Blu-Ray Disc Association sinks to new low with childish YouTube attack ads!

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I'm unsure why this is considered "viral" (other than you just made it so by bringing it here), or why there is a breathless news to "confirming" it's an official piece. Of course they're official, they have the logo big and bold at the end. Why is anyone trying to suggest they were skulking in the weeds?

As to "childish". . .by that standard any advertiser that uses humor in their ads is being childish. Which is roughly all of them at one time or another.
 
Geo said:
I'm unsure why this is considered "viral" (other than you just made it so by bringing it here), or why there is a breathless news to "confirming" it's an official piece. Of course they're official, they have the logo big and bold at the end. Why is anyone trying to suggest they were skulking in the weeds?
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Any video artist could easily add a Blu-Ray logo to the end of a video they made. But now its been confirmed by Home Media Magazine that these are bought and paid for advertisements created by Sony & Co. Also, the word "viral" was not just used by me but also in the Home Media Magazine article so I am not alone in that aspect.

Also, this goes beyond "humor" and probably moves into the "slander" category; it looks like BDA covered themselves though, as they spelled HD DVD "HD-DVD" in the ads, which is technically not the name of the format. For an example of humor, take a look at the Shrek HD DVD ads because they create humor that does not even mention BD or the war through the natural humor of the Shrek characters. On the other hand, this is a straight up negative attack ad. It is very rare you see a company directly attack another in this manner, it simply looks bad for the company doing the attacking. I've never seen the HD DVD camp resort to anything like this.

This is 'I want a PS3 for Xmas' part 2, you think Sony would have learned by now.
 
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Negative advertising just seems like desperation to me. If blu-ray isn't successful they are going to have to live through eons of parody ads.
 
There were FUDs against Blu-ray too (especially in its early days). So I don't know if people really care about these ads. I haven't seen them myself if people don't link them in forums. You're fueling them.
 
Slander? Where? The 2-1 claim? That's as much actionable as graphics IHVs cherry picking which driver of the other fellow to bench against. There was at least some period of time where that was true and documented. Sleasy, sure, but hardly actionable.
 
Youtube parody ad is desperation but $150 million dollar bribe for studio support isn't. Amazing the things kids come up with these days.
 
I'm personally more intellectually insulted by the HD-DVD camp's "we don't need/want more capacity or bitrate" argument.
 
phat said:
I'm personally more intellectually insulted by the HD-DVD camp's "we don't need/want more capacity or bitrate" argument.
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Who is "we"?
Define "need"?

(Of course player and disk manufacturing factor into the situation as well). Anyhow, I was shocked to see this: The Amazon.com Customer Vote deal had an HD TiVo, Blu-ray player, and HD DVD player and the results really surprised me:

http://promotions.amazon.com/gp/holiday/amazon-customers-vote

42% Toshiba HD-A35 1080p HD DVD Player (List: $399, Deal: $149)

36% TiVo HD Digital Video Recorder (List: $254, Deal: $89)

22% Samsung BD-P1400 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player (List: $339, Deal: $149)

The market seems to be on a pretty wild rollery-coaster right now.
 
phat said:
I'm personally more intellectually insulted by the HD-DVD camp's "we don't need/want more capacity or bitrate" argument.
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Unfortunately, saying Blu-ray is better just because it has more capacity/bitrate is no better than saying camera A is better than camera B because it has more pixels.
 
pcchen said:
Unfortunately, saying Blu-ray is better just because it has more capacity/bitrate is no better than saying camera A is better than camera B because it has more pixels.
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Poor analogy as the HD-DVD vs BD comparison is much simpler than comparing cameras. The two HD disc formats differ significantly in only DRM, interactivity, and, of course, bitrate and capacity. Of these differences, only bitrate and capacity affect picture quality. All other arguments are just politics, and politics can change. The intrinsic bitrate and capacity of a format can't. (Without breaking backward compatibility with existing players.)
 
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Joshua Luna said:
Who is "we"?
Define "need"?

(Of course player and disk manufacturing factor into the situation as well). Anyhow, I was shocked to see this: The Amazon.com Customer Vote deal had an HD TiVo, Blu-ray player, and HD DVD player and the results really surprised me:

http://promotions.amazon.com/gp/holiday/amazon-customers-vote

42% Toshiba HD-A35 1080p HD DVD Player (List: $399, Deal: $149)
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Well, heck, I voted for that one too. . . .because I already have a B-r player. :LOL:
 
phat said:
Poor analogy as the HD-DVD vs BD comparison is much simpler than comparing cameras. The two HD disc formats differ significantly in only DRM, interactivity, and, of course, bitrate and capacity. Of these differences, only bitrate and capacity affect picture quality. All other arguments are just politics, and politics can change. The intrinsic bitrate and capacity of a format can't. (Without breaking backward compatibility with existing players.)
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That seems like pretty much the same analogy to me. Quality is not the sole domain of bitrate and capacity as much as the BR camp would like you to believe that. Just the same as the megapixels on a camera doesn't necessarily mean quality.
 
AlphaWolf said:
That seems like pretty much the same analogy to me. Quality is not the sole domain of bitrate and capacity as much as the BR camp would like you to believe that. Just the same as the megapixels on a camera doesn't necessarily mean quality.
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Quality is not solely determined by bitrate and capacity, agreed. There are other factors, such as the codec. However, these other factors are the same between BD and HD-DVD (e.g. they both can use the exact same codec technologies), with the only variable being bitrate and capacity. Ergo, the higher the bitrate (which necessitates greater capacity), the better in this comparison. And by better, I mean greater headroom for the compression algorithms to better handle those high entropy scenes.
 
AlphaWolf said:
That seems like pretty much the same analogy to me. Quality is not the sole domain of bitrate and capacity as much as the BR camp would like you to believe that. Just the same as the megapixels on a camera doesn't necessarily mean quality.
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True. But then again they both support the same codecs, don't they? So within that context, bitrate vs capacity is a factor. Megapixels on a camera could be cancelled out by quality of the lens, compression technique, storage, digital vs real zoom, etc.

But assuming that the source material on both discs is the same, and the available compression methods are the same, then its bitrate and capacity that are going to make more of a difference than other factors.
 
Arwin said:
True. But then again they both support the same codecs, don't they? So within that context, bitrate vs capacity is a factor. Megapixels on a camera could be cancelled out by quality of the lens, compression technique, storage, digital vs real zoom, etc.

But assuming that the source material on both discs is the same, and the available compression methods are the same, then its bitrate and capacity that are going to make more of a difference than other factors.
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No. The part that makes the most difference is the effort.
 
phat said:
Quality is not solely determined by bitrate and capacity, agreed. There are other factors, such as the codec. However, these other factors are the same between BD and HD-DVD (e.g. they both can use the exact same codec technologies), with the only variable being bitrate and capacity. Ergo, the higher the bitrate (which necessitates greater capacity), the better in this comparison. And by better, I mean greater headroom for the compression algorithms to better handle those high entropy scenes.
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The thing is: discs are no longer just about the movie. You get a bunch of bonus content you can spend a lot of time with: interviews, commentary and more. It's no longer as simple as bitrate comparison. In this area both formats have their strengths and weaknesses and are pretty well balanced if you look at specs, but the content you get when you buy BD or HD-DVD differs significantly. If you're collecting movies (good or bad - doesn't matter) this becomes a major factor when you want to decide to go with one format or another.

Another factor is price. You can get HD-DVD player for below $200 but Blu Ray players start with almost twice as expensive price tag. I can get a lot of movies for that difference. That said: I have Blu Ray player myself but that's purely because I own PS3. :rolleyes:
 
I'm not saying that bitrate and capacity are the only determining factors here, obviously. I was just pointing out why in this context bitrate and capacity matter.

The other important technical factors are
- production cost
- extra technical media features

In terms of extra features, the capacity also determines whether or not you can have the extra content in HD, for instance (the interviews and so on). But of course there are also the picture in picture features, database options, online integration and such.

I disagree by the way that the two are well balanced in that regard if you look both at the specs and at the current reality. In terms of specs, BluRay has the capacity to do more. In terms of current reality, HD DVD had its features and specs ready sooner and currently discs in its library have more and better interactive features. BluRay is getting there though - as of this November, Profile 1.1 is required for all new players, and the PS3 should get a firmware upgrade before the end of the year (maybe it already has, who knows? I did notice that the PS3 seems to remember now what subtitles option I"ve chosen per disc since Firmware 2.0!)

We won't know for sure until the first movie is out I think though which is I think 2 January 2008 (Ms Jovovitch showcase movie ;) ).
 
Well I don't agree on the interactivity being superior on Blu Ray. Yes, one could judge based on current offerings and say that BD looks just pale in comparison to extra features HD-DVD titles provide. But I'm not trying to prove anything based on the fact that for some reason Blu Ray is just a little bit late in that area. What I'd like to point out is that Blu Ray has several important features *optional*, network being one of them. (isn't persistent storage optional as well?) Furthermore HDi speeds up development compared to BD-J. Besides HDi has support of one of the biggest dev-tools manufacturer, Microsoft. Sure you can hate Microsoft (if you do :] ) but there's no real space for argument here: Sony is THE hardware manufacturer and Microsoft is THE software manufacturer.

And yes, I'm kind of a Java hater so I'm probably biased here, but Java is semi-portable across current devices and I see no reason why writing dynamic content for Blu Ray devices should be any easier. With multiple manufacturers of hardware, constantly changing specs and time-constrained reality (you want BD release at least as soon on the shelves as the HD-DVD one) BD-J is not a winner in this battle IMO. But obviously what matters is content, amount of strong releases and variety of offerings. This is the space where Sony has an edge and this is what will probably play the major role in settling Blu Ray as a winner.
 
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