[avrev.com] Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD - Common Sense Prevails - Finally!

http://www.avrev.com/news/0405/22.dvd.htmlIt's all back up in the air again. Blu Ray and HD-DVD are no more, as Sony/Toshiba are now going to unite to develop a single format.

At last, common sense prevails.
Keeping both separated will only open the door completely to FVD from China or EVD from Taiwan. Now there is a good chance.
Best of all, I hope that the .NET comonent that was making HD-DVD look dodgy might now get dropped. Time will tell.
But the good news is the uniting.:banana: :banana:

Good news indeed! (For a freaking change)

Unbelievable! :banana: :banana: :banana:

This is a very good step in the right direction, although the agreement is not ready yet. It might take unto two months before the decision is made.
Time is needed not only for Sony and Toshiba to agree over a unified standard but also the big Movie Corporations must be won over.
And there's the issue of what protection to use for HD movies.

I just hope it won't become a too complex standard with many hard to implement features.

Ge Someone said:

I just hope it won't become a too complex standard with many hard to implement features.

Click to expand...

Ya, no kidding. That's all I need is to have my 62" wide screen HDTV become obsolete because of some 'feature'.
Here we go again!

Lonster

article said:

An HDTV digital video recorder (DVR) is one solution consumers are using now to archive HDTV yet the idea of collecting movies (and someday music) on an ultra-high resolution format is going to be very tempting indeed.

Click to expand...

GOOD NEWS BUT

....(and someday music)....

How will it effect the fledgling Dual Disc format and the now "up, up and away" or more appropriately "down, down and almost gone" SACD and DVD-A formats? Will this present yet another hirez audio format which will render our current SACD and DVD-A hardware as potential "low-appraised" items for the Antiques Roadshow? Only time will tell.

berninahusq said:

GOOD NEWS BUT

....(and someday music)....

How will it effect the fledgling Dual Disc format and the now "up, up and away" or more appropriately "down, down and almost gone" SACD and DVD-A formats? Will this present yet another hirez audio format which will render our current SACD and DVD-A hardware as potential "low-appraised" items for the Antiques Roadshow? Only time will tell.

Click to expand...

According to some friends I have at Dolby, any new format will be fully backwards compatible with so-called "legacy" formats.
The new Dolby Digital + and DD Lossless (AKA MLP) encoders will all happily play our existing High Res DVD-A and DualDisc, as well as SD-DVD of course.
Blu Ray and HD-DVD both have compatibility with these formats, so any merged one will also , I would think, include the same degree of compatibility.

What this should mean for us is that we will - at last - be able to have High Res Multichannel Audio and HD video, simultaneously. With bandwidth of 25 to 30 megabits per second, there is - at least with DD lossless - the ability to go as far as 10.2 in 24/96 resolution. This has always been part of the MLP encoders, but so far just not actually switched on yet due to it being pointless.

My main hope is that when the unification comes, it will mean that everyone is a winner. Let's just hope all the extra bitrate is not merely frittered away on million colour overlays and excessive amounts of tedious menus.

For any of the blue laser formats to work, serious DRM is going to be needed too, otherwise the labels and studios just will not go for it - there is no way I can see either Sony Music, Universal or any of the studios putting out what is effectively production master quality product that can be bootlegged and on the streets for $2 per disc within days of initial release. The biggest remaining obstacle to all this working is going to be the epedemic thieving (I will not use the "P" word as it glamourizes theft)

Ha! About time someone in the major corporations saw the blindingly obvious. (Excuse me whilst I quickly go and make sure it isn't April the 1st...)
My net connection's been down for a bit thanks to a virus which wiped out my PC for a bit (and that's with 3 different firewalls and two anti-virus packages running!) -nice to see such a positive posting when I came back!
Best
Scott

neil wilkes said:

According to some friends I have at Dolby, any new format will be fully backwards compatible with so-called "legacy" formats.
The new Dolby Digital + and DD Lossless (AKA MLP) encoders will all happily play our existing High Res DVD-A and DualDisc, as well as SD-DVD of course.
Blu Ray and HD-DVD both have compatibility with these formats, so any merged one will also , I would think, include the same degree of compatibility.

Click to expand...

That's good but will the new hardware play DVD-As? As you know, current hardware must support DVD-As. Looks like this new technology does not support SACDs.

berninahusq said:

That's good but will the new hardware play DVD-As? As you know, current hardware must support DVD-As. Looks like this new technology does not support SACDs.

Click to expand...

The Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats do not mandate legacy support for DVD-A. That is left up to the device manufacturers to decided based on business conditions. Some will probably support DVD-A, and some won't, simply because of the added expense in player design (Verance watermark support, CPPM license and technology, etc.)

HD-DVD does include support for all current DVD formats. Check with the DVD Forum for details on this.
Blu Ray will not play back DVD-A at this time, but as neither format's specs are finalized as yet, this might change.
Both may yet still either merge, or vanish before launch because of the newer holographic systems currently under development which can - and probably will - include Quantum Cryptography currently being developed by Toshiba which will be ready commercially in 3 years at the most. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4496893.stm for details on this.

One of the reasons Sony are interested in merger talks, maybe? Save developing a different DRM package? Makes sense to me, that's for sure.
But don't be surprised if neither Blu Ray or HD-DVD ever get launched.........

Amazing - formats used to last several years - now its down to several months!

My first worry is "what about all those DVD-A/SACD discs I have". Of course, the solution is to buy them for the umpteenth time on the new unified format. Deep Purple, as the logo on this site suggests, must have been issued on every format to date!

H

The DVD-A discs will be playable properly in an HD-DVD system, but NOT in a Blu Ray one. The focal lengths are all wrong, and for it to work will require Sony to build a DVD-A player and incorporate it into their Blu Ray player - and I'm sorry, but I just don't see that happening.
SACD is going to remain around for a while yet too. It's not going away, depite the rumours. Let's be honest - you can still buy turntables so I see no issue with SACD hardware even if it does get dropped by Sony as a current format.

I still do not actually see Blue Lasers happening.
Initial players will be
A/. Expensive
B/. Japan only - USA will follow later, Europe much later if at all.
C/. Obsolete by the time the price drops enough to make it a viable system due to the holographic systems under development
D/. Extremely short on any content as nobody in the major studios really wants it. They are all happy with SD-DVD. The Authoring works, they are geared up for it, and the quality, whilst not perfect, is still much better than VCR. Which is what a serious number of consumers are still using.

IMHO the reason the so-called "next generation" formats are coming so thick & fast is entirely down to greed. Rather than develop one solitary format that really is as good as the hype, all labels want to own their own delivery formats so as to avoid paying royalties. See the Quad era for proof, and they still have not learned the lesson that too many formats will cause them all to fail. Or maybe they have seen this, and this is why Sony have tried so hard to kill DVD-A - they know it is good, and they also know they do not own it.

Oh Oh, Microsoft, HP unveil new high-def video disc formats.

This is not another Blue laser format but a new Red laser format, it's HD-video on the current DVD hardware. Not "the real thing".
Anyway, as BerninaHusq(varna?) indicated, all this debate is about video as HighRes audio doesn't requier the blue laser densities (yet?).

Good argument, and one I have been saying for a while now.
For High Res Audio, DVD-Audio/Video hybrids are the way to go. And will remain so for at least another 3 to 5 years yet. If not more.
Where the newer formats will be needed is if - and I say if, the labels decide they want to put High Res Audio with HD video.

neil wilkes said:

Good argument, and one I have been saying for a while now.
For High Res Audio, DVD-Audio/Video hybrids are the way to go. And will remain so for at least another 3 to 5 years yet. If not more.
Where the newer formats will be needed is if - and I say if, the labels decide they want to put High Res Audio with HD video.

Click to expand...

This window tallies with what John Trckett, CEO of 5.1 Entertainment, suggested as the length of time the current audio carrier (i.e. (hopefully) DVD-A on Dual Disc) would be around until HD video ideas started getting through to the music industry, when I asked him this question at the European Dual Disc launch.

He did say however that all bonus material shot for Dual Discs for his label are now shot HD for future-proofing.

BD-4 CD-4 said:

Unbelievable! :banana: :banana: :banana:

Click to expand...

That's the word, indeed.

I would keep the champagne in the fridge until some actual facts emerge.

Jerry's articles, besides being poorly written typo-laced stream-of-consciousness fluff, are generally fact-free. Were there any actual quotes, from sources named or unnamed? Any hard evidence at all? He needs a proofreader and a fact-checker. Then some actual facts to check, a dash of writing talent and he'd be on his way to a career as an unpaid internet "journalist".

This forum is chock-a-block with talented writers who actually know what they're talking about. Wish more of you were publishing articles instead of know-nothing hacks.

TOKYO — Talks among Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba designed to unify competing next-generation DVD formats have failed, making it more likely the rivals will follow separate paths to the video market.

See source EETimes

We're not there yet.

and it's Toshiba that is playing hard to get..

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/eA3agU2Wn9fP72/Toshiba-Against-Sony-Led-Common-DVD-Format.xhtml

Although this could be negotiating strategy on Toshiba's part possibly because Sony blinked first..

John the Depot Dude said:

and it's Toshiba that is playing hard to get..

Click to expand...

Who knows? All rumours... I read Sony didn't want to dump the Blu-Ray 0.1 mm technology (layer depth I think this is) and only accept the "Software" format parts from HD-DVD.
Toshiba already has interested especially some production facilities with it's 0.6 mm disk (which resemble the current generation in mass production).

There is a lot at stake, so they will have another stab at it.

The presidents of Sony, Toshiba and Matsushita will meet to try to break a stalemate in talks over a unified format for next-generation DVD technology.

Click to expand...