Editorial: Why "HD DVD" Is Thumping "Blu-ray Disc"

[Specialist]

Why "HD DVD" Is Thumping "Blu-ray Disc."

http://tinyurl.com/tzqpm

Back in August of 2005 we did know that HD DVD, which used DVD production technology, would be easier to bring to market but it simply did not seem reasonable that Sony would put their PlayStation franchise at risk for anything but a technology they were absolutely certain they could bring to market on time. That turned out to be incorrect. The problems with Blu-Ray have created extreme cost and execution problems for Sony and now their premier division (instead of being the profit center for Sony) is predicting they will take a $1.5B loss next year largely resulting from this decision. To put this in perspective, just think what would happen if Apple’s iPod group, instead of generating massive profit, suddenly dropped into massive loss. Now you can see why the Sony PlayStation division just changed out their top executives.

Editorial by Rob Enderle.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Conquest10]

Excellent article. Studio backing means nothing if the people are not going to buy it. The studios made a stupid move by being greedy and most likely will jump ship pretty soon. Hopefully they got the message that they are not gods. There is no way they are not going to jump on the opportunity to make money.

Blu-Ray I think will not die as a technology. It still has potential for storage. But for movies? No.

[Deane Johnson]

Rob Enderle is hardly a person to be objective in his analysis. His company, The Promar Group, has Toshiba as one of their major clients and he is on the Advisory Board of Toshiba.

[Conquest10]

Rob Enderle is hardly a person to be objective in his analysis. His company, The Promar Group, has Toshiba as one of their major clients and he is on the Advisory Board of Toshiba.

So HD-DVD is not whooping Blu-Ray?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

= ?

[MozartMan]

So HD-DVD is not whooping Blu-Ray?

Well, can you buy HD-DVD burner for PC?

[Conquest10]

Well, can you buy HD-DVD burner for PC?

Looks like you didn't notice my last post.

Blu-Ray I think will not die as a technology. It still has potential for storage. But for movies? No.

[stiltman]

Blu-ray, burners and readers, have been on the market for at least 1.5y. All be it for niche industries (Broadcasting, Medical..etc) So I know it will not go away anytime soon.

I think HD-DVD will strick a home run in the consumer market

[Timmychuck]

You don't here about HD-DVD to much. When they a show a dvd release on tv all they
say is DVD and Blu-Ray, not HD-DVD.

I don't think Blu-Ray will die anytime soon. If it does, to stay in the game, you may find players that play both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

[oldfart13]

Futureshop here in Canada has 2 Blu-Ray burners. Can't find a HD-DVD burner or blank discs to save my soul.....

[MozartMan]

I wouldn't call that "good." Enderle has hated Sony since as far back as I can recall. He's also always been a M$ fanboy. Nothing wrong with that, except when readers don't know his past writings.
That said, his attacks on BD have always been about short-life issues. BD may or may not prevail, but whether it does or not has nothing to do with most of the issues he generally harps upon (I didn't read his full article, I just saw who the author was).

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=501377&Replies=15

[Deane Johnson]

Basically, Enderle is a person paid to plant positive stories in the press about HD-DVD and Toshiba. For that reason alone, anything he says has to be discounted.

Nothing wrong with that, it happens all the time. It's simply necessary to realize it's nothing more than paid advertising and propaganda.

[rhegedus]

Basically, Enderle is a person paid to plant positive stories in the press about HD-DVD and Toshiba. For that reason alone, anything he says has to be discounted.

Nothing wrong with that, it happens all the time. It's simply necessary to realize it's nothing more than paid advertising and propaganda.

Hey, Jerry, what position does Ulead take on this.....

[Deane Johnson]

How did Ulead get into this discussion? I'm confused.

[MozartMan]

How did Ulead get into this discussion? I'm confused.

Deane,

It's not Ulead, it's Jerry Jones, so called "Specialist", Community Relations Coordinator in the City of Boise Public Works Department, the person who started this thread, who paid by Ulead and HD-DVD to do propaganda of HD-DVD and AVCHD on this forum.

[oldandinthe way]

So far I fail to see a winner in the HDwars, Neither format has met the criteria for success. Both could fail.

[Specialist]

Hey, Jerry, what position does Ulead take on this.....

The fellow who identifies himself as "Mozart" apparently doesn't have a clue.

Fact: I don't work for the City of Boise Public Works Department. I left that organization in 2003.

Fact: I don't work for Ulead. My consulting contract with Ulead ended in 2004.

I work at a local university these days.

Ulead supports both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, based on what their Web site says.

Ulead has nothing to do with the link I posted.

Regards,

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[RLT69]

Editorial by Rob Enderle.

Enough said.

Until movies stop coming out on one or the other format, neither format will be a flop.

One advantage blu-ray has is capacity. It holds more information. Given how studios love to pack extra bits on their dvds - it would make more sense to use blu-ray rather than HD-DVD.

In terms of the market NOBODY is clamoring for either format.

If PS3 demand is any indicator blu-ray may very well over-take HD-DVD. Blu-ray is standard in PS3s, HD-DVD is an add-on for the Xbox. However this assumes that people who buy the PS3 will watch movies in addition to gaming. That is less certain. If the PS3 and the Xbox are only seen as gaming stations, then their impact on the high def format will be neglible.

In any event, giving the new technologies coming to the market (HVD), today and through the next year, neither format will have sufficient market penetration to hold off being tossed aside.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD are today's Digital Audio Tape.

[MozartMan]

Futureshop here in Canada has 2 Blu-Ray burners. Can't find a HD-DVD burner or blank discs to save my soul.....

HD-DVD burners and blank disks don't exist.

[qz3fwd]

From store inventories, it appear very few standalone dedicated BR players are selling while the HD DVD players sell out very quickly. If console owners do not start buying BR movies fast, the (movie) format is going to die very soon. Kinda like the "unsinkable" Titanic.

The "exclusive" studios do remember Sony's long history of proprietary formats you know.
Wait for CES which should be very interesting. All it gonna take is 1 BR exclusive studio going neutral to open the floodgates. After all, these studios will not sit by watching the HD DVD software sales for long since they are in business to make money and not subsidize Sony.


Not to mention how Sony treats it's "partners". Take Samsung for example.

No it not our fault... Wait until this and that..... BR's gonna rule when hades freezes over... Just wait until...

Consumers can smell a rotten fish from a mile away.

Anyone looked at PSP movie sales lately?

[Specialist]

A December 6, 2006 New York Times article by Sean Captain suggests that neither format is winning.

So which kind should you buy? The VHS versus Betamax war suggests that only one format will survive. But with big names backing each side, the high-def disc battle could rage for years. High-definition movies are quite tempting. But considering the current high player prices, limited content and uncertainty over which format to purchase, it may be more tempting to buy a good upconverting DVD player and sit a few feet farther back from the TV.

Frankly, I agree with this point of view.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[jman98]

A few random thoughts related to several postings above...

While HD-DVD blanks and burners may not exist, it is possible right now to burn to DVD-5 or DVD-9 in the format and have it play on HD-DVD players. This has been reported on various forums using Ulead to author the disc.

The "BluRay has more disc space" argument, while true, is arguably meaningless. You don't really NEED the extra disc space because VC-1 and H.264 are so space efficient. BluRay DID need the extra space at first because they couldn't get anything but good old MPEG-2 to work with their format (that's not true now, but it was true at debut) so they HAD to have large amounts of disc space to encode everything with MPEG-2 at high enough bit rates to not look like crap. In fact, MPEG-2 is so space inefficient that one article stated that at lauch, BluRay couldn't even support one of the extended Lord Of The Rings movies on a single layer BluRay disc with no extras at all, just the movie. The compression rates on VC-1 and H.264 are amazing. Sony wants you to believe that the extra disc space is necessary, but really it's not.

Combo players won't appear anytime soon because the BluRay licensing agreements makes manufacturers agree NOT to support HD-DVD in the same player. HD-DVD has no such restriction against BluRay support.

[RLT69]

The compression rates on VC-1 and H.264 are amazing. Sony wants you to believe that the extra disc space is necessary, but really it's not.

"640K is all we'll ever need"

I'm not sure where you've read that SONY is running a campaign convincing people they need blu-ray because of it's data storage capacity. But capacity is a big deal. Why do you think you have HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats in the first place? CAPACITY! DVD-5 and DVD-9 do not have the storage capacity for high def movies.

The capacity of blu-ray gives the movie studio the ability to put more features on the disc. More features, to them, is a selling point. Given the fact that you can an extra 20 GBs to play with, I think that will be quite compelling.

But in any event the studios are putting their movies out in both formats. The door has not shut for blu-ray. Hell the door for high def movies has barely opened in the first place! It's quite early to crown either format the winner.

If history is any indicator, the format that can hold more information is typically the format that wins.

FYI for the reading impaired - blu-ray is NOT SONY's format, blu-ray was developed by a group of companies.

"The "Blu Ray Disc Association" was founded in 2002 by nine leading electronic companies like: Matsushita, Pioneer, Phillips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung and Sony."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association

[rhegedus]

Ulead has nothing to do with the link I posted.

Sorry, thought you were still with them and might have had an inside line as to which way software developers were leaning.

[Specialist]

I don't know anybody at Ulead these days.

My contract ended in 2004... not long before Ulead was purchased by InterVideo.

I still use the Ulead software, however, and I write tutorials -- as I get the time -- for beginners.

I formerly was on the list of people who were involved in beta testing Ulead software.

But that was a royal pain and I decided to quit doing that, too.

I haven't been terribly impressed by InterVideo, frankly.

I'm hoping Corel will do better.

I think all software developers are doing their best to stay "neutral" and support both high definition DVD formats.

According to the EETimes, we might see high definition devices supporting both formats in 2007:

http://tinyurl.com/yaxl6a

But it seems there is another issue in the high definition DVD debate.

It's the "iHD" vs. "BD-J" debate.

The "iHD" and the "BD-J" are competing ways to author high definition DVD discs.

Some past articles:

iHD is an XML-based interactivity specification currently used by HD DVD. It is not "Microsoft's iHD," but rather a specification developed jointly by Microsoft, Disney, and the DVD Forum. For the moment, Blu-ray uses an alternative specification, the Java-based BD-J. The exact issues of debate between the camps supporting each specification isn't entirely clear. For instance, iHD supporters argue that iHD integration into Windows means that iHD will be cheaper to license than BD-J, and will afford for greater integration with the dominant home operating system (i.e., Windows). BD-J members believe that the licensing will soon be a moot issue once players are sold en masse, and while iHD is a specification that can be supported on any platform, they feel as though a Java-based solution is more universal and cross-platform friendly.

http://tinyurl.com/cuabq

http://tinyurl.com/e3lml

Interesting stuff.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[RabidDog]

Did'nt you kill all your followers in the jungle, with kool-aid?

[Conquest10]

"640K is all we'll ever need"

How many times is this going to be brought up when talking about Blu-Ray?

First off, its still debatable whether or not Gates actually ever said that. Secondly, that "quote" attributed to him is said to be from 1981. Is DOS actually that much better at 8 gigs over 640K?

HD-DVD has already shown that you don't need that much space for an HD movie. Perhaps they might add every language on the planet for audio tracks. Other than that, I don't see the need. You think the studios are actually going to go out of their way to add extras to use up the unused space on the disc and not charge extra? Yeah, good luck with that.

[olegy]

But capacity is a big deal. Why do you think you have HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats in the first place? CAPACITY! DVD-5 and DVD-9 do not have the storage capacity for high def movies.

Well, not quite right.
You can easily fit 2- 2.5 hour 720p movie on the DVD-5 ( H.264 or even Divx/Xvid compressed)
Or a similar 1080i/p movie on DVD-9.
Feed Divx/Xvid HD content, burned on DVD 5/9, into a hardware HiDef player like Snazio 1350 and enjoy full power of High Definition.

[guns1inger]

Over here the PS3 hasn't gone on sale yet, the Xbox 360 - champion of HD-DVD has been around for what seems like ages, yet Blu-Ray is the only format that gets a mention when HD discs and players get any press. LG had the first consumer Blu-Ray player on the shelves, and Sony took this as the launch opportunity for the X range of Bravia TVs (1920 x 1080p). All the consumer press articles about the HD format are Blu-Ray centric, with less than lip-service being paid to HD-DVD as a competing format. I have only seen Blu-Ray discs on the shelves as local releases.

For the average consumer in Australia, HD-DVD doesn't even exist.

[rhegedus]

Ditto.

With number of releases equal at about 130 (according to wikipedia), it's hard to see where the 'thumping' is taking place...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blu-ray_releases

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HD_DVD_releases

This battle will be decided by the home entertainment market but currently there aren't enough films available to tempt home buyers into buying into hi def DVD.