Blu-Ray takes the lead

[Steve Benner]

A couple things.

Yes, the PS3 is was a large factor and is probably the only reason Blu Ray has sales at all. The stand alone players still are not selling as well as HD DVD. Another huge factor is the movie releases in the past few months. HD DVD just hasn't been releasing much. This changes as of March 27th. In gets better in May too, Universal has announced a massive amount of titles and we shall see how the war is then.
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

My guess is that the PS3 sales will soon level off and it will be up to the stand alone players. You cannot place your whole formats existence on a game concole.

I love HD DVD simply because I can burn Red Lazer HD DVD's through DVD Studio Pro of my own content and because of the combo discs. I have two players (XBOX and Toshiba HD-A2) and one is in my room on the other in my grandmothers. My parents still use regualr dvd on their big screen SD tv. My little brother watches regular dvd, so when I buy a movie like "Happy Feet," I want it to be able to play on both. The quality between the Blu Ray and HD DVD is the same as long as you are comparing like encoding specs.

In Europe, HD DVD is outselling by about 85%. Source: http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070308PD200.html. The European markets will not cave so easily to Blu Ray due to money.

Also, it will be interesting to see if Apple releases HD movies on iTunes. This will be great for me, because then I can get Disney and Lionsgate support as well as my HD DVD studios and have everything but Fox and Sony.

I really get the feeling though that both formats will eventually exist. The combo drives are starting to appear, and Warner is releasing their "Total HD" discs that play both. Either way though, I am on the HD DVD side for now. If Apple doesn't release HD movies on iTunes by May, I probably will get a Blu Ray player as well so I don't have to deal with this.

It really doesn't matter which one loses for me. If my HD DVD format loses, I still have the same quality movies and a player. They will still look great and play. No need to buy them again.

[Harrison Murchison]

I totally agree with your post Steve. I'm not a fan of Blu-ray because I don't find it to be the most consumer friendly.

Blu-ray has 3 forms of copy protection :

AACS- Just like HD DVD
BD+ - which rides on top of AACS but can do things like disable your player
ROM Mark- marks the disc so that hopefully pirate discs can be tracked
Region Encoding- Prevents certain discs from playing in some regions.

HD DVD has :

AACS

Now you tell me what format is most likely supporting consumer Fair Use right more? The ideal situation is for people to pull their heads from their @$$ and support HD DVD because in the end the studios are going to go where the money is. If that's HD DVD you're going to get the benefits of a player with the most features, lowest cost and least amount of restrictions. Who doesn't want that?

[John C. Chu]

I like HD DVD for the same reasons, lower priced players and the ability to burn your own content on low cost 4.7gig DVD-Rs.

I read an interview where it states that it costs $5,000 for a glass master plus $2.50 to replicate each Blu-Ray Disc, while it only cost $2,500 for a HD DVD glass master and $1.10 per disc. Chump change for the big studios I guess, but might be a consideration for smaller producers.

I do hope universal players become the norm and this "war" becomes irrelevant. I only paid $299 for my Toshiba player and the new ones are selling for $398.

If and when, Sony comes out with a player at the magic price point for $299,[my price point anyway] I will probably get one. Sony just announced one for $599.

I understand China will be making HD DVD players...hope that drives the costs of the players down even more.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by John C. Chu

I read an interview where it states that it costs $5,000 for a glass master plus $2.50 to replicate each Blu-Ray Disc, while it only cost $2,500 for a HD DVD glass master and $1.10 per disc. Chump change for the big studios I guess, but might be a consideration for smaller producers.

http://wesleytech.com/blu-ray-vs-hd-...-revealed/111/
It’s a bit over a month old but still informative.

[Dean Sensui]

I was watching a Blu-Ray demo at the Navy Exchange last week, and was surprised at what I saw.

Actually, "disappointed" is the word.

It looked like the content was poorly encoded.

Upon close inspection you could see that there was excessive sharpening "halos" at the edges. There was a considerable amount of "mosquito noise" as well. And in the titles, the curves of the text weren't clean, with stair-step aliasing apparent.

My brother-in-law was interested in getting HD soon but I told him to wait. HD images should look a LOT better than what he was seeing on that screen. I don't know if it was the player, the set or the encoded material off the disk. But it sure didn't look anything like what I was getting from my HVX-200.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Dean Sensui,
Unless it was playing off the defective Samsung player than the only other reason for the picture looking that bad could be because the demo was only 18mbps of Mpeg2. Like I mentioned earlier, the older titles used that so maybe this demo suffered the same fate.

[John C. Chu]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

http://wesleytech.com/blu-ray-vs-hd-...-revealed/111/
It’s a bit over a month old but still informative.

Thanks Paul.

From that article, it looks like they cost about the same to replicate.

I can also see now how much "profit" is built into these things...most of the new generation format movies are averaging around $26-35 each.

On a side note, Circuit City/Best Buy are always having weekly sales of older movies on DVD from around $4-6bucks a piece. And on DVD these things still look great. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or so.

[Dean Sensui]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

Dean Sensui,
Unless it was playing off the defective Samsung player than the only other reason for the picture looking that bad could be because the demo was only 18mbps of Mpeg2. Like I mentioned earlier, the older titles used that so maybe this demo suffered the same fate.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking (hoping). It was playing off a Sony Blu-Ray player and to a Sony LCD display. I know it's not the display and I hope it's not the player.

If I were Sony I'd have the local reps hunt down any older demos and replace them with something that's a lot better.

That said, a couple of other people looking at this were saying "Wow, look at that!" So maybe what's unacceptable to some might be impressive to others.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Anyone who sees crappy BluRay is seeing just that... Crappy BluRay. BluRay can look very good, every bit as good as HD-DVD and theoretically better. Both disc formats use the exact same codecs and file structure, it' sonly the laser mechanism and menu/media systems that differ between the two. Let's consider Studios like TimeWarner who support both formats and are now set to release "TOTAL-HD" discs, which have BluRay on one side and HD-DVD on the other. In their press conference introducing TOTAL-HD, they said it's the best compromise or solution right now because the studios only have to create one copy of the film in a supported codec like VC1 or H.264. Then they create a unique menu system (and other interactive content, if necessary) for each format.

I've seen my share of crappy BluRay, but I've also seen a lot of crappy HD-DVD. Anyone who says HD-DVD is superior, obviously hasn't taken a good look at BluRay or they are biased. Sony didn't do themselves any favors with the first crop of BluRay titles all being low bit-rate, single layer, MPEG2 transfers. Essentially they were higher resolution than standard DVD, but with proportionately more compression with the same ancient codec. I also had to laugh at most of the BluRay demonstrations I saw at various events (even with actual Sony reps there conducting the demo), that they would run junk MPEG2 video clips. They would show snippets of films like Spider-Man 2, which was obviously up-converted DVD. Sad, really. Very poor marketing. It's as if Sony just expected everyone to go "WOW!" just because it was a new Sony product. And you know what, most of the audience did. Sadly, most people, even A/V pros attending these events have not seen a good upconverted DVD feed on a properly calibrated 70" SXRD. It looks better than most broadcast HD, so most people had no idea they weren't looking at the true potential of BluRay.

Personally, I don't like Sony. I don't like their marketing hype, I don't like the way they develop and release products, etc.. But all things considered, I hope BluRay actually wins the format war. It is (sadly) the superior format for a great many reasons beyond delivering movies in HD. As far as a movie format, BluRay and HD-DVD are dead even. BluRay does have the advantage with their Java menu and multimedia system, but so far no titles really take advantage of that. And I personally don't care (I assume most people don't). I just want to put the disc in the player and watch the movie.

On that note, I hope something gets decided ASAP. Or someone releases a universal player that actually works and supports all the capabilities of both formats. The just shipping LG universal player is a start, but it doesn't support most of HD-DVDs menu and extra functions and they also crippled HD-DVD output to 1080i while it allows for 1080p output when playing BluRay. Which is complete BS, because all but 2 current HD-DVD titles are encoded at 1080p. Toshiba and most of the HD-DVD supporting studios are not pleased with LG's dual player that cripples HD-DVD in favor of BluRay.

[Peter Jefferson]

"My guess is that the PS3 sales will soon level off and it will be up to the stand alone players. You cannot place your whole formats existence on a game concole."

Actually you can.. Sony did this with PS2 and DVD.. in fact the PS2 is what bought DVD into the mainstream market, along with piracy and porn..
believe it or not, but without these 3 elements, DVD would not be what it is today..

Sony are counting on their user base, in addition to the HD upgraders (home theatre buffs) to jump to PS3 as its an all in one box no brainer..

Do not doubt that sony are relying on PS3 sales to bring BD into the mainstream consumer market.. and it will definately NOT fall.. in fact sales will increase as games and movies are relased using that format.. Production houses will begin to learn and implement newer encoding technologies such as DDTrueHD... and soon to follow with BD authoring and burning tools making it the most viable option for those of us in the production field to deliver our work in HD to those cients who have no other means or are nto inclined to spend any more money on any other HD formats as they already have one (ps3... ) i doubt you will find a PS3 owner go out and fork another 500bux for a HD DVD player.. when the PS3 is a perfectly capable player

for the future, IMO the capacity of DL BD will cement it as being the optical format of choice simply becuase it allows the production house much more flexibility in choice, formats, encoded bitrates, content, and actual disc production costs...

[Charles Hurley]

The winner will be the format that is the cheapest to bring to market, period. You can talk about codecs and formats until your binary code drops a 2 but it doesn't matter. Beta was in the running back in the day but it lost because of licensing and cost, it was and is the superior format. $1.40 chump change? Per Unit? X10,000,000? The ONLY person this doesn't significantly affect is the small producer, to the studios it's what is called the bottom line. Sing fat lady sing.

[Peter Jefferson]

well, with acceptance and market share, prices will change depending on demand..

At this time, BD offers more consideirng its already in use with XDCam, in addition to XDCam already being the successor for Digibeta...

Also in regard to actual capacity, those capacities will play a fundamental role in determining the usability of the format..

[Rob Lohman]

I'm thinking the format that'll win is the one with the most and best content.
And at the moment that looks to be Blu-ray (most studios behind it).

Prices will drop (and already have), so I'm not so convinced that's gonna be
the deciding factor. What good will a $250 player do if you can't get the movies
you want for it?

The PS3 has just started selling here in Holland (and other parts of Europe?),
so it will be interesting to see what that does to Blu-ray disc sales during 2007.

In the end I just want one format to 'win'. I don't need nor want two formats.
And until we get that (or we will see a good market shift to see where it's going),
I'm not gonna invest in either format.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Rob Lohman

The PS3 has just started selling here in Holland (and other parts of Europe?),
so it will be interesting to see what that does to Blu-ray disc sales during 2007.

The Netherlands shouldn’t be selling them yet. It should be all pre-order. The European release date is this Friday and their will be around 1 million units available on that date. What’s funny is that Great Britain alone will receive more units than the US did.

[Heath McKnight]

Semi-related story; Blu-Ray association hopes to take over SD DVDs in 3 years:

http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2574

heath