[David600]

 http://www.dvdfile.com/news/views/ed...001/10_18.html


4hours of HD material on 50GB discs.


will we be told :" nah, technology is not ready" so majors can bank on dvd for another 7years or so and then, all over again ?

 

[rudolpht]

Not soon enough


Tim

 

[KennyG]

No one is going to kill the goose that's laying the golden egg.

DVD has not even come close to market saturation yet...until that happens we will get no HD DVD.

My bet would be about 5 years from now, most all titles will be on DVD, everyone who wants those oddball titles will have them.

Then HD DVD will rollout...very expensive, and of course pointed at us, the people who got DVD started (and before that, LD)

This is unfortunate, but that's the way it works, if they rollout HD DVD to soon standard DVD could take a big hit in sales because 1/4 of the people who own DVD now would upgrade and severally cut back on buying standard DVD.


OR another sales model...what if HD DVD were rolled out tomorrow.

Players starting at $1,500 to $2,000, three to five studios supporting it with 5 titles each. Let's say those titles cost 40 to 50 dollars each...after all, upon initial rollout they are shooting at the people who spend alot of their money on HT, these prices are in line with LD prices, and the POSSIBLE upgrade of picture quality.

So at first the manufacturers could shoot for a nitch market...how many of you are going to bite???

Not I, with tiltles like the Pledge, Swordfish, and the Superbits, standard DVD can be very close to broadcast HD...for me HD players would have to get to a price point of around $750, and at $40 per disc I'd buy maybe one or two per month...nothing like I buy standard DVD.


However if they wait several years to rollout HD DVD, then they can start to phase out standard DVD and we will all have to comply eventually.

GEE, can Lucas get out 3 or 4 versions of TPM by then?

 

[shahram72]

I think it will be a while before we see HD-DVD. Not enough people own HD sets yet. I am just glad that current DVD's look as good as they do, I will not be replacing much when HD DVD comes out. I think that the HDDVD players will definitely be backwards compatible with current DVDS, therefore making our current collections useful. I think they might probably output a 720P signal from them as well to boast "enhanced resolution" as an added feature to help sell the players. I do not want to see HD DVD come out as a high-end format. High-end formats never reach a fair price point. I love DVD's because they are better looking, sounding, and cheaper than my crappy LD's. So let's be patient, DVD has years of life left in it, and don't even think of considering HD DVD coming out until after the studios and related companies settle this HDCP protection issue, which I beleive if they pass, will alienate so many customers, it may kill off HD as a format once and for all.

 

[Brett]

Hi Guys,


While I hope to be proven wrong, I'll side with Shahram here - for two reasons:


1. The studios don't want us to obtain equivalent quality to movie theaters.


2. Home theater amateurs are already squeezing very nice quality out of SD-DVD.


This lessens motivation both on the supply side and on the demand side. With forthcoming "data-pure" SDI connections and constantly improving scaling and displays, the source definition isn't the main issue. There's still plenty of life in the old dog, although it could seem easier to get a quick fix by boosting source definition. It will improve things, but not to the extent of other important factors in processing and displaying the video signal. Let's enjoy this lull to use DVD's current low resolution as a handicap, stimulating us to make progress in other areas of image processing - then, when HD-DVD does come out, we'll be fully prepared to gain its full benefits.


Cheers,

 

[Hank527]

If its backwards compatibl;e or if manufactures put both HD and SD movies on a disc for regular and HD dvd players then we could have the best of both worlds

 

[Savageone79]

I hope they pick 1080p or 720p for the format. I really do not want another interlaced movie format!

 

[Chris Moreau]

And on what display would one watch a 1080p HD-DVD, Savageone? (Although, that's certainly something I'd love to see!)

 

[shahram72]

I think 1080p is unlikely. 720p would be nice, but think it will be 1080i. Just because the number is higher from a marketing standpoint. People will still not know the difference between interlaced and progressive. And I think 1080i takes less memory than 720p. It wont matter as long as movies are still shot in 24fps, a line doubler with 3:2 pulldown will still be able to reassemble the progressive frames intact.

 

[joekun]

1080p would be great, but 1080i as pointed out above would be fine since it can be deinterlaced. Deinterlacing technology has become cheap and will only get better and better.


It would be really cool if they would provide HD and SD on the same format hank527! Now you've got me excited about that slim, slim possibility. Use 10 GB for the SD and 40 for the HD. You could probably hold up to about 3 hours of HD with that and you wouldn't have to buy the disc twice (who am I kidding? )

 

[Rachael Bellomy]

David, I'm going to make you a special person and tell you about Ever Ever Land. It's a place where everybody are either faries or elfs or Maytag Repair Men. Nobody ever gets sick and they never die. Ice cream cones grow on trees, and the woods smell of wild chocolate cactus. There's sugar and deep fat in all the food, but nobody ever gets fat or needs a tooth pulled. Liberace plays the piano, Zappa's on guitar, and Elvis is in the building. Whatever you can imagine will be. Imagine getting up in the morning and picking Hershey's Kisses for breakfast after spending the night with Jenifer Lopez and remembering that trip to Mars you took with Recall last spring.


This is the place where HD-DVD's are sold-the end....Bon Jour mon ami,!

 

[David600]

heehaa!!


ciao Bella !


mmh, a night with Jelo ? mwouarf !!


let's hope this planet is Earth http://www.delmontsdreammarine.com/g...anets/0355.gif


Recall Recall Recall !!! (what a movie btw ! what a world created by Verhoeven ! )


now on HD DVD, is there any article on the net of majors having a big issue with HD dvd ? they don't want to make avaivable to the public a high def source, fearing copies ( for cinemas for instance ) ? surely, the higher the source quality, the better the copies.


But who would not love to have a 720p or more HD dvd in his home theater here !

 

[shahram72]

Something to keep in mind is that there is not a whole lot of difference between high def movies and 480p movies. I've seen several movie clips on high def demos and while they did look better than the DVD equivalent, it was not a night and day difference. It was better, but not a whole lot. The movies in high def I saw still had that soft film look to them. I think you would need a projector to see the difference. I don't think they will make a format that benifits only projector owners. Look how long VHS has been around, and how long laserdisc stayed. Am I glad those things died! I don't think we'll see HD-DVD for quite a while. I would say at least 5 years.

 

[David600]

there's also the fact of different formats still going strong. vhs survived laserdisc but this not a good example. vhs still is here, with penetration of 80% of US households. there's about 60M households in the US ( ? ) and about so far 20-22M dvd players in the US. that's 30% penetration.

Consumers would not appreciate HDdvd now and the obligation to upgrade, especially since dvds are already light years above vhs in terms of quality and features, convenience.

it's a different market, people record much less and I don't think people will start recording again asap dvd recorders become cheap. The market has changed.

But the technology is there for hd dvd. It will have to wait I think, perhaps till 2005-2006 ore more. Especially if the recession-stagnation stays for several years ( the beariest experts, among them Warren Buffet, forecast a secular bear market till 2008-2010, after this longest ever bull market, which started with Microsoft in 1981). Cut that in half, that's still a good 4-5years of stagnation.

Speaking of that, Hollywood majors are said to seriously consider 2 tier rental window pricing IF sales of dvds start to show weakening growth! If we see the latest nrs from Amazon, there is maybe room to worry, especially with consumers prefering to stay home and go out/travel less ( which boosts..... rentals, no necessarily sales of dvds).

Bah, as long as majors "superbit" their movies.......

 

[genixia]

IIRC, terrestial TV channels are due to be HD only around 2008 so everyone will need an HDTV set by this time. I would expect to see HD DVD being pushed around 2004/2005, based on the guess that this is when the majority of the public will own a HDTV...

 

[Gertjan]

(ramble mode on)


I would think that there are three parties involved in this process: consumers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and the studios as content providers.


Consumers

I like the idea of both regular format and HD format on one disc. They could make it so that on one side the DVD is the regular format (maybe even P&S to keep J6P happy) that plays in DVD players that are sold today, and the other side is the full-blown HD version for those who have the equipment. It would be very similar to the two-sided DVDs we have now with the P&S version on one side and the anamorphic widescreen on the other. If they were to do it that way, the DVDs would be useable by everybody.


CE manufacturers

The CE manufacturers are pushing the HD widescreen TVs. It would make sense for them to come up with a DVD standard that is a HD-DVD format that is compatible with what the HD widescreen TVs can display, and to make players that can play & output both the regular DVD format and the HD-DVD format. Then they can offer a more complete package (HD-TV + HD-DVD player) and thus make it more appealing to the consumer. Now one of the reasons to hold off on buying a HD-TV is that there really isnt a whole lot of HD material available to actually utilize the HD part of your HD-TV. But if DVDs were to become available with the HD format on one side.... If you care enough about picture quality to spend the extra $$$ on a HD-TV, you would probably also not have a big problem with spending a little more on a HD-DVD player if that meant you'd more fully utilize your HD-TV.


Studios

The studios would probably be the limiting factor in how fast this would take off. They will probably be reluctant to produce content in HD for the public if the copying is too easy. We see that all over with the HD broadcast and the HDCP copy protection scheme etc.


I personally dont really see why they should worry about copying of HD-DVDs too much, because we already have the same capability with our regular DVDs. I don't think that the copying will suddenly take off just because it's a HD format instead of regular format. (It would actually probably even be harder to distribute the HD content, so it might actually work as a damper on illegal copying to come out with the HD format.)


I don't know what all is involved the the techonology of producing a HD-DVD. But hopefully the costs of producing the DVDs with the regular format on one side and the HD version on the other would not have be -that- much higher. That would leave the copy protection issue as the only thing left to prevent this HD stuff to take off.



This will all take a few years though more than likely. Setting a standard and coming out with new equipment is not something you can pull off overnight. Although i'd be all for it


(ramble mode off)


Gertjan

 

[Rachael Bellomy]

I'ma retty 'fer them thar height-defining DVD's now! After watching some Muse LDs with about 700 lines, interlaced, I want a format with that many lines approximately. On the 7 Muse discs viewed so far, only once have I seen vibrating lines. That was on Robert Downey Jr's finely checked jacket in CHAPLIN. The colour is occasionally inconsistent on Muse, but the line-count is enough for a very sharp picture. It's making me rabid and crazy for HD-DVD! Best wishes!

 

[shahram72]

Sorry for the ignorance, but what are MUSE LD's, and what kind of equipment do you use to watch them on?

 

[dkeller_NC]

"Something to keep in mind is that there is not a whole lot of difference between high def movies and 480p movies. I've seen several movie clips on high def demos and while they did look better than the DVD equivalent, it was not a night and day difference. It was better, but not a whole lot. The movies in high def I saw still had that soft film look to them.


There's a very good reason you're not that impressed with HD movies if your basis for comparison is HBO-HD. While the picture quality is theoretically much better, HBO insists on "zooming" HD transfers of 2.35:1 films to make them 16:9, which hurts the resolution considerably.


Also, a few of us think that HBO-HD is further down-rezzing even these poor transfers to satisfy Hollywood's paranoia over "un-protected" HD content coming over analog inputs. This has the advantage of "easing" the current HD audience into the idea that HD movies don't look that good anyway, rather than giving them beautiful transfers now, and down-rezzing them to 500 lines or so when the new copy-protected STBs hit the streets.


While it always helps to have a high-end projector that can resolve more detail than a standard HD RPTV when judging picture quality, the difference between a good HD transfer and a good DVD transfer is fairly obvious even on a 40" WS Toshiba.


A good comparison to make might be "BraveHeart" on DVD and "CSI" on HD-CBS to judge what a HD is capable of.

 

[Savageone79]

When I said 1080p would be a good format I was thinking ahead in the future in say 5 years when it comes out I bet lots of High end tv's will support 1080p. It is actually part of the HDTV standard. Also the poster who said that 1080i takes up less memory then 720 is completely incorrect. 720p takes up a lot less space and actually even 1080p would take less space then 1080i becuase of the way that mpeg is encoded interlaced frames actually require higher bitrate to encode then progressive ones do and provide for less artifacts in the picture. Mpeg was made for progressive scan compression. Interlaced capability was a later add on.