Petition to try and save HD DVD

[Rich86]

have more trust in Toshiba focusing on customer desires than I do Sony (from practical experience).

Growing up with abusive parents and teachers who smack you around for something someone says you did when you were on the opposite side of the school's grounds to them leaves you with less than no tolerance for this kind of condemn Sony for what Fox insists on while giving Toshiba a free pass for deliberately misleading the consumer among other things. I am as serious as a six-inch square sore that won't heal when I say that people who have done things like this in person have found out the hard way just how easily I can be set off.

So I did what I always do in such situations. I signed both petitions. Mostly because nobody in the world gives a flying fukk at a rolling donut about online petitions, but there you go. The retailers are the ones who will make the choice in the end. What I would like to see is people who take up the defeat of coding practices as a hobby quit whining about it and work on finding ways to defeat said coding. Is that not what I used to hear repeated on these forums every day? That what man invents, man can circumvent? I never thought I would see the day that this forum would be giving over to pissing and moaning about how a format is aggressively copy-protected.

Seriously, whatever happens in future, why not work on bringing us to the ideal point where fools are put out by protections and those of us who have the sense to do some homework can copy or playback at our leisure? Is that not what this site was supposed to be about?

Good grief - you should find and take advantage of some professional counseling . . .

[SatStorm]

We had the opportunity (actually we still have it) to use those HD DVD players for H264 on simply DVD-R discs. That would be enough for now, same way CVD/SVCD was enough 9 years ago, when our sources was VHS tapes, laserdiscs and the analogue TV Broadcasts.

The way I see it, that BD win just killed our dreams for authoring on HD material and nothing more.

So, what we have is Raw H264. Today in DVD-Rs, tomorrow probably on solid state hard discs.

What we really need is an authoring standard, to use our Raw H264 in a way we used by DVD. And hardware of course to playback our authored work.

[MozartMan]

What we really need is an authoring standard, to use our Raw H264 in a way we used by DVD. And hardware of course to playback our authored work.

SatStorm,

Have you heard of BD9 and AVCHD?

BD9 and AVCHD refers h.264 video burned to DVD5/9 for playback on Blu-ray players.

With Ulead DVD Movie Factory 6+ ($80) with HD pack ($20) you can use h.264 video and author AVCHD disk with menus, chapters, burn to DVD5/9 and play on Blu-ray player.

Is this what you are asking for?

[somebodeez]

orsetto, you write very well.

Because the consumer WANTS TO RENT, NOT OWN, and the industry caters to that demand.

Naturally I can't speak for ALL consumers but I personally prefer both. Renting is cheaper than buying, you don't have to consider long term storage and if whatever you rented turns out to be a disappointment, you're not stuck with it and it works for those who will only ever watch a movie once in their entire life. For the content that does turn out to be entertaining and becomes a family favorite, you can then buy to own, add it to your library and watch it whenever and however many times that you want.

(Snip) And they did not reprice those tapes too quickly, either. By the time they did drop the price to $20, the movies had aired on HBO or Showtime and whoever wanted them had recorded them already. It was not a great system for us buffs, but it worked VERY well for the studios and most consumers.

The Broadcast Flag and HDMI enters the scheme of things now.

This is what stopped me personally from buying into a DVD recorder or DVR. (well ok, that and as much control as possible over quality, desired end format etc) and sticking to capping with my PC.
I've seen mentioned (mostly in these forums) about the recording restrictions those things obey and I'm just not agreeable to that so I saved my $ there. I'm sure there were a lot of "regular" people who received a surprise when they got their shiny new toy home and discovered that they couldn't record *everything* they wanted to with it like their VCRs could.

The next format to catch on with the consumer will need to be EASILY recordable in HD, TOTALLY standardized at launch, PORTABLE, and did I mention CHEAP?

That's basically what I'm waiting for.

[SatStorm]

Yes MozartMan. I haven't tested BD9 -yet- myself, so to see how compatible it is. The reviews I read regarding BD9 is very mixed at the time being.

I'm not into AVCHD at all.

[TuxOmatic]

Although I don't have a video camera that records in AVCHD, I burned a DVD5 with HDV footage converted to AVCHD using Ulead's VideoStudio. It was just an experiment to see if it would play on a Blueray player. Worked great with excellent video quality. You can only get about 15 minutes on a DVD5, but could be useful for certain things.

As to HD content on cable, there are time when I start to buy into the VOD concept. If you pay for movie channels, Cox has a list of HD movies that you can watch at any time. Happy feelings start to spin in my head until signal begins to crap out. There are some nights the glitches on the digital channels reach a point where it becomes unwatchable. This reinforces my concern of relying on content providers for my entertainment. I then pat myself on the back for investing in all of my DVD's, turn off the cable box, and watch my movies without quality issues. I only wish I could afford a large library of HD movies . . . in either format. Right now I'm still interested in which way this goes.

Tux

[SatStorm]

In Europe we have some HDTV DVB S2 channels, which we can grab on our PCs easy and cheap. Most of them are 1080i, few of them are 720p.
I'm able to demux/remux those grabs, author them as "HD DVD" and burn them on DVD-Rs. They play fine on HD DVD standalones.

I can't find someone to testify that this works so easy the BD9 way. I haven't try myself. This time, I'm doing something else with my PCs, so I'm not able to test it either. On a DVB/S forum, I read that those that tried it, didn't have any success. My logic say that it must work. Anyway, we shall see. After all, simply data ain't that bad for movies.

AVCHD is something else and I'm not into it.

[MozartMan]

In Europe we have some HDTV DVB S2 channels, which we can grab on our PCs easy and cheap. Most of them are 1080i, few of them are 720p.
I'm able to demux/remux those grabs, author them as "HD DVD" and burn them on DVD-Rs. They play fine on HD DVD standalones.

I can't find someone to testify that this works so easy the BD9 way. I haven't try myself. This time, I'm doing something else with my PCs, so I'm not able to test it either. On a DVB/S forum, I read that those that tried it, didn't have any success. My logic say that it must work. Anyway, we shall see. After all, simply data ain't that bad for movies.

AVCHD is something else and I'm not into it.

Here is some threads for you:

Blu-Ray Movie Burning Experiences...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=815296

TsRemux: Transport Stream De/Re-muxer:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125447

[RabidDog]

I thought DVD "won" out over VHS for a few reasons
in rentals stores the quality stayed the same over life, unlike vhs
Cost of production was much lower than Vhs
For consumers, big quality improvement, no more rewinding, instant track access (good for adult films) easier to store and easier to transport for everyone.
ANd of course unbreakable copy protection 8) , unlike VHS to Vhs copying machines.

I know someone who bought one of the first retail DVDs (they were available to rent for some time b4 being *sold* to consumers) and he paid £70 for "Indiana jones and the temple of Doom". Just shows the mentality of the studios at the time.

cuttysark.org

[SatStorm]

@MozartMan: On those threads you pointed me, the results of what works and what not works on BD9 are mixed also.

[rhegedus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywWfmRdOmJ0

[vhelp]

Actually, I'm pretty frustrated at the whole thing. I mean.. you had vhs; svhs; laserdisc; cable;
dvhs; dvd; with the new hd-dvd/blu-ray on the front lines.

From what I've observed (correct me if i'm wrong) vhs and laserdisc were the longest lasting
video format.

DVD basicaly came out in the mass as the new (slowly assepted) standard around 1998+
I know this, because I remember when my video rental store here in New York started to carry
dvd movies for rental. There was one shelf of dvd movies -- prob 30 movie titles in all. I went
back in, every week, (as I used to do during my movie rental days) and see the same shelf
with the same movies for those first 6 months. It was a slow process. But then, things had
started to pick up after that and another shelf was added. And, right around mid to end of
1999 my movie rental store was filling (replacing their vhs stock pile) with DVD movie rentals
with a new shelf about every month. Now, two years later, most of the store shelf's were
just dvd's, and only the center isle was vhs -- waiting to be replaced by their dvd-counterparts.
Today, that rental store is about 2 full vhs shelfs left.

So, somewhere in 1999 or 2000 or so is where DVD took off as the new official video standard,
at least in terms of rental and commercial format for consumers. Course, Cable and Analog tv
were still in the game then, but they are now (finally) being [s:4e7aed6b42]forced[/s:4e7aed6b42] phased out of the picture and
HD (or, HDTV) is the new standard, which by the way has several sub formats.. ie, Resolutions
and Bitrate, to name a few) and this is slightely confusing because people are saying that there
is this format war of two new standards, HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, but you know.., is Blue-Ray
is slated as the *new* standard then what does that mean for the HD as in HD-TV or HDTV
standard which is being pumped out now as we speak over analog antenna (OTA) for instance ??
Or, if the new standard is Blue-Ray, will they change the acroynum to, 'Blue-TV' ??

Anyway.

What I still don't understand here is the difference between the two.. I mean, if both format
(medium/machanics) will play MPEG and AVC/H264 video formats then what is the problem ??
and, who cares ??

Otherwise, my vote goes for HD, but only because I understand 'hd' to mean MPEG-2 video
and AVC/H264 to mean, (advanced DivX/XviD/MP4) AVI container format or what-haveyou

-vhelp 4507

[zoobie]

there's nothing wrong with having 2 formats or even more
formats come and formats come again

[jagabo]

there's nothing wrong with having 2 formats or even more

Yeah, every movie should have its own format. Then we can have a dedicated player for each movie. There'd be no confusion about which player to get. The player would just be bundled with the $500 movie.

[lordsmurf]

Solid-state media is now approaching 64GB on a single stick, and pricing is starting to break well under $0.50 to $1 per GB. Mass production would bring it well within accepted costs (seeing the retarded price of $30-40 for a BD disc). You'd get more, in a safer medium (NO PROBLEMS WITH SCRATCHES!), in a smaller container, that is less affected by the elements.

I'm already shooting 8GB and 16GB CF cards in my cameras.

[Conquest10]

Solid-state media is now approaching 64GB on a single stick, and pricing is starting to break well under $0.50 to $1 per GB. Mass production would bring it well within accepted costs (seeing the retarded price of $30-40 for a BD disc). You'd get more, in a safer medium (NO PROBLEMS WITH SCRATCHES!), in a smaller container, that is less affected by the elements.

I'm already shooting 8GB and 16GB CF cards in my cameras.

I'm liking the solid state notion but I think we're more likely to get the VOD option in the future. It works great with cable but most likely the MPAA would prefer a PPV VOD where you pay for it every time you watch rather than the current model where you purchase a disc and you get to watch whenever you want.