Macromedia CTO on Xbox2
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Hmm, so it's going to play a lot of Flash content? Didn't they try to make Flash cartoons into mainstream entertainment (Ice Box?) during the dot com boom?
"HD-capable DVD player" is ambiguous. Will it have an HD-capable disc drive or will it just play DVDs but also play HD content from some other source?
PVR could be attractive but not if it raises the price too much. But rather than self-contained, it sounds like you have to have a MCE PC. That's great for companies that make PCs. But does MCE get MS more money than just XP? (also, has MCE sales set the world on fire? Doesn't seem so.)
I think it's only the tinkerers who bother getting pics and downloaded digital video onto their TVs. Plus a lot of that content is stuff that enrages the RIAA and MPAA. So unless there are legal video download services ready to feed these products...
Huh. I wonder what Macromedia is looking at it for. Do they expect MS to have some form of IE on the thing?
"HD-capable" sounds like "HD Ready" me thinks. Little "this could suck" and "I'm gonna get screwed" alarm bells should start going off. WMV9 encoded HD movies on regular DVD-ROMs as MS is pushing today (you can already by them) vs the ability to play movies put out in a standard format by film studios for HDDVD or BluRay?
MS would be better off ignoring HD movies rather than trying to push WM9-encoded DVD discs as HD.
Because it just calls attention to the whole HD movie playback features in consoles and they're going to lose in comparison to a true, blue-laser disc drive which is going to have much higher bitrates and probably 1080p support with new audio codecs (MLP or DTS Plus with lossless audio).
I understand the strategy, if they can't put in an HD-DVD drive, to say, "We have HD movie playback too." But it will be seen as an inferior offering, even perhaps by people who otherwise might not have cared about HD playback.
Plus is there a lot of content being encoded in WM9 and pressed on DVDs? Just a handful right?
Maybe they mean some kind of a scaler to take ordinary DVDs and upscale to 720p or 1080i/p?
Because it just calls attention to the whole HD movie playback features in consoles and they're going to lose in comparison to a true, blue-laser disc drive which is going to have much higher bitrates and probably 1080p support with new audio codecs (MLP or DTS Plus with lossless audio).
I understand the strategy, if they can't put in an HD-DVD drive, to say, "We have HD movie playback too." But it will be seen as an inferior offering, even perhaps by people who otherwise might not have cared about HD playback.
Plus is there a lot of content being encoded in WM9 and pressed on DVDs? Just a handful right?
Maybe they mean some kind of a scaler to take ordinary DVDs and upscale to 720p or 1080i/p?
wco81 said:
What? Why would a blue-laser disc drive = automatic higer bitrates and higher resolution? HD content isn't PHYSICAL media specific. Are you going to tell me that if I copy a HD movie to a DVD or a hard drive that it will be somehow lesser than the EXACT same copy on a blus-laser disc (drive) just because of what it is put on?
Its a standards issue. The movie studios are going to put out discs for the format that is going to be in most people's homes: Either HDDVD players or Blue-Ray disks. HD-encoded DVDs are a stop-gap measure that has no future in the market place.
Therefore, your Xbox2 will only have a handful of HD-encoded DVDs to play, as the studios are not going to bother releasing every movie in a crippled format that has a small marketshare.
Therefore, your Xbox2 will only have a handful of HD-encoded DVDs to play, as the studios are not going to bother releasing every movie in a crippled format that has a small marketshare.
DemoCoder said:
I assume the idea is to download HD movies and store them on a harddrive or stream them. We've seen the itunes revolution start to take off, next could be an "imovie style" of service spearheaded by Microsoft.
Sony owns movies studios and MS does not. This makes MS a little less threatening to Sony's movie rivals. Same for music companies.
Sony's ownership of studios is no threat to others, because BluRay is an open standards run by consortium of many companies and studios. The PS3 will play the same discs as any other BluRay player.
When someone goes to Best Buy, they want to buy a disc that will work on their device. That disc, is either the HDDVD standard or BluRay. Buying a WMV9 DVD-ROM guarantees that it own't play in 99% of the players on the market, and limits you to either Xbox2 or PC's.
Sony's ownership of a studio means in fact, that they can push content onto BluRay and pretty much guarantee a solid library of content. We're talking every Columbia/Tristar/Sony Entertainment film ever produced. MS owns no studios. And furthermore, other movie studios have no reason to fear releasing content on BluRay since BluRay is not a proprietary format controlled by Sony. You can already buy players from Sony, Samsung, Phillips, etc.
You should oppose proprietary hacked up movie formats. It will fragment the HD market even more and just cause consumer confusion. WMV9 on DVD-ROM needs to die a rightful death. It's nothing more than a "demo" format for showing the potential of HiDef before the real technology arrives. It's like the bastardized MPEG-on-CDROM "VCD" format used in asia. It sucks big time, but got entrenched. WMV9 on DVD-ROM is the Hi-Def equivalent of "VCD". Let's not make the same mistake twice, and whats more, last Microsoft fsck up the market with a proprietary hack that could become a defacto standard, miring up in a quagmire for a few years.
When someone goes to Best Buy, they want to buy a disc that will work on their device. That disc, is either the HDDVD standard or BluRay. Buying a WMV9 DVD-ROM guarantees that it own't play in 99% of the players on the market, and limits you to either Xbox2 or PC's.
Sony's ownership of a studio means in fact, that they can push content onto BluRay and pretty much guarantee a solid library of content. We're talking every Columbia/Tristar/Sony Entertainment film ever produced. MS owns no studios. And furthermore, other movie studios have no reason to fear releasing content on BluRay since BluRay is not a proprietary format controlled by Sony. You can already buy players from Sony, Samsung, Phillips, etc.
You should oppose proprietary hacked up movie formats. It will fragment the HD market even more and just cause consumer confusion. WMV9 on DVD-ROM needs to die a rightful death. It's nothing more than a "demo" format for showing the potential of HiDef before the real technology arrives. It's like the bastardized MPEG-on-CDROM "VCD" format used in asia. It sucks big time, but got entrenched. WMV9 on DVD-ROM is the Hi-Def equivalent of "VCD". Let's not make the same mistake twice, and whats more, last Microsoft fsck up the market with a proprietary hack that could become a defacto standard, miring up in a quagmire for a few years.
Iron Tiger
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A blue laser drive will have higher capacity media, so it stands to reason that that space will be used to provide higher bitrate content. I don't know if it will really offer greatly improved picture quality, because they'll also have to have the new DTS format and the new DD format soundtracks on the disc, and that's sure to take up a lot of space.a688 said:
1440x1080 resolution. And T2 EE WMV HD takes up only about 5GB, which is barely more than the MPEG2 SD version that's on the same disc.wco81 said:
EDIT: The MPEG2 SD version is on the other disc and is actually LARGER than the WMV HD version.
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