Why don't drives read HD-DVD anymore?

[RLT69]

I have nothing against BD, but I loathe Sonys handling of it.

The majority of your posts are one big rant against Blu-ray. Give me a break

For the record Sony does not equal Blu-ray. Blu-ray is controlled by the Blu-ray Disc Association. Blu-ray won because they went out and locked up the majority of Hollywood studios. HD-DVD did not. Blu-ray was supported by the Hollywood studios because of the DRM. Hollywood wanted DRM. Blu-ray had nothing to do with that. You want to distribute Hollywood's wares then you have to have DRM.

The future of any optical format has been suspect. There were articles written over the past couple of years stating, on-demand, streaming, downloading distribution systems would make Blu-ray and its' successors obsolete. This is nothing new. It's common knowledge. The big question is when will that happen.

Sony, Toshiba, Blu-ray, HD-DVD had nothing to do with slowing any adoption of HD content. That's just plain stupid. The simple fact is HD adoption is slow because of two things:

1. The high cost of HDTVs.
2. Lack of HD content.

Not alot of people will plunk down a couple grand to buy a tv, especially in a recession. When there is not alot of content to watch, you are not going to go out and buy a new tv. As prices drop and more HD content becomes available (I'm talking tv shows not movies) then people will begin to shift to HD.

There is a 3rd reason as well. Content on DVD is good enough for most people or put another way HD content is not as compelling for people to move from DVD to HD, they way DVD was compelling to move from VHS. There were alot of articles written about that point.

You can stop blaming Sony for the end of the world. The world is still here and HD adoption is growing; at the pace most people predicted :P

[mrswla]

The simple fact is HD adoption is slow because of two things:

1. The high cost of HDTVs.
2. Lack of HD content.

Not alot of people will plunk down a couple grand to buy a tv, especially in a recession. When there is not alot of content to watch, you are not going to go out and buy a new tv. As prices drop and more HD content becomes available (I'm talking tv shows not movies) then people will begin to shift to HD.

There is a 3rd reason as well. Content on DVD is good enough for most people or put another way HD content is not as compelling for people to move from DVD to HD, the way DVD was compelling to move from VHS.

The only one of those that has any subtance is the third one. The first two were true a few years ago, but no longer hold up. Anyone can buy a budget HDTV for around $300 to $500. Most, if not all, of Primetime network (and cable) tv is broadcast in HD. It also goes beyond that. Most of them broadcast all day in HD.

[jagabo]

About 1/3 of US households now have an HDTV.

[ocgw]

The simple fact is HD adoption is slow because of two things:

1. The high cost of HDTVs.
2. Lack of HD content.

Not alot of people will plunk down a couple grand to buy a tv, especially in a recession. When there is not alot of content to watch, you are not going to go out and buy a new tv. As prices drop and more HD content becomes available (I'm talking tv shows not movies) then people will begin to shift to HD.

There is a 3rd reason as well. Content on DVD is good enough for most people or put another way HD content is not as compelling for people to move from DVD to HD, the way DVD was compelling to move from VHS.

The only one of those that has any subtance is the third one. The first two were true a few years ago, but no longer hold up. Anyone can buy a budget HDTV for around $300 to $500. Most, if not all, of Primetime network (and cable) tv is broadcast in HD. It also goes beyond that. Most of them broadcast all day in HD.

The vast majority of ppl buy new TV's when an old one breaks down, not to upgrade to a better TV

ocgw

peace

[mrswla]

About 1/3 of US households now have an HDTV.

The vast majority of ppl buy new TV's when an old one breaks down, not to upgrade to a better TV

That is what I am saying. People aren't buying into HD because the cost is too high or that there is a lack of content. They are not buying into it because their current stuff is still running good. Most people are not like the people in these forums. Not into all the cool toys.

[LNMagic]

I have an LG combo drive that plays both. All that proves is how useless this latest format war was. I can understand Betamax/VHS a little bit. One machine can only play one kind of media. But today, a single drive is compatible with CD, DVD, BD, and HD DVD. The format war was unnecessary; both companies would have made more profits by allowing more combo standalone units.

Then again, maybe it's the studios' fault. They have become so paranoid about copy protection that they inhibit people from adopting new technologies. I have an HD-DVD/BD drive, along with an HDCP compliant video card, yet I cannot play HD content without buying even more pieces - either AnyDVD or a new monitor - because my monitor doesn't support HDCP. Content providers should not have control over what hardware we use to play the media. The hardware is capable of playing HD content.

Movie studios should take a cue from the music industry. Radiohead recently released "In Rainbows" as a pay-what-you-like mp3 download. Yet, when the album was released for sale, it topped charts. Even Apple now sells DRM-free music as its staple format.

I suspect that when movies are released with scaled-back copy protection, the general public will adopt it more readily. The trick is to convince the studios of such.

[HemLok]

For the record Sony does not equal Blu-ray.

Blu-ray may not be 100% Sony but don't discount just how much influence Sony does have and how much they gambled on it winning. Without Sony Blu-ray would not have won the Format War. Sony lost loads of money buying people to win the war and selling PS3s at a loss. Sony has its hands in the entire process from beginning to end when it comes to Blu-ray creation, sales, and playback. They also have their hands in manufacturing, the format, the protections, etc. Sony's interests have always been at stake with regard to Blu-ray winning the Format War.

In the end, my greatest point of anger with Blu-ray as a format is that use of AACS is mandatory. There simply is no option. If you are a small studio or you are a company who wants to release something on Blu-ray then you must pay for the AACS licensing. CSS was not mandatory for SD DVDs which left the market for DVDs wide open. CSS, region coding, etc, were all optional for SD DVD. With Blu-ray and AACS the BDA and Sony will make a extra money off every single movie/whatever released on Blu-ray. This is harmful to the little people who simply cannot afford a license for AACS. This is detrimental to the free and open release of content.

[orsetto]

The majority of your posts are one big rant against Blu-ray.

Are you kidding? I've posted about BluRay maybe five times in the past two years. Menawhile you guys have been flaming each other every which way from Sunday on a daily basis.

Give me a break. You can stop blaming Sony for the end of the world. The world is still here and HD adoption is growing; at the pace most people predicted :P

I don't blame Sony for the end of the world, just for causing a trainwreck at the worst possible time, and Toshiba was not exactly blameless either. The greater CE industry and Hollywood would dearly love to murder Sony and Toshiba, because they threw a wrench into the HD transition just long enough to sow confusion and doubt that opened the door much wider for cable on-demand, web services and other HD technologies that don't involve either a dedicated player or packaged media. The demand for HDTVs came long before an HD disc: had a single unified HD successor to DVD been introduced instead of a format faceoff it would have smoothly greased the wheels for continued packaged media habits and player sales. The disruption of that habit blew it all to hell, now nobody wins except internet providers, cable companies and maybe the studios if they wait long enough (Disneys Bob Iger is the only one poised to move quickly enough to make actual money whichever way the wind blows). Of course HD adoption will continue on an upward curve, nobodys denying that, what Sony effed up was the disc/player paradigm being central to it long enough for anyone involved to make money the "easy, old fashinoed way". The studio profit money in downloads, web delivery, and on demand is pathetic and unpredictable compared to packaged media, and the CE mfrs get absolutely nothing out of it if a dedicated player box isn't required. Thats the mess Sony and Toshiba gifted the industry with. Consumers could care less: they'll take their content however they can get it, as long as its cheap.

[videopoo]

In the end, my greatest point of anger with Blu-ray as a format is that use of AACS is mandatory. There simply is no option. If you are a small studio or you are a company who wants to release something on Blu-ray then you must pay for the AACS licensing. CSS was not mandatory for SD DVDs which left the market for DVDs wide open. CSS, region coding, etc, were all optional for SD DVD. With Blu-ray and AACS the BDA and Sony will make a extra money off every single movie/whatever released on Blu-ray. This is harmful to the little people who simply cannot afford a license for AACS. This is detrimental to the free and open release of content. 

	

		

			

			
				
Well said!
			
		
	

[kurkosdr]

But movie only is exactly what I want as I build my 1000+ movie, PC based HD "juke box" (400+BD and 300+DVD so far)

Man, you must absolutely tell me what software you are running on that pc! Loved those virtual DVD/Bluray disc covers and the way you can hand pick them from the screen. It's MyMovies3 right? And the link says something about MC7 (what is this?) and PowerDVD8 (ok, I know that). And I can only imagine what other cool software you have in there (I bet you have some more than that).

Just don't reply "software you can easily find online". There is so much software out there that finding good ones like yours is not easily done.

So please just post a list of the software you are running, I want mine jukebox too!

They keep support for lame formats like DVD-RAM but drop HD-DVD-ROM like a bad habit? It makes no sense.

Because HD-DVD was a bad habit. Yes, I too think that all this "format war" was an ego war between two stubborn companies, and it was all about whose patents will eventually be adopted (and paid) by the rest of the industry. But lets face it, HD-DVD was destined to fail.

When HD-DVD fans where asked about the advantages of the format, their only responses were that 1)the discs were cheaper to make (a point that became irrelevant the moment the first "low-to-high" Bluray discs appeared) 2)That the players were cheaper to buy (not true, it was just walmart unloading some old players because they'd started to collect too much dust, the new players were similar in price to bluray players) and 3) that microsoft's HDi technology was so very cool (huh?).

Instead, Bluray offered:
-Higher bitrates, more size, and stronger copy protection. This means that Hollywood studios could make movies that were longer in time, more good looking and harder to copy.
-Higher recording speeds for BD-R discs and much better recorders (HD-DVD recorders, namely one laptop by toshiba, produced discs with too much noise that couldn't be read on xbox 360). Also, it had bigger capacity for data.
-Despite been mainly a child of Sony, some patents are owned by other companies. The Bluray format had more companies working on it and it's development had started before HD-DVD had even been announced. Instead all HD-DVD patents were owned by Toshiba, which was seen by a many as a takeover attempt by Toshiba of the whole industry.

So, Hollywood studios, consumers, and device makers eventually put 3 and 3 together and abandonded Toshiba's little experiment to make a whole new format out of it's own.

The only mentionworthy momentum the HD-DVD format ever gained was when a stupid studio released the movie "Click" in Bluray, encoded with MPEG2 video, in a 25GB disc. MPEG2 commanded for an extremely high bitrate, something the 25GB disc couldn't facilitate. So, the -always clueless as usual- "Videophile magazines" came to the conclusion that 1)HD-DVD was the videophile's format of choice (despite it's obvious technical inferiority) and 2)50GB blurays were a scam by Sony PR (nowadays, this applies for those 51GB HD-DVD discs toshiba announced).
Then everything started to turn in favor of Bluray, and HD-DVD seemed more like paying the same as Bluray and getting way less. And the rest is history.

PS: I am not a fan of either format. The future lies in DivxHD. And it is not tied to any optical disc. It can live everywhere. So, glory to DivxHD!

[ocgw]

Thx kurkosdr

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Signature Edition/Media Center 7
Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 (integrates into Media Center 7)
Slysoft Virtual Clone Drive (VCD)-freeware
Slysoft AnyDVD HD-(20% off and free lifetime updates until Dec. 31,2009)
Slysoft CloneCD
MyMovies3 ( http://www.mymovies.dk/download.aspx )-freeware
Haupauge HVR-1600 OTA ATSC HDTV Tuner w/ Media Center plugin
( http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_mce.html )
Haupauge MCE IR remote driver ( http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_wintv7.html )
TsMuxer-freeware
imgburn-freeware
DVDFab Platinum 4 (yeah I know it is old but it still works for DVD)
eac3to-freeware
BDRB

MyMovies integrates into Media Center and PowerDVD integrates into MyMovies

Place iso into folder named for the movie and MyMovies folder monitoring drops in the coverart and other meta data from imdb or other database of your choosing into the folder

OTA ATSC HDTV integrates into MC7



Netflix streaming integrates into Media Center too



and I like how Win7/MC7 handles CD's



ocgw

peace