Let's hope this heralds a reduction in consumer cost for the technology. It's not a particularly well-informed opinion, but I've always thought BluRay was superior.
Of course, if one must have BluRay, one must have a PS3!
That's a very good point, and as mentioned in the article, there are potentially a million HD-DVD customers out there who are going to be rather upset about this. The choice, when it comes to consoles, has always been either to purchase the XBox360 and get a runner-up HD format player with sub-next generation gaming hardware, or purchase a PS3 and get a cheap BluRay player with real next-gen gaming hardware thrown in.
As much as I would love to jump on the Sony-bashing bandwagon, there can be no denying that they had this round won from the start.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 02-19-2008 12:50
BluRay superior?!
Now that is a laugh!
Sorry, but BluRay is infinitely inferior to the HD DVD standard.
The only thing that the BluRay standard has over the (now defunct) HD DVD standard, was the amount of information that could be packed in one row! BluRay can pack more information in one row than HD DVD, because the laser is much closer to the medium, meaning that it can be done smaller.
Howver, HD DVD can do a dual-layer, something that BluRay has an incredibly difficult time doing, because the laser is so close to the medium.
The advantages of HD DVD were low price for the medium AND FOR THE EQUIPMENT needed to produce it. In fact, one could change a regular DVD production line with a few small changes to do HD DVDs - that made it easier and cheaper to produce.
Also, the equipment needed to produce the Masters was much cheaper, and easier to work to produce HD DVDs.
No folks, this was all about the money, this time. Sony paid out massive amounts of moolah to get the majors onboard here (I work for Toshiba, so...I got a bit of inside information here). Toshiba could not bring that amount of money to the table, unfortunately. Sony learned from the VHS vs Betamax fiasco and though they did take some missteps, in the end, they triumphed due to the money.
Of course, that money is now going to be recaptured through the Customer - BluRay discs are going to be hideously expensive, and so are the movies. You will all pay more for this.
I personally am setting my bets on the USB sticks getting cheap enough to do 128 GB for under $10 in the next 5 years. They are already up to 4 GB for under 10 Euros, so I think that is pretty feasible. As I have a Player that can read from the USB stick, I do not need CDs or DVDs anymore. I rather suspect that BluRay will also suffer the same fate.
In the long run, however, it is good to see the "battle" is over (IMHO). The better format did not win out, but then, history is full of such cases!
The fact that this time, we have a fast "decision" is something positive for the consumer.
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
WS, I agree that BluRay had a major advantage in the way of 'money to throw at it', but as the storage capacity is substantially higher, and with the hope that time will take the edge off the production costs, I still maintain that BluRay is superior. Of course, it is more expensive as it requires all-new production equipment, but major proponents of the format seem to think they'll bring the costs in-line with HD-DVD in a relatively short space of time.
While the established limits are about 54GB for a dual-layer BluRay and 30GB for dual-layer HD DVD, the theoretical limits are actually closer to 200GB for BluRay and 60GB for HD-DVD. In the long run, BluRay goes that step further.
While steam-power does a job admirably, things change and new processes become necessary. The technology behind the technology eventually has to move on, and manufacturing techniques can't just be re-jigged forever without compromising on substantial technological advancement.
On a side note; it must really get Microsoft's goat that Toshiba's baby was usurped by a format supported by (among others) Apple!
According to Engadget, "Companies listed as Members of the Board or Managing Members" include:
Blu-Ray: Apple, Inc., Dell, Inc., Hewlett Packard Company, Hitachi, Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Mitsubishi, Electric Corporation, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, Sun Microsystems, TDK Corporation, Thomson, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, and Warner Bros.
HD-DVD: Memory-Tech Corporation, NEC Corporation, Sanyo Electric Co., and Toshiba Corporation.
They have a list of "Companies listed as Members, Associate Members, or Contributors" which is much longer.
quote:Other interesting facts:
* The Nichi Corporation, who holds the design patents to the Blu-ray's laser system, sits as an associate member of the HD DVD Promotion Group.
* Even though Apple sits on the Blu-ray Board of Directors, its DVD Studio Pro software supports authoring HD DVD media.
* Blu-ray, unlike HD DVD, requires a hard coating on its discs because it's 0.5m closer to the surface. The polymer coating it uses, called Durabis, was developed by TDK and is supposedly extremely resilient and fingerprint resistant.
* The Java platform is mandatory on Blu-ray as it's the standard for menus/multimedia (i.e. all Blu-ray systems must support JVM).
* Microsoft, of course, did eventually side with HD DVD -- not surprising, given its number of long-standing IP cross-licensing deals with Toshiba. HD DVD systems continue to run Windows CE.
* The first consumer Blu-ray device in the US market wound up being the Samsung BD-P1000, and not the PlayStation 3 as expected.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 02-19-2008 16:35
quote:While the established limits are about 54GB for a dual-layer BluRay and 30GB for dual-layer HD DVD, the theoretical limits are actually closer to 200GB for BluRay and 60GB for HD-DVD. In the long run, BluRay goes that step further.
Except to reach that theoretical limit for BluRay, one is going to have to do a ridiculous and extremely expensive amount of R&D to get that laser down even further (in fact, it is going into areas not even remotely researched to do it). Not to mention how susceptable the drives already are to vibration (due to the fact that the laser is so close to the media that is being written on). Even closer ranges would increase that substantially.
A Dual-layer, double-sided HD-DVD gets up to 50 GB, btw.
And the theorectical limit of the HD DVD was nowhere near the paltry amount you have given. That is without adjusting the laser depth. With adjustments to the laser depth (the amount of space between the laser and the material written to), one has many more options to store data with on the media.
Let us be plain here - the market has settled on the more expensive, and less flexible standard. That should not come as a great surprise if one examines history.
In any event, it is all moot now.
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
Microsoft was also responsible for HDi, the interactive later of HD DVD, where BluRay used Java (BD-J). One of the main sticking points between both HD DVD and BluRay reaching an agreed standard "format" prior to their separate launches was over the use of HDi (XML and Jscript) or Java. HDi was favoured my most of the parties involved to begin with, but something happened and the majority suddenly jumped on the BD-J wagon and that's when the talks broke down and each group went ahead with their separate launches.
I'd sure love to know what happened in those meetings to turn so many companies away from HDi though. I'm guessing M$ thought it had a winner with HDi and tried to leverage some kind of advantage from it that didn't sit to well with the other mega-corps involved.
Regardless, I'm happy that BD won, I like my PS3. I picked up a 360 about 6 months ago but I'm seriously regretting it now as all of the exclusives I got it for it are also being released on the PC. They'll probably run faster and in higher resolutions on my rig too. If it had true exclusives that weren't just Halo (which I'm not a fan of, console shooters aren't my thing, got a PC for that) and a handful of XBL games then I might keep it, but I'm really scraping to find a reason why I shouldn't hock it. 360 with sub-par versions of what I could have on the PC or a Wii + funds towards a smexy Macbook Pro for the 08 refresh...
Dracusis : good to see you around, and there is a major battle for standards going on at high level - some companies are simply lining up to
beat the life out of Microsoft. Seriously : read more about power.org (it's both a site and, in reality, a MAJOR initiative from IBM, Sony, to name only two).
The true aim of their game is : fighting the Redmond Devil with it's own weapons.
Eg. The Redmond Devil sells closed source stuff, and NEVER abides to the standards it defines - nor do them abide
to simple "paying honesty to their customer."
So the discussion is : fair sharing of the market by monsters - and IBM is one of the MAJOR advocates of this.
Ask if you want more details.
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-19-2008 19:04
Blu-Ray did it with lobbying their product to WB. After that it was down hill and it went pretty fast down hill for HD. It seems that HD had MS and they were going to try to ride their coat tails to get over the format war. But Blu-Ray beat them to it by going for the movie companies first. IMO that's where Blu-Ray won this battle.
This is just the same as the Beta vs. VHS war back in the day. At least this time, the format war didn't take as long. I remember in the 80's we had both player types. Live and learn from that one.
As far as the PS3 being your Blu-Ray player of choice, it's not a bad one. However, using the console controller to navigate a movie sucks. I am sure there is or will be, an add on controller though.
I would like to see HD become the format for online video viewing. Netflix dropped carrying HD movies in their stock. However, what could happen is that the HD format become the online video viewing format. Not sure if any of you have it or have seen it, but the quality from the Netflix online service, isn't really that great. It would eat up some serious bandwidth to do it, but it would be great to see HD quality through Netflix.
That being said, that is a sure fire way for the cable companies to back it. Since Time Warner is currently testing the "pay for what you use" theme, if it goes through, what better way to insure that the bandwidth goes up for users? Have them watch HD movies on their computer via the web. That would jack the bill up for them
Interesting about the HD being the online format, as I understand it Toshiba and Microsoft are still supporting HD, and I believe they plan for it to be the format for computer and home video. Toshiba Handheld cameras record in HD format now, and Microsoft will handle the software for it.
My point about power.org, in more details : The Cell architecture of the PS3 is one of the power.org standards
- against Intel : Cell chips.
The real aim of the initiative is to make hardware and software abide to interoperable standards.
So they can make real compatible technology, and evolve on the technology market with safe business practices - no monopoly possible here.
quote:
Power Architecture is a family name describing processor architecture, software, toolchain, community and end-user appliances
So, in business terms :
1) Sony uses Blu Ray and promotes it as OPPOSED to MS'HD.
2) Sony opens up the PS3 to Linux - various flavors at that. (vs Vista).
3) Sony relies exclusively on Java for the distribution of their upgrades, and other web features. (vs .Net)
4) IBM are promoting, still, and discreetly backing up the distribution of Eclipse - a major contender to Visual Studio,
probably the only meaningful one.
5) And so on and so forth - IBM also are currently the first IT consulting firm in the world I think, thanks to massive recruitment in India.
6) I doubt, but cannot verify, that the PS3 is compatible with DirectX (even if it physically is, I suppose Sony foster
usage of the OpenGL ES API - in unofficial development kits, only that one is available and I don't see MS providing developers
with development tools ported to PS3).
All these companies, very active now in hardware "open standards" (Cell and power.org) and software open standards
(Eclipse and OpenGL).
They simply respond, very naturally, to Microsoft keeping their stuff closed and plotting for
embedded control hardware in desktop pcs.
Regarding point 6 there, my friend whom works in the games industry as a programmer had this to say...
quote:
Sony originally released the PS3 dev kits using GL ES ... but the performance was so crap (That'll be cos Sony were writing the drivers) that they just decided sod it and released the hardware details and let people program it directly. nVidia do, however, provide CG for shader compiling though (ie not shader assembly).
posted 02-19-2008 10:50
