Probably because Apple can make nearly that much for an iPod with much cheaper components.

But iPod sales are not hindered by lack of supply now.

The incredibly stupid, hobbled, and doomed to failure TV aka AppleTV maxes at 720p.

It seems to me the focus is entirely on iPod video users - which is tiny now. If they start selling downloadable 720p content like XBL, that could change. I suspect 720p is to keep the price down (lower cpu/gpu cost). Yet, I'd say if they were really committed to Blu-ray they could have made a box with Blu-ray drive & 1080p for $499. I bet that would have sold more than the Tosh players.

For all intents and purposes Dell & Apple are sitting out the format war.

No their model is different from packaged media. I think they described Apple TV as the "DVD player of the 21st century."

They are competing with packaged media, not promoting it. No doubt they will offer Blu-Ray drives at some point on Macs capable of both playing back BD-ROM and writing BD-Rs and BD-REs.

iTunes is trying to sell you downloads instead of or in addition to DVDs. As for 720p instead of 1080p, the downloads are actually 640x480 so there may be some scaling done on the box. That has more to do with infrastructure than CPU/GPU, both on the server end and on clients. After all, it only has a 40 GB disk and most people don't have hundreds of gigs to dedicate to video content. Remember iTunes targets a much broader demographic than HT geeks.

The other thing is, iTunes video downloads are for permanent ownership, not rentals. That is why Wal Mart and Target were said to be threatened by the advent of movie sales on iTunes. For that reason, the studios probably aren't ready to offer HD video downloads for purchase yet.

They are competing with packaged media, not promoting it.

Exactly. But all along BD supporters here claimed it was MS which which was doing this ....

With supporters like Apple BD doesn't need many enemies ..

With supporters like Apple BD doesn't need many enemies ..

And MS isn't competing with packaged media with the Xbox 360 download service?

Sony has announced similar intentions for the PS/3.

Gary

Amir,

Please PM me or post here who specifically said our encodes had to happen in two days. This makes absolutely no sense since the time line for the rest of the project allows the time required for customizing the encodes as necessary. If the encode can be done in a week that has always been perfectly acceptable. Are you making this stuff up? I work here and I suspect I would of heard about any two day encode mandates...

Paid,

Since some people are doubting the veracity of my statements regarding this topic, if it is OK with you, I will go ahead and respond here “on the record.”

For months, we have given Sony access to our latest VC-1 encoder plus training and support from key engineering team at Microsoft. During that time, competing studios (including BD exclusive ones like Disney) have published many titles on VC-1 including many on BD. Yet Sony has not committed to even a single title using VC-1. Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder. But your comment in this post, and the fact that your AVC encoder is slower than ours, throws out that theory, leaving us wondering what is still keeping you from using VC-1. As a technology supplier to you, we need better data to figure out why we are not earning your business.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we have incredible demand for our resources from the many studios we work with. Supporting you comes at a high cost to us and results in missed opportunity to get other high quality titles out from committed VC-1 studios.

So I have asked my team to contact their counterparts at your organization one last time to inquire exactly what projects you expect to use VC-1. Kindly note that if the answer is “continuing evaluation,” that we will not provide you with any additional support or updates of our software (which requires training on its usage) beyond this point.

I also trust that my obligation to your upper management in providing fair and ready availability of VC-1 technology support for BD has been met and I appreciate you communicating that as such to Tokyo (or I can do that). If your stance changes in the future, we might consider engaging with you again, should resources allow or that. And of course, we will continue to work with other BD studios just the same given past success with them.


Respectfully,

Grubert, please... Let's stop talking about individuals and focus on issues.

Okay, I'll focus on an issue:

Do you still claim that "Sony has a 2-day maximum encoding allowance for their titles"?

Okay, I'll focus on an issue:

Do you still claim that "Sony has a 2-day maximum encoding allowance for their titles"? His claim was he was told by a Sony official that was the policy.

It is quite possible that is not the practice inside Sony studios, as paidgeek is suggesting, but Amirm was still told that as an excuse for Sony to not move to VC-1.

As in" Sorry, VC-1 doesn't meet our needs, we have a policy of a two day encoding window for our workflow so we need a real time encoder like our MPEG-2 hardware. VC-1 is just too slow for our needs."

Amirm is stating what he was told was the policy in the past or recently. Paidgeek may know the actual practice is a lot more flexible than that. MAybe that is Sony's corporate goal, but at the encoding practitioner level, they have changed that to focus more on quality instead of time pressure.

Both could be telling the truth, suggest we let this one go. Please???

I read over the rules, and it says nothing about praising posters (only attacking them), so I will say this:

Grubert, you are my hero!

I'd also like to have Amir answer this question directly for himself. He was the one who made the claim and while his response was informative, it did not validate his claim.

I hope there isn't a limit to how many people you can have on your ignore list.

It seems the moderators deleted my summary of the back-and-forth between amir, dialog_gvf and paidgeek (even though it contained no attacks on any poster - only on the information), so let me rephrase in a bowdlerized manner.

amir said: "I said Sony has a 2-day maximum encoding allowance for their titles. In the past they used real-time MEPG-2 encoders and claimed that no software encoder could fit the bill since encoding and tuning would take more than 2 days."

This was refuted by dialog_gvf.

amir restated his claim.

paidgeek (who works at/for Sony) said amir was wrong, and asked him for the source of that information.

amir replied:

Paid,

Since some people are doubting the veracity of my statements regarding this topic, if it is OK with you, I will go ahead and respond here “on the record.”

For months, we have given Sony access to our latest VC-1 encoder plus training and support from key engineering team at Microsoft. During that time, competing studios (including BD exclusive ones like Disney) have published many titles on VC-1 including many on BD. Yet Sony has not committed to even a single title using VC-1. Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder. But your comment in this post, and the fact that your AVC encoder is slower than ours, throws out that theory, leaving us wondering what is still keeping you from using VC-1. As a technology supplier to you, we need better data to figure out why we are not earning your business.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we have incredible demand for our resources from the many studios we work with. Supporting you comes at a high cost to us and results in missed opportunity to get other high quality titles out from committed VC-1 studios.

So I have asked my team to contact their counterparts at your organization one last time to inquire exactly what projects you expect to use VC-1. Kindly note that if the answer is “continuing evaluation,” that we will not provide you with any additional support or updates of our software (which requires training on its usage) beyond this point.

I also trust that my obligation to your upper management in providing fair and ready availability of VC-1 technology support for BD has been met and I appreciate you communicating that as such to Tokyo (or I can do that). If your stance changes in the future, we might consider engaging with you again, should resources allow or that. And of course, we will continue to work with other BD studios just the same given past success with them.


Respectfully,

This is a red herring.

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:


1. Topic A is under discussion.
2. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
3. Topic A is abandoned.

In this case:

1. Current encoding time at Sony is under discussion.
2. The benefits of using VC-1 are introduced under the guise of being relevant to current encoding time at Sony (when VC-1 is actually not relevant to current encoding time at Sony).
3. Current encoding time at Sony is abandoned.

Anybody agree?

I'd also like to have Amir answer this question directly for himself. He was the one who made the claim and while his response was informative, it did not validate his claim.Please let it go and move on to other things. Amir did answer the question:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9578421&&#post9578421
Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder. But your comment in this post, and the fact that your AVC encoder is slower than ours, throws out that theory, leaving us wondering what is still keeping you from using VC-1.
It sure seems that Sony's responses as to why they would not use VC-1 versus what paidgeek has said has caused Amir to wonder if what they understood initially may not be correct as he so states above.

Asking for anything more is just bashing IMHO.

I'd also like to have Amir answer this question directly for himself. He was the one who made the claim and while his response was informative, it did not validate his claim.

I agree with this comment.

It seems the moderators deleted my summary of the back-and-forth between amir, dialog_gvf and gary (even though it contained no attacks on any poster - only on the information), so let me rephrase in a bowdlerized manner.

amir said: "I said Sony has a 2-day maximum encoding allowance for their titles. In the past they used real-time MEPG-2 encoders and claimed that no software encoder could fit the bill since encoding and tuning would take more than 2 days."

This was refuted by dialog_gvf.

amir restated his claim.

paidgeek (who works at/for Sony) said amir was wrong, and asked him for the source of that information.

amir replied:



This is a red herring.

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:


1. Topic A is under discussion.
2. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
3. Topic A is abandoned.

In this case:

1. Current encoding time at Sony is under discussion.
2. The benefits of using VC-1 are introduced under the guise of being relevant to encoding time at Sony (when VC-1 is actually not relevant to current encoding time at Sony).
3. Current encoding time at Sony is abandoned.

Anybody agree?

We at a different forum (I will PM you a link if you want one) forum saved your summary for posterity, don't worry Grubert, your legend will live on!

Other than that, I agree that the subject has been changed very subtly from the encoding time used by SPE, to the benefits of VC1 over AVC.

Why are you having this conversation in public?

I don't see why these business dealings should concern us. If Sony doesn't use VC-1, it's not our problem. Please don't put us in the middle of your disputes. :)

Hmm.. I'm all confused here.. Wasn't the discussion about someone claiming that Sony had a strict policy of never spending more than two days on an encode and that false information led to another opinion that Sony must be focusing on quantity of encodes vs. quality of encodes ??

Then the record was set straight by a Sony employee (MPEG2 encode times) and then somehow the discussion was turned to VC-1 ??

b2b

I agree that the subject has been changed very subtly from the encoding time used by SPE, to the benefits of VC1 over AVC.
It seems to me Amir did what any savvy business executive would do... turn the discussion into a possible business opportunity by promoting their VC-1 technology.

MS people (including a certain VP) are attacking Blu-ray from any angle, spreading FUD and doing things you wouldn't think people representing a multi-billion dollar company would do in public, and then they wonder WHY Sony is unwilling to use VC-1 as their codec?

Isn't it obvious??

Why are you having this conversation in public?

I don't see why these business dealings should concern us. If Sony doesn't use VC-1, it's not our problem. Please don't put us in the middle of your disputes. :)
Where in the world can we get such juicy glance into inner working of business dealing ;) After all, this is format battle thread. Battle it out, by all means. Keep such juicy info coming :)

Anybody agree?

I agree.

It seems the moderators deleted my summary
Perhaps because it is debating and is not allowed here? This thread needs a serious crackdown...

Why are you having this conversation in public?

I don't see why these business dealings should concern us. If Sony doesn't use VC-1, it's not our problem. Please don't put us in the middle of your disputes. :)

I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate for this thread.

It is a notch way above the normal level of importance of our mere mortal discussions. But, it is certainly a format battle issue.

I'll have to admit, my jaw is scraping the floor that we're being let in on it.

Gary

Perhaps because it is debating and is not allowed here? This thread needs a serious crackdown...

Sorry, are you saying the Format Battle thread shouldn't allow debating? :confused:

Gary

Hmm.. I'm all confused here.. Wasn't the discussion about someone claiming that Sony had a strict policy of never spending more than two days on an encode and that false information led to another opinion that Sony must be focusing on quantity of encodes vs. quality of encodes ??

Then the record was set straight by a Sony employee (MPEG2 encode times) and then somehow the discussion was turned to VC-1 ??

b2b

Well yes, you do seem confused. As I read this thread, I read that Amir said someone from Sony said that about the 2 days as an excuse to not commit to using VC-1 because it is software based and slower than the hardware based real time MPEG2 encoder Sony is currently using. Nothing more, nothing less.

The fact that paidgeek says they sometimes spend much more time than 2 days tell me that the 1) Prep and background work takes much more time than the relatively insignificant time spend running an automated encoding pass 2)
The people Amir was dealing with were blowing smoke 3) Speed of encoder is not that big a deal

It seems to me Amir did what any savvy business executive would do... turn the discussion into a possible business opportunity by promoting their VC-1 technology.

Or they can just pay an "independent" individual to promote their interests as has been alleged in the pay-for-Wiki-edit case. ;)

Or just give more laptops with HD-DVD drives to bloggers -- tech influencers. :D

Perhaps because it is debating and is not allowed here? This thread needs a serious crackdown...

This area, as well as all areas of AVS Forum is for the discussion, support, and debate on various areas of the audio video world.

-make sure your information is accurate; cite the facts on which you base your post: if it is your opinion, qualify it as such
-are you an industry insider? identify yourself as such and do not use AVS to bash your competition

b2b

Paid,

Since some people are doubting the veracity of my statements regarding this topic, if it is OK with you, I will go ahead and respond here “on the record.”

For months, we have given Sony access to our latest VC-1 encoder plus training and support from key engineering team at Microsoft. During that time, competing studios (including BD exclusive ones like Disney) have published many titles on VC-1 including many on BD. Yet Sony has not committed to even a single title using VC-1. Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder. But your comment in this post, and the fact that your AVC encoder is slower than ours, throws out that theory, leaving us wondering what is still keeping you from using VC-1. As a technology supplier to you, we need better data to figure out why we are not earning your business.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we have incredible demand for our resources from the many studios we work with. Supporting you comes at a high cost to us and results in missed opportunity to get other high quality titles out from committed VC-1 studios.

So I have asked my team to contact their counterparts at your organization one last time to inquire exactly what projects you expect to use VC-1. Kindly note that if the answer is “continuing evaluation,” that we will not provide you with any additional support or updates of our software (which requires training on its usage) beyond this point.

I also trust that my obligation to your upper management in providing fair and ready availability of VC-1 technology support for BD has been met and I appreciate you communicating that as such to Tokyo (or I can do that). If your stance changes in the future, we might consider engaging with you again, should resources allow or that. And of course, we will continue to work with other BD studios just the same given past success with them.


Respectfully,

I recommend we discuss this in more detail offline as we are still bound by an eval agreement. Public responses would also be potentially embarrasing and that is not good outcome for anyone. We are encoding for several studios, not just SPE, so your comments here would concern them as well. Please PM me with how you prefer to discuss.

I dont care how long it takes either format to encode movies, I just want them released... giveme giveme giveme more high def movies.... :D

Kosty,

I saw your post regarding Dances with Wolves. This actually ties into my catalog depth list. The MGM number on the 3.0 revision is too high. I found out that Sony sold off a bunch of the MGM catalog to Fox in May 2006. So by not following the IMDB numbers (for MGM only) in the 3.0 version of my list, I was double counting between Fox and MGM. If there are other changes that come up, I'll include the correction in a future version of the list.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6339508.html

Originally Posted by rdjam
Perhaps because it is debating and is not allowed here? This thread needs a serious crackdown...

Well to a member of any dictatorship, in this case hardware run by Toshiba, software by Microsoft, debate is indeed not allowed.

We at the BDA allow debate and free talk in any and all forms. :)

I found out that Sony sold off a bunch of the MGM catalog to Fox in May 2006.

They didn't sell anything. It's distribution, nothing more. MGM themselves still own the titles.

Well to a member of any dictatorship, in this case hardware run by Toshiba, software by Microsoft, debate is indeed not allowed.

We at the BDA allow debate and free talk in any and all forms. :)

You're a BDA insider? I didn't know that...can you elaborate?

I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate for this thread.

It is a notch way above the normal level of importance of our mere mortal discussions. But, it is certainly a format battle issue.

I'll have to admit, my jaw is scraping the floor that we're being let in on it.

Gary

Because in business there are times where diplomacy works better. And pure aggressiveness might just create the opposite results.

I'm only saying that using us as hostages in this "extreme" sales pitch isn't probably the best way to receive much love from Sony and to promote VC-1 among consumers. When somebody keep screaming to my ears to buy the stuff he's selling, my reaction would be to run away. :)

Because in business there are times where diplomacy works better. And pure aggressiveness might just create the opposite results.

I'm only saying that using us as hostages in this "extreme" sales pitch isn't probably the best way to receive much love from Sony and to promote VC-1 among consumers. When somebody keep screaming to my ears to buy the stuff he's selling, my reaction would be to run away. :)

The point of making it public is to try and get some of the zealots to petition paidgeek to get Sony to start using VC-1, call me cynical, but what other explanation is there.

More on Dances with Wolves.

We keep hearing about the bright beautiful future of Blu-Ray. Great audio, loads of extras, interactive content, high storage and high bandwidth titles that will be best of class. We just need to be patient.....

So coming March 13, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/Dances-With-Wolves-Blu-Ray/dp/B000MGB6MI/sr=8-9/qid=1169750974/ref=pd_bbs_sr_9/105-7482147-3317211?ie=UTF8&s=dvd

As is usually the case with BD, the reality is different than the promise. A four hour movie cut down to three hours. Encoded with AVC on BD-25 and carrying a $40 list price. No extras, no interactive content, 5GB less storage than HD-DVD titles (as are most BD titles) and of course bandwidth levels below the "limited" maximum of HD-DVD. With only 25 GB of storage space and a 3 hour length, the bandwidth will have to be lower than King Kong which is a 3 hour title on a 30GB disc.

Please tell me why you guys support BD again, because what you're getting doesn't match up with you're telling us you're going to get.

Note: To clarify, I believe that efficient codecs can give us great looking titles on smaller discs, however, BD supporters keep telling me this isn't ok.

More on Dances with Wolves.

We keep hearing about the bright beautiful future of Blu-Ray. Great audio, loads of extras, interactive content, high storage and high bandwidth titles that will be best of class. We just need to be patient.....

So coming March 13, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/Dances-With-Wolves-Blu-Ray/dp/B000MGB6MI/sr=8-9/qid=1169750974/ref=pd_bbs_sr_9/105-7482147-3317211?ie=UTF8&s=dvd

As is usually the case with BD, the reality is different than the promise. A four hour movie cut down to three hours. Encoded with AVC on BD-25 and carrying a $40 list price. No extras, no interactive content, 5GB less storage than HD-DVD titles (as are most BD titles) and of course bandwidth levels below the "limited" maximum of HD-DVD. With only 25 GB of storage space and a 3 hour length, the bandwidth will have to be lower than King Kong which is a 3 hour title on a 30GB disc.

Please tell me why you guys support BD again, because what you're getting doesn't match up with you're telling us you're going to get.

Note: To clarify, I believe that efficient codecs can give us great looking titles on smaller discs, however, BD supporters keep telling me this isn't ok.

So I take it you have never heard of double-dipping then.

The point of making it public is to try and get some of the zealots to petition paidgeek to get Sony to start using VC-1, call me cynical, but what other explanation is there. "zealots"? Are they the same people who want Sony to use VC-1 because they think VC-1 is "all that"? :cool:


fuad

More on Dances with Wolves.

We keep hearing about the bright beautiful future of Blu-Ray. Great audio, loads of extras, interactive content, high storage and high bandwidth titles that will be best of class. We just need to be patient.....

So coming March 13, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/Dances-With-Wolves-Blu-Ray/dp/B000MGB6MI/sr=8-9/qid=1169750974/ref=pd_bbs_sr_9/105-7482147-3317211?ie=UTF8&s=dvd

As is usually the case with BD, the reality is different than the promise. A four hour movie cut down to three hours. Encoded with AVC on BD-25 and carrying a $40 list price. No extras, no interactive content, 5GB less storage than HD-DVD titles (as are most BD titles) and of course bandwidth levels below the "limited" maximum of HD-DVD. With only 25 GB of storage space and a 3 hour length, the bandwidth will have to be lower than King Kong which is a 3 hour title on a 30GB disc.

Please tell me why you guys support BD again, because what you're getting doesn't match up with you're telling us you're going to get.

Note: To clarify, I believe that efficient codecs can give us great looking titles on smaller discs, however, BD supporters keep telling me this isn't ok.

They're simply releasing the 180min original cut of Dances with Wolves. We know the longer cuts will be released eventually one day. Studios are out there to make money, and they will by making us double dip, just like dvd releases.

They're simply releasing the 180min original cut of Dances with Wolves. We know the longer cuts will be released eventually one day. Studios are out there to make money, and they will by making us double dip, just like dvd releases.

The DVD releases had extras... this doesnt even have that

The DVD releases had extras... this doesnt even have that

An even bigger incentive for people to get a newer version when it is released.

More on Dances with Wolves.

We keep hearing about the bright beautiful future of Blu-Ray. Great audio, loads of extras, interactive content, high storage and high bandwidth titles that will be best of class. We just need to be patient..... From what I can understand DWW is an MGM title to be distributed by Fox. MGM titles, from what I know, do not have much in terms of extras. And by extras, MGM means the longer four-hour cut.

Just to clarify it to those who don't know, this version is the theatrical cut. There is nothing wrong with studios wanting to release a theatrical cut first and then release an extended cut.

However, you seem to imply that MGM intentionally cut a four-hour theatrical cut which is certainly not the case.

Like Maxpower1987 said, MGM clearly has the intention of double-dipping here. But again, it's not like only BD studios are doing that. Coming soon on DVD, BD and HD-DVD is the FINAL CUT of Alexander from Warner, the THIRD version of this film; first was theatrical and the second was a director's (and the first shorter) cut.

EDIT: Again to clarify further, the actions of one BD studio doesn't mean that it is a standard practice for all BD studios. For example, Fox chooses to use DTS HDMA. Sony chooses to use LPCM. MGM chooses to not include much extras. The choice is not enforced by the BDA or Sony.


fuad

From what I can understand DWW is an MGM title to be distributed by Fox. MGM titles, from what I know, do not have much in terms of extras. And by extras, MGM means the longer four-hour cut.

Just to clarify it to those who don't know, this version is the theatrical cut. There is nothing wrong with studios wanting to release a theatrical cut first and then release an extended cut.

However, you seem to imply that MGM intentionally cut a four-hour theatrical cut which is certainly not the case.

Like Maxpower1987 said, MGM clearly has the intention of double-dipping here. But again, it's not like only BD studios are doing that. Coming soon on DVD, BD and HD-DVD is the FINAL CUT of Alexander from Warner, the THIRD version of this film; first was theatrical and the second was a director's (and the first shorter) cut.


fuad

Wasn't the last rumor on LoTR that it was short versions (not EE) and no lossless audio ??

b2b

We at the BDA allow debate and free talk in any and all forms. :)

So you are a BD insider. Why didn't you declare that all this while ?

There have been posts saying there are several insiders here writing things as if they are independant ... didn't know you are one of those.

So a 4-hour cut of a ponderous Kevin Costner movie is cut down?

What's the problem again? :D

You're a BDA insider? I didn't know that...can you elaborate?

He is not, according to him, he works at a company that manufactures 1080p display :rolleyes: :p :D

From what I can understand DWW is an MGM title to be distributed by Fox. MGM titles, from what I know, do not have much in terms of extras. And by extras, MGM means the longer four-hour cut.

Just to clarify it to those who don't know, this version is the theatrical cut. There is nothing wrong with studios wanting to release a theatrical cut first and then release an extended cut.

However, you seem to imply that MGM intentionally cut a four-hour theatrical cut which is certainly not the case.

Like Maxpower1987 said, MGM clearly has the intention of double-dipping here. But again, it's not like only BD studios are doing that. Coming soon on DVD, BD and HD-DVD is the FINAL CUT of Alexander from Warner, the THIRD version of this film; first was theatrical and the second was a director's (and the first shorter) cut.


fuad


If you folks feel that you're getting a good value for your money, and that this lives up to your hopes and expectations for the BD format, by all means feel free to buy both versions.

The DVD releases had extras... this doesnt even have that

So get the DVD version then.

Or the HD-DVD version.

Oh, wait. :p

re: Dances with Wolves.

I thought BD 50 will be enough for long extended cuts and such?

It will/would. They are choosing to release the theatrical cut first, much as New Line is with LOTR, as I see someone has already pointed out. Feel free to wait until they release the longer cut: I know I've been bitten by the double-dip often enough that I am cautious, now.

yup, I'll wait for the super-duper-special re-re-re-re-remastered edition with longer cut. Until then, I'll stick with my SD DVD. (I already own the VHS, LD, DVD and the remastered DVD)

If you folks feel that you're getting a good value for your money, and that this lives up to your hopes and expectations for the BD format, by all means feel free to buy both versions.

No, I will just wait for the inevitable Directors Cut on a BD50 with all of the extras. My expectations have been much more than exceeded by BD, we have some excellent titles, and more titles coming, I don't particularly care about IME/PiP. All I want is excellent PQ and lossless Audio, which BD has delivered to me in droves.

Man, I'd love to see a histogram of all the individual track rates to see what the current mux allocation looks like as compared to actual usage. And to see where peaks align.With an XBOX360 add-on and a Mac with some PowerDVD program you can look at the audio and video rates at any time. I don't have a Mac, but a friend does and I asked him to look at the scene in "Batman Begins" where Bruce Wayne first goes down into the bat cave and the bats start flying around. He reported that both the audio and video stayed peaked there. But neither of us has done anything beyond that.

The PS3 will report the video bitrate as best it can. I don't know if it will show the audio bitrate changing with TrueHD tracks or if it just shows the peak and I haven't tested it. But with something like that you can look at the video rates to see how they are changing and how the audio tends to change with video. I haven't done testing, but suspect that it is reasonably common for audio to pickup as scenes become more frantic (like a car chase).

--Darin

His claim was he was told by a Sony official that was the policy.I believe that was his claim. Now his claim seems to be that he was assuming that was their policy, based on this comment he made:
For months, we have given Sony access to our latest VC-1 encoder plus training and support from key engineering team at Microsoft. During that time, competing studios (including BD exclusive ones like Disney) have published many titles on VC-1 including many on BD. Yet Sony has not committed to even a single title using VC-1. Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder.Looks to me like there is obviously a difference between what Amir is saying now and what he said previously:
Well, until Paidgeek tells us who he is, I go by direct information I have from Sony on why they didn't want to use VC-1. They were absolutely dedicated to finishing a title in two days or else.It looks like Robert (or somebody) deleted his attack on dialog_gvf over this issue. I would have liked to have read it again given Amir's current stance on why he claimed the thing as factual that he did.

--Darin

Man, I'd love to see a histogram of all the individual track rates to see what the current mux allocation looks like as compared to actual usage. And to see where peaks align.

Talk to Ben. This is the critical idea behind Statmux.

But, logic tells us that a visually complicated scene would frequently come with complicated audio.

Consider, a battlefield scene. Lightning. Anything that you've seen cause major pixelation on broadcast HD.

Gary

I really feel like bashing someone! :)

I believe that was his claim. Now his claim seems to be that he was assuming that was their policy, based on this comment he made:
Looks to me like there is obviously a difference between what Amir is saying now and what he said previously:
It looks like Robert (or somebody) deleted his attack on dialog_gvf over this issue. I would have liked to have read it again given Amir's current stance on why he claimed the thing as factual that he did.

--Darin
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9573065&&#post9573065

b2b

So get the DVD version then.

Or the HD-DVD version.

Oh, wait. :p

Well, if this was an HD-DVD title, it would have more storage and higher bandwidth on the encode.

Isn't this what you folks keep telling us is important? Or is this not important anymore?

B2b....are you out there?

Well, if this was an HD-DVD title, it would have more storage and higher bandwidth on the encode.

Isn't this what you folks keep telling us is important? Or is this not important anymore?


Unless you have some proof that a decision to release the 180 min version was based on some limitation of BD, bandwidth and capacity are not an issue here.

Universal hates HD DVD now. That's why they've all but stopped announcing releases. I have not a shred of evidence to support this, but it fits the current facts. So, it's OK if I push that from now on? ;)

Gary

Well yes, you do seem confused. As I read this thread, I read that Amir said someone from Sony said that about the 2 days as an excuse to not commit to using VC-1 because it is software based and slower than the hardware based real time MPEG2 encoder Sony is currently using. Nothing more, nothing less.

The fact that paidgeek says they sometimes spend much more time than 2 days tell me that the 1) Prep and background work takes much more time than the relatively insignificant time spend running an automated encoding pass 2)
The people Amir was dealing with were blowing smoke 3) Speed of encoder is not that big a deal I recommend we discuss this in more detail offline as we are still bound by an eval agreement. Public responses would also be potentially embarrasing and that is not good outcome for anyone. We are encoding for several studios, not just SPE, so your comments here would concern them as well. Please PM me with how you prefer to discuss.

I think both Amirm and Paidgeek may have time to time a requirement of keeping some vagueness on the issue for legitimate reasons. We know exactly who Amir is and it s probably a matter of record who he negotiated with at Sony. He's a publicly disclosed insider providing a summary of a private conversation with a Sony official conducted at a fairly high level. He probably can't provide us with a more exact quote for pity's sake. What do you expect for him to wear a wire and tape every conversation?

This whole damn issue is really boiling down to a litmus test on Amirm's and Paidgeek's credibility. In my humble opinion, I believe them both in their summaries, and I don't get offended when they use the opportunity to promote VC-1 or defend Sony's dedication to quality over . That's their friggin jobs. That's why their identified as insiders. Others opinions obviously differ.

Amirm's an public insider, you know his position at Microsoft, judge what he says with the knowledge that he is trying to put his product and his team in the best light. I assume Amirm spins the facts his way. That's why he' s pubicly identified as a Microsoft insider, so we are aware of that and can allow for it in our consideration of his information. Talkstr8t and Paidgeek do the same damn thing. I'm glad all of them are here. I listen and I observe what they don't say as much as what they do say. But when they say something happened I usually give then the benefit of the doubt, because its more complicated to remember untruths, They don't need to do that to spin.

Amir is at an disadvantage here, because we know exactly who he is. Notice Talkstr8t and Paidgeek want to keep confidential so he can freely speak without being pubicly attributed to Sony. You are asking Amirm for public disclosure of a private conversation in detail that he may not be able to give. I mean what do you want?

Amirm is providing us a glance into corporate politics. Of course he has to be vague. Of course he is spinning. Of course Paidgeek is trying to defend Sony's procedures . Of course Amirm is defending VC-1 and saying that Sony's refusal to use it may lie more with politics than VC-1 performance. Any of this stuff surprising to anyone?

Get over it. Eventually we'll move on.

I do agree that conversation on this topic is fine, I just don't know what you guys expect.

Get over it. Eventually we'll move on.Seems to me that once a lie is proven, people really want to move on! Nothing wrong with that. Amir lied. Paidgeek called his bluff. :) So, yes, let's move on.

[flame-suit on]
By the way, if Amir cannot disclose his "private conversations" on this forum, I would like him not to disclose anything from that conversation in the first place. I would call that as integrity. It is getting plain tiring to hear this defense (from him -- though not this time -- and from supporters like you) after the bluff is called. It is better not to lie in the first place even if it is a white lie. Paidgeek has conducted himself in an excellent manner in all regards. Some insiders need to learn this.
[/flam-suit off]

There, now I no longer feel like bashing anyone! :)

Of course, we expect insiders to spin things their way. The "issue" (such as it is) here is that we have two different accounts that are directly contradictory and both cannot be correct.

I agree with Grubert's summary, though, and that the subject was changed rather than an answer given.

I agree completely with Grubert's summary, too. I will still say, let's move on! :)

Of course, we expect insiders to spin things their way. The "issue" (such as it is) here is that we have two different accounts that are directly contradictory and both cannot be correct.

I agree with Grubert's summary, though, and that the subject was changed rather than an answer given.

I agree as well.

They're simply releasing the 180min original cut of Dances with Wolves. We know the longer cuts will be released eventually one day. Studios are out there to make money, and they will by making us double dip, just like dvd releases. I was hoping that greater capacity on the shiny discs, even with 30GB and VC-1 or 50GB with AVC and downloads and network storage would stop this practice. :(

I hate double dipping. I hate even more triple (HD) and quadruple (extended version HD ) dipping.

This thread evolved into a discussion on how both formats could use broadband and network storage to supplement the disc capacity and bandwidth in the future

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=788514

Well, if this was an HD-DVD title, it would have more storage and higher bandwidth on the encode.

Isn't this what you folks keep telling us is important? Or is this not important anymore?

B2b....are you out there?

Higher capacity and bandwidth are important.

You know what's even more important?

Content support.

Of course, we expect insiders to spin things their way. The "issue" (such as it is) here is that we have two different accounts that are directly contradictory and both cannot be correct.

I agree with Grubert's summary, though, and that the subject was changed rather than an answer given. The difference is, I don't see the versions as being contradictory.

Amirm saying he was told one thing during a negotiation and the actual practice in place at the workplace level being different are not mutually exclusive.

Both insiders could easily be telling the truth.

I recommend we discuss this in more detail offline as we are still bound by an eval agreement. Public responses would also be potentially embarrasing and that is not good outcome for anyone. We are encoding for several studios, not just SPE, so your comments here would concern them as well.

Please PM me with how you prefer to discuss.

I'll let this go now.

Higher capacity and bandwidth are important.

You know what's even more important?

Content support.

You mean like this... http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

Instead of this... http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

b2b

Unless you have some proof that a decision to release the 180 min version was based on some limitation of BD, bandwidth and capacity are not an issue here.

Universal hates HD DVD now. That's why they've all but stopped announcing releases. I have not a shred of evidence to support this, but it fits the current facts. So, it's OK if I push that from now on? ;)

Gary

I'm not floating out any kind of rumors here. I'm talking about the kind of follow through we're seeing from another staunch BD exclusive studio, Fox. What I am saying is that BD is great on paper, but it's the finished product that the customer pays for that matters. So while BD has greater capacity and bandwidth, a premier title like Dances with Wolves gets the BD-25 treatment, so you get no benefit of the greater capacity or bandwidth available in Blu-Ray.

This is an expensive title being played on expensive players. Does it concern you that at this stage of the game a Blu-Ray disc at this price point is providing you with less storage and bandwidth than comparable HD-DVD discs?

I'm not floating out any kind of rumors here. I'm talking about the kind of follow through we're seeing from another staunch BD exclusive studio, Fox. What I am saying is that BD is great on paper, but it's the finished product that the customer pays for that matters. So while BD has greater capacity and bandwidth, a premier title like Dances with Wolves gets the BD-25 treatment, so you get no benefit of the greater capacity or bandwidth available in Blu-Ray.

This is an expensive title being played on expensive players. Does it concern you that at this stage of the game a Blu-Ray disc at this price point is providing you with less storage and bandwidth than comparable HD-DVD discs?

Last time I checked the bandwidth for BD-25 & BD-50 are identical.

Blu-Ray 48Mbps, 50GB
0.........1.........2....x....3.........4.........50GB
+------------------------|------------------------+
| | |48 Mb/s
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |40
| | |
HD-DVD 30Mbps, 30GB | |
0.........1.........2.........30GB |
+-----------------------------+30 Mb/s |30
| | |
| | |
| | |
| |20 |20
| | |
DVD 10Mbps, 9.4GB | |
0........9.4GB | |
+--------+10 Mb/s |10 |10
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |0
+--------+--------------------+-------------------+
Chart is copyright © 2006 & 2007 by b2bonez and MrHanky
All rights reserved with permission to copy and publish without
alteration is hearby granted. Disfigurement or un-authorized
modification is not allowded.
Please respect other peoples work (however humble it is..)


b2b

http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=281960

Blu-ray is a very expensive process – the investment for a replicator is 10 to 20 times the cost of HD-DVD," Joone continued. "These replicators are nowhere near capacity in their facilities – they have these machines that they paid millions for, and they’re not using them. I’m here to pay full price to get Blu-ray titles done; I went as far as saying, you guys don’t even have to do the silk printing on the disc, I’ll do the art somewhere else, so that internally your employees don’t have to see anything – even though our artwork is not very explicit or hardcore. But every disc stamper puts in an ID showing who stamped the disc, so later on, the replicators could be in trouble. As a replicator you’re in the biz of selling as much time on your machine as possible; their incentive is to pay for these multi-million dollar machines they’ve bought. Even the replication disc cost to me is three times as high as HD. I don’t think the Blu-ray facilities are going to get a lot of people knocking on the door – there’s not much demand, the market is brand-new, and it’s too expensive."

Confirmation of Blu-ray's replication costs?

http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=281960



Confirmation of Blu-ray's replication costs?

Perhaps that's why Sony is switching to AVC so they can get more out of the SL25 Media? Maybe their plan to subsidize the costs of replication didn't take into account that HD-DVD would still be around at this point in the game and it's costing them more than they'd like.

I'd still like to know what the actual costs are for replicating HD30, HD51, BD25, and BD50. Unless the cost of BD50 is exhorbitant, I don't know why Sony is keeping it such a secret?

http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=281960

Confirmation of Blu-ray's replication costs?

From what replication company? If most replication houses are refusing the business, where do the prices come from? Perhaps since they know they have the porn producers by the you-know-whats, the few willing to do it are quoting rediculous numbers. :)

Still, it seems to set a good maximum of 3x HD DVD = 3.6x DVD for BD costs. At estimates of DVD costing 50 cents, that makes it $1.80 per BD disc. They sell it for $50. I wonder how they can afford it? :rolleyes:

Also, we can calculate a good maximum for Total HD: 3.6 + 1.2 + G (gluing). So, Warner is willing to spend up to 5x DVD to sell an HD DVD disc they could have made for 1.2x DVD, or a combo they could have made for 2.5x :)

Gary

Last time I checked the bandwidth for BD-25 & BD-50 are identical. Yes and 30 GB > 25 GB.

What good are DL 50 GB discs is you can't / won't use them?

You mean like this... http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

Instead of this... http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

b2b

Dang, that's gotta hurt. But wait, 3-600 titles will be released this year on HD DVD. To quote Amir:

There will be incredible number and variety of content in HD DVD this year. We have amazing number of post houses around the world trained with VC-1 and HDi. This is fueling incredible amount of HD DVD production worldwide. This, on top of strong support from Hollywood studios, will mean a banner year for HD DVD.
It ain't starting out that great, really... Can we assume Amir knows of support from studios not yet announced?

What I am saying is that BD is great on paper, but it's the finished product that the customer pays for that matters. So while BD has greater capacity and bandwidth, a premier title like Dances with Wolves gets the BD-25 treatment, so you get no benefit of the greater capacity or bandwidth available in Blu-Ray.


Yeah. And I can tell you many BD supporters are not happy. We won't purchase the disc.

But, once again, you're trying to tie the choices made by the studio to the format. I can do it too:

Current reports say LOTR will be the theatrical version. Are New Line holding back the extended editions because HD DVD doesn't currently have the capacity to support an adequate treatment of the extended editions?

Or, is double dipping the obvious answer then?

Gary

Dang, that's gotta hurt. But wait, 3-600 titles will be released this year on HD DVD. To quote Amir:


It was 300 titles this year, and a claim 300 were released in 2006, for a total of 600 by the end of 2007.

Gary

It was 300 titles this year, and a claim 300 were released in 2006, for a total of 600 by the end of 2007.

Gary

To be specific, the CES press release stated:

http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/_pdf/010707_hddvd_ces_2007.pdf
At a press event today at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show..., announcing more than 300 additional movie titles that will be available this year, for an expected total of more than 600 titles worldwide.Of the more than 41 studios and distributors supporting HD DVD worldwide, Warner Home Video, Paramount Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, HBO Home Video, New Line Home Entertainment, Genius Product, Inc., The Weinstein Company, Studio Canal, and Bandai Visual, one of the largest animation companies in the world, collectively announced more than 300 additional HD DVD titles will be released this year.

I've seen that number a few times... Anyone know how many of the 300 for 2007 will be exclusive?

So far, my shared titles are about split (I have Sahara and Aeon Flux on Blu-ray while I have We Were Soldiers and Phantom when they were HD-DVD before the Blu-ray came out. Batman Begins will likely be another).

The difference is, I don't see the versions as being contradictory.

Amirm saying he was told one thing during a negotiation and the actual practice in place at the workplace level being different are not mutually exclusive.Even ignoring what paidgeek said, Amir's own two versions don't seem to match. First he told us that they were limited to 2 days and now he says that it was his impression based on them choosing to use MPEG-2 instead of agreeing to do one or more titles with VC-1. You seem to be stuck on this thing of somebody at Sony telling Amir that they only allow 2 days. If Amir's current position is that somebody at Sony told him that they do not allow any more than 2 days, then why do his last comments on the subject include:
Yet Sony has not committed to even a single title using VC-1. Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder.I'm sure most here are smart enough to know the difference between wanting a fast turnaround time and having a strict 2 day limit.
Both insiders could easily be telling the truth.So, which version from Amir is true? That he got direct information from Sony that they have a strict limit of 2 days or that he assumed it based on them not using VC-1 and some other things?

--Darin

Of the more than 41 studios and distributors supporting HD DVD worldwide, Warner Home Video, Paramount Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, HBO Home Video, New Line Home Entertainment, Genius Product, Inc., The Weinstein Company, Studio Canal, and Bandai Visual, one of the largest animation companies in the world, collectively announced more than 300 additional HD DVD titles will be released this year.

Of those studios listed, only Universal and Studio Canal are exclusive. (SC limited to European distribution).
Of the 300 titles, how many are unique? Because last year an international version was counted along with a US version.
Plus by my counting from now until the end of 2007 they have to release nearly a title a *day*. Better get cracking!

I'm not floating out any kind of rumors here. I'm talking about the kind of follow through we're seeing from another staunch BD exclusive studio, Fox. What I am saying is that BD is great on paper, but it's the finished product that the customer pays for that matters. So while BD has greater capacity and bandwidth, a premier title like Dances with Wolves gets the BD-25 treatment, so you get no benefit of the greater capacity or bandwidth available in Blu-Ray.I don't like to see them doing this. On the other hand, all the formats can do is provide the tools to the studios. They decide what to do with them. I don't blame Blu-ray for Warner deciding to hold back the best audio on Blu-ray releases when they were provided with the space and bandwidth for them and chose to leave those unused instead.

In this case, if they are using a BD25 because BD50s aren't available enough (or some reason like that), then I do consider that a bad thing right now, but I am also looking at where we are going. If HD DVD adds TL51s with 1.5x spin rate I will consider that a good thing as far as how good the HD DVD format is. Even if a studio decides not to use it for some reason on some release where they could have.

If one of these formats goes away then all the studios will be left with the tools that the winning format provides.

--Darin

So while BD has greater capacity and bandwidth, a premier title like Dances with Wolves gets the BD-25 treatment, so you get no benefit of the greater capacity or bandwidth available in Blu-Ray.

Why are posts like these so ignorant of history?
Studios like MGM, with limited catalog, are famous for releasing bare bones versions and elaborate SEs further down the line, then reissuing cut down versions of the SEs, then "Ultimate Editions" etc.

"Dances With Wolves" was released by MGM bare bones, insult to injury it was pan and scan. THEN they issued a 2 disc SE with the director's cut later.

Fox does the same thing time and again. Need I talk about Disney and their Gold Collection/Platinum titles? I'm looking at the THIRD release of "Peter Pan" this March!

The market is still largely early adopters (diluted somewhat by the PS3). They sell the bare bones versions, then release elaborate SEs when the market has grown sufficiently. The early adopters upgrade for the new cut, transfer, extras.

Some folks need history & marketing lessons.

Dell & Apple are sitting out the format war.Dell has two Blu-ray laptops, the Dell m1710 and the awesome Alienware Area-51 m5790 (http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Area-51_m5790/area-51m_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AREA51M5790&SubCode=SKU-A) (under $2600 really well-equipped). Not exactly sitting out....

If one of these formats goes away then all the studios will be left with the tools that the winning format provides.

--Darin

Bluray has all the tools except HDi. According to the insider thread, Sun or Sony basically spend no resource to help studio on this regard. On the other hand, HDi seems to be popular among the post house. Could studio push bluray to add HDi?

Could studio push bluray to add HDi?I think it is too late at this point. I think just that one thing might have been enough that we would have avoided the war we are seeing now, if they had done it a couple of years ago though.

--Darin

I think it is too late at this point. I think just that one thing might have been enough that we would have avoided the war we are seeing now, if they had done it a couple of years ago though.

--Darin

But then without Sun's vested interest we wouldn't be enjoying the war between Talk & Amir ;)

I think it is too late at this point.

But BD-J Live is not mandatory until mid June? If you swap BD-J Live profile with HDi, it is still not too late. :)

I think just that one thing might have been enough that we would have avoided the war we are seeing now, if they had done it a couple of years ago though.
--Darin

It is really sad that Sun paid under the table to veto HDi in BDA and "waiting" for the pie. If HDi had been added, Sun at least need to fight very hard for the dominance and this fight without the format war would certainly benefit consumer.

But BD-J Live is not mandatory until mid June?There is no "BD-J Live". There is BD-J, which is mandatory in all players regardless of release date, and there is BD-Live, which any manufacturer may choose to implement whenever they see fit.
It is really sad that Sun paid under the table to veto HDi in BDA and "waiting" for the pie.Link to the tiniest shred of evidence supporting this ridiculous claim? You forget that it's Microsoft which seems to employ this sort of tactic (i.e. bribing pro-Microsoft bloggers with free laptops (http://apcmag.com/4889/microsoft_offers_2_000_ferrari_gifts_to_bloggers) or pay for pro-Microsoft Wikipedia entries (http://software.silicon.com/webservices/0,39024657,39165435,00.htm)), not Sun.

HP proposed Java for Blu-ray years ago. When Microsoft hatched HDi for HD DVD they pushed very hard on the BDA members with whom they had leverage to force the technology on Blu-ray as well. They failed because there was strong support for Java among many of the CE vendors and several of the studios (in spite of Microsoft tales of interim, uninformed votes where HDi prevalied) and because the cable and broadcast industries have standardized on Java.

Of those studios listed, only Universal is exclusive.
Of the 300 titles, how many are unique? Because last year an international version was counted along with a US version.
Plus by my counting from now until the end of 2007 they have to release nearly a title a *day*. Better get cracking!


Is this true? I thought Bandai Visual and Studio Canal and a couple of other small fish were exclusive to HD DVD.

Cheers,

Grant

Dell has two Blu-ray laptops, the Dell m1710 and the awesome Alienware Area-51 m5790 (http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Area-51_m5790/area-51m_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AREA51M5790&SubCode=SKU-A) (under $2600 really well-equipped). Not exactly sitting out....

But very close. Talk, let me get this straight, megabuck players from companies known for "cheapness" is testing the waters - at best.

Last time I checked the bandwidth for BD-25 & BD-50 are identical.

Blu-Ray 48Mbps, 50GB
0.........1.........2....x....3.........4.........50GB
+------------------------|------------------------+
| | |48 Mb/s
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |40
| | |
HD-DVD 30Mbps, 30GB | |
0.........1.........2.........30GB |
+-----------------------------+30 Mb/s |30
| | |
| | |
| | |
| |20 |20
| | |
DVD 10Mbps, 9.4GB | |
0........9.4GB | |
+--------+10 Mb/s |10 |10
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |0
+--------+--------------------+-------------------+
Chart is copyright © 2006 & 2007 by b2bonez and MrHanky
All rights reserved with permission to copy and publish without
alteration is hearby granted. Disfigurement or un-authorized
modification is not allowded.
Please respect other peoples work (however humble it is..)


b2b





Blu-Ray 48Mbps, 50GB
0.........1.........2....x....3.........4.........50GB (some BD titles)
+------------------------|------------------------+
| | |48 Mb/s
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |40
| | |
HD-DVD 30Mbps, 30GB | |
0.........1.........2.........30GB |
+-----------------------------+30 Mb/s |30
| | |
+-------------------------------------------------|25 (Dances with Wolves
| | | and most BD titles)
| |20 |20
| | |
DVD 10Mbps, 9.4GB | |
0........9.4GB | |
+--------+10 Mb/s |10 |10
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |0
+--------+--------------------+-------------------+
Chart revised by 2Channel
Inspired by the prior work of b2bonez and MrHanky


So let's take a look at a sample title like Dances with Wolves and what the real world numbers are that we're working with.

BD
25GB disc divided by 181 minutes for the title, divided by 60 seconds and multiplied by 8 (convert bytes to bits) = 18.42mb/sec total average bandwidth

HD-DVD
30GB disc divided by 181 minutes for the title, divided by 60 seconds and multiplied by 8 (convert bytes to bits) = 22.10mb/sec total average bandwidth

Now if they do LPCM for the audio on the BD that's at least a few mb/sec straight off the top of that number (if someone knows the exact mb/sec for 5.1 LPCM please let me know).

The one advantage BD has is that it can peak higher for the video bandwidth than HD-DVD. That's nice, but can they really afford to allow bandwidth peaks that go that high when they have to conserve space to fit this title on the disc?

The advantage HD-DVD has is that in addition to the extra disc space, dynamic muxing is now available as a tool as well. This allows better effective use of the disc space and bandwidth with longer titles like this.

I understand that the studios make these decisions, not the BDA. My point is that as a consumer of HD products, I care about the final delivered product that I will use in my home. I have to ask again, if there were no format war, would all BD titles be on BD-25?

One more item to consider, as I understand the situation, all of those TotalHD titles are BD-25/HD-DVD-30. If I am wrong, please correct me.

I think it's clear MS has heard two different stories from Sony, so they "called" it. Since MS was attacked in public for highlighting this discrepancy, they responded in public. Move on.

We at the BDA allow debate and free talk in any and all forms.
So you are a BD insider. Why didn't you declare that all this while ?

There have been posts saying there are several insiders here writing things as if they are independant ... didn't know you are one of those.

Peter, care to comment about this.

Looks like you are ignoring AVS policy about insiders ....

Could studio push bluray to add HDi?There have been thoughts of adding HDi at some point so studios could use either BD-J or HDi and the players would have to support both.

I think it's clear MS has heard two different stories from Sony, so they "called" it. Since MS was attacked in public for highlighting this discrepancy, they responded in public. Move on.

Oh ... finally someone got it. Ofcourse don't expect such clarity from the BD firing brigade.

But very close. Talk, let me get this straight, megabuck players from companies known for "cheapness" is testing the waters - at best.Alienware is virtually the definition of premium hardware. Further, at ~$2500, I believe the Area-51 is by far the least expensive laptop with a blue laser drive and 1920x1200 display, and the Dell at $4000 isn't priced much differently from comparable HD DVD laptops.

One more item to consider, as I understand the situation, all of those TotalHD titles are BD-25/HD-DVD-30. If I am wrong, please correct me.Wrong. Warner says they can do DL for both. Amir says otherwise, but we've heard that argument from him before and we all know how that turned out...

Wrong. Warner says they can do DL for both. Amir says otherwise, but we've heard that argument from him before and we all know how that turned out...

So ... in other words ... we don't really know ... I guess we'll have to wait and see when they're released. I know what the press releases said ... but ... I'd rather just wait and see.

June, 2007, right?

lowering the price still further is the only weapon they have left. And every time they do, they 've just made it less attractive for others to enter the market.You're still using this argument, even in light of the recent announcements that several new companies are entering the market with their own players?How many announced specifics, or even showed a player? How many were recognized CE vendors with a brand presence? The announcements were either for very, very low-end manufacturers (ensuring a name-brand commodity market will never develop) or for high-end players (which won't drive enough volume to matter).
And wasn't one of the companies a former BD-exclusive company (LG?) Sure, BD exclusive years ago. They were neutral since before 2006 CES (where they showed BD and HD DVD players).
How many more player manufacturers have to jump on board before you retire this tired song and dance?Show me one which makes a difference and I will.

Talkstr8t mentioned that the response rate was 80% and implied that number was the accurate number of PS3 users that would use the PS3 or intended to use the PS3 as a Blu-ray player.

Several posters here pointed out that, many people would choose that option in a setup menu just to make sure that feature was enabled and that it may not be an accurate method of determining the number of people that would actually use the device in that manner.It was clearly not a setup menu - no one could possibly mistake the question for a setting required to enable Blu-ray playback.

How many announced specifics, or even showed a player? How many were recognized CE vendors with a brand presence? The announcements were either for very, very low-end manufacturers (ensuring a name-brand commodity market will never develop) or for high-end players (which won't drive enough volume to matter).
I don't think Onkyo fits into either of those categories. Aren't they more middle of the road, or am I mistaken?
Show me one which makes a difference and I will.
So now you're changing the argument? You've been saying for months that HD DVD's low initial price would scare off other hardware manufacturers and that Toshiba would be going at it alone. This has been proven false by Meridian, Onkyo, and the Chinese low-end manufacturers all announcing their support at CES this year. Now that this has happened, you're changing the argument, saying you meant only a certain type of hardware manufacturer (and certainly not the ones that announced their support at CES.)


I don't know - maybe you should just admit you were wrong about that particular guess, huh?

Paid,
....This makes absolutely no sense since the time line for the rest of the project allows the time required for customizing the encodes as necessary. If the encode can be done in a week that has always been perfectly acceptable. Are you making this stuff up? I work here and I suspect I would of heard about any two day encode mandates...

For months, we have given Sony access to our latest VC-1 encoder plus training and support from key engineering team at Microsoft. During that time, competing studios (including BD exclusive ones like Disney) have published many titles on VC-1 including many on BD. Yet Sony has not committed to even a single title using VC-1. Our impression was that you wanted to have fast turnaround given your preference to use a real-time MPEG-2 encoder. But your comment in this post, and the fact that your AVC encoder is slower than ours, throws out that theory, leaving us wondering what is still keeping you from using VC-1. As a technology supplier to you, we need better data to figure out why we are not earning your business.
...

Amir.

In a thread about 6-8 months ago (or so), you asked a direct question of the then-BD Insider. He did not answer, even after multiple requests on your part. Based on his avoidance, you stated that he did not want to answer because it would make him / Blu-Ray look bad. A fair assessment in my opinion, especially since he continued to post other responses.

Now, you seem to be doing the same thing here. You were asked a direct question, and in response changed the subject.

I would like to see the question answered. Your prior statements about encoding time made Sony look very bad, and potentially undermined their credibility in terms of encoding quality. If it was an erroneous statement on your part, you should correct it publicly.

After all, you asked the same of someone in another thread, and I think it fair you live up to your own standard.

-Pie

Researcher Sees Blu-ray Victory (http://www.homemediaretailing.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?sec_id=2&&article_ID=10208)

Biased paid lacky, right?


We believe that you will see Blu-ray players at around $400 by the end of this year and HD DVD about $300. In the United States, it has to be less than $200 for mass appeal and less than $100 for an impulse purchase, but that will happen quickly. Going into [2008], I will sit and eat one of our reports if we haven’t seen an HD DVD player for less than $200.


Hey, looks like a possible YouTube event! :)

Presumably he means sometime in 2008, since he already stated what the end of 2007 prices he expects.

Paidgeek.

According to TheDigitalBits, Universal has finally come forward and announced that they will be releasing 100 titles for 2007. There's a partial list, which includes The Big Lebowski!

How the heck does Sony plan to combat The Big Lebowski. I mean, Blu-Ray is screwed!! :)

Seriously, though, will Sony and/or the BDA make some new announcements to "counter" Universal's? Something that includes the long-anticipated Lawrence of Arabia or other A-list titles?

-Pie

I think The Big Lebowski is a great title. I'd buy it if Universal were to release it on Blu-ray.

Looks like a great title list from Universal. Sony has it's planned 100 too.

Should be a great year!

Gary

Researcher Sees Blu-ray Victory (http://www.homemediaretailing.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?sec_id=2&&article_ID=10208)

Biased paid lacky, right?



Hey, looks like a possible YouTube event! :)

Presumably he means sometime in 2008, since he already stated what the end of 2007 prices he expects.

There analysis is predicated on a mighty big assumption.

Each group has got its advantages, but what really changes the picture is PS3. It is poised to be in virtually 25 million to 35 million homes in the next two to three years.

In addition they are not factoring the emergence of universal players and their impact in the next two to three years.

Paidgeek.

According to TheDigitalBits, Universal has finally come forward and announced that they will be releasing 100 titles for 2007. There's a partial list, which includes The Big Lebowski!

How the heck does Sony plan to combat The Big Lebowski. I mean, Blu-Ray is screwed!! :)

Seriously, though, will Sony and/or the BDA make some new announcements to "counter" Universal's? Something that includes the long-anticipated Lawrence of Arabia or other A-list titles?



-Pie


This is really the domain of the marketing department and I don't know exactly what they will announce for SPE. I think Fox and Disney are just getting rolling though, so collectively there are going be a lot of great titles on Blu-ray this year.

big lebowski was a great movie, in fact it wasthe first dvd i ever watched!


but forget that, did the bd supporters conveniently gloss over SEASON 1 OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!

According to TheDigitalBits, Universal has finally come forward and announced that they will be releasing 100 titles for 2007. There's a partial list, which includes The Big Lebowski!

Seriously, though, will Sony and/or the BDA make some new announcements to "counter" Universal's?They already did. Sony alone announced 100 titles for 2007, which matches Universal. Warner and Paramount will likely release equally on both, which means Fox, Disney and Lionsgate releases (accelerating) will all weigh only on the Blu-ray side. Universal's announcement certainly looks like an attempt to deflect concerns over HD DVD's withering release schedule.

Peter, care to comment about this.

Looks like you are ignoring AVS policy about insiders ....

I'm not commenting in the "Insiders" thread as an insider, representing my company, or inviting questions as such.

It was clearly not a setup menu - no one could possibly mistake the question for a setting required to enable Blu-ray playback.

you'd certainly like to spin it that way...but it certainly isn't that cut and dry and i thought it was very strange myself.

There analysis is predicated on a mighty big assumption.


Isn't that countered by his prediction of $299 HD DVD by the end of the year, and sub $200 in 2008?

I think we'll be seeing him eat the report myself. I still see $299 being extremely difficult for 2007, due to the laser diode issues.

Gary

Is this true? I thought Bandai Visual and Studio Canal and a couple of other small fish were exclusive to HD DVD.

Cheers,

Grant

Didn't notice Studio Canal listed, edited post accordingly.

Bandai releases on both formats. They have released some non-region coded BD titles in Japan.

I'm not commenting in the "Insiders" thread as an insider or inviting questions therin.


umm, i think there is a general, broader policy...the insider's thread has nothing to do with the general policy...

I don't think Onkyo fits into either of those categories. Aren't they more middle of the road, or am I mistaken?They are more middle-high, but they have nowhere near the volume nor distribution to make a substantial difference.
So now you're changing the argument? You've been saying for months that HD DVD's low initial price would scare off other hardware manufacturers and that Toshiba would be going at it alone. This has been proven false by Meridian, Onkyo, and the Chinese low-end manufacturers all announcing their support at CES this year. Now that this has happened, you're changing the argument, saying you meant only a certain type of hardware manufacturer (and certainly not the ones that announced their support at CES.)Fine, for the sake of clarity I'll amend my argument to "Toshiba's strategy has made it very unlikely that other tier one CE vendors will enter the HD DVD market, and neither no-name low-end players nor niche high-end players are going to appreciably forestall HD DVD's demise."

but forget that, did the bd supporters conveniently gloss over SEASON 1 OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!

Nope. Great title. I'd probably get it. It will probably be expensive.

But, I'll have to admit I'm not much of a rewatcher of TV shows. I had never bought a box set until I got Firefly, since I never saw it when broadcast.

Ooo, Firefly! Come on Fox!

Gary

Paidgeek.

According to TheDigitalBits, Universal has finally come forward and announced that they will be releasing 100 titles for 2007. There's a partial list, which includes The Big Lebowski!

How the heck does Sony plan to combat The Big Lebowski. I mean, Blu-Ray is screwed!! :)

Seriously, though, will Sony and/or the BDA make some new announcements to "counter" Universal's? Something that includes the long-anticipated Lawrence of Arabia or other A-list titles?

-Pie

Here's the actual link (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/index.html#mytwocents) to Bill Hunt's artical on Universal's HD DVD 2007 plans in DigitalBits.com

Robert Harris did an article on me and the AVS Forum here. (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/robertharris/harris112106.html)

-Robert

I hope there isn't a limit to how many people you can have on your ignore list.
lol, good one :D

I wonder the same thing myself. I remember asking the mods too.. didnt get a reply.

Robert Harris did an article on me and the AVS Forum here. (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/robertharris/harris112106.html)


Wow, you can't buy publicity that good. Congratulations.

Gary

It seems to me Amir did what any savvy business executive would do... turn the discussion into a possible business opportunity by promoting their VC-1 technology.
Perhaps we should all get a cut of VC-1 revenues for having to read through the sales pitch (j/k)

Dell has two Blu-ray laptops, the Dell m1710 and the awesome Alienware Area-51 m5790 (http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Area-51_m5790/area-51m_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AREA51M5790&SubCode=SKU-A) (under $2600 really well-equipped). Not exactly sitting out....
Any word on a Mac Pro with BD drive?

Sorry, are you saying the Format Battle thread shouldn't allow debating? :confused:

Gary
Heh heh - thought we were on the insider thread there for a minute :)

Well to a member of any dictatorship, in this case hardware run by Toshiba, software by Microsoft, debate is indeed not allowed.

We at the BDA allow debate and free talk in any and all forms. :)
"We" at the BDA? Something about you we didn't know, I suppose? ;)

Universal is talking about titles, but did anyone catch this... ??
Also on the way to HD-DVD in 2007 according to the studio (90% of the titles as DVD/HD-DVD Combo releases).

b2b

90% of the titles as DVD/HD-DVD Combo releases

Oh, please let that be only for the new releases!

I already own the DVDs for all the catalogue releases that are listed there that interest me... :(

They already did. Sony alone announced 100 titles for 2007, which matches Universal. Warner and Paramount will likely release equally on both, which means Fox, Disney and Lionsgate releases (accelerating) will all weigh only on the Blu-ray side. Universal's announcement certainly looks like an attempt to deflect concerns over HD DVD's withering release schedule.

How many of those Lionsgate title will be available on HD-DVD through Studio Canal? ;)

Ahh, region free, it's a beautiful thing.

If Sony ends up with AVC I don't think anyone will be surprised. However, I'll be curious to see how their AVC encodes stack up against VC1.

No ifs - it is already happening. And yes it will be very interesting to see the results.

All of this ganging up on Amir is rather silly and seems more a systematic attempt to undermine his respect and credibility than to further "enlighten" the issue. Surely we can chill out a bit now?

Amir is undermining his own credibility with fractional truths. We only serve to point them out to the folks who blindly trust people who seem to have more knowledge and authority.

For example, if he said that 'most HD DVDs are DL' that would be true. But he said that they all were... which is not. Unless you count the DVD layer on the combos...

And asking Amir about Sony's policy is like asking Bin Laden about US policy. I am sure he is well informed but the version you will get will not be one that you can necessarily trust - and that should come as no surprise.

How many of those Lionsgate title will be available on HD-DVD through Studio Canal? ;)

Ahh, region free, it's a beautiful thing.

Certainly is. The Universal titles released on BD around the world will also be nice to acquire for certain titles.

Even if they are region coded on release, they are mandated to release non-coded discs after 12 months... Unless it is Japan in which case no problem same region.

Certainly is. The Universal titles released on BD around the world will also be nice to acquire for certain titles.

Even if they are region coded on release, they are mandated to release non-coded discs after 12 months... Unless it is Japan in which case no problem same region.

So region coding is like playing russian roulette on Blu-Ray? Some discs are some discs aren't?

When will Universal be releasing in BD and which titles?

So region coding is like playing russian roulette on Blu-Ray? Some discs are some discs aren't?

When will Universal be releasing in BD and which titles?

The discs are labelled. It is not difficult.

The same deal as with BD - different distributors.

Spy Game, U-571 and Brokeback Mountain are listed for the UK.

Some Universal titles are also distributed by Disney in Japan.

You forget that it's Microsoft which seems to employ this sort of tactic (i.e. bribing pro-Microsoft bloggers with free laptops (http://apcmag.com/4889/microsoft_offers_2_000_ferrari_gifts_to_bloggers) or pay for pro-Microsoft Wikipedia entries (http://software.silicon.com/webservices/0,39024657,39165435,00.htm)), not Sun.
Oh lord - you're trying to make it look like bribes. MS was simply looking for someone independent to help correct some unfair language. The very story you linked to says:

[Miscrosoft said to him]"Feel free to say anything at all on your blog about the process, about our communication with you on matters related to Open XML, or anything else. We don't need to 'approve' anything you have to say, our goal is simply to get more informed voices into the debate."...

....The Foundation is now looking at ways for big companies such as Microsoft to liaise with Wikipedia on editorial matters, Gerard added.

He continued: "It's clear that the present situation, where a company not knowing the precise right thing to do can end up with bad press around the world, is not good for us or for them."

Oh, please let that be only for the new releases!

I already own the DVDs for all the catalogue releases that are listed there that interest me... :(

Are there any HD extras on the HD DVD side (layer) of combo discs?

I'm wondering if combos are a way of sticking with the SD extras in "value added" form, and saving a bit of money in encoding costs, as well as keeping the HD DVD side capacity available for the main feature?

What is the structure of combo discs so far released?

Gary

umm, i think there is a general, broader policy...the insider's thread has nothing to do with the general policy...
Correct - if he is posting here and working with an agenda, the site policy says he should have honestly and openly identified his "interests" as an insider... but I think he knows that already but chose not to...

And asking Amir about Sony's policy is like asking Bin Laden about US policy. I am sure he is well informed but the version you will get will not be one that you can necessarily trust - and that should come as no surprise.

Comparing Amir to Bin Laden? Did you really intend to say that?

We all need to think carefully before we post.

Certainly is. The Universal titles released on BD around the world will also be nice to acquire for certain titles.

Even if they are region coded on release, they are mandated to release non-coded discs after 12 months... Unless it is Japan in which case no problem same region.
Too bad you won't be able to play them on US players - so the point is worthless.

Are you trying to claim that the overseas distirbutors are "required" by some arcane rule or law to "re-print" all their releases 12 months later?

That's preposterous and so obviously false. You won't be able to play them - dream on ;)

Now with HD DVD we can play any of these overseas releases from any region :)

The discs are labelled. It is not difficult.

The same deal as with BD - different distributors.

Spy Game, U-571 and Brokeback Mountain are listed for the UK.

Some Universal titles are also distributed by Disney in Japan.

Well, the UK releases are in a different region, so they're not much help. Do you have a list or link to any of those Japan releases? I'm looking on the Internet but haven't been able to find them.

Too bad you won't be able to play them on US players - so the point is worthless.

Only (a person who won't be able to get titles involving) the Sith deal in absolutes. :)

Anything from Japan is in the same region. No problem there.

And there is no rule that says they have to be region coded. Sony won't do it for catalog anywhere, and Warner and Paramount are supposedly against using it period.

Gary

Only (a person who won't be able to get titles involving) the Sith deal in absolutes. :)

Anything from Japan is in the same region. No problem there.

And there is no rule that says they have to be region coded. Sony won't do it for catalog anywhere, and Warner and Paramount are supposedly against using it period.

Gary

I see your Sith with Chronicles of Riddick and raise you with Serenity. ;)

I believe rdjam's point was that the UK titles listed are not in the same region.

............
BD
25GB disc divided by 181 minutes for the title, divided by 60 seconds and multiplied by 8 (convert bytes to bits) = 18.42mb/sec total average bandwidth

HD-DVD
30GB disc divided by 181 minutes for the title, divided by 60 seconds and multiplied by 8 (convert bytes to bits) = 22.10mb/sec total average bandwidth

Now if they do LPCM for the audio on the BD that's at least a few mb/sec straight off the top of that number (if someone knows the exact mb/sec for 5.1 LPCM please let me know).........


One additional update on this subject. Assuming the audio is 24/48 5.1 LPCM, that's 5.9mb/sec that has to be dedicated to the audio. That brings the total average bandwidth for the video portion of Dances with Wolves to 12.52mb/sec.

One additional update on this subject. Assuming the audio is 24/48 5.1 LPCM, that's 5.9mb/sec that has to be dedicated to the audio. That brings the total average bandwidth for the video portion of Dances with Wolves to 12.52mb/sec.

Considering the age of the movie, the audio is probably sourced in 16/48. (As described by Roger Dressler). So if you are going to "assume", then it would be be better to consider the most likely thing.. ;)

b2b

Considering the age of the movie, the audio is probably sourced in 16/48. (As described by Roger Dressler). So if you are going to "assume", then it would be be better to consider the most likely thing.. ;)

b2b

Fair enough. That requires 3.9mb/sec.

So 18.42mb/sec - 3.9mb/sec = 14.52mb/sec total average bandwidth left for video.

I see your Sith with Chronicles of Riddick and raise you with Serenity.

"Sith" grossed several times more than both of those movies combined (theatrically and DVD sales) :p

"Sith" grossed several times more than both of those movies combined (theatrically and DVD sales) :p

Yes, but considering that dialog_gvf is a big Firefly fan (like myself), I'm willing to bet he cares about Serenity. Of course he gets me back on the fact that when Firefly is released in HD it will likely be a BD exclusive. ;)

Fair enough. That requires 3.9mb/sec.

So 18.42mb/sec - 3.9mb/sec = 14.52mb/sec total average bandwidth left for video.
Since its a Fox/MGM title you can "assume" that it will be using DTS-HD Master Audio and not PCM.

And anyway your PCM numbers are wrong.

24/48 5.1 PCM is 6.9Mbps

16/48 5.1 PCM is 4.6Mbps

The math couldn't be simpler for uncompressed audio.

48000Hz * 24bit = 1152000 bits per second * 6 channels = 6912000 bits per second (6.9 Mbps)

48000Hz * 16bit = 768000 bits per second * 6 channels = 4608000 bits per second (4.6 Mbps)

Originally Posted by PeterTHX
Well to a member of any dictatorship, in this case hardware run by Toshiba, software by Microsoft, debate is indeed not allowed.

We at the BDA allow debate and free talk in any and all forms. You're a BDA insider? I didn't know that...can you elaborate?Originally Posted by nataraj
Peter, care to comment about this.

Looks like you are ignoring AVS policy about insiders ....I'm not commenting in the "Insiders" thread as an insider, representing my company, or inviting questions as such. Ah, yah but, if you are an industry insider, you are supposed to identify yourself as such , even here so that we can properly evaluate your biases for and against your compettion.

Not just in the insiders thread.
umm, i think there is a general, broader policy...the insider's thread has nothing to do with the general policy...
Mods did I get this right?

-are you an industry insider? identify yourself as such and do not use AVS to bash your competition

We want you to post here, we just want to have an idea of where you stand as an insider, and be identified as such so we can consider where your coming from.

Your're a pretty passionate BDA guy, just want to know where your coming from.

Since its a Fox/MGM title you can "assume" that it will be using DTS-HD Master Audio and not PCM.

And anyway your PCM numbers are wrong.

24/48 5.1 PCM is 6.9Mbps

16/48 5.1 PCM is 4.6Mbps

The math couldn't be simpler for uncompressed audio.

48000Hz * 24bit = 1152000 bits per second * 6 channels = 6912000 bits per second (6.9 Mbps)

48000Hz * 16bit = 768000 bits per second * 6 channels = 4608000 bits per second (4.6 Mbps)

Aren't they going to save DTS-HD for the Deluxe Double-Dip release? ;)

I believe the .1 channel does not require as much bandwidth as a standard full channel as it is just for low frequencies (up to 120Hz I believe).

iHD, HDi? Nope it's called Advanced Navigation
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/25/ihd-hdi-nope-its-called-advanced-navigation/

It's also no wonder MS choose to back HD DVD considering they use so much of Microsoft's technologies. One thing for sure is that no one is arguing that BDJ is better than HDi!

Ouch, those are fighting words to Talk. ;)

Aren't they going to save DTS-HD for the Deluxe Double-Dip release? ;)

I believe the .1 channel does not require as much bandwidth as a standard full channel as it is just for low frequencies (up to 120Hz I believe).
All of the Fox and MGM/Fox titles use DTS-HD MA. Its their standard codec. Just like PCM is standard for all Sony and Disney releases.

The .1 channel uses the same bandwidth as the other channels. The bitrates for the PCM tracks are reported as 4.6Mbps and 6.9Mbps by both the PS3 and the PC software players. The numbers I gave above are accurate.

Ah, yah but, if you are an industry insider, you are supposed to identify yourself as such , even here so that we can properly evaluate your biases for and against your compettion.

Not just in the insiders thread.

Mods did I get this right?



We want you to post here, we just want to have an idea of where you stand as an insider, and be identified as such so we can consider where your coming from.

Your're a pretty passionate BDA guy, just want to know where your coming from.

Per chance a bit of "disclosure" on your part is in order too. You attended the "industry only" CES event, and attended Toshiba dealer briefings with DTV Tvio Guy. Not exactly the profile of someone who claims no industry affiliation.

b2b

Per chance a bit of "disclosure" on your part is in order too. You attended the "industry only" CES event, and attended Toshiba dealer briefings with DTV Tvio Guy. Not exactly the profile of someone who claims no industry affiliation.

b2b I am not an industry insider. I am not employed by any company that is involved on either side of this HD DVD Blu-ray debate. I am an enthusiast who loves home theater.

The "industry only" CES show is broadly defined for me and my closest 140,00 friends. There's a lot of technologies there besides next generation optical discs. I bought my players from Robert and enjoyed talking with him while we both were in Las Vegas.

In my business I deal with companies that evaluate products to sell at the retail level. I attend those industry as an 'industry affiliate " so I can gather information give my professional advice to retailers.

I stay longer on my own dime at some events so I an evaluate and look at these HD optical technologies as I am personally interested in them. And so I maybe can know what I am talking about. In the course of my travels, I talk with a lot of other people who care about this stuff as an hobby. So I try to share it here.

I don't personal have a business interest in the success of either format.

How about you? What's your motivation here?

Since the other thread got closed I will just post my reply to Amir's post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9564496&&#post9564496) here. Also I hope that everyone remembers that it is perfectly acceptable to debate in this thread as long as it isn't personal.


That is not what I said. I said Sony has a 2-day maximum encoding allowance for their titles.As benes pointed out paidgeek said that it is actually 2 days minimum and that more difficult encodes can take longer. Also paidgeek said in this post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9570854&&#post9570854) that he had never even heard of such a requirement before. I have looked through the recent posts in this thread as well and have yet to see any evidence for what you say. Isn't it possible that you might have made a mistake and have been attacking Sony unfairly over this issue?


In the past they used real-time MEPG-2 encoders and claimed that no software encoder could fit the bill since encoding and tuning would take more than 2 days.Can you link to a article were Sony said that none of there Blu-ray encodings would take more than 2 days? Personally I never seen Sony say that they had a time limit for video encodings.


I did not bash MPEG-4 one bit. I am just pointing out 4 major studios in both HD DVD/BD use VC-1 for all or some of their titles.Are you including Disney in that list? Just to point this out but I don't think you could count Disney on a list for VC-1 anymore than you could count Paramount on a list for MPEG-4 AVC.

There are two major studios that used MPEG-4 AVC for several of their titles (Fox and Disney). And a third major studio will be added to that list in a week (Sony). Add in smaller studios like Lionsgate and the Weinstein Company and I think it is doing rather well.


Sony stands alone in not using it or any advanced codec for that matter. But the first time they are open to it, is with their much slower encoder. You are smart enough to draw some useful conclusions out of this, other than bashing me personally. No?Every time you say negative things about your competitors and I point it out you than accuse me of personal bashing. Honestly I have little interest in making this personal but I am not going to stop pointing such posts out as long as you make them. After all technically speaking you are not supposed to use AVS Forum to bash competitors.

As for why Sony chose MPEG-4 AVC there are polticial reasons for that decision. I would say the same thing though for studios who picked VC-1. After all Microsoft poured millions into improving their VC-1 encoder and spent even more providing free technical support. That was done as a way to establish VC-1 as a video codec for movie encodings and not out of any sense of kindess. As such I do not think it is fair to paint Sony in a bad light simply because they decided not to choose VC-1.


That's is the problem Richard. You are so eager to assume everything I tell you as being wrong, that you ignore it all.Not at all, I am just skeptical of what you post concerning certain topics.


Sometimes you have to trust that people in the industry know more than you do, even if they are in opposing camp.Trust is something that must be earned though and so far Amir you have given me many reasons to be skeptical about what you say concerning certain topics.


And not go and insult/ridicule them left and right, as you are doing yet again with the AVC comment above.First off you are exaggerating since I have been careful to be polite in my posts about this issue. Secondly you were the one that went searching through my posts from over a year back to attack me with.


Don’t keep accusing me of wanting to steal your first born.The only thing I am really trying to do is to see the FUD against MPEG-4 AVC end. I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to want.

I am not an industry insider. I am not employed by any company that is involved on either side of this HD DVD Blu-ray debate. I am an enthusiast who loves home theater.

The "industry only" CES show is broadly defined for me and my closest 140,00 friends. There's a lot of technologies there besides next generation optical discs. I bought my players from Robert and enjoyed talking with him while we both were in Las Vegas.

In my business I deal with companies that evaluate products to sell at the retail level. I attend those industry as an 'industry affiliate " so I can gather information give my professional advice to retailers.

I stay longer on my own dime at some events so I an evaluate and look at these HD optical technologies as I am personally interested in them. And so I maybe can know what I am talking about. In the course of my travels, I talk with a lot of other people who care about this stuff as an hobby. So I try to share it here.

I don't personal have a business interest in the success of either format.

How about you? What's your motivation here?

"I work for no man" (See O'Brother script for details..)

Motivation is to learn the facts, understand the technology and not end up with 10 HD players than don't meet my needs.. ;)

b2b

"I work for no man" (See O'Brother script for details..)

Motivation is to learn the facts, understand the technology and not end up with 10 HD players than don't meet my needs.. ;)

b2b Fair enough. Me too. :)

I just want the best quality HD at the lowest cost into consumers hands as soon as possible. I'm greedy, I want to see all my favorite movies in HD on my front projection screen in a way the directors intended. I'm amazed we've come so far so fast.

Glad you're here b2.

I think in this forum of civilized debate a greater truth does emerge.

What's your motivation here?I'm trying to not get screwed out of 20 GB of capacity and 18 Mbps of bandwidth by people who financially benefit from doing so or by people who have irrational hatreds of particular companies.

I'm trying to not get screwed out of 20 GB of capacity and 18 Mbps of bandwidth by people who financially benefit from doing so or by people who have irrational hatreds of particular companies.

So I take it you won't be buying any BD-25 titles then?

All of this ganging up on Amir is rather silly and seems more a systematic attempt to undermine his respect and credibility... There's no need for such an effort. He does that all by himself.

Fair enough. Me too. :)

I just want the best quality HD at the lowest cost into consumers hands as soon as possible. I'm greedy, I want to see all my favorite movies in HD on my front projection screen in a way the directors intended. I'm amazed we've come so far so fast.

Glad you're here b2.

I think in this forum of civilized debate a greater truth does emerge.

"Civilized debate" is up for debate sometimes... :) Now that both Amir and you are hounding PeterTHX about whatever affiliation he has. ;)
BTW, a kind note. I understand you work for a BDA company. As such, I am not necessarily going to answer your posts here unless I feel others could benefit from it (as is the case here). It is a rule we have here that insiders can ask questions of each other, but we don’t necessarily have to answer them . I doubly apply that rule to those who don’t volunteer they are an insider.

Could possibly the "THX" be a slight hint ?? Maybe it's better to make friends with people that could possibly be related to a THX company than to be confrontational ??

b2b

from the Universal interview.

As mentioned earlier Universal will be releasing over 100 titles to HD DVD in 2007. More than 90% will be combo discs. The first 40-50 titles will be released in the first half of the year. Some new releases coming are Hollywoodland, Children of Men, The Good Shepard, and Smokin' Aces. Planned catalog releases are Scarface, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Battlestar Galactica S1, Bruce Almighty, The Bourne Identity, Meet the Fockers, American Pie, Inside Man, Pride & Prejudice, The Big Lebowski, Liar, Liar, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brazil, Erin Brockovich, Shawn of the Dead, Slap Shot, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.


http://hometheaterforum.com/htf/showthread.php?t=250887

Does the 90% of combo disc figure for Universal start to make an impact? ,

That would put over 75 HD DVD DVD combo discs on the market by the summer?

If they don't lower the price, not only are DVD holdouts / J6P not going to buy them, but HD-DVD supporters won't. I know I avoid these things like the plague. The only one I have is Miami Vice and that was a gift. I am contemplating another copy of the Big Lebowski, but not on combo. Same with Scarface, Shawn of the dead, The Bourne movies, and the Fockers...

Battlestar Galactica Season 1, I might have to bite the bullet. I've avoided the SD versions since I knew HD would be on the way, but I won't like it. ;)

from t heuniveral interview.




http://hometheaterforum.com/htf/showthread.php?t=250887

Does the 90% of combo disc figure for Universal start to make an impact? ,

That would put over 75 HD DVD DVD combo discs on the market by the summer?

Kind of an old poll, but from most comments nothing has changed. Funny how Universal is ignoring the wishes of their customers. That will have an "impact", just not a good one.. ;)

Only 18.84% "Like" combo discs...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=3706

b2b

I prefer single HD DVD discs, but I don't mind the 30GB/9GB dual layer dual layer combos. If they're at the same retail price that the 30Gb HD DVDs were. I don't mind the lack of silk screening on the discs and that saves a bit on the production.

A combo is basically two DVD 9's DVDs glued together back to back so production isn't that much more than a regular HD DVD .

Its the cost of the Total HD discs I worry about, with the BD production cost. But if its not initially passed on to the consumer in the way of a higher retail cost then I will reserve my judgement.

In the poll above, a lot of the blah :eek: reaction to combos was early ones were 15GB/9GB and their was fear that 15GB was being given away for DVD compatability. 30GB HD DVD sides reduce that fear and would make combos a better deal, if the price isn't raised. Also they were price experimenting with them to see of consumers would pay a premium for them, so they were intilaly 15GB instead of 30GB for a higher street price. That explains the poll result at that time.

I prefer single HD DVD discs, but I don't mind the 30GB/9GB dual layer dual layer combos. If they're at the same retail price that the 30Gb HD DVDs were. I don't mind the lack of silk screening on the discs and that saves a bit on the production.

A combo is basically two DVD 9's DVDs glued together back to back so production isn't that much more than a regular HD DVD .

Its the cost of the Total HD discs I worry about, with the BD production cost. But if its not initially passed on to the consumer in the way of a higher retail cost then I will reserve my judgement.

Pesky facts.. You know that's not true... or maybe you don't.. Either way what you are saying is incorrect. ;)

b2b

so production isn't that much more than a regular HD DVD well its probably not like 3 times the cost like a Blu-ray disc is... :D

not much more is a relative term :rolleyes:

well its probably not like 3 times the cost like a Blu-ray disc is... :D

not much more is a relative term :rolleyes:

HD-30/DVD-9 is larger still – 820 ft2,
with two operators per line, producing 5,000-10,000
discs per day at a cost 2.5 times that of DVD.

Oh, I re-read the entire article and the "2.5 times" is what the production line costs vs. a standard DVD line. So if a DVD line costs $1 million then the combo line costs $2.5 million, takes 4 times as much operator time and is 3 to 6 times less productive than DVD (25,000 and 30,000 discs per day).

Cheap HD-DVD disc production...?? Myth meet reality.. ;)

I also see a "method" to their madness that will take the form of all discs coming from Universal being combo discs. Yes, that is what I see them working towards and as soon as they get enough lines installed, DVD will go "bye, bye" and it's 'Hello Combo".. :)

b2b

Kind of an old poll, but from most comments nothing has changed. Funny how Universal is ignoring the wishes of their customers. That will have an "impact", just not a good one.. ;)

Only 18.84% "Like" combo discs...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=3706

b2b

Maybe a case where the more extreme early adopter represented at AVS is not exactly representative of a more general early adopter?

Standard DVD's get looked down upon here and are seen as simply bloating the price.

I'm buying both formats and if combos are bloating my hd-dvd prices then what's bloating my BD prices?

I also see a "method" to their madness that will take the form of all discs coming from Universal being combo discs. Yes, that is what I see them working towards and as soon as they get enough lines installed, DVD will go "bye, bye" and it's 'Hello Combo".. . When they start doing day and date releases and all catalog releases in Combo discs they CAN stop production of standard DVD's. Or retailers can choose to stock only the combo as DVD owners can buy once and get a HD DVD version for free.

Its a significant HD DVD advantage, if they price it so it competitive with buying either the HD DVD only or the DVD only as currently Blu-ray doesn't have this capability online.

CNET CES videos including discussion of LG BH 100 and HD adult industry


http://www.cnettv.com/9710-1_53-25796.html

http://www.cnettv.com/9710-1_53-25822.html

Heading off maybe in a different direction, but I notice BD sales on eproduct wars on Amazon (http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/)seem to be passing HD DVD in the last 6 weeks or so.

This may be related to the PS3 but, on that same screen, it also seems correlated to the number of new releases for that period. It looks like instead of putting out a bunch of new releases and associated PR to fight the PS3, the HD DVD group sort of gave the BD group a free pass for that period. And that hurt.

Anybody else agree? If so, anybody know why?

- Tom

I will be interesting to see which 'standard' wins out.
i.e. pick one:
a) BluRay media is for sale in 5 years, but HD-DVD is not
b) HD-DVD media is for sale in 5 years, but BluRay is not
c) dual format players are in everyone's homes in 5 years, and disks are single format (half in a BluRay section of your DVD store, and half in the HD-DVD section of your DVD store).
d) single format players, but all studios always release combo disks (BluRay on one side, HD-DVD on the other side, possibly with a second DVD (not blueray nor HD-DVD) with the DVD version of the movie on one side, and DVD features on the other side). DVD stores once again sort movies by Title, and not by format.
e) they both go by by and some sort of 'buy a movie specific hardware decryption key card' and 'download your movie from the internet' technique ends up being adopted.

trbarry:

In my opinion the difference in amazon sales is related to the release of new titles, and not to a 'winning format'. i.e. there haven't been many new titles in HD-DVD in the past month, so sales (mostly early adoptor) are down because they own all the ones they want already. And there have been new titles in BluRay in the past month, so sales (mostly early adoptor) are up because the titles have only just become available for purchase.

Kosty mentioned above As mentioned earlier Universal will be releasing over 100 titles to HD DVD in 2007. More than 90% will be combo discs. The first 40-50 titles will be released in the first half of the year. Some new releases coming are Hollywoodland, Children of Men, The Good Shepard, and Smokin' Aces. Planned catalog releases are Scarface, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Battlestar Galactica S1, Bruce Almighty, The Bourne Identity, Meet the Fockers, American Pie, Inside Man, Pride & Prejudice, The Big Lebowski, Liar, Liar, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brazil, Erin Brockovich, Shawn of the Dead, Slap Shot, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.So we'll know in a little while if I'm right or not.

from t heuniveral interview.

http://hometheaterforum.com/htf/showthread.php?t=250887

First two questions:


Q: Will you release titles on Blu-ray and if so when?
A: Universal currently has no plans to support Blu-ray.

Can we tone down the anti-Blu-ray rhetoric, Universal? :)

That's a rather different tone than recent statements.


Q: Will you release titles on the new Total HD discs and if so when?
A: At this time Universal has no plans to release titles in the Total HD format. They like the idea of the combo discs (DVD on side and HD DVD on the other) and Total HD won’t support that.

I would have thought the reason they wouldn't be interested in Total HD was they aren't interested on releasing titles on Blu-ray.

Gary

From the Universal press release:


With more than two million HD DVD players expected in the market in North America by the end of 2007, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is committed to expanding its portfolio of compelling HD DVD content and further igniting consumer demand," said Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

Does anyone else see how that is remotely possible without Microsoft releasing an Xbox 360 with an HD DVD drive?

Gary

That's a rather different tone than recent statements.



Gary

It seems that way to me as well. A very weak statement of support for HD DVD from Universal.

I believe those that attack Amir personally have serious judgemental issues. For example, can't you conceive that he was told one thing by Sony in private and a totally different thing here? There is an ongoing underlying assumption that he's trying to deceive the world. I suspect the protests are hiding hidden agendas, even more so from those that loudly deny such a possibility (I'm here to ensure "truth" prevails.) Maybe their livelihood is from an MS competitor, or they got turned down for a job, or even got fired. I would consider those material insider criteria, but only from a bias standpoint, not expertise.

If Amir wasn't so open and candid about his experience and views we would know a lot less. If he were guarded like Talkstr8 or Paidgeek he wouldn't give enough information to raise questions.

Sure question him, but keep it respectful, like you would a co-worker (or for some of you, "should")

Does the 90% of combo disc figure for Universal start to make an impact? ,

That would put over 75 HD DVD DVD combo discs on the market by the summer?

Are combos a way of avoiding producing HD extras?

They aren't going to bother repeating the DVD side extras on the HD DVD side, right?

Gary

Sure question him, but keep it respectful, like you would a co-worker (or for some of you, "should")

Respect cuts both ways. And when somebody is trying to pull a fast one on the forum members, he is disrespecting them.

Respect cuts both ways. And when somebody is trying to pull a fast one on the forum members, he is disrespecting them.

I totally agree. The response that we are talking about was offensively evasive.

Oh, I re-read the entire article and the "2.5 times" is what the production line costs vs. a standard DVD line. So if a DVD line costs $1 million then the combo line costs $2.5 million, takes 4 times as much operator time and is 3 to 6 times less productive than DVD (25,000 and 30,000 discs per day).

Cheap HD-DVD disc production...?? Myth meet reality.. ;)

I also see a "method" to their madness that will take the form of all discs coming from Universal being combo discs. Yes, that is what I see them working towards and as soon as they get enough lines installed, DVD will go "bye, bye" and it's 'Hello Combo".. :)

b2b

Yes ... but that's compared to DVD ... so if BD is 3x HD, then it would be 7.5x DVD. That's pretty significant ... unless I'm reading it wrong?

Whoops, posted this in the wrong thread (insiders):
Quote:
Originally Posted by WriteSimple
30GB at 30Mbps will result in :
30GB x 8 (byte conversion) x 1000 (Mega conversion)/30Mbps = 8000 seconds of audio and video or 133 minutes.

50GB at 48Mbps will result in:
50GB x 8 (byte conversion) x 1000 (Mega conversion)/48Mbps = 8333 seconds of audio and video or 138 minutes. fuad


So HD30 is equivalent to a BD48 at the max performance of both. Given HD is careful with bandwidth and space, where BD wanted to take the easy way out with MPEG2 and PCM, we can see the content design capacity for both were very, very similar. BD will likely continue to waste capacity and bandwidth as they have no incentive not to do so. This is the opposite of the trend to commercial internet distribution and as Amir has pointed out this is counterproductive to home streaming. However, BD may become more space efficient, in which case we'll continue to see a majority of releases on the smaller BD25.

Dell has two Blu-ray laptops, the Dell m1710 and the awesome Alienware Area-51 m5790 (http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Area-51_m5790/area-51m_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-AREA51M5790&SubCode=SKU-A) (under $2600 really well-equipped). Not exactly sitting out....

You can also buy blank BD media at Dell also. In addition, Dell announced a free Blu-Ray movie with certain systems (IIRC, it was an HD-Net production of the Space Shuttle ...)

Dell is definitely not "sitting" the format war out.

But then without Sun's vested interest we wouldn't be enjoying the war between Talk & Amir ;)

Or M$'s vested interest in not seeing Sun's BD-J become successful also?

It seems that way to me as well. A very weak statement of support for HD DVD from Universal.


What other studio(s) have promised 100 titles for 2007 besides Universal? This sounds like pretty solid support to me.

That's a rather different tone than recent statements.

Gary
It seems that way to me as well. A very weak statement of support for HD DVD from Universal.
So Disney actually states that it sees itself eventually releasing on both formats. Yet anyone who mentions that Disney may be going neutral is eventually labeled an over zealous HD DVD fanboy.

Yet Universal reaffirms their HD DVD alliance, not just in words but in actions, and it is considered weak and we are already assuming it is a change in tone for the studio. You know, not everyone is as pompous as Fox or Sony when they make press releases.

Heading off maybe in a different direction, but I notice BD sales on eproduct wars on Amazonseem to be passing HD DVD in the last 6 weeks or so.

This may be related to the PS3 but, on that same screen, it also seems correlated to the number of new releases for that period. It looks like instead of putting out a bunch of new releases and associated PR to fight the PS3, the HD DVD group sort of gave the BD group a free pass for that period. And that hurt.

Anybody else agree? If so, anybody know why?
In my opinion the difference in amazon sales is related to the release of new titles, and not to a 'winning format'. i.e. there haven't been many new titles in HD-DVD in the past month, so sales (mostly early adoptor) are down because they own all the ones they want already. And there have been new titles in BluRay in the past month, so sales (mostly early adoptor) are up because the titles have only just become available for purchase..... I don't (think) Universal was as fixated on the January sales numbers as we are here. I think the January surge in Blu-ray and slowdown in HD DVD is both not so much a slowdown in HD DVD sales, its remained constant for the most part but a strong surge form Blu-ray from the holiday season Blu-ray PS3 sales. But it takes 10 x as many PS3's to equal the same number of HD DVD players. The lack of new titles in January has also shifted existing owners away from new title purchase. Also, Amazon stats are relative and January sales volumes are much less than Decembers but tend to flatten out the rest of the year.

I think the HD DVD movie sales have yet to be affected by the boatloads of HD A2's hitting the market and will increase sharply in Feb and MArch and will start to pull away from Blu-ray when the new Universal titles start hitting the streets.

I don't think Blu-ray has gained the lead in sales for good. I think this is a temporary situation where the short term sales will be neck and neck for a few months and then HD DVD will drive upward as cheaper stand alone players penetrate the market.

Whoops, posted this in the wrong thread (insiders):
Quote:
Originally Posted by WriteSimple
30GB at 30Mbps will result in :
30GB x 8 (byte conversion) x 1000 (Mega conversion)/30Mbps = 8000 seconds of audio and video or 133 minutes.

50GB at 48Mbps will result in:
50GB x 8 (byte conversion) x 1000 (Mega conversion)/48Mbps = 8333 seconds of audio and video or 138 minutes. fuad


So HD30 is equivalent to a BD48 at the max performance of both. Given HD is careful with bandwidth and space, where BD wanted to take the easy way out with MPEG2 and PCM, we can see the content design capacity for both were very, very similar. BD will likely continue to waste capacity and bandwidth as they have no incentive not to do so. This is the opposite of the trend to commercial internet distribution and as Amir has pointed out this is counterproductive to home streaming. However, BD may become more space efficient, in which case we'll continue to see a majority of releases on the smaller BD25. That sound right, if you are using the maximum bandwidth.

I guess you can't have it both ways, use the maximum bandwidth or have extra storage capacity. That's the disadvantage of using MPEG-2 and PCM, bandwidth and space are gobbled up. Encoder improvement of VC-1 to use less bits and statmux for virtual bandwidth effectiveness seems like a better solution for increased storage.

But 8333 - 8000 = 333 seconds. That extra 5 minutes 33 seconds could be critical though. :rolleyes: What's the calculation for a BD25 again?

Kosty:
re your "I don't Universal ... penetrate the market"

Nifty analysis. :)

Thanks;

I meant to say:

I don't (think) Universal was as fixated on the January sales numbers as we are here.

Makes even more sense that way :D

I don't (think) Universal was as fixated on the January sales numbers as we are here. I think the January surge in Blu-ray and slowdown in HD DVD is both not so much a slowdown in HD DVD sales, its remained constant for the most part but a strong surge form Blu-ray from the holiday season Blu-ray PS3 sales. But it takes 10 x as many PS3's to equal the same number of HD DVD players. The lack of new titles in January has also shifted existing owners away from new title purchase. Also, Amazon stats are relative and January sales volumes are much less than Decembers but tend to flatten out the rest of the year.

I think the HD DVD movie sales have yet to be affected by the boatloads of HD A2's hitting the market and will increase sharply in Feb and March and will start to pull away from Blu-ray when the new Universal titles start hitting the streets.

I don't think Blu-ray has gained the lead in sales for good. I think this is a temporary situation where the short term sales will be neck and neck for a few months and then HD DVD will drive upward as cheaper stand alone players penetrate the market. Bottom Line:

Universal not fixated on Jan sales
HD DVD sales remain constant
Blu-ray sales with PS3 only catch HD DVD sales
No new HD DVD titles for first owners available
Amazon sales volume in Dec > Jan so relative rankings unreliable
New HD DVD titles coming
More HD DVD HD A2 sales coming
Cheaper HD DVD players + good attach rate = more disc sales

I'm trying to not get screwed out of 20 GB of capacity and 18 Mbps of bandwidth by people who financially benefit from doing so or by people who have irrational hatreds of particular companies.

Whew! All my hatreds are: 1) Rational, and b) not limited to just companies, but practices and people too!

:D

Oh, and incidintally, no discussers or discussees here are included in the above... it's just entertainment people!

I suspect BD leaves proportionally more bandwidth on the table anyway, so that may make a HD30 disk effectively larger than a BD50 :)

Thanks;

I meant to say:

I don't (think) Universal was as fixated on the January sales numbers as we are here.

Makes even more sense that way :D

Bottom Line:

Universal not fixated on Jan sales
HD DVD sales remain constant
Blu-ray sales with PS3 only catch HD DVD sales
No new HD DVD titles for first owners available
Amazon sales volume in Dec > Jan so relative rankings unreliable
New HD DVD titles coming
More HD DVD HD A2 sales coming
Cheaper HD DVD players + good attach rate = more disc sales


I think the Blu-Ray surge multiple is here to stay, and furthermore, that we'll be heading to 2x, 3x, or 4x the sales ratio soon (and no, I do not work for Fox ... lol). Feb/Mar/Apr looks like a bloodbath for HD-DVD sales, as per the lack of confirmed release dates for this interim period:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

I think the Blu-Ray surge multiple is here to stay, and furthermore, that we'll be heading to 2x, 3x, or 4x the sales ratio soon (and no, I do not work for Fox ... lol). Feb/Mar/Apr looks like a bloodbath for HD-DVD sales, as per the lack of confirmed release dates for this interim period: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html
I think it is a brief surge that will die away as PS3 Gamers revert to form. We need to watch quantity of disks sold, not quantity of titles

I think the Blu-Ray surge multiple is here to stay, and furthermore, that we'll be heading to 2x, 3x, or 4x the sales ratio soon (and no, I do not work for Fox ... lol). Feb/Mar/Apr looks like a bloodbath for HD-DVD sales, as per the lack of confirmed release dates for this interim period:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html betcha the situation is closer to my take that yours: ;)

See ya in 90 days :)

I'm not commenting in the "Insiders" thread as an insider, representing my company, or inviting questions as such.

Neither am I.

But you should put a sig (like I have) so that people know who you are. That way we get less shills ...

IIRC, in a PM (or in a post) you told me sometime back that your company is not supporting one format over the other.

So where is the truth ?

So Disney actually states that it sees itself eventually releasing on both formats. Yet anyone who mentions that Disney may be going neutral is eventually labeled an over zealous HD DVD fanboy.

The observation is simply one of looking at comments over time.

The Disney statement of "probably" was in a financials conference call last summer (edit: I was wrong, it was last March). Show anything that supports a move to neutrality since.

Buena Vista Worldwide Home Entertainment President Bob Chapek's last three statements:

October 23, 2006:

"As the Blu-ray technology continues to infuse our industry with robust growth, BVWHE is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the format with the release of our first 50GB titles. We have seen the future and it is here -- the digital age is upon us and Blu-ray is the format consumers have embraced for their entertainment choice."

December 19, 2006:

"Buena Vista's Blu-ray discs continue to draw critical raves for both their cutting edge delivery and innovative features. I'm confident the visual and audio experience of these new titles will be unsurpassed."

January 8, 2007:

"Blu-ray is quickly becoming the high-definition standard on the market
today and we are very pleased to add this amazing slate of Blu-ray releases
that will appeal to our core demographic. With the dual-layer, 50GB discs,
the possibilities for exciting new interactive features and additional
bonus content are endless."

Since the fall, Universal's position has gone:

We will never release on Blu-ray
We will be exclusive in 2007
We have no plans to release on Blu-ray.

You don't see a trend there?

Gary

Originally Posted by Dahlsim
But then without Sun's vested interest we wouldn't be enjoying the war between Talk & Amir

Or M$'s vested interest in not seeing Sun's BD-J become successful also?

Of course. The entire war is easily condensed down to a war of the vested interests of these large corporations. In fact the current status of the war is easily traced back to who has put up the most money and this case #1 is Sony who also has the most converging interests in winning the war.

Counting the money put into dedicating the PS3 to blu-ray along with all the other areas Sony is subsidizing the format it's easily into the many billions of dollars (just looking their projected early losses on the PS3 alone). Advertising, replication subsidization, R&D. Of course it's all about vested interest.

Toshiba doesn't have as many convergence points as Sony does so their investment seems commensurate to vested interest as well.

MS as a coroporation could easily throw a lot more money into hd-dvd but clearly their vested interest is more limited, or at least they think it is (btw saying 'M$' is equally as tacky as saying '$ony' no?). If BD ultimately fuels a strong surge in PS3/Java/Linux marketshare they might rethink that later.

Sun's vested interest is equally as obvious, so I hope no one really reads a dear love for tech specs and consumer interests into any of this. I imagine if Java was most advanced by the hd-dvd format Talk could easily debate from the other side of the table as could Amir.

I also see a "method" to their madness that will take the form of all discs coming from Universal being combo discs. Yes, that is what I see them working towards and as soon as they get enough lines installed, DVD will go "bye, bye" and it's 'Hello Combo".. :)

b2b
Well, yeah! :rolleyes: Studios aren't rolling out HD films because average folks are demanding them, it's to replace a format has hit a growth plateau. So, once a family has a collection of these, they just might get curious about the HD side. :)

You don't see a trend there?

Do you remember LG backpedalled on their universal announcement last year ...

Do you remember just a month before HP went neutral HP person was the official spokesperson for BD and said very strongly that they prefer BD. Search my posts to see links to that I provided recently.

The truth is we don't know. What shows on the surface and what happens under the water are two different things ...

Well, yeah! :rolleyes: Studios aren't rolling out HD films because average folks are demanding them, it's to replace a format has hit a growth plateau. So, once a family has a collection of these, they just might get curious about the HD side. :)

Well the thing that will be most curious to them is why they are having to pay more for something they don't want and will forgo even buying it. Or Universal could make the price the same as other studios regular DVD discs and then explain to their stockholders why disc profits are down because of the high production costs Combo discs.

Either way, the myth of "HD-DVD are cheap to make" has been exploded as a key point for HD-DVD production if none of the producing studios use the cheap discs for upcoming titles..

b2b

Well the thing that will be most curious to them is why they are having to pay more for something they don't want and will forgo even buying it. Or Universal could make the price the same as other studios regular DVD discs and then explain to their stockholders why disc profits are down because of the high production costs Combo discs.

Either way, the myth of "HD-DVD are cheap to make" has been exploded as a key point for HD-DVD production if none of the producing studios use the cheap discs for upcoming titles..

b2b

Did the Adult content companies and independents back HD-DVD because they bought into the myth of lower production costs?

Combo discs cost more to make than an HD-DVD only disc or a DVD only disc. But they cost less than making both of the single format discs. ;)

Did the Adult content companies and independents back HD-DVD because they bought into the myth of lower production costs?

Combo discs cost more to make than an HD-DVD only disc or a DVD only disc. But they cost less than making both of the single format discs. ;)

Not really... Published information goes counter to that myth too..

b2b

Among the additional new titles to be released in 2007 ... Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Ouch... that one hurts. :eek: :o

Do you remember LG backpedalled on their universal announcement last year ...

If I recall, from CES 2006, LGE went:

- Showing separate prototypes
- Specifically cancelling the BD, and announcing they intended to release a combo (nothing said about the HD DVD player)
- Withdrawing the combo and being unclear what their plans were
- A surprise announcement of the combo and a release soon after

So, the trend was clearly away from BD exclusivity. And people had been pointing that out since CES 2006.


Do you remember just a month before HP went neutral HP person was the official spokesperson for BD and said very strongly that they prefer BD. Search my posts to see links to that I provided recently.

The truth is we don't know. What shows on the surface and what happens under the water are two different things ...
Very true. We don't know. But, is this something we'll be saying in a few months time?:

"Do you remember just a month before Universal went neutral a Universal person was saying they had no plans to release on BD?"

Gary

All of the Fox and MGM/Fox titles use DTS-HD MA. Its their standard codec. Just like PCM is standard for all Sony and Disney releases.

The .1 channel uses the same bandwidth as the other channels. The bitrates for the PCM tracks are reported as 4.6Mbps and 6.9Mbps by both the PS3 and the PC software players. The numbers I gave above are accurate.

Ok, I'll go with your numbers then.


............
BD
25GB disc divided by 181 minutes for the title, divided by 60 seconds and multiplied by 8 (convert bytes to bits) = 18.42mb/sec total average bandwidth

HD-DVD
30GB disc divided by 181 minutes for the title, divided by 60 seconds and multiplied by 8 (convert bytes to bits) = 22.10mb/sec total average bandwidth
.............


If the audio is 16/48 LPCM

18.42mb/sec - 4.6mb/sec = 13.82mb/sec total average bandwidth remaining for video

If the audio is DTS-HD the rate varies from title to title. I looked at the list of titles on your Blu-Ray link that use DTS-HD and subtracted the video bit rate from the total bit rate to back into the audio bit rate number. The lowest rate on currently available titles is 5.10mb/sec and the highest rate is 6.54mb/sec.

18.42mb/sec - 5.10mb/sec = 13.32mb/sec total average bandwidth remaining for video

18.42mb/sec - 6.54mb/sec = 11.88mb/sec total average bandwidth remaining for video

Is that accurate? or have I made any mistakes here?

First two questions:


Can we tone down the anti-Blu-ray rhetoric, Universal? :)

That's a rather different tone than recent statements.


I would have thought the reason they wouldn't be interested in Total HD was they aren't interested on releasing titles on Blu-ray.

Gary

While I won't pay 37.99 for a movie, any movie, i am willing to pay 19.99 - 24.99; that seems to be the range on hd dvd combos to date...the 37.99 being day and date new releases.

i started out abhorring combos for their price but have come to realize what the actual intent is...i have at least a dozen different "dvd" devices, whether they be in my main home, my summer home or my car. in this "initial" period, i certainly am not installing hd optical in all these places, only my main home...so what the heck are you supposed to do if you buy an hd optical disc and you need to play it somewhere else...this is what universal is targeting and in hindsight may be very smart imo for targeting both the early adopter (at least those that come to the realization i did) and the average consumer.

again though, universal if you are listening, I WILL NOT pay 37.99 (hell, not even 29.99) for a title, period :)

otherwise, bring on the combos ;)

So is AACS-claiming that AACS is intact because the encryption wasn't cryptographically cracked with massive CPU power but that keys were stolen because an implmentation upstream of the the decryption exposed the keys?

Well unless you're the NSA with almost unlimited CPU resources, you're not cracking the encryption anyways.

To would-be leechers, it doesn't matter how the content was decrypted, just that it was. So the AACS claims that it's still intact is a bit hollow, no?

So is AACS-claiming that AACS is intact because the encryption wasn't cryptographically cracked with massive CPU power but that keys were stolen because an implmentation upstream of the the decryption exposed the keys?

Well unless you're the NSA with almost unlimited CPU resources, you're not cracking the encryption anyways.

To would-be leechers, it doesn't matter how the content was decrypted, just that it was. So the AACS claims that it's still intact is a bit hollow, no?

It really doesn't matter if the vault was cracked or the combination was stolen, the end result is the "money" is gone.. ;)

b2b

So is AACS-claiming that AACS is intact because the encryption wasn't cryptographically cracked with massive CPU power but that keys were stolen because an implmentation upstream of the the decryption exposed the keys?

Well unless you're the NSA with almost unlimited CPU resources, you're not cracking the encryption anyways.

To would-be leechers, it doesn't matter how the content was decrypted, just that it was. So the AACS claims that it's still intact is a bit hollow, no?

Just because computers now can't crack the encryption, wait until the hackers get 8/16/32 core computers in the next couple of years, do you really think that MD5/SHA are invulnerable forever.

Just because computers now can't crack the encryption, wait until the hackers get 8/16/32 core computers in the next couple of years, do you really think that MD5/SHA are invulnerable forever.

Granted nothing is ever permanent, and anything made by man can be broken by man... but brute force is not the likely way these types of encryption schemes will be compromised. Certainly not on the desktop (or even distributed computing) and likely not even on super computers. Moore's law is not eternal, and there are only so many seconds in the day and FLOPs in the CPU. 2^128 or 2^256 is a lot of combinations!!

again though, universal if you are listening, I WILL NOT pay 37.99 (hell, not even 29.99) for a title, period :)

otherwise, bring on the combos ;)

Warner (and possibly Paramount) are planning to thrust BD supporters into combo hell as well (Total HD).

Both sides are going to be rather livid at the idea of paying extra for something that is of almost no value, except to a split home/laptop format neutral person or those with both PS/3 and an Xbox 360 + add-on set up in different locations.

Up to now many Warner BD titles were $5 SRP less than the HD DVD combos. So, it means BD supporters will probably be the ones paying more than they would have.

Gary

I believe those that attack Amir personally have serious judgemental issues. For example, can't you conceive that he was told one thing by Sony in private and a totally different thing here? There is an ongoing underlying assumption that he's trying to deceive the world. I suspect the protests are hiding hidden agendas, even more so from those that loudly deny such a possibility (I'm here to ensure "truth" prevails.) Maybe their livelihood is from an MS competitor, or they got turned down for a job, or even got fired. I would consider those material insider criteria, but only from a bias standpoint, not expertise.


I disagree with attacking Amir -- or anyone on the forum -- in a personal manner. Now, in terms of questioning his statements, certainly what you say here is plausible. However, it's up to Amir himself to answer the question.

As I stated in my previous post, I believe Amir has something of an ethical responsibility to answer these questions. In a previous thread, he made multiple requests for clarification on a BD issue from an insider, was ignored, and (rightly) made note of that fact that said insider was being deliberately evasive. If he expects one insider to answer questions, shouldn't he live up to that same standard?

-Pie

Warner (and possibly Paramount) are planning to thrust BD supporters into combo hell as well (Total HD).

Both sides are going to be rather livid at the idea of paying extra for something that is of almost no value, except to a split home/laptop format neutral person or those with both PS/3 and an Xbox 360 + add-on set up in different locations.

Gary

I have PS3 and 360 and sometimes move them around and still can't see much practical value in the TotalHD disk from a consumer standpoint. I'd much prefer the SD/HD combo/twin.

I have PS3 and 360 and sometimes move them around and still can't see much practical value in the TotalHD disk from a consumer standpoint. I'd much prefer the SD/HD combo/twin.

I think most of us would agree that except from a "format disappearance insurance" perspective (which seems more and more unlikely), a DVD/HD disc combo would be of considerably more value to everyone than Total HD.

So, anyone still think any of studios are putting us first?

Gary

Ok, I'll go with your numbers then.



If the audio is 16/48 LPCM

18.42mb/sec - 4.6mb/sec = 13.82mb/sec total average bandwidth remaining for video

If the audio is DTS-HD the rate varies from title to title. I looked at the list of titles on your Blu-Ray link that use DTS-HD and subtracted the video bit rate from the total bit rate to back into the audio bit rate number. The lowest rate on currently available titles is 5.10mb/sec and the highest rate is 6.54mb/sec.

18.42mb/sec - 5.10mb/sec = 13.32mb/sec total average bandwidth remaining for video

18.42mb/sec - 6.54mb/sec = 11.88mb/sec total average bandwidth remaining for video

Is that accurate? or have I made any mistakes here?
Yeah that seems right. I did my own calculations based on the assumptions that the DTS-HD track is 5Mbps average and that the movie will use all 25GB of space. I came up with ~13.5Mbps for the video. And thats also assuming that there will be no extra audio or subtitles. But we know that the movie is not going to use exactly 25GB and there is still overhead to account for. So the actual number might be 12.xMbps.

I think AVC is definitely capable of delivering at those bitrates. VC1 can do it and in terms of efficiency they are very similar. It just takes careful encoding when you are using lower bitrates. According to Fox they used 14Mbps AVC on Speed and that title got positive reviews. LXG is 16Mbps and I personally consider that to be one of the best discs I've seen on either format in terms of the encoding. I don't remember seeing a single compression artifact.

Granted nothing is ever permanent, and anything made by man can be broken by man... but brute force is not the likely way these types of encryption schemes will be compromised. Certainly not on the desktop (or even distributed computing) and likely not even on super computers. Moore's law is not eternal, and there are only so many seconds in the day and FLOPs in the CPU. 2^128 or 2^256 is a lot of combinations!!

I understand that, but with recent 'breakthroughs' in computing, it would be silly to think that the encryption will last more than two maybe three years. Look at the Top 10 supercomputers (http://top500.org/list/2006/11/100) and you will know what I mean, and yes the hackers will never get to use these supercomputers, but it will only take a fraction of the power to break this in a few weeks of constant attack. With new processors coming out of Intel/AMD every couple of months, not to mention the Cell, and this really is its forte, high FLOPs. IBM/Sony have already started work on the successor to the Cell, so that will be even better suited, put these in an IBM workstation, and bam you got a cracker paradise.

So, the trend was clearly away from BD exclusivity. And people had been pointing that out since CES 2006.

Not really. The trend was people announcing universal players/drives and pulling back. So the CW was that either a contract or arm twisiting is going to prevent universal players. I saw many posts suggesting this ...

"Do you remember just a month before Universal went neutral a Universal person was saying they had no plans to release on BD?"

Sure, at this very minute Universal may be announcing this ... the difference being, they didn't say anything about possibly releasing in BD in a conference call. Also I've not heard any "chatter/rumors" about universal ... unlike Disney. So, I choose to beleive that Disney will become neutral, if not in the short term, atleast medium term. Ofcourse you are free to do the same about Universal ;)

HD-DVD shall win the battle! I've seen a few discs DVD9 made by pirates with ripped content from HD-DVD and BD also:)

20 years ago a VHS win over Betamax by help from xxx industry and now HD-DVD alliance can say "thanks" to pirates:)

I understand that, but with recent 'breakthroughs' in computing, it would be silly to think that the encryption will last more than two maybe three years. Look at the Top 10 supercomputers (http://top500.org/list/2006/11/100) and you will know what I mean, and yes the hackers will never get to use these supercomputers, but it will only take a fraction of the power to break this in a few weeks of constant attack. With new processors coming out of Intel/AMD every couple of months, not to mention the Cell, and this really is its forte, high FLOPs. IBM/Sony have already started work on the successor to the Cell, so that will be even better suited, put these in an IBM workstation, and bam you got a cracker paradise.

I stand by the statement that these types of encryption will never be broken via brute force. Attack on the algo, sure supposing that someone comes up with a vulnerability, but not by blindly hammering away at the combinations. 2^256 would take all the computers in the world more time than the universe has existed to crack even 1/2 the possibilities. I think we can assume that content will be safe for the extent of our lifetimes (and pardon my appeal to authority, but the NSA even agrees with me and they are more concerned with this stuff than Hollywood).

I stand by the statement that these types of encryption will never be broken via brute force. Attack on the algo, sure supposing that someone comes up with a vulnerability, but not by blindly hammering away at the combinations. 2^256 would take all the computers in the world more time than the universe has existed to crack even 1/2 the possibilities. I think we can assume that content will be safe for the extent of our lifetimes (and pardon my appeal to authority, but the NSA even agrees with me and they are more concerned with this stuff than Hollywood).

Yeah, it is true that brute force attacks will have to basically strike lucky, and the vulnerability approach is much more likely/easy, that said, you never know what the Russians will come up with ;).

I understand that, but with recent 'breakthroughs' in computing, it would be silly to think that the encryption will last more than two maybe three years. Look at the Top 10 supercomputers (http://top500.org/list/2006/11/100) and you will know what I mean, and yes the hackers will never get to use these supercomputers, but it will only take a fraction of the power to break this in a few weeks of constant attack. With new processors coming out of Intel/AMD every couple of months, not to mention the Cell, and this really is its forte, high FLOPs. IBM/Sony have already started work on the successor to the Cell, so that will be even better suited, put these in an IBM workstation, and bam you got a cracker paradise.

It may be easier than that since there are now close to a total of 300 discs of both formats where interested hackers may have access to both the encrypted and unencrypted data. With many encryption schemes that many samples of both encrypted and plain text can constitute a vulnerability to the whole system.

But I have no idea whether it does in this case.

- Tom

A number of off-topic posts have been removed. Though one would think it's a little tough to BE off topic in this thread.

If I recall, from CES 2006, LGE went:

- Showing separate prototypes
- Specifically cancelling the BD, and announcing they intended to release a combo (nothing said about the HD DVD player)
- Withdrawing the combo and being unclear what their plans were
- A surprise announcement of the combo and a release soon after

So, the trend was clearly away from BD exclusivity. And people had been pointing that out since CES 2006.
GaryWho else do we know with a similar experience?
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/21/samsungs-hd-dvd-blu-ray-combo-player-just-in-case/

Regarding Universal's supposedly flagging support, for my money, I'm willing to bet we see Disney publishing on HD DVD long before we see any BD's from Universal if the strength of their commitment is measured by their comments.During the company's annual meeting with shareholders last week, Disney CEO Robert Iger said that HD DVD support is a real possibility. Saying that "we're very exited about next generation DVD formats," Iger made it clear that Disney has been supporting Blu-ray because they believe it "offers more features and higher quality than the competing format." However, before saying that that company still believes that Blu-ray is going to ultimately prevail, Iger admitted that the company "will probably publish in both formats."(From here (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060313-6374.html))

Just sayin' :)

3/13/2006 - that quote is almost a year old and the most recent data we have is 'no way'...

So... I will take your bet! :) I imagine by Q1 2008 we should have an answer...

Regarding Universal's supposedly flagging support, for my money, I'm willing to bet we see Disney publishing on HD DVD long before we see any BD's from Universal if the strength of their commitment is measured by their comments. (From here)

That article is getting pretty long in the tooth. There have been no other public statements in the meantime to support it. They also (in the same article) think BD would prevail in the end anyway. Since then they have been unflagging in BD support and even put a BD vs HD DVD FAQ on their website.

Regarding Universal's supposedly flagging support, for my money, I'm willing to bet we see Disney publishing on HD DVD long before we see any BD's from Universal if the strength of their commitment is measured by their comments.(From here (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060313-6374.html))
Just sayin' :)

Disney considering HD DVD support, sees Blu-ray as eventual winner
3/13/2006 6:43:47 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

March 2006?! You figure an isolated comment made to shareholders and analysts before either format launched has bearing on the current situation?

Go back another year from there and you can "prove" Warner and Paramount are HD DVD exclusive. :)

Time flows. Things change.

Gary

Uhhh, you are making the case that Disney's policies change over time and attempting to use that to prove they won't change.

- Tom

Yeah that seems right. I did my own calculations based on the assumptions that the DTS-HD track is 5Mbps average and that the movie will use all 25GB of space. I came up with ~13.5Mbps for the video. And thats also assuming that there will be no extra audio or subtitles. But we know that the movie is not going to use exactly 25GB and there is still overhead to account for. So the actual number might be 12.xMbps.

I think AVC is definitely capable of delivering at those bitrates. VC1 can do it and in terms of efficiency they are very similar. It just takes careful encoding when you are using lower bitrates. According to Fox they used 14Mbps AVC on Speed and that title got positive reviews. LXG is 16Mbps and I personally consider that to be one of the best discs I've seen on either format in terms of the encoding. I don't remember seeing a single compression artifact.

I agree completely. I expect AVC should perform at a similar level as VC1. This title has the possibility of coming out very good. It will certainly serve as a good test to see how AVC stacks up to VC1.

I decided to go through all of this in detail because the argument we so often here from BD supporters is that BD is better because of BD-50 and 48mb/sec transfer rates. Of course this never seems to transfer into a superior movie playback experience. If you take a close look at the reviews on Highdefdigest it makes sense.

Blu-Ray reviews

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

Of 126 Blu-Ray titles reviewed, 102 titles are BD-25 and the majority of those are mpeg2 with a handfull of VC1 and AVC encodes.

HD-DVD reviews

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

Of 132 titles reviewed, 113 of them are HD-30 almost all are VC1 with a few AVC encoded titles in the mix.

I expect that BD-50s will become more common in the future, but if current BD-50 reviews are any indication I doubt they'll produce better results than what HD-DVD is already widely delivering on HD-DVD-30 with VC1 and AVC encodes.

I agree completely. I expect AVC should perform at a similar level as VC1. This title has the possibility of coming out very good. It will certainly serve as a good test to see how AVC stacks up to VC1.

I decided to go through all of this in detail because the argument we so often here from BD supporters is that BD is better because of BD-50 and 48mb/sec transfer rates. Of course this never seems to transfer into a superior movie playback experience. If you take a close look at the reviews on Highdefdigest it makes sense.

Blu-Ray reviews

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

Of 126 Blu-Ray titles reviewed, 102 titles are BD-25 and the majority of those are mpeg2 with a handfull of VC1 and AVC encodes.

HD-DVD reviews

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

Of 132 titles reviewed, 113 of them are HD-30 almost all are VC1 with a few AVC encoded titles in the mix.

I expect that BD-50s will become more common in the future, but if current BD-50 reviews are any indication I doubt they'll produce better results than what HD-DVD is already widely delivering on HD-DVD-30 with VC1 and AVC encodes.

Since you have a doubt in your last sentence, let me throw in this little thought.
It is my opinion that BD50's with AVC will produce better results than HD-DVD30 using VC-1.. That is the main reason why Microsoft is pushing for HD-DVD51. If they weren't worried about it, you wouldn't see them scrambling as they are to get it out as quickly as they can and have Amir keep talking about it on these forums. The second reason is so they can tout they have the greater capacity again which they did for awhile until BD50 showed up..

Regarding Universal's supposedly flagging support, for my money, I'm willing to bet we see Disney publishing on HD DVD long before we see any BD's from Universal if the strength of their commitment is measured by their comments.In terms of support Disney was not as dedicated to exclusive support as Universal was, but in terms of switching over I think we are more likely to see Universal switch than Disney. After all people refer to the comments made by Disney in early spring of last year but since than Disney seems far less interested in the idea of going neutral. Universal on the other hand seems to no longer write off the possibility of going neutral as they used to. As such personally speaking I think the chance that Universal will switch is slightly higher than the chance that Disney will switch.

bliklian, considering you work at Microsoft shouldn't you have that fact in a signature? After all the fuss that recently happened over the issue of insider signatures I just wanted to mention that though what is weird is that I thought you already had a signature.


I decided to go through all of this in detail because the argument we so often here from BD supporters is that BD is better because of BD-50 and 48mb/sec transfer rates. Of course this never seems to transfer into a superior movie playback experience.No offense but if it did how exactly would you know? Seriously how do you know that a movie like Chicago didn't look better on Blu-ray than it would have had on HD DVD? It just seems to me that a lot of HD DVD supporters are incredibly pessimistic about Blu-ray and I don't see why. Many of them are optimistic enough about things like internet extras, more studio support, cheap Chinese HD DVD players, and TL51 with HD DVD but the second you mention Blu-ray they get pessimistic. From what I have seen the same people calling Blu-ray supporters optimistic are often the same people that are the most optimistic about HD DVD.

I think Universal's dedication to combo discs and their willingness to transition their day a date releases to that combo HD DVD DVD format is a sign they will stay pro HD DVD and not neutral.

I expect to see more Universal advertising on the vurtues of combo discs. They would look silly switching to Total HD discs after marketing combos. I think saying 90% of releases will be HD DVD is a strategic decision meant to have combos replace DVD 9's in common use and make combo discs and thus HD DV D a commodity item.

They are betting that combos will get so cheap other studios and content providers will use them.

I don't see them supporting Blu-ray until 2009 at the earliest, and never if HD DVD sales are at all competitive. Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets. Universal is pushing chips on the table and doubling down. They might know something we don't.

I think Universal's dedication to combo discs and their willingness to transition their day a date releases to that combo HD DVD DVD format is a sign they will stay pro HD DVD and not neutral.

I expect to see more Universal advertising on the vurtues of combo discs. They would look silly switching to Total HD discs after marketing combos. I think saying 90% of releases will be HD DVD is a strategic decision meant to have combos replace DVD 9's in common use and make combo discs and thus HD DV D a commodity item.

They are betting that combos will get so cheap other studios and content providers will use them.

I don't see them supporting Blu-ray until 2009 at the earliest, and never if HD DVD sales are at all competitive. Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets. Universal is pushing chips on the table and doubling down. They might know something we don't.

This broad move to combos makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless it is a strategic maneuver designed to assure the success of HD-DVD in the marketplace. What they must already know that we don't, is how much they can reduce replication costs, to make the scheme competitively viable.

Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets.How? The one title I've seen in VC-1 from them (Flight Plan) wouldn't work on HD DVD as it is now because of bitrate issues. I know rdjam was telling people that using VC-1 meant that they would have an HD DVD compliant encode (which wasn't and isn't true), but why are you claiming that using VC-1 is hedging their bets?

--Darin

It just seems to me that a lot of HD DVD supporters are incredibly pessimistic about Blu-ray and I don't see why. Many of them are optimistic enough about things like internet extras, more studio support, cheap Chinese HD DVD players, and TL51 with HD DVD but the second you mention Blu-ray they get pessimistic.

I'm not sure that pessimistic is the right word. Antagonistic is probably more on point. And I'm not sure that Blu-ray technology is the main source of the problem. I would bet a fair amount of money that antagonism towards BD supporters (and I will leave out any colorful adjectives) is the biggest source of the problem.

Oh lord - you're trying to make it look like bribes.How else would you describe giving high-end laptops to bloggers who comment on Microsoft technology?
MS was simply looking for someone independent to help correct some unfair language.Oh, like when you donate $10K to your congressman without any expectation that it will influence how he votes on a given issue?

Are you trying to claim that the overseas distirbutors are "required" by some arcane rule or law to "re-print" all their releases 12 months later? That's preposterous and so obviously false. You won't be able to play them - dream on ;)Yet another issue upon which you've completely missed the facts.

It's not an "arcane rule". Paidgeek clearly explained in the Insider Thread the rules regarding region coding. Any discs pressed twelve months after the initial region-coded release must remove region-coding. Further, many of the studios aren't supporting region coding at all.

Uhhh, you are making the case that Disney's policies change over time and attempting to use that to prove they won't change.


No. I'm saying no one isolated comment from last spring can be defined as the last word on Disney neutrality. Same with Universal.

Look at EVERYTHING they've said, and how it has evolved toward the present, and use that to come to some conclusions.

Gary

How? The one title I've seen in VC-1 from them (Flight Plan) wouldn't work on HD DVD as it is now because of bitrate issues.

Are you talking about the VC1 video and LPCM audio streams combined, or did Disney go and push the VC1 video bitrate way up past the point of diminishing returns?

What is it that would specifically prevent this video encode from being dropped on a HD DVD with a DD+ or True HD track?

Thanks in advance for the info. This has me curious.

In any case, one title in VC1 seems more like testing the waters than a back door plan. If they start doing all of their titles in VC1, that might indicate something esle.

Yet another issue upon which you've completely missed the facts.

It's not an "arcane rule". Paidgeek clearly explained in the Insider Thread the rules regarding region coding. Any discs pressed twelve months after the initial region-coded release must remove region-coding. Further, many of the studios aren't supporting region coding at all.

I think that's not a rule for all studios, only the rule applied by Sony.

Fox and Disney are region-coding everything, old and new. Which sucks.

I think that's not a rule for all studios, only the rule applied by Sony.

Fox and Disney are region-coding everything, old and new. Which sucks.

The 12-month region coding window is a BDA rule.

Sony's policy is to not use region coding on catalog titles. However, a 12 month window for those is permitted by the BDA rules.

Gary

I would bet a fair amount of money that antagonism towards BD supporters (and I will leave out any colorful adjectives) is the biggest source of the problem.
Agreed, except for Paidgeek and sometimes Gruber :) I'm sure there'sa few others.

Originally Posted by Kosty
I think Universal's dedication to combo discs and their willingness to transition their day a date releases to that combo HD DVD DVD format is a sign they will stay pro HD DVD and not neutral.

I expect to see more Universal advertising on the vurtues of combo discs. They would look silly switching to Total HD discs after marketing combos. I think saying 90% of releases will be HD DVD is a strategic decision meant to have combos replace DVD 9's in common use and make combo discs and thus HD DV D a commodity item.

They are betting that combos will get so cheap other studios and content providers will use them.

I don't see them supporting Blu-ray until 2009 at the earliest, and never if HD DVD sales are at all competitive. Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets. Universal is pushing chips on the table and doubling down. They might know something we don't. Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets. How? The one title I've seen in VC-1 from them (Flight Plan) wouldn't work on HD DVD as it is now because of bitrate issues. I know rdjam was telling people that using VC-1 meant that they would have an HD DVD compliant encode (which wasn't and isn't true), but why are you claiming that using VC-1 is hedging their bets?

--Darin "seems to be much more" in comparision with Universal. Universla is using a technology that is applicable ot HD DVD. Disney is using a technology , or trying it out, that can be used if it migrates to HD DVD and 30BG discs and VC-1.

I don't know if that specific encode and DD+ can fit on a 30 GB disc. I just think its significant they were trying VC-1. Why take batting practice if you are never going to step up to the plate?

Seems to me that saying " Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets." is hedging enough for my statement. It's only in comparison to Universal making a bet with a HD DVD only format for its 2007 releases.

Originally Posted by Kosty
I think Universal's dedication to combo discs and their willingness to transition their day a date releases to that combo HD DVD DVD format is a sign they will stay pro HD DVD and not neutral.

I expect to see more Universal advertising on the vurtues of combo discs. They would look silly switching to Total HD discs after marketing combos. I think saying 90% of releases will be HD DVD is a strategic decision meant to have combos replace DVD 9's in common use and make combo discs and thus HD DV D a commodity item.

They are betting that combos will get so cheap other studios and content providers will use them.

I don't see them supporting Blu-ray until 2009 at the earliest, and never if HD DVD sales are at all competitive. Disney using VC-1 seems to be much more hedging its bets. Universal is pushing chips on the table and doubling down. They might know something we don't. This broad move to combos makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless it is a strategic maneuver designed to assure the success of HD-DVD in the marketplace. What they must already know that we don't, is how much they can reduce replication costs, to make the scheme competitively viable. If all of its 2007 releases are in a HD DVD only format and it is making a move not to release any standard DVD s for those titles and go combo only, that would be a big statement that Univesal expects HD DVD to survive and dominate Blu-ray sales.

Not quite as bet the company, as Sony with Blu-ray, but its poses some public risk and is a significant strategic decision.

Universal would take a huge bath on their DVD sales were they to follow that strategy. Somehow I doubt they'll go that route.

On the other hand Warner have used the combo discs to lever up prices and hence ease the transition to Total HD discs, which will be as or more expensive. Perhaps Universal is preparing the market for the same transition.

Universal would take a huge bath on their DVD sales were they to follow that strategy Agreed. They are far more likely to drop the prices on the combo discs to near DVD levels.

I dislike hybrids but if the price is the same as 30Gb discs and the hybrids are 30/9, then I don't mind the lack of full disc silk screened artwork.

Since I own a HD DVD player already I won't benefit from Total HD discs except that it may ease the way for studios to master stock and release more HD content. For me, the Blu-ray side is as good as the silk screening until I buy a Blu-ray player. I certainly don't want to play more for the priviledge of having a Blu-ray side I won't use. Blu-ray owners would feel the same way, so the only way consumers win is more content or the prices are close to single format prices.

Total HD is also more a big studio creature, Smaller content providers won't want to eat the increased cost. HD DVD or staying with standard DVD would make sense ot tehm, so Total HD may not help smaller replicators move to HD as a combo disc would.

Which is it. The price of DVDs or the price of HD30s? It's their price to set, but that doesn't mean they're gonna just throw money away - what are they expected to receive in return?

Universal would take a huge bath on their DVD sales were they to follow that strategy. Somehow I doubt they'll go that route.
Why? The only downside I see is that BD supporters (still relatively few in number) wouldn't buy their DVD releases to avoid support to HD. For the rest of the world it provides future-proofing.

Edit: I think they will be near DVD prices

Which is it. The price of DVDs or the price of HD30s? It's their price to set, but that doesn't mean they're gonna just throw money away - what are they expected to receive in return? Apparently they think the replication cost differential to move for HD DVDs to combos HD DVD/DVDs is small enough that they can make more profit by selling them to a expanded market of non current HD DVD users.

That is (figures out of the air, using round numbers) assume it it costs 50 cents more per disc to make it a combo instead of a HD DVD 30GB one.

If they can charge at least 50 cents more per disc retail wholesale and consumers see a benefit then they lose nothing and might as well make combos. Or if they can charge 50 cent more wholesale and the retailers eat the increase

If can only charge the same but say make $5 profit on every disc , then if they can increase sales only 10% by selling them to (1) risk averse people or (2) what the heck I might get an HD DVD player someday or (3) I want a DVD side with my HD DVD disc so I can use it in the other players I own, they don't lose anything.

If all of its 2007 releases are in a HD DVD only format and it is making a move not to release any standard DVD s for those titles and go combo only, that would be a big statement that Univesal expects HD DVD to survive and dominate Blu-ray sales.


It would, if it were possible and happened.

For Universal to replace DVD with combos requires the same replication capacity for the combos as currently exists for the production of their DVD. Do you realize the difference in replication quantity?

A single major DVD title last year sold more copies in one day than all HD DVD sold in 2006.


Agreed. They are far more likely to drop the prices on the combo discs to near DVD levels.


Considering the currently reality is absolutely contradictory to that claim, why do you think that?

Gary

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bliklian, considering you work at Microsoft shouldn't you have that fact in a signature? After all the fuss that recently happened over the issue of insider signatures I just wanted to mention that though what is weird is that I thought you already had a signature.


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actually, it would seem that all bkillian need do is state "these are only my personal views and not those of my employer" without identifying his employer as so many here that are insiders, at least the non-ms insiders, either don't have any sort of acknowledgement in their sig or simply this statement...some only say BD insider...

no reason an ms insider should be held to a higher standard... :rolleyes:

I think the premium pricing of previous combo discs was a limited volume market test.

I think if Universl is going to make this their HD standard they will price this as the market allows, and it will fall to under the $19.99 street price, which is a magic consumer sales volume number.