Just When the HD Format War was Winding Down...

You don't know that for a fact - hell, it's just Linux Fanboyism Two, Electric Boogaloo. I demonstrate later in the post (hell, you do too!) why they have cause to support it. The fact is, they are shoring up the investment both they and their consumers have made - that ain't something that happens a hell of a lot.

And that's fine for now. But Sony is hoping for a move away from conventional DVDs, and were that to happen, Sony will be raking in money because then, you would have to buy Blu-Ray if you wanted your favorite movie on disc.

If you are correct, and Microsoft is trying to scuttle films on optical media (which I seriously doubt, given their reticence to create more web-based applications), it'll be the same shit, different day. A format war all over again. And they wouldn't throw away a huge amount of money to kill a format just so that they have to go through it all over again.

The speculation is. There are far simpler means to getting into the movie download business than some grand conspiracy to destroy traditional media. Apple managed it. Netflix managed it. Amazon managed it. All without needing to nuke little discs of plastic.

Meanwhile, because the HD-DVD player is an optional component to the 360, it truly doesn't matter in the end. They offer it so that people can watch films on it, not to drive the console. Were HD-DVD to fail (and they are actually trying to ensure that is not the case, which is actually far more responsible to their customers than usual), they could just say, "Well, go buy a Blu-Ray player - remember, it was Sony who basically made that investment a $180 brick."

I find it hilarious that you mention the one thing the PS3 is good for the moment - playing Blu-Ray films. Sony artificially inflated the prices of Blu-Ray players to drive up sales of their console, which promised cheap playback of Blu-Ray discs, and hell, even then, the sales have been lukewarm. As third-party manufacturers manage to lower their costs, even that benefit for the PS3 will be gone.

Not true. Enthusiasts do get what they pay for and, without enthusiasts buying at the high end, it would take a long time for the best technology to filter down to the masses.
You kidding? They pay to be guinea pigs and, when it comes to a new format, they usually pay to be jerked around by Sony, no matter which side they choose. Meanwhile, by the time it filters down to the consumer level, improvements are made. Just looking at DVD, enthusiasts went ahead and upgraded to Progressive scan, then DVD+/-R support, then upconverting, then high-def players. It's a hell of a lot like iPod enthusiasts, who will upgradeUpgradeUPGRADE every single time Steve Jobs says "One more thing." Meanwhile, half of these clowns are busy buying up the most expensive cables they can (apparently missing the whole "digits are digits" thing) and getting fancy power management to ensure "clean" power. If Blu-Ray players had knobs, people would be buying special wooden ones to increase the warmth of the video, for Christ's sake.

I've seen both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray films on the highest of high-def televisions. It failed to blow me away the same way the VHS-to-DVD transition did. Not even close. I'm all for audio/video quality, but as it stands now, the cost of the investment is not worth the benefits for the vast majority of the planet. Blu-Ray may be outselling HD-DVD two to one, but the sales of both have been hilariously lackluster.

I support Microsoft furthering the interests of it's own ties with the computing and motion picture industries and, most importantly, the interests of their customers. It is good business sense, and, quite frankly, that is exactly what Blu-Ray supporters would say about Sony were they to engage in this sort of deal (not that they could afford it).

I never thought I'd see the day that Paladin would be arguing that Microsoft is exhibiting anti-competitive behavior!

Apparently, when he feels threatened as a consumer, suddenly unbridled capitalism doesn't look so peachy!

That sounds like a good option, and I thought about doing that. But I decided against it.

Here's why:

Let's say I buy a dual format player.

Then I buy movies willy-nilly in whatever format they are sold, let's say it's even, 50% Blu-Ray and 50% HD-DVD.

A year later, (for sake of argument), Blu-Ray wins and HD-DVD goes out of business.

Five years later, my dual format player breaks. Well, since Blu-Ray won, and HD-DVD has gone bye-bye, no one makes dual format players anymore. Now all of my HD-DVDs are useless.

I'm not liking the possibility of that.

EDIT-
Nevermind. Xerafin beat me to it.

The difference is that I don't think what Microsoft is doing here should be illegal; it's just grating that some entity from outside the HD disk market is going to determine whether either HD format becomes the standard.

First, I don't feel "threatened." If, at the end of the day, I'm left with a stack of disks that I can't get new players for, so be it. Second, I support unbridled capitalism despite knowing that it will occasionally produce results I don't like.

Question: will disc images look the same for the new formats?

At present, I get Audio_TS and Video_TS subfolders when I explore a DVD I've burnt off my HDD. This plays in any current DVD player. The same is true if I use DVDShrink to rip a disc.

If so, I may just backup all my films onto my PC and buy an external burner for whichever format eventually wins.

Yes, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are pretty much identical in image quality, although there might be some discernible differences from title to title. The highdefdigest.com website reviews both formats and mostly their reviews of the same titles on both formats claim that the pictures are indistinguishable.

Both formats have image quality far superior to standard DVD. On a big screen, the difference is very, very apparent.

I'm sure you could, but you wouldn't get the benefits of the higher resolution formats.

I applaud the strategy and their ultimate goal.

Hell, I just don't want to have to buy new discs if my current player ever goes down and HD or BR are the only players available.

I think he was talking about the file structure of the data on the physical disc.

Two words:
Backwards Compatible

Backwards compatibility has a nasty habit of only lasting so long, especially once all media in the old format has been sold or is no longer profitable.

Like the complete failure of unbridled capitalism.
Paradox!!

Not unless "result I don't like" = "failure of unbridled capitalism." Since no system can ever produce results that everyone likes all of the time, I conclude that "results I don't like" cannot be the single determinant of failure of a system.

Okay.

Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players play standard DVDs as well. I play my old DVDs in my PS3 (Blu-Ray) all the time.

Aren't you supposed to be off writing? Weren't we supposed to remind you of this?

Yes, with a tazer, where is it?

See, the funny thing about my taser, is that it's on my COCK!

Blu-ray is a stupid name, HD-DVD sounds better.

Personally I like the name Blu-ray.

Has anyone seen the statistics of the two formats side by side? I remember reading that a Blu-ray when compared to standard DVD has at least 6 times more storage or something at 24 gigabytes.

Can anyone pull up some statistics?

You are correct. Blu-Ray Discs are 25 GB per layer and HD-DVD are 15 GB per layer.

Now correct me if I'm wrong- but the technology built into the PS3 versus that of the Xbox, as far as the ability to read an HD disk internally (whether Blu-ray or HDDVD) sets it a fairly good standard above as far as the limitations of the disks that are being used to play the games.

[?=Rambling]AFAIK currently the 360 is playing discs on DVDs (as is the PS3 I'm sure, but you won't have to pop money on an HDDVD player when they start making next gen games on the next gen discs) and the amount of information it can store overall is paltry when placed next the the HDDVD, let alone the Blu-ray. The study done in quality shows that the difference between discs doesn't compromise quality in any aspect, but rather that they are nearly the same in most regards. This is a point of interest to me, since we were supposedly going to be ushering in the next era of gaming on a next gen disc alongside the consoles, and that the new storage and formats would afford great opportunities for developers to make better programs and draw a better landscape.

I realize that the disc doesn't do much to add to the potential of the machine in any graphical sense, except that the higher amount of space allows for a better quality image on the screen and apart from that more information can be stored on one disk. The way I see that being benneficial is when you had someone perhaps designing the background for a scene in "______" and with DVD he was only afforded 500MB to design it, with HDDVD he is afforded 750, but with Blu-ray he is given a whole 1GB (not saying those are proportionate or accurate numbers, just providing an example). Those added MB can really add up to a much better quality, very quickly.

Granted in the scenario I am citing, I am moving away from what it can do for the movie industry and talking about what these advancements can do for gaming (Hello Press Start), but the idea is the same in both aspects. In truth, the film industry will never touch on the full potential of these discs, ever. A movie is filmed and transfered, formatted, converted, ripped to ribbons and put back together to go from celluloid to MB- the whole process is quite ridiculous when you consider the money to be saved (and made) in switching to entirely digital theaters and filming equipment (the purists disagree, movies on film just have that real, gritty feeling). What you get now is an HD quality movie (which would look better if filmed with a camera specifically designed for HD) with a bunch of nifty extras, and quite possibly 50 times the extras you had on you standard DVD (still all shit that most people will never watch), but you really aren't scraping the surface of the discs capability.[/?]

[?=Conclusion]It is my opinion that the two formats should and can coexist as two entities in seperate industries- the HDDVDs are far more suitable to the Movie industry and the Blu-ray discs are more suitable to the Gaming/Software industry[/?]

Blu-ray, until they make the discs more durable and less expensive, is not really suited towards gaming.

Most games are not filling up DVD-9, although some upcoming games are, so yes it's probably time to move on ... by next generation, or this generation if you're Sony.

Problem is for gamers, gaming keeps getting more and more expensive. Blu-ray costs a lot more currently than HD-DVD to produce. Sure, the price will come down, but they've also proven it's easier to stack layers of HD-DVD than Blu-ray, currently. That's the keyword in all of what I said, currently.

I think the addition of the Blu-ray player was a bit of a hasty move on Sony's part, as well as them trying to impart their own format, basing off the Playstation brand name because of it's popularity. Sony would have done much better and have had more success with the PS3 if they'd have gone the DVD route this generation... let HD-DVD and Blu-ray battle it out on their own merits, then incorporate the "winner" into the next system. Costs would be less and Sony could have kept their domination going in the gaming arena, due to the fact that the PS3 could have came to market much sooner. But now it's struggling, 90% of the reason is because they had to jam a BR-DVD into the PS3.

Ironically, that's pretty much the opposite of what most people are thinking - that Blu-Ray will be for motion pictures and HD-DVD for everything else.

I would bet good money that the PS3 would be at a similar price range to the 360 had they cut the Blu-Ray player. Then, it could have been seen as a somewhat sane choice when it comes to gaming. High-def players simply aren't ready for products that aren't intended for enthusiasts only.

Honestly, neither Microsoft nor Sony played the game well when it comes to high-def. Microsoft with it's choice of video output interfaces, Sony with building in Blu-Ray. What both should have done was have HD-capable video output standard and have high-def players optional. What both really should have done was have user-replacable optical drives - i.e. push a button on the bottom of the console and the entire drive ejects for not ony easy replacement in case the drive fails, but also so that you can upgrade the HD capabilities of the console easily, without adding a peripheral, and at your discretion. Hell, if they did it right, you could have any damn format you want in there - HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, Multi-Format, higher speeds, read/write, blah, blah, blah. This is one area where the upgradability of the computer should be bleeding over to the console.

One last thing - just because Blu-Ray can store a shitload more does not necessarily mean better games. First, you have to *read* all that stuff off of the disc (and you know how long load times are as it stands right now!); second, you have to process those assets. Space in RAM, processing power (which, on the PS3, is not a constant), etc., etc. That (in addition to sheer manufacturing cost and the cost of developing said assets) is why companies have not been flocking over to the higher-capacity discs. It's a tradeoff - +content/-performance or -content/+performance. It makes more sense, right now, and probably in the lifetime of these consoles, to go with the latter.

So who is the head of PS3?

I wanna kick him in the nuts for including the blu-ray player.

Where I see the benefit in Blu-Ray and such for gaming is not so much better graphics and whatnot, but more of them.

For example, take the world in The Elder Scrolls games. Think of the size of it in Oblivion. Now imagine how much LARGER of a world they could have if they used the full data capacity of a dual layer BD-ROM disc.

Are the art assets for that just going to fall out of the sky? Same for writing, scripting, etc?

Bigger worlds are fine, but they have to be made. Remember how we all laughed when some clown at Sony came out and said that he expected most top-shelf PS3 games to end up being about $80 a pop? I think you'd see that.

Just because there's more of something doesn't mean it'll be good. What's necessary is a damn good story, and quite frankly, that
is still a huge challenge in game development. Hell, as it stands now, most games still have some serious lulls in the story and gameplay. You can't fix that simply by having more of it.

The main advantage of larger capacity discs is in the quality/size of the media rather than the quantity of it.

Approaches like the one being taken with idtech 5 will benefit greatly from increased storage space, you won't be getting more content made simply to fill up extra space however.