Re: Toshiba says HD DVD has not lost out to Blu-ray

Spamdula McDibbleweeds <swam_mollen@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Broadband has a much higher penetration in the market than HDTV does right
now. ?Also, I bet if you look at the households who do have HDTV, a
greater percentage of them are also going to have broadband when compared
to the national average.

Are you dense? Broadband needs a PHYSICAL connection to the telephony
network to work.
Every single home can buy a new TV unrestricted by phusical barriers
like not having a decent copper wire down their raggedy backwater lane
in the the deep countryside.

Do you have a reading problem, or are you simply using strawmen arguments
to claim I'm wrong? *RIGHT NOW*, a larger percentage of houses have some
form of broadband compared to HDTV.

Furthermore, I am also saying that the percentage of HDTV owners who also
have broadband is higher than the percentage of the entire US population
that has broadband.

What either of those facts has to do with needing a physical telephony
connection for broadband is beyond me. It's also incorrect, since cable
modems are not run by telephone companies, and emerging long-range
wireless technologies don't rely on wires to the home at all.

Uptake of HDTV is going to be higher in the short term because people
dont need major civil engineering works to be done to get everyone a
new TV set.

Yes, this is a good point, but again, you're talking about the future. My
comments were based on the present.

Exactly. ?I don't think the prices will be competitive for another 5-10
years, though...which should give the video market enough time to swing a
majority in terms of HDTV penetration.

So you are saying that in 5-10 years, Solid state will be able to
compete on price and capacity with Optical media?

Well if thats the case, Blu-Ray better stop releasing thousands of
movies between now and then, as it's all obviously going to be for
nothing because you say so!

By your argument, there was no reason to even bother with DVD because here
we are, just over 10 years later looking HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

DVD really isn't that old of a format if you think about it, and in the
past 10 years, computers have made huge advancements and the speed of
those advancements is only increasing. Looking at emerging technologies
today, it's not impossible to see that it could very well be possible to
not only store a full length movie on a memory chip, but also be able to
manufacture that chip and packaging for the same amount of money it costs
to stamp out an optical DVD or Blu-Ray disc today.

One possible way to achieve this would rely on printer technology that would
literally "print" the memory chip with the movie already stored on it. The
chip would then only need to be shoved into a consumer-friendly package and
then shipped to the store. If you needed to change to a different title, you
just tell the printer to use a different file. Voila.

Which makes me wonder why the industry foisted blu-ray vs. hd-dvd onto the
public in the first place after dealing with dvd-R vs. dvd+R, SACD vs.
dvd-A, and let's not forget VHS vs. Beta. ?


None of these were remotely the same.
SACD was never more than a side show, and there never was a competitor
for high definition audio, DVD-A never got beyond a handful of disks
that were on limited release.

That's not the way history tells it... While they may not have come out
at the same time, they considered each other competitors, and pretty much
killed each other off due to the confusion and pricey equipment both
requierd. The high-end early adopters - the market that would be
interested in such things - was content to just sit back and wait for a
dominating format, which didn't happen. Regular consumers were just
content to stick with regular CDs which worked on everything, and probably
weren't even aware of either format.

DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RAM was a non-event as every burner does both or all
three now anyway, and either way, all burners played the same pre-
recorded DVDs

The combo drives for DVD-R/+R didn't appear at first, remember? There was
a time when there were burners that only did -R, or +R. When the combo
drives first arrived, they were pretty expensive - at least more expensive
than the single format burners that were already on the market. This
changed quickly, but it still slowed the adoption of burnable DVDs on the
market. Even now, some players won't handle -R and +R discs equally -
probably some stupid political resentment on the manufacturer's part...
Again, it was a pointless format war that was foisted onto the consumers,
while not providing any benefit to anyone - manufacturer OR consumer alike.

Also, tell me, which format is better? What are the technological
differences between the two (other than the obvious ones that make the 2
formats incompatible with one another.) Does a -R disc store more than a
+R one? Is one faster than the other? Are there features one has that
the other lacks?

Even when a format war is "won"
as cleanly as it was with VHS vs. Beta, it still cost consumers,
electronics manufacturers, and the movie studios a lot of money. ?And in
the case of DVD-A/SACD, neither party won as both formats are relegated to
a dusty, forgotten corner in your better A/V stores where they continue to
battle for dominance in a market that didn't care when they were new, much
less even knows they exist.

In all cases, none of these comparisons are valid.

Beta vs VHS was for a home video stqnard, whereas before, there was
nothing at all.

You've forgotten about 9mm film? (Granted, that was pretty much only used
for home movies - you couldn't record TV with it.)

It was still a format war, no? It was still something that forced
consumers to make a choice between two incompatible formats that
moreorless performed the same function and had the same features. In both
cases, retailers had a lot of influence in which one won as well. In the
case of VHS/Beta, since Sony didn't want porn on Beta, the porn industry
went with VHS, pretty much creating the home video market and sealing
Beta's fate. VHS' greater storage capacity and convience of being able to
fit a movie on a single tape further saw to Beta's defeat.

In any case, why do you advocate there being yet more formats further
down the line as a reason to pretend Blu-Ray does not matter in the
long run?
Surely you have just argued that we dont need any more format wars,
and thus, the industry should back one format, and be done

In the long run, DVD does not have the capacity - Blu-Ray needs to be
the next standard, as HD WILL be required at some point over the next
decade by the majority of consumers.

There are still many people who feel that even without the HD format war,
Blu-Ray/HD-DVD will basically become this decade's version of Laser Disc -
a superior format to the market favorite, but never winning mass appeal.

Even once the HD format war is over, that format still has to compete with
DVD. I agree that over the next decade, the majority of people will
switch to HDTV. However, even if they switch, will they feel the need to
also switch their DVD library over to HD? Even an existing, non-upscaling
DVD player combined with the upscaler in the HDTV, will produce a superior
picture to any SDTV. For many, that may just be enough - especially if
they have a smaller (<45") screen. For the high-end market, sure, HD
movies is a no brainer.

DVD took off so fast because not only did it obviously appeal to the
high-end market, who eagerly abandoned LD for it, but it ALSO gave the
mass market a VAST improvement on their existing equipment. DVD also
provided a ton of features that VHS could never dream of. However, beyond
the better picture and better sound (if you have an equally high end sound
system), what do either of the HD formats offer that DVD doesn't?

Also, don't forget, it still took DVD until 2006 to completely overtake
VHS in both the retail and rental markets and that was after studios had
started to drop VHS altogether. Even if the HD format war ended tomorrow,
and Blu-ray players dropped to $200, in 10 years time, I guarantee that
there'll STILL be plain-old DVDs on the market, and that the market share
between DVD and HD won't be nearly as lopsided as it was for VHS vs. DVD.

I consider myself in the high-end market. I have a large screen TV, and
can easily discern the difference between an upscaled DVD and a true HD
source. However, I also know I'm not the average consumer.

In 10 years when HD penetration is near universal, Blu-Ray will be
selling as well as DVD.

I doubt it. In 10 years, people will still be converting to HD. Even if
the homes have a HDTV, and player, what about the mobile market? Do you
really think family SUVs will benefit from a HD player with a crummy 5"
screen in the backseat for the kids?

About the only way to accomplish this would be to drop DVD altogether, and
only have studios release in HD, and retailers only carry HD. Even then,
I still have doubts that sales would be as high as they were for DVD when
it was at its peak. DVD sales have been falling lately. I think people
are realizing they really don't have to own every movie they watch -
especially given the "quality" of some of the so-called movies pushed out
into theaters and then onto DVD just weeks later...

200gb disks are already on the drawing-board, and prices are falling
as economies of scale increase.

As you point out with holographic memory, this is way more capacity needed
based on today's highest video standard. ?Sure, extra capacity is extra
capacity, and the computer data crowd may be interested in these larger
discs some day. ?But for video? ?As we saw with DVD, there were relatively
few titles that actually bothered to fill up even a single layer DVD, to
say nothing of a dual-layer one. ?I can't tell you how many TV series I
have on DVD that could easily put more episodes on each disc, but instead
opted for more discs. ?Even if you gave the publishers a 200GB disc, do
you honestly think they'll do something intelligent with it, like putting
an entire season of your hour long drama on a single disc? ?My guess is
that they won't. ?My guess is that you'll still end up buying 6-7 half
full discs for that single season just like now...

DVD can have 17 gigs if you do a flipper with dual layers on both
sides - but how many actually used that facility? ero.
Early DVDs were flippers, but then they figured out how to stick two
layers together to get 8 gigs on one side.

Fact is, getting 2 or 3 disks ina bundle feels more value than one
with everything on it.

Yeah, until it's time to actually find the shelf space for it...

Anime releases are particularly bad in this area. Your typical anime
series is 26 episodes, each about 25 minutes each (including opening, closing,
preview, etc.) Most anime series were released on 7 DVDs, with each disc
only containing 3 or 4 episodes on it. That doesn't even fill up a single
layer. Going with dual layer discs, why couldn't they put 6 or 7 episodes
on a disc - cutting the number of discs in a series from 7 down to 4?
Why? Because selling 7 discs at $20 each is more profitable than selling
4 discs at $30/ea.

Do you really think that 50GB, 100GB or even 200GB discs will change
anything?

Of course, in 10-15 years, we very well could be hearing about a new media
format. ?Remember that DVD isn't even 15 years old, if you go way back to
1995 when the DVD spec was finalized.

As I said, it just isnt necessary without a new form of TV.

Theroetically, if they produce 3dtv between now and then, it might
need a new storage medium - but that is highly doubtful.

A 3d format - especially one that could work on existing HDTVs - would be
the sort of thing that could cause people to skip over the 2D HD formats
provided by Blu-Ray, even if the physical medium still a multi-layer
Blu-Ray disc.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.
.

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