@Trezzer

Quote:

The only really good thing about them in my book is the resistance to scratches, but since I take good care of my discs it's a non-issue to me

Actually, I would be interested to see a video of someone scratching a BR disc on the top surface. Up to now, I can count the number of discs I have that can't be read due to scratches at the bottom surface in the fingers of one hand, both CDs and DVDs die a very horrible death with only minor scratching on the top.

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@BrianK

Quote:

I've always wondered why CD makers didn't insert harmonic distortion as a 'warmth' button option on players. That would have been good humor.

One manufacturer once made a valve CD player, the reviewer said it was the best sounding CD player ever.

A motherboard manufacturer did something similar - stuck a valve on the motherboard!

Quote:

The numbers used come from Blu-Ray themselves. If it's not true then consumers have a false advertising issue with Blu-Ray. I'd bet that on a dual layer disc is used and one strips the duplication in audio streams and all the extras would the movie fit on that single layer.

It'll depend on the bitrate. At the highest H.264 rate I mentioned earlier (50Mbits/second) a single layer would just about hold an hour's worth.

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Whyzzat?

@minator

Quote:

One manufacturer once made a valve CD player, the reviewer said it was the best sounding CD player ever.

You can buy valve preamps to warm up any signal with the bucket-load, actually.

Quote:

A motherboard manufacturer did something similar - stuck a valve on the motherboard!

To be driven by an... AC97, if I remember correctly...

Last edited by AMiGR on 04-Feb-2007 at 02:13 AM.

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@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: I'm sure some people are going to proclaim that we need this huger space for all the content. But really do we? 25GB in SD is ~11 hours, in HD is~5 hours of playback.

I don't know where you got those figures from, but I wouldn't want to look at movies that were encoded at 2.5 GB per hour with MPEG2. I have seen a couple of movies that were less than 2 hours and downloaded from the internet. It just doesn't cut it. It comes close, but for nitpickers like me, I am annoyed by the occasional stutter and artifacts.

There is a reason there are Super bit releases. All the extras removed and in the highest bit rate allowed by the media. In that case 25 GB will get you around 5 hours.

But if you factor in uncompressed 5.1 or even 7.1 audio, you will need even more storage.

Sure you can offset things by using the newer and better video codecs, but these won't work on current DVD players (perhaps in the future?).

Quote:

So if it matters you appear to have much larger pockets then many of us. DVD-R burner is about $35 and the 4.7GB media at $.25 ... compared to Blu Ray Burners are about $700 and the 25GB media at $17. At this time it makes little financial sense for someone to burn to Blu-Ray the large size is great and all but the DVD costs of 1/3 per GB makes DVDs attractive. Also consider that every friend out there likely has at least a DVD player and many with DVD players in their computer. Right now the DVD is the way to go if your goal is to fit the widest audience.

And roughly the same goes for HD-DVD. But if we keep talking like this we might as well stop development of any future media. Remember how expensive CD-R was?

Quote:

Ahh say the pundits but they want larger media for system backups. It's already out there for $700 you could buy a 750GB NAS and now you have faster backups and recovery along with a device you can take with you. Another options is 6 320GB JBODs for over 1.5TB of potential storage. There are other price/performace effective options for systems then Blu-Ray.

But sending that through the mail... Everything has its pros and cons and special purposes. I like to carry around Siebel software and documentation. If I could fit everything onto one disc, that is more important than price, as I have to carry that around with my laptop. Currently a DL DVD-R won't be enough to carry version 7.8.2 and patches 7.8.2.4.

I also have a external 120 GB 2.5" drive, but it seems USB 2.0 isn't as reliable as I hoped. Or the hardware manufacturers don't stick to the specs. In theory one USB port should be sufficient to make everything run, but when I use only one port, I see it happen quite often that it switches back to 1.1. Haven't tried with FireWire though.

@AMiGR

"TDK Blu-ray Discs are extremely scratch-resistant, dirt and fingerprint resilient and resistant to ultraviolet light."

http://www.tdk-europe.com/en/bluray/durabis2.php?WYSESSID=aj335nb2n7n

"The Verbatim Blu-ray discs, with Scratch Guard withstand finger print smudges, are less sensitive to ultraviolet light (sunlight) and are dirt and dust repellent. In addition, our Blu-ray discs have successfully passed the so called 'steel wool' test - this test involves a steel wool cloth being rubbed against the Verbatim Blu-ray disc, in effect simulating possible day to day handling."

http://www.verbatim-europe.com/index/articles_view.php?article_id=2344&lang_id=1&change_lang=1

I wonder who cleans their discs using steel wool...

But considering the protective technology and higher data density I think it's no wonder Blu-Ray discs have been more expensive to produce, although currently HD-DVD and Blu-Ray prices seem to be about the same. For me personally scratch and fingerprint intolerance has been one of the most important cons regarding CD/DVD technoology, so I am very happy with this!

@ Minator

Quote:

Both drives have higher tolerances so they cost more to make

Too bad the XBox 360 HD-DVD drive cannot be used for games. When / if HD-DVD movie support fades, the drive could also still serve a purpose for playing damaged game DVDs.

@Tigger

Loosing exclusive studio support would be a huge issue for HD-DVD for sure. As would Microsoft going Blu-ray with Xbox 360 at this point. But a big part of the question is if and when either of these things is going to happen and whether or not some other studio might go neutral from the BD side. Since these things are still unknown I think it is too early to call it.

But we understand each other, I think we can agree to disagree peacefully.

Who knows, maybe downloadable movies kill both formats? I doubt it, though.

HD-DVD still has superior interactivity features compared to BD. That is part of the competition that benefits us all in the end.

BTW: The latest Harry Potter is already out on HD-DVD (not yet on BD), saw it in a store last week. Good thing abour region-free too, everyone is free to import their own if its not yet out in the U.S.

@MikeB

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Too bad the XBox 360 HD-DVD drive cannot be used for games. When / if HD-DVD movie support fades, the drive could also still serve a purpose for playing damaged game DVDs.

How is it that you can pack a sentence with so many snide remarks... :)

Blu-ray scratch proofing is excellent thing, though.

@jtsiren

Quote:

HD-DVD still has superior interactivity features compared to BD. That is part of the competition that benefits us all in the end.

Can you provide some example of featural differences between movies currently available for both formats? It may well be that iHD is ahead of BD-J, as BD-Live only becomes mandatory for all players produced after June 2007.

@BrianK

Quote:

I don't ever recall seeing a home DAT setup ever. If they exist then cool. The only DAT I've touched is in studioes.

Still have mine, but technically most of my "home" stuff is what I bought for the studio and moved out to the front rooms later.


I've always wondered why CD makers didn't insert harmonic distortion as a 'warmth' button option on players. That would have been good humor.

Quote:

The numbers used come from Blu-Ray themselves. If it's not true then consumers have a false advertising issue with Blu-Ray. I'd bet that on a dual layer disc is used and one strips the duplication in audio streams and all the extras would the movie fit on that single layer.

They'd have the same lawsuit against HD-DVD (and DVD for that matter), when DVDs first came out, they were all 1 layer, now you never find a single layer DVD for a Hollywood movie, and its not because of audio tracks, etc. Audio is really in the noise range as far as space used on a DVD or either of the HD varieties.

Quote:

Quote: . I can always use more space for backup. On a Blu-Ray disk I can put 2 hours of DV (or HDV) video directly off my camera (the file is just over 24 GB). On a HD-DVD, I can put 1 Hour and 21 minutes You could use a 3 layer 51GB HD-DVD and put all 2 hours on it. Yes argue Blu-Ray does it in 2 layers. Does it truly matter how many layers are there as long as the space requirement is met and the solution is cost competitive? Likely not.

I dont think dual or triple layer disks or recorders are going to be available anytime soon. When I bought my first DVD recoders they were more expensive then the Blu-Rays are now, its still plugging along though it only writes at 1X. They paid for themselves several times over and of course now I have 4x and 8X recorders. If I was shooting video as much as I was then, I would probably own a Blu-Ray recoder now. Its annoying to put my raw DV footage in 20 minute pieces (either 1/3 or 1/6 of a tape onto each DVD), but I need to do it so I have backups. Silly to spends thousands on a shoot and lose some footage because a tape goes bad in a year.
-Tig

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

Quote:

jtsiren wrote: @Tigger Loosing exclusive studio support would be a huge issue for HD-DVD for sure. As would Microsoft going Blu-ray with Xbox 360 at this point. But a big part of the question is if and when either of these things is going to happen and whether or not some other studio might go neutral from the BD side. Since these things are still unknown I think it is too early to call it.

Actually I think both may happen fairly soon. Universal is the only HD-DVD only studio, and with Peter Jackson and others pushing for a Blu-Ray release of there products, its going to be hard for Universal to say no. In addition, shift to Blu-Ray will help push the XBox360, right now, with Blu-Ray winning the HD-DVD drive isnt that big a plus, with the XBox360 games being better now, if it supported Blu-Ray with an external drive, it could effect the PS3 sales at least until a few more great games come out. As for one of the Blu-Ray guys going dual format, Sony, Disney and Fox are pretty adamant they arent going to, Lionsgate could, but that would likely upset the other 3 and they arent likely to want to make the big boys mad at them, especially when they often use them for distribtution deals.

Quote:

BTW: The latest Harry Potter is already out on HD-DVD (not yet on BD), saw it in a store last week. Good thing abour region-free too, everyone is free to import their own if its not yet out in the U.S.

I know, but WB announced at the CES Blu_ray panel that all 5 Potter Films would be out on Blu-Ray by Christmas 2007, the announcement at the similar HD-DVD event was much less forthcoming, we have 20 disks out for the HD-DVD we hope you are enjoying our movies in High Definition. Not a promise for the 5th Harry Potter, not a promise for the Matrix Trilogy. I'd take that as a bad sign for WB continued support of both platforms.
-Tig

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Tigger, MikeB

Quote:

Quote: Loosing exclusive studio support would be a huge issue for HD-DVD for sure. As would Microsoft going Blu-ray with Xbox 360 at this point. But a big part of the question is if and when either of these things is going to happen and whether or not some other studio might go neutral from the BD side. Since these things are still unknown I think it is too early to call it. Actually I think both may happen fairly soon.

That is more of a statement I can understand and agree on. That is certainly a distinct possibility and would change the odds tremendeously. What I find interesting, though, is how much stamina the HD-DVD side ends up having and how much of a market can they build in the meanwhile. If enough, they might stay around for a long time.

As for interactivity on HD-DVD, as MikeB asked about, I think the major differentiator is the in movie experience current HD-DVD players can offer while Blu-ray can not. Including picture in picture and other interactive elements. From what I've seen, HD-DVD is just that much more polished, BD-J, Blu-wizard and the sort simply aren't there yet. Naturally competition pushes things, so Blu-ray will continue to evolve. Competition benefits consumers, even though this format war clearly has its downsides as well.

Neither, I think, have BD-Live like features available, although HD-DVD seems that they might get online stuff around sooner and demoed such advanced stuff to this tune at CES I believe. I'm not an expert on that.

@jiyong

Quote:

I don't know where you got those figures from, but I wouldn't want to look at movies that were encoded at 2.5 GB per hour with MPEG2

Blu-Ray themselves!. I had a subsequent post where I had already answered that for Tiger. Also for MPEG2 they were better then DVD but VC-1 encoding has now made Blu-Ray match the VC-1 encoded HD-DVD products. As for newer codecs being pushed into future DVD players. Good idea but all the manufactures nixxed it to move to a new format. Likely they did this to milk you more $$ for the same movies you already own.

Quote:

And roughly the same goes for HD-DVD. But if we keep talking like this we might as well stop development of any future media. Remember how expensive CD-R was?

Good comments but I disagree with your conclusion. Blu-Ray is the expensive backup option compared to other available solutions today. At some point it'll come down to a price more encouraging. Personally when media prices drop in 1/2, ~$10, and burner prices drop to 3/4, ~$200 range, it'll be a better price competitive option.

You like to carry around Siebel Software? Wow some people have really strange hobbies they enjoy.

@Tigger
Quote:

They'd have the same lawsuit against HD-DVD (and DVD for that matter), when DVDs first came out, they were all 1 layer, now you never find a single layer DVD for a Hollywood movie

So are you argeeing the studioes published numbers, though they may be best case, that are accurate? I simply repeated those numbers, if my numbers are pretty far off in the real world it's because Blu-Ray's advertisements haven't reflected the real world. I'll find and use #s in the future that run around the false advertising and better reflect the actual.

Quote:

Its annoying to put my raw DV footage in 20 minute pieces (either 1/3 or 1/6 of a tape onto each DVD), but I need to do it so I have backups. Silly to spends thousands on a shoot and lose some footage because a tape goes bad in a year.

It is silly to not do backups, though no one said not to. It is annoying to have to split into 20 minute pieces but why not use an alternative method? How much raw video would 1.5TB of harddrive work for you? For the price of burner + first 25GB disc you could get that solution. A 500GB harddrives on sale can be found for about $150. If you're lucky you can get 10 Blu-Ray discs, 250GB, or half the storage. Harddrives backs up faster and recovers faster so it even has other advantages over Blu-Ray. And since the price is half you could get a 2nd set of harddrives and have a backup for your backup. Again this is not to say at some point Blu-Ray might not be financially more compelling it undoubtably will just not until we see some large price drops on burners and media.

Quote:

announcement at the similar HD-DVD event was much less forthcoming

There has already been over 300 HD-DVDs announced for release in 07. And if HD-DVD didn't push this at CES they need some better marketing.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @jiyong Quote: I don't know where you got those figures from, but I wouldn't want to look at movies that were encoded at 2.5 GB per hour with MPEG2 Blu-Ray themselves!. I had a subsequent post where I had already answered that for Tiger. Also for MPEG2 they were better then DVD but VC-1 encoding has now made Blu-Ray match the VC-1 encoded HD-DVD products. As for newer codecs being pushed into future DVD players. Good idea but all the manufactures nixxed it to move to a new format. Likely they did this to milk you more $$ for the same movies you already own.

Since when are you buying the PR from BR?

Nobody is forcing you to buy the same movies again. You can still play your DVD with most, if not any, next-gen player. And if you are lucky, upscaled too!

And as for new codecs, I was really surprised the high-street brands actually are adopting DivX, so that's a good sign.

Quote:

You like to carry around Siebel Software? Wow some people have really strange hobbies they enjoy.

Unfortunately it's not a hobby, but a job. But as long as it pays the rent of my Manhattan sublet, you won't hear me complaining.

But the point I was trying to make, that it's not price alone, otherwise nobody would buy new technology. So for me the tipping point isn't just the price, but also the convenience of carrying just one small disc, where hopefully in the future most computers are equipped with.

USB sticks might be an option, but at first I was convinced USB2 would work with every Windows PC, but unfortunately I am starting to be proven wrong, especially with the higher capacity sticks. And transferring a couple of GB over 1.1 is just not an option. I do have to add that I think it's the hardware, not the software (Windows) that is causing the problem in this case.

Convenience is also why I prefer the 2.5" external disks over the 3.5" ones. With 2.5" it's just the disk and 2 USB cables, with 3.5" you also have to carry an extra power supply and finding the extra power socket. This might sound trivial in a home situation, but I've been in too many situations where I had to convince my colleagues in giving up just one socket just for my laptop, as they occupied three or four (laptop, PDA, phone, storage).

Sure I know I could easily have three times as much storage for the same price, but the convenience factor is more important for me.

@jiyong

Quote:

Nobody is forcing you to buy the same movies again. You can still play your DVD with most, if not any, next-gen player. And if you are lucky, upscaled too

True no one is forcing you and if the sentence read that way I apologize.

By changing media formats it's easier to encourage the end user to purchase the same movie again. "You already own the DVD but this DVD is better so buy it" VS "You already own the DVD but Blu-Ray is better and next-gen and you don't want to be behind the times so buy it." The later has a much better marketing ring to encourage users to buy a new copy of those movies they love. If you recall part of the move from VHS to DVD was DVD included cool new features, looked better, and is the future. We see the same sort of things marketed on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

As for Siebel yes I figured it was your job. No doubt carrying 1 Blu-Ray disc with everything on it versus 5 DVDs with the same info is an advantage. The disadvantage today at that prospect is the lack of Blu-Ray drives in servers and desktops. Meaning if you wanted to do it today you'd have to carry all 6 discs, DVD+Blu-Ray, or carry that Blu-Ray drive with you.

As for the Windows reverting to USB1.1 one issue might be a system that's behind in updates. I believe , but could be wrong, USB2.0 came in a service pack and had patches after that service pack. If say the device uses something where the patch is lacking USB reverts to 1.1 for best compatibility.

Linux Kernel 2.6.20 with PS3 support released:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/4/119

Some related quotes:

Quote:

The new Sony-contributed patches to the 2.6.20 kernel appear to add machine-specific support for technology such as the PS3's memory architecture, DMA (direct memory access) model, and SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) model."

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There is some interesting stuff here, like how to talk to an SPU, (more here) although that is apparently not without limitations. It also seems like there's a little database of user preferences, held in flash memory, that you can access during boot. I think I'm most excited about these mysterious hvcalls, which include a bunch of commands prefixed with gpu_. I wonder if accelerated video, or better, GPGPU, is on the way? However between the graphics driver and whatever it's driving is the lv1 policy module, which sounds ominous. Policy."

OSNews discussion:
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17165

Finally Amazon Canada received some new PS3 stock, currently ranking number 1 at their bestsellers list:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/bestsellers/videogames/702-9756802-6078429

Too bad HMV is forcing you to buy a rear view mirror when you buy a PS3, whether you already have a rear-view mirror already or not and whether or not you planned on buying Motorstorm which is the only game that lets you use a rear-view mirror.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22524

Nice value-add there...NOT!

I truly pity the UK consumers.

@Lou

HMV's action is one they took on their own. Yet it is with Sony products and does inadvertantly reflect on Sony. If I walked in to get this and was confronted with a mandatory PSP inclusion I'd go to another store. But, at the same time I'd question if the PS3 is the option for me and perhaps if the Wii or 360 wouldn't do as well.

In Japan retailers are allowed to charge whatever they want by Sony. Thus, when the PS3 came out they saw retailers jack up prices. Similar to in the US how Ebay prices were jacked up. As a consumer there's something different to me if a store does it on the product or if an individual does it on Ebay.

@BrianK

Not sure - in the Eurogamer article, they quote "At HMV.co.uk, we've been working with Sony to offer up to 5000 customers an incredible deal when you buy the new Sony 4GB PSP."

The first few people in Japan have now already been able to buy Virtua Fighter 5 for the PS3 (official release date 8th of February for Japan?), interesting to note the case notes 1080p support (upscaled?).

Pictures from a new PS3 owner:
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d106/knl01/VF5.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d106/knl01/IMG_1004.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d106/knl01/IMG_1003.jpg

Last edited by MikeB on 09-Feb-2007 at 11:26 AM.