Toshiba Wins Hollywood Studios' Support for HD-DVD

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I am not too cheap...I own an HDTV capable set and have comcast bringing me an HDTV box for my cable.

The comment since you don't read well is that the average consumer does not have this. PPL like my mom and dad, my uncles, my in laws,etc. Most do not have HDTV capable sets now and just got DVD players in the last 2-3 years....This does not happen overnight and market penetration of HDTV sets and technology does not warrant this as anything more then niche market and early adopters. I bought a DVD player in 1996 as one of the first 500,000 units ever sold and it was a painful wait for titles to be put on DVD. It wasn't until late 1998 that all the hollywood players were aboard with the same format and then the titles were not coming fast and dvd rental places had little to no titles available for rent. It has only been in the last 2 years that dvd players have been 100 dollars or less and at that point may have finally penetrated as many homes as VHS.

Be an early adopter and fight this one. I wont this time, or at least for the next 2 years probably. It will be a niche market for the Hometheater gurus and ppl who like to pay way too much for something with limited titles and uncertainty... The home theater ppl will drag us into this but be assured it may take longer then it did going into DVD. Consumers are fickle and unless you can convince them that that new DVD player they JUST bought doesn'cut it anymore they wont upgrade...That is a fact...

First off, my apologies. I wasn't implying that you, specifically, were too cheap. That was directed more to the market in general.

I don't read so well? Where did I imply that the "average consumer" has an HDTV? I openly acknowledged that HDTV was a small percentage of the overal market. My point was for such a small percentage they seem to have disproportionate pull in the market.

I still don't understand your skepticism. At this very moment in time, a new technology format would be poor timing, I agree. But HDTV prices are falling and sales continue to rise. Through 2005 and 2006 the potential market for a next generation display format would be pretty large.

Every new format has been relegated to "niche" status for its first couple years. It takes time to displace the incumbent and I certainly don't see this generation being any different. The fact that both formats will be backwards compatible with DVD is reason enough to think they'll be successful to some capacity.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I am not hampering anything I am just commenting I think this is bad timing!! Go ahead and release them I say. I know plenty of ppl and I bet no more then 5% of them will even buy one in the first 1-2 years of release. That sounds like a niche market, and ther is nothing wrong with that.

I like technology trust me. I have kids now (young) and I never get to listen to my expensive sound system anymore. The pciture is what I get to enjoy and I think it looks great now.

Any idea on intital cost of players???

Edit: lets also remember that on top of cost of capable TVs, new players, there will be higher price for these disc. You say higher capacity will mean more bonuses on disc??? They will come with a much higher price tag as well

Early adopers will spend thousands upon thousands now to enjoy these when the rest of the average joes who are shell shocked now with viusal and audio clarity will get them later at a fraction of the cost. It is just the market and nothing will change. It will probably follow DVDs rise in timeline. May be a bit quicker with backwards compatability, but possible format war never helps....

Supposedly the initial Toshiba players will retail for around $1000 next Christmas. The Blu-Ray units already on sale in Japan sell for around $3000, but they are full-fledged media recorders with DVD+-RW capability and a hard drive. Nobody knows the expected price for Blu-Ray read-only players.

Regarding the extras on the disc, I'm not asking for more content. Hell, most DVDs have more extras than I give a shit about. I meant that I would like any filmed extras (color commentary, special features, deleted scenes, etc) to be stored in HD, just the like the actual movie. Storing the extras in HD will require additional capacity.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Duvie
By the way it isn't hard to grow by 50% when sales of units is so small...Heck DVD players form 1996 to 1997 to 1998 may have increased as much at 200-300% per year to get to the numbers they are today. that will taper off.

Dumping of chep plasma TVs may help numbers but consumers are going to be pissed when they see most of the market is going to go to the LCD market....ONce the HDTV cable subscriber numbers go up more then they are I think it will be a better time. I mean go ahead and introduce it now, but with limited ppl to likely buy now format wars last for longer periods of time whcih only work to keep the average sitting on the sideline afraid to leap into possible the format that dies.

Just wondering, what makes you think LCD will win out over Plasma in the flat panel market? The only advantage LCD has over PDP is resolution. Plasmas are easier and cheaper to manufacturer and arguably have better picture quality.

In case your curious, here are the HDTV sales numbers from September 2002 through 2003. Link

For the year-long period ended September 30, more than 2.4 million HDTV sets were sold in the US, NPD researchers determined. The figure is 50% more than were sold in the previous year and three times the number sold two years ago. Although the largest flat-panel sets are still expensive - $20,000 for a 63" plasma display panel (PDP), for example - prices have dropped considerably for many types of TVs, particularly CRTs, (picture tube or "direct view" sets). 26" HD-capable CRTs can be found as low as $599, a sharp decline from the $1000 price niche they occupied last year.

 

[Pariah]

Bleh. Was hoping blu-ray would run away and win this one. Capabilities are pretty similar between the 2, but capacity is everything. If it doesn't store what I want it to store, I don't care how cheap it is, I don't want it. DVD's are way too small for large scale storage. No justification for 5 times the space? Every tried writing the contents of a 200GB drive to DVD? I bet not, since among numerous problems, it is completely impractical. Four 50GB discs would make backing up a 200GB drive relatively painless. When I could do it on 4 discs, why would I want to have to hassle with the 7 it would take for HD-DVD? HD-DVD better be cheaper considering it has 40% less capacity and would force me to buy more discs than blu-ray would. With the new generation of 400GB ATA drives, and who knows how big in the future, 30GB will be worthless before you know it.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Ultimately number 3 is worthless considering we are going from 4.7/9.4 now for single sided dual layer and again most do not watch this at its best level with their equipment. No justification 5 times the space. So they can not view that at even close to its prime??? 15/30gb is maybe even too big but more reasonable...

You do understand that 30GB can be easily eaten up by recording a 2hr HD broadcast at 720p, 1080i or worse yet 1080p. I don't even think you can get a 2hr broadcast at 1080p on that disc (30GB HD-DVD).

Originally posted by: Duvie
The comment since you don't read well is that the average consumer does not have this. PPL like my mom and dad, my uncles, my in laws,etc. Most do not have HDTV capable sets now and just got DVD players in the last 2-3 years....

"Average" people don't have HD sets either but they are selling VERY well. Especially with the recent price drops. People with HD sets will most likely want an HD recorder.

I think if manufacturers made player/recorders that worked with either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, I think we can live with both formats. Hey, people thought there was going to be a war between DVD-R and DVD+R. But now that we have players/recorders that accept both, dual formats are not a problem at all.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
You do understand that 30GB can be easily eaten up by recording a 2hr HD broadcast at 720p, 1080i or worse yet 1080p. I don't even think you can get a 2hr broadcast at 1080p on that disc (30GB HD-DVD).

The amount of content you can fit onto a disc is directly proportional to the bitrate it's stored at. If 2hrs of 1080p@24fps doesn't fit onto a single 30GB disc at 12mbps, you lower the bitrate to 10mbps and voila it fits. It looks worse, but it fits.

I want Blu-Ray to win the simply because I want the highest quality possible. More capacity means higher bitrate for the video and audio streams.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: JackBurton
You do understand that 30GB can be easily eaten up by recording a 2hr HD broadcast at 720p, 1080i or worse yet 1080p. I don't even think you can get a 2hr broadcast at 1080p on that disc (30GB HD-DVD).

The amount of content you can fit onto a disc is directly proportional to the bitrate it's stored at. If 2hrs of 1080p@24fps doesn't fit onto a single 30GB disc at 12mbps, you lower the bitrate to 10mbps and voila it fits. It looks worse, but it fits.

I want Blu-Ray to win the simply because I want the highest quality possible. More capacity means higher bitrate for the video and audio streams.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Yes you can do things to make it "fit," but that always comes at a price (less quality). When you pay for a nice HD set, you want to be able to play back the show you recorded with the best possible quality. Hence, Blu-Ray would be the best option. DVD capacity just won't due for HD recording, so the faster these new standards get here, the better.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
That's exactly what I'm saying. Yes you can do things to make it "fit." But that always comes at a prices (less quality). When you pay for a nice HD set, you want to be able to play back the show you recorded with the best possible quality. Hence, Blu-Ray would be the best option. DVD capacity just won't due for HD recording so the faster these new standards get here, the better.

I agree! I dislike HD DVD because I feel the specs have been sacrificed in the name of cost, but that savings sure as hell won't get passed along to the consumer. Manufacturing costs are usually a fraction of the price at places like Best Buy and Circuit City.

 

[JackBurton]

And for people that are serious about recording HD shows, I highly suggest building an HTPC for your recording needs. I'm sure every set top HD recorder (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) will be equipped with a broadcast flag check. This REALLY sucks ass for people wanting to record their shows in all their glory. There is one HDTV tuner out that I know of that ignores the broadcast flag, so you can record whatever show and at whatever quality you'd like. I'm definitely going for an HTPC box equipped with a nice HDTV tuner AND an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray recorder. 🙂.

 

[icp]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Ultimately number 3 is worthless considering we are going from 4.7/9.4 now for single sided dual layer and again most do not watch this at its best level with their equipment. No justification 5 times the space. So they can not view that at even close to its prime??? 15/30gb is maybe even too big but more reasonable...

Actually dual layer recordable DVDs only contain 8.5GB of storage. The "pits" on one of the layers have to be made bigger.

Also keep in mind that dual layer DVDs only support R mode and not RW mode. I imagine the same is true for blu-ray and HD-DVD discs. So if you want to use a blu-ray or HD-DVD recorder like a VCR you'll probably have to use single sided discs only.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: Duvie
By the way it isn't hard to grow by 50% when sales of units is so small...Heck DVD players form 1996 to 1997 to 1998 may have increased as much at 200-300% per year to get to the numbers they are today. that will taper off.

Dumping of chep plasma TVs may help numbers but consumers are going to be pissed when they see most of the market is going to go to the LCD market....ONce the HDTV cable subscriber numbers go up more then they are I think it will be a better time. I mean go ahead and introduce it now, but with limited ppl to likely buy now format wars last for longer periods of time whcih only work to keep the average sitting on the sideline afraid to leap into possible the format that dies.

Just wondering, what makes you think LCD will win out over Plasma in the flat panel market? The only advantage LCD has over PDP is resolution. Plasmas are easier and cheaper to manufacturer and arguably have better picture quality.

In case your curious, here are the HDTV sales numbers from September 2002 through 2003. Link

For the year-long period ended September 30, more than 2.4 million HDTV sets were sold in the US, NPD researchers determined. The figure is 50% more than were sold in the previous year and three times the number sold two years ago. Although the largest flat-panel sets are still expensive - $20,000 for a 63" plasma display panel (PDP), for example - prices have dropped considerably for many types of TVs, particularly CRTs, (picture tube or "direct view" sets). 26" HD-capable CRTs can be found as low as $599, a sharp decline from the $1000 price niche they occupied last year.

from the highend places I have visited they said the LCD was better. they also said alot of these sub 4000 dollar plasma machines were crap. They said if a PLasma had a screen issue it can't be fixed and is basically finished, whereas LCD's can be fixed. I cannot vouch for this but have to go on the words they tell me cause I am not the expert. So they are hot (power consumption), they said no better in picture quality, and difficult to impossible to fix. They also said in their opinion the lCD's would be the mainstream.

Edit: I didn;t think about the HD as being a recorder for HD programs and that definitely gives it a bit more consumer bite. If current trends of ppl getting PVR digital recorders now to record digital broadcast holds true then this could help adopt the medium much faster. Still while I have seen my TV with a HD TV signal I am not like piss my pants excited. Its nice and clearly visible. It is likley many of us here will have them in near future but it is still the average consumer that plays a cautious hand. I just wish they could pick one.....Sounds like the Blue ray offers more in capacity, but as mentioned above Sony sure has a habit of always trying to go it alone and never working with anyone...Just want to hold patents and reap all the benefits from everybody. Don't get me wrong I have a Sony TV!!!

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: JackBurton
That's exactly what I'm saying. Yes you can do things to make it "fit." But that always comes at a prices (less quality). When you pay for a nice HD set, you want to be able to play back the show you recorded with the best possible quality. Hence, Blu-Ray would be the best option. DVD capacity just won't due for HD recording so the faster these new standards get here, the better.

I agree! I dislike HD DVD because I feel the specs have been sacrificed in the name of cost, but that savings sure as hell won't get passed along to the consumer. Manufacturing costs are usually a fraction of the price at places like Best Buy and Circuit City.

As someone who is a cottage industry doing video productions, I am all for lower costs and a better track record of compatibility with set top players. The DVD Forum is doing well. The +RW Alliance has finally gotten on board a little with DL. Sony, whom I love for their cameras and DV/HDV stuff, is not doing me any other favors. Ever since the BetaMax fiasco, Sony has had this dying need to make every thing they do THE standard. I, for one, am tired of it.

BTW, I think BetaMax should have won (and I guess you might be able to compare Blu-Ray to BetaMax and HD-DVD to VHS). But, I do think that if the DVD Forum had not added the three formats, Blu-Ray would not support them all. I can compare a WMV in SD with MPEG in SD and WMV wins hands down. Smaller and better color. I have not done any comparisons with the three formats using the same HDV test clips I have yet (band competition video has to ship this week and too much bandwidth involved in time and disk space).

Remember this too. Pioneer has already upped the anty. Pioneer is talking 500GB disc using ultraviolet lasers (probably implemented as DL, DS).

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Duvie
from the highend places I have visited they said the LCD was better. they also said alot of these sub 4000 dollar plasma machines were crap. They said if a PLasma had a screen issue it can't be fixed and is basically finished, whereas LCD's can be fixed. I cannot vouch for this but have to go on the words they tell me cause I am not the expert. So they are hot (power consumption), they said no better in picture quality, and difficult to impossible to fix. They also said in their opinion the lCD's would be the mainstream.

They are feeding you a bunch of crap. I've heard this same line from places before and I don't understand why they're pushing LCD this hard. Plasmas are cheaper to manufacturer, offer a higher viewing angle, have a better color gamut, quicker response rate, and come in larger sizes.

LCD advantage is higher resolution for a given size and no potential for burn-in, though burn-in isn't nearly the issue it was in the early generation panels.

You can buy quality plasma panels in the sub $4000 range. The only problem is, most of these panels only have 480 lines of vertical resolution. Panasonic has some phenomenal plasmas in this price range.

Edit: I didn;t think about the HD as being a recorder for HD programs and that definitely gives it a bit more consumer bite. If current trends of ppl getting PVR digital recorders now to record digital broadcast holds true then this could help adopt the medium much faster. Still while I have seen my TV with a HD TV signal I am not like piss my pants excited. Its nice and clearly visible. It is likley many of us here will have them in near future but it is still the average consumer that plays a cautious hand. I just wish they could pick one.....Sounds like the Blue ray offers more in capacity, but as mentioned above Sony sure has a habit of always trying to go it alone and never working with anyone...Just want to hold patents and reap all the benefits from everybody. Don't get me wrong I have a Sony TV!!!

Sony is not going at it alone!! The Blu-Ray group consists of 14 board of directers, one of which is Sony. All decisions and changes to the spec need to be cleared through this group.See here The board consists of Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK, Thomson, and Fox.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed
Sony is not going at it alone!! The Blu-Ray group consists of 14 board of directers, one of which is Sony. All decisions and changes to the spec need to be cleared through this group.See here The board consists of Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK, Thomson, and Fox.

IIRC, Sony and Matsushita hold the patents.

 

[Eug]

IMO, HD-DVD makes the most sense. Blu-Ray is more expensive technology, and harder to implement, for dubious benefits of increased capacity.

 

[Dug]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
And for people that are serious about recording HD shows, I highly suggest building an HTPC for your recording needs. I'm sure every set top HD recorder (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) will be equipped with a broadcast flag check. This REALLY sucks ass for people wanting to record their shows in all their glory. There is one HDTV tuner out that I know of that ignores the broadcast flag, so you can record whatever show and at whatever quality you'd like. I'm definitely going for an HTPC box equipped with a nice HDTV tuner AND an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray recorder. 🙂.

That's the problem right now. If broadcasters have their way, you won't be able to record at all. You'll have to buy a new hdtv tuner every time they change their flags, which they have already done. So stand alone HD-DVD or Blu-Ray recorders for recording your shows may never happen.

I personally don't like the idea of Blu-Ray. Cost is a concern. Do you really think the extra cost will be a direct cost passed onto the consumer? No, the middle man gets a markup too. So any extra cost in material will be exagerated on the consumer end.
When you start buying DVD's like I do, it adds up quick.

On another note- LCD sucks. You will never be able to have true blacks.
For small areas I can't wait for Samsung's Vixlim
For large areas a DLP projector can't be beat.

 

[Davegod]

I'm not so confident that cost is the sole driver of the movie business. If it was, they'd be sticking with DVD. This decade they managed to sell people DVDs of movies they'd already bought on VHS. They even managed to sell multiple versions of the same film on DVD to the same people, by releasing different versions with extra feature content. I think they're hoping to do similar again, or at least to justify higher prices and higher margins. Oh, and new brilliant copy protection so they can sell a HDDVD for every one of those millions of movies being stolen on the internet. Or, back in real world, a HDDVD for every thousand movie downloads, and that's only for a few weeks until they have all perfectly defeated it.

For movies, you can be sure as hell HDDVD isnt consumer driven technology. 99% of people are more than happy with DVD and dont even own the expensive equipment needed to fully take advantage of the picture and sound quality DVD can offer, nevermind the new stuff. As for HDTV, few countries even sell HD TVs except perhaps as some novelty item for rich people. There's no HD TV there, and most people are much more bothered about the quality of the programming than that of the picture.

 

[NightCrawler]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Bleh. Was hoping blu-ray would run away and win this one. Capabilities are pretty similar between the 2, but capacity is everything. If it doesn't store what I want it to store, I don't care how cheap it is, I don't want it. DVD's are way too small for large scale storage. No justification for 5 times the space? Every tried writing the contents of a 200GB drive to DVD? I bet not, since among numerous problems, it is completely impractical. Four 50GB discs would make backing up a 200GB drive relatively painless. When I could do it on 4 discs, why would I want to have to hassle with the 7 it would take for HD-DVD? HD-DVD better be cheaper considering it has 40% less capacity and would force me to buy more discs than blu-ray would. With the new generation of 400GB ATA drives, and who knows how big in the future, 30GB will be worthless before you know it.

The Roms are 15/30 but the writable HD-DVD is 20/40.....so it would take 5 disc versus 4 not as bad. Also since most people still aren't using dual layer because the write speed sucks most would just use 20 gig single layer versus 27 gig blu ray single layer. 7 gigs isn't that much of a difference and the cost becomes a factor here.

 

[NightCrawler]

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: Duvie
Ultimately number 3 is worthless considering we are going from 4.7/9.4 now for single sided dual layer and again most do not watch this at its best level with their equipment. No justification 5 times the space. So they can not view that at even close to its prime??? 15/30gb is maybe even too big but more reasonable...

You do understand that 30GB can be easily eaten up by recording a 2hr HD broadcast at 720p, 1080i or worse yet 1080p. I don't even think you can get a 2hr broadcast at 1080p on that disc (30GB HD-DVD).

all.

Do you have to use MPEG-2, MPEG-4 would save some space and it has better picture quality at lower bitrates.

 

[LordPhoenix]

I was goin for Blue-Ray as well.

Damn cool name.

 

[NightCrawler]

Originally posted by: LordPhoenix
I was goin for Blue-Ray as well.

Damn cool name.

You mean Blu-Ray 🙂

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: NightCrawler

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: Duvie
Ultimately number 3 is worthless considering we are going from 4.7/9.4 now for single sided dual layer and again most do not watch this at its best level with their equipment. No justification 5 times the space. So they can not view that at even close to its prime??? 15/30gb is maybe even too big but more reasonable...

You do understand that 30GB can be easily eaten up by recording a 2hr HD broadcast at 720p, 1080i or worse yet 1080p. I don't even think you can get a 2hr broadcast at 1080p on that disc (30GB HD-DVD).

all.

Do you have to use MPEG-2, MPEG-4 would save some space and it has better picture quality at lower bitrates.

You are missing that WMV-HD compression is better than current MPEG Layer 2. Standing in the Shadows of Motown is on a standard DVD in 720p as is Step Into Liquid.

 

[NightCrawler]

How fast can you record a Blu-ray Disc?


According to the Blu-ray Disc v1.0 specification, 1x speed will require a 36Mbps data transfer rate, which means it will take about 1 hour and 33 minutes to record 25GB. The Blu-ray Disc Association are currently working on the v2.0 specification, which will support 2x speed to cut the time it takes to copy content from one disc to another in half. In the future, the data transfer rate is expected to be raised to 8x or more.

DAMN that's slow, can't wait til 16x versions hit the market 🙂

 

[0roo0roo]

I think blueray is better, but hd-dvd is more practical for consumers as it will be more affordable.

heh, i expect the initial prices for either to be high either way.

i prefer blueray. never say "x" size is enough... it never is. just look at how dvd was huge when it came out, now we realize it can't even hold seamless branching movies without sacrificing heavily on video bitrate etc. if the consumer is to invest in new technology that lasts atleast a decade, it should be worth the jump, not the lazy easy route for the studios.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

I think blueray is better, but hd-dvd is more practical for consumers as it will be more affordable.

heh, i expect the initial prices for either to be high either way.

Of course, but the point is that HD-DVD will be cheaper for the manufacturers, movie companies, and the distributors.