I sure hope that people aren't stupid enough to not realising the any HD format is just a transition from any laser discs to online distribution - this is the only real way of the future.

But that future is quite a long way away for many people. Upwards of 20GB for a movie (to be of acceptable quality) requires approx 14 hours to download on a typical 3Mbps DSL connection.

Only people living in major metropolitan areas will have a chance of coming anywhere near the bandwidth required. But even typical FIOS packages would require 3 hours or so, completely tying up your connection.

There's a lot to be said to checking a list of movies on line and have them arrive the next day as real discs so that you can pop them in the DVD player and put the computer aside for a while.

Until late last year, my only options were dial-up, ISDN or satellite. DSL finally arrived.

HD laser discs are just an excuse to rip-off consumers into re-buying their whole collection on HD, give me a break. I have over 150 DVDs, that would be $3000 to upgrade everything to Blu-ray/HDDVD, right.



Quit whining and buy an upconverting DVD player for your old discs and a BluRay player for your new BDDVDs.

I wish I had that option back when I had 450 VHS tapes that I blew about $10-12,000 on back in the day... I've reformed and currently do online rentals by mail for all my DVD needs. Works out to about $2 per viewing, which is a much better deal than $25 for a DVD that I'll watch at most twice.

Quit whining?? You quit whining about replacing your VHS tapes.

I already have an upconverting DVD player and am very happy with it - another reason not to waste money on HD.

Just checked VUDU.COM and it's the way of the future. Splash all your money on Blu-ray stuff for all I care, you seem to enjoy getting ripped off.

Dave's comment is a bit too harsh, imo. Nobody is forcing anybody. I remember, about 3 years ago, we had a client from mainland china who got married in our country. When I finished the DVD, they asked if I could make a VCD version! Well, 99% of our players come from mainland China! And it's not that the DVD players are out of their reach or not available. They just used their VCD and didn't care for DVD!

Last year, the sister of the bride got married and we shot their wedding too, and they didn't ask for a vcd copy at that time :-)

In short, nobody is forcing anyone to shift. You can even still use cd-r or VCD if you want. The standard is still there. In our country, VCD discs are still available and these are legal copies. Nobody buys them though, because if they took Dave's position, it is obvious that the vast majority don't think they are being ripped off by the newer technology.

"Ripped off" is a personal thing and you can't apply it to everybody. Are people in our country excited about BD? Well, most don't even know there are 2 standards. One thing is for sure, local distributors and vendors here are smart enough not to jump early. Nobody, AFAIK, is pushing either. Well, maybe in 2-3 months, since the war is over, we'll start the push for BD players.

"Ripped off" is a strong word to make and to generalize to everybody, because we are in a global market. Although some tastes are similar, some can be so different. The concept of renting is not new to us here in Asia, but having a disc to play is valued more. It's not just the infrastructure, it's the sociology/psychology of having something to hold and "own." It's also the psychology/sociology of instant playback anywhere anytime. When you have children and they want to watch The Little Mermaid or Shrek for the 2,000th times, you'll understand the value of a media to have.

Finally, I think BD is still a transitory media. In fact, all these technologies are all interim and transitory. If you ask me, the rise of the SSD and cheap SD cards, are already forebodings of what might be 5-10 years from now. Think of a 100gb 300x SD card for U$5-10 vs the bulky 5.25" disc. But of course, it takes more than technological superiority for a standard to become mainstream. So, I won't rack my brains forecasting 5 years up. I'd go along with BD till the next wave comes along and we start all over again.

What is more or less certain is that, except for tapes, the disc players seem to be all backward compatible. This means, nobody is forcing you to switch as you can play your older discs with the newer players.

Now, I hope the mini-dv tapes are also future proofed by newer cameras so they can still be read or at least that format or casing is still used in the future. As far as archival goes, I still have lots of confidence and respect with tapes. BD discs still have to prove their archival reliability. It's just a pain havint to transfer things to tape as you do a 1:1 work to get them there.

Of course, archival issues are another matter. If we limit ourselves to movies how they are presented or viewed, well, BD is here to stay. You like them or you don't, but I'm sure that Dave's position isn't shared by majority of the world. Marketing hype or not, it's the consumers who will vote with their wallets or cards and no amount of bashing is going to change that.

Okay, easy does it folks -- let's cool off please -- thanks in advance,

Sorry about that Chris. I was speaking matter of factly. The tone is normal, not excited, not angry or offended, nor combative. Too bad people can't hear me with typed words :-)

In any case, I hope Sony, et al can finish the menuing and get the authoring softwares/standard with BD ready in 6 months or less. Aside from waiting for the BD players price to go down, we wedding shooters or even serious amateurs want to have the ability to make those menus that we do in DVD. I hear there are some improvements and additions with the new standard.

In our country, BD will take a bit of time to take hold maybe compared to the USA. Too many variables in the value chain still not in place. It's not just the players, or the availability of titles, w/c I am sure will follow suit quite easily. There are already some titles, but the momentum isn't there. I think, in our country at least, there is still the hurdle of getting those HD tvs or monitors aside from the player issue. I think, it will be past 2nd half of 2009 if there are any momentum we can have as far as the high def TVs or monitors aren't that affordable yet for many. There are U$200 19" LCDs with HDMI but they are not TV so that's the problem right there. HDV tvs are about 2.5-3x as expensive and that is a big issue right there. I think it has something to do with taxes for TVs. I'm sure the tuner itself isn't that expensive. I have a USB tv tuner for my notebook w/c I paid U$40 only. Non-USB are in the U$25-30 range. So, a U$400-500 19" LCD TV is too expensive with only the tuner that is added considering the LCD as a monitor costs only U$200.

Toshiba is having a press conference at 5 PM Japan time (3 AM EST 2-19-08); it's expected that HD DVD support will end.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Toshiba/Industry_Trends/Breaking:_Toshiba_Schedules_Press_Conference,_HD_DVD_Announcement_Expected/1479

heath

HDV tvs are about 2.5-3x as expensive and that is a big issue right there. I think it has something to do with taxes for TVs.LCD TVs have different backlights than monitors to provide brighter pictures. They also have different panels than monitors for wider viewing angles. Dead pixels are not tolerated, so the yield is lower. It's more than just the tuner. And yes, taxes might enter into the equation as well.

Back on topic, when Warner made their announcement, I was pretty sure BD had won, but I'm still amazed at how quickly the dominoes fell.

Toshiba to announce HD DVD pullout on Tuesday: report

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080218/bs_nm/dvd_toshiba_nand_dc_1

It's officially over, Toshiba have formally announced it!

Sayonara!! Rest in peace.

This informative podcast (http://home.paonline.com/jeff_lup/bugle/taps.wav) concerning HD-DVD sums it up quite good.

http://www.electronichouse.com/article/toshiba_announces_discontinuation_of_hd_dvd_businesses

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080219/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_toshiba

Well, now that it's all official, I guess I'll just have to wait until I like the 1080p TVs that are out there. They're still not up to the standard I'd like - and I'm hoping that OLEDs will meet the colour requirements I'm aiming for, though I may end up having to purchase an interim TV when they switch to digital broadcast.

Once I get a 1080p set, I will undoubtedly get a Blu-Ray player to take advantage of it - unless someone announces a 4:4:4 1080p format for home viewing (maybe Red will say something about this at NAB?). But I will never be buying a collection of discs. This will be a rental player only, and maybe hooked up for gaming on occasion.

-Steve

I hope Sony sends them a fruitbasket at least, which a note saying:
"Good form, it was a splendid battle"
and in the basket would be a blu-ray player

From the Wall St Journal:

Toshiba Exits HD DVD Business,
Ceding Market to Sony's Blu-ray
By YUKARI IWATANI KANE
February 19, 2008 11:37 a.m.

TOKYO -- Blaming the loss of support from a key movie studio, Toshiba Corp. said it is pulling out of the HD DVD business, handing victory to Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray technology in the fierce format war over high-definition DVDs.

Toshiba said Tuesday that it would cease production of its HD DVD players and recorders immediately and close out the business by the end of March.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120342115442976687.html?mod=Asian-Business-News

There could be a silver lining in the press announcement:

> "On Tuesday, Toshiba also formally announced that it will invest more than 1.7 trillion yen to build two flash memory factories.

One will be located in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, and the other in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture.

The plants are scheduled for completion in 2010. Construction will begin in spring 2009.

Demand for flash memory chips, which are used in digital cameras and other products, is growing worldwide.(IHT/Asahi: February 20,2008)"

This could mean higher densities, faster speeds and lower prices for solid state memory.

Here's my conspiracy theory:

Hollywood is the driving force behind the victory of Blu-Ray.
Indy productions are somewhat of a threat to Hollywood's market share.
Blu-Ray, after many years, has no realistic software for indy producers.
Could it be that Blu-Ray is purposefully resisting indy productions?

I don't totally believe this, but the thought did make me wonder...On the flip side it doesn't make sense for Sony to block indy producers since they sell us cameras.

Also in today's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120321618700574049.html?mod=todays_us_nonsub_marketplace

But the payoff won't be immediate. For starters, DVD-replication factories that stamp out high-definition discs aren't quite ready for Blu-ray's victory. Just a handful of the plants exist -- not enough to handle the high-definition movie demands of all the major studios. That could mean the studios now backing HD DVD exclusively face delays moving to Blu-ray. Those studios also are trying to negotiate favorable terms, similar to what the studios already committed to Blu-ray got.

Conspiracies are wonderful to speculate about. However, I think that ordinary ineptitude is sufficient to explain most of the problems we are seeing.

Personally, I'm not planning to have this part of the HD food chain functionally until late fall of this year, when profile 2.0 is available. And after Apple announces support for blu-ray in DVD SP and elsewhere.

Yeah, I think it will speed up the process for us. To me it's a huge bummer that HD DVD didn't win because at least they had their act together for our industry.

Yeah, I think it will speed up the process for us. To me it's a huge bummer that HD DVD didn't win because at least they had their act together for our industry.

I guess I don't understand what you are referring to when you say HD DVD had their act together for our industry. I have had a Blu-Ray burner for months and have been able to record my HDV video to Blu-Ray without compromising quality. While I never have seen or heard of any HD DVD burner on the market. From the first time I saw some of my HDV footage. My goal has always been "how do I preserve this quality for my clients?" At least Blu-Ray gave me a burner.

Its nice that I have to now worry if my Blu Ray player is up to date and will work with all the functions that its supposed to have and if it play all my dvd's..list goes on

thats my 1/2 cent.

Sad day really new technology thats trying to move forward looses over the old mpeg2 lives on and all because of some dirty tactics of Sony. I know its a proven format but still when will we move forward.



I think you are misinformed there - BOTH systems use EXACTLY the same codecs!

Forget the war [correction, since the war is over]for a sec--just pretend that it doesn't exist.

Amazon just lowered the price of the Toshiba HD DVD player to $109 shipped free. [And it still comes with 5 free movies via mail] The means, the player is essentially free.

Just think of this as an awesome upscaling DVD player.

And think of it the great HD you can put on a cheapo DVD-R[with the proper authoring tools].

I just ordered one to give my folks/sister to share some of the HDV footage that I've shot of the kids.

If you can get over the fact, that's it not Blu-Ray.... it's a sweet deal.

I guess I don't understand what you are referring to when you say HD DVD had their act together for our industry. I have had a Blu-Ray burner for months and have been able to record my HDV video to Blu-Ray without compromising quality. While I never have seen or heard of any HD DVD burner on the market. From the first time I saw some of my HDV footage. My goal has always been "how do I preserve this quality for my clients?" At least Blu-Ray gave me a burner.

Just an FYI Greg, but many of us have been doing that for 1 1/2 years on HD DVD, no need for expensive media and burners for up to 44 minutes of 25 mbps HDV on DVD/9 media, fully working menus as well.

I have a PS3, but I still think HD DVDs had much better movies, and the xbox360 has better games. It doesn't even look like blu-ray will start releasing good movies or games anytime soon. So I'm all set for the quality,
but they're draggin their feet.

Like I said...for us...it's not going anywhere for a few years...until Blu Ray becomes easier to author and prices of media and the players will come down.

Blu-ray authoring is easy using Adobe CS3 and blank discs are down to a few bucks each, so for small run projects Blu-ray is already quite usable. If you need an inexpensive way to play personal videos in HD just put them on a flash drive and attach that to a Sony PS3, or connect a laptop to your HDTV. Now that HD-DVD is officially dead there won't be much point in making any further discs in this format, since the players will be hard to find a few years from now.

Interesting stuff from the Digital Production Buzz podcast.

http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/Archives/ShowNotes.php?date=2008-02-14

The interview with Bruce Nazarian (DVD Association - dvda.org) at 20:32 picks up on some concerning numbers:

An 'industrial' or 'non-broadcast' BR-DVD title incurs fees for authoring and for replication - $2500. Mandatory copy protection $3000 per title.

So if you're wanting to make a Sell-thru title or release an Indie film as a self funded project, you're toast. It would dent (!) the budgets of the vast majority of corporate DVD projects.

Okay, so there are fees associated with DVD production and in fact anything that involves MPEG, but they tend to kick in at far higher numbers.

Are there going to be different strata of BR projects? Will most corporate/wedding BR titles exist either as 'possibly dodgy if not actually illegal and therefore blockable' titles or confined to a feature limited set with strict limits on numbers of units?

I don't want to sound like Chicken Little but there appeared to be concerns over the many restrictions and DRM within BluRay that would i) stop people ripping movies and selling them, and ii) stop people making legal BR disks of their own content and selling them.

I have real concerns about this.

It seems to me that the major studios and networks, many of whom are owned by the same people who make Blu-Ray disks, have a strong financial interest in NOT making it easy or cheap for independent producers to do what they do... sell high-definition disks at a reasonable price to a mass audience.

It took a long time after DVDs were introduced before average schmoes like me could not only afford the equipment and software to produce our own disks, but (perhaps more importantly) have some confidence that the people to whom we were sending the disks could reliably view them at home. I sincerely hope we don't see stand-alone Blu-Ray players routinely manufactured to NOT read home-brewed, region and DRM-free, Blu-Ray disks.

For the work I do, if I have to pay license fees of $5500 or more for each title I release, that will just about kill that medium for my output. Exorbitant licensing fees like this could end up shooting the Blu-Ray association in the foot, however, as it will increase the pressure to come up with an affordable (perhaps Open Source) alternative, or to completely bypass the whole disk thing with HD video streaming.

Just an FYI Greg, but many of us have been doing that for 1 1/2 years on HD DVD, no need for expensive media and burners for up to 44 minutes of 25 mbps HDV on DVD/9 media, fully working menus as well.

How have you been burning them? Inever found a HD DVD burner that I could buy.

You can use a standard DVD burner. HD-DVD format content can be burned onto DVD-R and played in an HD-DVD player.

Exorbitant licensing fees like this could end up shooting the Blu-Ray association in the foot, however, as it will increase the pressure to come up with an affordable (perhaps Open Source) alternative, or to completely bypass the whole disk thing with HD video streaming.

Huh. Maybe we could buy the rights to the discarded HD-DVD technology for a dollar, and promote it as the "peoples' HD alternative." Monopoly sucks. We're already seeing its effects, with these insanely greedy pronouncements from the Blu-Ray Bandits.

You can use a standard DVD burner. HD-DVD format content can be burned onto DVD-R and played in an HD-DVD player.

But when I do that on my computor, a DVD will only hold 20 minutes of video and it doesn't look as good as when I record it to Blu-Ray. And BTW, my partner has put more than 44 minutes of content on a Blu-Ray disc and he can create a Blu-Ray disc with fully working menus, as well. While I admit that we haven't created anything for wide distribution, no one has attempted to levy any $5500 in fees for any of the programs we have created. Since Blu-Ray burners are relatively cheap and very easy to get, we do not have to go to some master disc manufacturer and don't have any issues with that. BTW several years ago, when I was looking for prices for mass distribution of a plain old DVD, I was quoted similar prices.

G4 is one of those stations that I occasionally watch
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/682990/HDDVD_Funeral.html

>Blu-ray authoring is easy using Adobe CS3 and blank discs are down to a few bucks each, so for small run projects Blu-ray is already quite usable.

Kevin, are you serious? CS3 for the Mac or PC? I would buy a burner if I knew I could set up my system for under $1,000 and put at least 40 minutes on DVDs costing me less that $15. I haven't heard that's possible yet.

I will sorely miss HD DVD.

>Blu-ray authoring is easy using Adobe CS3 and blank discs are down to a few bucks each, so for small run projects Blu-ray is already quite usable.

Kevin, are you serious? CS3 for the Mac or PC? I would buy a burner if I knew I could set up my system for under $1,000 and put at least 40 minutes on DVDs costing me less that $15. I haven't heard that's possible yet.

I will sorely miss HD DVD.

Well Dana, you can get Blu-Ray discs for less than $12.00 each. And my partner has 1 disc that has a 7 1/2 minute program, a 9 1/2 minute program and a 48+ minute program on one disc and it wasn't full. And I think the Blu-Ray recorder is easily less than $1000.00 for the latest recorder.

CS3 for the Mac or PC? I would buy a burner if I knew I could set up my system for under $1,000 and put at least 40 minutes on DVDs costing me less that $15. I haven't heard that's possible yet.

I bought a 4X Blu-ray burner with CS3 upgrade version and five blank BD-R discs for about $900 from Videoguys. If you don't have an old version of Adobe software lying around it's a few hundred more, and if you're working on a Mac you may need Roxio Toast for actually burning the discs because CS3 for Mac tends to make coasters.

Individual BD-R discs are under $8 now if you shop around and dropping quickly.

There might be a little bit of F.U.D. going there re: the licencing fees.

As for the BD burners they're down to below $500 and dropping.

I'd love to find $8 media but I haven't yet.

Mind you $11 is pretty good and it'll just drop further.

Looking forward to going HD in the next year or so.



ian

There might be a little bit of F.U.D. going there re: the licencing fees.

And it also may be similar to the situation with putting a 'DVD Video' logo on your packaging. In order to do so, there are physical and financial hoops to jump through. Many smaller corporate producers ignore this detail and just whack a logo on there, and I guess quite a lot of Sell-thru video productions might do the same when they're not on the shelves of K-Mart.

But if caught, you're caught.

I'd prefer it if Sony would do what the MPEG folks do, just state that for titles of less than 10,000 units, or produced on BR recordables, licensing and DRM does not apply. Then we know where we stand.

As somebody who does production/postproduction I've been thinking how to demo my work with my Samsung 46" 1080P monitor.

Given I can burn HD DVD to DVD-R with Apple DVDStudioPro, I might be able to pick up a Toshiba HD DVD player for VERY CHEAP and use it for just such purpose. Very cheap = $50 or less.

Realistically who's going to be running down to BestBuy to buy one now. They're going to have to dump them.

Toshiba HD DVD Player is now $79.99 at Costco. Free HDMI cable and two HD DVD movies are included in the box.

P.

There might be a little bit of F.U.D. going there re: the licencing fees.


Its not a problem for someone burning discs at home. But it has been confirmed by independent studios that they must cough up the $2,500 AACS base fee plus the per disc fees when volume publishing their releases. I think R&B Studio's "Chronos" and "Nature's Journey" comes to mind, where the HD DVDs were printed without AACS to save money but AACS was included on the BDs due to being mandatory.

I suspect it just got a bit more difficult to compete with Hollywood as a small independent publisher. I also suspect the Hollywood folks are perfectly happy with that ;)

Maybe my conspiracy theory isn't too far off. I just wonder what the climate will be like in 20 years.

Maybe my conspiracy theory isn't too far off. I just wonder what the climate will be like in 20 years.

*looks into silicon ball

It'll be the same -chaotic, still unpredictable, and look a lot like decades past

Looking back, I stuck with VHS too long. Too many of my movies are on tape. The money I saved by buying a player late is now long forgotten, but my collection lives on.

I now plan to buy a BD player sooner, rather than later. Sure, DVDs aren't as bulky and noisy as VHS tape, but as screen sizes grow, BD quality will become more and more apparent. My only misgiving is that BDs are currently overpriced vs. DVDs.

So, did you already transition to BD? Will you transition soon? Will you wait? Do you not plan to get a BD player at all?

First bride request pushes me over.

It really depends upon the type of work you do.

Some clients are happy you show up at all!

Others have the means to afford whatever you suggest.

I am stumped right now and might start with the 20 min HD on DVD-5 for now for some of my work, when I upgrade a camera.

I don't think anyone would accept HD DVD anymore.

I don't think anyone would accept HD DVD anymore.

Can you burn BD on a DVD-5 and it play for 20 minutes?