So, it's over. Let's do an aftermath summary. Why Blu-ray won the war?

I would say the key was PS3.

Sing it with me:

"na na naaa na...."

It was covered by many news programs today in Japan that Toshiba is considering to fold HD DVD business...

It will be official soon.

Done and confirmed:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/16/t...d-dvd-already/

I'm going to keep my eye open for the fire sales. I sure wouldn't mind picking up an HD-DVD player for under 50 bucks.

No, it snowballed after the Warner announcement, then Netflix. Studio support was the factor.

Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, end format war: source
 

My own rambling thoughts....

HD-DVD or Blu-ray - it doesn't matter. Japanese high tech industry wins again.

Toshiba stock could easily as well go up as down if the market heaves a sigh of relief that the long-flogged horse is finally in the knacker's yard

Stock movements won't come into play on Monday in the US due to the national holiday.

Market preferences outside the US still dominate global commerce.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/techno...37974620080216

Unconfirmed sources at Toshiba that they will pull the plug next week.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray oversight in Japan is the same company and everyone (including Toshiba and Sony) are signed up for both standards. Pity my Toshiba A-3 was cheaper, loads faster, has Ethernet and upscales better than my Sony S300. In Blu-Ray speak it's profile 2.0 today and cost me a $100 less. Oh well.

I know that Blu-Ray theoretically has region coding, but as I look through my pile of movies I notice that they are (with one exception) coded for all regions.

So if the studios aren't actually using it does the region coding really matter? Although, I suppose none of it matters if the talk of Tosh pulling the plug is true.

I think the real loser is corporate video.

We've been producing HD content for many clients. It's been easy to encode the HD video...into HDDVD spec...and burn it on a DVD. As you know regular DVD media (be it -R or +R) is cheap. As long as your video was under the 18 minute range...this process was easy and you could play the HDDVD you created on any of the HDDVD boxes.

For tradeshows for clients...this was a no-brainer. Cheap Toshiba $200 HDDVD player...and make a loopable HDDVD out of DVD Studio...and voila...playable HDDVD for clients at a very affordable price.

We also have a client who we produce HD content for...and then provide 135 HDDVD discs for them to play in retail outlets. So what if blu ray won...right now...this is a cost-effective way to distribute HD content. Oh..did I mention that once we create the master...we use our STANDARD DVD duplicator to make the copies...at less than .40 per copy ?

So..with all the blu ray hub-bub....I started looking into getting into blu-ray production.

An EXTERNAL blu ray drive from Lacie runs around 700.00 . Duplication ? Well not so easy. A 2 disc blu ray duplicator runs around 4k. So...if I want to get into any kind of blu ray production...I would have to make copies by the "onsies - twosies" method. Oh...and blu ray disc prices....$36 a PIECE. And a blu ray player right now is $400-500.

So for now...HD DVD is NOT dead in my world. We'll buy a bunch of HDDVD's to keep on hand for shows and over the next 2 years or so...this will still be a viable delivery method until blu ray prices come down...as they eventually will.

Just like HDDVD that you can put on standard DVD disks, Blu-ray can also
be put on the standard DVD disk.... and they play fine, in a Blu-ray player.

So its realy down to the cost of the player....

many folks are just using the Sony Playstation...

Ray..

Have you done this? I was informed that blu-ray would NOT let you burn content...unless it was a blu-ray burner.

About a year ago...(when we started doing this...) Folks had said that the blu-ray spec did not allow for burning onto DVD media.

For a bridal show demo, I used Vegas8b to render a HDV MPG file and then took NERO 8 Ultra with the BluRay & HD-DVD Plugin and made a BluRay h.264 DVD at 1080 resolution... I was able to get 27 minutes on a single layer DVD-R and tested an hour on a DVD+R Dual Layer... at 17 Mbps bitrate (you can actually fit more on the discs!) This was tested on my Samsung BD-P1400 player and 2 other Sony BRD Players.

Here are the basics how to do it:

Using a PC and Nero:
1- Open Nero Vision
2- Select "Make BluRay Disc"
3- Add video files and select the M2T file rendered from NLE. MAKE SURE its about 29 minutes or less for DVD-R SL!
- add chapters here too if desired.
4- At the bottom, click "More" then "Video Options"
5- Click on Blu-Ray Video tab in that new window.
6- Video Format: Choose MPG4 then click on "Configure Encoder" and choose HIGH.
7- Quality Settings: Custom
Sample Format: Automatic
Bitrate: 17000 kbits
Resolution: 1440x1080 (You can choose 1920x1080, but on my processor, it takes longer to scale this... the player does the correct aspect on the 1440x1080.)
Encoding Mode: 1 Pass
Audio Format: Automatic
8- When you get to the menu screen, just select not to use a menu if you want straight play or create your own menu.
9- Go through the rest of the process. And finally choose burn or whatever... just create the folders to a hard drive and burn later!
10- When encoding finishes... open Nero Burning Rom and choose DVD (UDF)... click on the UDF tab and choose Manual settings, then physical partition, then choose UDF format 2.5 then choose Label and type in a name for the BluRay disc such as Bridal Show.
11- Click NEW
12- Navigate the right pane and locate the folders "Certificate" and "BDMV". Drag BOTH folders to the left pane... this is the BluRay disc you'll be burning.
13- Insert blank DVD-R and BURN AWAY!

Lots of details here
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=815296
What sucks is "SONY" Vegas does not support DVD burning for Blu-Ray.