DV Info Net - Can we safely say the HD war is a draw -- at least for now?

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- - Can we safely say the HD war is a draw -- at least for now? (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/digital-video-industry-news/95421-can-we-safely-say-hd-war-draw-least-now.html)

I'm going to finally burn one and try it out on my friend's PS3, for the heck of it, and find an HD DVD player and do the same thing. Someone once mentioned to make it withOUT a menu.

Customflix offers Blu-Ray (720p, natch) DVDs (WMV HD now, too, HD DVD coming soon):

http://www.customflix.com/Products/HighDefinition.jsp

heath

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khoi Pham (Post 690788)

Not a draw, according to Nielsen VideoScan as of 5/20, Blu-ray leads HD-DVD in overall software sales, 57% to 43% since both was launched. But in that last few months Blu-ray is outselling HD-DVD 67% to 33% year-to-date for 2007. That's a 2 to 1 margin.
As for hardware, Blu-ray has the exclusive support from Sony, Pionner, Panasonic, Samsung, Phillips and almost all of the computer industry, HD DVD has only Toshiba and MS and maybe some Chinese brand about to jump in, in the last few weeks Toshiba has been dropping their prices and give away 5 free movies, if that is not the sign of desparation, I don't know what is, they drop it so much I'm sure that it has to be sell at a loss, no major brand like Pionner, Panasonic will want to jump into HD DVD and compete at that price, sure it is tempting but I think the best HD DVD can hope for is just hang in there, no way they could win, HD DVD only has exclusive support of 1 Studio and that is Universal, Blu-ray has 5 exclusive studio, Disney, Fox, MGM, Lionsgate and Sony, so if you want to go out and buy Pirates of the Caribean and play it on your HD DVD player, forget it, Universal is the loaner, when do you think they will go neutral and start selling Blu-ray disc?
HD DVD is more mature than Blu-ray right now as far as extras goes, but Blu-ray will catch up, beside when I'm watching a movie right now, I just want to watch it, I don't gives a hoop about picture in a picture or connect to the internet for some other stuff, I just want to watch the movie.
HD DVD burner is no where in sight, but Blu-ray burner is now available, for us that is good, we can now deliver full author Blu-ray disc to our clients.
I got a PS3 awhile back, cuz I am a movie buff, I just want to watch HD movies, but now it as become the heart of my media room, it plays awsome Blu-ray movies, it upconvert SD DVD to 1080P, it plays my SD card picture, it play cds, it play games, I'm not a gamer but now I am, playing game in a 5.1 surround sound system is awsome, I can surf on the internet with it with the wireless keyboard and mouse plug into its 4 usb ports, but most of all it is my demo center for my work, I upload my HD demo into its hard drive and show my work straight from it.
The war is good, it droves the prices down fast, but cheaper is not always better, I think software is the key, no matter how cheap the players are, if there are movies that people want to watch but they don't make it for HD DVD then I don't think that format can win.

Nielsen VideoScan don't poll all stores. There are some fairly large online outfits that they don't count so I believe in their numbers but I'm staking anything of value to them.

Samsung ships HD DVD enabled laptops and will come out with the BDP-UP5000 dual format player this year so they certainly aren't exclusive. http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/12/s...player-on-the/

Dell is the only exclusive PC manufactuer that I know and they're fading fast. HP sells both platforms. You can buy Media Centre PC with HD DVD drives or their HD100 USB HD DVD player
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...lang=en-US&s=1

Apple will be adding Blu-ray authoring in the future is my guess but to date they are only supporting HD DVD in DVD Studio Pro 4

The war is not winnable by either company. Blu-ray has required a cartel like hold on studios to survive. HD DVD has required charing less than competition in price to survive. If anyone see an "awesome" movie on Blu-ray you can rest assured that the same movie would look "awesome" on HD DVD. In fact many dual format owners claim that their HD DVD discs still look superior overall.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zsolt Gordos (Post 690831)

Does anyone have a clue why no HD DVD burners are out yet, while more and more blu ray burners around?
I guess its to avoid piracy...:P It also means blu ray is better protected.
If this is true, it may mean blu ray will win, the HD DVD makers will lose sales once burners come out. Its code is cracked anyway.

Btw. blu ray shall win - it has the potential for larger file sizes. Think about 2k and 4k and stuff like that coming to homes in a few years. TV screen diameters and resolution increasing all the time. 1920x1080 is not the end.

The disks coming from a face lifted DVD production facility cannot be the future. Even if B. Gates himself supports it.

HD DVD burners are coming this summer according to gentleman named Robert Zohn of Value Electronics in Scarsdale NY. Blu-ray was conceived as a recording format so the there was a very small jump. HD DVD's code is not cracked. AACS keys were discovered and that affects both platforms because they both us AACS. Blu-ray offers BD+ as an adjunct to protection but to date no discs are using it.

Both formats are limited by a maximum of 1080p resolution so regardless of filesize you'll never go above 1080p with the current specification. Here's an interesting post that was closed down on AVS regarding a simultaneous release of Flags of our Fathers on Blu-ray and HD DVD. That Blu-ray disc was encoded at a higher rate in AVC which meant it was 13GB larger in size over the VC-1 HD DVD version

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=855599

As you can see the extra space is superfluous. The picture may even be softer than the VC1 version which sames 13GB.

Those who use Cineform and Red codec and now Apple's ProRes 422 should know that size doesn't equate to a better picture. It's about what you do with the encoding that makes or breaks the picture.

Can anyone confirm that all Blu-Ray players (not just the PS3) will play M2t burned tot a DVD-R/+R disk?

to answer to the question :Can we safely say the HD war is a draw ?
we can say yes, there is no war and no winner. The industry has proven that nobody needs HD, at least not in the proposed conditions.
DVD is still there and rock solid.
If you really need HD, there are solutions (mainly related to computer equipment) that perfectly fit the HD editing workflow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Lohman (Post 695569)

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...oap060107.html

An interesting article but I don't think they gave enough weight to the importance of price ... until blu-ray is about the same price as HD-DVD, blu-ray won't win. Right now, HD DVD players are half the price of blu-ray players.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Lammey (Post 695580)

This is the stragegy Toshiba is apparantly using, and only time will tell if it's successful, but I have a feeling that the "larger=better" mentailty of the public will make Blu-Ray (with its higher capacity) the winner in the end.

FWIW, I almost pulled the trigger on the Toshiba unit at Sams Club for $243 last weekend, but the lack of software and the chance of ending up with a dead end format put me off. When I was a kid, I asked for an Intellivision instead of an Atari, and ended up with a technically superior machine that had little industry support. Never again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Lowe (Post 695842)

Intellivision was pretty cool and frankly, I enjoyed that box.... I wouldn't regret that move.. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Lammey (Post 695580)

An interesting article but I don't think they gave enough weight to the importance of price ... until blu-ray is about the same price as HD-DVD, blu-ray won't win.

But Blu-ray is apparently winning handily in terms of number of discs being sold, and that's even with Toshiba players selling as low as $249 some places. The article addressed the price issue and came to this conclusion:

"If that's all you have going for you, cheaper might win you a battle or two, but without more studio and industry support, it's never going to win you the war."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Lammey (Post 695580)

Amazon has the HD-A2 for 300 bucks and I understand that people been getting it for as low as 250 but that player doesn’t even do 1080p. The most affordable 1080p HD DVD player is the HD-A20 and it’s priced at around 400 dollars at Amazon. The new second generation Sony Blu-Ray player the BDP-S300 is only 500 dollars and it has HDMI 1.3. You would have to get the Toshiba HD-XA2 if you wanted HDMI 1.3 and it cost around 600 dollars. Anyway there is already a Blu-Ray player that has the same upscaling capabilities as the XA2 and it’s the Samsung BD-P1200 with a price that's only several dollars more than the XA2.

Yes you get a whole lot more free movies if you buy an HD DVD player but realistically the prices are about the same.

-EDIT-
I didn’t see Kevin Shaw’s post when I wrote this

One thing I forgot to mention, Panasonic's own second generation player, the DMP BD10A will come with 5 free movies and the unit is priced at around 600 dollars. I’m hoping Sony does that to their BDP-S300. If they do Panasonic will have to lower their player’s price by 100 dollars as well.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/h...r-hd-dvd-read/

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/...-Targets.xhtml
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/s..._as_sales_jump

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Cinema/DVD/H7L2L2R8
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/06/12...th-600gb-disk/

Can we have a section just for High Definition Formats?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira (Post 695892)

...but that player doesn’t even do 1080p.

Personally, I see this is a good thing. Its a lower-cost, entry level setup that will still be quite a bit better than SD. From what I've seen, most-if not all- HDTV screens smaller than 42 inches don't even have 1080p capability. Considering that you can get a decently sized (32"+)720p/1080i screen for about $600, I'd rather have that instead of doubling the price for something marginally larger with 1080p. Assuming there's a large portion of the market filled with these 720p screens, spending that extra cash on a 1080p player doesn't make sense.

I think having that lower-cost option will help to sway more people over instead of bludgeoning people with one high-priced option, telling them its such better quality. While most everyone on this board knows, and can probably see that 1080p is the best option available- not everyone out there in the general public is entirely convinced. Heck, I know people that think VHS is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and can't understand what all the fuss about this "High Definition" is all about...

Just my two cents...

In the end it's all speculation anyway. Both are here at the moment and likely stay for a while.

I'm hoping that by the end of the year it will be clear where this is going....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw (Post 695885)

The key phrase is "without more studio and industry support" ... Is there anything preventing the studios (except Sony) that have pledged exclusivity to blu-ray to change their minds once they see that the majority of the public has HD DVD players? Besides, I don't think the average consumer knows anything about the studio and industry support or storage issues ... I think the thought process goes something like this ... "ok, this plays HD DVDs? Great. And it costs half the price of that other player that plays high def DVDs? And there's no difference in the picture? Great, I'll get the one that's half the price."

To put it another way, the industry and studio support that blu-ray currently enjoys may evaporate if they don't start pricing their players as cheaply as HD DVD players.

1080p outputs aren't necessary. The movie is stored as 1080p24 on disc. Thus when the movie is output on a 249.99 HD-D2 (Costco, Sams Club) it's output at 1080i60. Thus it contains the full progressive picture that is delivered after your HDTV de-interlaces the signal properly. Assuming that your TV doesn't blow the de-interlacing the picture quality will be no different regardless of if you player outputs 1080i or 1080p.

HDMI 1.3 is another relatively worthless feature. So it transfers native bit-stream TrueHD or DTS HD. That's great but none of your titles are sending native THD or DTSHD out of the player. They both employ internal mixers so that you can modify the various audio streams. Then the player outputs this mix as PCM to your receiver. So ....you guessed it. You spend a bunch of money for a HDMI 1.3 player and AVR only to have that player working with PCM audio which could have been easily accomplished with a HDMI 1.2 player which is much cheaper.

I just mated my HD DVD player with a Sharp Aquos 32" and damn it looks good. My suggestion is to forget the format war and get what makes the most sense for you. Neither format will be obsolete...especially to those on this board...it's not like you all don't have video cameras ;}

If you can’t see a difference between 1080i and 1080p than why did Toshiba put 1080p in all of the higher priced players? Having a player that can output 24p will give you a better picture no matter how good your TV is and if you’re TV has 120hz and 24p input, the picture will look incredible. Same with HDMI 1.3, why does Toshiba have it in the HD-XA2? Besides the sound options, it does give you 1.8 times the colors if you have a compatible TV and some of them are already out.

Players such as the Toshiba HD-XA2 and the Samsung BD-1200 are fully worth it for the features they include and people should not feel cheated.

Higher numbers and more specs always impress people.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...kbuster18.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6762621.stm

Retailers in Australia did the exact same thing when they said its best to carry just Blu-Ray products.

The impact of this announcement might be big but if Amazon does that, well….

HD DVD players apparently selling like hotcakes

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira (Post 698317)

Amazon won't do it the HD DVD players are amongst the best selling DVD players.

The key is Wal-Mart whether you shop there are not Wal-Mart are the walls of Jericho that must come down.

I'm looking forward to CEDIA and the Holiday rush. It'll seperate the contenders from the pretenders.

You sort of misunderstood what I was trying to say meaning BlockBuster taking sides isn’t as big as it sounds and it would only mean anything if Amazon does that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira (Post 698803)

You sort of misunderstood what I was trying to say meaning BlockBuster taking sides isn’t as big as it sounds and it would only mean anything if Amazon does that.

Oops...we're crystal clear now.