He didn't make any qualifier. Maybe you should ask him unless you'd prefer to find a hair to split? :)
Just because they didn't design DD+ to be superior doesn't mean that that wasn't a by-product of their work. Roger didn't say that there were no returns from using higher bitrates (like 1.5mbps) - he said there were diminishing returns. He's said that he doesn't think it's necessary to go up to 1.5mbps, but he also has admitted that there are improvements (small/imperceptible to most though they may be) when using bitrates above 640kbps.

That's backwards. Roger said they designed DD+ to produce the same result as DD at full bitrate, not that they didn't design DD+ to not be better.

I don't recall reference to improvements above 640k except for use of more than 5.1. He specifically mentioned that most of the utlities were for low bitrate usage.

That's backwards. Roger said they designed DD+ to produce the same result as DD at full bitrate, not that they didn't design DD+ to not be better.
It's not that complicated. DD for DVD and HD DVD is limited to 448kbps, even though DD can really go to 640kbps. Since BD was not based on DVD, it was never limited to 448kbps. In order for HD DVD to match the 640kbps, they had to use DD+. A nice little bonus was that they could not only match the bitrate, but they could also exceed the bitrate significantly. See how that works? I don't recall reference to improvements above 640k except for use of more than 5.1. He specifically mentioned that most of the utlities were for low bitrate usage.
I've posted it in this very thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10455715&&#post10455715). You didn't reply to it the first time. Here's the original post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8292776&&#post8292776) from Roger.
I hope you are not interpreting my statement of “It is indeed rapidly diminishing returns beyond 640 kbs” as no gain. No means zero. I allow for the possibility, however small it may be under real world conditions.
And let's not forget your own comment:
I certainly believe that SOME people have the ear (training and/or natural perceptual acuity), gear (equipment is the easiest as it only takes $$$), and environment (only takes $$$ but often significantly more than the electronic equipment). Don't you? Or is it all snake oil and ouija boards to you?
Or does this only apply when it supports your argument?

Must have missed it.

My statement only applies in the specific context in my original post (i.e.: lossless).

Pumping up the bitrate for the sake of marketing (as Universal has done) is something Dolby was specifically avoiding (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8295394&&#post8295394) and an entirely different animal. ;)


"Hence we are against wasting audio data for the sake of specious market factors, like "more is automatically better" or "24 bits or die."

Must have missed it.

My statement only applies in the specific context in my original post (i.e.: lossless).

Pumping up the bitrate for the sake of marketing (as Universal has done) is something Dolby was specifically avoiding (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8295394&&#post8295394) and an entirely different animal. ;)
Okay, so who decides when there're enough bits and adding any more past that point is wastefull and unnecessary? Remember, he's never said there are no gains to be had by going above 640kbps (and in fact, he specifically denied claiming that.) He's also claimed that to most people with most material in most cases, 640kbps will be perceptually trasparent. If that's the case, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that going to 1.5mbps would be enough to cover the corner cases? And if not, then doesn't that destroy the argument that going to 1.5mbps is solely for marketing?

By the way, you never did answer my question from a while back: In your opinion, do you think that it's possible to throw enough bits at a lossy codec to make a given track perceptually lossless (for everyone, experts and J6P alike) when compared to the master? If so, where would you draw the line?

I've said this several times, but the issue still remains: how is it that the same people clamoring for lossless/uncompressed only (because anything less is unacceptable) are the ones arguing that 1.5mbps DD+ = 640kbps. Why is it that more bits only count in cases where it supports your argument, otherwise the extra bits are just wasted and just for marketing? I still can't wrap my brain around that.

My statement only applies in the specific context in my original post (i.e.: lossless).
So you honestly believe that the people who have "the ear, the gear, and the environment" would be able to choose the lossless/uncompressed track over a high bitrate DD+ track but would not be able to discern differences between a 1.5mbps DD+ track and a 640kbps DD track? What are you basing this on, if I may ask?

I check up on this thread every other day or so; it sure seems to have gone seriously off topic for quite a while. I mean there's clearly interest in this stuff, but it seems to belong in players or somewhere else. Just a thought... :)

It's not that complicated. DD for DVD and HD DVD is limited to 448kbps, even though DD can really go to 640kbps. ...

As it turns out there are SD DVD with 640kbps DD tracks. Comments on this are on the insider forum. (Pink Floyd's Pulse concert has an 640kbps DD track)
As it turns out the spec is 'limiting' but the hardware implementation allows for higer bitrate DD.

As it turns out there are SD DVD with 640kbps DD tracks. Comments on this are on the insider forum. (Pink Floyd's Pulse concert has an 640kbps DD track)
As it turns out the spec is 'limiting' but the hardware implementation allows for higer bitrate DD.
Thanks. I actually had read that, but didn't want to go into even further detail explaining the exceptions. But yeah, despite the spec limiting DD to 448kbps, it turns out it was possible with some/most hardware to use the full 640kbps.

Okay, so who decides when there're enough bits and adding any more past that point is wastefull and unnecessary?

Again, Roger was quite clear that he didn't believe even 1.0Mbps wasn't necessary for 5.1 or less. I'd say a guy from Dolby would know their codec better than either of us and his point was clear that there was an extremely miniscule gains to be made by going beyond the DD max bitrate. He was equally clear that DD+ was only made to address the shortcomings of the specifications HDDVD inherited from DVD. You're trying to spin this as a feature when the more accurate appelation is the creative workaround for the environmental contraints.

I obviously don't believe bit-rate is the end all and be all of audio (or video) performance. It's certainly an important factor and it couldn't hurt, but simply because there's more isn't always better as you're seemingly trying to make it out. I'm not for a pumped up bitrate beyond what Dolby thinks is necessary for an excellent lossy encode. I'd quote Roger again, but it's obvious that no keystrokes of mine will convince you, so i'll give you the last word. :)

...
So you're refusing to answer my questions? That's a shame, because I was especially interested in your answer to: So you honestly believe that the people who have "the ear, the gear, and the environment" would be able to choose the lossless/uncompressed track over a high bitrate DD+ track but would not be able to discern differences between a 1.5mbps DD+ track and a 640kbps DD track? What are you basing this on, if I may ask?

As it turns out the spec is 'limiting' but the hardware implementation allows for higer bitrate DD.That's because to meet the DD conformance requirements, you have to support the DD spec, not the DVD spec.

I check up on this thread every other day or so; it sure seems to have gone seriously off topic for quite a while. I mean there's clearly interest in this stuff, but it seems to belong in players or somewhere else. Just a thought... :)

I'd love to change topics as we've gone past the point of silly on this. Any suggestions?

BTW, I blame myself as I started this. I should have known better. ;)

I'm curious as to why BD Live would be postponed until next year. Why is it so hard to implement?First off it might not have been postponed since that article only refers to the ability to use internet features. After all remember that it took a while before HD DVD players got a firmware update to allow them to use internet features so it would hardly be a surprise if that happened for the first BD-Live players.

paidgeek-maybe you can answer a few questions regarding BD+

Now that it is inevitable we will be seeing BD+ enabled discs in the near future, the issue of compatability with Gen 1 & 2 players must be addressed.

0. Is BD+ part of the specification the Gen 1 & 2 players meet?
1. Is BD+ supported in every player sold to date? If not what machines do/dont support it currently?
2. Will BD+ enabled discs playback transparently on early adopter machines?
3. Will firmware updates be required for players, and if so which players and when?
4. What is the first disc to hit the streets with this "feature" enabled?
5. How will consumers know the difference between and BD+ and BD- disc's in case there are compatability problems before buying and opening the disc?
6. Is the specification complete and official yet? If not, what is the target date for completion?
7. What assurances will Sony/BDA make to early adopters that they will not get screwed? (I'm sorry, but due to security breaches, your $1500 player is soon to be a boat anchor and your going to have to shell out another $1000 to continue to watch future BD titles)

Thank You.
This is from the Insider's Thread, and I don't see any answers. Does BD have another backward compatibility issue, besides BD-Live?

I'd love to change topics as we've gone past the point of silly on this. Any suggestions?

BTW, I blame myself as I started this. I should have known better. ;)
I apologize for making the critique without offering any suggestions. I mostly lurk on this thread. But I don't see why it can't bounce around here and there, sampling issues that have their own threads--numbers of players sold, Chinese players, the PS3 effect, HD DVD's game plan vs. BD Sony's, etc. :)

So you're refusing to answer my questions?

I answered you in my second paragraph. If you haven't been able to ascertain my thoughts on lossless versus DD+, you haven't even been vaguely paying attention to me. Again, I could quote Roger a few more times, but what's the point when you're going to ignore it?

But I don't see why it can't bounce around here and there, sampling issues that have their own threads--numbers of players sold, Chinese players, the PS3 effect, HD DVD's game plan vs. BD Sony's, etc.

Yeah the Format Battle part of the "Format Battle Thread" leaves avenues for many... theaters in the format war. Pun intended. :p

I answered you in my second paragraph. If you haven't been able to ascertain my thoughts on lossless versus DD+, you haven't even been vaguely paying attention to me. Again, I could quote Roger a few more times, but what's the point when you're going to ignore it?
1. You haven't answered a number of my questions - you either ignore the post completely or you dance around the subject without actually providing an answer. You even made a deal with me where you would answer my question if I answered yours, but you failed to hold up your end of the deal.
2. Your insults aside, I don't ignore your responses - I was looking for clarification, because it seems like your point of view changes as needed to support the particular argument you're making at that time.
3. You like to cherry-pick through Roger's posts, choosing only the select phrases that support your argument (at the time) and ignoring any others that may contradict what you think to be correct.
4. Others have expressed dismay that the thread has been stuck on this subject for a while, so I'll drop it now. There's no point in trying to figure out your convoluted logic anymore, since you're unwilling to discuss this rationally.

I answered you in my second paragraph. If you haven't been able to ascertain my thoughts on lossless versus DD+, you haven't even been vaguely paying attention to me. Again, I could quote Roger a few more times, but what's the point when you're going to ignore it?



Actually, it seems like you've avoided specifically answering it.

This is from the Insider's Thread, and I don't see any answers. Does BD have another backward compatibility issue, besides BD-Live?BD+ is a requirement for all Blu-ray players and that poster you quoted sounds like someone who was just trolling against Blu-ray. Just for once WayneL why not avoid fanning the flames of FUD about an issue and actually just wait and see? Blu-ray is better than you seem to think and it is quite possible that BD+ will not even be noticed by Blu-ray owners.

just asking - no need to get upset

BD+ is a requirement for all Blu-ray players and that poster you quoted sounds like someone who was just trolling against Blu-ray. Just for once WayneL why not avoid fanning the flames of FUD about an issue and actually just wait and see? Blu-ray is better than you seem to think and it is quite possible that BD+ will not even be noticed by Blu-ray owners.

I think question 0, 5 and 6 are legitimate to ask, I agree that the rest are unfair. I'm sure you're right that all BD players will support BD+. I do think it's fair to ask for confirmation on that though. I also think it's ok to ask if it will be noted if a disc uses BD+. If you have a scenario where your player doesn't have the software update yet for BD+ or has a BD+ bug that needs to be fixed, it's legit to know that kind of info up front. As for a date for BD+ being complete and delivered to consumers, I think that's fair to ask as well.

I apologize for making the critique without offering any suggestions. I mostly lurk on this thread. But I don't see why it can't bounce around here and there, sampling issues that have their own threads--numbers of players sold, Chinese players, the PS3 effect, HD DVD's game plan vs. BD Sony's, etc. :)

From your list I think your last item is most interesting. HD DVD game plan vs. BD game plan.

We've seen the news that blue lasers are becoming more available as they have finally made progress on production of these components. With better yields and higher volumes comes lower cost.

So we know that Toshiba has been driving a low cost strategy. You can find the HD-A2 online for as low as $299. Recent reports say that Sony will save on their cost of goods to build the PS3 by $100 later this year. So does anyone have an opinion on how this will play out? Will we see a price war between the two sides? If so what will the consequences of that price war be (positive and negative)?

As a side note, for all those interested, you can own your very own 128 bit hex number. Don't worry, it's not the special one, but it will be yours free and clear. I'm keeping my number secret. ;)

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/

From your list I think your last item is most interesting. HD DVD game plan vs. BD game plan.

We've seen the news that blue lasers are becoming more available as they have finally made progress on production of these components. With better yields and higher volumes comes lower cost.

So we know that Toshiba has been driving a low cost strategy. You can find the HD-A2 online for as low as $299. Recent reports say that Sony will save on their cost of goods to build the PS3 by $100 later this year. So does anyone have an opinion on how this will play out? Will we see a price war between the two sides? If so what will the consequences of that price war be (positive and negative)?

As a side note, for all those interested, you can own your very own 128 bit hex number. Don't worry, it's not the special one, but it will be yours free and clear. I'm keeping my number secret. ;)

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/
The price war will be hard on HD DVD, harder on BD, but catnip for consumers. :D

Notice it calls it a DD+ core, not a DD core.

Where do you have support for your stance that HD DVD DD+ contains a DD core?


continue reading.

but do you now at least agree that there is a core and extention on the HD DVD?

Thanks for the link. The paper is a very good read, but I don't think it supports your argument. It clearly explains that "HD DVD discs will use Dolby Digital Plus bitstreams" while on Blu-Ray discs "the Dolby Digital Plus bitstream will be constructed as a hybrid of a 5.1 Dolby Digital core frame followed by a Dolby Digital Plus extension frame."

I agree, it is a good read, but you should read carefully the whole article.

And don’t BS that you did, if you did you would not have said

It sounds like they intentionally gimped DD+ on Blu-Ray to accomodate players with only the mandated DD supoprt; otherwise they would have to include both a DD and DD+ stream on the disc


Because the Blu-ray format has no audio packet constraints, Dolby Digital Plus will always operate with full sixblock coding frames, just like Dolby Digital. This yields the maximum coding efficiency, and makes the process of decoding core and extension frames easier because they always have identical frame structures.


to me gimped and more efficient/easier don't go together

The point is that the hardware is converting DD+ to DD*.


what would you call stripping? the DD+ in HD DVD has the core and the extensions the processor needs to strip the two. DD+ goes in DD comes out that is a conversion.

My point is: you are contending that DD+ tracks in a 1.5Mbs "container" may be something less than 1.5:


no what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient.

I agree, it is a good read, but you should read carefully the whole article.
And don’t BS that you did, if you did you would not have said
...
to me gimped and more efficient/easier don't go together
Page 7:
On HD DVD, the maximum is 3 Mbps regardless of the number of channels. The maximum bit rate for Dolby Digital Plus on Blu-ray Disc is 640kbps for the core audio packet (carrying from one to 5.1 channels) and 1.024 Mbps for the extension packet (carrying up to 5.1 channels) for a total bit rate maximum of 1.7 Mbps.
HD DVD: 5.1 Channels at up to 3Mbps
Blu-ray: 5.1 Channels at up to 640Kbps, or up to 1.7Mbps if you use the extension packet to needlessly duplicate channels already present in the core

It seems to me that the maximum bit rate for Blu-ray is hampered by the 640Kbps DD core where HD DVD isn't. Blu-ray is more efficient from a processing perspective because the ciruitry can be designed for a consistent frame structure, but the maximum bit rate of the audio signal is lower. When the efficiency comes by sacrificing performance, I feel justified in calling it gimped.

The link you posted in response to the question Would you please post a reference that says DD+ on HD DVD has a DD core? clearly proves it does not.

The price war will be hard on HD DVD, harder on BD, but catnip for consumers. :D


The cheapest player prices (new product available online) currently are:

HD-A2 - $299
HD-A20 - $379
BD-P1000 - $449
Xbox360 Core and add-on - $488
HD-XA2 - $530
BD-P1200 - $545
PS3 - $599

Prices are coming down nicely on the players. Samsung is most aggressive on the BD side. It will be very interesting to see what their BD-UP5000 universal player comes in at.

continue reading.

but do you now at least agree that there is a core and extention on the HD DVD?

There's no doubt there is a core (for 5.1) + extension (for 7.1) architecture.

What there is no evidence of (and that you've not provided) is anything that supports your claim that the core of DD+ on HD DVD is DD rather than DD+.

Rather that a snide "continue reading", go ahead and give us the quote from that whitepaper you cited as evidence, please.

what would you call stripping? the DD+ in HD DVD has the core and the extensions the processor needs to strip the two. DD+ goes in DD comes out that is a conversion.

Stripping would require no conversion which is no where to be found in this incorrect process you described (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10471561&&#post10471561) :


and some people say DD+ is better then DD even though they did not hear a difference and that nmaking DD+ mandatory is a good move that means better audio even though the most popular HD DVD player can only strip out and pass the DD core.

If I strip a page out of a book and pass it to you to read in tact, that's one thing.

If I first translate it from German to English on another piece of paper as you cannot read it in it's native format, that's a conversion.


I'm not attempting to split hairs here, but when combined with several of your other posts, you've attempted to say that the core bitstream on HD DVD is DD rather than DD+. From everything I've seen, that's not so.

Feel free to settle the matter definitively by simply cutting and pasting the text from that whitepaper you cited as evidence.

I agree, it is a good read, but you should read carefully the whole article.

And don’t BS that you did, if you did you would not have said







to me gimped and more efficient/easier don't go together

Another pleasant post. :rolleyes:

I don't believe the poster was taking issue with the efficiency of parsing only one frame type.

Nonetheless, a format that can 10% more efficiently store data at 640Kbps* still will not be capable of transporting more data than a format capable of 1.5Mpbs*.

*5.1. channels rates

no what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient.

So much so that it will carry less sonic data for a 5.1 mix despite having ~2.5X the data rate?

So much so that it will carry less sonic data for a 5.1 mix despite having ~2.5X the data rate?

You have amazing patience ... I've given up ... kudos to you. ;)

So much so that it will carry less sonic data for a 5.1 mix despite having ~2.5X the data rate?
At this point you'll get no response, but watch, it will be raised again.

This isn't directly related to the format war, but it is DRM and DMCA related and I think of some interest from that perspective to the broader topics.

Company targets Apple, Microsoft and others for not using enough DRM
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070511-company-targets-apple-microsoft-and-others-for-not-using-enough-drm.html

Media Rights Technologies is not a content owner, so why are they suing under the DMCA? The legal argument is a bit complicated but goes like this: Microsoft, Adobe, Real, and Apple make media player software. That software can tune into digital music streams like Internet radio stations, many of which are transmitted without any sort of DRM attached. Although streams are designed to be ephemeral, it's trivial to use streamripper software to snag copies of the songs being played through such services. MRT claims that all four companies should have used some form of DRM to protect streams—or rather, they should have used one particular form of DRM, the "X1 SeCure [sic] Recording Control." And who makes X1? MRT does.

Essentially, the company has sent letters to four of the biggest players in the industry, threatening them with lawsuits that could lead to "statutory damages of at least $200 to $2500 for each product distributed or sold" unless they adopt the company's proprietary streamripping protection code. The legal argument at work here is that, under the DMCA, "mere avoidance of an effective copyright protection solution is a violation of the act."

Have we all gone crazy? I suppose this is just another unintended consequence of letting content providers create DRM laws.

This isn't directly related to the format war, but it is DRM and DMCA related and I think of some interest from that perspective to the broader topics.

Company targets Apple, Microsoft and others for not using enough DRM
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070511-company-targets-apple-microsoft-and-others-for-not-using-enough-drm.html

Media Rights Technologies is not a content owner, so why are they suing under the DMCA? The legal argument is a bit complicated but goes like this: Microsoft, Adobe, Real, and Apple make media player software. That software can tune into digital music streams like Internet radio stations, many of which are transmitted without any sort of DRM attached. Although streams are designed to be ephemeral, it's trivial to use streamripper software to snag copies of the songs being played through such services. MRT claims that all four companies should have used some form of DRM to protect streams—or rather, they should have used one particular form of DRM, the "X1 SeCure [sic] Recording Control." And who makes X1? MRT does.

Essentially, the company has sent letters to four of the biggest players in the industry, threatening them with lawsuits that could lead to "statutory damages of at least $200 to $2500 for each product distributed or sold" unless they adopt the company's proprietary streamripping protection code. The legal argument at work here is that, under the DMCA, "mere avoidance of an effective copyright protection solution is a violation of the act."

Have we all gone crazy? I suppose this is just another unintended consequence of letting content providers create DRM laws.
If that is accurate, Media Rights Technologies sounds like it's been high a few too many times...

That company would collect the damages?

Or the companies would be sued for not using DRM?

It's not just the DMCA. It's software patents in general.

Sounds like they are just trying to get some free advertising.

Sounds like they are just trying to get some free advertising.

More folks looking for free advertising......

RFID / RFA anti-piracy technology could hit optical media
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/05/10/rfid-rfa-anti-piracy-technology-could-hit-optical-media/

They will get their name out there.

But they have to get companies which serve media online to sign on to their DRM and this kind of publicity stunt won't win them any good will.

Since we've had a lot of discussion regarding efficiency of DD vs DD+ I decided that it would be best to hear from Roger on the subject. Here's the question and answer.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10518739#post10518739


Hi Roger. I'm not sure if my previous question regarding efficiency between DD on BD and DD+ on HD-DVD is something you can speak to, or if it's NDA material. Here's a recent post from someone on another thread. I'm hoping that you can tell us if this statement is accurate, and if so what the efficiency differences actually look like between DD and DD+ on the two formats.

what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient.



The efficiency difference between DD and DD+ changes with bitrate. As the bitrate goes down, the efficiency of DD+ increases vs DD because the new coding tools take effect. As the bitrate increases to the same as normally used for DD, 448 kbps, the efficiency is essentially the same--might still be small advantage to DD+ under special circumstances due to the improved filterbank. In the case of HD DVD, as the bitrate increases beyond what DD can do (448 kbps), say 640 and above, the efficiency of DD+ reduces slightly as the frames get smaller, but as there is no equivalent bitrate for DD in that case, it cannot be concluded DD+ is less efficient than DD.

Thanks 2Channel.... that should help clear up some of the misinformation that's been put forth.

Now to put that "DD+ contains a DD core" aspect to bed...

HD DVD: 5.1 Channels at up to 3Mbps
Blu-ray: 5.1 Channels at up to 640Kbps, or up to 1.7Mbps if you use the extension packet to needlessly duplicate channels already present in the core

jgyenese: do realize trhe difference between general and specific? the codre+extensions was in the general, the BD does not need the core because it uses the DD is in the specifics.


It seems to me that the maximum bit rate for Blu-ray is hampered by the 640Kbps DD core where HD DVD isn't. Blu-ray is more efficient from a processing perspective because the ciruitry can be designed for a consistent frame structure, but the maximum bit rate of the audio signal is lower. When the efficiency comes by sacrificing performance, I feel justified in calling it gimped.

no. Even thoug it does say "decoding core and extension frames easier" -funny you would assume if there were no coere and extrensions on HD DVD how can it be easier to do it on BD, it clearly says "maximum coding efficiency" that means the same audio with less BW

There's no doubt there is a core (for 5.1) + extension (for 7.1) architecture.

What there is no evidence of (and that you've not provided) is anything that supports your claim that the core of DD+ on HD DVD is DD rather than DD+.

Rather that a snide "continue reading", go ahead and give us the quote from that whitepaper you cited as evidence, please.

why don't you show me the evidence where I am wrong?

but now that we at least agree that BD and HD DVD and anything DD+ woill have a core and extensions let's move to the next step.

do you agree that a DD+ decoder is a DD+ decoder and it should bnot care if it is BD or HD DVD. That a CODEC has a fix set of rules for the decoder and that they will be format agnostic

i.e. if you could output DD+ to a reciver on both formats then the receiver would not care if it came form BD or HD DVD but will just decode DD+

why don't you show me the evidence where I am wrong?
Because that's not how it works? How's that?

You made an assertion - that DD+ on HD DVD is made up of a DD (not DD+) core plus extensions. Because you made the assertion, the burden of proof falls upon your shoulders. You've attempted to sidestep the issue a number of times, by posting the link to the white paper and then posting quotes that don't actually prove your assertion. Instead of dancing around the issue, why not just post the exact text from the white paper where it says that DD+ on HD DVD uses a DD core? That would end the discussion pretty quickly, don't you think? I have to say - it's very telling that you chose to post the above instead of just providing the quote from the white paper.

So far, it also appears that you've been wrong about a few of your claims, according to Roger Dressler's responses in the Insiders thread. We'll have to see what he says in response to your follow-up question from today. Should be interesting...

I'm not attempting to split hairs here, but when combined with several of your other posts, you've attempted to say that the core bitstream on HD DVD is DD rather than DD+. From everything I've seen, that's not so.

you always try to split hair. You argued for God knows how long that there cannot be issues with lossless decoding and then at the end you admitted it can and your issue is that you prefer assuming it will never happen in real life.

Let's face it what you quoted is me asking if the player does not need to output DD+ is it really an advantage to mandate some sort of decoding of it. In the end the person with the right player in either format can listen to DD+ if it is there and the person with the wrong one will have DD.

Stripping would require no conversion which is no where to be found in this incorrect process

your sentence is inverted. I agree stripping would not require a conversion of the core, but the conversion can be done with stripping. Do you agree it is DD+ coming off the disk and DD coming out? So there is a conversion. That conversion is most likely by stripping though I guess if MS wanted they could add 5.1 mini internal speakers and mics where they decode , make analog play the track on the internal speakers then record it from the mic make it digital and then compress to DD to output on your system, but that would be nuts :) since all they need is to strip off the extensions.


If I strip a page out of a book and pass it to you to read in tact, that's one thing.

If I first translate it from German to English on another piece of paper as you cannot read it in it's native format, that's a conversion.

how is that example relevant. If you strip a page from a German book it is still German, that is a clip. Nowz ifz youz stripez thez endingz zedsz fromz thisz sentencez youz willz havez convertedz itz toz Englishz

So much so that it will carry less sonic data for a 5.1 mix despite having ~2.5X the data rate?

no, where would you get that from. I already said I think DD+ can be slightly better.

At this point you'll get no response, but watch, it will be raised again.

give me a brake.

why don't you show me the evidence where I am wrong?

I already did (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10489262&&#post10489262), as the whitepaper you quoted says:
Dolby Digital Plus was designed to employ an altogether new technique to address the
downmix compatibility issue, and is the only perceptual coder thus far to do so. In its “core plus
extension” structure, the Dolby Digital Plus core is a complete 5.1-channel mix; the extension
contains the new channels, plus any channels that have been modified between the 5.1 and
7.1 renditions. (See Figure 3.)"

I'll be happy to address your other questions when you support your original claim.

You made an assertion - that DD+ on HD DVD is made up of a DD (not DD+) core plus extensions. Because you made the assertion, the burden of proof falls upon your shoulders.

hand he made the assertion I am wrong? why doesn't he have the burden of proof to point it out?

Instead of dancing around the issue, why not just post the exact text from the white paper where it says that DD+ on HD DVD uses a DD core? That would end the discussion pretty quickly, don't you think?

I am not dancing around the issue. it is just that it is not as simple as a quote. The same way he can't post a quote that says there is no core on HD DVD (like he said earlier) now at least he agrees there is a core. All that remains is to get to what is that core.

you always try to split hair. You argued for God knows how long that there cannot be issues with lossless decoding and then at the end you admitted it can and your issue is that you prefer assuming it will never happen in real life.

Let's face it what you quoted is me asking if the player does not need to output DD+ is it really an advantage to mandate some sort of decoding of it. In the end the person with the right player in either format can listen to DD+ if it is there and the person with the wrong one will have DD.



your sentence is inverted. I agree stripping would not require a conversion of the core, but the conversion can be done with stripping. Do you agree it is DD+ coming off the disk and DD coming out? So there is a conversion. That conversion is most likely by stripping though I guess if MS wanted they could add 5.1 mini internal speakers and mics where they decode , make analog play the track on the internal speakers then record it from the mic make it digital and then compress to DD to output on your system, but that would be nuts :) since all they need is to strip off the extensions.




how is that example relevant. If you strip a page from a German book it is still German, that is a clip. Nowz ifz youz stripez thez endingz zedsz fromz thisz sentencez youz willz havez convertedz itz toz Englishz

No Anthony, I'm simply striving for technical accuracy:

- DD+ on HD DVD does not have a DD core. (see your whitepaper)

- The 360 sending DD on it's output is doing so by conversion, not by "passing out a stripped core" (no different than the HD A1 re-encoding to DTS, one would not refer that as "stripping out & passing the core")

- There is no significant efficiency loss with DD+ on HD DVD (as per Roger Dressler)


If you have larger points that you are trying to make for which these were supposed to be supporting statements, then so be it. But as they stand, the assertions are incorrect.

hand he made the assertion I am wrong? why doesn't he have the burden of proof to point it out?
He's already provided his proof, even though it's a logical fallacy to insist someone prove a negative. He's quoted sections of the white paper that show that your assertion is incorrect. You have failed to provide any evidence that your assertion is correct. That's where we are at this point.

Notice that you've responded a number of times, yet you've never bothered to provide the evidence that would squash the discussion instantly? That speaks volumes...
I am not dancing around the issue. it is just that it is not as simple as a quote. The same way he can't post a quote that says there is no core on HD DVD (like he said earlier) now at least he agrees there is a core. All that remains is to get to what is that core.
No, you really are dancing around the issue. It's very simple. You claimed that DD+ for HD DVD had a DD core. When asked for proof, you provided a link to the white paper (because supposedly that's where the proof was.) When asked for specific paragraphs, you provided quotes that did not support your assertions. Now you claim that the info's too complicated for a simple quote to suffice, yet you still offer zero evidence. You can try to deflect all you want, but we all see through you.

Just buck up and admit you were mistaken. It happens. Or, provide definitive proof and end this. Either way, the ball's in your court.

From the Insider's thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10529710&&#post10529710):


hi Roger, how about DD@640? (i.e. would DD+@640 on HD DVD match it)
DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 (on HD DVD) uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss is offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.
From that, I'm taking it as DD @640kbps is basically identical to DD+ @640kbps, with the possible (extremely slight) advantage going to DD+. Is anyone reading this differently?

no, where would you get that from. I already said I think DD+ can be slightly better.

When taking statements you have made together, such as:

what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient.

I don't think people are getting as much back as they think with DD+ for 24/48 5.1

DD+ does not have an advantage, it is as simple as that.


We know there is a significant difference between DTHD and DD+ and that there is none between DD and DD+.

so why not ask for DD? isn't DD+ just as false hope? in 24/48 5.1 there is practically no difference...

Need I go on?

It would appear that you think he difference is very slight at some times, and non-existant at others.

Hence I ask you if you really think that the 2.5X datarate is really completely negated by your so called "efficiency loss" on HD DVD?

If "yes", then please explain Rogers comments.

If "no", then please explain why if 640Kbps is already so well encoded that further gains are not audible despite a 250% increase in bitrate to work with, how lossless PCM is sunch a significant jump in quality?

More enlightenment from Roger on the insider thread.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10529710#post10529710

Originally Posted by AnthonyP
hi Roger, how about DD@640? (i.e. would DD+@640 on HD DVD match it)

DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss is offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.

At this point Anthony, it seems pretty clear that Roger does not agree with the argument you've been making as to why Dreamgirls got the same 4/5 AQ score for both the DD 640Kbps encode as the DD+ 1.5Mbps encode.

Roger and Amir have already agreed with the theory I put forward. The point of severely diminished returns was reached at 640Kbps on the BD and if the reviewer could not detect an improvement in the 1.5Mbps encode he certainly wouldn't have detected an improvement in a lossless encode either.

Do you still disagree with all of us?

Amir: snip.....I know that he has angst over lack of “high resolution audio” and hence the 4 star rating. But our goal in life is to achieve transparency. And if he can’t hear the difference beyond 640bkps, I submit that he would not hear the difference with lossless either, in a blind test. So the rule of automatically giving one less start due to lack of lossless audio, doesn’t do justice to the fidelity presented. This is especially so if the reviewer has no way of hearing the original to know what could have been there, but was not. snip........

Roger: snip......And just so no one thinks I’m seeking to disagree with Amir, I totally agree with his views in Post 4345. It mirrors my own findings. Well said.

From the Insider's thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10529710&&#post10529710):



From that, I'm taking it as DD @640kbps is basically identical to DD+ @640kbps, with the possible (extremely slight) advantage going to DD+. Is anyone reading this differently?


That's how it reads to me.

Equivalent codec framing efficiency + ~2.5X datarate should make for DD+@1.5Mpbs sounding pretty darn good.

I guess I'll just go ask Roger about the core issue as well, and end that dance also.

jgyenese: do realize trhe difference between general and specific? the codre+extensions was in the general, the BD does not need the core because it uses the DD is in the specifics.
That explains why BD is limited to the bit rate of DD for 5.1 audio - unless you want to duplicate channels in the extension.
no. Even thoug it does say "decoding core and extension frames easier" -funny you would assume if there were no coere and extrensions on HD DVD
I made no such assumption. There is indeed a DD+ core on HD DVD that contains up to 5.1 channels.
it clearly says "maximum coding efficiency" that means the same audio with less BW
I find it odd that you pick out a three-word quote that has nebulous meaning, interpret it to mean what you want even though it contradicts other sections, then accuse other people of not having read the whole paper.

- The 360 sending DD on it's output is doing so by conversion, not by "passing out a stripped core" (no different than the HD A1 re-encoding to DTS, one would not refer that as "stripping out & passing the core")

not a stripped core, just the core, strop mangling what I said


- There is no significant efficiency loss with DD+ on HD DVD (as per Roger Dressler)


can you show me where he said that?

I said

DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient.

and he said

DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 (on HD DVD) uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss for DD+

I said it is a bit less efficient and he said the same thing. Now if you want to know if DD+ on BD is more efficient then HD DVD you need to ask that question :)

what he added was that

that loss in efficiencyis offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.

He's already provided his proof, even though it's a logical fallacy to insist someone prove a negative.
no he has not and no it is not a fallacy, can you show me the link to a respectable philosophical publication that says so?

He's quoted sections of the white paper that show that your assertion is incorrect.
no he quoted a section saying DD+ has a core. That much I knew. It did not have any details (other then it is 5.1).


No, you really are dancing around the issue. It's very simple. You claimed that DD+ for HD DVD had a DD core. When asked for proof, you provided a link to the white paper (because supposedly that's where the proof was.) When asked for specific paragraphs, you provided quotes that did not support your assertions. Now you claim that the info's too complicated for a simple quote to suffice, yet you still offer zero evidence. You can try to deflect all you want, but we all see through you.

The issue is scaesare
Keeps on flip flopping. To get to the core of the issue you can only move in one direction.

Just buck up and admit you were mistaken. It happens. Or, provide definitive proof and end this. Either way, the ball's in your court.


like what? Roger saying DD+ is less efficient but some might like the slightly modified (cleaner) sound that comes out? To you guys saying I was wrong when I stated DD+ is slightly less efficient?

Just buck up and admit you were mistaken. It happens. Or, provide definitive proof and end this. Either way, the ball's in your court.


when I am wrong I do admit it. Now care to show where I am wrong?

Hence I ask you if you really think that the 2.5X datarate is really completely negated by your so called "efficiency loss" on HD DVD?

I am guessing not completely. But that is a guess. The question is how much better is it?

If "yes", then please explain Rogers comments.

If "no", then please explain why if 640Kbps is already so well encoded that further gains are not audible despite a 250% increase in bitrate to work with, how lossless PCM is sunch a significant jump in quality?


I have explained it but let's try again

But before that can you explain to me why so many think there is a big difference between DD+ on HD DVD and DD on BD going from 640k to 1.5mbps while there won’t be a much bigger one between going from 1.5 to 5 (max for 24/48 for DTHD)? We are talking a 3.5 difference from DD+ and >5x for DD

Also my answer is neither of those two caricatures and my previous posts many of which you quoted prove it.

Now as to a more reasonable question
why do I care about the benefits of DTHD but not DD+?

I will start with an old quote of yours that I did not bother to answer when I saw it (at least I don’t think I bothered)

you said (way back) http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10480429#post10480429

Mmm, I've not really seen anybody state that.

The argument seems to be more that "quality" is A) subjective, and b) not a binary quality, but rather a scale.

why bring it up not just to bring back the past. But because it is relevant to the question.

In that statement you are contradicting yourself. If quality is subjective, then a subjective scale could be Binary (time is a scale but it is binary if I am interested in before 3 or after 3, or on time for the meeting or late for it)

The reality is quality (in this case) is not subjective. There is the master and the encoding it can be measured exactly how far the decoded stream is from the master and then it can be quantified, that is not subjective but objective. What is subjective is the value we give to that difference.
So the question is how do you value the audio.


For me, since lossless is so easy, I see no value in lossy. (Yes it is better then having nothing). So saying DD+ is a better then DD it does not add much because you are still lossy (it is like saying you missed your flight by 10 min, instead of 20 min). As you move away from lossless the difference becomes more and more useless and needs more and more difference to count in my opinion.

Even though HD DVD mandates DTHD decoding, it only mandates 2ch DTHD, so in essence it is almost like BD where it needs the lossy as well (if someone only gets 2ch and connects it to a 5.1 system they will be PO), the 2ch was so that it can pass the PiP and menu sounds. I don’t think any studio will ever do just lossless on either format with DTHD. To me that makes lossless and lossy like first class and economy on a flight. Someone with a first class system that can enjoy the lossless will use it, someone who’s system does not (*) most likely does not care (or else he would have made different choices in what he bought).

(*) think about it, if a player can decode internally lossless then the “can’t use it” cases are relatively non existant. So it is a plane where most seats are first class.

not a stripped core, just the core, strop mangling what I said

So as not to "mangle" allow me to simply quote what you said in your post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10471561&&#post10471561):

and some people say DD+ is better then DD even though they did not hear a difference and that nmaking DD+ mandatory is a good move that means better audio even though the most popular HD DVD player can only strip out and pass the DD core. (emphasis most delightfully mine.)



can you show me where he said that?

Sure!, It was in Roger's reply (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10529710&&#post10529710) to your own question. I'll even highlight the pertinent words and his overall conclustion for you:

DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 (on HD DVD) uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss is offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.



I said it is a bit less efficient and he said the same thing. Now if you want to know if DD+ on BD is more efficient then HD DVD you need to ask that question :)

No.. what I'm asking YOU is why you are highlighting efficiency losses, and making statments like : "We know there is a significant difference between DTHD and DD+ and that there is none between DD and DD+. " and "so why not ask for DD? isn't DD+ just as false hope? in 24/48 5.1 there is practically no difference... ", when the codecs are rougly equivalent in efficiency, yet one is capable of 2.5X the data rate of the other?

Sure!, It was in Roger's reply to your own question. I'll even highlight the pertinent words and his overall conclustion for you:

and you missed


DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 (on HD DVD) uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss is offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.

no he has not and no it is not a fallacy, can you show me the link to a respectable philosophical publication that says so?
You made the assertion. The burden of proof is yours. If I claimed that I had a four-headed flying elephant living in my home and you asked me for proof, would you really accept my answer if I challenged you to prove I did not have said elephant? This is a pretty basic premise in debate - you prove the positive, not the negative. In this case, you made the positive assertion - that DD+ on HD DVD is comprised of a DD core plus extensions.
no he quoted a section saying DD+ has a core. That much I knew. It did not have any details (other then it is 5.1).
Nice try at rewriting history, but that's not accurate. He quoted the section saying that DD+ has a DD+ core plus extensions when going beyond 5.1 channels.
Dolby Digital Plus was designed to employ an altogether new technique to address the
downmix compatibility issue, and is the only perceptual coder thus far to do so. In its “core plus
extension” structure, the Dolby Digital Plus core is a complete 5.1-channel mix; the extension
contains the new channels, plus any channels that have been modified between the 5.1 and
7.1 renditions. (See Figure 3.)"
Even now, with all of your blathering, you still have failed to prove your point. Instead of manning up to your mistake, you insist on twisting the facts around, all while ignoring the numerous requests to simply back up your claims with some evidence. Like I've said many times, you could put the issue to bed pretty quickly. All you have to do is post the exact text from the white paper that you claim shows that DD+, when used on HD DVD, has a DD core. If you can't do that, own up to the mistake like a man.
The issue is scaesare
Keeps on flip flopping. To get to the core of the issue you can only move in one direction.
Wrong. The issue is, and always has been, you. You've made claims that can't be backed up with the available documentation. Some have already been refuted by Mr. Dressler, like the one where you said "what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient."
like what? Roger saying DD+ is less efficient but some might like the slightly modified (cleaner) sound that comes out? To you guys saying I was wrong when I stated DD+ is slightly less efficient?
Actually, he said that DD+'s slight efficiency loss at 640kbps was offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Offset - meaning that the Adaptive Hybrid Transform compensated for the slight loss. He went on to say that they were very close, with some giving the edge to DD+. Nowhere did he ever call the audio "slightly modified (cleaner)." Those were your words and no one else's. In fact, here's his direct quote:
DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 (on HD DVD) uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss is offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.
when I am wrong I do admit it. Now care to show where I am wrong?
Well, let's see:
1. You said this: "what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient." To which Roger said "The efficiency difference between DD and DD+ changes with bitrate. As the bitrate goes down, the efficiency of DD+ increases vs DD because the new coding tools take effect. As the bitrate increases to the same as normally used for DD, 448 kbps, the efficiency is essentially the same--might still be small advantage to DD+ under special circumstances due to the improved filterbank. In the case of HD DVD, as the bitrate increases beyond what DD can do (448 kbps), say 640 and above, the efficiency of DD+ reduces slightly as the frames get smaller, but as there is no equivalent bitrate for DD in that case, it cannot be concluded DD+ is less efficient than DD."
2. You claimed that DD+ on HD DVD had a DD core. You further claimed that the info could be found in the white paper you linked to. As of now, you have been unable to show us, in the white paper or elsewhere, any sort of evidence that your statement was true. You're now trying to backpedal, claiming you just meant there was a core for DD+, but your past posts tell a different tale.

It's a shame you refuse to properly quote people in your posts. It shows a real lack of respect for your fellow posters. Not as much as referring to said posters as "morons," "dumb," "stupid," etc. but still...

and you missed

Well, that makes it a tie at worst. Slightly MORE efficient due to the Adaptive Hybrid transform at best.

So we are back to HD DVD is no worse than Blu Ray from an efficiency persepctive, and perhaps even better. And then we tack on the fact that on HD DVD DD+ is capable of 1.5Mbps. Where does that leave us... hmmm?

{SNIP}


The issue is scaesare
Keeps on flip flopping. To get to the core of the issue you can only move in one direction.

{SNIP}



I do? Oh. I hadn't thought so. I've been pretty much saying the same thing on this DD thing all along.

I was wrong in the PJ forum about a the light loss for a certain PJ. I had to mea culpa that one.

Anyway, care to point out my flip-flop for me? thanks!

(Oh and by the way, I found the quote from Roger back when where you got the mistaken DD core in DD+ idea...)

reposting this Anthony, because somehow you manged to "strip it" out of your reply to me, yet I just KNOW you'll want to be sure to address it!

Originally Posted by AnthonyP
not a stripped core, just the core, strop mangling what I said

So as not to "mangle" allow me to simply quote what you said in your post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10471561&&#post10471561):

and some people say DD+ is better then DD even though they did not hear a difference and that nmaking DD+ mandatory is a good move that means better audio even though the most popular HD DVD player can only strip out and pass the DD core. (emphasis most delightfully mine.)

hand he made the assertion I am wrong? why doesn't he have the burden of proof to point it out?



I am not dancing around the issue. it is just that it is not as simple as a quote. The same way [SIZE=4]he can't post a quote that says there is no core on HD DVD (like he said earlier) [/size now at least he agrees there is a core. All that remains is to get to what is that core].

{scrreeeeeeching halt}

Whoa. I just saw this on a re-read. Assuming that you are referring to moi... please supply the post # and the quote.

Seriously, this is the second time you've made a false accusation of me. Back it up.

no he has not and no it is not a fallacy, can you show me the link to a respectable philosophical publication that says so?


Steeb is absolutely right you know. It is indeed a logical fallacy to use the absence of evidence for something believed to be not true as proof.

Are you asking Steeb to provide documentation of this, or is your "publication" comment referring to the DD+ core issue again?

Actually, he said that DD+'s slight efficiency loss at 640kbps was offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Offset - meaning that the Adaptive Hybrid Transform compensated for the slight loss. He went on to say that they were very close, with some giving the edge to DD+. Nowhere did he ever call the audio "slightly modified (cleaner)." Those were your words and no one else's. In fact, here's his direct quote:

do you know what AHT does?

1. You said this: "what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient." To which Roger said "The efficiency difference between DD and DD+ changes with bitrate. As the bitrate goes down, the efficiency of DD+ increases vs DD because the new coding tools take effect. As the bitrate increases to the same as normally used for DD, 448 kbps, the efficiency is essentially the same--might still be small advantage to DD+ under special circumstances due to the improved filterbank. In the case of HD DVD, as the bitrate increases beyond what DD can do (448 kbps), say 640 and above, the efficiency of DD+ reduces slightly as the frames get smaller, but as there is no equivalent bitrate for DD in that case, it cannot be concluded DD+ is less efficient than DD."

Steeb: not at all. I said that here. Someone else asked if DD is more efficiuent then DD+. He said at low levels (under 448) DD+ is more efficient and beyond 640 there is no whay to compare, that is why I asked him the only relevent one and he said DD+ is a bit less efficient.

2. You claimed that DD+ on HD DVD had a DD core. You further claimed that the info could be found in the white paper you linked to.
and it does

As of now, you have been unable to show us, in the white paper or elsewhere, any sort of evidence that your statement was true. You're now trying to backpedal, claiming you just meant there was a core for DD+, but your past posts tell a different tale.

not at all. I am still claiming it is DD, I just want to know that Steve now realizes that there is a core so that we don't go back to an is there isn't there discussion. That is what constantly happens with him.

I want the answer to two simple questions. Do you agree there is a core (let's forget what it is for now in DD+) and is there only one CODEC called DD+. Two extremely simple questions.

reposting this Anthony, because somehow you manged to "strip it" out of your reply to me, yet I just KNOW you'll want to be sure to address it!

no just thought it useless to respond to

you said

- The 360 sending DD on it's output is doing so by conversion, not by "passing out a stripped core" (no different than the HD A1 re-encoding to DTS, one would not refer that as "stripping out & passing the core")

I never said anything was done to the core. Like you quoted I said DD+ is stripped to the DD core and it is passing out the DD core.

Whoa. I just saw this on a re-read. Assuming that you are referring to moi... please supply the post # and the quote.

Seriously, this is the second time you've made a false accusation of me. Back it up.


get real, I don't feal like looking back further, but what does this sound like to you?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10480456&&#post10480456

Well at least someone, 2 actually, asked Roger Dressler the DD core\DD+ questiondirectly/.

do you know what AHT does?
Not a clue. But I bet Roger does. If you disagree with what he said, I'd suggest you take it up with him.

Steeb is absolutely right you know. It is indeed a logical fallacy to use the absence of evidence for something believed to be not true as proof.

steve no he is not .
He said " it's a logical fallacy to insist someone prove a negative"

what you said is called argumentum ad ignorantiam in essence no evidence is not proof of anything. and it works both ways
(i.e it is commited everytime you say something like -you are wrong because you did not prove DD+ core is DD)

what he says is a fallacy based on the real fallacy.

In essence some real events can't be proven except in the posotive, I can't prove Big foot does not exist because for that I need to have an impossible amount of info. Even harder if it is that BF never existed because then it would not be enough to show in all the area BF might live that there is not one but that there was never one in all time. So some stuff can almost not be proved in the negative -on the other hand if a BF is captured then showing him is proof of the positive.

Steeb: not at all. I said that here. Someone else asked if DD is more efficiuent then DD+.
Yes, and when they asked the question, they used your exact phrasing. In case you've forgotten, here's the exact exchange, complete with links.
Question with your quote in it (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10513553&&#post10513553):
Hi Roger. I'm not sure if my previous question regarding efficiency between DD on BD and DD+ on HD-DVD is something you can speak to, or if it's NDA material. Here's a recent post from someone on another thread. I'm hoping that you can tell us if this statement is accurate, and if so what the efficiency differences actually look like between DD and DD+ on the two formats.

what I am contending is that DD+ is a bit less efficient then DD and DD+ as used on HD DVD is even less efficient.
Roger's answer (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10518739&&#post10518739):
The efficiency difference between DD and DD+ changes with bitrate. As the bitrate goes down, the efficiency of DD+ increases vs DD because the new coding tools take effect. As the bitrate increases to the same as normally used for DD, 448 kbps, the efficiency is essentially the same--might still be small advantage to DD+ under special circumstances due to the improved filterbank. In the case of HD DVD, as the bitrate increases beyond what DD can do (448 kbps), say 640 and above, the efficiency of DD+ reduces slightly as the frames get smaller, but as there is no equivalent bitrate for DD in that case, it cannot be concluded DD+ is less efficient than DD.
He said at low levels (under 448) DD+ is more efficient and beyond 640 there is no whay to compare, that is why I asked him the only relevent one and he said DD+ is a bit less efficient.
No, he said that there would be a slight efficiency loss with DD+ but that said loss would be offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. He said that it would be pretty close, with some thinking the DD+ superior. Taking chunks of his quote out of context won't work. Here's the entire post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10529710&&#post10529710):
hi Roger, how about DD@640? (i.e. would DD+@640 on HD DVD match it)
DD 640 uses 6-block frames (32 ms) and DD+ 640 (on HD DVD) uses 3-block frames. That slight efficiency loss is offset by the new DD+ Adaptive Hybrid Transform. Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter. It's pretty close, though.



and it does
Okay. So you're still contending that DD+ on HD DVD contains a DD core. Prove it. It's that simple. Copy and past the text from the white paper that shows you're correct, I will humbly apologize, and the whole thing will be over. I really don't see why you can't provide this info. You've already said that it could be found in the white paper. We're just asking for you to show us.

I want the answer to two simple questions. Do you agree there is a core (let's forget what it is for now in DD+) and is there only one CODEC called DD+. Two extremely simple questions.
1. I agree that with DD+ on HD DVD, there is a DD+ core that handles 5.1 channels. If there are to be more than 5.1 channels on the track, it would be comprised of the DD+ core and the extensions that add the extra channels. There's no DD core in the HD DVD implementation of DD+.
2. There's only one DD+ per se, but the way they are implemented in the two formats is different, from what I can tell.

Now that I've answered your simple (irrelevant) questions, why not provide the proof you claim to have and end this?

What will you say if Roger comes back with an answer that contradicts your assertions? Will you then admit you were wrong? I sure will if it turns out you're correct.

There's been some confusion with DD+ on the two HD formats that I was hoping you could clear up for us. When used with HD DVD, does a DD+ track have a DD core? The same question goes for BD - does a DD+ track (when used with BD) contain a DD track? If so, is it possible for players (on either format) to simply "strip" away the extensions and output DD without converting the track? If it's only possible on one format or the other, please specify.
The HD DVD format's use of DD+ employs a converter to output standard DD, if/when the player is able to bypass the mixer. The BD format uses a DD core for the first 5.1 "DD+" channels, so will not use any conversion for the DD output, if/when BD begins using DD+ for 6.1 or 7/1-ch programs.
Link. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10531854&&#post10531854)

What say you, Mr. P? Seems pretty open and shut to me.

Not a clue. But I bet Roger does. If you disagree with what he said, I'd suggest you take it up with him.


Don't you think you should find out what it is before you say I am wrong?

Don't you think you should find out what it is before you say I am wrong?
Nope. I'll take Roger's word for it, thanks. Like I said, if you disagree, take it up with the expert.

Oh, and about that DD core...

What say you, Mr. P? Seems pretty open and shut to me.


It would to you :) But I will wait until he answers my follow up question. (funny how you did not quote were it is not decoding/reencoding.)

P.S. DD+ on HD DVD does not have a DD core anyway. There is no need for it, because true DD+ decode support is mandatory on HD DVD.
Heh. I love it. One week later and we've come full circle. ;)

Heh. I love it. One week later and we've come full circle. ;)

And beyond, because even though Roger has apparently answered, it's still being disputed. Fun, eh? :rolleyes:

(funny how you did not quote were it is not decoding/reencoding.)
I posted his entire response to me. Don't accuse me of lowering myself to the sort of tactics you regularly employ.

Nope. I'll take Roger's word for it, thanks. Like I said, if you disagree, take it up with the expert.

I don't disagree with Roger. He said DD is more efficient and then stated AHT brings DD+ on par but it would not sound the same. Without knowing what AHT does to sound how do you know I am wrong (like you stated). But funny how you love to jump to hasty and wrong conclusions

I posted his entire response to me. Don't accuse me of lowering myself to the sort of tactics you regularly employ.



you missed just before your answer

Every DD+ decoder chip includes a converter that outputs a DD 640 stream without full DD+ decoding and DD re-encoding. Reduces computation load, and avoids compounding coding artifacts.

But funny how you love to jump to hasty and wrong conclusions
You keep saying I'm wrong, yet Roger keeps saying you're wrong. Funny indeed.

you missed just before your answer
That's great, but I posted his entire response to my question.

Even still, I never saw any mention of a DD core in relation to HD DVD. I'm sure you'll never let this go, so there's really no reason to discuss it further. The facts are out there and everyone can judge for themselves who to believe - you or Roger Dressler.

Unless Roger adds more to the discussion, I'll leave it to you.

get real, I don't feal like looking back further, but what does this sound like to you?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10480456&&#post10480456


It sounds just like this:

Would you please post a reference that says DD+ on HD DVD has a DD core?


Which is my taking exception to your assertion that the core is DD. My position, as I've made clear, is that the core is DD+, not DD.

not at all. I am still claiming it is DD, I just want to know that Steve now realizes that there is a core so that we don't go back to an is there isn't there discussion. That is what constantly happens with him.



I've NEVER said this, and I defy you to post where I have.

This is the second time you've made this accusation.

What I have said is that I disagree with your assertion that the core of DD+ is DD.

And now, Roger has substantiated what was already stated in the whitepaper.

Sorry for interjecting myself into the fray but I did read the white paper before my earlier post, and my understanding is that because BD support of DD+ is not mandatory, the player is able to construct a hybrid DD core from DD+ and decode that.
the Dolby Digital Plus bitstream will be constructed as a hybrid of a 5.1 Dolby Digital core frame followed by a Dolby Digital Plus extension frame. A basic two- or 5.1-channel Blu-ray player only needs a conventional Dolby Digital decoder IC to play these bitstreams.
In my reading there is no inherent DD core in DD+.
Is that what all of this fufarah is about?
SFW is the point here?

Steeb: not at all. I said that here. Someone else asked if DD is more efficiuent then DD+. He said at low levels (under 448) DD+ is more efficient and beyond 640 there is no whay to compare, that is why I asked him the only relevent one and he said DD+ is a bit less efficient.


and it does



not at all. I am still claiming it is DD, I just want to know that Steve now realizes that there is a core so that we don't go back to an is there isn't there discussion. That is what constantly happens with him.

I want the answer to two simple questions. Do you agree there is a core (let's forget what it is for now in DD+) and is there only one CODEC called DD+. Two extremely simple questions.

Ok Anthony. I've been saving THIS (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8002766&&#post8002766) for a while now. Given that you've accused me of something I have never said, and implicated me in this post as well, time to play it I suppose:

This is incorrect. DD+ does have a core+extension structure, but the core refers to a first frame with a complete 5.1 mix, and a second frame with any additional channels needed to construct the 7.1-ch mix. If the mix is 5.1, there is only the core frame. In HD DVD, that core is DD+, and that's why there is a DD+ decoder there to digest it--a DD decoder cannot. There is otherwise no similarity to what DTS does, and there is no layerd coding. In Blu-ray, rather than carry a companion DD track with 5.1, then a parallel core DD+ frame with exactly the same 5.1 audio, we use the DD frame as the core, thereby eliminating redundancy. And since DD640 is a demonstrated improvement over 448, it serves the same purpose as elevated bitstreams (over 448) on HD DVD.

I'd like:

a) An apology to the folks for giving out incorrect info (all the while hurling out insults like "stupid", moronic", etc...)

b) A personal apology for accusing me of stating something I've not, or otherwise the post # where I have EVER said DD+ does not have a core.

c) You to have the gonads to simply admit a mistake.

Not a clue. But I bet Roger does. If you disagree with what he said, I'd suggest you take it up with him.

I believe it's a method for making cheese from mouse milk.

But seriously, what does it matter other than Roger's reference to it as part of explaining that DD+ on HD DVD does not suffer the overall inefficencies you assert?

steve no he is not .
He said " it's a logical fallacy to insist someone prove a negative"

what you said is called argumentum ad ignorantiam in essence no evidence is not proof of anything. and it works both ways
(i.e it is commited everytime you say something like -you are wrong because you did not prove DD+ core is DD)

what he says is a fallacy based on the real fallacy.

In essence some real events can't be proven except in the posotive, I can't prove Big foot does not exist because for that I need to have an impossible amount of info. Even harder if it is that BF never existed because then it would not be enough to show in all the area BF might live that there is not one but that there was never one in all time. So some stuff can almost not be proved in the negative -on the other hand if a BF is captured then showing him is proof of the positive.

The part you ignore, is the logical fallacy you are perpetuating:

You are asserting bigfoot does exist DD+ has a DD core. When given a direct quotation otherwise (from a paper you cited as an authority, humurously enough), your claim that we cannot find evidence depicting bigfoot the section to which you refer is what you lean on as support.

Don't work that way.

Incidentally, I believe Sasquatch may be one of the few folks with hearing to truly demand 24bit/96Khz lossless, if that makes you feel any better.

1. I agree that with DD+ on HD DVD, there is a DD+ core that handles 5.1 channels. If there are to be more than 5.1 channels on the track, it would be comprised of the DD+ core and the extensions that add the extra channels. There's no DD core in the HD DVD implementation of DD+.
2. There's only one DD+ per se, but the way they are implemented in the two formats is different, from what I can tell.

Now that I've answered your simple (irrelevant) questions, why not provide the proof you claim to have and end this?

What will you say if Roger comes back with an answer that contradicts your assertions? Will you then admit you were wrong? I sure will if it turns out you're correct.

Incidentally, I was not going to answer these questions until you provided your "proof" from the whitepaper. Now as it's clear in face ov evidence otherwise that you'll refuse to own up to our mistake, I'll go ahead and chime in.

I agree with Steeb on both counts... that's my understanding from the papers as well.

Feel free to read the other quote from Roger I posted, by the way. If you believe it to be incorrect, I STRONGLY encourage you to ask him on the insider's thread about it.

I don't disagree with Roger. He said DD is more efficient and then stated AHT brings DD+ on par but it would not sound the same. Without knowing what AHT does to sound how do you know I am wrong (like you stated). But funny how you love to jump to hasty and wrong conclusions

Interesting. You also said:

"Roger saying DD+ is less efficient but some might like the slightly modified (cleaner) sound that comes out?"

When what Roger really said was:

Some folks think the DD+ version comes out better in this hairsplitter...

Subtle, but important differences.

Revisionist history?

you missed just before your answer

And MY follow up question is an attempt to get some authoritative answers before you can say "See...they are able to go from DD+ to DD without a full decode... there MUST be a DD core in there somewhere!"

The reality, I imagine, is that it's much like some video transcoders that can re-use motion vectors, quant matrices, etc... during a conversion so as to specifically avoid rounding and quntization error where possible.

Of course, that certainly does not mean the source and destination codecs are one and the same.... or that one even "contains" the other. Hopefully Roger will be able to keep that debate from even starting.

Sorry for interjecting myself into the fray but I did read the white paper before my earlier post, and my understanding is that because BD support of DD+ is not mandatory, the player is able to construct a hybrid DD core from DD+ and decode that.

According to my understanding, that's not quite it. On BD, the initial 5.1 channel mix IS DD. There's nothing to construct. It's the same ol' DD we know and love today, but with enough framing headroom on the disc to bump the datarate up to it's full 640Kbps. A standard DD decoder (either in your AVR or the deck) will be able to decode this mix.

If the content should ever go beyond 5.1 channels, then additional DD+ extension frames with the extra channel info will be present on the disc as will. You would need a deck or AVR capable of DD+ to decode the frames along with the core DD frames and play back the full 7.1 channel mix.

In my reading there is no inherent DD core in DD+.
Is that what all of this fufarah is about?
SFW is the point here?

You are correct. And , um yeah... it all seems to be about one person arguing that it's different than the way you, we, Dolby whitepapers, and a Dolby representative all understand it to be.

Your last question is a darn good one... :(

And now for something completely different.

A cartoon inspired by the God of War II launch party.
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s=700&a=176336&po=2,00.asp

Just noticed this post from RobertR1 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10532776&&#post10532776) in the Insiders thread and I just had to comment on something about it:

What's sad is that while enthusiasts have always been "spen whores" they're taking it to a whole new extreme is this format war. Mainly since specs are what make them different. Its very refreshing to see, when a person actually working on the materials, provides their input on the subject of endless debates involving people who have no possible control over the release or an ability to do an A/B comparison with the master. So they cling onto their precious spec sheets and fight like it's DDay.I just find this position more than a bit hypocritical simply because I have seen Robert comment on more than a few occasions that he considered VC-1 movies to be blind buys for him. For someone who has such disdain for those who like the better specs of Blu-ray I have always found it illogical that he can hold such a position when it comes to video codecs. Apparently caring about specs is all right as long as you have the right opinions about the right specs.

The first "smaler" german label (kinowelt) is realesing Blu-ray titels (Million Dollar Baby & March of the Pinguin) after they have only realesed HD-DVD.

No announcements to release the movies above on HD-DVD also.

You may think this wont affect the war, but i think independant and smaller lables will decide this war, because they cant afford to spend to much on a single Release.


Greetz

I don't disagree with Roger. He said DD is more efficient and then stated AHT brings DD+ on par but it would not sound the same. Without knowing what AHT does to sound how do you know I am wrong (like you stated). But funny how you love to jump to hasty and wrong conclusions

Did he say it doesn't sound the same? I believe what he said was that some people felt the DD+ w/ AHT sounded better.

Since these are both lossy encodes, how do we know which is 'truer' to the master?

Also, I noticed that you highlighter in another post that only 'Some People' thought it sounded better. Was that your way of saying that since it is only 'some people' it minimizes the importance or it doesn't really sound better? Because, if we go back to the whole lossy/lossless thing, I'm pretty sure we all agree that only 'some people' can hear the difference. :p

As best as I can tell from Roger's responses, DD+ has a DD+ core that contains the 5.1 channels. The extensions for DD+ are the channels beyond, to 7.1, etc. -- for HD-DVD.

At the end of the day though, I think this is just entirely silly. Many here argued that lossless was better than lossy because it was just that much better and the extra bandwidth usage was warranted to reach those corner cases.

However, now some of those same people are saying that even though DD+ might handle some corner cases better, it's really no better than DD and is just a waste of bandwidth.

:confused:

According to my understanding, that's not quite it. On BD, the initial 5.1 channel mix IS DD. There's nothing to construct. It's the same ol' DD we know and love today, but with enough framing headroom on the disc to bump the datarate up to it's full 640Kbps. A standard DD decoder (either in your AVR or the deck) will be able to decode this mix.Ah, I see that now. The way I read into the white paper text, I was assuming that the input must be DD+, not native DD.
It's a bit interesting to get into the details of the audio side.
Those Dolby guys are pretty sharp.

I guess for me the bottom line is, I do hear a difference particularly between DD and DD+. Generally, I find DD+ fuller, more natural and not as thin as DD but that's really only part of the equation when it comes to soundtracks and sound design.
Overall, I find DD+ superior to DD.
If others don't I'm not going to argue and unless I know the reviewer and their system, I don't put a lot of stock in their AQ analysis.

Ah, I see that now. The way I read into the white paper text, I was assuming that the input must be DD+, not native DD.
It's a bit interesting to get into the details of the audio side.
Those Dolby guys are pretty sharp.

I guess for me the bottom line is, I do hear a difference particularly between DD and DD+. Generally, I find DD+ fuller, more natural and not as thin as DD but that's really only part of the equation when it comes to soundtracks and sound design.
Overall, I find DD+ superior to DD.
If others don't I'm not going to argue and unless I know the reviewer and their system, I don't put a lot of stock in their AQ analysis.

Yeah... the other part of it is that the DD+ datarate on HD DVD can be clocked at 1.5Mbps.... almost 2.5X the rate that DD can deliver. So plenty more bits for the coder to play with to get a better perceptual encode.

Ah, I see that now. The way I read into the white paper text, I was assuming that the input must be DD+, not native DD.
It's a bit interesting to get into the details of the audio side.
Those Dolby guys are pretty sharp.

I guess for me the bottom line is, I do hear a difference particularly between DD and DD+. Generally, I find DD+ fuller, more natural and not as thin as DD but that's really only part of the equation when it comes to soundtracks and sound design.
Overall, I find DD+ superior to DD.
If others don't I'm not going to argue and unless I know the reviewer and their system, I don't put a lot of stock in their AQ analysis.
What DD tracks are you testing? To play the devil's advocate, if you're comparing HD DVD's DD+ to DVD's DD, then that's not the same as comparing HD DVD's DD+ to Blu-ray's DD.

Blu-ray's DD is 640 Kbps, which is 43% more bits than DVD's DD. (HD DVD's DD+ is usually either 640 Kbps, or else 1.5 Mbps.)

your sentence is inverted. I agree stripping would not require a conversion of the core, but the conversion can be done with stripping. Do you agree it is DD+ coming off the disk and DD coming out? So there is a conversion. That conversion is most likely by stripping though I guess if MS wanted they could add 5.1 mini internal speakers and mics where they decode , make analog play the track on the internal speakers then record it from the mic make it digital and then compress to DD to output on your system, but that would be nuts :) since all they need is to strip off the extensions.Actually, that is close to what we actually do. Although without the speakers and mics and analog intermediate :)
We decode the DD+ signal to a 5.1 PCM stream, then we encode the 5.1 PCM stream into your choice of codec, DD@640, DTS@1.5, or WMA PRO@I have no idea, never used it :). There's no "stripping" or anything like that.

For the DD+ to DD re-encode, we may not go all the way to PCM internally, I believe there is an optimization we can make which at some point in the decode cycle, we are able to use those buffers to do an encode to DD. This avoids some rounding issues because we never went all the way to the full waveform, but it's still a lot more work and complexity than the supposed "stripping" you believe we do, and it uses all the data from the original stream, not just the lowest 640Kb.

And beyond, because even though Roger has apparently answered, it's still being disputed. Fun, eh? :rolleyes:
Not really. Beyond boring, if you ask me. How many pages now?? Let's move on...

Not really. Beyond boring, if you ask me. How many pages now?? Let's move on...

Agreed ... the horse is dead ...

Agreed ... the horse is dead ...Long live the dead horse. :)

Long live the dead horse. :)

:lol:

:lol:

HAIL THE UNLIVING EQUINE!

Actually, that is close to what we actually do. Although without the speakers and mics and analog intermediate :)
We decode the DD+ signal to a 5.1 PCM stream, then we encode the 5.1 PCM stream into your choice of codec, DD@640, DTS@1.5, or WMA PRO@I have no idea, never used it :). There's no "stripping" or anything like that.
.

Are there any negative implications or aesthetic reasons why I should want to avoid this? DTS output would be my gut instinct.

And what about more than 5.1? Are there any HDDVDs that are greater than 5.1? I'll likely be doing PLIIx anyways...

What DD tracks are you testing? To play the devil's advocate, if you're comparing HD DVD's DD+ to DVD's DD, then that's not the same as comparing HD DVD's DD+ to Blu-ray's DD.
Blu-ray's DD is 640 Kbps, which is 43% more bits than DVD's DD. (HD DVD's DD+ is usually either 640 Kbps, or else 1.5 Mbps.)
I don't have BD playback so for the most part it is DVD DD vs HD DVD DD+.
When you say BD DD @640 is 43% more the DVD DD, isn't DVD DD also capable of 640? I have Cream Live At Albert Hall HD DVD which is 640 DD and while it is a good recording, I thought Rhino did a disservice in not doing a DD+ 1.5mbs or TrueHD encode especially since it is a concert and Rhino does great stuff otherwise.
Again I'm not a slave to pure specs but I usually hear a difference.
Also the soundtrack design is huge. On some DD+ tracks the sound is closed in and boxy without any ambient "air" either real or created.
Well done DD+ is quite astonishing in it's portrayal of space and natural sound.
FWIW, I watched Running Scared a couple weeks ago with DTS-MA track.
Man talk about a juiced soundtrack. .40 cal snubnoses sounded like howitzers.
It's cool but I'm glad every movie isn't like that.

DD on DVD is limited to 448 Kbps. 640 Kbps IS possible, but not within spec.

You keep saying I'm wrong, yet Roger keeps saying you're wrong. Funny indeed.

no he said , like I did, DD+ is less efficient then DD at 640. All he added is that some people like the "cleaner" sound that the AHT creates by removing hard to encode low level anomalies.

that does not make it more efficient just tells us some people have bad taste.

Sorry for interjecting myself into the fray but I did read the white paper before my earlier post, and my understanding is that because BD support of DD+ is not mandatory, the player is able to construct a hybrid DD core from DD+ and decode that.

Milt99: no, it is the opposite. every BD disk needs to have DD, what it does is that the DD+ encoder leaves the full DD on the disk and adds the DD+ extensions, then if you want to use DD+ the decoder merges the DD companion with the extensions and then decodes the DD+ stream formed by the two.

Ok Anthony. I've been saving THIS for a while now. Given that you've accused me of something I have never said, and implicated me in this post as well, time to play it I suppose:



Originally Posted by Roger Dressler
This is incorrect. DD+ does have a core+extension structure, but the core refers to a first frame with a complete 5.1 mix, and a second frame with any additional channels needed to construct the 7.1-ch mix. If the mix is 5.1, there is only the core frame. In HD DVD, that core is DD+, and that's why there is a DD+ decoder there to digest it--a DD decoder cannot. There is otherwise no similarity to what DTS does, and there is no layerd coding. In Blu-ray, rather than carry a companion DD track with 5.1, then a parallel core DD+ frame with exactly the same 5.1 audio, we use the DD frame as the core, thereby eliminating redundancy. And since DD640 is a demonstrated improvement over 448, it serves the same purpose as elevated bitstreams (over 448) on HD DVD.



why snip that part and not what he was responding to

A standard decoder can then just decode the base DD layer. A DD+ decoder decodes both streams and adds them together and generates a higher fidelity signal.

that was what he said was wrong. And I never stated that. All he was explaining is that you need a DD+ device to know how to strip out the DD


but lets go to the resources we have today (since he answered the question)

Yes! Much of what changed between DD and DD+ is syntax (structural), not coding operations. One prominent example is the option for shorter frame sizes. It means certain header information occurs more regularly, and some of this data gets stripped out when converting back to DD. The output block structure and bit allocation are all retained.

and from the white paper he linkewd to

In the worst case, when the audio data
is encoded using new features of E-AC-3, the audio is
decoded to a frequency domain representation that is
common to both AC-3 and E-AC-3. No time-domain
decoding is necessary due to identical filterbanks for
both formats. In the best case, if the audio data is
encoded without using any E-AC-3 features, then the
encoded audio data can be repackaged into an AC-3
frame without any decoding or encoding of audio data.
In this case, no requantization is necessary due to the
identical bit-allocation process shared by both formats.
the AC-3 snroffset and packs the result into the E-AC-3
bitstream. The E-AC-3 converter extracts the snroffset
value when performing bit allocation for the AC-3
bitstream.

Did he say it doesn't sound the same?
how can something sound better if it is the same?

I believe what he said was that some people felt the DD+ w/ AHT sounded better.

yes, what is your point?

Since these are both lossy encodes, how do we know which is 'truer' to the master?

the one that is least different from the master :)

Also, I noticed that you highlighter in another post that only 'Some People' thought it sounded better. Was that your way of saying that since it is only 'some people' it minimizes the importance or it doesn't really sound better? Because, if we go back to the whole lossy/lossless thing, I'm pretty sure we all agree that only 'some people' can hear the difference.

neither. It is the same like when RTO brought up that test between CD and MP3 and someone said he liked the MP3 better.

Not really. Beyond boring, if you ask me. How many pages now?? Let's move on...


agree, it is not as if anything will come from it.

I am done on the subject

agree, it is not as if anything will come from it.

I am done on the subject

Oh. You're done now.

Surprise. :rolleyes:


PS - Anthony, your mailbox is full

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead
horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often
try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do an outsourcing study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

no he said , like I did, DD+ is less efficient then DD at 640. All he added is that some people like the "cleaner" sound that the AHT creates by removing hard to encode low level anomalies.
Mis-quoting him will get you nowhere. He never used the word "cleaner" - only you have.
that does not make it more efficient just tells us some people have bad taste.
Rather than insulting people, maybe you should read his post again. Not that it'll make any difference. You're intentionally being obtuse in a desperate attempt to save face. Notice that no one - not a soul - has come to your defense? Get over yourself and just end this.

You're intentionally being obtuse in a desperate attempt to save face.

http://www.btinternet.com/~tonyrichardson/durr.gif

"How's that workin' for ya?"

OK. I beg your forbearance for one last post on this. Should this NOT close the issue, I'll start a separate thread to continue, so as not to clog this one up any more. Promise.

I hadn't really thought that it would be necessary to narrow down the issue in such a ridiculous specific manner, particularly given Roger Dressler's post from July that I quoted earlier. But apparently it is.

The issue at hand is the specific one of whether Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) on HD DVD has a core stream for the 5.1 mix comprised of a traditional Dolby Digital bitstream, or a Dolby Digital Plus core.

Here is what Roger Dressler, Director of Business Development at Dolby Laboratories had to say when I asked to him to address this specific issue:



Hi Steve,

Thanks for the questions.


Originally Posted by scaesare
Roger-

Thanks for the recent answers to my questions on the insider's thread.

Apologies for a somewhat specific and narrow question that may not be generally useful to others (hence the PM):

One person on the site has been rather vocal in stating that the core of DD+ on HD DVD is a standard DD core.

My belief is that this is true on BD, but not on HD DVD.

You are correct.



Originally Posted by scaesare
While DD+ and DD share some similarities, DD+ is a superset of DD, and on HD DVD it is distinct DD+ core that is present for the initial 5.1 channels, and DD+ extension frames are present for > 5.1 mixes, correct?

You are correct again.



Originally Posted by scaesare
Is it in any way correct to say that the core of HD DVD is only DD?

No.



Originally Posted by scaesare
Thanks Roger.

-Steve


Thanks much for your efforts in not only undertanding the technicalities and nuances, but for helping others clarify issues. Much appreciated.

Regards,

__________________
Roger
Dolby Laboratories Insider


I should hope this clears up any deliberate misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, I suspect that instead, the person making this assertion all along will now claim that he never said/believed that the core itself was DD, but rather that the DD information was "within it".

Should that happen, I refer you to POST# 2321 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10531572&&#post10531572). Just in case that post should get edited to revise history, I'll quote the pertinent portion here:

I am still claiming it is DD".


And with that, I'm sure the horse is no longer flinching.

The Horse à la Monty Python: I'm not dead yet! I'm feeling better!

And ... a moment of silence please ... for the horse ... :p

Oh. You're done now.

Surprise. :rolleyes:


PS - Anthony, your mailbox is full

Ah yes, and the French never surrender, they just quit fighting because "they're done" . . . ;)

I've been watching this battle for quite some time . . .very entertaining, actually. I want to thank ALL of the participants.

Ah yes, and the French never surrender, they just quit fighting because "they're done" . . . ;)


:D

Q. Why are the streets of Paris lined with trees? A. So the Germans can march in shade


Yeah that horse has been annihilated. The glue and hot dog factories are already churning through the carcass.

Matrix reviews posted on highdefdigest.com
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/matrix_umc.html

Looks like I'm going to have to buy these soon. :D

and here's their review of traffic - http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/traffic.html

think i'd be careful about trusting that site's reviews.

and here's their review of traffic - http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/traffic.html

think i'd be careful about trusting that site's reviews.Try this one...http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/matrix-trilogy-the/4674

The Matrix on HD DVD with all the features is going to be amazing. ;)

Matrix reviews posted on highdefdigest.com
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/matrix_umc.html

Looks like I'm going to have to buy these soon. :D

Wow, great review. Thanks for pointing that out!

OK. I beg your forbearance for one last post on this. Should this NOT close the issue, I'll start a separate thread to continue, so as not to clog this one up any more. Promise.

I hadn't really thought that it would be necessary to narrow down the issue in such a ridiculous specific manner, particularly given Roger Dressler's post from July that I quoted earlier. But apparently it is.

The issue at hand is the specific one of whether Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) on HD DVD has a core stream for the 5.1 mix comprised of a traditional Dolby Digital bitstream, or a Dolby Digital Plus core.

Here is what Roger Dressler, Director of Business Development at Dolby Laboratories had to say when I asked to him to address this specific issue:

I should hope this clears up any deliberate misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, I suspect that instead, the person making this assertion all along will now claim that he never said/believed that the core itself was DD, but rather that the DD information was "within it".

Should that happen, I refer you to POST# 2321 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10531572&&#post10531572). Just in case that post should get edited to revise history, I'll quote the pertinent portion here:

And with that, I'm sure the horse is no longer flinching.Most Excellent post, Steve. It's something I have tried to explain to some, repeatedly.

You have nutshelled it perfectly here - and accurately, also.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead
horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often
try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do an outsourcing study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
:p!!

Also:

22. Say that this dead horse will carry 60% more on it's dead back :p
23. Say that this dead horse sounds better because it carries 250% more data to make the same lossless sounds. :p

and here's their review of traffic - http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/traffic.html

think i'd be careful about trusting that site's reviews.

Are you suggesting these discs look bad?

Don't worry, they'll get around to releasing these on BD later this year and I'm sure they'll look just as good as the HD-DVD version. Maybe they'll include BD+ as an added bonus.

Milt99: no, it is the opposite. every BD disk needs to have DD, what it does is that the DD+ encoder leaves the full DD on the disk and adds the DD+ extensions, then if you want to use DD+ the decoder merges the DD companion with the extensions and then decodes the DD+ stream formed by the two.
Anthony, I have read the discussion and have to say that you are just plain wrong in most of what you stated. I suggest you acknowledge that to Steve, etc.

DD+ on bluray is *required* to have a regular old DD core, and both DD and DD+ on bluray is limited to a maximum of 640k for all 5.1 soundtracks.

HD DVD, on the other hand, requires ALL HD players to be able to decode DD+ and thus does NOT use a DD core in DD+ streams, since it would be a complete waste of space. DD+ on HD DVD can do much higher data rates than bluray also for 5.1 soundtracks.

This situation is very similar to Lossless Audio on the two formats.

Bluray does not require it BD players to decode the advanced Lossless Audio compression formats, so the only way to guarantee BD owners can hear the lossless audio is to use L-PCM uncompressed audio tracks, wasting lots of space.

HD DVD, however, requires all players to handle TruHD, which uses 13 to 1/2 the space to produce the identical Lossless audio that L-PCM does.

This is why so many Bluray releases are forced to include LPCM soundtracks, whereas most HD DVDs do not have to.

On Bluray for 5.1 audio, you MOSTLY ONLY have a choice between DD/DD+ 640k, DTS or LPCM uncompressed lossless audio, whereas on HD DVD, one can choose from a variety of formats wich sound better than DD/DD+ 640k - such as DD+ 1.5, DTS 1.5 and TruHD.

If bluray releases WEREN'T using LPCM audio, they would likely be being slated for poor comparative audio. But these space-hogging LPCM tracks do leave less space for video than TruHD.

Sony posts big Q4 loss, blames PS3
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/16/sony_q4_plus_forecast/

The firm issued a bullish forecast for the coming year, predicting operating profits of 440 billion yen (£1.84bn). Sony expects to reduce the cost of manufacturing PS3s, and to make LCD televisions more cheaply. The forecast also included 59 billion yen (£247m) to be gained from sales of land, which could account for it being higher than analysts' predictions.

Yikes! Was selling land part of their PS3 strategy all along?

http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index_mail.shtml?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-16-2007/0004590002&EDATE=

In-cinema trailers expected reach of 30 million consumers on 12,000 screens
nationwide; $100 rebate on select Toshiba players bring price to an
industry-first $299.99*

HD DVD will have in cinema trailers The companies supporting HD DVD
began spring marketing and retail campaigns in May, running in-cinema
trailers to promote the HD DVD format.

Playing to record-breaking crowds of consumers in front of some of the summer's biggest blockbusters, including Spiderman 3, the trailers are designed to educate consumers about the quality and value of HD DVD, and will play for four weeks. The trailers showcase the amazing audio and video quality, the stunning interactive features available only on HD DVD, and the incredible line-up of films
already on the market.

According to National CineMedia, the number of impressions is expected
to reach approximately 30 million viewers. The trailer will run across a
network of 932 theaters and on 12,000 screens nationwide, including the top
three movie theater chains Regal, AMC and Cinemark.

I just love the fact that the HD DVD PRG saved enough money to start advertising HD DVD before all the actual movie theater showings of Spiderman 3! :D

The irony of it all!

I've just started reading through some of the 2,388 posts in this second part of this battle thread (my favourite one so far is 2371!). My assertion at this point is this... both formats are losing.

I consider myself to be an average Joe in the home theatre end of things, just slightly ahead of many of my friends but certainly not bleeding edge like some here. Never owned a Beta machine; got my first hifi VHS in 1987; bought my first CD player some time after graduating high school (I think in 1988); had a laser disc player in about 1993, and bought my first DVD player in late 1999. Just bought my first front projector (of the 720p variety; I love how HDTV looks!).

Given the status of the format war, I do not foresee myself buying an HD player for at least the next year, or maybe even longer. Most consumers won't spend the significant cash currently required to get HD players, and will continue to be satisfied with DVD's for a much longer time than I likely will. With the single DVD format (thanks Lou Gerstner!), it still took years to saturate the market to a point of being acceptable for the majority of folks as a VHS alternative/replacement. Had DVD emerged amidst a format war, general acceptance of DVD might still be up in the air today.

And, though I may be somewhat unique in this regard, I have found myself reluctant as of late to even buy any DVD's. I have typically bought in the average range of 30-40 DVD's a year. So far this year I have bought only 5. I had truly hoped that the battle would show signs of abating by now so that the choice would be easier. I would gladly spend $500+ on a HD player (and in short order considerably more on media) if I knew that the format wasn't going to be dead in a year or two. So, folks like me are spending less on hardware (players and displays alike; I may have gone 1080p if I had an HD player) and much less on software than they could be by now.

Finally, brand loyalty is potentially going to be dealt a huge blow by this battle. At day's end the consumers who adopted one format or the other will be pissed at the losing company (Sony or Toshiba) when their chosen format dies.
[/So ends my diatribe.]

Hmm, so if someone wanted to watch Spiderman 3 on their HDTVs which format are they going to have to get?

Blu-ray

Hmm, so if someone wanted to watch Spiderman 3 on their HDTVs which format are they going to have to get?
DVD. I still haven't heard that DVD players stopped working on HDTV's. And everybody already has the players

Blu-ray , but that's missing the point.

The millions that will see Spiderman 3 in the theaters will associate it and HD next generation DVDs with HD DVD to a degree. They will at least be exposed to the concept of HD DVD. When they go in a store and try top buy a player months from now they will see the price points of the players.

Few will buy a player just to buy any single movie. Its the other way around. If HD DVD player prices are less then will sell more than more expensive Blu-ray players.

What I found as ironic is HD DVD PRG saving up their promotion money to be used effectively during Spiderman 3's theatrical release or to have that Sony movie's blockbuster theatrical success being used as a weapon in advertising and promoting HD DVD.

Think about it, Toshiba and the rest of the HD DVD PRG will use a blockbuster Sony movie to promote HD DVD.

HD DVDs can also upconvert those DVDs as well. So a lot of DVD sales could go to those HD DVD owners as well.

Think about it, Toshiba and the rest of the HD DVD PRG will use a blockbuster Sony movie to promote HD DVD.

And what happens when they go to the store to buy the HD version of Spiderman 3? They will buy a HD DVD player because it is cheaper? I don't know, for some this tactic might backfire, sending them right into the warm and embracing arms of Blu-ray... :)

I don't think they just will look at the price point of the player. They will also look at which movies they can buy for that format. Content is king.

BTW, how nice to see some non DD/DD+ posts! :)

The Spider-Man franchise is important for Blu-ray, no doubt. However, one movie doesn't make a format, and the (IMO) lousy 3rd movie in the trilogy certainly doesn't help things.

P.S. While I do think Spider-Man 3 is lousy, I still think it will sell well on Blu-ray. I just don't think it will sell as well as it could have, had it been up to the same standards as 1 and 2.

How is it doing in the box office?

It set a record the first week right?

Don't know how it's been doing since then. Most expensive movie ever so maybe they barely made a profit so far.

New Pirates and Shrek may each break that record. Shrek is Universal? Oh well 2 out of 3 blockbusters of the year isn't too bad.

Some people will scratch their head about a format not having such a high profile movie and then wonder about what other movies it will be missing.

How is it doing in the box office?

It set a record the first week right?

Don't know how it's been doing since then. Most expensive movie ever so maybe they barely made a profit so far.

New Pirates and Shrek may each break that record. Shrek is Universal? Oh well 2 out of 3 blockbusters of the year isn't too bad.

Some people will scratch their head about a format not having such a high profile movie and then wonder about what other movies it will be missing.
So after Pirates there are no more blockbusters? I see Bourne Ultimatum and Transformers doing very well and one could surpass SM3 or Pirates (depending on it's competition for the first few weeks). People forget that SM3 really has no big competition for 2 weeks. What would truly make it stand out is it staying #1 for 3-4 weeks straight with competition.

The millions that will see Spiderman 3 in the theaters will associate it and HD next generation DVDs with HD DVD to a degree.

yup conning people is the only way to get them to buy HD DVD :)

And what happens when they go to the store to buy the HD version of Spiderman 3? They will buy a HD DVD player because it is cheaper? I don't know, for some this tactic might backfire, sending them right into the warm and embracing arms of Blu-ray... :)

I don't think they just will look at the price point of the player. They will also look at which movies they can buy for that format. Content is king.

Mm.. I dunno. With HD DVD being 1/2 the price of a BR player, I think there's a darn good chance people will sample, and find movies in the same genre of Spiderman that they like (Matrix?).

BTW, how nice to see some non DD/DD+ posts! :)

Indeed it is! But I'll tell ya a couple of PM's in my inbox right now make me :eek:

yup conning people is the only way to get them to buy HD DVD :)

*sigh* ... like the Blu-Ray demos showing PiP, interactivity, and networking all the while showing it on a player that doesn't even have a network port? :rolleyes:

All they're doing is running a commercial ahead of a feature that will likely generate a huge audience. It's hardly the same thing. This is getting silly.

So after Pirates there are no more blockbusters? I see Bourne Ultimatum and Transformers doing very well and one could surpass SM3 or Pirates (depending on it's competition for the first few weeks). People forget that SM3 really has no big competition for 2 weeks. What would truly make it stand out is it staying #1 for 3-4 weeks straight with competition.


I could be wrong on this, but I would think the new Harry Potter movie might do well this year as well.

I just saw it ironic that HD DVD PRG saved enough money to present in-cinema advertising one the largest summer blockbusters that happens to be a Sony release.

Advertising directly to consumers that watch movies and selling less expensive HD players is probably going to be more effective than trying to educate consumers what studios what movies belong to and then sell them more expensive players that cost twice as much.

They'll just assume those few Blu-ray movies they can't get aren't released on HD DVD yet and they might just settle for the less expensive DVD version anyway.

So after Pirates there are no more blockbusters? I see Bourne Ultimatum and Transformers doing very well and one could surpass SM3 or Pirates (depending on it's competition for the first few weeks). People forget that SM3 really has no big competition for 2 weeks. What would truly make it stand out is it staying #1 for 3-4 weeks straight with competition.

Well, what about Fantastic 4: Rise... and Live Free or Die Hard, both Blu-ray exclusives? I'd call those blockbusters. I don't think Bourne or Transformers have enough chick flick qualities to make them as big as SM4/P3 at the BO.

Shrek is Universal?
Paramount, I believe. So should hit both formats by the holidays, one would expect.

They'll just assume those few Blu-ray movies they can't get aren't released on HD DVD yet and they might just settle for the less expensive DVD version anyway.

That's where the sales drones at BB will correct them and point them at the PS3. ;) Even if they also include fallacies like HDDVD only being 720p or 1080i. :rolleyes:

I consider myself to be an average Joe in the home theatre end of things, just slightly ahead of many of my friends but certainly not bleeding edge like some here. Never owned a Beta machine; got my first hifi VHS in 1987; bought my first CD player some time after graduating high school (I think in 1988); had a laser disc player in about 1993, and bought my first DVD player in late 1999. Just bought my first front projector (of the 720p variety; I love how HDTV looks!).

Given the status of the format war, I do not foresee myself buying an HD player for at least the next year, or maybe even longer. Most consumers won't spend the significant cash currently required to get HD players, and will continue to be satisfied with DVD's for a much longer time than I likely will. With the single DVD format (thanks Lou Gerstner!), it still took years to saturate the market to a point of being acceptable for the majority of folks as a VHS alternative/replacement. Had DVD emerged amidst a format war, general acceptance of DVD might still be up in the air today.

And, though I may be somewhat unique in this regard, I have found myself reluctant as of late to even buy any DVD's. I have typically bought in the average range of 30-40 DVD's a year. So far this year I have bought only 5. I had truly hoped that the battle would show signs of abating by now so that the choice would be easier. I would gladly spend $500+ on a HD player (and in short order considerably more on media) if I knew that the format wasn't going to be dead in a year or two. So, folks like me are spending less on hardware (players and displays alike; I may have gone 1080p if I had an HD player) and much less on software than they could be by now.

I'm right there with ya. I can't see paying $500 on a HD player. However, I did plunk down $179 for an HD DVD add on for my 360 that I had already. HD DVD may or may not survive, but it is long from dead now or in the near future. I have purchased ~20 HD DVDs and the movies I can't get on HD DVD, 2 or 3.

They still look decent in the theater and most of my guests are hard pressed to tell the difference. The HD DVD discs I have will last a LONG time. They will not disintegrate like Mr Phelps tapes.

RobertR1 posted this story in the News thread along with the April NPD numbers.

NPD: DS Sells More than 5 Times PS3 in April; Total Industry Sales Up 20%
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16199

Nintendo absolutely dominated the competition in yet another month, as the DS led by Pokemon Diamond and Pearl drove sales. The PS3 had its worst month with only 82,000 sold. NPD analyst Anita Frazier still has hope for the PS3 and she also tells us that it's "inevitable" that 2007 will be another record-breaking year for the U.S. game industry. Complete data and comments inside...

NPD April numbers:
DS: 471K
Wii: 360K
PS2: 194K
PSP: 183K
360: 174K
GBA: 84K
PS3: 82K
GC: 13K

I believe the heir to the PS2 is not the PS3, it's the Nintendo Wii.

RobertR1 posted this story in the News thread along with the April NPD numbers.

NPD: DS Sells More than 5 Times PS3 in April; Total Industry Sales Up 20%
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16199

Nintendo absolutely dominated the competition in yet another month, as the DS led by Pokemon Diamond and Pearl drove sales. The PS3 had its worst month with only 82,000 sold. NPD analyst Anita Frazier still has hope for the PS3 and she also tells us that it's "inevitable" that 2007 will be another record-breaking year for the U.S. game industry. Complete data and comments inside...

NPD April numbers:
DS: 471K
Wii: 360K
PS2: 194K
PSP: 183K
360: 174K
GBA: 84K
PS3: 82K
GC: 13K

I believe the heir to the PS2 is not the PS3, it's the Nintendo Wii.

Maybe they should have put a Blu-Ray player in *that* ... :p

the PS3 is an HD game system and the wii is SD only, they are very different things.

you can buy a wii cheap and hook it up to any old TV and it will work fine, the PS3 is seen as a HD item.

If you do NOT have a HDTV yet why would you buy a PS3?

I would just stick to the PS2 as it still has tons of great games and is cheap, then buy a wii if you are into the more kiddy games that dominate nintendo systems.

the PS3 is going to be market limited by the number of people who own HDTVs that want a HD game system. Many others are waiting for more games to come out before they buy a 600$ game system.

that said i own 3 of them :eek:

the PS3 is an HD game system and the wii is SD only, they are very different things.

you can buy a wii cheap and hook it up to any old TV and it will work fine, the PS3 is seen as a HD item.

If you do NOT have a HDTV yet why would you buy a PS3?

I would just stick to the PS2 as it still has tons of great games and is cheap, then buy a wii if you are into the more kiddy games that dominate nintendo systems.

the PS3 is going to be market limited by the number of people who own HDTVs that want a HD game system. Many others are waiting for more games to come out before they buy a 600$ game system.

that said i own 3 of them :eek:

Let me describe how I view this. The trojan horse strategy of the PS3 was based on the idea that it would generate the sort of big volume sales that the dominant console of each generation produces. In a surprise move that no one (including Nintendo) foresaw, the Wii is emerging as the dominant console of this generation. It effectively sucks the oxygen out of the room for the competition.

That aside, even weak PS3 sales numbers help BD, just not to the level of a knock out punch.

I would just stick to the PS2 as it still has tons of great games and is cheap, then buy a wii if you are into the more kiddy games that dominate nintendo systems.


Those 'kiddy games' are selling pretty well. ;)

I love my Wii, and I have a lot of adults over for get togethers and everyone seems to fall in love with it as well. It's addicting!

I bet if the Wii was HD and had Blu Ray, Blu Ray would be doing much better right now. (EDIT: I don't want it to sound like it's doing bad, but I think it would be even more ahead then it is)

Those 'kiddy games' are selling pretty well. ;)

I love my Wii, and I have a lot of adults over for get togethers and everyone seems to fall in love with it as well. It's addicting!

I bet if the Wii was HD and had Blu Ray, Blu Ray would be doing much better right now. (EDIT: I don't want it to sound like it's doing bad, but I think it would be even more ahead then it is)

Except that it would then be a $450 system.

The balance of price/perfomrnace is a delicate one.

Except that it would then be a $450 system.

The balance of price/perfomrnace is a delicate one.

Very true. That is the main reason I haven't bought into Blu Ray yet. If it wasn't so expensive I would have by now.

I think if the Wii was around $450 and had Blu Ray, I wouldn't have minded the price because of the games and innovation of them. It's much harder to pay slightly more for a PS3 for the better graphics and lack of any breakthroughs in gaming. I can play most of the games it has with very similar gameplay/graphics now on the xbox 360. So buying that extra system just for the Blu Ray option doesn't seem like much sense at the moment (at least for me).

Let me describe how I view this. The trojan horse strategy of the PS3 was based on the idea that it would generate the sort of big volume sales that the dominant console of each generation produces. In a surprise move that no one (including Nintendo) foresaw, the Wii is emerging as the dominant console of this generation. It effectively sucks the oxygen out of the room for the competition.

That aside, even weak PS3 sales numbers help BD, just not to the level of a knock out punch.


I've been saying it since day one, it is all in the price...the price of the PS3 is way more than MOST parents/people are willing to spend, regardless of how much technology you advertise as being stuffed in the package. That is why there are magic price points.

I've been saying it since day one, it is all in the price...the price of the PS3 is way more than MOST parents/people are willing to spend, regardless of how much technology you advertise as being stuffed in the package. That is why there are magic price points.

The problem is that designers make more money then the consumer. Then they loose a bit of reality for the avarage worker.

500$ seems like nothing for someone that is wellpayed. Put for many families thats money they dont have to spend on toys.

The Wii hade 2 things. A fair price and it was "cool" It wasnt something a child was emberessed to tell the other that he got instead of a PS3.

My guess is the avarage PS3 buyer is in his 30s and grew up with a C64.

In a surprise move that no one (including Nintendo) foresaw, the Wii is emerging as the dominant console of this generation. It effectively sucks the oxygen out of the room for the competition.

That aside, even weak PS3 sales numbers help BD, just not to the level of a knock out punch.

Given how the prices have played out the Wii's success shouldn't be a suprise really. The PS3 intro price was speculated all over the place and ended up coming in quite high, esp. now that it's settled at $600 with no low end model.

In light of the struggles of the PS3 MS has decided to go for profitability in it's gaming division over market share in total unit sales hence the 360 has had no price drop. MS could be pricing the core at the level of the Wii to compete better, or they could subsidize the hd dvd addon if they wanted to push share for that format but they've priortorized profitability. Apparently they've decided they'd rather be a solid 2nd place and profitable rather than try to subsidize their way to 1st place in the console race. Then again perhaps they're also taking profits based their head start in market share for now.

That leaves Nintendo with the lowest priced 'next-gen' system along with an innovative new approach given the controller. Name brand was already established for Nintendo before Sony even entered the console market so the Sony Playstation brand doesn't beat out Nintendo.

As for high tech value mainstream consumers may be curious but clearly aren't caught up with 'HD' yet (just look at the lukewarm interest in BD and HD disks at this point) so the Wii is an obivious winner with the mass market on both price and a form of innovation that doesn't require a bunch of new equipment.

the PS3 is an HD game system and the wii is SD only, they are very different things.

You can spin all you want - but Wii is a competetor to 360 & PS3. People are deciding to buy Wii (and to an extent 360) instead of PS3.

the PS3 is going to be market limited by the number of people who own HDTVs that want a HD game system.

30M households is not exactly a limited market. Anyway, looks like Sony greatly exaggerated the demand and misled the studios ...

You can spin all you want - but Wii is a competetor to 360 & PS3. People are deciding to buy Wii (and to an extent 360) instead of PS3.


It's not spin to realize the basic truth that the PS3 and Wii do not compete for the same customers. I'd love to see you make that argument given the technical & price differences or is the fact that they came out at similar times in the same general field all that's required to be a competitor?


30M households is not exactly a limited market.


It's certainly not realistic to expect more than 10-15% of that to jump in for the first year of a new game console, a segment that have traditionallly had lackluster title selection, with the sole exception of the Dreamcast. I know my 360 selection was pretty pathetic for exclusive titles until 11/2006 or so...



Anyway, looks like Sony greatly exaggerated the demand and misled the studios ...

Partisan hyperbole is certainly nothing new from you. Did Microsoft mislead the few studios supporting HDDVD given the absolutely pathetic performance of the 360 in Japan? Of course not. Sony has delivered a steady greater than double lead in disc sales with surges to nearly five times those of the other format. Or was PS3 supposed to win the format war all by itself?

It's not spin to realize the basic truth that the PS3 and Wii do not compete for the same customers. I'd love to see you make that argument given the technical & price differences or is the fact that they came out at similar times in the same general field all that's required to be a competitor?


Guys no need to argue. I would say you both are right.

PS3 are not competing with the same customers as the Wii. They made it to expensive for that.

But i would say that the goal for Sony was the sell it to those customers. They just overstimated that consumer group buying power/economics.

RobertR1 posted this story in the News thread along with the April NPD numbers.

NPD: DS Sells More than 5 Times PS3 in April; Total Industry Sales Up 20%
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16199

Nintendo absolutely dominated the competition in yet another month, as the DS led by Pokemon Diamond and Pearl drove sales. The PS3 had its worst month with only 82,000 sold. NPD analyst Anita Frazier still has hope for the PS3 and she also tells us that it's "inevitable" that 2007 will be another record-breaking year for the U.S. game industry. Complete data and comments inside...

NPD April numbers:
DS: 471K
Wii: 360K
PS2: 194K
PSP: 183K
360: 174K
GBA: 84K
PS3: 82K
GC: 13K

I believe the heir to the PS2 is not the PS3, it's the Nintendo Wii.What's even more interesting is when you consider how the 360 performed at the same stage in it's lifetime. since, no doubt, people will spin this as "April is always a slow month" for the horrid PS3 sales. In April 2006, the XBox 360 sold just under 300K consoles.

When you look at the first 6 months of both consoles lives, the only month that the PS3 outsold the XBox 360 (in the US, using NPD numbers) was month 2, or December. At this point in their life cycles, the 360 was trending up, because of the previous shortages, and the PS3 is trending down, despite Sony having almost 2 million consoles in inventory (ie, that they can't actually sell to stores, because the channel is glutted)

The Wii, on the other hand is doing amazingly, which surprises me, since there's nothing to play on it. I own one, and in the last month, the only thing I've done on it is show youtube videos to friends, and vote in the "everybody votes" channel. Finished Zelda, Finished Rayman, and Wii sports is no fun by yourself...

PS3 are not competing with the same customers as the Wii. They made it to expensive for that.



Right. PS2 competes much better with the Wii by pricing and in the same area (Guitar Hero, DDR, etc). That their sales numbers are close (and so far above the 360/PS3 next gen numbers) just reinforces that



But i would say that the goal for Sony was the sell it to those customers. They just overstimated that consumer group buying power/economics.

Eventually Sony will undoubtedly want that. Right now though, they're milking the PS2 goose who's R&D paid off years ago and is pure profit. Eventually they have to transition that (most likely putting the impetus with a price cut) and that could be tricky, but most likely not until there's a precipitous drop in PS2 sales.

You can see the 1st 6 month performance of every console here (http://videogamecharts.com/page3.html), where you see the PS3 line is ABOVE the 360 line. ;)

Right. PS2 competes much better with the Wii by pricing and in the same area (Guitar Hero, DDR, etc). That their sales numbers are close (and so far above the 360/PS3 next gen numbers) just reinforces that

Eventually Sony will undoubtedly want that. Right now though, they're milking the PS2 goose who's R&D paid off years ago and is pure profit. Eventually they have to transition that (most likely putting the impetus with a price cut) and that could be tricky, but most likely not until there's a precipitous drop in PS2 sales.

You can see the 1st 6 month performance of every console here (http://videogamecharts.com/page3.html), where you see the PS3 line is ABOVE the 360 line. ;)

I couldn't disagree more on the Wii. It absolutely competes with the 360 and PS3. You could make the case that the target consumers for 360 and PS3 are a perfect overlap, while the Wii has a partial overlap, but they deffinitely compete. There is no better proof of this than Microsoft and Sony execs making comments about the Wii. If it wasn't competing for market share, they'd never mention it.

As for the chart. Month 1 would be 11/06 for the Wii and PS3 and 11/05 for the Xbox360. The chart ends at 2/07 for the Wii and PS3. As I've said before, with a one year head start it's not enough for the PS3 to sell as well as the Xbox360, it has to sell better to close the gap. Looking at the March and April numbers, the PS3 was outsold by the 360 in both months, and drastically outsold by the Wii.

Take a look at the month 4 cumulative sales total for the Wii. It had already passed the best month 5 cumulative sales numbers of all other systems. Now add in the March and April NPD numbers for 07. The PS3 stands at about 1.25M compared to the 1.5M April 06 number the Xbox360 had reached. Then you have the Wii which is simply a monster at 2.5M, setting yet another record at the month 6 mark.

That graph is going to get uglier for PS3 when they update the sales numbers.

You can spin all you want - but Wii is a competetor to 360 & PS3. People are deciding to buy Wii (and to an extent 360) instead of PS3.



30M households is not exactly a limited market. Anyway, looks like Sony greatly exaggerated the demand and misled the studios ...

(Please, could you ease up on your Sony rampage, in this and other threads? As an employee of MS, even though you in your sig say these are your personal opinions, I think you should be more careful in your statements about your competition.)

You're right, the Wii is a competitor to the PS3 and the 360, it is just not very next gen. No matter, it will for sure "win" in number of units sold, both HW and SW. What surprises me is that people find this surprising?

I bought my son a Wii, which he totally loves, but myself a PS3. :) Which I totally love. I think over time, people will have a Wii AND (PS3 or Xbox360). Ie. Sony will win the Next-gen race, but Nintendo will sell more units. :)

You're right, the Wii is a competitor to the PS3 and the 360, it is just not very next gen.
None of them are "next gen" anymore. All three are "current gen."
I bought my son a Wii, which he totally loves, but myself a PS3. :) Which I totally love. I think over time, people will have a Wii AND (PS3 or Xbox360). Ie. Sony will win the Next-gen race, but Nintendo will sell more units. :)
How - pray tell - are we to determine the "winner" for this generation of consoles, if not in number of units sold?

I couldn't disagree more on the Wii. It absolutely competes with the 360 and PS3. You could make the case that the target consumers for 360 and PS3 are a perfect overlap, while the Wii has a partial overlap, but they deffinitely compete. There is no better proof of this than Microsoft and Sony execs making comments about the Wii. If it wasn't competing for market share, they'd never mention it.


Maybe our difference is semantics except what I'm calling "competition" you're specifying as "consumer targets." The market share that the PS3, 360, PS2, and Wii compete it is not in the same category and certainly not a zero sum game. Even the PS3 and 360 aren't mutually exclusive even in their more narrow nextgen segment , though certainly are far more exclusive from the segment the Wii and PS2 selling like hotcakes too. My point is that a sale on the Wii is not a sale that would have otherwise gone to a PS3 (or a 360). Thus it's not a competitor.

Specifically, Joe Sixpack shopping for his kid's birthday present is choosing between the far cheaper PS2 or the slightly more expensive but harder to find Wii. But J6p isn't really considering either the 360 or PS3 unless he's a bit more affluent in which case he's just as likely to get both (which is where me most of my friends fit on the anectodal scale).

Speaking of the 360, it's only performing marginally better than the original Xbox, which in retrospect is not that good at all (especially in light of the goliath that the PS2 became). If Wii sales were relevent, then the 360 should be just as concerned, if not more, because it's also being trounced if we're only looking at the number of units sold and should have every advantage in the time it's been on the market, number of titles released, etc etc.

Most people are bringing up the Wii with the 360 and PS3 because they came out around the same time while the Wii makes has no pretensions at all about being "next gen" in it's graphics or processing. The Wii has been a freakish occurance up to this point. Part of the (marketing) genius with the Wii is it's (lack of) availability which is fanning the flames on a demand that might not have been there if there was a glut on the market, perhaps. It's not relevent to the HD scene at all, though, and sales of Wii are not affecting the HD war.





That graph is going to get uglier for PS3 when they update the sales numbers.

Indeed I do expect the 360 and PS3 lines to cross. I just believe Sony has every incentive to not want PS3 sales to cannibilize PS2 sales at this point in time. That I think the lines with the 360 will eventually cross again in the PS3's favor is neither here nor there. ;)

Or was PS3 supposed to win the format war all by itself?

Uh, Yes. Ergo, Sony's current predicament.

That's completely nonsensical. BDA was obviously planning a full slate of players and would have likely seen a revolt like the DVD Forum saw when Toshiba's plans became apparent. :o

The problem is that designers make more money then the consumer. Then they loose a bit of reality for the avarage worker.

500$ seems like nothing for someone that is wellpayed. Put for many families thats money they dont have to spend on toys.

The Wii hade 2 things. A fair price and it was "cool" It wasnt something a child was emberessed to tell the other that he got instead of a PS3.

My guess is the avarage PS3 buyer is in his 30s and grew up with a C64.

Yeah the average worker might not see himself these days on the happy days.

But I'm about 30 and I grew up with Vectrex, C64, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, PC 386, PC P90, PC Amd Athlon 64, etc.

Still if I would buy a console I would buy a Wii. And believe me, if my child was a tad bigger I would buy it tomorrow (for him). I think Nintendo games are the most suitable games for kids. All other formats are mostly intended for boyish boys or boyish men :D

And ofcourse I think the Wii is also the right choice for all the girls who like gaming.

And I for sure won't buy a HDTV for my child or children until the prices of HDTV's are in the same class as CRT's. Better not to spoil your child I think, even if you have all the money for a new HDTV. And lastly why would I let the little kid play with a $3000 HDTV? Better to swith on off, on off with that smaller budget SD TV.

And for the sake of all this that I wrote, why would we buy a console that requires to show it's inner beauty only with a HDTV?

(Please, could you ease up on your Sony rampage, in this and other threads? As an employee of MS, even though you in your sig say these are your personal opinions, I think you should be more careful in your statements about your competition.)

I prefer that you read my posts as my posts. Not thr' any tinted glasses - if you want my reply. Ignoring rest of your post.

It's not spin to realize the basic truth that the PS3 and Wii do not compete for the same customers.

By saying something is "true" doesn't make it so.

I refer you to any standard economics or marketing book. Just because they are in different price ranges don't neccessarily make them non-competing products. Heck even coke & star bucks coffee are competing products.

Anyone sort of feeling that these HD movie formats in general are starting to really foster a lot of apathey from the general public?

While I guess sales are incrimentally getting better, I dunno it just seems like both formats are very much in the "niche" categorey and now that the honeymoon period for both formats is wearing off, it's getting worse, not better.

Maybe bigger releases like the Pirates films will jump start things.

That's completely nonsensical. BDA was obviously planning a full slate of players and would have likely seen a revolt like the DVD Forum saw when Toshiba's plans became apparent. :o

Arnold Schwartzeneggar: " I'm your twin brother."

Danny DeVito: "Obviously!" :p

Anyone sort of feeling that these HD movie formats in general are starting to really foster a lot of apathey from the general public?

While I guess sales are incrimentally getting better, I dunno it just seems like both formats are very much in the "niche" categorey and now that the honeymoon period for both formats is wearing off, it's getting worse, not better.

Maybe bigger releases like the Pirates films will jump start things.

They are definitely niche. We are looking at a combined sales of may be 300K per month for BD + HD and something like 100M for DVD. So DVD sales are 300 times more than HiDef.

And the sales not not getting incrementally better. They have stagnated - with variations coming from releases.

By saying something is "true" doesn't make it so.

I refer you to any standard economics or marketing book. Just because they are in different price ranges don't neccessarily make them non-competing products. Heck even coke & star bucks coffee are competing products.

In other words the PS3 has to compete with those joysticks you see at Walmart with built-in Namco and Atari 2600 games.

In other words the PS3 has to compete with those joysticks you see at Walmart with built-in Namco and Atari 2600 games.

Your words and not mine. And it shows :p

PS : Here is some info for you guys to start with.

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

In other words, good substitution is an economic concept where two goods are of comparable value. Car brands are an example. While someone could argue that Ford trucks are much different from Toyota trucks, If the price of Ford trucks goes up enough, some people will buy Toyota trucks instead.

Except the analogy here is Ford Trucks versus Honda Motorcycles. Apples and oranges. Just because they both have wheels and go on the highway, they don't directly compete.

Customers shopping for a Wii or PS2 aren't necessarily excluded from those shopping for a PS3 or 360. If you want to lump them together that's ok... but then MS should be even more worried than Sony because the 360 should have enormous advantages over the Wii and is still getting trounced. Otherwise see the rest of my reply to 2Channel. ;)

"640K of memory should be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates

OT, but interesting.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

Misattributed

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Often attributed to Gates in 1981. Gates considered the IBM PC's 640kB program memory a significant breakthrough and was surprised at how quickly it became a problem,[1] but he has denied saying that programs would never need more than 640kB.

I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.

Bloomberg Business News (19 January 1996); also WIRED (16 January 1997)



Also

http://digg.com/microsoft/Bill_Gates_Thoughts_on_Microsoft_in_1989_2

"So that's a 1 MB address space. And in that original design I took the upper 340k and decided that a certain amount should be for video memory, a certain amount for the ROM and I/O, and that left 640k for general purpose memory. And that leads to today's situation where people talk about the 640k memory barrier; the limit of how much memory you can put to these machines. I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn't - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem."

Maybe our difference is semantics except what I'm calling "competition" you're specifying as "consumer targets." The market share that the PS3, 360, PS2, and Wii compete it is not in the same category and certainly not a zero sum game. Even the PS3 and 360 aren't mutually exclusive even in their more narrow nextgen segment , though certainly are far more exclusive from the segment the Wii and PS2 selling like hotcakes too. My point is that a sale on the Wii is not a sale that would have otherwise gone to a PS3 (or a 360). Thus it's not a competitor.

If Microsoft and Sony don't see it as competition, why do their executives talk about the Wii? Wouldn't it be as irrelevant as talking about the DS or PSP compared to their consoles? As hard as it may be to believe, there are people who consider the PS3 or Xbox360 and opt for a Wii instead. It's not as common as someone choosing between PS3 and Xbox360, but it is a part of the market dynamic.

Specifically, Joe Sixpack shopping for his kid's birthday present is choosing between the far cheaper PS2 or the slightly more expensive but harder to find Wii. But J6p isn't really considering either the 360 or PS3 unless he's a bit more affluent in which case he's just as likely to get both (which is where me most of my friends fit on the anectodal scale).

I suspect that the customer you describe is more frequently buying the PS2 than the Wii, as the PS2 is cheaper, has a huge library of games and is easily available. The Wii customer is being pulled in by the buzz and the uniqueness of the product. The graphics don't hold a candle to the 360 or the PS3, but the motion sensing remote is a unique and immersive experience. I still see people in lawn chairs every other sunday morning in front of Toys'R'Us waiting to grab one of the 20 - 30 units they received.

Speaking of the 360, it's only performing marginally better than the original Xbox, which in retrospect is not that good at all (especially in light of the goliath that the PS2 became). If Wii sales were relevent, then the 360 should be just as concerned, if not more, because it's also being trounced if we're only looking at the number of units sold and should have every advantage in the time it's been on the market, number of titles released, etc etc.

Agreed, the 360 is only marginally above the Xbox historical numbers. However the original Xbox shipped a year after the PS2, so it had to come from behind. The opposite scenario is true of the 360 and PS3. Coming from behind is not easy. I agree with the 360 needing to be concerned about the Wii. Where the volume goes, so go the developers. At least the 360 has a good installed base already established to help secure software development dollars.

Most people are bringing up the Wii with the 360 and PS3 because they came out around the same time while the Wii makes has no pretensions at all about being "next gen" in it's graphics or processing. The Wii has been a freakish occurance up to this point. Part of the (marketing) genius with the Wii is it's (lack of) availability which is fanning the flames on a demand that might not have been there if there was a glut on the market, perhaps. It's not relevent to the HD scene at all, though, and sales of Wii are not affecting the HD war.

I've already commented on this above, but let me try a different approach. If the Wii were suddenly banned from sale all over the world, would there be a rise in PS3 and 360 sales? I'm not saying the conversion is 1:1, but there would absolutely be increased sales of PS3 and 360 as a result.

Indeed I do expect the 360 and PS3 lines to cross. I just believe Sony has every incentive to not want PS3 sales to cannibilize PS2 sales at this point in time. That I think the lines with the 360 will eventually cross again in the PS3's favor is neither here nor there. ;)

The lines have already crossed (starting with the March 07 NPD numbers).

Here's the first 6 month sales tally (North America)

Wii = 2,470,000
360 = 1,504,000
PS3 = 1,270,000

Here are the sales to date (North America)

Wii = 2,470,000
360 = 5,400,000
PS3 = 1,270,000

Sony will have to cut PS3 prices this year. As painful as it is, they can not continue to post months were they are being outsold 2.1:1 by the 360 and 4.4:1 by the Wii.

Except the analogy here is Ford Trucks versus Honda Motorcycles. Apples and oranges. Just because they both have wheels and go on the highway, they don't directly compete.

BTW, apples and oranges are competition - they are substitute products. :D

This is all economics 101.

Customers shopping for a Wii or PS2 aren't necessarily excluded from those shopping for a PS3 or 360. If you want to lump them together that's ok... but then MS should be even more worried than Sony because the 360 should have enormous advantages over the Wii and is still getting trounced.

Both 360 and PS3 need to be worried. I'd actually say a good comparison would be that of a Hummer (PS3/360) vs Toyota Prius (Wii).

They attack the same market (game consoles) from two different angles providing different solutions. Looks like people prefer the Prius.

Another interesting example would be SACD/DVD-A vs MP3. We all know who won.

You guys need to think outside the box.

If Microsoft and Sony don't see it as competition, why do their executives talk about the Wii? Wouldn't it be as irrelevant as talking about the DS or PSP compared to their consoles? As hard as it may be to believe, there are people who consider the PS3 or Xbox360 and opt for a Wii instead. It's not as common as someone choosing between PS3 and Xbox360, but it is a part of the market dynamic.


I think the analogy with the DS or PSP is very appropriate. Both MS and Sony have ambitions on the gaming console becoming a home theater media center hub and of coures there's the format war so larger stakes are involved. If Sony ever does more to integrate the PSP with the PS3, we may indeed hear more.

One thing about this era of gaming is that the exclusives will be fewer and farther in between. PS3 benefits from 360 software development and given what we've been hearing from Rockstar about the PS3 and 360 it sounds like they're looking to optimize whenever possible and that bodes well for PS3.


I've already commented on this above, but let me try a different approach. If the Wii were suddenly banned from sale all over the world, would there be a rise in PS3 and 360 sales? I'm not saying the conversion is 1:1, but there would absolutely be increased sales of PS3 and 360 as a result.


I really don't think would be a significant (certainly not as high as 10-15% or more). I think PS2 sales would go up, though. I myself would still be waiting on PS3 if it hadn't been able to help fulfill my HD appetite with it's Blu-ray playback.


The lines have already crossed (starting with the March 07 NPD numbers).


Yup. As I expected. I also expect them to cross again... maybe as soon as this winter... maybe next year, but I do believe it's inevitable. One thing that the focus on North America leaves out is that the rest of the world has not been kind to the 360 and the PS3 doubles it's numbers.

BTW, apples and oranges are competition - they are substitute products. :D


Exactly. Subtitute, not same class. I like the Hummer comparison but think a sports car analogy is more appropriate. More expensive and more exclusive. And even with high gas prices, I'd still rather have a sports car than a hybrid. John Doe still prefers the Accord.


You guys need to think outside the box.

I think there is more than one box. :)

Exactly. Subtitute, not same class. I like the Hummer comparison but think a sports car analogy is more appropriate. More expensive and more exclusive. And even with high gas prices, I'd still rather have a sports car than a hybrid. John Doe still prefers the Accord.

We aren't worried if they are the same "class" or not. The question is does the demand for PS3 depend on the demand for Wii. And the answer - unequivocally - is yes. If Wii was a failure I can confidently say PS3 would have sold more - even at $600.


I think there is more than one box. :)

Don't keep getting locked up in boxes. Come out into the open and broaden your horizon ;)

In other words the PS3 has to compete with those joysticks you see at Walmart with built-in Namco and Atari 2600 games.
Ironically, I amused myself with a couple of those for months before I finally gave in and bought the Xbox 360.

But yeah, I know of several who would buy ONE of the Wii, the PS3, or the Xbox 360. And it seems the Wii is quite popular.

Here is an interesting quote from the HMM article.

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom052007/index.php?startpage=34

Panasonic is cutting Blu-ray player price more than 50% end of May, replacing the 1,299 BD-10 with $599 BD-IOA - a price that also includes five Blu-ray movies, including the first two "pirate" releases.

So, far so good. But look at the comment by Panny exec.

"We hope this does something" said Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, VP of corporate development and Blu-ray Disc Group, Panasonic North America.

Very funny. You can draw your conclusion on what that says about how well Panny BD players are selling now ;)

Here is an interesting quote from the HMM article.

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom052007/index.php?startpage=34



So, far so good. But look at the comment by Panny exec.



Very funny. You can draw your conclusion on what that says about how well Panny BD players are selling now ;)

They sold me one. Now I have to figure how long I need to wait come fall to get one that will play all the new features that (so far) have not been important.

The lines have already crossed (starting with the March 07 NPD numbers).

Here's the first 6 month sales tally (North America)

Wii = 2,470,000
360 = 1,504,000
PS3 = 1,270,000

Here are the sales to date (North America)

Wii = 2,470,000
360 = 5,400,000
PS3 = 1,270,000

Sony will have to cut PS3 prices this year. As painful as it is, they can not continue to post months were they are being outsold 2.1:1 by the 360 and 4.4:1 by the Wii.Also, note that from April on, the 360 never sold less than 200K per month.
Yup. As I expected. I also expect them to cross again... maybe as soon as this winter... maybe next year, but I do believe it's inevitable. One thing that the focus on North America leaves out is that the rest of the world has not been kind to the 360 and the PS3 doubles it's numbers.I find it hard to believe, looking at February, March and April sales that the PS3 would be able to maintain 200K per month for the rest of this year, so that line crossing again before winter is not looking likely, barring some major change like them halving their price.
Also, you didn't seem to notice that the current american tally for the 360 is just over 5 million, and the worldwide tally is over 10 million, so in truth, the XBox 360 also doubles it's numbers worldwide.
Amusingly enough, if the PS3 continues to sell at it's current rate, and Toshiba make their targets that they stated at CES, then by the end of the year, Toshiba will have sold almost as many standalones as Sony has sold PS3s in the US. Add in the Addon, which is still exceeding the xbox team's expectations, and the BD group might not have the "insurmountable" lead they thought they would have.

Amusingly enough, if the PS3 continues to sell at it's current rate, and Toshiba make their targets that they stated at CES, then by the end of the year, Toshiba will have sold almost as many standalones as Sony has sold PS3s in the US.Personally I don't see why so many Microsoft employees bash the PS3 on a regular basis on this forum. It is selling rather poorly at the moment but I think everyone who knows anything about game consoles understands that they sell best in the last few months of the year.


Add in the Addon, which is still exceeding the xbox team's expectations, and the BD group might not have the "insurmountable" lead they thought they would have.No offense but it would be interesting for a change to hear exactly how well the HD DVD add-on is selling and what the original expectations for it were. The fact that it exceeded expectations without further information doesn't really mean much.

Amusingly enough, if the PS3 continues to sell at it's current rate
PS3 sales will increase in Q4 of course (just like 360 and Toshiba sales will increase in Q4).

Toshiba make their targets that they stated at CES, then by the end of the year, Toshiba will have sold almost as many standalones as Sony has sold PS3s in the US.
If Toshiba does indeed ship its projected 1.8 million Toshiba HD DVD players in 2007 (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128448/article.html) I will be impressed. (I think that's supposedly for North America alone.)

They do seem to be fairly consistent in their aggressive projections though. They are also predicting 3 million Toshiba HD DVD players in fiscal 2007 (http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/afx/2007/04/25/afx3653006.html) (worldwide, April 2007 to March 2008), with the total worldwide numbers from all brands during fiscal 2007 at 4-5 million.

Whether they will be able to accomplish that or not is a different question.

Add in the Addon, which is still exceeding the xbox team's expectations
Numbers please.


the BD group might not have the "insurmountable" lead they thought they would have.
Yes. The PS3 needed to deliver its knockout punch early, but failed.

Except the analogy here is Ford Trucks versus Honda Motorcycles. Apples and oranges. Just because they both have wheels and go on the highway, they don't directly compete.

Customers shopping for a Wii or PS2 aren't necessarily excluded from those shopping for a PS3 or 360. If you want to lump them together that's ok... but then MS should be even more worried than Sony because the 360 should have enormous advantages over the Wii and is still getting trounced. Otherwise see the rest of my reply to 2Channel. ;)

I kinda understand where you're coming from, but do you really think most shoppers are going out to buy a Wii or a PS2? I would think that most shoppers already have or have had a PS2. So ... when a customer with a PS2 goes out to look at the Wii, the competition would be either the PS3 or the 360. Why would they buy another PS2? :confused:

I think both formats and game consoles are facing rough sailing. Players and disks are rather expensive frivolous items that are purchased with discretionary cash. If you all haven't noticed, gasoline prices are going through the ceiling again. Consumers really have no choice but to dump more money into their gas tanks leaving less to spend on nonessentials.

--- CHAS

Why would they buy another PS2? :confused:

Because a lot of PS2 sales are to replace broken PS2 and Sony would have liked them to buy PS3 instead.

Yeah the average worker might not see himself these days on the happy days.

But I'm about 30 and I grew up with Vectrex, C64, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, PC 386, PC P90, PC Amd Athlon 64, etc.

Still if I would buy a console I would buy a Wii. And believe me, if my child was a tad bigger I would buy it tomorrow (for him). I think Nintendo games are the most suitable games for kids. All other formats are mostly intended for boyish boys or boyish men :D

And ofcourse I think the Wii is also the right choice for all the girls who like gaming.

And I for sure won't buy a HDTV for my child or children until the prices of HDTV's are in the same class as CRT's. Better not to spoil your child I think, even if you have all the money for a new HDTV. And lastly why would I let the little kid play with a $3000 HDTV? Better to swith on off, on off with that smaller budget SD TV.

And for the sake of all this that I wrote, why would we buy a console that requires to show it's inner beauty only with a HDTV?


funny my parents said that having 32 inch wide screen lcds in the kids room is crazy. but i have them hooked up to there own PCs and a PS3 each, i have master control as it is set up so i can see just what they are doing on there systems at and time from my office PC.

I wanted to setup network streaming from my main HT PS3 but it was just not ready for that yet.

the kids have a PC account that lets them play any of the G and pg-13 movies and shows i have on the media server. in order to use the HD disks i would have to rip them to the server, that was going to be a problem for many reasons. It was just easier to get them there own PS3s.

they both still have PS2s setup and would like to get wiis when there is more games for them.

if this sounds like i spend lots of cash on my kids, well yes but we have a no plastic toy rule in the house :) now that saves a huge amount of money and space.

if this sounds like i spend lots of cash on my kids, well yes but we have a no plastic toy rule in the house :) now that saves a huge amount of money and space.

Man, those Limited Edition Wooden PS3's must've cost you an arm and a leg!

;)

Personally I don't see why so many Microsoft employees bash the PS3 on a regular basis on this forum. It is selling rather poorly at the moment but I think everyone who knows anything about game consoles understands that they sell best in the last few months of the year.Of course they do, but Sony is currently doing less than half as well as the original XBox, which was considered a dismal failure by many people. As to my "bashing", I wasn't bashing the PS3 at all, it's an amazing machine, and very capable. I was commenting on the terrible beating it's getting in the market, which has more to do with Sony than with the PS3 :)
No offense but it would be interesting for a change to hear exactly how well the HD DVD add-on is selling and what the original expectations for it were. The fact that it exceeded expectations without further information doesn't really mean much.And I would love to be able to tell you, but until there's an official announcement (and with the XBox team, you never know, they're weirdly secretive about the oddest things), I can't really say.

Personally I don't see why so many Microsoft employees bash the PS3 on a regular basis on this forum. It is selling rather poorly at the moment but I think everyone who knows anything about game consoles understands that they sell best in the last few months of the year.


No offense but it would be interesting for a change to hear exactly how well the HD DVD add-on is selling and what the original expectations for it were. The fact that it exceeded expectations without further information doesn't really mean much.

Seasonal softness cuts across all of the consoles. When the market picks up it will pick up across the board. The PS3 needs something special to change its growth rate vs. the other systems. Hot titles and lower prices are the two logical solutions. I find it unlikely that there will be a lot of hot titles that are PS3 only, when its monthly sales numbers are trailing all of the other systems. Lower prices this year seem more likely.

I'd love to see the sales numbers for the add-on as well.

I kinda understand where you're coming from, but do you really think most shoppers are going out to buy a Wii or a PS2? I would think that most shoppers already have or have had a PS2. So ... when a customer with a PS2 goes out to look at the Wii, the competition would be either the PS3 or the 360. Why would they buy another PS2? :confused:

I waited in line twice to get a Wii, so I had a chance to talk to a bunch of other folks who were trying to purchase that system. The Wii has continued to be in tight supply (though I suspect it might be getting a little better right now). Suffice it to say that nearly everyone who has purchased a Wii to date, had to either go out of their way to find one (usually getting in line early somewhere), or paid well above list to get it from E-bay. These are not folks who were thinking about buying a PS2 and said, well let's take this Wii home instead.

There are four categories of Wii buyers that I met in line. The folks who are selling the system on Ebay. The folks in their late teens to early twenties who are picking this up as their second or third game system. The folks who are buying this because this is the hot console their kid really wants. The folks who are 35+ who have checked out a Wii somewhere and decided they really had to have this system.

The first category are people who are selling these systems to the actual consumer of the product. They have been selling these systems for about $399 (or higher). The person paying that price is not a target buyer for the PS2, more likely the 360 or possibly PS3.

The second category are people who buy multiple systems. They add to the sales numbers of pretty much all consoles. A Wii sale to them does not detract from a 360 or PS3 sale. Again, they're not buying this product instead of a PS2. Likely they've owned a PS2 for many years.

The third category are buying this system very specifically because this is what their kid has asked for. Not a 360, not a PS3 and not a PS2. We could say that some of these buyers were never in the market for the 360 or PS3 because they're outside of the budget they were willing to spend, but they were never in the market for a PS2 either. The PS2 is not the hot new system that all of the other kids are talking about.

The fourth category, well that's me. I could buy a PS3 or a 360, or heck I could buy all three. Here's what it came down to for me. The PS3 and 360 are systems that take the traditional route to make games more immersive. They deliver better graphics than the previous generation of consoles. I'd likely have fun with either of these sytems. But the Wii came along and it delivered a more immersive experience in a completley different way. A motion sensing controller. You can't appreciate it until you try Wii Sports for yourself. I knew this was a system that my wife would enjoy playing just as much as me. I was never in the market for a PS2.

Personally I don't see why so many Microsoft employees bash the PS3 on a regular basis on this forum.

Personally I don't see putting NPD numbers as bashing - if you want to see real bashing go to gamers forums.

Secondly considering your absolute hatred for anything MS I'm not surprised you bring this up in the face of dismal performance by PS3 on which your favorite format is based. You have always specialized in MS bashing at every possible moment ... :p

This format war sucks. It's suffocating the whole market, killing interest, and everyone already knows HD DVD should have complete rights to every movie release. (Sorry, sorry I had to say it -I'll jump off a building later) All this bickering over the HD Disc is going to kill this poor sick baby -Where's Solomon when you need him?

As for game consoles, is it safe to say every Wii owner is going to buy a PS3/360 eventually? (Well almost everyone)

Of course they do, but Sony is currently doing less than half as well as the original XBox, which was considered a dismal failure by many people.A bit of a surprising comment for three reasons. The first is because the Xbox actually sold better than the Gamecube and though it didn't do great it didn't do poorly. Secondly because the PS3 is not doing less than half as well as the Xbox did based on what I can see at vgcharts (http://www.vgcharts.com/page3.html). Finally the PS3 is doing only slightly worse than the XBox 360 did in its first 6 months in the US.


Personally I don't see putting NPD numbers as bashing - if you want to see real bashing go to gamers forums.Actually it was 2Channel who posted those. I just dislike the routine bashing of Blu-ray/MPEG-4 AVC/BD-J/PS3 that I see being done by certain Microsoft employees. I don't think it is right and it is technically against forum rules (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10347410&&#post10347410) as well.


Secondly considering your absolute hatred for anything MS...nataraj, don't lie about me. I may dislike what certain Microsoft employees do on this forum but I have no hatred of Microsoft and I think you know that.

Yeah I saw those charts too, funny that both the 360 and the PS3 were doing worst than the gamecube in the first 6 months.

I don't think Sony is in trouble at all with the PS3, if you have a look at some of the gamer day videos that just got released, some of them are truely amazing.
My personal favourite is a game called Little Big Planet. That and Playstation Home will be huge.

here's a video if anyone is interested
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=17723&type=mov&pl=game

I would of course like a price drop like everyone else.

I also think that the Wii demographic is completely different from that of the 360/PS3. Thee are alot of people that will play a Wii, when they would never touch a games machine before, much in the same vein as the Nintendo DS. Even my parents play the Wii, yet never expressed any interested in my 360.

Personally I don't see why so many Microsoft employees bash the PS3 on a regular basis on this forum.

If they weren't all in lock step, I would take their opinions at face value, but especially for the Insiders, it's clear they're coming from a pro HDDVD perspective and I take everything they post with that under consideration. If nataraj supported BD... or was neutral even, I could think it wasn't by company directive that his opinions were established (or even for his presence here).

I wouldn't necessarily believe their numbers for the add-ons, either. Not necessarily because of veracity but because they're not in the business of selling directly to retailers. They sell through a distribution channel, just like Sony. This is where the 3rd party comes in from professionals (NPD) to others (VGcharts/videogamecharts.com /etc).

People said the PS2 was too expensive when it came out and should have stuck with CD ROM instead of DVD, which just wasn't necessary. History has shown this to be foolish.

These same claims were said in regards to PS3 and that it's too expensive and that DVD is fine and that Blu-ray is not necessary. It was also said by many that the 360 was too expensive when it launched and decried the "tard pack" Core. That PS3 and 360 sales are both closer to the Game Cube IS Very interesting.

I also think it's interesting that one can compare xbox360 & ps3 with gamecube. But I do also think it's scary since gamecube was the least successful of all Nintendo gaming machines.

People said the PS2 was too expensive when it came out and should have stuck with CD ROM instead of DVD, which just wasn't necessary. History has shown this to be foolish.



But there is some difference. DVD was something everyone could benefit from. BD is someting only HDTV owner can benefit from.

If Bluray was the hot product everyone wanted and there werent any format war. then it would have been a much wiser choise to put it in.

I also think it's interesting that one can compare xbox360 & ps3 with gamecube. But I do also think it's scary since gamecube was the least successful of all Nintendo gaming machines.

Here, all kinds of comparisons ...

http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=317

6 month launch data for the USA:
Wii - 2.4 million
N64 ~2.7-2.9 million shipped, likely 2.2-2.4 million sold
PS2 - 2.1 million
Xbox - 1.9 million
GC - 1.6 million
360 - 1.5 million
PS3 - 1.2 million (roughly the same as PS1 shipped adjusted for population)
PS1 ~950,000 shipped, like 700-800k sold?

People said the PS2 was too expensive when it came out and should have stuck with CD ROM instead of DVD, which just wasn't necessary. History has shown this to be foolish.

DVD was well established when PS2 was launched. Thats the problem with blind comparisons.

Afterall PS2 never sold below 100K per month in the US and went only twice below 200K.

BTW, officially Sony blames lack of s/w for poor sales - not withstanding bold statements by sony execs that they can sell PS3 without any games ;)

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3159628

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=140302 (19-May-2006)

However, Reeves maintained that shifting PS3s in the early days won't be a problem, such is the strength of the PlayStation brand: "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games."

If they weren't all in lock step, I would take their opinions at face value, but especially for the Insiders, it's clear they're coming from a pro HDDVD perspective and I take everything they post with that under consideration. If nataraj supported BD... or was neutral even, I could think it wasn't by company directive that his opinions were established (or even for his presence here).Oh, I don't think we're all in lock step. I often disagree with Nataraj :)

On HD DVD and XBox related topics, of course our opinions are coloured by our work. If we didn't think our product was better, or that it didn't have a chance of succeeding, we would be working in the wrong group, now wouldn't we?
There is no company directive that we can only like HD DVD, in fact, some of our internal mailing lists are almost as... lively... as AVSForum threads :). Our company has, however come out publically in favour of HD DVD, so it's no surprise that in public, it's employees won't say anything to cause people to dispute that. There are enough online bloggers willing to portray anything said by anyone related to a company as gospel truth and company policy that it could easily become an embarrassment to both the employee and the company.

As a person, I would love to own a PS3. I cannot, however justify $600+(*) just so I can play Lair and Final Fantasy :). I may still get one when it becomes affordable, which would be at about $200 for me. But then I may not, I've never actually paid for a console. The XBox was a gift, the Wii was a gift, and the addon was a ship gift, so my total cost for being able to watch HD DVDs is $0. Can't beat free. :)

I wouldn't necessarily believe their numbers for the add-ons, either. Not necessarily because of veracity but because they're not in the business of selling directly to retailers. They sell through a distribution channel, just like Sony. This is where the 3rd party comes in from professionals (NPD) to others (VGcharts/videogamecharts.com /etc). Not hard to believe our numbers, we've never announced any. That the addon exceeded the XBox team's expectations is obvious even to the public, considering that the initial allocation, which they assumed would allow them to keep the channel reasonably full during the holiday season, was sold out within a week.
People said the PS2 was too expensive when it came out and should have stuck with CD ROM instead of DVD, which just wasn't necessary. History has shown this to be foolish.

These same claims were said in regards to PS3 and that it's too expensive and that DVD is fine and that Blu-ray is not necessary. It was also said by many that the 360 was too expensive when it launched and decried the "tard pack" Core. That PS3 and 360 sales are both closer to the Game Cube IS Very interesting.Interesting, yes. Significant? Who knows. What is significant is that by the end of this year, there almost certainly won't be the 10:1 player advantage that a certain BD insider has been harping on for the last year. There'll still be an advantage, but with all those new PS3 games out by then, there may not be a BD software advantage anymore. I believe this scenario is possible, and achievable, although it will require Toshiba to execute perfectly, and our team also. If the PS3 had performed according to the expectations many people had for it, our team would currently be having serious morale problems. :) I'm personally pretty happy we're not.


(*) $600 + component cable + Extra controllers

Oh, I don't think we're all in lock step. I often disagree with Nataraj :)


Publically on these forums you are, though, for obvious reasons (as you've alluded to below). I use nataraj only as an example. I don't actually believe he's been posting here under directive and that he's a genuine HDDVD partisan. :)

Unfortunately, he's echoing all the Insiders and there's nothing to disuade from the outsiders (my) impression that you all speak with the same voice and at least complementary opinions. His opinion could be seen in it's own light if there was someone... anyone... at MS who was posting... if not pro-Blu-ray at least more towards neutrality. But as you allude to below, it's just not realistic when there are bloggers, etc who would make more of it than it actually is. It would obviously not be politic for a team member to post in disagreement with Amir or Ben, even if there is no mandate against it.

Even though I obviously lean Blu-ray, I still love my 360 and will definitely cherry pick good HDDVD titles that I'm interested in, just as I do with the Blu-ray titles and am completely neutral on the gaming front. The factionalism I sense from the MS employees often spurs the contrariness in me, though and the PS3 is a great kit that I'll definitely defend it as long as my own experience remains positive.


On HD DVD and XBox related topics, of course our opinions are coloured by our work. If we didn't think our product was better, or that it didn't have a chance of succeeding, we would be working in the wrong group, now wouldn't we?

Nope. I imagine it makes the tribalism even stronger. I certainly envision a hypothetical someone only doing VC1, though, who would certainly appreciate it's merits and might think it worthwhile to try to persuade certain BDA studios the merits of VC1 rather than the less realistic approach of making them HDDVD supporters (which has larger corporate/political implications).... I could certainly see them recognize that the superior throughput and capacity available to Blu-ray wouldn't hurt.


There is no company directive that we can only like HD DVD, in fact, some of our internal mailing lists are almost as... lively... as AVSForum threads :). Our company has, however come out publically in favour of HD DVD, so it's no surprise that in public, it's employees won't say anything to cause people to dispute that.
There are enough online bloggers willing to portray anything said by anyone related to a company as gospel truth and company policy that it could easily become an embarrassment to both the employee and the company.


Sure. I would keep my mouth shut, make an alias and, probably bouncing off an anonymous proxy, make no mention of my affiliation with MS. But then I try to be alert to any political feathers I might be ruffling at my employer... that might just be me, though. ;)


As a person, I would love to own a PS3. I cannot, however justify $600+(*) just so I can play Lair and Final Fantasy :). I may still get one when it becomes affordable, which would be at about $200 for me. But then I may not, I've never actually paid for a console. The XBox was a gift, the Wii was a gift, and the addon was a ship gift, so my total cost for being able to watch HD DVDs is $0. Can't beat free. :)


I can certainly appreciate that. I bought my own 360 as soon as I didn't have to wait in line for one (same with my PS3 incidentally) since I'm a gamer with an increasingly insatiable High Def apetite. I knew I would avoid standalones for at least the 1st gen and the add-on was a great deal with the CC coupon to sample the format. PS3 would have been a forgone conclusion eventually, but I'd have likely waited for the first price drop but for the Blu-ray ability to help satisfy those urges.

I'd note that my PS2 component cables worked great and I'd be using them but for a ground loop issue and the fact that I had an HDMI cable available (and was eventually intending for an HDMI AVR anyway). ;)


Not hard to believe our numbers, we've never announced any.



Right. I was referring to the hypothetical.


That the addon exceeded the XBox team's expectations is obvious even to the public, considering that the initial allocation, which they assumed would allow them to keep the channel reasonably full during the holiday season, was sold out within a week.


I got mine right before the holiday allocation and saw them throughout, though they looked to be sparse (usually only 1 or 2 units per). Maybe we just had a glut in So cal. :shrug:

I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time...

funny a bunch of guys here say the exact same thing for HD DVD disks, and some say they are into computers


I guess Gates would disagree with all the MS employees here saying 30GB is enough.

If Toshiba does indeed ship its projected 1.8 million Toshiba HD DVD players in 2007 I will be impressed. (I think that's supposedly for North America alone.)

They do seem to be fairly consistent in their aggressive projections though. They are also predicting 3 million Toshiba HD DVD players in fiscal 2007 (worldwide, April 2007 to March 2008), with the total worldwide numbers from all brands during fiscal 2007 at 4-5 million.

Whether they will be able to accomplish that or not is a different question.

BuGsArEtAsTy you forgot that they also stated 600k fiscal 2006.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aQbBKEih9iG0&refer=japan
Toshiba retails its HD DVD players in Japan for about 100,000 yen ($857) each, and said it aims to sell between 600,000 and 700,000 units by March 2007.

so what's the real number? 1/3-1/5?

I kinda understand where you're coming from, but do you really think most shoppers are going out to buy a Wii or a PS2? I would think that most shoppers already have or have had a PS2. So ... when a customer with a PS2 goes out to look at the Wii, the competition would be either the PS3 or the 360. Why would they buy another PS2?

except that PS2 is still one of the top sellers, so someone is buying it.

Yeah I saw those charts too, funny that both the 360 and the PS3 were doing worst than the gamecube in the first 6 months.True, and personally I think the higher price of the PS3 and Xbox 360, with hard drive, would naturally cause the short term adoption rates to be lower.


But there is some difference. DVD was something everyone could benefit from. BD is someting only HDTV owner can benefit from.In terms of image quality though that would also apply to the PS3 and Xbox 360 since both look their best on an HDTV.

Yeah I saw those charts too, funny that both the 360 and the PS3 were doing worst than the gamecube in the first 6 months.

Yes, but unlike PS3 vs 360, we know how it went with 360 vs GC ;)

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/6539/gcxbps3el5.png (http://imageshack.us)

Unfortunately, he's echoing all the Insiders and there's nothing to disuade from the outsiders (my) impression that you all speak with the same voice and at least complementary opinions. His opinion could be seen in it's own light if there was someone... anyone... at MS who was posting... if not pro-Blu-ray at least more towards neutrality. But as you allude to below, it's just not realistic when there are bloggers, etc who would make more of it than it actually is. It would obviously not be politic for a team member to post in disagreement with Amir or Ben, even if there is no mandate against it.
I love conspiracy theories

If nataraj supported BD... or was neutral even, I could think it wasn't by company directive that his opinions were established (or even for his presence here).

You do know that I've been posting here for 7 years and I've been working in MS for less than 3, right :p :p

Anyway, looks like Sony fans are so pi**ed off with PS3 sales they are now back to their old game of trying to smear me. :rolleyes:

Say... noticed in hidef digest's review that the TrueHD for the Matrix set is supposedly 16/48... Any of you guys who said 16/48 PCM wasn't enough bits want to tell us how you think the audio on the Matrix is if you have it yet? I'll call out names if I have to. :D

open for business :)

THQ's CEO called for deep price cut or to "Unbundle the costly Blu-ray" PS3 in the Wedbush Morgan Institutional Investor Conference. So, looks like I'm not the only one "speculating" on this idea.

SCEA spokeswoman said they have not announced any plans to cut the price or unbundle Blu-ray.

No links for now, but there should be in a couple of days when mainstream media reports this.

Well unbundling of the bluray from the PS3 isn't possible at all, it would cause more problems and confusion than it would be worth, but I'm sure you know that Nataraj.

A price cut on the other hand, most definitely on the cards, have no idea of the date though.

Not like either of these 2 ideas are new, they've been pervaded by everyman and his dog. Plenty of 3rd parties have said the same thing.

Edited: Thanks bkilian :D

It might be good to decouple the miserable attach rate on the BD side by making BD an option for PS3. Time to sacrifice the Trojan Horse? :)

Well unbundling of the bluray from the PS3 isn't possible at all, it would cause more problems and confusion than it would be worth, but I'm sure you know that Amir.

A price cut on the other hand, most definitely on the cards, have no idea of the date though.

Not like either of these 2 ideas are new, they've been pervaded by everyman and his dog. Plenty of 3rd parties have said the same thing.Not everyone from Microsoft is Amir :) You were replying to a post by Nataraj.

Do you ever wonder if Blu-Ray had been first out of the gate and Sony had spammed this forum with "insiders" that AVS would be a haven for BD fanatics instead of the other way around?

Anyway, carry on about those "attach" rates. I'm going to go buy a movie.

Do you ever wonder if Blu-Ray had been first out of the gate and Sony had spammed this forum with "insiders" that AVS would be a haven for BD fanatics instead of the other way around?



Mods... any way to add a one-click button at each post for easily adding people to ignore list? I'd like to start making more liberal use of it, but it's not terribly convenient to get to.

Well unbundling of the bluray from the PS3 isn't possible at all, it would cause more problems and confusion than it would be worth, but I'm sure you know that Nataraj.

How much is majority market share in consoles worth to Sony ? I don't know and neither do you. Ofcourse I'd rather that they continue with BD and high price. That definitely helps 360 ;)

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just a question of whether Sony thinks 82K in US and getting beaten 8:1 in Japan is desperate or not.

Not like either of these 2 ideas are new, they've been pervaded by everyman and his dog. Plenty of 3rd parties have said the same thing.

But Sony spokesperson doesn't respond to everyone and their dog. Nor does it get reported in trade publications. You can be sure THQ CEO not only talked about it but also told Sony about it personally - when they cancelled Saints Row for PS3 (moving devs to next edition instead).

And there is a specific reason I mentioned this news item - I was accused of FUD when I first posted this possibility a while back.

Sony is enjoying far better market share with the PS2 alone. Combined with PS3 still gives them the console lead. I'd say they know their best interests better than you. ;)

Microsoft will come out with a Blu-ray add-on before Sony gives up Blu-ray on the PS3.

David Jaffe(maker of God of War and Calling all Cars) said the very same thing. I'm sure they would take note of his comments.


How would you feel as a developer being told that you only have
20% of the space you thought you had available. What about the customers that buy a revision of the PS3 without a Bluray drive, they go and buy one of the bluray games, take it home and find they can't play it. Sony aren't going to recall and redo all the exisiting games out there. It would be very confusing to customers to have 2 different version of games on the shelves, even when PCs did it, it caused some confusion, and PC gamers are more tech saavy than console gamers in general.

How about a gentlemans wager? I wager a price drop will happen before a Bluray-less PS3 is released. I honestly believe that a bluray-less PS3 will never be released, but a condition of such would make ir difficult to put a finite time frame on.

All the loser has to do is admit the other was right.

I love conspiracy theoriesJust to point this out but there is a huge difference between pointing something out and making a conspiracy theory. The so called "Phase Hydra" was a pure conspiracy theory without a hint of proof and yet a good number of HD DVD supporters were eager to believe it. On the other hand it is hard not to notice the strong presence of Microsoft employees posting here to promote HD DVD and bash Blu-ray. It is hard not to notice that some of these posters who before the format war had a posting average of under 0.25 posts per day now have a posting average of at least ten times that number. To be fair maybe it is just a string of coincidences but do not be surprised that some people wonder if there might be more to it than that.


SCEA spokeswoman said they have not announced any plans to cut the price or unbundle Blu-ray.I would point out the obvious fact that no company would announce a price cut until they plan to do it. For instance Microsoft wouldn't announce an October price cut for the Xbox 360 in June. As for unbundling the Blu-ray drive that would be as impossible for the PS3 as unbundling the DVD drive would be for the Xbox 360.


How much is majority market share in consoles worth to Sony ?A lot, but I think you are under estimating the PS3 if you honestly believe that it will not increase in sales over time. For instance games like Lair, Heavenly Sword, White Knight, and FFXIII are going to move a lot of PS3 consoles when they are released.


Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just a question of whether Sony thinks 82K in US and getting beaten 8:1 in Japan is desperate or not.Well the Wii is certainly selling well at the moment in Japan but I think you made a mistake and looked at only the weekly chart for hardware sales. Also going by that same weekly chart the Xbox 360 is getting beat 30:1 by the Wii.

David Jaffe(maker of God of War and Calling all Cars) said the very same thing. I'm sure they would take note of his comments.

How would you feel as a developer being told that you only have
20% of the space you thought you had available. What about the customers that buy a revision of the PS3 without a Bluray drive, they go and buy one of the bluray games, take it home and find they can't play it. Sony aren't going to recall and redo all the exisiting games out there. It would be very confusing to customers to have 2 different version of games on the shelves, even when PCs did it, it caused some confusion, and PC gamers are more tech saavy than console gamers in general.

How about a gentlemans wager? I wager a price drop will happen before a Bluray-less PS3 is released. I honestly believe that a bluray-less PS3 will never be released, but a condition of such would make ir difficult to put a finite time frame on.

All the loser has to do is admit the other was right.

I agree, they'll never strip out the BD drive. The loss of face from a move like that is too much to contemplate. A price drop is deffinitely in the cards, yet so painful. They're already losing more than $200 on each PS3. If they can shave their parts cost by a $100 at the end of this year, that means they can go to $499 without increasing their loss/unit.

Does anyone want to take a swag at the new PS3 price? I think they need to be at $399 coming into November, but I don't know if they can get there.

A price drop is deffinitely in the cards, yet so painful. They're already losing more than $200 on each PS3.That was based on an estimate made last year. I don't think anyone in this thread really knows how much it currently costs to make the 60 GB PS3.


Does anyone want to take a swag at the new PS3 price?I think it is quite possible that the 60 GB PS3 will be reduced to $500 sometime late this year. The combination of a cheaper Blu-ray drive, 65 nm CELL CPU, and the removal of PS2 CPU should be enough to allow for that.

The probability of a PS3 without a BD drive is about zero. On the other hand the likely hood of the PS3 lasting for 10 years is also IMO about zero. Sony's whole pitch re using BD and Cell etc as a way to make a computing platform for games that will last 10 years, is a serious mistake. Technology is improving at an increasing rate, and ten years is a very very very very long time.

The probability of a PS4 that might not use BD but some other distrubution media, and could infact be solid state of downloaded, is quite possible.

To say that PS3 has lived up to expectations is unrealistic, Ken getting pushed out could only have come as a result of enormous failure to meet expectations and Howard's willingness to take very painful corrective action.

Will PS3 do better in the future, is still not clear, if Sony starts to dramatically reduce prices, say to 500 this summer and 400 before Christmas, sales would probably pickup, but of course this will extend the time/units to improve unit profitibility.

Sony needs to turn around expectations, the old saying you have only once to make a first impression is quite true, and turning around negative or even neutral perceptions is an expensive proposition, which takes more than just money, it will take dramatic improvements in the systems actual performance to accomplish that.

In the game of competing for the consumers money, you cannot discount the effect of the Wii, certainly they are not the same target, but the in the classic marketing analysis of Total Available Market, Served Available Market, and Share of Market, it would be unwise not to consider the discretionary spending that is going to Wii.

There is another developing factor, and that is that the PC which had been sort of written off as not a major factor in the games market is exceeding expectations, and with the PS3 and Xbox 360 price points, more and more serious gamers are looking at adding a high end graphics card for about half the price of the console is becoming a very viable alternative. It is interesting to see Microsoft offering solutions that allow for development of games for both platforms at the same time. Remember the installed base of PC's as potential games systems makes all the console installed base pale by comparison.

So back to the BD/HD situation. If Microsoft/Toshiba continue to pursue a price elastic strategy, BD could have difficulty, the Xbox 360 HD addon showed that an effective price for the drive could be 150 dollars, if for instance they continue this and say drive the effective price to 100 dollars, and expand the support for the add on on the PC, this could have a dramatic effect, with people being able to add a HD drive and software to a PC for under 200 dollars, and don't forget Microsoft still wants to have the PC be the center of the Home entertainment center.

On the other hand, if Microsoft/Toshiba using the HD add on as a model can convince the Chinese high volume manufacturers that a standalone HD player could be built and sold in the market for under 200 dollars with a goal to get to 99 in a few years , and at the same time Microsoft/Toshiba can convince Walmart for instance that HD players with a walmart no name brand can sell based on price, and that Walmart's marketing/distributing/selling engine can make the money selling the "blades" we could see a dramatic shift in HD's direction, since it is likely this scenario would cause some studios to go format neutral.


The interesting business situation is that to pull this off, Microsoft needs to do very little except subsidize HD DVD addon for Xbox 360 and continue to improve VC-1 and watch and wait as the market place shifts more and more to software, and less for hardware , and Toshiba also needs to do very little except again subsidize the drive.

On the other hand Sony needs to keep reducing the PS3 product line pricing and absorbing the costs, AND also keep the seven dwarfs happy so that they don't decide that they simply cannot and will not compete with the PS3 (it certainly is pretty clear that the PS3 is the best price performance BD player out there), and keep the Studios from going neutral. A single product that straddles two very different markets (Games/CE) is a very delicate balancing act. Right now Sony seems to be making decisions more from the CE/BD side, we could see that shift.

It still is early to call a winner, BUT in today's market you only have to look at the US trade deficit with China, and Walmart's success to see that most of the time the low cost, non branded, "pile them high sell them cheap" seems to work.

John

Just to point this out but there is a huge difference between pointing something out and making a conspiracy theory. The so called "Phase Hydra" was a pure conspiracy theory without a hint of proof...

Just to point out... this phrase was within an actual BDA writeup of one of their meetings in Fukuoka , Japan. It was ostensibly lifted from their website and reported on by Alex Millians.

I know you are a stickler for detail, so here's the quote from Alex:

-- The BDA has formally kicked off a new PR campaign called "Phase Hydra"....its purpose is to seed "high profile" forums with Blu-ray advocates and target bloggers to promote Blu-ray to get the word out to the world...the campaign will also focus on "smaller, independent studio issues"...

Somehow, I still tend to think just the name is going to be a big factor eventually in deciding this.

"Oh, I want a HD DVD player to go with my HD TV!"

"Excuse me, where are the Blu-ray TV's?"

thread closed:

there are continual violations of AVS rules and the thread is getting too long:

some long time members may want to review the rules of this thread if you expect to keep posting on AVS


Format Battle General Discussion Thread III: Discuss it here! (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10599226&&#post10599226)