Letters to the Editor
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Format war
Samsung currently makes players that play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, rendering the "war" moot.
Not that it helps me one bit. I've got an analog video projector that doesn't have HDMI inputs, so I currently can't use either format. That's the studios "protecting" me via encryption.
I'll have to wait for an affordable drive for the PC that plays both before I can enjoy HD-Anything in my theater.
Pfft!
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I'm not even buying movies on DVD
Well, unless they're really cheap. Records morphed into 8-track, then cassetes tapes and CD's to digital. Movies went from film to video (remember Beta?) to DVD to pay per view... and now to ???, without any visible improvment in quality in the last 5 years. I'm beginning to feel that this is all a scam to get us to spend more money. Okay, that feeling has been in my mind quite a while. Maybe "less is more". I'm not spending more money until the technology settles down a bit.
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Nice if you have the bucks
Since I, like the majority of people out there, do not have the money to switch machines every couple of years, I guess I just won't be buying any of Paramount or Dreamworks' movies. Unless they'll play on non-hi-def machines, I'll just have to forego the utter ecstasy of these studios' product.
How will I ever survive? *eyeroll*
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Pick one already goddamnit
My XBox is an HD player, the PS3 is a BluRay. The cheapest straight BluRay player is $300 from Wal*Mart.
Pick a great goddamn format already.
BTW Luddites it's pretty damn hard to buy a NON HD TV now. Oh there are a few but it's damn hard. And regular video looks crappy on an HD screen. So you're slowly being pushed to get HD cable/sat.
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DVDs are quite good
I'm waiting for a hybrid drive that'll cost $100 tops. When that time comes, I'll be ready to change my TV from a LCD 1080i projection to a 1080p direct LCD.
Except for a few titles (like 2001 : A Space Odyssey), I won't buy movies I already have.
Oh, and just a note : I've heard that action movies (or movies where the camera moves a lot) are not especially nicer on HD because they don't improve the frame rate (obviously), only the resolution. So ironically, the HD difference is mostly visible on rather quiet films.
Olrik
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Not so fast!
In Being Digital, Nick Negroponte wrote about how we'd have so much bandwidth available that we'd never be able to use it all. That was 11-1/2 years ago, and I'm still waiting.
All of the articles that assume that the DVD format wars are irrelevant because we'll all be downloading everything real soon now make two mistakes. The first is the bandwidth - we don't have Negroponte's ultimate bandwidth now, and we're not going to have it any time soon. If you do the math, you discover that it takes an intolerably long time to download HD video at any speed that's currently widely available or will be widely available in the next couple of years. (Even if you count FiOS, which is not widely available, it's not going to get you downloads that take less time than a trip to the video store.) And this doesn't even consider that an HD download will make the Internet effectively unavailable to the rest of your household until it's done (or will be slowed down by anybody else's use of the Internet; take your pick).
The second mistake is that storage is not that cheap or convenient for regular consumers. An HD DVD can hold up to 30 GB of data. If you own, oh, 50 movies, that's up to 1.5 terabytes. Depending on what you buy, that's $300 to $400 worth of hard drives, and of course hard drives fail all the time, so you'll need to do backups if you don't want to risk losing the movies after you've paid for them. Suddenly downloads don't look quite as attractive, and they're certainly not as cheap as they might otherwise appear.
Now, eventually it will be true that downloading movies will be a better business model than selling them on disks. It's just not going to happen as fast as some online columnists might like.
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I think it's all in the name...
I predict HD-DVD will win the consumer vote simply because of marketing... and not through promotions or publicity, but the simple factor of its name. This may sound overly simplistic, but think about it: we have two formats of High-Definition DVDs. One is called "HD-DVD." One is called "Blu-Ray." One sounds simple, no-nonsense, generic (in a good way), even non-proprietary. The other one sounds flashy and trendy, which is great except if you're worried about it being long-lasting. If a consumer thinks both are equivalent (at least in that they both deliver HD video) and is worried that one of the two formats is going to win out over the other, I think consumers would be more likely to bet on the one with the long-lasting name. And that one is HD-DVD.
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Format
What's happening with that DVD that holds all the formats?
jebldmm,
If you have a DVD burner, get a copy of DVD Decrypter, rent a movie and burn yourself a copy. Us the "read iso" option, I've only had one that wouldn't work. Yes, I know it's illegal, but screw it.
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Storage Costs
If you own, oh, 50 movies, that's up to 1.5 terabytes. Depending on what you buy, that's $300 to $400 worth of hard drives.
Even today, that's not $400 worth of hard drives. You could pickup 3 500GB drives for around $350 if you shop around. 1TB drives are now hitting the market. I'd expect to see 2TB drives within 2 years selling for about $300.
Both of these formats are DOA. Most consumers aren't particularly interested in them. Cable companies are already rolling out HD on demand, for a lot less than $20 a movie. Most folks don't want to see something more than once or twice anyhow.
Remember DVD-Audio and Sony's goofball Super Audio CD's? HD-DVD and BluRay are the video equivalents. Nobody gives a crap. They want to download their video and watch it on their iPhone or on their cable box. They don't want to hook up yet another stupid player to their television, jump thru more tedious DRM hoops and re-purchase their libraries all over again in some new format that's destined for the scrapheap in 5 to 10 years.
If these two formats had come out a couple of years earlier - or better yet if the industry greedheads had been able to settle on a single format - hi-def discs might have stood a chance. They missed their window of opportunity. By the time they even begin to become established, the market will have passed them by.
Even if, by some miracle, downloaded content doesn't bury HD-DVD and BluRay it's likely technological progress probably will. The Japanese are already making noises about the NEXT hi-def format, probably holographic discs, which will sport capacities theoretically in excess of a terabyte. They'll make BluRay look like an old 5.25" floppy drive.