Format war may be almost over?
 

LG has announced a Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo PC drive and a possible HD-DVD/Blu-ray combo player:

Article (Japanese)

$1200 is too expensive. You could snap up a nice PS3 and Xbox/HD DVD bundle for less. I'm interested in the drive inside though and how Hitachi got the lens assembly for all working.

This guy is not impressed...

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...gvisit=y&npu=y

Now you're talking, Harrison! That's my kinda DVD player combo. : )

Another complaint article.
http://rss.engadgethd.com/2007/01/09...lu-ray-player/

Ok, so it seems the war is still strong...

I'm not faulting LG. I think they'll get things together. What's exciting is that the drive that supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray media is going to be available on it's own as well.

Hopefully we'll have a few drives like this by years end. Part of me wants to build a kick ass HTPC system with over a TB of storage and having a single drive that supports both discs would make it a lot easier.

Just hook up an external HD-DVD drive to this and add extra storage and you’re all set.
http://chinese.engadgethd.com/2007/0...lu-ray-burner/
It would have been a killer setup if it offered an extra bay for an internal HD-DVD player.

To be fair, I’m going to throw in a positive article.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070111/cgth036.html?.v=82

It's official, the format war is over
 

I just ran across this one at a tech site. HD-DVD is the winner. While CES is running, the porn industry has a conference. They are choosing HD-DVD. Discussion is in the article linked.

TGDaily article on it

Interesting!! Guess that decides it. Now, if ICANN just finalizes the .XXX internet address, things will be really decided.

Studio adoption is a very significant indicator, and if HD-DVD win's because it's cheaper, well that fits the bottom-line margins for a great many companies (like all of them :)

We know that LG and others will be releasing multiformat players to solve the headache of end users having to choose one player over the other. But these players do not address the front-end issues of studios having to own two complete editing systems to meet a dual market that has a single purpose.

I really don't care whom wins. I just want one. However, this whole issue of 'physical' disk delivery is changing. I don't know who will win this format war, but I can understand that the next format war to come along won't involve a physical disk and player.

Moderator note:

I combined the two threads about this format "war". They where just a couple
of lines apart in the same forum, please don't create a new topic for something
that's already being talked about!

Second I changed the title. Nothing is official until one (or both) of the parties
throw their towel in the ring. Up until that point it's all speculation and looking
at market numbers.

Please refrain from stating something is the case when it's obviously not true.

We can say that the format war is heating up and 2007 will no doubt be an
interesting year for both formats!

"but HD DVD is easier to produce, cheaper to produce and there are more HD DVD players in homes than there are Blu-ray players, for example in the Xbox 360."

They mentioned the XBOX360 but they should have also mentioned the HD-DVD add-on. Saying it the way they did can get your average non-gamer to believe that the XBOX360 has a HD-DVD drive built in. Also they completely left out the Play Station 3 which sold over 1,000,000 units in the US alone. I’m sure most people can agree that Blu-Ray wouldn’t have stood a chance if Sony hasn’t included Blu-Ray but Sony was smart.

The adult industries are just one of the deciding factors on the outcome of this war. The fact that Panasonic, Sony and Hitachi will release Blu-Ray camcorders in the coming months is an even bigger deciding factor. We already have camcorders whose discs are compatible with Blu-Ray players from Sony and Panasonic and JVC said the Everio GZ-HD7 will have some compatibility with Blu-Ray.

This war is far from over.

A couple of points to add:
First, the articles quoted both are spurious at best. The BD consortium has not at all commented (nor has the HD DVD consortium) on the adult industry, in either a positive nor negative fashion.
Second, the timing of these articles, both tied to the same video company, seems very suspicious given the fact that the HD DVD manufacturers are at a significant disadvantage and the adult industry trade show started the same day that these articles came out.
Third, these articles put the BD consortium at a serious disadvantage. The BEST they could do is to come out and say that they do not have any intent of limiting content. Does anyone expect the BD consortium to come out and say "We support the adult content industry?" That isn't going to happen.

HD DVD cannot play on XBoxes without an addon box; there are over 1 million Playstations with BD already installed. Only one major studio is supporting HD DVD exclusively, and only one other major studio supporting HD DVD at all.
The entire subject smells bad at all levels, and while it's a serious consideration, it would be most important to clarify the source of the information, as to the best of my knowledge (and having spoken with a few AVN companies this week at CES) that several adult companies have already released titles on BD, and moreover, the BD consortium hasn't said anything one way or another.
It would be exceptionally difficult for BD to limit content. Yes, BD is more expensive to burn, but not more expensive for blank media, nor more expensive for packaging, nor more expensive for distribution, storage, nor authoring, and those are the salient points.
What I personally believe is that a fairly small studio is tweaked that they cannot afford to have BD burned, but can afford to have HD DVD burned, and that has turned into a statement of "The industry is no longer supporting BD." Until I hear a statement from the BD consortium or one of their members, I'm not buying the story of anyone being limited, nor of an industry ignoring BD. FWIW, I was given a copy of the first adult film on BD. That's the only comment I'll make about the DVD. The point is, BD *is* being used by the adult industry, because there are already DVDs in the format that people can buy.

Both formats are viable; players for both formats are selling, and there are now 3 dual format players coming online (too bad that CD's are a casualty of one of them). I suspect that they'll both be with us for a while. Additionally, there are companies who have now announced dual format DVDs with both BD and HD DVD content on them. I don't believe this is going to be like the Beta vs VHS wars that some of us witnessed 20 years ago.

To avoid this thread being locked down, please avoid discussing the subject in any but the most professional, adult terms? Please remember that inappropriate material or discussion is not permitted on DVInfo.net.

Well, there's no way to get around it - the porn industry is a huge, multi-billion dollar business, and if all the new adult movies are in HD-DVD, you're dang right that's going to change the scales of balance. Just as PS3 changed the balance, so does this.

Still hard for me to beleive that there is a war at all as it's such a waste, but what do I know?

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

The correct figure is closer to 600,000. Sony said 1M, but shipped information only says 400,000 for initial and 200,000 since then.

DSE, I did hesitate before posting as I am aware of the policy. It was actually something one of my cohorts had pointed out about 6 mths ago as a possible make/break on the format wars. Some folks are saying the internet drops the importance of that industries selections, but evidence seems to point to an expansion of the market in brick and mortar.

I do family stuff, so am not involved at all as it is bad for business. I just try to follow what all the news is.

That's still short the sub 50k units of HD DVD sold thus far.
I don't know how many Sony has actually shipped, I guess. The press release from Sony said 1m, Peddie says 1m, but if you've got accurate information of only 600K, then the others would be incorrect.

Doing a little research I found out that the 1 million figure is for the entire North American sales and the US sales is close to 700,000. That is the 2006 sales numbers by the way so up until this day, a lot more than 700,000 have been sold in the US.

As far as HD disc players are concerned, I recently bought a Sony Playstation 3 and think it has a lot going for it. I haven't tested its HD playback capabilities yet, but if they work then the PS3 is an easy choice compared to paying a similar price for just an HD player. By the way, the base model PS3 is only $499, or same as the retail price of standard HD-DVD players (with no game capabilities). The PS3 looks good, saves space and serves a lot of different functions, if you can turn off the games long enough to do anything else.

LG Hybrid HD DVD/Blu-ray Player Getting Canned?
 

Here is a USA today article with console sales numbers.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/...ry-sales_x.htm

Here’s another similar article.
http://hdtv.engadget.com/2007/01/14/...-be-sold-sans/

One thing worth noting here is that in just a few weeks Sony shipping almost 700,000 game systems to North America capable of playing high-definition Blu-ray movie discs. At that rate there should be several million such players in circulation in the U.S. by the end of 2007, making it easily the most widely installed HD playback device.

Yes, the installed HD base definitely has Sony's BD at the front of the pack now. The question now is if it would have been more advantageous to ship the PS3 a year ago for around 300-400 bucks with a DVD, then put out a $500 BD player in Q4 2006.

I don't know, in the end it really looks to me like Sony has forced their gaming fans into spending an extra one or two hundred bucks so they can claim HD player dominance.

You could say the same thing about the PS2 when Sony decided to put a DVD player inside. Sega wanted to release a cheep 199 dollar system early without a DVD player and guess what happened to them. Even the GameCube couldn’t do so will because of a lack of a DVD player.

I don’t think Sony is worried at all that they currently have a lot less units out than the Wii and the XBOX360 but the PS3 haven’t got released in Europe yet and most of their best game are coming out in March. Once Blu-Ray wins the battle you will see an even greater surge of people buying a PS3.

In fairness, the PS3 scenario is a bit different. This time they've forced their proprietary technology into the product at great expense and product delay. They've essentially shoved the BD player into the product for two reasons: get PS3 owners to start purchasing BD movies (important); give their marketing department some meat (major). After forcing every hardcore PS gamer (and I mean hard core, the average schmoe doesn't drop half a K on a video game system) into buying a BD player, the Sony marketing machine can begin touting all kinds of BD numbers. And then they can make "projections" that show phenominal growth based on extrapulating data from other BD players and applying it to PS3s (attach rate, etc..). I think Fox has already done this with some press release that had a ridiculous graphic showing BD skyrocketing in sales while HD DVD just flatlines.

Technologically Blue-ray is fine, but speaking from a consumer standpoint.... You know, Sony tried to trick us with a fictitious movie reviewer, then installed hacked back door root kits on their customer's computers. Now they've forced their game fans into buying a $200 BD player to inflate sales numbers. Honestly, I just don't want them calling the shots on the next (and probably last major) home video format. And don't get me started on Disney and Fox; I remember DIVX and how they treated DVD owners.

Well said. The DVD player is the PS2 was a great move on Sony's part - their main competition at the time was Sega Dreamcast, which in most ways was a superior system, but it didn't have a DVD player.

That turned out to be a killer, because at the time, DVDs were just exploding onto the market, and the player were still expensive ($150 plus). A sony 2 cost about the same as an average player, so many people said, "what the heck? I might as well get a game system too."

But this is different, as you say. I no, I don't trust Sony either.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

I always thought that everything was gonna jump physical media and go straight to broadband download?!

Not a chance.
A-world pipes aren't big enough.
B-Most consumers like physical devices. The next generation won't care as much as this one, though.
C-The studios aren't ready to let media go straight down the pipes as well.
It'll happen, but not in any real near time.
As a guy that owns a couple thousand DVDs, and a couple dozen BD/HD DVDs, I don't particularly want to be downloading the media anyway. But I'm old school. :-)

For John Vincent:
I can understand your point, but for clarity;
you're talking about three separate different divisions, all unrelated. The RootKit issue was actually a BMG initiative undertaken long before Sony bought BMG, and when Sony discovered what BMG had done, heads rolled. In other words, they unknowingly bought the problem.
Regardless of what you think the reasoning might be, BD was always intended as a means of initially introducing the consumer to BD, since day one. Makes perfect sense to me.
I can think of a lot of more ethically-challenged examples on the part of other big companies as well. Dishonesty to a point, seems to be the watchword of most major corporations whether we're talking about Ford and tires, Walmart and insurance, or any number of issues. If you don't trust Sony, you can't trust any of the others, either. From my perspective, due to the internal competition, Sony is actually more trustworthy than most of the others in the game.

You are basically right on all you said with a few exceptions.

Ford did not supply the tires, Firestone did. Most all the failures were caused by the consumer driving on under inflated tires. Look at other vehicles as you drive today and you will see that consummers still don't keep them even close to being inflated properly. I see tire failures all of the time. That is why it is illegal for truckers to drive on underinflated tires, and they are ticketed.
A few years ago, while driving a freeway in California, I managed to get a driver going 80 mph to pull over, after much effort understandably, to show her that one of her tires was under inflated. I asked her to touch the tire and she did. Well, just briefly, as it was so hot as to burn your fingers! That is the main reason that tires fail. They are opperated way out of their safety parameters. Kind of like dragging your Sony Z1 behind your pickup to get that great shot and then blaming Sony because the camera did not hold up!

Secondly, Walmart does not hide it's insurance policies, you know going in and are free to go elsewhere! Most workers are part time and all are free to leave at anytime.

Not quite the same with what Sony did.

As far as your A, B, and C remarks you are dead on. I want that product in my hand. I also hate buying software, like CineForm, as a download only. I paid $400.00 and I want that hard copy and I did not get it sent to me. One bitch with CineForm!

And, Hollywood wants us to get hard copies to! Someone can always hack into everything on-line.

JMHO----Mike

I'm sure that was the reasoning. I'm just not sure it makes sense - sort of mixing their apples and oranges, as it were. Here's why:

If the format (Blue-ray) fails to catch on, even despite the PS3, then it was a big-time failure. As has been pointed out in several places, the addition of Blue-ray to the PS3 crimped the PS3's release and added several hundred dollars to the price tag - an awful lot if you just want to play games and don't want a Blue-ray player. Most normal (ie - non-dvinfo guys) people I know could care less about Blue-ray; they just want to play to coolest games. HD-DVD certainly can provide that as a format. Cool game system is one thing; a new DVD/storage format totally sperate thing.

As to ethics, I also see nothing wrong with what Sony's done here - I just wonder if they're trying to shove a square peg down a round hole.

I'm not sure they are more ethical than any other company - they clearly want to dominate the market and have done, as far as can can tell, everything legally possible to do so. Given their past attempts to heavily regulate formats they control, there is a legit concern about their domination of the "next big thing" in the format wars.
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

lemme weigh my 2 cents in here.

if you've been keeping a tab on CES happenings you'll see efforts to combine both formats on the combo player level and the manufacturing level (THD).

if you've taken business 101, then it's fairly obvious that both format/standard makers should have unified BEFORE coming to market. look at the "fixes" that are costly and just plain ole' stupid from a logical point of view. if they didn't debut either format until one unified format was created at least 2 years ago, PS3 would be on that platform and XB360 would have debuted a unified HD USB player and we'd all have an early adopter's piece of hardware that will still play ONE unified format. now the industry will pay for their stupid mistakes multiple-fold in the years to come. if they just knew enough about the market to turn around in the middle of creating these platforms, they would have captured more of the market. instead, more confusion ensues, people stick with SD. HD's will catch on... but not fast enough. it'll take on LaserDisc and hell LD's are STILL AROUND! lol

Well actually, from a technical standpoint, the BD discs are much, much more fragile than HD-DVD. The HD-DVDs are simply going to last longer, so data recovery/duplication costs become a factor. Also, the BD media does cost more to produce, and does not scale as well as HD-DVD.

Yes, members of that industry are not going to go exclusive to one format and completely alienate owners of the competing hardware. However, within the adult industry, there are some major players, and they have all pretty much swayed to HD-DVD. I would assume this was done because HD-DVD, being very close to current DVD technology, is more cost effective in the short-term and mid-term.

With processing power advancing how it is, the codec is becoming more important than the storage medium. I don't know how many of you follow the divx/xvid scene, but the latest generation of codecs are very, very close to DVD quality video (already at DVD quality audio), in a CD-size footprint. The consumers are still kind of in the dark with regard to perceptual compression, but I think it will come to the forefront as modular, software-upgradable internet-ready dvd/bd/hd-dvd players become prevalent. (When distribution networks figure out how to stream content to a box in your living room, they will want to be able to upgrade that format and add DRM restrictions without your permission, so that's where the live upgrade idea comes from.)

You are absolutely right. That you can have a single disc that supports both formats is incredibly frustrating for manufacturers. Consumers will not want to accept the added cost of the second format because nobody is going to pay twice for the same movie in two formats. Sony will push BD-exclusive content that won't be allowed on the HD-DVD side with the idea that consumers will buy the BD player over the HD-DVD to enjoy that additional content. But by then, consumers will be able to easily find that extra content online for free, whether it's legal or not.

You raise many good points!

This will probably end up like the DVD +/- R deal. These days who cares if it is +R or -R? My burner does both as well as DL and it was $39...

While it seems like too much money and time at the moment, those big boys will give in as they see the BD movies collect dust on the shelves of Best Buy.


I won't buy an HD-DVD or BD for quite sometime. By the time I do, some other format will wipe them both out more than likely. Look how cheap flash media is these days...



my $.02

Yes, but the difference between BD and HD is much greater than between +/- R, so it will take longer for combo writer drives to come down to a reasonable price. For me, the cost of media (factoring in degradation) will be the deciding factor, and that's why I am biased towards HD.

But I don't own either at the moment, nor do I have any plans to do so in the immediate future :) I completely agree that we should simply wait until one format wins.

That seems to be what a lot of people are going to do - including myself for the time being.

Is it at all possible that in 3 or so years that some other, even better product will come along, something like an Ultra-HD (ie -4k res) holographic recorder that will kill both formats?

I guess what I'm trying to say is with so many people staying on the fence, doesn't it leave the door open for some other product to wipe them both out?

Or is that level of technology too far away (say 10 years or so) so we will have to pick one or the other, or both?
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

Well first lets remember that HD DVD isn't even a year old yet, and BD is even younger. I not 100% sure, but I don't think DVD was doing as well at the one year mark.

As for 4K stuff, we're not going to be 100% HDTV in the US in 3 years, I don't think consumers will be ready to re-purchase 4K tv sets at that point. Plus the broadcast industry is still revving up HD. Cable, Satellite and TV companies are not going to move to a new format any time soon.

Just my two cents.

I think if you follow history back, you'll see this happens a great deal.