Why HD-DVD and Blu-ray are dead on arrival.

[Mr. Analog]

Sean Cooper over at slate.com thinks that disc media is on the way out...

...these new high-def formats will extend the market for home-entertainment media indefinitely. Both formats will fail, not because consumers are wary of a format war in which they could back the losing team, a la Betamax. Universal players that support both flavors of HD should appear early next year. No, the new formats are doomed because shiny little discs will soon be history. Here are four reasons why.

Why HD-DVD and Blu-ray are dead on arrival.

Interesting read, what do you guys think?

[Shayne]

Its tough to say, I think that HD discs will carve out a niche market in the end.

DVDs are here to stay for the long haul at least till better "on demand" services are available

[Darren Dirt]

Maybe the original Star Trek was right -- all the "discs" we know of will just be thin little colorful squares of plastic containing bagiglions of datum.

[Cova]

Interesting read, what do you guys think?

I think using exagerated headlines is dumb and the article won't be worth my time to read.  Many people will always want to "own" their stuff, in this case movie collection, as opposed to renting it, or downloading a time-limited copy.  HD is obviously the future, so one of either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will fill that market of people wanting to own a copy of the content.

[Mr. Analog]

Interesting read, what do you guys think?

I think using exagerated headlines is dumb and the article won't be worth my time to read.  Many people will always want to "own" their stuff, in this case movie collection, as opposed to renting it, or downloading a time-limited copy.  HD is obviously the future, so one of either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will fill that market of people wanting to own a copy of the content.

Well, maybe read the actual article and you'll know why the guy has such a polarized viewpoint.

[TheDruid]

In all honestly, i invested a TON of money into DVDs these last few years. The thought of buying them yet again in a new medium wheather it be Disc or on-demand makes me sick to my stomach.

However what id like is to Convert my entire DVD collection into electronic format with the ability to centrally store it so that from any TV in my house i can "Access" my libray without physically loading a disc. With the ability to transfer it to a portable device ah la IPod video for on the go watching.

That IMO is the ultimate format, never degades or loses quality, store in your pocket (eventually), buy it once for all future display devices.

Im sure you can do that now... but i think the technology needs to catch up and make it easy. Im not ready yet to start ripping DVDs; that and how many terabites of storage would i need? Hard drives still need to get a little cheaper to make it viable.

[Mr. Analog]

That was one of the reasons cited in the article that really stuck with me, the idea that we might actually be transcending ROM media as the delivery source / active storage medium for entertainment content. To be sure physical ROM storage will be around for archiving, in my opinion that won't change. I think P2P (legal or otherwise) is probably the best conduit for HD content delivery and that playback via some kind of media centre PC is likely to replace a physical media player for many of us.

[Shayne]

Are we willing to wait around while the 10GB movie downloads?  I know that I would be hard pressed to download 10GB in 2 hours, but thats the type of bandwidth required to stream a move in 1080p.

I agree with Cova in that people want to own the media, I want to be able to pop in a disc and begin to watch it right now.  The idea of storing it in digital format like Druid suggests would also kick ass, but the cost of storage is far to high.  Riping a single episode of BS:G in 100% quality and 5.1 sound is 900MB, might not sound like a lot with current Hard Drive sizes at 500GB+, but thats just a 45 minute episode in non-HD quality.

I don't think we can just drop the "disc" standard yet, they cost pennies to make, and hold data for a very long time.

The reason I say that HD will be a niche is that I don't think many people are going to replace the TV they got in the family room that has been servicing them for years to get a new fangled HD-TV.  Most of us here are well above the "normal" standard of living and can easily drop the required cash to get a TV and think nothing of dropping off a perfectly good 27" to the salvation army (not to mention most of us a pretty geeky and must own the latest gadgets).  So having us stand around and discuss is probably a pretty poor sampling.

[Tom]

You should see my TV. I would LOVE to go out and buy a nice 32-42" LCD TV or HiDef Projector, it just aint going to happen no matter how much I want it to.

My TV is one of those nice cabinet TVs that sit on the floor. 27 inches of grade A 1980s technology. And yes, its real wood!

[Lazybones]

http://www.thedvdwars.com/

VERY interesting numbers... Looks like HD-DVD is ahead in a few areas.


Quick show of hands, who thinks this is a Hardware topic? I know we are talking about a format, but I deals heavily with electronics.

[Shayne]

Hmm, well how do you like that.  I would have put money on Blu-Ray leading

[Tom]

HD-DVD is easier for manufacturers. It uses the same basic processes to make HD-DVD disks. Its also backwards compatible. You can make a HD-DVD disk with plain old DVD layers under the HD-DVD layers.

[Mr. Analog]

http://www.thedvdwars.com/

VERY interesting numbers... Looks like HD-DVD is ahead in a few areas.


Quick show of hands, who thinks this is a Hardware topic? I know we are talking about a format, but I deals heavily with electronics.

I think this is about whether or not physical media will have relevance in the future, so I agree, let's shift this over to hardware.

[TheDruid]

Im not surprised really, HD DVD players are cheaper right now, and from my POV both formats have equal shelve space in the store. Be interesting to see these numbers after ps3 establishes its self. Really; show of hands, how many ppl think that the PS2 was largely responsible for the original jump to DVD? I remember when i bought my first DVD player (well conned into one by an international stereo scam, but that’s a different story). Owning a DVD player was a big thing, and at that point they were in the $400 - $500 range. PS3 immediately put DVD players into the homes of millions.

PS3 will do the same. There’s no doubt that PS3 will eventually sell millions. That’s A-LOT of established blue ray players, so when those ppl are in the store, which format will they buy? the choice is easy. Sure you can get an HD-DVD player for XBOX, but there’s two problems; one only a certain percentage of xbox owners will shell the extra cash for the player, two what about all the non xbox owners? Lets face it, im rooting for HD DVD, but they got a though battle a head, established user base, and big movie studios releasing Blue-Ray only blockbusters.

It's Sony's gamble and theirs to screw up, and with their track record lately, they are their own worst enemy.

[Mr. Analog]

The story of DVD adoption is a strange one, back in the mid-to-late 90s there was another format war of sorts, back then it was DVD vs DivX Set-Top Box and the set top box was the pony a lot of industry bigwigs were banking on, of course that was when the argument was strongly in the hand of the consumer wanting to own something substantial (rather than just "renting" a transient file). DVD started creeping into the retail scene around '98/'99 as I recall, they started with one or two shelves and as word of mouth spread about the monumental leap in video technology popularity started to catch on. DVD offered significantly better picture and sound quality (over VHS), no rewinding, no degradation and alternate soundtrack and subtitle options. Sure, the nerd crowd were the early adopters, but they always are (and sometimes they lose, like with LaserDisc) but the advances were so significant I think it was impossible to stop the spread of DVD as "the" medium for watching video at home.