why the xbox720 should be using HD-DVD

[-tkf-]

I'm in jersey,

Role models $17 vs $27

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9193909&type=product&id=1946701

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9193883&type=product&id=1946701

Bolt
$17 vs $27
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=Movies&ks=960

and if i still had the past circular for when sex drive came out you can see that the dvd was on sale for $15 that week but the bluray was still $30

Buy the Blu-Ray with digital copy and DVD included :
http://www.amazon.com/Bolt-Three-Di..._bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1236579676&sr=8-4

You are comparing a standard DVD to a special edition Blu-Ray.
If you compared the same versions it would be 23 vs 28 dollars, of course you could rent 10 movies from netflix and have a nice sushi dinner along with those movies :-/. Or you could invest 5 dollars in a vastly superior experience and get a disc that would still look impressive in 5 years.

 

[joker454]

I'm not a parent myself, but I honestly do not think that parents would knowingly purchase a bootleg for their kids. What kind of example is that to set for young children? Disney is a strong supporter for BD because it's impossible to make a 1:1 copy of a BD-ROM. Disney titles typically have a high degree of extras and interactivity and any non genuine copy would be instantly identified as a bootleg since it would be movie only.

Immoral or not isn't really the issue, the point is that it happens. Piracy is a very real issue because it's so darned easy to do, even with blu-ray. Hence why I feel an all digital internet based solution is where the studios want to go. We are in the same boat with video games incidentally. Believe me, we all want to switch to digital delivery as soon as possible again due to both piracy and the used market that everyone except the studios profit from.

What you're suggesting sounds just like DIVX, which was soundly rejected by consumers when it was first introduced.

Nah, Divx was still disc based which means it met with the same inconveniences and limitations of any other disc based format, notably that it had no recurring revenue via a subscription and you still had to haul your ass someplace to get the disc. Plus Divx had other issues that doomed it from the start. What I'm talking about is more akin to a more robust version of the current internet based Netflix service (excluding its disc-in-the-mail service which I also think is temporary).

Really the only think stopping all this is our poor broadband in this country. When a 10mbps internet connect is as common as a phone line, then all digital can take over. So it's still many years away...but inevitable.

 

[eastmen]

Buy the Blu-Ray with digital copy and DVD included :
http://www.amazon.com/Bolt-Three-Di..._bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1236579676&sr=8-4

You are comparing a standard DVD to a special edition Blu-Ray.
If you compared the same versions it would be 23 vs 28 dollars, of course you could rent 10 movies from netflix and have a nice sushi dinner along with those movies :-/. Or you could invest 5 dollars in a vastly superior experience and get a disc that would still look impressive in 5 years.

Yea the disney titles are the best value on bluray, which is why i bought sleeping beauty.

However i don't see a diffrence between the role models movie i linked to and the bluray. Same features in both verisons. Its the same with sex drive. So i don't really get where your going with this.

Also 1:1 blruay copies do exist , they just aren't all that popular becasue a large percentage of people feel that just having the movie is enough and they don't need bloopers or some other feature they will never use.

 

[specwarGP2]

Also 1:1 blruay copies do exist , they just aren't all that popular becasue a large percentage of people feel that just having the movie is enough and they don't need bloopers or some other feature they will never use.

Well after doing some reading, I've learned that it is certainly possible to make a 1:1 copy of a BD. Based on this, I no longer think BD will be the guaranteed dominant distribution method for home video.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why? Ease of copy hardly held DVD's dominance at bay!

 

[joker454]

Why? Ease of copy hardly held DVD's dominance at bay!

Because:

a) there was no online option back when dvd came out, dvd was unchallenged
b) dvd's at ~8gb in size were "huge" back then, dumping them to hdd for pc playback wasn't simple then like it is now
c) dvd blanks weren't 10 cents each back then

Today, it's cake to make a "good enough" bootleg version of any movie for mere pennies, that wasn't the case 10 years ago. This is a serious problem for movies and games alike, although more for movies because at least with games the popularity of online play gives us other options to protect against piracy.

 

[DrJay24]

We are in the same boat with video games incidentally. Believe me, we all want to switch to digital delivery as soon as possible again due to both piracy and the used market that everyone except the studios profit from.

And the customers.. some of us like the ability to sell or loan our disc purchases. I love my collection of $10 digital games, but I cannot lend them to friends like I can with my discs.

 

[Carl B]

And the customers.. some of us like the ability to sell or loan our disc purchases. I love my collection of $10 digital games, but I cannot lend them to friends like I can with my discs.

I think you're missing Joker's specific point in that instance, because your bolding implies that studios and consumers are on the same side. "Everyone" includes the consumer in his example. The consumer and the studio are not on the same side for these purposes.

 

[joker454]

And the customers.. some of us like the ability to sell or loan our disc purchases. I love my collection of $10 digital games, but I cannot lend them to friends like I can with my discs.

Yeah like Carl says, it's basically the studios/publishers on one side, and everyone else on the other. It's true that as a customer I hate that I can't trade or sell digitally downloaded games, that's why I avoid Steam if I can and limit my digital purchases to cheap dlc. Even then though, I bought all the Oblivion dlc expansions and now I can't sell them even though I've stopped playing it having transitioned to Fallout 3. To me, that sucks

Alas to the studios, that's great. From their point of view they don't want the customers reselling games or buying them used. It sucks for me as a consumer, but it's an inevitability. Fortunately it's still many years away.

 

[-tkf-]

Because:

a) there was no online option back when dvd came out, dvd was unchallenged
b) dvd's at ~8gb in size were "huge" back then, dumping them to hdd for pc playback wasn't simple then like it is now
c) dvd blanks weren't 10 cents each back then

Today, it's cake to make a "good enough" bootleg version of any movie for mere pennies, that wasn't the case 10 years ago. This is a serious problem for movies and games alike, although more for movies because at least with games the popularity of online play gives us other options to protect against piracy.

If i remember correctly the first "DiVX/Nandub" encode was introduced with the Matrix as example. From there it was fairly easy to obtain "good enough" quality.

High Quality DVD rips were available pretty early in DVD´s life and they were all sized for CD-R.

 

[joker454]

If i remember correctly the first "DiVX/Nandub" encode was introduced with the Matrix as example. From there it was fairly easy to obtain "good enough" quality.

High Quality DVD rips were available pretty early in DVD´s life and they were all sized for CD-R.

I'm not sure I would put "high quality" and "cd-r" in the same sentence In any case, any noob today can go to google and figure out everything he needs to make movie rips. It may have been possible back in 1997, but it wasn't quite so easy as it is now. In fact you don't even need that info now, you can just torrent the movies and have someone else do all the work for you.

I guess what I'm saying is that for common folk there wasn't really an easy alternative to dvd back then, whereas there is one now. Well, actually there are many now. Aside from Netflix streaming, torrents, and many other 2009 alternatives, now you also have DirecTV delivering tons of hd movies right to your home. Just plop a 2tb disk in their dvr and you can build a massive movie collection without even getting up from your couch. It's just so darned easy. That's another option that was not available to challenge dvd in '97.

 

[eastmen]

Well after doing some reading, I've learned that it is certainly possible to make a 1:1 copy of a BD. Based on this, I no longer think BD will be the guaranteed dominant distribution method for home video.

I wouldn't go that far , however at a point in the future studios will move past the format. IF VOD can continue to increase in quality adn ease of use studios will move to that.

 

[TheWretched]

I'm not sure I would put "high quality" and "cd-r" in the same sentence

We are talking casuals here... I mean, there are actually people watching cam rips of movies... I've seen one at a friends house and left soon after it started... it was HORRIBLE^^

I mean, many people also are content with VCD or even KVCD and whatnot... Ripping DVDs was easily doable after deccs was unleashed to the public. The software was already there, even if slow as hell (one time encode, so it didn't really matter), thus time consuming, but after all... you got a movie, or several, for mere cents. Rentals were an easy way to make yourself a giant library of movies cheap AND to keep. Both of which digital distribution doesn't offer (they are neither cheap (well in Germany they aren't), nor can you keep them and third, the quality isn't up to par either, seeing as people have steadily rising standards)

 

[specwarGP2]

I wouldn't go that far , however at a point in the future studios will move past the format. IF VOD can continue to increase in quality adn ease of use studios will move to that.

Oh don't get me wrong, I still think it will be the defacto distribution method for movies that you want to buy in HD. I have no doubt that consumers consumers will reject a digital download delivery system where it's either pay per view or subscription only. Also studios know that certain blockbusters are like printing money. All 3 LOTR movies generated more than 1 billion dollars in DVD sales. How do you extract that potential revenue from a subscription, or pay per view?

But my view is like Carls now - BD probably will become dominant, but there is the off chance that something (piracy) could screw it up.

 

[-tkf-]

I'm not sure I would put "high quality" and "cd-r" in the same sentence In any case, any noob today can go to google and figure out everything he needs to make movie rips. It may have been possible back in 1997, but it wasn't quite so easy as it is now. In fact you don't even need that info now, you can just torrent the movies and have someone else do all the work for you.

I guess what I'm saying is that for common folk there wasn't really an easy alternative to dvd back then, whereas there is one now. Well, actually there are many now. Aside from Netflix streaming, torrents, and many other 2009 alternatives, now you also have DirecTV delivering tons of hd movies right to your home. Just plop a 2tb disk in their dvr and you can build a massive movie collection without even getting up from your couch. It's just so darned easy. That's another option that was not available to challenge dvd in '97.

CD-R sized rips were the holy grail back then, it was the "only" way to get those "darn" dvd´s down to something manageable and cheap. Nandub was a modified VirtualDub that allowed 2 pass encodes with DiVX, DiVX was step one, Dual Pass Step 2 and Nandub made it possible. I still remember seeing the first demostration done with this technic, the mentioned Matrix Clip. Back then i was pretty much in shock

I enjoyed many nights messing about with ripping my own DVD´s learning about the DVD structure and seeing what this technique could do. The knowledge i gained back then have been used many times since in my line of work.

But your absolutely right that anyone that wants a movie today can easily download one, without much prior knowledge. And it´s the studios that mess up when it´s easier to get a pirated copy than a legit copy. The PS Store in europe is a good example. I can´t buy movies there but i can without any problem find a pirate movie in a multitude of versions and watch it on the same PS3.

 

[eastmen]

Oh don't get me wrong, I still think it will be the defacto distribution method for movies that you want to buy in HD. I have no doubt that consumers consumers will reject a digital download delivery system where it's either pay per view or subscription only. Also studios know that certain blockbusters are like printing money. All 3 LOTR movies generated more than 1 billion dollars in DVD sales. How do you extract that potential revenue from a subscription, or pay per view?

But my view is like Carls now - BD probably will become dominant, but there is the off chance that something (piracy) could screw it up.

For every movie a studio can sell millions of , there are movies that are worth almost nothing. Not only that but as time goes on the older block busters maintain less of their selling power and for every LOTR there is a rush hour trilogy. How many copies of Lord of the Rings does a consumer need ? However if you offer Lord of the Rings in a streaming package yo ucan continue to get money from a person each month because if they want to see lord of the rings more than once they have to keep paying. As if is now if you buy lord of the rings launch day They get $30 from you on bluray. In 4 yeasr if you want to watch it again you don't have to pay anything. If you want to watch it with VOD you eithr have to pay again or have a continuing subscription to it. That subscription they sell you over and over again.

Not only that but the studio can cut out many middle men , you cut out the foundrys pressing discs and you cut out the stores taking a % of the sale price and you get rid of th risks of over stock and over production.

In say 2011 people will have more powerfull vod hardware and higher connection speeds than they did in 2008/2009. You put the two of them together you can you can get higher bit rates with better compression.

Thats an advantage over bluray right there. Bluray is basicly stuck at 50 gig discs at 1.5x transfer speeds for movies and its current codecs. But vod and streaming can constantly be updated with each new revision of hardware. Simply do a check like netflix does on my 360. It checks transfer rate and selects video quality depending on that.

In the future when you first attach a device to the service it can simply check which codec and what quality level its capable of supporting and then do a connection test and select quality level by that.

Im' pretty sure that if the next xbox is a $400 machine in 2011 it will be cable of using more powerfull comperssion than basicly 2005 bluray player tech from when the specs for that was finilized.

 

[Boxercide]

You are high on PCP if you think in 2011 VOD will have the infrastructure to make a dent in physical copies.

I know it can be hard to remember but we are a quarter into 2009 as I type this. Explain to me the magical way in which 1080p w/ 7.1 audio will be streamed into our homes.

I'd love to hear it and pass along your magic to the rest of the world.

 

[neliz]

Blue-Ray.

No Piracy? Dead Platform.

 

[patsu]

As long as there is sufficient demand for Blu-ray, BDA will keep improving it to keep up with times. Unlike previous storage standards, Blu-ray has a standardized VM in every player. They will be able to tap on it for interesting services in the future (e.g., episodic download, recording and playing tru2way interactive cable programs). The players will also gain in processing power over time. Besides, I know PC makers are planning to include Blu-ray drives as soon as it is cheap enough (This year or next year).

If the retail price of digital distribution is too low, the studios will be very keen to keep Blu-ray strong to balance their revenue (e.g., This may translate into fudged release schedule). Most consumers these days dislike the restrictive DRM in digital distribution. Buying packaged media like Blu-ray will become more convenient (Thank to neighborhood kiosks and expanding retail footprint). Network infrastructure for everybody-download-HD-movies at the same time (on release day) is still being deployed and refined. All these gaps give room for Blu-ray to differentiate.

As long as consumers continue to spend, both online and Blu-ray may co-exist for a long time (Look at UMD. It is still around despite relatively weak studio support).

But all these discussions seem off-topic though.

Blue-Ray.

No Piracy? Dead Platform.

Ha ha, exactly. It's a balance. The studios need to give the consumers enough leeway without shooting themselves in the foot. That's where third parties like AnyDVD come in.

 

[makattack]

You are high on PCP if you think in 2011 VOD will have the infrastructure to make a dent in physical copies.

I know it can be hard to remember but we are a quarter into 2009 as I type this. Explain to me the magical way in which 1080p w/ 7.1 audio will be streamed into our homes.

I'd love to hear it and pass along your magic to the rest of the world.

The number of people with iPhones/iPods/PSPs/G1s/laptops/et al that I see store and play movies on their little devices -- that they obviously downloaded from iTunes/Amazon/or even ripped from disc media tells me that they number more than those with 1080p/Home Theater systems.

This, along with Netflix coming out with a "streaming only" subscription plan (rumored) indicates to me that this is the future, and it's closer than you think.

I personally have a 1TB HD full of movies and shows (archived from my TiVo or downloaded from Amazon) which allows me to watch whatever I like without hunting for a disc. The last DVD I purchased was a JR Cash DVD video of his cover of NIN/Reznors Hurt from a discount bin back a few years for $5.00. Granted, I may be a small minority, but the fact that many of my other friends are in the same position -- really tells me I'm not alone.

There will always be the audio/video-philes who demand the best AQ/IQ, but the number of people who prefer the convenience of streamed or downloaded content far outnumbers them.

This is why I went through this:
1) converted from vinyl to tape -- despite the loss in fidelity
2) converted from tape to optical -- despite the inability to play them everywhere, initially
3) converted from optical to digital streaming or download -- despite the DRM headaches.