Anyone know the cost difference between brd discs and dvd?

[Sis]

Isn't the point of BR the fac that it's 6 times bigger than a DVD? If so, isn't it enough for it to be less than 6 times more expensive than DVD and everyone should be happy?

I mean, if i had to choose between buying 6 DVDs and 1 BR and the BR disc is cheaper than the 6 DVDs, i'd go for the BR one. And that's without even considering the fact that it solves the multi-disc mess too.

So in the end, anything below 6X the price of a DVD should make people happy. Can't believe people are nagging about it being "a whole 10% more expensive than DVD". That's just crazy.

No, unless it's a personal storage medium, people buy things for the content.

The first issue is in comparing blu-ray to normal DVD. If the average consumer can't tell the difference in video quality (assuming they don't have Hi-Def tv or just plain oblivious to the image quality difference), there's no way in hell they'll spend even 10% markup.

The second issue is in comparison with HD-DVD. If the equivalent content can be found on both an HD-DVD and a blu-ray disc, and the blu-ray is 10% more, again I'd expect the HD-DVD to be purchased.

.Sis

 

[MechanizedDeath]

No, unless it's a personal storage medium, people buy things for the content.

The first issue is in comparing blu-ray to normal DVD. If the average consumer can't tell the difference in video quality (assuming they don't have Hi-Def tv or just plain oblivious to the image quality difference), there's no way in hell they'll spend even 10% markup.

The second issue is in comparison with HD-DVD. If the equivalent content can be found on both an HD-DVD and a blu-ray disc, and the blu-ray is 10% more, again I'd expect the HD-DVD to be purchased.

.Sis

The "slight" to consumers is in the lack of future-proofing with HD-DVD. 3L HD-DVD can't match 2L BRD. Lord help HD-DVD if Sony/Panasonic manage to bump the final spec to 30GB/layer too, b/c then a 1L disc will match a 2L HD-DVD.

The reason it's not futureproof is b/c 1080p tvs should have significant market penetration in the next decade. When movies are encoded to meet this standard, HD-DVD falls flat. You're either gonna have to add a lot of compression, or a lot of layers. OR, you go to a new format...again. BRD can meet the demands of the highest HDTV standard on the horizon...at least with a 2L/3L disc. There wouldn't be a need to jump to a new storage format just yet. HD-DVD would need to work magic with multiple layers to keep up. Live I keep saying. BRD owns HD-DVD on every level that matters to the end-user. There's no defense for HD-DVD unless you are personally stamping the discs. PEACE.

 

[jvd]

The Digital Bits said it best awhile ago when he explained why he felt BRD was the superior format to HD-DVD.

He stated quite simply that HD-DVD is a manufacturer's format, and BRD is a consumer's format; each is more beneficial to those groups. He felt HD-DVD simply doesn't have the legs to last long enough to not need yet another new optical format in 8-10 years, and the fact that the few companies/studios left backing HD-DVD is actually a slight against consumers.

To put it simply, HD-DVD is DVD 1.5, and BRD is DVD 2.0.

You honestly believe that either of them wont be replaced in 8-10 years ? I think before the end of this decade we will have optical formats that are doing 100 gigs per layer . Lets not even talk about what we will have in 8-10 years

 

[Sis]

Live I keep saying. BRD owns HD-DVD on every level that matters to the end-user. There's no defense for HD-DVD unless you are personally stamping the discs. PEACE.

No, you are masking a personal respect for the BRD technology behind a "consumer preference".

Consumers will care about content and price. Possibly in reverse order. They definitely won't care about layers, total storage potential, or a lot of maybe's around future proofing.

.Sis

 

[MechanizedDeath]

You honestly believe that either of them wont be replaced in 8-10 years ? I think before the end of this decade we will have optical formats that are doing 100 gigs per layer . Lets not even talk about what we will have in 8-10 years

New optical format? Most certainly. Terabyte storage should be within reach in the next decade (haven't done the math on how narrow a blue laser can get, but I think it's doable, at least with layers. Data storage must, must, must always increase.

But this is talking about movie format. VHS lasted a very long time. There's no reason a properly future-proofed optical media like BRD couldn't last as long or longer. 1080p is gonna be the highest tv standard we see for a while. At the very least, it should take broadcasters a decade to even think about switching to that standard. So I don't think it will be necessary to support resolutions higher than that. So as long as disc can hold a 3-4hour movie on a single disc without noticeable degredation in picture quality, I think it will be fine. The only problem with BRD I see is gonna be the ability to cram a full-length movie AND a ton of extra features all at 1080p with HQ audio. But if BRD/HD-DVD take off, would consumers want to upgrade yet again? We're already making a switch from DVD in less time than that. Eventually, the upgrade path needs to level off IMO. PEACE.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

No, you are masking a personal respect for the BRD technology behind a "consumer preference".

Consumers will care about content and price. Possibly in reverse order. They definitely won't care about layers, total storage potential, or a lot of maybe's around future proofing.

.Sis

Um, content and price are irrelevant to the issue. The comment was about slighting the consumer. You have excellent content and price RIGHT NOW with DVDs. Why even bother upgrading? Oh, that's right. We want HDTV quality content. Now why would you want to upgrade to a format that has limited support of HDTV content? If you're gonna make the upgrade, you might as well take the product that offers you the greater technology, right?

The issue of price is still an unknown one, and the reality of ANY optical media is that the price to the consumer is grossly out of line with the price to the manufacturer. Retail price in no way, shape or form reflects the production price. When the discs cost cents on the dollar, and you're still paying $15-30 for movies, then you have a couple orders of magnitude difference in price there. The cost for BRD and HD-DVD content will reflect the market demand/penetration and the rip the studios want to take off the top. It has nothing to do with the production costs. So I see that as totally irrelevant. Unless you're stamping millions of discs yourself, and worried about saving a percentage of money on that, I don't see it as an issue for the consumer. PEACE.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You honestly believe that either of them wont be replaced in 8-10 years ? I think before the end of this decade we will have optical formats that are doing 100 gigs per layer . Lets not even talk about what we will have in 8-10 years

But this is talking about movie format. VHS lasted a very long time. There's no reason a properly future-proofed optical media like BRD couldn't last as long or longer. 1080p is gonna be the highest tv standard we see for a while.

I concur. Nowhere has 1080p sets yet, and Europe has virtual no HD at all. HDDVD released now will do nothing in Europe. By the time Europe has got HDTV, 1080p will be a standard and option on sets probably.

So at the moment we've no need for high def DVD format, and when we have, I think it'll be visually obvious which out of HDDVD and BRD has the better qaulity (because of more space). And from HDTV there's really not much more to do for picture quality as far as I can see. HDR colour? Even higher resolutions? Look how long it's taken to advance from SDTV, and there's little advantage to going higher than 1080p.

Seems to me BRD is a long term format. Perhaps HDDVD is more popular with the studios because they are mostly American studios who know there's a home market ready for HiDef movies and want a cheap way to produce them? Why shell out big bucks for a BRD fabbing plant if only 30% of 1 market is going to see it? But in the nearish future the shortcomings of HDDVD will be apparent.

It's interesting thinking about it. There's no point to HD discs if there's no sets to see them on. But who'll buy HD sets if there's no media to watch on it? It really wants a consolidated effort from the industries to provide hardware and content to promote each other, and the hardware side seems to be well and truly behind BRD, seeing it as the stronger technology with longer term returns, from HiDef movies to large scale storages, and a potential for BRD videocameras (like we have DVD cameras now).

Yes, it definitely seems to me like HDDVD is only popular with short-sighted accountants at movie studios. If they instead bite the bullet and splash out on BRD fabbing, they'll have a format to push and fabbing prices dropping for the long term.

 

[karlotta]

Ok fill me in, i will be the average joe ( in the future) who will go to Bestbuy and buy a recorder to rip a 3.5hr football game. i just got my uber 1080p TV! whoo whooo. Also i will want to watch the chick flicks with the old ball and chain so she wont get all pissed about this huge TV in her decorated den. Of course i have a Xbox360 and a PS# on the way maybe i dont need a recorder...? Anyways will a HD_DVD have enough storage to record it? And will a HD_DVD be able to hold a movie of 1080p quality? Most movies are NOT 3 to 4 hrs long. God i hope the chickflick isnt 3 to 4 hours long!

 

[Oda]

As far as I'm concerned, and this is a bit of a prediction on my part, but as soon as Sony finalized their purchase of MGM and announced the PS3 would come equipped with a BRD drive, Blu-ray won.

For the past while it's been BRD has the hardware companies, and HDDVD has the content companies. Sony however is the tiebreaker. No other content company in the world has a film catalog even close to Sony's. It is to such a degree that I wouldn't be surprised if Sony was able to deliver and support a new format solely on its in-house content.

And now add in the PS3. By 2007, there will be no other machine in as many homes capable of outputting true HD content than a PS3. I willing to bet that there will be more PS3's in Japan alone than there will be HDDVD players in the entire world.

Unless Toshiba buckles and agrees to the unified format (and you damn well know it's them who are holding it back), I predict that Warner/New Line and Universal/Dreamworks will jump ship sometime next year.

Do everyone you know a favor, tell them to support Blu-Ray. Let's avoid getting stuck with the inferior format this time.

 

[Sean*O]

It has been posted on AVS forum by people who work on the encoding of HD movies for Microsoft, that 1080p takes up no more, or even less space on disc than does 1080i.

They are currently in the process of encoding movies at 1080p for HD-DVD.

There won't be an issue with storage of most 1080p movies.

If you want to record the 3.5 hour football game, it will be at 1080i or more likely 720p because the majority of football games are being broadcast in 720p. I think only CBS does football in 1080i at this point.

 

[Sean*O]

Unless Toshiba buckles and agrees to the unified format (and you damn well know it's them who are holding it back), I predict that Warner/New Line and Universal/Dreamworks will jump ship sometime next year.

What makes you think Toshiba is Holding Sony back from anything?

AFAIK, Sony has no plans to launch anything Blu-Ray in the US until the PS3 launch, while Toshiba and Warner expect to have equipment and software in store around November of this year.

If anything, I bet it is Sony stalling with unification talks to delay HD-DVD until the launch of the PS3 is closer.

Also, Warner is about the last company who will ever jump ship and go to Blu-Ray as they have a vested interest in the HD-DVD format.

 

[Npl]

It has been posted on AVS forum by people who work on the encoding of HD movies for Microsoft, that 1080p takes up no more, or even less space on disc than does 1080i.

If you consider 1080i has half the amount of data you know this is either impossible or comes together with lower quality (in respect to the resolution).
Or the encoder is garbage.. should try Mpeg4 instead of WMV maybe?

 

[MechanizedDeath]

What makes you think Toshiba is Holding Sony back from anything?

AFAIK, Sony has no plans to launch anything Blu-Ray in the US until the PS3 launch, while Toshiba and Warner expect to have equipment and software in store around November of this year.

If anything, I bet it is Sony stalling with unification talks to delay HD-DVD until the launch of the PS3 is closer.

Also, Warner is about the last company who will ever jump ship and go to Blu-Ray as they have a vested interest in the HD-DVD format.

What purpose does that serve? Sony would want to iron out all the details as soon as possible so they can start mass production as soon as possible. Stalling serves them no purpose. They may not be compromising, but I seriously doubt they're stalling. PEACE.

 

[Sis]

No, you are masking a personal respect for the BRD technology behind a "consumer preference".

Consumers will care about content and price. Possibly in reverse order. They definitely won't care about layers, total storage potential, or a lot of maybe's around future proofing.

.Sis

Um, content and price are irrelevant to the issue. The comment was about slighting the consumer. You have excellent content and price RIGHT NOW with DVDs. Why even bother upgrading? Oh, that's right. We want HDTV quality content. Now why would you want to upgrade to a format that has limited support of HDTV content? If you're gonna make the upgrade, you might as well take the product that offers you the greater technology, right?

First, I disagree with your assertion that HD-DVD has limited support for HDTV content just because 1080p might someday be more popular that 720p or 1080i sets and HD-DVD just might have trouble holding 3-4 hours of it.

Second, i'll grant you that content may be irrelevant (that wasn't my point anyway, but whatever) but how is price irrelevant? Are you suggesting that blu-ray and hd-dvd discs will be identically priced at the retail counter? From what I've read, it was expected that blu-ray would have a slight price premium over hd-dvd--at retail, not just in manufacturing. Do you see this differently?

.Sis

 

[Tsmit42]

From what I've read, it was expected that blu-ray would have a slight price premium over hd-dvd--at retail, not just in manufacturing. Do you see this differently?
.Sis

Well manufacturing cost of BRD and HD-DVD has "almost" nothing to do with retail prices. DVDs cost less than $0.10 to produce, and HD-DVD is suppose to be within 10% of that. At the most that is $0.11, so if BRD is twice as expensive to produce than HD-DVD we are only looking at $0.11 difference in price if we were to go by the price it cost to produce the disc. So a HD-DVD at $20.88 or blu-ray at $20.99 is pretty much the same to most people, if people care about $0.11 price difference they need to get a life.

Of course it would cost the companies more upfront, but they could pass that $0.11 down to the consumer. And for the new plants they have to build, the premium they will charge over current dvd prices(for a limited time hopefully) should pay for that. I don't see how a person that cares about technology can go against BRD. I(and many others) would happily pay $0.11 more per movie to have a uniform format between pre-recorded content and recorded/rewriteable/pc discs.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

First, I disagree with your assertion that HD-DVD has limited support for HDTV content just because 1080p might someday be more popular that 720p or 1080i sets and HD-DVD just might have trouble holding 3-4 hours of it.

Second, i'll grant you that content may be irrelevant (that wasn't my point anyway, but whatever) but how is price irrelevant? Are you suggesting that blu-ray and hd-dvd discs will be identically priced at the retail counter? From what I've read, it was expected that blu-ray would have a slight price premium over hd-dvd--at retail, not just in manufacturing. Do you see this differently?

.Sis

Retail pricing is totally unknown, and a result of many things. But the bulk of the cost of any optical media is not the media itself, but the rip pubs and devs need to take off the top. Price variation between HD-DVD and BRD (at least in the long run) will amount to cents on the production side. When movied are gonna cost $15-30, where's the rest of that cost coming in? There's markup at various points in the chain, but I don't see cost meaning much at all. I expect both format to follow a similar scaling as DVD did. And why not? Economies of scale drop optical media prices like nothing. I think it's an overplayed item b/c HD-DVD gets trounced on anything else meaningful. And nothing tugs the heart strings more than price. But in reality, the consumer is paying the vast bulk of the money to the makers of the movie anyway, not to the manufacturer of the media.

Besides which, unless HD-DVD comes in priced at bargain prices like DVD now, there shouldn't be much room for variance anyway. Above a certain level, a movie's price becomes prohibitive. It's not like they can charge $40 for a movie and expect to ship any meaningful number of units. So, I don't agree that pricing means anything for optical media. If this was an HDD, I'd change my tune, but it's not. Optical media is the cheapest storage format around. PEACE.

 

[one]

Second, i'll grant you that content may be irrelevant (that wasn't my point anyway, but whatever) but how is price irrelevant? Are you suggesting that blu-ray and hd-dvd discs will be identically priced at the retail counter? From what I've read, it was expected that blu-ray would have a slight price premium over hd-dvd--at retail, not just in manufacturing. Do you see this differently?

No one knows at the present moment how they will be priced.
But one thing that looks sure is the player install base matters. It's really the chicken or the egg. Unlike DVD, there will be very little people who buy a PS3 to watch Blu-ray movies. But think of this situation, if a PS3 owner goes to a store and finds Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, which will he/she buy? It's just like PSP/UMD. Casual users will choose Blu-ray discs. Even though an HD-DVD disc is slightly cheaper, I think the chance for HD-DVD is slim.

You may argue against the above assumption, "but Warner will release hi-def Matrix movie on HD-DVD". The problem is, ironically, those who want hi-def Matrix are in minority at best, only devoted fans of movie franchises. It's a niche market. Most people are content with Matrix DVD. It's the same for Blu-ray, Blu-ray sales won't match DVD sales for years to come. But one decisive difference from HD-DVD is that Blu-ray has PS3 and casual users behind it. (In addition, Dell+HP+Apple > Toshiba+NEC.) In the early market of HD media which is small and just beginning, the presence of PS3 can be relatively larger than the presence of PS2 as a DVD player in 2000.

 

[Sis]

Retail pricing is totally unknown, and a result of many things.

I had thought I had read some estimated prices that put average movie on HD-DVD in the low 20s and Blu-Ray a couple dollars more (in the US) but searching doesn't pull anything back, so I'll assume that I misread that information and concede the point to you.

.Sis

 

[gokickrocks]

why are people bringing up the future-proofing of blu-ray when it was trumped around the time of its announcement, iirc, there are 2 optical mediums that have surpassed blu-rays storage space, 1 im sure of, hvd, can hold up to 1TB with transfer speeds of 1Gbps

for the argument of blu-ray having 6x storage over hd-dvd and the consumers should find it within reason to pay 6x the cost...it would only be reasonable if the majority of the storage space is filled

 

[NavNucST3]

Second, i'll grant you that content may be irrelevant (that wasn't my point anyway, but whatever) but how is price irrelevant? Are you suggesting that blu-ray and hd-dvd discs will be identically priced at the retail counter? From what I've read, it was expected that blu-ray would have a slight price premium over hd-dvd--at retail, not just in manufacturing. Do you see this differently?

No one knows at the present moment how they will be priced.
But one thing that looks sure is the player install base matters. It's really the chicken or the egg. Unlike DVD, there will be very little people who buy a PS3 to watch Blu-ray movies. But think of this situation, if a PS3 owner goes to a store and finds Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, which will he/she buy?

So why cant I as an HDTV owner walk into that same store and buy a player and some movies...months if not a year before the launch of the ps3 and bd-roms. I make that same case for me buying an xbox360, if we believe that graphically the two consoles will be the same, why should I wait those same extra months/year for HD. I want HD movies (I only have about 20 on D-VHS) and I want AA on my games, and I want it yesterday.

It's just like PSP/UMD. Casual users will choose Blu-ray discs. Even though an HD-DVD disc is slightly cheaper, I think the chance for HD-DVD is slim.

I think that is perfectly valid if you are of the "content doesn't matter" camp. But again, just from the list of 85 movies coming on HD-DVD I want at least 20 and some are my faves of certain genres. I know it has been mentioned on some sites that Sony has 1500 movies ready for BD, but I need a list to see which movies I want (read: I will probably buy a bd-rom).

You may argue against the above assumption, "but Warner will release hi-def Matrix movie on HD-DVD". The problem is, ironically, those who want hi-def Matrix are in minority at best, only devoted fans of movie franchises. It's a niche market. Most people are content with Matrix DVD. It's the same for Blu-ray, Blu-ray sales won't match DVD sales for years to come. But one decisive difference from HD-DVD is that Blu-ray has PS3 and casual users behind it. (In addition, Dell+HP+Apple > Toshiba+NEC.) In the early market of HD media which is small and just beginning, the presence of PS3 can be relatively larger than the presence of PS2 as a DVD player in 2000.[quote}

A niche market, like the gaming industry in prior years, like DVDs when they came out, like HD now. HD-DVD has 3 very huge franchises, the LOTRs, the Matrices, and the Potters, the last time I checked those were huge money makers, that is not to say that it is > Star Wars, Spiderman, someone help me with some others...but to utterly dismiss them I think is faulty.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that when someone buys a movie, they aren't usually checking to see, "Is this the TL HD-DVD?", or "Is this the 200GB BD-ROM?" Obviously in the storage market place that is EXACTLY what they will do, and as it stands now BD wins out (assuming they don't have DL issues).