement technology for short distance which does not replace the need for whole house distribution. Indeed, the high frequencies used for wireless HDMI, will not be able to go through walls and such.

Could that be a potential idea, have the player work more like a reader and transmitter, and the TV itself does all of the heavy lifting, sounds alright to me.

Why Japanese CE in particular?

What brand of CE products are in your home?

Why Japanese CE in particular?

Well, Samsung and LG too. Let's say traditional CE. Those with a good presence in Canada. Solid retail support. Good warrantee support. A history of making great products that I see and purchase.

Anybody new has to build up some trust. It doesn't get bought with a low price. In fact, that makes me suspicious. I've been burned too many times in my life chasing price, instead of seeking value.

Bottom line here: You wouldn't recommend people wait for these Chinese players rather than purchase an A2, right? Will they be better value? Should people wait?

Gary

Amir, that makes no sense what so ever. Download or disk you still need a machine on site that can decode the content.
Maybe you don't recall how efficient VC-1 is or how fast PCs have gotten with dual core now, going to multi-core.

As for a PC, just because a new DL format came out my PC won't magically become much better. If it did I would still be using my ancient IBM PS2 model 30.
Not sure how you can get into blu-ray with PS1 or PS2 either ;). If you are willing to buy a new machine to play these formats, why not upgrade your PC? Besides, PCs get upgraded every four years on the average. So time heals that nicely.

1) DL will be even more lowest common denominator and dial up means that movies can't be HD
Not really. We did HD downloads for Xbox 360.

2) internet (and even more importantly high speed internet) is not available everywhere. For example we had a three day new years party at my sisters cottege. I brought some DVDs and so did some others. and she has a DVD player connected to the TV. On the other hand she does not have a phone line nor internet.
This is why we are not saying digital downloads should be the exclusive technology here. But still, AACS allows burn to own. So you can download, create an HD DVD (or SD DVD) and take it with you.

3) I am not interested in renting. DL can be to own, but I think it will end up being renting (DL for 5 days type of thing)
No reason that has to be the case.

4) I don't want to have to go with a more expensive internet package (regular high speed is enough)
Yet you will buy more expensive BD discs? For the price one BD disc or so, you can have an entire month of high-speed internet.

5) I like going to the store, picking up some disks then looking down saying "no that is way to many" then putting some back, picking up some others and doing that little dance until I have to leave the store.
Fine, no one will stop selling optical media if there is demand for it. But seeing how record stores are closing doors, when digital downloads take off, same thing might happen there.

Besides, retailers want to do burn to own also. And it would not be far fetched to assume that they would let you do the same at home.

6) not looking forward to having to wait for DL when I decide to buy something
Digital downloads can be much faster than a trip to store.

I am not willing to chance the movie equivalent of MP3 when the movie equivalent of SACD/DVD-A is here.
That is not the scenario we are talking about. The scenario is the same experience as a full HD DVD. Same fidelity and same user interface.

Really, I am not here to push everyone to use digital downloads. But rather, have a balanced view that each can serve a part of the market effectiviely. Taking the extremes on either side makes no sense in this day and age.

If a BD insider who was at CES says that current players were playing back a BD200, then it is a fact, if he says,'I think they could play the BD200 on current players', it is an opinion.

So... how long have you followed this discussion in lurk mode, in order to say that?