Is it really all over for HD DVD? SlySoft don't think so.....

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Neil,
it must be over: if Blu-Ray fails Sony will be in extra very deep troubles, since all their technologies of the last 20 years had no mass-market share thus no royalties. The only thing that still get some $ is the Playstation 2 - 3 and PSP had been a huge money loss.
Sorry for Brain and Chris but if Sony goes thru Ch.11 i'm the first to get a bottle of champagne. They managed to destroy everything else, now they just deserve it.
 
I apologize for digressing from the topic, but the last line cracked me up: "In any event, I wish all those involved a happy Easter from the bottom of my heart."
 
When I first started looking at HD one of the first things I noticed was that there were HD-DVD and Blu- Ray rips available all over the internet. Nobody seems to have noticed, but the first thing I wondered was if the movie studios were going to end up ditching both formats until they could find something more secure. I doubt HD-DVD is the answer, my guess is that it would be an as-of-yet undeveloped technology. The question is, how long before consumers forget/forgive and willingly spend their money on the next new thing. The studios may fear that more than piracy, better to sell some Blu-Ray than a whole lot of nothing. With the tv I have standard DVD looks fine upscaled with my Denon 2910. I'll continue to wait, and occasionally laugh.
 
After initially avoiding both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, I finally jumped into both formats and was impressed with the video quality (of course). I preferred HD-DVD mostly because of the "slickness" of the on-screen menu system which was more advanced than the Blu-Ray discs (at the time). As the price of the players came down, I resigned myself to the fact that it was fairly cost effective to support both formats. The industry assasination of HD-DVD was quite perplexing, unlike anything I've ever seen in consumer electronics, yet the end result of having one format proved to be a good thing.

If Blu-Ray somehow tanks, I cannot see another "format" coming along. After SACD, DVD-A (which only WE knew about), HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, no one, and I mean no one, will give a rats ass about it. The age of "downloads" will have begun.

Being of the "old fart" school, I prefer to hold the media in my hand. However, in reality, there really is no need to have it there if it's available "on demand" whenever I want it.
 
The movie studios and hardware manufactures seem to be handling new technology about as well as the record companies handled it. They are only lucky that the internet is still a little too slow for HD video downloads, and it is likely that their luck is soon to run out. I too prefer to have a nice box and picture to look at/read. Time will tell. If prices come down to standard DVD levels I'll happily take advantage of HD technology - knowing full well that it is likely to have a shorter life cycle than the technology that preceded it.

One other thing - TV series. I have discovered the joys of buying a whole series so that you can watch it as your own pace, and without commercials. I recently picked up the Sarah Silverman Program and the first year of The New Adventures of Old Christine. Two shows that I find to be actually funny. There was no HD release. If enough of these were released on Blu-Ray I'd find it harder to sit on the sidelines.
 
It’s true that if we want Hi-Rez sound out there to the masses, so that one day there might be millions of music surround fans and we finally get rereleases / new surround music, one format must take hold. I just wish it would have been HD-DVD. Funny thing, now that HD-DVD is gone I see a run for the remaining players / discs and empty store shelves.

As far as copy protection goes, I remember what was said on one of the local T.V. tech shows here in the Bay Area:

“There is no such as copy protection. Copy protection is like trying to comb your hair in different styles while a brick is about to hit your head.”
 
“There is no such as copy protection. Copy protection is like trying to comb your hair in different styles while a brick is about to hit your head.”

That's a good quote. However, nobody has yet broken the watermarking on DVD-A. That's one hell of a comb.
 
Yes, for sure. And SACD, nobody has been able to stick a SACD in a drive and create an exact copy with all its layers as far as we know.
 
Neil,
it must be over: if Blu-Ray fails Sony will be in extra very deep troubles, since all their technologies of the last 20 years had no mass-market share thus no royalties. The only thing that still get some $ is the Playstation 2 - 3 and PSP had been a huge money loss.
Sorry for Brain and Chris but if Sony goes thru Ch.11 i'm the first to get a bottle of champagne. They managed to destroy everything else, now they just deserve it.

PS3 is not making any money at all.
They are incredibly expensive to make, and units are being sold at either a break-even or possibly even a loss-leader.
Look at the published market figures. Sony's PS3 division in the year to March 2007 lost $1,900,000,000 - 1.9 billion dollars. And another 970,000,000 in the next 9 months afterwards.
They really need Blu Ray to work. Unit sales of PS3 are a pitiful 14,000,000 units max, and this is not even close to repaying the investment.
 
That's a good quote. However, nobody has yet broken the watermarking on DVD-A. That's one hell of a comb.
Actually, it was broken by a team of scientists at Princeton University way back in around 2000. However they were ordered in court to not share their tools.
The only reason watermarking has not been defeated by "hackers" is because the format is not in demand enough. The other reason, is that the watermark is embedded in the actual PCM, meaning you'd have to decode (legal and possible) the MLP, "defeat/remove/warp/distort" the watermark, then re-encode it into MLP, which is patent-protected by...Dolby now. So they've made it fully impossible to legally backup a watermarked disc. (at least without paying $5000 for an encoder). So it's pretty protected, at least legally.

Well, SACD is physically protected, not even made for computer playback, so Sony sure succeeded there.
 
Is it naive to say that a format is only going to survive if the originator is willing to go for broke, put a shitload of desirable content on the market and promote the hell out of it? Yes, you'll lose a ton of money initially, but isn't this a long-term game? The timid support for DVD-A and SACD proves that you can't take a toe-in-the-water approach to establishing a new format.
 
The big issue is that no one can expect a fast growth as the DVD media - it's the same story that happened with DVDA/SACD vs CD.
CD was a change of the world, from analog LP to digital, as it was DVD for VHS. Blu-ray (or HD DVD) can go for a niche but it will never be mainstream.
And a niche is not enough for a new format.
 
Hello People,

I read this thread with interest. Short term looks at the HD-DVD and BluRay formats may not show the differential, but believe there is a significant one. HD-DVD was limited to a maximum storage capacity of 35 Gigabytes of storage. This is probably OK if the industry would settle for low quality "High Definition" pictures that are still reproduced with lossy throw away data compression that utilizes motion prediction and blur enhancement (MPEG2, MPEG4, H264 etc.). In addition a defective characteristic that is important to most audio people is the damage done by lossy digitally data compression to audio. This is where Bluray will eventually shine.

A two hour movie requires 230 Gigabytes of storage in full uncompressed mode for the picture and 12 additional Gigabytes for the uncompressed multichannel audio. Bluray is designed to have an ultimate capacity of 500 Gigabytes per disc which will comfortably accommodate full HD picture and sound which brings back the term High Fidelity to both picture and sound.

This is one of the main reasons why Warner Bros. chose Bluray over HD-DVD.

Lou Dorren
 
PS3 is not making any money at all.
That's what he was trying to say :)
winopener said:
The only thing that still get some $ is the Playstation 2 - 3 and PSP had been a huge money loss.
They say they're not making loss on the units anymore, but whether they earn the "investment" back from sold games?

The only reason watermarking has not been defeated by "hackers" is because the format is not in demand enough.
True. The other reason is, nothing is preventing playback except DVD-A players.
 
Bluray is designed to have an ultimate capacity of 500 Gigabytes per disc which will comfortably accommodate full HD picture and sound which brings back the term High Fidelity to both picture and sound.

Wow. Just wow. A 500 gig optical disc! I can't even imagine how small the lands and pits are on something like that.

Remember when the word "terabyte" was something out of science fiction? That must have been, oh I don't know, a whole ten years ago! The speed with which technology exceeds what we can imagine continues to astonish me.

J. D.
 
Wow. Just wow. A 500 gig optical disc! I can't even imagine how small the lands and pits are on something like that.

Remember when the word "terabyte" was something out of science fiction? That must have been, oh I don't know, a whole ten years ago! The speed with which technology exceeds what we can imagine continues to astonish me.

J. D.

That's the sort of thing that gets the computer makers (and users) excited.

So the long term win for Blu-Ray may be for computer storage and back up vs. the whole media discussion (major label movies, music, etc. issued on Blu-Ray disc)
 
Wow. Just wow. A 500 gig optical disc! I can't even imagine how small the lands and pits are on something like that.

Remember when the word "terabyte" was something out of science fiction? That must have been, oh I don't know, a whole ten years ago! The speed with which technology exceeds what we can imagine continues to astonish me.

J. D.
My inbuilt sarcasm detector was wavering slightly there, but I think it was being too sensitive.
However I assure you, I have no watermark detector, at least last time I checked. :) I like to backup my discs.
 
PS3 is not making any money at all.
They are incredibly expensive to make, and units are being sold at either a break-even or possibly even a loss-leader.
Look at the published market figures. Sony's PS3 division in the year to March 2007 lost $1,900,000,000 - 1.9 billion dollars. And another 970,000,000 in the next 9 months afterwards.
They really need Blu Ray to work. Unit sales of PS3 are a pitiful 14,000,000 units max, and this is not even close to repaying the investment.

The PS3 has been breaking even for several months now, even at the $399 price point.

The losses in the fiscal year representing the PS3's launch are similar to the launch of the PS2. Everything comes down in price.

The blue laser diode used in the PS3 was $125 at launch; it is now $8.

Let's not mention MS' $1.89 BILLION settlement on the 360 eh? With the PS3 sitting only 4-5 million behind the 360 in worldwide sales I guess they're both pitiful by your count?
 
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=14786

Check out this forum post from the SlySoft guys.
BD+ is now broken wide open, and they seem to think that (as do I) as the main reason Hollywood went to Blu Ray is because of the supposedly "unbreakable" Copy Protection, Toshiba may yet dust off the HD DVD specs.

Dream on.

BD+1.0 was broken, several months after it came out. On the day they announced they had cracked BD+ wide open, there was already one title on the market not cracked; Hitman. I spoke with Slysoft and they said it could take 4 weeks for them to get the physical disc, then they could work on it.

If Fox starts implementing new variations of BD+, the public has to wait 4 weeks from each release until Slysoft can crack it. I wonder how many peopel they'll need working on it if all studios start using it in different incarnations.

My guess (actually, moreso knowledge) is that Fox are pretty pleased with the first implementation of BD+.
 
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