A reflection: Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and some older formats

[Stormwatch]

Until about a hundred years ago, music came on things called "phonograph cylinders". Then, these were replaced by things called "gramophone records" (a.k.a. "phonograph records"). Early ones were made with a mix of shellac, wax, and slate. Later ones were made of vynil, so that's another popular name for them.

Now, these still have some fans, but were mostly replaced around 15 years ago for something called "compact disc" - or CD, as we all know.

Since the introduction of the CD, the music industry kept looking for new places on which to put music. DAT, Audio-DVD, SACD, MiniDisc. All of them had great quality sound; but you had to buy new players, you had to buy the music again, and there were restrictions to what you could do with it. None of these formats was a major hit.

Then came the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 file format... you know, the MP3.

It had no support from the big guns, and sounded worse than the alternatives. How could it win? Yet it did.

Why?

It played on the computer you already had. You could have hundreds, even thousands of them in the hard disk or on CD-Rs. There were no copy restrictions. Why buy music again, you can rip the CDs you already have. Why handle all those CDs again, you can put hundreds, even thousands of them in CD-Rs or, later, portable media players.

To sum it up: price and convenience beat the minor diferences in sound quality.

Now you may be wondering: what does it have to do with Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

Think about it. Just as the CD was a huge improvement over the old records, DVD was a huge improvement over VHS. Now, are the new formats such a huge improvement over regular DVD? Is the high definition image improved enough to make people want to buy their favorite movies again? Especially taking in account the huge prices of new TVs that can actually display the better images. And all the stupid artificial restrictions that the makers are putting in them.

One has to wonder: are the new formats really going to take off? Remember, there was a time when people believed SACD and DAT would sell; ditto about Super VHS; I recall reading in a magazine: "you can get your MiniDisc player now, because we're sure it WILL become a huge hit soon." You already know, it never did.

History is full of flunked media formats. Let's see what future brings now...

[Super Laydock]

Now, are the new formats such a huge improvement over regular DVD? Is the high definition image improved enough to make people want to buy their favorite movies again?

That's a very valid question and to be honest I believe the answer to both questions is "no" for the vast majority of people.

It's gonna be difficult to explain to people why the MUST have HD-DVD or Blu-Ray over the familiar DVD player if they are already quite happy with sharpness of screen and functions of DVD.
"Yay it can store even more extras..."

Sony came at a very good time with the built in DVD playback in the PS2 and having it for certain was a major part in the acceptance and success of the PS2. I am sure they'll try to repeat this with the PS3 and Blu-Ray, but considering the above I believe BR will have less impact on PS3 sales than DVD on PS2's.

[Vexorg]

I don't think either format is going to dominate the market, at least not for several years. Even the most optimistic of predictions I've seen put HDTVs in only 25% of American homes by the end of 2007. That doesn't leave a very big market in the first place but then you add the high cost of the product, consumer backlash against restrictive DRM, the emergence of video-on-demand download services and the fact that in general the demand for Hollywood's product is declining, I don't see either format being a winning proposition at this point. If I had to pick a winner though, I'd have to say it'll be the first of the two formats to have a sub-$100 player, which doesn't look to be happening anytime soon.

[Specineff]

When Joe Sixpack can buy an upconverting 300 +/- USD DVD player that will upscale his existing collection to 720P, I don't see why he will be buying a Blu Ray or HDDVD player.

In defense of Minidisc, Sony has improved it a lot, but its aiming towards pros and semi-pros who do recording in addition to listening. There's no point in competing with the Crap-Pod in that area. But boy, can my Hi-MD record...

[neorichieb1971]

The problem with BR and HD-DVD is the movie prices and lack of availability of movies on the format.

I think alot of people will buy HDTV's for different reasons.. wether it be games, satellite, cable or whatever.

Sony are doing good getting BR into PS3's, but the problem lies with the movie prices. In my opinion, the movies should not be over $20 and any format that tries to get movies out at over $20 should not be accepted into the marketplace.

Also, when a new format comes out, it should concentrate on NEW movies, not old ones. The old ones can be re-released later. Anything more than 2 years old should not be released on a new format until the format has reached a threshold of sales. Because as pointed out, nobody wants to replace their old DVD collection anyway.

[Never_Scurred]

Thanks for the MD love up there.....
The only thing that is keeping me from joining the cult of iPod is the fact that those fuckers can't do live recording and are lorded over by the iTunes software. The only problem is that Sony seems to treat these new formats like they want them to die early. They really are shit when it comes to supporting their own.

[Icarus]

The only thing that is keeping me from joining the cult of iPod is the fact that those fuckers can't do live recording...

Try this... and iPods have microphone adaptors as well.

...and are lorded over by the iTunes software.

I use Winamp on my PC to manage all my music. iTunes only ever gets used on Mac if I want to turn my Powerbook into a makeshift stereo system.

As for MDs, never liked them. Good for recording and stuff, but I use a portable system for one thing only: playing music. And for that my iPod wins over any other format.

[Specineff]

Not to start a flame war, but the Ipod cannot record on WAV at 44.1 KHZ. IIRC, it's limited due to copyright concerns and such. (And MD only needs a mic or a Y-Cable. )

[iatneH]

Holy cow... CDs have been around for 15 years already?? Seems like not too long ago that I thought they were a pretty cool new thing...

[sffan]

Holy cow... CDs have been around for 15 years already?? Seems like not too long ago that I thought they were a pretty cool new thing...

More like 20 years actually. I first saw them in '86 when I was in college.

One comment: I've read that CDs degrade over time, even if they're just sitting there. Therefore vinyl records will outlast CDs. They may not sound as good, but they're more permanent.

[Blade]

I have to say, mp3s have grown in quality over the years, and now with the advent of mp4 (although one drawback is that it's security sensitive), things can only get better.

I actually record my own mp3s using a program called Goldwave, there's lots of ways to improve the quality of a sound, reducing air noise, increasing bass/treble etc.

As for something like Blue Ray....well to be honest if it's soley owned by Sony, the likelyhood of it getting popular is very low.

[Stormwatch]

Holy cow... CDs have been around for 15 years already?? Seems like not too long ago that I thought they were a pretty cool new thing...

More like 20 years actually. I first saw them in '86 when I was in college.

Actually, the first CD player was released in late 1982.

[TalkingOctopus]

Not immediately. But eventually, high resolution screens and players will be cheap and everyone will have one. However, right now I think it's a tough sell. I also think companies did a terrible job marketing/naming home theater tech. The average consumer probably has no idea what 480i/720p... are and do not care. It's all very confusing.

[D]

Resolution, resolution, the current dvd's still have alot of compression, this is noticable in for instance dark passages. like a black or dark rey wall, you can clearly see compression in Green Mill for instance.
Laser disc did not have any compression, but the resolution was lower.
I think VHS was fine. Here you have people buying the cheapest vcr's, money can buy, but If you get a quality one and quality tapes, they're not that bad at all.
The industry wants us to beleive that anything old sucks, well, this just isn't the case.
at the end of a "superficially created" life cycle companies release bad quality devices.
As with record players, they released cheap as gut wrenching needles that f#$%cked up our records and had his and amplified clicks, etc.
Same with everything else. Any equipment. It's business after all.

[Bingo]

In audio, content alone tried to drive consumers to invest into technology that relied on the exact same speakers/amps to provide most with too little of a perceptible quality increase. It was entirely content-quality-driven when the major step had already been made, the transition to digital from the clumsy handling, size and possible hiss or analog defects with less than optimal equipment. That step was too small and had no mass appeal. HD is different in that it is essentially technology-driven, content just follows suit. HD will be a TV reality independent of a perceived jump in quality. It will install itself through new TVs bought. And what a short-term demo can't do in terms of wowing the undescerning public into believing they need it NOW, long-term exposure to the quality coupled with larger and more revealing displays will. It'll just take a while and be a tech geek format in the interim. People will want the new stuff once they've gotten used to being able to sit close to their large TVs and after a while find DVD doesn't quite measure up. Players won0t cost much in a few years, discs (whichever format) won't cost more than DVDs. The transition will be natural.

Bottom line: the new formats won't have to bring HD to our homes, they are a symptom of a change in TV technology, not the cause. Give it a few years and no one will ask the question anymore.

[neorichieb1971]

New formats come out to keep the economy going.. New industries are born and create jobs, then its impossible for them to die. To sell HDTV, you need a format that will support it and show it off.

Think about what would happen in the auto industry if gasoline/petrol was phased out. Millions of jobs would be lost in the mechanics industry. Sure, it would be less pollution, but European and USA countries would have such a big knock on effect.


Eventually HD stuff will sell big time. It might not even be HD-DVD or BR, it might be something we haven't seen yet. I've heard reports that RAM cards will come out and store gigabytes, easier to handle and store HD movies. I personally absolutely hate optical discs, they are hard to keep scratch free and skip/jump all over the place.

[Ceph]

Think about what would happen in the auto industry if gasoline/petrol was phased out. Millions of jobs would be lost in the mechanics industry.

Please elaborate on this. Why would non-petrol cars not need mechanics/servicing?

[neorichieb1971]

It would definately eliminate alot of the philopshy's of the gasoline engine don't you think?

You think if a car ran like a forklift using only electrical power you would need to buy air filters, spark plugs, belts etc. Do you think you would have after market turbos and superchargers.. All that would be obsolete or have to be remodelled.

And the people that fix cars would have be retrained from scratch.

If hydrogen or something was used, thats very similar.

But basically my point is that the whole infrastructure would change at one time or over the course of a few years and the working class that work in those fields would become as specialist or in demand as helicopter pilots.

Soon enough, the game industry will face this change as more titles will be download only.. As speeds get faster, the bigger the games that will be downloadable. You think EB and Game will be around then, unless its them who provide the servers?

[Blade]

Knowing Gamestop, they'd probably hook up a deal with Microsoft or something to set up their own Game Servers.

[Michaelm]

Well personally I made sure, when I got a new PC monitor last year, that it would support component in and have the right resolution for 1080i.
I'm not buying anything different then 50Hz TV's untill lightguns are properly supported on the new screens.

I know DAT is popular with people that record live shows of artist.
I myself got me a minidisc for that purpose because it's cheaper and it too eliminates the noise you would have on normal tape recordings.

As for what format would get popular of the 2 new ones, I'm not sure, probably the cheapest, but like someone else already said it could well be a format that has yet to be invented.
Ultimatly I think it will be more like flash ram because then there are no moving parts needed greatly reducing the energy needs.


And on another note....

And the people that fix cars would have be retrained from scratch.

These things seem to happen all the time because of automation and computerization.

[judesalmon]

Once you start watching movies is 1080p, you won't want to go back to DVDs.

[Arcatech]

And for that my iPod wins over any other format.

The sound quality on an ipod isn't as good as say a archos, creative, or iaudio.

[Vexorg]

Once you start watching movies is 1080p, you won't want to go back to DVDs.

Although that might be mostly because you've most likely spent $5,000+ on an AV setup capable of playing those movies at 1080p.

[LoneSage]

I don't care about the difference between VHS and DVD; personally I think it's crazy to pay up the ass just to get a higher clarity of picture because that's what it was like in the theater, but whatever.


The support of Sony in Japan is staggering, with the PS3's release there Blu-Ray could win over HD-DVD.

[roker]

Once you start watching movies is 1080p, you won't want to go back to DVDs.

Once you've realized that you can't afford a setup like that, you'll learn to live with DVDs

the same way people stuck with VHS

[bigbadboaz]

I saw the Toshiba HD-DVD player showing "Serenity" today while wasting time in Best Buy. Man, I couldn't even tell a difference. It was running on a 37" Sharp Aquos LCD - maybe it was the LCD issues (ghosting, etc.) bringing the quality down, but without comparing a regular DVD image side-by-side it seemed money spent here would be entirely wasted. I generally appreciate new tech, but this was just sad. I definitely feel this will be a tough sell to the general consumer.

Side note - isn't it depressing how HDTV in general has failed to deliver? The Sharp LCD displaying the HD-DVD highlighted this issue for me. Sure, you have much greater resolution. But when you introduce compression artifacts from the digital standard, and then image quality issues from the TV technology itself such as ghosting, black-level problems, the rainbow effect, etc., the overall image is often worse than what you would see on an analog set. The tradeoff is often not worth it. Again, just sad.

[Vexorg]

I saw the Toshiba HD-DVD player showing "Serenity" today while wasting time in Best Buy. Man, I couldn't even tell a difference. It was running on a 37" Sharp Aquos LCD - maybe it was the LCD issues (ghosting, etc.) bringing the quality down, but without comparing a regular DVD image side-by-side it seemed money spent here would be entirely wasted. I generally appreciate new tech, but this was just sad. I definitely feel this will be a tough sell to the general consumer.

Side note - isn't it depressing how HDTV in general has failed to deliver? The Sharp LCD displaying the HD-DVD highlighted this issue for me. Sure, you have much greater resolution. But when you introduce compression artifacts from the digital standard, and then image quality issues from the TV technology itself such as ghosting, black-level problems, the rainbow effect, etc., the overall image is often worse than what you would see on an analog set. The tradeoff is often not worth it. Again, just sad.

I've probably ranted several times on the pathetic state of HD content (at least on Comcast, my local cable provider.) Once you get past the HD local channels (not all the local channels even broadcast HD yet, and even the ones that do still have mostly SD programming) you get a total of 5 HD channels, none of which have anything worth watching 95% of the time. I'd dump Comcast in a second if I had any alternatives (I don't have line of sight for satellite TV here.) Things will probably improve over time, but for as long as HD technology has been around, shouldn't we have been done with the early adopter phase years ago?

As for tubes versus LCD/DLP/Plasma, the main reason I went with an LCD when I bought my new TV a few months ago was for portability. I've had far too many bad experiences with moving CRTs around to ever want to bother with one again. Most recently, I had to help someone move a big 36" CRT TV down a flight of stairs and around two tight corners. It took a minimum of 4 people to even pick the thing up, much less carry it any significant distance. I also got my finger smashed by a big ancient 21" computer monitior a few years back, and still have a nice scar on my finger from that.

[bigbadboaz]

Dude, I hear you. How long have we been in the HD transition now? I can remember people talking about High Definition back in the Genesis days. It's 2006 now and the tech still seems to be in its infancy.

LOL @ the CRT stories - I had a 35" ProScan set that was my pride and joy back in college. But we had to move it from dorm to home, home to dorm every single year. The month after I got it we had to carry it up three flights of stairs. Two hundred and sixty pounds, three dudes, maybe four feet of hall width around corners. We almost dropped the sucker down the second flight. Two years later, I got a 260-pound football player to help carry it - he had more trouble with his end than I did with mine.

I still miss the picture on that thing, though. Absolute heaven. The first 2D game I saw in S-Video was on that screen, and I've never gone back.

[Michaelm]

Well, I bought the monitor more for my next gen systems then for watching movies. Dragon's Lair in 1080i does look wonderfull.

[Bingo]

Your views are skewed guys, HD may have been around in some form for some of you, but the international technological standardization of the whole food chain and take-over from SD is only starting now. Broadcast HD has been downhill for ages in the quality department as subchannels are added, bandwidth and resolution reduced (see HDlite), not to mentioned the disregard for varied content or original aspect ratio. As production and broadcast switch to HD all over the globe content will increase in variety. Judging what's coming based on comcast now is premature.

That Toshiba disappointment rang a bell btw, I've read a lot about that lately. Their players have a fair share of quirks, and it may have been (not saying it was) set to something other than 1080i output if it didn't look better. The Toshis won't output real HD unless set to 1080i output. They really don't output anything better than DVD on any other setting. Make sure you check for that when you're less than impressed.

As for the statement suggesting increased quality is only perceived to justify money spent: it was the other way 'round for me and everyone I know. I only bought HD capable equipment after I'd seen the quality. I'm not hard core, this isn't painting your CDs with markers mysticism. There's huge differences in HD material though, much more so than in DVD. It's more true to the source quality in every way bad and good.

Granted, my HD experiences have always been on projection systems, demo and at home. And I'll be the first to admit that not all material wows non-videophiles in the same way. HD video always does. HD is huge potential, not all sources use it the same way. The main advantage in every case is that you can have a bigger image and/or sit closer and retain the integrity and detail of the image, creating a more immersive experience. If you sit too far from too small an image visual acuity limits any advantage HD could have. The advantages in resolution only really factor in where perceived image content in SD is less than an 'eyeful', when we don't really get enough to look at to fool us into thinking it's real. The single most common comment I've gotten from random people watching HD was 'there's so much to look at I can hardly take it all in'. I'm no HD promoter, what I'm saying is that in the usual household TV situation HD really isn't making a difference and DVD is good enough. You're still well below the detail threshold there. That's why the change will only come gradually as TV habits and size change.

Just as an addendum to this little essay: resolution isn't the only thing HD offers. It has better color reproduction, something that strikes me everytime, even when resolution doesn't. The new standards offer the possibility to playback at something other than 60Hz (or 50 in PAL land), which were limitations of the OLD NTSC and PAL systems. No longer, good riddance. You can watch films without judder added by pulldown. I know this is geek stuff now, but HD is more than just resolution.

Only buy the stuff if you're convinced, when you're convinced. Wait until HD is no longer a question of added expense. This is only the early adopter phase. I'm allergic to marketing hogwash and bullshit, and I'm no easy fan. This is opinion purely based on practical experience of my own and many friends from different non-geek backgrounds. I fully understand the limited appeal in today's usual viewing environment.