http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn10102

Interesting! And since a lot of articles these days talk about consumers' "we could care less" attitude towards the hi def DVD format wars, this may be the answer!

heath

Its success will depend on its cost, as with most consumer technologies.

Next year we'll have downloadable movies in HD resolution. Myself personally I can't see the need for any hd disc format. I and many like myself I'm sure are ready to be done with discs, having movies on a home server is just too convenient, when it's done right that is.

I'm also interested in Pioneer's plans in making a "variable/adjustable" blue laser HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combination drive.

http://www.i4u.com/article6445.html

That might be another solution.

Wes, thats what I have been saying for a while now. I need NO new optical media!!! How often does not ever watch a movie twice? I just want to be able to download any movie I want, for lets say 3 bucks for one showing. Then its gone. I have already encoded my entire 100 hours of home movies and put them on a video server. The only weak link now is still the client side.

Dave

While I certainly like the idea of downloading HD I thnk that at the current 20+ gig per movie we are not there yet, If this did start to catch on you can be sure the ips would start adding charges for extra dowloads, If say you watched 3 movies per week, you are looking at 250+ gig per month.

I think that was a lot of the reason Apple went with a lower res from dvd version, they are getting the movies in at under 10 percent of the HD size

Sharyn

As a "content creator", like most on this board, I will always want some kind of removable, long lived media for my projects. As a former IT manager, I have little confidence in the long term operability of anyone's hard disc or other type of server. If the device doesn't fail on its own, the business model behind its support may. Any tape or disc will outlast any server!

As for Warner's patent on a combo disc, getting a patent is vastly different from getting the licensing rights to produce them commercially - the Blu-Ray group would have to agree.

You know except for the small storage space I still like the idea of HD on DVD disks. They are very cheap and you can fit a lot of VC1 or AVCHD content on a dual layer disk. For short projects you can still fit almost an hour of HDV on a dual layer DVD which isn't that bad considering most people were limiting DVD's to 60 minutes when they wanted the highest quality.

I really wish all new normal DVD players would add HD decoding. I think most consumers would be happy about having a 30 minute HD version on a DVD that they could create for not a whole lot of money.

The great thing about HD-DVD on a normal DVD disk is that it will playback in a HD-DVD player. So when clients get the new players they will still be able to enjoy what disks they already have.

[QUOTE=Don Blish]As a "content creator", like most on this board, I will always want some kind of removable, long lived media for my projects. As a former IT manager, I have little confidence in the long term operability of anyone's hard disc or other type of server. If the device doesn't fail on its own, the business model behind its support may. Any tape or disc will outlast any server!

I agree ... plus with DVDs you get menus, chapters, etc. which make navigation easy ... I suppose that's possible with movie downloads but I'm not sure if that's been done yet.

With Mpeg2 DVD, yep you get menus. But so far, there has been no authoring s/w that allows HDV material to have menus that play on any set top DVD player I have found.

Now, once the authoring tools come out for HD-DVD and blue ray, and these players ship that seem to work correctly, then I guess it may be possible to author these discs, with menus, and burn onto a DVD for cheaper costs.

Now, PremierePro2 does not output HD-DVD or Blue ray discs. Guess these things are just being released, or will be.

So, if I can author my HD material to media that is priced fairly, and players can be got at a fair price, and they have menus, sign me up!

Dave

This combo format is very unlikely to ever come to market. Such a disc would have to be licensed and approved by both consortiums... HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. Since both consortiums couldn't agree to pool their patents, split the license fees and create a common format, it is unlikely that they would agree to allow a hybrid disc which meets the specs of both formats.

The patent could be invalidated in any number of ways. The idea is fairly obvious, and it is quite possible that someone thought of it before these Warner Brothers engineers. There is nothing revolutionary about the idea. Dual-layer DVDs work on the same principle - a partially reflective layer 0 (closest to the read laser), and a fully reflective layer 1 underneath. Dual-layer HD DVDs and dual-layer Blu-Ray discs work on the same principle. This idea is just to blend the formats. So, I wouldn't put too much stock in the patent at this point.

Each disc could only hold the content of a single-layer HD DVD (15 GB) and a single layer Blu-Ray Disc (25 GB). Blu-Ray discs are easier to manufacture as single-layer than dual-layer. But HD DVDs are nearly as easy to manufacture as 30 GB dual-layer HD DVDs as they are in single-layer format. So if you are authoring a major movie title as an HD DVD you would normally want a bit budget of 30 GB. This combo format would severely compromise the capacity of the HD DVD layer.

But worst of all is the idea that the disc manufacturer would have to pay license fees to both consortiums for one disc. So each disc would have twice the license fees. This is more expensive than producing discs in both formats.

Lastly, if you wanted to make a combo DVD/HD DVD/Blu-Ray disc, you would have to mold one substrate with information on both sides. This is highly unusual... CDs, DVDs, HD DVD and Blu-Ray are all molded with information only on one substrate, then 2 substrates are bonded for DVD or HD DVD, and a protective layer is applied to CD or Blu-Ray. I'm not sure how easy this format would be to manufacture... it would probably be very difficult.

In my opinion, this idea is not something to get terrribly excited about at this point.

plus it'll be thick as a LD ;). heh heh heh.

this combo DVD isn't going to hold dual or triple layers of HD-DVD and dual to quadruple layers of BluRay AND dual layers of SD-DVD at the same time... which makes it useless. most SD and HD contents will be on dual layer or more.

re: availability of downloadable HD. one doesn't need to have files as big as 20-40GB. with x264 compression, it can look every bit (pun) as good as the original but at a fraction of the size.

This combo format is very unlikely to ever come to market. Such a disc would have to be licensed and approved by both consortiums... HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. Since both consortiums couldn't agree to pool their patents, split the license fees and create a common format, it is unlikely that they would agree to allow a hybrid disc which meets the specs of both formats.

Yep.

There's so many more issues that are not addressed (in addition to layer configurations, licensing and manufacturing). The patent is merely conceptual in nature and I think these guys at Warner are jumping on the opportunity to patent one or more concepts that may potentially be the solution to this format war. They're hedging their bets on a compromise of sorts and this being one possible solution.

It seems a lot of consumers are more interested in just waiting to see how it shakes out. You have the XBox 360 getting an add-on HD DVD drive (not internal yet), and the Playstation 3 getting a built-in Blu-Ray. If history is an indicator, PS3 will outsell XBox 360 worldwide, around 3 or 4 to 1, if not higher.

I think that's what will determine the battle. At least WMVHD is out of the picture--too much confusion.

heath

At least WMVHD is out of the picture--too much confusion.
What is the confusion over? WMV HD = VC-1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMVHD) is one of the mandatory codecs for both formats. Encoders for WMV have existed for years now.

At least WMVHD is out of the picture--too much confusion.

heath

WMV-HD was sort of a bridge format... something to tide us over until HD DVD came along. WMV-HD discs are very similar to a HD DVD in that they use VC-1 along with Javascript menus. I believe that WMV-HD discs will play in HD DVD players. HD DVD allows for a title to be written to standard DVD-9 discs, in the case where the content producer doesn't need the added capacity of an HD DVD disc... and this would be very similar to a WMV-HD.

In any case, there is never a lack of confusion amongst new standards in the world of video, or technology in general.

I need NO new optical media!!! How often does not ever watch a movie twice?
Dave
Obviously, you don't have kids. :P We have many movies that get watched frequently. Fortunately, as they get older, they don't watch them 4 times in a row, only 3-4 times a week for the first two weeks. Then once ever other month. :D

If a movie isn't worth watching twice, it isn't worth watching once :)

I m sorry if it sounds rather damn, but im relatively new to HD and just want to ask you gurus here. Lets say i have a mpg2 (HDV) file on my laptop, the file is about 4G (which is under the full capacity of a typical DVD). How can i copy these 4G to a DVD. The reason i ask this is that MS Windows doesnt allow to copy more that 2G at a time. Maybe there's a software that by some magic overcomes this 2G limitaton. And then again, after i have my 4G copied to a DVD , which of any currently available DVD players would play it?
Well just basically walk me thru this process.
I'd greatly appreciate any help

you refer to DVD, but you should refer to the standard used for the DVD.
UDF is the standard for most DVD. and there are several version of UDF.
the latest allows for big files, so these days you can find vob files on DVD that are bigger than 1 or 2 gig.
if you burn a data DVD (just burning files on it) , you can use several format that could be incompatible with file naming convention or file size.
Nero is nice enough to warn you when you drop files into a DVD project.
If you go to video DVD, then you must use an authoring program.
This app. will reformat you video (since m2t is not HD-DVD compatible).
unfortunately, very few encoder can spit a decent HD-DVD compatible file.

Ok , thank you for your answer. I dont wanna jump on any of the war fighting formats rite now. Stuff 's not generally available or very expensive to the point where i really cant justify the purchase solely for home use.
As it happens i got Avel Link Player2 and tried it out with my own HD 1080i content. The good thing it played HD mpeg2 beautifully. But on the other hand the DVD looked significantly softer than the original that i played for the comparison sake right off the HDV camera. I m curious if any of you know as to whether avlp2 can output full HD res or at least 1440x1080 (HDV res). The playback on avlp2 looked more like 720p. Not bad, mind you, still nice, but visibly softer, with all the original footage's crispness gone.

I have followed this discussion for a while, and early on had an exposure to WMV-HD as a viable way to distribute HD content. I have also noticed that sales of music CDs are on the way down and that several local record shops including Sam Goody's and Tower Records have closed. People are carrying digital music players, but not 5" CD players. Hello!!!

As a maker of videos, I shifted to all HD production last spring and felt it was wrong to sell clients on this concept but have no way of delivering. I have a problem with the wait-and-see format decision. So far, the blanks for the two HD disc formats are prohibitive in cost, considering we go through about a dozen blanks in the course of release a wedding or event video. So WMV-HD has worked for me, and the cost of the HD disc players is comparable to HD compatible computers including the notebook similar to what I am using. Also, for about $1000 customers can get an HD camcorder like the Sony C3 or Canon HV10 and play back their events right from HDV tape. For less than 10% of the cost of a player, they can buy an external hard drive on which they can have their event video in a less compressed format than WMV-HD. Or we can put the WMV-HD video up to about 80 minutes on an old style DVD for direct play in Media Player, or transfer to their hard drive for similar play.

This past week we installed Verizon FIOS TV with an HD DVR box. We learned that we can upgrade this to accept streaming video from any of the computers in our house, and that includes WMV-HD.

So I am telling my clients to consider integrating a computer with their HDTV and look to technologies other than disc. I have questions as to whether HDDVD or Blu-ray will ever be commerically viable.

If a movie isn't worth watching twice, it isn't worth watching once :)
I love this quote!

You will see it next week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070104/tc_nm/timewarner_dvd_dc_1

You will see it next week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070104/tc_nm/timewarner_dvd_dc_1

I'll believe it when I see a viable shipping product... But I'm all for it if they can make it work. I just have a hard time believeing that a major studio comes out of nowhere with a patent on layering multiple formats and then succeeds in producing a disc format that many electronics manufacturers like LG who are not specifically affiliated with either camp (and one of the primary proponents of dual format players) has failed to do. I wonder who their disc engineering and production company is that developed this (if it's true). I hope it's not just some announcement and we still have to wait months (or never) for such a disc to materialize. But I'm somewhat skeptical that such a multilayer disc can reliably play in current HD-DVD and BluRay players. The reflectivity requirements for BD and HDDVD are nearly identical, but by placing BD layers behind the HD-DVD layers (or vice versa) how do they expect current players to be able to adapt to the proper focal length and see through the primary two layers.

OTOH, I saw this same thing referenced elsewhere today and the "insider source" indicated that the discs will be BluRay on one side and HD-DVD on the other and not the multi-layered disc as previously discussed. That would make a whole lot more sense even though it wouldn't be quite as cool.

Anyway, if they can do it, I say bring it on! Let's get this whole HD disc format "war" over with and move on with our lives.

So I am telling my clients to consider integrating a computer with their HDTV and look to technologies other than disc. I have questions as to whether HDDVD or Blu-ray will ever be commerically viable.

Mark, that may be a workable interim solution, but also not as convenient for many people. BluRay and HD-DVD will be commercially viable rather soon. BluRay players are now priced as low as $649, with LG/Philips releasing models under $450 here in the next 10 weeks. I think a lot of people forget that we're now seeing all the nay-saying we saw with DVD 10 years ago. Oh, it will never work, oh it's too expensive, blah blah blah... The first DVD players were $1600 from Sony and Pioneer. It took longer for DVD to come down in price than BluRay has.. In fact, DVD players didn't break the $600 barrier until nearly 18 months after their initial debut. Sony claims they will have BluRay players in the $300 range by January '08. Toshiba is claiming HD-DVD players less than $200 by then.

As for other alternatives such as downloadable / on-demand. iTunes type systems, etc.. That day is approaching, but it won't replace purchasing of video on disc for a while. In fact, it hasn't really done away with purchasing audio on CD either. I still prefer to buy albums on CD if I in fact want the entire album. Why? Superior quality compared to MP3/AAC and I don't have to deal with all the DRM restrictions and issues of what I buy throu ITMS can't be played on my PDA or my Sonos without annoying work-arounds (burn to audio CD, then re-encode to MP3 or whatever - loss of quality over the inferior quality to begin with). Same with video. We're starting to see video through ITMS and similar at "near-DVD" quality. Right now, the bandwidth and delivery methods just aren't there on a large enough scale to set up millions of potential customers on a site like iTunes where they can download the same quality of movies they can buy on HDDVD or BluRay. And that won't happen for a while. We still have tens of millions of people in the USA on dial-up because that's still all they can get (or all they're interested in) because their only other choices are shoddy wifi solutions (neighbors sharing T1s and all that) or satellite.

I think that one day streaming media will become a true alternative to disc for movie-goers. I truly think that the optical disc as we know it will die with BluRay and HDDVD though. There are other technologies coming down the pipeline that will offer vast improvements and don't operate off of a spinning disc approach. As I posted (perhaps it was here somewhere) before... The choice of blue diode lasers to create higher density disc media was somewhat strange. 50GB ROM in the same size of a CF card can be manufactured complete with data in place (manufactured that way and not burned or written to, it's originated ROM not PROM or FLASH which would be ungoldy expensive in such a capacity right now) and we're talking production costs of $15 per 50GB ROM. Yes, that's hugely expensive considering manufacture costs of BluRay discs are still pennies. But if some industry like Hollywood would invest into such a technology pricing would change drastically almost over night.

Also, from imdb.com:

;End of the Hi-Def DVD Format War?

Warner Home Video may have found a solution to the format war between the Sony-developed Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD high-definition video discs: a hybrid disc that it is calling Total HD. Today's (Thursday) New York Times reported that the one-disc-fits-all development will be announced by Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, which opens on Monday. In an interview with the Times, Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, described the new disc as an elegant way for studios to make their content available more widely "in a way that is not conceding defeat" for whichever format they have been backing. Initially, the Times observed, the new disc would add a fourth DVD version of every available movie or TV show, but Warner is seeking to find a method for incorporating the standard DVD format on Total HD, thereby combining all formats on a single disc. Meanwhile, South Korea's LG Electronics, said on Wednesday that it plans to unveil a player capable of playing either Blu-ray or HD DVD discs at the CES. The company provided no further details other than that the players will become available during the first quarter of this year.'

heath

But I'm somewhat skeptical that such a multilayer disc can reliably play in current HD-DVD and BluRay players. The reflectivity requirements for BD and HDDVD are nearly identical, but by placing BD layers behind the HD-DVD layers (or vice versa) how do they expect current players to be able to adapt to the proper focal length and see through the primary two layers.
The reflectivity requirements for BD and HD-DVD differ enough to be combined on the same face of a disk. The distance of the point of focus is totally not the same: 0.1mm for a BD and 0.65mm for a HD-DVD.

But it's not clear today if the Total-HD proposition made by Warner uses a dual HD format on a same face, or one HD format on each face of the disk.

Wait and see...

On the paper, it's even possible to combine the DVD SD format, the HD-DVD, format and the Bluray format on the same face of a disk: the HD-DVD norms allow to have DVD SD layer (at 0.6mm of distance) readable by the red laser of a standard DVD player, combined with a second layer, not in DVD SD but in HD-DVD (this format is called by the HD-DVD consortium "Twin DVD" --approved in the v1.2 norms of HD-DVD--).
Why not creating a 3 layers disk combining a "Twin DVD" + Bluray on the same face? The costs of production seem today a litle to high to allow this solution... but even at a raisonable cost, the marketing guys of the Studios will be not happy: they want to keep the 2 segments separated, the existing DVD SD market, and the HD market. Like that they are more sure that the consumers will pay a second time the news HD version of their favorite films...

sounds like it's only HD-DVD&BluRay only, no SD.

but even with that in mind, i doubt they can do DUAL layer HD-DVD AND DUAL layer BluRay at the same time. with 3 layers to work with, they can do single layer on one format and dual on the other or just single layer all around and pick+choose format.

what's screwed up is how this is a "fix" to the obvious problem of having a unified format IN THE FIRST PLACE!

the thinking is, let's see how the limited market is going to accept both formats. the response is, meh. the reply from the industry to that reponse is, ok let's combine both formats... AFTER THE FORMATS are out in the market. *sigh*. so.very.stupid.

It doesn't solve the 'real' war, the need for one format to dominate and be a quarantee of widespread distribution. One program, one disk, single solution. Otherwise, you're still having to support both formats in front end. Nothing changes. In fact, you now may have to entertain two formats on two disks.

"You more you mess with the plumbing, the easier it is to clog."

If a movie isn't worth watching twice, it isn't worth watching once :)

Lovely quote, and I agree!

If I like a movie, most of the time I will rewatch it. Some movies are more rewatchable then others, but I still think it's worth having them, because I love them.
And I also don't want to go to a pure download-style, because I love having a closet with dvd's.
It's like with music: if they really make the cd's nice, with nice artwork and digipacks and stuff, then I am thinking: hey, I pay extra, but I get extra. It's a nice collector's thing. And I'm not someone who buys a movie three times for the change in the cover only, but I love it when there is a movie that I really like, and they put it on DVD with nice extra's, and nice artwork. It's very physical, and it gives me more satisfaction then just watching it on a computer screen, selecting it from a map from my Hard Drive.
But to each his own, of course.

I like the quote about buying a DVD if you'll watch it more than once. My wife has us on Netflix, but I was, until recently, still buying DVDs without even seeing the movie ever until I bought it, or just buying a movie I've seen and NOT watching it. It saves me more money this way and I'm not trying to sell a $15 DVD for $5!

The only exception is Criterion (www.criterion.com)--I'll still buy DVDs from this company! Even if I haven't seen the film.

heath