PC World interviews Paramount's Chief Technology Officer. It's a good interview, explaining exactly why they switched.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136253-c,dvdtechnology/article.html

Doug

From Midnight Watcher's post:PCW: Presumably, making this move wasn't something you did lightly. What led up to the decision to shift your production exclusively to HD DVD?

Bell: Paramount has been getting experience with publishing titles in both formats for the last year. We've had a hands-on ability to see how these formats work in practice. And after some hands-on analysis, we decided that HD DVD was the format we wanted to support.

PCW: Why was that?

Bell: For one thing, the lower prices of the players: It's good for consumers, it's good for our customer base.

For another thing, HD DVD came out of the DVD Forum. The DVD Forum is very experienced at developing and managing specs. [HD DVD] was launched in a very stable way, with stable specifications, and they had specified a reference player model, so all players had to be compatible with the HDi interactivity layer, and all players had to be capable of the interactivity. So when we publish titles in the future that have interactivity, we can be assured that every HD DVD player will be able to handle this content.

PCW: So, as a studio, you believe that the underlying stability of HD DVD's specs is a benefit?

Bell: When you look at what the DVD Forum has specified as required, it's a good set of advanced technologies. You can be assured that that benefit will be available to all consumers, no matter what [player] model they purchased. That speaks to the DVD Forum, that it published specs that were complete and market-ready, and that it didn't need to publish up [and change the specs], as Blu-ray has. To some degree, [such changes are] going to create some legacy issues.

For example, HD DVD players have [ethernet] connectivity built-in. If the player doesn't have that, or it's optional, you can't rely on that [as a feature].

PCW: Didn't we see the same thing with DVD players, though, where some features were mandatory and others weren't?

Bell: When you have a format, you generally have mandatory requirements on players, and you sometimes have optional features. On DVD, Dolby Digital 5.1 was mandatory, but DTS 5.1 was optional. But that meant that when you published a title, you never really knew how many customers had players that supported the feature you were adding to the disc at some cost. On HD DVD, the mandatory audio technologies are Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby TrueHD. [For more details, see an explanation of the differences among the various Dolby technologies.]

PCW: Over time, though, DTS became a de facto standard on DVD players. Don't you expect to see the same thing happen over time with Blu-ray's specs, such as the requirements for storage and interactivity via an ethernet connection? [Paramount's decision comes ahead of Blu-ray's new minimum specs, which go into effect for players sold after October 31.]

Bell: Eventually, that's true, but right now we have early adopters and enthusiasts [buying players]. If you do migrate the spec and your options are not included on the early players, these are the very people you leave behind. They're our most valuable customers in launching a new format, and you want to make sure that what they buy continues to represent the best of the format.

PCW: What about the additional capacity of Blu-ray, which has 50GB dual-layer discs, as opposed to HD DVD's 30GB dual-layer discs? Some studios have cited the additional capacity as necessary. Are you going to miss having the extra headroom?

Bell: This is a little bit overrated. Making a choice like the one Paramount has made is a multifaceted choice: It depends upon manufacturability, the reliability of players, the cost, the infrastructure that's developed to support our creation of titles. Many different factors came into play--including capacity. When Paramount made this decision, we considered the broad spectrum.

If everything else were equal, more capacity would be better. Why not?

But if you convert the playing time, a 30GB disc gives you somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of capacity. It depends upon the nature of the movie and how you compress it. There's no compromise on the quality. We've found that 95 percent of movies are less than 2.25 hours long. With a disc whose capacity is 3 or 4 hours, you can put a fair amount of bonus material on that disc as well. So 30GB with the option to add another disc is fine, from our point of view.

PCW: What if the multiple soundtracks and high-definition bonus materials won't fit on a single disc?

Bell: If there's an overflow of bonus material, we'll just go to another disc. That's not an issue for consumers. In some cases, they consider that it has more value. It's done routinely in DVD. Why put every single title on a high-capacity disc if it doesn't need it?

PCW: Do you expect capacity needs to change in the future?

Bell: A 45GB disc is under development. [Editors' note: This disc has been in development for two years.] Secondly, compression will become more effective. The number of minutes you get on a disc depends upon how much you can compress a movie. As we gain experience with the new codecs, the ability to compress at high quality will be improved.

Capacity is a factor, but it's not an overriding factor. In the grand scheme of things, the better proposition for consumers in our view, and for our business needs, is HD DVD.

PCW: From your first-hand experiences, what can you tell us about the difference in programming languages between HD DVD, which uses Microsoft's HDi technology, and Blu-ray, which uses BD-Java?

Bell: BD-Java is a programming language. The benefit is that it's very flexible. The drawback is that you may need 100 lines of BD-Java code. HDi is a relatively compact piece of code; one command can cover quite a bit of interactivity.

BD-Java is also more complex, so the possibility of errors is greater. And when BD players are put out, [there's the question of whether] they all support the scenarios as coded up from the low level. [Some of the early problems with BD-Java discs] were in part due to the complexity that BD-Java brings. From our point of view, HDi offers all of the flexibility we need, in practice, and it does so in a more simplified way and in a way that we feel leads to better compatibility, better reliability, and lower costs.

PCW: Up until now, how have you approached coding your discs for HDi and BD-Java?

Bell: At this particular point in time, we've been able to supply more features with HDi and HD DVD than with BD-Java and Blu-ray Disc. What we have typically done in practice is that we've created the interactive scenarios in HD DVD and then tried to pull them into Blu-ray. But that has not been entirely possible: Some things we can do in HDi are not supported in BD-Java. If you're going to do BD-Java, you need someone who's capable of programming at a low level. With HDi, you don't need somebody with that additional level of training. We don't need programmers to code our discs.

PCW: Do you think users are interested in the interactivity on these discs?

Bell: Interactivity is an important part of why you would move up from DVD. Yes, [high-def] has a great picture, but is that enough? Connectivity is something that studios will grow into, and it's something that we believe studios will grow into.

We're thinking about [having media servers to provide extra content via the Internet], but those kinds of investments cost money. The motivation to do them grows as the installed base grows. If we see there's a sufficiently large installed base to justify the cost of the server, we'll do it. Right now we're concentrating on getting a great picture out, and great interactivity.

PCW: Will this exclusive period extend for a limited time, or is this an indefinite arrangement?

Bell: At this moment in time, it's an indefinite commitment. The core of this announcement comes from our experience, and what our consumers are looking for. We hope this will influence consumers' choices.
This is exactly what I have been saying. A spec that doesn't exist from the beginning isn't a spec. BD is a series of upgrades that I guess in theory were designed to be added slowly to keep costs down. But, in the end that is not a dependable way of designing a movie playback system.

Wow! That's a fantastic interview, with a lot of well-reasoned points expressed by Alan Bell. He's the CTO, not some marketing drone or spokesperson... this should lend a lot of credibility to HD DVD's advantages and the idea that those might be a powerful incentive to a studio.

Now what I am about to say is pure speculation... but I'd guess that a lot of what is said in there is also going on at Warner. For example the nature of HDi vs BDj and it meant that starting with HD DVD and then porting to Blu-ray worked better for them, etc.

Wow! That's a fantastic interview, with a lot of well-reasoned points expressed by Alan Bell. He's the CTO, not some marketing drone or spokesperson... this should lend a lot of credibility to HD DVD's advantages and the idea that those might be a powerful incentive to a studio.

Now what I am about to say is pure speculation... but I'd guess that a lot of what is said in there is also going on at Warner. For example the nature of HDi vs BDj and it meant that starting with HD DVD and then porting to Blu-ray worked better for them, etc.

It also explains what might have turned Bay around (though I still hope he doesn't direct TF2)

Yes very good interview with direct comments and no hyperbole. However, his comments about 45Gb HD DVD disc contradicts his whole one-spec for all machines theory.

The interesting thing is that he is saying things that people on AVS have been saying all along.

1) 30GB is enough capacity for HD material and 50GB has not shown to be needed for HD or that it has improved PQ.

2) Cost matters. HD DVD will hit all the magical barriers first $199, $149, $99. Each price point will open HD to a whole new group of consumers. The number of consumers willing to pay $500 is simply tapped out. To expand the marked beyond the current 1% or so prices need to come down.

3) Stable specs. The DVD Forums made hard compramises when creating HD DVD. It doesn't have all the "best gee whiz gadgetry" they simply chose what works well at a price that can be managed. BDA on the other hand reacting to a competitor launching before they were ready has had what 4,5 revisions in a year. None of the players are currently compatible with the latest spec even a year after launch.

4) Understanding that required is much stronger than optional. If ethernet is required then every player can access the internet (if consumer hooks it up). This can never be guaranteed with BD.

5) Java is a full scale programming language. As a result is has pros and cons. HDi is a better fit for the type of programming we are expected to see on optical media. While java made add a little bit more it increases costs, complexity, has more room for bugs and errors and requires a VM on each piece of hardware. Newer BD machines on new platforms would require new VM which reopens the whole compatibility issue all over again. Check how many updates Sun has made for the windows VM over the last decade.

6) Codecs will improve not degrade. If movies like King Kong fit now they likely 2,3,5 years from now the same length movie would w/ more extras not less.

Even hot headed Michael Bay seems to see the logic in the HD DVD plan
Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three blu-ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you - I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.

As a director, I'm all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard firsthand people upset about a corporate decision.

So today I saw 300 on HD, it rocks!

So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!

Michael Bay

Bad news is we will have to suffer through Bay's horrible directing for yet another movie he doesn't deserve. :D

Wait, people from the other side haven't jumped on here yet to call Bell a liar and claim Microsoft shifted him money under the table and a hooker for the weekend to switch to HD DVD.

Yes very good interview with direct comments and no hyperbole. However, his comments about 45Gb HD DVD disc contradicts his whole one-spec for all machines theory.
Not if he has information that suggests the triple layer disc will work on current consoles (if all you need to do is update firmware, the hardware doesn't become obsolete).

I think the most interesting thing to come out of the interview (which was fantastic by the way) is the last question:

PCW: Will this exclusive period extend for a limited time, or is this an indefinite arrangement?

Bell: At this moment in time, it's an indefinite commitment. The core of this announcement comes from our experience, and what our consumers are looking for. We hope this will influence consumers' choices.

That says to me they have no intention on going back to Blu-ray and that the incentives will be spread across the 18 month deal.

What I mean to say is that the "18 month" figure discussed seems to apply more to the incentives than to the actual exclusive arrangement.

LOL, Michael Bay. I guess we should cut him some slack.

My big question is what happens to dual-format now? Given further insight into what probably is going through all the studio's heads, I now wonder if the two format model will survive. I still think the best solution is dual-format players, but it's all up in the air right now. This is clearly a watershed event. I can't wait to see how it plays out.

Doug

space doesnt matter but we have a 45 gig in development...lol

The interesting thing is that he is saying things that people on AVS have been saying all along.

1) 30GB is enough capacity for HD material and 50GB has not shown to be needed for HD or that it has improved PQ.

2) Cost matters. HD DVD will hit all the magical barriers first $199, $149, $99. Each price point will open HD to a whole new group of consumers. The number of consumers willing to pay $500 is simply tapped out. To expand the marked beyond the current 1% or so prices need to come down.

3) Stable specs. The DVD Forums made hard compramises when creating HD DVD. It doesn't have all the "best gee whiz gadgetry" they simply chose what works well at a price that can be managed. BDA on the other hand reacting to a competitor launching before they were ready has had what 4,5 revisions in a year. None of the players are currently compatible with the latest spec even a year after launch.

4) Understanding that required is much stronger than optional. If ethernet is required then every player can access the internet (if consumer hooks it up). This can never be guaranteed with BD.

5) Java is a full scale programming language. As a result is has pros and cons. HDi is a better fit for the type of programming we are expected to see on optical media. While java made add a little bit more it increases costs, complexity, has more room for bugs and errors and requires a VM on each piece of hardware. Newer BD machines on new platforms would require new VM which reopens the whole compatibility issue all over again. Check how many updates Sun has made for the windows VM over the last decade.

6) Codecs will improve not degrade. If movies like King Kong fit now they likely 2,3,5 years from now the same length movie would w/ more extras not less.

Even hot headed Michael Bay seems to see the logic in the HD DVD plan


Bad news is we will have to suffer through Bay's horrible directing for yet another movie he doesn't deserve. :D

Stable specs perhaps but not stable players. I still have freeze-ups with my HD-A2 vs no problems ever with my PS3. 30GB may be enough for you but it isn't enough apparently for many titles that lack trueHD so the video could fit and look good. Codecs improve and that is true. So BD's higher bandwidth and even better looking movie's than HD-DVD can look even better.. I don't want to wait for codecs to improve before I start seeing the quality and extras I can already enjoy thanks to Blu-Ray..

Thats a good article. Interviews that look to create facts and not lead an agenda are always interesting in that way. What perfect timing too. First, make the announcement. Second, let the press finish with the first. Third, let the dust settle and start communicating. Bravo!!! Give an interview and communicate your thoughts and rationale. Theirs not much room here to even accuse him of spinning. "Stick with the facts" is what I am sure he coached himself before this whole thing came out. The majority are 2.25 hours, the spec is done, its easier for us to code if we have to code at all.

Stable specs perhaps but not stable players. I still have freeze-ups with my HD-A2 vs no problems ever with my PS3. 30GB may be enough for you but it isn't enough apparently for many titles that lack trueHD so the video could fit and look good. Codecs improve and that is true. So BD's higher bandwidth and even better looking movie's than HD-DVD can look even better.. I don't want to wait for codecs to improve before I start seeing the quality and extras I can already enjoy thanks to Blu-Ray..
Lemonade, brother. Lemonade.

space doesnt matter but we have a 45 gig in development...lol

It would be good for TV shows. Instead of putting a TV series on seven 30 GB discs it could be put on five 45 GB discs.

Not if he has information that suggests the triple layer disc will work on current consoles (if all you need to do is update firmware, the hardware doesn't become obsolete).

I think the most interesting thing to come out of the interview (which was fantastic by the way) is the last question:

PCW: Will this exclusive period extend for a limited time, or is this an indefinite arrangement?

Bell: At this moment in time, it's an indefinite commitment. The core of this announcement comes from our experience, and what our consumers are looking for. We hope this will influence consumers' choices.

That says to me they have no intention on going back to Blu-ray and that the incentives will be spread across the 18 month deal.

What I mean to say is that the "18 month" figure discussed seems to apply more to the incentives than to the actual exclusive arrangement.

Looks like Paramount is now pushing whoever they can forward to try to quash the NYT story. Very lame. Nothing stated in that article in any way justifies pulling the plug on Blu Ray support from a business perspective. but I can think of 150 million more that do.

"What you're customers are looking for": Heres a scoop bud, 2/3 of the customers you claim to care about will be looking for there friggen Blu Ray movies!

Looks like Paramount is now pushing whoever they can forward to try to quash the NYT story. Very lame. Nothing stated in that article in any way justifies pulling the plug on Blu Ray support from a business perspective. but I can think of 150 million more that do.

"What you're customers are looking for": Heres a scoop bud, 2/3 of the customers you claim to care about will be looking for there friggen Blu Ray movies!


Unless this move pushes the pile back to the center and it goes back to 50-50, or HD DVD starts to pull back in the lead.

Then where will that 2/3rd's be?

Maybe.......JUST MAYBE......Paramount wants to direct the HDM war a little bit themselves like Fox and Disney are trying to do?

I think the most important fact he alluded to was compression........as time goes by transfers will look even better and be even smaller. Bigger is only better if you are a female......then sometimes it is how you use it.

Looks like Paramount is now pushing whoever they can forward to try to quash the NYT story. Very lame. Nothing stated in that article in any way justifies pulling the plug on Blu Ray support from a business perspective. but I can think of 150 million more that do.

"What you're customers are looking for": Heres a scoop bud, 2/3 of the customers you claim to care about will be looking for there friggen Blu Ray movies!

Every single item makes sense from both a business standpoint and a consumer standpoint. Why continue to support the more expensive format with little more to offer?

2/3 of the customers will be 1/10th of the customers by January. 1/20th by this time next year. Face it. If you didn't already own a PS3, you'd never have BluRay. The sales figures don't lie. Players aren't selling. Movie sales are low. Costs are too high.

Paramount just put the concept that the future for BD is dead into the minds of many everyday consumers.

Very soon the only place you will see a BD logo is on the PS3 box and a Sony movie. At least the PS3'ers can still play all those fantastic game titles.

The most interesting thing I took away from it was:

PCW: Will this exclusive period extend for a limited time, or is this an indefinite arrangement?

Bell: At this moment in time, it's an indefinite commitment. The core of this announcement comes from our experience, and what our consumers are looking for. We hope this will influence consumers' choices.

The ONLY pile being pushed is cash and its being pushed toward of bunch of undeserving, anti-consumer, studio suits.

The ONLY pile being pushed is cash and its being pushed toward of bunch of undeserving, anti-consumer, studio suits.

Which ones?

really a good interview....

Which ones?

The ones at Disney.

Which ones?

You're right! there are 2 piles being pushed here. And its not very hard to figure out who is getting what.

This is what Alan Bell really said in the interview:

1. We are a movie company. Why should we have to learn how to write software?

2. We are a movie company. Anything that will get our movies into the customer's hands more cheaply, we're all for it.

3. We are a movie company. Our product is getting stale. We need to get it out now! The public is getting tired of waiting.

Doug

This is what Alan Bell really said in the interview:

1. We are a movie company. Why should we have to learn how to write software?

2. We are a movie company. Anything that will get our movies into the customer's hands more cheaply, we're all for it.

3. We are a movie company. Our product is getting stale. We need to get it out now! The public is getting tired of waiting.

Doug

4. We are a movie Company. Its just to difficult to find a programmer who knows Java

5. We are a movie Company. Who gives a hoot about 2/3's of our customers anyway, It's the 1/3 that really count.

6. We are a movie Company. and ... MOTHER!!!

That's enough aka_dnv. Go punch a pillow or something.

There is no convincing the BD supporters, even when the facts are posted.

Keep holding onto the thought that Para was paid $150M, paid by Microsoft, and that the agreement is only for 18 months. After all, it all originated from BDA. You know, the group that was the first to spread the FUD?

That's enough aka_dnv. Go punch a pillow or something.

Man, f*** pillow-pants!

Clerks 2, HD DVD exclusive, funny movie.

5. We are a movie Company. Who gives a hoot about 2/3's of our customers anyway, It's the 1/3 that really count.


The 1/3 that accounts for 2/3 of our profits. :)

Understand that (volume sold - cost = profit) -- BD production is a money pit at this point in the game.

Codecs don't really get any better. Codecs are merely a promise to transform a certain set of data (using a predefined set of algorithms) into a stream of video data. However, what does occur is that given an input stream of video data the algorithms that transform that stream into a compliant input for said codec (this is called encoding) get better. The reason for this is that there are many possible way to transform the video stream into something compliant with the codec. In fact the more advanced the codec is more choices the encoder must make.

Stable specs perhaps but not stable players. I still have freeze-ups with my HD-A2 vs no problems ever with my PS3. 30GB may be enough for you but it isn't enough apparently for many titles that lack trueHD so the video could fit and look good. Codecs improve and that is true. So BD's higher bandwidth and even better looking movie's than HD-DVD can look even better.. I don't want to wait for codecs to improve before I start seeing the quality and extras I can already enjoy thanks to Blu-Ray..

reading your posts over the last few days, I can only imagine that you watch movies on your ps3 with the bitrate meter on constantly, ooohing and ahhing to yourself whenever the peaks go over 40.

This is what Alan Bell really said in the interview:

1. We are a movie company. Why should we have to learn how to write software?

2. We are a movie company. Anything that will get our movies into the customer's hands more cheaply, we're all for it.

3. We are a movie company. Our product is getting stale. We need to get it out now! The public is getting tired of waiting.

Doug

If they want to get movies into customer's hands more cheaply, then perhaps they better revisit their $40MSRP for their HD discs. And actually start releasing a decent number of movies, rather than the paltry effort shown to date. If, and when, they do this, I'll put some credence into Paramount's decision.

If they want to get movies into customer's hands more cheaply, then perhaps they better revisit their $40MSRP for their HD discs. And actually start releasing a decent number of movies, rather than the paltry effort shown to date. If, and when, they do this, I'll put some credence into Paramount's decision.

I'm willing to bet that that announcement is coming soon...

Have to disagree with people lauding the rationality of all arguments. The 50gb vs 30gb issue, for example... I would think that most people do not enjoy swapping discs to access bonus material, nor do I think that people would see a better value in getting tv season sets with more discs (and swapping) on hd-dvd than on blu-ray. That's just plain stupid and I'm sorry I had to be the first one to see it.

Have to disagree with people lauding the rationality of all arguments. The 50gb vs 30gb issue, for example... I would think that most people do not enjoy swapping discs to access bonus material, nor do I think that people would see a better value in getting tv season sets with more discs (and swapping) on hd-dvd than on blu-ray. That's just plain stupid and I'm sorry I had to be the first one to see it.

The mass consumer has been conditioned with the "more discs is better" mentality for years now!

You only have to look at the local dvd isle to see "2 Disc Special Set!" "2 Disc Director's Cut!'

Enthusiasts look at things with different eyes than the mass consumer.

4. We are a movie Company. Its just to difficult to find a programmer who knows Java

5. We are a movie Company. Who gives a hoot about 2/3's of our customers anyway, It's the 1/3 that really count.

6. We are a movie Company. and ... MOTHER!!!

7. We are a movie Company and we make movies for HD DVD!

5) Java is a full scale programming language. As a result is has pros and cons. HDi is a better fit for the type of programming we are expected to see on optical media. While java made add a little bit more it increases costs, complexity, has more room for bugs and errors and requires a VM on each piece of hardware. Newer BD machines on new platforms would require new VM which reopens the whole compatibility issue all over again. Check how many updates Sun has made for the windows VM over the last decade.


Boy oh boy. There are a number of highly debatable assertions in that interview that read like bullet points delivered in an Amir Powerpoint, and your comments are just incorrect.

1) Language != VM/API platform. Your cell phone most likely runs apps that are written in the Java language, but these are not apps written to the J2SE API. Don't confuse the language with the VM or runtime, because if you desired a more compact animation friendly language, it wouldn't be hard to create a tool for it for BD-J. (more on that later)

2) Low-level = easier to implement an interpreter. This is the irony. It takes more lines of code to implement a Javascript interpreter than a simple bytecode interpreter. You cannot say that a language is "low level", but more complex to create implementations of, and then claim a "high level language" is less likely to have implementation bugs. High level languages yield less *developer bugs*, but the runtimes are significantly more complex. Conversely, low level languages make it easier for developers to hang themselves, but make writing compilers and interpreters much simpler. Compare Smalltalk, Haskell, Self to C or Pascal.

The lower level your abstract machine, the simpler it is to implement semantics. In the reductio ad absurdum case, I could create an interactivity layer based on simple Turing Machines whose 'interpreter' would probably number less than 1,000 lines of C code. It is in fact, high level semantics as first class constructs that require more care.

The only thing that makes a Java VM complex is if you want to get fancy with the optimizer (e.g. CLDC HotSpot) and memory management (parallel collectors, heap sharing) But this has to be compared against the correctness of implementing DOM + JavaScript + sorta-CSS + XPath + SMIL. Umm, it's 10 years since the launch of IE4 with DOM/CSS support, and Microsoft *STILL* hasn't fixed all the bugs!

Come back and talk to me about the simplicity of implementing "web standards"-lookalikes for HDi interactivity when you fix your damn browser.

3) Windows VM updates != embedded VM updates. The Desktop/Server VM has been updated so much because it has been MASSIVELY increased in functionality over the years. From JDK1.0 to JDK1.6, the number of classes has ballooned orders of magnitude. It's like saying that the number of updates/hotfixes that Microsoft made to Windows3.1/95/98/ME/XP/Vista proves that Microsoft's embedded OSes will be similarly bugged.

The BD-J core which is based on CDC is simpler than JDK1.1.

4) New machines require new VMs yes, but the reality is, most VMs are just licensed from Sun or other embedded players and ported to a new CPU (but x86 and ARM implementations already exist). The rest comes down to the OS interface/JNI layer. This is not much better for HDi. HDi must be ported to new systems as well, it won't magically just run everywhere. Where's my HDi simulator for Linux and OSX if it's so portable?

5) "Don't have to be a programmer" Umm, if you're writing XPath statements and JavaScript, you're a programmer. Plus, the idea that JavaScript/DOM programming is easier to understand than Java for the newbie is ridiculous. JavaScript contains both closures and prototype based inheritance, and 90% of people I interview for jobs can't understand some simple closure and prototype snippets. JavaScript is only simple if you avoid doing anything complex with it.

Again here, the reality is obscured by spin. It is highly unlikely that people developing interactivity will have to drop down into Java OR Javascript, as tools will be created to generate the appropriate code.

6) "Hundreds of lines of code"
If you want to do Flash-style menu animation in UIs, I wholeheartedly agree that the Java language is not the idea choice. However, the benefit of embedding a "low level" virtual machine as opposed to a wannabe JavaScript DOM, is that one can compile other languages and frameworks down to the VM.

While HDi developers will be forever locked into, IMHO, Microsoft's poorly designed XML markup, BD-J developers can drop in the *vastly* superior JavaFX Script, which blows HDi's XML+JavaScript syntax out of the water in terms of conciseness and capability.

Prefer Javascript? Fine, drop in one of the opensource Javascript interpreters. Or a bastardized JRuby, or JPython. (Rhino has already been ported to J2ME with a footprint of only 200kbytes. )

The bottom line is that almost 2 billion phones are running Java, and Microsoft's mobile software was far buggier for far longer. And developers are lamenting, not cheering, the fact that the iPhone lacks Java support, precisely because the DOM+Javascript approach is so limiting.

Have to disagree with people lauding the rationality of all arguments. The 50gb vs 30gb issue, for example... I would think that most people do not enjoy swapping discs to access bonus material, nor do I think that people would see a better value in getting tv season sets with more discs (and swapping) on hd-dvd than on blu-ray. That's just plain stupid and I'm sorry I had to be the first one to see it.

I have many movies that have the extras on another disc and several that have the rest of the movie on another disc. I have yet to be injured swapping the discs. How damn lazy can one be?

Bell: Eventually, that's true, but right now we have early adopters and enthusiasts . If you do migrate the spec and your options are not included on the early players, [B]these are the very people you leave behind. They're our most valuable customers in launching a new format, and you want to make sure that what they buy continues to represent the best of the format.

Excellent statements. I got the feeling they take greatest care about us enthusiasts and early adopters. I have never heard something like this from the alliance on the other side of the fence.

For all Paramount/Dreamworks guys/employees lurking here in the forum: a warm thankyou, honestly.

Well that's a bit harsh to lump everyone into the Paramount/Dreamworks shill camp. I could prove to anyone who walks through my front door that I am not. I don't care which side wins, but the interview speaks for itself. This decision was not made over last weekend. I imagine it was in the works at least since last spring. Alan Bell described in exact terms the process where they reached this decision, and in reading the posts regarding Java, etc., I hardly understand what they are talking about, let alone understand the minute inner workings of the code itself. Why should a movie studio be expected to be any different? The greatest amount of text in the interview was devoted to the difficulty of working with Java compared to what Paramount needed to put their movies on HDM. He basically said that the risk of using Java was too great for what they needed to release their movies. I know a lot of people are upset. It's understandable, but the facts stated in the interview remain.

Doug

Great interview...

I'm ready to jump into the HD game, but they need to get more CE support as well. Hopefully Samsung creates a HD DVD player soon.

Grabbing Paramount was a very good move(great interview btw), and if they grab another studio from blu ray(preferably Disney), I will pick up a HD DVD player this fall :D

Have to disagree with people lauding the rationality of all arguments. The 50gb vs 30gb issue, for example... I would think that most people do not enjoy swapping discs to access bonus material, nor do I think that people would see a better value in getting tv season sets with more discs (and swapping) on hd-dvd than on blu-ray. That's just plain stupid and I'm sorry I had to be the first one to see it.

LOTR Extended Edition - two discs just for the movie, not the extras. Doesnt take anything away from an awesome film.

Well that's a bit harsh to lump everyone into the Paramount/Dreamworks shill camp.
[...]
Doug, I hope you didn't misunderstand the point I was trying to make. Mr. Bells interview shows a lot of appreciation for the needs and desires of early adopters if it comes to saving their investments. On the other hand, it's a known fact that todays standalone BD players won't be able to fully utilize upcoming BD features. I remember the statements a BDA member made a few months ago regarding this case: "early adopters are most likely to buy a second and third player anyway [so there's no need to take care of them]"...

Therefor my honest thanks to Paramount/DW and Mr. Bell in particular for his words.

Thats a good article. Interviews that look to create facts and not lead an agenda are always interesting in that way. What perfect timing too. First, make the announcement. Second, let the press finish with the first. Third, let the dust settle and start communicating. Bravo!!! Give an interview and communicate your thoughts and rationale. Theirs not much room here to even accuse him of spinning. "Stick with the facts" is what I am sure he coached himself before this whole thing came out. The majority are 2.25 hours, the spec is done, its easier for us to code if we have to code at all.

Yes. Why is it that interviews with people connected with HD DVD always reveal cold sober judgment and modest predictions--especially when compared to people like Andy Parsons and others of his ilk (BR)?

Have to disagree with people lauding the rationality of all arguments. The 50gb vs 30gb issue, for example... I would think that most people do not enjoy swapping discs to access bonus material, nor do I think that people would see a better value in getting tv season sets with more discs (and swapping) on hd-dvd than on blu-ray. That's just plain stupid and I'm sorry I had to be the first one to see it.

My ass disagrees with you--when the extended versions of LOTR come to HD DVD, I WANT at least two discs (maybe even three or four). Maybe your hinder and bladder can take four hours at a time, mine can't!:o

Oh, and most consumers of SDs equate more discs with better value, so I would assume HD DVD purchasers will, too. Remember, cramming everything onto one disc was just to support the argument BR's 50-GB wonders were better than DV DVD's 30s.;)

Unfortunately, Bell's "facts" about Java aren't facts at all, as I dispel in my previous post.

But for you non-programmers out there, if you don't think writing HDi XML/Javascript requires programming experience, have a look at an HDi blogger, here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/amyd/

or see if you understand the total non-programmableness of this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2006/06/13/630208.aspx

Or ask yourself why NetBlender's DoStudio MX for HD-DVD invented their own high level markup language to hide HDi XML/XPath/JavaScript from the artist, if 'no programming required'

The reality is, if you're not using a high level code-generation tool, you have to learn programming for both HDi and BD-J. Furthermore, over the lifespan of digital media (~10 years), HDi will show its limits far before BD-J will. In other words, BD-J has a steeper upfront learning curve (without tools) for sure, but if you care about what's going to be possible on the format 2-10 years from now, HDi is far more limited.

I'll give you a simple example. BD-J is powerful enough to embed a full YouTube player written in Java, or Flash player (yes, it's *already* been done on mobile phones, with people writing codecs in Java) HDi cannot handle this and would require a server side proxy to recode YouTube videos on-the-fly into codec it could handle. Good Luck.

Why would you want a YouTube player on the disc? Maybe it would be nice to link to online Video reviews/discussions of the movie, parodies, user reenactments (think starwars), etc.

Unfortunately, Bell's "facts" about Java aren't facts at all, as I dispel in my previous post.

But for you non-programmers out there, if you don't think writing HDi XML/Javascript requires programming experience, have a look at an HDi blogger, here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/amyd/

or see if you understand the total non-programmableness of this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2006/06/13/630208.aspx

Or ask yourself why NetBlender's DoStudio MX for HD-DVD invented their own high level markup language to hide HDi XML/XPath/JavaScript from the artist, if 'no programming required'

The reality is, if you're not using a high level code-generation tool, you have to learn programming for both HDi and BD-J. Furthermore, over the lifespan of digital media (~10 years), HDi will show its limits far before BD-J will. In other words, BD-J has a steeper upfront learning curve (without tools) for sure, but if you care about what's going to be possible on the format 2-10 years from now, HDi is far more limited.

I'll give you a simple example. BD-J is powerful enough to embed a full YouTube player written in Java, or Flash player (yes, it's *already* been done on mobile phones, with people writing codecs in Java) HDi cannot handle this and would require a server side proxy to recode YouTube videos on-the-fly into codec it could handle. Good Luck.

Why would you want a YouTube player on the disc? Maybe it would be nice to link to online Video reviews/discussions of the movie, parodies, user reenactments (think starwars), etc.

Havent you heard, Science was banned from AVS after some payments changed hands...

Havent you heard, Science was banned from AVS after some payments changed hands...

MSFT bought that, too? :mad:


Seriously, though, there's enough wiggle room for "at this point in time, it's indefinite" to drive a bus though.

Havent you heard, Science was banned from AVS after some payments changed hands...


LMAO!! That was classic.

If DBJ is so great why has it taken BDA 2 years to get it working (assumeing the do!)

If DBJ is so great why has it taken BDA 2 years to get it working (assumeing the do!)

I imagine there was a bunch of testing on "DBJ" for it take 2 whole years (cue dramatic music).
That was hilarious to read, though, thanks. :)

Assumeing the do! :D :D :D

My ass disagrees with you--when the extended versions of LOTR come to HD DVD, I WANT at least two discs (maybe even three or four). Maybe your hinder and bladder can take four hours at a time, mine can't!:o

Oh, and most consumers of SDs equate more discs with better value, so I would assume HD DVD purchasers will, too. Remember, cramming everything onto one disc was just to support the argument BR's 50-GB wonders were better than DV DVD's 30s.;)

I was always wondering why someone would want two disks when one disk would be sufficient, and finally I have the answer :) I can at least understand why some gullible consumers would think that more disks give more value, but I can't understand this from a studio's point of view. Won't it just double all the mastering, replication costs?

Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three blu-ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you - I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.

As a director, I'm all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard firsthand people upset about a corporate decision.

So today I saw 300 on HD, it rocks!

So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!

Michael Bay

Translation:
Last night at dinner I was having dinner and drinks with three blu-ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-ray and I drank too much. So by 1:30 in the morning I was pretty ripped and I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts when you are half cocked mind you.

:)

If DBJ is so great why has it taken BDA 2 years to get it working (assumeing the do!)

Oh, BD-J works, that's why I can enjoy Pirates 2 Liars Dice and an enhanced Dragons Lair on BD.

The reasons why specs get delayed are sometimes technical, sometimes organization. OpenGL was vastly superior to Microsoft's DirectX for most of its lifespan (until DX9), but Microsoft was able to make improvements extremely fast because they ran a small dictatorial group with IHVs, vs OGL being gummed up by committee.

RIM's been shipping push email on the BlackBerry for years, meanwhile the IETF is taking their good ole time updating IMAP4 to support mobile. Does that mean the proprietary blackberry solution is technically the best? No, first to market does not mean best.

Ask Diebold how great their "first to market" voting machines are.

I mean, let's be honest here. HD-DVD got a ahead start over BD just like MS Xbox360 had a year headstart on PS3. So while HD-DVD specs while maturing, BD specs were still changing. No one's denying that.

But just because HD-DVD decided to glom on a bastardized web programming model and ship their spec does not mean it is technically the best choice for the life of the platform.

Sometimes, committee gridlock is a good thing, and coming second isn't always bad, since you learn from the mistakes of the first.

In a way, the format war has been good, because it pushed BD to improve itself, and the result is that it ended up with a technically superior interactivity layer, it just took longer. Over the lifetime of the media, this will mean there is more legroom, more stuff that can be squeezed out of your player, which is a good thing.

I wonder how much of this format war really came down to Microsoft's anti-Java anti-PS3 strategy, to both nullify the advantage of PS3's builtin drive movie playback, as well as prevent Java from dominating yet another beachhead. MS is still frantically scrambling to find a way to combat Java in the enterprise and mobile markets and has a bad taste in its mouth after losing legal cases to Sun. The idea of Java in every player has to be anathema to them.

MSFT bought that, too? :mad:

Not bought... "paid to stay away" is more like it...

Actually there was a rumor floating around that Science said something bad about Dr.Don's mom or something and he just instantly perma-banned Science on the spot.

That seems to be all rumor though since Science doesnt appear to have been banned yet. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/member.php?u=7598239)

I was always wondering why someone would want two disks when one disk would be sufficient, and finally I have the answer :) I can at least understand why some gullible consumers would think that more disks give more value, but I can't understand this from a studio's point of view. Won't it just double all the mastering, replication costs?

2 30GB HD DVDs are still cheaper to make than 1 BD 50.

I was happy to get LOTR EE on 2 discs, 4 hours is too long for me and I don't have a bladder problem ;)

HDM Precident:

BLADE RUNNER . . . 5 HD Discs for 5 movies even though 2 of the 5 differ by less than 5 minutes of footage and the 3rd - less than 10 minutes of footage.

Only the Work Print and Final Cut will be longer with the WP a different version than all of them.

HDM Precident:

BLADE RUNNER . . . 5 HD Discs for 5 movies even though 2 of the 5 differ by less than 5 minutes of footage and the 3rd - less than 10 minutes of footage.

Only the Work Print and Final Cut will be longer with the WP a different version than all of them.

There you go!;)

I mean, let's be honest here. HD-DVD got a ahead start over BD just like MS Xbox360 had a year headstart on PS3. So while HD-DVD specs while maturing, BD specs were still changing. No one's denying that.
That's a misleading statement. Both formats were cooking for many years before release, but it was HD DVD who was able to hit the market first, and with a mature spec. OTOH, Blu-ray hit the market last, and then waits a year to issue a spec that still is not complete. (No network connectivity necessary in November 2007's 1.1 profile.)

BTW, it's interesting you mention the 360 and the PS3, because their CPUs are both built around IBM's PowerPC designs. In fact, they even share cores (more or less). However, MS chose a pragmatic approach that was similar to existing designs, which facilitated rapid development of a mature set of developer tools. Sony... well... didn't.

Oh, BD-J works, that's why I can enjoy an enhanced Dragons Lair on BD.
.


Was that on PS3?, you couldn't find anything better to play? :D

Oh, BD-J works, that's why I can enjoy Pirates 2 Liars Dice and an enhanced Dragons Lair on BD.

The reasons why specs get delayed are sometimes technical, sometimes organization. OpenGL was vastly superior to Microsoft's DirectX for most of its lifespan (until DX9), but Microsoft was able to make improvements extremely fast because they ran a small dictatorial group with IHVs, vs OGL being gummed up by committee.

RIM's been shipping push email on the BlackBerry for years, meanwhile the IETF is taking their good ole time updating IMAP4 to support mobile. Does that mean the proprietary blackberry solution is technically the best? No, first to market does not mean best.

Ask Diebold how great their "first to market" voting machines are.

I mean, let's be honest here. HD-DVD got a ahead start over BD just like MS Xbox360 had a year headstart on PS3. So while HD-DVD specs while maturing, BD specs were still changing. No one's denying that.

But just because HD-DVD decided to glom on a bastardized web programming model and ship their spec does not mean it is technically the best choice for the life of the platform.

Sometimes, committee gridlock is a good thing, and coming second isn't always bad, since you learn from the mistakes of the first.

In a way, the format war has been good, because it pushed BD to improve itself, and the result is that it ended up with a technically superior interactivity layer, it just took longer. Over the lifetime of the media, this will mean there is more legroom, more stuff that can be squeezed out of your player, which is a good thing.

I wonder how much of this format war really came down to Microsoft's anti-Java anti-PS3 strategy, to both nullify the advantage of PS3's builtin drive movie playback, as well as prevent Java from dominating yet another beachhead. MS is still frantically scrambling to find a way to combat Java in the enterprise and mobile markets and has a bad taste in its mouth after losing legal cases to Sun. The idea of Java in every player has to be anathema to them.
Paramount and Universal's problem with BD is that there are going to be a ton of players that can't use the content that they (and Disney) believe is the key to selling an upgrade to DVD. While not technically the best, the HDDVD spec works and is fully functional. That is way more than can be said for BD now and over the next 8 months or so. The other problem is that while HDDVD players are going down in price, BD players will have to increase in price to accommodate the new features.

BTW, it's interesting you mention the 360 and the PS3, because their CPUs are both built around IBM's PowerPC designs. In fact, they even share cores (more or less). However, MS chose a pragmatic approach that was similar to existing designs, which facilitated rapid development of a mature set of developer tools. Sony... well... didn't.

Microsoft is a software company that makes operating systems, development tools, and controls a significant 3D platform (DirectX). Microsoft *already* has the development tools, and whenever a new HW platform arises, they just glue together components to make new tools (Visual C++ -> Embedded C++ for example) MS has their own compiler, their own VM, their own IDE, their own driver platform, their own freakin OS. Sony would have to start from ground zero to match this on PS3, or grab a bunch of open source toolkits and cobble them together.


Regardless of what the hardware design is, Microsoft will always have an advantage in this area because it's a software company, period. If Microsoft had used the CELL processor for the X-Box 360, trust me, they would have had something like Sony's new EDGE tools built into their devkit far earlier.

Yes, CELL is more complicated than the XBox360 CPU, it also has alot higher peak performance. The XBox360 has a better GPU, but the CPU is markedly inferior, and once again, this will show over the lifetime of the platform. But let's not turn this into a console war discussion.

The fact of the matter is, Microsoft is the world's largest software company. Getting them involved in making the software layer and tools for optical media is certainly going to lead to shorter development times because of the sheer amount of resources they have, in both manpower, and existing code base.

That said, it still doesn't mean jack about their design. The fact that you can ship something first does not mean it's superior. There are plenty of examples of the opposite. I'll give credit to MS, they know how to ship products (often by taking shortcuts, getting market share, and then copying other company's features)

Sony has been incompetent as well, and picking bleeding edge as your base and having to get into the software tools business is not conducive to quick maturity.

On the other hand, if your argument is that MS picked a "simpler design", I agree. HDi is simpler and technologically inferior. Thanks for the admission. As a technologist, I prefer BluRay for this reason. Why? Because it's a more interesting platform to me.

If Microsoft slapped together a DVD-9 player with VC-1 and Silverlight interactivity, it would probably be even cheaper than HD-DVD, but see, for me, it's not the costs, it's the technology.

Oh, BD-J works, that's why I can enjoy Pirates 2 Liars Dice and an enhanced Dragons Lair on BD.

[...]
Just curiuos: Do you actually own Dragon's Lair BD? So it works on your player.

According to this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=888094 some users report there is nothing to enjoy about the title because BD-J is not working correctly. For example see post 64 of the thread.

EDIT: posting it here for the lazy ones

Have you played it yet? :confused: It is Not Good on my BD-P1200. As I said previously, if this is the quality we get with BD-J, then something is wrong. I may still buy the Blu Ray disc, having sent the one I borrowed from NetFlix back, only to support the studio. However, having had the "bumpy" and inconsistent BD-J experience, I am going to try the HD-DVD version before plunking down the cash.

Bill

Disney liked HDi very much. lets face it if the studios knew then what they know now HDi would have been in the Blu Ray spec too. Actually come to think of it they wouldn't have gone with Blu Ray in the first place.

Paramount and Universal's problem with BD is that there are going to be a ton of players that can't use the content that they (and Disney) believe is the key to selling an upgrade to DVD. While not technically the best, the HDDVD spec works and is fully functional. That is way more than can be said for BD now and over the next 8 months or so. The other problem is that while HDDVD players are going down in price, BD players will have to increase in price to accommodate the new features.

Strawman. Most BD players are PS3s by far, and software upgradable. My PS3 already handles BD-J. The handful of people who own $1,000 standalone BD players that may not have networking or a harddisk are frankly an irrelevent and tiny market that would not affect Paramount or Universal's bottom line one iota.

If Paramount really based their decision on HDi vs BD-J, then they are complete fools. However, I don't think they based their decision on something as specific as the menuing system/interactivity layer of the format. This is a smokescreen.

In software markets, when a deal is announced, the CEO/CTO/VPs will be trodded out to justify the deal with talking points, about how they went with vendor X instead of vendor Y because of features ABC. The reality? Many of these deals are hammered out on the golf course based on money and executive whim, often in *defiance* of the technologists within their own company. I have been in the software industry for over 20 years, and I've seen it happen time and time again, where the CEO sends out a letter to employees with a surprise announcement, they they have just partnered with firm X, and all development will use their software components.

And more often than not, Firm X's stuff sucks, people internally hate it, but the deal was made for reasons outside technology.

So parading CTOs out in the media is unimpressive to me. Bell isn't saying anything different than the propaganda Amir was selling last year on AVS. Paramount's CEO is not a developer, has no clue about the differences between Javascript and Java, and I guarantee you, that the money/promotions/strategic portions of this deal had far more importance than a software API.

Believe me, most business deals do not happen because of technology. Geeks would LOVE it if management made decisions based on technology. They don't.

The joys of BD-J: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gQG4OFgrpA

Microsoft is a software company that makes operating systems, development tools, and controls a significant 3D platform (DirectX). Microsoft *already* has the development tools, and whenever a new HW platform arises, they just glue together components to make new tools (Visual C++ -> Embedded C++ for example) MS has their own compiler, their own VM, their own IDE, their own driver platform, their own freakin OS. Sony would have to start from ground zero to match this on PS3, or grab a bunch of open source toolkits and cobble them together.


Regardless of what the hardware design is, Microsoft will always have an advantage in this area because it's a software company, period. If Microsoft had used the CELL processor for the X-Box 360, trust me, they would have had something like Sony's new EDGE tools built into their devkit far earlier.
Indeed. I understand that Sony has a poor reputation when it comes to software development tools.

However, it should be noted that it's not as if Sony is a newcomer to the console space.

The fact of the matter is, Microsoft is the world's largest software company. Getting them involved in making the software layer and tools for optical media is certainly going to lead to shorter development times because of the sheer amount of resources they have, in both manpower, and existing code base.
Bingo.

That said, it still doesn't mean jack about their design. The fact that you can ship something first does not mean it's superior. There are plenty of examples of the opposite. I'll give credit to MS, they know how to ship products (often by taking shortcuts, getting market share, and then copying other company's features)
I agree. However, I consider the HD DVD package as superior. Basically the HD DVD group set a relatively high but realistic overall goal and achieved it. The Blu-ray group set a goal which consisted of a mixed bag (with some technically superior aspects and some technically inferior aspects), and failed to achieve it in a timely manner... and then are orphaning previous versions to get things up to snuff.

Sony has been incompetent as well, and picking bleeding edge as your base and having to get into the software tools business is not conducive to quick maturity.
I agree.

Just curiuos: Do you actually own Dragon's Lair BD? So it works on your player.


I don't own a standalone BD or HD player, I own a PS3 and an Xbox360 with HD-DVD attachment. I think the standalone players are a ripoff, they cost more, but include far less powerful hardware. So rather than pay $1,000 for a player with a 300Mhz CPU that may have issues with future firmware upgrades, I own players with multicore 3.2Ghz CPus and very fast graphic chips, built in networking hardware, and a hard disk.

If MS was smart enough to ship an Xbox360 form factor with internal HD drive, I'd be very happy.

I don't own a standalone BD or HD player, I own a PS3 and an Xbox360 with HD-DVD attachment. I think the standalone players are a ripoff, they cost more, but include far less powerful hardware. So rather than pay $1,000 for a player with a 300Mhz CPU that may have issues with future firmware upgrades, I own players with multicore 3.2Ghz CPus and very fast graphic chips, built in networking hardware, and a hard disk.
The Toshiba players cost less than both of those, with the MSRP of the A2 being $299, and street prices below $250 (with a few showing up once in a while at $199 or less). Furthermore, it is firmware updatable, with a spec that is already mature.

I have the 360 with HD DVD drive as well, but the fan noise can be irritating if the room is warm.

The joys of BD-J: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gQG4OFgrpA

thats funny :D , actually I didn't know it was THAT bad :eek:

Blu Ray really is a PS3 only format!

Strawman. Most BD players are PS3s by far, and software upgradable. My PS3 already handles BD-J. The handful of people who own $1,000 standalone BD players that may not have networking or a harddisk are frankly an irrelevent and tiny market that would not affect Paramount or Universal's bottom line one iota.

If Paramount really based their decision on HDi vs BD-J, then they are complete fools. However, I don't think they based their decision on something as specific as the menuing system/interactivity layer of the format. This is a smokescreen.

In software markets, when a deal is announced, the CEO/CTO/VPs will be trodded out to justify the deal with talking points, about how they went with vendor X instead of vendor Y because of features ABC. The reality? Many of these deals are hammered out on the golf course based on money and executive whim, often in *defiance* of the technologists within their own company. I have been in the software industry for over 20 years, and I've seen it happen time and time again, where the CEO sends out a letter to employees with a surprise announcement, they they have just partnered with firm X, and all development will use their software components.

And more often than not, Firm X's stuff sucks, people internally hate it, but the deal was made for reasons outside technology.

So parading CTOs out in the media is unimpressive to me. Bell isn't saying anything different than the propaganda Amir was selling last year on AVS. Paramount's CEO is not a developer, has no clue about the differences between Javascript and Java, and I guarantee you, that the money/promotions/strategic portions of this deal had far more importance than a software API.

Believe me, most business deals do not happen because of technology. Geeks would LOVE it if management made decisions based on technology. They don't.

And you (whoever you are) claiming to be unimpressed isn't impressive to me. The fact is that the PS3 will not win this "war". They are trying to and will have to sell standalone players and these players are the ones that Bell and I are concerned about. The system BD has in place at this time is unfair to consumers. That will change and I guess the real question would have to deal with how many advanced discs would be in the market and how many people owned players that wouldn't play those features. HDDVD will do those things now. The geek/tech thing is cool, but the consumer doesn't care how it works. They also don't want to have to make sure that they have the proper version of said type of player. They want the entire disc to work on their player. No matter how old it is.

thats funny :D , actually I didn't know it was THAT bad :eek:

Blu Ray really is a PS3 only format!

Exactly. I cringe when I see people buying standalone players......they're crippled from the factory. Why deal with it? Even if you never play games on your PS3, it'll still be the best BR player regardless.

The Toshiba players cost less than both of those, with the MSRP of the A2 being $299, and street prices below $250 (with a few showing up once in a while at $199 or less). Furthermore, it is firmware updatable, with a spec that is already mature.


Yeah, but my XBox360 also plays games, and lets me buy downloadable content, does the A2? See, that's my issue with HD-DVD. We are replacing a 10-year old optical format with another one that should last 10 years, so why replace it with something which is going to be hamstrung and obsolete (HD-DVD) so soon?

I'd rather next-gen optical's design take its time and get it right. HD forced BD to ship BD-J frankly before the implementations were ready, let's be honest. So sure, HD's got a limited browser-style scripting interface built in, and that may be fine for a year or two, and then we find out its limitations and we're stuck with them.

I'd like to see BD-J take its time, that minimum performance requirements are mandated, minimum heaps, etc.

There's 3 year old stuff done on your weak mobile phone today that HDi can't do. That's a next gen?

I always though AVS was a bastion of pioneers/early adopters who were interested in the absolute best technology, people who owned $5k-20k home theaters, not people who whine about trivial differences in player prices, or disc costs. It's frankly amazing to me that people with $10,000 setups are pimping HD-DVD over costs, to me, it's intellectually dishonest. This used to be the forum of the Elite, not Joe Sixpack. Too many people here simply want a cheapass HD platform with inferior software architecture shipped ASAP.

I don't own a standalone BD or HD player, I own a PS3 and an Xbox360 with HD-DVD attachment. I think the standalone players are a ripoff, they cost more, but include far less powerful hardware. So rather than pay $1,000 for a player with a 300Mhz CPU that may have issues with future firmware upgrades, I own players with multicore 3.2Ghz CPus and very fast graphic chips, built in networking hardware, and a hard disk.

If MS was smart enough to ship an Xbox360 form factor with internal HD drive, I'd be very happy.
No cross-examination or offense intended: so you own Dragon's Lair BD and/or HD?
I'm just asking this for the poor fellows who have problems with their BD version, trying to find an answer whether the title works as designed on some BD players or the PS3, because I don't have the possibility to test it.

Exactly. I cringe when I see people buying standalone players......they're crippled from the factory. Why deal with it? Even if you never play games on your PS3, it'll still be the best BR player regardless.

Presently my Pioneer is a better DLNA client than the PS3, and has a better image. I can live with it being slower and not being able to play games on it (friends don't let friends console game).

And you (whoever you are) claiming to be unimpressed isn't impressive to me. The fact is that the PS3 will not win this "war". They are trying to and will have to sell standalone players and these players are the ones that Bell and I are concerned about. The system BD has in place at this time is unfair to consumers.


Look, early adopters always get raped, period. I don't care if you bought CD, DVD, receivers, HDTV. If you buy the first model of anything, you're going to get raped. This is not "unfair to consumers", it's reality. The Early Adopters pay for the development of the mainstream and shake out the bugs.

These standalone players have less complex HW in them than the PS3. Do they have a low yielding 90nm CELL and RSX GPU, with 256mb GDDR3 memory and 256mb XDR RAM? So why do they cost $1,000? Because videophiles are willing to pay that money, that's my guess. I used to think people who bought $500 progressive DVD players and $1000-2000 video processors were idiots too.

I'm sure these standalone players are going to get alot better and alot cheaper *real soon*. Frankly, the different in OPU and BD-J do not account for the cost differential between HD-DVD and BR. For one, the codecs are the most intensive parts of playback/decoding, and both formats support the same codecs.

For two, a Javascript interpreter consumes far more CPU than Java (and runs a factor of 10x to 100x slower)

I'd say that part of the price differential is related to the fact that when you're losing, your only recourse is a price war, so Toshiba has to race to the bottom. The BD player manufacturers, rightly or wrongly, don't perceive that they need to sacrifice margins to win the format war.

Maybe the big fallout from this Paramount deal will be that BD standalone player prices get slashed.

Presently my Pioneer is a better DLNA client than the PS3, and has a better image. I can live with it being slower and not being able to play games on it (friends don't let friends console game).

Keyword: presently. Every few months, the PS3 firmware gets upgraded. The DLNA functionality has been massively improved since the early firmwares. Of course, I have my doubts as to whether they will ever support Windows Media. :)

Look, early adopters always get raped, period. I don't care if you bought CD, DVD, receivers, HDTV. If you buy the first model of anything, you're going to get raped. This is not "unfair to consumers", it's reality. The Early Adopters pay for the development of the mainstream and shake out the bugs.

These standalone players have less complex HW in them than the PS3. Do they have a low yielding 90nm CELL and RSX GPU, with 256mb GDDR3 memory and 256mb XDR RAM? So why do they cost $1,000? Because videophiles are willing to pay that money, that's my guess. I used to think people who bought $500 progressive DVD players and $1000-2000 video processors were idiots too.

I'm sure these standalone players are going to get alot better and alot cheaper *real soon*. Frankly, the different in OPU and BD-J do not account for the cost differential between HD-DVD and BR. For one, the codecs are the most intensive parts of playback/decoding, and both formats support the same codecs.

For two, a Javascript interpreter consumes far more CPU than Java (and runs a factor of 10x to 100x slower)

I'd say that part of the price differential is related to the fact that when you're losing, your only recourse is a price war, so Toshiba has to race to the bottom. The BD player manufacturers, rightly or wrongly, don't perceive that they need to sacrifice margins to win the format war.

Maybe the big fallout from this Paramount deal will be that BD standalone player prices get slashed.It is no mystery that the PS3 has been sold at huge loss. Granted, that is the way everything but the Wii has worked.

It is no mystery that the PS3 has been sold at huge loss. Granted, that is the way everything but the Wii has worked.

The cost of PS3 manufacturing is still less than the selling price of BD standalone players. Even the wildest estimates of PS3 cost put it at $800.

Just what do you think BD requires that adds $500 over the HD-DVD price. OPU/optics? Nope. Software licenses fees? Nope. BD-J "hardware". Nope. Either these players have a very poor architecture (maybe they are just $1,000 commodity PC linux boxes with video cards in a player form factor?), or they are getting big margins.

The cost of PS3 manufacturing is still less than the selling price of BD standalone players. Even the wildest estimates of PS3 cost put it at $800.

Just what do you think BD requires that adds $500 over the HD-DVD price. OPU/optics? Nope. Software licenses fees? Nope. BD-J "hardware". Nope. Either these players have a very poor architecture (maybe they are just $1,000 commodity PC linux boxes with video cards in a player form factor?), or they are getting big margins.
The $800 for the PS3 doesn't include dev and the $500 for standalones does. Most of the players no longer have a huge margin for the dealers anyway.

Yeah, but my XBox360 also plays games, and lets me buy downloadable content, does the A2? See, that's my issue with HD-DVD. We are replacing a 10-year old optical format with another one that should last 10 years, so why replace it with something which is going to be hamstrung and obsolete (HD-DVD) so soon?

I'd rather next-gen optical's design take its time and get it right. HD forced BD to ship BD-J frankly before the implementations were ready, let's be honest. So sure, HD's got a limited browser-style scripting interface built in, and that may be fine for a year or two, and then we find out its limitations and we're stuck with them.

I'd like to see BD-J take its time, that minimum performance requirements are mandated, minimum heaps, etc.

There's 3 year old stuff done on your weak mobile phone today that HDi can't do. That's a next gen?

I always though AVS was a bastion of pioneers/early adopters who were interested in the absolute best technology, people who owned $5k-20k home theaters, not people who whine about trivial differences in player prices, or disc costs. It's frankly amazing to me that people with $10,000 setups are pimping HD-DVD over costs, to me, it's intellectually dishonest. This used to be the forum of the Elite, not Joe Sixpack. Too many people here simply want a cheapass HD platform with inferior software architecture shipped ASAP.
Those are early adopter geek arguments. I'm an early adopter geek myself, but I don't for minute believe that early adopters determine the outcome of a format war.

Cost is extremely important. Even this early adopter couldn't stomach spending just $500 on a high-def player, when there were so many more titles available on DVD. If I don't want to spend $500, then joe consumer generally doesn't want to spend $500 either.

Furthermore, I have little patience for the growing pains of Blu-ray. I don't want to be that much of a beta tester. It was bad enough with HD DVD, but judging by the progress with Blu-ray, it's much worse, with early adopters of Blu-ray being orphaned.

Those are early adopter geek arguments. I'm an early adopter geek myself, but I don't for minute believe that early adopters determine the outcome of a format war.

Cost is extremely important. Even this early adopter couldn't stomach spending just $500 on a high-def player, when there were so many more titles available on DVD. If I don't want to spend $500, then joe consumer generally doesn't want to spend $500 either.

Furthermore, I have little patience for the growing pains of Blu-ray. I don't want to be that much of a beta tester. It was bad enough with HD DVD, but judging by the progress with Blu-ray, it's much worse, with early adopters of Blu-ray being orphaned.

I've heard this early-adopter argument many times. It is true of many CE products. It is not true of HD DVD. My A1 operates flawlessly and supports all the latest interactive features on HD DVD movies. The problem with BD is that it is expensive and obsolescent. All BDA had to do to avoid that was to get their specs mandated from the get-go, as HD DVD did. Brushing aside the satisfaction of early adopters and making them buy expensive standalones over and over again is exactly the problem that Alan Bell believes HD DVD has avoided. What makes HD DVD special is that early adopters have not been abandoned or orphaned. I have no need (and no desire) to repurchase until my A1 quits working altogether. Even then, I might repair it, since the audio DAC's are amazing. The only BD early adopters who will accept the obsolescence of their players will be the very rich or the ultra "loyal." Other BD owners, especially the ones who are buying obsolete standalones before the new units arrive, will be ticked big time. Without a disclaimer on the box, there will be anger and dismay all over the place; and the return lines at BB and CC will be very long. Some may even begin a class action suit, claiming they were not properly warned about the restricted functionality. Paramount is going to avoid all this, and I believe that Warner will be close on its heels. All packaging of units that will not be fully functional for all interactive features should carry proper labeling. That would protect BD hardware manufacturers from potential consumer rebellion. Of course, sales would drop if consumers were appropriately warned.

Edit to add: The BDA message is that early adopters don't matter. The HD DVD message is that early adopters do matter. It seems rather clear and simple to me.

Well, the reality is, you don't know how mature and bug free HDi. (how much it adheres to its specification) It's still a complex API, and undoubtedly, current HDi advanced content is not stressing all parts of the implementation. Moreover, as soon as more players come to market on HD-DVD, you may have issues with ports or reimplementation.

We have to assume that today, HDi implementations == 1, that is a reference implementation provided by MS.

If we look at the Web Browser space, we have 4 different browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera) which implement XML, CSS, DOM, and Javascript/Ecmascript, and the reality is, all of them have different bugs, which is why as a web developer, you have to restrict yourself to a subset of Javascript/CSS/DOM which works across browsers.

That is the peril that happens when you have multilple vendors creating separate implementations.

So at the moment, its unlikely that HD-DVD player implementations will feature 'different bugs' because there just aren't that many HD-DVD players. The future? We'll see. I predict that at some point, all the gloating over BD-J miseries will come back to haunt HDi advocates.

I have to point out, that MS was the company that submitted Javascript to ECMA for standardization, and it was MS that worked with the W3C on XPath/XSL/CSS/DOM/SMIL specs, yet of every current implementation of these standards, Microsoft remains the most broken.

Yes, Microsoft was unable to produce the most correct implementation of standards they themselves helped developed.

It's just too early to talk about HDi being hassle free for consumers when NUM_PLAYER_MANUFACTURERS < 5 and probably all MS source code.

Let's wait and see how smooth and compliant those cheapo Chinese players are supposed to me. I have a $26 Cyberhome that can't even handle Star Wars DVDs property.

I always find it humorous that the only people ever concerned about the blu ray spec and version, are HD DVD fan boys.

I find Bells “concern” over obsolescing older BR players with new spec updates is particularly un-genuine, as he mentions during the capacity discussion that a 45 GB version of HD DVD is in the works! Is that disk, going to be able to play in current generation HD DVD players? What a bunch of bunk.

And please forgive me if I am not overly touched with Bells concern for Paramount’s early adopting customers when the only reason he is giving the interview in the first place is to justify why Paramount is dumping 2/3’s of their early adopting customers. Am I the only one that sees the irony in that?

Believe what you will fan boys, this type of thing ends up hurting all consumers.

I believe that Warner has many of the same concerns that Paramount has. It will be interesting to see how they deal with these concerns. Will they drop BD altogether and be rid of the headaches associated with BD Java, incomplete specs, expensive development and replication, angry early adopters, and the like? Or will they bite the bullet and create disks loaded with interactive features that will run on some BD players and not others? I think they have been wrestling with this for quite some time. The postponement of certain titles on BD is ample evidence of that. I'm sure they preferred that the specs be completed this July, as first announced. As it is, there is no guarantee that the October deadline will be met either. And, even if it is met, there will be lots of BD players on shelves that do not meet the new mandates. This will confuse both customers and sales personnel. The BDA will have to figure out a way to deal with this problem, and studios will have to hire extra employees to answer phone calls from very confused consumers who are lost as to why the disks have options that are not enabled. HD DVD hardware manufacturers (Toshiba, Onkyo, and others) will have none of these migraines. All of their players will be required to support all features listed on the red disks. If something doesn't work, it will be a warranty issue or perhaps even a firmware upgrade issue. It will not be due to a missing ethernet port, absent second video processor, insufficient persistent memory, or other irresolvable hardware issue.

It occurs to me that BD hardware manufacturers could offer -- at cost -- physical hardware upgrades that would fix the problems. That would certainly be preferable to replacing a $600, $1000, or $1500 piece of obsolete hardware. That would be a very gracious gesture on the part of BD, and it would show that the format does care about early adopters. The good will would far exceed the potential cost involved.

Well, the reality is, you don't know how mature and bug free HDi. (how much it adheres to its specification) It's still a complex API, and undoubtedly, current HDi advanced content is not stressing all parts of the implementation. Moreover, as soon as more players come to market on HD-DVD, you may have issues with ports or reimplementation.

We have to assume that today, HDi implementations == 1, that is a reference implementation provided by MS.

If we look at the Web Browser space, we have 4 different browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera) which implement XML, CSS, DOM, and Javascript/Ecmascript, and the reality is, all of them have different bugs, which is why as a web developer, you have to restrict yourself to a subset of Javascript/CSS/DOM which works across browsers.

That is the peril that happens when you have multilple vendors creating separate implementations.

So at the moment, its unlikely that HD-DVD player implementations will feature 'different bugs' because there just aren't that many HD-DVD players. The future? We'll see. I predict that at some point, all the gloating over BD-J miseries will come back to haunt HDi advocates.

I have to point out, that MS was the company that submitted Javascript to ECMA for standardization, and it was MS that worked with the W3C on XPath/XSL/CSS/DOM/SMIL specs, yet of every current implementation of these standards, Microsoft remains the most broken.

Yes, Microsoft was unable to produce the most correct implementation of standards they themselves helped developed.

It's just too early to talk about HDi being hassle free for consumers when NUM_PLAYER_MANUFACTURERS < 5 and probably all MS source code.

Let's wait and see how smooth and compliant those cheapo Chinese players are supposed to me. I have a $26 Cyberhome that can't even handle Star Wars DVDs property.
I should point out that MS wrote the HDi layer for the SoC solutions to be used in some inexpensive Chinese players.

I always find it humorous that the only people ever concerned about the blu ray spec and version, are HD DVD fan boys.

Actually, many people who know about this problem are in fact postponing their purchase of Blu-ray until after these problems are resolved and newer fully-compliant players come to market. It is only a matter of a few months, after all. As to the matter of disappointed consumers who bought unwittingly, it is only a matter of time until we see who cares or who does not care about what the players will play or not play. I think that hindsight will show that Paramount made a very wise move. Of course, I could be mistaken: It could happen that no untimely BD consumers will be angry, disappointed, and the like. One thing I do know: It would matter to me, if I purchased a unit that didn't do everything I was led to believe it was supposed to do. Are some BD owners so very easily satisfied and so calmly accepting of whatever they get or don't get at whatever price? They seem to get angry at everyone and everything else: Why don't they demand more of their preferred format? Constructive criticism is a good thing, and it leads to product improvements. Bashing, on the other hand, is quite unproductive. The difference between constructive criticism and bashing is like the difference between logical debate and a fist fight.

I could point out that spec sheet of the NEC 1100A drive used in the A1 indicates that it will in fact support 45GB disks, but we will have to see whether firmware will be enough to enable that. However, I don't think that will be an issue for quite some time. In fact, I think that my A1 will probably be retired long before the 51GB spec becomes mandated. In any event, it won't be a problem this holiday season; whereas it is likely that the BD spec issue will affect some holiday purchases. But all of this is just my humble and civil opinion.:)

I should point out that MS wrote the HDi layer for the SoC solutions to be used in some inexpensive Chinese players.

Microsoft and Broadcom have been working on this platform for quite some time. Perhaps BD supporters can tell us about the simple platform that the BDA and Broadcom have developed to provide to engineers of cheap Chinese BD players. Or is there such a thing? A joint software/hardware solution to make inexpensive BD players widely available?

We have heard about Funai: Will their platform be shared with other Chinese manufacturers?

I think that Alan Bell is quite aware of these Chinese HD DVD players and the affect they will have on software sales. His reference to a $200 player suggests he is quite informed about what is to come. He doesn't seem to be concerned that the market will be flooded with cheap, fully compliant, Chinese BD players.

DemoCoder,

I agree that BD-J is more powerful, but perhaps the studios think that the extra power is not worth the cost/effort. Much like how I could design a toilet that could be driven like a car. While technically superior to a normal one I doubt many would chose to commute with their pants around their ankles.

DemoCoder,

I agree that BD-J is more powerful, but perhaps the studios think that the extra power is not worth the cost/effort.

That seems to be exactly what Alan Bell is saying. Technology should be simple and cost-effective for what it is designed to do. Anything more complicated involves needless expense for both manufacturers and consumers. I think Disney would have been quite happy with iHD, since they helped develop it and since it is already working quite well.

Addition: I suppose it comes down to whether you want to work with Sun or with Microsoft. The decision to use Java rather than iHD may have been based on political, and not merely "scientific" considerations.

Oh, BD-J works, that's why I can enjoy Pirates 2 Liars Dice and an enhanced Dragons Lair on BD.



Do you have to wait 2 minutes for it to load? And then possibly fail?

I heard only ps3's can do it properly at the moment. Thats certainly cause for concern for those that don't own a ps3 if they do the same on the cars bd disc.

The whole BD-Java/Profile issue is a smokescreen, just like MPEG-2, and BD-50, etc. First it was that BD movies were all going to use MPEG-2 and the PQ was bad, yet very quickly after a few initial hiccups, we started seeing high quality xfers and VC-1/H.2.64 usage. Then it was that BD-50 was fiction, never going to happen anytime soon due to costs and yields, yet, here we are, with dozens of BD-50 titles.

Now the issue is BD-J implementation quality and lack of network or storage, and it is true that those are issues at the moment, but realistically, do you expect that to be the case 6 months or a year from now?

All of the arguments being made here leave HD-DVD a very tiny window to win the format war. Software and price differential issues are a gap that will be closing very soon, and what then?

I bet by this time next year, people won't even be talking about bugged BD-J implementations anymore, because the issue will have been resolved long before that. And the only people who will be complaining about the 1.1 profile will be a truly tiny portion of people who jumped the gun and bought a standalone BD player instead of a PS3.

I bought a PS3 not to play games (have an XBox360 for that thank you, and game consoles don't get good until second-gen of titles arrive, which means no good PS3 games until this xmass), but as a low cost BD player. As far as I'm concerned, it not only a better player than the standalones (and future proof), but it *looks better* from an industrial design point of view compared to the truly ugly standalone players.

So, I say, gloat all you can. If you think HD-DVD can leverage a small lead/gap in implementation quality/price to win the format war. I happen to think they won't and that the differences will continue to be eroded.

It's like when Intel fubared with the Pentium 4, and AMD took advantage and delivered a lower cost high performing Athlon. They were flying high for a while, with OEM wins everywhere. Then Intel got back on their feet and closed the gap. Now who's in trouble?

If your corporate strategy is to win based on someone else's temporary difficulty in shipping a firmware implementation, you are in big trouble.

The whole BD-Java/Profile issue is a smokescreen, just like MPEG-2, and BD-50, etc. First it was that BD movies were all going to use MPEG-2 and the PQ was bad, yet very quickly after a few initial hiccups, we started seeing high quality xfers and VC-1/H.2.64 usage. Then it was that BD-50 was fiction, never going to happen anytime soon due to costs and yields, yet, here we are, with dozens of BD-50 titles.

Now the issue is BD-J implementation quality and lack of network or storage, and it is true that those are issues at the moment, but realistically, do you expect that to be the case 6 months or a year from now?

All of the arguments being made here leave HD-DVD a very tiny window to win the format war. Software and price differential issues are a gap that will be closing very soon, and what then?

I bet by this time next year, people won't even be talking about bugged BD-J implementations anymore, because the issue will have been resolved long before that. And the only people who will be complaining about the 1.1 profile will be a truly tiny portion of people who jumped the gun and bought a standalone BD player instead of a PS3.

I bought a PS3 not to play games (have an XBox360 for that thank you, and game consoles don't get good until second-gen of titles arrive, which means no good PS3 games until this xmass), but as a low cost BD player. As far as I'm concerned, it not only a better player than the standalones (and future proof), but it *looks better* from an industrial design point of view compared to the truly ugly standalone players.

So, I say, gloat all you can. If you think HD-DVD can leverage a small lead/gap in implementation quality/price to win the format war. I happen to think they won't and that the differences will continue to be eroded.

It's like when Intel fubared with the Pentium 4, and AMD took advantage and delivered a lower cost high performing Athlon. They were flying high for a while, with OEM wins everywhere. Then Intel got back on their feet and closed the gap. Now who's in trouble?

If your corporate strategy is to win based on someone else's temporary difficulty in shipping a firmware implementation, you are in big trouble.
Who said HD DVD's corporate strategy is to win based on someone else's temporary difficulty in firmware implementation?

I think the better way to describe it is that Blu-ray squandered its advantages over HD DVD because of Blu-ray poor implementation of the format on so many fronts.

Do you have to wait 2 minutes for it to load? And then possibly fail?

I heard only ps3's can do it properly at the moment. Thats certainly cause for concern for those that don't own a ps3 if they do the same on the cars bd disc.

Blu-ray CE manufacturers should try to get on the same page. If Blu-ray is to succeed, it will have to be more than Sony or PS3.

I think that Paramount was getting impatient with the lack of standardization of implementation among BD players. That is what he meant by the need to be "market ready."

Well, to be sure, if Sony was smart, they'd share the source code/license what they've done for the PS3 to other manufacturers.

I also believe that a big concern for Alan Bell was network connectivity.

I am amazed that the BDA couldn't agree to mandate network adapters. The Internet is important for everything these days. How much would these ports have cost?

That will be a big deal for studios that want to post online previews and other features that lead to more sales as well as provide user entertainment.

Well, to be sure, if Sony was smart, they'd share the source code/license what they've done for the PS3 to other manufacturers.

Hopefully, they have learned from the Beta experience, where they were a bit stingy with their licensing. Their history though shows a reluctance to share more than they have to with independent Chinese manufacturers. There are indeed patent risks with such ventures, as Toshiba has found. One might see a knockoff of the PS3 at half the price on Wal-Mart shelves. But someone from the BD group should help the Chinese with a simple platform. Starting from scratch would introduce even more inconsistencies in both hardware and programming, as well as delay the entrance of cheap BD players into the market. Of course, the BDA might not want to help the Chinese cut into BD standalone and PS3 sales. This may be a "damned if you do" and "damned if you don't" situation for Blu-ray. Toshiba doesn't have this problem because they need more HD DVD players than they can produce themselves and because Toshiba will get royalties (if they can collect them without litigation) on those Chinese players in any case. Cheap Chinese BD players would speed up Blu-ray adoption for sure. But I'm not sure whether the BDA is ready or willing to let in that wild card variable.

Doug, I hope you didn't misunderstand the point I was trying to make....

S'okay tteich. No offense. It's just that my BS meter is set really, really high right now.

I also believe that a big concern for Alan Bell was network connectivity.

That will be a big deal for studios that want to post online previews and other features that lead to more sales as well as provide user entertainment.

Finally, an example that I might actually use. For a long time I have been wondering just why the heck would I want my HDM player hooked up to the internet. Now if it could stream my music into my HT from my home server, that would be great. But giving it access to the internet. I'm doubtful I would ever want that. I even hate my cell phone and know a lot of other people who feel the same way. I'm getting too old to care about all this neat new stuff. I think Paramount might be seeing the same thing. Just use what works now. Nobody knows the future.

Doug

Bell: When you look at what the DVD Forum has specified as required, it's a good set of advanced technologies. You can be assured that that benefit will be available to all consumers, no matter what [player] model they purchased. That speaks to the DVD Forum, that it published specs that were complete and market-ready, and that it didn't need to publish up [and change the specs], as Blu-ray has. To some degree, [such changes are] going to create some legacy issues.I think the profiles are an issue for Blu-ray, but when I read this I wondered if Alan Bell was referring to something he was part of as far as "the DVD forum". From what Amir posted in the insiders thread:
He has only been at Paramount for a year. Here is a quick bio on Alan in his previous job at Warner:

"As Senior Vice President, Warner Bros. Technical Operations Alan is responsible for advanced technology and requirements development across a broad range of areas centered on the preparation, distribution and consumption of digital motion picture content and related derivatives. Dr. Bell's current areas of interest include the development of next generation HD DVD standards, digital home entertainment networks, including the technologies and issues associated with digital content rights management and copy protection.it looks like he worked for Warner and was part of developing HD DVD standards, then moved to Paramount and is now praising the team that developed the HD DVD standards.

I also wonder about his comment about 45GB discs. Does that mean TL51s are off the table, since from what Toshiba said at CES it sounded like 45GB discs were no longer being considered and TL51 was being considered instead. If they have dropped the 45GB disc stuff for TL51 instead, then it makes me wonder how up to date Alan Bell is on things. Maybe we'll hear more at CEDIA.

--Darin

S'okay tteich. No offense. It's just that my BS meter is set really, really high right now.



Finally, an example that I might actually use. For a long time I have been wondering just why the heck would I want my HDM player hooked up to the internet. Now if it could stream my music into my HT from my home server, that would be great. But giving it access to the internet. I'm doubtful I would ever want that. I even hate my cell phone and know a lot of other people who feel the same way. I'm getting too old to care about all this neat new stuff. I think Paramount might be seeing the same thing. Just use what works now. Nobody knows the future.

Doug

I think Paramount does want to use Internet stuff, so HD DVD readiness in that regard is probably important for them.

Having said that, I don't have a high-speed connection (only dialup), so most Web interactive stuff would be useless to me.

But it is always better to have a feature that is standard, even if individuals like you or me probably won't use it.

Maybe when the nephews or nieces come over, they might want to go online at Disney and play some stupid games or download some stuff.

The PS3 certainly has connectivity. There is no reason why the other BD manufacturers could not have spent the extra dime (or dollar) to include it.

Furthermore, future BD+ upgrades might allow a scan of your player to determine whether you are using a pirated copy. Your ISP could be sent immediately to the FBI and an orange jumpsuit ordered in your name.:)

I also believe that a big concern for Alan Bell was network connectivity.


If you look at his statements in the PC World interview, it doesn't appear to be a priority...

"Bell: Interactivity is an important part of why you would move up from DVD. Yes, [high-def] has a great picture, but is that enough? Connectivity is something that studios will grow into, and it's something that we believe studios will grow into.

We're thinking about [having media servers to provide extra content via the Internet], but those kinds of investments cost money. The motivation to do them grows as the installed base grows. If we see there's a sufficiently large installed base to justify the cost of the server, we'll do it. Right now we're concentrating on getting a great picture out, and great interactivity."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136253-c,dvdtechnology/article.html

I think that is splitting hairs, they are both triple layer discs.

If you look at his statements in the PC World interview, it doesn't appear to be a priority...

"Bell: Interactivity is an important part of why you would move up from DVD. Yes, [high-def] has a great picture, but is that enough? Connectivity is something that studios will grow into, and it's something that we believe studios will grow into.

We're thinking about [having media servers to provide extra content via the Internet], but those kinds of investments cost money. The motivation to do them grows as the installed base grows. If we see there's a sufficiently large installed base to justify the cost of the server, we'll do it. Right now we're concentrating on getting a great picture out, and great interactivity."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136253-c,dvdtechnology/article.html

I think his point might be that with HD DVD, this connectivity is ready, although I would agree that he wants to go slowly with this kind of development, which could be costly (everything he says seems to be based upon a cost/benefit analysis ). The thing is that the connectivity will be there with HD DVD if and when Paramount needs it. I think all of the studios are going slowly with this to some extent. The point is that with BD, the hardware isn't there yet (except for the PS3), even if Paramount decided to implement it, however gradually. Warner seems more eager to go with this option afforded by HD DVD.

My ass disagrees with you--when the extended versions of LOTR come to HD DVD, I WANT at least two discs (maybe even three or four). Maybe your hinder and bladder can take four hours at a time, mine can't!:o

Oh, and most consumers of SDs equate more discs with better value, so I would assume HD DVD purchasers will, too. Remember, cramming everything onto one disc was just to support the argument BR's 50-GB wonders were better than DV DVD's 30s.;)

It's called pause, and it's a bad analogy anyway. The less discs, the better. Period. I find it crazy to see people making arguments based on consumer ignorance. You're basically saying that because consumers are ignorant to swapping and think that multiple discs are a better value, that we should somehow agree with that and go with hd-dvd. Huh? Are we debating which is the better format in the long run or are we debating what we can trick everyone into adopting a little faster with initially cheaper players?

There is something that continues to be lost in all this, and I think it's something those supporting Blu-ray can't seem to grasp.

It really doesn't matter whether you agree or not with Paramount's decision. Paramount looked at the situation, and decided to do what was in the best interest of their company. After all, Paramount is not a publically owned company. And therefore they don't need our permission to do anything with THEIR movies.


Democoder, I have nothing but respect for your knowledge in the Java field. I'm pretty sure you and I wouldn't agree on PS3 Vs. Xbox 360, but as for your coding abilities, I have no doubt you are much more qualified to talk about it than most.

That said, again, that doesn't matter at all. Whether you believe Bell or not, whether you could argue the joys of BD-J vs. HDi with the man, doesn't matter. Paramount decided BD-J was not in their best interest or financial forecasting. If you want to argue payoffs and all that, ok. But until I see otherwise, multiple people from Paramount pretty much outline that they've looked at cost, and then at what cost the consumer could get into their movies. They decided financially that they could probably profit better buy supporting a single format, and getting people who want their movies to go to that format.

Sound familiar? :)

With HDi, the hardware is there for the network adapter, but that is neccessary, not sufficient. What do you do when you make a network connection to a server which speaks a protocol that HDi didn't have the forethought to mandate?

Can you implement all IPTV protocols or YouTube with HDi? Yes, HDi might work brilliantly if you happen to have an MS approved media extender in the house with MS supported DLNA codecs, but what happens when you want to connect to porn site, or a content download service run by a TV studio, or YouTube?

Since HDi has no builtin support for Flash or Flash's On2/VP codec, and the chances of implementing these in Javascript is nil, I'd say, no web porn for you. There may be latent hope that YouTube's H.264 feeds might play back, but I wouldn't hold my breath. DLNA has a lot of "optional" stuff with respect to streaming, so which DLNA features are mandated for HDDVD handle?

Only when you start to envision scenarios that MS had no forethought of, do you see why BD-J + networking makes way more sense than HDi + networking.

I always find it humorous that the only people ever concerned about the blu ray spec and version, are HD DVD fan boys.

You are mistaken in believing this. I came to these threads prepared to go Blu a few months ago and ready to become a 100% BD fan. Upon learning about the future profile changes, I realized I had to hold off, because I wanted a feature complete player.

Then, I began reading about BD-Live and decided that would be the way for me to go. However, I realized that the network connectivity was optional, and thought that maybe there would be reluctance on the part of studios to include features that all players could not handle.

Face it. The profile situation is not good. Imagine being a studio planning for specifications that do not exist in the wild and will not work with many players in the field. Or having a great idea that requires network connectivity but will not work on a significant number of players.

This is not HD DVD fanboy ranting. This is the reality of the situation, and will be for months to come.

Michael,
I would counter and say that no matter what a corporation does, all of the top executives will put together a PR package and spin it to the media, and they will all agree, and they will all be reiterating the same talking points. The fact that they aren't public is irrelevent, they still have to talk to the press to justify their actions and protect their brand image.

If the Paramount decision was so wonderfully analytical about the viability of the formats from a technical standpoint, then ZERO financial incentives would have been needed.

It's perfectly possible, that Bell, a huge HD-DVD guy in his own right, could have pressed the issue, but there's no denying that $50-150 million in deals was involved.

Imagine if Amir quit Microsoft and became the CTO of Warner, and then Warner announced HD-DVD exclusivity, and Amir was out in the press yapping about HDi vs BD-J, and then we find that Warner also got $200 M in incentives. Are we to believe it was purely a technical decision, and whats more, that the bias of the CTO had no role either? And you don't think all Warner execs would be coming out of the woodwork to praise to deal?

What's the alternative, really? A studio makes a major deal, and all of the executives when ask to comment are ho-hum about it? Any major corporate business deal is going to be pumped and hyped, and talking heads will be sent out, along with PR firms, to pimp the benefits of the deal to everyone.

Next year, if Paramount has to go back to Blu, all of the same executives will be talking about how wonderful a decision it is, and even Bell (if it hasn't resigned) will be recruited to go out into the media and tell everyone why he had a change of heart.

There is something that continues to be lost in all this, and I think it's something those supporting Blu-ray can't seem to grasp.

It really doesn't matter whether you agree or not with Paramount's decision. Paramount looked at the situation, and decided to do what was in the best interest of their company. After all, Paramount is not a publically owned company. And therefore they don't need our permission to do anything with THEIR movies.


Democoder, I have nothing but respect for your knowledge in the Java field. I'm pretty sure you and I wouldn't agree on PS3 Vs. Xbox 360, but as for your coding abilities, I have no doubt you are much more qualified to talk about it than most.

That said, again, that doesn't matter at all. Whether you believe Bell or not, whether you could argue the joys of BD-J vs. HDi with the man, doesn't matter. Paramount decided BD-J was not in their best interest or financial forecasting. If you want to argue payoffs and all that, ok. But until I see otherwise, multiple people from Paramount pretty much outline that they've looked at cost, and then at what cost the consumer could get into their movies. They decided financially that they could probably profit better buy supporting a single format, and getting people who want their movies to go to that format.

Sound familiar? :)

Excellent post. I really agree with you that Paramount made their decision based upon their best understanding of where the money can best be made. I think they believe they can put out more movies at a lower cost by sticking with one format -- HD DVD. It is time, labor, and money consuming to prepare each movie for two formats; and, in this case, the more expensive format had to be dropped. It is a purely financial decision, not a political one. Paramount sees the economics of HD DVD as more favorable. Unlike some other studios, they aren't carrying a flag for the favored format, no matter what it costs them. The are looking out for themselves and their bottom line; and, insofar as consumer cost comes into play, they are looking out for what will work best for consumers in the long run. And, justified or not, they see the opportunities rolling in with the Chinese players and the discounted Toshiba players. More players with high attach rates means more movies sold down the road. I think Paramount is more confident in attach rates for standalone players than volume sales of game consoles. Just MHO.

I think it should be noted that anytime MS has had anything to do with hardware directly, that hardware almost always explodes upon contact with electricity.

Zune, XB360, etc, etc.

Trusting MS with hardware is like giving a heroine addict your prefilled needle and a presigned checkbook and then asking them to return the items tomorrow in the same condition.

MS only even succeeds as software when that software has an update function. Probably the only company in the world to build such an amazing reputation by merely fixing their own broken junk.

Im no pro BD or anti HD, merely anti MS. And thank the heavens they've given me unlimited ammo to support my case. :)

Speaking of payments, does anybody know what the Disney tour is going to cost Panasonic?

I am sure that incentives are passing among major players in both formats: advertising, promotions, replications, discounts, waived royalties, and the like.

I really think that whatever money they got, it only helped confirm the direction they were going in anyway.

Blu-ray is the more expensive format. Selling more Blu-ray disks might not mean higher profits than they get with HD DVD. It is all about subtracting cost of production from proceeds from sales.

I wonder if the honeymoon phase of discounted disk replication was over and whether that influenced their decision.

It would be nice to be a fly on the wall at these meetings. We may have to wait for Amir's book to get some of the inside story.

Maybe it could be made into a movie for both formats.:)

You are mistaken in believing this. I came to these threads prepared to go Blu a few months ago and ready to become a 100% BD fan. Upon learning about the future profile changes, I realized I had to hold off, because I wanted a feature complete player.

Then, I began reading about BD-Live and decided that would be the way for me to go. However, I realized that the network connectivity was optional, and thought that maybe there would be reluctance on the part of studios to include features that all players could not handle.

Face it. The profile situation is not good. Imagine being a studio planning for specifications that do not exist in the wild and will not work with many players in the field. Or having a great idea that requires network connectivity but will not work on a significant number of players.

This is not HD DVD fanboy ranting. This is the reality of the situation, and will be for months to come.

And you learned about them from... HD Fanboys, who, know doubt exaggerated the issue.

If your worried about the future profiles, either get a PS3 or a machine that can accept a firmware update. Optional or required, I'll bet you there are many times more Blu Ray players connected to the internet than HD DVD players.

And you learned about them from... HD Fanboys, who, know doubt exaggerated the issue.

If your worried about the future profiles, either get a PS3 or a machine that can accept a firmware update. Optional or required, I'll bet you there are many times more Blu Ray players connected to the internet than HD DVD players.

Could you list the BD players (other than the PS3) that have network connections and then the players that do not? Thanks.

Or maybe some one else can help me with this.

Could you list the BD players (other than the PS3) that have network connections and then the players that do not? Thanks.

Or maybe some one else can help me with this.
How about ones that can use it for connectivity with a movie like HDDVD?

If your worried about the future profiles, either get a PS3 or a machine that can accept a firmware update. Optional or required, I'll bet you there are many times more Blu Ray players connected to the internet than HD DVD players.
You do know that it takes a lot more than a simple firmware update to change a player's profile?

And you learned about them from... HD Fanboys, who, know doubt exaggerated the issue.

If your worried about the future profiles, either get a PS3 or a machine that can accept a firmware update. Optional or required, I'll bet you there are many times more Blu Ray players connected to the internet than HD DVD players.

Well you haven't learned about this from anyone. THERE ARE NO BD SAL PLAYERS that are upgradeable via a firmware upgrade to make them profile 1.1 compliant. It is the SoC/amount of persistant memory that is the problem. IT IS A HARDWARE problem that cannot be fixed.

The ONLY 1.1 compliant BD player announced so far is the $2000 Denon.

Michael,
I would counter and say that no matter what a corporation does, all of the top executives will put together a PR package and spin it to the media, and they will all agree, and they will all be reiterating the same talking points. The fact that they aren't public is irrelevent, they still have to talk to the press to justify their actions and protect their brand image.

Which they did. And that's all they had to do. That is what they did.

Paramount didn't have to go to the press at all. They released a press release, that is the extent of all they needed to do to justify anything.

Anything beyond that is really irrelevant.


If the Paramount decision was so wonderfully analytical about the viability of the formats from a technical standpoint, then ZERO financial incentives would have been needed.

And until one can prove that financial incentives were there, I think all you can do is speculate.


It's perfectly possible, that Bell, a huge HD-DVD guy in his own right, could have pressed the issue, but there's no denying that $50-150 million in deals was involved.

Again, as many have asked and none have come, I demand proof before I go Bill Hunt on this. I'm not interested in an unnamed friend-of-a-friend who told some guy at the NYT about another unnamed source that got a secret package in the parking lot from another unnamed source.


Imagine if Amir quit Microsoft and became the CTO of Warner, and then Warner announced HD-DVD exclusivity, and Amir was out in the press yapping about HDi vs BD-J, and then we find that Warner also got $200 M in incentives. Are we to believe it was purely a technical decision, and whats more, that the bias of the CTO had no role either? And you don't think all Warner execs would be coming out of the woodwork to praise to deal?

Again, you are more than speculating. I'll leave that to The Digital Bits.


What's the alternative, really? A studio makes a major deal, and all of the executives when ask to comment are ho-hum about it? Any major corporate business deal is going to be pumped and hyped, and talking heads will be sent out, along with PR firms, to pimp the benefits of the deal to everyone.

Considering NO ONE from the PR firm, executives, or PR for Paramount has mentioned money or incentives, again I must ask for proof. Or are they all lying? Because what I am reading, Paramount has been pimping the cost of HD DVD and what they believe are the advantages of being exclusive to it.


Next year, if Paramount has to go back to Blu, all of the same executives will be talking about how wonderful a decision it is, and even Bell (if it hasn't resigned) will be recruited to go out into the media and tell everyone why he had a change of heart.

Once again, total speculation.

Please let me know when the concrete information comes available. Because right now that is all complete conjecture.

And you learned about them from... HD Fanboys, who, know doubt exaggerated the issue.

If your worried about the future profiles, either get a PS3 or a machine that can accept a firmware update. Optional or required, I'll bet you there are many times more Blu Ray players connected to the internet than HD DVD players.

Excuse me, but I am not a moron. I can see past fanboyism to the real facts. What is exaggerated about there being NO 1.1 compliant players??? At all. What is exaggerated about the features of 300 being less on the Blu side? WB has already stated they will need to rerelease on BD just to deliver some of the features on the HD DVD.

I don't want a PS3 because it is a game player that plays movies. Additionally, it is not 1.1 or 2.0 compliant. If it becomes so and I see a reason to go BD, I will reconsider although I don't like the remote solutions available and will need to be certain the noise levels are acceptable (I hear varying reports on this).

Profiles are a major issue for BD, and based on everything I've seen about the Paramount decision, I believe reliable, consistent features were a consideration. Rather than trying to explain away the lacking features that make BD inferior in certain ways right now, how about we discuss them rationally.

Michael,
I would counter and say that no matter what a corporation does, all of the top executives will put together a PR package and spin it to the media, and they will all agree, and they will all be reiterating the same talking points. The fact that they aren't public is irrelevent, they still have to talk to the press to justify their actions and protect their brand image.

If the Paramount decision was so wonderfully analytical about the viability of the formats from a technical standpoint, then ZERO financial incentives would have been needed.

It's perfectly possible, that Bell, a huge HD-DVD guy in his own right, could have pressed the issue, but there's no denying that $50-150 million in deals was involved.

Imagine if Amir quit Microsoft and became the CTO of Warner, and then Warner announced HD-DVD exclusivity, and Amir was out in the press yapping about HDi vs BD-J, and then we find that Warner also got $200 M in incentives. Are we to believe it was purely a technical decision, and whats more, that the bias of the CTO had no role either? And you don't think all Warner execs would be coming out of the woodwork to praise to deal?

What's the alternative, really? A studio makes a major deal, and all of the executives when ask to comment are ho-hum about it? Any major corporate business deal is going to be pumped and hyped, and talking heads will be sent out, along with PR firms, to pimp the benefits of the deal to everyone.

Next year, if Paramount has to go back to Blu, all of the same executives will be talking about how wonderful a decision it is, and even Bell (if it hasn't resigned) will be recruited to go out into the media and tell everyone why he had a change of heart.

DemoCoder, your argument is turning back against you. Suppose you were made CTO of Paramount. Wouldn't you push the benefits of Java? Better to base your case on what was actually said in the interview and go from there rather than base it on conjecture.

Otherwise, I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts. Even though I don't fully understand everything you said, I learned something.

Doug

I think the profiles are an issue for Blu-ray, but when I read this I wondered if Alan Bell was referring to something he was part of as far as "the DVD forum". From what Amir posted in the insiders thread:
it looks like he worked for Warner and was part of developing HD DVD standards, then moved to Paramount and is now praising the team that developed the HD DVD standards.

I also wonder about his comment about 45GB discs. Does that mean TL51s are off the table, since from what Toshiba said at CES it sounded like 45GB discs were no longer being considered and TL51 was being considered instead. If they have dropped the 45GB disc stuff for TL51 instead, then it makes me wonder how up to date Alan Bell is on things. Maybe we'll hear more at CEDIA.

--Darin

The European Conference where the TL HD DVD is to be "updated" as far as what is happening - doesn't start till I believe after CEDIA is over.