There are several markets in play here; its not going to be straight fight to the finish. At least half of the pro video market use Sony products for shooting and they will end up using BluRay by default as that's where Sony is going. Similarly BR discs will in the fullness of time make a very good case as an archival format. For small video/DVD production shops such as myself, of which there are thousands, BR is a complex and expensive way to author (or rather will be as you can't actually do it yet), whereas HD-DVD provides a sensible progression from DVD.
The critical market is of course home video. The secret to this is whoever actually starts to sell discs in real numbers. I think the alignment of particular studios to particulars formats is irrelevant in the long term. Hollywood is not really in the loyalty game when money is involved and if one format takes off the studios will move swiftly to colonise with straight faces and "shareholder value" on their lips. I think HD-DVD is the likely winner in this scenario.
There are several markets in play here; its not going to be straight fight to the finish. At least half of the pro video market use Sony products for shooting and they will end up using BluRay by default as that's where Sony is going. Similarly BR discs will in the fullness of time make a very good case as an archival format. For small video/DVD production shops such as myself, of which there are thousands, BR is a complex and expensive way to author (or rather will be as you can't actually do it yet), whereas HD-DVD provides a sensible progression from DVD.
Is it possible for someone (like Apple) to get their authoring software to handle that complexity, or do you already know you *will need* to wade into scripting and manually tweaking the disk?
I think HD-DVD is the likely winner in this scenario.
Even if Blu-ray went away, I don't really see how HD-DVD can make a market for itself in a market where they have to compete with regular DVD. I think that the players will need to sell in significant numbers for several years before it is worth while making software to play on them. HD-DVD has no driver to get the installed base up, and Blu-ray does.
Until there are a significant number of players out there, making a HD-DVD will be like making a newly pressed classical LP (i.e. lucky to sell a couple of thousand copies). Look at SACD sales to see what I mean.
Most people just don't need HD-DVD or Blu-ray either. Blu-ray will eventually catch on because it will be in everybodies PS3, so eventually people will start buying Blu-ray disks.
Hollywood is not really in the loyalty game when money is involved and if one format takes off the studios will move swiftly to colonise with straight faces and "shareholder value" on their lips...
Excellent call mate. Paramount just announced that they're going to go both ways. Those sluts...!
If Sony pulls off the PS3 really well they'll have a big stick to beat HD-DVD with...
"We have been intrigued by the broad support of Blu-ray, especially the key advantage of including Blu-ray in PlayStation 3," said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures, Worldwide Home Entertainment."
Even if Blu-ray went away, I don't really see how HD-DVD can make a market for itself in a market where they have to compete with regular DVD. I think that the players will need to sell in significant numbers for several years before it is worth while making software to play on them. HD-DVD has no driver to get the installed base up, and Blu-ray does.
Until there are a significant number of players out there, making a HD-DVD will be like making a newly pressed classical LP (i.e. lucky to sell a couple of thousand copies). Look at SACD sales to see what I mean.
Most people just don't need HD-DVD or Blu-ray either. Blu-ray will eventually catch on because it will be in everybodies PS3, so eventually people will start buying Blu-ray disks.
Oh I have to agree. I don't think there is any partciular mass desire for home HD at this point. The iPod wins out against SACD and AudioDVD as the listening choice of the masses and there is a lesson to be learned.
From a professional point of view however we are already using HD and that content needs to be disseminated somehow; HD-DVD looking to be the easiest option at the moment.
When does the PS3 come to market and when will there be HD content for it? More to the point whene will there be a critical mass of 1080 TV's out there that can actually notice the HD difference?
Is it possible for someone (like Apple) to get their authoring software to handle that complexity, or do you already know you *will need* to wade into scripting and manually tweaking the disk?
Well that's a very good question.
Apple has a good Java team and I sure they will be trying to provide this sort of functionality in future versions of DVD Studio Pro. With what urgency really depends on how things pan out. I am sure there are half a dozen major authouring companies in LA and London who are at this moment getting their heads around the whole BR Java implementaion in anticipation of charging $100,000 per disc but I'm not in that league unfortunately and can't justify the effort.
The ironic thing here is that current DVD media is perfectly capable of holding an entire HD movie... so long as a more aggressive compression algorithm is used.
Such codecs exist and are already widely popular with computer users. You can already buy $200 players capable of playing HD material.
The hold up is, hollywood wants better copy prevention technology. Otherwise, consumers would already have their hands on HD movies.
Joe public could care less how the HD is delivered.
But hollywood has somehow convinced us that HD movies require completely new and needlessly expensive players.
Oh I have to agree. I don't think there is any partciular mass desire for home HD at this point. The iPod wins out against SACD and AudioDVD as the listening choice of the masses and there is a lesson to be learned.
From a professional point of view however we are already using HD and that content needs to be disseminated somehow; HD-DVD looking to be the easiest option at the moment.
When does the PS3 come to market and when will there be HD content for it? More to the point whene will there be a critical mass of 1080 TV's out there that can actually notice the HD difference?
At some point, there will be a critical mass of HDTV sets, people are buying them now. There will also be a critical mass of PS3s much sooner than that.
Content providers will gradually ramp up production of HDTV material as the market space gets larger.
But the reality facing HD-DVD is grim. There is no reason for anyone but really rich folks to buy one any time soon, and nobody will provide movies for such a small market. It is a chicken and egg situation that Blu-ray has found a way out of and HD-DVD has not.
The ironic thing here is that current DVD media is perfectly capable of holding an entire HD movie... so long as a more aggressive compression algorithm is used.
Compression is a very variable thing, especially with four-dimensional video compression. Personally, I don't think MPEG2 is good enough -- from a perspective of output quality -- to be used in action movies. MPEG4 doesn't seem like it will help much, although I sure it won't hurt.
The thing is, compression algorithms that are more aggressive than MPEG4 generally sacrifice quality quite a bit. The way they cut the most space is by omitting vast regions of frequency content, or by reducing the number of reference frames (I-frames in MPEG lingo) and those doesn't help picture quality.
Which is all well and good... but the fact remains that HD movies can be put on DVDs today and played in relatively cheap DVD players.
This already exists! I watch HD rips in my home theater all the time. Simply compress an HDTV rip into a codec of your choice and you're good to go with a $200 player.
Granted, I would really love to have higher capacity discs. But lack of capacity is not the reason why we don't have HD movies.
Hollywood's desire for copy prevention technologies... that's the only reason why we aren't already watching HD movies off of DVDs.
It is important to remember this when looking at the blu-ray/hd-dvd battle. Adequate technology isn't the hold up and has little to do with determining which format will eventually prevail.
But the reality facing HD-DVD is grim. There is no reason for anyone but really rich folks to buy one any time soon, and nobody will provide movies for such a small market. It is a chicken and egg situation that Blu-ray has found a way out of and HD-DVD has not
complete and utter BS. The tenousness of your point is too evident. You're basing everything on a game player changing the balance. What if the PS3 causes other manufactuers to quit making good BR hardware? What if people buy a game player to ...newsflash..play games??? It's pretty obvious that Microsoft could easily and most likely will choose to utilize HD-DVD in the near enough future.
Just answer me this one question. How is Blu-Ray going to win against a cheaper competitor that has every bit of the same quality? History shows that it is "your" scenario which is grim.
Kidred
I think you'll see more studios decide to support both formats. It won't cost them much more to do so and they are indeed in the content providing business. Paramount isn't switching to Blu-Ray but rather deciding to support Blu-Ray as well. I think this is smart...I applaud Paramounts actions and would like this to stop being an religious partisan issue. Let the market decide.
Just answer me this one question. How is Blu-Ray going to win against a cheaper competitor that has every bit of the same quality? History shows that it is "your" scenario which is grim.
Blu-ray drives and disks will be cheaper, because they will sell 100x as much hardware and software as HD-DVD. High volume will drive costs down with Blu-ray, but not with HD-DVD.
Forget about Blu-ray - tell me how HD-DVD can beat out regular old style DVD. Blu-ray is making an end run around the problem, but if Blu-ray died tomorrow, HD-DVD would still fail.
Blu-ray drives and disks will be cheaper, because they will sell 100x as much hardware and software as HD-DVD. High volume will drive costs down with Blu-ray, but not with HD-DVD.
Forget about Blu-ray - tell me how HD-DVD can beat out regular old style DVD. Blu-ray is making an end run around the problem, but if Blu-ray died tomorrow, HD-DVD would still fail.
The economies of scale arguement gone wrong. Why are all the industry vets withing the pressing industry refuting your claims? I don't know why it's not sinking in with some of you.
HD-DVD upgrades to a plant at 1 tenth the cost of a new BD line. DL HD-DVD have already been mass produced by companies like Memory Tech.
HD-DVD would not fail..you have absolutely no information to backup your statements other than pithy wishing.
Paramount is doing the right thing for consumers...will the Blu-Ray studios care enough about their consumers to do the same?
I think you'll see more studios decide to support both formats. It won't cost them much more to do so and they are indeed in the content providing business. Paramount isn't switching to Blu-Ray but rather deciding to support Blu-Ray as well. I think this is smart...I applaud Paramounts actions and would like this to stop being an religious partisan issue. Let the market decide. [/B]
I agree, Warner & Universal may follow suit and publicly support BRD. However, you have to question the motive behind the switch from supporting one format to safely supporting both-
Quote:
Several execs in each camp believe the Paramount announcement to publish in both formats, which is the direction Warner has been leaning for the past week or two (with a similar announcement expected this week), is simply a temporary face-saving strategy and that ultimately all studios will shift completely over to Blu-ray by launch time next spring.
I agree, Warner & Universal may follow suit and publicly support BRD. However, you have to question the motive behind the switch from supporting one format to safely supporting both-
hmmm yeah who knows what goes on in movie execs heads? dukes of hazzard remake with jessica simpson?? house of wax remake with paris hilton???
anyway IMHO all that needs to happen is Warner and Universal announcing dual-support bluray/hddvd and that's a major coup for the bluray camp, because their roster will then be:
but of course it could also go the other way if say Fox went HDDVD, then that would leave SonyColumbiaTristar/MGM(?) as the only BluRay-specific studio.
That is not an answer to the most important part of my post. How can HD-DVD get market share away from DVD? DVD is good enough for most folks.
I can't think of any reason for Joe Sixpack (and on up into the upper classes, except for videophiles) to buy a HD-DVD player.
Once the market within the next 5 years starts getting flooded with cheaper chinese-made LCDs and plasma TVs, thinner, bigger, better, brighter, sharper, etc, etc, and prices come down, high-def will truly start to reach Joe Sixpack.... some people have gone so far as to say the switch from analog standard def to say digital 1080p high def will be like going from black and white tv to color tv.
HD-DVD upgrades to a plant at 1 tenth the cost of a new BD line. DL HD-DVD have already been mass produced by companies like Memory Tech.
All arguments that deal with equipment costs are very speculative. No one has released real numbers, as far as I know, so there's no real cost bearing. It's also uncertain if the difference in line costs makes much difference, particularly when considering how a new line figures into accounting versus an old line that has been retrofitted. I think you should get off the point of line costs, since it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, given that I know how a $2M RFID transponder assembly line amortizes while selling much lower cost units. To boot, only the big players will be making HD discs for the first phase, so it will probably take a longer time for the line cost issue to play out than it will for the player market.
I tend to agree. Physical media costs, at least for movies, are an absolutely minute percentage of the end cost to consumers. Although, I suppose if these next-gen formats end up raising the cost of store-bought movies by a few bucks, then it might be significant.
But once again, we're back to the fact that current DVDs can already fit HD movies. Cheap players can play these movies. Yet hollywood hasn't gone that route.
Adequacy of technology and manufacturing costs aren't what's driving this format war.
Rather, it's all about control of the market. We could argue until we are blue in the face about which format is superior. But, each of the major players will still try to position themselves such that they have the greatest control over the market... they could care less which format is technically superior.
Seriously, this isn't a conspiracy theory. It's just the way the format battle is playing out.
Comments
The critical market is of course home video. The secret to this is whoever actually starts to sell discs in real numbers. I think the alignment of particular studios to particulars formats is irrelevant in the long term. Hollywood is not really in the loyalty game when money is involved and if one format takes off the studios will move swiftly to colonise with straight faces and "shareholder value" on their lips. I think HD-DVD is the likely winner in this scenario.
Originally posted by vinney57
There are several markets in play here; its not going to be straight fight to the finish. At least half of the pro video market use Sony products for shooting and they will end up using BluRay by default as that's where Sony is going. Similarly BR discs will in the fullness of time make a very good case as an archival format. For small video/DVD production shops such as myself, of which there are thousands, BR is a complex and expensive way to author (or rather will be as you can't actually do it yet), whereas HD-DVD provides a sensible progression from DVD.
Is it possible for someone (like Apple) to get their authoring software to handle that complexity, or do you already know you *will need* to wade into scripting and manually tweaking the disk?
Originally posted by vinney57
I think HD-DVD is the likely winner in this scenario.
Even if Blu-ray went away, I don't really see how HD-DVD can make a market for itself in a market where they have to compete with regular DVD. I think that the players will need to sell in significant numbers for several years before it is worth while making software to play on them. HD-DVD has no driver to get the installed base up, and Blu-ray does.
Until there are a significant number of players out there, making a HD-DVD will be like making a newly pressed classical LP (i.e. lucky to sell a couple of thousand copies). Look at SACD sales to see what I mean.
Most people just don't need HD-DVD or Blu-ray either. Blu-ray will eventually catch on because it will be in everybodies PS3, so eventually people will start buying Blu-ray disks.
Hollywood is not really in the loyalty game when money is involved and if one format takes off the studios will move swiftly to colonise with straight faces and "shareholder value" on their lips...
Excellent call mate. Paramount just announced that they're going to go both ways. Those sluts...!
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...a/12801241.htm
If Sony pulls off the PS3 really well they'll have a big stick to beat HD-DVD with...
"We have been intrigued by the broad support of Blu-ray, especially the key advantage of including Blu-ray in PlayStation 3," said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures, Worldwide Home Entertainment."
Originally posted by e1618978
Even if Blu-ray went away, I don't really see how HD-DVD can make a market for itself in a market where they have to compete with regular DVD. I think that the players will need to sell in significant numbers for several years before it is worth while making software to play on them. HD-DVD has no driver to get the installed base up, and Blu-ray does.
Until there are a significant number of players out there, making a HD-DVD will be like making a newly pressed classical LP (i.e. lucky to sell a couple of thousand copies). Look at SACD sales to see what I mean.
Most people just don't need HD-DVD or Blu-ray either. Blu-ray will eventually catch on because it will be in everybodies PS3, so eventually people will start buying Blu-ray disks.
Oh I have to agree. I don't think there is any partciular mass desire for home HD at this point. The iPod wins out against SACD and AudioDVD as the listening choice of the masses and there is a lesson to be learned.
From a professional point of view however we are already using HD and that content needs to be disseminated somehow; HD-DVD looking to be the easiest option at the moment.
When does the PS3 come to market and when will there be HD content for it? More to the point whene will there be a critical mass of 1080 TV's out there that can actually notice the HD difference?
Originally posted by Gon
Is it possible for someone (like Apple) to get their authoring software to handle that complexity, or do you already know you *will need* to wade into scripting and manually tweaking the disk?
Well that's a very good question.
Apple has a good Java team and I sure they will be trying to provide this sort of functionality in future versions of DVD Studio Pro. With what urgency really depends on how things pan out. I am sure there are half a dozen major authouring companies in LA and London who are at this moment getting their heads around the whole BR Java implementaion in anticipation of charging $100,000 per disc but I'm not in that league unfortunately and can't justify the effort.
Such codecs exist and are already widely popular with computer users. You can already buy $200 players capable of playing HD material.
The hold up is, hollywood wants better copy prevention technology. Otherwise, consumers would already have their hands on HD movies.
Joe public could care less how the HD is delivered.
But hollywood has somehow convinced us that HD movies require completely new and needlessly expensive players.
Originally posted by vinney57
Oh I have to agree. I don't think there is any partciular mass desire for home HD at this point. The iPod wins out against SACD and AudioDVD as the listening choice of the masses and there is a lesson to be learned.
From a professional point of view however we are already using HD and that content needs to be disseminated somehow; HD-DVD looking to be the easiest option at the moment.
When does the PS3 come to market and when will there be HD content for it? More to the point whene will there be a critical mass of 1080 TV's out there that can actually notice the HD difference?
At some point, there will be a critical mass of HDTV sets, people are buying them now. There will also be a critical mass of PS3s much sooner than that.
Content providers will gradually ramp up production of HDTV material as the market space gets larger.
But the reality facing HD-DVD is grim. There is no reason for anyone but really rich folks to buy one any time soon, and nobody will provide movies for such a small market. It is a chicken and egg situation that Blu-ray has found a way out of and HD-DVD has not.
Originally posted by kupan787
And then read this article
From the article:
So who do you believe, the actual disk replicators, or the BDA?
Well, it's over now. Paramount is now backing BRD AND now on the fence Universal AND possibly Warners supporting Blu-Ray...
Originally posted by dfiler
The ironic thing here is that current DVD media is perfectly capable of holding an entire HD movie... so long as a more aggressive compression algorithm is used.
Compression is a very variable thing, especially with four-dimensional video compression. Personally, I don't think MPEG2 is good enough -- from a perspective of output quality -- to be used in action movies. MPEG4 doesn't seem like it will help much, although I sure it won't hurt.
The thing is, compression algorithms that are more aggressive than MPEG4 generally sacrifice quality quite a bit. The way they cut the most space is by omitting vast regions of frequency content, or by reducing the number of reference frames (I-frames in MPEG lingo) and those doesn't help picture quality.
This already exists! I watch HD rips in my home theater all the time. Simply compress an HDTV rip into a codec of your choice and you're good to go with a $200 player.
Granted, I would really love to have higher capacity discs. But lack of capacity is not the reason why we don't have HD movies.
Hollywood's desire for copy prevention technologies... that's the only reason why we aren't already watching HD movies off of DVDs.
It is important to remember this when looking at the blu-ray/hd-dvd battle. Adequate technology isn't the hold up and has little to do with determining which format will eventually prevail.
But the reality facing HD-DVD is grim. There is no reason for anyone but really rich folks to buy one any time soon, and nobody will provide movies for such a small market. It is a chicken and egg situation that Blu-ray has found a way out of and HD-DVD has not
complete and utter BS. The tenousness of your point is too evident. You're basing everything on a game player changing the balance. What if the PS3 causes other manufactuers to quit making good BR hardware? What if people buy a game player to ...newsflash..play games??? It's pretty obvious that Microsoft could easily and most likely will choose to utilize HD-DVD in the near enough future.
Just answer me this one question. How is Blu-Ray going to win against a cheaper competitor that has every bit of the same quality? History shows that it is "your" scenario which is grim.
Kidred
I think you'll see more studios decide to support both formats. It won't cost them much more to do so and they are indeed in the content providing business. Paramount isn't switching to Blu-Ray but rather deciding to support Blu-Ray as well. I think this is smart...I applaud Paramounts actions and would like this to stop being an religious partisan issue. Let the market decide.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Just answer me this one question. How is Blu-Ray going to win against a cheaper competitor that has every bit of the same quality? History shows that it is "your" scenario which is grim.
Blu-ray drives and disks will be cheaper, because they will sell 100x as much hardware and software as HD-DVD. High volume will drive costs down with Blu-ray, but not with HD-DVD.
Forget about Blu-ray - tell me how HD-DVD can beat out regular old style DVD. Blu-ray is making an end run around the problem, but if Blu-ray died tomorrow, HD-DVD would still fail.
Originally posted by e1618978
Blu-ray drives and disks will be cheaper, because they will sell 100x as much hardware and software as HD-DVD. High volume will drive costs down with Blu-ray, but not with HD-DVD.
Forget about Blu-ray - tell me how HD-DVD can beat out regular old style DVD. Blu-ray is making an end run around the problem, but if Blu-ray died tomorrow, HD-DVD would still fail.
The economies of scale arguement gone wrong. Why are all the industry vets withing the pressing industry refuting your claims? I don't know why it's not sinking in with some of you.
HD-DVD upgrades to a plant at 1 tenth the cost of a new BD line. DL HD-DVD have already been mass produced by companies like Memory Tech.
HD-DVD would not fail..you have absolutely no information to backup your statements other than pithy wishing.
Paramount is doing the right thing for consumers...will the Blu-Ray studios care enough about their consumers to do the same?
I can't think of any reason for Joe Sixpack (and on up into the upper classes, except for videophiles) to buy a HD-DVD player.
Kidred
I think you'll see more studios decide to support both formats. It won't cost them much more to do so and they are indeed in the content providing business. Paramount isn't switching to Blu-Ray but rather deciding to support Blu-Ray as well. I think this is smart...I applaud Paramounts actions and would like this to stop being an religious partisan issue. Let the market decide. [/B]
I agree, Warner & Universal may follow suit and publicly support BRD. However, you have to question the motive behind the switch from supporting one format to safely supporting both-
Several execs in each camp believe the Paramount announcement to publish in both formats, which is the direction Warner has been leaning for the past week or two (with a similar announcement expected this week), is simply a temporary face-saving strategy and that ultimately all studios will shift completely over to Blu-ray by launch time next spring.
I agree, Warner & Universal may follow suit and publicly support BRD. However, you have to question the motive behind the switch from supporting one format to safely supporting both-
hmmm yeah who knows what goes on in movie execs heads? dukes of hazzard remake with jessica simpson?? house of wax remake with paris hilton???
anyway IMHO all that needs to happen is Warner and Universal announcing dual-support bluray/hddvd and that's a major coup for the bluray camp, because their roster will then be:
Fox, Disney, Warner, Universal, Paramount, Sony, ColumbiaTristar, MGM. a formidable roster.
but of course it could also go the other way if say Fox went HDDVD, then that would leave SonyColumbiaTristar/MGM(?) as the only BluRay-specific studio.
Originally posted by e1618978
That is not an answer to the most important part of my post. How can HD-DVD get market share away from DVD? DVD is good enough for most folks.
I can't think of any reason for Joe Sixpack (and on up into the upper classes, except for videophiles) to buy a HD-DVD player.
Once the market within the next 5 years starts getting flooded with cheaper chinese-made LCDs and plasma TVs, thinner, bigger, better, brighter, sharper, etc, etc, and prices come down, high-def will truly start to reach Joe Sixpack.... some people have gone so far as to say the switch from analog standard def to say digital 1080p high def will be like going from black and white tv to color tv.
Originally posted by hmurchison
HD-DVD upgrades to a plant at 1 tenth the cost of a new BD line. DL HD-DVD have already been mass produced by companies like Memory Tech.
All arguments that deal with equipment costs are very speculative. No one has released real numbers, as far as I know, so there's no real cost bearing. It's also uncertain if the difference in line costs makes much difference, particularly when considering how a new line figures into accounting versus an old line that has been retrofitted. I think you should get off the point of line costs, since it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, given that I know how a $2M RFID transponder assembly line amortizes while selling much lower cost units. To boot, only the big players will be making HD discs for the first phase, so it will probably take a longer time for the line cost issue to play out than it will for the player market.
Hence, a bigger deal is making a cheaper player.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Hence, a bigger deal is making a cheaper player.
I tend to agree. Physical media costs, at least for movies, are an absolutely minute percentage of the end cost to consumers. Although, I suppose if these next-gen formats end up raising the cost of store-bought movies by a few bucks, then it might be significant.
But once again, we're back to the fact that current DVDs can already fit HD movies. Cheap players can play these movies. Yet hollywood hasn't gone that route.
Adequacy of technology and manufacturing costs aren't what's driving this format war.
Rather, it's all about control of the market. We could argue until we are blue in the face about which format is superior. But, each of the major players will still try to position themselves such that they have the greatest control over the market... they could care less which format is technically superior.
Seriously, this isn't a conspiracy theory. It's just the way the format battle is playing out.