RUMOR: Xbox 360 20GB SKU to be replaced by 60GB SKU

[Asher]

Compromise is what HD-DVD was all about, "good enough" can fall of a cliff an die. I hate it with a passion. I accept that others may be fine with it, it´s their choice. For me HD-DVD was never about highest possible quality, it was only about Compromise. Interestingly i have found many of the die hard supporters of HD-DVD to be among those that have no problem accepting even lesser quality from download services.

But isn't the irony that HD DVD was the solution with more than "good enough" features? Network connectivity, PiP, etc that Bluray still doesn't fully match up with?

Yes, bluray had more capacity, but this isn't even a case with "good enough" in terms of video quality. The visual parity of HD DVD and Bluray were always equal (if not in favour of HD DVD on early titles). Both fully supported lossless audio. All of these codecs have points of diminishing return after ~20Mbps and I think 99.99999% of people can not tell apart 30 and 40 Mbps h264.

I think if you're arguing the case of "good enough" versus a good, complete solution, Bluray was on the wrong side for you given it's half-assed featureset that is basically for movies only ("good enough").

 

[zed]

ild read somewhere that toshiba wanted to dump HD-DVD as early as 2005 + were only persuaded to continue by MS

I'm not sure I understand. I have an xbox 360 and I have acess to high def. I was just watching 300 in high def on my 360 through a download.

r u sure its the same quality as blu-ray/HD-DVD ie 1920x1080, most downloaded hi-def content ive seen advertised is only about dvd quality

 

[AzBat]

Not at all, we were building the tools before we even thought about an XBox addon. We shipped the first Toshiba long before we shipped the addon. We didn't need to make the addon to prove our code worked, but since the addon did become a reality, there was no reason not to use it as our technology demo.

Doesn't matter what I say though, you'll happily twist it to fit your warped world view.

I apologize for giving you such a hard time. I'm usually not so tenacious. I was trying to nail you down the exact reasons behind why Blu-ray in now off-limits when before they said that if consumers demanded it they would consider it. You're initial replies seemed disingenuous and callused to end-users like myself. But now that you have laid it all out for us to see, I can understand the reasoning even if I don't agree with it. I can appreciate the difficulty in providing such a product, but I still think Microsoft should offer the choice as they originally intended to do. However, I won't hold it against you if you don't.

yea not sure why we're trying to crucify bkilian as though he has this anti-Br agenda... he's just trying to illuminate the situation

I wouldn't say I was trying to crucify him, but if that's how it looked, then I'm sorry. I appreciate that he tried to enlighten the situation, but it took him awhile to get to the real reasons behind their moves. It's a little more than the HD-DVD add-on only getting a 3% attach ratio.

Tommy McClain

 

[AzBat]

The Xboxfounder guy is at it again. He's posted his take on the supply issues, the 60gb SKU, Blu-ray and Video Marketplace...

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/134392.asp

Tommy McClain

 

[mrcorbo]

ild read somewhere that toshiba wanted to dump HD-DVD as early as 2005 + were only persuaded to continue by MS

r u sure its the same quality as blu-ray/HD-DVD ie 1920x1080, most downloaded hi-def content ive seen advertised is only about dvd quality

I read somewhere that Tom Cruise is an alien. Of course that was on the cover of Star magazine at the supermarket...

XBVM HD movies are roughly on par quality-wise with broadcast HDTV. Noticeably lower quality than HD DVD or BR, but still HD.

 

[bkilian]

I apologize for giving you such a hard time. I'm usually not so tenacious. I was trying to nail you down the exact reasons behind why Blu-ray in now off-limits when before they said that if consumers demanded it they would consider it. You're initial replies seemed disingenuous and callused to end-users like myself. But now that you have laid it all out for us to see, I can understand the reasoning even if I don't agree with it. I can appreciate the difficulty in providing such a product, but I still think Microsoft should offer the choice as they originally intended to do. However, I won't hold it against you if you don't.

Well, whenever you're talking about any product from any company, it's always about the money. Sure, we want the consumers to be happy, but only because happy consumers give us money. If we can't see the path to "Step 3: Profit!", then it's probably not going to happen. Microsoft, as a company, really hates "Step 2: ???"

The XBox addon was essentially a "loss leader" in an attempt to kickstart the format, in the same way the PS3 was a loss leader for pretty much the same reason. The real money to be made was in the format itself, not an addon we made almost no profit on. I'm not certain why you thought my earlier answers were any different, I've been pretty clear from the start that the economics of it just doesn't support a BD addon.

(That's not to say it couldn't happen at some point if some VP decided that strategically it would be more valuable than the actual monetary income, but I wouldn't bet on that happening)

 

[-tkf-]

But isn't the irony that HD DVD was the solution with more than "good enough" features? Network connectivity, PiP, etc that Bluray still doesn't fully match up with?

Yes, bluray had more capacity, but this isn't even a case with "good enough" in terms of video quality. The visual parity of HD DVD and Bluray were always equal (if not in favour of HD DVD on early titles). Both fully supported lossless audio. All of these codecs have points of diminishing return after ~20Mbps and I think 99.99999% of people can not tell apart 30 and 40 Mbps h264.

I think if you're arguing the case of "good enough" versus a good, complete solution, Bluray was on the wrong side for you given it's half-assed featureset that is basically for movies only ("good enough").

Yes early HD-DVD titles were way ahead of Blu-Ray, that was then. Today it´s Blu-Ray that leads, i am sure you know dvdfile.com and they comparison that was made there. You also know of the issues with so called lossless audio vs uncompressed audio, surely an encoding problem but something that points to disc authors running out of space. And again, featurewise afaik Blu-Ray is on par with HD-DVD with the latest releases in the pipeline. The difference is that Blu-Ray has more headroom both in Features and Space which is a very good thing for the future.

Are there any extras on the Video downloads? Or is it just a simple file?

 

[AzBat]

Are there any extras on the Video downloads? Or is it just a simple file?

They are just a simple file. That's 1 of the 2 strikes against it so far. The other being it's just a simple 24 hour rental.

Tommy McClain

 

[Tap In]

not as prolific as NavNucST3 but I too am already using X360 digital distribution as much, if not more, than DVD rentals in both SD and HD.

so for me, the future is now. They just need to continue adding content and more and more movies.

 

[Asher]

Yes early HD-DVD titles were way ahead of Blu-Ray, that was then. Today it´s Blu-Ray that leads, i am sure you know dvdfile.com and they comparison that was made there.

This is actually news to me. www.highdefdigest.com always compares the video quality and almost always, with identical source material, it's a 100% identical encode across both.

I think you are grossly overstating Bluray's technical superiority when it comes down to actually watching the movies. I've watched a ton of Bluray and HD DVD via zip.ca (Canada's netflix) and both look equally stunning, minus the BD-25 MPEG-2 discs.

And again, featurewise afaik Blu-Ray is on par with HD-DVD with the latest releases in the pipeline.

Yes, two years after launch the feature set of Bluray will match what HD DVD had at launch. To me, this is an example of the "good enough" mentality that you supposedly don't like.

 

[pipo]

Yes, two years after launch the feature set of Bluray will match what HD DVD had at launch. To me, this is an example of the "good enough" mentality that you supposedly don't like.

Sounds a lot like a certain console too...





Just kiddin' guys!

 

[-tkf-]

This is actually news to me. www.highdefdigest.com always compares the video quality and almost always, with identical source material, it's a 100% identical encode across both.

I think you are grossly overstating Bluray's technical superiority when it comes down to actually watching the movies. I've watched a ton of Bluray and HD DVD via zip.ca (Canada's netflix) and both look equally stunning, minus the BD-25 MPEG-2 discs.


Yes, two years after launch the feature set of Bluray will match what HD DVD had at launch. To me, this is an example of the "good enough" mentality that you supposedly don't like.

I am also a keen reader of Highdefdigest, and like bluray it didn´t start out to good. The Video Quality asements they made were imho shitty but have gotten vastly better.

It only took me 45 minutes to find the 2 articles for you (hopeless site):
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6326
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6457

I hope you at least click the links ;-)

My DVD history is what makes me so damn sure that Blu-Ray was the only way to go. From the start the DVD was borderline close to being to small to handle the best quality, and with the invasion of extras, soundtracks and just to many bells and whistles i think that the movies ended up suffering in to many cases. Space and Bandwidth was the problem. Ironic that the successor ended up having the same constraints.

With DVD i started with a small 29´inch 4:3 TV, soon i moved to a 32 inch then 44 CRT TV and then to a SD Projector and then to the 720p Projector i have now. For every upgrade i could see more and of course the flaws became more visible as well. The next upgrade is in the pipeline and it´s a A2000 1080p. My point is that the coming years of better quality on Display Devices will do just the same for Blu-Ray as it did for my DVD´s. In 8 years i may be watching upconverted Blu movies in 4K

 

[Asher]

I am also a keen reader of Highdefdigest, and like bluray it didn´t start out to good. The Video Quality asements they made were imho shitty but have gotten vastly better.

It only took me 45 minutes to find the 2 articles for you (hopeless site):
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6326
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6457

I have checked them out, but I still don't know how valid they are. It's particularly perplexing, for instance, how Bluray titles can score higher on VC-1 on average for video when the last time I checked, no titles had different VC-1 encodes released on both platforms? To me the first thing that jumps out at me is that the same encodes are getting lower scores on HD DVD vs Bluray, which to me tells me there's something wrong with their configuration for HD DVD or they're buying into a placebo effect since Bluray is "superior" in capacity...

 

[mrcorbo]

I am also a keen reader of Highdefdigest, and like bluray it didn´t start out to good. The Video Quality asements they made were imho shitty but have gotten vastly better.

It only took me 45 minutes to find the 2 articles for you (hopeless site):
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6326
http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6457

I hope you at least click the links ;-)

My DVD history is what makes me so damn sure that Blu-Ray was the only way to go. From the start the DVD was borderline close to being to small to handle the best quality, and with the invasion of extras, soundtracks and just to many bells and whistles i think that the movies ended up suffering in to many cases. Space and Bandwidth was the problem. Ironic that the successor ended up having the same constraints.

With DVD i started with a small 29´inch 4:3 TV, soon i moved to a 32 inch then 44 CRT TV and then to a SD Projector and then to the 720p Projector i have now. For every upgrade i could see more and of course the flaws became more visible as well. The next upgrade is in the pipeline and it´s a A2000 1080p. My point is that the coming years of better quality on Display Devices will do just the same for Blu-Ray as it did for my DVD´s. In 8 years i may be watching upconverted Blu movies in 4K

I tried to find that after you mentioned the articles, so thanks for posting the links. Unfortunately it's pretty much exactly what I expected. You can't make the types of comparisons he's making and come out with the conclusions he's drawn. His methodology is flawed to start with because he's making subjective comparisons between encodes of different source material. And it was material he knew the nature of before-hand which allowed his own expectations to color his judgment.

The guy probably means well, but he's totally unsuited to doing the type of analysis he's attempting to do. He just doesn't understand proper testing methodology enough.

Higher bitrates do matter. But the higher they get the less benefit they provide and this loss of perceptible benefit actually accelerates up to the point where there truly is no benefit to the additional data.

To put this in perspective, when we're talking about the bitrates you find on either an HD DVD or BR disk and the use of these advanced codecs you're frequently going to be perceptually lossless. At that point you could throw as many more bits as you want at the encode and it's not going to look any better. Some scenes are going to have either extreme background detail, high motion, or in some other way tax the codec's ability to render the source material with perfect fidelity. This is where the additional bitrate helps.

The reason it is debatable how important the additional bitrate BR offers really is is that the actual benefit is going to consist of small snippets of increased detail which you are going to be unlikely to notice unless you are specifically looking for them. If this amounts to 1 total minute in a 100 minute movie, with the elements that comprise that minute scattered throughout the entirety of the movie, how significant is it really?

 

[-tkf-]

Unfortunately it's pretty much exactly what I expected. You can't make the types of comparisons he's making and come out with the conclusions he's drawn. His methodology is flawed to start with because he's making subjective comparisons between encodes of different source material. And it was material he knew the nature of before-hand which allowed his own expectations to color his judgment.

Of course it´s subjective and surely he is biased because he cares about the "little" details. So that would be biased towards quality not Blu-Ray as such.

I cant find the piece but the first time he got flamed was when he made a remark about how he found Blu-Ray releases to be more film like. In the first article i linked he tried to back it up, still using his own subjective findings after watching hundres of movies.

Naturally after he posted this he was a paid of bluray supporter that hated HD-DVD. Not surprising that so many Review sites never dared to actually take a stand in this war.

His conclusion (and they are not unlike what other have found) is that Blu-Ray looks better than HD-DVD, thanks to High Bitrates on AVC encodes. Something that just wasn´t possible on HD-DVD because of lack of space and bandwidth. Does the difference matter? As i made a point of, yes it does, not only will there be better display devices down the road, the players will surpass the PS3 as well. And it would be so sad if we relieved the "Edge Enhancement revelations" where old DVDs that used to look good turns out to be shit on bigger and better displays. Thankfully with the HD-DVD format dead burried and thrown away like it should have been for a long time it´s not an issue. Now it´s a question of not buying releases that aren´t up to snuff.

 

[Asher]

AVC encodes are certainly possible on HD DVD. They weren't as common for a variety of reasons, but none of that is important.

I agree that technically AVC is the superior codec of the bunch in general terms. I do not agree that Bluray titles looked better in general than those I've seen on HD DVD. In fact, aside from a few garrish early Bluray titles they looked identical.

I think if you look at most Bluray titles, they aren't using much (if any) more space than HD DVD titles in terms of video. Most of them "waste" the remaining space with things like PCM audio.

Anyone who makes the claim that Bluray movies, by virtue of the spec, are visually/aurally superior to HD DVD is simply being affected by their own biases. In the vast majority of cases, you've got identical encodes (where available), or if not available very similar bitrates. It's all how you choose to see things.

The fact that this guy said Bluray seems more "film like" is just icing on the cake proving he's detached himself from reality. He's seeing what he wants to see.

 

[AzBat]

Depending on the movie, there are extras available. 300 has multiple files that you are able to download.

I remember there being some "shorts" available, but I just checked again and out of the 12 shorts available only 2 are available for currently available to rent movies: Transformers(2 small trailers). Plus, you have go actively find them separately since they're not listed with the movie download.

AzBat: I find it ridiculous to suggest that the "on demand" model is being demonized considering the numbers that Comcast puts out about how popular it is. I also find the "sub-par HD" to be a little extreme when you don't seem to have a basis from which to compare, similar to George Ou and his "...low bit-rate lie" blurb.

There also seems to be some, what I would call, unfounded statements with people judging quality on what they may have seen from a download site, or what they may have seen from satellite TV or OTA VIDEO and expecting film to look the same. Personally, XBLM HD downloads are hands down better than DVD, Satellite HD (dish and directv) and better than every OTA channel that I have. Is it as good as my HD DVDs or my BD? In many cases it is "good enough" and or equal outside of the resolution differences.

I'll take back my sub-par comment since I don't have as much technical knowledge as you and others here. However, I still believe a 2-6gb downloadable movie is still not going to be able compare technically with a HD-DVD or Blu-ray movie that's taking 15gb-50gb of space and runs natively at 1080p. Whether or not that's good enough, I'm not sure. But if I'm going to be spending money on HD movies to keep, I sure would want the best version available. But that's just my opinion.

As for demonizing the "on demand" model, I was saying I personally don't care for Microsoft's version. I've watched probably 3 or 4 videos(movies and TV). For one thing, my DSL connection isn't fast enough. It takes half a day or more to download the HD versions. I think I would need a 5mb connection for it to be worthwhile. Second, I can't buy it to keep it and it doesn't offer ALL of the extra content I can get through renting via NetFlix or my local Blockbuster. I'd rather use them and save a buck or two in the process. Anyway, there might be a lot of people like yourself that like on demand, but I'm not one of them.

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

Yes early HD-DVD titles were way ahead of Blu-Ray, that was then. Today it´s Blu-Ray that leads, i am sure you know dvdfile.com and they comparison that was made there. You also know of the issues with so called lossless audio vs uncompressed audio, surely an encoding problem but something that points to disc authors running out of space. And again, featurewise afaik Blu-Ray is on par with HD-DVD with the latest releases in the pipeline. The difference is that Blu-Ray has more headroom both in Features and Space which is a very good thing for the future.

Are there any extras on the Video downloads? Or is it just a simple file?

lack of extra's hasn't hurt bluray compared to its competition .

I don't see why that would bother a video renter . You have x amount of hours to view it once you press play and its a high def file. There are no forced trailers and no waiting time for a rented disc to come to the mail , or cost to drive to the store pick it up and bring it back along with the time wasted in that. I can normaly start the download go make popcorn and get some soda and have the video ready to view on my console . Its also pretty cheap. If your a huge movie buff a netflix or blockbuster online set up might work out to be cheaper , however for the $25-$35 a bluray title goes for I can rent quite a few movies.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The fact that this guy said Bluray seems more "film like" is just icing on the cake proving he's detached himself from reality. He's seeing what he wants to see.

Kind of ironic given that the HD DVD mandated Film Grain Technology as part of the spec in order to make the, potentially, very crisp and digitally encoded images look more "theater" like.

 

[mrcorbo]

Kind of ironic given that the HD DVD mandated Film Grain Technology as part of the spec in order to make the, potentially, very crisp and digitally encoded images look more "theater" like.

Actually it's doubly ironic as VC-1 is also specifically designed to attempt to maintain film grain even at the expense of compression efficiency. Maybe this guy doesn't get out to the movies much and doesn't know what actual film looks like?